Monday, March 22, 2021

Still Here


 Saw Minari at a movie theater on Friday. I think it may be the best movie I saw from 2020 although Nomadland is close. There were seven people in the theater, well spread out but since Michigan's covid is climbing it may be the last time I do this for a while.The acting in Minari was superb.

Also saw Let Him Go on Prime, which was an excellent adaptation of the novel by Larry Watson, which I greatly enjoyed a few years ago. Kevin Costner and Diane Lane played a long-married Montana farm couple to perfection. They cross swords with the worst family imaginable. The name Weeboy perfectly suits their horribleness. 

I am trying to get up the nerve to watch Promising White Female.


Just started Call My Agent on Netflix, which seems like fun. Finished the Allen v. Farrow doc, which was just sickening. I can never watch a Woody Allen movie again. 

Reading THE LOST MAN (Harper) and Buddha in the Attic for my book group. 



Lots of good weather here. How about you?

24 comments:

Steve A Oerkfitz said...

I also saw Minari which which was pretty good. I also watched Promising Young Woman Which I also watched. And I watched the 4th season of Billions.
Read Later by Stephen King. Enjoyable, quick read. Reread The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler and am now reading What Waits For You by Joseph Schneider. I liked his first novel last year. This is a sequel to that one.
Really enjoying the warm weather. Close to 70 tomorrow. Unfortunately it is a eye injection for me so I'll be mostly just laying on the coach.
Less than two weeks to MLB and Detroit is fielding the worst time in their division.

Todd Mason said...

Yeah, indeed...but I was taking less and less joy in anything Woody Allen by the latter '80s...the creep vibe was very apparent from early on, almost impossible to miss, in fact. Still have a small fondness for the collective mockery made of WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY?, a collaborative improvisation to begin with...the bits where he, as the most famous face of the project, is interviewed in interpolated scenes are pretty much the weakest bit (though the Lovin' Spoonful musical breaks aren't too inspired, either). And, of course, China Lee's striptease allows one of his bits to fall in line with his creep cred.

Shall catch up with LET HIM GO and the others. CONDOR with its third episode continues to impress me (and given it's a co-production of MGM, Paramount and AT&T, that it can afford good production values and Mira Sorvino, William Hurt and Brendan Fraser, all fine in supporting roles, is unsurprising). Sunday night pay channel fare is pretty much fun at the moment...while cutting (and re-establishing landline phones) is Not Yet necessary.

Margot Kinberg said...

You've reminded me that I really want to see Nomadland, Patti! I'm behind on my viewing! And I hope you're enjoying the Jane Harper.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Yes, I am , Margot. She really knows how to capture the Australia outback.
Also watched DRIVEWAYS on Hoopla, if you get it from your library. Brian Dennehey's last film and he is brilliant A movie that should have received more attention.

Jeff Meyerson said...

I must admit that sounds like a pretty depressing lineup. I would not watch that Allen v. Farrow show if you paid me.

We've added some shows - Remedy, a Canadian medical show (on Ovation); another Canadian show I am recording that hasn't started yet (Cracked); Equinox (on Netflix), a Danish show about a bus of high school kids that disappeared - except for three - 21 years ago. Then younger sister (9 then, 30 now) of one of the girls has a late night radio call-in show, and a caller prompts her to try and find out what happened once and for all. I like it that it is only 6 episodes. I am getting quite a picture of different areas of Denmark from all these shows - Dicte (Aarhus), Borgen (Copenhagen), The Sommerdahl Murders (Helsingor/Elsinore), Seaside Hotel (near Skagen), Equinox (Copenhagen and Bornholm). We finished series 1 of Seaside Hotel, series 2 of Schitt's Creek, series 3 of The Good Place.

