Thanksgiving/Black Friday Weekend Views - by Mike N.

Friday! Black Friday! A great day to stay home if you have that option. (If you don't, then I'll mis-appropriate the late Dave Allen's "May your God go with you.")
  Not to mislead: Nothing that follows is holiday-specific. Parades or football games, I've no interest in and nearly no knowledge of. The same goes for Lifetime movies of holiday-themed romances.
   Once I headed home Wednesday night, aside from final preparations for Thursday's feast - which is meant to carry us at least through Friday - most of my time is technically my own through Sunday night. So, some of that time will find me looking for things to watch.
   Probably the biggest streaming splash of the week is Martin Scorcese's Netflix-funded latest: The Irishman.    

It was released in theaters early this month, a requisite step in making sure it's eligible for Academy Award consideration, it hit Netflix' streaming service Wednesday the 27th. Clocking in at a considerable three hours, twenty nine minutes, it's almost certainly better viewed at home, where it can be paused at least for nods to the gods of bodily functions.

Based on Charles Brandt's 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses (which is also the title used on screen in the movie itself), it stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, with a supporting cast that includes Anna Paquin, Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Stephen Graham, and Harvey Keitel.
   An epic crime drama, loosely similar in spirit to Goodfellas, as main character Frank Sheeran (De Niro), an elderly man in his final days, looks back over the chance meetings and decisions that made up his life. A WWII veteran, then truck driver who becomes involved with the Bufalino (Pesci) crime family, becoming a fixer and hit man, who then is placed with and becomes a trusted friend and associate of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino.)
   A tale of duties, loyalties, family, alienation, the shifting sands of time beneath our feet, and the irredeemable regrets of a lifetime.
   Considerable use of de-aging software is used, as we follow the principle characters over multiple decades, flashing from one era to another, then back again as events unfold and the story fills us in. I found the effects worked well and weren't jarring, and that the scant rough elements had to do with posture and body movement as actors in their mid-to-late '70s were playing men in their thirties for substantial sections of the film. They made this work better in general by having them all play their parts almost entirely with a physical reserve despite their age - summoning intensity from quieter places - as opposed to the problems they'd have faced were this, say, an action adventure. 

  The film is based on a controversial work of supposed non-fiction, based on the late-life confessions of Frank Sheeran, played in the film by De Niro. As such, it's presented as a true crime story, complete with on-screen text accompanying brief freezes of the action, letting us know how and when various supporting characters would eventually meet their ends. Certainly, too, there's a great deal of material involving Hoffa, the Kennedys, and organized crime that there are conflicting views on. I decided early on to let the movie tell its own story, and take it as its own capsule universe rather than break stride to wrestle with whether or not details were true. Should I become more interested I can always look into more of the particulars, so long as I keep in mind that several of these are details we will never, truly know.
    Solid performances, skillful direction, sweeping narrative, and character relation elements that bunch up into an emotional knot, or even a fist to the gut, during the final half hour of the film. The final shot is a haunting one. Ultimately, it's a thoughtful piece that will prompt some soul-searching about our own lives, and likely those of our parents.

On far, far lighter notes, over on Disney +, Friday continues to see new episodes of both the Star Wars series The  Mandalorian, and the topic-of-the-week exploration of The World According to Jeff Goldblum. 

  I've seen the first three episodes of The Mandalorian, following a bounty hunter who is given an assignment that seems destined to challenge his life's purpose. Fans of internationally famous manga from the '80s very quickly came to reference this series as having thematic ties to Lone Wolf and Cub.
    For those looking to place it in the Star Wars timeline, it's set a few years after the events of Return of the Jedi. So, it's officially a post-Empire scenario, where large numbers of beings who were either part of that empire, or dedicated to fighting it, are now left seeking new purpose, waiting around for a clearer personal resolution, or even just in a sustained daze, quietly waiting for someone to announce that things are going back to the way they were.
     Conceived, largely written by (six of the eight episodes that will compose this first season), and generally run by Jon Favreau, it has the mix of action and touches of humor we've seen in his other projects, such as the Iron Man films.
The episodes run about 40 minutes or so each - roughly what an hour-long network program would if one removed all the commercials.
As Star Wars fandom in recent years has become particularly toxic at its most vocal levels, a half-joke that's emerged due to this series is that Star Wars fans are suddenly and almost miraculously capable of liking something. A revelation!

