Seen in May

Wendell Pierce as Antoine Batiste in HBO's Treme. Image via The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

More and more lately, this has not been a month for watching movies, though serial television is alive and well. We've been catching up with Breaking Bad Season 3 and keeping up with HBO's Treme, both of which are engrossing and affecting shows. I've said it before and I'll say it again, these kind of smartly written cable shows are not just about television finally fulfilling its promise, but seem to have us rethinking long form narratives. Visual storytelling fully realized as a collaboration of location, story, writers, directors, musicians and actors all working together to pull us in, using techniques and time the way no other medium can. Having said that, here's the list of what was seen in May.

The Great Dictator
Chaplin's classic, long on my list of must-see movies. Doesn't disappoint. I think I understand Mel Brooks better now.

Breaking Bad Season 3
Walt White is in an ever complicating spiral from high school chem teacher to the leading producer of Meth in the South West.

Treme
David Simon's latest opus for HBO delivers compelling stories from Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. The music, though wonderful, sometimes threatens to over power the stories.

Big River Man
A mess of a film, but still pretty fascinating stuff as we watch an overweight and aging long distance swimmer will himself along the Amazon.

Cutting edge : the magic of movie editing
If the film editor is little thought of by the movie going public, fear not, they think highly enough of themselves. Though much of what these editors say is true, there's more than a little hubris in statements such as "Human flight and film editing. Invented in the same year. Equally important."

Iron Man 2
Like Iron Man but with too many characters. Robert Downey Jr. is still fun to watch.