WHAT ARE WE WATCHING ON TV IN JULY 2023?

Thoughts & swears regarding old & new movies or TV series & specials encountered this month via theater, streaming (via tube, tablet, or other tech), cable, network, rental, purchase, library, etc.

After watching the initial episode (or 2?) last month, binge finished Jury Duty (2023) on Amazon Prime (commercial free; moving to Freevee w/commercials soon) last night. As indicated in the early episodes, a mockumentary where one participant (Ronald Gladden) believes he is taking part in an actual documentary about the jury duty experience in Huntington County, CA., where everyone else, jury, court officers, lawyers, plaintiffs & defendants, is an actor. Isn't there some joke that half the population in Southern California is a part time actor? I’ve been called a couple of times & served as an alternate for a civil suit once (I’m now considered too old to serve, thank you Connecticut). I could see from the initial episodes how this elaborate practical joke might have worked – I’m old enough to remember Candid Camera -- the trappings & rituals seemed realistic enough; but as the episodes unfolded & the behavior became more and more absurd (and granted, it was sometimes amusing for being over the top) it would have taken a dimwit to believe that this was an actual trial. The rationale (or lack thereof) for sequestering & the damages figure would have been the most obvious; the incompetence of the defense lawyer was far too broad. Interestingly, the reveal takes place in episode 7. The eight & final episode has the creators take Gladden through a tour of all the backstage set ups I assume to assure the viewer that Gladden was really really fooled. Honest! (He was paid 100k for being the butt of the joke, or paid off for not revealing to TMZ how he figured out the scam by episode 2) Kudos to (actors) David Brown as Todd Gregory (a student of David Spade’s Joe Dirt), Edy Modica as Jeannie Abruzo (for letting nearly all of it all hang out), Susan Berger as the barely alive Susan Bernstein. Alan Barinholtz is the judge, and seems the most sit-comically actorly. James Marsden (as "himself”) overdoes the celebrity ass part. Memic moments: soaking, the clogged toilet, Jorf.

We saw the new movie - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this weekend. If you like action and the Indiana Jones series, I think you will enjoy it.

Having finished reading Dracula in late June, I altered my DVD Netflix queue to take a look at Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). 2h 8m. It was available on various streaming services & still might be. Visually it looked a little muddy; not sure if it was the age of the movie, or not being bluray. I was particularly interested because it’s said to be closer to its source material than most. Director, Francis Ford Coppola, screenplay James V. Hart. Special effects seemed a bit throw-back-y, which I would attribute to Coppola hiring one of his relatives (the pattern of people dropping from heights in slow motion).

The film keeps to Stoker’s technique of narrative via correspondence, diary, transcription, whether to allude to the original English novel of seduction, Clarissa (Richardson), or to note how writing has been transformed in the machine age (it takes place at the end of the 19th century), with the typewriter & the phono-recorder. The film takes it a step further, with Count Dracula (Gary Oldman – cast because of his name?) visiting London for the first time and drawn to what the contemporary marketing calls the greatest technological innovation of the century, the cinematograph (silent movie porn, wouldn’t you know).

The theme of the novel seems to be the persistence of the uncanny in the world of triumphant technology and rationality; a significant narrative thread features the madhouse with Renfield (Tom Waits in the film; not one of the better casting decisions, since he overacts to my taste), where society contains the uncanny in boxes, to be “cured” via benevolent scientific rationalism. The film makes the madhouse quite bizarre, with the guards all wearing cage-like headgear.

The film, following the cinematography reference, is far more explicit regarding the relationship of sexuality & vampirism than anything in the novel, but here Coppola & Hart are following cinema tradition. Sadie Frost plays Lucy Westenra and does considerable writhing around; probably the unfortunate highpoint of her acting career. Although in the novel the sexual element for Lucy is not explicit (at least to me), the novel does link her to the blood sucking of children which the movie avoids (until her final scene in the tomb). More interesting is that Mina Murray (later Mrs Harker), Wynona Ryder in the film, also gets in the act, after being introduced early in the film with a ”disgusted” reaction to an explicit erotic illustration from the Burton translation of Arabian Nights. In book & film, she is the stenographer, adept with the recently invented typewriter that will give women a new professional role in the industrial age, but in the film Dracula becomes her secret Prince Charming, and her loyalties are, at best, divided, while in the novel the link to the vampire is closer to disease transmission.

