Enjoyed Season 5 of Schitt's Creek and hoping the final season will make its way to Netflix

Season 5 of the hilarious Canadian sitcom/drama Schitt's Creek continues the arc of the story line, as the 4 members of the beleaguered Rose family continue not only at adapt to their fallen state (a once-wealthy family, whose fortune came from a national chain of video stores, is now living in a small motel in near destitution in the eponymous remote township) but also in fact become a part of the community, changing the lives of others and becoming more mature, sensible, and loving, to their neighbors and to each other. The main plot lines in this 5th, and penultimate (though we probably won't see Season 6 on Netflix for some time, blah!) season,  involve Johnny Rose (the always-funny Eugene Levy - who with his son Daniel created this show) getting deeply involved in the management of the tiny motel, Moira (Katerine O'Hara) proud of the seeming revival of her acting career (she's cast in a Croation horror film admittedly a ripoff of The Birds) and planning a local theater production of Cabaret (which we thankfully get to see in the final episodes), the flamboyant David (Daniel Levy) now in love with his business partner (Patrick) who is his temperamental opposite, and the delightfully ditsy Alexa (Annie Murphy) trying to build her PR business and in love with her polar opposite, the straight-arrow somewhat naive Ted - and props as well to the dour Stevie (Emily Hampshire), who seems to be coming out of her shell of self-doubt, and to the goofy Mayor Roland Schitt (Chris Eliott). The quality of the episodes varies a bit, but there's a laugh in each one, and, hey, they're only 20 minutes a piece; it's not a binge-type series, but one to take a bit at a time, over time.

The best movie about the making of a movie: Day for Night

Francois Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) is probably the best of all movies about the making of a movie; no other film gives as great a sense of what it's like to direct a film and of the complex internal dramas that take place throughout the process of a shoot. Of course there are exaggerations and extremely eccentric behavior, but it's like a compendium of all that can go wrong on a shoot - and of how every aspect of the process connects to the director. We see not only the interplay of often narcissistic and insecure people but also the culture of the staff and crew and even the extras - so much controlled chaos that we wonder how any film is ever completed. Yet we also see how hard they all work, how difficult it is or can be to stage a simple scene, the constant rewriting and revising to make the script better and the demand this puts on the actors and crew, the incredibly scary work of the a stuntman and of the camera crew on a crane, the monumental task of dealing with extras on a complex street scene. And then - to recognize, of course, that all the complexity we're seeing takes place not only in the movie being filmed (Meet Pamela) but also on the film we're watching (Day for Night); there's a movie outside the frame as well as within the frame, so to speak. Of course this is not a documentary; there are many story lines and some terrific long takes, notably the famous opening shot and the long series of takes in which one of the stars, drinking heavily, screws up each time - at first this is comic, soon it's nearly tragic. This might recall for some the recent film about that showed what it's like to be a working actor, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood. The movie it most reminds me of, however, is the great Rules of the Game - many interwoven plot strands, much interplay between the luminaries and the workers, collision of social classes and social forces, face mixed with tragedy - so I was not surprised when one of the characters name-checks the Renoir film. Like Rules, Day for Night is totally engrossing - look, if you're even thinking about watching a Truffaut film you're probably interested in how a movie is made - funny and sad, especially in that it was probably his last great film - a fitting capstone.

A sometimes puzzling but overall powerful and unusual film from Zambia: I AmNot a Witch

