Tag: Bryan Cranston (Page 5 of 7)

Breaking Bad 3.6 – There’s Crime…And Then There’s Crime

April 25, 2010 /

Remember how I opened last week’s blog by saying, “This, my friends, was one hell of an episode, offering up multiple moments which will almost certainly inspire me to say the same of future episodes”? I couldn’t have been more right: not only was this the best episode of Season 3, but it was one of the best installments of “Breaking Bad” to date, serving up moments that were nailbiting to the Nth degree and an ending which left me screaming at the TV, demanding that next week’s episode start right now, dammit!

Well, it’s about time the Cousins got legitimately threatening again. They’ve just kind of been hovering in the background lately, glowering but not really doing anything specific to match their completely bad-ass look. Now, to be fair, it’s not like they haven’t wanted to seriously fuck some people’s shit up…specifically, Walt’s shit…but they’ve been held at bay by their attempts to maintain some semblance of civility within the organization. That whole pre-credits sequence was nice and nerve-jangling, but its conclusion, with the seamless sonic blending of one cousin biting into a piece of fruit and the other dropping his axe into the officer’s skull, was just another example of the show’s ability to get a laugh out of some seriously dark shit. The next time we saw them, they were sitting in Gus’s fine, upstanding establishment, back to their usual all-you-have-to-do-is-look-at-us-to-know-that-you-shouldn’t-fuck-with-us schtick, but, hey, if it works, why change it? It was instantly obvious that they had no intention of going anywhere until Gus gave them what they wanted…which, of course, is why he eventually did just that.

Sort of.

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

Breaking Bad 3.5 – Escalate This!

April 19, 2010 /

This, my friends, was one hell of an episode, offering up multiple moments which will almost certainly inspire me to say the same of future episodes. Arguably the best of those moments came when we were made privy to a sight which both yours truly and Bullz-Eye.com editor-in-chief Jamey Codding have been waiting to see since January…but we’ll get to that later.

First, it’s time to flash even farther back.

How completely surreal to have the episode start off with footage from the first episode of “Breaking Bad.” I can’t say as I ever really considered the origins of the R.V., except to figure that, since Walt hadn’t given Jesse a whole lot of money to buy it in the first place, it was simply as good as he could find. With the benefit of hindsight, however, it’s pretty damned easy to imagine that a dumb-ass like Jesse circa Season 1 would have a little trouble coping with a sudden cash influx like the one Walt handed him. Some of the shit Jesse was spouting during the scene was pretty hilarious, as was the bit where the gang re-entered the real world at daybreak with one of them puking in the VIP Parking space. It was particularly nice to see Combo resurrected, even if only for the duration of the pre-credits sequence: in addition to reconfirming just how tight Jesse and Combo used to be back in the day and revealing Combo’s crucial role in the fruition of the Walt ‘n’ Jesse partnership, it also showed that, all things considered, he was probably lucky to have lived as long as he did. (Best moment: when Jesse groans that he only has about $1400 left and Combo hopefully suggests, “Waffle House?”)

Oh, if you’re wondering about the song they played in the strip club, it’s by the Teddybears and it’s called “Rocket Scientist,” but as of this writing, it ain’t available on iTunes. Sorry ’bout that, but at least you can hear it again by clicking below:

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

Breaking Bad 3.4 – Dirty, Damp, and Deep in the Valley of the Sun

April 11, 2010 /

I begin this week’s “Breaking Bad” blog with a confession: it’s the first episode this season where I didn’t have an advance screener, which meant that I was watching it along with the rest of you. The reason I confess this is because it also means that, in order to get my blog knocked out as quickly as possible, I had to watch it live on the TV set in my office, which is TiVo-less. It’s the set in the living room that has the TiVo, and…well, that’s recording “The Celebrity Apprentice” for me. Hmmm…suddenly, what was intended to be an attempt to earn your sympathy has abruptly become fodder for insult. This has gone terribly wrong. Perhaps I’d better go ahead and get to talking about “Breaking Bad” in order to try and save face. (Yes, I know: it’s far too late for that.)

Well, Jesse might be clean, but he’s clearly no smarter now than he was when he was still using. Kids, here’s your lesson for this week: if you’re ever driving a bullet-riddled RV and find yourself in desperate need of fuel, do not…repeat, do not…try to use methamphetamine as currency. While I can appreciate the need to take Old Faithful for a spin for “work” purposes, when it comes to potential witnesses trying to pick it out of a line-up, it’s hard to conceive of a more memorable vehicle. It kinds of stands out in a crowd, you know? I’ll give it to Jesse, though: ever since admitting to himself -whether rightly or wrongly – that he’s the bad guy, he’s developed balls of steel. Trading gas for meth with a state trooper right there in the store…? That’s pretty fucking ballsy, you’ve got to admit. The best line of the scene, though, had to be when Cashier Cara offered her concerns about the addictiveness of meth and Jesse assured her that it had been blown way out of proportion. (“It’s a media thing.”)

We had some great scenes from Saul Goodman this week. Of course Saul’s got a class action lawsuit working against the airline. He’s just that kind of guy. I loved both the guy we saw in his office (“You’ve been the victim of a terrible accident, some discomfort is to be expected”), as well as the phone call later in the episode, where he assures someone that they needn’t have had a wing fall on their house and that even a bag of peanuts is enough to get them into the lawsuit. Awesome. Mike’s mikes turned up a fierce war of words between Walt and Skyler over her revelation that she’d fucked Ted, a conversation which led Walt to offer one of his typically nonsensical declarations (“I’ll suit myself to his face!”) and found him heading over to the office to confront Ted in person and give a predictably ineffective performance.

