Happy Thursday, everyone! It's the beginning of meteorological winter here in the Northern Hemisphere as we work our way through the holiday season. I hope those of us who celebrate it had a pleasant and safe Thanksgiving; we took a trip back to Chicago for a nice long weekend and I got in some shopping while I was there!
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Half the reason I picked up the Criterion of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie was that I finally looked at the back of this and went, "Wait, is THAT what it's about?"
"In Luis Buñuel’s deliciously satiric masterpiece, an upper-middle-class sextet sits down to a dinner that is continually delayed, their attempts to eat thwarted by vaudevillian events both actual and imagined, including terrorist attacks, military maneuvers, and ghostly apparitions."
I finally realized that I was confusing this The Exterminating Angel, the Buñuel movie where similarly an upper-class dinner is happening but in this case they can't leave and their mini-society rapidly starts to break down as they get more desperate. That movie is a masterpiece and I'm hoping Discreet is just as good.
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie is available for rent and purchase at all the usual places.
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I firmly believe Original Cast Album: Company is one of the finest documentaries ever made, the chronicling of the recording of the Sondheim musical for it's first Broadway production in 1970. It was meant to be the first of a series of such films that sadly never materialized but at least we have this one gem, a movie showing the frustrations and joys of trying to get things exactly right in recording this. Sondheim is constantly prowling the recording studio, making sure his lyrics are being presented exactly right, and the musicians and actors are falling over themselves to do the work as well as possible. Infamously, the great Elaine Stritch takes hours to nail, "The Ladies Who Lunch," because both she and Sondheim know exactly what they want it to sound like and they're not leaving until it's done.
Plus, this disc has the fantastic bonus of also having the Documentary Now! episode parodying Company: Original Cast Album: Co-Op. Written by John Mulaney and Seth Myers and starring Mulaney as the Sondheim-analogue, it's a fantastic and note-perfect take on the material, made by people who obviously have a deep affection for the original material. Toss in a cast that includes Paula Pell, Taran Killam, James Urbaniak, Alex Brightman, Richard Kind, and Renée Elise Goldsberry and it's very worth your time.
Original Cast Album: Company is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel. Documentary Now! is all available on AMC+ and three seasons of it are on Netflix; I highly recommend dipping into an episode or two (look for one riffing on something you've seen and you'll be amazed at the work they put into it).
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I've been buying fewer books lately, but I always have to pick up this annual book (and Best American Short Stories) because they're very good at finding good work and highlighting, sometimes, authors I simply haven't run across yet. And they do great on guest editors; Rebecca Roanhorse, this year's GE, is a fantastic writer from New Mexico who has been writing excellent fantasy novels set in the area. (With the caveat that she has come in to some criticism from Najavo/Diné/Pueblo communities, which she has addressed; Roanhorse was adopted by a white family as an infant and it's a more complicated situation than I at all feel competent to address.)
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Look, I'm a simple man sometimes. Am I absolutely going to be interested in a Batman animated movie where Bruce reunites with his fellow monastery trainees in a '70s-tinged exploitation movie that revels in the cliches of the time? HELL yes. I've seen this before and it's a ton of fun, a good romp that excels in enjoying it's milieu.
Batman: Soul of the Dragon is streaming on HBO Max.
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Finally this week, and absolute blind buy of a graphic memoir. Hyun Sook grew up in South Korea in the '80s, during their Fifth Republic, an era of censorship and massive protests and political murders. This is her memoir about being a high school student during this era and joining a banned book club, joining political protests, getting tear gassed and growing up. It looks absolutely fascinating and I'm happy I ran across it.
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