Tag Archives: Matthew Bomer

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White Collar: Season One – #latetotheparty

White Collar - PaleyFest - March 7, 2011

White Collar – PaleyFest – March 7, 2011 (Photo credit: starbright31)

Bravo.ca began broadcasting episodes of White Collar recently. Season 2, I believe. I was acquainted with the series, but had never seen an episode. Frustrating references to plot points in the first season drove me to spend the day immersed in the first 14 episodes. A marathon of my own making, the Octogenarian joined by default. Four things contribute to the success of White Collar: the setting, the camera work, the scripts and the performances of the two leads – Matt Bomer and Tim DeKay.

The Setting – Manhattan

Ever since I saw Wonderful Town with Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, Manhattan has been on my destination bucket list. Woody Allen fueled my desire with his early homages to the island. Shot on location, White Collar rekindles the flame. The city has never looked more enticing.

The Camera Work

Oh my, cinematic camera angles, lighting that illuminates the emotions embedded in a scene, there isn’t a minute of digitized image that fails to snap and crackle. The moody scenes, through use of shadows, and spot-lighting, turn my television screen into a movie screen. White Collar leverages every production dollar.

The Scripts

Disciplined writing that begins with a clearly defined series arc coupled with smart and sassy integration of episodic story lines kept me on the edge of my seat. The banter was natural. I felt like an eavesdropper on conversations in which I would never hold my own.

Matt Bomer and Tim DeKay

Neal Caffrey (Bomer) and Peter Burke (DeKay) separately could be classed as stereotypical characters. However, when the two play off each other an irresistible sum greater than the parts is created.  The actors portray distinct aspects of male vulnerability and bravado, complementing each other in a way that only happens in the rarest of buddy films. The pair remind me of Robert Redford and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, transcending the artifice of script and screen.

Good on ya, mate if you’ve been following the series since 2009. If you are late to the party like me, catch up, you won’t regret it.

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The Arrested Development of #MagicMike

English: Channing Tatum at the 'Fighting' pres...

English: Channing Tatum at the ‘Fighting’ press junket at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills. Taken by his official site ChanningTatumUnwrapped.com. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Magic Mike is not a chick flick. Surprise! Steven Soderbergh‘s dark, testosterone-fueled film about male strippers is a dysfunctional man’s man film.

The 200 or so women with whom I watched an advance screening of the film discovered that each member of the dance troupe suffered from a case of arrested development. Dallas (brilliantly portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), the club owner, is a sociopath with an understanding of human weakness that he manipulates to make his club the hottest place in town for a girl’s night out. Magic Mike (Channing Tatum), the star of the troupe, has been dancing for six years as a means to an end that remains just out of reach. Happily married Ken (Matt Bomer) is a voyeur who enjoys watching other men fondle his wife. Tarzan (Kevin Nash) is a friendly ape who misses his cue from time to time due to substance abuse – any substance, as long as it is controlled. Big Dick Richie (Joe Manganiello) and Tito (Adam Rodriguez) round out the team of misfits with ripped bodies. Adam aka The Kid (Alex Pettyfer) is a 19-year-old with a chip on his shoulder and a sister whose co-dependency keeps his Lost Boy attitude in tact. These men may fail on the emotional maturity meter but read off the scale on physical fitness.

The movie marketers would have you believe that this is a high energy film with a touch of girls gone wild and a lot of laughs. Not so, we discovered. The dance scenes are high energy, and tongue in cheek. That WAS a pun, by the way. I lost count of the number of cheeks exposed. There were laughs. But my audience, who mirrored the fake film audience demographically did not yell at the screen or dance in the aisles, as I had anticipated. The most telling moment while watching the film occurred when Big Dick Richie pulled a large young women from the crowd for an audience participation number. As he spun her on his thighs, head pointed at the stage floor, Richie threw his back out. Cut to Richie walking off the stage holding his sore back. Cut to the disappointed face of the woman left standing in the spotlight in humiliation. My audience issued a collective and commiserating Oh.

The world of Magic Mike is seedy, sombre and self-destructive. Only one character makes it out of the dark into the light. The finale did not convince me that his transformation from womanizing, boozing, money-making jerk to civilian was permanent. The sleazy life of the male stripper as depicted in Magic Mike is too seductive.