hi•a•tus   

n. A gap or interruption in space, time, or continuity; a break, or,
my excuse for where I’ve been.

In the interest of saving face, I can explain. My Oscar hype shortly dwindled out and after signing my life away to the media gods at Rogers (right.), I found myself intricately woven into the sticky web of Digital Cable. Coming from aerial television, this was both a blessing and a curse. Series, mini-series, sitcom, drama – you name it! And my film reviews took a backseat to, dare I say, shows like Storage Wars, Celebrity Ghost Stories (actually a really good show) and most importantly, and probably most understandable, Mad Men. As my former roomie and I paced through the fourth season DVD (preceded by the third, second and first), we could not stand the anticipation for season five.

Now, I know what you’re saying to yourself. “This is NOT a television review site.” And in that remark, you would be correct. And yet, I finally made it to the season five finale and found myself entranced by the true likeness the drama has taken to the medium of film, most particularly in the cinematography. In some blurry attempts to capture these said moments, I found some great illustrations of my point on the magical Internet, so it appears others have fallen prey to the beauty of this mise-en-scène.

Exhibit A:

Now, I really appreciate a good setup. This scene certainly brought me back to one of my favourite film moments, as pictured below:

And I don’t know about you, but that scene from Fight Club changed the way I feel about The Pixies. But anyway, back to Mad Men.

The Mad Men team has proven their artistry time and again with their exciting promotional posters. This minimalist poster below comes off a long stream of StumbleUpon sessions of mine dedicated to revamped classic film posters like on this great Tumblr page. I don’t care about the controversy – I’m a sucker for simplistic.

Now I’m sure we’re not alone here but while said former roomie and I made our way through the Mad Men DVDography, we found ourselves in anticipation for which song they would end the next episode with. And when there was silence? Wow. So I was certainly drawn into the final scene of this episode as seen below:

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!

Exhibit B:

This scene brought me back to The Artist, which I watched again recently. There’s something about exposing the cameras, crew and set. I love when the medium draws attention to its own existence. And with the incorporation of John Barry’s Bond ballad, “You Only Live Twice” (which is so fitting for the episode, as usual), the scene takes on that Old Hollywood glamour.

Of course I won’t spill the beans as to how the episode ends but I will be counting down the days until season six.

And now, back to the feature presentation!

*Images courtesy of ScreenCrave, 
http://decantre.wordpress.com
, Starcasm.net and Incoherent.net, respectively.