Monday, July 19, 2010

Lost's Worst Season

Season 6 certainly was (at least for me) the lowest point of the entire series. Worse then even Season 5, which suffered from a lack of direction nearly all season and certainly worse than season 3's aimless early episodes.

In season 6, almost all of the on-island stuff was ultimately unnecessary. Most of the cast sat around for great lengths of time, walked from place to place just to sit some more, and lacked any cohesive direction. Had the story progressed during that time, I wouldn't have a problem, but almost none of the things they did the first half of the season made a single lick of difference.

Character growth on-island was not only stunted, but regressed. All the character growth of the last 3 years (in-universe, off screen mostly) was swept away. It was like they ignored all of season 4 and 5 and were writing these people like they were still in early season 3.

Thursday, July 08, 2010

Bruno and Borat

While I can buy the comments that Bruno and Borat were made to "highlight their prejudices" - especially commonly mentioned about "middle America" or whatnot, there were only a few notable scenes that really conveyed this in both films. The guy at the rodeo who they captured on camera making racist and bigoted comments is one of the few genuine moments of the film.

The problem is, even when he was able to pull a fast one on someone and get them to say something bigoted, racist, or sexist, a lot of coaxing was needed to get them to that point. The college students they got liquored up started playing loose with their tongues is one of those situations that took a lot of work to get them to "show their true colors."