Weekend at a glance

[muckefuck]

Weekend summary

Friday: The Devil Wears Prada over leftovers with monshu.
Saturday: Last couple episodes of Rome, first season. Two Ingrid Pitt Hammer horror films (The Vampire Lovers and Countess Dracula) and four episodes of Carnivàle, second season, chez cassielsander.
Sunday: Cubs vs. Sox Cactus League exhibition game at Nuphy's, followed by dinner at Joy Yee and two episodes of Carnivàle, first season.

Notes

The Devil Wears Prada e. was perfectly right about this movie: Any scene without Meryl Streep or Stanley Tucci is as superfluous as a sweater on a polar bear. (We rewound and rewatched her "cerulean" monologue at least three times.) Fast forward through them all and you've got a solid hour of entertainment. Trust me, you'll never miss the clichéd morality play that passes for a plot.

Rome Late to the party again, aren't we? Nuphy lent us the first season boxed set and monshu devoured it within a week. Engrossing and beautifully shot. The gladiatorial combat in Episode 11 is phenomenal, easily the best I've ever seen in a television programme and one of the very best ever produced anywhere. We are now hella impatient for Season 2.

Carnivàle Like I said. cassielsander offered to fill me in, but I was happy to start Season 2 cold and plunge in mediam rem for maximum estranging impact. Episodes 3 & 4 are quite probably the squirmiest two hours of television I have sat through in my life. Particularly 3--each scene made us more uncomfortable than the last. One actress in particular seems to have been cast primarily on her ability to produce the most unsettling smile imaginable.

The mise-en-scène is absolutely stunning: gorgeous, filthy, and 100% convincing. (Well, maybe 99%. I did find myself questioning at one point how a carnival trailer in 1934 could have electricity when I didn't see or hear any kerosene generators running outside.) At times, the grittiness verged on self-parody--there was much discussion in the peanut gallery Saturday night about Nick Stahl's status as the Dirtiest Leading Man Ever--but I found it refreshing to see rousties actually wearing the grease and sweat of someone who's been hustling in the sun for the past ten hours.

It's also wonderful to see so many trusted character actors getting juicy parts that they can really put something into. Every other face in this show is familiar to me from somewhere (kudos to Nuphy, btw, for identifying Fr. Norman as the father from The Waltons) which--rather than being distracting--only adds to the eeriness of the entire show. princeofcairo might be gratified to know that, when I went back and started watching from the beginning last night, I was mentally generating Unknown Armies stats for various major characters.