Category Archives: Television

The Queen’s Gambit and the Peril of Sports Movies

The Queen’s Gambit and the Peril of Sports Movies

Written and Directed by Scott Frank with luscious cinematography by Steven Meizler The Queen’s Gambit stars the luminous and captivating Anya Taylor-Joy Elizabeth Harmon and follows Beth life from her discovery of chess in the basement of her orphanage through her trials and tribulations with substance abuse, loss, and love as she climbs the ranks of world championship chess in the late 50s and 60s.

Adapted from a 1983 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis The Queen’s Gambit is both a character study and a sports film. Following Beth from age five when she is orphaned after her mother is killed in an automobile crash through her young adulthood in her twenties the story charts the characters growing addiction with prescription medication and alcohol as she develops her skills and talents as a chess prodigy while haunted by the tragedies of her life.

Skillfully directed with the best use of split-screen instead of a montage and deftly written with nary a scene of line of dialog out of place by Scott Frank the limited series immerses the viewer in Beth’s life and challenges with a bold confident style that never shies away from the more troubling aspects of her journey. Anya Taylor-Joy’s performance is masterful with careful control she expresses more with voiceless expressions than many actors ever achieve with speeches full of sound and fury that signify nothing. I have been a fan of Ms. Taylor-Joy’s acting since seeing her in the amazing horror film The Witch, and here she commands every scene and every shot without overwhelming them with ‘star power.’

Steven Meizler’s photography is simply amazing. His use of low-level light while still capturing deeply saturated colors is fantastic, creating scenes with depth, character, packed with emotion and yet never breaking the sense of period. More than once I have watched a period set film orseries and the photography spoiled the suspension of disbelief in subtle way that still proved impossible to ignore, not so here.

The Queen’s Gambit does fall into the category of film that is the ‘sports movie,’ and as such faces the challenges of the genre.

The first is the ‘Big Game’ problem. Usually a sport movie, no matter the sport, turns it emotional ending on the final big game, the championship match that the character of characters has been striving towards the entire story. The problem is that they can only win or lose and with rare exception the popular satisfying ending is winning and with the audience aware of this it tends to drain the drama from the play. A League of Their Own subverted this by having characters the audience identified with and cared for on both teams so someonewas going to lose, and the audience would be torn in their loyalties. The Queen’s Gambit had no such option and was forced to confront the issues head on. The solution Scott Frank found satisfied emotionally.

The second major problem facing sports movies is the requirement to understand the play involved. One reason the vast majority of sport movies fail to work for me is that I do not watch sports as a pastime and so the players’ great plays and terrible plays are not self-evident to me. The Queen’s Gambithas the issue multiplied as there are few people who could grasp and the dynamics of master level chess. Here Scott Frank used primarily play-by-play commenters to illuminate the games being played and avoided the trap of letting the audience ‘hear’ Beth’s thoughts as she played. During one critical match I knew that dramatically Beth’s opponent needed to perform a move she wasn’t expecting and yet I also knew I had no hopes of seeing and understanding if his move was the expected or surprising one. Frank solved this dilemma by having an observer mutter ‘He wasn’t supposed to do that,’ the dialog, though a tad clunky, worked.

Overall, The Queens Gambit is a masterful piece of television and the story fit the limited series format. It is doubtful that it could have been as thoroughly satisfying had someone tried to compress it into a single feature film.

The Queens Gambit is currently streaming on Netflix.

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Series Review: Jordskott

Jordskott is a police/thriller/horror series from Sweden with two seasons currently streaming on the service Shudder.

The show follows Eva Thornblad a police officer returning home after her father death in a fire. Johan Thornblad led the family business in lumber and mineral extraction and with his death the fate of the company the heart of community’s economy is in doubt as environmentalists pressure for the local virgin forest to be kept pristine. Eva is haunted by the disappearance of her daughter seven years earlier and when local children began vanishing in similar manners she’s drawn by the local police force into the investigation. What she uncovers are dark family secrets, horrors in the forest, and a noirish plot to steal the company her family founded.

Jordskott, which means ‘soil shoot’ in Swedish, practices what is rare today the slow build-up and reveal of supernatural horror. While I watched the series, I was reminded of Twin Peaks and how what started as a hunt for a serial killer twisted into a tale of ancient evil and the corruption just under the surface of a small American town. Jordskott while having the same gradual reveal of supernatural forces and evil that lurks inside of people’s souls, takes its own approach and should not be considered as a ‘knock off’ production. Its similarity lies in tone not plot.

