Monday, May 26, 2014

100 hours of TV, pre-screened for your summer viewing pleasure


Commercial TV pretty much sucks, as I was reminded once again last night during the season finale of “Mad Men,” the critically-acclaimed show about a 1960s Madison Avenue advertising agency and the people who work for it.

Last night's episode took place in 1969, the night Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. A founder of the agency (played by Broadway star Robert Morse) dropped dead shortly after the moonwalk. The episode ended with his ghost performing a soft shoe routine while singing, “The Moon Belongs To Everyone, The Best Things in Life They’re Free” as main character Don Draper (Jon Hamm) watched misty-eyed, trying his best to convince viewers he was finding profound meaning in Morse’s performance.

My dachshunds could have come up with a more convincing ending.  

So, now that summer is officially here and all those God-awful series that weren’t worth watching in the first place are in re-runs, what's there to watch on TV?

Here’s my suggestion: Netflix Streaming Video. For $8.99 a month, you can choose from hundreds of foreign and American movies, plus dozens of TV series from around the globe. Non-English programming is subtitled -- helpful if you, like me, are hard of hearing and are missing half the dialogue in the programs you watch anyway.

If you don’t yet have Netflix, do not be intimidated by streaming video technology. All you need is wireless internet and a cheap ($50 or less) device any moron can easily hook up to his or her TV. (Trust me. If I can do it, you can, too.) All TV programming will be delivered via streaming video in a few years so you might as well adapt now.

Here are some recent Netflix streaming favorites, pre-screened for your viewing pleasure. Some are series, so you can binge-watch two, three or, on rainy days when you can’t go out and play, eight or nine episodes back-to-back.

The Great Train Robbery: This 2013 two-part BBC movie is about the 1963 robbery of a Glasgow-to-London mail train that captivated Britain like no crime before or since. Part I follows the perpetrators as they plan and execute the robbery, which netted them £2,100,000 in small bills. Part II is the story of the Scotland Yard detective who obsessively led his men on a quest to chase them down. It’s well-acted, intelligent and, best of all, true. (Truth is stranger than fiction, you know.) You will need to turn on closed captions for Part I because the South London working class accents of the gang are, to this American at least, unintelligible. (3 hours.)

Mother of Mine: You may not think of Finland as a major WWII battleground because American troops didn’t fight there, but it was -- the Soviets and Nazis went at each other, leaving the country in tatters. To keep them out of harm’s way more than 70,000 Finnish children were shipped to other countries, mostly to neighboring Sweden, to live with host families for the war’s duration.

The movie is the story of a Finnish boy who came to stay with a Swedish farm couple still reeling from the recent drowning of their only child. The farm wife is played to perfection by Maria Lundqvist, an actress generally known for her comedic roles. You, of course, have never heard of Lundqvist and I am only mentioning her name to make you feel inferior, as if you should know who she is when, in fact, I had never heard of her either until I saw this movie but I looked her up on Wikipedia and this is my blog so I can drop names if I want.

Lundqvist’s character takes out her grief on the boy whose mother, from Finland, eventually writes that she has fallen in love with a German soldier and plans to move to Germany after the war ends. The boy’s mother informs the Swedes they can keep her son. Something then happens you won’t expect.  

My wife got teary-eyed at the end, a sure sign of a good movie. (2 hours.)

Air Disasters: As long as one doesn’t fall from the sky with any of my family or friends on board, I’m into plane crashes big-time.

This series of Canadian-made documentaries examines 10 of the world’s most infamous disasters -- the Turkish Airlines DC-10 that killed nearly 300 when a cargo door blew off over France, the Air India 747 that exploded off the Irish coast because of a bomb planted by Sikh terrorists, the South African Airways 747 whose cargo caught fire over the Indian Ocean, etc., and investigators’ frustrations as they painstakingly try to determine what went wrong. Every episode includes re-enactments – pilots screaming “mayday” and the terror of doomed passengers as the plane plummets. (Macabre, I know, but don’t claim you haven’t wondered what it would be like because we all have.)

My favorite episode (nobody was killed) involved a shiny new Air Canada 767 that, due to a ground crew error, ran out of fuel in the middle of nowhere and the pilot was miraculously able to set the jumbo, which was flying without hydraulics, down on a racetrack. For air crash geeks only. (10 one-hour episodes.)

