Little Screen – Big Dramas

Many of the great TV dramas have come from Great Britain. There are exceptions — “The Wire,” for example.  Even some made in the U.S.A. classics are Mother country inspired.  One of those is “House of Cards.”  If you haven’t seen the British original, please do.  It is well worth the time.  It is British in the best senses of the word. Smart. Funny.  Droll.  Discreetly nasty. However that does not diminish the expertise of the very American adaptation, which steals the premise and some of the original’s theatrical devices, but gets the behind the scenes, sausage-making aspects of Washington D.C. all too well.  The American version is darker and perhaps grittier. 

Kevin Spacey As President Underwood

All three seasons are available from Netflix, the result of a successful and mimicked experiment whereby content deliverers produce their own content.  Actor Kevin Spacey is the prime player as an amoral, ambitious politician.  It is difficult to imagine anyone else in the role.  He is matched well with on-screen-wife and partner in crime Robin Wright. One wonders — and I’m sure there are those who don’t wonder at all — if this isn’t meant to be the Clintons. The events, however, seem psychically current. In the third season President Underwood must confront a bullying thug of a Russian leader who is remarkably Putinesque. The plots and cliff-hanging subplots keep us binging. David Fincher is likely the strongest-behind the scenes presence in the American version. The original was based on the novel by Michael Dobbs.

Felicity Huffman As Victim's Mother In American Crime

No doubt spurred by cable channels producing must-see TV (“Shameless,” “Breaking Bad,” “True Detective”) the networks popped out of their coma.  “American Crime” is the result of ABC deciding quality and originality might be marketable concepts. Timothy Hutton portrays a father whose life has been beaten into near submission, and Felicity Huffman plays his ex-wife, inconsolably unhappy and unbendingly angry that life refuses to live up to her convictions. Performances from the two veterans are top–notch as are those of the supporting cast, though their presence is brief in the first episode. The premiere set the tone for what appears to be an exploration of race and class in America through the drama set up by a horrendous crime in Modesto.  John Ridley, best known for writing 12 years A Slave, created the series, which is, so far, excellent. Tonight is episode 2.

“House of Cards” delivers and “American Crime” promises to deliver what most TV shows can’t or won’t — theater for the small screen that embraces big ideas and wide screen vision. And as we supersize our home screens, the difference is becoming negligible.

Film Pairings — Two Thrillers From Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski

The director of, Knife in the Water, Repulsion, Chinatown and Rosemary’s Baby is no stranger to horror in the cinematic world or the real one.  He was an all too young witness to the Nazi invasion of his native Poland. In the late ‘30s, his parents were taken to concentration camps. His father managed to survive.  His mother didn’t.  She perished in Auschwitz.  In 1969, Polanski’s wife, actress Sharon Tate, and some of her friends were violently slain by Charles Manson’s “family” and, for years now the director has been dogged by U.S. authorities and the international press for an alleged molestation of an underage model in 1977.  Today, at 81, Polanski rarely leaves France or Poland for fear of extradition to the U.S. where he would likely face incarceration.  While in exile, he continued to make movies.  One of them, The Pianist, brought Polanski another Academy Award, one he could not accept personally without risking arrest. The two movies below are not necessarily his greatest work perhaps, but great work nonetheless. They make for a night of intelligent crime films.

From Frantic

Frantic – A physician and his wife visit Paris for a medical conference. When they get to the hotel, they discover she has the wrong suitcase. While he showers, she steps out to replace some items in her lost luggage.  She doesn’t return. Harrison Ford, as the good doctor, gets a cold shoulder from the French police who believe she is not missing, but that there is trouble in the doctor’s marriage. Without knowing the language, or the city Ford strikes out on his own and finds himself in the middle of a smuggling ring with international security implications as well as in the crossfire between Arab and Israeli agents vying for the smuggled item.  Released in 1988, the thriller holds up as well as any Hitchcock film, perhaps better.  One of my favorites. Spending part of the evening in Paris is a bonus.

From Ghost Writer

Ghost Writer – Also a thriller, this 2010 Polanski film is more mental suspense than physical and alludes not so subtly to real life politicos (Tony Blair and Condoleezza Rice, for example). Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, Kim Cattrall and Eli Wallach are part of the fine cast in this award winning film based on the novel The Ghost by Robert Harris. McGregor is a ghostwriter helping a former British prime minister complete his memoirs. But the writer digs in a little too deep. Torture, anyone? Other war crimes perhaps?  Conservative Brits were outraged by the film. But that wasn’t the only event connected to the film’s release. Polanski was arrested by the Swiss while he was en route to an award ceremony in Berlin. The arrest was requested by U.S. authorities allegedly because of the previous molestation charges.

For the evening’s libations, perhaps Pernod or Absinthe (it’s now legally sold in the U.S.)  For those not imbibing in spirits, there is nothing wrong with Pellegrino. I know that’s Italian, but it’s better than Perrier and this is a Eurozone evening.