For the uninitiated:  Leary stars as reckless NYC fireman Tommy Gavin, who lost his cousin and countless friends during 9/11 and has been a wreck ever since.  Tommy’s family is a mess — he’s separated from his selfish wife Janet (Andrea Roth), struggling to keep in touch with his rebellious daughters, and constantly dealing with the alcoholic shenanigans of his extended family.  But Tommy’s real family is at work — the camaraderie and trust he shares with the guys on the job, goofing off at the firehouse or backing each other up during dangerous emergency calls.  Tommy deals with his grief and frustration in a number of reckless ways — drinking like a fish, sleeping around, starting fights and taking unnecessary risks at work.  Oh, and he also has a tendency to have drunken conversations with the dead people of his past, particularly his cousin Jimmy (James McCaffrey), whose death he feels responsible for — and whose widow Sheila (Callie Thorne) has come into his life in a mutually destructive, utterly unhealthy relationship.

Season five opens with a string of particularly great episodes, but tails off in its latter stages as it covers over-familiar ground.  It begins with Tommy on the wagon, struggling to stay on the straight-and-narrow, but his fight is challenged when a French reporter (Karina Lombard) turns up at the firehouse to conduct interviews for her book about 9/11 — stirring up an emotional wasp’s nest.  Frequently during this storyline, the season verges on “on-the-nose” territory politically, but the risk pays off with some fantastic moments as the characters wrestle with their emotional memories of that tragic event — a particular stand-out for me is an no-holds-barred argument between Tommy and his best friend Ken Shea (John Scurti), and a spectacular, episode-ending monologue from Sheila that, by rights, should have brought closure to her character arc.  (If Callie Thorne weren’t such a talented comic actress, who they clearly want to keep around, it probably would have been.)

Strengthening this A-story are a number of effective subplots.  Among them: the struggles of new station chief “Needles” Nelson (Adam Ferrara) to establish his authority over the crew; the relationship between “Black Shawn” (Larenz Tate) and Tommy’s daughter Colleen (Natalie Distler), and the comic repercussions that has at the firehouse; the disruptive influence of Janet’s new boyfriend Dwight (Michael J. Fox), a man so messed up he makes Tommy look normal; Tommy and Janet’s efforts to play nice for their younger daughter Katy (Olivia Crocicchia), which leads to a memorable scene in a bed-and-breakfast full of pretentious snobs at her boarding school; the integration of Sheila’s son Damien (Michael Zegen) into the crew as the new “probie;” and, my personal favorite, health issues for the brilliantly moronic Sean Garrity (Steven Pasquale) — aka “White Sean,” easily my favorite character on the show — a story arc way too good to spoil here.

As the season moves along, however, we return to over-familiar territory, and the season degrades.  (It’s a twenty-two episode season — remember when that was the norm?  Maybe it’s a good thing seasons are getting shorter.)   Tommy’s battle with alcoholism continues, the destructive influence of his extended family reenters his life, the never-ending and not quite convincing sex triangle with Tommy, Sheila, and Janet goes another few rounds.  The second half of the season is too much Tommy, not enough crew, and the subplots here are weaker:  Ken rekindles his unlikely love affair with a prostitute that ripped him off; Franco (Daniel Sunjata), a shameless player the show seems to struggle to find material for, gets into boxing and falls for a tough chick at the gym everyone thinks is a lesbian; Silletti (Mike Lombardi) starts a band with Damien.  None of these tracks really amount to much, as the show shifts its focus more squarely on Tommy and his relationships, ad nauseum.  Throughout, it continues to take dramatic risks, staging lengthy, emotionally charged dialogues, but unfortunately fewer of them pay off.

It’s also impossible to discuss Rescue Me without talking about gender issues, which I’ve never been 100% comfortable with on this series.  This is definitely a Guy Show, unapologetic about the macho-asshole behavior it’s depicting, and on one level it feels honest, at least — there are guys like this in the world, surely.  And in its better moments, it undercuts its own sexism by using it to reflect badly on the obvious insecurities and stupidities of the men spouting it.  (Maybe that’s why the less intelligent characters — Garrity and Silletti especially — come off so much more sympathetically than the smarter ones, like Tommy, Ken, and Franco)   But there are other moments when the behavior is kind of endorsed, and I find myself wishing these characters would mature or evolve somehow.  (They’ve tried it, but the guys always seem to revert.)  Meanwhile, the female characters on the show — the ones that aren’t just on-hand to fall for Tommy’s bad boy charms, at least — have an unsettling tendency to be villainous forces in the lives of the show’s men.  You could read it, of course, that the women are equally deplorable, equally selfish, equally messed up and crazy and self-destructive, because they are — and so, theoretically, equal.  But at the end of the day, the show never quite comes down on their side.  The men are usually defended, the women, well, not so much.  This is particularly noticeable with Janet, a character who’s never been treated with much sympathy, and it’s particularly more problematic with Sheila — a unique, complicated character on the one hand, consistently well performed, but often relegated to conflict-generating, catalyst behavior, which feels unfair.  There’s some hope that smart new character Kelly (Maura Tierney) might address this, and late developments finally take Tommy to task for his relentlessly destructive behavior, but the jury’s still out.

