It is, of course, a good thing for the American movie industry that China and America have resolved their dispute over market access, and the number of American movies released in China is set to rise from 20 to 14. That’s not huge overall compared to the number of movies that come out of American studios every year, but ut Chinese moviegoers spent $2 billion at the box office last year, and that number’s supposed to rise by 20 percent this year.

There are limitations, of course—those 14 movies all have to be Imax or 3D editions of movies. So the pictures that can make it overseas are somewhat limited by what the studios are already shooting in those formats or willing to convert, and that likely means more big blockbusters rather than small but clever indies. I’m torn between wanting to see more of that money come back to American moviemakers and knowing that it’ll likely increase the profit margins on precisely the movies that don’t need the extra proof that they’re successful. Maybe I can have it both ways, and those jacked-up margins will give studios a little more permission to experiment with smart original ideas because they’ll have more of a cushion to absorb those projects if they fail.

It’s also worth a reminder that at the same time that China’s opening up its movie market, it’s banned all imported television during primetime broadcasts and issued new regulation saying that no channel can have more than a quarter of its programming be imported. Abiding by one World Trade Organization ruling doesn’t mean that China’s given up on trying to protect the growth of its domestic entertainment industry. And it doesn’t mean the regime’s about to let in a lot of entertainment that might undermine the values it’s trying to promote. If I was trying to maintain a vaguely Communist economic system, I’d be a lot more concerned about the plucky entrepreneurialism of 2 Broke Girls than the loud and goofy fantasies of the Transformers movies.

By David Liss

Alcatraz, I am running out of patience. All you have to do is give me some reason to care about your main story and the characters who inhabit it, and I’ll be happy. Why is that so hard to do? This week’s episode is a big step backwards from last weeks’ mythology-builder, and instead we get something that is episodic and phoned-in, ignoring those the main thing the show does well – intriguing prison flash-backs – and replacing them with a generic and under-wrought generic cop show.

That said, last night, Alcatraz delivered its most literary episode yet – with references to Harold Robbins, Ovid and a character who is obsessed with Jules Verne as imagined by writers who have clearly never read him. All of which, it turns out, is in the service of nothing. Fox had teased that this week’s episode of Alcatraz was going to reveal some important back story, including information on why Tommy Madsen is so important to the show, but that turned out to be a bluff. Instead we get another wheel-spinning installment that drops vaguely suggestive hints at a larger story which it does little to advance.

Our returned psycho this week is Johnny McKee a serial poisoner, who targets people he has decided have it coming – plus those people who happen to be near by. He has a particular thing for bullies, and when we first meet him he is working as a bartender and poisons a quartet of men because one of them was being an over-the-top-dick. So, right away we get a sense that McKee has no sense of proportion. Just as I’m wondering how a guy from the past, who has no present-day identification, can get hired at all, he takes a job as a pool boy and is immediately confronted by more improbable assholery. One jerk throws a towel on his head, so he poisons everyone in the pool. Ultimately we learn why McKee can’t just take a chill pill. The one girl in high school who was nice to him was put up to it by the football team, who ambushed him and threw firecrackers at him, one of which – wait for it – blew off his testicles. I can see how that might make someone angry. McKee goes off, learns chemistry, becomes a wiz at poisoning people, reads lots of Jules Verne, and ends up at Alcatraz. When he was first arrested in the ‘50s, he’d killed more than 70 people, which I think would make him the most prolific serial killer of all time, no?

In Alcatraz he’s just another murderer, but when the local kingpin hires him to kill a rival in the shank business, McKee identifies the kingpin as a bully, so we all know who is going to be on the business end of his homemade poison. These prison sequences tend to be the highlight in an otherwise lackluster show, but this one felt phoned in to me. No real drama, no warden craziness (other than his loony introduction to prison movie night) and nothing that sheds light on the time traveling mystery.

