Blog Archives - Ian Thomas Malone

Thursday

19

December 2024

0

COMMENTS

Queer captures Burroughs’ essence, alongside all of his shortcomings

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews

Much like his novels, William S. Burroughs is difficult to unpack. The elder statesman of the Beat Generation, Burroughs cemented his legacy with his 1959 novel Naked Lunch, one of the last American books to face a censorship trial. Unlike his contemporary and friend Allen Ginsburg, who also had the merits of his work debated in court, Burroughs remains a divisive figure in the literary canon, his eloquent prose and innovations frequently undercut by his meandering plotting and excessive repetition. The legend of Burroughs is as much the product of his outsized public persona and the high esteem from figures such as Ginsburg and Kerouac as his actual bibliography.

The novel Queer sat untouched for more than twenty years after it was originally written alongside Naked Lunch and Junkie, the two most noteworthy works of Burroughs’ career. A combination of Kerouac and Burroughs’ own literary agent helped the novel see the light of day. Believed to have been originally written as a companion piece to Junkie, the novel struggles to stand on its own two feet without a healthy understanding of the eccentric writer’s broader ethos, a challenge that director Luca Guadagnino struggled with mightily throughout his film adaption of the book.

The film Queer follows Burroughs’ avatar William Lee (Daniel Craig) as he bums around in Mexico City, spending his days drinking and admiring young men passing through the area. Lee quickly falls for a mostly-closeted GI named Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey), who gradually falls for his repeated attempts at seduction. The two drink, hook up, and eventually search for drugs, as the typical Burroughs plot usually goes.

Guadagnino brings his typical stylistic A-game. The sets are gorgeous, if not a little sterile for the likes of Burroughs. Craig disappears into the role, putting forth a valiant effort to give the work some semblance of a soul. Craig understands the oversized sense of stature that Burroughs brought to the world, even if he can’t quite replicate it.

Burroughs was not much for resolution. His novels defied all semblance of literary form, a reality that complicates all attempted adaptations of his work. Films generally benefit from some sort of structure.

Guadagnino delivers an adaptation that captures the essence of Burroughs’ style and elegance, along with all of his shortcomings. Queer is a beautifully empty narrative. Guadagnino’s fatal mistake is the film’s runtime. 137 minutes stretches the novel’s thin plot past the point of tedium. Whatever goodwill Guadagnino and Craig built up in the first hour is long squandered by the absolute disaster of a third act.

Burroughs the man was full of charisma and charm that was often lost in translation when it came to his written work. Guadagnino and Craig do their best to bring his colorful world to life, but a successful film almost certainly would have required them to do a lot of his work for him. After a while, as was often the case in Naked Lunch or Junkie, the desire to check out becomes too tempting to ignore throughout this luscious slog.

Monday

25

November 2024

0

COMMENTS

Conclave is a gripping thriller undercut by a lack of confidence in its own story

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews

Rituals either have meaning, or they don’t. The process of selecting a new pope feels fairly ridiculous, following certain rules and traditions that have been in place for more than a thousand years. Many of those customs, such as the sequestering of the College of Cardinals were established in the 1200s to prevent corruption, a reality that may seem strange to generations who have grown up with seemingly endless scandals affecting the Catholic Church.

The film Conclave centers its narrative amidst the secrecy of the Vatican. Based on the 2016 novel of the same name, the film follows the election of a new pope, and all the politicking that entails. Led by Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the conclave quickly devolves into a standard power grab, with various factions jockeying for support, most belonging to various shades of extreme conservatism. The sweeping liberal changes enacted in the Second Vatican Council are still met with swift opposition some sixty years later, with many cardinals supporting the return of the Latin Mass among other pillars of the old church.

Director Edward Berger is far more concerned with atmosphere than plot over the course of his narrative. The tight pacing and gorgeous cinematography from Stéphen Fontaine keep a steady undercurrent of suspense as the cardinals work through their ballots. The sets provide a suffocating sense of beauty, the panopticon of the Vatican never straying from the forefront of the story. With its many secrets and imposing disposition, the building itself starts to feel like a character after a while, an impressive feat of filmmaking.

While Fiennes keeps a tight grip on the reins of the narrative from his perch in the lead role, Conclave is often undercut by its script. The film struggles with character development, particularly the supporting players. For the most part, Cardinal Lawrence’s own motivations receive only scattershot attention. A late third-act effort to correct this falls a bit flat without the proper investment in its characters.

