Good day, fine people.  If you’re a local in Miami, I’m sure you’re like the rest of us trying to get away from this God-awful perma-rain. So what better to do than read my blog? Nothing. 

“Breaking Bad” Season 3 Review

I’m going to try hard here and do something pretty difficult- I know a lot of you haven’t seen the whole season yet, so I’m going to give you my recommendation and say what I like about it without giving away any plot details, nor any plot details of the previous two seasons.  So, if you’re current with the show, it will sound like I’m skimping on some detailed analysis- this is intentional.

If you aren’t familiar with the premise of the show- what are you doing in your free time? Walter White, a high-school chemistry teacher down on his luck, discovers he has lung cancer and starts using his expertise of chemistry to cook meth in order to leave money for his family.  In order to do so, he must team up with a former student of his who dropped out to sell drugs.

If that’s not a juicy premise, I don’t know what the hell a juicy premise is.

I find this season of Breaking Bad to be the best yet (and that is saying quite a lot- even Season 1 is a 5-hour masterpiece, but it only gets much bigger, wider, and better from there on out) for several reasons.

What the writers of Breaking Bad do better than anyone else on the planet, in my view, is maintain surprise and a “what-happens-next” feel. At every possible opportunity, these writers set up your expectations not to see them play out as expected, as bad writers do, and not simply to move the plot along- each and every setup betrays the obvious and flips what you thought of characters and situations, constantly.

 The writers understand what it takes  to really be unpredictable, and they do so without tripping on logic, backtracking, sudden unbelievable changes, or the slightest hint of convolution.  The entire plot is a masterful tapestry, with each part fitting neatly, perfectly into the next- no characters are wasted, literally every moment is significant in unexpected ways, and characters constantly evolve and turn against type.

The finale episode, “Full Measure”, is a complete masterpiece of television and indeed filmmaking, going from clever to bad-ass to traumatizing within 48 mere minutes.  In the last three minutes alone, I experienced extreme tension, then shock, then more extraordinary tension, to pity, to dislike, to panic, to awe at the resolution- I had NO IDEA how Walter White was going to get out of that one, and rarely am I surprised by story anymore.  Of course, the writers then took it a notch further- the ending image is one of the most heart-rending moments I have ever seen, and is probably one of the best filmic representation of “collateral damage”, ever.

Not to mention that the filmic techniques- the slick, desert-nightmare, hot-sun cinematography and a visual style that knows the power of symbolic images and frame construction to amplify emotion, the gorgeous sunset color palate, and the INCREDIBLE sound design textures that drive home feelings of unbelievable dread or high emotional power, the dead-on performances from Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul, and Dean Norris- all of it culminates into a truly unforgettable, life-enriching experience that will influence my own film-making for as long as I am able to forsee.  Please go watch “Breaking Bad.”

Grade: A+

Manifest Destiny Updates

As with many films, we have discovered over the course of post-production that we still owe a few shots to really finish the film.  As many of you know, the film was shot on the RED EPIC, which is expensive to rent- fortunately, we’re getting help from Jokes, who is gearing up to shoot his feature film with it (more on that next week.)

But what that does mean is that we probably aren’t going to get this puppy all the way done, including sound and polish, until January or February. Anyone who has ever made a film before will tell you that they are almost never done when you thought they were, for a variety of reasons. I’ll still keep you guys posted here- but trust me, the project isn’t going to lose momentum or anything.

Enjoy this rainy-ass week! If you can. I’ll be back next Wednesday.

-Tim