What to Stream…

Don’t watch Made in Italy, a saccharine and soppy tale about a father and his grown son who bond over renovating their Italian villa in beautiful, romantic, Tuscany. Of course there is a lovely woman who owns a bistro, just waiting to get close to the son. And the father, an artist, does his best work ever.  Of course.  The scenery is worth something – but not worth 90 minutes of your time. It’s on Kanopy.

And don’t watch Reptile on Netflix. It is awful: it glorifies cops, shooting, betrayal and wealth. The cops are corrupt (except the hero of course).   The film fails the Bechdel test. The test asks whether a film or work of fiction features at least two female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. Some versions of the test also require that those two female characters have names.  Reptile also fails every other test going – especially the test for logic.  The actors are obnoxious, nasty and treat women badly.  I haven’t got a good word to say.

A six-part French series Les Sauvages called Savages is on CBC-GEM, is worth watching.  This is a political thriller.  Idder Chaouch, is a Muslim man whose family settled in France—after the gruesome anti-colonial war for independence launched by Algerians in the early 1960s.  Chaouch insists he is French and can unite the North African emigrees. In a stunning and unexpected victory, Chaouch wins the French presidency.  Within hours, there is an assassination attempt on his life.  His future son-in-law, a well- known French actor, and a woman security guard decide to investigate.  There is a plot involving a right-wing gang, and some unsavoury characters.  Good production values, good acting and not a bad plot. Here is the trailer.

You might want to tune into the two seasons of DI Ray.  Filmed in Birmingham, England, Ray is a police detective inspector who is hard driven, and drives her team even harder.  Ray is a south-Asian woman who has had to swallow her pride, and pretend she is white in order to have a management career in the police.  In the first season, we notice the micro-aggressions by the other cops, and by members of the public.  Ray is engaged to a white cop of superior rank, but his parents are both embarrassed and skeptical about the upcoming marriage.  We see how hard it is and how Ray tends to lash out in sarcasm.  The second series, it’s a bit more intriguing.  Definitely worth watching; here’s the trailer.

Blue Lights is another British police procedural; it’s on Britbox.  Not bad.  Most of these series tend to glorify cops and make them seem brave and wonderful… we know that’s not true.  This series takes place in Belfast, lots of driving around, lots of squad cars going into rough no-go areas of town.  It may keep your attention, but I’m a little sick of cops. And these are trainee cops, watch the trailer!!

Human Capital is quite good. I admit I was attracted to this 2020 feature film by its title; it’s on Kanopy.  Drew is a real estate salesman who sells houses in an upscale suburb of New York. He sees how the rich live and he begs a wealthy neighbour to allow him to invest in a hedge fund — touted as a safe investment.  One thing leads to another, and we meet the real estate man’s teenage daughter who wants to be a helpmate to a kid who is in and out of youth detention; we meet Drew’s new wife who is pregnant with twins. We see how the rich manage to try to muscle Drew out of the way – and what he does to fight back.  Not bad at all.  Acting is great, especially the daughter who is played by Maya Hawke. It’s a clever story. Here’s the trailer.

Shattered Glass, is a 2003 feature film on Kanopy.  It is very good. Stephen Glass is a reporter for the centrist magazine, The New Republic from 1995 to 1998.  Scores of his published articles were fictitious, containing interviews that never happened, or false information.  This film looks at the kind of “professional” journalist Glass was and how he got found out– trailer is here.  Here’s a rather nice review of the film.

You can tune into Sacha on PBS/Masterpiece (on Prime). It’s a six-part thriller series produced in Switzerland.  Sacha is a former prosecutor who is charged with the murder of someone from her dark and hidden past.  A brilliant investigator and prosecutor, Sacha seems to have very little memory or understanding of whom she wanted to kill and why.  Her ex-husband and daughter try to help her get to the bottom of the case.  Sacha claims she will take any punishment meted out to her, and go to jail as she knows what she has done. But at the same time, the prosecutors and those closest to her try to piece together her wretched early life which explains recent tragic events.  It’s worth watching, for sure. The trailer is in French, but the film has subtitles in English.