Hot on his heels in the present day, we learn that Soto has the cell assignment of every inmate in Alcatraz committed to memory, that Hauser speaks Mandarin fluently, but without any understanding of tones, and that Madsen is perfectly okay with Hauser stepping all over her interrogations. This happens when Soto suggests they speak to Jack Sylvane, since he was McKee’s next door neighbor. Hauser refuses to let Madsen go to the facility where he is being held, won’t explain who the soldiers guarding the interrogation are, and doesn’t let Hauser answer any questions that don’t have to do specifically with Mckee – including the ones that might shed some light on her own grandfather. And she takes it all without batting an eyelash. Where’s the tough chick now? Given what Madsen has learned in previous weeks, why is she so willing to let Hauser hold back on her and not complain. There’s so much potential for drama and conflict here, and it’s all going to waste. Instead we get vague gestures toward character, such as when Soto goes to visit the hot coroner with a soft spot for golden-age heroes. She finds that fact that Soto doesn’t like dissected corpses oh so cute.

But back to the exciting manhunt. Investigations lead to an abandoned school house chemistry lab – which Madsen and Hauser investigate without backup – and then an 11th hour realization that McKee is plotting to gas a BART train. Madsen and Hauser head to the scene, again without backup. If more than one bad guy ever emerges at the same time, they are not going to have enough personnel to handle the crisis. In the end, the ticking clock is stopped, the bad guy is apprehended, and everyone goes back to not wondering what the hell is going on.

Framing all this is comatose Lucy. At the start of the episode, Dr. Beaureguard declares that he’s tried Lucy’s alternative techniques – which turn out to be more odd ball/new age and less super-secret scientific – than we’ve been led to believe. Shock therapy and acupuncture have had no success, and now Lucy is comatose but dreaming. Dreams later become suggestive throughout the episode. McKee claims not to dream at all, but historical Lucy knows he’s lying, and that his dreams hold the key to the truth about his secret of explosive castration. Sylvane reveals that one of the side effects of being post time travel is that he no longer dreams.

And then there’s the inexplicable business with the book. Beaureguard tells Hauser to read to Lucy, handing her a copy of a Harold Robbins novel, but Hauser refuses. At the end of the episode, Hauser picks up the book and it turns out to be a copy of Ovid’ Metamorphoses in disguise. The significance of dreams – and who has them and who does not – is never explained, and I feel like there is something going on when we see a work of classical poetry disguises as a potboiler, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is. In the end, we get another episode with insignificant forward movement and little pay out. Alcatraz, you are on notice.

David Liss is the author of seven novels, most recently The Twelfth Enchantment. His previous books include A Conspiracy of Paper (2000) which was named a New York Times Notable Book and won the 2001 Barry, MacAvity and Edgar awards for Best First novel. The Coffee Trader (2003) was also named a New York Times Notable Book and was selected by the New York Public Library as one of the year’s 25 Books to Remember. A Spectacle of Corruption (2004) was a national bestseller, and The Devil’s Company (2009) has been optioned for film by Warner Brothers. Liss is the author of the graphic novel Mystery Men and writes Black Panther for Marvel Comics as well as the forthcoming series, The Spider, from Dynamite Comics.

Today would have been David Foster Wallace’s 50th birthday, had he not committed suicide in 2008 after years of struggling with severe depression. I will admit to sometimes finding his writing off-putting: he could be anthropological about his subjects, particularly in his non-fiction, where on occasion, that distance shaded over into contempt. But sometimes, he applied that approach to a subject that truly merited it, and that was the case in “The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys And The Shrub,” his report for Rolling Stone about John McCain’s struggle against George W. Bush in the South Carolina Republican primary in 2000 (the essay was later republished in one of his collections, and then an expanded version as a stand-alone book).

While of course there’s expertise that comes with covering the campaign trail, and the jobs of embeds are really hard, it’s also a setting that benefits from someone parachuting in occasionally and pointing out that hey, all of this is utterly ridiculous, and exhausting, and a spectacle. Wallace writes:

If this all seems really static and dull, by the way, then understand that you’re getting a bona fide look at the reality of media life on the Trail, much of which consists of wandering around killing time on Bullshit 1 while you wait for the slight meaningful look from Travis that means he’s gotten the word from his immediate superior, Todd (28 and so obviously a Harvard alum it wasn’t ever worth asking), that after the next stop you’re getting rotated up into the big leagues on the Express to sit squished and paralyzed on the crammed red press-couch in back and listen to John S. McCain and Mike Murphy answer the Twelve Monkeys’ questions, and to look up-close and personal at McCain and the way he puts his legs way out on the salon’s floor and crosses them at the ankle and sucks absently at his right bicuspid and swirls the coffee in his McCain2000.com mug, and to try to penetrate the innermost box of this man’s thoughts on the enormous hope and enthusiasm he’s generating in press and voters alike … which you should be told up front does not and cannot happen.