The film makes much of her link to Vlad the Impaler’s original inamorata, the princess who commits suicide when misled by the Turks, thus barring her soul from heaven; the immortal Vlad views her as the reincarnation of his princess. The men in the film seem relatively weak in comparison to the novel, where they generally have major roles in the writing (diaries & correspondence). Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) seems particularly weak, whether through casting, direction, or Monica Belluci draining his blood; Dracula in contrast seems like the literary reincarnation of the seducer Lovelace from Clarissa, and, following the Richardson novel, it is Clarissa/Wynona Ryder who ultimately triumphs over her seducer, though for Richardson it is due to her ironclad virginal virtue, not something one can attribute to Mina Harker. One wonders whether either Stoker or Coppola really take Christianity as anything more than another talisman; I suspect Coppola takes his religion more seriously, considering the last scene, with a sort of beatification which is a significant swerve from the novel’s conclusion.

The other male characters carried over from the novel are as follows: Lord Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes), Lucy Westenra’s fiancé, not much developed in the film; Jack Seward (Richard E. Grant) who plays a strong narrative role in the novel as the voice of rationalism and foil to his mentor Abraham Van Helsing, the vampire lore expert, played by Anthony Hopkins somewhat in the throwaway “the things I do for money” mode & who generally drains the starch from his wimpy movie pupil; and manly Quincey Morris (Billy Sherman) the Texan with the big old Bowie knife (unfortunately Joe Don Baker was not available for the role).

Anyway, the novel is a lively read & I don't regret watching the film (don't expect Apocalypse Now or The Godfather) -- I've watched scenes now & then but I don't recall ever watching it all the way through.

Though it’s in my DVD collection, I watched this time on the Criterion Channel streaming service: Ugetsu aka Ugetsu Monogatari (1953) 1h 33m. B&W, Japanese w/English subtitles. Director, Kenji Mizoguchi. Screenplay, Matsutaro Kawaguchi & Yoshikata Yoda. Cinematography, Kazuo Miyagawa. Art director, Kisaku Ito. Music, Fumio Watched a second time with audio commentary. I watch the film off and on over the years, since first encounter in college over 50 years ago. It’s dear to my heart. At the time, this one and Rashomon were the only 2 Japanese films known to Western audiences that followed international studio output. Some reviewers didn’t get it at all; Bosley Crowther of the NY Times didn’t find it as entertaining & transparent as Teahouse of the August Moon. Although it won a Silver Lion award at Cannes, no film got top prize that year, a disappointment for the producer since two of the principle actors, Machiko Kyo & Masayuki Mori, played the husband & wife in the hit Kurosawa film, which did get a Grand Prix previously.

Historical film taking place in the 16th century, a time of continuous war among various clans. Features 2 village farmers & their wives. At the beginning they are all together, but as the story unfolds, they are separated & each have separate adventures. One of the farmers, Genjuro (Mori) makes pottery on the side, with the help of his brother in law Tobei (Sakae Ozawa). Genjuro decides to take advantage of the upheaval to sell his wares in town; Tobei insists on going along, hoping to somehow obtain armor & weapons to become a samurai. Fat chance is his wife Ohama’s opinion (Mitsuko Mito); Genjuro’s wife (Kinuyo Tanaka; she is usually carrying around their toddler Genichi (Ichisaburo Sawamura)) worries mainly & quite sensibly, that Genjuro will get himself killed. But the men return successfully with money in their pockets, and this amplifies their greed, and they & their wives get to work loading the kilns with more pottery ware, but the village is invaded by one of the armies while the pottery ware is still baking in the kiln. Although the rest of village is hiding out away from the village, Genjuro is obsessed & returns; he just misses getting caught, hiding behind the kiln. When the soldiers eventually leave, he discovers that the wares have been successfully baked. The family set off for the town of Omizo, crossing Lake Biwa at night on a skiff steered by Ohama; the naturalistic setting now is transformed into a supernatural one via night & fog (Ugetsu Monogatari is roughly Tales of Moonlight & Rain), and they encounter another skiff containing a mortally wounded lakeman, who warns them of the danger of pirates. Genjuro delays the trip, fearing for Miyagi & his son, and Genjuro, Tobei, & Ohama leave Miyagi & Genichi on the shore of Lake Biwa the next morning, Genjuro telling his wife to head for the hills to avoid the soldiers. At Omizo, Genjuro & Tobei are successfully selling their wares. Tobei has collected enough to pay an armorer. While he is being fitted, Ohama, disgusted, wanders off, only to be captured by soldiers, dragged to a Buddhist temple, where she is raped – to add insult to violation, the leader drops a handful of coins by her prostrate body. Later she wanders from the temple in a daze. In one of the most powerful & moving shots in the film, the photographer captures her at some distance with a low angle shot so she seems almost a silhouette against the light at the top of the porch; she lowers her head and begins to cry. Meanwhile, left alone, Genjuro is accosted by a noblewoman, Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyo) & her attendant/nurse (Kikue Mori), who select many pieces & ask that they be delivered to their dwelling, the Katsuki mansion, where he will be paid. While delivering the goods, he stops at a kimono shop, and in a surrealistic moment Miyagi steps out from the back of the shop & admires one of the kimonos; Genjuro expresses his love for Miyagi by offering material things from which she takes pleasure for his kindness rather than their materiality; but I don’t think the scene suggests that his love is simply male ego. But then the moment is interrupted by the appearance of the Lady & her attendant, who lead him to their mansion.

