What I'm Watching

This is a monthly post that chronicles the movies and TV I’ve watched in the last month and the music I’m listening to. Anything I’ve finished gets a review on my website unless I’ve watched something again, in which case I usually just add a note to the review page.

Movies I’ve Watched:

• After the Thin Man (1936): Not as good as the original.

• Every Little Step (2008): A documentary about auditions for the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line.

• Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (2023): My favourite thing about this penultimate Mission: Impossible movie is that the sequel is not called Dead Reckoning Part 2.

• (The) Phantom Empire (1988): This spin on Journey to the Centre of the Earth and The Lost World is quite terrible. But there are jokes and some of them actually land.

• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010): It’s really hard to figure out which era of Persian history this takes place in. It’s almost like they didn’t care.

• Sly Lives! (2025): RIP Sly Stone. Read my reviews of albums by Sly & the Family Stone.

TV I’m Watching:

• Basketball: I am very much enjoying this playoff regardless of what happens in the final 2-3 games. As a result, I wrote a list of my favourite NBA teams.

• Hockey: Back when I still cared about hockey, the Oilers were my 2nd team. Despite driving around the East Coast during part of their run, I was cheering for them back in 2006, the last time they were in the Stanley Cup Finals before last year. So I am watching this with interest even if I can’t make it through the overtimes.

• Mare of Easttown (2021): This crime drama/mystery starring a “difficult woman” (Kate Winslet) as the lead detective instead of the usual “difficult man” is good. But explaining why it is good involves at least two massive spoilers.

• Only Murders in the Building (2021): We have begun season 4.

• Scavenger’s Reign (2023): This is a creative animated (soft) sci-fi show with some really weird aliens and a surprising amount of body horror. (Yes, seriously.) Like most fantasy and sci-fi, though, the characters are two-dimensional at best. I didn’t finish it because my free trial of the service it is on expired before I could and I didn’t like it enough to pay for the last couple of episodes.

• Smiley’s People (1982): Jenn and I enjoyed the Alec Guinness version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) but this one - which is the third in the trilogy even though they never made the second book into a TV series - is even more deliberately paced than that earlier series. Also, for much of this one, it feels like much lower stakes.

• Taskmaster: We are watching the latest season of the original show.

Theatre I’ve Been to:

• A Strange Loop live at Young Centre for the Performing Arts: This is a pretty remarkable musical about a black gay man writing a musical about a black gay man writing a musical…It is very funny but is also not for everyone. There is a reason it wasn’t at Mirvish.

Music I’m Listening to:

• Nick Cave: So I saw Nick Cave for the firs time (and I presume the last time) last month and somehow this turned int finally reviewing all his albums I had never reviewed before. You can find my Nick Cave album reviews here, and here are the new one:

  • The Boys Next Door: The Birthday Party (1980): The final Boys Next Door album gave the new group their new name because it is a pretty big departure from their first album.

  • Die Haut: Burnin’ the Ice (1982): This German band made instrumental post punk heavily influenced by Public Image Limited. Nick Cave joined them for a few tracks on this record so I reviewed it.

  • The Bad Seeds:

    • Your Funeral…My Trial (1986): Having listened to the entirety of their discography more than a few times now, I think this is the first album that really suggests Nick Cave will become Nick Cave. It’s kind of the beginning of their peak, I think.

    • Henry’s Game (1992): A return to their louder, more typical sound after The Good Son.

    • Live Seeds (1993): Live tracks from the Henry’s Dream tour with Nick Cave’s re-recorded vocals.

    • Nocturama (2003): I think this is probably the weakest Bad Seeds studio record outside of maybe their covers record from the mid ‘80s (and I think I like that one more).

    • B-Sides and Rarities (2005): An immense b-sides collection.

    • The Abattoir Blues Tour (2007): If I could go back and time and see them on any tour, it would have been this one.

    • Live at the Royal Albert Hall [1998] (2008): A show from the Boatman’s Call tour.

    • Live from KCRW (2012): Much like the above show from nearly 15 years earlier, this is a more sedate performance but this time it’s because it’s at a radio station.

    • Live from the Royal Albert Hall (2015): Probably their best live album I’ve heard but, confusingly, there’s another show from 2015 with nearly identical cover art.

    • Ghosteen (2019): Probably Cave’s best album from the teens but I’m not sure I want to listen to it a lot.

  • [solo]: Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Place (2020): During the pandemic, everyone was performing alone in their homes. Cave went and did it in a place, including never-before solo piano versions of a number of full band songs.