Flatscreen Favorites
By Brandon Nowalk
Breaking Bad
One of our best television dramas ended its third season last Sunday night, and the complications are mounting. Brilliant, anal-retentive chemist Walter White (consecutive Emmy-winner Bryan Cranston) is now cooking methamphetamine at an industrial laboratory for a man whose carefulness comes off as cryptic and threatening. Walter’s partner Jesse is secretly branching out and dipping his toes into some dangerous territory. Walter’s wife, Skyler, is slowly but surely going Lady Macbeth, taking control of his criminal enterprise. And Walter’s brother-in-law, DEA Agent Hank, is recuperating from an attack with his eyes on the prize: tracking down the mysterious meth cooker once and for all. I haven’t yet seen the final two episodes, but the season so far promises a dark, explosive finale as control freak Walter finds too many elements way beyond his control. It’s a welcome change, since the early half of Season 3 got bogged down in too many faux-deep monologues and pretensions to thematic development. Breaking Bad is best as a recklessly paced, cliffhangery thriller with occasional ventures into what it all means. Lucky for us, it finally got its groove back.
Coen Brothers Collection Box-Set
Last week saw the arrival of a DVD triple-feature from two of America’s best contemporary directors, Joel and Ethan Coen. First up, 1987 Nicolas Cage comedy Raising Arizona, wherein Cage and his wife Holly Hunter are so desperate for kids that they decide to steal a baby from a group of famous quintuplets. Next we have the best gangster film of 1990 (better than The Godfather Part III and Goodfellas both): Miller’s Crossing, starring Gabriel Byrne as a man stuck between warring mobs. Finally, the 1991 Palme D’or winner Barton Fink, about a screenwriter retreating to a bizarre hotel haunted by the likes of Steve Buscemi and John Goodman. For fans of the Coens, the set is a treat; for strangers, it’s a necessity. The films are typically playful when it comes to language, especially the invented vernacular of 1920s mobsters in Miller’s, and beneath the clever banter lurks the Coens’ perennial philosophical puzzles. Unfortunately, the Coen Brothers haven’t yet recorded a single commentary track for their films and this set is no exception. Instead of special features, the draw of this set rests in three of the Coens’ best films at an affordable price.
Life
Fans of the smash hit Planet Earth will love this BBC/Discovery Channel sequel of sorts, the ten-part, ground-breaking nature documentary Life. You may have caught it when it aired this spring narrated by Oprah Winfrey, but for those put off by Winfrey’s occasionally clumsy line readings, the set has been released in America in two forms: one with Winfrey narrating and one with the original, soothing British sounds of David Attenborough, both on DVD and Blu-Ray. Regardless, the primary draw is the fantastically vivid imagery from all over the planet following all manner of species, each hour-long episode dedicated to a single category like reptiles or plants. Apparently some of the footage, like that of the Komodo dragons hunting the water buffalo, has corroborated tentative understandings of animal behavior, and some, like the sailfish sequence, revealed behaviors for the first time. As with Planet Earth, Life has a behind-the-scenes featurette for each episode describing how the footage was attained, nearly always as awe-inspiring as the episodes themselves. Even if you ignore the scientific breakthroughs and the intensive camerawork, just the extraordinary beauty of Life is enough to restore our sense of wonder about the natural world.