The Sound of the Crowd

The season finale of 24 was absolutely in-fucking-credible.

I come late to it; missed the first season, only caught the first couple last year on DVD, but I’ve been increasingly watching this year.

Tonights ep made it a point-to show when people ask what I mean by good drama TV–on a par with Buffy when it was good, if not with West Wing (nothing is).

True tragedy, awesome suspense, and Kiefer Sutherland giving the best performance I have seen him give since the underrated Flashback. He deserves his Golden Globe award and Emmy nominations, more than one of his co-stars have done incredible work too.

Looking out for reruns or the inevitable DVD release is highly recommended.

“Funny, isn’t it? In 2002, Republican strategists used the impending Iraq war to distract the public from the miserable economic news. Now they’re complaining that Iraq is taking voters’ focus off the economy.”

Hollywood’s White House

Best take on Bush’s speech last night I’ve seen so far.

You’d almost think Jewel has come to terms with what she made it on.

According to one fan who saw a disappointing concert recently, “I don’t know if she was having a nervous breakdown or what. She told everyone to stop looking at her teeth and look at her breasts.”

You heard the lady.

Billie Piper?

Billie Piper?

I don’t know what’s wrong with these kids today…

“Wasn’t it just weeks ago that we were debating whether we should see the coffins of the American dead and whether Ted Koppel should read their names on “Nightline”? In “Fahrenheit 9/11,” we see the actual dying, of American troops and Iraqi civilians alike, with all the ripped flesh and spilled guts that the violence of war entails. (If Steven Spielberg can simulate World War II carnage in “Saving Private Ryan,” it’s hard to argue that Mr. Moore should shy away from the reality in a present-day war.) We also see some of the 4,000-plus American casualties: those troops hidden away in clinics at Walter Reed and at Blanchfield Army Community Hospital in Fort Campbell, Ky., where they try to cope with nerve damage and multiple severed limbs. They are not silent. They talk about their pain and their morphine, and they talk about betrayal. “I was a Republican for quite a few years,” one soldier says with an almost innocent air of bafflement, “and for some reason they conduct business in a very dishonest way.”

–From Frank Rich’s review of Michael Moore’s film.

I recommend the show TV Revolution that Bravo is airing this week.

I know a little bit about the presentation of minorities in television. Partly this comes from my experiences with Buffy fans, but my interest pre-dated that to some degree, and stems mostly from reading books like Where the Girls Are, Alternate Channels, and Prime Time Blues. All of which I also recommend, even moreso than the series.

So far, Bravo’s look at the subject seems fair. I found little to which to object, and much to praise.

(I disagree with the idea floated that Roseanne got critisized solely because she was an angry woman trying to protect the integrity of blue-collar women on television, though. I mean, even she admits now she lost her mind in the first half of the ’90s–and just whose idea was the gloriously shark-jumping lottery season, anyway?)

The New York Times ran a review of the first ep of Bravo’s series a few days ago, that makes a couple of good points I missed.

Bush suffered cuts and bruises when he fell off a bike earlier today. First this made me think he was trying to emulate The West Wing’s Jed Bartlet, who in that series’ pilot episode is reported to have crashed a bike into a tree.

But then, I was struck by just how butch he is. When I read this:

“It’s been raining a lot and the topsoil is loose,” the spokesman said. “You know this president. He likes to go all out. Suffice it to say he wasn’t whistling show tunes.”

Suffice it to say he wasn’t whistling show tunes?

Dear god.

Well, I mean no, obviously not–it’s not like he were some fruity dancer in Les Miz or anything–those people have coordination. And balance.