American Horror Story season one: revisiting the Murder House

It's no secret that one of my favorite shows is American Horror Story. The show is about to start it's third season, although technically each season is actually a stand-alone mini-series so the show is an anthology of different narratives instead of a multi-season show. This, I think, has helped make it such a strong show since the writers can go into each season with a set narrative arc and they don't end up introducing red herrings or side plots that go nowhere. But, when AHS's pilot episode premiered almost two years ago, we didn't know that the structure was going to go that way. Questions about how they would maintain the freshness of the story for more than a season were often at the forefront of my mind. Now that I know better, it's even more exciting to revisit the first season. Since I know what the vision was to its completion, there are all sorts of clues, themes, and nuances to pick up on. I'm planning to go over each episode and look into the time line of the Murder House (for those who watched it already, you'll know that the show frequently used flashbacks to show different points in the house's history, not necessarily in order), and look into some overarching themes that show up. I'll try to avoid outright spoilers, but since I know what's coming obviously what I choose to focus on will be influenced since I know what's coming. So without further ado, let's step in the front door of that gorgeous evil house for the pilot episode.

How Many Robot Fights is Too Many? Suspension of Disbelief and "Pacific Rim"

Over the summer, I managed to catch a few movies in the theater. One of those was Pacific Rim, a sci-fi film stemming from the Godzilla tradition. It was my husband and his friend's pick, but I was definitely willing to give it a shot mostly owing to the involvement of Guillermo del Toro. I loved del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and The Orphanage, and read his Strain trilogy (perhaps more on that another time), so I'm willing to give him a chance even outside of genres that normally draw me in. And Pacific Rim was pretty fun; it had some interesting characters, in particular the female lead Mako Mori who subverts some traditional movie tropes. But, my nitpick-y self had some issues with it, and after watching the movie I spent a lot of time thinking about where I draw the line in my suspension of disbelief. Spoilers follow.

On Time Tuesdays: Is "Hannibal" already feasting on leftovers?

I really wanted Hannibal to turn into a great show. But we're 4-ish episodes in, and it's already turning into another formulaic procedural drama with a little more gore. Criminal Minds has already ripped off the best of Thomas Harris for weekly installments; to work, Hannibal needed to focus on something other than increasingly farfetched serial murders that could be solved in the span of an hour. After episode 3, I was hopeful that it was turning in that direction. But then, the latest episode aired and I'm feeling pretty cynical towards the show.

Art Crushes: Gianlorenzo Bernini

I am an art nerd. I grew up going to museums, volunteering summers as a docent, drawing, and eventually studied art history, which led to several lucky trips abroad. For art lovers, there are moments you always remember, when you see a work that really moves you for the first time. For me, one of these happened in my first art history survey in college. My school, rather than having two surveys covering the entirety of art history, broke it down into several specifications. The first one I took was Renaissance and Baroque. My professor eventually became my advisor, and one day in class she put up a slide that took my breath away: Gianlorenzo Bernini's David.

On Time Tuesdays: Is "Hannibal" Worth Sitting Down With A Glass of Chianti?

NBC's new series Hannibal has aired two episodes now, giving some hints at what the show might be leading towards and setting up its cast of characters. For those who are even more behind than I am, Hannibal is a prequel to the original Hannibal Lecter trilogy made most famous by the 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs. The original three novels and corresponding movies all take place after Hannibal has been caught and incarcerated (a later fourth book, Hannibal Rising, examines Hannibal as a child and young man, but is rather disconnected from the original trilogy), and although we get snippets of Hannibal's original crime spree, the new series is the first narrative to show Hannibal when he was an uncaught serial killer.

On Time Tuesdays: Walking Dead Season 3 in Review

Last Sunday was the season 3 finale of The Walking Dead, AMC's zombie thriller that I have discussed previously as one of the better examples of horror TV at the moment. Season 3 was fairly strong overall, but it still had its ups and downs as it constructed a new societal system for the main band of survivors and developed a conflict between their group and another community nearby. I hope the show will continue to strengthen in season 4--I wonder if some of the difficulties they've faced haven't been due to the transition from a six episode format in the first season to a more traditional thirteen and sixteen episode arc in seasons 2 and 3 respectively. Season 1 was all action; with more episodes, the show had more time to spend on exposition and character development but it didn't always seem like it was sure where it was going. (If you haven't yet seen Season 3, spoilers follow.)

Beasts of the Southern Wild: Magical Realism in the American South

I actually tried to see Beasts of the Southern Wild while it was still in theaters; my friend and I actually got together to go and the theater was sold out. We ended up seeing Celeste and Jesse Forever, so it was not a total loss by any means, but one of my biggest regrets about this awards season was having seen so few of the nominees before the ceremonies, particularly this show. It's odd to cheer for a film you haven't even seen yet. I can't completely blame the sold out theater, though--I did get the DVD from Netflix before the Oscars and I still didn't watch it in time.

After all of that anticipation, of course Beasts was not exactly how I expected it to be in my head, but it was a fantastic movie. Much has been said about star Quvenzhané Wallis' Oscar nominated performance, making her the youngest actress nominated for the award. (I find it very interesting that Emmanuelle Riva's nomination this year also made her the oldest person nominated for Best Actress--there seem to be far fewer Best Actor nods at such far ends of the spectrum, and I wonder if it isn't telling that really juicy roles for actresses come with roles when women are not seen as romantic interests as much, but I digress.) Beasts is proof positive that waiting for the ideal people to make a film can make or break it.