We have not yet started on Season 2, but I am very pleased with season one, which did not end in a cliff-hanger but rather presented a complete and satisfying story. If you have Shudder, and given its slim pricing it’s really one of the best deals out there for commercial-free streaming, this is something to give a spin.

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Do You Need Pleasant, Non-Stressful Viewing?

This year has been a very tough one for so many people and here in early November the television seems to be a device invented to deliver stress directly into people brains. However, there are programs that not only do not talk endlessly about the crumbling state of civilization but also are devoid of assault, murder, and other stressful act even when committed in fiction and I am here to bring one of those.

Travel Man 48 Hours in … is hosted by The IT Crowd‘s Richard Ayoade and follows in the wake of his program Gadget Man. Where gadget Man a program where Richard demonstrated various apps and gadgets came off as advertising way too much Travel Man is much more pleasant. (Aside from season one where there were still unfortunate elements of Gadget Man still lurking about.) The basic premise of Travel Man 48 Hours in … is that in each episode Richard travels a city bringing along a celebrity guest and that explore the location for two days, sampling food, buying trinkets, while providing a running comedy commentary. A good introduction to the series might be Helsinki which Richards visits with American actor and comedian Paul Rudd and we are introduced to a Burger King with a sauna.

Each episode runs about 23 minutes and makes for a very pleasant, entertaining, and utterly unserious break from the real world.

Travel Man 48 Hours in … is currently streaming on Hulu.

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Quick Thoughts on Lovecraft Country

I have completed HBO’s adaptation of the Lovecraft Country set during Jim Crow America as a Black family fights for survival in a world that in addition to racism contains magic and monsters.

Overall, I rate Lovecraft Country as Good but not Great and I know that puts me at odds with a number of my fellow genre fans. That’s okay, art is subjective and as I often say in my writer’s group meetings, ‘Your mileage may vary.’

The performances are stellar, the production is fantastic, and the writing of each episode overall is excellent so what doesn’t work for me are issues that may not matter to someone else.

For me the narrative momentum drifted in the middle of the story giving it some second act issues which gave some of the middle episodes the same overall feeling of a classic Doctor Who escape, run around, and get caught again episode. Information was gleaned, some characters issues advanced, but the plot remained stuck in place.

I never understood why Christina invoked a convoluted plan that involved bequeathing a fake inheritance to Leticia to maneuver her into buying the old home instead of just going there directly to recover the orrery.

At times thematically it felt a bit heavy handed.

For something invoking the concepts of Lovecraft’s work the absence of cosmic horror is startling.

It was good and should be watched but for my money I think HBO’s sequel/extension of the graphic novel Watchmen is a better series.

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Novel Nordic Noirs

For some time my sweetie-wife and I have been enjoying murder shows from the far north of Europe. Recently we have added two more programs to our rotation of after dinner entertainment.

Arctic Circle is a show set in the Lapland region of Finland. This is the part of the world where you get reindeer and lots and lots of snow. It is also the area of Finland that seems to analogous to American’s relationship with Appalachia, rustic and suspicious of outsiders and with a dose of religious fundamentalism. The show follows Nina a local cop who usually is dealing with drunks and poachers now entangled in a case involving cross border human trafficking, the Russian Mafia, and a novel and deadly virus while dealing with the issues of a single mother  with a special needs daughter and a growing affair with a foreign scientist.

The show is well produced, well acted, and is thoroughly engaging.

The second program is Jordskott a police thriller with horror overtones. Produced and set in Sweden, though it features the lead from the Finnish serries Bordertown now playing a heavy, this show centers on Eva a police detective who has returned home after the death of her father and the unresolved disappearance of her young daughter seven years earlier. Atmospheric and moody Jordskott, which translates roughly in Soil Shot, unfolds at tits own pace with just enough mystery and strange reveals the keep the viewer engaged.

Arctic Circle is currently streaming on the Roku Channel Topic and Jordskott is a Shudder exclusive.

