Screened: October 2010

October 1: Iron Man 2

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

I didn't think it was bad, necessarily, but in this movie much more than the first you could really see all the pieces being moved into place for the 2011-2 Marvel Universe Cinema Explosion. I'm sure for some superhero fans that really gets them pumped, but now I'm feeling a bit wary of Thor and Captain America. If the path to The Avengers doesn't unwind organically, I'm afraid that the whole enterprise is going to collapse under its own weight.

October 2: A Home at the End of the World

Screened: At home, DVR from HBO

October 4: Date Night

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

October 6: Who's That Knocking on My Door

Screened: At home, Netflix Instant Watch

So, sometime around the end of September/beginning of October, forces conspired to prompt me to dive headfirst into Martin Scorsese's filmography. I've seen quite a few of his movies, having taken an undergraduate course that studied his work alongside that of Woody Allen and Spike Lee, but there are still quite a few I haven't yet seen, and several I haven't watched since that class. The press around the beginning of Boardwalk Empire frequently invoked different ideas of how Scorsese's artistic vision framed the show, and the kinds of continuing criticism one reads when one frequents the websites of television critics paint an interesting portrait of what people view as markers of the Scorsese-esque. After letting it rattle around in my head for a few days, I decided to give in to my self-imposed movie marathon impulses and institute Scorsesefest 2010, watching the features in chronological order.

Introductory movie, and a first-time viewing for me. There's something sort of charming about the fact that even the early work of acclaimed directors can feel so student-y - as an American Studies person with a few film studies courses under my belt, I couldn't help but be amused by the conversations he has his characters engage in regarding The Searchers. It was interesting to watch this film in relatively close proximity to Mean Streets - you can see where a lot of the ideas about male camaraderie, Catholic imagery, and the relationships between young men and women got more refined as Scorsese got more experience as a filmmaker.

October 6: Daughters of the Dust

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

October 8: Boxcar Bertha

Screened: At home, DVR from TCM

Another one that was new to me. I'm left mostly fascinated by how unbelievably fake the blood looks in movies from the sixties and seventies. It looks like paint, the kind of bright primary red that kids use. How alarming would it be if something the color of a stop sign came out of your body?

October 9: Mean Streets

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

I love, love, love the first twenty minutes of this movie. The opening credits, the character introductions, the soundtrack choices. (Listening to "Tell Me" about five times in a row was a crucial step on the way to instituting the one-woman film festival.) Perfection. While the film then starts to drag a bit for me, I think on this viewing I was better able to appreciate the way that it captures a sort of age of liminality when you're trying to be an adult even though you don't really know how to do so.

October 9: The Social Network

Screened: In the theater

The movie managed to address the ongoing discussion around Facebook and how it has or hasn't altered the meaning of friendship to its relevant generation without directly engaging those debates that always seem to involve a lot of hand-wringing over the fate of the Millenials. Take away the millions upon millions of dollars, and you've still got a painfully honest picture of the way people in their late teens and early twenties come together, fall apart and learn (or avoid learning) how to become adults. Great performances by Jesse Eisenberg and Andrew Garfield; Eduardo Saverin should send Garfield a fruit basket or a bucket full of cash or something - Garfield's wounded-Bambi eyes generate more sympathy than favorable press or positive legal outcomes ever could.

October 15: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Screened: At home, Netflix Instant Watch

Of all the Scorsese works I didn't see for class, I think this was the one that I was most interested to see for the first time. When you're watching Scorsese alongside Woody Allen and Spike Lee, it quickly becomes evident that you're dealing with a lesser-evil situation as far as depictions of women go - when I get to The Departed, I can talk about how excited I was when I first saw it that Vera Farmiga's character had a real job - so the female protagonist is really intriguing. (Boxcar Bertha doesn't really have much of a personality, unfortunately.) While I liked Ellen Burstyn's performance a lot, it's a very seventies movie, in a dated way rather than an iconic one. Not that I didn't like it, just that I don't know that I'll ever feel a burning desire to watch it again.

