Digested Ham

Media Digest: February 28, 2016

What I'm Watching

• Hunted, with the Fam. This is fun TV. You're not only watching the contestants try to outrun the fugitive trackers. You're also mocking them for their stupidity and thinking of how you might do it better.
• Better Call Saul. I've been thwarted my circumstances in my attempts to watch this series before. Great show, though.

 

Media Digest: January 4, 2017

What I'm Watching

• So, I finally finished watching The Following. On the one hand, it was certainly good enough to watch, but on the other, I really had to suspend my disbelief more than usual. How many times must Ryan Hardy go rogue when it's clearly dangerous and stupid to do so? Frankly, I was shocked at one point toward the end of the series when he actually included some other law enforcement in his plans. And the show seemed odd in its focus. Season one made sense, as it's centered on serial killer Joe Carroll. Season two was weird and less satisfying. And in season three the focus was quite scattered. I don't think the series could have sustained another season. After all, how many psycho serial killers in a row could reasonably be obsessed with killing the same guy? I also didn't love the show's final scene.
      One thing I did like was how Ryan and Joe's relationship sometimes turned into a cute (albeit one-sided) buddy movie thing. On those occasions you could see something of Joe's allure, which was not obvious earlier in the series, even though loads of people clearly were attracted to him for some reason. 
• Sully, unsurprisingly, was very good. I was surprised by the non-linear storytelling, and was briefly worried that we'd be cheated out of seeing the crash, but we're not. Tom Hanks is always great.
• True Memoirs of an International Assassin is a cute enough movie. Kevin James is a fiction writer who winds up living a life like the one he wrote a bestselling novel about.

Media Digest: December 16, 2016

What I'm Watching

• So, I watched Sex Lies and Videotape. After hearing the title for so many  years I thought the movie surprisingly uninteresting. But maybe it was shocking in its day. What's really disturbing, though, is the picture of Andie MacDowell on the movie cover, because it looks like it's going to be a story about a psychotic killer drag queen (hello, Dressed to Kill).
• The Following. I'm enjoying this Kevin Bacon series, though I don't like watching it alone in the house at night on the treadmill with earbuds in for some reason. 

What I'm Reading

• I'm working my way through David Richardson, Esperanto: Learning and Using the International Language.
• I finished, but need to write a review of Brain Trust, by Lynn Sholes and Joe Moore.

 

Media Digest: November 1, 2016 -- Red Reddington and other heroes

What I'm Watching

• Faster:  Dwayne Johnson pairs up in this one with Billy Bob Thornton. It's very okay, not bad, not great, but there is an unexpected twist at the end.
• Spectre: I watched this one a second time because I'd forgotten I'd seen it already. Why? Because one James Bond movie is much like another: pretty, and fun to watch, but I can never follow the plot.
• Star Trek Beyond: This was also a pretty movie, and I bet it was really impressive on a larger screen than my Kindle Fire. 
• The Blacklist: Catching up on Red Reddington. I don't care about anyone else in the show particularly, but I do love his character.

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 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.

Media Digest: September 24, 2016 -- Walking My Baby Back Home

What I'm Watching

• Columbo 5.1 (Forgotten Lady): This is an unusually interesting episode. Janet Leigh plays Grace Wheeler, a faded actress who kills her retired doctor husband because he refuses to finance her return to the spotlight in a new musical. The rub is that she doesn't remember doing it, so unlike other Columbo villains, she's not trying to hide anything from the lieutenant. Apart from that, there's a bunch of other good stuff. There's a charming bit of interaction between Columbo and his dog, when the dog has ice cream all over his face. And Columbo gets hunted down by internal affairs because he hasn't gone to the pistol range in ten years and needs to take his firearms test or lose his badge. Columbo later hands his badge to a policeman friend and asks him to take the test for him, because he can't hit the target. There's an intense whispered conversation between Columbo and Grace's old flame and dance partner, Ned Diamond, while Grace flits in and out of the room. And having earlier established that Columbo is up for bending the rules, there is the pathos of the ending, when Ned confesses to the crime to save Grace the unpleasantness of learning what she's done. She hasn't got long to live, and his intention is to gum up the workings of justice long enough for her to die in peace. Columbo, it is implied, will go along with the deception.

"Wipe off your face," Columbo tells his dog.