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Pandemic Programming: Staged

The Global COVID-19 pandemic in addition to killing more than a million people with over 210,00 of them here in the dysfunctional United States of America, has also wreaked havoc on the entertainment industry. Beyond the shuttering of exhibition houses and live theater around the globe production has foundered on the rocks of this disease. Film and television sets are cramped, crowded affairs with buffet style craft services to keep everyone fed and little ability to engage in social distancing with the results being that making new programing a risky enterprise.

However, a few creatives are finding ways to still give us the entertainment and joyful diversion we desperately need in the dark days and the one I am enjoying best is Staged.

Starring fan favorites David Tennant and Michael Sheen Staged centers on the two actors playing fictionalized and exaggerated versions of themselves as they are trapped in their homes by the pandemic and via Zoom calls attempt to salvage a theatrical production being helmed by a novice and weak first time director played by the program’s creator, director, and writer, Simon Evans.

In addition to Tennent and Sheen their real-life spouses, Georgia and Anna are supporting and engaging characters along with a few guest stars also contributing to the socially distanced project.

Selected scenes are available on YouTube and work quite well on their own but the full half-hour episodes laying on Hulu are the real joy. If you are in need of laughter fueled escape, I couldn’t recommend Staged any higher.

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Lovecraft Country Impressions After 7 Episodes

Lovecraft Country is an HBO limited series adapted from the novel of the same name written by Matt Ruff and centers on a group of Black characters dealing with magic, monsters, and racism during Jim Crow America. Mild spoilers ahead.

The story’s protagonist is Atticus ‘Tic’ Freeman, a Korean War veteran, genre fiction enthusiast, and a descendant of the founding member of cult order.

I have now watched seven episode of Lovecraft Country and my feelings are hopeful but with a dash of apprehension.

The characters are well drawn with complex backstories and vibrant inner lives that all the actors of the series portray beautifully. The drama and dynamics are grounded in a realistic approach with the various character struggling with lingering abuse, trauma, and trust issues while still possessing aspirational motivations that speak to a high nature within them. In the face of a racist, unjust, and oppressive system that surrounds them they maintain, for the most part, their own dignity.

The fantastical elements, monsters and magic, are handled quite adeptly with fresh shocks and turns that has prevented the genre elements from becoming stale even seven hours into the story.

My apprehensions arise from concerns of the course of the narrative and the coming conclusion and break down into two major categories.

First; The lack of direct objectives for the protagonists. Tic, for most of the series now, has been searching for and attempting to decipher pages from a magical text with the goal of protecting his family. But it is not clear exactly what he is protecting them from. While there are evil supernatural forces, and one such force attempted to use Tic as part of a dangerous ritual, the surviving members of the cults do not appear to offer a direct and specific threat to Tic. It is not clear what will happen if Tic fails in obtaining ‘protection’ or what will happen if the surviving cultists are unopposed. This would be fine if we were only 1/3 of the way into the story but at 2/3 we need to have a clear appreciation of the stakes.

While the character drama is proceeding nicely, and the characters are being tested on their inner natures and being forced to change and grow that is sufficient for dramatic fiction but lacking for genre stories. Genre is more plot dependent; we need more than Luke Skywalker gaining maturity we need the defeat of the Death Star as well.

My Second apprehension centers on the thematic elements of the story and specifically with the racism of Jim Crow America. It is good to tell this story set in the Jim Crow period. It is a dark disgusting chapter of American History too often swept aside in popular entertainment. My issues do not arise from setting here and being direct in depicting the overt racism, but I fear the series is setting itself up for an unsatisfactory conclusion.

We know that Jim Crow will not end until the middle of the next decade and that systemic racism will persist after its legal abolition. making it a central thematic conflict in the show without a fictionalized character to stand in for it means that the characters no matter their eventually outcome with the cultists will lose in the greater cultural conflict. This is where having a character stand in for the wider culture is a useful device. A white racist character that comes to see the evil and ignorance of their racism can be used to suggest that cultural change and growth is possible and hinting that victory of those evil forces is possible even if your story ends within racist times but Lovecraft Country has no recurring major racist characters to suggest such a growth is possible. Because the racist characters come and go as part of the universal background the background becomes unchanging and unchangeable.

Perhaps that is the thematic intent of the show’s creators but it is very difficult to make failure and futility into satisfying ends for stories.

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Painful Television

No, I am not referring to the televised US Presidential Debate. I did not watch as I already have more than enough information to make an informed vote. Sadly, I am talking about a Scottish murder mystery limited series Deadwater Fell.

