The Big C (2010-2013)

Director: Michael Engler                                Writer: Darlene Hunt & Jenny Bicks
Music: Marcello Zarvos                                 Cinematography: John Thomas
Starring: Laura Linney, Oliver Platt, Gabriel Basso and John Benjamin Hickey

This Showtime series was like a breath of fresh air when it premiered three years ago. Laura Linney, one of my absolute favorite actresses, was perfect for the role, especially after having already died of cancer twice in The Other Man and The Life of David Gale. She has a sense of humor and a natural quality that made The Big C one of the best series I’ve ever seen. Produced as it was, by Showtime, it also didn’t have to operate under the constrictions of network television censors and could deal with the topic in a realistic way. There were ups and downs during the seasons that left some fans disappointed, but taken as a whole it is a tremendously successful program that benefited from great writing and direction, and wonderful acting. The series begins with Linney learning that she has stage four cancer and her first major decision is that she doesn’t want anyone to know, primarily because she doesn’t want to be burdened with everyone else’s reactions.

The first season introduces the audience to Linney’s husband, Oliver Platt, who plays an impulsive man that she has had to shepherd along her entire marriage. With her diagnosis she has no time for his juvenile behavior now and promptly kicks him out of the house. This, of course, angers her son, Gabriel Basso, who blames her for the breakup. Linney plays a high school history teacher who is in the middle of summer school and takes on a rebellious teen in her class, Gabourey Sidibe, and attempts to help her straighten her life out. At the same time she is dealing with cranky neighbor Phyllis Somerville and school custodian, Idris Elba, whom she has an affair with, prompting her to make a bucket list. Through it all her only confidant is her young oncologist, Reid Scott, who winds up learning along with her. One of the unexpected benefits of Linney in the lead role was undoubtedly her ability to get Liam Neeson to guest star in one program, leading to other big stars appearing in the series.

Season two has Linney now deciding to undergo treatment, something she wasn’t going to do during the first season. A new clinical trial is being run by Alan Alda, a cancer specialist who does a nice job appearing at various times during the last three seasons. At the trials she meets Hugh Dancy, and develops a heart-breaking relationship with him. One of the highlights of the show is also the work of John Benjamin Hickey, who is brilliant as Linney’s homeless brother. Subplots expand exponentially this season with Sidibe being proposed to by Boyd Holbrook, Hickey falling in love with Cynthia Nixon, and Basso befriending Parker Posey. This is perhaps the darkest season, with several threads in the subplots dealing with death and keeping Linney’s mortality front and center for her, especially in the finale.

Season three has been the most disappointing for fans, primarily because it seems to be all over the place. But despite the emphasis on Platt’s character, who becomes so obsessed with his own ego that it threatens to tear the family apart, there is still a lot to recommend it, especially on repeat viewings. To replace the emptiness that she feels with Platt’s emotional absence, Linney decides to adopt a baby and finds the going extremely rough. But the grim resolution to that subplot is incredibly satisfying. Basso finds Jesus and an unexpected sexual bonanza in the process, while Hickey takes things to another level by becoming a gay, phone sex operator. Meanwhile Platt’s blog has brought him to the attention of self-help guru Susan Sarandon, which ultimately brings the whole family to Puerto Rico and the worst possible news to Linney.

Season four, while only four episodes, is actually on par with the rest of the seasons. The first three seasons were comprised of half hour episodes, with more of an emphasis on the comedy. But the final season focuses on the drama, expanding all four episodes to an hour. It’s an extremely moving final season, with special guest appearances by none other than Isaac Mizrahi. For fans of Laura Linney this is a must see program, but there is so much more to enjoy. Platt’s character is infuriating through most of the series, as is Basso’s, but that’s intentional. It’s difficult to imagine a less humorous subject matter for a situation comedy, but series creator and chief writer Darlene Hunt is masterful and her balance between humor and pathos is perfect. The Big C is over now, but everyone who enjoys intelligent and entertaining television should definitely pick this up on DVD. It’s that good.

