w/e 4 February 2018
After missing it when it was on telly before Christmas, this week we finished watching Feud: Bette and Joan (about to expire on iPlayer). All good stuff, good fun, and quite touching by the end. I knew next to nothing about Bette Davis and Joan Crawford beforehand. TV’s odd isn’t it. I can’t imagine anyone proposing a trilogy of movies about Davis and Crawford’s late careers, but 6½ hours of TV? Why not?!
I thought this was a one-off series, but I just noticed that this was only the first season of Feud and the second, according to Wikipedia, is “to be called Buckingham Palace (originally titled Charles and Diana), centered on the relationship between Charles, Prince of Wales and Diana, Princess of Wales”. How odd. Entirely unrelated.
Coincidentaly, BFI Southbank had a screening of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane at the point in our viewing of Feud when shooting on that film had finished. It was good to see the real thing, and it made Susan Sarandon’s performance of Bette Davis seem even more accurate and fun.
Next up was the short seventh season of Game of Thrones which we polished off over the weekend. At this point I can barely follow what’s going on. Or, rather, why any of it’s going on. There are so many characters, with such intertwined histories over so many seasons, that every meeting seems to involve someone saying “you killed my father!” or similar, and my mind has to struggle to remember what that was all about a few years ago. All silly fun though, and often stunning to look at. It’s a shame that Brandon Stark’s still around though. He seems like a tedious, self-important, tech firm geek who thinks he knows everything and is about to give you a copy of his manifesto about how women should never be put in charge of dragons.
The week almost ended on Sunday night with a visit to Ronnie Scott’s to see Femi Temowo and Engines Orchestra which was lovely. I hadn’t heard of either of them before but it sounded like it would be interesting and it was. A Nigerian guitarist, jazzy horns, and an eight(?) piece string section. And Temowo was really smiley and friendly and chatty, so it was a nice show. Here’s a video:
That would have been the end of the week except now it’s 1.37am and I’m up watching the Super Bowl. American Football’s the only sport I watch outside of maybe the Olympics and I love how familiar it feels to me after all these years. I’m far from an expert or a devoted fan, and, while watching, will get distracted enough by something on my iPad that I’ll miss touchdowns… but I do love the familiar sounds and rhythms of it all.