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’ve Watching:

• Birdemic 2 (2013): Is the sequel to one of the worst movies ever made worse than the first one? Some people think so. I’m going to say it isn’t, but it still one of the worst movies ever made.

• Brigadoon (1954): A favourite film of my father’s, I watched this for the first time as an adult (I don’t remember it from my childhood) and it’s everything wrong with classic Hollywood musicals. I hated this movie.

• The Divorcee (1930): This is, at least for most of its run, a remarkably adult film for Hollywood for the era. Doesn’t stick the landing, of course.

• Female (1933): This is a wild, and brief, film about a successful businesswoman (slash sexual predator) who is brought back to her “true nature” by the love of a good man.

• A Free Soul (1931): This is a drama about a free-spirited woman raised by her brilliant attorney single father, and the harms that come to her as a result. Like other pre-code films I’ve watched recently (see above), it’s a morality play about the dangers of women having choice and adults not marrying.

• Gamera tai Shinkai kaijû Jigura (1971): The children’s kaiju thing will never make sense to me.

• Germania anno zero (1948): The king of Italian neo realism goes to Germany and makes a film about life in Berlin post-war. It’s a little contrived compared to his earlier films. Still remarkable he made it, though.

• Gor (1987): This is a silly “science fantasy” film with basically no science fiction, all fantasy, based on what appears to be a rather notorious book series. Professor gets into a car accident and is transported to a different earth that we can’t see because it’s on the other side of the sun from us (or something). Things there are different.

• 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 films. They pale in comparison to Méliès, the great of the age, and I’m not really sure why I was supposed to seek her out. I think some people value representation more than innovation.

• Krótki film o miłości (1988): This is actually an episode of The Dekalog, which I watched, like, 17 years ago, expanded into a feature.

• La maman et la putain (1973): 3 and a half hours of an insufferable Frenchman (played by an actor known for playing insufferable Frenchmen) trying to fuck four or five different women and yelling at them for getting mad at him for trying to fuck other women. (And when he’s not yelling at them or complaining, he’s lecturing them because he’s oh so very smart, you see.) Some people think it’s a masterpiece.

• Narayama Bushikō (1983): I managed to finally watch the remake. (I have accidentally seen the original twice.) If you ever want to see an example of a film totally remade even though it’s almost exactly the same story, watch the 1958 and 1983 versions of this movie. They are so different.

• Paisà (1946): An incredible, multilingual docudrama in 6 parts about the Allied liberation of Italy made only a year after the war ended. The English actors are not good but I don’t think that matters.

• Seven Chances (1925): Funnily enough, after watching this I watched an Alice Guy short that inspired this. Not one of Keaton’s best as it takes a while to get to the reason you watch the film, the chase scene.

• El Sur (1983): A well-shot and affecting coming-of-age drama about a girl discovering the truth about her seemingly incredible father.

• Warrior Queen (1987): No warrior queen in this one. And I’m not sure this is the most footage I’ve seen taken from another film (30 years earlier!) but I’ve never seen so much incorporated into the climax. Among the laziest films I think I’ve ever seen, given the production values are better than some.

TV I’m Watching:

• Archer (2009): I missed the final season somehow so I’ve started watching it. I used to absolutely love this show but I feel like I’ve grown tired of it or it’s gotten stale. I only laugh out loud once or twice an episode now, at most. But I’ll finish it. It will be weird to try to write a review of it so many years after I first started watching it. I might have to re-watch it or something.

• Basketball:

  • March Madness: I watched the entire madness as I always do. Though people are complaining, it was better than last year’s tournament, which was the worst since I started watching.

  • NBA: The Raptors ended up 5th, despite their attempts to fall into the play-in. Great play-in night last night and I look forward to the remaining games and the playoffs. Stay tuned for some Raptors blogs from me.

• Baseball: One of my New Year’s resolutions is to watch more Blue Jays pre-All Star break. (We didn’t really tune in until July last year.) So far, sort of okay.

• The Diplomat (2023): I mostly enjoy this show even though it’s kind of ridiculous. Jenn and I were talking about it and I think one thing I like about it is that it at least sort of exists in some realms of plausibility much of the time, unlike say, House of Cards. I have reservations but I am usually able to ignore them because I find it entertaining. (And the cast is excellent.)

• F1: Due to, um, certain things happening in the Middle East, there aren’t many races this spring. The next race is in May.

