John Adams [TV]

HBO Miniseries

Directed by Tom Hooper

If this doesn’t get you singing Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies in the shower nothing will. Laura Linney, who generally sometimes gets under my skin a little, was born to play Abigail Adams. I liked a lot of the choices that were made – especially in terms of which historical and personal episodes in the Adams’ lives the writers chose to focus on. I didn’t like the crooked camera work in the colonies. I liked Paris and Amsterdam. I liked Paul Giamatti as John Adams, Stephen Dillane as Jefferson, Tom Wilkinson as Franklin, David Morse as Washington, and Sarah Polley as the Adams’ daughter Nabby.  I also liked the understated relationship between John Adams and his cousin Samuel in the first few episodes.  The end trails off a bit, as biographies tend to – it’s tough to get around that.

* * * Motherlovers * * * [Music Video]

Andy Samberg / Justin Timberlake – SNL Digital Short

Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?  Why do I have to be the last to know?

I like it best when they are eating sub sandwiches

[Click the picture to view the clip]

Mad Men (First Season) [TV]

2007, American Movie Classics, created by Matthew Weiner

Spent 13 of the last 48 hours watching this series. The casting director should be given a medal of valor. And yes, the art, costumes, lighting, everything in its place – perfect. The story is interesting enough – not exactly a Russian novel, but engaging enough to keep me up past my bedtime and make me seriously reconsider leaving the house in anything other than a gray suit with a pocket square. Protagonist Don Draper is one of the least interesting characters in the show – not at all unlike Ayn Rand’s Henry Rearden, whom the show never misses an opportunity to compare Draper to. The thematic structure of the individual episodes comes off a little heavy handed at times, but I get that it’s intentional – everyone is thinking of the same thing at the same time. Advertising. Deep. And if the writing seems forced well they can write that off too –  in 1960, they will have us believe, people loved to speak in platitude. But for all its problems it is still so well made and played that I will probably watch the second season and hope for whatever minor improvements are necessary to put this puppy over the top.