If you need a break from the daily news, I have a suggestion. Watch the telenovela “Jane the Virgin.” I’m sorry to say that it’s on Netflix. Despite that, it’s wonderfully entertaining.
I won’t explain the plot—too complicated—but I urge you to watch the first few episodes.
It was originally broadcast on the free airwaves on CW network affiliates, so might be in a rerun mode in some markets.
Another show I saw on Netflix when I visited my daughter is a Danish comedy called “Rita.” Rita is an unconventional flawed character and teacher who always looks out for her students. It is entertaining and provides some glimpses into Denmark’s schools that American educators will appreciate. It is also great relief from the news of the day.
If you would prefer to avoid patronizing the platforms of ed reform billionaires, you can check to see if your local library offers Kanopy as a streaming service. The selection is amazing!
I don’t subscribe to Netflix. My daughter does. I only see it when I visit her.
thanks for Jane the virgin
>
What the heck. A few recommendations, films with a brain:
Angels in America (miniseries). Politics and coming out
Baraka. Breathtaking tour of the natural world and of world religions
Being in the World. Wonderful film based on the philosophy of Martin Heidegger
Big Kahuna, The. Breathtakingly powerful film about sleazy salesmen and a naïve beginner being shown the ropes, powerful moral message.
Birdman. A wonderful film about artistic integrity in a shallow world filled with silly monkeys
Blind Side, The. Beautiful film telling the real-life story of a white Southern mom who takes in a homeless and traumatized African-American boy
Coherence. Excellent sci-fi about friends at a party who become trapped in a quantum superimposition
Day the Earth Stood Still, The. Original version
Dallas Buyers Club. Prejudice can’t survive actually getting to know people.
Ex Machina. An eccentric Silicon Valley genius plays god. Probably the best science fiction film ever made about artificial intelligence
Forbin Project, The. Classic sci-fi about AI that takes over the world
Glengarry Glenross. Everything that’s wrong with capitalism as a religion. LOL
Ida. Nun left at convent during German occupation of Poland learns that her parents were Jewish, leaves to explore who she is
Immortal Beloved. Gary Oldman as Beethoven. Mind-blowing story of Beethoven’s love life, breathtaking, heartbreaking, powerful, with outstanding performances
In Darkness. Powerful film about Jews hiding from Nazis in Lvov, Poland/Ukraine
Incredible Shrinking Man, The. Classic sci-fi with profound existential undercurrents
Man from Earth, The. Almost no one knows this amazing film. Not going to tell you what it’s about. Wonderful. Probably the best small budget film ever made
Milk. Good film about the hero who jump-started the modern gay rights movement in California
Mr. Nobody. Last mortal on Earth after people have achieved immortality. A film about the multiverse
N = NP. Extraordinary drama about mathematicians who have solved one of the most significant outstanding problems in the field, with horrific consequences for surveillance and domination by the state. Powerful and important and not well known.
O Brother, Where Art Thou. The Odyssey. sort of. LOL.
Poison. Otherworldly albino boy in a small town. A film about ahimsa
Primer. Great film about two guys who have invented a time machine. NOT stupid as most time travel films are
Siberian Education, A. Great film about rule by strongman, starring one of my candidates for the finest male actor alive today, John Malkovich (the other? Joaquin Phoenix)
Tracy Fragments, The. Ellen Page’s brilliant performance as a teenager experiencing a psychiatric breakdown. A must see with really innovative cinematography
Waking Life. Amusing anime on the subject of lucid dreaming.
Winter’s Bone. Powerful performance by Jennifer Lawrence as a teenager hunting down her drug-dealer father in an attempt to save the family farm
XXY. Powerful film about an intersex teen; a must see
Yikes. Error above. Waking Life is not an anime. It was created using the rotoscoping technique–drawing over filmed live action
“O Brother Where Art Thou” is in some ways a tribute to Preston Sturgess. Pity he only made a small number of films.
Bob, Thank you for sharing your list of weighty films. Some of us are trying to keep our sanity and keep from keeling over with a heart attack due to the stress of paying attention to what is going on in the world. When I need to escape I like to watch travel shows and PBS NOVA programs on solar system space craft missions. I noticed “O Brother Where Art Thou” on your list. Are you a Preston Sturgess fan? Although I cringe during some of the scenes that would never be filmed now, “Sullivan’s Travels” gets it right about stressed people needing comedy. I loved the scene where the prisoners were invited to watch movies in the African American church. “The Lady Eve” is also wonderful.
My husband and I love the PBS “Spy in the Wild” series, where scientists plant look-alike animal-robots fitted with cameras in their eyes among wild animals. Fun! I’ve also seen some amazing camera-views of birds in flight, though I don’t know how that was accomplished.
Alas, no. I am completely ignorant of Mr. Sturgess’s films, but I will check them out. Thank you for the recommendations!
My comfort during these times has been listening to music, especially Debussy, Chopin, Scriabin, and Glass.
Schitt’s Creek, hands down. A celebration of humanity, incredibly funny, a perfect escape from these horrible times. Or Kim’s Convenience. Or Letterkenny. All are Canadian and provide a glimpse of what it looks like to live in a civilized nation.
The two adult children in Schott’s Creed annoy me.
Jane the Virgin is way better.
Before dinner my husband and I check out the news for as long as we can stand it.
During dinner we watch baseball. (Or football, in the absence thereof).
Then comes the after-dinner treat. It’s a revolving group of cool TV series, taking their turns alphabetically. They play on Netflix, or Prime Video, or we find them on “Search” [HBO et al series].
Currently:
Bosch – an LA detective series. Ex-wife is ex-FBI investigating casino fraud; focus is on LA political shenanigans. Good family stuff, sensitively rendered.
