I’ve had a little more time to indulge my non-business yearnings, and so I have some suggestions to make to you…
• Marc Maron’s new standup special, “Panicked,” on HBO, had me laughing so hard I was tearing up – which is pretty much all I can ask from an hour of comedy. He gets most of the politics out of the way in the first few minutes, and then engages in a series of riffs on subjects ranging from the California wildfires to his father’s dementia to the effects of grief. It is all rooted in his broader anxieties, which, as it happens, many of us share, if sometimes less deeply and almost always shared less incisively. It was taped before he announced that he would be ending his 16-year-old, pioneering podcast, “WTF?” later this year, though now one can see those wheels turning. Brilliant stuff.
• Carl Hiaasen’s new comic – and bitingly funny – novel, “Fever Beach,” is terrific. The plot is so convoluted that it hard to explain, so suffice it to say that, as usual in his oeuvre, the cast of characters is bizarre, the satire is pinpoint and scabrous, and the whole thing is infused with Hiaasen’s trademark affection for and deep cynicism with what Florida has become. It is entirely fair to say that Hiaasen is neither impartial nor balanced in his critiques and observations, but he has no desire to be – his goal is to come in with caustic guns blazing, and to empty out his rounds before the end of the book. Mission accomplished.
• Yes, I saw the new “The Naked Gun” movie. And yes, I laughed a lot – it was fun to see a comedy in the theater, and great to hear other people laughing at the same time. Like the originals, the jokes don’t always work, and they’re almost always stupid. But it was just what I needed the other night, and I must admit that Liam Neeson and Panela Anderson jump whole-heartedly into roles modeled on those originally played by Leslie Nielsen and Priscilla Presley. Some of the best jokes were given away in the trailer, but there are plenty more that will appeal to the 12-year-old kid who resides in many of us.
• “The Penguin Diaries” is the based-on-a-true-story film about a disillusioned middle school teacher who takes a job at an affluent boarding school and finds his life changed by his relationship with a penguin that he rescues from an environmental disaster. Which sounds sort of like “Free Willy” meets “The Holdovers.” But it ends up that “The Penguin Diaries” is something different – it takes place in 1976 Argentina, against the backdrop of the escalating coup d’état in which members of the resistance often were picked up off the street by the secret police and disappeared. The counterpoint provided by the two evolving themes works really well, largely because of a committed performance in the lead by the great Steve Coogan, ably supported by Jonathan Pryce as the schools’ headmaster. It’s on Netflix, and worth an evening’s streaming.
• Despite my general lack of enthusiasm for superhero/comic book movies, I was persuaded by my son to see “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” – and the fact that it works better than I would have expected tells me something about the genre. (Or at least, what can appeal to me about the genre.) Even with all the special effects and outlandish plot devices, “First Steps” ends up being about something concrete a relatable – the choices we make for and about our children, and even more, the defining and infinite nature of a mother’s love. In a category of films increasingly about explosions, special effects and unconvincing narrative, that ain’t nothin’.
That’s it for now. I’ll see you next week.
Sláinte!!
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