In any case, you’ll get told to read a lot of things by David Foster Wallace today. But this would be my vote for which one you should pick. It’s a fantastic piece. But it’s also a terrific reminder of how marvelous it would be to have him around for a presidential election that’s many magnitudes weirder than South Carolina in 2000. What a loss.

By Kate Linnea Welsh

“Live from Damascus” begins with a party at Lockhart/Gardner, as Will officially gets the word from Cary that the State’s Attorney will not go after him again. The celebration is short-lived, though, as Lionel Deerfield arrives with the news that the state bar association is pursuing Will’s disbarment – not because of judicial corruption, but because of the money he “borrowed” from a client in Baltimore fifteen years ago. Will ready admits that he’s guilty and seems ready to give up – “It never ends, does it? Once they have you in their grasp, they never let go.” – but Diane insists that he fight, and she’s the one who pleads for leniency. Because of Lockhart/Gardner’s pro bono work (which Will, of course, didn’t want to do in the first place), the board offers him six months’ suspension in place of proceeding with a disbarment hearing. Diane thinks he should keep fighting; she’s convinced that six months away from the law will kill him, which sounds a tad over-dramatic to me. Perhaps she actually means that she thinks it would kill her, or that she doesn’t know how she’ll function without him. Will decides to talk it out with Alicia instead, but Alicia barely has to say anything – Will decides to take the suspension as he’s telling Alicia what’s going on. When Alicia weirdly claims that she can’t imagine giving up the law for six months, Will points out that she gave it up for a decade, and this is a nice reminder that what’s seen as a cataclysmic event for a single man in this position is barely acknowledged as difficult sacrifice for a married mother.

Will’s final case before his suspension begins is against Neil Gross (last seen in “Great Firewall”), whose company made the software that the Syrian government used to decrypt emails and phone calls between protesters. They used that information to capture, torture, and kill people, and Lockhart/Gardner’s clients are the families of three dead American protesters. The judge keeps talking about his sympathy for Occupy Wall Street, and Gross’s lawyer Viola Walsh claims this must mean he won’t be objective, which is an interesting follow-up to the fake judicial corruption story. Much of the trial is spent going back and forth over whether Gross knew that the software, which was sold through a wholesaler, was headed to Syria, and Walsh distracts everyone with a picture that supposedly proves that one of the victims, Sara, is still alive. Will, who thinks he has nothing left to lose and, as Diane puts it, wants to “hit a home run with [his] last at bat,” is determined to get Sara back, and Kalinda uses her contacts and a little blackmail to find Sara’s location. Meanwhile, Will realizes that they key to the case is tech support: the Syrian government registered their software licenses but had to get help before actually using the software, so Gross’s company had to know what was going on and deliberately help them. By the time the dust settles, Lockhart/Gardner has won the case and Sara is safe at a US Air Force base in Germany – but Kalinda’s contact in Syria has vanished.
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Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve watched all four seasons of Sons of Anarchy. And while shotgunning the show’s episodes may not be for the faint of heart (so much grotesque violence!), it’s given me a lot to think about with the show. So every day this week, I’ll be considering another aspect of life in Charming, California.

Since you’re probably not one of the (very few) people who are watching Enlightened, HBO’s excellent, if uncomfortable show about a corporate drone who has a breakdown, followed by an epiphany, and begins living out her principals in all sorts of hilariously awkward ways, you probably don’t get the joke in the title of this blog post. But the Enlightened episode “Consider Helen” was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen on television in a while: a quiet day spent with the mother of the main character, who is grappling with private and unresolved griefs her daughter is too self-involved to acknowledge or understand. All of which is a long way of saying that until that episode of television, and until I started watching Sons of Anarchy, I don’t think I realized how thirsty I was for the perspectives of older women on television. Enough with the women who are meant to reflect me now or in ten years. I want a sense of the women I’ll become, the grand crones and the quiet ones, too.

