Cinemonkey

Plus sa change ...

As you may know, On the Aisle is no more. The podcast we did for All Classical Portland was cancelled after 300 episodes. All our 30+minute shows hosted by Ed Goldberg and featuring over the years Marc Mohan and many others have been deleted from the website along with about 50 text reviews of movies that I wrote over six years. 

Fortunately some of us landed elsewhere. Stating Friday, the 22nd, the new 30-minute live show Film at 11 made its debut at 10 AM (yes, we know ... what is it called ...). It's hosted by me and Mona Bowen, with numerous guest reviews lined up, from Hallie Z., to KBOO's Fortunato, Open Mike, and Just Jess, and with certain special guests in the works. We feel that we are offering something unique to at least the Portland, Oregon media landscape. 

I also plan on contributing film and DVD reviews to the KBOO blog. They begin with this take on Bardot in Clouzot's La verité. 

The episodes of Film at 11 aired so far are stored on a special page on the KBOO web site, located here. 

 

A Head for Crime [Headhunters]

 

 

 

Fashions in detective Fiction seem to go in waves. There was the long Agatha Christie polite mystery, followed by the overlapping hardboiled school. In recent years there has been the “novelty” detective (dwarf, blind, Russian cop), followed by the grim realism of James Ellroy and Don Winslow, among others, which is the current standard.

In the past 10 years, though, the Scandinavian thriller has come to the fore. The First Scandinavian mysteries popular in English were the 10 “Martin Beck” police procedurals by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, many turned into American adaptations and also a series of homegrown TV shows. The Danish TV series Forbrydelsen is one of the best shows on any television ever, and has been turned into the slow paced American knock off, The Killing. In 1992, Danish author Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow (Smilla’s Sense of Snow) was an international best seller (and a dull movie), and while in recent years, the obvious leader is the Dragon Tattoo series, which also drew attention to the work of Henning Mankell, Arnaldur Indriðason, Ann Holt, and numerous others in what is being called Scandinavian noir or when they come to the movies what I like to call film glacée.

 

Scandinavian noir films, such as Insomnia, are notable for usually being procedurals, often with political or social cause backdrops, a wide range of social strata examined (like the hardboiled school), and with troubled or disturbed main characters out of Dostoevsky. As with the Martin Beck books, they offer internal critiques of the “Socialist dream states” of the north, especially the bureaucracy and myopia, and the women have none of the Christian inhibitions of the U. S. or England when it comes to nudity, sexuality, multiple partners, and even crime. The latest recipient of readership loyalty is the Norwegian Jo Nesbø. Yellow Bird, the same company that adapted the Dragon Tattoo novels, has made a film of one of his stand alone novels, Headhunters, though most of his books feature the series character Harry Hole.

 

 

Taking a page from Patricia Highsmith, Headhunters tells of a successful businessman, the unusually named Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie, who has the cadaverous look of Steve Buscemi), who has a sideline in art theft, if only to keep his beautiful wife Diana (Synnøve Macody Lund, who, like Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut, is introduced in all her coltish beauty in a bathroom) in the finery he thinks she demands. Brown is rather on the short and gargoyleïsh side, at least in his view, and he needs all the edge he can to keep his wife interested – when in fact, all she wants is a child. In daily life, Brown is a recruitment executive, a headhunter for major corporations. At his wife’s art gallery, Brown meets one Clas Greve (TV’s Nikolaj Coster- Waldau, from Game of Thrones), who strikes Brown as a likely candidate for a computer company in search of a CEO. Greve seems even more attractive when Brown learns that the man inherited a rare Reubens from a relative. Little does Brown know, at first, that Greve is also a “headhunter” – hence the plural title.

 

More should not be said of this tale that relies on turnabouts and revelations as Brown slips from one predicament to another.[1] The director is Morten Tyldum who is working from a script by frequent collaborator Lars Gudmestad, and the film seems to be loyal to the text. As with other Yellow Bird films, the technical credits are high, but unlike the second two Dragon movies, the pace is lively, with the characters continually rooted in realistic elements, despite the usually heightened events of a thriller. The film in fact requires careful attention to its meticulous structuring. Few causal remarks, such as someone saying that they have a fear of dogs, are needlessly placed, and the theme of “heads” and “hunting” are a common theme, fully woven into the film’s texture.