October 15: Taxi Driver

Screened: At home, from personal collection

The Scorsese filmography is one where, generally speaking, men recur and women do not. Which is to say, from Harvey Keitel through Leonardo Dicaprio, you've got a number of actors who show up in more than one Scorsese film, and few actresses for whom the same is true. Watching Taxi Driver this time around, I couldn't help but wonder what it might've been like if Scorsese had worked with Jodie Foster as an adult. She has such a dynamic presence, in that sardonic-seventies-tween sort of way that doesn't seem to exist among child actors nowadays, that it's intriguing to speculate on how she might work as a Scorsesian adult.

October 16: New York, New York

Screened: At home, from personal collection

- I'm trying to think of what a contemporary analogue would be to Scorsese taking De Niro and making New York, New York as the film following Taxi Driver, but I'm fairly stumped. Young directors on their way up the ladder of industry success generally don't do things like this these days. It's especially jarring to watch the films in order, as both feature pans from De Niro's feet up to his head - Taxi Driver towards its end, when Travis is first revealed in shaved-head, ready-for-crazy-action mode, and New York, New York at its beginning, showing Jimmy for the first time. It's a bit of a downer, and it'll never have the same reputation as the films of the great book musicals, but I love New York, New York, flaws and all.

- I love the many layers of meta-commentary in the "Happy Endings" sequence. It is so very perfectly fifties, and utilizes Liza Minnelli and all her attendant history (baggage?) so well.

- "The World Goes 'Round" seems like it could be a perfect song for Glee. It has just the right tone for a bittersweet, episode-ending montage.

October 17: The Last Waltz

Screened: At home, from personal collection

I'd been fighting it since the "Tell Me" scene in Mean Streets, but this was officially the point in this endeavor when I realized that the impulse to accumulate soundtracks was going to become a problem.

October 21: Raging Bull

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

In terms of Scorsese's period pieces and the way he incorporates aesthetic elements of contemporaneous films, it was really interesting to watch Raging Bull so closely after New York, New York. He doesn't broadcast his influences as explicitly as, say, Tarantino or Todd Haynes, but you can feel a love of those unique things that mark each era as distinct from one another. This was the movie where I most appreciated the opportunity to watch it outside of the class setting and just take time to absorb the beauty of the film.

October 22: Please Give

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

October 30: Winter's Bone

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

Mood Music XLI

Mood Music XL

I'm back(ish)! I've had multiple posts pending in various stages of drafts for a while now, which I'm attempting to balance with a semi-crazed work load. So there will be more frequent posting, eventually. Among the things I haven't yet discussed: last month's venture into the Scorsese filmography. I love many of his soundtrack choices, but recently I've fixated on this particular selection from The Last Waltz:

Week in TV: October 24-30

Boardwalk Empire

- The theme song is slowly growing on me. It's still not the kind of song you can imagine playing in the background as someone makes their way from the audience to the podium at an awards show, but it's got its own sort of swagger.

- Somehow, this episode managed to reference not one, but two different things that have come up in my reading this semester that make my skin crawl: the phrase "feeble-minded" and the contraceptive concept of douching with Lysol. Ew.

Glee

- I don't think I've previously discussed A.V. Club writer Todd VanDerWerff's breakdown of Glee's three showrunner-writers and what each brings to the episodes they write, but it's gotten a strong example this season in the way Will's been written in the episodes by Ryan Murphy. Where he normally seems like an enthusiastic, if occasionally hapless teacher, in Murphy's two episodes so far this season he's come across as a psycho with no boundaries, who then wonders why acting like a psycho with no boundaries isn't immediately winning Emma over to his side. Murphy can usually make his particular brand of heightened reality work within Glee's universe, but when a character's doing something so cringe-inducingly awful that you want to avert your eyes from the television, that's when you should maybe re-evaluate that character's path.

