Heaven is in vogue these days

I have written before about the TV comedy The Good Place and now there is apparently another one called Miracle Workers. I have not seen the latter show because it is on a network that I don’t get but it is based on a novel of the same name by Simon Rich that I read recently. Both shows take an irreverent attitude to the idea of an afterlife but while the The Good Place takes this as an opportunity to examine the question of what ethics and morality consists of and leaves gods out of the picture entirely, Miracle Workers focuses on the life of god and the people who work for him, mainly those who work in the Department of Answered Prayers.
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Katherine Helmond (1929-2019)

The actress has died at the age of 89. In a long career as a stage and screen and TV actor and director, she may be best remembered as part of a terrific ensemble cast in the prime time parody of daytime soap operas called, appropriately enough Soap, that ran from 1977 through 1981. It was utterly hilarious must-see TV until its last season when it succumbed to the disease of shows that run too long when the plots become increasingly absurd even for a parody and the quality of the writing weakens.
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Oscar nominees for Best Picture

This Sunday will be the Academy Awards show that I never watch because not only do I hate awards shows in general but apart from everything else, the awards are often given to those films that have the biggest backing by their producers who spend a vast amount of energy and money promoting their films and undermining the competition. Marlow Stern and Kevin Fallon look back on the history of such vicious campaigns that were often successful in achieving their goals. They say that disgraced mogul Harvey Weinstein was one of the worst culprits.
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Bruno Ganz (1941-2019)

The Swiss character actor died last week at the age of 77. Many people may not be aware of him. I myself saw him in only one film late in his career. But he achieved YouTube immortality because his serious role in the 2004 German film Downfall, where he played Hitler in the last days in his bunker, became a meme, with English ‘subtitles’ of his words made up to reflect current events.
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How Brexit happened and what lies next

Over the weekend I watched the film Brexit: An Uncivil War starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Dominic Cummings, the brains behind the original Leave campaign. I must admit that I had not heard of Cummings before I saw this film. He seems to be someone who keeps a low profile and after running the campaign has largely disappeared again, leaving others to pick up the debris. The film highlights the use of data-mining people’s online activities to find out what drives them and targeting ads to exploit their fears, especially those who had dropped out of the system and no longer voted.
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I didn’t realize that after-credits scenes are now a thing

I recently saw the film Black Panther. I am not a fan of action films in general and superhero films in particular because the long fight and chase scenes bore me and I wait impatiently for them to end so that the story can move along. In my experience, nothing is lost by fast-forwarding to the end of these scenes. The resulting films would be at least a half-hour shorter and immeasurably better. But I know that I am not the target audience for these films.
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Film review: Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

This film and the book it was based on has received quite a bit of buzz about being one of the few films that feature an all Asian cast. In this case ‘Asian’ is used in a highly restricted sense of being just Singaporeans of Chinese ethnicity. No other groups made an appearance other than in bit parts.

The first half of the film can be categorized as ‘wealth porn’ where we are regaled with the lifestyles of exceedingly rich Singapore Chinese families who show that they can be as obnoxiously ostentatious about flaunting their wealth as any gauche Westerner. At that point I was going to give up on the film but the sunk-cost effect kicked in and I thought I might as well watch a bit more.
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TV review: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (no spoilers)

I watched this show yesterday and have to agree with Kevin Fallon that it was a gimmicky disappointment, not up to the level of earlier episodes of Black Mirror that I found thought-provoking even if somewhat dark. Set in 1984, the main conceit of this latest offering is that it has a ‘choose your own story’ interactive structure where at various points you, the viewer, are asked to make a choice between two options that the chief protagonist Stefan is confronted with as he designs a ‘choose your own adventure’ computer game based on a ‘choose your own adventure’ book. You can already see the interweaving of multiple layers of reality.
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Film review: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

People either love or hate this film, with very few falling into the lukewarm category. I personally love it. I was blown away when I saw it when it first came out 50 years ago and watched it again a few days ago, perhaps for the third or maybe the fourth time, It as always risky to watch a film or read a book that one loved a long time ago when one was much younger because of concerns as to how well it would stand up. I watched it this time with a more critical eye and found that it stands up incredibly well and is as engrossing as ever. I enjoyed it so much that the next day I watched it all over again, this time with a commentary by actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood who play the laconic astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, who discuss what it was like working with legendary director Stanley Kubrick and how some of the effects were produced. They say that he was meticulous in his preparation for filming but gave very little direction on how they should play the scenes.
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