 

Still, Headhunters isn’t probably the best introduction to Scandinavian noir. It’s more of an Elmore Leonard type tale than an examination of northern social problems and congenitally unhappy people – though in one sequence Roger comes home to find Diana watching The Girl Who Played with Fire on TV. Apparently, like the Dragon movies before it, Nesbø’s novel is to be turned into an American movie at some point, so the subtitle-reading-averse will still be able to get the story.

 

1 Though I will add that Headhunters becomes the fourth of only four films I can think of in which a character is submerged in human feces. The others are Seven Beauties, The Shawshank Redemption, and Schindler’s List. Interestingly the other three are all prison films, and two of them are set in concentration camps.

Posted at All Classical on April 28, 2012 by D. K. Holm

CSI on Star Trek

Friday May 7: Star Trek ... Next Day Air Hip hop tale of two thieves who are accidental recipients of a cocaine cache. Friday May 15: Angels and Demons ... Management Jennifer Aniston and Steve Zahn star in this comedy about unlikely love between a slacker and a high powered professional. Shot in Oregon ... Still Green Yet another tale of high schoolers staging one last blast before hitting college. Friday May 22: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian Security guard Ben Stiller must sneak into the national museum in order to rescue two of his museum's ghostly residents, shipped there accidentally ... The Girlfriend Experience Steven Soderbergh's new movie is more Bubble than Oceans's 11 as it examines the life and commerce of a high class call girl in New York ... Dance Flick The latest parody of recent films and genres from the Wayans Brothers ... Friday May 29: Drag Me to Hell Stephen King-like tale of a loan officer given a curse by an aged lady she declines. Sam Raimi directs and co-writes... Up Disney animated comedy about a aged balloonitic taken an airborn trip to South America... The Brothers Bloom Two con men ( Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo) attempt to fleece a rich girl (Rachel Weisz ) in this crime comedy from Rian Johnson (Brick).

 

 

A recent episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation posed a satiric homage to Star Trek and its fans. In it, two of the heretofore minor characters, lab rat Hodges (Wallace Langham), who is so minor that chief cop Jim Brass doesn't know who he is when he calls from a crime scene, and biochemist Wendy Simms (Liz Vassey), accidentally meet, and stumble upon a crime scene, at a convention for a show called Astro Quest. There a producer is murdered for taking the long-cancelled Astro Quest and updating it into a messy, dirty, violent Battlestar Galactica-style TV show of despair and pain, to the ire of good old “Questers” (and look for BSG's co-creator along with star Grace Park among the outraged fans; in addition BSG scribe David Weddle co-wrote the episode).

In this in-joke littered episode, Hodges fantasizes being the Captain Kirk equivalent and eyeing Simms in various costumes and settings. By the end, Simms has started equally fantasizing, and after the loving parody the show makes the point that Star Trek and shows and movies like it provided a propitious funnel of feelings for otherwise frustrated people of all stripes. nerd or normal. Trekkers may be the original Incels.

The homage was perfectly timed, as J. J. Abrams reconstitution of the Paramount franchise is set to open on May 5. The new rendition raises once again the mystery over why Star Trek has had such a hold over a generation of viewers. The show wasn't all that popular when it aired originally for three seasons in the mid-'60s, and NBC cancelled it in June 1969. Its life continued in syndicated reruns and an animated version, and eventually the executives at Paramount realized that there might be something in the franchise, especially after the rise of Trek conventions and a letter writing campaign by fans. That resulted in, among other things, a feature film reuniting the show's cast, a tepid stodgy affair directed by Robert Wise in 1979, which made it clear that the old codgers at the studio still didn't understand what they had. Eventually, though, perhaps thanks to the popularity of Star Wars, other movies and new TV series re-captivated the next generation of audiences.