- Over the summer, I had designs on writing a post about what I though Glee could learn from other high-school shows, which obviously never quite materialized. (If this season is structured like the first, with the multi-month winter hiatus, it still might make an appearance.) The repeated mentions of the club going to Nationals brought up one of those points - where the first season's first thirteen episodes were loosely structured around the trip to Sectionals, there's been no real mention of them so far. The show I'd refer to here as an example is Friday Night Lights - each season of FNL, especially the first and third, where the team actually makes it to the State Championship game, utilizes the game-by-game structure of the football season as a narrative frame. Given that they didn't make it past Regionals last year, all this talk about New York is increasingly seeming like a) totally wishful thinking that is b) completely divorced from reality and c) not in a wacky, fun way.

Sons of Anarchy

One of the things I love and hate about cable dramas is that you never quite know where the writers set their boundaries. When you're not beholden to the same kinds of Standards and Practices as the networks, where do you draw the line on what's too much, especially when your show takes place in a relatively insane, violent universe? I'm thinking specifically about Jax's new Belfast flirtation with the girl he doesn't know is his half-sister, which seems to bring up these two voices in my head as I watch. One says, uneasily, "Even on a show as crazy as this one, incest is totally a line that they wouldn't cross," and the other says, "OR WOULD THEY?!?" And then both yell at the TV for persons in the know to intervene.

Private Practice

This television season seems to be featuring a disproportionate number of actors jumping around the dial - Zosia Mamet, Kevin Alejandro, Paula Malcomson, etc. - but none have been quite so disorienting as the Wednesday/Thursday juxtaposition of the Gustafson-heavy Terriers episode and Rockmond Dunbar then appearing on PP as a guy on the downlow. I mean, it partly indicated to me how quickly I've embraced Terriers (so good), but it also made for a weirder-than-it-was-supposed-to-be hour of television on Thursday.

Also Watched: Sherlock, Luther, 90210, Gossip Girl, Raising Hope, Detroit 1-8-7, The Good Wife, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Hellcats, Terriers, Top Chef: Just Desserts, Community, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Degrassi

Baking: Miscellaneous

So, I ended up feeling a bit...out of sorts...this weekend, and in looking for somewhere to displace my energies I took a brief break from reality and apparently became possessed by a manic impulse to function as a one-woman bake sale. Below, behold my Sunday afternoon and evening.

I feel like this post needs its own mood music selection.

Nigella Lawson's chocolate chip cookies with peanuts from the NY Times Dessert Cookbook, and Cap'n Crunch crispy treats from Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey. The crispy treats are very, very sweet.

Spritz cookies - these were my favorite thing about Christmastime growing up, and once I had my own kitchen I just sort of pilfered the electric cookie press from home and now I just make them whatever time of year I want. They're easy to overcook, but this was the best batch I've made in a while, just buttery and melt-in-your-mouth.

Chocolate cupcakes (this recipe with modified baking time) pre-frosting

And post-frosting, with Raspberry Buttercream, using some of the remaining frozen puree from my birthday. I'm proud of my piping, which I tried for the first time with these two batches above and below. It's not quite professional-looking, but it's better than slapping the frosting on with a spatula.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese frosting

Packaged up and ready for transit. I feel like I should advertise this like a place that sells overstocks. Like, "Coming this Monday! I spent the weekend mired in insecurity; YOU be thankful Like Water for Chocolate is a work of fiction and reap the sugar-drenched benefits!"

Mood Music XXXIX

Week in TV: October 10-16

Boardwalk Empire

Best episode yet, and a great episode for fleshing out previously underserved characters in Margaret, Gillian and Chalky. In some reviews I've read, people have found the scenes highlighting Margaret and Chalky somewhat heavy-handed, but then I don't know what period television they're watching where such moments are "expected" or "obvious." Maybe it's just years spent in history classes where people feel compelled to excuse "the way things were back then," but I think it's important to showcase resistant voices in media like this. Thinking critically about the past helps us understand then and now, and if this is the kind of writing that BE's going to continue to employ, then I'm in for the long haul.

