W - Bones

As mentioned before, I love Netflix for the different TV shows that I manage to stumble across. Recently I found the series "Bones", which features a somewhat socially inept but thoroughly brilliant forensic anthropologist who teams up with a bit of a neanderthal FBI agent to solve various murders. If it sounds a bit quirky it's because it is. It's also a combination that works an is both funny and entertaining.

The show features Emily Deschanel as Dr. Temperance Brennan A.K.A. "Bones" and David Boreanaz as FBI special agent Seeley Booth. These two provide the key contrast in worldview and personality that makes the show work and also have a strong attraction to one another, again making for good tension. They are supported by a large ensemble of other "squints", as Agent Booth calls them, who work in the lab with Dr. Brennan. The leading characters in the Lab are Dr. Jack Hodgins and Angela Montenegro. Again, interpersonal relationship issues create some fun tension.

************Spoilers Below ***************

The first couple seasons focus on the actual crimes and introduce a lot of really cool, albeit totally unrealistic, tech. (OK, you simply *cannot* get a useable image of the reflection in someones eyeball from a picture printed on the cover of a tabloid magazine) These first season also set up the relationships and define the characters very well.

As the show progresses two things happen that seem to be common in this type of show. The first is that they shake up the format a bit by getting rid of one of the ensemble. This is frequently done on shows because of contract issues, but in this case the person reappears a couple times later on, so that was probably not the issue. What bugged me was both the fact that he was one of my favorite characters and that the way they got rid of him was really a break from his established character. If they want to shake up the cast a bit that's one thing, but at least don't mess up the character development you've been doing all along.

The other development, also common to shows of this type, is that the episodes move from being primarily about the case to being primarily about the characters and their interactions and relationships. Several times from Season 5 on I felt like they really needed to go back and re-watch the first season to remind themselves of what the series was about. The relationship stuff wasn't badly done, and was mostly well integrated into the plot, but the shift in priority was a bit off-putting.

I am currently in the middle of Season 7 and there are at least 10 seasons with the show still going. I am very curious to see how it does. My experience is that it is almost impossible to keep this type of show interesting and viable for more than 6 or 7 seasons. Almost every one has clearly jumped the proverbial shark by season 8. My hope is that Bones does better than the norm. There are troubling signs, but maybe they will pull it back from the brink.

Highly recommended if you like crime drama with a bit of quirky humor and a dollop of romance, not to mention some really gross shots of maggot infested dead people.

R - Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina, By Leo Tolstoy

So you want to read something with some weight to it? I think I can help you out there. I just finished reading A.K. a couple days ago - of course I started it about a year ago - and it is a book that I can recommend to anyone who loves long, involved plots with lots of characters and an overwhelming amount of detail. In the best Russian novel tradition it includes lots of sitting around and brooding about stuff and deeply passionate, albeit somewhat irrational, inter-personal relationships.

Tolstoy wrote Anna Karenina in the 1870's and it first appeared in serial form in a literary magazine. The ending was not published in the serial so the first time the entire novel appeared was when it was published in book form. When you consider that the paperback version runs some 960 pages you realize that the literary magazine was evidently a pretty hefty thing - of course they did spread it out from 1873-1877, so that helped a bit.

Many critics consider Anna Karenina to be one of, if not the, best novel ever written. It is also widely considered to be the greatest of the "realist" fiction novels. Fyodor Dostoevsky lauded it as did many others at the time of its publication. Even today there are many who recommend it highly.




OK, enough of all that stuff, on to my opinions.

As you can see on the left, I read this on my Kindle (greatest electronic gadget ever, BTW), which saved me from having to lug around a 20 pound novel for months at a time. The translation I read was done by Constance Garnett in 1901. I have no idea how accurate a translation it is, but I had no gripes. I like Russian novels for their weight and their brooding thoughtfulness, so I entered into this project with a hopeful and positive attitude. I was not disappointed.

