What I'm Watching

This is a monthly post wherein I list the movies I’ve watched, the TV I’m watching and the music I’m listening to.

Movies I’m Watching:

• Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933): I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed so hard at choreography in a Hollywood musical as I did in the rollerskating section of the middle musical number in this movie. Among the most ridiculous things I think I have ever seen. (I asked Jenn if we were secretly on drugs while we were watching it.)

• Films of Alice Guy: I read on Bluesky recently that there was a pioneering woman filmmaker from the first era of cinema who I should watch. So I’m watching her flims. So far, they are mostly very short (they might be fragments) and they pale in comparison to Méliès, the great of the age, but I have only watched four or five.

• Nothing But a Man (1964): This might be a landmark film in American neo-realism and/or African American cinema (even though it was directed and written by white people!). Among the most European American films made pre-American film renaissance you’ll ever see. (I guess it helped kick it off, because you could argue the renaissance started right around this time.)

• Nuremberg: des images pour l’histoire (2021): This is a TV-quality documentary about the Americans who were sent to Germany to collect German Nazi films about their atrocities for presentation at the Nuremberg trials and then film the trials themselves. Though it is not a great film, and its rather brief, it is worth watching especially at a time when a certain country is trying to de-legitimize the ICC.

• Nürnberg und seine Lehre (1948/2009): The above documentary is, in part, about the making of this American government propaganda film.

• Our Hospitality (1923): This is an early Keaton feature with lots of great stuff that doesn’t quite rise to the level of his greatest films. For such a short film, I think it could be tighter.

• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018): This kids’ Marvel movie is better than a lot of Marvel movies for adults.

• El vampiro negro (1953): This Argentinian remake of M was perhaps a little bit overrated for me.

TV Shows I’m Watching:

• Basketball: The Raptors fell into the play-in by losing to the Pelicans. It wasn’t awesome. Though this team is much much better than last year’s, I find them more frustrating because my expectations are higher and they routinely lose to teams they should beat. (They also can no longer beat good teams unless you count the Sunds on Friday.)

• Curling: Jenn and I watched much of the Brier.

• The Diplomat (2023): We’ve started the latest season but have only watched the first episode because we’ve been kind of busy watching sports.

• F1: It’s back. With new rules that everyone hates but which made both the first race and the first sprint race more exciting. However, I’m watching the second race as I write this and it looks like Mercedes will dominate, which is not ideal.

• Master of None (2015): Still plugging away at this, though other things have gotten in the way. Midway through the second season.

• The Olympics: We love the Olympics and watched much of it. Because the first week was so bad, the second week felt really good and I was surprised to learn we actually didn’t win as many medals as a number of recent winter games. Ah well, we enjoyed ourselves.

• Slings and Arrows (2003): I enjoyed this Canadian comedy series about a struggling Shakespearean theatre festival. I’m glad it’s only 18 episodes though, as I think some of the plot-holes and sillier aspects of the show would have grated on me if it had been 66 episodes like an American show.

• The West (1996): I watched this years ago on Netflix but Jenn had never seen it so we're watching it again. The most Burnsian of mini-series even though he didn’t direct it (he just produced it).

• Taskmaster:

  • New Zealand: There is a “new” season on YouTube which is probably a year or two old by now. If you don’t know, this is the best non-British version of the show even though the talent pool is smaller than, like, every other country’s.

Music I’m Listening to:

• The Bad Plus Chris Potter and Craig Taborn playing the music of Keith Jarrett’s American quartet live at George Weston Recital Hall on Thursday March 5: My fourth time seeing The Bad Plus live was somehow in their fourth configuration.

• Beethoven: Piano Trios (1808-1824): These trios (piano, violin, cello, subbing in clarinet for one) do a good job of showing how Beethoven transformed Classical into Romantic.

