Sorry to see the end of SLOW HORSES and PACHINKO. But am still enjoying MY BRILLIANT FRIEND, THE ENGLISH TEACHER, and the new Cate Blanchett series, DISCLAIMER.
Saw BASQUIAT at the Detroit Film Theater (from 1996). Jeffrey Wright did a great job of playing Basquiat although the film was so loaded with famous actors it was disconcerting trying to remember them. I don't remember seeing this one at the time. Then I was able to watch JEAN MICHEL BASQUIAT: A RADIANT CHILD on Kanopy, which gave a lot of context and criticism to his work.
Sunday I saw a play in Ann Arbor at Theater Nova. IN SEARCH OF THE MOTHMAN. Two fine actresses did their best with a muddled script. This seemed like a good first draft.
Finished THE SHRED SISTERS by Betsy Lerner and about to start BRIAN, Jeremy Cooper.
We finally got some rain and boy, did it smell good. What makes some rain smell and others not.
What are you up to?
16 comments:
Moisture in the air helps scents along.
Because HBO is now running THE PENGUIN, I was finally moved to see the last five (alas) episodes of PENNYWORTH on MGM+ on demand (and it ends with a cliffhanger)...the current PENGUIN series (Batman crossed with THE GODFATHER) is rather good so far, and GOTHAM on broadcast some years back was appropriately gothic, but PENNYWORTH remains the best of the Wayne family-related series, with its alternative history of '60s Britain (and as meddled with by the US) and general panache as an espionage/crime drama series (not to slight the intentionally goofy '60s series nor the occasionally very good animated series of recent decades--MASK OF THE PHANTASM, a product of those last folks, remains the best Batman film I've seen).
I liked what I saw of BASQUIAT, caught in progress on IFC or Sundance when they were film channels a couple of decades back...should see the entirety.
Starz is offering up the impressive SWEETPEA revenge drama and the (if anything) improving adaptation THREE WOMEN, HBO also has Armando Iannucci's absurdism-through-true-portrayal filmmaking series THE FRANCHISE, and while Showtime and MGM+ have little new on the plate at the moment (the latter did just wrap the first season of HOTEL COCAINE and the even better one--season THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK), they and HBO are parading some of their older series (MGM is also proud of the horror series FROM, which annoyed the hell out of me in its first season...I might give it a shot now in its current third).
HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU did its best episode so far yesterday, along with a good SNL and good weeks for THE DAILY SHOW and LATE NIGHT, and THE LATE SHOW did its one new episode interviewing K. Harris, and did rather well with that...AFTER MIDNIGHT remains a fine series, while also on a week's repeat break, and LAST WEEK TONIGHT also good, though it lost points tonight for John Oliver's relatively obtuse critique of jazz (generally), and their proclivity for barely stringing two new episodes together in their weekly run of late. Bill Maher's show remains a fairly witless preening snarkfest, and THE TONIGHT SHOW a bore with some good music, but their compeers take up their slack.
Meanwhile, here's a short set by my acquaintance Laurie Kilmartin, from her Friday appearance on CBS's daytime chat series THE TALK: https://youtu.be/jphAUSJr-6M?si=GZF98nCeYQrPFVoO (she and Maria Bamford will both be performing separately in Phila around month's end at the Philly Helium chain club, and I hope to make them both)
Further progress in rearranging the house to make the former Cat Bedroom Alice's new office; adventures in fining new foods for the cats seem less than fully successful (as they've been showing some boredom with their usual array of Purina's better products of late).
Better times for at least some of the contributors here, when possible...hope things are on upward trends for us all.
Yours for the tantrum Drumpf throws when he loses yet again, and lets hope not too many people manage to riot too much.
Doesn't look like that Kilmartin YT link set off as a hotlink, so here's my post of it, if that helps: https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2024/10/laurie-kilmartin-stand-up-at-talk-cbs.html
We could use some rain badly too. In fact, we washed the car ourselves yesterday because there has been no appreciable rain in so long.
Otherwise, not a lot going on here. The weather has been good, upper 60s to mid-70s - but it is going to turn colder starting tonight (for a few days). Mostly, getting some reading done and watching various shows.
Since we've recorded a number of episodes now, we've started watching MY BRILLIANT FRIEND and THE OLD MAN. Good so far, particularly the former. We're up to the last episode of UNIT ONE, the Danish crime series, and the British THE TOWER (series 3; though the Tower itself was really only in the first series). We like THE ENGLISH TEACHER, as well as NOBODY WANTS THIS. Never watched GIRLS5EVA, so are catching up on that, though I think Jackie likes it more than I do. Finished the third series (mostly, the movie studio one) of BABYLON BERLIN, with 4 to go. There will be a fifth and final series next year, probably. We don't watch many network shows.
