sense and sensibility (2008): the bbc miniseries

Last night, I watched Le Clan des Siciliens (1969), directed by Henri Verneuil, with Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura, and the ever-handsome Alain Delon, and was subsequently going to follow-up with a post about the possibly worst score written by Ennio Morricone, mainly because of repetitive, obnoxious 'boings.'  Legitimate boings.

But instead of whining about something I didn't enjoy, I decide to turn to the BBC production.  I've only read two Austen novels: Pride and Prejudice and Emma, which was the book that pretty much stopped me from reading anymore of her work.  But BBC's Sense and Sensibility has done the almost-impossible: convince me to read more Jane Austen.  Not to mention, I actually like it.  So far.  We'll see what reactions it will yield in the next two parts.

Betty Draper, meet Don Revie, your twin counterpart in real life

Starting in 2008, I've been keeping track of all the movies and books (sometimes television) that I watch/read in a year. And as of yet, 2010 has been the most representative of turtle-pace consumption of television/movies but the highest in literature reading. Anyhow, the case is that I haven't been watching many films because I find myself pretty much narcoleptic even more so nowadays compared to the time I could sit through the entirety of Gone with the Wind or Il Gatttopardo without going through a series of unconscious head bobs. Instead, I am back to the cycle of television series catching--and this time, in the form of Mad Men.

I love watching it, seeing references, reading on Slate/Guardian's commentaries, and then moving on with life because God knows how much time I actually have when I'm not conking/conked out. But I think my utter favourite pop cross-cultural reference to this date is the nifty article written by Christopher Mann called

"THE MUTUAL SUFFERENCE OF DON REVIE AND BETTY DRAPER"

I am not so keen though, on the physical attraction of Betty Draper in correlation to Don Revie's blotchy, skin-sagging, once-had-a-structure, face; it frankly makes me snort in response.

Mad Men meets football manager? What is this supposed crazy spewing of rhetoric, analytically thought out and sitting on the borderline of acceptance on my part? For those who don't know Don Revie, perhaps you've watched The Damned United. And if you haven't watched The Damned United, then in short, Revie is the infamous manager of Leeds United during the 60s and 70s, who, through argued-contradictory/hypocritical play, brought the team to top standing in the league, only to be brought down by his rival (probably because of his argued-contradictory/hypocritical mangement), Brian Clough. And Betty, is the psychologically-afflicted trophy wife of once-Draper and now-Francis, and still engaging in a furious love/hate debacle with her former husband.

Appearances aside, Mann comes to the conclusion that both of these personalities strive to appear and be more sophisticated than others when they are sadly deluded as they fall victim to the same cycle of moral corruption of those who they despise and criticize. (On the other hand, the analogy of Betty Draper-now-Francis/Don Draper antagonism and Don Revie/Brian Clough antagonism insinuates a sort of jealous homoerotic relationship between the latter group, which is half-disturbing and half-comical.) What also helps in concreting the comparison of unlikelihood is the fact that Don Revie's career pretty much teeters on the same time period of Betty's fictional existence. Brilliance right?

thirty days of sharing: day three

03. your favourite television program

A syntagmatic analysis, in which what Berger calls, an examining of “a sequence of events that forms some kind of narrative,” can be applied to the televisual universe of The Wire. By looking at each season, which revolves around a certain theme (drug trade, port, city government and bureaucracy, education, and the print media), we can also examine how each event/scene in each episode builds up not only one relative problem, but also parallel such problems. In season four, the drug trade prevails as a dominating force in the inner-city kids’ lives, which is one of the reasons (on top of lack of city funding) why some of the schools undergo so many disciplinary problems. Each character, no matter how separate they are in which institution they belong to, are somehow interconnected to each other, whether they are aware of it or not, due to events within the frame of the story. In season two, nephew to Frank Sobotka, Nick, and his girlfriend visit the house, Jimmy McNulty’s divorced wife, a realtor, is selling. Neither of them knows each other but Nick Sobotka, his uncle, and his fellow port workers are currently under high scrutiny of the crime force McNulty works on.

All the events in each season purposefully build up to reveal how the urban poor deal with the conditions in their neighborhood, how the police, in turn, deal with matters that complicate on different psychological and sociological levels, and how Baltimore’s problems do not stem from one cause but a messy web of many inner-city issues. Each season’s story becomes a complex commentary because of the many themes the show tackles. The finale to each season usually ties up the major case but often times, there are many loose strands still left behind, which adds to the complexities that comprises the multi-layered story of The Wire.