This is a key turning point, since at the mansion, in the context of the Lady’s admiration, Genjuro realizes that his pottery, initially just a source of extra income, is art. Machiko Kyo is made up as a Noh actor, with an actor’s mask – as in Shakespeare, the female roles are played by males, so Kyo, a trained dancer, enchants Genjuro with a ceremonial Noh theater dance & song, accompanied by the voice of her dead father. Lady Wakasa is a ghost, along with her retinue. Never experiencing love in her lifetime, she initiates Genjuro into high Japanese art through erotic seduction. But while he is preoccupied, his wife is being speared to death by starving soldiers. I misremembered the scene thinking it was a reenactment of the Brueghel Icarus painting, with the peasant foregrounded, ignorant of the iconic mythological fall in the deep background; Mizoguchi though does it in reverse, with Miyagi bleeding to death in the foreground, with the soldiers squabbling in the background. He lets the naturalistic death trump the iconographic at play in the Wakasa thread. Meanwhile (lots of meanwhiles) Tobei, now fully armed, comes upon a defeated general having his lieutenant applying the coup de grace, who respectfully wraps & takes the general’s head for whatever honorable purposes he deems necessary, but Tobei stabs him in the back & runs off with the head (very Kurosawa cynical, though the body of the kneeling, beheaded general seems a gruesome echo of Ohama’s silhouetted, weeping body in the earlier post-rape scene). Tobei brings the head to the general of the rival clan & is rewarded with a commission & vassals, although the general doesn’t believe for a minute Tobei’s story of dispatching the dead general single handedly. Tobei than proceeds to parade around town with his entourage and stops at the local brothel where he meets the fallen woman who is Ohama. They kiss and make up, though there is what seems to be an unintentionally funny moment when she collapses with grief and shame & bumps her head on a dry docked boat (if I remember correctly). Genjuro, meanwhile, is in town purchasing trinkets for his new lady love, when he runs into a Buddhist priest who informs the sorry potter that he has death on his face, and takes him to a Buddhist temple for exorcist things. When Genjuro returns the proposed wedding with Lady Wakasa is off when she and the maid are repelled by the Sanskrit spells the priest has tattooed on Genjuro’s back (something like this happens also in the film Kwaidan). One odd thing not mentioned in the audio commentary is the breath of Genjuro & the ladies is visible; either it’s very cold in the “mansion,” or it’s a subtle supernatural touch as the illusion/delusion begins to collapse (the detail in this film is amazing; Mizoguchi was said to be something of a perfectionist). Convinced they’re evil spirits he wards them off with wild swings of his almost father-in-law’s sword, collapsing outside the mansion. Here he’s awakened by the local militia who accuse him of stealing the antique weapon; the camera pan shows he’s been lying outside the charred ruins of the mansion destroyed long ago during the incessant wars. The last part of the film focuses almost exclusively on Genjuro, who returns to the village & Mizoguchi & his crew create one of the greatest homecoming scenes on film. He sees his old house, arguably like a shabby, broke down comment on his former palace of art, and it’s no better inside. He wanders out the back as the camera follows him go by the windows, then reenters to find Miyagi at the hearth making dinner. She greets him and hands him the sleeping Genichi. While he is cuddling his son in the background, the camera foregrounds Miyagi, conscious of the transient supernatural moment, one that breaks me down emotionally just recalling it. Tanaka was one of Mizoguchi’s greatest regulars, worked with him for years, but broke with him after this one and never spoke to him again or made another film with him. (He opposed her taking time off to direct a film on her own) The film ends with Genjuro again waking up to reality – it turns out his son did survive & somehow returned to his father’s house at the right moment. Ohama & Tobei are back, no more to roam (Mizoguchi didn’t like this plot turn; producer made him do it). A long camera take with Genjuro back modelling clay with Miyagi’s spirit in voice over, something between high art & naturalism, perhaps. Was the ghost of Miyagi a spiritual or an artistic moment? Mizoguchi converted to Buddhism & the acceptance of the transience of all human endeavor at about this time, but he was always something of a Genjuro to the end of his life.

