Posts Tagged ‘new york times’

“Shōgun” thoughts, Episode Three: “Tomorrow Is Tomorrow”

March 6, 2024

Despite all its hallmarks of a real nail-biter — an escape in disguise, a firefight in a forest, a heroic last stand, a race at sea — this episode fails as action filmmaking.

The director Charlotte Brandstrom, late of the tepid fantasy series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” chronicles various exciting things going on. Ishido, Toranaga and the Christian forces fight a three-way battle in a forest by firelight. Buntaro makes his brave stand against dozens of goons on the dock. Blackthorne races against his foul-mouthed Catholic frenemy Rodrigues as they steer their ships into and out of danger. All of these incidents seem, on paper, to be the stuff of crackerjack action filmmaking.

Unfortunately, pointing a camera at action, while necessary for action filmmaking, is not the only criterion for success. Too much of the nominal excitement is filmed at a remove — medium-wide shots that neither give the full lay of the land nor immerse viewers in the physicality of combat. There’s no actual surprise in the surprise attack in the forest, no attempt made to root us in the experiences of the besieged, no fight choreography that communicates the peril of battling two enemy forces at once, as Toranaga, Blackthorne and the surprisingly well-trained Mariko do.

You don’t feel the arrows whizzing by, the way you do in, say, the battle scenes in Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” films. You don’t feel the chaos of that nighttime battle. You don’t feel Buntaro’s blend of desperation and terrifying skill as he holds at bay a dock full of assailants. You don’t feel the risk of that game of chicken Blackthorne and Rodrigues are playing, not when your primary view is two guys with their hands on the rudder. You don’t feel much of anything.

The lighting is a persistent problem in this regard. Both the blue-gray of the nighttime scenes and the blinding haze of daytime at sea make the show feel not so much surreal as unreal, like action taking place in a digital no-man’s-land.

I reviewed last night’s mixed Shōgun for the New York Times.

“Shōgun” thoughts, Episodes One and Two: “Anjin” and “Servants of Two Masters”

February 27, 2024

Of the two episodes in this initial offering, the former is by far the weaker. For one thing, it falls victim to a bad case of first episode syndrome: a tendency to front-load shows with attention-grabbing material that is much blunter and broader than what follows. (I always think of “Billions,” which opened with a bound and gagged Paul Giamatti being used as a human ashtray and toilet.)

Here, the voyeurism and torture had something of the air of “This ain’t your average samurai story”; the very expensive but rather staid look of the series, with all the usual medieval peasant grime and aristocratic splendor, gives lie to that claim, at least visually. At any rate, when you’re killing babies in side plots and boiling men alive onscreen in your very first outing, where do you go from there?

You go in an entirely different direction, as it turns out. It’s not that the second episode lacks for spectacle: the murderous rescue of Blackthorne by Yabushige’s “bandits,” and the genuinely shocking rampage of a maid-turned-assassin through Toranaga’s quarters on the hunt for Blackthorne, provide plenty. What does the trick is exposition, of all things. The multiple scenes in which characters are given the lay of the land — Father Martin and Blackthorne explaining to Toranaga their nations’ conflict; a Franciscan prisoner describing Toranaga’s rivals to Blackthorne; Blackthorne outlining the Spanish/Portuguese conspiracy for world domination to the court — may be inelegant, but they sure are engaging.

These expository dialogues add much-needed density to the comparatively airy first episode. Suddenly, a straightforward adventure story about a cool lord and a fish out of water is a complex latticework of countries, religions, underlings, rivalries, assassinations, alliances and conspiracies — all on top of the basic culture clash that drives Blackthorne’s narrative. Threats can come at any character from any direction. Simply staying alive requires both Blackthorne and Toranaga to bob and weave like they’re making their way through razor wire, and one wrong move will slice them to ribbons.

I reviewed the double series premiere of Shōgun for the New York Times.

