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Gift Book Reviews: THE MAKING OF GONE WITH THE WIND and STYLING THE STARS

Every year for Shelf Awareness for Readers, I review a couple of coffee-table books for the holidays. I received two beautiful ones this year that I think movie lovers on your gift list would appreciate. I really did watch Gone with the Wind again after reading all the behind-the-scenes stories.

These reviews originally appeared in Shelf Awareness and are republished here with permission.

The Making of Gone with the Wind by Steve Wilson

Commemorating the 75th anniversary of the film adaptation of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, this gorgeous treasure trove by Steve Wilson showcases more than 600 items from producer David O. Selznick’s archives.

These items, also on exhibit at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin (where Wilson is curator of the film collection), include storyboards, costume sketches, stills from the screen tests of the top contenders for Scarlett O’Hara, on-set photos, and confidential memos from the creative minds behind the movie.

Among the most fascinating artifacts is the seven-page edict from the Hays Office (Hollywood’s censors), with notes about which elements were objectionable (e.g., painful childbirth, use of the N word by “white people”) and needed to be toned down or eliminated. Fans of the classic film will see it again with new eyes after reading this book, and those who haven’t experienced it will want to settle in for a viewing.

Amazon | IndieBound

Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures from the Twentieth Century Fox Archive by Angela Cartwright and Tom McLaren

Angela Cartwright, who played Brigitta von Trapp in The Sound of Music, grew up on movie sets and was fascinated by the way actors transformed into their characters. She and coauthor Tom McLaren delved into the Twentieth Century Fox archives and found negatives of long-forgotten continuity photos from movies made from the late 1920s to the early 1970s.

Continuity photos are taken on sets to document the makeup, hairstyle and wardrobe of every actor in every scene so that the looks can be recreated at a later time. Because the shots in Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures from the Twentieth Century Fox Archive are not publicity stills, the actors are more unguarded than carefully posed. Marlon Brando smiles with sand and fake blood on his face, and Doris Day pretends to be grumpy in a robe and pajamas. The book also covers little-known facts (Olivia de Havilland had to wear her own clothes in Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte). Classic-movie lovers will enjoy these glimpses of stars in the process of creating some of their iconic roles.

Amazon | IndieBound

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Nerdy Special List 2014 Favorites Edition

Hope you’re enjoying the season and not getting stressed out by all the things you have to do to be ready for the holidays. I live in denial and then do everything the night before people visit, and by “everything” I mean hide all my clutter in the hall closet and string DO NOT CROSS crime-scene tape across the door.

One thing I like doing at the end of the year is to reflect on my top reads. My personal list will go up later; this one consists of favorites from my contributors to the Nerdy Special List.

This month, I’d like to welcome a new blogger to the NSL, Lauren from Malcolm Avenue Review. Lauren is a discerning, insightful, witty reviewer—visit her site to see for yourself. I am lucky to have her on board.

I asked each blogger to recommend an outstanding book from this year. Here’s what they said.

Jen from Jen’s Book Thoughts:

Wait for Signs by Craig Johnson
Each year at the holidays, Craig Johnson has sent out a short story to his mailing list as a gift. In addition, a couple others have been released as e-books between his yearly novel publications. This year, all of those short stories plus one brand new story—twelve tales in total—were brought together in the collection Wait for Signs.

For longtime fans of the series, or someone who has *gulp* never read Craig Johnson’s work, this is a prize little collection. All the humor, incredible characters, and sense of place are present in little snippets of Absaroka life. Fans of the series will learn more about Walt’s life to complement what you know about the beloved sheriff from the novels. Those who know nothing about the Walt Longmire books will get a taste for Johnson’s style and the world he’s created in his mega-popular series.

While this is a great book to read in short bursts, if you’re like me, you’ll sit down to read one or two and end up reading the whole thing. But that’s OK, because these stories are keepers and worth reading over and over. I think it’s going to become a holiday tradition with me. As a side note, there is also a wonderful audiobook version of this collection from Recorded Books, read by the series narrator, George Guidall.

Erin from In Real Life:

The Wolf in Winter by John Connolly

John Connolly peels back the idyllic veneer of fictional town Prosperous, Maine, to reveal a darkness forged in history and cultivated through the evil that dwells in the human heart. The death of a homeless man and his daughter’s disappearance leads private investigator Charlie Parker (and his motley band of helpers) to Prosperous, where the town’s leaders—those who guard its secrets—will go to any length to protect what they treasure.