The DVD-Netflix for Bram Stoker’s Dracula included a version with Francis Coppola, the director, doing audio commentary; so as an addendum, my impressions. For Coppola, this was more of a job rather than a purely personal work (though in his introduction, he initially makes it sound more like a personal project). Coppola was in deep financial & personal distress at this point in his career, having blown the profits, personal & aesthetic, from the Godfather films, to the extent that he was forced to make Godfather III for the money. Winona Ryder was supposed to play the daughter in the film (Coppola’s daughter Sophia took the role, I believe) but became ill. As a sort of apology, she brought him the James Hart script. As he notes, it helped to “stabilize” his life, financially & as a reliable director. However, there is a note of resentment running throughout the commentary; it’s not his script, he resents the apparently constant hovering from the studio (because of his history of going over budget in a big way), he makes a number of passive aggressive remarks about Ryder – he repeats that in the future her acting ability will finally blossom – and while he has high praise for the other actors, his mention of Keanu Reeves is only that he was a young friend of Ryder’s. One insight I overlooked: Coppola, who throughout the commentary points out his various homages to the classics auteurs of movie fantasy (Murnau, Cocteau, Dreyer), notes that the Greek Orthodox wedding of Mina & Jonathan cross cutting with the bloody death of Lucy Westenra, is – of course! – a reference to the baptismal massacre in Godfather 1. In my original review I thought the effects seemed a little cheesy & attributed them to his hiring a family member. Coppola’s second unit director was his son Roman; the effects were (he claims) an effort to recreate the old time integrative in camera effects of Hollywood yesteryear – lots of studio sets with painted glass backgrounds. The emphasis was incorporating effects into the filming, rather than post-photography. At one point, I believe Coppola is admitting Roman was actually functioning as co-director of the movie. While the film may have rejuvenated Francis Coppola’s career, it seems to have been a movie career graveyard for Sadie Frost & Roman Coppola (most of his career has been music videos). Another antiquarian point was that virtually all of the film was done in studio (this includes the snowy chase at the pass in the penultimate scene), the exception being the Harker wedding, filmed in an actual LA Greek Orthodox church. All of this to emphasize a point that Coppola reiterates, that he kept the film within budget, though he states that what he calls the “theatricality” was a stylistic choice. Apparently this caused some friction with his cinematographer, Michael Ballhaus (check out his work in the Bill Murray movie Scrooged, which is bright, sharp, and quite the opposite of the look of this film). The 19th century garden scenes were done on a set originally created for Esther Williams’s swimming pool; I could swear it was the same setting for much of Ryder’s scenes with Daniel Day-Lewis in The Age of Innocence. Other odds and ends: the museum quality costumes were by Eiko Ishioka; the composer Wojciech Kilar created three cues but provided no variations, so the techs had to repeat them with different elements muted to fill out the score. A reminder that AIDs was more in the foreground when the film was made, so that the blood transmission element must have had more force. What struck me was how the editing gives such short cuts, and even within each cut, the camera is often chugging along at high speed, machine gun pace, Coppola emulating a magic act’s flimflam. Coppola: "It wasn't a terribly enjoyable experience for me."

Went to see Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part One this weekend. It has the usual strengths and weaknesses of the M:I movies -- exciting action mixed with clunky and improbable plots. And like the other movies in the series, it's a little too long but those stunt scenes are done so well that you'll be happy to sit through the slogging exposition.

The movie's secret weapon is Hayley Atwell, who is given a lot more personality than Tom Cruise's sexy brunette sidekick usually gets in this series. She and Cruise have terrific chemistry; a car chase in which they're handcuffed together in a teeny yellow Fiat is so much fun that despite their 20-year age gap, I found myself wishing they'd do a rom-com together.

And the movie's climactic set piece, an extended scene on the Orient Express -- that's "on" as in "inside" and as in "atop" -- is one of the best action sequences the series has given us.

As for that clunky plot, Cruise is searching for a key to save the world blah blah artificial intelligence blah blah tyrannical domination blah blah wake me when the exposition is over, please. But Esai Morales makes a pretty good villain; Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg provide their usual effective support/comic relief; and there are just the right number of undetectable rubber masks to be fun without getting as annoying as they sometimes have.

