Sarah Pavis

Idris Elba is my favorite actor that I’m currently watching in 3 different TV shows.

I’m making my way through HBO’s The Wire via Netflix (I’m on season 3, fwiw).  Yeah, it’s as awesome as everyone says it is.  Just some damn good characters and some honest story telling.  Idris plays Stringer Bell, a stand out character in an already great cast. A powerful number two in the Baltimore street drug trade who falters when he’s the point person. He makes some tough decisions trying to run things like a business.  Like most characters on The Wire, he’s enderaing for his faults.

In the current (5th) season of The Office Idris plays Charles Miner, a new manager type whose overseeing the restructuring of several branches. There are definite echos of Stringer in the character of Charles; when he has a focused objective and power structure he’s ruthlessly effective, but when the power shifts and he’s shooting from the hip… he doesn’t make the best decisions.  He does have “an effect on women” as his character admits.  And Kelly and Angela both swoon over him calling him a black George Clooney.  And how.

Now he’s playing Charlie Kgotso in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency which premiered this week on HBO.  Filmed as a movie, the 2 hour pilot, shot on location in Botswana, has a very complete feel to it and there are 6 episodes in the can so far.  Idris plays a familiar character I’ve come to know and love:  too cool for school bad guy.  He didn’t play a major role in the pilot, but he was bald and clean shaven and was rocking an African accent so for him that’s like a completely new character.  I kid, Idris, I kid.  I haven’t read the books (the show is based on a series of 10 novels) so I’m not sure how much screen time I can expect from his character.  Hopefully proportionally more that in the pilot.  Charlie Kgotso may not be a huge stretch for Idris (from what I can tell in the pilot, of course) but Idris’ suave hard man routine is like pepper, add a dash to almost any dish to give it a welcome kick.  So whether or not it helps his acting resume, he’ll almost certainly help this new series.

Share/Save/Email this

I’m not narcoleptic like you see in the movies, falling asleep mid-sentence or at hilarious moments.  I’m just really prone to sleep.  Give me a halfway comfortable chair or flat surface and I could knock off without too much trouble, I’m pretty good on planes.  But my own bed… that’s not even a question, I’m off quicker than a light switch.  I had been good up till lately, staying up late as I like then crashing when I liked and making up for it on weekends if necessary.  Lately… I dunno.  It’s probably the dregs of winter and the daylight savings time switch a few weeks back I somehow haven’t internalized yet, but I’m getting more into the hilarious movie territory some nights, struggling to stay away at 8 or 9 o’clock.  If you’re an insomniac, I’m not going to get any sympathy from you but as someone to whom sleep has always been a close friend, it’s starting to feel burdensome.  A few days ago after a particularly early-to-bed night, I jotted down this little poem/story thing about how it feels to me.  Hopefully this’ll clarify things and maybe keep me from stumbling through some tongue tied explanation in the future.

Things are better in the summer. I’m a pretty seasonally affected person so those long light filled days are appreciated. As is the lack of bone aching, down comfortor seeking cold.  It’s almost spring in Chicago and in my apartment.

Share/Save/Email this

Happy Friday!

This is Alice, my kitty companion.  Although I rarely call her Alice, it’s most often “dork” or “muffin.” She’s been with me just over two years now.  While she’s not a cuddle monster she’s affectionate, playful and one smart little thing.  I live alone in a one bedroom so she makes a great roommate: quiet, neat and doesn’t mind when I bounce around the apartment talking to myself.

alice at window

Share/Save/Email this

“Kings?  What show is that?”  That was my reaction when I first read this post on the recently premiered NBC show.  A show I’d never heard of had just had it’s pilot to apparently dismal ratings, although a few tweets and blogs I’d glanced at said it was promising.  While NBC is more forgiving than FOX I’d hate to see a quality scripted network show get pulled before it had a chance to find an audience.  Having just watched it on Hulu clocking in at 1 hour and 23 minutes of show time (plus commercials), a long and clearly well financed pilot, I have to think NBC is invested enough in it to give the show at least a half dozen episodes and a try in a new time slot if necessary (currently on Sundays at 8pm eastern/7pm central).

So what is the show?  The title struck me as really boring.  Not knowing what it was, I initially thought perhaps it’d be a Sopranos-type power struggle premise.  Or it’d have more of a staid, documentary flavor to it.  But I was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t as cookie cutter as that. From the opening shot of a farm house, the pace slow and intimate, it draws you in.  Whoever green-lit the long pilot made a good call.  You get a great sense of the show’s potential by giving the creative team a longer leash and more room to play.

Kings is speculative fiction.  A take-off of the Bible story, think of a country similar to present day America ruled by a king with a land border to an enemy country; that’s the basic conceit going into it.  But the feel of the show is a cross between Battlestar Galactica, with it’s fallible nuanced characters balancing the needs and expectations of many, and Band of Brothers, with it’s military camaraderie and gritty, personal feel.  The lead in the show is a character by the name of Davis Shepherd who is played by Christopher Egan, a guy with the easy going good looks of Matt Damon with pale Paul Newman eyes (although in the opening shot I could swear it was Heath Ledger) a character with blunt modesty that is tactfully underplayed by Egan.  Ian McShane’s King Silas and the cast of secondary characters have naturalistic and identifiably selfish qualities that keeps everyone’s motivations clear, if not their exact relationships or history, which gives the viewer enough insight to be engaged without being beaten over the head by the exposition hammer so often used in pilots.  I’m not one to get bogged down in plot, especially for a pilot, but suffice it to say it carries itself through the 83 minutes (2 hrs on teevee) exploring the characters, relationships and world it creates at a pace that unravels slowly enough to pull you in without getting lost or bogged down, but quickly enough to leave you wanting more.  As a good pilot should.

A TV pilot is like the SATs, it’s a good judge of potential but kinda irrelevant if and when the show gets up a good head of steam.  Dollhouse (FOX Fri 8pm EST) had an abysmal pilot but it’s starting to pick up and find it’s direction about a half dozen episodes in.  I wouldn’t commit to watching the show based on the pilot so it had to earn my viewership (okay i’m watching cause I’m a Whedon fan and I like Tahmoh Penikett but I’d boot Eliza Dushku given the chance).  Castle (ABC Mon 10pm EST), a lighthearted procedural starring the adorable Nathan Fillion, had a really strong pilot last week so i feel like I can tune in weeks following and be assured of at least a decent show.

Based on the pilot of Kings, the show is too good to let it slip into the ratings deadpool.  Hopefully NBC will promote it more or tweak the schedule to get it a larger audience.  Because if the following episodes are as good as the pilot is has the makings of a great vidlit show.

Embeded below is the pilot to Kings which will stay around for as long as the episode is active for on Hulu.

Share/Save/Email this

Guess I should start posting up in here.  Been doing some backend work on the site, still a lot more to do I’m sure.  Probably be continuously tweaking.  I opted for the WordPress platform because it’s easy to use, plug and play extensibility, and enough room to play on the backend to customize to my satisfaction.  I thought about Ruby or Drupal but as much as I love tinkering with code I didn’t want to put in the time it’d take to get my skills up to speed to be able to run a blog with all the features I’d want.  So I took blogging’s tried and true lazy way out and went with WordPress!

Nuts and bolts aside, I figured I’d do a little blurb on why I’m blogging here and now.  I’ve done 3 blogs before this one, all on hosted platforms starting in ye olde two thousand and three.  They’ve been about my personal life and that laundry list, day to day, blah blah blah made sense when the internet was small and only the people who you told about your blog could find it.  But now that I’m out of college, in a job, paying taxes in the year 2009… the blogging world feels a bit bigger now.  I feel like I have actual informed opinions to share that people other than my BFFs and my mom might care about.

Going off of writing what you know and writing what you love…  I’m planning to write about green engineering/green technology/innovation developments, political/current events with a focus on Chicago, video game/book/TV/film/theatre critique, the usual smattering of fun internet finds and of course ramblings about my personal life.  But we’ll see how that goes.

So if you’re reading, hello.

Share/Save/Email this

First post.

Share/Save/Email this