DCI Stringer Bell

This week I dove into the BBC's Luther. It is a solid episodic police procedural with enough power to keep you in the narrative for the hour and with an overarching storyline of romance and intrigue tantalizing enough to keep you wanting the next episode. 

The attempt to make Luther stand apart from other bobbies and killers shows is the ongoing relationship between DCI Luther and the femme fatal who eludes our hero in the season opener. Three episodes in and the relationship continues to evolve. The episode 4 sneak peek alluded to a potential consummation of this sexual tension laced "friendship".

For me though, the most interesting part is still hearing Baltimore's favorite heroin kingpin speak with British-born Idris Elba's native accent. 

I like to imagine a young Stringer took a different path after exposure to the city's Shakespeare in the park summer program. 

If you've got time to fit a new series into your life (And really who doesn't? Priorities, am I right?), three six episode seasons are streaming right now on Netflix. It's definitely worth a look. 

Derek Season 1 Finale

So I mini-marathoned the final four episodes of the initial Netflix run of Derek yesterday. As I have posted previously, this show is a tearjerker in crass comedy's clothing. Rather than wallowing in either, Derek makes more of a rapid-cycling manic depressive of the viewer. The shifts are so abrupt it is not uncommon to find oneself in a fit of raucus laughter before the tears from the previous scene have stopped flowing. 

The final episode is no exception with some heartfelt moments of reflection from Derek's friends on what makes Derek the man so much greater than his role in society. We hear how lucky Derek is that his limitations allow him to bypass the psychological pits and snares that drag the rest of us into disappointment and self-loathing. Likewise, he is praised for taking the best shortcut to happiness and fulfillment, kindness. 

Derek really is a beautiful little show and I can't wait to hear news of season 2. 

Derek celebrates his 50th birthday. (entertainment.ie)

Boardwalk Bye-Bye

Anthony Laciura's Eddie Kessler (http://boardwalkempire.wikia.com)

Sorry for the long hiatus everyone!

Last night I watched episode 4 of the current season of Boardwalk Empire. I write this in near shock at the abrupt departure of a long-time minor character and pleasingly emerging lead, Anthony Laciura's Eddie Kessler. Eddie began the show as series lead Nucky Thompson's discreet and faithful personal valet.

Eddie was always there in the background, providing the occasional moment of levity. That was it, until Eddie took a bullet during an escape with Nucky last season. Eddie demanded more responsibility in the organization and gained Laciura more serious screen time in the bargain. Unfortunately, Eddie's time in the sun was short-lived.

While on a mission which brought us some beautifully raucous, German-inspired drinking scenes with a Capone brother, Eddie is nabbed by an upstart FBI agent eager to impress new director J. Edgar Hoover. After cracking under the pressure of interrogation by Brian Geraghtey's expertly played FBI agent, Eddie tidies his room, writes a note, and steps out his top-floor bedroom window.

Eddie will be missed, but I am hopeful Geraghtey's and Ron Livingston's new-to-the-show-this-season characters will fill this new hole in the show. As I mentioned, Geraghtey is already doing his part. Livingston's character, on the other hand, is still shrouded in mystery, but I have the distinct feeling there is much more to come from him.

So What's the Plan Here?

Screen shot of just a portion
of my podcast listening.

Now that I've completed a few posts, it's probably important to layout my plan for this blog. If you've looked at the first five posts you'll see the content is quite eclectic. The common denominator is me. That's it. The reason these five media moments are strung together in the order they are is the order in which I experienced them.

I am a media sponge. I listen to tons of podcasts and subscribe to so many I can never keep up. I follow many TV series and time-shift almost all of my viewing via the streaming services Hulu Plus and HBO Go. Netflix is my go to for older series, films, and now original series like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Derek.

My intention for this space is the curation of my thoughts, impressions, and found connections regarding the media I manage to make/take the time to process. My goal starting out is to post about at least one piece of media experienced during my day at least five times a week. With the word morning in the title, I'm also hoping to post by mid morning most days. Thanks for your time! And I hope you'll stop by again soon.

Screen shot of my most
used streaming apps. 