Those who need closure will, of course, have to wait for part two to arrive next summer (assuming that the current Hollywood strikes don't delay its completion). This movie does find a sensible place in the story to put the break, and holds together as a coherent story while leaving a second half of the crisis to be resolved later.

To some extent, this movie is critic-proof. You know what you're going to get, and you know whether that interests you. But in the unlikely event that you're teetering with indecision, this movie does the stuff you know it's going to do very well.

Hot weather & heavy rain & humidity in New Haven, poor AC, so I ended up watching quite a bit.

Via Amazon Prime: Baby Assassins aka Beibi warukyure (2021) 1h 35m. Director/screenplay/editor: Yugo Sakamoto. Cinematography, Iju Moritada. Action director, Kensuke Sonomura. Music, Supa Love. IMDB acting credits dreadful, but I believe the principals were: Akari Takashito (as Chisato, pale, black hair), Saori Izawa (Mahiro, tan, blonde hair, rather depressed), Satoshi Uekiya (Kazuki, the Yakuza dad’s “daughter”). Snapshot of Tokyo pop culture of a couple years ago. Two girls just out of high school & uninterested in university, are on a corporate killer payroll, but management is concerned about their social skills, so they are ordered to live together & take part time jobs; we learn this in flashback. Movie opens with Mahiro interviewing in a backroom for a job at a typical Japanese convenience store; the manager is boring her to tears with his banal management quotes, so she shoots him, only to discover that the store apparently has the staff of an infantry platoon (but armed with knives), she loses her gun, & the martial arts tussling begins. Only after she has disabled the entire staff via stabbing (the gore in the film is kept to a minimum) does her future roommate Chisato appear from behind the counter to finish the job (she prefers her semiautomatic). Lots of foodie stuff as the roommates get acquainted with cooking (wok & one-pot); one of Chisato’s jobs is as an assistant chef at a Tokyo waffle house where she ends up killing one of the customers & breaking the boss’s neck – Chisato is not good with whipped cream & apparently is ignorant of mangoes -- at another job we are introduced to Japanese fruit sandwiches, photographed, celebrated, & deplored on Twitter, the film connects the girls to a Yakuza gang via an all-night snack shack (dumplings on a stick & red bean jelly), and finally in the climactic action sequence, the girls celebrate a reconciliation with Japanese cream cakes though they are interrupted & forced to attend a massacre-battle with the Yakuza gang – this in turn refers to an earlier attempt at reconciliation on Chisato’s part when she offers Mahiro a pan, i.e. the Japanese version of a French baguette. Although it’s in Japanese with English subtitles, one of the running jokes is the infiltration & transformation of Western pop culture in urban Japan; there are so many language carryovers – waffle-o, machine gun – you almost don’t need subtitles; the Japanese warukyure explains the continuing appearance of pop-y versions of Ride of the Walkyrie in the soundtrack, when it isn’t doing hip hop beats. Finally -- and hopefully this will always be limited to Japanese pop culture -- there is the key scene midway, when Chisato gets a part time job that seems perfectly suited to her bubbly personality: a boutique, extremely expensive restaurant where all the waitresses act like anime maids and the patrons all seem to be incels who seem to revel in the infantility of it all. The head Yakuza visits the restaurant with his son, loves the cash flow & talks about getting the gang more involved with feminine-centered enterprises (by favoring his daughter Katsuki), but finally it’s too new school & cutesy (I believe the term is something like kawai sone), & the OG testosterone emerges & he lines up the maids for sex trafficking, but Chisato … Entertaining as hell, and there is a sequel; sounds perfect for Netflix.

Also on Prime watched the Ong-Bak trilogy, starring Tony Jaa, which appears to be a celebration of the Thai martial art of Muy Thay. Watched it out of order: Ong Bak 2 – Ong Bak 3 – Ong Bak: the Thai Warrior. The first seems to be a tribute to and has the look of late 70s/early 80s exploitation grindhouse movies. While it purportedly takes place in its “present,” i.e., urban Bangkok in the early 2000s, 2(2008) & 3 (2010) take place in the 15th century and have a nice look & décor. Tony Jaa is still “Tien” or Candle, but this time as a karmic ancestor – the ethos is sort of Buddhist. Ong Bak is a Buddhist deity, and in the initial film, its effigy head is removed by an antiquities gang, with Tien on a quest to recover it; the name is retained in the other films of the “trilogy,” though it doesn’t seem to have much relevance to the historical films. What seemed most interesting to me was the theme of merging dance, martial arts, & religion, in some ways commenting on the mindless & mercenary brutality of the first Ong Bak.

