Toss up
By Aaron 6/4/2007

Entourage, Season 3 – Doug Ellin – 8/10

Season Three opens just as Season Two did – with Vince’s new movie, “Aquaman” about to premier. While the kickoff of “Aquaman” isn’t exactly “smooth,” the show quickly moves in another direction. With Ari’s agency woes continuing, E and Vince try to sell Ari on “Medellin” a Pablo Escobar story E and Vince are in love with. While not thrilled, Ari does get some things rolling for them but he tries to keep “Aquaman 2” in the running. “Medellin” is so important because it sets the tone for the whole series as it is the root of almost every conflict that arises in regard to Vince’s career. E’s relationship with Sloan continues to move forward (albeit very very very slowly) and he runs into an ex fan, Seth Green who’s two episode performance is pretty funny. Along the way, three new characters come into play as an old friend joins the fold, Vince falls for a woman he meets at work, and Turtle falls for a new girl (as usual).

The show continues to be very funny and very clever although certain aspects were a surprise. Bloggers and critics crowed about how the show would quickly become the Jeremy Piven show and that Ari Gold would have a larger and larger role. This was almost true for the first few episodes as Ari has to deal with both business crises (agency pressures) and family dilemmas (his daughter’s new boyfriend), both with hilarious results. But both issues are quickly resolved somewhat early in the first part of the season as the writers take an easy way out of both scenarios. In the second part of the season, Ari’s humor is almost completely absent as his screen time is incredibly small (where was he? He wasn’t shooting a movie…) Anyway, being twenty episodes long, this season has a lot of fluff, particularly in the first part of the season where the plotlines on all fronts seem to inch forward at a snail’s pace. The end of the first part of the season does end with an intense cliffhanger of extremely high magnitude, but its tough to look beyond the fluff of Season 3A.

Season 3B comes back almost exactly where 3A left off, except a little bit later on. An important new character is on the scene and Ari is fighting to for screentime (essentially). Luckily the writers bring back “Medellin” seemingly in play after the boys botched their chance the first time. Unable to think about other projects, all aspects of the “Medellin” storyline begin to resonate throughout each episode (thank God). And in this sense, there is really only one episode I would consider “fluff” in the second part of the season. Some of our favorite characters are back too and Shauna finally makes an appearance at the end, after being absent for so long. When Ari does get his screentime back its also an increase in screentime for Lloyd who really begins to come into his own in the last part of the series.

Many of the problems I had with the second season do begin to fall away here as Turtle’s Saigon storyline falls by the wayside. However, the impact of this is that other storylines for Turtle arise and he begins to hog lots of screentime, usually at the expense of E, who’s relationship with Sloan is almost never addressed until the writers realized their neglect and crammed in some stuff at the end. Drama’s rise continues although the writers have finally found a way for Drama’s comic value to shine through the fact that his character has changed from worthless to, well, not worthless. Most of these small issues need to be cleaned up by the writers. They need to decide if the focus of the Entourage is going to be E and Vince or all four and they can somehow balance time in a thirty minute program between them and the other auxiliary characters. It seems like they’re just tossing up plotlines and hoping they work.

Where this season stacks up with the rest is a small step backward. While the second half of the season is a bright spot, it can’t make up for the slow first half that mostly annoyed me. Further, the character path’s of the once secondary Entourage members (Turtle and Drama) seems to be barely sustainable unless the show is truly going to change directions. IE Turtle goes from a wastrel chronic masturbator always chasing girls who does too much pot to a legit guy with a steady girlfriend. All said and done, these trajectories have me more worried about the format of the show then the arcs themselves.

What I want to see in the next season (spoilers perhaps…) is I’m not quite sure. With last season and even the “mid term” finale of season three, there were powerful cliff hangers. Now, it seems like everything is tied up pretty nicely. Turtle’s social life is improving, as is Drama’s professional life. Vince’s career and even his and E’s gamble seem to be on steady ground. While of course all of those storylines will have some wrench thrown in them when the fourth season begins shortly, it doesn’t leave much for us to think about over the next two weeks as we wait for the fourth season. The biggest issue left open, and one largely because of a weak spot in the finale, is what E and Sloan are going to do. The finale should have had a choice being made by one of them so we could ponder whether that was going to hold true when the season picked up. Instead, we just know that there will be a decision made, or perhaps the decision will be lamely explained away in the first episode of season four, robbing us of the drama of actually seeing the scene.

When it comes down to it, the second half of the season was enjoyable while the first half was a mild annoyance – if the show is going to survive and be HBO’s main show post-Sopranos, the writers need to step up and earn more than the eight saltystix I’m giving this season.

Could “Avatar” Win Best Picture?

By Brett Hogan

 

Last week, the trailer for James Cameron’s sci-fi experiment “Avatar” debuted. While initially unimpressed with the teaser, I began to wonder: Could this film win best picture? 

 

Buzz has been generating for this movie for years. Years. The technology to make this movie didn’t exist when Cameron conceived it, so he invented it. When is the last time you heard of a director spearheading the invention of anything? The casting started in 2005. Most movies these days, even epics, are done in half that time. I could go on. 

 

The most important thing to take away from all of this is that people are saying this will be the future of movies. Now, I don’t agree with the idea that CGI will become more prevalent than it already is. But I do believe that this will set the bar miles higher for sci-fi. I mean, that is what Titanic did. And that won some awards if memory serves.

 

I’ll bet you’re asking yourself, how can you even suggest that a film like this will win Best Picture when the initial trailer was nothing better than visual stimulation? Well, there are a couple of reasons. First, the Academy has expanded Best Picture to ten films. This doesn’t guarantee anything other than improved chances for most films on the cusp.

 

Second, after last year’s Oscars debacle, which saw the best film of the year, “The Dark Knight,” not only get shafted in awards but nominations as well, the Academy is pulling out all the stops to appease those with the loudest voices in the film industry, the fanboys. Now, the Academy probably didn’t lose anything because of that other than some viewers of the award show. Perhaps if people are again outraged with the winners or nominees, the heads of the Academy would lose their jobs. So this is all about the Academy protecting itself, which is not so outrageous.  

 

 

Third, there is an economic motive here. I’ve heard this film will cost $190 million, not counting the R&D costs associated with Cameron’s inventions or the cost of getting 3-D cameras into every theater in the country. The Academy will do everything in its power to get people into the seats and make this the next “Titanic” or “The Dark Knight.” But the Academy doesn’t have much power, besides nominating and awarding, so they will slap the “Nominated for Best Picture” moniker onto every commercial and print ad to get the people who didn’t believe the critics to relent and see this movie.

 

Of course, all of this is pure conjecture, and no revolutionary film (Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, etc.) has ever won the Best Picture category because it changed the game. Except maybe Titanic. But still, could this movie actually win? My answer is no but a nomination is certain and who knows what could happen from there. We’ll know more come February 2010.