For an institution as mysterious as the Vatican, Berger isn’t all that interested in peeling back the layers. Conclave loves its scandals. Characters deliver eloquent soliloquies on the troubles of the world full of Aaron Sorkin-esque platitudes. Absent from the narrative is the nitty gritty work of politics. The film deploys a few stunts too many in a desperate attempt to wrangle in its unwieldy plot.

With a brisk runtime of 120 minutes, Berger creates the perfect pressure cooker for Conclave to triumph in its final act, but the landing just doesn’t stick. Conclave builds up so much goodwill, only to seemingly turn its attention away from its own story in favor of commentary on the state of the real world. The many cliches betray a lack of confidence in the film’s own story, and the characters that are so captivating for much of the narrative.

Fiennes’ orbit is a genuinely interesting place to spend time in. The level of detail in the cinematography and set design is so exquisite that you can’t help but wonder why the script wasn’t given the same attention. Conclave is a genuinely intriguing thriller that falls just shy of the label of masterpiece. A film with first-rate acting and some of the best cinematography all year shouldn’t need to resort to cheap stunts to propel its narrative.

Friday

8

November 2024

0

COMMENTS

Classic Film: Last Year at Marienbad

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Time waits for no one. People, on the other hand, wait around for plenty. People put off their dreams, sometimes for legitimate reasons, often simply because the timing isn’t quite right, whatever that means. Miserable relationships endure, not because anyone thinks the situation might improve, but because change is scary, and the cold dark unknown feels more intimidating than the familiar devil.

The 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad (Original French title: L’Année dernière à Marienbad) structures its entire narrative around the psychology of lust, tossing out all conventional notions of narrative and structure. A man (Giorgio Albertazzi), staying at a grand palace that had been converted into a hotel, sees a woman (Delphine Seyrig) he claims to have met the previous year. The woman, who came to the hotel with a second man (Sacha Pitoëff), possibly her husband, denies knowing him, particularly his claims that she asked him to wait a year before they could run away together.

Director Alain Resnais uses the beautiful baroque architecture of the hotel as a backdrop for Albertazzi’s seductive narration, creating luscious, dreamy visuals of a passionate vacation fling that constantly overwhelms the senses, even before you consider the additional psychological layer of whether the man is telling the truth. Screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet frequently uses repetition in the constant voice-overs, further muddying the waters between reality and the dream. Skepticism toward the man’s claims eventually gives way to the undeniable charm to be found in the labyrinth that is Albertazzi’s storytelling capabilities.

The mathematical strategy game NIM plays a large role in the narrative. The second man frequently exerts his dominance over the rest of the hotel guests with his commanding performances in the game. The surface-level simplicity of Nim is a point of frustration for many, the game itself boiling down to a matter of mathematics, with no one able to develop a strategy to end the second man’s streak. Life itself can often appear simple on paper, until we have to step outside our heads and go about the messy labor of achieving our dreams in a world that has its own ideas.

Despite the film’s ample avant-garde trappings, a nonlinear narrative where no one has a name, Resnais’s work is eminently accessible. The taut 94-minute runtime gives the film plenty of space to forge its unique identity without exhausting the audience. The dreamy cinematography functions as an extension of the screenplay, keeping everyone engaged even as the narrative wades into obtuse territory.

Resnais constantly plays with the framing of the camera, creating the illusion of a dreamlike state. There is often some distance between the narration and the events unfolding on screen. The other guests at the hotel often feel like mannequins, heightening the sense of a cat and mouse game between the man and the woman, on top of the power dynamic already at play with the second man’s dominance at NIM over everyone else.

The whole film plays out like the visual manifestation of the illicit fever dream being described by the narration. Affairs are often described as intoxicating. People don’t have affairs out of logic or sensibility. They do it for the thrill. Resnais eloquently captures that sensation, bringing his audience along for the ride.

The difference between love and lust often boils down to the hunt. Anyone can have a fantasy. The barriers to acting on such carnal desires are not particularly rigid, especially in a hotel the size of a palace. Unhappiness, on the other hand, can be a rather imposing panopticon. The mind can concoct all sorts of reasons to stay miserable, some more logical than others.

Does truth matter in the realm of passion? Resnais has a beautiful way of deconstructing reality, challenging the way we think about the world through the romance of desire. As uncomfortable as it is to say, facts don’t really have much business in the realm of love. Romance is inherently a buy-in. It seems ridiculous to say that it doesn’t really matter if someone was telling the truth about having met you a year before, but people don’t fall in love based on logic. How we feel is what really matters.