What did those original viewers like about the show? Was a love of camp the motivation, or was it sci-fi nerd kids who had dreamed of having their interests finally represented on TV rejoicing in even a pallid reflection of their desires? The sets were cheesy and the acting bombastic, and like science fiction of the '50s and '60s each episode was really a social protest moral statement about matters of the time such as over population and nuclear escalation. The multi-ethnic cast promoted a form of easy liberal universalism.

J. J. Abrams has become something of a franchise savior. Though his own program Alias had a cult it struggled, but his vision for Lost took off when he was commissioned to take it over. He went on to reify Tom Cruise's Mission Impossible series, and now turns his guns on Star Trek, which, like other recent sequels such as the James Bond series, goes back to the beginning and starts over. The film has all the familiar names, but in larval form and with new faces: James T. Kirk (teen movie star Chris Pine), Spock (TV's Zachary Quinto), Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy (Karl Urban), Scotty (British comedian Simon Pegg), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin). Winona Ryder also stars, and the bombastic villain is an unrecognizable Eric Bana as the destructive Nero.

Expect the movie to include typical Abrams narrative touches such a fixation on parental figures and romances rife with secrets. Abrams, a stated non-Trek fan, will probably not include in-jokes or homages to the original show. The emphasis will be on action and suspense, "facing your fears" Baywatch-style psychology, and less on ideas and social protest. But will Abrams show the kind of affection that the CSI episode unveiled? Probably not. It will be interesting to see what hardcore Trek fans make of the exercise.

And speaking of cults such as Star Trek, one of the most interesting and the most long lived is the affection for the icy, imperious Sherlock Holmes. The character is so beloved that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 60-some stories with the consulting detective weren't enough and over the last 100 years writers who felt they could do just as good a job have created pastiches with similarly named sleuths or with Holmes and Watson themselves once again at center stage. One of the most clever pastiches, however, is David Pirie's approach. The British novelist and horror film historian went back to the roots of the character and created a series based on Doyle himself, and his Watson-like apprenticeship to Dr. Joseph Bell, the real life model for Holmes.

In a series of novels, and in two TV movies based on them, Pirie explored the foundation of the Holmes myth in the real life circumstances of Doyle's life. Now two of the films are out on DVD, with the late Ian Richardson (who played Sherlock Holmes in two TV adaptations in the 1980s) as Dr. Joseph Bell and Robin Laing as the young Scottish medical student Doyle.

Murder Rooms imagines how Doyle met Bell and became his fascinated acolyte as Bell makes himself available to the local constabulary as a consultant on difficult cases. One episode gives some background on a difficult case that confounds both men and leads to romantic disillusionment on Doyle's part and a first interest in spiritualism.

It's clear what attracts readers and viewers to Holmes. It's familiar. It was cozily familiar back in the late 1800s when the stories first began to appear, and remained familiar through renditions by Basil Rathbone and Jeremy Brett and countless others.

Originally published in the Vancouver Voice April 2009.

Out of the Past: Glasgow Courier, 2 October 2017, Cult of Chucky

 

By D. K. HOLM

FOR THE COURIER

 

 

The major release this week at The Worx (700 ½ 1st Avenue North, 406-228-4474) is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, an entry that proves that dead franchises won't shut up, as this series becomes as loud and blurred as the Transformers movies.

 

 

Also on hand is the incredibly stupid A Ghost Story whose content is as bland as its title. This is a film in which the ghosts actually are sheets with holes cut out, and it's the kind of highbrow horror film in which the camera is content to simply sit and stare, as a widow (a gaunt Mara sister) sits and eats a pie, or methodically drags a couch out to the side of the street for pickup. Fascinating! The only good thing about this dull enterprise is that being draped, the viewer doesn't have to actually see the dread sexual harasser Casey Affleck (he has settled several cases), though one can still hear that squeaky, rasping, mumbling "voice."

