Improv Murder, Tinder Swindlers, Dostoevsky in Wisconsin,Your Winter of Soul, and More…
Dear Wags,
February, like Napoleon in Russia, is short, cold and bitter, but you need not be! Oh, don’t be so literal. We aren’t mocking your height, we are talking about your temperament, which may need some seasonal tweaking. Aside from the danger posed by black ice, we think the dead of winter is a grand time. Expectations are low, and therefore, the most surprising things are liable to happen. Are you ready for them? Clearly, great things are on the horizon for you: You have that lightening wit, those dazzling good looks, and manifestly excellent taste in reading material. Therefore, we are obliged to keep tossing distractions in your radiant path. They will warm you up this February, a misunderstood month of low expectations but great inspirations. Drink deeply from this cup!
Yours Ever,
Laughs
Murderville (Netflix). Wag Supremo Will Arnett is every cop show cliché as Det. Terry Seattle, who must solve a new case every week with the help of a new partner, played by hapless famouses who include Conan O’Brien, Annie Murphy, and Marshawn Lynch (a stitch). The guests aren’t given a script, and so must improv their way through the mystery. Buckle up for Sharon Stone performing an autopsy!
Thrills
Suspicion (Apple TV+). Four ordinary, if quite photogenic Brits (Georgina Campbell, Elizabeth Henstridge, Kunal Nayyar, and Tom Rhys-Harries) are arrested on suspicion of having kidnapped the brat of an icy (is there another kind?) media mogul played by Dame Uma Thurman. Off they scurry to prove their innocence, if they are innocent…just the sort of nail biter you need, from Genius Rob Williams.
Docs
The Tinder Swindler (Netflix). The charming Shimon Hayut posed as a billionaire and flimflammed unsuspecting European women out of heaps of money. But he didn’t count on his marks banding together to take him down. Sisterhood is powerful, Shimon! Didn’t they teach you anything at the Tel Aviv Institute of Con Artistry?
Riveted: The History of Jeans (PBS). The secret history of the quintessential American garment, from slavery to the Wild West to Woodstock to Gloria Vanderbilt, and far beyond. Children, jeans were stiff pantaloons that could not be applied to the leg parts without struggling with grommets and zippery-type appliances.
Torn (Disney+). A tribute to mountaineer Alex Lowe, who lost his life in an avalanche, as rendered by his son Max. As majestic as the Rockies. —Fanny B. Workman
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Fiction
All happy families are alike…so you will find the Chao clan of Haven, Wisconsin awfully different. There’s patriarch Leo, running the family restaurant, in a spot of difficulty with his wife Winnie, who has left the premises to live an old gym. There’s Dagou, the eldest son, who’s thrown his life into helping his dad’s business, while Ming, the troublesome black sheep, can’t be bothered. Then there’s the youngest boy, James, who crosses paths with a tragic stranger on his way home from college. That big Christmas party promises to be a doozy. Lan Samantha Chang’s The Family Chao takes inspiration from The Brothers Karamazov, and dives deep into the secrets and lies of small town America.
Nonfiction
The 1950s—it wasn’t all sock hops and malt shops, no matter what they tell you. Luckily Mr. James R. Gaines, Journalist, is around to give us a new portrait of that very American decade, not as an era of vanilla conformity but as one of brave and often accidental heroes. In The Fifties: An Accidental History, he profiles pioneers of the feminist, gay rights, environmental and civil rights movements, all formed by the Richie Cunningham era. All that, and the birth of Rock n Roll, too. —Dean Moriarty
Hugh Hefner — champion of free speech and various progressive causes. Also: controlling, strange, and well, that whole sexploitation empire. Power: Hefner’s Long Shadow explores the complicated legacy of the Playboy tycoon, who conveniently expired just as the #Metoo movement was born. The Dauntless Amy Rose Spiegel travels into the darkest recesses of the Mansion, and comes back with all kinds of harrowing tales — including how Hef and Bill Cosby’s lives intertwined. Along the way, she explores how a controversial brand shaped midcentury American popular culture. —Marie Catherine Ochs
Questlove’s Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is Wag’s vote for the best documentary of 2021. Now the soundtrack is available for you to listen, groove, or frug to… isn’t that what they did in Mount Morris Park back in explosive, exciting 1969? If the Chambers Brothers’ electric Uptown won’t get you moving, it’s too late.
Hello partner/The world’s got problems/But you won’t work hard enough to solve them. With Thoughts and Prayers, South London singer/songwriter Samm Henshaw is proving that the winter of 2022 has Soul too, in a jazz-infused number that reminds us a just a touch of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, which isn’t something Wag says lightly.— Levee Green
There’s a rich array of content available to stream during Black History Month, a testament to an evolving culture. A mere half-century ago, a mainstream Hollywood film with a Black star was revolutionary. Our Long Read on Sidney Poitier explored his remarkable contribution to cinema and society, and at no time was that more evident than 1963. The same year as the March on Washington, Poitier starred in Lilies of the Field, a simple tale of a rambler who aids a convent of German-speaking nuns in the building of a chapel. It is hardly radical, but Lilies was a tiny catalyst that helped push a paradigm shift, and Poitier became the first actor of color to win an Oscar for a leading role. Connie Field’s Freedom on My Mind (1994) charts the dangerous real world drive to register Black voters in the Deep South during the same period, while Ava Duvernay’s Selma (2014) dramatizes the struggle. Francesco Zippel’s Oscar Micheaux: The Superhero of Back Filmmaking, is a tribute the first major African American filmmaker, who made more than 40 movies, both silent and sound, in the early days of pictures. These films are all screening this month on TCM, and that’s only a small sampling of the good stuff on offer.— Tracy Chambers
July 28, 2024