Here’s to Cecilia Gentili

February 16, 2024

Mourning a coworker you’ve never physically met is a motherfucker. You grieve, and when people ask why you apologize instead of unburdening. Caveats, explanations, I can’t imagine what the people who were really close to her must be feeling. (The last of these, at least, has the benefit of being heartfelt.) Who am I, you ask yourself, to miss this person who was only ever a face on a Zoom call to me? To be this upset is stealing valor, you say to yourself. To be this sad is embarrassing. 

But to have worked with her, been inspired by her, felt in some way bettered by your time with her, and still somehow be embarrassed to miss her? It won’t do. No, it won’t do, if only because it’s so difficult to imagine Cecilia Gentili being embarrassed herself. She could not have amassed such a record of concrete accomplishment, in so many fields and on so many fronts, if she’d wasted her time apologizing for how she felt. If she felt strongly enough about something, in fact, the world would hear about it.

I wrote about Cecilia Gentili, a co-writer and colleague of mine in the New York Times trans solidarity letter campaign, for Defector. I’m very sad she’s gone.

Cecilia Gentili 1972-2024

February 8, 2024

I am a little embarrassed by how hard Cecilia’s death has hit me. It feels like stealing valor, you know? Based on her memorial last night the number of people whose lives she transformed for the better — and I mean hand to hand, person to person, on a retail basis — is beyond count. That’s even before you get to whatever exponent of that number benefitted from the work she did or the example she set.

I’m one of the latter. I worked with Cecilia in organizing the New York Times trans letter campaign, which I can say without fear of contradiction would not have been what it was without her. It’s not just the doors her name opened, the connections she worked, the people impressed enough by seeing “Cecilia Gentili” listed at the top to sign beneath. It was the sense that she would not be wasting her time with this if it weren’t important, or wasting her time with the rest of us if we were doing a rotten job. If Cecilia was on board, then we were on the right track.

I never got to meet Cecilia in person. We arranged everything over the internet, so she was a face and voice on Zoom to me more than anything else. But that was enough. That’s how she thanked me one time for helping to get the project off the ground, and I remember she just seemed so happy that people from outside the community were doing things like that. I mean, what can you even say when Cecilia Gentili tells you “good job”? “You’re very welcome, important figure in New York City queer history, I appreciate it”? I think I just blushed and grinned.

Cecilia was a part of the best thing I’ve ever done in my life and now she’s gone. That’s hard. That’s fucking hard. Thank you, Cecilia. Thank you so much.

Not the Brightest Killer of the Flower Moon

November 3, 2023

The demimondes depicted by the American master Martin Scorsese vary widely — his New York stories alone span three centuries — but they have one common requirement: It takes intelligence, of one kind or another, to navigate them. His protagonists are smart, street smart, shrewd, skillful or some combination of those qualities as a rule.

That rule is broken in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Normally, a character like Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) — a World War I veteran turned henchman in a plot to murder Osage people for their oil profits in 1920s Oklahoma — would either rise to the top of his uncle Bill Hale’s organization, or wise up and fight to stop it on his own. Ernest does neither, precisely because he lacks the qualities Scorsese has spent a lifetime depicting.

I wrote a little visual essay about Killers of the Flower Moon and Martin Scorsese protagonists for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Twelve: “Admirals Fund”

October 27, 2023

Am I at a loss for words over the series finale of “Billions”? That depends. Do hooting and hollering count as “words”?

There’s no other way to put this: In its final hour, “Billions” delivered, and delivered, and delivered. It saw what it needed to do — spend 45 minutes beating the living snot out of Mike Prince, and the remaining 15 minutes depicting beloved characters being really nice to each other for a change — and by God did it. In the process, it gave us that rarest of prestige-TV commodities: a happy ending.

I reviewed the marvelous series finale of Billions for the New York Times. I’m gonna miss this wild show.

As ‘Billions’ Ends, Its Creators Discuss the Changing Face of the Ultrarich

October 26, 2023

Since “Billions” first aired, shows taking on the very wealthy have become both common and popular. But shows like “Succession,” “The White Lotus,” even a horror story like “The Fall of the House of Usher,” are often satirical. “Billions” is frequently funny, but the intent feels different.

