when you’re a boy, you can wear a uniform

Valkyrie: Diverting but not moving. A Bryan Singer film about a plot to kill Hitler, starring Tom Cruise, should keep me on the edge of my seat for its entire run. But right when Col. Stauffenberg (Cruise) implemented the plan to isolate Berlin from the SS, I got a text inviting me out [...]

it’s all in the game

Thank you for your patience with those last two self-indulgent entries. Now we can have fun again.
A few days ago, Leonard commented on an AVClub interview with Flight of the Conchords. Bret observed that “There aren’t many TV shows that can go on tour.“
The ideas immediately began bubbling in the drug dens of [...]

there ain’t no back in the day. ain’t no nostalgia.

By Season 5, we’ve assembled quite a cast. We’ve got the cops – street level, detectives and command – all angling for position. We’ve got the dealers, all the way from the twelve-year-olds counting the stash to the masterminds dealing with supply. We’ve got politicians. We’ve got folks we picked up [...]

you want it to be one way. but it’s the other way.

Season Four was the hardest for me. I think it’s fantastic television – the writers, actors and directors are all at the top of their game – but S4’s like a wound I don’t want to touch. You can tolerate folks on the street rising and falling; it’s all in the Game, after [...]

well, get on with it, motherf–

Season Three’s my favorite of the entire run. We meet a broad cast of new and interesting characters. We return to the same setting of Season One. We have just enough history on all of these characters that we can start fucking with expectations. And, interestingly enough, the show begins to [...]

it’s all in the game, though

Season Two
In Season Two, The Wire proves that its success wasn’t a flash in the pan. The show broadens its scope from the decay of America’s inner cities to the decay of America’s industries – in this case, the port of Baltimore. S2 also follows some of the original cast of S1, proving [...]

all the pieces matter

If The Wire, the greatest show which the medium of television has yet to produce, was ever just about the War on Drugs, that moment’s past. The Wire is about the power of institutions to destroy human lives. In Season One, it was “the game” – cops chasing dealers, dealers chasing each other. [...]

don’t give heed to temptation

I’m offering points off this media blow, but only if you give me your corners:
The Plot Against America: An odd little novel. Roth gives an excellent depiction of a country’s slow descent into fascism, starting with an alternate history where Charles Lindbergh is elected President in 1940. He keeps America out of the [...]