In the end, the season’s a pretty good example of the series — what it does well, and what it doesn’t.  Ultimately I’d like to see the show focus more on the created family of the firehouse, the emotional issues of working a dangerous job, the near-flawless ensemble chemistry of its talented cast, and the compelling firefighting sequences, which are almost always a highlight.  For all its weaknesses, it’s those strengths — well, and the fact that even at its worst, the show consistently raises issues and provokes thoughts; look how much I just freaking wrote about it! — that keep bringing me back for more.

I have also gone so far as to pull Subnetworks off the shelf long enough to examine a few pages, and managed early forays into research and organization for the second draft — just getting a few things straight in my head about the world of the book, gradually edging myself back into the headspace to work on the novel — which is kind of a scary prospect.  Producing raw wordage is one thing, but revising is the really hard work.  Wish me luck!

I finished Multicasting over the weekend, and it’s easily the most satisfying of the three albums for me, as I’m getting more and more comfortable with the software — and also thanks largely to my gradually expanding library of software instruments, especially the World Music jam pack, which has enabled me to diversify the orchestrations considerably.  I don’t consider this high art or anything, but hey, I like the songs, and more importantly I’m really enjoying the process:  learning the software, and figuring how to build music, all sort of by the seat of my pants.  It’s the perfect musical outlet for a lapsed rock musician, and I’m having a blast.

Below is the tracklist; playable ones are highlighted.  Most have appeared in previous blog posts, but there are four new ones availbale: “The Desert Portals,” “The Pavement Artist,” “Melting Pot,” and “Streetwise.” I think “Mirage” may still be my favorite.

1. Doctor Toothman
2. Low Down & Dirty
3. Codebreakers
4. Marching Morons – The Series
5. Mirage
6. Mudfoot McGee
7. It’s Jurgen!
8. Jive Turkey
9. Monkey Wrench
10. The People’s Republic of Equatoria
11. No Man’s Land
12. Deadly Serious
13. Bomb Squad
14. Here Comes the Bus
15. The Desert Portals
16. The Pavement Artist
17. Unearthly Forces
18. Melting Pot
19. Streetwise

I do hope, at some point, to get away from theme-songy, loop-driven music, but right now it’s really scratching my itch — a totally different buzz than writing fiction!

Like the majority of the Scandinavian cinema I’ve seen — which is not a broad sample, mind you — Insomnia is a patient film, glacially slow in places, allowing extended shots and silent moments to paint its dark psychological picture.  The relaxed pace, at times an obstacle, nonetheless contributes to the eerie, unsettling mood of the film.  The story gradually peels back the depths of Engstrom’s dark personality, and Skarsgard’s stoic inscrutability slowly melts as the stresses of the assignment build; it’s a subtle but effective transformation.

Overall, it’s a solid psychological puzzler with a distinct visual sense, an effective and well constructed film — it’s easy to see why Christopher Nolan would be interested in remaking it.  (I saw Nolan’s 2002 version, with Al Pacino, years ago, but I don’t remember it well enough to know if it’s a faithful adaptation.)

The setting of The Dervish House is Istanbul, and it’s a thematically significant one – a bustling crossroads bridging the divide of the Middle East and Europe, old ways of thinking and new, the past and the future.  A simplistic plot summary won’t suffice.  Let’s just say there’s a fearless nine-year-old boy with a unique heart condition and the coolest “action figure” ever…a crusty Greek economist with a dark political past and an eye for redemption…an ambitious art dealer who sets out to uncover an ancient artifact…her husband, a cut-throat wheeler-dealer looking to set himself up for years to come…a young woman who takes a job pitching a revolutionary new nanotechnology to venture capitalists…and more memorable characters, their stories told over the course of an eventful week during a relentless heat wave.  Various interests – business, political, cultural, technological, religious – are on a collision course, and as the novel progresses, these characters are witnessing it all, and exerting their effects upon history.  The individual stories are ingeniously interconnected, and together they tell the story of a city, and of a future.  It’s breathtaking stuff, and it’s the essence of “futurismic” – it should be required reading for anyone submitting fiction to Futurismic, that’s for sure.