LEVIEN This was not a satire. It’s a drama with comedic moments, but that’s different than a satire. These characters are perhaps exaggerated in some ways, but we’re not sending up the rich. That wasn’t our goal here. It was more to let people into a world we felt we’d identified — yes, with our spin and our point of view, but not so that we could all huddle together and laugh and feel better than them.

KOPPELMAN There’s an absurdism to “Billions,” for sure, but that’s because the world right now is capital-A Absurdist. The show has to capture that spirit.

On the eve of the series finale, I spoke to co-creators and showrunners David Levien and Brian Koppelman about Billions for the last time (sniff!) for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Eleven: “Axe Global”

October 20, 2023

Whatever may eventually happen with this almost vestigial story line, it doesn’t here. There’s no big prestige to whatever trick the writers Brian Koppelman, David Levien and Beth Schacter are pulling, not in this episode anyway. This one really is as simple as two groups vying for an alliance with a minor character we’ve seen only once, ahead of revealing her pick. Forgive me, but I still have visions of that fabulous shock ending from Season 2’s penultimate episode dancing in my head, a level of scheming, skulduggery and surprise that I want to see again before the curtain closes.

We may yet get it. I simply refuse to believe that a show this beautifully bombastic won’t go out with a bang, in a finale with more twists and turns than a Mario Kart racetrack. Keep in mind that while the opposing armies seem pretty firmly established, they have every possibility of fracturing, reconfiguring or turning on themselves. Which leads to the biggest question of all, and no, it’s not whether Chuck and Axe can stop Mike Prince — it’s whether they will be back at each other’s throats if and when they do.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of Billions ever for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Ten: “Enemies List”

October 13, 2023

A common criticism of “Billions” is that its constant pop-culture references can seem forced. This time around, that’s the idea, as Prince bobbles two separate Quentin Tarantino references during the standoffs with Bobby that begin and end the show. Axe goes so far as to point this out — sure, it’s the show hanging a lampshade on what is either a tic or a signature, but it makes sense.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Nine: “Game Theory Optimal”

October 6, 2023

Ain’t it grand? Beyond the wealth porn and barrage of pop-culture and sports references, the charm of “Billions” has always been that it is simply a well-made financial thriller, written by smart people who, like the characters they chronicle, enjoy being five steps ahead of everyone else. Personally, I love that feeling. I love not knowing what Chuck is up to, or whether Prince can root out the conspirators before they close ranks with Chuck, or what fate worse than death Prince is planning for his enemies once he has them in his clutches. I love being outsmarted by a television show, and that is the stock in trade of “Billions.”

I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season One, Episode Eight: “The Owl”

September 30, 2023

Is “Billions” the most chilling show on television right now? And I’m not talking about the wintry setting of this week’s episode. Like virtually every episode since Prince’s presidential ambitions became clear, “The Owl” casts an unflinching eye on the danger posed to American democracy by megalomaniacal strongmen, by the ultra-rich, and especially by the people who are both.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Seven: “DMV”

September 26, 2023

Well, that was a nasty bit of business.

One of the best episodes of “Billions” in recent memory, “DMV” — named after the government agency turned into an unlikely bed of low-stakes graft and influence-peddling by the Rhoades family — shows the depths to which many of the show’s leading players will sink to get what they want. Even if their desires are relatively high-minded, the depths remain the same.

I reviewed last week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Six: “The Man in the Olive Drab T-Shirt”

September 15, 2023

“When did I become Lex Luthor?” Mike asks Wendy plaintively. I dunno, Mike, probably when you decided to run for president as a bald billionaire, something the comic-book villain did over two decades ago. He won, too, if you can somehow imagine a United States of America willing to elect a wealthy megalomaniac as president. Try not to strain yourself.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Five: “The Gulag Archipelago”

September 8, 2023

Let’s do a little narrative reverse engineering, shall we?

