A Brie Grows in Brooklyn

GIRLS Season 1: A Review

By Bianca Ozeri

When Brie asked me to write a post on GIRLS, I got nervous because she hates the show and I love the show and sometimes I mistake disagreeing with Brie for cultural ineptitude. Which, she tells me, really is a mistake given that she still listens to Lana Del Rey. So, yes, I love GIRLS. Lena Dunham has, to me, hit the proverbial nail right on the head.

More than a voluntary choice, this adoration feels the only option in order to maintain my dignity. For every Sunday, during HBO’s shit slot, I watch a simulation of my life. I have three primary girlfriends who compositely exhibit qualities of comical ignorance, serious priggishness, and chic wisdom (myself included). We’ve had dance parties to Robyn. We’ve lived together when we shouldn’t. Virginity still looms for one of us. We’ve dealt with death together (not that of an unborn fetus, but still). And now that I’ve written out what I thought an uncanny likeness, I realize that it’s pretty cookie-cutter, and you, if you’re a girl, probably (hopefully!) draw the same parallels. 

(Clara, absent, takes a brilliant photo) 

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Girls: The Last Episode

It was posed to me, last week, that the reason why I don’t like Girls is because I’m jealous of Lena Dunham, who, unlike me, is a successful writer who makes real money. “That is definitely part of it,” I admitted outright.

But it’s not the only reason, I tried to argue, to a chorus of people proclaiming that it directly mirrors their own lives. “I can relate to it,” they intoned. “I am LenaDunham. Her best friends. I know the dudes they date. I live in her apartment in Greenpoint. I have HPV. Do you like my tattoos? My generation.”

“Does no one else watch this tv show?” I asked them. “Because it’s really not that good.”

But my protests fell on deaf ears. After the backlash that ensued after the first episode, which was as ridiculous as the florid praise that came before it, anyone who watches it is weary of having an individual opinion. If you hate it, you might disagree with real cultural critics. And if you love it, then you encounter people like me, who want to argue with you about it until you cry.

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Where’s The Masturbation At? Girls, Episode 2: A Review

I don’t have very much to say about the second episode of Girls, because I didn’t hate it as much as I did the first one, and I also am having trouble remembering what even happened. These are the notes that I wrote to myself while watching the episode:

Jobs that are boring

Happy with these lives??

Take abuse

Whatever they want!

50 Shades of Gray

So cute at interviews. Oh my god!!

Which basically just reads like a summary of any given New York Magazine cover article.

My main take-away was that the way sex is portrayed is irritating, because the show makes it seem like “girls” don’t enjoy it. They just have it because they know they’re supposed to be sexually active, in the same way they know that they should probably get jobs. Having sex seems like nothing more than a penance for being fucking alive. 

(Please don’t continue to read this post if you’re related to me.)

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GIRLS: A Review

I was wondering why Lena Dunham’s new show on HBO, “GIRLS,” got the bitch slot (10:30pm) on the Sunday night line-up, despite all of the glowing reviews in the media. Or at least the New York-centric, witty pop culture media that defines my worldview. 

After watching it last night, I think I know why. Despite the fact that New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum describes herself as “a goner, a convert” for the show, and even though writers like Frank Bruni seem to think that it defines the way that the rising generation of women feel about sex, the network executives aren’t sure it’s that good. 

And, if the first episode is any indication, it’s not. I say this with a twinge of envy-relief—and also with disappointment, because I find Lena Dunham to be really endearing, the kind of girl you’d immediately want to be friends with—but the show was dull, confusing, and myopic. “This is what middle-aged well-educated white people WANT to think 24-year-olds are like today!” I thought, as I continually checked the clock from 10:33pm until 11:04pm, waiting for the minute when I could, with good conscious, turn off the television and go to sleep.

Because from the moment that Lena appeared on the screen as Hannah, a young woman from the Midwest who has been living on her parent’s dime in New York for the past two years, to the first time she referenced how hard it is to get a job in this economy—in the publishing industry, no less, which doesn’t even pay living wages for its executives, thereby rendering a quest for a salary almost superfluous— to the awkward, uninspired sex between Hannah and her worm bellied loser of a lover, to the final scene in which Hannah, on her own, walks bravely past a TAXI CAB, Carrie-style, towards the subway, I was fucking bored.

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Luck: A Sneak Peak Review

I was going to write this brilliant review of Luck, the new HBO series about horse racing, but I find myself without anything to say about it. Quite frankly, for 80% of the time, I had no idea what was going on. The only parts that I truly enjoyed were the horse racing scenes, and I have to admit, I enjoyed those thoroughly.

Because I’m not thinking well, here are the topics which I would like someone else to tell me how to discuss.

1. Michael Mann, the Director: I can’t say anything authoritative about Michael Mann, who I thought produced Michael Clayton and The Bourne Identity, but actually directed films like Miami Vice, and The Last of the Mohicans, which I can’t remember watching? If he had done the former, I would have said he’s really good at capturing sleek movement, in which case he’d be Tony Gilroy, who actually directed them. As it stands, he did a great job making me feel exhilarated during the horse racing scenes, and generally nauseous and jumpy during the rest of the takes. 