    While I've still only watched the first episode, The World According To Jeff Goldblum makes for a snappy focus on generally trivial matters that are points of major focus for subcultures. The first episode is a (roughly) half hour on the world of custom and special edition sneakers. While some small effort is expended to show how some scientifically-determined metrics can be used to design physically personalized sneakers to optimize someone's ability to run and/or jump, the majority of the episode makes it clear that nearly all of the mania surrounding them is a blend of fashion and collector's mentality, which is to say something artificial and built on nothing more than popular opinion. It was refreshing to have that message come through so clearly, while at the same time rendering no negative judgement on it because Goldblum indulges himself in a chameleon-like shared appreciation with the sneaker fans. He's here to understand, connect and commune, not to challenge anyone's passions.
  Along the way Jeff crosses over in the world of unboxing videos, something that's arguably more interesting than the obscenity of people paying hundreds and even thousands of dollars for a single pair of sneakers. (Yeah, judgmental bastard that am, I'm no Jeff Goldblum.)
  The success or failure of the series will hugely depend upon how well one takes to Jeff Goldblum. If you accept his almost eternally childlike enthusiasm and personal style as genuine (and likeable), then this should work well for you.
     Based on the first episode, I expect to eventually watch all of them, even though I suspect they'll all be quick hits of ultimately empty entertainment calories. A sort of video confection that is mostly enjoyable, but doesn't find me immediately wanting another hit. For me, that makes it similar to donuts or pancakes -- it'll hit the spot, but my appetite's quickly sated for a while. I'll be back, but in my own time -- which is probably a-ok with Disney, as these streaming services ideally want us to stick around forever, not dive in to eat everything up in short order, then cancel the service until enough new material builds up to make for another dive and dash.

   One thing the Thanksgiving holiday has robbed me of this week are new episodes of both The Good Place (NBC) and Supernatural (CW), two series I look forward to, and both ones that are now in their final seasons. Especially as they're in their final seasons - the fourth and fifteenth, respectively - I'll be spending a little time on each in future columns.

    Sunday night will bring me new episodes of two series I follow - Watchmen (HBO), and Ray Donovan (Showtime), though in deference to early rising for work on Monday, I likely won't get to eithr of them until at least Monday. I'd have added Rick and Morty (Cartoon Network) to that list, but the chickenshits at Cartoon Network seem to be pulling the same crap that HBO used to, in making a holiday-adjacent week a skip week for an ongoing series. Yeah, we'll make time for our family and friends on holidays, but we still want our shows. It's not as if most of us watch them right when they're broadcast (whatever that means these days -- don't touch that dial!) anyway, but we want them to be there when we reach for them at 4 AM.
   So far, the debut season for Watchmen has been first rate, reaching 34 years beyond the events of the '80s limited series to bring us both new characters and weave a pervasive racial element through their history, along with updating us on some of the survivors of the original story.
   Ray Donovan's in its seventh season, and is once again pulling me along in a strange fashion that now strikes me as an oddly brilliant connection to the predicaments of the characters in the series itself. I'm interested, and want to see what happens to them, but at the same time I'm weary both on their behalves, of the endless complications, and a little of some of the characters themselves. Fixer to the stars and powerful, the titular Ray (played by Liev Schreiber) continues to wearily hang on the frayed end of his rope.
 I'm not sure how much of a happy ending is possible for many or maybe even any of these deeply-damaged characters, but I'm increasingly comfortable with the notion that they'll reach an ending. In the meantime, it remains an interesting assortment of characters, a study of the dynamics of a multipli-traumatized family of co-dependents, and the dark realities of how so much of What Is is just a mutually agreed-upon fiction.

     Enjoy the weekend. If you get the time, and the spirit so moves you, let me know if you've watched any of these things, and how they struck you. Also, you could do far worse than checking out the posts by the Consortium members for the other six days of the week. They're doing more interesting things than I'm managing here at the shallow end of the pool.   - Mike N.


   Updated guide to my earlier columns, highlighting show and movie titles. Each link pops out to a new window, so it won't automatically close this one:
 Sept. 20th: Mindhunter (Netflix)
     Sept. 27th: What's The Matter With Helen, The French Connection, and Frenzy. (Early '70s R-rated movies I saw with my mom)
     Oct. 3rd:    Preacher (AMC), Stumptown (ABC), Sunnyside (NBC), The Good Place (NBC), and Jack Ryan (Amazon Prime).
     Oct. 11th:  Joker (still in theaters), and In The Tall Grass (Netflix)
     Oct. 18th:  El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (Netflix)
     Oct. 25th: Dolemite Is My Name (Netflix)
     Nov. 1st:   Watchmen (HBO series), The Kominsky Method (Netflix)
     Nov. 8th:   Seconds (1966 movie, currently available as part of Amazon Prime)
     Nov. 15th: Dr. Sleep (current theatrical release, but probably not for long), Horace and Pete (2016 web-produced series, currently on Hulu)
     Nov. 22nd: NOS4A2 (AMC, now on Hulu) and Man In The High Castle (Amazon Prime)

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