Ranking the seasons: Dexter

The fifth installment of Showtime’s serial killer saga, “Dexter”, delivered the highest ratings yet, and the show was already the most watched in network history, so we can probably assume the series will go as long as star Michael C. Hall remains interested.  (Fun fact: Hall’s marriage to co-star Jennifer Carpenter [AKA Dexter's sister Deb] is apparently headed for divorce, which could add some extra tension to the set as both will be back next year.)  But, ratings aside, how did this season stack up to the rest on a scale of 1 to awesome? Let’s rank them shits.

1. Season One
Primary Season Long Arc: The Ice Truck Killer
Dexter’s Love Interest: Rita
Deb’s Love Interest: Rudy
The Gist: “Tonight’s the night.” The bright colors of Miami  juxtapose with the detached, sardonic voice over – the Dexter deadpan.  Enter Dexter Morgan – blood spatter forensics expert by day, blood spattering serial killer by night.  He’s cleaning up the streets of Florida the old fashioned way – by dumping garbage bags full of the mutilated bodies of criminals into the Atlantic.  The clash of styles between the emotionless Dexter and the flair of Miami’s culture – from loud music to loud shirts – were still new and exciting in the first season.   These style elements eventually became routine, but what really cements the debut season as a clear number 1 was a plot that was mysterious not only on the surface level of the twists and turns of the Ice Truck Killer case, but in terms of digging into Dexter’s past and uncovering something that fundamentally changes his interpretation of his own identity.  It was almost an origin story that pieced itself together in flashbacks over the course of the season. The writers would try to repeat this in future seasons but would ultimately fail to satisfy.

2. Season Four
Primary Season Long Arc: The Trinity Killer
Dexter’s Love Interest: Rita (married)
Deb’s Love Interest: Anton and Lundy
The Gist: Dexter’s 4th installment is best known for the shock of the season’s cliffhanger ending – Dexter returning home to find his wife, Rita, murdered in the bathtub.  The season also had another shocking death earlier in the year as Agent Lundy is shot and killed in the middle of a conversation with Deb.  It’s probably those dramatic exits of 2 longtime characters that push this season just above the rest of the pack, but John Lithgow made a decent serial killer in his guest stint as well.

3. Season Three
Primary Season Long Arc: DA Miguel Prado gets hands on with some perps
Dexter’s Love Interest: Rita (engaged)
Deb’s Love Interest: Anton
The Gist: The 3rd season is nuts.  Somehow Dexter becomes a serial killing mentor to district attorney Miguel Prado, played by Jimmy Smits.  Despite the goofiness of the DA/serial killer tandem-ing, I actually liked Smits.  Eventually, though, the conflict that arises between him and Dexter gets a little melodramatic and seems to drag on for too long before it finally resolves itself in a completely predictable fashion.  A lot of the side stories really started to get annoying this year, too – like Deb banging the partially skinned club musician,  Anton (David Ramsey).  During those scenes I was hoping Miguel and Dexter would burst into my actual house and put me out of my misery.

4. Season Five
Primary Season Long Arc: Jordan Chase and friends
Dexter’s Love Interest: Lumen
Deb’s Love Interest: Quinn
The Gist: When I first heard that Julia Stiles was going to guest star on Dexter’s 5th season, I said: “The bad news is that Julia Stiles is guest starring on Dexter next season.  The good news is that Dexter will murder her. “ More bad news:  He didn’t!  Instead he had sexual relations with her several times and helped her overcome a lot of her PTSD issues through the healing power of stab-murdering a bunch of bad guys.  At this point some of the show’s staple elements are really starting to fall flat.  Dexter’s conversations with imaginary (and/or ghost) Harry have progressed from interesting in season 1 to not so interesting in season 3 and 4 to actually pretty annoying in season 5, for one example.

5. Season Two
Primary Season Long Arc: The Bay Harbor Butcher
Dexter’s Love Interest: Rita and Lila
Deb’s Love Interest: Agent Lundy
The Gist: Dexter’s bags of bodies are discovered and the heat is on. Everyone is looking for the Bay Harbor Butcher, including the FBI. Dexter also starts going to alocholics anonymous type meetings where he explores the idea of his “dark passenger” and befriends a crazy person with a ridiculous East End accent named Lila.  Dexter wastes little time as he and Lila really hit it off, by which I mean Lila takes her clothes off and Dexter hits it.  Later he kills her.  Also, she was super annoying, and that’s the sole reason this season ranks last.

Top 20 Movies of the Decade (2000-2009)

After waiting a year (almost) for the movies of 2000-2009 to fully sink in, we’re finally prepared to unleash our best of the decade list. Hold on to your butts.

