Things to Watch on Netflix

We're all about Netflix Instant Watch these days.  With DVD rental being what it is (essentially obsolete), and the fact that mail is tricky when you live in a hotel, we're glad that watching things online has been an option.  And, thankfully, there have been some pretty great things to catch up on.


Doctor Who

The Premise: The Doctor, a 900-year-old Time Lord, travels through time and space to keep universal peace.  He is joined by an assistant; there are adventures.  The show will appeal to viewers ages 13+, particularly ones who enjoy shows by JJ Abrams and Joss Whedon.


My Take: I didn't think much about watching this BBC production until I found out the writers responsible for the new Masterpiece Mystery! Sherlock Holmes series were writers for Doctor Who.  It took me a few episodes to get into it, but once the plot started coming together, both Danny and I were completely hooked.


The writers are great at setting up future plot points and making sure the pay-offs work in the end.  They also have a better sense of sequencing and remembering what happened in earlier episodes than most other sequential shows.  They also are incredibly skilled at writing characters you love, even when you start out thinking this isn't going to go so well.  The Doctor's Assistant Donna in the fourth series? Incredibly annoying.  But...she grows on you.  You get to like her.


One of the trickinesses of the show is that the Doctor is 900 years old; when he is mortally wounded, he regenerates.  This means you've got a different actor playing a different facet of the same character, which is not easy to write when that character is the central character.  The writers pull it off, though.  I was really not sure when Matt Smith took over from David Tennant (to be fair, I wasn't a fan of David Tennant after Christopher Eccleston).  But by the end of the series, I really did think bow-ties had the potential to be "cool."


Unlike American television, the end of a season (or "series") is typically not left as a cliff-hanger.  So at the end of the series, you're not miserable.  I like that.


The other great thing about Doctor Who?  It's one of the few smart, witty shows that's appropriate for family viewing.  Just be aware that though there's no gore, sex, language, drugs, or Rock n' Roll, it can still be genuinely scary.  Scary, but there is always - always - a happy ending.


Top Gear (Series 9-12)

The Premise: Three white, middle-aged British men test and review high-performance sports cars, host celebrities, and perform "challenges" such as turning a Renault Minivan into a convertible (which ends in flames), going on an RV trip (which ends in flames), trying to make an inexpensive car faster with their own impressive lack of engineering skills (which makes Danny giggle).  Oh, and there's The Stig.  Some say..his favorite film of 2010 was Nanny McPhee Returns, and that he washes his hair with liquid nitrogen.  All I know is he's called The Stig.


And if you've watched the show, you know why that's funny.


My Take: This is the best kind of reality TV, because each of the hosts are fantastic characters is their own right.  Series 9-12 are available on Instant Watch.  The highlights include:


9.1: Richard Hammond reviewing his harrowing accident in the Vampire jet-car; Richard, James, and Jeremy try to resurface roads better than the city.  It goes badly.
9.3: Jeremy, Richard, and James try to buy (rather than rent) a car in Miami for $1000. It goes badly.
9.5: The Kristin Scott Thomas episode - one of my favorite "Star in a Reasonably-Price Car" segments.
10.5: The Challenge?  To find out the fastest way to cross London.  The Stig takes public transport (hilarity ensues), Richard Hammond rides a bike (sweat ensues), James May drives a Mercedes-Benz GL500, and Jeremy Clarkson attempts a powerboat down the Thames.
10.8: James Blunt in the Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car - one of my other favorite SIARPC bits.
10.10: The David Tennant episode! I've never seen anyone handle Jeremy Clarkson so gracefully.
11.1: Police cars are built. It doesn't end well.
11.6: Germany vs. Britain (a personal favorite).
12.1: Jeremy, Richard, and James attempt to drive semi-trucks (aka "lorries").
12.6: The Communist Car episode.  One of my very favorites. Also includes extensive testing of the Ford Fiesta.


Not available on Instant Watch but worth mentioning:


8.1: The Renault Espace Convertible Challenge.  You can watch it here.





And, last but not least, episode 13.6, the Mallorca Time Trial Rally, the first part of which can be viewed below.





Or, as I like to refer to the episode, "The Blond, the Spaniard, and the Midget."


It's glorious.


Also available for your viewing pleasure:


Tell No One


On of the best thrillers I've ever seen.  It shares similarities to The Fugitive, but the plot is even more twisty and mind-blowing.  In French with English Subtitles.  If you're not a foreign film watcher, this is one to watch anyway.  The star, François Cluzet, is reminiscent of a dialed-down Dustin Hoffman.  Actor François Berléand (The Choir, The Transporter), also plays a key character, and Kristin Scott Thomas shows off her French.


Bottle Shock


My favorite wine movie.  Stars Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, and Chris Pine.  You may not have thought that a movie about wine could be suspenseful, but this one will surprise you.  Centered around the wine-tasting competition in 1977, you may consider moving to wine country after viewing.


Or France.  It's a toss-up.


Possession


Starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Aaron Eckhart, Jeremy Northam, Jennifer Ehle, a literary mystery and romance based on the A.S. Byatt novel.  It may not measure up to the novel's pedigree, but the film is well-written and acted.  One of my new favorite films.


The September Issue


Basically, it's The Devil Wears Prada: The Documentary.  Though in reality, Anna Wintour is surprisingly less demonic than she's made out to be - watch how she interacts with her daughter.  No joke, she's tough, but if she were a man, I have a hunch she'd be revered for notoriety rather than snickered at.  The woman knows her stuff, there's no denying it.