I'm reading Ed Hoch and Philip K. Dick short story collections. Read Cara Hunter's THE WHOLE TRUTH and James Byrne's THE GATEKEEPER, and now reading T> J. Newman's third airplane-related thrilled, WORST CASE SCENARIO. And boy, is it. A pilot has a heart attack in flight and his plane, and the 295 people on board, crash into a nuclear power plant north of Minneapolis. Unless they can get things under control in the next 16 hours, it will make Chernobyl look like a picnic. She really knows how to keep things moving, and all her books are incredibly cinematic. You can see the movie in your head as you're racing through the pages, and that is not a bad thing.
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Yes, we started SWEETPEA on Starz. Liked Ella Purnell in YELLOWJACKETS and FALLOUT.
Have caught several episodes of the new season of THE OLD MAN as well, which slipped my aging-man memory. With the new episodes of MY BRILLIANT FRIEND rolling, I should finally give it all a try. Have been mostly enjoying catching up with 911 in various piecemeal ways of late, most amused by grunting giraffes in the opening of one repeat, as giraffes have no vocal chords (reminding me of a Drumpf reference to how he was "sweating like a dog" not so long ago...a neat trick.
I'm glad you got some rain. We're still waiting, here, but I'm hoping it won't be long now. Glad to see you've been watching some good TV.
Amazing how varied our streaming channels are. Most I have given a try although not Mhz or Starz. Criterion is the best if you like movies. But I end up watching the most with Kanopy from my library. It does have monthly limit though.
Waiting the rain in CA must be a long wait usually. Will miss it this year.
Patti, glad to see that you have gotten out to see interesting movies and plays.
We are continuing to watch the THE ARK and enjoying it. We finished the last season of STAR TREK: DISCOVERY. We did not like that season as well as the early seasons but the resolution was fine. And we have been alternating between BROKENWOOD MYSTERIES and MIDSOMER MURDERS.
I am reading THEN WE TAKE BERLIN by John Lawton. It is the first book in the Joe Wilderness series. I liked Lawton's first series about Frederick Troy so I don't know why I waited to so long to start this series.
Glen is reading two books right now:
ICONS OF ENGLAND, essays edited by Bill Bryson and THE BEST OF MCSWEENEY'S INTERNET TENDENCY, edited by Chris Monks and John Warner. ICONS OF ENGLAND is hit or miss, he is liking the other one better.
Had a decent trip to IL to visit my mother and we got a few things completed.
Listened to MEXICAN GOTHIC (the Big Read for a neighboring county) and Don Winslow's CITY ON FIRE. GOTHIC was enjoyable but did not keep me as interested as CITY. I was looking for a horror novel yesterday and started listening to a tie-in novel for THE WALKING DEAD.
Still been watching Kevin can F**K HIMSELF and mostly enjoying it. Also started the short-run John Mulaney show EVERYBODY'S IN L.A.
Weather here is finally more Autmn-ish with cooler temps and a little rain. I finally motivated myself to patch the crumbling mortar around the house's old foundation walls. Several gaps went much deeper than I realized and I used up much more mortar than I expected. I will have to do more patching before it gets too cold.
I read another book by the author of MEXICAN GOTHIC. Cannot remember the title though. Bill Bryson is always so much fun. I watched a lot of MIDSOMMER and BROKENWOOD but quite a while ago.
No Jerry this week? I hope he's enjoying his trip.
Yes, in MA.
I had my annual CPAP appointment yesterday and I'm good to go for another year. The Sleep Doctor took my blood pressure--110 over 70--and she told me: "This is the best BP number I've seen today!"
After a rainy weekend, Western NY is forecast to have a cool but sunny week.
Today we're having lunch with two of Diane's friends that she taught with for years before they retired. They have moved TWELVE TIMES. They would buy a house, fix it up, and...move. They never paid off a mortgage with this constant movement. Now, they sold their house and they're moving to The Villages in Florida! I question their sanity.
More annual Doctor's appointments next week. Diane is already packing for our annual October trip to Ohio. Stay safe!
Gerard as Anonymous: 12 moves?! I guess renovation and house hopping are hobbies as much as anything else.
My only streaming channels per se remain the free ones, including Tubi and such and the broadcast and cable free feeds online...but there certainly is plenty to see. I will eventually join the Cherry Hill library system, as our local one is apparently too strapped to offer Kanopy.
I have now learned that adult giraffes can't grunt (in a range of human hearing) so much as snort, which more or less sounds like a grunt, but mostly involves them blowing air through their nostrils. Their vocal chords might be capable of vibrating, but mostly in a range humans wouldn't be able to hear, perhaps a bit like the subsonic vocalizations of adult elephants. Baby giraffes bleat very much within the range of human as well as giraffe mother hearing.
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