A good way to spend New Year’s Eve or start 2021 would be to watch Death to 2020 on Netflix that gives a humorous review of the year’s events with a biting sardonic tone. One of the creators of the show is Charlie Brooker, a well-known British TV personality known for his sarcastic wit, who along with Annabel Jones also created the dark futuristic series Black Mirror.
Here’s a clip from the show.
Here’s another clip.
Here’s the trailer.
When I was young and a new hit film came out, we would joke about titles for possible sequels, trying to come up with the most incongruous ones, resulting in things such as “The Ten Commandments Rides Again” or “The Son of the Magnificent Seven”. We found these were amusing because sequels were relatively rare.
Nowadays any film that has reasonable commercial success is almost guaranteed a sequel and often many sequels and spin-offs so that it has ceased to be unusual. But I was still taken aback at the news that the Disney studies were planning ten (yes, ten!) new films each in the Star Wars and Marvel franchises, which have already had so many films that I did not even bother to look up the number.
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In a recent review of this hit Netflix series, I mentioned that I found the lead character Beth Harmon not compelling and that this reduced my enjoyment of the series. Some commenters disagreed with me. I could not quite put my finger on why I had this reaction but Sarah Miller who, unlike me, has read and loved the book by William Tevis on which the series was based, writes that she too was dissatisfied with the character because, while most of the series stayed close to the book, the creators of the series had made a crucial change in Harmon’s character that eliminated the central tension, because the lead actor Anya Taylor-Joy “is way too good-looking to play Beth Harmon”.
This seven-part miniseries on Netflix about a female chess prodigy Beth Harmon in the 1960s taking that male world by storm has been much talked about and has apparently spurred a lot of interest in chess, with increased sales of chess sets and more young women becoming interested in playing a game that is still highly dominated by men.
I watched the series and my reaction is mixed. I thought I would enjoy it a lot more than I did. The story of a young girl overcoming tremendous odds to become a success is the kind of underdog story that appeals to me. In addition, in my adolescence and up to the first couple of years in college I played the game seriously, and was even the captain of my high school chess team. But even though I could appreciate the name-dropping of the great chess players and the openings and the defenses, the series somehow failed to grip me. It started very slow, so much so that I stopped watching the first episode halfway through but came back to it to give it another chance. It picked up the pace later but towards the end I was watching it just to see how it ends.
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I was watching the new series on Netflix titled The Queen’s Gambit that deals with a female chess prodigy entering that world that is even now highly male-dominated but was even more so in the 1960s, the period in which the show is set.
In one episode, we see her walking though a college campus and the soundtrack plays the instrumental Classical Gas by guitarist Mason Williams. It is a great piece that I know well and as soon as I heard it, I said to myself “Ha! The writers made a mistake because that music came long after the time represented in the film.” But later I looked it up and it is from 1968. I had no idea so much time had passed since I first heard it,
Here’s the tune. It is really good.
I recently stumbled across this highly enjoyable film. I had never heard about it before even though it has a stellar cast, and only decided to watch it because it was described as a comedy that was quirky and witty. The description was accurate. It is a film with good writing and excellent performances from all the actors. I am surprised that I missed hearing about it when it was first released and that it did not make a bigger impact.
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To take our minds off the election while the in-person voting and counting starts, let’s talk films, especially classic films.
I have expressed before my mystification with film makers who take classic films and then remake them. It is one thing to remake a poorly made original because you think you can do a better job with a story that you think is compelling. But the only reason for doing so when the original was successful and is now regarded as a classic is because you think that there is a new generation that would benefit from seeing it that would not watch old films which feature actors that current audiences are unfamiliar with and are often in black and white and lack the high production values of modern films. But we sometimes even have remakes created after barely one generation has elapsed since the original. Take the film The Karate Kid released in 1984 that was commercially successful. Naturally, it spawned sequels in 1986 and 1989. But it was then remade in 2010.
Those of us old enough to have seen the first James Bond film Dr. No when it was released in 1962 tend to view Sean Connery as the best Bond of all, even though good arguments can be made for some of the others who came later. And so the announcement of his death today will bring with it a tinge of sadness as yet another film icon of our era leaves us. I was surprised that he was 90 years old. I guess that is because you tend to think of the actors who dominated in one’s youth as getting older but not becoming that old. Roger Moore, who also acted in numerous Bond films and brought a lighter, more comedic touch to the role, died three years ago, also at the age of 90.
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I recently watched two comedies that have as their premise a fairly familiar plot line but each takes it in unexpected directions. In both a group of people who know each other well get together for a meal and then something triggers increasingly heated exchanges during which secrets and long-suppressed resentments are revealed in anger as people strike back at those whom they secretly dislike or think have hurt them.
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The release of the film The Trial of The Chicago 7 that I reviewed here has renewed interest in the life of Abbie Hoffman. Nathan J. Robinson writes that while this is to be welcomed because there is much to be admired about Hoffman, the film also downplays some of the more radical of Hoffman’s ideas because writer-director Aaron Sorkin is someone who feels that the US institutions are fundamentally sound and that it is the people who run it that are the problem, while Hoffman felt that the system was rotten through and through and needed fundamental restructuring.
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