Another busy week for me, probably for you, too. Too many uncomfortable things in the news, well outside my control, and too many moves back to Old Normal that I'm just not comfortable with yet. Local eateries taking down plexiglass protections, and too few people opting to go into stores masked. The coverage of the public hearings on the insurrection in the Capitol have begun, but I've little stomach for the blow-by-blow theater of the moment, including the pacing. My hope is that this slowly-turning mill will grind exceeding fine and thoroughly, and will lead to successful prosecutions of so many more, including Trump and the various, scheming, hangers-on and sycophants. However it goes, I'll largely be taking it in as daily postmortems and analyses from trusted sources. Don't worry, I won't be aiming to cover that here.
It's good to have work to focus on, even if it has been reaching into my personal time of late. I've been giving some attention to trying to get one, extra, small but noticeable thing done after getting home (beyond the basics, like making dinner) before letting myself collapse. Thursday, that extra step was getting the lawn cut. That, and then taking care of dinner wrung the last drops out of me for the day, only to have word that an old comics buddy of mine has landed back in the hospital with a scary situation. The next 24 hours should tell most of the tale, as surgery Friday appears certain. That's some seven states and better than 1300 miles away, so I'm depending on update messages.
Work, etc. continues to cut in to my entertainment screen time, but I still manage to see some things and to see some of what's about to arrive.
I'd lost track of the season length for the second season - the series' latest - of Hacks
(HBO Max), in part because some of the release info incorrectly told us
season two would be another ten-episode season, like the first. So, I
was thinking that this week (the series drops 2 new episodes each
Thursday during its run) would see the season finale. Instead, I was
surprised to find, when I got around to it on the weekend, that the
season had wrapped. Moreover, it wrapped in a way that has left
the fans (and, based on what I've read, the people involved in the show)
unsure if that season finale was also one for the series. The creative
team behind the show say they have more to go - that when they pitched
the show they included endings for the stories, and the season two
finale was not that. Still, HBO Max has not yet officially picked the
show up for another season. Hopefully it's all just part of a
promotional calculus, they're listening for any buzz and/or grumble, but
are otherwise just delaying the announcement.
I wrote a little about the series early this past November, when I'd gotten around to checking it out.
The second season built nicely on the first, story arcs for each of the
characters advancing in satisfying ways for nearly all of them. I'm
hoping to get to follow them the distance. (2024 note: Hacks' third season is currently rolling out over on Max, with the first six episodes in place.)
On HBO, this past Monday saw the debut of a new series I'd heard nor read nothing about prior to running across its debut on HBO Max. It's largely a skewering of the film industry and the players in it, as it primarily follows an American actress on the rise who has come to Paris to star in a remake of a
Alicia Vikander plays the lead, Mira, who is trying to navigate the swirling waters of celebrity, hoping to better define herself and steer both her life and career in a better direction. However, she has to be careful not to recklessly abandon the games of a celebrity lifestyle. In part she's trying to distance herself from much of what got her into the spotlight (made trickier inasmuch that she's still part of the promotional machine for a recent sci-fi costume adventure movie), but do so without sinking her career by being too harshly honest about it. Among the challenges, the director of this new project may be worse than simply "troubled."
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas, this is an expanded remake of his 1996 film Irma Vep. That film is also available on HBO Max, but I've decided to wait to watch it until after I've seen the 8-episode miniseries, expecting that the film almost couldn't help but spoil key elements.
Here's the trailer for the series. The first episode hooked me enough to watch for the second. The layered nature of the fiction - that this is largely about the pitfalls and scandals of imaginary celebrities - is much more inviting to me as story elements than the "reality star" programming out there.
Arriving today on Amazon Prime (2024 note: That final Craig Bond film is currently streaming on Peacock, long-gone from Prime) is a film I'd forgotten about, lost in the various pandemic decisions. Daniel Craig's reportedly final outing as James Bond, it's 2021's No Time To Die (R 163 min.) Earlier production & director-related changes saw this delayed, then once those were settled the pandemic hit. So, a film originally targeted for a 2019 release became a September/October 2021 one, which was still too early for me to seriously consider packing back into a theater with the other, potential plague rats. Oh, it was almost certainly a good move for them, especially with all the money that had been sunk into this for production and post-production work, but that timing just wasn't going to work for me. As it wasn't streaming, it was out of sight and mind.
Roll here to June 2022, and it was an "Oh, yeah. That." moment when I saw it would be hitting Prime this week. Here's what was the final, U.S. theatrical trailer for it. Catching that - with a few interruptions - as Friday rolled through, it was a good, emotionally-rounded outing for Craig's final turn as Bond. While I'm sure I still would have enjoyed it, including taking in the sweep of action on a big screen, even pandemic considerations aside this was more entertaining for me as a home-view item. I'd have been squirming at least a little in the theater seats. Here, on a 50" screen, where I can pause it at will, especially makes a film approaching two and one half hours much easier to enjoy.
Returning this Sunday (on Paramount +) is the frequently quirky Evil, back for its third season. The first had been broadcast on CBS, but the decision was made to thereafter shift it to be one of the streaming exclusives, this back before the rebranding, when it was still called CBS All Access. I'd last written anything about it back in mid-October of last year, just after season two's finale aired.
This wasn't a series I was initially drawn to upon hearing about it, but I was very happy that I gave it a chance. The writing is generally clever, the interplay between the characters entertaining, and while it can get dark and authentically creepy, the cast has not only good chemistry but the comedic chops to play scenes to good effect.