 

 

For the British Heritage freaks there is Churchill, in what seems like the latest of about 17 new Churchill-WWII-Dunkirk films. This one has Brian Cox and Miranda Richardson as Mr. and Mrs. C., and is a hagiographic knee-pad movie, with soaring music – or at least notes … movies don't feature actual melodies anymore – in which Churchill feels veddy veddy bad about all the lads he sent to die, and simple children revive his spirit with V-fingers, while those he berates continue to “love” him. In general the film pretends that the American military leadership were stupid until Churchill came along to sort them all out and save Operation Overlord, when in un-re-written history Churchill was blithe about sending men to die en masse, re: Gallipoli. The movie is bogged down by re-stating the same damn argument every five minutes, between Churchill and Eisenhower, then the King, his wife, Montgomery, Smuts, and on and on, always about his not wanting to send men to their doom. On the other hand, TV’s John Slattery is excellent as a combative Ike.

 

 

Finally, there is Cult of Chucky, the seventh Child’s Play film, and with an eighth poised for an appearance. I imagine that most viewers lost track of the series after the second or third, or at least the one with Jennifer Tilly. She’s back though as the lethal doll’s moll, and the killing ground is an antiseptic mental hospital where a young woman blamed for earlier killings is doing time. Naturally, Chucky shows up thanks to an insensitive shrink, and soon the monster bifurcates a few times to other collectibles dolls and human beings, creating the “cult.” Some of the “kills” are funny, in that paradox of gore films, and Brad Dourif as the voice of Chucky has some dandy Bondian quips. Entertainingly grim as Cult is, one does wonder why we as a culture need films in which helpless women are preyed upon by unpunished evil. Clearly a great many men in this society want women but can't get them and so take it out on the gender with fantasies of mass slaughter. Happy times!

 

As usual, no word on what the Valley Cinemas (600 2nd Avenue South 406-228-9239) is showing, though the website http://polsontheatres.com/glasgow-mt/ will know at some point. The theater may hold over The Lego Ninjago Movie, and / or Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the busy, noisy sequel, or it might add anything from among a list that includes Tom Cruise in American Made, a funny, manic real life comedy, or the drama The Glass Castle. Coins will be flipped.

 

Next week I’ll celebrate the release of the Montana-set Certain Women on Criterion DVD.

 

 

 

Anger Management

Cinema aficionados, both students and scholars, rely on Criterion for exhaustively adorned DVDs with lots of educational extras. Wes Anderson says in an interview somewhere that he learned filmmaking from Criterion. In this regard, the company's new disc set of 12 Angry Men doesn't disappoint.

This short 96-minute film from 1957, in somber black and white and in the 1.66:1 aspect ratio, similar to its roots as a television live drama, comes in a two-disc set with the film on Disc One, along with the original television broadcast, aired in 1955 with a mostly different cast, directed by Frank Schaffner. This hour long version is introduced by Ron Simon, curator at the Paley Center for Media, who gives some insight into the origins of the piece in author Reginald Rose's own experience as a juror, and into the visual style of Schaffner, unusual for live TV. There is also a short video history of the film, and the trailer. On Disc Two, there's old interview footage with the director, the late Sidney Lumet, and an interview with screenwriter Walter Bernstein about Lumet, for whom he was an occasional collaborator. Ron Simon comes back for an interview about the career of  Reginald Rose, and DP John Bailey comes on to talk about esteemed cinematographer Boris Kaufman, whose career ranged from L'Atalante to The World of Henry Orient. Last on the disc, there is Tragedy in a Temporary Town, aired originally in 1956, and written by Rose, with Lumet directing. Finally there is a 24-page booklet, with cast, crew, chapter titles, and transfer information, and a functional essay on the film by law prof Thane Rosenbaum. The art for the box cover and in the booklet seems to be by Sean Phillips, but unearthing that information is harder than it needed to be. I'm also surprised that the booklet doesn't feature Rose's own short afterward to the play, which appeared in his collection Six Television Plays (Simon and Schuster, 1956, pages 155-159).

That's a lot of info packed into a set, and some might wonder if all this labor is an exegesis of a gnat turd. Released in 1957, 12 Angry Men fared poorly at the box office, possibly because it was yet another grim kitchen sink tale premised with a good gimmick but used as a platform to broadcast obvious social problem issues, with Henry Fonda as the unnamed dissenting juror in a room of guillotine pullers who scores some easy liberal wins off the straw man racists and executioners all around him. The music, by Kenyon Hopkins, who did other films for Lumet, is that popular "arty" kind of mournful fanfare music of the time with lots of wind instruments that Alex North made famous.

