Get Saul: AMC Crime Drama 'Better Call Saul' Comes To An End

My wife and I watched and enjoyed the final episode of Better Call Saul on AMC last night. 

I thought the finale was clever and interesting and an appropriate end for the wonderfully slimy crooked lawyer James “Slipping Jimmy” McGill, aka, Saul Goodman. 

Saul Goodman was a great character, portrayed so well by actor and comedian Bob Odenkirk. He was sleazy, smart and thoroughly bent. 

Goodman was a breakout character from the many unforgettable characters created by Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould in their fine crime series Breaking Bad. 

Better Call Saul looks back at how Jimmy McGill became so bent and transformed into Saul Goodman. 

Better Call Saul, their follow up series, revisited many of the great characters from Breaking Bad, such as former crooked Philly cop and enforcer Mike Ehrmantraut, portrayed by Jonathan Banks, and the brilliant and peculiar drug lord Gus Fring, portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito. 

The final episodes of Better Call Saul also brought back Breaking Bad's high school chemistry teacher turned meth dealer Walter White, portrayed by Bryan Cranston, and his partner Jesse Pinkman, portrayed by Aaron Paul. 

One particularly standout character in Better Call Saul was Goodman’s partner in crime and love, Kim Wexler, portrayed so well by Rhea Seehorn. 

Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad are two fine crime dramas infused with abundant humor. 

If you have not watched the two series, I suggest you begin at the beginning of Breaking Bad and enjoy the many hours of the best television can offer.  

When Gangsters Took Over The Big Apple: Inside AMC’s ‘The Making of the Mob: New York’

I've not yet watched AMC's The Making of the Mob, but I'll catch up with the series on Comcast On Demand at a later date.

Allen Barra offers his take on the series at the Daily Beast.

AMC’s new eight-part series, The Making of the Mob: New York, goes deeper into the history of American racketeers than just about any previous TV program. The production is billed as a docudrama, meaning it blends narration, archival footage, and dramatic interpretation and reenactment of real-life events. 

Sometimes it works—the depiction of New York street scenes, particularly the pre-World War II Lower East Side, is riveting. 

But sometimes it doesn’t. Part of the problem is that most of the principal characters were portrayed far more vividly in Boardwalk Empire. Nothing against Rich Graff as Lucky Luciano, Ian Bell as Meyer Lansky, or Umberto Celisano as Al Capone, all of whom are capable actors and attractive screen presences, but the script doesn’t allow them to expand on their roles as their predecessors in Boardwalk could. 

... What one should take issue with is that most of the “fact” presented in The Making of the Mob is not fact at all, but factoids. In particular, I object to the constant broad use of the word “Mafia.” Historians have long debated the origin of the term, and no one doubts it signified a Sicilian-born criminal organization. But after years of research, I have never seen the slightest credible evidence that the Sicilian Mafia was imported to the United States, or that native Sicilians had any control whatsoever over American crime. 

Not only were most of the early mob figures—Rothstein, Lansky, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Louis “Lepke” Buckhalter, and the most powerful New York gangster of all, Owney Madden (who goes unmentioned in The Making of the Mob)—not Italian, most of the Italians weren’t Sicilians, with Albert Anastasia and Frank Costello both hailing from Calabria. (Costello was born Francesco Castaglia but changed his name to better get along with New York’s police force.). Vito Genovese was Neapolitan, as was Capone, who was in no way a member of the Mafia, though he was known to hire Mafia hit men.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/15/when-gangsters-took-over-the-big-apple-inside-amc-s-the-making-of-the-mob-new-york.html

AMC's 'Turn' Tells Revolutionary War's Real Spy Story

The Hollywood Reporter offers a piece on an upcoming AMC mini-series called Turn, which will cover a true spy story set during the Revolutionary War.

If The CW’s Reign takes creative license in its story of Mary, Queen of Scots, AMC's historical drama Turn is the opposite. Producers maintain that the series will uncover the real story of spies during the Revolutionary War.

"There's a seedy underbelly to the war," executive producer Craig Silverstein told reporters Saturday at the Television Critics Association press tour. "The vibe you get is it was so pure then; how did it get so complicated now? What we're saying is no, no, no, it was complicated then."

