new on DVD: ‘Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,’ ‘Ten ’Til Noon,’ ‘Snow Cake,’ ‘Bones: Season Two’
See it:
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee [buy it]. From my review:
The worst of it are the attitudes of the white men in charge, like President Ulysses Grant (played, oh ho!, by actor-turned-right-wing-politician-turned-actor-maybe-about-to-turn-right-wing-presidential candidate Fred Thompson), ostensibly a friend to the red man, who avers that “setting the Indian on the course to civilization best ensures his survival” and that “there’s no saving the Sioux unless we compel them to give up their way of life and settle on the reservation.” Entire anthropological, sociological, and political careers have been expended on unraveling the bigotry involved in statements like those, so there’s no point in my going into them again. Clearly, though, horrific ironies about burning villages to save villages were not inventions of the 20th century.
more below the ad... scroll down...
See it:
• Ten ’Til Noon [buy it]. Quoting myself: “a thrillingly original film that plays with narrative structure and tweaks the expectations audiences bring with them from long experience with crime flicks...”
• Snow Cake [buy it]. See it for Sigourney Weaver’s extraordinary performance as an autistic woman, and for Alan Rickman’s as her unlikely new friend.
• Bones: Season Two [buy it]. I dunno much about this show about a modern gal Quincy, except that my boyfriend Loren Dean is in a couple of episode as her brother, and one of them is in this set. Damn, why doesn’t he work more?
comments
posted by Tonio Kruger (September 13, 2007 1:47 PM)
My take on Season 1 of "Bones" was that it was basically a show about self-hating geeks. Almost every other episode had at least one self-confessed lab rat wondering about their chosen profession and whether or not they were too emotionally detached from humanity as a result of their job, which of course raises the question of why they chose that particular profession in the first place.
Then, of course, there was the constant barrage of scenes that implied that it wasn't enough for the geeks to do their jobs and bring bad guys to justice, they had to get emotionally involved in each and every case, the implication being that if they did not cry in the middle of every investigation, they were obviously sociopaths.
It didn't help that the show--like the recent attempt at a "Night Stalker" reboot--blatantly wanted to make its two lead characters the new Mulder and Scully without displaying as much charm as the original Mulder and Scully. I liked the fact that David Boreaz actually attempted to play a different type of character than he played on "Angel" but his fellow co-star Emily Deschanel still paled in comparision to her sister Zoey.
I did like the "A History of Violence"-type subplot in the final episode though. Can't help but wonder how they're going to mess that up.