Siegfried & Joy Hit America

Siegfried & Joy, the wonderful German comic magicians, finally made it to the US this week and got the ecstatic welcome they deserved.

They made an appearance on the TV show “America’s Got Talent”, which seemed to stretch the definition of “America’s” to include our NATO allies. (Absolutely no problem with the “Got Talent” part, though.)

Here’s their portion of the show:

Siegfried & Joy won the First Prize in the 2022 German Championship of Magicians competition. They’ll be back in North America for the World Championship in Toronto this month.

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The week before the AGT show, Siegfried & Joy performed on (and around) the Theatre and Circus stage at this year’s Glastonbury Festival.

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You can see short videos of Siegfried & Joy’s street antics back in Berlin on their Instagram site. You’ll be amazed and mystified by their dazzling performances.

For Those of Us Still Recovering from the S06E07 Episode of “Better Call Saul” Last Monday

This “spoiler without context” showed up on Twitter:

Nicely played, @aniket9248!

“The Boys” Is Back in Town: Trailer for Season 3

Warning: The videos and the comments are probably NSFW.

The Boys, Amazon Prime’s bloody, obscene, and terribly funny take on the comic book Super Heroes genre, returns on 3 June 2022, after a far-too-long break. Fans of exploding heads and sociopaths with otherworldly superpowers should be thrilled.

I’d heard very good things about The Boys, but I hesitated before watching it, because I’ve never been a fan of comic book movies.* So glad I gave it a chance. That first season was one of the highlights of the year, and the second season was even better.

The 3 June 2022 premiere will include the first three episodes of the new season, with a new episode following on every Friday.

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Vanity Fair assembled some of the cast to provide line-by-line commentary on the trailer.

“Chace Crawford, Antony Starr, Jensen Ackles, Karen Fukuhara, and Laz Alonso watch and take us through the trailer for their newest season of ‘The Boys.’ From Homelander milking a cow to Soldier Boy’s explosive introduction, the cast explains the official trailer for the Prime Video series’ third season.“

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Variety also had a session with the cast and creator.

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Finally, here’s the teaser that was released earlier this year.

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*Or talking animal movies, or comedies that pretend that ghosts are a real thing, or movies starring Eddie Murphy and/or David Spade. Or movies entitled It’s a Wonderful Life, a film I hate with a white-hot passion, and blame for most of what’s gone wrong in the United States since the day it was released.

Actually, I could probably extend this list of reasons-not-to-see-a-movie indefinitely, were there but world enough, and time….

“The Prisoner” — The First Great TV Cult Series

Bob Dylan. Andy Warhol. Marilyn Monroe.

It feels like a 60s Reunion Week around here these days. Let’s end the week with a look at another cultural milestone.

The Prisoner was a surrealistic 17-episode British TV series that was released in the US during the traumatic summer of 1968.

The set-up was simple: In the introduction, a British agent angrily resigns from his job and prepares to leave the country. Before he can make his departure, he’s gassed and kidnapped. He wakes up in The Village.

We don’t know which agency or government is behind The Village. We don’t even know what country it’s in. Instead of names, the residents of The Village are identified by numbers; The Prisoner is “Number Six”. it’s almost impossible to tell which of the residents are prisoners and which are administrators, with the exception of the apparently powerful Number Two, who is played by a different actor in each episode.

 And nobody can leave The Village.

I identify The Prisoner as the “First Great TV Cult Series” because it meets the criteria for a cult citation. It didn’t attract a huge audience, but its admirers were obsessed with it. The word “fan” is derived from “fanatic”, which accurately describes the show’s more devout followers. It looks unlike anything else on television. It’s cooly cerebral, and leaves you with more questions than answers.

I think it ranks with the gorgeous and ultra-violent Utopia on the list of Great TV Cult Series.

Here’s the first episode.

Andy and Marilyn

As pretty much everybody knows by now, Andy Warhol’s 1964 artwork, Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, sold at Christie’s for a record $195,000,000, making it the most expensive American artwork to ever sell at auction. The bidding lasted less than four minutes, and the identity of the winning bidder has not been disclosed.

Meanwhile, Netflix is currently screening “The Andy Warhol Diaries”, a six-part series based Warhol’s extensive posthumously published journals. Warhol’s diaries covered the period between November 1976 and February 1987, ending about five days before his death. An edited version of the diaries, running 807 gossipy pages, was published in 1989. To the great frustration of many readers, it had no index, which made finding juicy stories about the celebrities in Warhol’s orbit difficult to find.

