OK, one last fall preview…

Smith (CBS): Emmy Award winner Ray Liotta stars as a criminal mastermind in this drama about a close-knit crew of criminals who plot and execute high-stakes robberies. Though Bobby Stevens (Liotta) appears to be a regular family man with a nine-to-five job, he’s actually an expert thief who is seeking a few last big jobs so he can finally leave the business for a comfortable, lawful lifestyle with his wife, Hope (Virginia Madsen), and their two children. While they never discuss Bobby’s illegal pursuits, Hope is growing weary of turning a blind eye.

This pilot is rather unusual. It’s not unusual in terms of plot, but in terms of style and ambition. This is more like a feature film than a series. Yeah, more and more shows can truly make that claim these days, but there’s something more to this one. Take the cast, for instance. Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Amy Smart, Johnny Lee Miller and so on. Reads more like a feature film than TV series to me. I’m a fan of the cast members, so I was anxious to see this pilot. So, how great was it? Eh, it was pretty good. Like Michael Mann’s recent film version of Miami Vice, this pilot is in no shortage of excellent style. In fact, much of it reminded me of Michael Mann’s crime films, like Heat and Miami Vice. Heat in particular kept coming to mind. The plot is something we’ve seen plenty of time, and there’s little original to this attempt. What might make it different is that we see the heist that is setup actually play out by the end of the pilot, so I’m not sure where they’ll be going in the long run with the show. I can’t believe that they’d be pulling off a heist per episode. Perhaps spreading them over a few, I don’t know. One way or another, they have ample potential, particularly with such a fine cast and a production crew that clearly knows what they are doing. It’s the writers that I’m most worried about. They’ve gotta get off genre stereotype quick if it’s going to hold up.

So, today is the 5th anniversary of September 11. Not sure what I’d post about it at this point, given the fact that most posts about the topic across the net diverge into political rants by both ends of the political spectrum, typically over-reacting to either extreme. The better approach to these anniversaries is as a day of memorial. In the years since the event, we’ve seen many questions and opinions raised on the matter. We’ve seen the news networks cover it from every possible angle, filling as many minutes of air time as possible. We’ve had numerous documentaries on the topic. I’ve seen most of them, including the crack-pot conspiracy theorist documentaries (9/11 Eyewitness being my favorite for laughably dumbest - the dude presenting it is worth it alone). My favorite non-conpiracy theorist documentaries on 9/11 are HBO’s In Memoriam and the French Naudet brothers’ 9/11. Both are fantastic documentaries. Then this year we had the release of two excellent theatrical films on the topic. United 93 was truly phenomenal - a contender for best movie of the year. Even Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center was quite good (far better than I expected it to be, actually - though still not as brilliantly done as United 93). To commemorate the day, I watched United 93 and HBO’s In Memoriam this evening…