On Time Tuesdays: Bates Motel Drinking Game

It's only been two episodes but there are already a few patterns in Bates Motel. Since this show is shaping up to be delightfully nutty buckets, why not come up with a game to make the watching experience even more social?

On Time Tuesdays: Bates Motel

Last night, A & E aired the first episode of their new show Bates Motel. If it's not obvious already from the title, Bates Motel is an update (in more ways than one) of Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Psycho. The show looked pretty promising from the teasers and overall I was pretty pleased with the first episode. With such familiar subject matter, I was expecting Bates Motel to be, if not exactly predictable, at least a touch formulaic. There's definitely a lot going on in the show's world already, and it managed to be surprising and fresh even with such well known characters.

Building Stories: Choose Your Own Adventure for Adults

Towards the end of last year, I started to hear about a new "graphic novel" called Building Stories. The basic description is that it's about the lives of the residents in an apartment complex in Chicago, a seemingly straight forward work of literary fiction with pictures. However, Building Stories isn't quite so simple; it features not only a non-traditional narrative structure but a non-traditional physical one as well. The reason why I'm hesitant to classify Building Stories as simply a novel (graphic or otherwise) is because it's not just a single object that you can hold in one hand and read from cover to cover. There are a lot of covers, and lot of things without covers, in Building Stories. Author Chris Ware has put together his narrative through fourteen separate items contained in a larger, sturdy box rather than between two pieces of cardboard.

Oz the Great and Smarmy

For once I actually got out to a movie in a timely fashion--opening weekend no less! This so rarely happens lately, and I've developed a considerable list of movies that I need to catch up on once they hit Netflix. I think I will have to give up on sleeping if I ever want to watch them all. So how disappointing that one of the rare times that I actually saw a movie within a week of its release, it was such a disappointment, while I continue to miss out on a lot of really amazing films on the big screen.

Shows That Make You Hide Behind The Couch: The Awesome Rise of Horror TV

I am a horror fan. I've mentioned some of my scary literary faves already, but lately I've been getting most of my shocks on the small screen. When I was growing up, the only horror TV shows I remember were the occasional Stephen King mini-series (Rose Red has given me a yearning to visit the Winchester Mystery House someday), but in the last few years genre television has trickled down from networks like HBO and Showtime onto more standard cable channels like AMC and FX and now even onto network stations. Some of them are amongst my favorite shows on TV right now. Others are... less successful.

BASS 2012: "North Country" by Roxane Gay

I've been reading a lot of short fiction lately, and am only holding out until March to get my hands on some more (I cannot resist the lure of Karen Russell, particularly after Michael Shaub called Vampires in the Lemon Grove "magnificent" and "flawless.") and I am loving it. I've never gorged myself on short fiction, but I've always enjoyed it. I think one of the things that really strikes me is that with good short fiction, I can get everything I get out of a good novel, but in concentrated form. Perhaps this is why, as a huge Stephen King buff, I love the novels but adore the short fiction. The last novel I read of his was Under the Dome, and I was massively impressed as usual by his talents as a world builder, but there is something to be said about a writer who can spend a few hundred pages setting up an elaborate literary ecosystem and can also do it in a single-serving chunk.

Currently I'm working my way through The Best American Short Stories 2012, which gets me out of my comfort zone a little since I'm not picking and choosing authors, or even subject matter--I pretty much go into the stories blind, with the exception of a couple that have since become title stories in anthologies of other works by their authors.

How I Gave My Teeth to Art

A little backstory about myself is necessary for this post: teeth freak me out. In coming days you'll see me post about horror films, shows, and books, but but the one thing that I really can't abide, and that will get me to avoid watching something, is stuff happening to people's teeth. I have never seen Marathon Man, and I never will. I shudder at the thought.

So recently, as I've been trying to get over my fears, I decided that there was no better way to work through this issue than by embracing my teeth and giving them up to be used in a work of art.

The New Breed of "Romantic Comedy"

I was a little bit at a loss for what to write about this week; a few things that I've been preparing are not ready yet, and my hopes to start retro-recapping the first season of one of my favorite TV shows have gone down the drain for the moment since our PS3 died so I have no way to watch the blu-ray I got for Christmas. I was considering discussing last week's Golden Globe awards and awards season in general, and while considering the films from those nominees that I've been lucky enough to see already I stumbled upon another topic.

Since this is the Behind the Times Blog, after all, I was ruminating on the films I had seen and the ones that I was sorely disappointed to miss in the theaters. At the top of that list was Beasts of the Southern Wild, which I have heard phenomenal things about. I actually went to see Beasts in the theaters... only to find it sold out and on the last week of its theatrical run where I live. While I'm sad to have to settle for the DVD, I saw another film that day in its place: Celeste and Jesse Forever. It surpassed my expectations, and I've been thinking about some of the similarities between it and one of the few awards season nominees that I have seen at this point: Silver Linings Playbook.

Favorite Books of 2012

Obviously I'm a little late on this. We're almost two weeks into 2013, and I've been reading and salivating over best/favorite books of 2012 lists since the end of November, at least. Many of them were influential when I cashed in the gift certificate I got for an early Christmas gift and made my vacation reading decisions (having time off from work is the best opportunity to catch up on all the reading I'm behind on). But I'm very glad I didn't try to pick favorites before the new year rolled over, because the last two books I read in 2012 made this list and the very last one is a book I loved so much that I'm mercilessly forcing it on my friends and will probably be gushing over its virtues for years to come. So without further ado, in order that I read them: