Man of Steel (2013)

When you look at Man of Steel you can see a lot of Christopher Nolan influence: the design of the poster (listing off the multitude of stars), the dark atmosphere, even the main title is not shown until the very end as an exclamation mark, much like Nolan's other recent entries.  But the main difference is, obviously, Nolan only helped create the story and produced the film, which are still key roles in the movie making business.  Zack Snyder, director of 300 (2007), Watchmen (2009), and Sucker Punch (2011), takes the helm and adds his own unique touches, including obnoxious camera work and a loud, bombastic, relentless 45-minute final showdown.

Man of Steel tells us once again the story of Superman's (Henry Cavill) rise to fame, where he comes from and what makes him who he is.  Superman (1978) was the first major superhero movie, and I'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't know the story of Krypton's destruction, Superman's adoption by earthling foster parents, his times struggling in Smallville, and his eventual move to Metropolis and the Daily Planet.  This is all well known, so the major question is what can this reboot bring that we don't already know?

Nothing, really, but what it does well, at least early on, is paint Superman's childhood in a much darker tone then we've seen before.  Jonathan Kent (Kevin Costner) teaches Superman, dubbed Clark Kent, to hide his powers and not use them because he doesn't think the world is ready to know there is alien life out there.  Clark has to deal with his developing powers, which include X-Ray vision and super hearing, and figure out how to control and focus his attention so he can master this powers.  It's a unique take rather then Clark's usual outcast status that he is assigned.

Moreover, his journey to the fortress of solitude is a little less convenient then in past Supermans; usually he just walks north and happens upon the exact location his father Jor-El hid it (it's a fortress in previous versions, here it's a spaceship).  His soul-searching wanderer recalls Bruce Wayne's similar exodus from Gotham in Batman Begins, though with Nolan and David S. Goyer in charge of the story (as they were on Begins) this does not come as much of a surprise.

Lois Lane is also wonderfully utilized, proving for once how she earned her pulitzer.  Rather then conveniently being in the right place at the right time, she hunts down her leads and is able to track down Superman on her own tenacity.  Usually in this story Lois isn't introduced until Clark Kent arrives at the Daily Planet, making this story development quite the shake-up to the established Superman mythology.

There's a lot to like here, but unfortunately Zack Snyder is in charge, which means its far from great.  Don't get me wrong, Mr. Synder adds his own unique voice to the mix and if anything, I'm happy Mr. Nolan did not direct this; it would have been too similar to his Batman trilogy and, more importantly, too self important and full of itself.

But Mr. Snyder doesn't handle subtlety very well (a church scene frames him with a stained glass Jesus), and pitches the action at such a high pace early on that it has nowhere to go.  Combined with the recent Star Trek Into Darkness I feel like our action directors have forgotten what pacing is and how to escalate an action scene in intensity.  The audience needs a breather, but once the World Engine is in place everything becomes so frantic that we nary have a moment to breath.

To the movie's credit we do finally get to see what a true Superman fight looks like: pitching him against General Zod (Michael Shannon) and his army means we get plenty of super punches and millions of dollars in property damages.  Hell, the amount of human casualty that occurs at the end ranks so high that it's no wonder our nation is wary of Superman at the end, and a high ranking General asks him if he can be trusted.  These are cynical times he live in, and I suppose its only natural that one of the few remaining pillars of Americana be brought down with it.  Many buildings are destroyed in the climax, and Superman contributes more the destruction then he does to stopping it.  That still doesn't stop him from saving Lois Lane whenever she falls out of a plane.

Overall, it feels like they played their best cards first, and now there's nothing left for the sequel.  How do you top the near destruction of Metropolis?  Batman saved Gotham and then faced his greatest foe in the sequel.  Lex Luthor is still around, yet to be introduced, but I don't know how great a villain he ultimately is.  I guess we still have Kryptonite to deal with.  No one fully figured that out this time around.

I guess I just really wanted to love this movie.  I wanted something groundbreaking and revelatory to be done, to see Superman in a new way, and while those elements are present, I realized there's something else missing: it's not much fun.  Even Nolan's Batman Begins is fun in certain elements.  It doesn't bother me that a few buildings come down.  It's that more buildings fall down.  And more.  And more.  It feels like it never stops.  And eventually it becomes a little depressing, and the spectacle is lost.

Arrested Development: Season 4 (2013)

We're living in an age when gone-too-soon TV shows are starting to get a second go around at life.  The most notable examples are Family Guy and Futurama, both shows that have been resuscitated, though the latter is being taken off life support.  Arrested Development is a third example, and I guess it's no coincidence that all three shows aired on Fox, the network that also killed the beloved Firefly.  I don't think any other network has cancelled so many loved shows.

One thing TV fans are learning, however, is that just because a show is returning, doesn't mean it's going to be as good as it was the first time around.  Many, myself included, will agree that pre-cancelled Family Guy is a lot better then post-cancelled Family Guy, though the show just finished its 12th season and, like The Simpsons, is showing no sign of retiring.  Futurama, on the other hand, is in its final season having recently been cancelled by its new home, Comedy Central.  And the show's post-cancelled seasons are not the same caliber, though there are some gems.

So obviously this does not bode well for Arrested Development, which was given a second life by Netflix, where the first three seasons of the show now live.  To be fair, Mitch Hurwitz, creator of the show, decided to do something new with the material, partly because he couldn't get all the actors together at the same time (some are just to busy now), and partly because he experiments with a new way of storytelling.

