miscellany and a snow day

So I've been slogging through this week. Just going through the motions pretty much. It's a tough spot, but these things happen. It can't always be magical fabulosicity, but it's just a comedown sometimes.
I started watching the first season of Friday Night Lights for no apparent reason, and I was pretty impressed. The show should by all accounting suck. It's a take off on a successful movie that starts with a ridiculously cliched storyline. The star quarterback gets paralyzed in the first game of the season, and the shy back-up comes on to throw a hail-mary, game-winning pass. The writing is passable, but not mindstoppingly great. What makes this show is the incredible acting. The whole cast turn in some flooring stuff. They really make the material live so palpably. This is also enabled by the cinema verite style of filming, which has become a cornerstone of the ongoing television renaissance, and the production design. They really get past a spotty premise with the grace of gritty performances.

In the movie department, I'm psyched to go see Be Kind, Rewind this weekend. I'm such a fan of Michel Gondry. His stuff with Charlie Kaufman is top-notch. I do feel like his style was maybe a little off for Human Nature, and I would have liked to see what Kaufman would have done with it. The story goes that Gondry came up with the kernel of the idea for Eternal Sunshine and gave it to Kaufman, who was writing Adaptation at the time. Kaufman had already written Human Nature and wanted to direct it himself at some later date. Gondry apparently convinced Charlie to let him direct it, and the rest is history. Gondry's brand of fairytaleism just seems to work against this film, but Sunshine is, of course, just great and so luminous. Anyway, on a related note, it will be interesting to see Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut with Synecdoche, NY hopefully coming soon to a theatre near me. I see in IMDB that it's in post-production, so we'll keep our fingers crossed that it gets out there. It sounds wild, but anyway. I can't wait to go see Be Kind tomorrow. I am such a fan of Mos Def. His performance in Monster's Ball was some understated brilliance all the way. Obviously, the Hitchhiker stuff was great too. He really walks away with that film.
Anyway, here is a slight description of the film from Wesley Morris's review in the Boston Globe today. "If Bill Cosby and Jerry Lewis had made a Richard Pryor-Gene Wilder comedy by Hasbro, it'd go something like this. I'll have 'Bustin' Loose,' super-sweded, please." How awesome does that sound.

So, I can't decide if I should go see Super Furry Animals or Victoria Bergsman tomorrow night. Both intrigue me, and I would kinda' like to see what shows at the MFA are like, but I would also like to rock out a little bit. We'll see.