20. Memento – The infamous “backwards movie” that really launched Christopher Nolan’s career (The Dark Knight, The Prestige, Inception). Nolan packs enough action into his movies to satisfy most everyone, but at the root of his best movies are unique story/narrative concepts that are fully developed and realized via complex plots. Hard to believe that some thought of him as a “gimmick” movie maker when Memento first came out.

19.  Cloverfield – A documentary style horror movie, effectively crossing Godzilla with The Blair Witch Project. Maybe not completely beloved by critics, but beloved by me. Cloverfield‘s faithfulness to its point of view gives the unfolding horrors a sense of realism that heightens their impact.

18. Nine Lives – Nine loosely connected, interwoven vignettes, written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, son of famed Latin American author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

17. Dogville – Lars Von Trier’s controversial 2003 movie starring Nicole Kidman and set on a stage with no props, backdrops, or scenery. Very dark.

16. Adaptation – Charlie Kaufman and his fictional twin, Donald, attempt to adapt Susan Orlean’s  The Orchid Thief.

15. The King of Kong – This documentary tells the story of the all-time Donkey Kong arcade game record, which is surprisingly dramatic. There’s sabotage, conspiracy, and an antagonist so villainous, you wouldn’t believe it if it wasn’t real. Plus a lot of hilarious nerds.

14. O Brother, Where Art Thou? – The Coen Brothers teamed up with George Clooney to make a Depression-era retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

13. The Man Who Wasn’t There – Billy Bob Thornton stars in this barber shop Noir. My favorite Coen Brothers movie of the decade, even if it’s not the most critically acclaimed.

12. Brick – This is what happens when you view a high school drama through a Noir lens.

11. The Descent – A horror movie that rises to the challenge of having an actual story with real characters, while remaining truly scary. (Side note: In seventh grade, I made it to the southwest semifinal spelling bee for my state, and I got out on my first word. Descent. Ever since, the word has terrified me.)

10. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – Charlie Kaufman’s “what if we could pay to erase our bad memories?” movie, starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet.

9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – Peter Jackson’s fantasy trilogy is probably the best execution ever in this genre.

8. Let the Right One In – Swedish vampire movie that on the surface sounds similar to the plot of something like Twilight, but in reality works as a totally unique, quirky horror movie.

7. Inglourious Basterds – Most critics prefer the Kill Bill movies, but despite many openly sophomoric elements, Basterds struck me as Tarantino’s most mature movie, and it’s my favorite of his from this decade, and maybe my favorite over all.

6. A Tale of Two Sisters – This Korean horror movie combines a “what the hell is going on” plot with a variety of creepy visuals.  It has stuck with me for about 7 years.  (It also was remade into the horrible American horror movie “The Uninvited“.)

5. Shotgun Stories – A blood feud erupts between two families in a rural Arkansas town, and it’s not long before both sides go too far.

4. Amelie – A French story about an eccentric girl and her first secret adventures after a childhood of isolation.

3. The Station Agent – A lonesome dwarf inherits an old train station building in rural New Jersey and befriends some of the locals.

2. The Best of Youth – Originally made for Italian TV, this 6 hour mini-series/movie tells the story of 2 brothers, covering from their high school years up through adulthood.

1. Grizzly Man – The life and death of Timothy Treadwell – the guy who voluntarily lived among the bears in the wild of Alaska for months at a time – filmed by Treadwell himself and pieced together into a documentary by Werner Herzog after Treadwell’s death.  I watched this over 5 years ago and still think about it a lot. It didn’t win the Oscar, in fact it wasn’t even nominated, but it’s number 1 in our book.

Documentary December – Last Train Home

In many ways, life in China is almost incomprehensible to the average American. Lixin Fan’s documentary, Last Train Home, gives us a glimpse, a sometimes disturbing one, of life in China through the lens of one family of migrant workers.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 86 minutes

Directed by: Lixin Fan

Starring: Zhang Changhua, Chen Suqin, Qin Zhang

Theatrical Release: 09/5/10

DVD Release: 2/22/11

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $272,556

Metacritic Score: 86/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 100%

The movie opens with a shot panning across an endless crowd of people – I’d guess in the six figure range – standing outside of a train station in the rain. Every year 130 million migrant workers head home for the Chinese New Year, which, we’re told via text on the screen, is the largest human migration in the world. The subjects of the film, Zhang Changhua and Chen Suqin, have been making this annual trek for roughly 20 years – starting when they were just 16 years old and dropped out of school to find work, a decision which they not only regret but seems to consume them – even after 20 years, they bring it up constantly. The couple spends the rest of the year living in a tiny bunk down the hall from the factory where they sew jeans and other garments to be shipped to the Western world.

