Happy Thursday, everyone! No big preamble this week because we have some heavy stuff to get to. For some reason, this week's selections are...a lot.
________________________________________
Lately, I've been trying to read more works by indigenous authors, For instance, Rebecca Roanhorse, whose novel Black Sun made a big splash last year (and I really love her Trail of Lightning, set in a USA where a supernatural occurrence has fragmented the country and the old gods and monsters have come back). This appears to be a thriller set in the Cherokee Nation and right up my alley. Brandon Hobson is a member of the nation, was nominated for the National Book Award back in 2018 and feels like someone I should definitely keep an eye on.
Along with this, this weekend I'm going to finally start Reservation Dogs on FX Hulu. It's been getting some great reviews in various places and it's good to see more varied voices on TV these days. Plus, series creator Sterlin Harjo is an absolute blast in an interview and I want him to keep making TV so he keeps getting interviewed.
________________________________________
Here we have this weeks complete blind spot for me. I ran across this in a store this last week and was very much intrigued. The late Stan Brakhage was apparently very important in experimental film, influencing animators and music video directors and others. I'm completely unfamiliar with his work but looking at some of his work on YouTube I'm very intrigued. For instance, Dog Star Man, which uses various levels of superimposed imagery to a very interesting effect.
Or Window Water Baby Moving, which is the record of the birth of his daughter Myrrena and is credited for helping to make birth less of a mystery to many Americans who saw it (and was often on a double bill with the educational film All My Babies). CW: it's explicit as hell.
A lot of his work is available on YouTube but I can already tell from these clips that I want to see them remastered on this disc.
________________________________________
John Adams is an excellent opera composer who works in modern subjects. In this case, the visit of President Nixon to China which resulted in closer relations between them and the USA (and also hung Tawan out to dry as they were expelled from the UN and the USA broke off formal diplomatic relations with them). Sadly, I've not seen this filmed performance but Adams is pretty much always worth a look.
Now the one of his that I have seen multiple times is Doctor Atomic, about the last hours before the Trinity test in Los Alamos where everyone involved in the Manhattan Project is wondering if the bomb will even work or if it's going to work all too well. It's a magnificent work of dread and wonder and has one of the greatest arias I've ever heard, as General Leslie Groves contemplates the impending explosion. Sadly, I can't find that one, but my god check out this area by Oppenheimer.
Sadly, neither opera appears to be streaming anywhere.
________________________________________
And now, on to the heavy stuff! Coming in 1978, this is the kind of miniseries I so loved in my childhood in the golden age of the network miniseries. I very vaguely remember seeing this as a kid without any real sort of context (to be fair, I was 5). So I was really happy to come across this, with baby versions of James Woods a year before his breakthrough in The Onion Field, Meryl Streep a year before her first Oscar for Kramer Vs Kramer and Michael Moriarty four years before his breakthrough in Q: The Winged Serpent.*
*OK, fine, he already had a Tony by this point and won an Emmy for Holocaust.
FIlmed in Germany and Austria, this was apparently very well-regarded at the time and won a ton of Emmys (and while they aren't the ultimate arbiter of quality, they're also not completely inconsequential). It reminds me that I also want to check out War and Remembrance and The Winds of War, two sprawling miniseries based on very popular Herman Wouk novels that follow several families through WWII. Sadly, those don't appear to be streaming at all but it is available on DVD.
Holocaust as well is not on streaming anywhere. However, Q is streaming on Cinemax and on Pluto TV with ads and I cannot recommend that crazy movie enough,
No comments:
Post a Comment