Deadly distractions, and prelude to a celebration - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

It's another hodgepodge this week.
 I do need to make a point of jotting down a few, brief notes about items I come across and watch on the various streaming services as I'm watching them, because the structure of those services doesn't tend to leave traces. Unlike my DVR, where I can pop over to the Deleted queue to see a respectable bulk of hours of material I've recently watched and discarded, several of the streaming services (Amazon Prime in particular) sweep already-watched material from view. As if to say "We Shall Speak Of This No More!" Oh, they can easily be found again if you want, but you have to remember what it is you're looking for.
   While it can be argued that if you can't remember the title of

something you watched a few days ago that it didn't make that much of an impression, it's probably a little more true these days that my memory's gotten sketchier about the recent past. It's the downside of the tech-extended memory of all this video access. Much like reading, with the ability to flip back to earlier pages to casually check on some detail, all of this access has weakened some aspects of mind and memory if suddenly left to its own, atrophied devices.
   It's the way of every technical advance in mind and media -- when the written word came into popular use the elders of that era, steeped in a completely oral tradition, warned of a similar loss of faculty as memory was no longer the sole instrument to be relied upon. You kids and your fancy toys!
  Anyway, I know I chanced upon and watched several movies I'd not heard of before, enjoyed moderately in the moment, and then had them fade from mind as I moved on to other things. Were I to have a list of titles I'd suddenly remember each in some detail, but in the moment I lack that critical trigger, and so I can't write about them. If I chance across them again -- and doing so with one will likely spark the memory of a chain of things I'd watched -- I'll try to be more careful and leave myself a few notes.
  One thing I have been watching - well, rewatching - is NBC's 2013-2015 series Hannibal. (Currently available as part of the package on both Amazon Prime, where it's been for years, and, more recently, Netflix.)

  This generally excellent, highly visually-styled Bryan Fuller series only ran three seasons, at a now much more fashionable 13-episode length, and generally adapted for the small screen several of Thomas Harris' novels. These were all linked by his creation Dr. Hannibal Lechter, which had been famously adapted for the screen several times since the 1980s.
   The titular lead is played by Mads Mikkelson, while Hugh Dancy played Will Graham, an FBI-affiliated profiler whose unique mind grants him a dangerous degree of empathy with serial killers. It allows him to perfectly assume their point of view as he deconstructs their crimes and divines the motives.
 The relationship between Hannibal and Will is the core of this series, as it evolves through multiple, occasionally explosive, stages.
 The culinary notes and episode titles lead to some wonderful Google searches and expanded horizons for the viewer, and, while grotesque, many of the crime scenes are enthralling.
  While I occasionally lament that it didn't get to run out the full length that series creator Fuller wished-for - by even half - I remain happy that we got the three seasons that we did.
 The third season, while offering up a great deal of previously unadapted material, started to venture too strongly into stories already made into big screen films (2001's Hannibal and 1986's decidedly ahead-of-the-curve Manhunter), and so likely lost some of the potential audience via a dull-witted "seen it!" reaction. That the core relationship, between Will and Hannibal, frequently threatened to be sidelined by other stories and geographical distance between the characters for the early part of the third season also likely didn't help the week-to-week ratings.
  The pacing, visual styling and performances remained top-notch television, though that final season did have a few too many scenes where elegant people with emotionally-muted expressions traded archly clever observations with layered meanings. And, to be honest, it did have a tendency to become a tad whack-a-doodle here and there, as they moved to stress the boundaries of what they could get away with on network tv, and what the audience would be willing to believe.
  The mix of the show's quality and my mental and emotional inability/unwillingness to confront various official duties found me quickly moving through seasons one and two and nearly halfway through season three during this past week. But that's my problem.
 The cast is excellent, including Laurence Fishburne, Caroline Dhavernas, Hettienne Park, Scott Thompson, Aaron Abrams and Gillian Anderson, with recurring roles for Eddie Izzard and Gina Torres, among many others.
  Shifting gears --

 I was happy to see the second season of Doom Patrol launch yesterday on HBO-Max, and that they kicked it off with the first three episodes of the season. Yes, there were several other things that I should have been doing instead, were I a responsible adult, but I instead latched onto and rolled through all three episodes in short order. It made for a welcome running start into the new season, picking up exactly where season one ended. I didn't need it, but they supplied a separate 2-minute recap of season one, narrated by the series' own Cliff Steele (Brendan Fraser), in a suitably overwrought style. The brutally broken characters continue to be engaging, and I'm sure that at the pace of a new episode each Thursday it'll all be over too, too soon.

 The rest of this almost became next week's post, but with this piece landing on Friday, and the July 4th holiday the following day, I thought it would then be too rushed and so likely seen (by whoever would see it) a little too late. My own next week is already promising to be a slippery week professionally, and how it ends will in significant part depend, shades of Blanche DuBois, on the kindness (and understanding) of strangers. But that's not for here. Suffice to say that I am more likely than not to be reaching next Friday more spent than usual. Spent and upbeat is to be hoped for.
Coming up next week - next Friday. July 3rd - Disney+ will be premiering a full Broadway production of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical Hamilton. The hugely praised production purports to tell the story of the Founding Fathers via a focus on Alexander Hamilton.

  It was recorded in full, in 2016, originally for documentary purposes, at the Richard Rodgers Theater, and so features the entire, original cast, all of whom have long-since been replaced. The show's director, Thomas Kail, also directed this film version as he was the one who edited it together using the footage from multiple cameras.
  This is an odd item for me to be mentioning, because the limits of my exposure to the show have been articles, audio and video features on the show, and some of the songs that have shown up on YouTube, and I would be lying were I to say I've heard a single number from it that drew me in.
  The overall score of the musical is hip-hop influenced, though attempts a range of styles, and that's likely my main hurdle. I've never been a fan of hip-hop. Thusfar it has failed to reach me, to connect with me. It's not as bad a disconnect as, say, rap, most of which doesn't even rate as music for me -- just rhythmic speech, too often with an dull, ugly thud. But, I digress.
 I intend to try to give it a chance. No promises. The press releases I've read are cagey concerning how long it will be offered on the service.
 Similarly, I see that TCM will be rolling out the 1972 film adaptation of another broadway hit musical centering on the founding fathers: 1776. That'll be at 2:30 in the afternoon, EDT, on Saturday the 4th itself.

 I will note that I cannot recall ever having watched it all in a single sitting, nor being captivated by any of the songs -- nor even feeling that it flowed well as an overall musical. However, it's been far to many years, and for at least some of us who came up through that awkward stretch of history (by which I mean the end of the 1960s, when the musical first appeared, through the frequently tortured celebratory bust that was the bicentennial), everything felt over-hyped.
 As with Hamilton, I intend to give is a chance, and to try to come at it with a fresh perspective.
 For now, here's wishing a successful conclusion to this week, a pleasant weekend, and a more upbeat, pre-holiday week ahead than we have any good reason to expect.  - Mike