Kevin Warnock

The cast of Mad Men, Season One. Photo from http://www.amoeba.com/blog/2008/10/all-the-news-that-s-fit-to-sing/mad-men-crazy-like-a-fox.html

On Sunday, January 15, 2012, the blog for The Wall Street Journal newspaper carried a small piece entitled ‘Mad Men’ Finally Returns to TV announcing the return of Mad Men for a fifth season.

Mad Men on the surface is a cable television show about the advertising business in New York City during the 1960s. But it’s also a show about morality and ethics, and I think the advertising business is just a vehicle to make the larger points about life that the show advances. In this regard, the show reminds me of the cancelled HBO drama Carnivale, which I loved. That show on the surface was about a traveling carnival, but it really had little to do with such triviality. Carnivale was a masterpiece on par with The Wire.

A reader identified only as John wrote the following comment at 11:49 am on January 16, 2012 to the Wall Street Journal blog entry that I think succinctly summaries what Mad Men is about.

I wish I could give John more credit by publishing his last name. Here is John’s comment in its entirety.

“I have seen all episodes of this tragedy. Here are people who cannot hold onto anything of value. This is really a fine portaryal of betrayal and selfishness. With appropriate commentary it should be shown to people contemplating their future as real people and real adults. It is in effect a morality play showing the emptiness of sexual freedom and destructive lack of standards. Set in the vacuum of advertising and manipulation this series should alert every thinking individual to the dangers of living for pleasure and self interest. I suspect that the next season (starting March 2012) will further strengthen the premise that men and women left to squander their lives in sex, drink and irresponsible behavior as parents in the final analysis end up on the heap of derelicts.

Most of these Madmen characters cannot stop abusing their own opportunities and children. We must learn from their mistakes and not adopt them as excuses for our own tragic weaknesses.”

I know people that squandered their lives in sex, drink and irresponsible behavior.

I bet you do too.

If you don’t, you’re not looking for evidence very hard, I suspect. Look harder.

Mad Men is worth watching with due deliberation and careful reflection.

Perhaps Mad Men will shake more than a few people out of their stupor so they can clean up their act and live more just, honorable and ultimately more rewarding lives.

Left unchecked, people who behave shockingly poorly end up homeless, broke and alone, no matter how nominally ‘rich’ they appear at their ‘peak.’ Don’t let that happen to you or someone you care about.

[Note: I corrected a few minor typos in John’s comment. You can see his original comment here.]

The Red Shoes movie poster, 1948

Last night I watched The Red Shoes on Blu-Ray Disc.

What a beautiful movie. The colors are astonishing. This is a Technicolor movie — the most beautiful Technicolor movie I’ve ever seen.

“What — but you don’t have a TV Kevin!”

I didn’t have a TV — now I do. After going several years without a television, I broke down and bought a modest Vizio flat panel set. It was the cheapest set at Costco in the size I wanted, which is large enough for house movie nights at home with my four roommates. I installed it over the fireplace in the living room between my beloved Polk SDA SRS speakers I bought new in 1986.

My new television is a liquid crystal display model. The plasma sets that were even cheaper looked miserable by comparison — gray and washed out. I was shocked. The Vizio looked just as good as the LCD set at twice the price immediately adjacent to it. Why would someone buy that set I wondered?

The really impressive purchase though wasn’t the flat panel, it was the Vizio Blu Ray player, at just USD $119.00. This player includes Vizio ‘apps’ software applications. The Vizio apps allow you access to Netflix, Vudu and Pandora Internet services via your television using the Blu-Ray remote control. I already had a Netflix account, and it was easy to activate so that it’s accessible from the Blu-Ray player.

The quality of the streaming is just shy of Blu-Ray quality, and much better than standard DVD quality. I am impressed. I have only had the system stop playback for buffering once in about 10 hours of use so far. The online reviews are mixed. Some have trouble keeping the player connected to Wi-Fi and have to go through setup every time they turn the unit on. I had to go through setup twice, but only twice. I read that current firmware fixes the problem, so maybe my unit has the current firmware. I have 90 days to exchange the unit at Costco, so I’m not worried.

Dinner and movie night on my still fledgling urban homestead is Sunday night. We watched the first two episodes of the cable television drama Mad Men. I am already hooked on the show and I had never seen it before. I haven’t had a cable television subscription since mid 2008. The savings from canceling cable paid several times over for my new Vizio TV and disc player. The cable companies really should fear Netflix, which could well put them out of business over the next decade.

Vizio E470VLE LCD television

For dinner, we made jambalaya for the main course. We had watermelon for desert and Whirley Popped popcorn during the Mad Men episodes.

Now, back to The Red Shoes.

I rented this movie because reportedly it’s one of Martin Scorsese’s favorite movies, and I like Scorsese.

Here’s the abstract from Wikipedia:

The Red Shoes (1948) is a British feature film about a ballet dancer, written, directed and produced by the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, known collectively as The Archers. The movie employs the story within a story device, being about a young ballerina who joins an established ballet company and becomes the lead dancer in a new ballet called The Red Shoes, itself based on the fairy tale “The Red Shoes” by Hans Christian Andersen. The film stars Moira Shearer, Anton Walbrook and Marius Goring and features Robert Helpmann, Léonide Massine and Ludmilla Tchérina, renowned dancers from the ballet world, as well as Esmond Knight and Albert Basserman. It has original music by Brian Easdale and cinematography by Jack Cardiff, and is well regarded for its creative use of Technicolor. Filmmakers such as Brian De Palma and Martin Scorsese have named it one of their all time favorite films.

I am not a movie critic, so I hesitate to try to review this movie. My long ago girlfriend Muire Dougherty has a degree in film from San Francisco State University, and she didn’t think much of the last film I tried to critique, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I rewatched that movie 20 years later, and she was right that the movie wasn’t very good. I just checked on WikiPedia and it says the author of the book on which that movie is based was so unhappy with the result that he never allowed any further adaptations of his writing.

I’m pretty sure Dougherty would approve of The Red Shoes, but I can’t tell you why with authority. I thought about Muire because when we dated she used the first name Moira rather than her real first name Muire, and the star of The Red Shoes is Moira Shearer. I don’t know and have never known anyone else with the name Moira.

I give The Red Shoes my highest rating even though I can’t properly explain why.