Time Shifting The Lumineers "Live" from London

Lead vocalist Wesley Schultz leads the audience in crowdsources rendition
of "Ain't Nobody's Problem But My Own" (cdn.novafm.com.au)

Saturday's Lego session with my son was accompanied by a "live" performance by the Lumineers, a dusty, roots revival group more at home in the margins of a Steinbeck novel, than a shiny London "theatre." The group found their way to London's impressive Roundhouse Art Center as a part of Apple's 30-days-of-concerts event, iTunes Festival. While not all the festivals shows are available on demand, I was able to time-shift the Lumineers at a time convenient to me and my family. By fest's end at least two concerts will have streamed live from London each day in September. The productions carry Apple's signature polish with stunning cinematography, lighting, and sound.

Drummer, Fraites, joins Schultz up front. (cdn.novafm.com.au)

The Lumineers did their part in keeping things visually interesting by mixing up the stage groupings, with duets highlighting different members of the band. Wesley Schultz welcomed his "brother" Jeremiah Fraites to the stage front for a duet and the next song replaced the drummer with the band's sole female voice, Neyla Pekarek who we learn later is celebrating a birthday shared with the day's performance. 

(cdn.novafm.com.au)

The most intersting moment? A more intimate set in an attempt to recreate the feel of the group's pre-breakout club and house shows had the band mates each on his/her own white cube right in the middle of the audience. In an intriguing bit of irony for an event put on by one of the world's biggest mobile device retailers, Schutlz took the opportunity of some set-up-necessary downtime prior to the first song in this new arrangement to admonish, "We'd encourage you put away your cell phones and be here right now and enjoy this moment." Individual holdouts unwilling to cut their once in a lifetime bootlegs short by pocketing their phones were then fingered, literally pointed out, and told, "I'm talking to you too." While full compliance remained unattained, the message was received and the rest of the show featured much less visual distraction. 

On the music end, The Lumineers kept it loose with some beautiful arrangements of both hits and deeper cuts, a couple of fun audience inclusive numbers including their breakthrough "Hey, Ho, and my personal favorite moment, a uniquely haunting cover of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues." A burgeoning Dylan fan in his own right, The Lumineers' take was peppy enough to get my 5-year-old away from his Legos to perform a little jig on the living room rug. 

Cajoled back on stage for a three-song encore. Schultz continued his, I'm guessing, non-Apple approved stage patter stating, "We were lucky to sell a lot of albums this year and happy that people still bought albums and listen to the whole thing or streamed them or whatever instead of buying just one song." Interesting opinion with iTunes radios release later this week following Pandora's one-song-at-a-time model instead of the whole-album-listening Spotify model. 

Derek is Not What I Expected, and Thank You for That, Mr. Gervais

Promo for Netlix full-season launch of Derek (netflix.com)

I sat down to the pilot episode of Derek knowing just two things about the show: it starred Ricky Gervais, and he was playing a character with some sort of mental challenge. I was scared. Scared to watch Ricky mock the disabled for laughs. David Brent was social awkward and most definitely not very smart, but the viewer felt like her could have done and known better and therefore it was safe to laugh at him. I was afraid Derek might be the helpless victim of Gervais' comedy leaving the jokes humorless. 

Those fears are quickly put to rest as a beautifully acted character came to life. Derek is no buffoon. He is brimming with humanity, pure of heart. Is he different? Yes. Do funny things happen to him? Yes. Are we laughing at his differentness? Absolutely not. We are on his team and it is more often other's inability to handle his difference who are made the objects of ridicule. To erase any positional ambiguity concerning whose side we are on, those who would look to Derek for laughs at his expense, in this case symbolized by a woman at Derek's favorite pub, are delivered a perfunctory head butt by the show's heroine, comedian Kerry Godliman's Hannah.

Comedian Kerry Godliman's quietly endearing Hannah (channel14.com) 

I initially found the music perhaps a bit too didactic in its direction of our emotional states, a tinkling piano routinely pulling us back to poignancy when we teeter too close to brink of absurdity and insensitivity. By the end of the second episode, I began to welcome this musical sign post, as reminder of the import of the shows storytelling. These characters represent real people in the world, a world where budgets are often given more consideration than the people affected by those numbers. Two episodes in, this is a serious show with humorous moments, not a show designed the other way around.

Gervais' performance is truly stunning. He had me in tears more than once an episode and it was his nuanced performance, not the musical score than got me there. This deeply embodied character is another piece of evidence in the case that some of our best comedians can really kill it in dramatic roles. Think Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting, Tom Hanks in Philedelpia, Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love and Reign on Me, Jim Carrey in The Truman Show. The converse, a dramatic genius really nailing a turn at comedy, seems much more rare.

