Saturday, February 28, 2015

April is coming...what will you be watching?

Hello blog reading types, I'm taking a little excursion for books by ladies tonight to give you a bit of a blurb on the four shows I think are worth looking into this TV show return season. All of them may involve some catch up TV on your part but I feel the time you spend will be worth it.

Now I don't know when season 7 Parks and Recreation will get to Australia (my season 6 DVDs are a US import which I did buy here, but I don't know if season 6 has even screened properly) or it would be on this list. I'm trying to limit myself to one show of each stage of the TV series life span- one new, one managing to break beyond first season into a second (that is a big task that many shows fail to do...need I mention Firefly here), one more than two seasons in and hitting its stride, and one on its way out- this again knocks out Parks and Rec in the last camp, but also knocks out House of Cards, Game of Thrones, and Portlandia in the third camp and Better Call Saul in the first (though truth be told I feel that the jury is still out on it in the long run). Also limiting shows on mid season break to one, so no Arrow, or Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (though I am pretty crazy excited to see the complete season 3 of Arrow and season 2 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as to see The Flash which I have seen none of yet).

Starting with the new...


Now the last episode of the first season of How to Get Away with Murder aired in the States a few nights ago (no spoilers please US folk!), but it just started on commercial TV here in Australia- it stated so recently in fact that if you are an Australian who wants to catch up on it, all three episodes that have screened thus far are still up on the channel 7 catch up TV website for you to watch (more of it is probably on iTunes but the 7 website is free). A few people who were watching this before 7 started screening it strongly recommended it to me, they were people I trust so I figured I might check it out at some stage. Then I was a little wary when I saw that it was created by Shonda Rhimes as I was unsure post Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice what that meant (yes I used to watch both of these but stopped watching Grey's with any degree of regularity around the sixth season (I dipped in occasionally after that but not often) and Private Practice completely after the third (it was not a great show to begin with and they killed off my favourite character so I had no interest anymore))...would someone who had created such long lived medical dramas that morphed into medical soaps (that weirdly happened to continue to rate well despite of this change- well Private Practice pretty much started as soap) be able to convincing create a legal drama that is also in part a college drama that would rely on a degree of suspense? I wasn't sure so I had a degree of hesitation. Then I was intrigued a little later when I read a post somewhere in internet land that compared How to Get Away with Murder to Donna Tartt's The Secret History- a book I owe you a blog post on, short hand for the minute I loved it- and said that there were striking/good similarities. So sitting down to watch it I was not sure what I'd think... by half way through the first episode, I was completely hooked!

Basic premise of the first episode, in the present day, you see four individuals, pretty soon revealed to be college students, disposing of a body. Flashback three months and it is the start of the college year at a college with a prestigious law school, and these four students (Wes, Connor, Michaela and Laurel) are in their first law school class with Professor Annalise Keating, a highly regarded and very tough law academic, and practicing lawyer who nicknames her class "How to Get Away with Murder". In this class, Professor Keating declares she will select four students who will intern on legal cases with her throughout the semester. To select these students, the class is given the task of assisting her with a defense for a secretary accused of killing her boss, who was also her lover. Are you excited to watch that plot? Well you should be...for good measure I will also tell you (as this isn't a spoiler) that a student from campus has also disappeared and is assumed dead. It has none of over-the-top soap that I was scared might be apparent...thanks in large part to the powerhouse performance by Viola Davis as Annalise. Actually the whole cast acquit themselves really well and I was very happy to Liza Weil continuing to work the icy bitch edge she perfected as Paris in Gilmore Girls as one of Annalise's two associates (in another flashback to my favourite shows of the past, the other associate is played by Charlie Weber who was Ben in season 5 of Buffy and who is now sporting a very attractive beard). It has the right balance of quick paced legal drama and long haul suspense relating to the present day body burying and the case of the missing student. A bit of a warning, though they are brief and not particularly graphic (I am told they might get more so), for those who don't like sex scenes in their TV shows there are a few (at least one in every episode that I've seen)...I'd also hazard a guess that some violence is coming though there is yet to be any on screen in the three episodes I've seen. So that is my new show to check out...if the continued buzz I was hearing from the internet but trying ignore, whilst it was on in the States, it sounds like people were excited about this one for the whole season and it has just been confirmed for a second. It is currently screening at 9.30 on Tuesdays on 7.