While Charlie Parker is as flawed a hero as has ever been committed to the page and is beset with enough tragedy to make a weaker man crumble, he continues to persevere, driven by forces of this world and beyond it. In The Wolf in Winter, Connolly also addresses numerous modern American social issues, presenting the results of pervasive attitudes and common actions in the most dramatic light possible. The result is a story that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.

Lauren from Malcolm Avenue Review:

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

The author became preoccupied with death at the age of 8 after witnessing a horrific accident. Years later, a young and somewhat aimless Doughty took a job running the cremation machines (“retorts”) at a Northern California funeral home. Smoke Gets In Your Eyes is Doughty’s detailed account of that job and how it impacted her views on and relationship with death and dying. Ultimately, Doughty continued her education in mortuary science, not to take it on as her profession per se, but in an attempt to understand and bring change to the way Americans have come to deal with (i.e., shield ourselves from) death and death practices. Whip-smart, wickedly funny, and a natural storyteller, Doughty turns what could be a dry and morbid tale into a fascinating and enlightening must-read.

Note: To those who think the subject matter may be too gruesome, this book is for you. Why we’ve come to see the process of dying as something grotesque and to be avoided at all costs, all while getting further astray from “natural” death with our practices of embalming and makeup and yes, even cremation, is at the heart of this story. Also, never fear—although the book gets specific about body preparation and cremation, there was only one total grossout scene.

From PCN:

A stage actor drops dead during a production of King Lear. Hours after that, the world begins to end. A virus called the Georgia Flu, which makes Ebola look like a 24-hour bug, spreads quickly and wipes out most of Earth’s population within days. The story jumps back and forth in time, including to fifteen years after this event, to show how the fates of five central characters are intertwined.

Emily St. John Mandel’s National Book Award finalist is a moving meditation on love, life, and the value of art in a world where everything is in ruins. How hard do you fight for art when it’s a struggle to find food and drinking water? The subtlety in the writing is what makes this novel so heart-aching; Mandel doesn’t overexplain or manipulate, allowing readers to fill in the horror and grief the characters experience. Don’t be put off by the dystopian or sci-fi label if you’re not a fan of either genre. Read this if you just like beautiful language that soars and a story that haunts you.

This year, Penguin Random House will donate a book to Save the Children for every book you give (up to 25,000). All you have to do is post on Facebook or Twitter what book(s) you’ll be giving, accompanied by the #giveabook hashtag. I’d too like to hear which titles you plan on gifting so let me know in the comments. I’m always looking for good book suggestions!

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Movie Review: STILL ALICE

Based on Lisa Genova’s 2009 novel of the same name, Still Alice (limited release, Dec. 5) is about a college professor dealing with early onset Alzheimer’s. The film takes viewers along on the agonizing journey as the disease consumes Alice’s once brilliant mind.

In the book Alice is a psychology professor at Harvard, but in the movie, she’s a linguistics professor at Columbia. The change gives Alice’s plight an ironically cruel twist—after an impressive career as an expert on words, she has to struggle to come up with even simple ones.

Julianne Moore is sublime as Alice, deftly handling the transition from the confident professional woman to someone who has to “learn to lose.” Moore gives subtle cues to when Alice is having a lost moment—her eyes become blank or her face goes slack—and it’s even more moving when she tries to cover it up. Cowriters/-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland allow the tragedy to unfold without trying to milk it.

Alec Baldwin gives able support as Alice’s husband, but Kate Bosworth and Kristen Stewart are cold and lackluster, respectively, as Alice’s daughters. They both seem to love Alice but it’s not clear why the sisters aren’t kind to each other. Their sniping is tiresome. Stewart’s habit of constantly touching her hair and face is also distracting.

But Still Alice is Moore’s movie. The story might be a gut kicker but she’s captivating in every scene. Her performance is anything but forgettable.

Nerd verdict: Memorable Moore

Photo: Sony Pictures Classics

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Movie Review: INTO THE WOODS

The film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine musical Into the Woods (out December 25) is an example of how star power can be effective in drawing people to the cinema. I really wanted to see this movie because of the incredible cast, but I don’t normally like musicals and fell asleep when I saw the stage version many years ago, so take this review for whatever it’s worth.