• Benny Goodman: The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Concert (1938, 1950): The mythology of this show - the first jazz show at Carnegie Hall - is that it convinced American music snobs that jazz was art. I don’t buy that for a second because a) only a few thousand people saw the show (and it reeks of the typical New York-centrism of American music critics) and b) because the album came out 12 years after the concert and, by that time, jazz was very much treated as art music. This one concert that nobody saw made that happen? I call bullshit.

• Ligeti: Lux Aeterna (1966): Certainly one of the great choral pieces of the 20th century, in spit of its brevity.

• Lutyens: Ô Saisons, Ô Châteaux (1946): This is an awesome cantata that was considered outside the range of the human voice when Lutyens first tried to get it performed. The string writing is really cool, with some passages that sound really aggressively modern and other parts that could be birdsong. The voice part does indeed sound difficult but also is clearly singable since I am listening to someone sing it. Just a really cool piece of music.

• Mahler:

  • Das Lied von der Erde (1908): This should have been Mahler’s ninth symphony but he was scared of the curse so he called it a “song” instead.

  • Symphony No. 9 (1909) live at Roy Thomson Hall on Saturday February 21, 2026: Mahler’s symphonies were among the first complete sets of symphonies I’ve ever heard. Though 9 wasn’t my favourite back in my 20s, seeing it live was really something. I think I’d love to see all of them live before I die, especially 8 and 10.

  • I’m slowly making my way back through the other symphonies again so I can write reviews.

• Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor (1844): You can read my review here.

• Mingus at Antibes (1960/1975-6): A great example of a small Mingus band live.

• Mozart:

  • Krönungsmesse (1779): I enjoyed this mass, his most popular.

  • The “Haydn” Quartets (1785): Some really great string quartets inspired by the father of the string quartet.

• Offenbach:

  • Orphée aux enfers (1858): This helped create the genre of operetta (a French proto-musical) and helped create the French comic opera boom. So it’s important. But it’s so pop it’s ridiculous and it really isn’t my thing.

  • La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein (1867): Another one of his comic operettas, that I like maybe a tiny bit more than the one above, I guess, but it’s still really not my thing.

  • Les contes d’Hoffman (1880): Finally a real opera that doesn’t only pander to the music halls and doesn’t rely solely on the same singing gags over over.

• Red Nichols: I couldn’t find the compilation I was looking for but eventually found what feels like a reasonably definitive one. I…really don’t like this. I haven’t listened to 20s jazz in years but this sounds so tame and, to put it bluntly, white in comparison to my memories of the best of the stuff.

• Prokofiev:

  • 4 Pieces for Piano (1908): Great stuff. You can read my review here.

  • Complete Piano Sonatas (1907-1953): Some of the best solo piano music you will ever hear.

  • Visions fugitives (1917): Less impressive than his other piano music as it strikes me as less original.

• Sibelius: En Saga (1892/1902): A really interesting tone poem where the most modern parts suggest minimalism but which are contrasted with very classically late Romantic music.

• Johann Strauss II: Accelerationen (1860): Beyond "The Blue Danube," I'm not sure how many waltzes I've heard from "The Waltz King." This certainly is one. It's go so many of the features of a classic waltz but, to Strauss's credit, it feels fresh in part because of how he plays with the tempo. I imagine this is pretty hard to dance to and that is was a bit of rage among the waltz-dancing class.

• Smetana: Prodaná nevěsta (1866-1870): This Czech opera apparently was the first to get international recognization.

• Verdi: Messa da Requiem (1874): Maybe the best choral piece of the 19th century.

• Webern: Passacaglia (1908): It is crazy to me that this was condemned as being too radical at the time, and for being "without content." If you've listened to any 20th century music - especially modernism and certainly anything after modernism - this doesn't sound particularly radical and it certainly doesn't lack "content." It's a stirring, interesting orchestral piece that I hear a massive influence from, particularly in later modernist orchestral works. And it really does sound, to me, pretty tame in comparison to what would come later. I appreciate the variety in the various techniques, too.

• And of course, there are the usual covers.