Currently available on the steaming service Acorn but also available as a single stand-alone purchase for the limited series Deadwater Fell is the story of a tragic fire that kills the wife and children of the village local doctor, Tom (David Tennant) and how the fallout from the events splinters the town and relationships.

My problem with the series is I truly disliked spending time with these characters. There is scarcely one that is pleasant, and most are actively abusive and manipulative. While all the characters have big dramatic issue, events, and troubles, the very nature of the characters make me immune to care.

The actors perform their tasks admirably, making these repulsive characters real and I do not hold them accountable for the writing. Though as I said to my sweetie-wife while we were watching the final episode, ‘If I want to watch Tennant being manipulative and evil, I’ll just watch Season One of Jessica Jones.’

In addition to the character abrasive natures the writing also seems to suffer from the author pushing the characters into scene for the audiences benefits rather than from a natural outgrowth of character motivation. For example, Tom, the Doctor, goes to Jess and tells her a sad story of his abuse as a child, as story Jess later learns is a lie. It reveals a bit of Tom’s character and his manipulative nature but Tom going to jess served no purpose for Tom. He wasn’t gaining anything. No cooperation, no item he needed, there was literally from Tom’s perspective, no purpose to do that. It advanced plot and revealed character but only by being out of character.

With less than ten minutes left to the final episode we abandoned the series and played Dominion.

I cannot recommend this series to anyone.

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Streaming Review: Get Duked!

Several weeks ago, my sweetie-wife discovered the trailer for the Amazon Original, meaning they purchased the exclusive rights, feature film Get Duked!and on August 28th it became available on Amazon’s Prime Video Streaming service.

Get Duked! (You ignore the exclamation mark) is the comedic, farcical story of 4 city boys dropped into the hinterlands of the Scottish highlands as part of a contest the Duke of Edinburgh Award but three of these young lads are delinquent youths with the final member of the quartet a naive youngster who actually cares about the prize, a laminated certificate.  However, once there are beyond the supervision of the sole adult in charge of the contest the ragtag assembly are hunted by mysterious and murderous landed gentry intent on ‘culling the herd’ of degenerate and unacceptable influences. Add into this mix of underachieving and limited intellect boys a collection of baked farmers and a local police station intent of glory beyond tracking the local and evasive bread thief and you have a movie that is pretty far from serious.

Written and directed by Ninian Doff in his feature film debut Get Duked! is a frivolous affair that is suitable for an hour and half of drama free entertainment. The young actors are capable and manage the difficult balance between being youths in trouble and characters you do not want to get injured or killed while several older actors get a chance to show off some comedic chops usually missing from the sort of parts that they play. I’m particularly thinking of Kate Dickie perhaps best known for her turn on Game of Thrones as the unbalance Lysa Arryn turning in a fine performance as the local chief constable desperate for glory and advancement.

The Scot accents in the film get a little heavy and with rapid overlapping dialog some viewers may wish to engage their television’s closed captioning systems to follow all of the voices but in general Get Duked! provides decent light-hearted escape from today’s terrible times.

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Quick Hits Aug 20, 2020

Just a few quick thoughts and observations for today.

Democratic Convention: Despite being a former poli-sci major and minor political junkie I have not been watching the convention. However, from analysis and coverage from both the right and the left it seems that they’ve found a way to do their messaging in these strange terrible times. They are keeping their aim fixed on the prize, defeating Trump, and are showing a level of unity quite unusual for this party. I understand the frustration from progressive that Republicans have highly placed speaking slots at the convention but this election is unlike any other in our nation’s history and the first problem, removing Trump from office, takes priority over everything else at the moment. More than ever, policy must come after victory.

Agents of SHIELD: The series, with all its ups and down, completed its seventh and final season swinging for the fences and engaging in some seriously epic storylines. Overall, I really enjoyed the series and I have started a re-watch from season one. The hints and rumors of a tie-in with the next phase of the MCU are intriguing and we’ll see where they go.

Writing my Next Novel: I’m almost ready for the prose outline of the new and still untitled novel. I’m currently working on a bullet point outline, just the most critical points for each of the five acts but as I go each act has more bullet points than the previous indicating that the story is taking off on its own. For this murder mystery aboard a generations starship I plan to incorporate some of the story structure ideas advocated my screenplays writer and Chernobylseries creator Craig Mazin.

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