W reveals first look at Lisbeth Salander - take two

Actually, before we get into any of that (and if you haven't seen these, there well worth a short wait), I have a bone or two to pick with people who watch TV (and believe me, I watch much more than I should.)

After running 13 episodes of "Terriers" - easily my favorite new show of last fall - before canceling it to due to very low ratings, FX has now managed to debut a show that, at least in its debut, is fairing even worse.

And the really sad part is that "Lights Out," while far from a perfect TV pilot, shows a heck of a lot of potential. I'm a sucker for boxing-related entertainment anyways ("The Fighter," while not one of the best movies of 2010, is still pretty sensationally entertaining, thanks almost entirely to Christian Bale), and this show has the promise to be a nearly first-rate entry in the genre.

First, the very good. The ensemble is all-around good, led by someone I had never seen before, Holt McCallany, as the retired pugilist Patrick "Lights" Leary. He brings a winning sense of losing to the role of a fighter who's been retired for five years on the wishes of his wife (Catherine McCormack) after feeling he was cheated out of winning his last bout. Add to that Stacy Keach ("Fat City"!) as his father/manager and Pablo Schreiber (aka Nicky Sobotka on season 2 of "The Wire") as his brother and serially inept manager, and you've got the makings of a gritty family dynamic that, given time, could lead to some fantastic television.

In the pilot, Lights finds himself extremely low on money and is forced to become the muscle for a loan shark, which he's not surprisingly very good at. To tell you more beyond that would be criminal, so I'll just say the end of the pilot sets up the story arc of season one, assuming enough people tune in to even make that possible. Please do!

OK, now on to the main event. Though I'm still not and probably never will be sold on the need for David Fincher to make an English-language version of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," it's hard to argue he didn't make a heck of a splash with this reveal of what Rooney Mara will look like as Lisbeth Salander in W magazine. That really doesn't need any more build up from me, so here goes, the cover shot and then one more.




Though, having read the second and third Lisbeth Salander novels by Stieg Larsson and watched the first two movies in their original Swedish (and if you like smart thrillers, do yourself a favor and watch them back-to-back now), I'm sure Lisbeth would never agree to strike such poses, I don't think there's any denying that Fincher and Mara have nailed the look.

And, though in sheer attitude Noomi Rapace got Lisbeth just about perfect in the Swedish movies, her look was the only thing that gave me any pause. In the books, though clearly a tough woman who doesn't take any shit from anyone, Lisbeth also cuts a pixieish figure, at least in the picture Larsson paints in your mind (well, at least mine). So, Fincher has gotten at least one thing right so far, but after sitting through Matt Reeves' thoroughly unnecessary, almost shot-by-shot remake of "Let the Right One In," he's gonna have to do a whole lot more to hook me on the need for any of this.

OK, I have to get to the job that still somehow pays my bills, so I'll just leave you with this rather surreal video from PBS' "American Masters," which I believe aired last night (while I was catching up with the pilot of "Lights Out" and "Parenthood" - sublime). In it, The Dude himself pays a visit to The Little Lebowski, a store in NYC with an obvious theme. While it's no surprise that such a store exists, it still adds a fun level of oddity to have Bridges pay it a visit. Enjoy the clip, and have a perfectly passable Thursday. Peace out.

A visit with Oliver Stone's "W."

The biggest strength of Oliver Stone's "W." is that as I was watching it I had no idea just who this movie was intended for, so you can bring into and take from it just about whatever you want to about our current ruler.

The second biggest strength is Josh Brolin's portrayal of George W. Bush himself, but we'll get to much more on that later. First, a breakdown of what you'll see and what you won't in this mostly successful portrait of power.

After a rapid but not particularly mean-spirited run-through of W.'s missing years (you never see, for example, the man snort coke in daddy's White House or anywhere else), Stone moves quickly to his main focus here, W.'s leadership of the Iraq War.

And this is when his flick is at its strongest, giving a real sense of palace intrigue as nearly all his players disappear into their characters to the point that you almost think you're watching a documentarian's portrait (with the sore exception of Thandie Newton, who we'll also be hearing much more about later.) My favorite moment came as the decision was made to go to war - as the big boys are making the final call, our "decider" sinks into the shadows and seats himself beside Toby Jones' Karl Rove, a subtle moment a younger Stone would never have been able to attain.

But in this stretch and elsewhere you also sense what's most noticeably missing - any of the flights of fancy that made his earlier presidential flicks and other movies so much fun. When they do come here, as in W.'s dream sequences on the Texas Ranger's ballfield and a very ill-conceived one near the end involving daddy, they just seem jarring and take away from the otherwise tight story Stone is telling. I read in the New York Times that he once conceived another dream in which W. was flying on a magic carpet and raining bombs over Baghdad. As silly as that would have been, I still would have loved to have seen it make the final cut.

And after setting up a very plausible case that many of W.'s actions regarding the war and other business are motivated in large part by his daddy issues (and Stone gets a huge assist here from a sensational performance from James Cromwell as Bush the elder), he completely omits the biggest gift and burden that "poppy" bequeathed to his son: The presidency itself. I would have gladly given Mr. Stone another half hour or so to see what he had to say about the fact that if daddy's hatchet man - James Baker - hadn't intervened in Florida, W. would probably never have become president at all. That subject is completely brushed over here, but if you want to get a workmanlike but solid taste of it, Netflix HBO's "Recount" (and keep your eyes on Laura Dern, who just nails the dippy Katherine Harris to a tee.)

But what makes Stone's flick mostly work so well is Josh Brolin, who dives so completely into the role of W. that you never for a minute think you're watching anyone but our leader. He nails it so perfectly that you can read his performance just about any way you want to. While many will see Stone and Brolin's largely sympathetic portrait of W. as a strong leader who follows his convictions, many others (me included) will see an arrogant, more than slightly intellectually challenged and ultimate dangerous man. The fact that you can read it so many ways is exactly why you'll be hearing Mr. Brolin's name on Oscar night.

Cromwell is also exceptional as poppy, but another word of praise is in order for my favorite of the supporting players, Stacy Keach. He makes his first appearance about half way in as the preacher W. turns to after he is born again, and Keach gets to deliver the key speech about Christian love that makes (for me, at least) the crux of Stone's ultimate but subtly made point. How much you think W. has followed this teaching will inform your assessment of the man, and Keach just sells it perfectly.

And, finally, it brings me no pleasure at all to state that Thandie Newton turned in the single worst performance I've seen in all of 2008 with her "portrayal" of Condoleezza Rice. I've had a major thing for Ms. Newton ever since "Flirting," a charming little Aussie flick in which her knee socks just drove me (and Noah Taylor) wild (and for another flick that she just smolders her way through, I highly recommend Bernardo Bertolucci's "Besieged.") I think it's this addiction to her sheer physical beauty that has blinded me over the years to the fact that she really just can't act a lick, which is on blatant display here. Her attempt to capture the nature of Ms. Rice is the perfect example of simple imitation rather then interpretation, and it's almost as bad as Frank Caliendo's take on W. (which, because I love baseball almost as much as our president does, I've had to watch what seems like 10,000 times by now.)

As a last challenge, I wonder if there's anyone out there who likes the president more than I do who found that Stone had any kind of axe to grind with the man in this flick. In his public remarks, the director has certainly disparaged W., but his movie portrayal is about as close to fair and balanced as I could have expected, and almost as entertaining too. Peace out.