So what are YOU watching?
- Bill Meyer
- Mar 30, 2020
- 6 min read
So. How are you doing? Been a little while...but as we are all navigating these interesting times, it seemed like the right moment to get back to writing as we all could use something other to think about than what’s going on in the world outside, at least for a little while each day. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while -- and for obvious reasons, now seems like...a really ideal time, especially as writing about art is more fun than reading the news or chasing three dogs around the house and cleaning constantly, which have been pretty much the major agenda items of late. The goal of this blog -- as you can read in the earlier posts -- is to be a place for discussion of ideas big and small mostly about film, music, poetry, and stories in any form. I don’t know about you, but our household has found some solace and distraction in the universe of stories in the last few weeks -- and here’s a shortlist of stories that we have enjoyed lately and where you can find them.
EVERYTHING on The Criterion Channel
The Criterion Channel is the online home of the Criterion Collection, who have been putting out high-quality DVDs and Blu-Rays of films you are unlikely to find anywhere else, from the very best of American movies to world cinema to independents and everything in between. After a brief run as part of Filmstruck, which was a joint venture with Warner Bros. that didn’t make enough money to survive, the CC relaunched last year and has been a huge part of our viewing ever since. Every few days, new films appear, often curated by theme with terrific introductory videos and other supplements. At $99/year, it’s a steal -- I don’t know anywhere else where ten bucks a month gets you access to Akira Kurosawa, Agnes Varda, Ingmar Bergman, Jane Campion, Alfonso Cuaron, and so many more. Here’s a few that have been fun of late:
This film, which comes in the “Adventures in Moviegoing” series, in which actors, directors, and writers curate and present their favorites, is one of Patton Oswalt’s picks for the month. If you want a couple of hours of awesome Japanese noir-cowboy-yakuza mashup, look no further than this potboiler from Takeshi Nomura, which stars Joe Shishido sporting the world’s most unusual cheek implants, which somehow work for him, but then again, as you will discover, he’s like a budget James Bond with a much more robust moral compass (for a hitman, I mean…).
I mean, there's being cheeky, but...this seems like something special
Discoveries like this are why the Criterion Chanel is such a joy. Entranced by the works of Jules Verne, Czech director Karel Zeman adapted several of his tales freely for this astonishing tribute to the power of stories.
Inspired by the line drawings in the original Victorian-era editions of Verne’s Voyages Extraordinaires, Zeman sought to reproduce the feel of those by using paint rollers to create highly unusual patterns on his sets and using a variety of forced perspective shots and other camera trickery to produce an effect that combines the feel of fantasy, animation, and, for lack of a better phrase, visual magic. If you have kids in the house, they’ll love this, but you do not need to be young to enjoy this one.
You like stories about a troupe of teenagers battling to survive in a possessed house full of killer pianos, murderous appliances, portals to other worlds, and fluffy cats who may or may not be demonic? Then this is most definitely a film for you. Stylistically mindblowing, House borrows techniques and steals shots from a dizzying array of influences and uses them to spin a deceptively resonant allegory that you should dig into but only AFTER you watch this for the first time and try to figure it out for yourself.
Series You May Have Missed
If you are like us, you are overwhelmed with the amount of content that is out there, and over the last few years, some gems snuck past and there are so many more we got behind in and never got back to...until now. If you are looking for something new, try one of these…
I don’t think I have laughed as hard at anything as I have every time we have watched this show, which might be the best satire of anything ever. OK, that’s hyperbolic, but so is everything about this version of the Bachelor and Bachelorette that has one of the deepest casts of sketch comedians ever assembled.
Multiple veterans of The State, The Groundlings, UCB, and more (most of whom you will recognize but not listing them as they are more fun to discover as you watch, especially the one in the panda suit) -- many of whom seem like impossibly big stars for a project like this but that’s the whole point -- run riot with some terrific writing to create a fanty-tale that has to be seen and even then, you won’t believe it. Trust me -- just watch it. Again and again. Like us.
The best part of the proliferation of content over the last few years is that projects that would never be made for television because they are too smart and would never work as films as they need twenty or thirty hours to be told well instead of two are suddenly readily available. The worst part is that there are so many worth watching, that some sneak by under the radar. In my experience, Counterpart falls decidedly into that category as most people I have asked have not heard of it, which is not exactly shocking given the fact that STARZ’s heaviest investment in their own content has been dominated by a show about pirates.
I can’t say much about the premise as it’s tough to get into anything without spoilers, but this is the most innovative spin on Cold War psychodrama yet conceived. The superb writing and production design provide the perfect canvas for the best work of J.K. Simmons’s career, and he is matched in intensity and brilliance by Olivia Williams and a magnificent supporting cast.
So you have probably at least heard of this one -- but it surprises me that more people I have talked to haven’t seen it. It is quite violent, which I understand is a significant obstacle for many -- for me as well these days if it is in any way gratuitous -- but the quality of the work in all aspects of this series justifies the unflinching gaze this show casts on humanity in its mostly darker aspects. The story is based on a 1970’s Michael Crichton pulp throwaway about an amusement park based on a cartoonish simulacrum of the American West where humans can don costumes and guns and play out their deepest fantasies on androids without consequence, but the series transcends its origins within the stunning opening credits and Ramin Djawadi’s score.
Rather than Richard Benjamin running haplessly from robot-gunman - gone-berserk Yul Brynner -- which was pretty much the complete plot of Crichton’s laughably bad 1973 film adaptation -- the HBO series, which is three episodes into its third season as we speak, offers Rachel Evan Wood, Anthony Hopkins, Ed Harris, Thandie Newton, Tessa Thompson, Jimmi Simpson and more in an intricately designed multi-dimensional labyrinth of a narrative crafted by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. Like Jonathan’s brother Christopher -- director and co-writer of Inception, Interstellar, the Dark Knight trilogy and more -- this pair weaves their story out of narrative threads that jump back and forth through time and space, but the long format allows them to develop ideas and characters to the depth needed for the complexity of the world they are continuing to build. It demands quite a bit from viewers -- as Jonathan Nolan remarked, "We're very lucky in that we're at a place with HBO where they let us make the show we want to make" without having to "dumb the show down" -- but if you want a show that re-evaluates American mythologies in a myriad of interesting ways, it is worth the investment. Think of it as a mix of Blade Runner mixed with Richard Slotkin’s Regeneration Through Violence as scripted by Cormac McCarthy and you’d be in the ballpark. It’s a heavy bread, but rich…
So I should probably go eat something and...move to a different room for variety’s sake? But I promise I will write much more regularly with short takes and long -- but for the moment, let me ask: what are you watching? Add suggestions in the comments -- and if you like what you read, please share widely. Back soon!
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