Now for the show that made it past the first season (I will link to the first season trailer so as not to spoil it for anyone)...


There was a year long gap between season 1 and season 2 of the UK series Broadchurch leading some to believe based on that and on the wrap up of the first season that there would not be a second series. The reason for the gap was later revealed to be the fact that David Tennant who plays one of the main characters was in the US filming the American re-imagining of Broadchurch, Gracepoint, as were some of the writing/directing team- I haven't seen Gracepoint but from what I hear it is not bad, but not as good as the original. Unlike How to Get Away with Murder, I had no reservations about Broadchurch when I started on the first season. I was late to the game (I watched it on DVD) and many people had recommended it, it starred several of my favourite British actors (mainly Tennant, but also his fellow Dr Who alum Arthur Darvill, and Andrew Buchan, an actor who has been for about a decade seeming to be on verge of breaking out of being a side character in British TV drama), and people were ranting about the soundtrack (along with The Tunnel, it has my favourite TV music of the last few years). The first season definitely delivered and one episode in (for me, two have aired here- both are still up on ABC iView but the first one will come down tonight), the second is looking good.

Not to spoil, a bit of a description of the first season. In a small close knit coastal community in Dorset, a young boy is found murdered on the beach. The community is horrified but at the same time starts pointing fingers at the other townsfolk and distrust grows. To investigate the case the local police detective who was recently passed over for promotion is joined by her new senior officer who is not only from out of town (he is from as far away as Scotland) but has also recently come off a difficult case that has left him with what looks like PTSD. The brilliance of this show was partly the performances (Tennant and Olivia Colman, are brilliant as the police detectives but whole cast is outstanding), partly the cinematography, and partly the music, but overriding all of these is the direction and writing. To keep actors in the dark (as well as keeping the public and media there too) as to the identity of the murderer, they were not told until they were given the scripts for episodes 6-8 after they had filmed the earlier episodes, and the impact of that on the acting made it a wise choice as you see the actors attempting to portray a character who may ultimately be revealed to be a killer. Though I guessed the killer quite early on, this made the series creepier and more suspenseful, and at times made me question if I was right in my thoughts on who the killer was. The second season picks up several months after the first and sees the same community grappling with the identity of the killer of the first season as the trial of the killer occurs and introduces some sure to be intriguing new characters, including one played by another Dr Who (well Torchwood really) alum in Eve Myles (the show is full of ex Dr Who folk as the creator previously worked on Dr Who and Torchwood). Anyhow, check out the first season on DVD if you haven't already, and if you have seen season 1, check out the second on ABC on Sundays at 8.30 or on ABC iView for the two weeks after that.

Now for the show that has past its second seasons and is hitting its stride and again this is one a lot of a people might not have seen so again I'll mainly talk season 1, also the new season hasn't started yet so I can't say anything about it anyhow....


When I first heard about Orphan Black, my response was something along the lines of "the same actor plays everyone I don't see that working". That said, I had no idea until just before I watched it why the same actor played everyone (I actually thought that was literally everyone for a while) and so it seemed like it might be a weird casting ploy that could not possibly deliver. Again I was late to the game on this (as is obvious from those last two sentences) and it seemed to generate more and more buzz from critics that finally I cracked and bought the first two seasons on DVD and hoped against hope that I would like it. I was super happy that I made that purchase in the end and I'm very keen for season 3 starting in April.