Outsourced


American employee has to go to India to train the phone team who's replaced his stateside department.  It's a classic fish out of water scenario, but this romantic comedy is surprisingly sweet and occasionally insightful when it comes to analyzing cultures.


There are other great finds, but I'm running out of steam.  What are you watching?

Not Dead

Sorry. I know, it's been a while. Turning in the book sucked out my will to blog. Or write, really, much of anything.

To catch up:

1. Robin Hood. Thumbs-down, sadly. Honestly, you don't know how much that breaks my heart. I wanted to love this movie, but it wasn't meant to be. You really do have to have characters to make a story work. More on that later.

2. The Losers. Thumbs-up. Honestly, the trailer made it look like the poorer, potato-sack wearing cousin of this summer's The A-Team. Which I haven't seen yet. But The Losers does, it does well. The characters are drawn broadly with much love and affection. The action sequences are fun. The villain is pitch-perfect. If she could sound feasibly British, I'd nominate Zoe Saldana for the Tomb Raider reboot. I recommend much.

3. Letters to Juliet. Thumbs-up. It's swoony and unapologetically romantic in a take-no-prisoners sort of way. When I am old, I want to look like Vanessa Redgrave.

4. Crazy Heart. The scriptwriter really did go with the "less talk more rock" approach. Literally. And while I won't begrudge Jeff Bridges his Oscar in the slightest, I found the story itself to be lacking. My engineer husband (who spends a lot of time these days with a novelist) summed it up this way: "It's like it was an act and a half, rather than three acts. There was a lot of setup, the climax, some plot, and then it was over. I didn't like it.)

*Note* He'll come home from work and tell me I didn't quote him right. But it's pretty close and true to the intended message.

That's it for movies. We've been watching a lot of Top Gear lately. So much that the phrase "Some Say" followed by a pause will now cause a Pavlovian-type giggle reaction. (This is inconvenient for Ridley Scott, since it happened during Robin Hood while one of the actors was trying to be profound. I don't remember who. I was giggling at the time). But it's really delightful and is the only media-related item I've ever found that can make my frequently stoic husband weep with laughter. WEEP.

And honestly, I can't blame him.

One of the reasons I heart it much is that the three hosts - Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond, are all very good at being characters. And I'm all about characters.

So maybe Ridley Scott needed to watch a little more Top Gear, because the sense of character was missing from a film about one of the most famous literary characters.

Lessons We Can Glean From Robin Hood (2010)

1.) It's important to give the audience a reason to like the main character. If we like the character, we will care about his story. If we don't like him, we won't give a cockroach's tush. The late Blake Snyder wrote about this in his seminal screenwriting book, Save the Cat. Basically, give your protagonist an opportunity to save a cat, or something - anything - that makes us like him. It doesn't have to be much. It doesn't have to be a cat. Russell Crowe could have saved a horse, and it would have helped. This is true for anti-heroes as well. Even if they have issues, the likability has to be there.

2.) Characters have to be consistent. When characters are consistent, we believe they're real people. When they're not, we struggle with the suspension of disbelief. So if you give us a smart, gutsy woman like, say, Marian, and especially if you cast a smart, gutsy woman like Cate Blanchett to play her, do not have this character threaten to remove a man's manhood at knifepoint and then have her light a lamp so she can undress behind a thin curtain, giving the aforementioned man a lengthy opportunity to observe and admire the silhouette of her feminine form.

I mean, really.

3.) No plot development is going to be interesting enough to save your story if your characters are flimsy. In fact, if you don't have characters, it's not a story. It's not. It's a recitation of events. Character make story. Stories make character. You can't have one and not the other, if it's going to work. A lot of plot-driven writers struggle with this, particularly sci-fi/fantasy writers. I've seen it in both published and unpublished work. Political machinations don't mean a thing if we don't care about the characters. The reason why is that if we have nothing invested, the stakes will never be high enough to create the tension necessary for a moving plot. And you need high stakes. You need tension. As Lauri Deason once said, "The original Star Wars movies were about saving the universe. The new ones were about tax reform."

And we all know which ones were the most successful.

4.) Pick your tone. Own it. Films like The Losers, Clash of the Titans, and Letters to Juliet work because they know what they are and they're good with that. They're not trying too hard to be too much. Robin Hood swung around from battle epic to comedy to drama to romance in such an awkward way that it didn't work at any of those. (Note: kissing someone in the midst of battle while blood drips onto that person's face...gross. Not romantic. Not sexy. Gross and awkward. No one wants to kiss a bio-hazard.)

So there you go. I've been reading a lot of British Chick-lit lately. I can't wait for this book to arrive at the library (it's currently out). I have a thing for books in which a woman inherits or manages to land into a large, old, decrepit house and has to make it a home of some sort. I don't know why, but I've had this thing for a long time. It's a big plus if the house has a secret history, or if the heroine makes curtains for it. Books like this, this, and this, and obviously this. I just finished Harriet Evans' A Hopeless Romantic, and that was a lot of fun :-)

Speaking of books, need to get back to Simply Sara edits. More later...in less than two weeks :-)

P.S. The frog pic at the top is one of the ones I shot at the Oregon Garden during out getaway weekend. The rest are in the slideshow - go take a peek.