Rubicon

I'll be honest, I really didn't think they would ultimately have the terrorist act seen through to completion, but I think that doing so distinguishes Rubicon from every other show airing right now. The whole season has gradually ratcheted up the tension in a glorious slow burn; many shows are daring, but few do so without also being showy. I'm on pins and needles waiting to see what happens in the finale - now that that tension has culminated in an explosion, what do the characters do next?

Mad Men

- Unusually low-key penultimate episode, at least as far as this show goes, which makes me a little concerned that something crazy is going to happen tonight. Like, both Sterling and Cooper keeling over dead or something. A plot point like Don publicly rejecting tobacco work represents a dramatic shift in the show - Lucky Strike is the client that forms the backbone of the pilot - but I think it would be uncharacteristic of Weiner to have some new savior show up in the finale. Most of the storylines feel right now like their implications are designed to play out in the long-term rather than the short-term - an exciting feeling after a finale, but an unnerving one beforehand.

- I usually like the oblique collection of out-of-context quotes that fill the "Next Time on Mad Men" teasers, but I wish that if they'd only been pulling from past episodes that they'd used the prior season finales rather than selections from this season. Not because I haven't liked this season (I definitely have) but because the past three finales are among the show's best episodes. A teaser with, say, Don's carousel speech and Peggy in the hospital from "The Wheel," Peggy's confession and Don's righteous smackdown of Duck from "Meditations in an Emergency," and various company-heist hijinks from "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." would actually get me excited about next week. As it is, I have to say I'm more intrigued to see how Rubicon closes out their season.

- This is mostly unrelated, but I really hope that somewhere among the lead-up to the Broadway arrival of the How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying revival we get a picture of Robert Morse and Daniel Radcliffe together. Just because I'm pretty sure it would be adorable.

Chuck

- I'm not dreaming, right? This season has been mad boring thus far? I'm sure a lot of outlets will blame it on Chuck and Sarah being together, but the problem is not their relationship as much as it's the fact that they never stop talking about their relationship. There's a rational level of insecurity involved in any new pairing, but I think we passed "rational" sometime in Season Three's back six and now we're veering off into "grating". All I know is when 8 on Monday rolls around, I increasingly want to watch 90210 live and time-shift Chuck instead of the other way around.

- I know I should probably be offended by the incidences of obvious product placement, but there's something so blatant about the way they mention Subway that it just makes me laugh.

Glee

- Now that's how you use a song from A Chorus Line.

- When the characters were reviewing their summer vacations in the premiere, did we somehow skip over Artie's lobotomy? Or are we supposed to believe that breaking up with Tina prompted some sort of dramatic break with rational thought? Where he seemed essentially smart, though occasionally misguided last season, now he just seems like he's taken leave of his senses. (The football thing stretches even the bounds of Glee's universe. Rules or not, there's no way that a school system lawyer wouldn't intervene in the interest of liability there. I'm pretty sure the apprehension of being sued transcends hyper-reality.) I just wish that he could've had a serious, low-key discussion with Brittany about the implications of losing his virginity instead of condemning her for manipulating him with her slatternly ways.

Sons of Anarchy

- I was struck in this episode by the difference between the ceremony involved in accepting or dismissing a member from the club and Jax's cursory break-up with Tara; I don't think SoA's ever before delineated quite so clearly the status of women in the club's milieu. I'm interested to see where Tara's path takes her now; I suspect that like Bill and Sookie on this past season of True Blood, she and Jax may be more interesting apart than they are together. It's not classy, but I'd love to see Tara totally lose her shit.

- Where's Wendy in all this kidnapping rigamarole? If I recall correctly, when last we saw her she was headed for a halfway house to become accustomed to sobriety. To some extent, it makes sense that they wouldn't tell her what's going on, in a variation of what kept them from sharing the news with Gemma for so long - don't alarm the recovering addict. But it would be nice if they'd mention her every once in a while, even if it's just to say that they're continuing to keep her in the dark.

Undercovers

Just what I was hoping for - oblique references to mysterious secrets! There may be hope for this show yet.