Mildred Pierce (2011)

Directors: Todd Haynes                                 Writer: Todd Haynes & Jon Raymond
Film Score: Carter Burwell                             Cinematography: Edward Lachman
Starring: Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce, Mare Winningham and Morgan Turner

HBO has done some incredible work over the last decade in producing films, but one of their greatest undertakings has been a new kind of miniseries. One of the most powerful is Band of Brothers, based on the book by Steven Ambrose that follows one company of the 101st Airborne from D-Day through VE Day. It was co-produced by Tom Hanks who also co-produced another great series, From Earth to the Moon, chronicling the space race. Arguably their most popular success has been John Adams which featured Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. But besides fascinating non-fiction, HBO has now begun filming classic novels in the same way that the BBC has been doing for decades. One of the first is Mildred Pierce from acclaimed American novelist James M. Cain.

Of course Mildred Pierce was filmed by Warner Brothers in 1945 by Michael Curtiz and won an Academy Award for Joan Crawford in the title role. But they turned Cain’s novel into more of a film noir. Writer-director Todd Haynes wanted to keep true to the original story and his five-part series does an excellent job of capturing the style of the book as well as the era. The Warner Brothers film was also set in the present, while the HBO series restores it to it’s Depression era milieu and did a tremendous job of recreating Los Angeles of the nineteen thirties. Kate Winslet was a terrific choice as the title character. She plays a housewife who has finally had enough of her husband’s cheating and kicks him out of the house. She also has two daughters, the youngest played by Quinn McColgan and the eldest played by Morgan Turner.

It turns out that giving her husband the boot is about the only time Mildred Pierce was able to do something positive for herself when it came to the people in her life. The worst abuser is her oldest daughter Vida. She is a snob and a brat and isn’t shy about letting her mother know how much she hates living in Glendale. But Mildred needs to make a living and works her way up from making pies to owning her own restaurant. This didn’t come without a price, however, as sleeping with one of her husband’s best friends is part of the deal. Later, when she falls in love with a down on his luck playboy she winds up syphoning money from her business to keep him, as well as her snooty daughter, in style. But Mildred trudges on, refusing to see how these people are using her and, even when she does realize it, not really caring.

Those expecting the same kind of noir sensibilities--and sensationalism--as the Warners film, will be disappointed. It’s a luxurious and unhurried series that captures not only the drama in her life, but the atmosphere as well. The scenes on the city streets feel a little cramped because of the necessity to avoid modern buildings, but the scenes in Santa Barbara and Laguna Beach are wonderfully open and pristine. Whether through specific locations or CGI it feels very authentic. Haynes has a nice, naturalistic style that lets the Cain’s characters reveal themselves rather than through camera manipulation. Carter Burwell is not my favorite composer, but he does an adequate job here. Mainly, however, it’s the actors. Guy Pearce is terrific as the gigolo, and the two actresses playing Vida are perfectly evil. The rest of the supporting cast is equally good. Mildred Pierce is not for everyone, but it’s a very nice piece of filmmaking that I enjoyed tremendously.

The Challenger Disaster (2013)

Director: James Hawes                                 Writer: Kate Gartside
Film Score: Chris Letcher                              Cinematography: Lukas Strebel
Starring: William Hurt, Bruce Greenwood, Brian Dennehy and Eve Best

I can remember exactly where I was when I heard about the Challenger disaster on January 28, 1986. I was in college and had a chemistry class that morning. My professor was devastated and proceeded to give us a lecture on the nature of liquid hydrogen. It was a sobering day as I also remember watching most of the news footage on the television. What I don’t remember is exactly how long it took for the information about the O-rings to come out. That, as it turns out, was discovered by the Rogers Commission, which investigated the disaster. I learned about Richard Feynman after his death, when his books became extremely popular, but I didn’t know about his participation on the commission until watching The Challenger Disaster on the Science channel the other night.

Though seemingly sedate in terms of visuals, this is an incredible film produced by the BBC. It’s based on Richard Feynman’s last book, What Do You Care What Other People Think? and deals with his participation on the Rogers Commission. Feynman was sick with cancer at the time, but went to Washington at the request of a former student who was now the head of NASA. Though reluctant to go, he made the trip and immediately found himself embroiled on a panel that seemed to want the findings to be unable to be determined. Rogers himself clearly wanted to support NASA and hold them blameless. Well, this went against everything Feynman was about, which was about finding the truth. As soon as he joins the commission he begins rubbing people the wrong way, especially Rogers, who wants to run the commission his way and feels as if Feynman is a loose cannon.

