One of the reasons British shows and movies about journalists are so great is that the English accept a raffishness in reporters and editors that we Americans normally only deem acceptable in cops. Which is the main reason I’m so excited to hear that Dominic West is playing a journalist in a high-end British television series. Take Dan Foster from State of Play:

Add some muscle mass, and subtract a successful if inexplicable marriage, and you’ll have a journalistic Jimmy McNulty: swaggering, ethics-bending, and extremely effective. And compulsively watchable. I just hope the stories in the series are good. The work should matter as much as the interpersonal relationships, or rather, the interpersonal relationships should be defined by the work.

I quite like the Pet Shop Boys’ video for “Together,” and I think it illustrates a useful point:

The video works on two levels: first, it’s a sweet, slightly sad, particularly English fantasy, with the Boys themselves standing around as slightly menacing Lords of the Dance. Second, it works as an exercise in context. Dance scenes that might seem like cheesy hip-hop battles or a rip-off of Bollywood gendered dance conversations read differently in an English industrial setting, and Regency dances in formal rooms are different when the people performing them are working-class kids in modern clothing. The rituals of conversation and courtship vary, but the emotions involved, that desire to close the distance between two people, stays the same. Those subtle differences make us see new things in well-established movements.

I like Natalie Portman just fine, but it strikes me as somewhat characteristic that she’d mistake writing and starring in movies about ladies who like to have sex as somehow raunchy and edgy. As much as she’s done interesting work in movies like Closer and now The Black Swan, she’s always seemed to have a somewhat bland, commercial streak. Sure, her lines in the Star Wars prequels were dreadful, but her line readings didn’t improve that sorry excuse for an entertainment much. She’s the model for the vexing archetype of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. Maybe the movie she’ll be writing is better than No Strings Attached, the similar-sounding movie she’s starring in. But wanting to get laid doesn’t make a lady a revolutionary, or even interesting.  And making movies about women who want or enjoy sex doesn’t make you a daring filmmaker, just someone who recognizes the basics of the human condition.