Digested Ham

Media Digest: October 27, 2016 -- The Rock

What I'm Watching

• Central Intelligence:  Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart are old high school acquaintances who team up for a spy caper. A cute movie, chiefly because it's hard not to like The Rock. Stick around for the closing credits.

Media Digest: October 25, 2016 -- Plot twists

What I'm Watching

• Shattered:  Pierce Brosnan kidnaps Gerard Butler's daughter! It's a decent thriller with a couple of twists.
• Favor: A friend helps you move a couch. A good friend helps you move a body.... This had a low budget feel to it, but I thought the story itself was really good. 

Media Digest: October 19, 2016 -- Goliath

What I'm Watching

• Goliath, season 1:  Billy Bob Thornton is a one-time big-deal lawyer who winds up taking on a case against a Goliath of a corporation, which also happens to be represented by his former firm. Give it at least two episodes if you're thinking of passing on it. The second episode ends with a bang.

Media Digest: October 15, 2016 -- Jason Bateman

What I'm Watching

• Disconnect:  Jason Bateman stars in this movie that tells three loosely connected stories, all of them involving the internet. One's about cyber crime, another about cyber sex, but the most poignant has to do with cyber bullying. The victim is Bateman's screen son, a high school music nerd who falls for some mean-spirited catfishing. An excellent movie, primarily because of the bullying storyline.
• Identity Thief:  Jason Bateman's identity is stolen by pretty much the worst person in the world, or so Melissa McCarthy initially appears. It's a cute movie. 
• The Change-Up:  Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds star in this Freaky Friday remake. It's cute-ish, and I like both stars, but it's too vulgar to be really good. Some of it had me wincing rather than laughing. The Jamie Lee Curtis/Lindsay Lohan Freaky Friday, on the other hand, holds up very well, is genuinely funny, and doesn't wallow in crudity.

Media Digest: October 11, 2016 -- Ourselves alone

What I'm Watching

• Columbo 7.3 (Make Me a Perfect Murder):  A TV executive kills another TV executive after he breaks up with her and passes her by on a promotion. She's got a clever scheme that involves changing movie reels during a screening, but Columbo's dealt with this sort of thing a couple times before (in "Double Exposure," the subliminal cut episode, and "Forgotten Lady"). I like how Columbo so often incorporates technology in the stories, tape recorders and digital watches and burglar alarms and so on.
• Columbo 7.4 (How to Dial a Murder): This is probably one of the more complex murder schemes. A film buff psychologist kills his wife's lover by training his dogs to attack when they hear the word "Rosebud." 
• Columbo 7.5 (The Conspirators): All these years of seeing this episode--a garrulous Irish author and entertainer is buying guns to smuggle to the IRA--and I never realized it was the final episode of the original series. And knowing that, I now appreciate its closing scene: Columbo, once again sitting across the table from a killer, marks a bottle of whiskey and repeats the killer's catchphrase, "This far, and no farther." What an excellent series.

I was under the impression that I would be able to watch the newer Columbo episodes next, but they're not available on Netflix or Amazon, so I can't, which is unfortunate. I also was not able to watch the two pilot episodes in this viewing. Not sure what's coming next.

What I'm Reading:

• Barry Eisler, The God's Eye View: I borrowed this one for free with Prime Reading! So far so good. The director of the NSA is bent on keeping his surveillance program under wraps, and he's taking some dramatic steps to do it.

Media Digest: October 7, 2016 -- Don't count on it

What I'm Watching

• Columbo 7.1 (Try and Catch Me): I'm already on the first episode of the last regular season of Columbo. It's gone by so fast. Ruth Gordon stars in this one as a mystery novelist who offs her dead niece's husband (because he'd killed the niece). It's a great episode. Gordon is a sympathetic character whom Columbo genuinely likes, but as he tells her on the pier in a wonderful scene, she shouldn't count on his kindness: he won't let her off just because he likes her. 
• Columbo 7.2 (Murder Under Glass):  This is the one where the food critic kills the restaurant owner by putting poison in the bottle opener. There's a nice scene at the end where Columbo and the murderer are having dinner--veal that Columbo prepared--and they tell one another that, although they respect the other's accomplishments, they don't like them. I do enjoy Columbo's relationship with his murderers. On another note, I just discovered that the kid who plays the Italian waiter Mario in this one is in fact Antonio Alda, Alan Alda's younger (half) brother.