Then there are two series with very similar plots: the English The Bay and the Luxembourgish Capitani (the first Netflix show from Luxembourg). In both, teenage twins go missing and one soon turns up dead. I prefer the second show. First, episodes are only half an hour. Second, the English show has a lot of annoying features to me (which may or may not bother you). The lead is supposed to be the family's police liaison, which generally means keeping them informed and making cups of tea, but here she is also investigating. Plus, in the opening (SPOILER ALERT) she picks up a guy in a bar on a hen night and screws him in the alley, only to discover - surprise! - that he is the kids' stepfather, married to their PREGNANT mother. She keeps this a secret, though you know it is bound to come out. Also, she pays NO attention to her own awful teenagers, who are running wild, especially her daughter. (END SPOILER) Capitani is set in a small town where everyone knows everyone else - it is almost amusing how no matter who he mentions, his assistant says "I know him" and does. He's an outsider (though a former lover has shown up), which gives him more perspective.

Weather has improved greatly with the arrival of Spring, so that's good. Still not willing to eat indoors in a restaurant, let alone go to the movies or (shudder) get on a plane. A lot more people we know are getting vaccinated, but there are too many morons out there who won't. I should finish THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT soon. It is amazingly close to the series.

George said...

It's hard to believe but the Sun is drenching Western NY with sunshine and mild weather. Spring arrived and it's staying for a while. We're supposed to be in the 60s this week.

Patrick is now in Asheville, NC for the next month. Katie and a friend plan a trip to New York City in a few weeks.

I fired up TURBOTAX and completed that chore. I like the e-File feature. No more standing in line at the Post Office to mail my taxes for me!

Diane is going to do some "yard work" today, but I'm already feeling the tickle of tree pollen. When you wake up sneezing, that's not a Good Sign. Stay safe!

pattinase (abbott) said...

BEARATOWN also set in Denmark paints a pretty sad picture of hockey culture there. Why do contact sports result in such toxic behavior?
Our weather is lovely too. But I have to wait for my lawn service to do a spring cleanup before I can do much. I am hanging CDs in my trees to keep the robins from taking over my yard this year.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Whoops, Swedish not Danish.

Jeff Meyerson said...

They (Sweden and Denmark) are close. THE INVESTIGATION was also Danish, but the murder took place in Sweden, I believe(at least in Swedish waters, between the two countries), and the killer was Swedish. We didn't watch THE BRIDGE (murder in the middle of the bridge between Copenhagen and Malmo) because by the time it was available to us we had already watched the US-Mexican border version, and we've since watched the British-French adaptation, THE TUNNEL, although only the first of three series so far.

Todd Mason said...

Because people who prefer to play, and perhaps even to watch, contact sports want to hurt people. There's artistry in them all, but pain is even involved in incidentally contact sports such as baseball and volleyball...chin music, a spike to the face.

Writes the man who's best high-school sports were field hockey (co-ed in Hawaii, where my street hockey childhood in New England helped) and Frisbee football...and, earlier, Cub Scout baseball, where my precocious size helped.

TracyK said...

Not much new here. Glen and my son put stain on our back fence (very small for the small back area) and I went out and weeded and cleaned up some and look forward to some more gardening soon.

The only new (to us) thing we have watched recently was WOLF HALL -- only one episode so far. It was very good, well done, but I don't see how one can follow it without being very familiar with the history or having just read the book. Too many characters and they all run together.

Still reading THE MEANING OF NIGHT, and finished STAGE FRIGHT by Christine Poulson (loved it) and THE SECRET PLACE by Tana French (also loved it).

Gerard Saylor said...

I think Jane Harper's novels have been stellar. I just read Hard Case Crime's reprint of SINNER MAN, one of Lawrence Block's early and "lost" novels. I've been finding several programs on HBO-Max that I'd been wanting to see.
On HBO-Max I've been REwatching the MAD MAX films and am halfway through the four. The first MAD MAX is still great. MAD MAX used to play on WTBS on cable fairly often in the early 1980s and the film was a scary shock to my 10-12 year old self. So much of ROAD WARRIOR was unique when it premiered and so much of the content has been copied.

Spring Break is next week and college visits are planned to Ann Arbor and University of Illinois. Maybe we'll do a side trip to Purdue. My mother will be VERY happy for us to visit Illinois and stay with her. Unfortunately, so many campuses are not doing in-person visits, so this visit is more a chance to Boy #1 to see the campuses, cities, and the area.

