Day: January 11, 2011

UPDATED: ABC’s V Back Tonight + New Morena Baccarin Interview with Details About the Show’s Future

Morena Baccarin as the alien queen, Anna.

By Jason Apuzzo. I just wanted to remind those of you who are enjoying ABC’s V that the show is back tonight, in what promises to be an interesting episode. Previews for the show (albeit not the one below) have shown a suicide bombing taking place during this episode; plus, the colorful Jane Badler – who played the alien leader in the old series – returns in this episode, something teased in the season premiere.

Also today there’s a new interview out with actress Morena Baccarin, who plays the Visitor queen, Anna. SPOILER WARNING: Baccarin reveals some tantalizing details about how the show’s storyline will be developing – including what cast members from the original series will be returning, and in what capacity; and, furthermore, it’s revealed that the producers have planned-out the storyline of the series through a hypothetical third season, a season which may or may not happen depending on ratings.

Click on over to Collider for more details. I’ve also embedded a preview for tonight’s show below.

[UPDATE: Having now seen the episode, I was not happy with it at all – and my earlier fears about the ‘suicide bomber’ subplot were validated, alas. Although there were aspects of the show I liked – particularly the speculative elements about the human soul, and Jane Badler’s juicy performance as the alien queen’s mother – I was very disappointed by the overall arc and purpose of the suicide bomber subplot. Its purpose seems to be to show that ‘desperate people in desperate circumstances’ will turn to terrorism, even – as we learn – an ex-Israeli Mossad agent. Memo to ABC: the Mossad fights terrorism, and doesn’t practice it. Had the leader of this rogue, suicide-bombing branch of the show’s ‘Fifth Column’ been a Chechen or a Russian, I think it would’ve been much more believable. As it stands, however, having its leader be ex-Mossad feels like a cheap shot toward the Israelis. Also: having the actual suicide bomber himself be a Catholic parishioner who is ‘inspired’ by Father Jack’s words was in extremely poor taste. What a disappointment. Two shows in, and my enthusiasm has already cooled.]

Posted on January 11th, 2011 at 2:26pm.

Skip James & the ‘Old, Weird America’

Skip James at work.

By David Ross. I wonder how much of my sensibility is traceable to the 1982 edition of The Rolling Stone Record Guide, edited by Dave Marsh and John Swenson. I was a twelve year old oddly drawn to what Greil Marcus calls the “old, weird America,” and the guide pointed toward an American shadow culture of the swamps, the back roads, the cotton fields, the mountains, the bordellos, the late-night clubs on the wrong side of the tracks. The music was important to me, but even more important  was the writing of critics like Marsh, Marcus, and Lester Bangs, which seemed to model a nerdy cool that was not entirely beyond my powers of imitation and which excitingly presupposed an American vitality and mysteriousness invisible to the teenage suburban eye.

Picasso's "The Tragedy."

With the guide in hand, I felt sure that the Brit-boy synth pop then dominating the charts – remember the Human League’s massively annoying “Don’t You Want Me”? – represented a momentary masochistic derangement (rather like communism) and not the human norm. This notion turned out to be only partially true – the great age of American music really was over – but it allowed me to grit my teeth and get through sixth grade.

I particularly remember the guide’s entry on Skip James (1902-1969), a Mississippi bluesman whose music had a strange ethereality and almost modernist abstraction, reversing the usual earthiness of the blues and turning it into something elegant and almost formal. These days his music puts me in mind of paintings from Picasso’s blue period. Wrote Marcus: “James’ high, ghostly voice pierces the night air – it always seems like night when these albums are playing – and his guitar shadows the moon.” This line thrilled me as a kind of poetry, and Skip James became – and remains – one of my touchstones. It really does seem like night when his albums play; his guitar really does seem to shadow the moon.

Here is the best of what little footage exists of James, from the film Devil Got My Woman: Blues at Newport 1966. And Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World pays homage to James here.

Posted on January 11th, 2011 at 2:20pm.