What I'm Reading

• Victoria Helen Stone, Evelyn, After: I got this as my free monthly read from Amazon the other day. It's romantic suspense. Right now I'm thinking it's a little too much romance and too little suspense, but that could change.

Media Digest: October 4, 2016 -- Season 6

What I'm Watching

• Columbo 6.1 (Fade in to Murder): William Shatner is a TV detective who murders his show's producer because she's been blackmailing him. Shatner's character is all about the game and seems to have very little concern about the consequences of getting caught.
• Columbo 6.2 (Old Fashioned Murder): Joyce Van Patten is excellent as the curator of a museum who kills her brother and then sorta kinda tries to pin it on her niece. Columbo unearths some family secrets that add layers to the story, which is really rather tragic. Van Patten's character turns out to be sympathetic and complex. The deal she arranges on the spot with Columbo at the end just adds to the emotional complexity of the story.
• Columbo 6.3 (The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case): Theodore Bikel is a corrupt accountant who murders his friend and partner Bertie at a meeting of their genius IQ club Sigma--a Mensa-like organization. It's a clever murder, but of course not clever enough. The weirdest thing about this episode is Bikel's relationship with Bertie, whom he teases and, yes, tickles. He even tickles him right before killing him.  

Media Digest: October 1, 2016 -- 98 Reasons for reading

What I'm Watching

• Columbo 5.6 (Last Salute to the Commodore): This last episode of season five is a weird one for a number of reasons. We don't see the murder. The guy Columbo originally suspects didn't do it. And, more generally, Columbo's acting is just strange. Over the top. There's a larger focus on Columbo's co-workers, and a lot of time spent on apparently comic scenes involving introductions. It's also a very physical episode. Columbo snuggles up with Robert Vaughan and his fellow policemen and a woman he finds meditating on a boat. It's just plain weird.
  
  
  

  Lots of close physical contact in this episode.

What I'm Reading

• Clare Dudman, 98 Reasons for Being: I finished reading my friend Clare's captivating novel yesterday and posted a review over on book-blog.com, which I may as well quote in full here: 
  
  "I wrote of Clare Dudman's novel One Day the Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead that it is "equal parts science and poetry." Something similar could be said of her book 98 Reasons for Being, which tells the story of the historical Dr. Heinrich Hoffmann. He was the author ofStruwwelpeter, or Shockheaded Peter, a German children's book of rhymed stories about, usually, naughty children and the horrible consequences of their misbehavior. Struwwelpeter was a big deal, wildly popular and much translated, but the Hoffmann on these pages, at least, was more concerned with his true calling in life: he served as doctor at Frankfurt's lunatic asylum in the mid-19th century. Dudman brings Hoffmann to life in these pages as he becomes obsessed with curing a new arrival at the asylum, a young Jewish woman, Hannah, who does not speak initially and seems mired in an overwhelming sadness. After the usual cures prove ineffective—and here the horrors of pre-modern psychiatric treatment are on display—Hoffmann adopts a radical approach: talking. His story, and then hers, slowly drip out during their sessions, so that the source of her misery is finally revealed while his trials and character are likewise laid bare. At the same time, the lives of the other residents of the asylum are explored, both the inmates and the attendants, who live on-site for extended periods. These are all fleshed out characters, very real in their faults and sorrows. It's all deeply moving and sad, in large part, and beautifully written throughout. Every time I opened the book I was spellbound by it. It is an added treat that some of Hoffmann's stories are featured in the book, fit between the chapters, and they are surprisingly relevant to the surrounding story.