What's To Watch? - May 26-June 1 - Lofty Uncommon Denominators and a few Unfortunate Choices

 

    Here in the States, a great many of us are looking at a holiday weekend, with Memorial Day extending the time off by a day. Hypothetically, more time for whatever one wants to do, within one's budget of money and energy. Ideally a mix of activities, some indoor, some out, but hopefully with few to no workplace obligations until Tuesday, there may be more time to find something to watch.
   

  Today sees the series finale for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, something I expect to get to before the day's out. This final season's incorporated a variety of flash-forwards, allowing us to see where key characters land decades later than the series' primary focus of the end of the '50s and early '60s. I'll be sad to see them go, but am more interested in seeing how the details work out for them than I am in artificially putting off the goodbyes.

     This Sunday will see the series finale for Bill Hader's HBO series Barry. While I'd followed the previous seasons week to week, after watching the first episode of this final season I started to let them pile up on what is now Max (more on that streamer momentarily), and especially with the Monday holiday I'll be watching it through this weekend. It's been a fun showcase for Hader's talents, along with a fun cast and, again, a set of characters I've enjoyed spending time with, among them No-Ho Hank. The dissonance of the elements - comedy, friendship, violence and murder - involving some substantially-damaged characters, kept the show quirkily interesting.

     My connection to new episodes of a third, much-enjoyed set of characters was abruptly snapped a third of the way through its final season, and with that show - Ted Lasso - coming to a close next Wednesday I'm entering this weekend intending to add Apple tv+ to my subs list - at least for the short term. I have faith in the people behind this very charming show, and expect that things will be well by the finale. It's been... interesting to find myself suddenly cut off from it only to start hearing the first harsh criticisms of the show, though for the most part I've just laughed them off because social media so often is the place for people to dig down deep and either find or manufacture discontent, which they then feel compelled to spread. Really, it's a weird infection sort of behavior override, a sort of virtual version of the rage virus of so many "fast zombie" movies, or the fungal threat in The Last of Us. Whatever better judgement and higher human functions disappear beneath an overwhelming compulsion to extinguish happiness in any fan they meet.

     This past Tuesday, the 23rd, HBO Max's rebranding and restructuring as Max occurred. While there's almost no way I'm going to celebrate the blending in of all of the Discovery and CNN "reality" programming with actual entertainment, I do want to give them their props for handling it smoothly. As promised, they handled all of the password transfers, and the darker blue of the HBO Max icon on my smart tv was replaced by the more vibrant blue of a Max one, a single click took me smoothly in, and  my previous list of marked shows and movies was still there. The initial look upon arriving was more bare-bones, initially reminding me more of Netflix, but they've been fleshing it out as the week rolled on.
     Among the little surprises for their rebranding, they premiered the superhero fantasy sequel Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), whose domestic theatrical run had started in mid-March. It picked up smoothly from the previous film, and scratches the same itch as we see how things have been going for the Philadelphia-based family of magically-powered superkids in adult bodies.

     Moving forward, subscribers will be advised to keeping their eyes sharp. While the streamer will be making a splashy, big deal about anything new arriving on the site, we can expect to see various series and films quietly disappear as part of their general financial scheme. Whether anyone's watching

something or not, most of these things require that some fee be paid for it being a continuing part of the streamer's library, so removing items - at least temporarily - will be one of their cost-control tools. This is going to be part of the reality for pretty much all the other streamers, too, which have quietly embraced the tool. On the positive side, some may rotate to other streamers for set stretches of time as a means of shifting the burden to those other streamers, knowing they'll get it back at some agreed-upon date, when they can give it fresh hype. All the players are still working it best-fit mechanics out, with recent word that even Disney+ will soon be pulling some content from their platform -- and then there's the matter of whatever agreement comes out of the WGA strike. It's all in flux.

     As mentioned last week, those who enjoyed the feel and intent of the series LOST, who also have Amazon Prime, may want to check out the first season of From. It's an MGM+ series that Prime has the first season of through the end of the month next Wednesday. Just be aware that season two, which is now halfway through, is behind the MGM+ paywall -- where season one will return come June 1st. Interesting situation and characters, piling mystery upon mystery, though the most important mystery will be how well the hopefully eventual explanations will be.
     Also, having noted a couple of George Pal-affiliated misfires that were part of a Tuesday theme on TCM this past week, I followed up with a check on their TCM Watch library of streamables on TCM.com, which anyone with a TCM subscription (I have access because TCM is part of my cable package), and found that both Atlantis, The Lost Continent (1961) and Doc Savage: Man of Bronze (1975) are in their ever-shifting library, until next Friday (June 2nd) and June 22nd, respectively. The former is patchwork adventure best seen through a child's eyes. The latter is a frequently painful, thematic mess, as an attempt to capture the chaste earnestness of the source pulp adventures saw someone on the production side nervously blink - more accurately deliver a series of arch winks at the audience - turning it all to camp.
     Some early decisions simply weren't checked well in execution, such as the decision to draw on music of an even earlier, turn of the century era, and misapply it to the 1930s. The Sting had managed to pull that off to great success two years earlier, but that was incorporating Scott Joplin rags. Here, the decision was to ape John Philip Souza, and someone's idea of a patriotic, rallying, martial tone, and tie it to a milk and cookies style hero.
     I know I included it last week, but the trailer's entertaining even just as a warning.

