Smash: "The Phenomenon" & "The Transfer"

Dancin’ Dan here, wishing I could say that I was coming here not to bury Smash, but to praise it. Truly. I have been a huge Smash apologist ever since that (amazingly, awesomely) ridiculous Bollywood number last season, but the show’s two most recent episodes, “The Phenomenon” and “The Transfer”, are just awful. I can't defend them. Any goodwill I had left for the show has gone pretty much completely out the window. Which is all the sadder considering we will soon be laying eyes on the series's final episodes.

SPOILERS AFTER THE JUMP

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The Mysterious Yearning Secretive Sad Lonely Troubled Confused Loving Musical Gifted Intelligent Beautiful Tender Sensitive Haunted Passionate Talented Mr. Ripley.

Last night I posted the Best Shot group roundup of The Talented Mr Ripley, but not my own choice. Why? Well every time I began I wanted to start over. If this blogpost were a passport I would have been defacing my own photo. I chose eight shots - at least -- but each one seemed to beg for a wholly different article to accompany it. Which is not to say that the film is any more gorgeously shot than others we've covered in this series (though John Seale easily deserved the best Cinematography nomination he was denied) but that it is several films at once. Which is why I've titled this post with its less condensed but truer title. Those sixteen extra shuffling adjectives in the brilliant title design say it all. 

Light bulb! 

Not actual light bulbs but figurative ones (we'll get to the actual ones in a minute) though actual lights figure into this perfect shot of Marge, backing through a hallway in what would handily be my choice if I thought of this film as only a thriller. This moment is just terrifying, aided immeasurably by a virtuousic turn by Gwyneth Paltrow. [more...]

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A Cluster of Links

articles elsewhere
The House Next Door Aaron Tveit on the rise
Salon Jennifer Wright relays the joy and weirdness of tweeting The Great Gatsby line by line
In Contention Warner Bros will distribute Ryan Gosling's directorial debut How to Catch a Monster starring Christina Hendricks. I'm so excited for this one. I guess it takes a great actor to finally give Christina her due as a potential film star
Guardian looks back at Carey Mulligan's career thus far
Empire Is Joe Wright directing 50 Shades of Grey. If so my interest in the project went from minimal to lots.
The New Yorker on Upstream Color. I feel terrible that I haven't yet seen this movie and loved Primer

three things that made me lol this week that i keep clicking back to
My New Plaid Pants Myrtle mowed down in The Great Gatsby (1949)
Des Hommes et des Chatons hot guys and cute cats in mirror poses
Gosloving "Ryan Gosling won't eat his cereal" -- my favorite one is the Lars and the Real Girl. Yours? (Do you think he recoiled at the "date" scene in Silver Linings Playbook)

Something That Bugs Me That Actors Keep Doing...
Typecasting is one thing. It happens to the best of them. But why do some stars willingly dive into roles that are so much like their other roles that you'd be entirely forgiven for thinking they're making a sequel. Why is Timothy Olyphant, for example, who played a Sheriff/ US Marshall on Deadwood and then a US Marshall on  Justified taking up another violent sherrif for The Man on Carrion Road? That's the kind of tiny niche that can just wreck your career for anything else (or did I miss some trend where violent sheriffs are ubiqui-hot like zombies?). Isn't it time he played like, I dont know, a chef or a used car salesman or something?  And why is Tom Cruise starring in yet another espionage franchise based on a TV series. How will they differentiate The Man From U.N.C.L.E. from Mission: Impossible now as film franchises? Why not just make Mission: Impossible 5. Oh, wait, he's doing that too!?! STOP IT!!!

TV Cancellations
Southland is done says TNT. I'd mourn its loss after a stellar fifth season but five seasons is a good run for any show and often shows nose dive in quality after five so quitting while you're ahead is kind of beautiful. Meanwhile Smash is officially axed as is The New Normal. Is this a dark day for gays who love television or a relief given the obnoxious self-loathing of the former and the preachy self-love of the latter?

You decide!

Link 15

New York Times Deanna Durbin, juvenile Oscar winner and 30s/40s star, has died
Rope of Silicon the first suggestive poster for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac ...
Nymphomaniac ...which also now has an official website
Us Weekly Reese Witherspoon talks about her arrest and taking responsibility for the crazy 
People Seth Rogen's mancrush on Zac Efron. I'm wondering what the "expletive" was but FWIW Zac is "very veiny" 
DP/30 David Poland talks to actress Alicia Witt
NPR the music from The Great Gatbsy (2013) 
Empire Logan Lerman joining Brad Pitt in the WW II tank thriller Fury 

All Superheroes All The Time. Must Be Summer
Vulture a practical guide to not hating Gwyneth Paltrow in Iron Man Three. This is amusing but Gwynnie is actually wonderful in the movie. Take that! 
YouTube a teaser for The Wolverine that I like more than that big trailer
The Playlist Quicksilver & The Scarlet Witch confirmed (sort of) for The Avengers 2. I'm confident that Joss Whedon can do right by witches (duh!) so yes, please. 
Movieline A sweded Iron Man Three parody from Thailand 

(Sort of) Off Cinema
The Stranger an excellent and funny piece about professional basketball's first coming out by heterosexual filmmaker Sherman Alexie (Smoke Signals, The Business of FancyDancing) 
ValleyWag an oblivious startup party from AirBnB themed on The Great Gatsby 
In Contention this is a few days old but fun. President Obama as Daniel Day Lewis as President Obama 

How Had I Never Seen This?
Meryl Streep with Adam Guettel ("Rain") 

As a lifelong Streep fan and also someone who loves Adam Guettel -- some of you may remember I recently saw him do a rare live performance -- how had I never even heard of this collaboration? Or is my memory going already? Thanks to TFE Reader Rene for pointing this out to me in the last Meryl post.

Smash: "The Producers"

One might also read that blogpost title as a command, "Smash the producers!" Go ahead. I won't stop you.

Tonight I am deeply in envy of my friend Glenn who took over Smash review duties over a week ago while I was in Nashville and lucked upon the best episode of the season "Opening Night". That episode was so good I even liked Karen Cartwright in it! *gasp*

But beware the fall when you reach a peak! Last week was too good to be true and this week's episode proves that Smash won't really be missed when it's finally put down despite its intermittent and blessedly unique high points. Last season's "hate watching," so widely reported because musicals are favored targets of scorn, seems to have turned into "hate-to-watch" since the ratings fall each week. Did you see Theresa Rebeck's e-mail to Buzzfeed? For all of the problematic agenda and ego that might have prompted her very late reply to their infamous Behind the Scenes expose on the troubled Season 1 show, she may well have a talking-about-herself-in-the-third-person point here:

If in fact Theresa Rebeck was the problem with Smash and the trainwreck it became, wouldn't things have gotten better rather than drastically worse - once she left?

Yeah, yeah, I'm avoiding talking about this episode.

A lot of screaming. Which is what I do whenever the show focuses on "Hit List"

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