Still from a heart-wrenchingly sweet Derek confessional
(thefunniestvideos.com) 

Finally then, we must deal with the elephant in the room. What exactly is Derek's condition? I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Is he really an employee, or a resident Hannah and the others humor with an honorary employee status. A possible diagnosis, autism, is mentioned at the end of episode two, but when Derek is asked about being tested, he responds, "Would it change who I am? No. Then just let it be then." With Gervais in seeming total command of the potential pitfalls around his depiction of Derek, I suggest we take Derek's advice.

Champagne, Plastic, and a Truly Digital iPhone Experience

Three shades of metal (theverge.com)

Tuesday's big media event for an admitted Apple fanboy like me was obviously the keynote presentation of the iCompany's newest iPhones. Apple's decision to limit the live stream to just a few key cities around the globe stretched this just-over-an-hour event into a two-day experience with a launch day coverage choice of watching Scott Stein, Josh Lowensohn, and Tim Stevens' CNet live blog unfurl while tapping into the audio feed of Molly Wood, Brian Tong, and Donald Bell's color commentary.

The audio feed was a good counterweight to my natural, or some may say Apple marketing department produced, tendency to go full drone, drop-jawed, and drooling over Apple's newest shiny bauble. While they are tech geeks by lifestyle and profession, they know smoke and mirrors marketing rhetoric when they hear it and aren't afraid to call it out. At the same time, they are not so jaded as to not admit being impressed when they see something they truly like. Besides they're just a fun group hang with for an hour. 

Day two's media came in the form of Apple's podcast of the keynote through the company's own podcast app. This was available shortly after the event, but I didn't have time to get to it until late last night. The beauty of streaming media on a phone while flat on my back in bed. 

Apple's keynotes are always well produced with clean visuals and straight-forward presentation of the newest software and hardware, and this round was no exception. While those unfamiliar with an Apple product launch are often distracted by the sheer volume of superlatives - best, finest, most, greatest - bandied about by the various Apple execs, many Apple event aficionados expect it and have come to find it almost endearing, like listening proud parents boasting about their truly accomplished children. 

i0S 7's home screen and logo (on3solutions.com)

The much expected champagne gold model was added to the metal line up with a slight shift in the black model from never-really-a-true-black-anyway to what Apple is calling "space grey," a weird choice when listed next to the more simple, unmodified "silver" and "gold."

iOS 7, while quite impressive, brought nothing new to the table since its tease at WWDC in June. It will be available for download on the 18th though, and can make 4, 4S, and 5 owners feel as if they have new phones as we wait for next September's launch of the iPhone 6. 

The completely announcement-spoiled 5C was also unveiled in vibrantly colored plastic. These are sure to be a hit with secondary and college students. 

In a cunning, but surprising move Apple announced that five of its apps, the productivity minded Keynote, Pages, and Numbers and the more creatively inclined iPhoto and iMovie, will now all be free with the purchase of new iOS hardware. 

CEO Tim Cook announces free apps (theverge.com)

This is a great marketing move. The mobile equivalent of the big box store's loss leader. Getting these apps in the hands of millions of iOS users on their phones, pods, and pads will ease the entry into the iWork and iLife ecosystems. This is a big hurdle often keeping PC users from making the leap to Macs and Mac users from leaving Microsoft Office behind. Giving these apps away will sell more Macs and Mac software. 

Probably the biggest news of the day was the confirmation of the much rumored fingerprint scanner security feature. It is an impressive bit of technology and much more reminiscent of the innovative leaps Apple used to bring us more often. 

Anatomy of a fingerprint scanner (macworld.com)

While the security angle of the fingerprint scanner garnered the most attention, I found the functional possibilities most intriguing. The scanner was reported to be able to learn the fingerprints of multiple users. This may open up the possibility of bringing a user profile function to shared iOS devises such as a family iPad which lives on the living room coffee table. My five-year-old's messy little finger may open a much more restricted iPad with educational games, a content-filtered Netflix, and the inability to make purchases, while my fingerprint opens up the whole iPad. 

Whatever one thinks of Apple, there were some new concepts thrown at us  this week and I'm sure we'll see these new devises in use soon.