What Are You Watching

[medjuck]

"Hollywood" on Netflix.  I have some qualms about the show, but the music is great.  The score is old fashioned big band movie music a la Henry Mancini or even Elmer Bernstein.  But it's the needle drops that are really interesting: Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Otis, Johnny Hodges, Brick Fleagle, Rex Stewart, Joe Liggins and some even more esoteric selections.  I admit I don't always hear or recognize everything because they're often buried in the mix or only brief snippets but at times they carry the scenes and are played at length.   (All of this is less true of the very first episode where the music isn't that interesting and sometimes anachronistic--e.g. Catch a Falling Star in 1947?)

Edited May 17, 2020 by medjuck

[jlhoots]

Defending Jacob - Apple TV series

[jlhoots]

Bark Skins

[Dave James]

On 5/5/2020 at 9:29 PM, Brad said:

I watched it when it first came out and my recollection of the first episode was that it lacked enough Vietnamese history. Although the series made an attempt to use Vietnamese participants, it was an American-centric series as are most books you read about Nam. From the US perspective, the books I’d recommend are Tim O’Brien’s books. From the Vietnamese side, I’d recommend Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer; his account of Apocalypse Now is damning. The Times ran a great series three years ago, Vietnam 67.  It’s worth the time. It ran for about 15 months. I was sorry when it ended.  I was in high school and then college in the late 60s (did my share of demonstrations and was gassed once or twice) and the one good thing about the series — or bad thing, depending on your perspective — is that it brings you back; I felt I was reliving it again. Wasn’t a great feeling.  Can only imagine how the combatants felt. 

Like you, I am a child of the 60's.  Living in Portland, Oregon, the anti-war movement was active, but nowhere near as organized as it was in other areas the country.  I went to college at Lewis & Clark, a small school in SW Portland,  The first anti-war demonstration on campus involved all of five people, two of which were professors and one who was my roommate.  By the time of the Cambodian incursion and its offshoot, Kent State,, a matter of a couple of years, the entire campus was knee deep in the movement.  The mini-police riot in downtown Portland, the Vortex Music Festival, a state sponsored rock show bought and paid for by the state oe draw people away from the American Legion's national convention in Portland, circulating petitions, burning draft cards, various and sundry marches.  Round up the usual suspects.

I watched every second of Burns' documentary.  A validation in every sense the term, that we were right and they were wrong.  When many first really realized that a government by and for the people was as easily as capable of lying, if not more so, as it was of telling the truth...and on the grandest of scales.   As we used to yell with our fists raised in the air, "Truth to power."   It's just unfortunate that Burns' documentary first aired more than 50 years after the fact. 

[Brad]

10 hours ago, Dave James said:

Like you, I am a child of the 60's.  Living in Portland, Oregon, the anti-war movement was active, but nowhere near as organized as it was in other areas the country.  I went to college at Lewis & Clark, a small school in SW Portland,  The first anti-war demonstration on campus involved all of five people, two of which were professors and one who was my roommate.  By the time of the Cambodian incursion and its offshoot, Kent State,, a matter of a couple of years, the entire campus was knee deep in the movement.  The mini-police riot in downtown Portland, the Vortex Music Festival, a state sponsored rock show bought and paid for by the state oe draw people away from the American Legion's national convention in Portland, circulating petitions, burning draft cards, various and sundry marches.  Round up the usual suspects.

I watched every second of Burns' documentary.  A validation in every sense the term, that we were right and they were wrong.  When many first really realized that a government by and for the people was as easily as capable of lying, if not more so, as it was of telling the truth...and on the grandest of scales.   As we used to yell with our fists raised in the air, "Truth to power."   It's just unfortunate that Burns' documentary first aired more than 50 years after the fact. 

We were definitely right. The cost to Vietnam and the US was incalculable. The naive belief that we all had that the Government doesn’t lie to us was ripped to shreds. By the way, Spike Lee has made a movie about four Black veterans returning to Vietnam that looks it will be good. It airs on Netflix on June 12. 

[Brad]

I don’t know if this goes here or the Film Corner but I was just browsing HBO Max, the new streaming service, and they have a special section from TCM. There are some fantastic films in there, especially foreign films, lots of them.

In addition, they have a section that has all the films from Studio Ghibli, the Japanese animation maker. This is the first time their films have been available digitally. You might recognize My Friend Totoro. In the middle to late 90s when my son was a toddler, we watched it countless times. I can’t wait to see it again. 

As if on demand, here’s an article in Rolling Stone that just came out, 50 Classic Movies to Watch on HBO Max

[sidewinder]

Tonight I have Bill Evans ‘Time Remembered’, the RRK documentary and the Milford Graves bio lined up as part of my cheapo Amazon Prime trial week.

Good value. 