But in an era of dumb movies, or at least dumbed down movies, 12 Angry Men now seems to grow in stature.  At least it is about something besides itself, or snappy editing, or a rock score. International filmmakers seem to agree. 12 Angry Men became something of a proto-The Office, with different nations doing their own version or variations. In 1963 there was an adaptation for German television, Die zwölf Geschworenen, followed by a 1982 TV adaptation called Tolv edsvorne menn and then an adaptation for television in India in 1986 (Ek Ruka Hua Faisla). America finally got back in the act with a little known HBO adaptation directed by William Friedkin in 1997, with Jack Lemmon in the Fonda role.  There was even a Russian variation in 2007, called 12, and directed by Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the Sun), and the most recent was for French TV in 2010 (Douze hommes en colère). The play version even makes a cameo appearance in Stephen King's new novel, 11/22/63, retitled The Jury so that a high school teacher could cast girls in the production. Though far from the original, the recent British mini-series, The Jury, shows roots in the Rose play. These wide ranging adaptations may speak to the cleverness and flexibility of Rose's original premise, but at the same time they bespeak an interest in a work that addresses fundamental issues of truth and justice.

12 Angry Men begins at the tail end of a trial of a young Hispanic man accused of stabbing his father to death in their tenement apartment, with the jurors, all male, walking out after hearing their instructions. The foreman is Martin Balsam, subtly brilliant as usual, as he was in Psycho, so wonderfully naturalistic. Lee J. Cobb, one of the great "anger actors," is No. 3. Beside him, E. G. Marshall  is No. 4, a prissy accountant type, while TV's Jack Klugman is No. 5, an easy going fellow. Jack Warden is No. 7, a guy who wants to wrap things up quick so he can make a baseball game, Henry Fonda is No. 8, and next to him is retiree Joseph Sweeney, carried over from the TV broadcast as No. 9. Ed Begley is a racist with father-son issues as Juror No. 10, and Robert Webber is ad exec "mad men" Juror No. 12.

After the first vote, all the jurors but one are for conviction, which carries a death sentence. Fonda then gets his chance to talk out his reservations about the case, and gradually wins over two more skeptics. As tempers flare in the hot room on a late summer afternoon, the jurors reveal a great deal about themselves, and some of them express noble beliefs about the system while others serve as warnings about how the process can go awry.

Fonda is great as the dissenter, but skeptical viewers may see through his piety to the manipulator underneath. He begins by claiming that he just wants to give the boy on trial his due, and sending him to the chair without at least talking about it strikes him as wrong. But it is clear that he is voicing questions that he has been ruminating all along, especially when he suddenly produces a knife exactly like the kid's, undermining one of the prosecution's points. Like a Machiavelli, Juror No. 8 manipulates his fellow citizens to effect the outcome that he wants. He may be right, but there is something about the film that undermines his stature.

The TV version ended with some uncertainty, or alleged uncertainty, imposed on the text by Schaffner. The original script makes it clear that the men go back to the court with a "not guilty" verdict, as does the movie. At root, the film is about reasonable doubt, and like another brilliant courtroom drama from a few years later, Anatomy of a Murder, also to be released by Criterion, it explores the profound ambiguity at the heart of the criminal justice system, which by necessity must deal with surfaces, and not motivations, or true, existential guilt.

12 Angry Men, Criterion No. 591,  hit the streets on Tuesday, 22 November, 2011, in both reg and Blu-Ray, and retails for $29.95 to $39.95, or is available at a video store near you.

Character Flaws

 

 

 

With so many programs in the blossoming 2011-2012 season already based on outside sources, it comes as no surprise that a 10 PM Thursday slot on NBC is home yet to another one. Prime Suspect joins the ranks of Homeland (Israeli TV), Revenge (The Count of Monte Cristo), Boss (King Lear), and Free Agents (British TV), among others that we probably don't even know about yet, in being based on a precursor, in this case the beloved British procedural staring Helen Mirren as DCI Jane Tennison, facing sexist fellow officers, guarded and undermining politicians, and impatient lovers as she tries to solve crimes and rise in the organization. The brainchild of actress-turned-writer Lynda La Plante, the original Prime Suspect began in 1991 and went for seven seasons in the form of peroidic mini-series. The point of the title is that above all else the series was about Tennison trying to penetrate the smokescreens sent up by the number one target of her investigations. The series was much like the Martin Beck book series by Swedish authors Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, and equally realistic about the effect of criminal hunting on the practitioners of that increasingly technologized art.