Hellcats

Perhaps the most pleasant surprise of the new crop of shows this fall, at least on the networks. The pilot was a little obnoxious, but Hellcats has actually turned out to not be terrible - its recent episodes have bestowed its main characters with decent development, and though it's depiction of both college cheerleading and the life of a pre-law student may not be 100% "accurate" in a real-world sense, the show does know its universe and communicate its ins-and-outs clearly. Special credit to Ashley Tisdale, who may be one of least broad actors to come out of the Disney/Nick machine in a while.

Terriers

Whenever I'm watching Sons of Anarchy and catch ads for Terriers, I'm struck by how mismarketed the show seems. The commercials highlight the goofy vibe and amiable banter between Donal Logue and Michael Raymond-James, and if I wasn't watching the show I think I'd think it was pretty lightweight. Since the third episode, though, the show's been tempering that goofiness with some serious doses of darkness that make the show unique, and very, very good. That last scene with Hank and Katie was heartbreaking, and the kind of scene that makes you realize that you've become totally invested in a show's characters.

30 Rock

- I can't believe this is the first time I've wondered this, but something about the use of the TGS sketches in the live show brought it to mind: Does SNL exist at 30 Rock's NBC?

- While I like Jon Hamm a lot, I've never really found Drew terribly funny, and I think his ad (in both versions of the show) was the most SNL-esque moment of the show just in distance from reality. Later in the evening I saw one of those Allstate "Mayhem" ads with Dean Winters, and thought how much funnier it could've been with an ad from Dennis instead.

Also Watched: How I Met Your Mother, 90210, Gossip Girl, Raising Hope, Detroit 1-8-7, Caprica, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Top Chef: Just Desserts, Law and Order: LA, Community, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, Degrassi, Gigantic, Law and Order: UK

Thoughts on..."Britney/Brittany"

So, clearly the "Week in TV" post for September 26 to October 2 never quite materialized. By the time I had time to think about it, it was Thursday, and I realized that many of the points could carry over to this week. I watched the pilots for both No Ordinary Family and Law and Order: LA, and thought both were solid, but feel no burning desire to continue on with either one. And I was curious to see where both Lone Star and My Generation were going, but as much as I liked/was intrigued by both, it's hard to mourn a show of which one has only seen two episodes. Lone Star could've been great, and for that matter, My Generation could've executed some major course-correction, but we'll never know for sure. Such is Fall TV.

Upon reflection, I realized that the only show I really had extended thoughts on for that week was Glee. (Hopefully, Lane's girlfriend on Mad Men wasn't a one-off and we can get back to her later.) I didn't really land on the "love" or "hate" sides of the Britney episode. There were pros and cons.

- While the whole device of characters hallucinating under the influence at the dentist was a little...implausible...I kind of liked that the show switched up the structure a little bit in terms of the way the songs were incorporated into the show. Usually Glee operates as a kind of hybrid between a backstage musical and a book musical, so it was interesting to see them try more of a revue. Songs presented largely independent of plot is where musical theater started, and I think Glee's loosely-structured enough to sustain episodes like this one every once in a while. Honestly, I'd love to see them tackle a week of performances with no plot at all, sort of Ziegfeld-Follies-style.

- I understand the impulse to draw upon the iconic video imagery in Britney Spears' catalogue, but I'd have loved to see some different song choices, maybe some non-singles. Rachel and Finn's storyline was begging for one of Britney's classic "I'm my own woman now and you can't tell me what to do" songs; my personal favorite is the underrated Oops!...I Did it Again track "What U See (Is What U Get)".

- There have been little odds and ends in Glee that are reminiscent of Ryan Murphy's prior high school show Popular, but none so much as Jacob Ben Israel, who's essentially the second coming of Popular's April Tuna. Murphy seems to have this affection for characters too strange to be real; in this episode, it worked for the increased focus on Brittany, but Jacob's off-putting manner was stretched a little too far beyond the limits of where the show can contain him. It's difficult to criticize any part of Glee for being excessive, but I feel comfortable in saying that the yelling during "Toxic" was too much.