The story is an intertwinement of the Grimm fairy tales about Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack and his beanstalk. There’s a wolf and a witch and a prince—two of them, in fact.

Tying them all together are a baker and his wife, who must reverse a curse that prevents them from having chilren. The witch makes them go into the woods to procure four items that would help her lift the curse. Lots of singing ensues.

As expected, Meryl Streep is well cast as the witch, bringing humor and a hint of humanity to the role. Johnny Depp’s wolf is appropriately lecherous and predatory and, yes, funny. Anyone who has seen Streep’s and Depp’s turns in Mamma Mia! and Sweeney Todd, respectively, know they can carry a tune.

The revelation is Emily Blunt, who follows her impressive turn as the badass heroine of this summer’s Edge of Tomorrow with another performance unlike anything we’ve seen her do. Her baker’s wife is the most riveting character, sensual without effort, and her singing voice is clear and pure.

More problematic was Chris Pine’s performance as Cinderella’s prince. When he started his first number, “Agony,” I was mortified because he was so cheesy and melodramatic. I thought, “Why didn’t [director] Rob Marshall tell him to tone it down?!” Halfway through the number, I realized Pine was intentionally lampooning the concept of Prince Charming.

Once I understood that, Pine’s performance became very funny, but the issue remains that his scenes are tonally incongruous with the rest of the movie. The other actors play it straight and earnest, including Anna Kendrick as Cinderella talking to birds. It can be argued that Streep’s and Depp’s performances are over the top, too, but witches and wolves are hardly subtle creatures and these two are simply in character. Pine’s portrayal is a parody, something you’d expect to see on Saturday Night Live.

A friend who also saw Woods this weekend told me afterward that the princes are written and played that way in the stage version, too (I don’t remember; I saw it a long time ago and, as mentioned, I fell asleep). She thought Pine was spot on. My friend continued to say, however, that the original production contained more comedy than the movie, so perhaps I wouldn’t have found the princes’ goofy scenes so jarring in tone if the movie were funnier overall.

It is mostly faithful to its roots, for better or worse. It’s too long; whole numbers and scenes could’ve been cut without the storyline being affected. Several threads are introduced and then left dangling. But the movie has its moments, and some of the performances might be worth a trip into the theater.

Nerd verdict: Uneven but diverting trek Into the Woods

Photos: Walt Disney Studios

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My Life According to Books 2014

Happy Friday after Thanksgiving! If you celebrated it, I hope you had a wonderful time.

Since holidays include fun and games, this is a good time to post the annual meme in which I post a few sentence starters and you complete it with the titles of books you read earlier in the year. The books could’ve been published at anytime.

I first saw this meme in 2009 at Reactions to Reading and since then have kept it going with my own sentence starters. This year, the illustrious Jen of Jen’s Book Thoughts contributed half the sentence prompts (numbers 6-10 are hers).

My answers are below. If you want to play, either post your answers in the comments or on your own blog and then leave a link in the comments. I love seeing everyone’s answers!

1. Black Friday makes me: Beware Beware (Steph Cha)

2. If you post racist comments on Facebook, I: Want You Dead (Peter James)

3. In my ID photo, I look like: Werewolf Cop (Andrew Klavan)

4. If someone interrupts my reading, I: (give him/her) One Kick (Chelsea Cain) Without Warning (David Rosenfelt)

5. When I read/watch the news, I: (feel) The Furies (Natalie Haynes)

6. The last time I visited the zoo, I: (was) Watching You (Michael Robotham)

7. If I were a Supreme Court justice, I would: (help) The Forsaken (Ace Atkins)

8. Absolutely nothing compares to: You (Caroline Kepnes)

9. Best advice my mom gave me was: (avoid) Love Story, with Murders (Harry Bingham)

10. My hope for 2015 is: (I’ll experience) The Wonder of All Things (Jason Mott)

Now it’s your turn. Have fun!

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Movie Review: WILD

Cheryl Strayed’s blockbuster memoir Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail comes to the screen December 3 (in limited release), with Reese Witherspoon playing Strayed as she hikes over a thousand miles of the PCT after her mother died and her marriage failed.

