1 The Social Network 2 Black Swan 3 The Kids are All Right 4 Inception 5 Animal Kingdom 6 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo 7 Toy Story 3 8 Winter’s Bone 9 True Grit 10 127 Hours
Honorable Mention: The Fighter, The King’s Speech, Greenberg, Kick-Ass, Please Give, Life During Wartime, Cyrus, Solitary Man, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World.
Did not see: Another Year, Exit Through the Gift Shop, Rabbit Hole.
WORST IN FILM Spork Somewhere Hot Tub Time Machine Due Date It’s Kind of a Funny Story
TV
1 Community 2 Mad Men 3 Louie 4 Breaking Bad 5 Treme 6 Party Down 7 Men of a Certain Age 8 30 Rock 9 Parks and Recreation 10 The League
MUSIC
1 Arcade Fire – The Suburbs 2 LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening 3 Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy 4 Bruce Springsteen – The Promise 5 Beach House – Teen Dream 6 The Black Keys - Brothers 7 Cee Lo Green – The Lady Killer 8 The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt 9 Das Racist - Shut Up, Dude 10 Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
Honorable Mentions: Sleigh Bells – Treats Yeasayer – Odd Blood The National – High Violet Ben Folds & Nick Hornby – Lonely Avenue
HBO – a time-honored vessel for innovation and truth in the modern-day television medium – treated Louis C.K. like trash. While comedies like "Bored to Death" and "Flight of the Conchords" were fresh but low-rent shows that shot on location, “Lucky Louie” had the production value of a cardboard box.
The network gave a multi-camera sitcom with a laugh track to one of the most subversive, brilliant stand-up comedians, and canned it after one season despite a gradual surge in viewership. He has yet to succeed in film or television for the reason that he never had the freedom to mouth off in the vein of his specials, “Shamed” and “Chewed Up.”
Thankfully, Louis C.K. is back on TV in “Louie.” From the looks of it, FX lent him some freedom. He writes, directs, stars, produced and edits the show, which follows Louis as middle-aged divorcee with two young daughters and fading ginger locks.
What ensues is a claustrophobic, caustic series of vignettes that are largely very funny. Some segments daringly venture into darkness through conversation, such as when Louie and his poker buddies interrogate a gay friend (Rick Crom), or fly off the handle with imaginary conclusions. Those fictionalized bits smugly suggests you’re in Louie’s head – his sad life, his twisted dreams, his perverse curiosity – and therefore at his disposal. He can lie to you, take you on detours and break the fourth wall to tell off Marshall McCluhan if he so chooses. Boy, if life were only like this!
More a sketch show than a sitcom, “Louie” features the comic’s stand-up act and leads into a semi-related skit. It’s sharply photographed but still gritty, especially the intimate club scenes privy to essentially to him, the viewer and the brick wall. In the opening credits sequence set to “Brother Louie,” the title character emerges from the Washington Square subway to the evening Manhattan streets, all the while detached from humanity and somewhat pissed off. He eats a slice of pizza, then heads to the Comedy Cellar – the shots playing like a more downtrodden version of Saturday Night Live opening.
In the first two episodes, Louie finds himself on a bus full of kids who are lost in Harlem and Facebook stalking an old classmate with whom he once shared a ‘moment.’ Meanwhile, an old woman flashes him in the hallway of an apartment hallway, and he explains his approval of bestiality. In the aforementioned poker sketch, fascinating truths come out of comedians arguing about elements of their respective acts that are considered taboo.
“Louie” perpetuates a ‘No hugging, no learning’ Larry David-style doctrine of self-loathing while avoiding the structural requirements of a series-long narrative. The format of a comedian using stand-up to lead into scripted scenes dates back to before “Seinfeld,” but the edgy Louis C.K.’s manner is modern, cruel and thoroughly hilarious. This is a huge leap for the comedian and, God help us, director of “Pootie Tang.”
Bottom line: By taking the lion’s share of executive creative control, Louis C.K. has finally found a highly promising vehicle. “Louie” deconstructs the TV comedy form and tailors it to his peculiarity. It replicates the animosity the world feels toward David on “Curb” and takes it even further thanks to a fearless asshole like Louis C.K.