- There has to be some occasion in the future where they have a dance-off between Heather Morris and Harry Shum, right? I mean, come on:

Week in TV: October 3-9

Boardwalk Empire

For an American Studies scholar, this show is kind of a smorgasbord of references. (1920 is right in the sweet spot of an era that a lot of historians like to work in.) Allusions to Uncle Tom's Cabin and Horatio Alger in the same hour? Nice.

Rubicon

I love how quiet this show is. The writers really trust the actors to communicate the paranoia and foreboding that sell both the broader conspiracy and the terrorist plot, and it's made the show uniquely good.

Mad Men

- It remains to be seen how the departure of Lucky Strike will play out long-term (I can't possibly be the only fan sitting there all, "Bring back Sal! BRING BACK SAL!"), but I think it will color rewatching of prior episodes in an interesting way. As embarrassingly desperate as the party in "Christmas Comes But Once a Year" is, how much more awful will it feel when you can put a date on when all that effort proves to be for naught?

- I've never really understood those people who believe in the Great and True Love of Joan and Roger, and I think the past few weeks have shown many reasons why they shouldn't be together. I mean, I get it: almost anyone seems like a better option compared with Dr. Greg. But Greg being kind of a horrible person doesn't make Roger not a horrible person too. The selfishness? The lack of respect for anyone besides himself? Betty gets a lot of press for being essentially a child, but I'd argue that Roger's development is similarly arrested.

- I like Abe.

- I don't think I've talked before about the wonderfully smarmy performance Kevin Rahm's given this season as Ted Chaough. I love straight-up shamelessness in a television character.

How I Met Your Mother

HIMYM is actually one of the major reasons I decided to try to do a weekly TV post. Back in the spring, I started to write a post about why I felt the show needed to establish an end date - it felt like they were spinning their wheels, and I didn't care about or like Don at all, to the degree that the writers' attempts to push him as Robin's potential soul mate actually made me angry. (The post was a tandem commentary on HIMYM and Big Love, and if that show's issues continue on to its next season, then I'll bring up those points again too.) The post sort of faded away, half-written and unpublished, and I finally deleted it when I realized that the points weren't really timely anymore. Hence, week-to-week observations. All of which is to say: I'm pretty sure that much of the audience got "closure" on Don a while ago, so hopefully Robin achieving the same will prompt the writers to pretend that whole thing never happened in the first place.

Glee

As far as Glee's themed episodes go, this was pretty middle-of-the-road for me. The question of how religion functions in people's lives is one that television shows rarely engage, so that was nice to see, but other shows have done it in recent years with a lot more nuance (Friday Night Lights, to mention one. This week's Community, to mention another.) Chris Colfer knocked it out of the park, though - among the show's main cast, I think he makes the most out of his showcase episodes - and "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" did make me tear up.

Sons of Anarchy

We've had enough of a break from Stahl's all-consuming craziness that I'm excited to see where her deal with Jax goes. Like everything on this show, it seems inevitably doomed to fail spectacularly, but it's always an interesting ride getting there.

Undercovers

I think this week pinpointed for me what's making this show so boring so far. While I understand why they wanted to stay away from a major conspiracy angle, there's also nothing cohesive driving the show from week to week. When you look back at the early episodes of Alias, the storyline that comes out of Danny's murder drives Sydney in a way that gave Jennifer Garner's performance a propulsive fire (Nikita, so far, has been similarly passion-driven). On Fringe, the circumstances are so crazy that they demand action. Chuck's writers have managed to make the wheels turn with a combination of Chuck v. Intersect and CIA/NSA v. various nefarious external groups and conspiracy-mongerers. "Spies plus marital drama" is an interesting idea, but without interesting execution the show is going to fail sooner or later. I really want to support this show and keep watching it, but without a creative bump it's going to turn into a chore.