The premise for those not in the Orphan Black fan club already... an English grifter, Sarah, who has returned to Toronto to see her daughter, Kira, sees a well dressed woman who looks exactly look her commit suicide at a Toronto railway station. It is soon revealed that Sarah is an orphan whose foster mother, Mrs S, moved her and her younger foster brother, Felix, to Canada from England when they were younger, so seeing this woman intrigues her...is this woman a long lost twin or other relative of some kind? If not, why does she look exactly like Sarah? Sarah steals the woman's wallet and keys and pretty soon her identity in a quest to find out more, whilst Felix claims the woman's body as Sarah's in order to help her get rid of her abusive ex, Vic. Firstly to clarify my misunderstanding, Tatiana Maslany does not play every character...she plays Sarah Manning (the main character), Beth Childs (the woman who commits suicide in the first episode), and as at the end of season 2, another seven characters on screen, Cosima Niehaus, Alison Hendrix, Helena, Rachel Duncan, Katja Obinger, Tony Sawicki, and Jennifer Fitzsimmons, as well as three in photographs. That is a LOT of characters still and I'm not telling you why she plays them all as it might be nice to discover that as Sarah does in episode 3 (I think it was three, it might be two) of the first season. Whilst she does not have great skills with accents- I'm very thankful every time she is playing one of the Canadians or Americans in the mix- even through the flawed accents of Sarah, Helena, Katja, and at times Rachel (Rachel's is the least flawed), Maslany does create a unique character of each person she plays to the point where you do not see her as one person playing many roles but each role as a distinct person to the point where people have a favourite one of her roles (personally mine is Cosima), and thankfully her accent skills are slowly improving. It is an acting masterclass from Maslany and the reveal at the end of season 2 makes me intrigued to see the season 3 developments on the one actor, many roles vibe. I also love the rest of the cast particularly Jordan Gavaris as Felix (Maslany could learn accent skills from him, I was SHOCKED when I found out he was Canadian as his English accent is brilliant), Maria Doyle Kennedy as Mrs S, Skyler Wexler as Kira Manning, and my favourite season 2 addition, Michael Huisman (of Game of Thrones fame) as Cal Morrison. Again a warning, this is a show with some sex (not in every episode, just a few times a season) and some violence (some of which is a little on the more graphic side...not on a GoT scale but there was one act of violence in season 2 that definitely had me cringe). Season 1 and 2 are readily available on DVD in Australia, and are also play on demand on Stan (for those who have it)...as it has aired on both SBS2 and the scyfy channel, I'm not certain (and cannot find online) where season 3 will air but I would assume Stan is a strong bet.

Finally a show I'm less worried about spoiling because it is crazy popular and also because it is about to start the second half of it seventh and final season...so I give you the beautiful season 7 part 2 teaser trailer...I mean look at these clothes!


That's right everyone's favourite show about the world of 1960s ad men is coming to an end! Where will I go for super stylish 60s fashions without Joan and Betty? When will there be characters whose repeated infidelities I can excuse like I did with Don and Roger...exactly that one I can forgo? How will I cope with leaving the 60s behind on my TV screen? A favourite of mine since it first screened here on SBS, in some ways it is a miracle that Mad Men lasted the seven seasons it did as the show had so many studio difficulties in the season 3-5 window that it might have been cancelled; an oddity in and of itself as the show always had overwhelming support from critics and, though there were swings, generally it had solid ratings to boot. 

There is little to say about Mad Men that has not been said, it is truly one of the highest points of the so called "golden age" of television that we have been living in for the last couple of decades. It manages to perfectly and succinctly capture the beauty of a past age and show both the heights of that beauty and murky depths hidden underneath it. Be it a housewife shooting pigeons, an office lawn mower accident, a truly honest summary of the position of women in 1960s business (the scene between Joan and Peggy in season 5 where they discuss their work success versus what the men in their office celebrate is simultaneous one of the most heart breaking and one of the best scenes the show ever gave us), or a song and dance number it gave us moments that will stay with us. It sought to portray the open struggles for equality by women and African Americans in the 60s whilst also showing the more hidden struggles of gay men in that era. It gave actors who already played characters I didn't like elsewhere more horrible characters to play- the scheming Cutler in seasons 6 and 7 was made worse by memories of Harry Hamlin as Aaron Eckolls in Veronica Mars and more importantly with Pete Campbell, Vincent Kartheiser gave me my second most hated TV character of all time after Vincent Kartheiser as Connor in Angel (let's hope he gets a more likeable part soon). It gave me an underdog to root for in Peggy...I assume everyone loves Peggy because how could you not. It gave me a big time eccentric and a small time eccentric to delight in with Bert Cooper and Roger Sterling. It gave everyone the opportunity to watch one of the most outstanding child actors ever grow up on screen as Kiernan Shipka delivered what is hopefully the performance that starts a long and brilliant career in her portrayal of Sally Draper. It gave us amazing actresses delivering amazing performances in amazing fashion with Christina Hendricks, January Jones, and Jessica Pare never letting the dresses stealing the day. It made unlikely characters some how likeable..Betty Draper/Francis is no-one's idea of a good wife and mother yet still the audience loves her. It refused to treat Christina Hendricks as anything other than one of the most beautiful women on television, despite the fact that others would rush to label her plus size...if only, other shows and in fact most of the entertainment and beauty industry would learn from this. It revived everyone's love of the fashion and the music of the 60s. And most importantly, it gave the world Don Draper.