All of that might sound ridiculous, but the great triumph of Last Year at Marienbad is the way that Resnais makes the absurd seem palatable when contrasted with the alternative that is reality for the woman. None of us would be comfortable admitting that we’d fall for a man who told us things we knew to be untrue. Plenty of us would also feel uneasy admitting that we’re staying in loveless relationships because we’re too afraid of the alternative, yet we all know someone currently mired in that reality. For a film that offers nothing in the way of answers, there is so much clarity to be found in Resnais’ work.

Tuesday

5

November 2024

0

COMMENTS

Now on Substack!

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog

Great news. ITM has started a Substack. Going to do a weekly column on dating, politics, popular culture, etc. The first two weeks are already up. Be sure to subscribe so you never miss an article.

Are You Not Entertained? by Ian Thomas Malone

If you’re not having fun on dates, what’s the point?

Read on Substack

Friday

4

October 2024

0

COMMENTS

Joker: Folie à Deux is a meandering mess with no clear sense of identity

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Two prominent complaints surfaced in the wake of Joker’s blockbuster success in 2019. The first criticism took aim at the way Todd Phillips’s origin story bent over backward to garner sympathy for the most notorious villain in the history of comic books, if not the entirety of American popular culture. The second focuses more on the film’s derivative nature, an excessively derivative take on Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy. Neither of these legitimate criticisms stopped the film from grossing over a billion dollars against a modest budget, a smash hit with fertile ground for a sequel.

There is no set formula for what makes a sequel work. At a bare minimum, one might hope to see a story that moves the ball forward in some tangible way, or uncovers something fresh to say about its subjects. Joker: Folie à Deux does not cross this small bar. It’s unclear if anyone even tried. Rarely does a film plod along with such reckless abandon toward the idea that anyone is supposed to enjoy what they’re watching.

Folie à Deux mostly centers its narrative on the trial of Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) for his actions in the first film. Living out his days in the custody of Arkham State Hospital, Fleck is frequently abused by the prison guards, largely keeping to himself. While walking to a meeting with his lawyer (Catherine Keener), Fleck comes across a music therapy session in part of the hospital not used for inmates, where one patient Harleen “Lee” Quinzel (Lady Gaga) quickly takes an interest in him. Lee sparks an interest in music within Arthur, sending him on numerous hallucinogenic interludes that comprise a large part of the film.

The narrative is essentially split into three camps. Folie à Deux tries to be a musical, a psychological thriller, and a courtroom drama, all at the same time. It succeeds with none of them. The songs are terrible. Worse, they’re forgettable.

Phoenix, who won an Oscar for his last go-around as Joker, appears to be functioning on autopilot. Much like the “incels” who championed the first film, Arthur is merely a reactionary figure responding to the world around him. The Joker is supposed to be an agent of chaos. Folie à Deux’s Fleck is just an aging edge lord who frequently appears bored or indifferent to the world around him. There is the sense that the musical interludes are supposed to serve as an escape from the monotony, but they’re not strong enough to make much of an impact.

The courtroom scenes are quite boring. A pre-Two Face Harvey Dent (Harry Lawtey) anchors the prosecution. While Lawtey puts forth an admirable effort, the script gives him nothing to work with. The legal drama plays out like a run-of-the-mill episode of Law and Order or The Practice.

Lady Gaga brings some interesting depth to Quinzel, whose backstory follows Fleck’s lead in being a loose riff on the comics. The script once again fails its actors, with Gaga being given little to work with. Folie à Deux reduces one of the most interesting new female comic book characters of the past few decades into the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope. It’s almost as if Phillips included her for the sole purpose of proving that the male basement dwellers weren’t the only people obsessed with the lunatic that is Arthur Fleck.

Successful sequels bring something new to the table. Folie à Deux starts off reasonably strong, building up the panopticon that is the Arkham State Hospital. The pacing is a complete mess once the courtroom is introduced. The film spends large chunks of its back half alternating between boring musical sequences and testimony from characters from the first film. The 138-minute runtime is painfully long, a meandering film that could’ve easily cut a half hour without missing a beat.

