Other Places - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

Where has this week gone? Oh, that's right.

 A trying week that has tightened its grip on me since Wednesday morning, as if the universe sensed it was my birthday, then continued to thwart any notion that I was just putting off a day off for later in the week. Work items continued to suddenly mount, as things here in covid-19 lock-down Pennsylvania are being pushed to change.
  Anyway, this hasn't left me much time to watch new things, much less write about them. So, this will be an anemic post for me, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the concentration of errors is higher than usual.
  I'll start with a couple timely reminders from pieces from earlier in the month.
  If you have Fios, starting today remember that you have a stretch of free access to HBO and Cinemax through Monday, and Starz through next Thursday. This is on top of the free Epix all month. Check the channels (including the On Demand, which is unlocked for these periods, too) for things you haven't seen, If you don't haveHBO normally, among their offerings I will continue to strongly recommend The Plot Against America, a 6-part alternate history drama which will be wrapping Monday night, the last day of this free preview. That's one of the items I'd already written about this month.
  Also, dropping into place today, Amazon Prime has season 6 of the crime drama Bosch, adapting Michael Connelly's novels. Were my Friday to be my own, that's probably what I would be watching. Instead, I'll be in work conversations, emails, running calcs and writing reports, like a sucker.
  Had this week gone more as hoped, I was going to begin trying to work the TCM highlights for the coming week into the mix, though I'm all but certain C7 architect Garbo Seltzer (who keeps the trains running on time in this blog, and who contributes the Tuesday pieces) would be eminently more qualified for much of that. Still, the core of this Friday series is supposed to be things I've watched or intend to watch.
   A hyper-abbreviated version: If you're reading this early enough, at 12:30, half past noon Eastern today, they're running the 1964 black and white Beatles film A Hard Day's Night. If you're seeing this too late to do you any good, remember come next Friday that I generally have these blog posts set to appear a 7AM Eastern.

Scheduled for 10:30 Saturday morning is a short (they've allotted 10 minutes for it) from 1929 Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder. Until just a few years ago I had no idea that Rose Marie, who I'd only known as supporting character Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke show, had been a spectacularly famous child star. This should be a quick glimpse into that early stardom.
  Sunday at 9AM Eastern, they have an hour spotlighting Peter O'Toole, followed at 10 by Lawrence of Arabia.

  Certainly, there's plenty to catch on TCM, but those were a few items I'd made a point of tagging in my DVR. (I'll aim to do much better next time.)
  Oh, something that's also on Amazon Prime, and has been since April 3rd, is a linked science fiction anthology series Tales From the Loop.They're all set in a small Ohio town that's built atop an underground, advanced physics laboratory causing seemingly impossible things to happen.Time travel. Body-swapping. Alternate realities.
  I've only watched the first couple stories, and found them to be high concept but not especially well assembled as stories. The first one in particular struck me as if they'd shot it from an earlier draft of the script, where some scenes and dialogue hadn't yet been written, but somehow no one working on it seemed to notice.
  I've only just now found out at the series was inspired by the paintings of Simon Stålenhag -- no, I won't pretend I know the name -- but it at least helps account for the looser storytelling approach. Your mileage and general appreciation may vary, and it could be that they didn't lead with their best material. I intend to get back to it in time.

  Over on Netflix, just this past Saturday, a new film debuted: Code 8.
 A sci-fi film involving a world where a small number of people have been born over the past few generations with special abilities.
 Starring brothers Stephen and Robbie Amell, it has superior effects, and isn't a bad story, though perhaps an unremarkable one here in 2020 where we've been so saturated with stories of people with superhuman abilities and the social problems they bring. I watched it early in the week, and it was entertaining enough. (I know, I know! Stop with this effusive praise!)

That's as much as I have the time and recollection for at the moment.
May the coming week be much better than the one just past.   - Mike N.

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