Top Chef: Just Desserts

There's "not here to make friends" and then there's the cast of this show, who seem to have built up a serious amount of mutual animosity in a relatively brief period of time, even for a reality competition. You'd think that with people deciding to leave of their own free will, or having some sort of oblique not-entirely-on-camera meltdown, that the other contestants would just sit back and let it happen. You already look like the good ones by default! It's Sibling Politics 101! Instead, the overly critical tone from various others comes across as hyperbolic, needless bitchery and the whole thing seems like it's teetering on the precipice of descending into total mania.

Bones

If the writers aren't careful, Hannah is going to land firmly in the same territory as Don on How I Met Your Mother last year. Telling us a new character is awesome is demonstrably not the same thing as actually introducing a new awesome character.

Also Watched: Nikita from last week, Chuck, 90210, Gossip Girl, Hawaii Five-0, Raising Hope, Detroit 1-8-7, Caprica, Modern Family, Cougar Town, Hellcats, Terriers, Community, 30 Rock, The Office, Grey's Anatomy, Nikita, Private Practice, Degrassi

New Shows:

Law & Order: UK

It was interesting to watch this after seeing the Law and Order: LA pilot. The Los Angeles version made me doubt whether the franchise could really work in another city, but then the UK version restored my confidence. The show sticks very closely to the original show's template, but with a unique chemistry among the permanent cast that makes it work almost immediately.

The A-List: New York

True story: I turned this off after about 45 minutes. I'm not big into the Real Housewives genre of shows - after the cast members introduce themselves and start talking to one another, they tend to achieve a level of vacuousness where my brain just completely tunes out. Also, teen Liz, who rooted for Reichen and Chip to win The Amazing Race back in the day, is disappointed that Reichen seems to be kind of a fame whore. I believed in your love!

Gigantic

The N's original programming isn't bad, necessarily, but their writing is never quite as sharp, and the drama not quite as daring, as some of the comparable-age-group offerings from ABC Family or the CW. Still, half-hour shows are perfect for morning coffee, and the mix of actual children-of-actors and former child actors in the show's main cast suggests that the show could demonstrate a more knowing sense of the scene it depicts than was on display in the pilot.

Mood Music XXXVIII: Feeling Nostalgic

You'd be forgiven for looking at this list and wondering, "Nostalgic for when, exactly?" For my early months of college, when these songs served as my soundtrack. After my parents had gotten me settled into my dorm room, one of the first things I did was download iTunes on my new laptop. At that time at home, the only Internet-connected computer was my mother's work desktop, which created this sense of constant surveillance. And I was such a good kid that I didn't even want to do anything that scandalous once I had free reign with my own computer. Even this totally legal enterprise felt emblematic of sweet, sweet freedom. The following are the first fifteen songs I bought - fifteen because I used a gift card - and there's something terribly soothing about listening to them in purchase order. It's not really a mix, but it's not random either. Maybe I'll do other chunks in the future - I love the way they present little snapshots of a given set of months.

Sister Golden Hair - America

Screened: September 2010

September 1: The Lady Eve

Screened: At home, DVR from TCM

September 3: The Turning Point

Screened: At home, Netflix Instant Watch

September 8: Broadcast News

Screened: At home, Netflix Instant Watch

September 9: You've Got Mail

Screened: At home, from personal collection

September 10: Little Women (1949)

Screened: At home, from personal collection

September 11: Going the Distance

Screened: In the theater

September 11: North by Northwest

Screened: At home, from personal collection

September 17: What's Love Got to Do With It?

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

September 18: Walk the Line

Screened: At home, from personal collection

September 22: Birth of a Nation (1933 edit)

Screened: Class screening

September 23: Within Our Gates

Screened: Class screening

September 24: Less Than Zero

Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix

September 28: Grease, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Screened: At home, on AMC

September 29: Gone With the Wind

Screened: At home, from personal collection

I'm going to be honest: I looked back at this list and don't really feel compelled to add extended commentary on any of these. I liked all of the movies I hadn't seen before, and I found Going the Distance to be heartening evidence that the romantic comedy may not be totally doomed. However, this month was kind of exhausting, and went by in a blur. Maybe I'll have more to say in October. For now, I'm just going to leave this list as it is.