Anna Karenina begins with one of the all-time great first lines "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." From that point on it moves quickly to introduce us to the main characters and their situations. For approximately the first third of the book it is really a pretty easy read, but it does begin to get challenging as you go on. The greatest challenge (and greatest reward as well) is that Tolstoy moves into a lot of events and detail that enhance the characters but don't really advance the plot. This is, of course, the nature of the realist novel. It chronicles the life of the characters and allows the plot to build over time. You could probably make a condensed version that left out a huge amount of that detail, but it would be devoid of the richness that makes the people real.

Tolstoy also uses the novel as a platform to exercise his own opinions regarding the state of the peasants, the decay of the government, the ultimate disaster of immorality and the challenge of righteousness. The unfortunate truth is that it is very hard to really grasp the soul of this novel without multiple readings, something that few of us will do. But despite its size and all the weight of brooding detail it is fundamentally an engaging story and a thought-provoking development of it. Don't read it if you are prone to depression, but otherwise I can endorse it with a thoughtful, brooding, look.

Besides, Tolstoy has a great beard! And that's a good enough reason to read it.

W - Sherlock Holmes

Went and saw this with my son the other day. He seems to get me out to new movies a lot. I really wasn't sure what to expect on this because the previews were a bit confusing in that they seemed to want to portray it as a comedy with occasional bursts of drama. The reviews I read, on the other hand, tried to compare it to the Sherlock Holmes books and seemed disappointed that the movie didn't live up to the books in terms of dramatic content. The previews seemed promising, however, so off we went.

The first thing I would have to say is that this is not the classic Holmes you've seen in the past. Robert Downey, Jr. does a fine job of being this interpretation of the great detective. He has the right blend of OCD, slackerdom and frenetic energy to make the character work.

Jude Law as Dr. Watson seems to come across more often as petulant than profound. The portrayal of the character somehow doesn't quite match the role Dr. Watson has in the film. But that is really a minor nit, the general feel between the two characters works most of the time. The female leads don't really have much point to them, but they do add a bit of eye-candy.

The plot itself is well-crafted, with that traditional Holmesian sense that you are dealing with the supernatural. Strange things happen and strange people do them. Mark Strong does a great job as the evil Lord Blackwood. I felt a bit like his character was not quite entirely developed, but he did a superb job of showing his contempt for Holmes and all ordinary mortals.

Finally, the cinematography was better than most recent films I've seen, without too much of the rapid cuts and scene changes that make it hard to watch so many films today. In addition the sets are very richly developed - even if a lot of the backgrounds are so clearly paintings.

Overall it was a film that I enjoyed thoroughly, not too heavy, not too deep, not too trivial (although without any particular moral), fun to watch and with enough twists and turns to the plot to keep me interested all the way through. I give it a slightly conditional B+ and recommend it with no real reservations.

W - Public Enemies

I saw this film a few days ago with my 18 y/o son. It is a semi-biography of some of the highlights of the criminal career of John Dillinger. We both enjoyed the movie, although I would have to say that at least part of what made it good was just the quality of the cast. Overall the script seemed to have bit off just a little more than could be comfortably handled in the two hours and 10 minutes it took. As a result it really helped if you already were familiar with Dillinger and his exploits (as both of us were). Without that knowledge a lot of the early part of the film seemed rather disjointed.

Once things got rolling there was sufficient action along with the actual plot to keep things both interesting and at least moderately coherent. Dillinger came across as perhaps a bit too sympathetic a character, although history does seem to show that he was perhaps a bit more loyal to his fellow thugs than they were to him and each other. It is wise not to forget that Dillinger and his cronies were murderers and thieves with little regard for the lives or rights of anyone who opposed them.

Public Enemies is rated "R" for language and violence - although I didn't feel that either was excessive or egregious. Overall it was a pretty good way to spend an evening with my son, but it probably not a movie I would see twice.

Public Enemies on IMDB