Zambian filmmaker/screenwriter Rungano Nyoni's debut movie, I Am Not a Witch (2017) is a striking and unusual film, although puzzling in many ways, at least to an American viewer, as it's sometimes hard to know to what extent the film is "realistic," to what extend it's satiric and surreal, and to what social problem and issue it's trying to address. That said, the film has some totally astonishing sequences and of course we all get the major theme of the film, which is the way society, whether in Africa or anywhere, demonizes its social outcasts and suppresses the voices of the eccentric and the oppressed - women in particular. The plot such as it is: The film begins with bus or van ride down a barely maintained dusty dirt road till we get to an end point at a series of open-air pens, something like a zoo. We disembark from the bus, buy a "ticket" (expensive, someone says) and we see a large gathering of women in strange garb and with unusual facial masks or tattoos: these are "witches," we're told (tourists are taking pictures); each is attached to a spool and long ribbon of white fabric; we are told this keeps them from "flying." The women burst into a frightening chant. So we see or sense that these women are exploited outcasts who have become social "curiosities"; on some level they remind us of a George Saunders story (people as live exhibits in theme parks; women attached to clotheslines as lawn decor!). But the story is never surreal or supernatural, as the plot gets in motion - and we follow a young girl (later named Shula) who turns up unaccompanied in a small village, where the inhabitants accuse her of begin a witch. After a sham trial - scary! - that convicts her she is shunted off to a corrupt government official who brings Shula to the witch conclave, where she was initiated - and they he tries to profit from her in various ways: claiming that for a fee she can produce rain (the Zambian landscape is dusty and uninviting throughout); bringing her in full witch garb on a TV-talk show, and so forth. Shula throughout is near mute, but she does in various ways resist her fate and refuses to call herself a witch. The end of the film, which I will not divulge, is ambiguous at best. And at the end, we have to wonder exactly what Nyoni is trying to get across: an indictment of African culture? of government corruption? of male chauvinism? of a terrible system of just and of social welfare? Or is the plight of Shula meant to be more symbolic - an allegory for the oppression of all women, or of all outsiders? Or maybe all of these things. Shula is the ultimate scapegoat.

A good example of clasic American noir: Johnny O'Clock

The 1947 Robert Rosssen film, Johnny O'Clock, is a good example of classic American noir, as tough-guy, rumpled, stocky, cheap-cigar-smoking NYPD detective investigates a case of a high-stakes gambler shot to death, a probe that leads the detective (Koch, played by Lee J Cobb) down some strange and confusing pathways. Unlike most noir classics, in this one the detective is a secondary figure; the title character, played by Dick Powell, operates as small private (illegal, obviously) casino and knows little about the killing under investigation, but gets drawn ever-deeper into an increasingly Byzanatine narrative about a murdered police detective who was way too close to to O'Clock and his "partner," a sleazy mobster who has dreams of expanding his gaming parlour (and who, stupidly, is himself a heavy gambler; O'Clock, in contrast, runs the games but he himself is never stupid enough to rely on chance). O'Clock gets drawn deeper into the story when he falls for - I can't quite say "falls in love w/" - the sister of a murder victim, and a highlight of the film is their tough-guy/gal dialog. Another highlight: A vision of NYC in the 1940s, and who won't be amused by rotary-dial pay phones on which the caller can pick up, dial O, and say: Get me the municipal airport. And what about the airport?: you can leave Manhattan 30 minutes before the flight at get to the airport in time; you get to the airport and they ask at curbside What flight? Answer: Flight 4. And Flight 4 boarding call announced over a loudspeaker. Air travel has changed! It's definitely a period piece, but a look back at this period of smooth-talking gangsters and disheveled but shrewd cops is always a kick.

A wartime comedy/spy film from 1942 that's still worth a look: To Be or Not To Be

Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 film, To Be or Not to Be, was daring an imaginative for its time, though much of the humor doesn't stand up too well today. He tells a complicated story centered on a small troupe of actors in Poland during the time o the Nazi invasion (1939) - canceling their season and putting the actors out of work. Through various complicated incidents the troupe becomes involved in supporting a resistance movement and spying on the Nazi occupying forces - all of which entails the actors playing roles in real life, pretending to be Nazi soldiers/officers. The Lubitsch touch here is that the film, though the stakes are real, is not a spy movie in any conventional sense; in fact it's much more of a comedy, with the Nazi officers clownishly ridiculous (it's no surprise that Mel Brooks did a remake/update of this film, which seems right in his wheelhouse) and the Polish actors completely hamming it up (they're portrayed as not especially good actors even in best of times) in their new "roles." Particularly funny is the scene in which the young Jack Benny engages in one-on-one dialog with a Nazi officer, filling time with joshing and small talk. Clearly, this film was meant not only as a wartime diversion but also as wartime propaganda - and if anything it seems that he underplays the evil of Hitler and his forces, making them comic buffoons rather than racist and malevolent tyrants and toadies. The film today feels very much of its time and place, but EL always brought a touch of style and glamor to his films (in this one, thanks to Carole Lombard as the doyenne and thanks to some snazzy costuming and set design as well), which, along with a few good laugh scenes (notably, Benny's 3 attempts to get through the eponymous soliloquy) this film is still worth a look.

Why it's so much fun to watch Mississippi Mermaid and why you can't stop watching Tiger King

Sure it's not much more than a French take on a noir crime remake featuring an alluring femme fatale, but thanks to Francois Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (1969) is incredibly fun to watch - just ignore the improbability of many of the plot twists - thanks to his great, imaginative direction and the presence of two great French film stars in the leads, Catherine Deneuve and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The story, in short (based on a novel by the crime writer Cornell Woolrich) has a well-off factory owner in the French territory of Reunion resorting to the classifieds for a mail-order bride - which first of all is hysterical: Imgine Belmondo in need or a mail-order bride or Deneuve responding to want ad! Of course there are twists, which we see way before Belmondo does, but even he, playing a dolt (funny in itself as well), realizes that this is not the bride he'd expected - though he falls in love w/ her nevertheless (no surprise there) - until she bilks him of all his money. In short, he heads off to France to track her down, but when he finds her he falls in love w/ her all over again and the two embark on a completely improbable crime spree, no details necessary because who really cares about the plot? But Truffaut's touches make the movie lots of fun; to cite a few: the opening credits played out over a page of want ads and read by various men and women; the terrific way he fills us in on the back story while Belmondo drives at reckless speed on the narrow roads of Reunion (or wherever the film was actually shot), Belmondo (his stunt man of course) scaling balconies and ironwork to sneak into Deneave's top-floor apartment; the really funny dialog as they buy a getaway car, the absurdity of burying a body beneath the concrete floor of a house they're renting (Did you ever try to dig a grave beneath a concrete basement floor? It's really hard to do!), and the final moments which make a nice bookend w/ the great freeze-frame Truffaut used at the end of 400 Blows. In short, not a movie to take seriously but one to just plain enjoy.

A few words on the 7-part Netflix Erik Goode-Rebecca Chaiklin documentary series The Tiger King, about the zoo owner "Joe Exotic" and his years-long battle with animal-rights activist Carole Baskin. At least through the first three episodes as we examine the warped psyche of Joe and his increasingly bizarre behavior alongside the weird obsessive behavior of Baskin we just keep wondering: Could these people be real? Could this show can become any more weird? And it does become more and more weird as there are various unexpected twists in the story line through the first 3 episodes. But I have to say that eventually the filmmakers have made their point - everyone involved w/ the illegal market in tiger cats is at best weird and at worst malevolent and criminal, with many victims including not only the wildlife - and by the end we feel or at least I felt I'd had enough already; these are not people I'd want anything to do with ever, I'd never go to one of these "private zoos" nor would I have deal with these people, and I'd had enough - though I have to admit, I couldn't help but see it through to the end. Obviously the filmmakers worked long and hard on this project and it's really hard to "kill your darlings," but some judicious editing would have helped, I think.

Schitt's Creek becomes more of a family/social drama in Season 4

We're continuing to enjoy Schitt's Creek, a perfectly light-hearted, feel-good series that makes for excellent small-dose viewing (episodes are only about 20 minutes) during this time of social isolation. and will only have a brief note here on Season 4: With this season the show is moving away from its broad-based comedy of the first seasons, though there are still plenty of laughs w/ each episode, but now the show is becoming more of a family drama that at times is a little schmaltzy but mostly it's touching and endearing as we watch son David (Daniel Levy) learn to express and accept love from a caring partner, Alexas (Annie Murphy) to find some self-worth and some competence in a new career and to turn her back on thoughtless and mean-spirited friends from her youth, mom Moira (Katherine O'Hara) tone it down a bit and actually do some public service to help her new community rather than feed her ego, and dad Johnny Rose (Eugene Levy) become more a part of the community rather, investing his time and effort into a local project rather than biding his time till the family can escape. I'm hoping that in Season 5 we don't entirely scrap the comedy, which in the end is what keeps this show aloft, and also hoping that Netflix will pick up the final season (6) before too long.

The Virgin Spring is one of the greatest early Bergman films

Among the many Ingmar Bergman films that I've seen, sometimes multiple times, for some reason I'd never see The Virgin Spring, which won the Best Foreign Language film Academy Award in 1960 (Bergman's only such award?). What a surprise - it's still a terrific film: creating a world that seems both realistic and remote, strong though simply delineated characterization as in a folk tale (which this movie is, at least at its source), frightening and morally complex, well-acted in all roles, and stunningly beautiful to look at, thanks to Sven Nyquist's b/w cinematography and extraordinary lighting effects. The story takes place in medieval Sweden in early spring (Bergman had an uncanny ability to create a medeival milieu; see also the quite different Seventh Seal). The great Max von Sydow, patriarch of a small farming family, sends his beautiful young daughter off to deliver holy candles to the local church (a day's ride on horseback); she comes across a group of goatherds - two grown men and a boy - and is naive enough to stop to offer to share her prepared lunch w/ them, with terrible consequences. We switch back to her farm family, where her parents are concerned that she's a day late in her expected return; the goatherds turn up at the farm house, where they are taken in for the night and offered food and shelter. But the family learns through inadvertence the fate of their daughter, and the patriarch exacts revenge - then seeks God's forgiveness. So yes this film bears the mark of many Bergman films to follow, a man struggling with hardship and with his faith - but it's also more stark and simple in its plot development than most other IB films: a folk tale of course, but also a parable or legend, with suffering, pain, sorrow, and a strangely open conclusion.

Ozark contineus to be an exciting series through Season 3, and a note on early black cinema

The 3rd season of Ozark continues with the great storytelling, writing, and acting of the first 2 seasons, as we watch the Byrde family sink ever deeper into world of money laundering, corrupt gambling, moving heroin, and outright war between two Mexican cartels. Is it really possible that a brilliant CPA/money manger, i.e., Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) would get caught up in this world and draw his family into the vortex? No, not really; but the show is written and presented with such intelligence that we're totally caught up in the drama - with special props to the amazing cast-against-type Laura Linney as Wendy Byrde, Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore, and Janet McTeer as Helen Pierce. What sets this series apart in particular is the writing. Though there are several scenes of brutal violence in Season 3, by and large the confrontations among the characters are played out with language; throughout the series I'm always trying to anticipate what the characters will say to one another to get out of increasingly dreadful crises and they're always a step or two ahead of me. No, there's not the character depth of, say, the Sopranos, the greatest crime-family drama, but the plotting is rich and intelligent and, in season 3, the arrival of Wendy's brother Ben (Tom Pelphrey)  adds a dimension (bipolar disorder) and some disturbing plot developments. Obviously, the Byrdes will be back for a Season 4.

On another note, I also have been watching a silent-era film fro 1919, Within Our Gates, by Oscar Micheaux; he was one of the first black film directors and this film is considered the oldest surviving work by a black director. To b honest, it's not a great film - the plot is jumbled and extremely had to follow, and there are far too many long sequences in which the acting is stagey and the action is minimal - but it does have a few powerful scenes, in particular the manhunt for two black characters and their horrendous demise at the hands of a vengeful crowd - and it touches on many themes of the lives of blacks in the cities of the North (Boston? Chicago?) and in the rural South. The main character is trying to raise funds for a sorrowful yet noble school for black children in the South, in in the process she encounters a lot of bias and prejudice among the grande dames of New England. Today, this film is more of a relic or curiosity than a great or innovative work of cinema - but that said it's eye-opening for many, or at least for me, to see that there was such vibrant films and race and racism done by black artists and for the black community, all in the shadow of the frightful Birth of a Nation.

Signs of early greatness in Antonioni's first film

I'm not sure if you could tell from his first film - Story of a Love Affair (1950) - that Michelangelo Antonioni was destined for a great career (Le'Avventura, Blow-up, The Passenger ... ) but it sure stands as evidence that right from the start he could, w/ minimal budget, create a good noir narrative, a distinct sense of time and place, and a few powerful dramatic scenes. The film starts out as a conventional detective story - a middle-aged PI gets the mundane assignment of checking up on the fidelity of the wife of a wealthy manufacturer - and we follow the detective through about the first 3rd of the fil: He checks out the wife's background and we soon learn that before she was married there was suspicion that she and a boyfriend (Guido) were present when Guido's then-fiancee fell to her death in an elevator shaft. Fell? Pushed? It's unclear - but when Guido and the wife learn that a detective has been snooping (they hadn't seen each other in 7 years) they suspect he's investigating the elevator accident. Their suspicions make matters much worse for them, as they plot to do away w/ the husband. Aside from the clever plot twists, which go right to the end of the movie, some of the highlights are the cool jazz score (sax and piano duo); terrific location shots of Italy just 5 years post war w/ some new construction, much war damage, and poverty all around - the vast boulevards and traffic circles almost devoid of cars and trucks and you could just part anywhere anytime even in Milan!; great rich/poor contrasts (the lavish apartment, baronial apartment of the wife/husband and the dingy hotel room where Guido makes do); a great charity dress-auction scene; the argument between Guido and woman on a bridge above railroad tracks and a muddy canal; the test drive of the Maserati; and for a lighter touch the somewhat comic scenes between the detective on the street and his boss back at the office pressing for results. All told, a really good film by many measures - surprising that it hasn't been adapted and remade in a contemporary setting (which would probably miss the whole point and ruin it, but still ... )