What would I like for the end of Mad Men? I would like Don Draper to live- the creators have promised that he will but I've been stung by that promise before (I'm looking at you, folks who created Big Love!). I think it would be interesting to end with Don and Betty back together...don't get me wrong I love Megan (Henry not so much) but I think this would be an interesting turn of events. I would like to see some reconciliation between Joan and Roger...messed up as their relationship has always been, there is still a lot of tenderness there and they are two of my favourite characters. I would like to see Sally get her life together (or start to) despite her upbringing. I would like someone to be nice to Harry Crane...to make a Parks and Rec reference, he feels like the Gerry of Mad Men. I would like Megan to get some acting success. I would like "Harris" or "Olsen" to appear in the company's name, or for Joan and Peggy to start their own successful company. I would like to see what has become of Peggy and Pete's kid. Base line I would like to see Sterling, Cooper & Partners keep on being brilliant into the 70s and beyond!

In end, I'm pretty sure that I will be happy with whatever they do and they will leave me wanting more...

BUT my one big request, that they probably won't deliver on, would be please, please, please can Pete Campbell be painfully killed?

Mad Men will be on Showcase and iTunes- I assume.

Finally after some recommends for this season of TV, I feel I should acknowledge the passing of a TV great. My mother is a Star Trek fan so when I was quite young, I was introduced to the original crew of the Enterprise...my mother was clearly trying to make me a nerd from a young age, and also trying to instill me with solid social justice ideals partly around race (if you don't know much of the original Star Trek, it was the most racial diverse show on US TV in its day, it featured the first black woman in a main role, and the first interracial kiss on TV). For me, there will always be only one crew of the Enterprise and today it had a great loss. Spock was my favourite character in the original series and Leonard Nimoy's ability to welcome that role being the role that he would be forever known for is almost unmatched (except by others from Star Trek). His wit in playing this up in golden era Simpsons episodes was just a hallmark of this. He inspired a lot of time spent perfectly the Vulcan salute in my house, he also inspired the name of one of my brother's pet mice (Spock, like his namesake, was a very peaceful mouse, who was bullied to the point of near death by fellow mouse, Indiana- my brother was six or seven at the time and he thought these were pretty cool names). He is a great loss to the entertainment industry. In tribute I share a clip of my favourite Spock moment from my favourite Star Trek film...no it isn't from Wrath of Khan which most believe to be the best Star Trek film (probably correctly), it is from The Voyage Home which struck a cord with me when I was a young girl who wanted to be a marine biologist and this scene still strikes a cord with me as an adult who travels on public transport...

Monday, February 2, 2015

Taking the flower...

Hello, people of blog land. Since last we spoke, I have been busy at work reading and buying more books by women to tell you about. I have finished Donna Tartt's The Secret History, started and finished Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking and Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park, bought, started and finished Mur Lafferty's The Shambling Guide to New York City and Jill Lepore's The Secret History of Wonder Woman, bought and started Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything, and bought Zadie Smith's White Teeth, Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch, Karen Joy Fowler's We are all completely beside ourselves, and Six Against the Yard by the Detection Club (not all members of the Detection Club are women (many of them aren't and the chairperson wasn't in 1936 when this was first published) but this particular book contains stories by Dorothy L.  Sayers and Margery Allingham as well as an essay by Agatha Christie so it half counts). Also since we last spoke, one of the books mentioned in my last post, Claire Zorn's The Protected, won the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in the YA category...see I told you it was something you should go and buy and read.

This post is a bit of a combo as I realised I hadn't done my normal blog of Hottest 100 votes and I felt that  they worked well in combination with talking about Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking, mainly because Palmer is an amazing musician and also because as always my "dear Hottest 100, where are the ladies" rant is coming.

