Saturday, February 21, 2009

Watching...

It looks like I'm one of a minority who think Slumdog Millionaire is a mediocre derived piece of work. Utterly uninspired, shallow, overtly dramatic and clichéd, it borrows heavily from the traditional Bollywood genre - not that there's anything wrong with it, but we've all seen the rags-to-riches tale with the boy-meets-girl--boy-loses-girl--boy-gets-girl spin enacted in countless creative ways for decades now, that it's just mindless repetitive consumerist crap at this point. Even if Danny Boyle's film has its moments (and how colorful some of his scenes are), ultimately Slumdog Millionaire is drone Bollywood melodrama dressed up to meet its western counterparts. Too bad it's being elevated to undeserving heights of film glory.

Late last night, I watched the pilot of Alan Ball's mindblowing series Six Feet Under. Yes, I know I've arrived long after the train has left the station (the series debuted in 2001), and it's time to board True Blood, but I've just had my mind blown away by the dark despairing humor that is the show's catalyst. I'm now seriously considering spending a hundred bucks and just buying the box set instead of scavenging through the local library.