Though sponsored by Ms La Plante, according to the credits, the focus on a prime suspect is one of the many things that the American version has dropped, at least on the basis of one episode, aired on Thursday, September 22, 2011. Prime Suspect is not a remake but a re-think, as developed by Alexandra Cunningham, formerly of Desperate Housewives. Instead the show has picked up a few bits of other programs. Jane Timoney, as she is here known, is trying to quit smoking, and chooses to do so via addiction unburdening chewing gum, like Sofie Gråbøl's Sarah Lund in the (superior) Danish version of The Killing. And a fourth act chase sequence looks cribbed from The French Connection. Fortunately, this chase scene is fully integrated into the narrative and says something about Timoney's character and advances the plot, rather than being mere filler as in most commercial break cliffhangers. Unfortunately, Prime Suspect goes in for those overhead shots of Manhattan looking straight down as if from the underbelly of a chopper. What do the networks do? Cull these from some fund of three or four dozen shot three decades ago? They all look the same.

Prime Suspect starts out strong – but then, most crime show pilots tend to do so, as the producers put everything they have in them in order to gain a foothold on the schedule. Southland commenced equally strongly way back when but within a few weeks after the pilot the show began to tread water (though I hear that the recently completed season was good). Treading water is the biggest sin of network television, which is an outrage because given only some 40 minutes a week to tell a tale, for the writers to process filler into the mix is a betrayal of the viewer. The plot of the opening episode very vaguely quotes from the original mini-series showing Timoney trying to get onto a high profile case from which she has been passed over unfairly, and progresses in its character delineation with no fat to speak of.

Anyway, Prime Suspect started out pretty good the other night, and the show is worth watching to see how well it develops in the various directions it has established. Much of its success so far goes to lead Maria Bello, taking a break from movies (The Cooler) to try her hand at episodic television. As a recently promoted New York City homicide detective, she is cranky, harsh, and highly selective on whom she chooses to bestow her compassion. She absorbs the arrows of her colleagues openly sexist or competitive scorn without reaction and only allows herself to show her real emotions in private, like Tennison, or with her boyfriend (The Shield's Kenny Johnson, AKA "Lemonhead"). In fact, the tone of Ms Bello's Timoney is more like Mary Shannon (Mary McCormack) on USA's In Plain Sight, but without the hilarious wisecracks. Like her, Timoney is acerbic, impatient, and unlikely to couch her disdain in politic purrings. She only matches Tennison in her sometimes crude misread of when and how to advance herself. So far, she is a fun character to watch, but the show around her is weak and predictable.

Dexterity

 

Dexter is about to start up again and with it come the usual anxieties that precede the return of our favorite programs. 

 TV watching comes in four tiers. In the lowest tier reside those programs we would in no way ever watch. For me it is "reality" competitions. The second tier consists of shows we are slightly curious about and may view once and never again (Playboy Club, Pan Am). The third level are those programs that we more or less like, and we follow just to keep up with them, but only capture, say,  60% of our loyalty. They are more of a habit, and if we drop them we don't miss them until a character on Psych makes a jokey reference to them. Then there is the top tier, those three or five or six shows, depending on the time of year, that we cannot do without, the shows around which we arrange our schedule, those shows that we discuss endlessly with our friends the next day or anonymously on talkbacks if we have no friends.¹

With the shows we really love, which tend to be the premium channel short-series such as The Wire or The Sopranos, we bring a level of scrutiny unheard of in the history of the medium, and with the advent of the internet, a means to publicize the fruits of that micro gaze. For example, Breaking Bad has a certain almost indescribable affect, a blend of anxiety and frustration, as if it were a Jane Austen novel, in addition to that essential "one step ahead of the viewer" quality that all good shows need. The 13-week format means that some series don't make sense until the whole sequence has aired. Season four of BB started out slow and revisited old settings and seemed to relegate Walter White to supporting character status. Still, the creators of the show have up until now earned the viewers' trusts, and now as the season steams through its final few episodes, everything is starting to make sense and the earlier longeurs now only add to the tension.

