bloggie blog

As you may know, Los Angeles has a blight problem: too many billboards. As a counterexample, Santa Monica is a much better city today than it would be if it had LA’s lax billboard laws. Imagine Ocean Blvd done up like the Sunset Strip. Ick! But back in LA, the latest looming evil is projection billboards. Recently, an evil corporation ran tests projecting ads on the sides of large buildings at night.

Oh look, we’ve become the hellish future portrayed by Phillip K. Dick, author of the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, which 27 years ago was the basis for the movie Blade Runner. Dick is turning over in his grave, and crazy replicants like Sean Young the actress not Sean Young’s character may as well be on the loose all over this town. Run, people, run!

This time, Breaking Bad opens with a music video. Or should I say, video de música? Los Cuates de Sinaloa cantan «Negro y Azul». Claro que Sinaloa se conoce por tener las mujeres más guapas en todo México, y supongo que eso quiere decir que en esta semana, el Breaking Malo va a tener chicas guapas. ¡Qué bueno! Aquí se puede ver otra video de «Los Cuates» con chica media desnuda. Y aquí se puede leer una entrevista con ellos.

Okay, back to English — after saying that cuate means comrade, equal, some dude from where you’re from. The lyrics to their Black and Blue (this episode’s title, too) are sung in a vocal range akin to speaking. I wonder if that’s how they always roll. But the lyrics are translated sloppily, with “potent” instead of the better “powerful,” and the all-too-common mistake of using a reverse apostrophe at the start of a word to indicate the omission of letters. “Talkin’ ‘bout” should be “Talkin’ ’bout.” ¡Drives me crazy! All of this is preview, probably with Bryan Cranston’s stand-in, so let’s move on past the first 4 minutes.

Some more teacher. Then lots of fallout from last week’s intense episode, rehashing the kid, the ATM, the sound. Then a great line for those moments when a grey lie is needed: “You didn’t hear that from me.” Got to remember that one!

Later:
“I’m a blowfish?”
“You are a blowfish.”
“I’m a blowfish.”
“Say it like you mean it!”
“I am a blowfish!”

Finally, for a second, I thought I saw a scene not shot on location. One moment where Dean Norris, the poor schmuck that doesn’t habla the Spanish, looks over the valley seems to be filmed on set. Quickly forgotten, because s#|t goes down. ¡Caracho! Things are getting malo.

Here’s a thought I want to pass on to my actor friends who are thinking about moving to Los Angeles: Most actors don’t work much that first year anyway so you might as well get it over with ASAP.

It comes from the final paragraph of a blog posting on Showfax.com that is now several weeks old. Read that last paragraph, take it to heart. A simple truth is that any actor that is thinking about moving to Los Angeles should be reading both Mark and Bonnie every week. I wish somebody had told me that.

I want to write about another episode of Breaking Bad. Again, I’m late, about 13 days this time. Again, the opening credits include a non-element in the name of the DP. Again, it’s an awesome show.

In this episode, we see further how the bad in Jesse‘s and Walter‘s lives creeps along, spreads further. Jesse has to go protect his drug racket, and pulls out the revolver to do so. Skyler thanks their benefactors for the money her husband didn’t get from them, so a lie will be unraveled? This is the Act I setup, counterbalanced by an everyday event, a long chemistry lecture about carbon and diamonds and H. Tracy Hall, on the normal first day of school … where not everything can really be normal now, can it?

When we return to Jesse, he’s still waiting for his victims, but playing peekaboo with their unfortunate kid. Cute and dirty. Later we see — and even more so, hear — one of the grossest deaths ever, but it was particularly satisfying, too. How easily done, how deliciously deserved.

At the end I thought that in this episode a young boy plays a key role and this cute young actor never speaks. Well written, well acted, well shot. (Carmen Serano and Jessica Hecht give awesome guest star work, too.) The boy seems to be a parallel to the work Mark Margolis played earlier this season, non-speaking and brilliant acting at the opposite end of life’s spectrum. Heartbreaking situations. And beautiful.

The writing is so beautiful when you stop and think about how they are weaving in all these bad things, keeping the show fresh, a mix of expected and unexpected problems when you get involved over your head with drugs and such. The bad is beautiful to me on this show. With one exception: Skyler and Walter seem to be going nowhere in there scenes together because their scenes together are getting repetitive.

She sits and shines shoes, and when she sits she shines all day.

I participated in a workshop with an established casting director over the weekend. He told a story that flabbergasted me. One time recently when he needed a little person for a script he was casting, he put out the notice to all actors, not just to those with agents and managers. He received 300 notices from actors submitting themselves for the part. Of these hundreds, only seven were actually little people!

So I consider this story and I put myself in their shoes, they meaning the people running The Biz. If I were running a business where 97% of the over-eager people approaching me were one brick shy of a full wheelbarrow, I would put up large barriers to entry. Oh, lookie. That’s just what they’ve done.

This episode of Breaking Bad aired on April 5, and now 13 days later I’m blogging about it. Hmm. I guess that means I don’t have to worry about spoiler alerts!

DP MiChael Slovis’s credit is still out of whack, periodically speaking. And this episode is directed by Johan Renck. Re is the symbol for the chemical element rhenium, a rare metal, rarer than molybdenum and often found with it. Okay, you know what? I don’t really know where any metal comes from, let alone molybdenum. Oh sure, I’ve heard of mining, but in my tangible life it’s as relevant as alchemy.

On with the show. I noted that the DEA’s office (the excellent Dean Norris plays our main man there), shows an address in reverse lettering on the façade as they leave the lobby of 400 Gold SW. That building is shown here on Google Maps. Nice location scouting: a building without windows could well be a goverment building.

Did anybody else notice the vertical distance between the waist of Jesse (the excellent AAron Paul) with his lowriders and the waist of Jane (played by Krysten Ritter) with her long legs, skinny frame and high pants? I think her pants’ waistline was 2 feet higher off the ground than Jesse’s. It was a weird juxtaposition. But a good scene. I’m pretty sure we’ll be seeing a lot of Jane.

Later in this episode, an extended musical montage thingy. Wha?!?! So not this show! But the unappealing characters therein: so this show.

“If there is any point to [this play], it is totally obscured by this disastrous production during which actors jabber meaningless dialogue at each other instead of actually communicating.”

Saw this on Backstage.com. I didn’t read more than that and I just had to post it here. Please, critic, tell us how you really feel.

My sister Cynthia and I were born exactly two years apart, born on two separate April the 15th’s. She is in Indiana, I am in Los Angeles, and on this special day we both think of each other, and our parents, and the I.R.S. Happy birthday to us!

Just saw the first episode of the second season of In Treatment, the show starring Gabriel Byrne on HBO. It’s so good. I saw most episodes of the first season — though the 2 or 3 episodes I missed had some of the most pivotal plot elements!

It’s such good acting, and it’s all about character. That’s why I like it and recommend it highly. When I heard the sparse opening music, it took me back to my Newton apartment where I watched the first season. Good memories. I’m not going to blog about every episode like I’m committed to doing with Breaking Bad, but I may write from time to time.