trash. art. movies.

JUSTIFIED

I was going to mention in my appreciation for Community how I like having the feeling that Dan Harmon and his writers are always making sure they’re one step ahead of the viewer. One hopes that this is always the case for a show but sometimes you get the feeling writers are flailing as they’re dragged towards a season finale. Having a sense of confidence in your show is especially great when the stories get as complex and ambitious as those of Community at its wildest or the detailed history of rural Kentucky bloodlines in Justified. And confidence is really a two-way street on a show when the writers have actors like Margo Martindale, Jeremy Davies and Timothy Olyphant to work with.

The relationship between Raylan, Dickie and Mags Bennett throughout the season added tremendously to the weird faux-authentic Kentucky vibe the show is abe to pull off despite filming in LA. What Justified does is bring the world of Elmore Leonard to life. Leonard’s world is rooted in its locale and is one where the miles of bad road in a character’s past is in every line of dialog they speak and after hanging out with them for five minutes you feel like you know them all personally. Justified does right (where so many other adaptations have gone wrong) by trusting in the Leonard-speak and staying true to soaking in the atmosphere. 

You’ll find a good number of behind the scenes folks in common between Justified, Karen Sisco and Out of Sight - which, along with Jackie Brown and maybe Hombre and 3:10 to Yuma, comprise all of the great Elmore Leonard-done-right movies. And season two even got Leonard himself in for a story credit on one mid-season episode. As a long time fan of his books, after so many botched adaptation attempts, it feels so damn good to be able to watch it being done right weeks in a row.

So Justified ended up being my most satisfying television experience this year. It started off strong and the performance Margo Martindale gives in the season finale made it one of the most memorable scenes of the year - in television or film. Speaking of which, Boyd Crowder. It must be mentioned that Justified’s finest trick might be taking an already memorable Leonard character in Rayland’s childhood friend turned neo-Nazi, Boyd Crowder, and with the help of the always underrated Walton Goggins turned him into a fascinating anti-hero who has practically stolen the show from Raylan. With season three just weeks away, I am the unashamed drooling fanboy.

COMMUNITY

I don’t think I’m alone in how Community crept up on me. It first caught my attention the summer of 2010 as a bright, colorful but fuzzy show that threw me off guard with some killer one-liners. The dialog was sharp enough to keep me entertained while the show found its footing - which didn’t take long. By the end of the first season I was convinced that the show had the potential for TAMY greatness and now, in the middle of its third season, it has delivered on that promise. There aren’t many shows that you can go into week after week with an unsure anticipation of exactly what to expect. Louie falls in to this category as well (and if I hadn’t picked it for top show last year…) and, like Community, it takes advantage of its unique freedom to be able to tell any story in any fashion it pleases. But Community, more than any other show that comes to mind, projects its stories through a prism that contains the whole history of both film and television. Watching an episode is like watching pulp culture squared; a place where Pulp Fiction and My Dinner with Andre are cohabitants with Rankin/Bass and The Cape.

This nerd bait isn’t just a set up to easy jokes or visual gags, the references can tend to be more stylistic and work as a frame for the stories. The characters are so strong they can slip into any scenario and shine. I think my biggest worry when I first watched an episode of Community was that the characters would be more too one-dimensional and resistant to any development. That worry was definitely put to rest in season two and if there hasn’t been any revelatory character development, the show has revealed nuanced characters that behave more consistently and honestly (or organic, if you must) than most half-hour comedies.

It’s not easy to come up with other shows that have the kind of willingness to experiment and pull it off with as much intelligence and success, but I think Spaced is a good comparison. It’s another show that doesn’t allow the pop culture references to date it - but rather use it for layered, stylistic and deconstructive purposes and make it feel part of the TV universe. And Dan Harmon has created a show that doesn’t just have one world - but rather a universe that allows us to access the worlds of each of the characters in the “study group” and see through their eyes. And then we get an episode about parallel universes.

I feel like a major reason fans are saying prayers for the continuing adventures of Jeff & the Gang are due to Community continuing to one-up itself. Just when you think the show has reached a peak by successfully pulling off some mad mix of imagination, ambition and weirdness like “Conspiracy Theories and Interior Design” (back when Kevin Corrigan seemed to be infiltrating all of TV, remember that? And yes, I know that episode was technically in 2010, thanks.) or the aforementioned Pulp Fiction/Dinner with Andre hybrid, “Critical Film Studies”, you have practically any of the 10 episodes that have aired so far this season that could qualify as topping those great episodes. The Hearts of Darkness homage, the parallel dimensions, the holiday musical — not to mention the epic two part paintball finale to the second season from just this past spring… Six seasons and a movie! Six seasons and a movie!

Dir. Lars von Trier

Life at the dusk of existence is like spending your days and nights perpetually “getting ready for bed” - a phrase that comedian Paul F. Tompkins rightfully pointed out as not making much sense to begin with. What are you getting ready for? How do you prepare for lying down? In Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, when a planet is about to hit Earth there are reactions that are varied enough only to cover most of the Grieving Process steps. For Kirsten Dunst’s failed bride it degrades enough that she needs help getting her seemingly atrophied body out of bed, never mind into a bathtub. I think this is what happens during Acceptance.

Through Dunst’s sister, Charlotte Gainsbourg, we swing back around and experience the encroaching doom and the subsequent revelation of a quickly approaching demise. Heavy. Yet Melancholia is elegant. Because Lars von Trier is such a cheeky monkey, he crafts his apocalypse film into perhaps his most approachable and certainly one of his least challenging films. (Though that’s on a scale for the person who’s made some of the most challenging films in recent memory, so…) But that is not to say it isn’t any less substantial than any other film. You could easily write thousands of words on Udo Keir’s wedding planner alone. John Hurt’s philandering father could get his own prequel.

I especially enjoyed the re-emergence of the sister themes that Martha Marcy May Marlene dealt with in its own way. In Melancholia, it bonds Dunst and Gainsbourg in sweet and tragic ways. And while on paper you wouldn’t exactly expect take to these actors as siblings, by the spectacular ending, you are completely sold on their connectedness and ying and yang. 

It’s certainly the most gorgeous thing I’ve seen this year - the year of Tree of Life, so that’s saying something. I believe you get your admission price’s worth in the first ten minutes of the film and by the end… well, experience it the best way you can. I’ll just leave it at that.