     Yeah, it'll leave the audience rooting for the mercy of some "green wigglies" being released in the theater.
     As noted last week, there was definitely a mercy in the summer of '75 seeing me effectively between movie-going companions, and largely oblivious to that summer's films. That would have been a seat-squirming disappointment to a couple of fourteen year-olds, who would have lacked the emotional distance to just laugh the misfire off at the time.

      On the side of things being added to Disney+, next Wednesday (May 31st), all four of the Indiana Jones movies, and the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, will arrive on the streamer. All owned by Paramount, it's not clear how long this licensing deal will be for. I'll be more inclined to rewatch the films, likely going with the timeline view of Temple of Doom, then Raiders, then Last Crusade... and, I suppose it's been long enough for me to try to give fresh eyes to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I saw that last one when it was in theaters in 2008, and I'm not certain that I ever went back for a second watch. '50s era Soviets felt like a shoddy ingredient swap for Nazis, and I don't think any of us were that keen on seeing Shia LaBeouf as the next link in the chain, placing the actor in an unenviable position.
     The tv series is set earlier still, but I don't know that I'm going to suddenly show interest in it. I never watched any of them when they aired. Seeing people reacting to the news that they'd be showing up provided a quick history lesson in the show's earlier syndication, as for some reason the Old Man Indy bookending elements from the show were removed from those, so I suspect that will be the first thing that fans of the series will be checking for.
     This is all in the run-up to the June 30th U.S. release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

     ... which makes the move to lease these earlier works out to Disney ahead of it a fairly savvy move. They get paid while Disney effectively advertises for the upcoming film.

     I invite you to look back through previous Friday posts, too, if you're looking for some possible things to watch, as I know there are many items I spotlighted weeks and even months ago that I've not gotten around to watching.

     Closing with a few free-to-all items over on Tubi:

     A bit of home video history I'd been unaware of while it was happening, decades ago - largely because I was a suburban kid on the opposite coast - was the pointedly curated movie and documentary cable phenom that was Z Channel. Run by a man who was truly obsessed with film and filmmaking, driven to see and interact with the world as much as possible with film as common points of reference, he carved out a regional empire of subscribers who almost universally never unsubscribed. This was done in large part by spotlighting bodies of work that were being overlooked by the mainstream. By traveling in the exact opposite of nearly every other player in the business of film, by raising his sights seeking what he called the "uncommon denominator," believing that if they targeted the most intelligent, erudite audience members, that a great deal of the rest would follow.
     Over the years I've heard mentions of the channel by various people in the entertainment biz, usually as then-contemporary references during appearances during the '70s and '80s, but it wasn't something I paid much attention to before the past year or so.
     The story of it all is in Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004   2h 1m)

     A very interesting, ultimately tragic, tale.

     I've been enjoying various archives of interview materials with movers and shakers in a variety of arenas of endeavor. One of the people who contributed a substantial body of such material over the course of decades has been Dick Cavett. Tubi has a collection of shows he did between the late '60s and the '90s, as he moved from commercial tv to PBS and back again. Some were when he had a full hour to work with, some a mere half hour minus space for commercials. The shows in this package are very deceptively grouped as twelve "seasons", when they're actually grouped by the main field of endeavor by a key guest on that show. Comedians, musicians/singers/performers, filmmakers, politicians, athletes, etc.  Just go to Tubi.com and search for Dick Cavett. There are three collections there - I know I'll also want to go through the one dedicated to comedians, and the one on pioneers of New York Radio, but here I'm talking about the broad-ranging 1991 Shout Factory collection. There's priceless material in there, capturing people at various points in their careers, including some who were gone all too soon afterwards. Many who went on to greater fame, and some to infamy. I don't have a trailer to run for this.
     A great deal of the material is also to be found on YouTube, btw.

     Finally, done for Reelz three years ago, there's an 88 minute documentary on the life and career of a much-beloved comedian and actor. It's the somewhat deceptively named John Candy: Behind Closed Doors (2020  TV-PG), the "Behind Closed Doors" being a larger brand name for a documentary series. It's a marvelous set of reminiscences, laying out the timeline of the man's life and career. Again, I don't have a trailer.

     That's all I have the time and energy for this week. Much, much to do.
     When we next get together it'll be June! Almost unthinkable, and with a holiday weekend sprawling out at our feet I'll leave it unthunk for a few days.  Take care, I hope you're enjoying pleasant weather - we're told to expect a sunny Friday hereabouts, peaking out in the mid-70s. A good time to get those windows open. - Mike