They arrive home at the family farm to spend time with their 16 year old daughter, 10 year old son and the grandmother that is raising the children with the financial help of the factory money. Their visit is awkward. Spending around 51 weeks a year away at work, they don’t know their own kids very well. Their daughter, Qin, is openly angry at her parents and rebellious. Ironically, and against all the parental advice she’s ever received, Qin drops out and gets a factory job similar to that of her parents. Her parents are confused and upset by her decision. Her mother says, “I’d rather work even harder than have Qin work.”

While there are many differences from American life to be seen, in some ways the similarities are more striking. The first words out of Qin’s younger brother’s mouth when his parents show him the cell phone they bought Qin are, “Does it have games?” During an argument with her mother, Qin says, “I don’t care what you say.” Teen angst and rebellion, it appears, are universal.

If the most important thing in someone’s life is spending time with the people they care about, the economic situation in China has removed this aspect of life almost completely. Last Train Home doesn’t beat this idea over your head, but by the end you realize that’s what it’s all about.

Handmade Awesomeness – How to Make a Reusable Grocery Bag

Documentary December – Exit Through the Gift Shop

There’s a lot of speculation regarding how true the events portrayed in the Banksy documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, actually are. After considering it a while, I’ve decided that I have no goddamn idea. But let’s start at the beginning.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 86 minutes

Directed by: Banksy, Shepard Fairy

Starring: Thierry Guetta, Banksy, Shepard Fairy

Theatrical Release: 04/16/10

DVD Release: 12/14/10

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $3.29 million

Metacritic Score: 85/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 97%

Exit Through the Gift Shop tells the story of Thierry Guetta and the eight years he spent relentlessly shooting footage for his great street art documentary, Life Remote Control. Thierry begins filming his cousin, whom goes by the moniker Space Invader, as his graffiti deals exclusively with the imagery of the ancient video game of the same name. Almost instantly upon shooting Space Invader in action, Thierry is obsessed. He quickly branches out from there, slowly but surely meeting and filming the biggest artists in street art including arguably the biggest name, Banksy, whom is shown only in shadow. Thierry travels the world, filming the hijinks. He scales buildings side by side with the graffiti artists he films and tightropes the peaks of steep rooftops to get the perfect shot. The artists respect his enthusiasm and fearlessness and not only let Thierry shoot them freely but befriend him in the process.

It’s not until much later – approximately 6 or 7 years, in fact – that they realize he is in no way a legitimate filmmaker. He is just a guy that compulsively films everything around him, never bothering to watch the boxes and boxes of tapes lining the walls of his residence. (As Banksy describes it, “I realized Thierry was not a filmmaker but a guy with mental problems.”)

This is where the reality of the events begin to come into question. At Banksy’s insistence, Thierry does attempt to edit together a movie out of his countless hours of footage. We are shown a couple of clips of the final product, which are essentially micro-fragments of nonsense strung together. No shot is over 1 or 2 seconds, nor do they relate to clips before or after them. Totally incoherent.

It’s at this point that Banksy takes over the project and Thierry takes on the street art name Mr. Brainwash and sets out to make a name for himself. The idea that the latter is a hoax has been put forth many times, and I really can’t say. I don’t want to ruin the ending of the movie by giving a lot of details, but I’ll say that the whole thing is almost too clever to be completely true and all of the facts represented accurate.

In any case, Exit Through the Gift Shop is an entertaining movie. It isn’t really the definitive street art documentary that Thierry may or may not have ever intended it to be, though if there’s a hoax involved it does make a fitting piece in Banksy’s collection. Thierry is an interesting character, however much fact or fiction he truly is.

Documentary December – Winnebago Man

Jack Rebney is the Winnebago Man – an oddly eloquent yet obscenity laced orator that rose to Youtube fame for the outtakes of an early 1980′s Winnebago promotional video that featured him losing his shit repeatedly and swearing up a damn storm. (My personal favorite quote is “My mind is just a piece of shit this morning.”) As a truly eccentric character – he has lived in the woods alone for the past 15 years – with a flair for hilarious dialogue, he is a kickass subject for a documentary. Director Ben Steinbauer, however, took this great subject and made a merely OK documentary.

First of all, take a look at the original video:

The movie begins with Steinbauer following in the footsteps of “throw it together” documentary filmmakers like Nick Broomfield that essentially make a movie about themselves trying to make a movie. They run down leads and try to get interviews. The narrative follows the filmmaker’s journey rather than the subject’s journey, and the story is told to the audience by the director via lots of voice over rather than letting the footage show us the subject and their story. In this case, Steinbauer talks about his personal history with the Winnebago Man video, which actually dates back to the pre-Youtube era of funny videos being spread via hand copied VHS tapes. He then details his early efforts in finding Rebney and setting up an interview with him. In an already very short movie (less than 90 minutes), this is fluff, and there’s an annoying “golly gee, funny videos make everyone happy” quality to the early voice over segments to make it a little worse.