Dexter has managed to maintain its tone and consistency through numerous personal changes, beginning way back in the first episode of the first season, when James Manos, the show's creator, quit after the first episode over creative differences. Season five also began with a personal change, and the first few hours of the season found Dexter (Michael C. Hall) a passive and confused serial-killer-for-good. But that was simply the lead up to Dexter finding someone he could mentor (Julia Stiles).

After the first hour, season six of Dexter seems to be adopting the same pace, though slightly faster. It is now a year after the last season's events. Dexter is somehow living next door to Sgt. (soon to be Lt.) Angel Batista (David Zayas), whose sister now babysits baby Harrison. Dexter is also trying to place Harrison in a Catholic pre-school recommended by Angel. Meanwhile, Angel has divorced Lt. (now Captain) Maria LaGuerta  (Lauren Velez) who has been promoted thanks to a little ruthless blackmail, and Debra Morgan (Jennifer Carpenter) and Joey (Desmond Harrington) are fighting, but really because he wants to ask her to marry him, in a restaurant scene reminiscent of a similar scene in the opening of Parks and Recreation season three. A teaser opening shows that Dexter is back in business, and his first "case"  for the episode is a reunion where he targets a rival who may have murdered the only person nice to Dexter in high school. This season's twisty serial killer theme is the mentorship of Professor Gellar  (Edward James Olmos, back in Florida) over Travis Marshall  (Colin Hanks, son of). They seem to be religious fanatics, based on the evidence of the first episode, and this leads into what appears to be one of the season's two themes. Here the topic is religion and faith. Angel urges Dexter to send Harrison to a Catholic institution because, well, God exists. Dexter has no conception of such a conception. Meanwhile, the professor and his charge seem to be driven by a religious mania to exterminate random people in preparation for end times. There first victim is a road side fruit vendor whose guts they leave in a weighing scale (intestines fare no better in other first episodes of the season.²

The second theme is anonymity. The premise is brilliantly weaved into the narrative, credited to Louis Cioffi.³ Dexter makes it known to the viewer that he likes people not knowing who he is – but then he turns out to be something of a celebrity at the high school reunion because of recent events, such as the death of his wife and the high profile nature of his job. This momentarily puts him in the same league as his ex-quarterback nemesis.⁴ Meanwhile, his sister Debra looks as if she is going to go "viral." During a shoot-out in a restaurant, innocent bystanders are shown photographing her heroism on their cell phones.

Private faith and public standing. The serial killer this season looks to be a public man with a private passion for slaying unbelievers, while Dexter is a person whose anonymity is crucial for the success of his enterprise. Meanwhile, the killer's faith (whatever that turns out to be) and Dexter's lack of it look as if they are going to form the high flown eschatology of this phase of Dexter's  career.

The sixth season of Dexter premieres on Sunday, 2 October 2011, on Showtime, and runs through January.

1. There is probably a fifth tier: those programs that we watch because everyone else in the world is watching them, such as Mad Men.

2.  Except now I can't remember if the show was Castle, The Mentalist, CSI, or what.

3. The episode was directed by indie thriller specialist John Dahl.

4. For which he is rewarded with a blowjob

5. For more in depth analysis of the whose series, a good place to run is Dexter: Understanding Cutting Edge Television, edited by Douglas L. Howard (I. B. Tauris, 228 pages, $16, ISBN-13: 978-1848852655). Being published in 2011, it is slightly out of date, with its episode guide only to the first three seasons, but it features opening interviews with source novel author Jeff Lindsay and with Manos, as well as critical essays on themes that include the vigilante hero, psychoanalysis, politics, the unexpected German "obsession" with Dexter, the construction of the opening credits sequence, among other topics.