Micro mini movie (and tv show) review: Gangs of New York and Kitchen Confidential

I'm usually very late to the party when it comes to movies, so it's no surprise that I only just now got around to seeing Gangs of New York. Basically, I stumbled across the book that inspired it in the library at work, and so Netflixed the movie. It's a fascinating time period in American history - you don't hear much about how the early waves of immigration affected New York city, and it wasn't a bad introduction to Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall, of which I knew only a little bit. Additionally, you rarely hear about Northern opposition to the Civil War, so the story of the Draft Riot led me to poke around a lot of other websites to get more information.

I did enjoy the movie a great deal, despite being interrupted a bunch of times in my watching. Daniel Day Lewis obviously stole the show, but he was also joined by a bunch of fantastic actors who were really seemed immersed into their characters and into the time period. Unfortunatly, I never completely bought Leonardo di Caprio and Cameron Diaz - neither of them were able to make me forget I was watching movie stars. I think part of that may be that di Caprio's role felt a bit underwritten.

Over the weekend, Bemo and I also watched the first disc of Kitchen Confidential, another casualty of Fox's network axe. We had seen two out of the four that were permitted to air, and enjoyed them a lot - the show wasn't the best new sitcom the world had ever seen, but the characters were great and I loved the interaction in the kitchen. It looked like a show that could continue to improve, and I would probably have made it appointment television, but unfortunatly it was cut down before it really had a chance. Like so many other shows with Fox *coughKeenEddiecough*. Bah.

Next up, we have the rest of Rome, season 2, and then either Freaks and Geeks or Dexter.