McDonald’s work can be challenging, at times – bringing SF reading protocols to an unfamiliar culture, even as you’re learning that culture, can be hard work – but it’s well worth the effort.  I do recommend setting a big block of time aside to truly sink your teeth into this one, though; I feel I would have enjoyed it even more if I hadn’t had to divvy it up into bite-sized chunks, due to an unfriendly reading schedule.   It’s great science fiction, and deserves all the attention you can give it.

The film opens in an obscure mountain village in a fictional European country, where a number of stranded British tourists are waiting out an avalanche before they can head homeward.   Here we meet, among others, Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood), a young party girl heading home to settle down and get married, and Gilbert (Michael Redgrave), a wisecracking musician who gets under her skin at the hotel during a noise complaint.  The tracks finally cleared, Iris makes her way to the train, along the way befriending a kindly old lady named Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty), who assists her when she takes a bump on the head.  Iris falls asleep with the smiling Miss Froy sitting across from her, but when she wakes up, Miss Froy has disappeared.  Iris begins a search, but it turns out everyone on the train has excuses not to help — some for selfish reasons, others for nefarious ones — and she finds her investigation obstructed at every turn.  Her one ally, of course, turns out to be Gilbert, who helps her unravel the mystery of Miss Froy’s disappearance, which spirals into dangerous intrigue.

The plot is a convoluted sequence of comic encounters and spy switcheroos, and it’s not one of Hitchcock’s tightest films:  the point of attack is late in coming, and it opens at a leisurely pace before finally ramping up to its intrigues.  But it’s a fun concoction, and an early look at many of the techniques and elements Hitchcock would master in later films.  Viewed in the context of its era, the film is also politically interesting, providing some pointed commentary on British attitudes regarding the possibility of a renewed European war — some of the British characters, sucked into the action against their will, are clearly stand-ins for public sentiment during those troubled times.

The Lady Vanishes may ultimately be a better example of a Hitchcock film than of a spy film, but it’s certainly a worthy entry on the list.

This weekend held particular significance, though:  Thursday represented the four-year mark since Jenn and I met at Worldcon in Anaheim.  It’s been an exciting and wonderful four years so far, full of change and adventure for both of us.  We rang in the occasion with a spectacular dinner at our favorite restaurant here in the Valley, Café Carolina.  Jenn’s post describes the meal perfectly, so I won’t try to elaborate, except to show you the dessert:

We filled our Friday and Saturday with food and fun as well.  One highlight was an outing to Dark Delicacies in Burbank, a horror bookshop where Amelia Beamer was signing her new novel.  There we met up with friends and made some new ones, then stopped over at Porto’s for a pile of pastries.

It wouldn’t be a four-day weekend without TV, movies, and games, of course.  I’m catching up on season five of Rescue Me (about halfway through so far); I always seem to forget how good this show is when I’m not watching it.  I find elements of it problematic, but there’s something refreshing about how unapologetic and gutsy it is, and the ensemble cast is consistently amazing.  (I think Steven Pasquale in particular is a brilliant comic actor, and his story arc this year has been filled with entertaining surprises.)  We also instant-streamed the weird Belgian animated film A Town Called Panic, a wonderfully strange, frantic movie I found a little too stream of conscious for a full review — suffice it to say, it’s the best weird Belgian stop-motion animation you’ve ever seen.  And on Saturday night we enjoyed some World of Warcraft instancing with friends, where I got to heal my first heroics with my neglected resto druid.  (If you don’t know what that means, don’t worry about it…)

The weekend wrapped up with Jenn’s birthday, and I made my first solo batch of chocolate chip cookies — a personal baking milestone.  Not only that, but they look and taste like cookies.  Holy shit!

It was nice to shut down and relax for a while, but it’s Monday again and time to resume some responsibility.  Back to work, to editing, to blogging and bill-paying…and soon, to writing, as I’ve decided September will ring in draft two of Subnetworks (or, more likely, draft 1.5, the last pre-critique version).

For now I’ll leave you with our anniversary photo — I do believe we are as happy as we look in this picture, so it’s a great way to remember a great weekend!