Imagine, if you will, that you are a both a trader and a traitor — a high-powered executive at a major investment fund, looking to fatally undermine your own boss in order to stop him from becoming the president of the United States.

Your Plan A, recruiting your even more dangerous old boss to stop him, has failed. You’re tired of waiting around for your performance-coach colleague, the ringleader of your band of mutineers, to generate a Plan B. It becomes clear that coming up with Plan C is up to you.

So you generate some short-term, medium-term and long-term goals for this plan. In the short term, you need something that will cost your hated boss enough money to rattle his cage. In the medium term, you’d like to generate doubt and dissension among his key employees, as well as elsewhere on the Street. In the long term, you want to increase the power available to a member of your own inner circle to make mischief — enough power, you hope, to engineer the fatal mistake that will take your boss down for good.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Four: “Hurricane Rosie”

September 2, 2023

I’ve enjoyed these last couple of weeks of comparatively low-stakes scheming among the “Billions” bunch, but they raise an important point. What “Billions” needs for its final act is a bit of financial-thriller legerdemain on par with the instant-classic Season 2 episode “Golden Frog Time.” You remember: the bit where it looks as if Chuck is crying because his big plan to take Bobby down got his own father and best friend in big trouble, only for the show to reveal he’s actually laughing because that was his big plan? It remains my favorite moment of the series, not to mention a moment I would point to as a reason I love covering television for a living. It’s not the fault of “Billions” that my expectations for its conclusion are that high, but they are. I hope the show rises to the occasion.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode Three: “Winston Dick Energy”

August 28, 2023

Watching a good episode of “Billions,” which this undoubtedly is, is like watching someone expertly play a puzzle game — solving a Rubik’s cube, say, or beating a level of “Tetris.” You gaze in admiration as skilled hands slide pieces and panels from one place to the next until everything lines up exactly where it should. Chuck’s friends and enemies inadvertently guide him to the correct course of action. Wendy’s petulance puts her on the path toward a major breakthrough. Winston’s defection provides Wags with the fresh kill he requires. “Billions” makes it look easy, but if it were, everyone would be doing it.

I reviewed this weekend’s episode of Billions for the New York Times.

“Billions” thoughts, Season Seven, Episode One: “Tower of London”

August 11, 2023

Long one of the most purely entertaining shows on television, “Billions” has always preferred to let its message about the robber barons who rule our world play out amid the beats of a well-made financial thriller over the more direct and unmissable approach preferred by heavy-handed satires like “Succession” and “The White Lotus.” If what we’re seeing in this premiere holds true for the series’s remaining episodes, though, the show seems to have well and truly gotten religion at last. It will spend its final hours depicting our heroes, and many of our villains too, battling to prevent a dictatorial billionaire from becoming the leader of the free world.

Bobby Axelrod is back in the Billions business and so am I, baby. I reviewed today’s seventh and final season premiere (if you’re streaming, Sunday if not) for the New York Times.

“Perry Mason” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Eight: “Chapter Sixteen”

April 25, 2023

As a pretty much miserable guy who’s sincerely angry about injustice, Perry Mason is a hero for our time.

I reviewed the season finale of Perry Mason for the New York Times.

Framing the Gender Conversation

April 24, 2023

I was interviewed by student journalist Isaac Suarez Flint about the New York Times’ coverage of trans issues and the response to it of which I was a part for his high school newspaper, the Evanstonian. Isaac is trans himself and writes about the issue with astonishing courage and clarity. I hope you’ll read his piece. It moved me to tears. This is why we did it.

“Perry Mason” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Seven: “Chapter Fifteen”

April 18, 2023

Perry’s not especially charismatic, as was Raymond Burr’s interpretation of the character back in the day. God knows he’s not very pleasant to be around, either. But he is unimpeachably dedicated to justice, which he’s determined to serve by any means necessary. No wonder this show is such a delight to watch! We all need a little Perry right this now.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Perry Mason for the New York Times.