Goodreads Bookshelf
Summer Watching '09
Besides what I've been reading, I figure I may as well make note of what we've been watching as well, mostly on DVD.
Burn Notice, season 2. A big thanks to Kapoo for introducing us to this show. We've been working our way through the story of ex-CIA agent Michael Westin, a spy who's been "burned"--had his assets frozen, his clearences revoked, and has virtually ceased to exist as a person. He's not allowed to leave Miami, and from there he works to figure out who burned him so that he can try to get his job back (the overarching story arc) and plays super-hero for hire (each episode). Great pacing, great ensemble cast--Jeffrey Donovan is excellent as Westin, a character who himself has to play different characters on a regular basis; Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar form an excellent team with Michael, while Sharon Gless is strong as Michael's mother. The show has a summer season (which we were missing because we couldn't watch the DVDs fast enough!), but a marathon before the season finale was just in time so that we'll be able to watch season 4 in real time.
The Tudors. I can't even remember now where I'd heard good things about this show--must have just been one of those things that was in the air. We're still in season 1, but one of the nice things about this show chronicling the reign of Henry VIII is that it's available on Netflix's "Watch Instantly" service, so we don't have to send discs back and forth and, in fact, can just let its episodes fill in the gaps of our viewing. It may not be historically accurate--or even all that close--but we've really enjoyed it. As a side note, this is the format that epic fantasy should take when it goes to the big screen, which gives me hope that HBO can do George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series justice.
The Shield. We fell a bit behind here: we didn't get season 6 watched until season 7 was well underway, and although Kapoo had set his DVR to record episodes for it, apparently there was a default setting he didn't know about and the DVR started erasing episodes at some point. So we've just this week started watching the cimactic season 7. It's been just a little hard to get back into it, for while we remember the characters and the basic plot points, there are a number of little details that no doubt have slipped our minds. Still, it's great television.
Flash of Genius. One of the few movies we've watched on DVD was this Greg Kinnear vehicle about the man who invented the intermittent wiper and subsequently got screwed by the car companies who stole his idea. Although the overall arc of the film (spoiler warning!) is a David & Goliath story in which David--once again--wins, it's not hard to see the costs of Kinnear's character's obsession with justice (or, for that matter, his obsession with invention). He misses out on the lives of his family and ultimately is estranged from his wife, though his children--after some bitterness and several missed years--ultimately rally around him. There's something of Greek tragedy in the film, as the character traits which help him invent are also the character traits that drive a wedge between himself and his family. In a twist on tragedy though, they're also the traits that allow him to pursue justice, ultimately representing himself at the trial against Ford, and win through in the end, though it's pretty clearly a Phyrric victory. And, incidentally, it would not have been hard to imagine a storyline in which his family didn't stay by his side (from one perspective, why should they?), and/or in which he doesn't win his lawsuit after turning out several settlement offers. I'm sure, in fact, that in the war between small-time inventors and the corporations who have screwed them, the alternate story has played out, and probably more often than the one that feels good here.