One of the things I appreciate most about Sons of Anarchy is the way Gemma is allowed to have specifically female problems, and to have those problems treated as if they’re on a level with the hurts and angers of Jax, Clay, and the other members of the club. When, in the first season, when Cherry shows up in Charming after sleeping with Clay, and Gemma breaks her nose with a skateboard, the show could have decided to treat Gemma as ridiculous, as if she’s overreacting. Instead, we get that very funny scene of her and Clay hollering at each other in jail, Gemma refusing to be bailed out. Both halves of this late-middle aged couple are acting as if they’re teenagers. They are equals in their absurdity, both permitted to feel overpowered by their reactions to each other.

Similarly, after Gemma is raped (a plot that I think is handled better than almost anything else in the series), Sons of Anarchy deals with her sexual anxieties respectfully and in a way that insists that rape victims shouldn’t be treated as marked by their experiences. It’s terribly, terribly sad to hear Gemma tell Tara that “Clay’s never gonna… want to be inside something that’s been ripped up like me…Love don’t mean shit. Men need to own their pussy. His has been violated. He’ll find another. It’s what they do.” But the show insists she’s still wanted, first in Tig’s advances towards her in the wake of the attack—Sons of Anarchy probably spends more dialogue insisting that Gemma is attractive than any other individual character—and in her eventual reconciliation with Clay.

It’s tremendously moving to see Clay exceed her expectations of him, not just having sex with her again but seducing her, clearing off her office desk and declaring as only Ron Perlman can, “I want my wife.” Her hurt and recovery are couched in the language of ownership: neither Charming nor the MC are exactly feminist paradises. But even when Gemma puts off telling Clay and Jax about the fact that she was attacked to avoid hurting them and destabilizing the club, both of the men in her life make her recovery a priority when she finally does tell them. Later in the series, she may be marginalized as just an Old Lady, beaten for daring to step beyond that role, but at least in that moment, her husband and her son can elevate her recovery.
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The bridge is yours.

-The final word on Chris Brown.

-Ryan McGee on how HBO killed the episode.

-Get a track off Bruce Springsteen’s new album, “Wrecking Ball,” every day for the next nine days.

-Ah, the joys of a good old-fashioned public art controversy.

-The weirdest political endorsements by musicians.

There is a school of thought that’s been advanced by some commentators since Pat Buchanan was fired from MSNBC that his dismissal was a mistake because his ideas need to be vigorously debated and debunked. From Andrew Sullivan:

However repellent some of his views, he is intellectually honest. Yes, publicly bigoted, sometimes outrageous, a flame-thrower, a reactionary who flirted at times with what only can be called neo-fascism. But here’s another thing he has always been: true to his own ideas and a gifted writer. He truly believes what he says and has read and researched a huge amount and has thought carefully about his extreme out-of-the-mainstream views. He is a serious figure in that respect. Compared with Al Sharpton or Ed Schultz, he is a paragon of intellectual integrity. He is not a propagandist. He is a passionate writer who loves nothing more than a good argument with a worthy opponent – and he has a serious sense of humor to boot. That his ideas are often repelling should precisely be why he should stay on MSNBC and defend his views against the smartest critiques that can be found. We should stop silencing people and keep debating them.

And from Buchanan’s now-former colleagues at MSNBC, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski:

Everyone at Morning Joe considers Pat Buchanan to be a friend and a member of the family. Even though we strongly disagree with the contents of Pat’s latest book, Mika and I believe those differences should have been debated in public. An open dialogue with Morning Joe regulars like Al Sharpton and Harold Ford, Jr. could have developed into an important debate on the future of race relations in America. Because we believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant, Mika and I strongly disagree with this outcome. We understand that the parting was amicable. Still, we will miss Pat.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant only if the ideas at hand have actual traction and need to be dislodged. Nobody takes seriously the ideas that Jerry Sandusky’s alleged abuse and rape of children has any connection to marriage equality for gay couples, or that Anders Brevik, the Norway terrorist, has the right worldview. Their credibility has nowhere to go but up, and lending someone a seat at the table confers some of that credibility, even if it’s only to acknowledge that the idea has power that’s dangerous. That risk should be weighed against the possible benefit of debunking the most marginalized, weak ideas by debating them in public.

