Last Three Things I Watched: ‘Road To Nowhere, ‘The Hour,’ ‘Breaking Bad’

Breaking Bad – We are halfway through season 4 and it’s the best season of all . . . after the first three I didn’t think it possible. The last several episodes have been more about character development than plot development. Sure the story is unwinding but not as fast as the most unlikely character is raising up the criminal hierarchy. This is the only series in memory which I instantly gobble up each episode the minute it arrives. Mad Men got stale by season 4 . . . I know how hard this kind of writing is . . . Vince Gilligan . . just let me say: I am so appreciative . [ Official AMC Site ]

The Hour – I just finished this six part BBC series. . . It was the plot and period which first drew to this story of TV news program in the mid 1950s — which happens to be the time of the Suez Canal Crisis and the Czech uprising again Soviet occupation — but now I come away thinking the main attraction is the cast. Putting The Wire star Dominic West at the heart of the drama proves to be a masterstroke, and he’s supported by a high calibre company of acting talent, including Juliet Stevenson, Anna Chancellor and Ben Whishaw. It’s West who drives the drama forward, though, with a skilled central performance. Behind the scenes of the show, there’s sexual politics, ambitions, the Red scare of the ’50s and pressures from all directions. And that, mixed with a strong attention to period detail, helps make The Hour an engaging drama. Just be warned that it starts a little slowly for many peoples’ tastes. The first episode isn’t its best. But it’s very much worth sticking with The Hour. It’s ambitious, high class drama. The DVD set will be out next week in the U.K. My pre-order is in. [ Official BBC Site ]

Road To Nowhere I had no idea where this movie was going. It’s constructed in the strangest way . . . usually I would be put off (as many critics were . . . including Roger Ebert) but I was sucked into the churning, twisting, shifting plot . . . and I was surprised I could make sense of the murky balance between reality and fiction: a beautiful young woman, murder, a powerful politico, a missing fortune, and suicide. To say it’s a movie about making a movie makes it sound too simple. But it is a story of a filmmaker creating a film based upon a true crime. He casts an unknown mysterious young woman bearing a disturbing resemblance to the femme fatale in the story. Unsuspectingly, he finds himself drawn into a complex web of haunting intrigue: he becomes obsessed with the woman, the crime, her possibly notorious past, and the disturbing complexity between art and truth. From the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina to Verona, Rome, and London, new truths are revealed and clues to other crimes and passions, darker and even more complex, are uncovered. Sound complicated?? You bet. [ RT ]

This is a list of the last three major video items I have watched on my home HD TV (excluding MLB games).