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 85 minutes

Directed by: Ben Steinbauer

Starring: Jack Rebney

Theatrical Release: 07/09/10

DVD Release: 11/02/10

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: $181K

Metacritic Score: 71/100

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 91%

As the film progresses, we meet Rebney and he’s exactly the same guy we’ve seen on youtube – sure, he’s older, in his mid to late 70′s, but just as intense, quick-witted and foul-mouthed as he was that day in the Winnebago 20 odd years ago. And here’s the film’s real flaw – we ultimately don’t see a ton of footage of Rebney just being himself. Steinbauer fights with him about talking about his childhood and opening up to people, which Rebney has no interest in. Rebney is extremely skeptical of Youtube and his so-called fanbase, whom he misunderstands and assumes to be laughing at him rather than being amused by his turns of filthy phrase.

Rebney’s dream is to write books about politics and philosophy. He agrees to work on Steinbauer’s project merely for the chance to spread his ideas. Winnebago Man reveals almost none of the content of his message and all the footage is condensed into showing him being defensive about “opening up to people.” Without revealing the ending, the “opening up” storyline does pay off in a satisfying way, and I did feel like Rebney was changed by the experience of making this documentary. Still, I wanted to know Rebney better, not in a superficial “what was your childhood like?” way, but in an adult “what are you genuinely passionate about today?” way. Instead I got a Rebney reduced to a hermit caricature to fit Steinbauer’s sappy ode to the power of funny videos. Golly gee, that’s swell.

Documentary December – The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

It’s the Appalachian equivalent of Jersey Shore.  The opening minutes of Julien Nitzberg’s documentary, “The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia“, give a rapid fire family history of the film’s subject, the White family of Boone County, West Virginia.  A gun shot sound effect punctuates.  The patriarch, D. Ray White, was a clog/tap dancer, growing famous both for his unique performances as well as his outlaw lifestyle that ultimately resulted in him getting shot and killed.  His sons attempted to follow in his footsteps, perhaps finding more success in terms of achieving the outlaw lifestyle than anything else. One died a violent death at a young age, one fled the area to keep out of trouble, and the most famous, Jesco White, has brain damage from “ten long years of huffing gasoline.”  He isn’t sure if the damage is on the left or right side of his brain, but does recall the doctor saying that in essence he has a hole in his brain where the remaining tissue is like cigarette ash.  (Jesco is the subject of a 1991 PBS documentary called “Dancing Outlaw” which we plan to review later in the month.)

TV Casualties Rating: out of 5

Run Time: 84 minutes

Directed by: Julien Nitzberg

Starring: Jesco White, Hank Williams III

Theatrical Release: 05/05/2010

DVD Release: 10/26/2010

Production Budget: N/A

Domestic Gross: N/A

Metacritic Score: N/A

Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 50%

In many ways, this super quick opening summary is the most compelling part of the film.  The outlaw life and death is dramatic and intriguing from a distance.  It all gets uglier upon closer examination.

After the shock of the family’s violent history, Nitzberg moves into the day to day life of the Whites, which is an all you can eat, smoke and snort buffet of prescription drugs, whiskey and weed. We watch a new mother chop and snort oxycontin off the hospital room end table a few hours after giving birth.  We see two 50-60 year olds blow smoke in their 85 year old mother’s face during her birthday party.  We meet a lot of family members that talk way slower than Tommy Chong.

The Whites have a histrionic streak about as wide as the New River Valley Gorge.  Family members trade off bragging about using and selling drugs or committing acts of violence.  They take an enormous amount of pride in their fame and the attention they get for being so dysfunctional.  The infamy and death are glorified as much as possible.

But generations of this lifestyle lead to a value system that a normal person can’t really comprehend until they watch this.  Drugs and violence have been such a part of the Whites lives now for so long that they have no real sense of the negative effects they can have, even in the case of guarding their kids from them.  There are scenes of one of the 5 or 6 year old kids drinking 6 or 7 cans of Pepsi and bouncing off the walls.  How many years until it’s something more serious? In later scenes, the same child threatens to murder his estranged father. His aunt’s response is something along the lines of, “You wanna go to jail? Don’t say that kinda stuff on camera.”

In the end, there isn’t really a single clear cut good guy among The White clan.  Jesco may be the most articulate and charming, which is insane considering his aforementioned brain issues.  The family is fascinating on a certain level, but there is ultimately no real substance to their story.  The violence of a train wreck is visceral and thrilling, but the aftermath, the reality, is no fun.

Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones