Season 3 of TransParent disappoints, and here's why

Sad to say this but I'm afraid Season 3 of the Amazon series TransParent just does not live up to the high standard that it set in Seasons 1 and 2. The characters face the same struggles and dilemmas - struggling to find their identities, sexual and otherwise, to make sense of their lives and their feelings, to advance in their careers, to find someone to love them - and it's great to see that these struggles enacted by 30 somethings and 60 somethings, not just by teens and young professionals. But Season 3 does not advance the plot of push the characters to moments of crisis and decision, as did the first two. Oddly, the 2 main characters in this season seem to be not Maura and her kids but Shelly, the ex, and Raquel, the rabbi. The best episodes were the one with the turtle, which mostly focused on the early years of the Pfefferman family, and Raquel's breakdown on the eve of the Seder. Others didn't come close: I could never quite believe the josh-moves-to-Colorado and becomes a Xtian - and neither could the Solloways, as they quickly back away from that plot twist. And what about the Season finale, which seems like an infomercial for Norwegian Cruise Lines? Aside from hardly believing this family would go on a cruise together, the narrative just leads us to nowhere - that is - to Shelly's performance on the cruise cabaret in which she sings - quite effectively - an Alanis Morissette song. What's the point? I though her one-woman show was to be about her life's journey, not a performance by a cover artist; was this to gratify a whim of the very talented Judith Light, who is emerging as the show's star? Sorry, but maybe there are now too many plot elements, some getting lost, and the next season should bring the focus back to where it belongs, i.e., Maura's journey.

An overlooked film that deserves a place among the fine films of its era: Coup de Grace

Who knew about the war in the "Baltic States" after WWI and the Russian Revolution, in which the Baltic (mostly German) soldiers and aristocrats fought the Bolshevik and Communist guerilla armies trying to spread Soviet state further into Europe? Victor Schlondorff's 1978 Coup de Grace tells of these long-forgotten battles (the movie is based on a novel by Marguerite Yorcenour), focused on a group of aristocratic German fighters housed in the ancestral castle of one of the officers (the castle had been abandoned to servants and the long-suffering sister and aunt of the officer during the war - reminds me a little of the castle in The Seventh Seal abandoned by the men during a Crusade). This is only to a degree a war movie - though some of the scenes of trench warfare are among the highlights; it's really movie about sex and power - with the sister, Sophia, at the center of all of the complex tensions and relations. The movie is tense and engaging throughout and requires pretty close attention, as the relationships among the characters are nuanced, full of surprises, and in constant transition. Some of the great scenes include the movement of troops in the snow, the New Year's party that goes out of control, and the final scenes, a confrontation of the officers and a rebel troupe, at a remote railroad station. This film is pretty obscure - I don't know anything about the director and not much about German cinema from the 1970s - but I think it deserves a place among the fine movies of its era, many by much more well-known "auteurs." Criterion thinks so, too.

OJ and the racial divide and a troubled mind

OJ world finally finished after we clocked in on the 5th and final episode of the excellent ESPN doc OJ: Made in America. Overall sense: it was horrible and frightening how the trial and its outcome split the nation along a racial divide or, maybe more accurately, made the divide apparent to all. The case was prescient - at the time the verdict was clearly seen as a payback for the LAPD beating of Rodney King; the black community in LA saw it as a case against the LAPD in general, the white community could not comprehend how a jury could let a man so obviously guilty based on the facts of the case and the evidence, his history, his motive, his inconsistent story, his lack of an alibi, go free - provoking righteous anger, especially among white progressive women. And today we see that both were right: police brutality against blacks is even more evident today thanks to social media, and violence against women is also more evident. We also sense, from the documentary more than from the Fx docudrama, that OJ was a peculiar and deeply troubled man: incredibly talented, good-looking, charming - who wouldn't want to be his friend? - that that he had a mysterious dark side: clearly beat Nicole on many occasions, flew into rages, at lives lived the thug life and at times the country-club life of the elite. As he himself said he was neither black nor white - or, we might say, he was both - and he was both a hero to the black community and a betrayer. I suspect that to this day he literally does not know if he killed Nicole and Ron Goodman; his mind is so troubled that I think he can just erase parts of his memory. The ESPN is particularly sorrowful as we see OJ in prison at the start and the end, an old man, a broken man, and we think what could have been.

Should you watch People v OJ Simpson or OJ: Made in America?

The ESPN documentary OJ: Made in America continues to fascinate and inform and what more could we ask of a documentary? Perhaps even more than the great Fx series The People v OJ Simpson, this doc reveals how the Simpson defense put the LAPD on trial than OJ, and how Cochran's brilliant if sometimes way over the top arguments led the jury to believe that they were fighting a history of racism and oppression and: If you don't stop it, who will? He completely took the focus off OJ and the evidence - and everyone in the courtroom knew that, you could see it on their faces. And in fact he was right: the trial caught the attention of the whole nation (even the world), dominating the news for about 7 months - in the dawning days of cable live news coverage and well before the Internet and social media - and we were not so interested in whether OJ killed Nicole and Ron but in the horrors revealed about race relations in LA and police brutality - a topic, amazingly, that we're focused on today as well. The documentary can catch the courtroom drama far more effectively than the Fx drama - the look on Marcia Clark's face after her tepid and technical closing argument; the dramatic scene of OJ trying on the gloves and showing the jury that the don't fit, his face stone-cold and mute - these are far more powerful when we see the actual footage. What the documentary can't capture is some of the internal debates and relationships within and among the legal teams (I assume these are based on Toobin's reporting; he was involved w/ both projects): the developing relationship between Clark and Darden, Darden's history with Cochran, the fights within the Dream Team about legal strategy, the fights w/in the DA's office about whether to rely on Mark Furhman (turned out to be the worst decision in the entire trial) and whether to ask OJ to try on the gloves (2nd worst). For these reasons, it's good to see both productions, for People v coming first  - but overall I'd say People v OJ is more about the legal strategies and Made in America is more about the national issue of race.

TransParent season three first half - hits and misses

Season 3 of the Amazon series TransParent is still pretty great - Seasons 1 and 2 may have been the best, most moving, most informative and socially significant series on TV in the past 2 years, and there's plenty of competition (People v OJ, Making a Murderer, Veep, to name a few) - but not quite yet at the level of the first 2 seasons. And I think that's because for the first half of Season 3 at least we've been consistently on a down note: Sarah and Josh are terribly depressed (Josh is letting his music business slip away, too bad because music has been a huge plot element), Ali seems supposedly happy but I find the older, super-hip poet-prof she's involved in to be a truly dislikable and untrustworthy character - it's really hard to believe in her professions of love; she seems to be dangerous and exploitative - the wonderful rabbi is a woman of constant sorrow in this season, and Maura is distressed about her body image and seems to be pulling away from the trans friend but toward what we don't know. The only upbeat character is the mom, Shelly - but she seems heading for a fall. The humor has been pushed aside, for the most part. That said - I continue to really like all of the main characters and hoping for the best for them; the lost turtle episode was one of the best of the whole series so far (written and directed by the creator, Jill Soloway), the opening sequence of rabbi in distress was surprising and good (though nothing could top the opening sequence of season 2, the wedding photos), and I think the character of Sarah in particular is becoming ever more complex as she wrestles w/ faith, acceptance, commitment, and her kinky sexual drive. On the downside, I think they did a lousy job with the Rita subplot; I won't give anything away but will only say it all would have worked better had they built up Rita earlier as a key, sympathetic character, and the Ali-hip professor romance is very unpleasant - I keep hoping she'll see this woman's phoniness and get her out of her life. I miss her former partner, the singer from Sleater Kinney (sp?) and from Portlandia, and what happened to Ali's research on the family history?

Resurrecting LBJ: All the Way

The HBO Jay Roach All the Way, with Bryan Cranston as LBJ, is a really good adaptation for screen of a successful play (by Robert Shenkkan, had to look that up) and it gives Cranston and several other of the lesser-known leads opportunities for some fine soliloquies about politics and power. It kept me engaged for + two hours - beginning with a great and harrowing sequences of the assassination of JFK and then taking us through LBJ's first years in office, focusing on his fight to get Congress to pass his civil-rights bill and to win the nomination and ultimately e elected to his own term in 64. All of the interest centers on the civil rights struggle - which we see not only from Johnson's perspective as he threatens, cajoles, charms, and cons various congressional leaders to win passage while trying to appease MLK and other civil rights leaders who cannot fathom the political process and the need for compromise and delay. The play/movie makes the process clear and has some pretty entertaining scenes: LBJ's many meetings with "Uncle Dick" Russell, of Georgia (Frank Langella) and HHH, the hapless liberal and later the unhappy second fiddle; LBJ's instant dismissal of Walter Jenkins after Jenkins was picked up on a "morals" charge - and LBJ's probing Hoover about how to identify a homosexual; his brutal treatment of Lady Bird (one of, I think, only two female roles in the play/film - a reflection of the time, I guess). Overall, though, here's little or no new ground in this story; anyone who's read the Caro LBJ bio will be familiar w/ all this material and w/ LBJ's domineering and bullying personality, and his deep insecurity. Vietnam is a shadow - only barely referenced, but of course we know that it was LBJ's undoing; this play (and Caro's bio, to a degree) serve to resurrect LBJ's posthumous reputation; for decades, his legislative accomplishments, which were significant - far more than any president other than Reagan (unfortunately) has accomplished in the past half-century, has been completely obscured by the tragedy and folly of the war.

Stillman's period piece with a contemporary mood and energy

Whit Stillman's Love & Friendship, based on the Jane Austen (unfinished?) short novel Lady Susan, is a little baffling at first as Stillman intros a slew of titled characters (doing so in a campy way, with the characters in pose with names and titles beneath them) but it gets under way as once the eponymous Susan, rumored to be the biggest flirt in England, played very well by Kate Beckinsale, takes the screen and completely holds our attention and engagement as she plots and schemes and manipulates everyone, especially the men, in the movie - a cruel woman, indifferent to her suffering daughter, heartless to all, willing to sacrificed love, friendship, anything to serve her selfish needs - in other words, not exactly a typical Austen heroine. The acting - an all British cast save for Chloe Seveigny as an exile from Connecticut (whose husband threatens to send her back to Hartford - to which Susan archly remarks: You could get scalped!). There are some really funny scenes, especially involving the suitors - Tom Bennett? - for Susan's daughter who's considered a bit of a "rattle," in other words, a kook. Not sure how many liberties Stillman took with Austen's prose or with the plot itself, but the film set in period feels lively and contemporary, with each of the characters vivid and distinct. The one flub, I think, was the annoying soundtrack, much of it medieval motets about 200 years out of synch w/ the narrative period (though nice use of Mozart/Figaro I think at the conclusion as couples awkwardly and surprisingly pair off).

People v OJ series: They know too much to argue or to judge

I'll continue in the chorus of praise for the Fx series The People v OJ Simpson - smart and engaging from start to finish, a great story about the justice system, about race, about celebrity, about the media - very contemporary in some ways and, in others, showing how far we've come since the 1990s - when it was a big deal to see this story unfold live, way before social media made everything live - and how little we've traveled: the same issues of police brutality and racism haunting us today. The cast was excellent throughout, with special nod to Davis Schwimmer as Rob Kardashian, OJ's best pal who lived in anguish throughout the trial, in doubt about his friend's innocence, and to John Travolta as the insider-lawyer Bob Shapiro, another OJ pal who could never quite stomach Cochran's theatrics. Each script -- 10 episode -- was smart and succinct and, as noted in earlier post, even if you think you remember the trial I can almost guarantee this series will bring you new information and new insight. Though at the end we can be furious with the jury for it's almost instant decision to acquit, we also understand their perception and their distrust of all evidence presented by the LAPD and the DA - the team behind the series leaving it up to us to figure right from wrong: they know too much to argue or to judge.

Terrific Netflix doc that's about much more than football

Just as Friday Night Lights was not exactly about high-school football - football was the device through which that great series told about the lives of American teens and their families at the dawn of the 21st century - the Netflix 6-part documentary Last Chance U is only nominally about football: It's also about race, poverty, American education, competition, and ambiguity. We follow for football players at Easter Miss Junior College, the national champion, each hoping for a football scholarship to a d-1 school and each carrying a burden of his own. These kids are from the direst poverty in the Deep South, troubled families, troubles of their own (2 had washed out of d-1 programs for some kind of malfeasance, not closely examined), and some with significant learning disabilities. EMJC is their potential ticket to or back to serious college football and, they hope, the NFL - that slight possibility of wealth and fame. But it's such a long shot, such an illusion, no matter what their talent. What to think about the school and its coaches, who push the men diabolically to play and win and run up the scores (perversely, the score spread is a factor in the all-important national rankings). The football program in Scoobie, Miss., is the point of pride for the school and for the entire town - so maybe it's great that they have focused so much time and $ on this program, in a town that otherwise is deeply impoverished and school that otherwise would, it seems, be, let's just say a long way from Princeton. The football team lifts the school and the community into national prominence - but it also raises some concerning questions. On the positive side, it's made clear that the players need to go to class and maintain a decent gpa to stay in school and on the team - and the tireless and extremely devoted "academic athletic advisor," Brittany Wagner, is completely devoted to keeping the players going academically - she's truly the hero of this series. But it's also clear that, even with all her counseling, some of the guys just can't do academics at a j.c. level - and the profs must be pressured to cut them a lot of slack. And then what? They go off to a college where football will be their full-time occupation; maybe that's good - a few will earn degrees that may help them even if they don't get a pro career - but others, it seems, are being exploited by the system: playing for big-time, big-money college programs and then spit out with no knowledge or skills except knowing the game (which for some may be enough) and often without a degree. Makes you think we ought to just make college teams part of the pro system and put aside the hypocrisy.