I won't get into too many plot points, partly because there are far too many to go over, and partly because I kind of already forgot what happened during this season.  Each character gets at least one episode, and the majority get two (Lucille, Buster, and Maeby are the only characters to get one episode, and theirs are some of the better ones).  There's an overarching web of plots that tie together various events at the made up festival of Cinco de Cuatro, and a couple of other locales.  Each episode provides you with a piece of the larger puzzle, and it slowly all fits together to tell one super, 8 1/2 hour long narrative.  And while this is a genius idea in theory, in execution it doesn't work.

Each character is so densely plotted that the show over relies on Ron Howard's narration to explain everything that's going on.  And even that doesn't help because you tend to miss a sentence or two and spend the rest of the episode perplexed.  For instance, matriarch Lucille (Jessica Walter) has her trial held at a bar, which was explained so quickly in the 1st or 2nd episode that my friend turned to me 10 episodes in when, again, we returned to said trial and asked, "Why are they doing this at a restaurant again?"

Now, the original seasons tend toward this habit as well; in the Pilot episode, Michael (Jason Bateman) delivers one line of dialogue to Tobias (David Cross) which prompts him to believe the boat party is pirate themed.  The first time you'll probably miss that line or forget it, since you don't know the implication the first time you hear it, but the second time you know whats coming and it makes it funnier!  So obviously Mitch Hurwitz is trying this out again.

But here's the problem: much of what happens this season isn't funny.  That might be a heresy to some of you, but its sadly true.  The original seasons of Arrested Development were funny on their own right, and only got funnier when you re-watched the episodes.  I've watched the first three seasons maybe five times now, and it never gets old.

Now take this newest season: save a couple of episodes, most of what happens is either not funny or boring, and a lot of it is miscalculated.  Granted this is what happens when you separate out characters, and Lindsay (Portia de Rossi) & Tobias are especially boring when filling out their own 33 minute slot.  Some of these characters were never well developed and were perfectly serviceable as punchlines.  But watching Lindsay date a guy with Face Blindness, or Tobias try and stage a Fantastic Four musical with recovering drug addicts wears thin when its the only plot going on.

GOB (Will Arnett) and Buster (Tony Hale) get the best episodes, as GOB becomes part of a music entourage (spoofing the HBO show) and entering into another competition with his fiercest rival Tony Wonder (Ben Stiller), as Buster receives an update to his missing hand.  Maybe these characters are inherently more interesting, as GOB usually revels in a seedy underworld and Buster suffers from years of arrested development.  Lindsay is simply defined by her shallowness, and Tobias by his ignorance, and neither are character traits that befit more then a couple of minutes per episode.  Tobias was best showing up randomly to say something outrageous like, "I just blue myself!"  Here, his Tobiasisms get overwhelming ("Ninja, please!")

I think this season could have worked with a different approach.  Now of course they couldn't get all the actors together, but was it really so hard to tell us part of each character's story and move the pieces along like a Game of Thrones season?  Episode by episode would check in with at least three characters and move their stories along, and the season could still serve as a puzzle box.  It's nice to have a B and even a C storyline, but the structure only allows for A stories, and not all of them hold up on their own.  Lindsay's Face Blindness dude would have been more forgiving in smaller doses, but having to put up with him for fifteen minutes was too much of an endurance.

The biggest sin this puzzle box season commits is the lack of conclusion.  After all that buildup and all that commitment, the ending should have delivered and instead ends with a big old question mark.  I guess they are hoping to get another season or even a movie, though I don't know if Netflix will act as Daddy Warbucks again.  Supposedly this season cost $45 million to produce, and at $8 a month subscriber rates, I don't quite see how Netflix expects to earn its money back.

Which brings me to the final aspect of Arrested Development, Netflix's controversial distribution plan, seen in past shows Lilyhammer, House of Cards, and the werewolf series (I'm too lazy to look it up).  A popular habit with Netflix is to binge watch shows; I've never been a huge fan of this practice, though I do tend to watch shows at a faster rate then the week-by-week model of television.  It's especially handy for shows like 24 or Lost which can be killed by commercial breaks; the hardest part of catching up with both those shows was having to tolerate their seasons over a full period of time like everyone else.

But there's also a conversation that happens amid social media and around the water cooler over week-by-week serials.  Every week I'd call up my best friends to discuss the latest happenings on 24 or Lost because something outrageous tended to occur.  Just earlier this week Game of Thrones dropped the most devastating twist on the show to date, which caused Twitter to go in an uproar and YouTube to produce a video showing several horrified reactions to the proceedings.  Now what if HBO gave us the whole season at once?  The same horrified reactions would occur, but at different times and there wouldn't be one huge conversation happening.

The biggest problem with this distribution method is that if you're going to watch it, you're going to do it as soon as the show is released.  Otherwise, you'll miss out on the conversation all your friends are having on it, and if enough time passes, you won't care.  I haven't seen House of Cards, though I've heard many great things; its just been so long since the show came out that I don't care anymore.  The conversation about Arrested Development is essentially over.  The show came out more then a week ago, and everyone who was going to watch it has.  Hell, this review might be considered too late to the conversation.

So what should Netflix do?  Release one episode a week?  On the one hand, fans could wait 15 weeks until all episodes are out and then binge watch them.  On the other, I think too many fans couldn't wait that long and Netflix could've gotten more subscriber mileage out of four months of Arrested Development.  On the other hand, a lot of fans might've decided they didn't like the current season and unsubscribed.  But that's the risk you take with TV, and why so many TV shows don't survive.

I still enjoyed seeing all these characters again; it was like a big reunion with old friends I hadn't seen in nearly a decade.  But sometimes its better to preserve the memories rather then ruin them by seeing what your friends have become.