The Shield - Season 5

If season 4 was intense, season 5 kicked that feeling into overdrive. A bumbling detective recurring character has taken over the captaincy of the station, but unlike previous years, the guy who commandeers his office is who Vick really has to worry about. Forest Whitaker guests all season long as Lieutenant Kavanaugh, a member of Internal Affairs who has it out for the strike team. It's an inspired performance, the best on the show, as he plays a man creepily obsessed with bringing down corrupt cops, willing to do a few uncouth things himself to get it done. He's provided the single greatest threat thus far to Vick's continued success, and he's just as scary when he loses as when he wins.

New subplots for the other cops to keep them busy. There's pregnancies and new, troublesome rookies to train and personal squabbles that get in the way of casework and yadda yadda. Claudette and Dutch's investigations are still generally interesting if a bit too focused on shock value still, but I really could do without a lot of the padding of all their personal crap. Luckily the end of the season puts Claudette in the position she should be, primed to face off against Vick. That's a conflict that has plenty left in the tank for the final two seasons. Also, the end of the arc for the strike team itself is pretty incredible, both in the sense of being a bit hard to believe and also an effectively shocking way to tie off a thread that was starting to get out of control. It's clearly going to lead to more conflict down the road, and probably a showdown as dramatic as anything in the last decade, just going on how the characters have been built over the course of years now. Definitely excited for the last 23 episodes.

The Seventh Seal

Ingmar Bergman is considered one of the best and most influential filmmakers of the last century. But because his films are old and Swedish, I haven't seen any of them before. The Seventh Seal is probably his most acclaimed, featuring still-iconic imagery like a knight's chess match with Death and being a surprisingly good watch today, over fifty years after its release. I expected something perhaps a bit meandering and atmospheric, lingering on endless shots of landscapes or something, but it's really just a character driven spiritual drama at its core. The two main characters are the knight Antonius and his squire Jöns, the former played by Max von Sydow who's still a great screen presence today, although the latter might actually be a more interesting figure in this movie. They accompany a troupe of actors while on their way home from a Crusade, while Antonius struggles over his loss of faith in God. You'd think being met in person by Death himself would help that out, but he still wrestles with it while fighting for his soul in a game of chess which carries out over the course of the film.

Besides that the plot is a bit light, introducing a variety of characters but not really having a ton for them to do. There's a few scuffles that get violent, and brief subplots by one of the actor's supposed heavenly visions, but the only real conflict in the movie is Antonius fight for his soul and those of his comrades. The rest of the movie fails to get too boring though, with Jöns rescuing a couple people from harm, giving his own unique view on life and generally just keeping the movie from getting too heavy. There's a surprising amount of enjoyable dialogue, and the Swedish itself isn't unpleasant to listen to. Really, what I'm getting at is that while I wasn't fully struck by the film's supposed awe-inspiring power, it was still very well made and more enjoyable than I expected. Not that it wasn't effective at all with the real subject matter, and in fact the climactic scene is pretty amazing even today. You never see what the characters see, but their complete fright and devastation is obvious. Certainly worth seeing for fans of world cinema.

Slapstick

Vonnegut's eighth novel is not exactly one of his best, but I still found it pretty enjoyable. He calls it "the closest thing" he'll ever write to an autobiography, and it begins with a relatively long prologue that is both funny and surprisingly poignant, where he writes about how he came to write the book and reveals where a lot of the pieces of the plot came from before you actually know they're in there. The novel itself follows at a very brisk pace, with this being one of the quickest to read Vonnegut books I've tackled. The writing style just lends itself to being absorbed in huge chunks, because it's very disconnected with extremely short chapters. Despite the small word count the plot itself isn't very dense, so it's quite simple to just power through in a couple sittings.

And you don't mind doing so because it's pretty funny and has some weird new ideas. The whole thing is written as the late-life memoir of a pretty strange man, born a freak with an unusual attachment to his twin sister, eventually growing to be President of the United States as the country slides into anarchy as the result of some strange diseases. Some of the stuff from his youth gets pretty uncomfortable, and the descent of civilization is just downright odd. While capable of providing a few laughs, the strongest part of the story might just be its structure, with the way it slowly fills in the picture from both directions, and a few pretty good bits of foreshadowing just from putting two and two together with the way it was written. Again, not really one of my favorites, but still a pretty enjoyable book from a great author.

Friday

So yeah, this isn't part of that whole "watching the greatest movies ever made" thing. It's a simple low budget comedy, but a pretty good one for the most part. I wasn't expecting a lot out of Ice Cube's acting as Craig, but his hard edged persona actually works well with the silly material. Chris Tucker plays Smokey in what was his breakout role, and the two of them make for a pretty entertaining on-screen duo. The plot is as basic as they come - Craig lost his job yesterday, so he spends his now-free Friday hanging out with Smokey and watching the people in the neighborhood. Things get more complicated later, after Smokey accidentally smokes too much of the weed he was supposed to sell, and they get into some trouble with the dealers. Also the local bully causes some troubles. But all of the trouble they get into is pretty minor, and just a way to try to build some tension near the end of the movie and give it a climax. They're never really in a lot of danger, and things work out exactly as expected. Which is okay, because the movie's just supposed to be funny, and it mostly is. A few of the jokes are pretty broad and disappointing, like some easy scatalogical humor and a midget being funny because he's a midget. But for the most part it's an easygoing movie with a few likable comedic performances and a decent soul behind it. It's just nice to see a side to 90s LA that's a bit more fun. I don't know about the sequels though, especially without Tucker's strong personality holding them up.