Born on State Highway 1

Precious – the movie that had champagne socialists all gooey in 2009 – finally found its way to my DVD drive the other night.

It was disappointing.

I like realism. There are lots of bad things going on. We should examine and talk about them. They need to be seen and discussed. Film, television, literature and the arts can do that.

Precious, however, was just too precious.

Inexorably, like all American crap, it descended into an uninteresting “Great Satan” versus “Truth, Justice and the American Way” narrative.

The title character, Precious, is a 16-year-old girl in 1987 Harlem. She is kicked out of school when she is discovered to be pregnant for the second time. To her father. For the second time. She and her mother live together on social assistance. Her mother is a nasty piece of work.

Precious, after being kicked out of school, goes to an alternative school where, shock-wheeze-gasp, she finds a teacher who sees her inner beauty and strength and refuses to give up on her.

She excels at the alternative school, learns to read, has her baby and discovers she has HIV.

Precious’s life is pretty shit.

And that, in a nutshell, seems to be the metatheme of the entire film: being Precious sucks.

Yeah, well. Lots of things suck.

Tension does arrive near the film’s conclusion when Precious’s welfare officer, played by Mariah Carey, tells Precious that her domineering violent mother wants to be reunited with her.

At this meeting, the welfare officer forces the mother to discuss the rapes that the mother’s boyfriend, Precious’s father, subjected her to.

We learn that the sexual abuse started when Precious was 3 years old, and that the mother only wants Precious back for proprietal rather than emotional reasons. Precious’s mother still harbours jealousy that her man preferred his own daughter to her.

But that’s it: the whole reveal is that the evil mother character ain’t no regular evil mother character but the Evil Mother Character From Hell! The worst! She’s sick and depraved!

Precious’s life really really really sucks! Okay? Get it?

I became convinced of my argument that this film is just more good-versus-evil American crap when I considered the scenes of escapism that played out while Precious was being raped/finding out she had HIV/being beaten up by her mother.

These lush scenes involved Precious on a red carpet signing autographs, dancing on television with handsome men, etc.

In other words, Precious’s life sucks and… she wants to be famous!

Fame, the all-American cure-all.

Did I mention Precious hates crack junkies? Can’t stand them. She hates it when they buzz her buzzer for no reason. That’s how good Precious is, okay?

Even the subplot relationship between Precious and the alternative schoolteacher was flat. We learn, when Precious briefly moves in with her, that the teacher is a lesbian. Precious seems surprised, but the plot angle adds nothing. Same goes for the male nurse who helps Precious at the hospital after she gives birth to her son. They become friends. Why? Dunno. They just do.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh on this movie, but my point is that the brutal realism serves no real purpose if it fails to make the viewer think. In my experience, thinking comes with nuances, such as plot tricks, textured characters and giving more questions than answers.

The characters, plot and theme of this movie were handed over on a plate, asking nothing of the audience other than to feel the requisite liberal guilt we are all supposed to feel for living in racist, class-ridden societies.

In other words, Precious is more about answers (blame bad people) then questions (why do people live like this in the world’s wealthiest country?)

I think there could be a huge improvement if the film were turned into a comedic musical.

I’m trying to figure out how to work in a bit part for Rodney Dangerfield.

Stay tuned.

A brief rundown of shows currently or recently airing around the world. Probably a few minimal spoilers.

Heroes

When women give birth, their brains are flooded with hormones that cause them to forget how painful childbirth is, so they’ll do it again and propagate the species. Something similar occurs in my brain when I watch Heroes. I sit there thinking, “Holy SHIT, this is awful. This is just so bad. I am never watching it again.” And then the following week a new episode is out and I get excited and watch it all over again. Madness. Terrible show.

V

This series is like a superband of sci-fi actors. Firefly’s Inara (or SG:1′s Adria) is the leader of the alien Visitors, along with her daughter Kara from Smallville. They’re opposed by Serious Face Agent from The 4400, Flashforward’s Naughty Wife, Supernatural’s Castiel and this other guy who hasn’t been in any other sci-fi shows, but I shit you not the actor’s name is Morris Chestnut, which is pretty fucking cool. Oh, and Kees Van Dam from New Zealand’s terrifying drama Street Legal is in there, his performance utterly shown up by everyone around him. And Bailey from Party of Five (ROMAN NUMERAL V OMG) is the guy who we don’t know where his loyalties lie. Continues to be entertaining. Watch it.