For all the complaints about Joker being derivative or morally irresponsible, the first film at least had a story to tell. Folie à Deux is fueled off scraps from the first, laced with boring musical interludes that add nothing to the story. Films do not need to be responsible, but all narratives should have something to say. Folie à Deux brings nothing to the table, an embarrassing waste of time for everyone involved.

Friday

20

September 2024

0

COMMENTS

Classic Film: Platinum Blonde

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

There is a certain timeless nature to comedy centered around class differences. The drama at the core of Frank Capra’s 1931 film Platinum Blonde could resonate with modern audiences if the film were released today. The question of whether the film brings anything new to the equation, whether to modern viewers or those who saw the film nearly a hundred years ago is a different story.

Stew Smith (Robert Williams) is a hardworking reporter only making 75 dollars a week. An assignment sends him into the orbit of the wealthy Schuyler family, where playboy Michael (Don Dillaway) is caught up in a blackmail scandal. Taking pity on the family, driven by his feelings toward daughter Ann (Jean Harlow), Stew goes easy with his reporting. Stew and Ann quickly fall in love and elope.

Much of the film’s comedy derives from Stew’s discomfort at his integration into the Schuyler way of life. He spurns Ann’s efforts to clean him up, quickly dismissing a valet hired to attend to him. In particular, he absolutely refuses to wear garters. A chance encounter with his best friend from the paper, Gallagher (Loretta Young) stirs up old passions, putting Stew on a natural collision course with his new overbearing family.

Platinum Blonde is mostly noteworthy for being Williams’ only leading role, as the actor died just three days after the film’s premiere. Williams brings plenty of range to the stock archetype that largely defines Stew. Despite having two fine actresses as leading ladies, Williams puts in most of his best work opposite Smythe (Halliwell Hobbes), the butler. Their interactions provide most of the film’s comedy.

Strong performances and a competent showing from Capra are sunk by a meandering screenplay that gives the actors little to work with. While Stew’s apprehension toward a life solely known as “Ann Schuyler’s husband” provides much of the drama, the film constantly hints at a subplot concerning Stew’s aspirations as a playwright that don’t really come into focus until late in the third act. Stew claims to want to write, suffering from writer’s block and a lack of inspiration, an underwhelming dilemma for the viewers to watch unfold on the screen. While fairly charming at first, Stew’s constant negativity grows tiresome as the narrative rolls along.

The 89-minute runtime feels exceedingly drawn out. Ostensibly billed as a comedy, there’s very little to laugh at throughout the film, but it’s hardly much of a drama either. Capra does make some strides toward redeeming his picture down the stretch, but as a whole, the experience plays out as a first draft that struggled to tie everything together. As a time capsule, the film has some value, showcasing Williams’ ample potential, but Platinum Blonde is too unfocused to leave much of a lasting impression.

Monday

9

September 2024

1

COMMENTS

Classic Film: The Passion of Joan of Arc

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog

The Passion narrative carries a lot of theatrical value even for non-believers. The sham trials of Jesus before the Sanhedrin and Pontius Pilate perhaps best illustrate the larger-than-life nature of one of history’s defining characters, a man grappling with the contrast of divinity and humanity in real time. The 1928 silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (original French title La Passion de Jean d’Arc) blends the history of one of France’s most beloved icons with the biblical tribulations of her spiritual lodestar.

Director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s work is a singular experience in filmmaking. Relying heavily on close-ups, with an absolutely breathtaking concrete practical set, the narrative sets up a succulent contrast throughout its 82-minute runtime. As the titular heroine, Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s expressive dramatic range evokes a sense of claustrophobia, buoyed by the imposing prison all around her. Falconetti never once lets up on all the angst coursing through Joan’s veins, delivering one of the finest performances in the history of film.

The silent film medium is perfect for the kind of storytelling on display in the film. The inter-title cards provide the necessary grounding for the audience to follow along with the plot, giving space for the actors to transcend all other conventional dramatic obligations. The musical accompaniment to Joan’s agony and the Machiavellian machinations strips the form down to its bare essentials, an immensely fulfilling adaption of the passion narrative.

All art is essentially human nature channeled through the creator’s preferred medium. There are limits to what a painting can do on a canvas or a film on its reel. Dreyer delivers a timeless treatise on the agony of the soul that bristles against the confines of its structure, a film so carefully constructed yet completely raw in its delivery. The Passion of Joan of Arc grabs you from its opening minutes and never lets go, an exhausting experience that drains almost as much as it inspires.