Having a streaming show that lands on a Sunday is something I've found particularly cool, as it's there anytime after 3AM here on the East Coast. My fragmented sleeping schedule would often find me catching it hours pre-dawn Sunday, after which I might go back to sleep or just start my free-form day early.
Here's the trailer for this new season - which isn't particularly spoilery as it's largely a series of dramatic cuts, and the show has enough of a fantasy/dream/illusion element that one can't necessarily take anything (especially in isolation) as real.
Oddly, I pretty much slept through the night, and only remembered this was waiting for me after I'd been up for an hour or so. It was fun to have the crew back, and early misgivings about some specifics of both last season's ending moments and the same ones for the early stages of this episode, evaporated as I was reminded that we can't take all that we see as the clear truth. They do need to hire a reasonably savvy high-schooler as a technical consultant, though, because a mass spectrometer is not really what they seem to think it is. That aside, a special nod to this week's guest star, Wallace Shawn.
I can already tell that this season - especially with it being shaved down by three episodes to a simple ten - will be flying by. In the meantime I'll enjoy my mid-weekend visit with them.
2024 Note: The long-delayed fourth season of Evil is set to begin May 23rd.
While
(based on the trailer) not fully to my tastes, I want to at least
mention that this past Wednesday Netflix premiered an original film
that's also appearing in theaters. (Hey, I can't fault anyone for
chasing a possible nod from the Academy.) A sports drama (basketball,
specifically) starring Adam Sandler as a talent scout who's been at it
for decades to too little real success, who takes a possible
career-ending risk by bringing an unapproved player to the states.
LeBron James is also involved, largely as a gateway to a raft of NBA
talent peppered through the movie. Presumably if you're into the pro
sport, this'll be a gold touch feature as that facial recognition area
of the brain lights up again and again for you. (Me? Unless you stacked
the line-up with white guys and people well under six feet tall, I
wouldnt' be able to pick James himself out of a line-up.) As with most
sports the list of things I'd rather be doing than watching a game is
nearly infinite. I didn't grow up with them, I have no affection for
them -- I do not care. If I ever do watch and manage to connect
with the movie it'll be at the level of the characters, their
aspirations, struggles and relationships. Every second of action on the
court will find an almost immediate glaze forming on my eyes, though,
and any characters' passion for the game itself will fall flat for me.
Hey, after such a rousing build-up, how could you not want to watch the trailer for Hustle (Netflix 1h 58m)
Sticking with Netflix releases where I'm not quite in the marketing cross-hairs, a new, supernatural adventure, queer, interracial romance, young adult series launches there today. Two young women, each at a coming-of-age point in their lives, each being told by their families that it's their time to step up and make their First Kill To belabor the obvious, it's a Romeo and Juliet tale with gender and race shifts, and at least a more obvious and justifiable reason for the enmity between the two family houses. We've seen again and again the importance of representation in entertainment media, so even if this isn't distinctly for you, maybe you know someone who might be interested in checking it out. Eight, roughly hour-long, episodes all arrived on Netflix today.
One last one for Netflix, before turning our sights elsewhere, is a film from 2021 that's having its debut on Netflix. It's in that murky area of being "inspired by true events," that finds me looking for more details. It's set in 1994 Rwanda, while the horrific genocide against the Tutsi was ongoing. A disparate quartet of young women hide out beneath the kitchen floorboards of one of their family's homes, where they are trapped for a considerable time.
It's Trees of Peace (2021 1h 37m)
The horrific genocide is fact, as is that women spearheaded the rehabilitation movement in Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide, and reportedly today that nation's government is one of three nations which currently have a female majority elected government. On the negative side, it appears that making the overriding concern the prevention of another genocide, the laws are so broad and exclusive that even basic dissent is essentially illegal, leading to what is effectively a single-party state. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have been critical of the process. The president, Paul Kagame, has been in office since 2000, this in a country where the president appoints the Prime Minister and the whole of the cabinet, though they are overseen by a popularly-elected, two-chambered Parliament (an 80-seat Chamber of Deputies and a 26-seat Senate), which have mandated minimum percentages of seats for women, and as noted above has had a majority female membership.
Next Thursday (the 16th) FX sees the debut of a new series. Starring Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, and Amy Brenneman, it centers on Dan Chase (Bridges), who disappeared from the CIA decades ago, living off the grid. After all this time he's located by an assassin, and it soon becomes clear to him that the only way to save his future is to reconcile his past. It's The Old Man. It seems almost surprisingly straight-on and serious, absent intentionally ironic or comedic elements. Maybe they're there, but if so the trailer's not tipping that hand. With Bridges now 72, I expect there'll be a mix of reactions to his playing the action hero -- albeit the title of the series provides him some cover.
As mentioned, it'll be on FX on Thursdays, which also means it'll be available to stream on Hulu by Friday.
If things go well and reasonably according to plan (Hey! It happens sometimes!) I'll have a satisfyingly busy Friday, having effectively shifted the past work week back a day at the expense of a chunk of last weekend. Somewhere in there I'll get around to this week's episode of The Boys (Amazon Prime), Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount +), and this Sunday will see the season finales on HBO for both The Baby (which I've fallen behind on) and Barry, which I've been following closely from week to week, but am envious of those who haven't watched it yet who will have the option of moving quickly from week to week instead of having to wait.
For now, though, that'll have to do for this week. Let's all try to take better care of ourselves and those close to us, and come back here next Friday. - Mike
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