This week’s installment of Girls is probably the most categorical bottle episode in the series thus far. We get a few minutes with Ray in the beginning, but really this half an hour is about Hannah and her experience with Dr. Joshua (guest star Patrick Wilson) in his beautifully restored Brooklyn brownstone. On one hand, the pared down cast (Dunham, Wilson, Karpovsky) lets us really focus on Dunham’s acting chops, and on the other hand, it puts a lot of […]
A Girl on Girls: Maybe I Don’t Care About Being Polite (S2/E3 “Bad Friend”)
Like I said last week, Girls excels when it has the courage to pare down the cast and really engage with specific cast members. This week we have even fewer players, including plenty of time with my imaginary boyfriend Andrew Rannells in his role as Elijah. “Bad Friend” uses a mostly split narrative—we are with Hannah, and then we are with Marnie. Yes, we briefly see Jessa and Shosh manning what looks like a killer stoop sale, but that’s all […]
A Girl on Girls: You’re Just a Sad, Limp Little Glow Worm (S2/E2 “I Get Ideas”)
This week on Girls we tend to get some very good advice from the most surprising places. Now ex-boyfriend George tells Elijah that he’s just confused, and Jessa tells Hannah that she tends to overthink things. The two seem mutually exclusive at first, but after thinking it over, it all boils down to not being resolute, in your decisions and in life. It might be about lacking self-confidence, sure, but we see that Hannah generally has more than enough of […]
A Girl on Girls: Maybe I Want to be Wendi Murdoch. Maybe That’s My New Thing (S2/E1 “It’s About Time”)
We begin again, this time with an unsmoteable “Previously on Girls” montage befitting of your weirdest weird uncle. The series had already been picked up for a second season by the time the first season finale rolled around, so the show left us with plenty of loose ends: Shoshanna lost her virginity to Ray, Jessa ran off with new-husband Thomas-John, Marnie was making out with a weird dude while Charlie looked on and Hannah was getting called a monster by […]
Emily Brontë + Skins = One Beautiful Trailer
From Hollywood’s obsessive need to retell the same stories over and over comes a new adaptation of Wuthering Heights with Fish Tank director Andrea Arnold at the helm. Vulture premiered the new full promo here, though the film was released in 2011 overseas. This reboot has been in production since 2008, with an everchanging cast (it included Michael Fassbender, Natalie Portman, Ed Westwick and Gemma Arterton at different points in time) that finally settled on Skins alum Kaya Scodelario as Cathy and newcomer James Howson as Heathcliff. […]
Chloë Sevigny’s Life in Pictures
Probably the least relevant in an ongoing series of short films and essays on the intersection between fashion and fetish, Dasha Zhukova’s contribution to the SHOWstudio project is mostly an excuse to apply old-timey silent film conventions to a short featuring actress Chloë Sevigny and writer Derek Blasberg. Where other auteurs (Daphne Guinness and Asia Argento have already contributed) made serious inquiries into the matter of fashion/fetish, Zhukova’s piece is a sepia-toned three minutes and forty seconds of Sevigny and a […]
A Girl on “Girls”: Save Your Strength, We’re in it for the Long Haul (S1/E10 “She Did”)
Getting to know Girls has been a long, strange journey. Tonight’s episode, “She Did,” marks the series’ tenth episode and season finale. It’s no secret that I have had problems with Girls in the past, but tonight’s installment only served to underline a growing fear I’ve had throughout: I like this show, and I identify with Hannah Horvath and Lena Dunham. With a sizable supporting cast, it is easy to forget that we are essentially gaining entry into the rich […]
A Girl on Girls: Your Granddad is Both a Gentleman and a Renegade (S1/E9 “Leave Me Alone”)
With what has happened over the last couple episodes, it is easy to forget that Hannah is in the position she’s in because she wants to be a writer; otherwise, she would have gone back home to teach English by now. This week’s episode of Girls, “Leave Me Alone,” reminds us of Hannah’s plight by starting off at a book party for a former classmate played by comedian Jenny Slate. Author Talia Schifferin (SP, since I am just going with […]