Diana just looked over my shoulder at the images for this post, said "gay", and walked away.

Doctor Who

It took me until Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone to be sold on the 11th Doctor, but now I am. I’m going over well-worn territory when I say that David Tennant got a little bit too omnipotent while Russell T Davies was a lot too panto. Matt Smith’s Doctor doesn’t know what the shit he’s doing and Stephen Moffat’s wasted no time in introducing this season’s overarching storyline with some cool dark stuff, and the reoccurrence of the Weeping Angels wasn’t as shit as I thought it would be.

Smallville – season 9 finale

This season has been a bit of a drop in standards, with only one stand-out episode: Absolute Justice, starring Stargate’s Michael Shanks as Hawkman and a bunch of DC Universe legends showing up (including Doctor Fate and the original Sandman). The finale was okay, but the cliff-hanger would have been better if the season had managed to raise any tension at all.

Supernatural – season 6 finale

The thing about Supernatural is, it’s a love story but with brotherly love instead of romantic love. I tell people this and they say, “Oh, yeah, bromance is all the rage.” But “bromance” doesn’t do Supernatural justice. It’s a genuine brotherly love story. The main highlight of the last few seasons for me is the actor who plays Castiel, who’s some kind of comic genius.

The season finale followed the usual pattern of showing “the road so far”, a montage of the past set to Carry On Wayward Son. The ending was great. So great that it could quite satisfactorily be the end of the series. Sadly, it doesn’t look like they’ll let it die, so I hope they’ve got some good plotting set up, because things feel really complete.

Stargate Universe

SGU is consistently pretty good. It’s beautifully shot, perfectly acceptable stories, good acting, good characters, cool premise. It’s really now just a matter of giving it a chance to take all of those elements and turn them into something that really stands out. Slowly developing situations and characters are all very well, but before this first season is done, there had better be some really fucking cool surprises in store.

Flashforward

I lost track of Flashforward sometime during the 70-year hiatus the United States apparently likes to impose halfway through seasons. Kiwi viewers have not suffered the same irregularity and are probably enjoying it as much as I was at the time. I want to get back into it. The casting and acting were great. There was just this growing sensation that the story was going to get away from the writers. If the flashforward is to six months in the future, how can the series last past one season? Without, of course, having another flashforward again, and again, and so on, which gets us into Heroes territory. Dominic Monaghan is fucking cool, though.

The '80s intro to the '80s episode of Fringe. Nice.

Fringe

My friend Morgan got me into Fringe, and he was right that I would like it a lot. There is something unsatisfactory to me, though, about the two-universe cosmos in which it takes place. If you’re going to have more than one universe, why have only two? Maybe there are more in store, but it’s in danger of becoming a cul-de-sac of story potential, again the threat of Heroes territory, but the Bishop characters are cool enough to keep me watching. Still can’t decide if the female lead is the most annoying person alive or not, but Daniels from The Wire is consistently b’dass.

How I Met Your Mother is one of the best comedies on American television at the moment. I’ve particularly enjoyed their running gags (none more than the repercussions of the slap bet) and their clever creation of websites to which the show directs viewers (Ted Mosby is a Jerk, Barney’s Video Resume, etc.) Last night was their 100th episode. It’s become an odd tradition in long-running shows to make round-numbered episodes particularly memorable. Clark’s father died in episode 100 of Smallville, and who could forget Stargate SG:1‘s hallucinogenic episode 200?

Show Stargate 200 »

I won’t spoil the revelations in the episode, but I will spoil the fact that the episode ends with Barney singing a musical number entitled “Nothing Suits Me Like a Suit”. Of course, Doogie Howser MD is no stranger to singing, having already starred in Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog – created by Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Joss Whedon and the best thing to ever come out of a writer’s strike.