[Matthew]

The Barbara Stanwyck Show. Nice half-hour dramas, nothing earth shaking, but it's always enjoyable to watch Stanwyck in anything.

[Matthew]

Hard to believe that Benny died almost 46 years ago. I have insomnia, and I need to listen to the Jack Benny Show or Fibber McGee and Molly radio shows to fall asleep, so it's like he's still alive for me. JBS is fantastic, as well as FMAM, so happy there's all those recordings still available.

 

[duaneiac]

43 minutes ago, Matthew said:

Hard to believe that Benny died almost 46 years ago. I have insomnia, and I need to listen to the Jack Benny Show or Fibber McGee and Molly radio shows to fall asleep, so it's like he's still alive for me. JBS is fantastic, as well as FMAM, so happy there's all those recordings still available.

 

I absolutely LOVE the Jack Benny Show!  It was such a well written show and had a talented ensemble cast that could easily rival that of Friends or Seinfeld.   The show did not focus much on topical humor (unlike, say the shows of Bob Hope or Fred Allen), so a lot of the comedy still works and has not overly suffered with age.  What delights me is how much of the program's humor came at Jack Benny's expense -- making fun of his age, his vanity, his stinginess, his movie career (and really, The Horn Blows At Midnight is not that bad a movie).  Jack Benny was not even a comedian in the traditional sense.  He did not come on and tell jokes on his show like Hope or Berle did.  I mean, the funniest thing Jack Benny ever said on air was, "I'm thinking it over!" and that was only funny because of the years and years the writers spent building up the miserliness aspect of his character, so that when in response to a mugger's demand for "Your money or your life!", JB takes a loooooong pause and then says those 4 not funny at all words, he got the biggest laugh from the live audience the show ever had.  That is expertly crafted comedy!

I remember watching that CBS tribute program when it first aired.  Jack Benny's was only the second celebrity death that genuinely saddened me.  Louis Armstrong's was the first.

[Matthew]

1 hour ago, duaneiac said:

I absolutely LOVE the Jack Benny Show!  It was such a well written show and had a talented ensemble cast that could easily rival that of Friends or Seinfeld.   The show did not focus much on topical humor (unlike, say the shows of Bob Hope or Fred Allen), so a lot of the comedy still works and has not overly suffered with age.  What delights me is how much of the program's humor came at Jack Benny's expense -- making fun of his age, his vanity, his stinginess, his movie career (and really, The Horn Blows At Midnight is not that bad a movie).  Jack Benny was not even a comedian in the traditional sense.  He did not come on and tell jokes on his show like Hope or Berle did.  I mean, the funniest thing Jack Benny ever said on air was, "I'm thinking it over!" and that was only funny because of the years and years the writers spent building up the miserliness aspect of his character, so that when in response to a mugger's demand for "Your money or your life!", JB takes a loooooong pause and then says those 4 not funny at all words, he got the biggest laugh from the live audience the show ever had.  That is expertly crafted comedy!

I remember watching that CBS tribute program when it first aired.  Jack Benny's was only the second celebrity death that genuinely saddened me.  Louis Armstrong's was the first.

I've gotten to where I love radio and movies, the whole entertainment forms from the 1930s & 1940s (basically, the whole inter-war era), a very interesting era, and it is an entertainment world long gone and not too remembered. Recently, I was trying to explain to someone in their early thirties about how HUGE Bob Hope and Bing Crosby were, how, when either one was introduced on one of these old radio shows, the crowd went absolutely nuts because they were so popular. The guy had barely heard on them. Same thing with a lot of my friends, they refuse to even think of watching any black and white movie -- that's too old timey for them. I feel that I'm in a whole other land when I tell people people I'm into old films, old time radio, books, and love jazz. Whenever I say things like that, I get that uncomprehending look, along with the whole "OK Boomer" vibe.

Edited June 15, 2020 by Matthew

[jlhoots]

Last 2 episodes of Bark Skins tonight.

Will there be a season 2?

[Jim Duckworth]

Had a lovely evening with Mrs. Duckworth and Nina Simone.

[soulpope]

[jlhoots]

On 6/15/2020 at 1:40 PM, jlhoots said:

Last 2 episodes of Bark Skins tonight.

Will there be a season 2?

Apparently no.

[jazzbo]

The rather strange reboot of Perry Mason.

[jlhoots]

Signed up for Disney+ so we can watch Hamilton.

[JSngry]

8 minutes ago, jazzbo said:

The rather strange reboot of Perry Mason.

Are you going past episode 1? If so, please report, becusae we had a hard time getting through that much. A lot of Boardwalk Empire/Etc rehashed, and not at all relvent to any iteration of "Perry Mason" I know of. Seems gratuitous, perhaps even cynical, to use that name and those characters for this story, maybe?