OK so to start my thoughts on Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking or to give it, its full title, The Art of Asking: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help...

 
  
Amanda Palmer to me has always been someone whose music I should have appreciated but that I missed connecting with as she initially sidestepped me. Her band, The Dresden Dolls, first got airplay when I was at uni and was in the midst of what I think of as my catch up phase. Having been raised in a household where the music of choice was either jazz or classical (not that there is anything wrong with that and in my adult years I came to be thankful for that additional musical knowledge), my first response as a teenager was to flee these genres and to listen exclusively to alt rock and alt pop and other musical genres with the word "alt" in the mix, but then in the middle of my uni years, triple j was going through a big skip hop phase so I listened to it less and there was no other alternative station in Wollongong so instead of listening to more and more new alt music, I discovered those rock and pop artists of the 1960s onwards who I'd missed as a child- listening to lots of Beatles, Bowie, Queen, Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd in particular. Dresden Dolls with their punk cabaret sound were exactly in my wheelhouse music wise but at exactly the wrong time...I was also a little weirded out by the fact that one of my close friends in high school was called Amanda Palmer (no, she didn't leave Wollongong for Boston and form The Dresden Dolls...it is just a very common name...there also is or maybe was a reporter for Channel 7 news in Australia with the same name in the late 90s early 2000s). What I heard of Dresden Dolls I liked but I didn't hear enough to invest to heavily. Then a few years later, Amanda Palmer started appearing on Spicks and Specks occasionally and again I thought I should really look into her music more...but that was in the midst/immediately after of her break up with her label so I didn't want to buy a Dresden Dolls album if she wasn't getting cash for it. My desire to look into her music was further compounded when she started dating and then subsequently married the man who (if I were a writer and I had them) would be my literary hero/hallmark/words to that effect, Neil Gaiman. I repeatedly made a mental note to buy an album in the future when I knew she would get the money but never delivered on that. I made notes to go to her concerts and never did. When I blogged a while ago about the Hottest 100 of the last 20 years and the lack of women and posted 20 songs by women that should have made it in, someone I know pointed out I forgot to include any Palmer/The Dresden Dolls, and that made me want to go and add "Coin Operated Boy" (my favourite Dresden Dolls song) in place of one of the songs I had included...but I didn't. I was the worst fan possible...maybe because I wasn't a real fan...except of her twitter feed which I read regularly and her blog which I read on occasion but that seems wrong when you are talking about a musician.

Anyhow getting to the point and apologies to Ms Palmer for the lack of cash in your direction in the past. A few weeks ago, I went to see Amanda Palmer at an event organised by the Sydney's Writers Festival and I picked up her book, The Art of Asking, which is based on her highly viewed TED talk. It was an amazing night as Palmer sang a few tunes, read some excerpts, others read excerpts, others sang some tunes, Palmer talked about her book with Tara Moss, and then Neil Gaiman appeared and read excerpts of both The Art of Asking and his new book Trigger Warning (which is the next book I plan to buy but haven't got around to getting just yet).

The next day I started the book and the main thing I can say is, taking aside Palmer's personal story, I wish it was something that had been written ages ago...then again maybe it is just Palmer's experiences that make her the perfect person to say it. As a rough split in the book, it covers Palmer's career from street performance artist (a massively tall bride statue offering flowers to passers by) to Dresden Dolls to label quitting to kickstarter to the present day and all the controversies she encountered in-between, paralleling this story in many ways with her memories of meeting and falling for and marrying Neil Gaiman. It parallels the professional and personal and the intersections between these..and the ways that we can function one way in one sphere of life and another in another. Palmer as a performer is willing to accept the help of others without reservation and to trust her fans unreservedly (what else can you expect from someone who was a street artist?) but Palmer in her relationship with Gaiman spent a significant amount of time grappling with accepting the help/financial support of her husband, let alone the difficulty for her of grappling with what it meant for her to have a husband in the first place. The book is unflinchingly honest and heart felt and on a couple of occasions I found myself crying (when she writes about the abortion she had just weeks after her marriage and the resulting weeks of weakness/illness and when she writes about her best friend's battle with cancer) and at others I found myself quite angry at the world (Palmer has repeatedly attracted controversy as a performer and a person, and there have been several "scandals" about the way she has done things...all of these ill founded in my opinion...and the vitriol she was faced with on each occasion just filled me with rage as I read about them, even though Palmer displays such forgiveness and very little bitterness in these sections). The book also asks much bigger questions about the value we place on art and why we do art in the first place and what our attitudes to generosity and honesty are and how we as humanity generally value (or not) ourselves as adult human beings. I would say it is a must read for anyone who raises money to live by crowd funding or similar, especially artists, and that it generally has a lot to offer for all of us as we seek to find a comfortable place in this world where we can be seen for who we really are. It asks people to be honest, to be comfortable with asking for help when it is needed, to be trusting, to be generous, to accept offered help, to get behind the art/artists we love, to realise that it is OK to sometimes feel that you have no clue what you are doing, and to take the offered flower/doughnut when we are faced with it.