The movie begins when Strayed commences her journey and ends as she completes it, with flashbacks in between to show how she got to the point in her life where she wanted to tackle such a daunting challenge, without any hiking or camping experience.

Witherspoon sheds all makeup and rom-com perkiness to capture the essence of a woman who’s lost in more ways than one. She carries a weariness around that doesn’t just come from the gigantic pack on her back.

The actress also has to go further than she’s ever gone on screen to do some of the risqué and reckless things Strayed has done. No doubt Witherspoon is good in a role that’s different for her, but I’ll stop short of saying she blew me away.

The beauty of the movie for me, besides Yves Bélanger’s cinematography, is Laura Dern as Strayed’s mom, Bobbi. Dern made my heart ache every time she appeared on screen.

I didn’t read the book so I don’t know how Bobbi was depicted there, but Dern plays her as relentlessly optimistic even though life dealt her some lousy cards. Bobbi could find the bright side in the darkest places. It’s because she refused to cry for herself that sometimes reduced me to tears. Dern’s performance made it easy to understand why the loss of Bobbi could send Strayed into such despair.

Not a lot happens on the trail, but the story is more about the emotional journey than the physical one, and some of Strayed’s moments of discovery and catharsis are potent. When it comes to character studies, director Jean-Marc Vallée, who helped Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto win Oscars for Dallas Buyers Club, is the right tour guide.

Nerd verdict: Tame but well-acted Wild

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Movie Review: AMERICAN SNIPER

In one scene in American Sniper (out Christmas day), Navy SEAL Chris Kyle comes home from his first tour in Iraq. Though he’s sitting still and claims he’s fine, a doctor slaps a blood-pressure cuff on him and reads his blood pressure as 170/110.

If that doctor had put that cuff on me as I sat in the theater watching this movie, my blood-pressure reading probably would’ve been 500 over 499.

This movie is INTENSE.

Based on Kyle’s autobiography of the same title (cowritten with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice), Sniper details Kyle’s four tours in Iraq, where he earned the nickname Legend for racking up the most confirmed kills in U.S. military history. Between his SEAL training and deployments, he gets married and fathers two children. I won’t reveal any more if you don’t already know the rest of his story.

I expected some cockiness and showboating from Bradley Cooper as Kyle—how else to portray a man called Legend, right? Instead, a beefed-up Cooper gives a subtle but incredibly effective performance as a man haunted by his war experiences, though he might deny it to everyone including himself. The actor plays Kyle with the quiet confidence of a man who knows his own talent and doesn’t have to brag or lord it over anyone.

The most gripping moments included nothing but a closeup on Cooper’s eye, as Kyle contemplates—sometimes agonizes over—whether or not a target is friend or foe, and should live or die. His breathing would be the only sound we hear (I stopped breathing altogether in those scenes) as he makes these impossible decisions, sometimes within seconds. We see what it costs him. And when he sights down his rifle at a child? Forget it. I could not watch.

As his wife, Taya, Sienna Miller has chemistry with Cooper but not every emotional note she played felt true to me. I didn’t quite believe her when she expressed her frustration and fear every time Kyle went back to Iraq. It’s not clear if this is because of the way the role was written (Jason Hall adapted the book) or directed.

Otherwise, Eastwood’s lean direction is on target. He tells the story in a straightforward way; when you have facts like this there’s no need for embellishment. The soundtrack is also sparse because war doesn’t require a fancy score.

At times, Sniper reminded me of The Hurt Locker, which is also about a soldier in the Iraq War who’s very good at his job but maybe not so much at just living a civilian life. But Chris Kyle’s story is real, and like the bullets that flew from his rifle, its impact is devastating.

Nerd verdict: Heart-stopping Sniper

Photo: Warner Bros.

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Movie Review: THE IMITATION GAME

Awards season is in full swing in L.A. and I’ve been going to a lot of screenings. Tonight is Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper with Bradley Cooper as Chris Kyle and later this week is Into the Woods. Both movies will be released December 25. Check back for those reviews.

Today I’m talking about The Imitation Game (out November 28), based on Andrew Hodges’s book Alan Turing: The Enigma, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Turing, who’s widely regarded as the father of digital intelligence and the modern computer.