Faithfully yours – is a 2022 Dutch thriller film directed by André van Duren. Two married women friends use each other as a alibis for their husbands as the women sneak off for a crazy weekend.  One woman, who picks up a writer at a conference, takes him to her country house on the sea.  The other woman visits a gay club in a hotel in a nearby town.  The second woman goes missing and the police become involved.  The film is a bit of a nail biter, but it moves quickly.  Wonderfully, the ending is not what you’d expect. Watch it on Netflix, here’s the trailer.

Heavy Heart: What you need to watch in these times…

Israel-Palestine: 60 Years of Violence, is a 1 hr, 20 minute nicely done French documentary. It  starts at the founding of Israel in 1948 and ends in 2008.  I couldn’t stop watching: It told me a lot I didn’t remember. There is outstanding footage of an interview with Leila Khaled, and footage of Yasser Arafat.  There is also a good script which is more factual than anything else.  Watch it on Youtube.

“All of the disasters I’ve seen combined: 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes—all of it combined doesn’t equal the level of carnage I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.”

Dr Mark Perlmutter, a North Carolina surgeon who spent 3 weeks providing care to Palestinians in Gaza in May.

“What should Israel have done in response to Oct.7”?  This is a good question answered brilliantly in 5 minutes by artist, radical commentator and writer Caitlin Johnstone. Five minutes worth hearing: here.

Israeli citizens are rioting on the streets to demand Israel’s right to rape Palestinian prisoners. Honestly, here is a 14 minute decent clip on it by Britain’s Owen Jones. In 10 months of war, the one thing that got Israelis to riot was to protect their country’s right to rape Palestinian prisoners.

American orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Mark Perlmutter, describes on CBS Sunday Morning the horror he witnessed in Gaza in May 2024 and Israel’s deliberate targeting of children. Five minutes  and worth watching here.    Perlmutter said,

“All of the disasters I’ve seen combined: 40 mission trips, 30 years, Ground Zero, earthquakes—all of it combined doesn’t equal the level of carnage I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza.  It’s almost exclusively children … who are shredded…  I’ve never seen anything like that before. “

“Look away from Israel’s crimes –blame Iran!”

“Look away from Israel’s crimes – blame Iran —  they say Iran ‘masterminded’ a Canadian student encampment and is ‘destabilizing’ West Asia.” But these crude ‘blame Iran’ claims are nothing more than pathetic attempts to legitimate genocidal Zionism.” This is a good piece of journalism from Yves Engler. It sums up the Canadian government’s  craven attitude toward Israel (and the US of course).  Israel and friends would have you believe we are all “shills” for Iran – if we don’t denounce the Palestinians, and Hamas.  

Canadian academic Justin Podur on his AntiEmpire project podcast has a fascinating half hour interview with Jamin Hubner, an American Christian Zionist who now works for the Palestinians’ cause.  Hubner is a professor and a clergyman who managed to see settler colonialism on his trip to the Holyland, and decided he could no longer go along with it.  You can listen to it here.

What to Read…

All in Her Head: the truth and lies early medicine taught us about women’s bodies and why it matters today by Dr Elizabeth Comen is brilliant.  Delightfully written, and nicely organized, Comen who is an oncologist, does a great job of showing how women over millennia have been the victims of the medical bullies, namely the medical establishment.  Fascinating. Comen’s resolve and her wit do not skip a beat. You won’t put the book down.

It’s rare that on the spur of the moment I bought an Audible selection and listened.  But I did that after hearing an interview with Toronto writer Jason Guriel, now an university English professor, on The Big Story here.  The book is a coming of age story about a young man from a lower middle class Toronto suburb who falls in love with books, music tapes then CDs at the specialty stores which used to be in almost every mall. It’s a book that is delightful – what music the author listened to, the origins and dismantling of Sam the Record Man, the crazy books Guriel traded for other silly titles.  He accurately portrays Indigo, as a glass and metal emporium with more stuffies, purses, notepads and bath salts than shelf space dedicated to books. The interview with Guriel is great – and his book both relaxes and revives. It revives the desire in many of us to just be able to read all day long.   

