Mystery Watch: Death on the Nile (2022)

Watched:  06/04/2022

Format:  HBOmax

Viewing:  First

Decade:  2020's

Director:  Kenneth Branagh

I have not read any Agatha Christie, which seems like a really stupid blind spot for me to have, but here we are.  I have also not watched Poirot mysteries on PBS and I haven't watched the older versions of these same stories.  I assumed I'd get to them, and I haven't.  Life is short and I mostly waste it.  I did watch the prior movie starring director/ star/ producer Kenneth Branagh, Murder on the Orient Express, and I thought, as a movie, it was pretty solid. Nothing to win awards, but accomplished what it wanted to do.

But as I have COVID and I was trying to figure out how well my brain was working, seeing if I could follow a Poirot mystery seemed like a good idea.  And the answer is - I could follow it!

I 10,000% suspect that this movie is just the bare bones of the original novel, which I am not looking up to check, as I should read the book at some point and I don't want to ruin it. 

This one had a few things going against it.  

Well, I have the COVID

Did some socializing on Monday and on Thursday received the alert that one of the people I'd been socializing with had become sick and subsequently tested positive for COVID.  

I'm not shocked.  I figured these latest mutations were so transmissible, I'd eventually get it unless I continued to live like a hermit as we did for 2020.  We're careful-ish.  No movies, no restaurants.  I wear a mask in and out at work and shut the door behind me when I have to go in.  But, you know, when people can't keep their hands off bats, I guess. 

But, yeah, I tested positive Friday morning - not feeling great then and the coughing starting - and tried to work but by 1:30 hung it up.  I had a telemedicine appointment at 2:20 and got prescribed Paxlovid.  Normally I'm all about FDA testing, but I'd very much like to knock this thing out and not incur long COVID.  

Last night I ran an un-fun fever, but that broke after I went to sleep.  This morning, I'm coughing, runny nose and very run down.  If I have a fever, it's so low it's not an issue.

I'd argue my sense of taste is diminished but not gone.   I could taste the HEB Fruit and Grain bar I ate.  But my coffee, tragically, isn't the flavor wonderland I normally enjoy.  

I expect between the meds, the mild impact I'm hearing reported and experiencing, and good care, I'll be okay.  Jamie has tested negative and seems fine.  She was mostly stressed yesterday watching me just stare at The Meg as it played on TNT (that's about where I was around 8:00).  But she's also had her 4th shot, and even if she technically has COVID right now (and she hasn't tested positive) then there's a strong argument for getting your booster.  Of the two people we saw Monday, one of them also has not tested positive.  So.

The real kick in the shins is that I had planned to go to get a booster next weekend, but my timing was off.  I had stuff to do this weekend and didn't want to be down for a day dealing with any post-shot side-effects.  (sad trombone)

Look, I'm aware of the death toll of this virus and I'm not taking it lightly.  The world wide impact of the virus is well known and I don't need to tell it to you here.  But I'm also pretty sure my Tuesday I'll be right as rain.  

Y'all be careful out there.  This thing is still floating around.  And we're all going to need to hard-ponder our new normal.  

Too Much TV - What Shows I've Been Watching

We had just finished up a few shows, but TV now knows most of us don't actually want to go outside on Memorial Day, and so... it was decreed, a bunch of new stuff would hit around this time.

What we're watching:

Joan Watch: Flamingo Road (1949)

Watched:  05/27/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  2nd?  3rd?

Decade:  1940's

Director:  Michael Curtiz

I remembered really liking this movie, but not many plot details.  What I really recall was that this was that age of post-Mildred Pierce Joan Crawford when she was having a second or third wind in Hollywood and back at the center of movies.  

This one would be a fabulous bit of film for a good old-fashioned "gender in cinema" student paper, with a tough-as-nails female lead who still has to navigate the mid-20th Century gender and sexual politics and the less-than-ideal male figures around her.  Not to mention the presentation of other women in the film who do not have the benefit of being Joan Crawford.

Friday Watch Party: Flamingo Road

I don't really care what this movie is about.  It stars Joan Crawford in her bangin' mid-40's, Sydney @#$%ing Greenstreet and Austin native Zachary Scott.  I mean, if you can't like that, we are not friends.

But, if you've not seen it - Flamingo Road is a grimy melodrama in the American South.  

Watch along tonight!

Day:  Friday - 05/27/2022

Time:  8:30 Central/ 6:30 Pacific

Service:  Amazon

Cost:  $3

link live 10 minutes before showtime!

Click here to set destination for Flamingo Road!!!  Joanie's waiting!

Ray Liotta Merges With the Infinite

Ray Liotta, actor, has passed.  He'll be remembered most for his outstanding performance in Goodfellas and his iconic performance in Field of Dreams, but he was terrific in literally everything I saw him in.  

Ida Watch: Out of the Fog (1941)

Watched:  05/24/2022

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Decade:   1940's

Director:  Anatole Litvak

Well, Jamie likes Ida Lupino, so it's never a huge fight when I declare "I'm gonna watch an Ida Lupino movie" which does, in fact, happen around here.  And right now Criterion Channel had a handful of options, most of which I've seen but a few I hadn't.  Tonight's choice was Out of the Fog from 1941.  