• Master of None (2015): I knew things would change in the third season but holy hell it’s a different show. They sort of address it by doing the Master of None Presents “Moments in Love” thing but it is a completely different show. Did people know that in 2021?

• Taskmaster: The British show is finally back.

  • New Zealand: We finished the latest season available on YouTube. 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.

What I’m Listening to:

• Cannonball Adderley: Somethin’ Else (1958): This is a hard bop/ cool jazz record (as was the style at the time) widely considered Adderley’s best.

• Bach: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (1731): Widely considered his greatest cantata, or one of them. I have not listened to enough of them to judge.

• Cardew: Treatise (1967): Because of the nature of this infamous piece, a 193-page graphical score made up of lines and symbols, I listened to two different versions:

  • Art Lange, Jim Baker, Carrie Biolo, Guillermo Gregorio, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jim O’Rourke: Treatise (1999): I think that if you treat it as background music, you will occasionally be startled but mostly it will drift on by, moving in and out of your awareness depending on how busy you are. If you try to just listen to it on its own, you may find it rewarding. You may find it dull. It’s really hard to know. I was mostly doing other things while I listened to it. (Because of course I was. It’s over 140 minutes long.)

  • Kymatic Ensemble: Treatise (2016): Listening to two totally different versions is illustrative (and, you know, the point is that no version is the same). I much preferred this one to the more famous version above.

• Ornette Coleman Double Quartet: Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1961): Certainly one of the most important jazz albums of the 1960s and in the history of free jazz. The first mostly improvised album-long performance in the history of jazz.

• Dutilleux: Ainsi la nuit (1976): I somehow missed that I had originally listened to this, like, 15-20 years ago. Anyway, this is one of the great string quartets of the last quarter of the 20th century. It’s a true demonstration of how “avant garde” does not have to mean “random.”

• Giordano: Andrea Chénier (1896): A decent late Romantic Italian opera.

• Liszt: "Bagatelle sans tonalité” (1885): To the best of my knowledge, the first major break with Western tonality occurs here. Sure, it doesn’t sound that radical now but imagine what it would have sounded like 140 years ago.

• Mozart: String Quartet No. 20 in D major, K. 499 "Hoffmeister" (1786): An okay string quartet.

• Mahler: Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1901-05): I listened to the orchestral version of this song cycle, not the piano version.

• Red Nichols: I couldn’t find the right compilation and I let my completist streak take control and now I’ve found myself listening to way too much music by this second rate trumpeter from the 1920s. What am I doing with my life?

• Orlando di Lasso aka Orlande de Lassus aka Roland de Lassus aka Orlandus Lassus aka Orlande de Lattre aka Roland de Lattre:

  • Lagrime di San Pietro (1594): This is an absolutely gorgeous piece of Renaissance choral music performed A Capella.

  • Penitential Psalms (1584): I like this less than the Lagrime di San Pietro.

• Les Paul: Best of the Capitol Masters - 90th Birthday Edition (2005): I couldn’t find his box set online so I had to grab a best of compilation instead.

• The Amazing Bud Powell Vols. 1 & 2 (1952, 1954, 1956): Released years after it was recorded, a good demonstration as to why Powell was the second greatest bop pianist.

• The Quintet: Hot House: The Complete Jazz at Massey Hall Recordings (1953): Reputed to be the greatest jazz concert of all time by some. Of course it’s not. But it’s Diz and Bird and Roach with Mingus and Powell. So it’s good. (Or rather part of it is. Some of it is just Mingus, Powell and Roach.)

• Rihm: Piano Pieces (2008): Rihm is not my favourite 20th century composer of piano music by a long shot. If anything, he is almost a little too avant garde for me in his ’60s/’70s work that I’ve heard. (I know there are a few pieces missing. This isn’t a complete set.) It feels too random, to disconnected from tradition. I like his later music more though not all of it is arguably as original as his earlier work.

• Schubert: Erlkönig” (1815): One of the most famous lied ever, perhaps the most famous. You’ve heard the opening (and probably the refrain) even if you don’t think you’ve heard it.

• Richard Strauss: Also sprach Zarathustra (1896): Hard to know what to say about this. You and I have heard the opening movement, “Sunrise,” so many times it’s cliche.

• Tchaikovsky: Swan Lake (1876): The second most famous ballet of all time is a little long as a listening experience but is full of great high romantic music.

• And of course, there are the usual covers.