You Will Be My Son:  Philes, both oeno- and Franco-, will love this French thriller about an aristocratic winery owner who chooses as his successor the son of his overseer rather than his own well-meaning geek (there’s that word again) son, with unpleasant consequences. Uncork a bottle of Bordeaux and drink in the well-crafted plot, breathtaking scenery and the suspense, which builds from scene to scene. From the get-go you know this isn’t going to end well. Whose body is in that coffin being consumed by flames in the crematorium at the beginning of the movie? You aren't going to hear it from me. (2 hours.)

The Sea Inside: This Spanish movie, based on the true story of a quadriplegic who went to court for the right to end his own life, stars Javier Bardem, an actor who has made some questionable career decisions but not when he accepted this role. Shot in Galicia, the sliver of Spain directly north of Portugal, it is a darn-near perfect movie, a celebration of life and, surprisingly, death. Not to sound trite – OK, I’ll sound trite – this movie will stay with you a long, long time. 

We saw it at our local art movie theater when it came out in 2004. As the closing credits rolled there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. I’ve watched it twice since on Netflix but my wife can’t bear to. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Kimberly-Clark, which makes Kleenex, underwrote the production. (2 hours.)

Orange is the New Black: The storyline of this black comedy that sometimes takes serious turns can be summed up in five words – Private Benjamin goes to jail. An educated young woman from an affluent family is sentenced to hard time in a Federal women’s prison for drug smuggling in this original Netflix series that premiered last year. What the series does well is toe a careful line between making you feel sorry for the inmates as you learn their stories, and reminding you that these women deserve to be where they are. Taylor Schilling as Piper, the hapless inmate from whose point of view the story is told, is especially appealing and likable. Season II – 13 new episodes – will be available for your binge-watching pleasure on June 6. (26 one-hour episodes.)

Jobs: Generally panned by critics when it was released last year, this movie stars Ashton Kutcher as Apple founder Steve Jobs. So, whom do you trust? The critics or America’s only objective journalist?

It’s a good movie, not a great one, and Kutcher does a more-than-credible job portraying Jobs as what he was -- a socially awkward, immature, meglomanical, prone-to-depression perfectionist who was devastated when he was fired by his own board of directors and took perverse pleasure in jettisoning them years later when he was wooed back to save the company. (2 hours.)

Wallander: Based on Henning Mankel’s novels (not that I’ve read any but critics always imply they are familiar with the source) about a brooding Swedish detective who goes around solving heinous and often out-and-out bizarre crimes, there are two series by this name on Netflix –one from the BBC, the other from Swedish television.  Both were shot in Sweden. The BBC version starring Kenneth Branagh as the title character, is, for my dime, better than the Swedish version. For starters, it’s in English so no subtitles are needed. It’s also faster-paced, a bit glitzier, and the cinematography is incredible. It will make you want to visit Sweden or, at the very least, buy a Volvo. (9 hour-and-a-half episodes.)

Spiral: I’ve saved the best for last. This French attorney/judge/cop series will suck you in and keep you awake at night, dissecting what you just saw and looking forward to another evening of binge-watching. Intricate story lines cross then double-cross, the acting is extraordinary and -- a bonus that might enable you to sound intelligent should you ever find yourself deep in conversation with a French law enforcement official -- you’ll learn about the French justice system. It resembles ours in many ways but is decidedly different. For instance, French judges often become involved in cases before any arrests are made and the cops, once they arrest a suspect, can beat the s---t out of him to extract a confession. Not necessarily a bad idea if you ask me but most Americans would probably disagree.

Caroline Proust, as Police Captain Laure Berthaud, is incredible. She is, despite her tough exterior, deeply flawed, vulnerable and utterly human and for that reason you want to give her a hug and tell her everything will be OK. (I’m sounding like one of those effete critics again —forgive me.)

If you liked "The Wire" and/or "Breaking Bad," you will love "Spiral." It’s better. Really. (40 episodes, each approximately one hour.)

Enjoy your summer viewing.

You can thank me later. (And you will.)

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