Month: March 2010

Based on the first two episodes, this is worth continuing with. Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan Givens, a US Marshal who is quick to draw his gun, and for whom the parallels with the role of a marshal in the early West still seems relevant. Early in the first episode he is posted back to Harlan County, Kentucky, where he grew up, and the rest of the series appears to take place there. Givens is based on a recurrent Elmore Leonard character, and Leonard is credited as an executive producer.

Part of the pleasure of the series is seeing Olyphant reprising his role as Seth Bullock, but with far more enjoyment than he showed in Deadwood. In that show he was one of the weakest characters: all repressed fury without a hint of irony. But in Justified, Olyphant is far more relaxed, with an easy smile and a sly sense of humor. There is menace when he threatens a suspect, but it is always delivered gently.

But the real reason to watch this is the locale in which it takes place. This is rural Kentucky, and the show displays a real sympathy for the ex-coal miners and the assorted losers who populate the trailers and shacks that litter the show, even when those same people become Nazi thugs, or small time thieves. In each of the first two episodes the audience is invited to develop some empathy with those on the wrong side of the law. And there are some lovely touches that bring out the clash of worlds, for example a prison bluegrass band performing at a birthday party held at an exclusive country club.

is there any way at all to find out what one’s friends’ scores on a specific movie are? seems like netflix disabled that function. i really liked it.

Parallel but intersecting stories, the perspective of the street and the cops, gritty realism, the presence of actors we know from their portrayals of Clay Davis, Wee-Bey and Omar… it is not hard to figure out that Brooklyn’s Finest is trying to mine the rich territory staked out in The Wire. It fails, unsurprisingly given that the bar is pretty high, but it does so predictably and disappointingly. The movie, filmed on location in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, follows three cops. Ethan Hawke is desperately trying to cash in on some drug raids to make a down payment on a new house for his large and expanding family (his Catholicism is referenced often). Don Cheadle is an undercover cop, who has infiltrated a drug gang (led by Wesley Snipes, in a fine performance), and feels the tug of dual loyalties. Richard Gere is a weary alcoholic, a few days from retirement, in love with a prostitute, unable to find meaning in what he does. Inevitably, these three stories converge in the final half hour. Continue reading Brooklyn’s Finest

This is not my bailiwick, and I assume you have all seen this, but I’d be interested in your reactions: The Death of Film Criticism. I’m particularly interested in how colleges and universities — the discipline — evaluates and weighs scholarship published outside of the usual refereed print formats.