Last night I watched the first episode of season 4 of the Sherlock series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. It seems to me that as the series progresses, the writers are becoming too clever by half, to the point where one can imagine them chuckling as they add one more improbable twist to the plot, saying gleefully, “This will blow people’s minds!”
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I was agreeing with a friend that the canned laughter that is heard on TV comedies is an abomination The worst ones are the really canned ones, laughs that are pre-recorded and then played at the times when the writers think the audience should laugh. These annoying laughs become even worse if you yourself are not watching the program because the phoniness becomes more obvious. If people are watching a program while I am in the next room, the canned laughter becomes so annoying that I have to move to a distant room just to get out of earshot.
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Blogging will be light during the holiday break but if you too have time on your hands, I think many people will find enjoyable this 46-minute documentary made (I think) in 1997 that looks at Andrew Wiles’s quest to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem. I did not understand almost all of the sophisticated mathematics involved but that did not matter.
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I must admit that I am not a big Star Wars fan. For example, I do not know who Boba Fett is, a character who seems to pop up frequently in discussions about the film, and this ignorance undoubtedly puts me beyond the pale. But I know enough and recall enough of the first three films (#4,#5,#6) to enjoy this imagination of how the same story could have been told by this eminent documentarian.
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On Stephen Colbert’s show he discusses his new film Where to Invade Next which hasn’t opened yet and that looks interesting. He goes to various countries, mostly in Europe, to find out their good ideas so that we can adopt them. I had not been aware that in Portugal, for example, they have not arrested anyone in the last fifteen years for drug offenses, even if it is the possession and use of hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. He claims that drug use and drug-related crime have decreased in that time.
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This week marks the release of the latest installment of this franchise. In this clip we see a Darth Vader voiced by a guest artist, using his own words.
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I am a big fan of the children’s TV show Sesame Street. I don’t watch it anymore but I used to watch it every day with my children when they were young and I got very fond of the characters on the show, particularly the Muppets, because the program was clever and funny. My children are all grown up now but I still watch some of the clips online where they parody popular culture
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I just do not understand the desire that some people have to be the first to get or do something that seems so trivial, and even if that lead is so fleeting and intangible. For example, the people lining up for days in advance, or paying others to do so, just for the privilege of getting a new iPhone on the day it is released, when you could wait a few days and get it at your leisure. But it seems to matter greatly to some to be the first.
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1968 was a turbulent year. Marin Luther King, Jr and Robert Kennedy had both been murdered, opposition to the Vietnam war was at its height, the Tet offensive had shattered the US government’s claim that they were winning that war, and racial tensions were soaring. It was in this volatile environment that the two political parties held their nominating conventions. The 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago was notorious for mayor Richard Daley imposing what was essentially a police state, with tanks and armored vehicles patrolling the streets and the violent clashes that ensued. Haskell Wexler’s film Medium Cool (1969) captures the mood well.
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In writing about the film Gaslight, I mentioned that actor Joseph Cotten also appeared in The Third Man (1949). Anyone who has seen that film will undoubtedly recall the mesmerizing theme and the soundtrack. In his retrospective look at great films, critic Roger Ebert’s rave review begins:
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