Season 3 of Schitt's Creek continues to endear itself to viewers

Not a whole lot to add re the unfortunately named Schitt's Creek, Season 3, as this season continues with the arc begun in Season 2; we see the foursome of the Rose family become increasingly absorbed into and welcomed by their community-in-exile, the eponymous Creek, and over time we continue to believe in and care about the Rose clan. At the outset of Season 1 they seemed like a bunch of spoiled brats and stuck-up snobs who found refuge in a crappy motel in this obscure (California?) village; by the end of Season 3 they are grateful to their eccentric neighbors and each in his or her way has become a contributing member to this society that once they held in scorn and contempt (as a side note - notice how their two-room motel digs by this point look pretty clean and spacious and even comfortable - not the mildewed, decrepit motel rooms of Season 1). At this point in the story line, Johnny Rose (the always hilarious Eugene Levy) is co-manager of the motel (owned now by Stevie, the sardonic Emily Hampshire); wife Moira (the other-the-top Catherine O'Hara) is an elected member of the Town Council; son David (Daniel Levy) has opened a so-far successful boutique gift shop; and daughter Alexis (Annie Murphy) has at last completed her h.s. degree (at age 28?). As I write this summary, I recognize that it does not do justice to the hilarious interplay among the foursome and some of the townsfolk nor to the clever dialog in some of the better episodes, such as Moira's attendance at a municipal-leaders conference or Johnny's attempt to explain "tax writeoffs" to Daniel. Anyway, the show continues to endear itself to viewers, and as each episode is really short - 21 minutes or so - it makes for a perfect moment of levity in these extremely dark and stressful days.

Another fine film-drama in the classic Rohmer style, plus a note on his Marquise of O

Eric Rohmer's 1984 film, Full Moon in Paris, is another one of his "inaction" dramas, a movie that feels more like a play, consisting almost entirely of a series of lengthy, one-to-one dialogs, with only a few exterior shots; also, like some of his other excellent films, this one (despite to sappy romantic title that conveys little info and the wrong mood for this film) focuses closely on a troubled young woman who seems to have a lot of friends (and lovers) but no happiness. In this film the woman, Louise, is a recent college grad with a low-level job in the design industry; she's living in a Paris suburb with her boyfriend (Remi), and they are obviously a mismatched couple: She likes to go out with her friends and spend the whole night partying, he's a stay-at-home type, a muscular athletic guy without her artistic interests and pretensions. At the outset, she decides to convert the small Paris apartment that she's been leasing out for some extra income into a "pied a terre," so that she can spend nights at will in the city partying w/ her friends. This is not going to work! She's extremely flirtation, carrying on a long flirting relationship with a pretentious writer (Octave), really leading a double-life - but unhappy in both lives. Of course Remi rebels at her absences, leading to one pretty violent and emotional outburst - but they reconcile, she claims to really love him, but needs her independence, and further confrontations and infidelities ensue. What strikes us throughout out the film is her unhappiness - reminding me in particular of Maud (My Night at Maud's) and the young woman in The Green Ray. This is a fine film for those who like and admire Rohmer's work over the years, though his films are like none other and not for all tastes.

One further note on Rohmer's  The Marquise of O, on which I posted a few days ago: I looked back on notes I posted a few years ago on the Heinrich von Kleist story that is the source for this movie and was reminded that in the story - which concerns who raped and impregnated the eponymous O - there's a really weird scene in which O seems to be sexually kissing her father, raising the issue of incest and abuse - a theme that, unless I missed something, Rohmer did not include in his adaptation. I wonder why not.