Copper vs. Orphan Black

I recently began watching the BBC America series Copper, which ran for two seasons from 2012 to 2013. The series is not without its flaws, including a somewhat slow start to its main story lines (as noted by a review in Variety published shortly after the series' initial release), but overall I found the series to be an excellent period piece, which does a better job than Scorsese's Gangs of New York in terms of presenting the actual history of the Five Points neighborhood during the Civil War (which is not to say that Scorsese's film is not excellent in many other respects!).

It is surprising or at least disappointing that Copper was cancelled and BBC America's other original series, Orphan Black, is still running strong. While the premise of Orphan Black is intriguing, the lead actress is fantastic, and the showrunners clearly know the tricks of their trade, I had to stop watching the show on account of the increasingly absurd, byzantine layers of conspiracy and melodrama, together with the sense that the main story line is becoming less plausible and less intelligible with each startling new revelation. And despite the fact that a PhD in evo devo was extensively consulted by the showrunners--they even based one of the main characters on her--whenever anything science-y shows up on screen, it always comes out either as clearly fallacious or as unintelligible gobbledigook. Sigh.

Five Points, Manhattan (George Catlin, 1827)

Easy Rawlins TV Series?

I just learned that, a couple of years agom there was a project in the words for a TV series based on Walter Mosley's famous black private detective character Easy Rawlins, but that NBC ultimately decided to take a pass. This is unfortunate, and hopefully another similar project will see the light of day--preferably one produced by HBO, Netflix, or Amazon, rather than by NBC or another network, however.

To my mind, "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1995) was a fantastic film, and is a proof of concept of an Easy Rawlins TV series.

Earth: A New Wild

I recently watched an excellent PBS documentary called Earth: A New Wild. The series focuses on human-environment interactions, and explores ways in which humans can help create healthier ecosystems even while living among and even harvesting resources from those same ecosystems. For example, "Episode Two: Plains" discusses methods for managing free range herd animals (such as cattle) that lead to healthier and more biodiverse ecosystems.

Episode Two also contains a discussion of reindeer herding by the Saami people in Norway. Among other things, the episode illustrates the traditional Saami method for castrating reindeer, which has to be seen to be believed. (Below is old footage from another source which illustrates the method.)

In any event, I highly recommend the series "Earth: A New Wild"; despite the inevitable schmaltz associated with the TV nature documentary genre, it contains surprising insights from contemporary ecology, and presents considerable evidence in support of its general thesis that human management and harvesting of natural resources is fully compatible with and often even necessary for the health of plant and animal species.

The Man in the High Castle

Amazon.com has produced an excellent television adaptation of Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle. The series currently consists of a single pilot episode. Ridley Scott was one of the executive producers.

The pilot features good writing, acting, directing, editing, cinematography, and production design. As noted in this review at Wired.com, the primary flaw is some weak CGI in establishing shots of New York City. Hopefully this problem can be sorted out (more practical effects?) should the pilot be turned into a series.

I was particularly impressed by how the writing and production design handled the series' alternate history premise in a convincing fashion. This is something that's really easy to get wrong. The pilot showed a nation which was still distinctly American in culture, but with a layer or sliver of Japanese and German culture imposed on top in characteristic imperialist fashion.

The pilot also depicted a material culture which was a combination of technology and design from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. You might think that this is a flaw, but to my mind it gets things exactly right. There is an inherent conservatism to the material culture of totalitarian regimes, both because of economic stagnation (think of the Soviet Union, or for a more extreme version, Cuba), and because of the regime's suppression of the novelty and innovation characteristic of the material culture of liberal democracies. One shouldn't expect a 1962 America ruled by the Axis powers to look like it came from an episode of Mad Men.

Space: 1999

The writing on this show is pretty poor, but there is some great Mid-Century modern design visible in its costumes and sets. Plus the music and intro sequence is very . . . scifi funky.

The Evolution of an SF Archetype

1. C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith;

2. George Lucas' Han Solo;

3. Joss Whedon's Malcolm Reynolds.

Links

1. Sports pundits perform worse than a coin flip, and the more successful one's are more confident without being more correct in their predictions. 

2. The Soviet-era commercials of Harry Egipt. 

3. The Norwegian slow-tv movement, as exemplified by a world-record breaking 30 hour continuous interview with crime novelist Hans Olav Lahlum.

4. Join Wall Street to save the world?

5. "Yukio Ohyama has devoted his entire life to photographing Mt. Fuji."

6. The art of book-stacking in Japanese book stores.

7. Ask the Past: advice from old books.

8. New York Times review of Joss Whedon's adaptation of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing"; filmed on a shoestring, it is allegedly a superior effort to Whedon's blockbuster "The Avengers". 

9. Excel spreadsheet artist.

10. The NSA and CIA have been running tests using Watson to sift through the massive reams of communications data which they have been secretly collecting.

11. Erotic goat sculpture from Pompeii.

12. The new field of behavioral epigenetics; it may be possible to inherit traits acquired by one's parents during their life.

Progressives' Truck with Trek

Matt Yglesias has written a fine essay on the many incarnations of Star Trek, including a celebratory discussion of its implict (or should that be blatantly explicit?) progressive ideology, with a concluding plea for a new series.

I agree with Yglesias' interpretation of Trek ideology, though I do not join in fist-pumping such a utopian statism. Also, I could do without another series. Yet the importance/impact of the franchise is undeniable.