Perhaps more impressive than its ample artistic merits is the way the film breaks down the terrifying sense of awe and wonder of Catholicism, particularly its penchant for evoking guilt, for a general audience. Religion looms over much of popular culture and society at large, even for those of us who have nothing to do with the Church. Many religious narratives fall flat through their preoccupation with attempting to explain the unexplainable. The whole point of faith is belief in something larger than yourself, essentially for little reason other than it’s what you’ve chosen to believe. It’s not particularly convincing for many, for obvious reasons.

Billions of people have come and left this earth hanging on to a promise of eternal life that may never come. The Passion of Joan of Arc does not make much of an effort to explain why its titular hero chose martyrdom at the hands of a sham trial. What it does achieve is perhaps the most impressive feat for a religious narrative. For those seeking to understand the agony of faith grappling with itself in real-time, there are few better places to start than Falconetti’s spectacular performance. Dreyer’s nearly one-hundred-year-old work is still one of the defining examples of the sheer power of filmmaking to break down the barriers of time and space and deliver the essence of what it means to be alive.

Editorial note: Ian viewed a screening of the film with a live original score featuring the George Sarah Ensemble at the Art Theatre in Long Beach, California.

Monday

9

September 2024

0

COMMENTS

The Queen of My Dreams buckles under the weight of its many ambitions

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture

Film as a medium often shines best when introducing its audience to worlds unfamiliar to their own. Many in the West are unlikely to be familiar with the 1969 Hindi musical Ardhana, an intense intergenerational family drama. Fawzia Mizra’s 2023 film The Queen of My Dreams leans heavily on Ardhana, including clips from the classic film in its own narrative while adapting many of its themes. Its title is also the English translation of Ardhana’s most popular song “Mere Sapno Ki Rana.”

Azra (Amrit Kaur) is a grad student studying acting in Toronto in 1999. A closeted lesbian living with her “roommate,” Azra butts heads with her mother Miriam (Nimra Bucha) over her career arc and lack of desire to adhere to the strict expectation of a first-generation Muslim immigrant. The sudden death of her father Hassan (Hamza Haq) on a trip back home to Pakistan takes Azra out of her world, forcing a reexamination of her relationship with her mother, and her culture.

Flashbacks play a sizable role in Mizra’s feature. In a nod to Bollywood casting traditions, Kaur performs double duty as Miriam in the 1969 flashbacks, showcasing a colorful, inviting world that’s a lot of fun to spend time in. Though the first act spends much of its time building up Azra as the protagonist, Queen of My Dreams is really Miriam’s story, increasingly ceding ground to the flashbacks as the narrative rolls along. After finishing med school in Europe, Hassan finds work in Canada, drawing only daughter Miriam away from home, deceiving her own mother in the process, setting up some intergenerational strife that’s eerily similar to Miriam’s own struggles with her daughter.

Mizra delivers a touching commentary on the cyclical pattern of daughters antagonizing and emulating their mothers. The theme of defying expectations transcends culture, religion, and sexuality. Queen of My Dreams is very confident in its own world, delivering a welcoming portrayal of Pakistan for audience members who might be unfamiliar with the region.

The film loses a bit of its power in the third act. Mizra doesn’t have a great handle on the balance between the flashbacks and the film’s present-day narrative in 1999, exacerbated by an unnecessary pitstop in 1989 Nova Scotia, where Miriam and Hassan first settled. There’s little rhyme or reason to how the flashbacks come and go, Mizra’s fascination with revisiting Ardhana growing tedious in the absence of plot progression.

Queen of My Dreams often severely underdelivers on its LGBTQ themes. Azra’s girlfriend Rachel (Kya Mosey) is a nonentity for the bulk of the film, Mizra unwilling to force any lesbian awakening on her characters. Real life doesn’t often come with easy answers to the struggles that some families feel toward homosexuality, but this film doesn’t really try to confront any of this either.

The narrative is too often bailed out by the film’s gorgeous aesthetics. Inexplicably, the whole experience feels like it’s overstayed its welcome despite a brisk 96-minute runtime. There is a beautiful film to be found in Mizra’s work, but it’s hard to praise her technical skills as a director when her narrative so blatantly holds back from its audience.

