Archives for December 2017

BoJack Horseman, Netflix’s secret sleeper star

December 29, 2017 by Leave a Comment

BoJack Horse­man.

Sea­son 4 of BoJack Horse­man aired on Net­flix this past autumn, and if you’ve yet to be point­ed in its very par­tic­u­lar direc­tion you’re in for a treat. It’s the lat­est in the long line of ani­mat­ed, adult drame­dies that stretch­es back to South Park (reviewed ear­li­er here), King of the Hill, Beav­is and Butthead and of course the Simp­sons.

Ensconced in his hill­top, pent­house apart­ment in the myth­i­cal LA sub­urb of Hol­ly­woo, BoJack is a washed-up has­been who used to the star of the squeaky-clean sit­com Horsin’ Around, who spends his days in a drug-fuelled, alco­holic haze of priv­i­leged self-pity.

Diane, Todd and BoJack.

The show’s stilet­to humour stems from two sources. On the one hand, it’s a glo­ri­ous­ly acer­bic pick­ing apart of the media land­scape as the worlds of film, tele­vi­sion and pub­lish­ing are glee­ful­ly trashed. Bril­liant­ly barbed one lin­ers are fired back and forth with sar­cas­tic brio, in the way that was sup­posed to have been done in the, whis­per it, dis­ap­point­ing­ly over­rat­ed His Girl Fri­day.

And on the oth­er, half of the char­ac­ters are, by the bye, ani­mals. So Bojack is in fact an actu­al horse. But his ston­er house­guest Todd is a 20 some­thing guy, and Diane, his soul­mate and ghost writer is a 20 some­thing girl. She though is mar­ried to BoJack’s best fren­e­my Mr. Peanut­but­ter, who’s a gold­en Labrador. And his agent Princess Car­o­line is a cat, who lat­er hooks up with a wealthy mouse, heir to the Stil­ton Hotel for­tune. What all this allows for is some fan­tas­ti­cal­ly laboured puns and slap­stick, togeth­er with a pletho­ra of ridicu­lous­ly elab­o­rate setups that even­tu­al­ly pro­duce won­der­ful­ly sil­ly pay-offs.

The main man, Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

All of which would be enjoy­able enough. But what real­ly ele­vates the series is the emo­tion­al depth and com­plex­i­ty that they man­age to reap from the soapy sto­ry­lines that they hang all this on. They do this, as Emi­ly Nuss­baum writes in her piece in the New York­er here, by expand­ing the show’s hori­zons from sea­son 2 on, by giv­ing each of the pro­tag­o­nists their own sto­ry­lines, instead of just focus­ing on BoJack, as they do in sea­son 1. So you end up being as invest­ed in Todd, Diane, Princess Car­o­line and even Mr Peanut­tbut­ter, as you do in BoJack.

The result is both the fun­ni­est, and the most engag­ing show cur­rent­ly being aired any­where on tele­vi­sion. And it’s hard not to con­clude that its showrun­ner and chief writer Raphael Bob Waks­berg is some sort of a lat­ter day Dorothy Park­er. If you’ve yet to sam­ple its delights, then by all means begin at the begin­ning, with sea­son 1. But be warned, it gets sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter from sea­son 2 on.

You can see the trail­er for sea­son 4 of BoJack Horse­man here. And here’s a 10 minute com­pi­la­tion of some of the fun­ni­est bits from sea­son 2 here.

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Filed Under: Television Tagged With: , ,

Call Me By Your Name, a new (Merchant) Ivory film. Yeah.

December 1, 2017 by Leave a Comment

Call Me By Your Name.

Once a year, crit­ics descend on a film to anoint it and declare it a film fit for grown-ups. Look­ing around, it’s not hard to see why. Every week, cin­e­ma goers are pre­sent­ed with a cast of inter­change­able super­heros who stand immo­bile against a green screen, as A N Oth­er arch vil­lain is CGId behind them, and the walls and ceil­ing of the cin­e­ma are engulfed in a blast of flames and a wall of sound, as the stu­dio respon­si­ble attempts valiant­ly to dis­guise the com­plete absence of a sto­ry by bury­ing us all in the 21st century’s answer to sturm und drang.