Clint Eastwood stars as a retired assassin named Jonathan Hemlock (ugh), whose pedigree also includes a past in mountain-climbing and a current gig as an art professor.  Hemlock is lured back to the intelligence world by his former boss in the top secret agency “C2,” a man named Dragon (Thayer David), who blackmails him out of retirement for one last job, taking out a pair of enemy agents who stole a microfilm detailing a germ warfare formula.  Hemlock performs one hit, but the second one looks to be more of a challenge; the target, as yet unidentified, is suspected of being a member of an international mountain-climbing expedition to scale the notorious north face of the Eiger in Switzerland.  Hemlock’s mission:  join the team, identify the agent, and take him out.

Is there a spy movie plot tying together the sequences of The Eiger Sanction?  Sure, and it’s even got some classic elements:  the retired agent pulled off the shelf for one last job…the nefarious intelligence organization with murky motives…heroes just as morally questionable as the villains…dastardly misdirections…sexy femme fatales…a cynical (if not nihilistic) message about the costs of the intelligence world on its agents.  It sounds reasonable on paper.

But is it a spy film?  Not really.  It feels more like a macho ego-stroke for Eastwood Circa 1975, with his iconic monotone, square jaw, and bad-ass behavior.  The plot is serviceable, but fails to engage because it’s consistently trumped by its function as an action vehicle, an excuse to watch Eastwood scale mountains, thump thugs and bed babes.  The performances are wooden, and the script is full of lazy cliches — not to mention casual racism, sexism, and homophobia, a sad timestamp of the more politically incorrect characteristics of its film-making era.

Eastwood also directs, and not without some skill.  The film makes good use of its western U.S. and Swiss mountain landscapes, and some of the mountain-climbing shots are impressively hairy.  Eastwood obviously did much of his own climbing, which contributes greatly to the authenticity of those sequences.  On the other hand, he overuses the wide helicopter tracking shots of nature, and the film’s pace is all over the map.  Interestingly, a massive section of the film focuses on his rigorous training for the big climb.  I appreciate that — most action heroes wouldn’t bother practicing, they’d just automatically be awesome — but it has a brutal effect on the film’s pace.

Meh.  Most of the films on the list at least make a case to warrant their inclusion:  even Modesty Blaise, in its bizarre way.  But to me The Eiger Sanction is rated way too high at #67, and probably wouldn’t even get an honorable mention on my list.  Fans of Old School Clint might get a kick out of its testosterone-heavy exploits, but most spy buffs will probably be repelled.  Or is that rappelled?

Season two elevates the show to a new story-telling level, though, and particularly in its early stages it really hits its stride, providing engaging A-story plots intertwined with increasingly effective lore and a nicely developing ensemble feel.  Chuck’s puppy dog infatuation with Sarah matures into a credible will-they-or-won’t-they romance, and the often incongruous elements of Chuck’s personal life — sister Ellie (Sarah Lancaster), future brother-in-law Captain Awesome (Ryan McPartlin), best friend Morgan (Joshua Gomez) — finally start to feel more integral to the the events of Chuck’s secret life.

The season definitely has missteps, most notably a two-episode arc where Sarah alledgedly falls for a sleazy MI-6 agent — and everybody mysteriously decides to start acting out of character. Chuck’s occasional tendency to feel like it’s being written by giggling adolescent boys is at its worst here.  The season rescues Morgan from his irritating, show-stopping presence in season one, making him more sympathetic and noble — but does so at the expense of the rest of the Nerd Herd.  Lester (Vik Sahay) and Jeff (Scott Krinsky) merely turn up to exhibit repulsive male behavior, while Anna (Julia Ling) is just completely destroyed as a character — when she’s even given any material.  The Buy More sequences are still kind of an albatross around the show’s neck in season two, even with Tony Hale turning up to provide some quirky retail villainy.

That said, the major plotlines and season arcs of season two are much more impressive and engaging — watching Chuck come into his own as a reluctant spy, learning a bit more about Sarah and Casey, developing the family dynamic with Ellie and Awesome, some heroic moments and character growth for Morgan, and the overarching plot of Chuck’s attempts to get “the intersect” out of his head.  There are definitely moments of emotional connect here, not on a par with, say, Buffy at its finest, but moments where the terrorist threats (or vampires) stop mattering as much as the characters’ personal struggles and interactions within the tense framework of those situations.  I wasn’t expecting this much from Chuck when I started watching it, so it comes as a very pleasant surprise.