And a final Amazon Prime film, a guilty pleasure on my part. Last Man Standing. I know it’s a remake of a remake (Kurosawa to Leone to Walter Hill) with noir voice over. Pastiche, don’t care, love those two gun cannons Bruce Willis uses like Mifune’s sword to wipe out two gangs bleeding the town dry (joke, they’re bootleggers), his passion & resurrection (Eastwood in Leone’s films) leading to the final confrontation with Christopher Walken’s Hickey. Can’t stop watching as the story keeps moving. Kudos to Ry Cooder for the score & Freeman Davies for the editing.

For action addicts, I note that The Villainess is for now available on Amazon Prime.

I have just viewed on TV the last in a four part series on Jim Jones and the mass suicides 0f 908 people at Jones Town. Harrowing and fascinating to see how he brainwashed these ordinary people.

My cable service is doing another freebie week, & this week it’s Acorn. Enjoyed the second season of Dalgliesh (2023). Total 6 episodes, 2 episodes each devoted to an adaptation of an early P.D. James novel. S2, E1-2: Death of an Expert Witness – S2, E3-4: A Certain Justice – S2, E5-6, The Murder Room. Bertie Carvel continues as Adam Dalgliesh, the poet-police inspector, & Carlys Peer is DS Kate Miskin, with newbie Alistair Brammer as DS Daniel Tarrant. These have been done as 70s period pieces, with cars, costumes, & prejudices all from that era (and not much help from CSI tech). Peer is perhaps a more likable Miskin than James’s creation, who has a bit more baggage (by the end of S2 it appears she’s leaving the nest with a promotion). Carvel does a good job as a cerebral & tactful leader, quite the contrast with, say, Vera Stanhope. Perhaps a better contrast might be with another period procedural, Endeavour; for me the Dalgliesh storytelling seems more rushed since the show runners are trying to squeeze novel length creations into ca. 90 minute stories, and not much time is available to bring out the ongoing development of the detectives. Still some good parts for the characters involved with the actual crimes: the daughter & the nanny in E1-2, the whole law firm in all its awfulness in E3-4, the museum staff & trustees in E5-6 (though the relationship between the major & Ryan seems to be suggestive without being made very clear). Maybe nothing quite as awful as the death in the nursing college in S1, but all still absorbing. Using the remaining week to see if I can view all 3 seasons of Happy Valley which would otherwise require a subscription to AMC+ or Acorn.

Minor footnote. Really liked the character of Tally in S2E5-6 (Murder Room), and it occurs to me that James has a penchant for creating sympathetic & single elderly women. Though she has a devious side, Mrs. Carpenter in S2E3-4 (Certain Justice), & the woman who discovers the body & befriends the little boy in one of James's novels I got around to reading this year, A Taste for Death. The nanny in S2E1-2 is an exception, though granted her teen charge's voodoo proclivities would try most folks' patience.

I have been watching the DVD series - Hollywood Singing & Dancing: A Musical History - I just finished the 1960's DVD and have also seen the 20's, 30's, 40's, 50's DVD's. So fun! I highly recommend it.

Thanks to some physical issues I’ve been watching a lot of content, but don’t really have the strength to write much. For the record, I recommend:

Following the screenwriting auteur Sally Wainwright. Through the Acorn freebie week, Seasons 1-3 Happy Valley, 2014-2023, 18 episodes. Scorching performance by Sarah Lancashire as Police Sergeant Catherine Cawood. Might also be available via other sources, e.g AMC+. As a result (super impressed!), re-watched Wainwright’s Scott & Bailey 2011-2016 (S1-5, 33 episodes) via Britbox, featuring Suranne Jones as DS Rachel Bailey, Lesley Sharp as DC Janet Scott, & Amelia Bullmore as DCI Gill Murray, with really excellent guest work by Nicola Walker. Both series ruffle male feathers; don’t care.

Two Buster Keatons: Via Criterion Channel, Our Hospitality (1923) w/Natalie Talmadge & amazing acrobatics by Buster. Purchased on Amazon Prime Video, Sherlock Jr. (1924), best known for Buster inserting himself into the film he’s projecting, but the highlight for me is the motorcycle chase where he doesn’t realize he’s lost the driver a while back.

DVD Netflix. Marriage of Figaro (1974) 3 hr. Mozart & Lorenzo Da Ponte. Glyndbourne production, London Philharmonic, John Pritchard conductor. Killer cast includes Ileana Cotrubas (Susanna), Kurt Skram (Figaro), Kiri te Kanawa (Countess Almaviva), Frederika von Stade (Cherubino), Benjamin Luxon (Count Almaviva).