It is a beautiful book and you can buy it most anywhere that sells books...if your main stream book stores let you down, head to the more "alternative"/"indie" bookstore in your area and you are sure to find it. And to answer to looming question about me actually buying some of Palmer's music...I finally did so I can slightly stop feeling guilty now. And also for the rest of you to enjoy, "Coin Operated Boy" the song I forgot to share in the past.




So, moving on from a book by a musician to some more music...


Normally I blog my votes for the Hottest 100 sometime just after I've cast them, but this year I didn't. I waited and I listened to the countdown and I will blog now instead. I had no reason for waiting, I just didn't have the time, and then after the countdown happened I realised that I wanted to share my votes with you because my votes were 7 female artists/bands with women on lead vocals to 3 male artists/bands with men on lead vocals, and once again the Hottest 100 was dominated by male artists- seriously Taylor Swift at 12 would have been an improvement as it would have upped the female artist count if nothing else (I understand the grounds on which triple j excluded it and they have the right to...but the controversy was a joke especially when it meant that the lack of limelight on female artists was so completely overshadowed (well not completely as The Sydney Morning Herald published their yearly rant on it...thanks SMH for continually being the voice of reason on this front)). My vote count on getting in was 3 (at numbers 61, 26 and 18...if my memory serves), even when you take it up to the 200 which was published today, and 2 of the 3 that got in where male acts I voted for!


So my votes, ladies first...


"Yellow Flicker Beat" by Lorde (the one female fronted vote that got in!)




"Goddess" by Banks




"I might survive" by Architecture in Helsinki (oddly absent...songs with the male singer taking lead vocals have frequently made the countdown in the past)



"Water Fountain"by tUnE-yArDs




"Stay Gold" by First Aid Kit




"90s Music" by Kimbra (SHOCKING absence!)




"Strong Hand" by Chvrches




And now to the guys...


"Hunger of the Pine" by alt-j feat. Miley Cyrus




"Talk Too Much" by Andy Bull




"Real" by Years & Years (the track by a male band that I voted for that didn't get in...I didn't expect it to, it has not got as much airplay as it should)




Enjoy these tunes as many of them didn't get the Hottest 100 outing they deserved, and if you, like me, would like to express your annoyance at the lack of women in the Hottest 100 EVERY YEAR, there is a change.org petition asking triple j to be more active in investing in female artists that you should sign, just click here to do that. If you wish to point out to me that the voting is fairly evenly split on gender lines or that it is democratic, firstly someone already has and I've already reached an agree to disagree decision in my mind on that, secondly gender of voters is irrelevant when talking gender of artist and even bringing it up indicates you think only women listen to music by women which is rubbish, and thirdly just because something is "democratic" (if it truly was, we would have heard Taylor Swift) doesn't mean it is right or that people don't have a right to disagree with it (or else I would have to keep quiet on my myriad disagreements with the Abbott government and sorry my right wing voting friends, that ain't going to happen). 

Finally since I talked music and Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking is partly about crowd funding, I give you a song that I might have voted for in the Hottest 100 except that it would have involved typing in my vote and unless you are Taylor Swift that doesn't bode well for getting in. It is my friend's crowdfunded 2014 single which was (biases aside) one of my favourite tracks of 2014...so I leave you for this post with "Walls" by arbori... it may not be by a woman but it features one and it also is right by the alley of supporting music that people are offering out there in the world (I got a dinner out of crowdfunding it).