CREAM O’ ‘09 01 A Serious Man 02 Up in the Air 03 Inglourious Basterds 04 Adventureland 05 The Hurt Locker 06 Sugar 07 500 Days of Summer 08 Funny People 09 Precious 10 District 9
RUNNERS Moon In the Loop Fantastic Mr. Fox Zombieland The Men Who Stare at Goats The Messenger The Hangover
DUDS Miss March The International Serious Moonlight Taking Woodstock Taken Public Enemies Away We Go
STILL NEED TO SEE The White Ribbon An Education Avatar The Road Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
MUSIC and TV
MUSIC
CREAM O' '09 Bat for Lashes – Two Suns Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs Monsters of Folk – Monsters of Folk Fever Ray – Fever Ray Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes – Up From Below Bob Dylan – Together Through Life Black Moth Super Rainbow – Eating Us Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix Pains of Being Pure at Heart – Pains of Being Pure at Heart The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You
RUNNERS Sonic Youth – The Eternal Passion Pit – Manners The xx – XX Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
ROLLING STONE IS UNFAIRLY OBSESSED WITH Bruce Springsteen – Working on a Dream U2 – No Line on the Horizon
TV
CREAM O' '09 Mad Men Curb Your Enthusiasm Shark Tank Modern Family Bored to Death Party Down
RUNNERS Parks and Recreation Hung It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
SORRY I DON’T WATCH Battlestar Gallactica Friday Night Lights
If "Entourage" is the ultimate young adult male fantasy, then HBO’s "Bored to Death" is, more specifically, a young writer’s fantasy. The writer Jonathan Ames (played by Jason Schwartzman), based on the real-life series creator-writer, decides to moonlight as a private detective after his girlfriend dumps him. (OK, that cause-and-effect motive from the pilot will never quite be convincing.)
His life: Frequenting New York Film Society social functions, getting handed scripts by Jim Jarmusch, being best friends with one’s editor, getting drunk off white wine and scenic inspiration a la Brooklyn, and having no shortage of things (good and bad) happen to him.
Despite all this, Jonathan is depressed, naïve and all too milquetoast. Thus is life as a young writer. "Bored to Death" is probably the first hipster noir, and also, obviously a comedy.
This is HBO’s second show set in Brooklyn recently – following "Flight of the Conchords." A hipster serial trend could emerge with this engaging series, which premiered Sept. 20. It disappointed in the first few weeks by taking the easy way out on more than one occasion. Five episodes in, it’s not a great mystery or a great comedy, just a good show that’s a little bit of both and sometimes neither. It works best when it isn’t trying to devise a genuine mystery – that it never quite pulls off.
George Christopher (played by Ted Danson), an avuncular magazine editor socialite (who is never seen actually working), fostered a compelling bond with Jonathan. Danson, who suddenly became TV’s foremost character actor in his golden years, steals the show here. As George, he has more luck getting his way than as himself, at 9 p.m., convincing Larry David to take a bite of cake.
The character was conceived as a cross between two journalists: the erudite, deceased George Plimpton and the hedonistic Christopher Hitchens. George eccentrically clings to the faded frisky naiveté of his 20s yet, at the same time, craves the earned status of an elder statesman.
Zach Galifinakis’ role as Ray, Jonathan’s other best friend, makes things confusing since both George and Ray are intended as comic reliefs. And yes, it is a comedy show, but George is the right kind of crazy. Ray is a confused, sensitive cartoonist with an injection of the comic’s own deranged, deadpan shtick. The character comparatively struggles to spring off the page because he’s underwritten. Galifinakis is a great comedian – just not for this show.
'The Case of the Lonely White Dove'
In the fifth episode, “The Case of the Lonely White Dove,” the series touches on all its narrative threads with fascinating maturity. The noir is in full swing as a Russian ex-con who wants to track down a lounge singer he slept with the night before he was sent to prison. Jonathan invites his ex-girlfriend to dinner at the Russian nightclub in Brighton Beach where the singer works. Jonathan is wistful, thinking he’s figured out where he went wrong with his relationship, but mixing business with pleasure never goes according to plan.
Also, George takes a cue from publisher Jann Wenner and plans to channel his bisexual side in a peculiar effort to beckon greater female readership of his mag.
One particular scene was an example of allusion overload. George’s hyper-literary male escort, played Romany Malco, broke the ice by referencing Klaus Kinski, Woody Allen’s The Whores of Mensa and Samuel Beckett while "Bored to Death"'s writers apparently got high off their own supply.
The real-life Ames' commitment to the show is admirable and unsurprising considering the affection and observation that's devoted to the depiction of the eponymous Brooklyn writer protagonist. Ames, a New York Press columnist-turned-novelist, writes or co-writes each of the series' episodes. You'd think this would lend itself to a greater homogeneity in quality among the scripts. Nevertheless, Ames' recognizable closeness behind the scenes strengthens the series' concoction of the writer fantasy.
In episode no. 5, the mystery, specifically the boardwalk scenes, was the most complex it’s been so far this season and could have stood alone. And yet, there was still ample time devoted to Jonathan’s relationship and Ray’s failed attempts at intimacy. And even George learned something. More impressive? Ames managed to conceptualize his vision of Brooklyn as an evocative fantasy world. "Bored to Death" suffered creatively at the worst possible time – at the beginning of the first season when it should be luring viewers not lulling them to sleep. But it has improved (and with the viewership flock came a second-season renewal), and just like the path of any young struggling writer, it needs to be given a chance.
"Bored to Death" airs Sundays at 9:30 p.m. EST on HBO.