Based on Washington's Spies by Alexander Rose, Turn tells the story of America's first spy group, the Culper Ring. Abe Woodhull (Jamie Bell), a farmer living in British-occupied Long Island, bands together with a group of childhood friends to form the Culper Ring, who help George Washington turn the tide of the war in the Rebel's favor.

You can read the rest of the piece and watch a trailer for the series via the below link:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/amcs-turn-tells-revolutionary-wars-670048

Note: I'm looking forward to watching Turn. I hope the mini-series does justice to Washington's Spies, as Alexander Rose's book was outstanding.

Westerns Make Gritty Comeback

Lori Rackl at the Chicago Sun-Times writes that the Western, once a staple on prime-time TV, is bucking its way back onto the small screen with the new AMC Western series Hell on Wheels.

You can read the review via the below link:

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/rackl/8590094-421/westerns-make-gritty-comeback.html

I'm a big fan of Westerns, but I watched the first episode of Hell on Wheels and I thought it was awful.

I much prefer the great, old TV Westerns from the 1ate 1950s and the 1960s that appear daily on Encore's Classic Western channel.

I grew up watching these Westerns, such as Have Gun Will Travel, Gunsmoke and Maverick, and I'm enjoying watching them again.

The old shows offer a galaxy of guest stars, many of whom went on to be major film stars. The shows also offer great character actors, writers and directors.

The TV Westerns were called "horse operas" due to the compelling characters and plots (daytime TV series were called "soap operas" due to the soap and detergent commercials aimed at housewives).

Today's TV makers could learn a thing or two about drama, action, comedy and good human stories from those old TV Westerns.

AMC's 'Mob Week' Features 'Goodfellas,' 'The Godfather,' and 'Donnie Brasco'

The Hollywood Reporter offers a piece on the cable station AMC's announcement about Mob Week.

AMC is getting into the mob business.

The cable channel best known for critically acclaimed series including Mad Men and Breaking Bad is set to roll out its first annual "mob week," hosted by former New York City Mayor and, as AMC puts it, "real life mob buster, Rudy Giuliani."

You can read the rest of the announcement via the below link:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/amcs-mob-week-features-godfather-215498

AMC will offer The Godfather, Goodfellas, Donnie Brasco and other classic mob movies, but I don't see how Pulp Fiction fits into that group. I'm not crazy about Pulp Fiction.  

The Duke's Best Westerns

AMC will broadcast an all-day marathon of John Wayne movies tomorrow on Saturday, January 8th.

At AMC's blog, Robert Silva offers his view of John Wayne's best westerns. You can read the piece via the below link:

http://blogs.amctv.com/movie-blog/2011/01/john-wayne-best-westerns.php

Like Silva, I would list The Searchers and True Grit in the top five, but I would move up The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Fort Apache, as well as The Shootist, Wayne's final great film.

It should be noted that the late, great John Ford directed Wayne in The Searchers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and Fort Apache. Henry Hathaway directed True Grit and Don Siegel directed The Shootist.

The Prisoner: Then and Now. AMC Remakes a Classic Television Series

I'm watching the classic television series The Prisoner again. I first saw the brilliant TV program when I was a teenager in the 1960s and with this, perhaps the 20th time I've watched the series over the years, I still find it intriguing.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner-1960s-series/

Patrick McGoohan is simply perfect as the defiant, disgruntled secret agent who wakes up in "The Village." The Village is a quaint place where secret agents, military people and others with government secrets end up after resigning from their posts and/or other secret reasons. Once they submit to the will of the bosses of the Village, they live out their lives peacefully.

But not McGoohan, called Number Six. One of the Number 2 bosses of the Village - the great Leo McKern - watched Number Six in his cottage via a camera and remarked that Number Six made putting on a dressing gown (bathrobe) an act of defiance.

The series was way ahead of its time, with hallucinatory drugs, cell phones, cameras and other surveillance techniques and computer technology.

AMC has remade the series and the new version of The Prisoner airs this month. I'm not sure why this remake is needed at all, but I'll probably watch the new series out of curiosity.

http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-prisoner/

Be seeing you, as they say in the village.

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