RLASKEY: words

No, I’m not writing about porn or some other sort of kink; I’m talking about the UK tv series that is only slightly available in America.  While the first season is available on Netflix, there are seven seasons in total which are not available for Region 1; and, therefore, isn’t around for the USA.

Bad Girls is a show about a women’s prison, both about the inmates as well as the staff that runs it.  The writing, the acting, and the camera work are all top notch.  It reminds me a lot of The Wire, though it doesn’t have quite the same polish or flash as the Baltimore epic: almost all of Bad Girls takes place in the prison, and there’s a very heavy sense of what it means to be stuck in a place for years on end.

What’s surprising to me is how good this show is, and how difficult it is to obtain in America.  If they were to market this and re-release, I’m sure it would be a hit.  Please check out as much as you can of this show; and let’s keep our fingers crossed that we can get our hands on more of it in the near future.

I wish; I wish; I wish I were no fish.

Watched Lost again tonight.  It’s one of those shows I wish I weren’t into so much; or at least haven’t put in so much time that I somehow feel obliged to keep it up.  It’s some cheesy soap opera type thing at this point, which just wrote itself into an awful hole.  I won’t give away any details, for those who are still holding on or haven’t yet arrived at this particular stage; though with that said, I’m waiting patiently for the pain to be over and the series to be complete.

I’m an American, from America; I’ve lived here all my life.  Even so, it is sometimes amazing to me as to what other Americans think or do.  A good case in point is the 2009 release of Brothers, a 2009 remake of the 2004 Danish Brødre.  Yes, we’re talking about a remake of a movie made five years prior.

The long and the short is that there is absolutely no reason to watch the American version; do yourself a favor and go for the original, 2004 version from Denmark.  Why?  The story and plots are almost exactly the same; albeit a bit more watered down in the American version.  Admittedly, the USA does introduce a certain amount of comedy, in that the child actors beat out the long-standing Hollywood names.  Additionally, the DVD feature on the American 2009 release also has a twelve minute piece on why they bothered to remake the movie.  My personal favorite was that they had to remake the movie  because not enough Americans had watched the original; to say nothing of the power of putting any sort of weight towards redistribution, re-release, etc.

With all that said, the movie is certainly very powerful.  Susan Bier deserves an incredible amount of credit for her work on the story, and for her vision in the execution of its telling.