Monday

5

August 2024

2

COMMENTS

House of the Dragon’s second season tethers itself too closely to its meager source material

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Game of Thrones, Pop Culture

Game of Thrones faced a gargantuan challenge in adapting an unfinished book series with thousands of pages of material, an unwieldly balancing act it handled spectacularly, at least until the last two seasons. House of the Dragon essentially faces the opposite problem, with its meager source material that needs to be stretched out into four seasons. The book Fire & Blood is essentially cobbled together from two novellas originally published in anthologies, The Princess and the Queen and The Rogue Prince, as well as the coffee table book The World of Ice and Fire.

You can read the entire tale of the Dance of the Dragons in a single sitting. There are certain challenges in adapting such scant offerings, but also plenty of advantages. The characters that make up the opposing sides of House Targaryen, the Blacks and the Greens, are essentially blank slates for the show to define on its own terms in ways that couldn’t be true for beloved book characters such as Jaime Lannister or Jon Snow. The only trouble with making House of the Dragon its own thing is the presence of George R.R. Martin amidst HBO’s broader landscape to milk the A Song of Ice and Fire franchise for all it is worth.

George R.R. Martin wrote The Princess and the Queen as part of the Dangerous Women anthology he co-edited in 2013 with his beloved friend Gardner Dozois, who passed away in 2018. The cover of the book includes a promo noting that the collection contains an all-new Game of Thrones novella. The 2018 release of Fire & Bloods expands the peripherals a bit, but there is a fundamental reason for the fast pacing of the novella. Though the Dance itself has been referenced numerous times within the mainline series, the novella exists largely to help sell an anthology that George R.R. Martin enjoyed working on with his buddy.

There is no real inherent reason that House of the Dragon must maintain such a rigid devotion to its source material, other than perhaps the idea that deviation might anger its creator, who is prominently featured in the credits. There are plenty of reasons why one might think it’s actually a good idea to change things up. A single novella is not exactly meant to carry multiple seasons of a television show. The show burned through its other source material, The Rogue Prince, published in 2014 as part of the Rogues collection put out by Martin and Dozois, halfway through the first season, hence the awkward timeline.

A show might consider it a bad idea to sideline Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) to his hallucinations in Harrenhal for an entire season. A show might consider it a bad idea to kill off a sympathetic character like Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) in episode four of its second season. A show might consider a bad idea to spend an entire second season on build-up after it spent its first season building up two mostly separate casts. The early demise of Kingsguard twins Erryk and Arryk Cargyll (Elliott and Luke Tittensor) wasted valuable screentime with a meager payoff. At least Rhaenys died in the season’s best sequence.

House of the Dragon is needlessly chained to its flimsy source material, a poorly paced slog that would do well to break free from the timeline of the novellas it remains haplessly devoted to. Prestige television takes years to make. You can’t expect viewers to wait years for a full season of exposition when most of them could read the entire novella within the runtime of a single episode.

The few substantive deviations from the source material have turned out pretty well for the show. Reuniting Rhaenyra (Emma D’arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) produced two of the season’s best sequences. The show’s bizarre devotion to the novella’s timeline hindered the season from spreading its wings after an uneven but compelling freshman effort.

As its title suggests, dragons are a large part of the show’s appeal. The CGI for the dragons has been spectacular, particularly during the battle sequences. Season two spent a large chunk of its time building up The Sowing, where four of the six riderless dragons living on Dragonstone, occupied by the Blacks, received riders. The show did a very good job spreading out the action, first building up Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty) and Seasmoke in episode six before giving Vermithor and Silverwing new riders with Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew) and Ulf the White (Tom Bennett), with Sheepstealer teased for next season, presumably bonding with Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell), replacing Nettles from the novella.

These four characters will all play important roles in the rest of the series. It’s hard to really make the claim that season two introduced them all that well. Hugh and Ulf received scant attention for the first half of the season, not making much of an effort to define their personalities until the final episode of the season, where their lowborn crassness was seemingly ratcheted up to put them in conflict with Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett). Though the show has a huge cast, it spent the whole season keeping its leads in a bizarre holding pattern, leaving piecemeal for the newer, also important characters.

None of this is particularly excusable. House of the Dragon knew precisely which characters would be important. Vermithor made his debut in last season’s finale, serenaded by Daemon, only to be treated as an afterthought for much of season two. Season one had twelve episodes. Season two only has eight, an arbitrary number ill-suited for the show’s unwieldy cast and complex narrative.

