E: Okay, here’s the deal. This week featured a really difficult and emotional case — which was a criminal case, by golly! — and some big emotional revelations and upheavals, not to mention the departure of two interesting new characters. Good, right? Except for two things. 1) Consistent characters. 2) Believable plots.
So that’s the other side of the coin. Continue reading
E: Well. Turns out that 2016 is going to be quite an interesting and unusual year.
On Wednesday and Thursday of this past week, the Screen Actors Guild and the Hollywood Foreign Press announced the nominees for their annual award shows. While they’re hardly the only Oscar precursor awards out there – they’re both preceded and followed by a plethora of guild and critics awards — they’re probably the most important in terms of figuring out which movies, performances and achievements the Hollywood community views as its best in a given year.
And what they tell us is that this year is kinda nuts. Movies and performances are popping up out of nowhere. Films that had been lauded across the board are nowhere to be seen. Publicists who campaign actors in lead and supporting categories based on their degree of fame and their best chances at a nomination or win are finding themselves cut out of the equation as awards bodies make their own varying choices. And I say bring on the crazy.
E: Shall we talk about what I’ve discovered lately about the Education of Alicia Florrick?
When I think of the word education, I think progress. An educated person is one who knows more, is better, smarter. Bafflingly, we’ve seen Alicia get tougher, but no more in touch with herself and no better able to advance her goals.
And what did we find in Discovery? A woman who blithely told her husband that he could go ahead and run for president, yet thinks that her life will remain the same when he does. She’s been scrambling to build a business utterly from scratch which she might have to abandon in less than a year if that campaign goes well. Did she give a moment’s thought to whether the life of a first lady (or even a candidate’s wife) is one she wants? Nope. Not even a little. Does she think about living in a press-induced fish bowl? No, she doesn’t. She thinks she can give Peter her cake, and eat it too. In fact, she strikes out in fury when her closest political adviser suggests she not sleep with an employee, as if there was anything reasonable about her position. Sorry, Alicia. Leaving aside whether an open marriage is morally excusable, and forgetting all about your hypocritical ire when Peter dared to followed the terms of your agreement, you created the conditions which make that arrangement virtually impossible. It’s your own damn fault, not Eli’s.
Except really, it’s the writer’s fault for having her give Peter the campaign go-ahead, which is the stupidest and most out of character thing she’s done in the entire series. It makes no sense; the writers wanted it to happen so it did, and there’s no other justification. I refuse to believe that any rational human being wouldn’t have known that in giving Peter permission to run, she was also handing over her own life for possibly the next 9 years (longer if he loses the nomination and tries again in the next cycle or the one after that), leaving her at best a weak satellite in his orbit.
So, um, yes. I’ve gone back to being mad at the show.
M: Okay, if you don’t understand the title, you need to do one of two things. First, if you don’t understand it because you don’t know that the first new Star Wars movie in the post-George Lucas era, directed by J.J. Abrams, is coming out this month, then you need to climb out from whatever rock you’ve been under for the last year or two. Second, if it’s because you don’t get the reference, you need to watch this old Bill Murry SNL sketch.
C: I actually did not get that reference, and now feel shame.
E: The key point is, it’s all about Star Wars. And Oscar movies. Star Wars and awards bait. You know what? It’s a lot of movies, period.
M: Well, not the SNL sketch, our December movie post. The sketch is only about Star Wars. However, since as E said, we won’t actually be talking “nothing but Star Wars,” a quick note. There are about a billion movies of note being released the first weekend this month.
C: Actually, it’s 10.
M: …fine, 10. There are 10 movies of note being released the first weekend this month. Most of them, really all but the Christmas comedy-horror flick Krampus, are limited, small releases, but still, that’s a lot even for the small releases. The month evens out a bit after that, but ramps up again in time for the Christmas school break.
E: Well, those Oscar movies have to play somewhere in December or they don’t qualify! Not that all of these are exactly Oscar-bait.
C: That is a crazy lot, anyway. So brace yourselves!
Relatively Entertaining 