It’s day six of the Fort Lauderdale Film Festival and I’ve seen seven films – most of them entertaining, two of them excellent. I thought that having to see a film every day – sometimes two – would get to be a chore, but the experience has been quite the opposite. When I don’t have a movie to go to I feel at a loss.
I am a judge for this year’s Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, which opens tonight. It would be hard to find a better time to lose oneself in movies.
The editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, is retiring after 15 years. In his farewell column, he wrote that the magazine pays allegiance to no political party (he wrote “tribe”) but to “elegance of expression, independence of opinion, and originality of thought.” It was the perfect distillation of the magazine’s character, and the reason I find it so readable. But he did leave out one quality: wit.
New Rule for Real Time with Bill Maher: When they run the same show two consecutive weeks perhaps they can call it a “repeat” instead of an "encore presentation.”
When looking for something to stream, Hania will always gravitate toward murder mysteries, while I much prefer spy stories. The other day, reading The Spectator, I came across a column by the English playwright David Hare who noted that Margaret Drabble once proclaimed that “boys like spy stories because they’re about derring-do” (I’m quoting Hare paraphrasing Drabble) while “girls prefer detective stories because they’re about psychology.”
I used to like awards shows but now they just remind me of how different my tastes are from those of most Americans. I watched a few episodes of The Bear (too over-the-top; nobody is that mad that consistently) and Bad Reindeer (too bizarre). Shogun I have no interest in. My favorite TV shows are/were My Brilliant Friend (which I assume wasn’t nominated because of the year break), Curb Your Enthusiasm (which at least got nominated), and Real Time with Bill Maher (nada).
The man behind Bad Reindeer, in one of his three acceptance speeches, praised the fact that the studios are taking risks on shows with unconventional premises. But the real risk, it seems, would be in backing a show about the everyday lives of ordinary people.