I think I've lost my appetite for all this Live Is Violent And Controlled By Violent People ethos of entertainment for a while...I'm gonna be more violent than any of them and kill their access into my senses, destroy them at their source.

Put THAT on HBO!

[jazzbo]

Yeah, I've kept up with it. It's a sever re-imagining and not as smoothly executed as it could be. I like that they made Drake a cop and a Black cop at that--I love that actor that's one reason I'm still watching, there are a few actors here that I really like.

I'm not a big Perry Mason fan, but I'm a big fan of another series of Gardner's, the B. Cool and Lam Detective agency series of the cases of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. Those are funny and for their time a bit edgy. Nothing like these HBO episodes. I'm guessing that this series COULD be viewed as a precursor to the Mason mythos we have officially. Mason could have been in WWI, he could have been a PI working for a lawyer before he became a lawyer and Drake could have been a cop before he became Mason's PI. 

It's nothing like Gardner's conception, but I do like its attempt at gritty realism and its spin on hard-boiled reality of the past, which reminds me of Hammett more than other crime fiction. And I'm a Hammett fan. So. . . I'm watching. I think it's one of those you have to watch several times and I think I'll rewatch these three before going further.

And I like Mason's girlfriend, she seems like someone real I know.

[JSngry]

I've seen it described as a "prequel", but I don't think there's any real basis for saying that except as a defense mechanism against what appears to have been a lot of viewer backlash after the first episode.

[jazzbo]

Well, if I recall correctly there's no reason it COUDLN'T be a prequel--I don't think in the novels Mason's history is spelled out in ways that would preclude this being a back story. I have tended to just think of this as something else. Another character, not the Mason we know (which could be like "Better Call Saul" in reverse--this is a Saul Goodman who later becomes more of a Jimmy McGill). That's easy enough to do as the three main Gardner characters, Perry Mason, Paul Drake and Della Street, don't really resemble the Gardner delineated personalities, and one could imagine they haven't morphed into those yet, or simply these are not those characters.

Then again, Mason in the books (my only real source, I never watched the TV series nor did I listen to the radio shows or watch any movies) is described by the most prominent DA thus: ""You're a better detective than you are a lawyer. When you turn your mind to the solution of a crime, you ferret out the truth." So. . . it's neither implausible nor out of character entirely for Maso to have BEEN a detective previously, that would explain his traits as a lawyer with his clients. His past is really never precisely addressed in the novels.

It's sort of my cup of tea and I'm sipping it with some pleasure. 

Edited July 8, 2020 by jazzbo

[catesta]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

Are you going past episode 1? If so, please report, becusae we had a hard time getting through that much. A lot of Boardwalk Empire/Etc rehashed, and not at all relvent to any iteration of "Perry Mason" I know of. Seems gratuitous, perhaps even cynical, to use that name and those characters for this story, maybe?

I think I've lost my appetite for all this Live Is Violent And Controlled By Violent People ethos of entertainment for a while...I'm gonna be more violent than any of them and kill their access into my senses, destroy them at their source.

Put THAT on HBO!

Yeah, the wife and I were looking for a new series to follow and gave it a shot. A friend of mine recommended it along with the Netflix series White Lines which I also only got through one episode of. The search continues...

 

Edited July 8, 2020 by catesta

[JSngry]

Brenda watches damn near anything, I mean, she likes this "hard-bolied" stuff and doesn't seem to have too many standards about it, and she was like, "this is not good", which sort of surprised me.

Part of it is that we were both all-in on Boardwalk empire and this one was simply too much like that one, so...apart from the disconnect of the character names, there was that, too, just not any reason to keep watching, seen it all before.

Maybe it gets better, but we're not going to stick around to find out. Which is too bad, because I like TV shows with cows in them. Eleanor is one of my favorite TV cows ever. But she's dead now, no doubt, so...you know...time to move on. It behooves us.

[Chuck Nessa]

Just starting season 2 of Marcella. I think I am in love.

[medjuck]

5 hours ago, JSngry said:

Are you going past episode 1? If so, please report, becusae we had a hard time getting through that much. A lot of Boardwalk Empire/Etc rehashed, and not at all relvent to any iteration of "Perry Mason" I know of. Seems gratuitous, perhaps even cynical, to use that name and those characters for this story, maybe? 

I hated episode 1 but got turned around with episode 2 mainly because of Tatiana Maslany.   She's got more charisma than any actress I've seen in years. I guess I should watch Orphan Black. I think the story got better with 2  and 3 but though it's now obvious how and why Mason will become a lawyer I'm not buying that this is the Perry Mason from the books, movies or tv show.   (Not that I've read or seen a lot of them.). Has anyone read that  they set out to do a Mason origin story? Or did they have  an idea for a plot that the grafted Perry onto? 

BTW Good music in it.