The film covers the period during World War II when Turing built a machine that cracked the Germans’ Enigma encryption, helping the Allies win the war and saving millions of lives. Turing and his colleagues were not allowed to talk about their work, and instead of being heralded a hero, Turing was prosecuted for indecency because he was gay.

Cumberbatch’s performance is top-notch. I wonder if he’s being pigeonholed as the go-to actor to play abrasive, antisocial geniuses, but here he has moments of vulnerability not seen in his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series or Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate.

Even more heartrending is Alex Lawther, who plays the young Turing in flashbacks. Lawther has mastered the trick of displaying no expression on his face while showing clearly the emotional devastation that lies right beneath his skin.

The actors playing Turing’s fellow cryptanalysts, including Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke and Matthew Goode as Hugh Alexander, are all solid. Director Morten Tyldum, who had previously directed another screen adaptation of a book (Jo Nesbo’s crime novel Headhunters), manages to inject an element of suspense into a story mostly about people sitting around trying to crack a code. Game moves you and makes you feel smarter—the type of film Hollywood needs more of.

Nerd verdict: Smart Imitation

Photo: The Weinstein Company

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Book Review: DEADLINE by John Sandford

This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

As a favor for a friend, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers looks into multiple dognappings that have occurred in the small town of Trippton, where his friend lives. Someone is stealing the residents’ pets, and rumor has it the canines are being sold to medical labs.

Before Flowers can make much headway in the investigation, he also stumbles upon a meth lab and some school board members who have been stealing millions of dollars of school funds. When a local reporter comes close to exposing them, he’s murdered. Turns out it’s only the first murder in a string of them, as Virgil takes up where the reporter left off and the crooked board members resort to extreme means to cover up their corrupt activities.

There’s a lot going on in Deadline, John Sandford’s eighth Virgil Flowers outing (after 2013’s Storm Front). The biggest joys of this series are Flowers himself (his boss is Lucas Davenport from Sandford’s Prey novels), the cast of eccentric supporting characters, and the humorous dialogue. In one conversation, one of Flowers’s fellow BCA agents observes that since “half of all shoot-outs are inside buildings,” he’d get rich if he invented “office camo,” so “you’d look like a cabinet, or maybe a water cooler.” Readers familiar with Flowers’s profane nickname will appreciate the name he gives a new friend at the end, but the uninitiated can also enjoy this installment without having read the previous books.

Nerd verdict: Lively Deadline

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Nerdy Special List October 2014

We have books to recommend this month! So, just sit back with your cider and throw blanket and…oh, who am I kidding? I’m running the A/C right now because it’s hotter than Colin Firth in a Tom Ford suit around here. Hope it’s more fall-ish where you are.

Here are the October books my blogger friends and I found noteworthy.

From Jen at Jen’s Book Thoughts:

Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America by Linda Tirado (Putnam, October 2)

Linda Tirado made waves around the world when she responded to a question one night in an online forum. The question was “why do poor people do things that seem so self-destructive?” As a member of the working poor, she felt qualified to answer. Her response went viral and now she’s telling the world in a full-length book what it’s like to be living near or below the poverty line in the United States.

Tirado pulls no punches in this frank self-portrait. She debunks many myths and stereotypes about the poor, starting with the idea that they are ignorant and lazy. Tirado is extremely intelligent, caustically witty, and very hardworking. Entertaining and informative, Hand to Mouth is likely to make many readers look closely at their own preconceived notions about this ever-growing segment of our nation’s population.

Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (Spiegel & Grau, October 21)

Bryan Stevenson is the director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization in Montgomery, Alabama, that works to provide legal assistance to those who are most in need: poor death-row inmates, children, the mentally ill, etc. Just Mercy is a product of his work with EJI.

Written in the style of a fictional legal thriller, Stevenson tells the true story of Walter McMillian, a young black man wrongly sentenced to die in—of all places—Monroeville, Alabama, the childhood home of Harper Lee. As Stevenson unfolds McMillian’s tragic story, he also highlights other equally horrifying cases he’s encountered.

This is a moving tale, written with superb storytelling skills, about the injustice overwhelming the current American legal system. In the newest book from Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, Think Like a Freak, the authors advocate using story as a tool to convince people to change their views. Stevenson has done just that. Just Mercy is a riveting, suspenseful, emotional story readers won’t be able to walk away from without knowing our justice system is horribly and life-threateningly flawed.