Giv­en that all seri­ous dra­ma aimed at grown-ups has long since migrat­ed to tele­vi­sion, it’s hard­ly sur­pris­ing then that any stray film that some­how slips through the cracks in the sys­tem to momen­tar­i­ly appear on the sil­ver screen is instant­ly pounced upon. This year’s crit­i­cal dar­ling is Call Me By Your Name. And it’s, well, per­fect­ly nice.

The unusu­al I Am Love.

Nom­i­nal­ly, it’s the third film in Luca Guadagni­no’s tril­o­gy of desire, after I Am Love (2009) and A Big­ger Splash (2015). But in real­i­ty, it’s the lat­est offer­ing from the Mer­chant Ivory con­vey­or belt. And there­in lies the rub. Because what you think of it will depend very much on what that means to you.

Pro­duc­er Ismail Mer­chant and direc­tor James Ivory were life and cre­ative part­ners for half a cen­tu­ry and pro­duced some 44 fea­tures togeth­er. Films like A Room With A View (1985), Mau­rice (’87), Howard’s End (’92), Jef­fer­son In Paris (’95) and Sur­viv­ing Picas­so (’96). Sol­id, depend­able, pro­fes­sion­al­ly pro­duced dra­mas revolv­ing around a reli­able ros­ter of reg­u­lar thes­pi­ans blithe­ly dis­port­ing their mid­dle brow cul­ture and earnest­ly extolling a lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion — the majes­tic the Remains of the Day is mere­ly the glo­ri­ous excep­tion that goes to prove the rule.

Boys will be boys.

Call Me By Your Name was adapt­ed by Ivory, Mer­chant hav­ing passed away in 2004, and only lat­ter­ly became a Guadagni­no project. Elio is a 17 year old boy spend­ing the sum­mer with his par­ents in their house on the shores of north­ern Italy, where their evenings are spent lis­ten­ing to Bach being played at the piano as they air­i­ly dis­cuss the mer­its of Hei­deg­ger and Niet­zsche. His father, a pro­fes­sor of archae­ol­o­gy, has invit­ed an Amer­i­can post grad of his to stay for the sum­mer, and Elio quick­ly finds him­self attract­ed to the hand­some American’s rugged good looks.

The peer­less The Remains of the Day.

The boy reveals his feel­ings, and… they’re rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed. Mean­while, he los­es his vir­gin­i­ty to the girl next door, but when then he instant­ly cools on her, hav­ing lost his heart to the Amer­i­can, she responds with… com­plete under­stand­ing, and pledges her life-long friend­ship. And when his par­ents even­tu­al­ly cop… they’re com­plete­ly sup­port­ive. In oth­er words, there is absolute­ly noth­ing at stake.

Every­one is so insuf­fer­ably edu­cat­ed, and so over­bear­ing­ly well brought up, that instead of a dra­ma, all you’re pre­sent­ed with is a pic­ture-post­card, wet-dream vision of a would-be ide­alised upbring­ing. No par­ents are real­ly ever that under­stand­ing, and would that that were what the crush­ing dis­ap­point­ment of a shat­tered first teenage love real­ly felt and looked like.

It all looks mar­vel­lous, and it’s won­der­ful to escape into that sort of hokum for a cou­ple of hours of a winter’s eve. But be warned, that’s all it is. If you’re hop­ing for Wag­n­er or Bach, I’m afraid all you’ll find here is Tchaikovsky. Or, worse again, Puc­ci­ni. Come to think of it, he’d have been a much more appro­pri­ate choice for the soundtrack.

You can see the trail­er to Call Me By Your Name here.

Sign up for a sub­scrip­tion right or below, and I shall keep you post­ed every month on All the Very Best and Worst in Film, Tele­vi­sion and Music!

Filed Under: Film Tagged With: , ,