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    Ah, I hadn't picked up on that. His performance I did (or La Signora did, I might not have recognised him TBH. see upthread). I guess I'd assumed Tom Tykwer did most of the background music.

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      Second season of Santa Clarita Diet is out now. Outstanding. By the same creator as Andy Richter Controls the Universe and Better Off Ted.

      Also going through Red Oaks on Amazon. It’s got four or five seasons but I’m only on the start of season 2. About a college kid in the 80s working at a country club. Kind of like Caddy Shack if it had been more like Doug Kenney’s original vision. More of a standard coming of age story instead of slapstick.

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        I'm up to episode 3 of the Santa Clarita Diet, and it's holding up exceptionally well in its second season. I didn't realise it was by the same guy as Better Off Ted which was a brilliant show unfairly killed way too young.

        Anyway, Episode 3 of Santa Clarita Diet felt like there was an in-joke with OTF about the Jordan Peterson thread...

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          Originally posted by Hot Pepsi View Post
          Second season of Santa Clarita Diet is out now. Outstanding. By the same creator as Andy Richter Controls the Universe and Better Off Ted.

          Also going through Red Oaks on Amazon. It’s got four or five seasons but I’m only on the start of season 2. About a college kid in the 80s working at a country club. Kind of like Caddy Shack if it had been more like Doug Kenney’s original vision. More of a standard coming of age story instead of slapstick.
          Speaking of that, A Futile And Stupid Gesture is a short movie recalling the start of National Lampoon through Kenny's death. It's pretty good. Martin Mull plays the dead older version of Kenny retelling the story. Ironically, Joel McHale plays Chevy Chase. Will Forte plays Kenny.

          The documentary on the same subject is better though.

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            Shown last night on BBC4, watched it this morning, terrific:

            https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...sos-last-stand

            Picasso's Last Stand reveals the untold story of the last decade of the great artist's life, through the testimony of family and close friends - many of them the people he allowed into his private world in the 1960s. As his health declined in these final years, Picasso faced damaging criticism of his work and intimate revelations about his bohemian lifestyle for the first time. And yet, in the midst of disaster, he rediscovered his revolutionary spirit with a creative surge that produced some of his most sexually frank and comic work. Exhibitions of the new style horrified and disappointed contemporaries. But now his biographer Sir John Richardson and granddaughter Diana Widmaier Picasso argue that this last enormous effort produced some of his greatest and most profound art: the stunning counter-attack of a protean genius coming to terms with old age.

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              For several years I've been avidly waiting for Richardson's last volume in his definitive Picasso biography, was there any word on it in the doc?

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                Ah good point, no, I don’t think his fourth and last opus was mentioned at all (Richardson was in the prog though, for about 3 minutes, fascinating), but I'll be watching the programme again sometime this week so I should able to tell you for sure (I was multitasking at my desk while watching it, I could have missed it). Interesting ITW here: http://alainelkanninterviews.com/john-richardson/

                You can't get the Beeb's iplayer in the US, can you? (is this BBC iplayer geo-restricted to solely the UK?).

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                  Sadly we can't get any of the UK iPlayer services in North America.

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                    Ah, bugga... Even with one of these VPN things?

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                      I couldn’t get it to work in Ireland when I had Kodi even. We get bbc 1 to 4 free on our cancelled sky box but (and not any Irish channels, weirdly).

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                        The fourth volume of Richardson's Picasso is somewhat like the fifth volume of Robert Caro's LBJ. It has been announced as being well-advanced or nearly done for years.

                        The Elkaan interview touches on one issue that Richardson has that Caro has also struggled with, which is that of the endpoint for what is expected to be the final volume. In Richardson's case, the issues seems to be whether he chooses to cover the Occupation; in Caro's whether he carries on past LBJ's not to run for re-election.

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                          Richardson needs to decide soon. He's getting on a bit.

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                            Yes.

                            Caro has twelve years on him and is still 82.

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                              He's nearly there according to this 2016 ITW that I've linked in my previous post! http://alainelkanninterviews.com/john-richardson/. He seems in good fettle in the BBC4 programme but, yes, he's no spring pollo.

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                                There's a pattern here

                                John Richardson’s four-volume Life of Picasso is due to be finished this year. (May 2016)

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                                  Finally finished Babylon Berlin. There is a lot more antisemitism in the second half than the first, in both the Black Reichswehr and the assassination plot, then the Nazis at the railway station.

                                  Another musical stunner at the end with Gloomy Sunday, even darker than the English version that was banned by the BBC.

                                  Could they do a second series and keep it fresh? They packed a huge number of issues and twists into 16 episodes. Might have exhausted the supply. I think Gideon completed the journey he started, as did Lotte, so in that sense they already have closure, even though the wider political battle was always going to be bleak because you can't change the overall direction the police was going. Gideon can't be anything but corrupted the closer we get to 1933. His victories over murdering scum will always be small in the big picture. Lotte also understands this as the series reaches its conclusion.

                                  Looking at analogies to the writing: Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene?

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                                    I think there are sufficient number of threads, if not lose ends, that can be picked up in a second series.

                                    [SPOILER] Gideon's relationship with his brother and wife will be a cause of tension. The latter's relationship with the financier a possible sub-plot. Lotte will be forced into protecting her sister from a toxic domestic situation. Will Greta survive? Both G & L will be pulled and pushed between political extremes, their jobs and the communist doctor providing different poles perhaps. [/SPOILER]

                                    I'm tempted to read the books, but I'm afraid they'll spoil the series for me (the reverse is normally the case.)

                                    I didn't remind me of a book so much as another film. People on Sunday, a 1930 production made by, among others, Robert and Curt Siodmak, Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann. All of whom fled to the US a few years later of course. It isn't similar in plot, more in ambience. Filmed with non-professional actors most of the action takes place at Nikolassee beach, and is very reminiscent of the beach episode in Babylon Berlin. So much so that I'm sure Tykwer must have intended it. Several of the streetscapes are similar too, particularly those photographed from upper storey windows.
                                    Last edited by Amor de Cosmos; 25-03-2018, 22:22.

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                                      Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                                      The Chinese Democracy of art history.

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                                        Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                        Finally finished Babylon Berlin. There is a lot more antisemitism in the second half than the first, in both the Black Reichswehr and the assassination plot, then the Nazis at the railway station.

                                        Another musical stunner at the end with Gloomy Sunday, even darker than the English version that was banned by the BBC.

                                        Could they do a second series and keep it fresh? They packed a huge number of issues and twists into 16 episodes. Might have exhausted the supply. I think Gideon completed the journey he started, as did Lotte, so in that sense they already have closure, even though the wider political battle was always going to be bleak because you can't change the overall direction the police was going. Gideon can't be anything but corrupted the closer we get to 1933. His victories over murdering scum will always be small in the big picture. Lotte also understands this as the series reaches its conclusion.

                                        Looking at analogies to the writing: Joseph Conrad, Graham Greene?
                                        They could do more on Lotte as the first woman detective in Berlin and then maybe her effort to escape Germany, assuming she’s anti-Nazi.

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                                          *reminds everyone that the series is an adaptation a series of books that answer all of these questions*

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                                            Yeah. I acknowledged the series in my last post (also why I didn't want to read them yet.)

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                                                Sorry, Amor. I missed your post with the spoiler.

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                                                  s'OK. I probably will look out the books at some point. Given its cost it seems unlikely the TV series will run as long.

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                                                    Originally posted by Satchmo Distel View Post
                                                    Yeah that's it. It's a bit of a curiosity (I'd probably never have come across it but The Believer gave the DVD away with their film issue several years ago.) It's an odd hybrid of documentary and fiction.

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