William Hurt plays Feynman and does a fantastic job. Hurt has sort of reemerged in the past few years as a character actor, after he became too old for romantic leads, in films like Vantage Point and Ridley Scott’s version of Robin Hood. He’s tremendous here, as the tired professor, completely in command as a lecturer at Caltech, but utterly out of his element in Washington D.C. Which doesn’t mean he doesn’t know what’s going on. This is made clear by the teasing he gives the other physicist on the commission who tells him he’s been in Washington for years and Hurt responds, “How is your integrity?” The other scientist is completely offended, even after Hurt tries to tell him it’s a joke. But as someone who believes in finding the truth, he ultimately doesn’t care about other people’s problems with him.

Brian Dennehy has lost much of his strength onscreen and looks old and fragile. Still, he has a certain commanding presence and makes a good former Secretary of State William P. Rogers. British actress Eve Best, who was fairly commanding herself in The King’s Speech, is great here as Sally Ride. But the other standout performer has to be the great Bruce Greenwood as Air Force General Donald Kutyna, and the relationship he develops with Hurt as Feynman is one of the great aspects of the film. All the while Feynman was on the commission he was suffering from the final stages of his cancer, but the search for truth is something he refused to relinquish. In the end, this is not so much a film about the Challenger disaster as it is a film about Richard Feynman, and that’s a tremendous story that has needed to be told. The Challenger Disaster tells in wonderfully.

Let the Music Play (2012)

The Doobie Brothers have been always been one of my favorite bands. Like most people my age, my first exposure to them was on the radio back in the seventies. Recently I had been reading a lot of rock biographies and was very disappointed to learn that no one had taken it upon themselves to write the fascinating story of one of the most successful rock bands ever. I had to settle for a VHS copy of a documentary called Listen to the Music, which had been produced in 1989 after the group’s reformation with Tom Johnston. In actuality it’s a very good documentary with lengthy performances of their hit songs, something that most music documentaries inexplicably tend to slight, preferring narration over the music. That, in combination with the absolutely stunning concert from Wolf Trap would have to suffice. That is, until now.

The recently released Let the Music Play: The Story of the Doobie Brothers is a wonderful new documentary that is now the most complete history of the band until a book comes along. It has new interviews with surviving members Tom Johnston, Patrick Simmons, Tiran Porter, John McFee and Michael McDonald, as well as manager Bruce Cohn, producer Ted Templeman, and rock critic Joel Selvin. And while some of the music performances are truncated in the film, there is a nice bonus section of live performances of songs in their entirety. The new film takes the story beyond where the earlier film left off at the first reunion and new album after the Michael McDonald years, and brings the story of the band up to the present. It also has a fascinating section near the end that talks to family members of the band and what their experiences were like growing up with famous fathers and spouses and what a great atmosphere the band provided, unlike than some of the negative images of rock musicians from the seventies.

Of course, The Doobie Brothers were also heavily into charity, not only gathering at the Ronald McDonald House and the Stanford Children’s Hospital every Christmas, but the many shows and tours that they performed in their career, including the one for Vietnam veterans spearheaded by Keith Knudsen that brought the band back together with Tom Johnston and has continued to the present day. The Doobies are a class act, not only one of the most successful groups in rock history, but full of excellent musicians and an ethos that allows for change, progress, a return to roots and, most important of all, a genuine love for the music that has resulted in an appreciative and dedicated fan base. Let the Music Play: The Story of the Doobie Brothers is a testament to one of the greatest bands of all time and comes highly recommended to anyone who wants to know more about them.

The Bridge (2013)

Director: Alex Zakrzewski                            Writer: Elwood Reid
Music: Shawn Pierce                                  Cinematography: Attila Szalay
Starring: Diane Kruger, Demian Bichir, Ted Levine and Matthew Lillard

Fox’s new crime drama, The Bridge, started out with a very unique twist on the genre, but seems destined to devolve into a standard, hour-long, police soap opera. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, however. The show still retains a lot of the ideas and situations that made the early shows so interesting. What drew me in, primarily, was the presence of Diane Kruger who had been so effective in the National Treasure films with Nicolas Cage. In the series she plays something of a sociopathic homicide detective who has no social filters, no compassion for other, and no ability to form personal relationships. Yet, instead of becoming a serial killer herself, she became a cop. The other major star in the series is the brilliant Ted Levine, minus his cheesy moustache from Monk and sporting a cowboy hat instead. He is the captain of the homicide squad as well as a father figure and confessor for Kruger, guiding her and helping with her personal issues.