One might expect a showrunner to look at the many pieces of the Dance of the Dragons and arrange them in a way that fits a four-season narrative. Not House of the Dragon. This show is so hellbent on following George R.R. Martin’s timeline that it forgets to be engaging television. The space between last season’s Dance over Shipbreaker Bay and the Sowing amounts to a handful of pages of the novella, hardly the best outline for a full season of television. Game of Thrones made plenty of changes from its source material. It’s not as if House of the Dragon hasn’t made a few of its own, but its sluggish pacing is an unfortunate, preventable lapse in judgement. One of the most exciting chapters in A Song of Ice and Fire lore has no business being this boring.

Wednesday

17

July 2024

0

COMMENTS

Stereophonic presents a grounded take on the messy nature of greatness in motion

Written by Ian Thomas Malone, Posted in Blog, Movie Reviews, Pop Culture, Reviews

There is a certain temptation to glorify the antics of so-called tortured geniuses who produce great art while turning the lives of everyone around them into complete hell. Truly moving work is so sparse across the narrow confines of capitalism that those capable of making it are often forgiven for their shortcomings. The consumer only views the landscape through its finished product, not the countless hours it took to arrive at such a destination.

The play Stereophonic is a treatise on the ugliness of beauty. Based heavily off the turmoil of Fleetwood Mac, the show centers around a five person band and their two sound engineers as they attempt to record a follow-up to build on their growing success. Peter (Tom Pecinka), the singer, guitarist and relative newcomer to the group, takes lead on producing the album, butting heads with drummer and group leader Simon (Chris Stack) and bassist Reg (Will Brill), who is in a dysfunctional decaying relationship with keyboardist Holly (Juliana Canfield). Peter’s own longtime relationship with singer Diana (Sarah Pidgeon) runs into its own problems when Diana starts to come into herself as a songwriter, challenging Peter’s stranglehold on the group.

The three-hour show takes place entirely on a single set, a recording studio with a live room upstage, complete with a glass barrier where the band performs real music. Two engineers, Grover (Eli Gelb) and Charlie (Andrew R. Butler) supervise the production from a center console, often providing comedy in the quieter parts of the play. The music is largely confined to the first act, only comprising about twenty minutes of the runtime, but sound plays a major role in the narrative, particularly when the band is separated from the audience from behind the glass, requiring the actors to communicate their sheer disgust for each other through gestures and facial expressions.

Where Stereophonic achieves its greatest success is through its deconstruction of the creative process, particularly the tedious monotony that often consumes the space between moments of genuine inspiration. A band can sit in a studio for fourteen hours doing nothing but engaging in drugs and idle chitchat, only to find the magic in the dead of night for a few moments until everyone comes back to earth, just as a writer can sit at their desk for hours on end procrastinating in an idle search for twenty unadulterated minutes of glory. Great art makes you feel alive. Making art is often a painful negotiation between the soul and its obligations to earn a living.

Artists often produce their best work when their backs are up against the wall, because they have nothing to lose. Success provides the individual with a much more tangible sense of what can be gained, if one could only figure out how to set ego aside and learn to work on a schedule. Artists are drawn to their work often because it’s the only thing they’re good at, but a balanced existence cannot be achieved through songs or words alone. A career can provide the fruits for a happy existence, but you can’t build a life off work alone. Creative genius may leave a powerful legacy, but life is a daily grind, hardly a three act structure.

Life is a team game. No work designed to be consumed by the masses exists in a vacuum, without the aid of editors, engineers, or other collaborators. The tendency to glorify the artistic tyrant comes from a place of acknowledging that there is often a hierarchy to the creative process. Just because a guitarist has a harder job than a bassist does not mean that the bassist doesn’t have anything to contribute. Greatness can in fact be achieved without stomping over everyone along the way.

Playwright David Adjmi crafted a remarkably balanced portrayal of greatness in motion. Will Butler, best known for his work with Arcade Fire, did a wonderful job with the music, blending the seventies-era melodies of Fleetwood Mac with his own indie trappings. The runtime absolutely flies by, an emotionally intense journey that makes plenty of space for quieter moments.

It’s rare to find art that achieves greatness while never losing sight that greatness is not some pedestal to structure one’s entire existence around. The Tony Award for Best Play was well-deserved, an immensely rewarding odyssey that gives all seven of its actors a chance to shine. For a show that leans as heavily on another artist’s legacy as Stereophonic does, the play displays great maturity in its restraint toward romanticizing the messiness that often defines genius in conflict with itself and everything around it. Artistic tyranny may find lightning in a bottle, but life is a day-to-day game.

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