Kwickie Kapsule Kritical Kommentaries

Our friend Barbara recommended this documentary to me a few months ago, and I caught up with it earlier in the week.  "Hosted" by Jakob Dylan (who appears to be as laconic in demeanor as his father, Bob), the doc takes you on a terrific ride exploring the pop/folk/rock music scene that centered in the Laural Canyon area of Los Angeles circa 1965-67.  It features interviews with such people as Brian Wilson, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and Michelle Phillips.  If you are of that era and/or just love that music, I highly recommend it.  Two things that stood out to me: One, the absolute reverence that all of these artists had and continue to have for Brian Wilson, and, two, the scene of a 70-something Stephen Stills laying down a guitar solo track in an LA recording studio.

Three solid Stars from The Grandstander.

O'Connor, Colman, and Menzies

We finished watching Season Three of Netflix' "The Crown", and I think that of all the people that I've spoken to who have watched this, my bride included, I am the only one who has liked it.  The focus of their criticism seems to be "Olivia Colman isn't as likable as Queen Elizabeth as Claire Foy was in the first two seasons."  My response is that Colman is playing a different woman - older, more experienced, perhaps more jaded - in the time period covered (1964-77).   I liked her in it.  I also thought that Tobias Menzies was a better Prince Phillip.  Josh O'Connor as Prince Charles plays a prominent part of this season, a season that portrays Charles as a total boob.

Also of note is Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret.  Fun Fact:  In the 2010 movie "The King's Speech" (which I just re-watched and is a terrific movie, btw), Miss Carter plays Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King George VI and the mother of the the current Queen and the late Princess Margaret.  All she needs to do now is find a vehicle where she would play the current Queen Elizabeth and she will have achieved a Windsor Family Trifecta.

Season Three of "The Crown" gets Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Kracinski and Rapace

We so much enjoyed last year's first season of "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan", and we were anxiously awaiting this new season.  How much did we like this one?  Not so much.  This one was so implausible that I found myself getting totally PO'd with the total ridiculousness of it.   

WARNING:  The next paragraph contains possible spoilers.  Feel free to skip over it if you haven't watched the entire series as yet.

Have one American special forces soldier fight off a couple of platoons of Venezuelan soldiers?  Sure why not.  And how many times is John Kracinski's Ryan going to disobey orders and go it alone against first, a camp full of vicious mercenaries, and then, even more ridiculous, the entire Venezuelan army, or so it seemed, after every American in the entire country was ordered by the US State Department to evacuate the country.  Screw you all, says Jack, I'm gonna do this MY way.

Okay.  You can go back to reading this post now.

The whole series made me realize why I quit reading Tom Clancy novels after about the third one of these flights of fancy.

One cool aspect of this series was the appearance of Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who appeared in all those Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies.  She's an asset to anything that she's in, but she isn't in this one nearly enough to get "Jack Ryan" any more than Two Stars from The Grandstander.


On a brighter note, an email from Amazon arrived this morning informing us that Season Three of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is now available for viewing.  Can't wait to get into that one soon.