Show Act 1, Part 1 »

But more to the point, here, for the second time on YouTube and inexplicably mirrored backwards, is the cast of How I Met Your Mother singing “Nothing Suits Me like a Suit”! Yaaaaaay!

That “Yaaaaaay” was meant to sound like Kermit the Frog. So now you know.

I’ve just finished watching through the first season of True Blood, the HBO show about vampires that stars our own wee Anna Paquin. And hasn’t she done well? Vinnie from Home and Away is in there too, so Australia gets a slice also.

The idea of the show is a small Louisiana town in which Sookie Stackhouse lives, a nice normal psychic waitress. The story starts two years after vampires “came out of the coffin” about their existence and have begun seeking legal equality with humans, now that Japanese scientists have created Tru Blood – a synthetic blood substitute that can sustain vampires without them having to feed off humans. Naturally, some vampires liked the way things were in the past, while other decent stereotypical story vampires try to “mainstream” and brood intensely about how guilty they feel.

At the same time, the new drug on the market is vampire blood, or “V”, which is a hallucinogen, amphetamine, steroid, aphrodisiac, panacea and/or empathogen, depending on what the plot requires at any given point. It’s also extremely addictive. Or not. Depending on what the plot requires at any given point.

Of course, it’s not really about vampires. It’s about immigration, homophobia, xenophobia, racism, etc., etc.

I put off watching True Blood, because the ads made it look like utter wank cashing in on the inexplicable and soul-destroying success of the Twilight novels. I didn’t realise it was created by Alan Ball, the fellow behind Six Feet Under, which was pretty excellent.

But part of what made Six Feet Under so good was how gradual it was. The characters were built up and displayed (and occasionally demolished) piece by piece. You ended up knowing them through and through, and when they did something – however fucked up – you could at least see where they were coming from.

Where SFU succeeded, True Blood fails. Everything moves too fast – probably exacerbated by watching all of the episodes in a row, granted. But characters fall utterly in love with each other at the drop of a hat, get entirely fed up and end relationships at the drop of another, over and over. The same goes for friendships. The same goes for addiction, with Sookie’s brother Jason going from twitching-in-a-heap desperate to banning his addict girlfriend from using in the space of about three episodes. Then there’s the sheriff of the local vampire district, Eric, who varies randomly between intimidating prince of darkness and old frat buddy in his behaviour with Our Hero Vampire Bill.

And each episode starts almost precisely where the previous one left off, so there’s no sense of any of these massive motivational shifts taking place in the space between episodes.

By the end of it, you’ve just got this sense that you’re watching events, rather than characters – happenings rather than doings. Because to consider them doings, you’d have to ask yourself why on earth the same character would act one way today and utterly differently tomorrow.

On the other hand, you’ve got graphic sex and violence, a whole new vampire mythos to learn (crosses no, stakes yes, holy water no, silver yes, etc.) and the occasional glimpses within this small town of the more epic events taking place in the world at large. The Vampire Rights Amendment is discussed on television, you see snapshots of the parallel vampire government system and there are hints of other things out there that haven’t joined vampires in being so open about their existence.

I find that shit compelling, which is why I watch just any old shit. I enjoy Smallville, for example. Because I want to know what happens next. That’s all. And while True Blood hasn’t got me gagging for the second season, I felt about the same way at the end of the first season of Supernatural – and that persistence paid off in many hours of excellent entertainment.

But well done, Anna Paquin, eh? And fucking well done, whoever made the credit sequence to True Blood. I’m surprised it’s not Danny Yount.

When American actor/director Liev Schreiber saw an MTV programme featuring Iraqi film student Muthana Mohmed fruitlessly searching chaotic post-invasion Baghdad for movie materials, Schreiber decided to give this deserving fellow a trip to Eastern Europe to work as an assistant on the set of his film Everything Is Illuminated.

However, as Nina Davenport’s insightful fly-on-the-wall documentary Operation Filmmaker shows, Muthana wasn’t the grateful recipient of American benevolence that his benefactors imagined.

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