It could have been worse. The full diary was more than 20,000-pages

The

The last time I saw Warhol was at a book signing in Washington. Warhol, well aware of the value of his name, was willing to sign anything. I was amused to watch as a young man dropped his jeans and ask Warhol to sign his underpants, which Andy, also apparently amused, did.

I wonder what those underpants would fetch at auction today.

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Andy Warhol’s Dead But I’m Not

I’ve always loved this late ’80s song by the band E-I-E-I-O.

Andy and Marilyn, together at last.

The Sunday British Humour Clip

One of an occasional series of postings featuring brief clips of (mainly) British humour.

From the TV show Yes Minister, one of the most cynical (and funniest) looks at government ever made.

In this scene, Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby explains to the hapless Jim Hacker, Minister of Administrative Affairs, why the United Kingdom is in the European Union.

Happier days, then.

First Teaser for “House of the Dragon”, HBO’s “Game of Thones” Prequel

“History does not remember blood. It remembers names.”

It won’t premier until late summer—21 August 2022—but HBO just posted the first teaser trailer for House of the Dragon, a prequel to Game of Thrones.

With its excellent first five seasons, Game of Thrones could have been a Contender, but things didn’t end well for many of the series’ characters, and for most of the series’ viewers. Once the showrunners no longer had George R. R. Martin’s novels on which to base the show, things seemed to deteriorate badly, through the mediocre sixth series and particularly during the widely-reviled rushed and incoherent final episodes.

Martin long ago promised that there would be two more volumes in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, which began with Game of Thrones. Given his age, writing pace, and other projects, most of his readers doubt he’ll complete the work. House of the Dragon seems to be based on Fire & Blood, a related Martin project covering the history of House Targaryen and set 200 years before the action of Game of Thrones.

Will I watch House of the Dragon? Of course I will, but after the disappointing conclusion of GoT, I’ll watch with lowered expectations.

Which I hope will be greatly exceeded.

The Sunday British Humour Clip

One of an occasional series of postings featuring brief clips of (mainly) British humour.

From the TV show That Mitchell & Webb Look, Series 3.

You know what the punchline will be as soon as David Mitchell enters the room, but you laugh anyway.

The Tragedy of Walter Hartwell White

Warning: Spoilers. But the show ended in 2013, and if you haven’t seen it by now….

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“Until you travel to that place you can’t come back
Where the last pain is gone and all that’s left is black”

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There’s a universal human tendency to arbitrarily rank things that are by their nature, unrankable.

“Best Supporting Actor in a Black and White Movie from the 1950s”. “Best Beer to Have when You’re Having More than One”. “Most Enjoyable Biblical Commandment to Break when Nobody’s Watching”.*

Someday, inevitably, there will be a television series that some people will contend is more brilliantly constructed, more beautifully written, and more superbly acted, than Breaking Bad. Someday, those people may be right.

But that day is unlikely to arrive anytime soon.

The video for “Black”, by Danger Mouse & Norah Jones, shows Walter White at his pinnacle, having eliminated the greatest threat to his family and to his crystal meth empire. And then, in the final few seconds, it shows what his victory costed.

Word is, we’ll get a last look at Walter White in the upcoming final season of Breaking Bad’s prequel, Better Call Saul,

The first two episodes of the 13-episode series will premiere on Monday, 18 April 2022.

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* (1) Erich von Stroheim as “Max von Mayerling” in Sunset Boulevard, (2) Schaefer—No doubt at all, and (3) A tie between the one about stealing and the one about taking the name of the Lord your God in vain.

YMMV, but I, for one, would love to split a Schaefers with Erich von Stroheim (dressed in his Max von Mayerling butler uniform) while stealing one of Gloria Swanson’s goddamn turbans.

Leaked Image from “The Crown” — Series 12

Found on the Net.

A couple of weeks ago, I tried to post this leaked image which appears to be from an episode of The Crown that’s scheduled to run in 2028, but I somehow managed to screw it up.

Fortunately, the very next day, I crossed paths with a British gentleman who was moving into the condo right next to mine, and who happened to be a specialist in computer operations. He generously offered to repair my PC at no charge. When he returned it a few hours later, it ran like a dream!

(I did later notice that a number of files–this one among them–had been accidentally deleted during the repair work. Thank goodness I had a backup copy!)

Meanwhile, my generous new neighbour has volunteered to run a special diagnostic program on my PC every few weeks, to check for viruses and other “bad stuff” that might turn up. If you’re having computer problems, I can highly recommend his company, “MI5ecurity–We Fix It, and Fix It Good”.