Some days the American common sense deficit seems worse than others, and such was the case when XXL published a video interview with the rapper Too $hort, titled “Fatherly Advice From Too $hort — Lesson Three: The Birds & The Bees.” Which in this case apparently means advice for boys who are starting to be attracted to girls on how to “take it to the hole.” And more importantly, suggesting that groping girls and pushing them up against walls is the quickest route to male sexual gratification. As disgusting as schooling young people in sexual assault is, and as horrifying as the thought is that such advocacy of assault would constitute “fatherly advice”—and XXL has apologized profusely for posting the video, as well they should—Too $hort’s apology may be even more revealing.

“When I got on camera I was in Too $hort mode and had a lapse of judgment. I would never advise a child or young man to do these things, it’s not how I get down,” he said in his apology. “Although I have made my career on dirty raps, I have worked over the years to somewhat balance the content of my music with giving back to the community. Just coming from a man who wants to see young people get ahead in life, I’m gonna do my best to help and not hurt. If you’re a young man or a kid who looks up to me, don’t get caught up in the pimp, player, gangster hip-hop personas. Just be yourself.”

First, there’s the idea that it’s totally fine to advocate molesting young girls as long as you’re in character, because no harm can possibly be done from giving that advice. Even if it’s very, very clear that advice is comedic or performative (something that might be less clear in an interview than in a song), that still suggests that something that actually happens to women and is completely and utterly awful is hilarious to contemplate—even when the “joke” isn’t well-crafted, or crafted at all to reveal the ugliness of such attitudes.

Then, there’s the idea that private conduct is, if not more impactful than the product you sell and the entertainment industry helps you distribute widely, at least balancing it out. I think it’s great if stars want to give back to their communities. But they’re kidding themselves if they think it’s some sort of spiritual tithe for disseminating ideas that at best are demeaning and at best could contribute to someone justifying themselves when they assault someone.

This post contains spoilers through the second season finale of Downton Abbey.

I don’t think I’m alone in this, but there was something disconcerting in seeing a rising fervor for Downton Abbey this season precisely as the show revealed its major structural flaws. And while the season finale (really, the Christmas episode aired as a stand-alone in the UK) contained a number of beautifully-filmed emotional high points (I particularly like Carson framed between Matthew and Mary during the servant’s ball), it also illustrated how those flaws have hollowed out or overstretched what could have been richer stories.

Downton Abbey seems to have become allergic to consequences. Presumably the next season will see Sir Richard attempting to exact vengeance on Mary, but unless Matthew is to behave the cad and back off his proposal, any efforts to shame her will be blunted by the protection of her marriage. Bates, it seem, will not hang, and the show seems dedicated to the idea that the only way Anna can be happy is through his eventual exoneration. Lord Grantham will forgive Sybil, and she and Branson will bring a grandchild back to Downton eventually. The only people who seem to have their ambitions thwarted, and then not even consistently, are Thomas and Edith—the show’s determination to short shrift the latter seems increasingly like habit rather than narrative integrity.

How much sharper would Downton Abbey be if Mary were forced to suffer disgrace and exile? If Bates had actually murdered his wife, a crime that would simultaneously feel emotionally justifiable and expose the hollowness of a system where the servant classes rely on noblesse oblige, rather than merit, for advancement? If Sybil had difficulty adjusting to life with Branson, and the show was brave enough to turn that fairy tale into an exploration of the costs of progress?

But that would require a broader story, and it points to the clutch of weaknesses at Downton Abbey’s core. I agree with Maureen Ryan that the longer season of the show has exposed some of Julian Fellowes’ limitations as a television writer. Enough is going on here that Downton Abbey—and it’s rare that I’d suggest this for a British show, though I often think American shows should have shorter season runs—really might have benefitted from an American-length season, and from an American-style writers’ room to give the storylines and the characters room to breathe.

The time jumps between episodes have become a way of moving the story forward, sometimes rapidly, but they’re also an crutch for Fellowes. When Sir Richard declared to Mary after she broke off their engagement that ““I loved you, you know…more than you knew. And more than you ever loved me,” it’s difficult to believe it from what we’ve seen on screen. The vast majority of their courtship and engagement was conducted in the language of power. Perhaps we’re meant to believe that a tenderness developed between them in the moments we aren’t privy to, but that’s a bit of a cheat, asking us to do the work that Fellowes hasn’t.
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