Month: November 2024

Most of you know my love of Germany, so I most certainly wasn’t going to ignore AppleTV+’s first original German-language series, which just dropped last month. I’m happy to report that Where’s Wanda? is a delightfully genre-bending puzzle of a series in the style and tone of Bad Sisters and Bodkin, but with all the charming German eccentricities I was hoping for—and not a Nazi or World War II reference anywhere in sight.

Where’s Wanda? is a dark comedy thriller about Wanda, played by Lea Drinda, a teenager who goes missing in a small town on the day of the town’s biggest holiday. Wanda’s parents, Carlotta and Dedo, played by Heike Makatsch and Axel Stein, are frustrated by the lack of leads the police are finding, so they take it upon themselves to investigate all their neighbors on their own by planting cameras and bugs in each house, because they absolutely believe Wanda is still alive and being held captive somewhere in their town.

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If you’re like me, the five words “based on a true story” at the beginning of a movie or TV show hook me every time. While I will never deny the power of a writer’s imagination, reality is still stranger than any fiction and the best stories do still come from real life. And, most horrifying, the worse a tale is, the more likely it’s based on something that really happened.

When it comes to stories about The Troubles, I’m always riveted. That dark period in Northern Ireland, which lasted from the late 1960s to 1998 which pitted Catholics versus Protestants, English versus Irish and nationalists versus unionists, was a violent and destructive time during which thousands lost their lives and millions of lives were affected, the repercussions of which are still being felt today. Now, nearly thirty years after the peace treaty that ended the active violence, we are in a fascinating time to be looking back. There is enough distance to allow proper historical perspective and yet it is recent enough to still trigger emotional responses, largely due to the fact that there are still so many victims, participants, witnesses, aggressors and accused still alive who can tell their stories, some whom have never spoken before.

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Here are some interesting facts about my household:

-When we bought our first DVD player, which was probably in 2002 when they became mainstream, Gladiator (2000) was the very first DVD we purchased.

-When a social media poll recently asked, “what movie do you think you’ve watched the most,” my answer was, not surprisingly, Star Wars, and my wife’s answer was Gladiator.

-The Gladiator score was composed by Hans Zimmer and featured memorable vocals by Lisa Gerrard, who is one half of an Australian duo named Dead Can Dance, who is one of our household’s most favorite bands. Gerrard’s work on the Gladiator score is, in my opinion, what makes it so unique and memorable. Zimmer and Gerrard share the credit for composing the score and they both were officially nominated when the score was one of the film’s twelve Oscar nominations in 2001. It is, in my opinion, one of the best film scores of all time, despite having lost the Oscar to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Dun Tan).

-Whenever we want to have fun, we love to re-create Elizabeth Taylor’s seemingly drunken announcement of Gladiator’s Best Picture win at the 2001 Golden Globes.

So, needless to say, Gladiator has had a large presence in my life. Since it came out in 2000, it has been in seemingly constant rotation on cable, so, like Godfather or Ocean’s Eleven, it’s one of those films that we are never able to scroll by when we see it’s on. If Gladiator is on, no matter where it is in the movie, we stop and watch. It is a film that is the perfect combination of action and art, of sentiment and brutality, of heart and heroism, of beauty and violence. It is Ridley Scott’s finest film and that’s saying a LOT, considering he also made Thelma and Louise, Blade Runner and Alien. It delivered Russell Crowe’s finest performance, features the best score in cinema history, and, as previously noted, was nominated for twelve Oscars, winning five, including Best Picture and Best Actor. Oh, and it also was a huge hit, becoming the second-highest grossing film of 2000.

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I am most definitely not one to swoon over superheroes–unless Marvel’s next franchise is titled Nandor the Relentless, I really couldn’t care less about even the smallest star in that entire universe. But, if forced, I would have to confess that Batman is the one superhero who has managed to capture my imagination the most in recent years. Now, granted, that is largely due to Christopher Nolan’s genius and his trilogy of Batman films that wandered so far away from what could be considered superhero fare that you almost forgot you were watching characters that originated in comic books. Credit also needs to go to Warner Bros and DC Entertainment for keeping Nolan’s flame lit by continuing to produce visionary, imaginative, innovative and artistically expansive stories from the Batman universe. Recent films like Birds of Prey, Joker and The Batman all generated rave reviews and the series Harley Quinn is one of the most heralded animated series on television. And now comes The Penguin, a limited series spinoff from Matt Reeves’ The Batman film from 2022, and this series is the best Batman offspring since Nolan’s films.

First of all, do not worry if you aren’t a Batman connoisseur. Unlike the Marvel films, where you have to know every character’s backstory and understand all the easter eggs and inside jokes to get the least bit of pleasure out of them, The Penguin can be enjoyed truly as a standalone series, even if you know nothing about the Batman universe.

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During the height of the pandemic, I was desperate for “feel good” TV. While I normally gravitate towards serious dramas, that was a time when I needed to find refuge in sweetness, in a more of a Zen approach to narrative storytelling, in being distracted by kindness and hope, decency and optimism. It’s clear I’m not the only one who felt that way, proven by the phenomenons Ted Lasso and Schitt’s Creek became during those years. Not that either show wouldn’t have done so at any other time, but coming out as they did during the pandemic, these two shows really hit the emotional bullseye, tapping into the zeitgeist, delivering positivity, kindness and sweetness to a nation desperately in need of it.

Now I find myself strangely in need of some goodness again, and, thankfully, Detectorists has come to my rescue. An unbelievably simple but sweet show that aired from 2014 to 2017 and is now available to stream on Freevee (through Prime Video), Detectorists stars Toby Jones as Lance and Mackenzie Crook as Andy, two guys for whom metal detecting has become more of a passion and a way of life than just a hobby to pass the time. There is a poetry in the way they approach their passion, as they trudge across farms and fields of England with their trusty detectors, listening for a faint ping to indicate the site of possible buried treasure. An awful lot has happened in these open fields in the English countryside, a lot of history could be buried here, and Lance and Andy can’t help but be just a bit romantic about it all.

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