When you set out on a journey, you have to choose a path, make a plan, and know what you’re going to need. Throughout Treme thus far we’ve seen characters picking out their desired paths, and to some extent creating plans toward achieving those goals. Tonight, however, we see characters beginning to come to terms with the reality of what their journey will cost them; the sacrifices they will need to make, the people they will need to help them, and the reasons they have to succeed.
It is possible for a show to bring up a lot of interesting ideas and worthy themes, and yet still fail to execute either their genesis or resolution in a truly effective way. It's the kind of thing that mutes one's enthusiasm for an otherwise stellar half hour of comedy and insightful personal drama. It's also just frustrating considering how seismic the shifts that this episode sets up could turn out to be.
If a city exists unimpeded by any sort of outside force, it will become the victim of entropy. Cultures and influences from different areas bleed into the sinew of a city and force it to become something else. Likewise, traumas can force a city to reexamine itself at the outset of rebuilding. Like a student transferring to a new school, there is an opportunity for reinvention. None of this is particularly negative, and in some cases the results are a net positive, but on some level the choice has to be made and the new vanguard has to be anointed. Tonight’s episode of Treme – prophetically entitled ‘Saints’ – starts the clock on a whole new series of possible cultural influences on New Orleans, some more willing to take their post than others.
Last season, New Girl had to struggle to get past the awkward pre-season marketing and the baggage of Zooey Deschanel in order to prove itself one of the funniest and most character-driven comedies this side of Community and Parks and Recreation. Yes, you read that right. Despite what naysayers might have you believe, this show is an astute character comedy that rewards investment in a group of characters who are layered, authentic, and wildly hilarious.
The story of Treme is that of the battle for the soul of a city. Every character we meet in this expansive, lively television show comes to the city with an eye to give or take something in the name of some grand idea that is New Orleans. To some, it is a home, a place to preserve and love. To others, it is the heart of an artistic movement they believe in.
David Simon excels at creating rich, textured, multi-strand narratives that serve as a kind of animating current meant to bring a particular setting to life. The Wire and Homicide: Life on the Streets gave us grimy, bottom-up views of institutional malaise and its deleterious effect on urban life in Baltimore. His newest show, Treme (which has its third season premier this Sunday), deals with New Orleans, a city equally as damaged by bureaucratic ineptitude and entropy, but further enervated by natural disaster in the form of Hurricane Katrina. Whereas his Baltimore opuses had their eyes set on crime, however, Treme finds its through-line in the singular and enduring culture of the Crescent City.
Steven Soderbergh puts out something like two movies a year, and yet each film is always so distinct from the last one in terms of tone and subject that they still manage to generate endless enthusiasm and speculation. Thus, cinema fans of all stripes should be thrilled to see the new photo from Soderbergh's last film, Behind the Candelabra, in the print edition of Vanity Fair (digital version via IndieWire).
Terrence Malick is a notoriously secretive and enigmatic filmmaker, keeping the plot and details of his films pretty close to the vest. So when we get just a single new image from his latest film, To The Wonder, from IndieWire, that is news in and of itself.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is riding high off of the publicity of his central role in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master, and as the saying goes, strike while the iron is hot. Thus, we are now getting word out of Deadline that Hoffman has signed on to star in A Most Wanted Man, the new film by director Anton Corbijn (Control, The American).
World's End, the newest film from director Edgar Wright (Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) starring his creative partners Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, is getting a little more populated. That's the news coming from Variety, who are reporting that fellow-Brit actor Paddy Considine has signed on to the coming comedy.
