Bad Blood

by Courtney Hilden
Spoiler Alert!: Certain surprises within the episode are revealed in this review.




"Bad Blood," the first episode of this season of True Blood, picks up where the last episode left off, with Tara still reeling over the death of Eggs, Sookie looking for a kidnapped Bill, Eric trying to sell V (vampire blood used as a drug) to fund the Queen of Louisiana, and Sam out looking for his family.  Although the episode was fascinating and moved all these storylines forward, like most episodes of the show, there wasn't much tying these things together. 

The episode opened with what has to be the longest "previously on..." segment in the history of television.  The show is juggling way too many balls at this point not to be confusing, even to those viewers who have been loyally following (including your's truly.)
It's good also to see some of the book's most interesting characters, including Kendra Jones.  Kendra is always in the background of the early books, and in this episode she gets a brief cameo.  Also seeing the Bellefleur cousins bonding over their mutual killer status was nice.  No other character manages to both be badass and sensitive like Terry Bellefleur.  That badass might be rubbing off on Andy, since he went through Jason's window.  (Also: can someone make a techno song of Andy and Jason's mantra?)  The only thing that's sad is to see Eric at his trashiest and horndoggediness.  As a fan of the books, I want to see Eric like he is in the fourth or later books.  Tara was also hard to watch.  Tara's a great character, but seeing her act like a stereotypical black woman (crazy and violent) was disappointing, since this show is supposed to be all about subverting stereotypes, though the show has always struggled to do so with non-white, non-male characters. 
The show, at this point, is espousing an atheist point of view, which would be fine, if this was a simplistic show.  It would be nice to see the show to work to show an complicated answer to God.  It's also sad that the characters often interested in God are stupid or African American.  In the latter case, it's racist, but in the former, it's simple unimaginative.  Also, in the case of race, is it necessary to make one of the few African American characters to be made a slave to white people and sell drugs, as they have with Lafayette?  Aren't there enough of those stereotypes on tv?  The only thing that was good about it was the interesting commentary about blood and drug use.  The magistrate mentions that using vampire blood for drug use was "blasphemy," a word associated with this simplistic evangelist model.  (The magistrate also mentioned that this situation was "moral anarchy.")  Maybe the show will depict drug use as not so bad or terrible in the same way that sexuality is depicted by fundamentalist Christians.   
Overall, a decent episode, one that was funny in its now-standard way and allowed all the characters the chance to naturally grow. 

3:10 to Yuma

by Courtney Hilden

3:10 to Yuma is a Western following Dan Evans (Christian Bale), a rancher desperately in debt, who agrees to transport Ben Wade (Russell Crowe), a notorious criminal, to the Contention Train Station to get Wade on the 3:10 train to Yuma, a prison. While transporting Wade, the two feel each other out, not exactly bonding but developing a level of respect.
Bale is engaging as Evans, and you can’t help but root for him. The film also stars the geek-approved Kevin Durand (who played Keamy on Lost) and Alan Tudyk (who played Wash on Firefly). Given Durand’s menacing performance on Lost, it’s unsurprising that he also plays a bad guy here, though it’s a one-note character. It’s too bad Durand wasn’t playing the bad guy, as Crowe’s Wade is stiff at the beginning of the film and far too warm at the end. Tudyk plays Doc Porter, one of the few uncompromisingly good guys in the movie, and looks better here with his blonde beard and large glasses than he does in his other recent movies. The only actor who grates in this movie is Logan Lerman, who plays William, Evans’s oldest son.
The film also had a surprising amount of people of color. Often, Westerns have whitewashed the American West. Although this movie isn’t perfectly progressive, it does at least acknowledge that there are non-whites in the West and that they are treated poorly because of it, like when they stop at a labor camp populated mostly by Chinese immigrants, who are treated as slaves. Unfortunately, all of the Native Americans in this film were depicted as evil, since one was part of Wade’s band of thieves and the others were part of the “blood thirsty” Apache tribe that attempts to kill most of the main characters. The only good thing with the Native Americans is that Evans acknowledges that they were kicked off their land and that the Apaches here are the kind who absolutely refuse to move and are more likely to be violent because of their social position. Most Westerns don’t acknowledge the unfairness and inequality that the U.S. government encouraged, but this film does, although it’s brief. Unfortunately, the Apaches are also apparently incompetently violent, since Wade defeats them. And, as always, all the good guys are white.
There were lots of realistic touches that made the movie work. For example, most of the blood was appropriately dark to the point of black. (Most movies make blood bright red so it’ll stand out, but in fact when exposed to air like that, it oxides much more, turning it dark.) The details on the sets, especially Porter’s operating room, were dead on and gave a great feel to the movie.
Like most Westerns, they're not much for accuracy but do have lots of violence. It's an interesting movie since it attempts to give a Christian allegory to a genre that has always worshiped lawlessness and rough living, and some of the actors give great performances.