Criterion Channel. Synecdoche New York (2008). 2 hr 4m. Director/screenplay, Charlie Kaufmann. On first viewing, his masterpiece. One of Philip Seymour Hoffmann’s greatest performances. Sort of like an autobiographical Woody Allen film if WA had that level of artistry. Bleak.

Also, the Acorn freebie week gave me a chance to catch up on Brokenwood Mysteries S9. Entertaining, but each episode is 90 min & I sometimes dozed off. Not on the level of the Wainwright procedurals. Glad they’ve gotten a Maori investigator (Jarod Wawiri) on board, & I continue to like Gina (Cristina Ionda) if only because she seems to repel Kristin & Mike.

Recently started watching Nip/Tuck, which I missed the first time around. Only a few episodes in, and enjoying it, but it's a Ryan Murphy series, which usually means that it falls completely to bits in season 2.

At the multiplex: Theater Camp is a delight despite having the black hole of anti-charisma Ben Platt in it; Barbie is great fun, with spectacular sets/costumes and superb casting that includes precisely correct use of Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, and Rhea Perlman, though it's not quite as thoughtful or subversive as Greta Gerwig thinks it is.

And catching up on Amazon with some movies from earlier this year: Air tells the story of how Nike signed Michael Jordan; Viola Davis is terrific as Jordan's mother, and everyone else is fine. M3gan is a killer-android/doll movie with a few amusing moments, though I am admittedly not a huge horror fan.

Jim Gaffigan stand up special Dark Pale on Amazon Prime had its moments; a relief after Charlie Kaufmann’s Synecdoche New York.

Caught The Mad Miss Manton (1938) 1 hr 20 min before Criterion Channel cycles it off at the end of July. Barbara Stanwyck (Melsa Manton) & Henry Fonda (Peter Ames) in an RKO pic; they would later work together in The Lady Eve. Screwball comedy/murder mystery with a touch of The Front Page, but shot with an occasional noir look by Nicholas Musaraca; director Leigh James, Pandro Berman in charge of production, Van Nest Polglase art direction. Crime solving by a gaggle of rich ladies, with Stanwyck as the alpha, and Fonda as a newspaper editor either in love with her or trying to wiggle out of a libel suit (see Libeled Lady) when his paper falsely accuses her of murder. All of the Law and Order protocols are flouted. Gleefully.

Note: the following were scheduled to be cycled off the Criterion Channel July 31, so I was doing a last minute binge!

War Requiem (1989) 1 hr 32 min. Director Derek Jarman. A film montage set to Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, op 66 (1962). As libretto, Britten combined the Latin requiem mass with poems by Wilfrid Owen, the poet of “the pity of war” who died in combat at the end of WWI. There are name actors in the film (in particular Tilda Swinton as a nurse), but they have no dialog. The documentary footage near the end is gruesome. A real find for me, thanks to Criterion, since I was ignorant, in particular, of Britten’s opus, Owen’s poetry, & Jarman’s artistry. Remarkable film & music.

The Blue Angel aka Der Blaue Engel (1930) 1 hr 44m. Director, Joseph von Sternberg. Screenplay, Carl Zuckmayer, Karl Volmoller, Robert Liebmann; based on Professor Unrat by Heinrich Mann. Haven’t seen this one since college. Emil Jannings is Professor Immanuel Rat, a stuffy professor of literature at the local Gymnasium, who becomes infatuated with chanteuse Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) & ends life as a humiliated clown. The Blue Angel is the local nightclub. Dietrich performs “Falling in Love Again,” probably her signature song. Shot in an expressionistic style, the street leading to the nightclub & the nightclub interior claustrophobic, perhaps intended to represent the professor’s descent into the abyss. His slow fall is like watching an animal being tortured. Noteworthy callbacks: the dead bird at the beginning & the chirping, singing birds in the nightclub, the camera pullback from the professor’s desk midway, and then at the end.

