Bree Season

Yeah, I know I know, the title is a pun, not a typo. This season of Desperate Housewives without a doubt belongs to Bree Van Der Kamp and I wouldn't be at all surprised to see Marcia Cross do a clean sweep of the award shows next year. Over here in the UK we are only up to the death of scary George after Bree discovers he offed her husband, so it's all to play for but already she's had so many incredible moments and has nailed every single one of them. Last year the awards initially went to Teri Hatcher, presumably to celebrate the fact she wasn't starving in a gutter somewhere, before finally they realised that the first season in fact belonged to Felicity Huffman. Hopefully the fact that this season has been decidedly weak so far won't deny Marcia Cross from her rightful moment of glory.

And speaking of characters named Bree, I saw a press screening of Transamerica this morning. There's been much hoo ha over Felicity Huffman winning a huge amount of awards and missing out on the Oscar for her performance. And it is an incredible performance, subtle, measured, pretty much pitch perfect. Unfortunately, the formulaic script and direction undermine her incredible characterisation. The rest of the film is full of stereotypes rather than characters and nothing is really resolved in a satisfactory manner. I was just left thinking that while the film deserved a lot of praise for a lack of sentimentality and mawkishness and the sensitive handling of the subject matter, it could have been better. Kevin Zegers was distractingly beautiful and very talented as her wayward teenage son, but even he was nothing but a collection of clichés and the big moment of discovery with Bree's identity is horribly forced. So it's a case of nearly but not quite. Ah well.