Saturday morning media hangover

This Saturday morning, the equivalent of the non-devout's "Sunday Morning," with the added caveat of work jeans, deserves a media-consumed-through-our-television-screen roundup.

Film:

Fair Game: It is no secret that I enjoy a good Naomi Watts movie, or a bad one. This movie came and went last year, which is too bad because it is very good. Sure, it is "biased," but that does not mean it is not honest (those two can easily coexist: one is a point of view, the other is an approach to emotion), and it was clearly from the point of view of the people wronged. It is the story of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, and the beginnings of the Iraq war. It shouldn't surprise me that the level of deception on behalf of the executive branch was so great, and all those who enjoy nothing more than to bemoan the current state of that particular branch ought to be a little more forgiving, for at least the stuff coming out of White House seems forthright. I really do recommend the film--the pleasure comes from many places: intrigue, domestic melodrama, political wonkiness, great performances, solid direction, Naomi Watts.

The Next Three Days: This movie suffered from a lack of Naomi Watts and from too much Paul Haggis, the director. It should have been a tight escape movie but it ended up being the portrait of a community college professor breaking down, which is bad enough in real life--there couldn't exist any other portrait of a community college professor. But this movie was long, and Russell Crowe's anguish and anger can only be tolerated in 90-minute bursts. If the film went two days too long, it is because Haggis takes himself too seriously, believing that all movies must be about something other than the thing they are about. They can be, but they shouldn't must be, which is also my problem with European films.

The Ghost Writer: Another liberal thriller from the liberal folks that make good movies (let us not pretend that any conservative other than Clint Eastwood makes good movies), this one is so well-made that I forgot to get the political point, which was effectively beside the point, which was that this film is really well-made. Roman Polanski knows his craft well, and although he should be an ex-con by now, I can't fault his awesomeness at making movies. So, if you put politics aside (it is much easier to do that in this movie than in Fair Game), you will like this movie. Of course, easy for me to say because I don't really need to put my politics aside, only my moral scruples. By the way, Pierce Brosnan has proven himself to be a great actor in his post-James Bond life, and this is a part of the proof. If you confuse this movie with the Nicholas Cage vehicle, Ghost Rider, about a demon from Hell who comes back to mortality to ride motorcycles and occasionally burst into flames, that is okay--the movies are only different in execution.

How Do You Know: I don't really like any of James Brooks's movies because he seems like such a self-satisfied upper class ninny. But that doesn't mean his writing is very bad; he is a clever writer who tries to get wisdom into banal phrases, and he often succeeds. Not a very good director, but the genres he writes don't always require great directing. This film, though, required something--maybe a better sense of pace, or maybe just not existing. As much as I like Naomi Watts, I dislike Reese Witherspoon, and Jack Nicholson has made a career from eccentric eyebrows and little else. It just takes one thing done well to make it as an actor, and Nicholson's eyebrows are all it took for him. Funny that I didn't like this movie because the writing is so much better than other romantic comedies, but the characters that say the lines are not characters that live in any world I know, with the exception of Owen Wilson's, a baseball player who will join the honored ranks of great charismatic sports stars in movies, like Kevin Costner in Bull Durham, Jimmy Chitwood in Hoosiers, and Scott Bakula in Necessary Roughness. Or even Kathy Ireland in Necessary Roughness. Well, let's just say the whole cast of Necessary Roughness.

TV:

The Killing. If someone had told me about the pleasures of Sunday evening tv before, I wouldn't have made personal goals about not watching anything on the Sabbath, but since I go the traditional route and observe the Sabbath from sun up to sun down, I think I am okay, especially during winter. This year alone has seen Sunday evening Sherlock Holmes on PBS's Masterpiece, Downton Abbey on the same, and The Killing on AMC. I don't watch anything during the week with the exception of a couple basketball games, so I feel great about watching quality television after sundown on Sundays. Besides, it can't be Sunday anymore if the Sun is gone. The Killing also takes place where there is no sun, in Seattle, or at least a version of Seattle that has never been sunny, and the killing refers to the mystery of a daughter's murder. The fact that we won't know the murderer at least until the end of the season gives me a reason to perform the Sunday night ritual of watching after I put the kids to bed. That puts important rituals at the beginning and end of my Sunday. And with that, this entry has come full circle.