Hyperallergic, the online arts magazine, has an article about art workers at the London Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) who were fired for attending the Global Strike for Palestine on Oct 20 last year.  Berlin-based artist Rheim Alhadhi warned the gallery she would not display her work in her first UK solo show unless ICA management takes responsibility for having fired the staff.  Alhadhi’s new exhibit is called Templates for Liberation which “grapples with the consequences of colonialist exploitation in Iraq and surrounding region through sculpture, photography and archival material.” Read more about the ICA and Alhadhi here .

Armine Yalnizyan won the 2023 Galbraith Prize in Economics in May.  She is a well-known progressive Canadian economist. Her speech, Walking with Giants: How Economic Thought and Policy Evolves is excellent and she tried to come to grips with issues such as neo-liberalism, the pandemic, high interest rates and more.  Her approach is thoughtful, feminist and hard hitting.  You’ll like reading it here.

Don’t read these two John Grisham books.  One, Skipping Christmas, is from 2001.  It’s terrible. A wife (whose daughter is working in South America in the Peace Corps) is lonely and cries a lot because Christmas won’t be Christmas without the daughter.  The husband puts on a brave face and makes a plan for him and the wife to go on a cruise – to ignore Christmas. The neighbours plan ways to get the couple to stay home and enjoy the holidays with all their homies. Ridiculous– actually insulting.

The second book I tried to finish was Grisham’s The Whistler; I gave up.  Yet another story about a crooked judge who is into real estate and land speculation in south Florida.  Maybe I’m at an end to my Grisham jag which has gone on far too long–wooden characters, women who could pass for Barbie dolls, tedious plots and lots of pages.  For my money, the best Grisham to read is Rogue Lawyer.  It’s a cut above. Here’s my review.

Podcasts to listen to…

On Co-op Radio’s the Redeye, Ted Rutland a professor of urban studies at Concordia University explains why we haven’t had much success in defunding the police.  Why do most people who act out due to mental health or social problems still have to put up with the police and their way of handling things? It is seldom the right kind of help the police give because their specialty is to disable, disarm and incarcerate.  Typical police can’t give the understanding or care needed in these cases.  In 2020 after the police murder of Floyd George, polls revealed that about 50% of Canadians wanted to see a reduction in police budgets – Rutland explains what has happened since then. Sane white middle-class people never encounter police – so the people with the least interaction with the cops believe they must continue to be well-funded.  According to Rutland, since 2020 no major Canadian city has reduced its funding for the police.

Full Story is an Australian investigative podcast from The Guardian. “Who Cared? The disappearance of Amber Haigh,” is a good court procedural which pits Amber’s next door neighbours suspected of murdering her against the flagging memories of witnesses from the unsolved crime that went unsolved for more than 20 years ago. Listen to all the episodes here.

Chortle chortle, scribble scribble: inside the Old Bailey with Britain’s last court reporters is a delightful look at the cases and barristers at the historic court, London’s Old Bailey. Two men in their 60s are the only reporters left who attend all manner of cases and then write stories for the media on the proceedings. They sell their articles to British newspapers, weeklies and even quality papers who no longer want to spend money on reporters in the courts. This is a Guardian Long Read and well worth listening to here.

Ars Gratia Artis

A young woman climbed suggestively all over the statue of Baccus in Florence, Italy. Italian curators point out that new fines levelled at people who destroy or deface artwork can go as high as 10,000 euros. Earlier this summer, a tourist carved his initials into a wall of an historic house in Pompeii.

Painting at the top: Hermitage by Marcelle Ferron, (1962), oil on canvas. Ferron (1924-2001) was born in Quebec and spent the 1950s as an artist raising her three children in Paris. She returned Montreal for her final years. To read more about Ferron, read this.