Modus – policeman plus profiler crime investigation, filmed in the Dutch part of Belgium [Eng subtitles]. Focus Season 1 on anti-social evangelist group; in Season 2 a top US official’s kidnapping focuses on US CIA intrigue. Plus: sensitive treatment of mildly-autistic daughter who is material to plot.
Ozark—hard to summarize but if you ever saw Breaking Bad it’s in the same genre: regular folk find themselves pushing the envelope & get in [almost?] over their heads; much background on how the most daring of poor Southern folk get rich off their trailer-trash neighbors. Like Breaking Bad, it’s over-the-top getting close to the border of comedy. Extra here: really good treatment of family unit (both middle-class protagonist’s & the connected very poor family intrinsic to plot.
Perry Mason—the Robert Downey remake. Perry as an investigator becoming a lawyer. Very interesting: please try it and stick with it even tho it doesn’t resemble the classic series. Authentic early ‘30’s cinematography and depiction of evangelism, declining farming, moralistic public contrasted with corrupt cops/ DA dept.
The Tunnel—British-French crime drama series. The tunnel is the Chunnel. The investigative team is headed by a savvy Brit w/working-class accent, and a very interesting Asperger’s French gal whose investigative talents allow her to rise [career-wise] above her complete absence of social skills. Series 1 perp is a serial killer, Series 2 perps are terrorists.
The Wire—if you’ve never seen it, you’ve just got to. This is a serious classic. It was shunned early on because of bad language (!) The locale is Baltimore. You’ll see many stars-in-the-making when they were younger, including Idris Elba, that amazing poly-talented Brit who can do any accent, Dominic West [more recently, star of “The Affair”], Michael K Williams—here, “Omar,” later “Chalky White” in Boardwalk Empire, the wonderful Lance Reddick (another poly-accented Brit, who had major roles in the “Fringe” series & also in “Bosch”), the amazing Andre Royo as “Bubbles,” & many others. What I love about this series is the multiple layers. At first they focus on the grunt-level cops, the usual clash between bean-counter/ GAGA cops and the passionate– but soon introduce progressive and not-so judges, and gradually, all the connecting city politics of Baltimore, circa early 2000’s.
Not in our alphabet now, but highly recommended:
Ray Donovan—it’s along the lines of Breaking Bad and Ozark, i.e, struggling middle-class folks pushing the envelope and eventually biting off [maybe?] more than they can chew— stretching the line between over-the-top and comedy—but it has it’s own thing going on, mainly in CA but also Boston, & boasting amazing performances by John Voigt and Liev Schreiber.
Counterpart—Check it out! We can’t wait for the next season. This is sci-fi of the highest order. Picture East vs West Berlin circa WWII—now add a fenced-off time-warp “passage,” where one progresses as though the war never ended, the other advances— yet govts occasionally allow movement between the two sides– now add the possibility of “doubles,’ one on each side!
Yes on Ozark. Outstanding performances by all the leads, especially by Julia Garner.
Hey folks we haven’t even been talking about books here! Are you reading?
Many here have their plates full with teaching, both in-person and online. But I for one have been sidelined. [I’m a PreK for-lang enrichment teacher; my type, as a daily visitor from one PreK to another, is persona non grata in the covid era]… So since I learned in July my services would no longer be required, I have returned to my childhood habits as an escapist bookworm nerd. Immediately after hearing my future as a teacher was doomed, I was depressed for 6 wks submerged myself in my usual distraction-type reading: Scandinavian Noir. (Been doing that for 15 yrs on summer vacation—now have extras lined up in case god forbid I have nothing else to read!) (Truth be told, always had mysteries lined up for escapist reading since I discovered Agatha Christie in youth!)
BUT! I’ve been a member of a nerdy, expat-oriented book club for 25 yrs, & we continue on zoom. Which means I’m “forced” to read something nutritious each month.
Our selections since March [covid start]:
“A Woman of No Importance,” by Sonia Purnell, the previously untold story of Virginia Hall, who was an important spy and saviour of many a French Resistance cell during WWII. Exciting exploits!
“Cousin Bette,” Balzac’s inimitable tale of how a shrewd woman manipulated her relatives & their choices of mates, who ran the gamut from Polish refugees to so-called aristocrats who’d gotten titles by virtue of past Napoleonic exploits, vulnerable to the changing times—all subjected to the dollars & cents spelled out in detail.
“A Girl Returned,’ an amazing debut novel by Donatella DiPietrantonio, which traces the story of a contemporary Abruzzo child who is suddenly turned out of her middle-class coastal life to her ‘real family’ in the highlands/ poor hinterlands.
“The Dry,” by Jane Harper: it presents as a mystery, but it more a tale of small-town outback Australia during a challenging extended period of drought. Harper’s strength is portraying the setting so strongly that it counts as a protagonist character.
“Death Comes for the Archbishop” by Willa Cather. Please read this book. I cannot but echo the long-ago NYT blurb that it “stands out from the very resistance it opposes to classification.” Through what read like simple vignettes, one gains a deep appreciation for the trials of pioneer travels, the sights and sounds of a new world. Amazing contrasts between ancient French culture and 300-yr-old Spanish-Indian culture. And strange visions you’ve never imagined, like Indian cultures developed on mesa-tops so as to avoid tribal warfare, & how to access them.
“Circe” by Madeline Miller. A wonderful Greek-myth romp. It’s a memoir of an immortal, comprising about 350 yrs of eternity; the protagonist’s life encompasses the whole hierarchy, from nymph to Titan forebears to key mortals [Dedalus, Odyssue, Penelope] to Olympians Hermes and Athena.
Our next selections are “Fleishman is in Trouble” by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and “Light Years” by James Salter.