Everyone in the family but the 15-year-old have been vaccinated! Last week I was booked for a 12:30PM vaccine appointment and confused it with another appointment at 5:30PM. At about 1:30PM my wife sent a message asking if I was vaccinated. "OH, shit!" Fortunately for me, the County's vaccination operation is A-Freaking-1 and very organized and they fit me in that afternoon. The biggest vaccination event since Polio and I screwed up my initial appointment...

pattinase (abbott) said...

Both of my kids loved Ann Arbor. It's the kind of place where everyone can find their people. Megan loved writing for the Michigan Daily especially. She was a real Rory Gilmore. She also went to the University of Illinois in Urbana, but found out quickly journalism was not her jam and came home after a semester. Then went to NYU and the grad program in literature.
Yes, I have been putting off WOLF HALL for that very reason. I don't have the patience right now to wrestle with it. Maybe after I get past my brain scans.

pattinase (abbott) said...

Well Beartown to me is about a rape. I see a lot of people (men) say it is about hockey.
Interesting how we define things based on our experience or sex.

Rick Robinson said...

Wow, you went into a theater, something I sure wouldn’t do! And all the traveling. The Covid pandemic isn’t over!

Reading some short stories, watching a few NCAA basketball games, though not as avidly as in the old days. Highs in low 60s here, the garden is starting to wake up, we’ve put down compost and mulch, and the hoses and sprinklers are turned back on. Taxes are paid, no stimulus check yet. Several books on hold at the library.

Todd Mason said...

Haven't seen BEARTOWN yet...though ice hockey definitely leans into machismic mayhem and the lack of respect of the body and boundaries of others that rape takes to a more insane level.

pattinase (abbott) said...

If you have had both of your shots some weeks ago now, you are pretty safe in a movie theater that had only 7 seven people in it, wearing masks.

Gerard Saylor said...

Gotta be tough for the theater to make a buck, unless everyone buys 10 buckets of popcorn.

I've seen ads for BEARTOWN and none of them mention sexual assault. They've been in the mold of Small Town Unites Behind Underdog Sports Team.

Todd Mason said...

HBO was running a set of the episodes yesterday...the rape of one of the younger characters is pretty key from early on.

pattinase (abbott) said...

That is false advertising. The rape nearly destroys the town. And the girl. There are no hockey scenes in the last two episodes.

Jeff Meyerson said...

If you want to see a mostly fun hockey movie, watch MYSTERY, ALASKA. Russell Crowe, Mary McCormack, Hank Azaria, Burt Reynolds, Colm Meaney. Jackie is a big fan of this one.

Gerard Saylor said...

I've never watched MYSTERY, ALASKA all the way through. That has Ron Eldard in it and I've been a fan of his since BAKERSFIELD, P.D. Heck, I've been a fan of everyone from that cast. Giancarlo Esposito and Brian Doyle Murray and others. Chris Mulkey was in that as well.

Speaking of Mulkey, TWIN PEAKS was such a massive hit but only Kyle Machlachlan remained prominent with leading roles or substantial supporting roles.

Todd Mason said...

Good weather finally arrived in the Philadelphia area today. (We had a brief spell week before last.)

TWIN PEAKS was more a esteem success than a ratings success. The second season particularly was a drug on the Nielsen market.

Also poorly rated but good was the Zwick/Herskowitz series between MY SO-CALLED LIFE and the brilliant ONCE AND AGAIN, ABc's one-season RELATIVITY. I have noted in the past the Z/H sequence was pretty much THIRTY-SOMETHING, TEN-SOMETHING (MY SO-CALLED LIFE), TWENTY-SOMETHING (R) and FORTY-SOMETHING (ONCE AND AGAIN). Though last I've checked, you could only see RELATIVITY on DailyMotion...a more legit presentation would be useful. But, then, Disney hasn't even released the third and final O&A season on home video.

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