From Rory at Fourth Street Review:

Brood by Chase Novak (Mulholland Books, October 7)

I’m happy to admit that I’m the type of person who looks forward to October every year—pumpkins, cooler weather, and ALL the scary books I can read. In this case, it’s the sequel to Chase Novak’s Breed, a disturbing and gruesome tale of a couple who go through great lengths to conceive their twins, Adam and Alice. Brood, the follow-up, is the story of the now adolescent children and what they must go through to live a moderately normal life.Reading this book is like giving yourself permission to tune out of the grim reality of the world. It’s fun, disturbing, and perfect for those looking for an autumnal read that’s not too scary. Brood is not for everyone (squeamish readers beware!), but for those looking for a lighter alternative to Stephen King, this is a good option.

From PCN:

Bestselling Japanese author Keigo Higashino’s latest mystery, Malice, is about a bestselling Japanese author who’s found murdered in his locked home office. Detective Kaga zeroes in on a suspect right away and the suspect surprisingly confesses without much coercion. But the confessed killer refuses to give a motive, and some of his story doesn’t align with the evidence, forcing Kaga to dig deeper to discover the truth. Malice is twisty and psychologically complex, and will keep you guessing about its dark secrets until almost the last page.

Which October books are you looking forward to?

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Movie Review: LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM

As I headed out to see Rory Kennedy’s latest documentary, I stuffed a few tissues in my pocket, preparing for a “sit and sob,” my term for moving cinematic experiences. I was correct about the sobbing, but I couldn’t have predicted the deep emotional impact of this film.

The title is self-explanatory. Last Days in Vietnam details the final evacuations of American military personnel before the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Well, they were supposed to be evacs of American military.

Many servicemen refused to leave behind their Vietnamese colleagues who had risked their lives to help Americans. These American soldiers decided to go against US policy and committed illegal acts to get their Vietnamese associates (and the associates’ families) out of Vietnam.

Whatever you think you know about those last days, you won’t know many of the stories told in this film. I was there during those days, my family and I were eyewitnesses to some of the events being recounted on screen, and we still didn’t know much of what Kennedy uncovered. That’s because a lot of the footage and photos have never been seen before, the films sitting undeveloped in a vault for almost 40 years before Kennedy unearthed them.

This docu is not political. It’s about humanity, people doing the right thing, commiting selfless actions at great risk to their own safety. And the film doesn’t just feature the American point of view (Henry Kissinger is one of the interviewees). It includes the Vietnamese perspective, allowing civilians to add their voices to the story.

The result is more suspenseful than many thrillers I’ve seen, more heartrending than Hollywood tearjerkers, with everyday people becoming real-life heroes in impossible situations. I wouldn’t have believed some of the stories if I hadn’t seen the photographic and videotaped evidence right there on screen. A woman throwing her baby out of a helo, hoping people on a US Navy ship below would catch her? For much of the film I was agape, wondering, “How much courage did that take? How did someone get that shot?”

If you have any interest in this part of history, or just in a real story about the worst of times bringing out the best in people, check out Last Days in Vietnam. It’ll have a limited run in select cities throughout October, with a handful of dates in November and December.

Cities include Los Angeles, DC, Nashville, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle. Visit the official website for a full listing. While there, you can also see interviews with Rory Kennedy on various programs, including Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show.

Nerd verdict: Immense Days

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Fall 2014 TV Shows I’ve Seen So Far, Pt. 1

Fall is officially here and so’s the fall network TV season. I enjoy sampling all the new shows, even if I end up faithfully watching only two of them. Below are my first impressions of shows that have premiered already or are available online.

A to Z (NBC, premieres Oct. 2, avail now here)

Ben Feldman and Cristin Milioti are appealing as a couple whose dating exploits are examined from A to Z. Andrew works at a dating site and believes Zelda is The One because he’s convinced she’s the girl he fell for from afar when he spotted her at a concert years ago. Zelda is a lawyer who’s a bit hesitant to buy into notions of fate, but decides to give a relationship with Andrew a go. Over the season, we’ll see how that works out.