The series is based on a joint Danish/Swedish television series of the same name that first began a couple of years ago. This time, however, instead of the bridge connecting the two Scandinavian countries, it’s the bridge across the Rio Grande connecting El Paso, Texas with Juárez, Mexico. That’s the real genius of the show. Even though it is derivative of its source material, it’s as though it was made for the U.S., the “unguarded” border with Mexico being a problem area for U.S. policy for decades. Both the Mexican and Texas authorities are called in when a woman is found lying across the borderline that separates the two countries on the bridge. Since the victim is from the U.S. Kruger claims the case for herself. But when the body is discovered cut in half, and the bottom half is from a Mexican victim, Mexican homicide detective Demián Bichir who was on the bridge that night teams up with Kruger as a two-person task force working both sides of the border. Much of the dialog in Juárez and with the Mexican actors is in Spanish, which gives the show a lot of realism as well as widening the audience base.

Bichir is a real find. Working mostly in Mexican films and television series, he’s a natural, a great actor, and the perfect foil for Kruger. Little known Johnny Dowers is also part of the El Paso homicide squad. A bit of a dandy on the show, one hopes that he’ll settle into a more well-rounded character as the season progresses. And finally, a serious, straight role for Matthew Lillard as a newspaper reporter. One of the great aspects of the show is how, in their chase to catch the killer, the police keep uncovering homicides that may or may not be him. Initially they attributed every killing to the unknown murderer, but well into the first season in becomes clear that these aren’t just some random killings and, even more frightening, the principals involved may be linked to the killer in a number of unrealized ways. Plus there are interesting sub-plots, with red herring killers, illegal immigration, gunrunning and drug trafficking. The Bridge is a great new show, a police procedural with real substance and, hopefully, one that will be around for a while.

The Taste (2013)

Director: Brian Smith                                Producers: Anthony Bourdain & Nigella Lawson
Music: Jared Gutstadt                              Cinematography: Bradford Whitaker
Starring: Anthony Bourdain, Ludo Lefebvre, Nigella Lawson and Brian Malarkey

While lots of television series produce spinoffs, reality shows seem to proliferate the most rapidly. Low production values, amateur actors, and minimal writing tend to make the prospect of another hit too tempting to resist. The Voice is a case in point. A huge hit for four seasons now, it has spawned two spinoffs, The Face and The Taste. The Face is your typical modeling competition, the same back stabbing and cat fighting we’ve seen on other shows, America’s Next Top Model and Make Me a Supermodel. But The Taste is something completely different: possibly the most boring show on television.

Firstly, the most obvious disadvantage when compared to its progenitor is that there is nothing for the audience to share . . . nothing. Unlike The Voice, which we can hear at home, or The Face, which we can see, the audience has to sit captive while the panel tastes the food and doles out victories and defeats. Now other cooking shows like Top Chef or Master Chef have managed to be interesting because of the competitive format, the key element being that the judges know whose food they are tasting. With the blind taste tests on The Taste you do have the one enjoyable facet of watching a coach vote against their own team member. But that’s not enough to carry the show and after watching for a while the thought “who cares” is unavoidable.

The second disadvantage is the panel themselves. This is an Anthony Bourdain production and his presence on the panel is almost maddening. His snarky appearances as a judge on Top Chef were fantastic, but here the blind test format forces the audience to watch bite after bite after bite of food rejected by his sophisticated palette. On the other extreme we have the other co-producer Nigella Lawson who has a preference for home cooking, which makes her team wind up as the first one out and her sitting there fairly useless the rest of the season. Brian Malarkey, a failed contestant on Top Chef is a real head-scratcher as he doesn’t really seem to bring much experience to the table, yet inexplicably his was the chef who won the competition. French chef Ludo Lefebvre, who you will remember cursing through the entire first few episodes of Top Chef Masters before he was mercifully jettisoned, is beyond cantankerous here and is just plain unpleasant to listen to.

Despite all of that, however, ABC has elected to renew The Taste for a second season. Perhaps they’ll revamp the format, or do something to make the show more interesting. Without that, I can’t see how the show can continue. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m going to have to ask The Taste to pack its knives and go.