Slow Horses by Mick Herron
I’m a big fan of the Apple+ series, which is based on this book series by Mick Herron, so I decided I’d give the actual books a go. I was surprised to find that Season One of the series so closely follows Book #1. It probably shouldn’t be surprising, as that makes sense, I guess I got used to the way the Bosch series blends various aspects of several books together during a season.
Buy Slow Horses (Deluxe Edition)For those of you who haven’t read my thoughts on the series and don’t know anything about Slow Horses, the stories are set inside a fictional Slough House, which is kind of a detention center for British spies who have screwed up somehow. Their deeds were not so bad to merit being fired but were bad enough that the main section of MI5 wants nothing to do with them.
The idea is that they will bore these agents with paperwork and other menial tasks that they’ll voluntarily quit. The house is run by the slovenly Jackson Lamb, who was once a great agent, but who has completely let himself go and mostly just wants to be left alone.
Naturally, they keep finding themselves in situations where they have to actually act like real agents. For this first book, they are hunting a group of white extremists who have declared they are going to behead a young Muslim man live on the Internet after a certain period of time.
I’m actually a fan of watching the movie or TV show before I read a book. I don’t mind the spoilers, and books help fill out the details of a story. Plus, once I’ve watched something, I have those visuals in my head. I’m terrible at remembering what a book tells me a character looks like, but I can always picture the actor while I’m reading.
Because Season One of the series followed the book so closely, there weren’t actually a ton of new details to be found. Mick Herron doesn’t seem to be a writer who digs deeply into his characters inner thoughts or motivations. Still, it was a very enjoyable read, and I’ve already bought Book 2.
Pierrot le fou
Jean-Luc Godard’s 1962 film is a classic of the French New Wave. Its plot is fairly simple: Ferdinand Griffon (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is bored with his bourgeois life and runs away with the babysitter Marianne Renoir (Anna Karina), starts a life of crime, and has varying adventures.
Buy Pierrot le fou (Criterion Collection)But Godard doesn’t know how to tell a story simply. He seems to have always been interested in the medium of cinema, in the artificiality of it. He’s never been more playful than he is in Pierrot le fou. The movie is constantly reminding us we’re watching a film.
The music will periodically cut out and then resume as if reminding us that real life doesn’t come with a soundtrack. Several times, characters look directly at the camera, and once Ferdinand makes a comment to which Marianne asks him who he’s talking to, and he replies, “the audience.”
It is constantly making references to other movies and literature. At one point, the great American director Samuel Fuller shows up and discusses his views on art.
The entire thing is just delightful. An absolute joy to watch.
King Cabbage Brass Band at Cain’s Ballroom
A couple of weeks ago my wife was sitting on the couch watching random YouTube videos. She came across one featuring the King Cabbage Brass Band. She liked what she heard, so she watched a few more videos. At the time, I was wandering around the house doing…something. I don’t remember what the heck I was doing, but I kept passing through the living room where my wife was, and when I did, my hips would start swaying to the music.
After a bit, my wife declared that those guys were local and they were playing the Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa in a couple of weeks. Normally, that’s the sort of information I’d say something like, “that’s cool,” and then go about my business. But I’ve been intentionally trying to do more local stuff – support local artists and businesses, but also just get out of the house more. So we decided to buy tickets. We even bought one for our teenage daughter.
I’m so glad we did. That show was a blast. King Cabbage Brass Band is a classic New Orleans-style brass band that also likes to cover a wide variety of pop, rock, and hip hop songs.
This show was a Mardi Gras celebration with a whole lot of what they called “Collabages” featuring a variety of local artists sitting in with the band. I totally dug hearing those collaborations, but the second set was just the band, and that was where it was at. Good God, I love hearing a bunch of horns playing dance music. I got more steps in that night dancing my little white boy ass off than I did the previous week. Even my daughter, who is very much in her frowning teenage stage, was smiling and dancing. I can’t wait to see them again.
The Pitt: Season Two
The Pitt is back, baby! One of my favorite series from last year is back for a second season. That in itself feels revelatory. These days it seems that every major show takes ages between seasons. There was a three-year gap between Season 1 and Season 2 of Severance, for Pete’s sake. And here The Pitt is acting like an old-fashioned network series, airing Season Two just months after the first one ended.
There isn’t a lot that’s new to talk about. Season Two covers one fifteen-hour shift over the Fourth of July weekend. Dr. Robby (Noah Wylie) is about to go on a three-month sabbatical and so a new attending doctor, Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), is there to take over while he’s gone. She acts as a bit of an antagonist, especially as she’s a big proponent of generative AI, and Robby is more of a luddite.
There are a couple of other new folks, but mostly, it is the same cast I came to love in the first season. They are all doing the same great work as well. This is competency porn at its very finest. This season does start off a little slow, and since nothing is really new about it, it has the feel of slightly lesser quality. But it picks up nicely, and having just watched the latest episode I can definitely say I’m still loving it.
Sleeping Car to Trieste
This British noir from 1948 involves a stolen diary that is hidden somewhere on the titular train. The diary contains information that could push Europe into war. The two people who stole it gave it to another man who double-crossed them. All three are on the train along with a police inspector and an incredible cast of fascinating characters. It is actually the back half of that sentence that makes the film interesting. The espionage stuff is fine, but the secondary characters are delightful.
Buy Sleeping Car to TriesteThe film understands this as it spends a great deal of time with their stories, even though most of them do not drive the actual plot alone. There is a young American soldier looking for some birds to chat up and winds up in a car with a British ornithologist. A boorish gentleman winds up boring the train’s renowned French chef trying to teach him how to cook dull British cuisine. A businessman takes a woman with him in hopes of an affair and is constantly sidetracked. Etc.
I was utterly enthralled by all of these side stories. So much so that when it would come back to the spy stuff, I was a little annoyed.
Spider-Noir
One of the many wonderful things about Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the introduction of Nicolas Cage portraying Spider-Man Noir, a hard-boiled detective Spider-Man stuck inside a 1940s film noir. His role in the film was minor, but now they’ve made an entire series featuring him. That sounds amazing. The trailer is a teaser, but I’m already fully on board.
