The Fighter

I sort of have issues with both of this film's Oscar wins for supporting performances. In Christian Bale's case it's because I don't think he really has a supporting role, and in Melissa Leo's case it's because I don't think she's even the best supporting actress in the movie. Leo does a good job as Micky's controlling mother, but Treme shows she's capable of much more subtle and effective work, and the character is the kind of horrible woman that doesn't require a ton of talent to pull off. It's not really a character that's hard to pull off. I thought Amy Adams was better playing against type as Micky's bartending girlfriend, obviously caring for him but having enough rough edges to make her seem more real than his mom and especially his awful sisters, who felt like burdens on the movie.

Back to Bale, I think the film as written and shot is more of a story of two brothers, one who failed at boxing and one who still has a shot, rather than a typical biopic about a boxer. I'd consider him and Mark Wahlberg to be dual leads if anything, because while the main arc of the plot is the rise of Micky's career, a huge part of that is how Dicky's hometown hero status looms over him despite his subsequent career failures and crack addiction. It's really an amazing performance by Bale, too, the kind that at times takes over the movie. If he was nominated in the lead category I still would have given him the win even over Colin Firth in The King's Speech. They're actually kind of similar roles despite the vast gulf in the characters' statuses. They both play real people with distinctive speech patterns that are a huge aspect of the role. I thought Bale's work was more mesmerizing and interesting to watch, though of course he got to actually meet and interact with the person he was playing, so it's an interesting competition.

The movie in general hangs on the acting of the main characters. Even Wahlberg, who I'm not always the biggest fan of, is good, mostly because he concentrated on looking the part and let the more natural actors in the cast carry many of the scenes. The main thing I know about David O. Russell is that he frequently leaves projects and clashes with his actors, but he seems to be a perfectly fine if not terribly inventive director. I do think he did an especially good job with the fights, which had the right mix of believable grit and energizing climaxes. A lot of the best actual sports scenes in sports tend to be in boxing movies, because there's not too much to organize; you just have two actors, a ring, and a camera. Russell mostly went with emulating what actual televised fights would look like, and I like how they felt real while still having good impact. Beyond the acting and the fights, there's not a whole lot that distinguishes The Fighter. But those two things go a very long way.

Treme - Season 2

Treme's second season expands on the scope of the show a bit while staying true to its roots, trying to show a complete picture of post-Katrina New Orleans and its many colorful inhabitants. The whole cast is back except for the ones who obviously wouldn't be, a couple characters get meatier roles (including David Morse as the cop friend of Melissa Leo's Toni, who deals most directly with the show's increased focus on crime), and Jon Seda from The Pacific shows up to kickstart a new plotline involving the city's attempt to rebuild and the seedy things that go into it.

If you didn't like the first season, you won't like the show now. It has the same natural feel, where characters go through their lives and something dramatic isn't really guaranteed to happen. There are a couple shocking moments beyond anything from the first season in keeping with the theme of crime returning to the city as it recovers, but they're rare and not what the show is about. There's also the same amount of extended scenes with live music, and if you don't like the kind of songs they play... well, it can be a hard show to watch. I do think there's enough variety of style that there's usually at least a couple songs I like per episode, though I occasionally wish they got less screen time, so the show would go by a bit quicker.

Being the second season, the show does branch out just a bit and have a few characters spend time away from the city. Del continues to hop back and forth between NO and New York, but this time his father comes along, and Janette is also in the city, with a story about being a cook there that feels mostly separate from the rest of the show but is still pretty interesting, even if you don't watch the Food Network. The writers also managed to miraculously save Sonny, having him clean his act up by working a fishing boat. I like the way the show avoids typical dramatic story beats with its characters, having developments that would usually go one way turn out another, more realistic and somehow more satisfying way. I won't go through every single character, but the show did a great job of continuing to intertwine all their lives, and the series is getting to the point where watching a new episode is like spending time with old friends and family. Treme will never be the amazing, game changing drama that The Wire was, but as a portrait of an interesting place tinged with political ideas without being overwhelmed by them, it is a very good show on its own. I look forward to season three.

Treme - Season 1

If you go in to Treme comparing it to David Simon's last series, The Wire, you're probably going to be disappointed. Not through any fault of the show's, but through impossible expectations. By the end of the season, I was fully prepared to call Treme a great drama, it's just not great on the easily-the-best-thing-on-TV-right-now level of The Wire. It's less centrally focused, feeling more like several narrow stories of living in post-Katrina New Orleans that happen to frequently connect and intertwine rather than a vast overview of the whole city. The many different main characters cover a lot of ground, depicting all sorts of situations and showing as many sides and points of view as they can. Sometimes I felt like the show was preaching at me a bit too much about the whole situation, but Simon has made it his business to expose the truth about things with his projects and it has resulted in shows worth watching for more than their entertainment value. Taking place in New Orleans, there's obviously a lot of music, and it's handled quite well, whether its classic stuff being played in the background or something original being played right on camera by the cast, which frequently features real-life musicians. Music is one of the show's strongest elements, with practically every song effectively conveying the mood and also tending to be genuinely enjoyably performed.

The show lives or dies on its characters, and most of them are good ones. John Goodman guest starred all season long, being the most directly political character and frequently entertaining in his rantings. He also played heavily into the moment where the show went from good political commentary to a legitimately brilliant TV show, so it's a character I'll remember for a while. Steve Zahn plays a DJ/aspiring musician/political revolutionary, and his story tended to be the series' comic relief while still having things to say, and it's another performance I quite enjoyed. Several of the main characters are played by veterans of Simons' other HBO shows, and they cement themselves into the roles well, amazingly avoiding the common fate of Wire actors where I can't see anyone from that show without thinking about it. Wendell Pierce plays a trombone player who lives day to day off any gigs he can get, and is another source of levity on a show that could have easily gotten overbearing. Khandi Alexander is his ex-wife, a bar owner looking for her missing brother and frequently featuring one of the best "Are you shitting me?" faces in history. Clarke Peters plays a Mardi Gras Indian chief who tries to keep his tribe together after the storm and also ends up having some run-ins with the law. He's basically the opposite of the kindly Freamon from The Wire, intimidating in his unerring dedication to his beliefs.

The season finale surprised me by featuring a glimpse of the past, showing a little bit of what the various characters were going through on the day of the storm. It was a powerful eight minutes or so, really putting you into what it's like to live somewhere where true disaster is never that far away. It left me truly wanting the next season to begin as soon as possible instead of just fondly anticipating it, and was a great way to help bring the show's first year to a close. HBO's been a bit on the weak side since some of its best series ended, but with Treme's success, True Blood continuing to evolve into something genuinely entertaining, and stuff like Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones on the horizon, it might not be long before it's unequivocally on top again.