Milioti, the mother from How I Met Your Mother, is charismatic while Feldman is attractive in a generic way; the latter description also applies to the pilot. Both stars have Broadway chops and neither has tendencies to be gratingly cute, but it remains to be seen whether or not the writers will make their courtship unique enough for viewers to keep tagging along.

Forever (ABC, Sept. 22)

Ioan Gruffudd stars as Dr. Henry Morgan, a medical examiner who has been alive for over 200 years and still hasn’t figured out the purpose of his immortality.

At the beginning of the pilot, he’s on a subway train that derails and everyone else in the car with him dies. When he does the autopsy on the train conductor, he finds the man was poisoned, and the police have a mass homicide on their hands.

The detective working most closely with Morgan is Jo Martinez (Alana De La Garza), who suspects something is off with Morgan but trusts him because he has Holmesian powers of deduction. She’s like a younger Sela Ward and Gruffudd exudes a combination of class and mischief that makes their chemistry…interesting.

Judd Hirsch plays the only person who knows Morgan’s secret, or so Morgan thinks until he gets sinister phone calls from someone who says he knows all about Morgan because the caller is also immortal. I don’t know if I’ll be eager to tune in to Forever every week, but Gruffudd’s charm does make me want to check it out again. (It premiered last night but another episode airs tonight.)

Gotham (FOX, Sept. 22)

Possibly the new show with the biggest marketing dollars behind it, Gotham was underwhelming, more style than substance. The muted colors and foggy streets suggest darkness, but no one is truly menacing.

The actors, from Donal Logue and Ben McKenzie as detective partners Harvey Bullock and (future commissioner) James Gordon, to Jada Pinkett Smith as junior mob boss Fish Mooney, all spit out lines in a cadence that’s probably meant to invoke classic gangster films but instead just seem affected. There are lots of pretty people in the show but no one makes a strong impression so far.

Since Batman will not appear—though the boy Bruce Wayne is present—I don’t think these secondary characters from Gotham City are arresting enough to hold my interest. Plus, once we’ve seen Michelle Pfeiffer play Catwoman to perfection, why do we need to see anyone else play a baby Selina Kyle?

Madam Secretary (CBS, Sept. 21)

Tea Leoni (who also produces) plays Elizabeth McCord, a former CIA analyst whom the president of the United States (Keith Carradine) asks to become Secretary of State when the current one’s plane goes down in the Atlantic. The president wants someone who “not only thinks outside the box, but someone who doesn’t even know there is a box.” (Can we please retire the tedious box metaphor already?)

I enjoyed seeing the scenes shot at my alma mater, the University of Virginia; Elizabeth and her husband Henry are professors there before she accepts the president’s offer and moves to DC. Leoni projects confidence and intelligence but also grit when Zeljko Ivanek’s Chief of Staff tries to put her in her place.

She has nice chemistry with Tim Daly as Henry and makes political speeches palatable. Leoni is just cool. When Ivanek’s character insists on Elizabeth getting a makeover, I thought, “Is he crazy? The woman’s gorgeous as is!”

The supporting cast is impressive, with standouts being Geoffrey Arend as Elizabeth’s speech writer and Erich Bergen as her assistant. Bebe Neuwirth is underused in the pilot. The show is not groundbreaking or edgy and probably won’t be must-see TV for me, but it’s good to see Leoni back on TV.

Selfie (ABC, premieres Sept. 30, avail now here)

John Cho and Karen Gillan star in a contemporary Pygmalion, with ad-executive Henry trying to rebrand shallow, social-media-addicted coworker Eliza as a lady with real-world manners.

Cho and Gillan are both better than their material; his comedic skills are wasted as the humorless Henry. Eliza is vapid and annoying in the pilot, coming across like one of those reality women whose first and last name start with K. It takes a talented actress like Gillan to not make Eliza a complete turnoff for viewers, to hint there’s a likable person underneath, but the notion that Henry would take her on as a project is still unconvincing.

The show gets props for casting an Asian actor as the lead opposite a Caucasian actress, something that’s never happened on network TV. I just wish it was a better vehicle for its stars.

Tune in later this week for my thoughts on more new shows. Have you checked out any? Found anything you like?

Photos: A to Z/NBC; Forever/ABC; Gotham/FOX; Madam Secretary/CBS; Selfie/ABC