Loosening the Restraints - Sept 9 - What's To Watch?

 

     (Any late additions or notes will be in purple.)      
    Another busy week, one that included a Monday holiday, and where despite that I'm already so ready to collapse into another weekend that I despair of all of the five-day work weeks to come between now and late November, when Thanksgiving brings us the next, scheduled, break. Stressed, tired, worried, I'm handling too many things poorly and with far less grace than I ever should, feeling as if I'm aware of my actions on a slight video delay that leaves me in a state of almost continuous regret over what just did or didn't happen. Actions in the physical world cost me more than my body often has to safely spend, and I'm trying to marshal personal resources to keep myself from further injury, trying to heal. I'm concerned that moments of relative optimism are just the manic crests of a personal manic depressive sine wave. It's often very dreamlike - a nightmare with the vague, cushioning comfort that it is a nightmare. Trying to be thoughtful, protectively taciturn, but undoing it in brief outbursts where the urge to be seen and heard exceeds my restraints. There's a wallflower who's drunk at the company party feel to it.
     I pause, take a slow breath or two, and try again.

     In between, I watch, much of it things I've already brought up in earlier Friday pieces.

     Thursday (yesterday) was both Star Trek Day (September 8th being the 56th anniversary of the first episode aired of Star Trek), and Disney Day on Disney+... because the House of Mouse wanted the attention. Today through Sunday Disney will be running it's D23 corporate celebration event, with many announcements to be made. I talked a little bit about the Disney+ side of that in last week's piece. I was too busy elsewhere to check out any Trek announcements made Thursday.
     Oh, speaking of both Disney Day and last week's post, I've yet to see a complimentary review of the latest live action & CGI-blend version of Pinocchio.

     Among the seemingly relentless flow of material (not a complaint) coming through streaming services, one that arrived just past the middle of last month, but which I didn't start to get to until recently, is another imported series (this one from Germany) that Netflix picked up.
     1987, in the then-divided city of Berlin. It centers on covert, East German, Stasi (East German secret police) agent, Kleo Strauss; a Communist Party-line True Believer, who would assassinate targets on command. She did so smoothly, effectively, with a light heart, and a spark of creativity, all with a clear conscience, believing unquestioningly in the system she'd been raised by. She was a top operative, succeeding every time. Then it all turned on her. After a few years the collapse of the Soviet Union spills everything out, and most of the series is Kleo's relentless search for why.
     The mix of emotional tones becomes surprisingly complicated, and there's an odd side-trip element in the mix involving one of the people she meets. It's Kleo

     There are aspects of it, specifically Kleo herself, that will appeal to fans of Killing Eve, though it's very much its own story. The eight episode series tells a fairly complete tale, hooking us with the story and characters before pausing to do a a deeper dive (in the sixth episode) to give us the full backstory for Kleo. By the end, we pretty much have the complete, bittersweet story.
     In the way of Netflix there are various language/presentation options. I happily stuck with what came to me as the default version, dubbed into British English (which included things like lending a Scottish accented voice to at least one gruff, authoritarian character), with captions. (Hey, I watch everything with captions.) It's done well enough that it seldom had the awkward disconnect that can come from a dubbed film, where the eye sees that the mouths are not forming the sounds we're hearing. That's another thing the captions help with, though; aside from reinforcing the script, they mildly distract from that mouths and sound dubbing disconnect. As ever, you do you.

     Newly-arrived on Netflix - and as with everything else you'll need to judge whether or not it's for you - is a 10-episode sci-fi drama about three teens who've been tampered with at the genetic level, leaving them with disruptive superpowers. Somewhat painfully promoted in some easily-abandoned ad copy as a "coming of rage" story, it's The Imperfects.

     I'm not particularly hopeful that there'll be anything notably original in this, and it's clearly aimed for an audience one third my age, but there may be some odd comfort and popcorn-level entertainment here. Sometimes it's difficult to keep from becoming cynical about de rigueur scenes, including ones where it's painfully clear that the actor is standing there, trying to react to something that will be added CGI in post-production.
     As mentioned, it's ten episodes, reportedly each with running times between 39 and 45 minutes. It's been promoted as very character-driven, and I'm at least mildly encouraged by the one review I read.
 