The Man From Laramie (1955) 1 hr 47 min. Director Anthony Mann. Screenplay Philip Yordan, Frank Burt, & Thomas Flynn. Cinematography, Charles Lang. This is one of a number of Mann’s Westerns that featured James Stewart. I thought I’d check it out late at night and it pulled me in into the early morning. Kind of like a Clint Eastwood mysterious stranger film, but it’s wholesome Jimmy Stewart. On one level he’s the leader of a freight hauling crew whose wagons are burned & mules killed by a gang from the Waggoman ranch, led by Alex Nicol’s Dave, a psycho & only son of patriarch Donald Crisp’s Alec, whose authority is eroding symbolically via macular degeneration. On another level, Stewart’s Will Lockhart is on a mission to find the gun runner whose trade resulted in the death of Lockhart’s younger brother, and whom patriarch Alec “sees” as the mysterious stranger who is a recurrent killer of his beloved son. But wait, there’s still more! Alec has a foreman, Vic Hansbro (Arthur Kennedy), who plays the role of Alec’s rival son, jealous of Dave, but also obligated to fight with Will Lockhart to defend Dave. And let’s not forget the women, Vic’s fiancée Barbara Waggoman (Kathy O’Donnell) – everybody is related in this town; she’s Alec’s niece & Stewart is a sort of rival to Vic -- & small time rival rancher Kate Canaday (Aline McMahon), spurned fiancée of Alec – he married someone else who created spoiled monster Dave. So big family romance type Western. Jack Elam functions as a kind of red herring that seems to go nowhere.

Over the weekend in between games of FIFA Women's World Cup soccer, I watched Key Largo (1948, 1hr 40 min) on Turner Classic Movies. It stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, of course, along with Edward G. Robinson, Lionel Barrymore and Claire Trevor (who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress); it was directed by John Huston.

I saw it many years ago on the big screen as part of a classic film series in the city where I then lived. Watching on my iPad wasn't the same immersive or communal experience, of course, but it was still very enjoyable.

>16 featherbear: I'm a big fan of these Mann/Stewart collaborations and they certainly show a different side of James Stewart's character. That wholesome side is not on view in, for example, 'The Far Country' in which his character's personality is very self-centred to say the least. It's a film which tries to show just how rough the gold mining towns were and the colour photography of the Alaskan landscapes is fabulous.

We did see Oppenheimer this weekend. The theater was almost sold out. We enjoyed it and thought it was well done. I would like to read more about him.

>19 JulieLill: "When Christopher Nolan’s film “Oppenheimer” is released on July 21, it will be the first time many younger Americans encounter the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer. But that film stands on the shoulders of the exhaustive and exhilarating 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning biography called “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer,” co-written by Sherwin and Kai Bird." --Andy Kifer, NYT, 07/10/2023, Behind ‘Oppenheimer,’ a Prizewinning Biography 25 Years in the Making.

One last run through of Marriage of Figaro before returning it, reluctantly, to Netflix-DVD yesterday. My one encounter with Ileana Cotrubas was in the classic Carlos Kleiber DG recording of La Traviata in my CD (& formerly vinyl) collection; I'm hardly an aficionado, but young Cotrubas I thought wonderful as Susanna, holding her own against Te Kanawa's Countess & Von Stade's quite adorable Cherubino. The DVD is long out of print, so I'll probably never see it again.

Now streaming on Peacock after a short theatrical run earlier this year: A Thousand and One . Shortly after being released from prison in 1994, Inez kidnaps her 6-year-old son Terry from the foster care system, and we follow their lives for a decade. It's a sad commentary on New York's foster care system that no one ever seems to be looking for Terry; he's just another kid who's slipped through the cracks.

The first few minutes of the movie could lead you to expect that you're in for two hours of misery porn, but while the movie is realistic about a black family living on the edge of poverty in New York neghborhoods that are rapidly gentrifying, the focus is on the relationships among Inez, Terry, and Lucky, who marries Inez and gradually becomes a significant father figure for Terry.

Teyana Taylor stars as Inez; she got her start in show biz as an R&B singer. She's done a fair amount of acting over the last decade, but mostly in small supporting roles. This is by far the largest and most dramatic role she's ever had, and she's excellent. Inez presents herself as a larger than life, supremely confident woman, but Taylor always makes it clear just how small and beaten down by life she really feels. The young actors who play Terry at 6, 13, and 17 (Aaron Kingsley Adetola, Aven Courney, and Josiah Cross, respectively) are all solid, and in synch enough to make Terry feel like a single person.

I think I could have done without the very last plot twist, which could have ruined a lesser movie, but writer-director A. V. Rockwell and her cast have done such a solid job of making us care about these characters that the movie holds up even under the unnecessary dose of over-the-top melodrama. Very good work all around, and Taylor and Rockwell are people to keep your eyes on.

Happily binging on Good Omens season 2. If you saw or read the original Good Omens you might wonder where this is going. Michael Sheen and David Tenent are just brilliant as always. With Neil Gaiman doing the writing its quite good, except that it ends in a cliff hanger. So now we need to wait till he writes (afterthe strike) season 3. Gonna be a long time, hope its worth the wait!

Reminder, August 2023 postings at What Are We Watching on TV August 2023