He was a friend of ours

The late William Buckley Jr. on "The Sopranos" finale. (Hat tip to The House Next Door.)

Jerry Orbach's dead, and this guy doesn't feel so good himself

This blogger really likes "Law & Order", probably more than he should, but he thinks the show may be close to jumping the shark. (Do people still say that?) Frankly, I think the expiration date passed on that show long before season 18, but to each his own, I suppose. Click here for my thoughts on "L & O". (H/t to The House Next Door.)

Hollywood to New York: Drop Dead

After seeing "I am Legend", I pondered the same question as this New York Times article: Why do filmmakers seem to take such joy in destroying New York City? This seems like the most obvious answer:

James Sanders, the author of “Celluloid Skyline,” about the history of New York in movies, ascribed the resonance of disaster scenes involving New York to the prospects for special-effects shock. “What would be the point of showing a demolished suburban street? You’d get the point but it just wouldn’t have the punch. You take the most familiar, iconic symbol of civic society in the world — a big city, and for Americans, that’s New York — and that’s where disaster is going to be the most powerful.” He added that New York serves as a yardstick — what architects would call a scale — that illustrates the magnitude for a disaster.

(Hat tip to The House Next Door.)

They can have my camera when they pry it from my cold, dead hands

This blog is documenting government abuses against the right to take photographs in public spaces. (h/t to The House Next Door.)

War stories

I saw "Saving Private Ryan" in the theater, and I was blown away. The movie is well-acted, emotionally wrenching and visually stunning. But the more I thought about it, the more I began to dislike the film, and eventually came to share many of the sentiments of this writer. The film is emotionally manipulative in a way that Steven Spielberg's other World War II opus, "Schindler's List", was not.

The final scene in "Schindler's List", in which the real surviving Jews who Schindler saved place stones, in the Jewish tradition, at the real Schindler's grave, derives its raw power from the fact that it has actually happened. (Though one could certainly argue that this coda is evidence of Spielberg's inability to let the story speak for itself.) The scene in which Schindler is given money to flee the Russians is stirring because we have witnessed the complete transformation of a man from a cynical profiteer to genuine hero.


But the end of "Saving Private Ryan", in which an elderly Ryan tearfully asks his family whether he's lived up to the sacrifices of the men who saved him, is purely mawkish. Spielberg seems determined here to wring a few final tears from the audience, and remind us all yet again just how much we owe to the Greatest Generation. I don't mean to diminish the sacrifice of those who fought in World War II. Indeed, their achievements can stand on their own without filmmakers like Spielberg to trumpet them.

Spielberg, however, doesn't seem to be glorifying patriotism or duty so much as brutality. The movie is relentlessly anti-intellectual; the translator portrayed by Jeremey Davies is weak and cowardly and ultimately commits a feckless, revenge-fueled killing. American soldiers are shown, without remorse, shooting surrendering troops. (That such things no doubt happened during the war is irrelevant; it would be possible to portray them without tacitly endorsing them.) In fact, the entire premise of the film seems to be that if your cause is just than all of your actions are by definition justified. It's not that Spielberg doesn't portray war as ugly--he does. But he also portrays it as redemptive, and that may be the most dangerous fiction of all.

(Thanks to The House Next Door.)

The man behind the curtain

This week's "Lost" brought to mind an episode from the now defunct HBO series "Carnivale", in which Jonesy was convinced that Sampson had invented Management in order to bolster his authority. Similarly, on "Lost", Locke believed that Ben had made up Jacob to keep the rest of the Others under his thumb. Both Jonesy and Locke were wrong.

This was a great episode, revealing much about the island's mythology but raising many more questions. We now know that Ben was not born on the island, but the rest of the Others must know as well. So why did he tell Jack, and initially Locke, that he had been born there? And now that we know for sure that the Others--except for Ben--were not part of the Dharma Initiative, where did they came from? It was implied that the Others do not age, at least not rapidly, given that Richard first encountered Ben when he was a boy, but Richard was already a grown man. Plus, after revealing that it was his birthday, Ben said to Richard, "Remember birthdays?"

It's also become clear that Ben fears Locke, and I suspect that Ben did not think that Locke would be able to see or hear Jacob. The fact that he did seems further evidence that Locke has a deep connection to the island, which could undermine Ben's authority. I think Ben wanted to take Locke to see Jacob, figuring he could not see Jacob, which might have demonstrated to the Others that Locke was not particularly special.

Finally, Ben is now the second person that I can recall who has seen the dead on the island, the first being Jack, who saw his dead father roaming the island. (Let's not forget that Jack found his father's casket empty.) I'm not sure what this means, but I suspect it marked Ben as special to the Others.

UPDATE: Great minds think alike:

The scene references both the aforementioned "Psycho" as well as "Harvey", but most specifically reminded me of HBO’s long-canceled "Carnivàle" where “Management” would remain hidden away in his trailer, calling the shots despite all outwardly appearances that he lacked physical form.

Hodge podge

In this week's "Lost" wrap-up, Andrew Dignan at The House Next Door makes a great reference, comparing the scene in which Sawyer makes Cooper read the letter that Sawyer wrote as a child to Inigo Montoya's revenge fantasy in "The Princess Bride." Brilliant. Dignan wonders if Sawyer, having finally carried out the revenge that was so tightly intertwined with his very identity, is primed to be bumped of by the show's writers. Personally, I still think Sawyer has demons to exorcise, but it's not for me to decide his fate.

Meanwhile, the boys at Slate, in their regular "The Sopranos" discussion, have completely ruined the ending of "Anna Karenina" for me by revealing that the title character kills herself. Of course, the point of the discussion is that in great drama, regardless the format, endings matter less than the journey that got us there, an important point to keep in mind as "The Sopranos" draws to a close.

You don't have to have read Tolstoy's classic to know its famous opening line: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This idea has often been discussed in relation to "The Sopranos", and an episode in season five was titled "All Happy Families." It reminds me too of a line in "The Godfather, Part III." (You're quoting part three? you ask. Hey, it wasn't that bad.) Michael's son, Anthony, tells his father that he'll never work for him because "I have bad memories," to which Michael replies "Every family has bad memories."

Indeed.

Woke up this morning

One of my favorite blogs, The House Next Door, published a post I wrote about "The Sopranos", here.