       Something I overlooked Thursday -- just lost track that it was something set to return -- is the arrival of season five of Cobra Kai on Netflix. It was one of those surprise interest series for me when it moved from YouTube's pay service to Netflix a few years ago -- I'd seen the first two movies it's based on back in the day, but had no reason to think I'd be interested in a continuation -- but it turned out to catch my attention. The initial trick was in having it be a (being generous as to life expectancies) mid-life crisis for the final two opponents from the first film, and enough of a perspective shift to find us questioning whether we were still as much in Daniel's corner and against Johnny's as we were back in 1984. Here's the trailer for the new season:    

     It's funny how it still doesn't immediately grab me, even now, but I know I find myself pulled in pretty quickly. Another 10-episode series, it appears to be doing generally well with reviewers, and indications are that it closes on a note that could be satisfying if it turns out to not be renewed for a sixth season.

      Arriving Saturday (tomorrow) on Hulu is a neo-Western crime thriller about a sheriff pursuing a violent gang, who themselves are hunting down a witness. Ron Perlman stars. It's The Last Victim (2022 TV-MA 1h 51m)

     As yet another of the films that had the misfortune of appearing during this extended pandemic block, it wasn't heavily seen in release, consequently it wasn't widely reviewed. On the whole it wasn't well-reviewed, though more often than not the bone of contention was whether or not the reviewer felt he'd seen the film - or pieces of the film - in other, often better, movies. While that can be a fair criticism, there's still some question of whether or not those critics were able to get out of their own way and simply watch and review this movie, instead of running the distracting compare & contrast, and arguing with fellow cinephiles whether it was a rip-off or an hommage of the Coen brothers.
     If and when I get around to watching it, I'll aim to just take it on its own, for plot and performances, and leave the other concerns to studio attorneys... which I'm guessing didn't rise to a level of action.

    Something I would have included last week had I remembered in a more timely fashion, was a note about the late Chuck McCann - gone a bit over four years now - whose birthday was September 2nd.          Actor, comedian, impressionist, puppeteer, commercial presenter, cartoon and commercial voice actor,  and tv host with a particular history of hosting children's shows. A sweet and gentle man at heart, his was one of the voices I was pleased to reconnect with via facebook during the past decade, even if just to know it was still out there in the world. I'd lumped the loss of him to the world into the fog of the past three years, which was why the reminder that he'd passed back in 2018 surprised me a little.

     From the end of the '60s and through much of the '70s he was familiar to millions for sharing a medicine cabinet with a hapless man in a series of Right Guard deodorant commercials. "Hi, guy!" By 1974 they even teamed him up with Groucho Marx for one of them, which led to a lasting friendship between the two once Groucho found out that Chuck had been such a fan that he had most of the Marx Brothers movies at home with his projector. They spent long sessions rewatching those old movies, Chuck repeatedly stopping the projector (and having to move the film to prevent it being burned by the bulb) as Groucho would give him the behind-the-scenes skinny on what they'd just watched.
     While Chuck had already been in the 1968 film version of Carson McCullers 1940 novel The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, as the tragic, permanently child-like friend of Alan Arkin's deaf-mute main character, two years later Chuck was the star of a more modest production: The Projectionist.
     In that 1970 film (commercially released at the start of 1971), Chuck plays a Mittyesque character who by all lights was pretty close to who Chuck was himself. A romantic, comic adventure that swung between the real world and a fantasy existence, the latter segments with the pace and patina of a silent film. Among other things it also boasts the first screen appearance by Rodney Dangerfield, who played the dual role of the theater owner, Renaldi, who was Chuck's character's tyrannical boss, and the evil villain The Bat in the lead's heroic fantasies where he was Captain Flash.
     TCM has shown the film from time to time, but at the moment I can only casually point you to a reasonable (and free) copy of it currently parked on YouTube. This copy's probably lost a minute or two somewhere along the way, at it's 86 minutes long while the official print of the film is 88, but it's essentially all here. The Projectionist.

     That's all I have the time for this week. I've been fortunate to live in a part of the country not being baked with sustained 100+ °F temps, nor drowned by relentless rains, but I'm aware of too many people who've been subjected to each of those -- especially the heat and the accompanying electricity problems. May these already be easing. Try to enjoy the weekend, and let's all make it back here safely for next Friday, when I'll be hitting both some new items and at least a couple returning series. - Mike