The film feels distinctly pre-war in content, a stage-like acting style derived from 30's-era norms plus - I assume - a desire to replicate the energy and pacing of source material from several of the players.  It's a tight 85 minutes of melodrama that feels like a mix of the socially conscious theater of the 1940's and some light crime.  

It also stars John Garfield (who is typically John Garfield excellent), Thomas Mitchell, Eddie Albert and a handful of other familiar faces and just faces.  

Garfield and Lupino out on the town

Amazon Watch Party Watch: Krull (1983)

Watched:  05/20/2022

Format:  Amazon Watch Party

Viewing:  Unknown

Decade: 1980's

Director: Peter Yates

Even as a kid, I had no real affinity for Krull (1983).  It arrived as part of the fantasy movie blitz of the 1980's, and I didn't see it in the theater.  The trailer had some interesting imagery, but I just didn't watch it.  At some kid's birthday, I watched the Fire Mares part of the movie, said internally "what the @#$% is this?", but wasn't super interested.  But, as a kid with time on his hands and a VCR, eventually I watched the film.  However, most of my memories of the story itself are from a comic book adaptation I picked up somewhere.  I think we only bought the first issue.  

About 16 years ago, Columbia House was in its death throes and had moved into DVD's.  I gave it a whirl and picked up 11 DVDs for $11 or whatever, and among my pickings was Krull.  Jamie and I tried to watch it, and I decided "this is boring" and we didn't try again.   On a rewatch, I am not sure why we thought it was boring.  It's not.  That's not really the crime to which the movie could be held accountable.

In fact, it's a very, very pretty movie.  The sets are immaculate and gigantic.  The exteriors are all over Europe in lovely pastoral settings.  There's some truly fantastic visual stuff happening, and in a lot of ways, the movie is genuinely well-directed when it slows down to have a beat or two.  The director, Peter Yates, is no slouch and did one of my favorite new-to-me films from the past few years, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, which could not be more different if Yates had physically been trying to get as far away from that movie as possible.

But, real talk, they kinda forgot to give anyone but the asshole wizard any personality beyond the thinnest layers atop an archetype.  It's weird.  There's an exposition guy who tells the "prince" what to do.  The price is princely (read:  nice but dim), and the wise old man is wise.  The stoic cyclops is stoic.  Perhaps because the actor cannot see and therefore cannot move.  

PodCast 200: "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984) - Signal Watch Canon Episode w/ SGHarms and Ryan

Watched:  05/21/2022

Format:  BluRay

Viewing:  Unknown/ First for Extended Version

Decade:  1980's

Director:  Sergio Leone

For more ways to listen

Steven returns to the podcast to talk one of Ryan's canon films, and one of Leone's last. It's an epic length podcast for an epic-length film, and certainly not everyone's cup of tea. Join us as we talk about what works, what doesn't, the challenges of the film, and what it all means.

SoundCloud 

The Signal Watch PodCast · 200: "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984) - Signal Watch Canon Episode w/ SGHarms and Ryan

YouTube

Music:

Deborah's Theme - Ennio Morricone, Once Upon a Time in America OST

Once Upon a Time in America - Ennio Morricone, Once Upon a Time in America OST

Signal Watch Canon

The Signal Watch PodCast · The Signal Watch Canon

Disney Watch: Chip n' Dale - Rescue Rangers (2022)

This is a weird one.  It's tough to separate from the weekend twitter meltdowns around the film which have been immediate, loud and remind you 21st Century people are soft, soft @#$%s with some incredibly screwed up priorities, and yet algorithms push these, the worst takes, into your feed.

I didn't watch Rescue Rangers which had an initial run of only 65 episodes, spanning a year and a half between 1989 and 1990.  I'm aware of the show, of course, and starting in 1990 I did watch Tale Spin when I walked in the door from a new school with an earlier release time, but between the timing of the airing of the show and a general disinterest, and being 14 and kinda moving on...  Anyway, back then, to be a nerd did not mean watching everything and hanging onto it forever in quite the way "fandom" insists we do today.

But I am a fan of John Mulaney and Andy Samberg, and guffawed at the trailer for the movie.  It had a nice "I can't believe Disney is letting them do this" vibe, and it was included at no extra cost in my Disney+ subscription.  It looked to be having a nice laugh at a lot of ideas around cartoons, nostalgia, updates and reboots.

There's some strong Roger Rabbit DNA to the film.  Humans and 'Toons co-habitate in this world.  A crime is committed that impacts Toons specifally.  Chip and Dale are actors who played Chip and Dale on their eponymous show (the original Disney shorts are not a part of this world).  All in all, back in the 1990's, we would have called this "postmodernism" in a media studies class.  It's a cute idea for a movie, appeals to older audiences while also pointing the movie and old episodes of the cartoon at kids with a family Disney+ subscription.