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Game of Thrones: A Cast Recap

The season finale of Game of Thrones is this Sunday night, and I am going to try to live-blog it, although it’s sure to be a bit of a letdown after this past week’s episode. 

To get ready for it, I’m going to do a brief recap of my opinions on all of the characters thus far, especially the ones I hate, until I get fatigued, and then I’m going to stop. 

Blah blah blah, spoiler alert. If you’re not caught up with the series, don’t read more, although I don’t reveal anything that hasn’t already been shown.

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Game of Thrones: My Casting Part I

It’s stormy as sin in Buenos Aires today, and I’m feeling inspired by the plethora of fake Game of Thrones YouTube trailers created by fans. Some of them get over 200,000 views. And they’re not even real trailers. So in the hopes that I can bring my readership up over 15 today, I’m going to do my own casting for the HBO series.

Robert Baratheon

HBO cast Mark Addy in this role, which I find to be disappointing. Not only does this guy not have black hair, he doesn’t even look capable of slaughtering anything, least of all Rhaegar Targaryen. He looks like a really nice guy, but come on, no one is going to believe that he fathered 16 bastard children.

My casting: Dominic West. I’ll be the first to admit that this casting has a lot of outward flaws. First of all, I know that Dominic West is too famous to play Robert Baratheon, but this is a “fantasy” casting, not a reality one. And I know he’s not hefty. But hear me out. Dominic West plays a great drunk (hello Detective McNulty on The Wire). He’s definitely a warrior. He’s a lover. I can definitely see him roughly taking his connubial rights with Cersei Lannister. Also, he can shoot the youthful Robert Baratheon scenes first, and then gain a ton of weight for the years when he is king. I mean, everyone knows that the mark of a fine actor is being able to rapidly gain and lose weight for a role. And finally, who wouldn’t prefer to gaze on his visage over that of Mark Addy (no offense)? 

Daenerys Targaryen

HBO originally cast Tamzin Merchant as Dany, who I think was a mediocre choice. But I think that she was a much better pick than the girl that they recently re-cast, who is:

Emilia Clarke. Emilia Clarke has only been in one other role, as a young girl in the series “Doctors.” I just watched her clips, and I don’t think that she has what it takes to be Dany. I mean, whoever plays Dany needs to be a girl who can walk into fire and emerge with three baby dragons crouched on her being. She needs to hire a slave army. She needs to marry Khal Drogo and eat the heart of a horse. She needs to be the most beautiful woman in the world. I mean, this girl is pretty, but she’s not UNIQUE enough. So in my fantasy cast, I would choose:

Lily Cole. I mean, look at how otherworldly beautiful she is.

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A Song of Ice and Fire

I’ve finally finished every book that has been published in George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire.

I woke up this morning after having a series of dreams about the characters, as if they were real people, only to find that instead of being in a castle being sieged by Jamie Lannister, I was in fact just in my bed in Buenos Aires. I was, however, clutching my sweatshirt as if it were his golden hand (if you get this reference, god help you.)

There is nothing sadder than realizing the following:

1. Fantasy novels are not real life, and if they were, you would probably be a commoner, not a high born lady with a latent magical ability.

(Sigh)

2. Although you just spent 8 weeks reading the books, you already can’t remember 75% of the characters names, because there are far, far too many of them.

3. You have a long wait until the next book is published, and you’re not sure what you’re going to do in the meantime. Read other books? No way. Hang out with friends? Who has any. 

4. There is an off-chance that the author will die before he finishes the series, in which case you will be left with an inferior ghostwriter who himself cannot remember the names or traits of all of the characters. (I’m talking about you, Robert Jordan.)

Fortunately, HBO is making a television series of the books, so those of you who don’t have 4,321 hours to kill can enjoy the storyline on your flat screen TV. 

Watching TV in a High Brow Kind of Way

If there ever were a show that proved that most actors are diminutive beings, than The Shield is it. I mean, look at this picture. These guys have stubbier legs than I do.

Right now, I’m looking at a pile of DVDs that includes The Letter with Bette Davis and Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story, which I’ve been intending to watch for years. It’s supposed to be one of the masterpieces of modern cinema, shot on fuzzily gorgeous 35mm in 1953, and if I don’t love it than I am not allowed to be a film buff. But when I started it a few weeks ago, in the early evening, buried under my warm down comforter, I fell dead asleep. It’s been accusing me from my desk ever since.

Mixed within the pile of cinema classics is Gilmore Girls Season II, and The Shield, Season I (courtesy of Matt Dreyer’s vast DVD collection. I miss you Matt Dreyer). All of my intentions to better myself in Buenos Aires by spending solitary evenings with the most high-brow of 20th century culture have thus far been ruined by the snappy banter between Lorelei and Rory Gilmore, whom I never grow tired of, not even when they spend 10 minutes talking about ordering Chinese food. 

I mean, look at how pretty these two are. Although feel free to tell me that I’m a bit of a fool for choosing them over Setsuko Hara, the star of Tokyo Story.

Last week, when I finished the Gilmore Girls, I briefly filled the hole in my time with George R. Martin’s fantasy series, A Sword of Ice and Fire, soon to be made into an HBO series. And while we’re talking cute, check out George R. Martin.

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