Damned shame about the potted plant, though. Poor bastard only had a week left ’til retirement…

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

Breaking Bad 3.3 – Scenes from the Power Struggle in Albuquerque

April 4, 2010 /

There is a theorem within the entertainment industry which states that there is no television series or motion picture, no matter how good it may be, which cannot be made at least a little bit better by the additional presence of Danny Trejo, and the accuracy of this theory was once again proven with tonight’s episode of “Breaking Bad.” You may recall Mr. Trejo rearing his head…pun totally intended…during Season 2, but tonight we got a bit more insight into his character…including, most importantly, why he’s called Tortuga. Never has someone who works in the criminal underworld ever suggested that you “come around back” and seen it result in something good happening, and, unsurprisingly, this was no exception to that rule, particularly since it was a flashback, but now we know how far back the Cousins have been involved in Walt’s affairs.

But let’s be honest: although they may have played a key part, tonight’s episode wasn’t really about the Cousins. It was about the power struggle within the White house. We’d seen this coming, with Skyler demanding that Walt stay not only out of the house but, indeed, out of her life altogether, while Walt was refusing to accept this position and offering dipping sticks as a peace offering. It wasn’t until good ol’ Saul Goodman’s pep talk last week, though, that the little light bulb above Walt’s head suddenly went off, leading him to decide that she was bluffing in her claims that she’d call the police on him. So what does he do? Well, first, he gets the pizza off the roof, then he ensconces himself inside and declares that he’s not leaving. It’s an intense war of wills between the two of them, and it’s rough going for us viewers, too, because, hell, who knows where the hell this is going? They’ll do any damned thing on this show!

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Breaking Bad, External Entertainment, External TV, Reviews, TV, TV Dramas

I’ve got those midweek movie news blues

April 1, 2010 /

Leonardo DiCaprio* It’s not really new news and I even posted about it before, but Mike Fleming has returned to the possibility that Leonardo DiCaprio may eventually be undertaking the role of John D. MacDonald’s great gumshoe, Travis McGee. However, there’s more this time around. If DiCaprio strikes a lot of us as a counter-intuitive pick for the laid-back, heroic tough guy, the choice of possible director seems even stranger: Oliver Stone. Stone’s often hyperactive style simply strikes me as wrong, unless he can turn himself into Howard Hawks or Clint Eastwood or someone more in that vein.

Still, my discomfort is nothing compared to Drew McWeeney, who is obviously a huge, huge fan of the books and who read a script that he was none too fond of — though it’s been so long since I’ve read the books that I’m so sure why introducing McGee on a surfboard is all that terrible. However, I do remember McGee as being more a fishing-with-his-buddy-Meyer-while sipping-whiskey kind of a guy. By the way, if they don’t cast Paul Giamatti as Meyer, the world just doesn’t really make any sense.

* If some people are made nauseous by the camera work in the Bourne movies, how many more will be made ill if the approach is set in some guy’s bloodstream and in James Cameron-style immersive 3-D? It appears we may be finding out because director Paul Greengrass, whose high-budgetted “Green Zone” has been a commercial and critical disappointment, is “in talks” to be the director on the Cameron-produced 3-D remake of “Fantastic Voyage.” I’m thinking about buying shares in whoever manufactures Dramamine.

* Screenwriters, playwrights, aspiring TV scribes — are you ready for Script Frenzy? I just found out about it. Remember, there are only thirty days in April and the goal is 100 pages.

* Big news for this movie mad, West L.A. bred Bruin boy. Regency chain has purchased the endangered, historic twin single-screen movie theaters that anchor UCLA-adjacent Westwood Village, the appropriately named Fox Village and Bruin theaters. The chain recently let go of an important neighborhood theater a couple of miles east which was turned into a triplex back in the eighties or early nineties, the Fairfax, which anchors the traditionally Jewish neighborhood that is home to Canter’s Deli. Win a few, lose a few, I guess.

Bruin_Theatre,_Westwood,_Los_Angeles,_CA_,_at_night

http://www.gq.com/entertainment/celebrities/201001/william-shatner-captain-kirk-interview?printable=true

* GQ’s Andrew Corsello has a very cool piece up about William Shatner and his battles with irony. But if anyone out there has seen him in Roger Corman’s sole non-genre film, “The Intruder,” they know there was a time when he was a very good actor who could it keep it fairly simple, even playing a villainous antihero, back in 1962.

* I’m a little late on this, but Steven Spielberg absolutely does not, repeat, does not, have Asperger’s Syndrome. In other news, I can now announce that I am 100% free of ovarian cancer.

* Bryan Cranston, star of AMC’s “Breaking Bad” and also the upcoming “John Carter of Mars” is a popular guy around these parts. He’s currently “eying” a part in “Larry Crowne,” the upcoming Tom Hanks starring/directed by dramedy co-starring Julia Roberts and written with Nia Vardalos of “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.” The character in question is  Roberts’ husband, whose a blogger who spends way too much time “looking at” porn. I wouldn’t know anything about that.

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