Episode 1: The Best Newsletter

Hello, friends. Welcome to this new thing I’m doing. Thank you for joining me.

Though it may strike some folks as the height of arrogance to call something “The Best Newsletter,” that’s not really what the title means. This newsletter is going to offer my commentary on a variety of “best” cultural items I engaged with that week: The Best… TV series or movie or book or magazine piece or restaurant or food item or whatever strikes me as worth sharing. Enough people ask me what I’m watching/reading/listening to that I’m hoping to use this forum to provide some relief for the overwhelming choice the world offers us these days.

This is not intended to be reviews of every new movie or show that comes out. Yes, I might write about the latest Star Wars-related series that streams on Disney+. But I might also write about a film like Double Indemnity (1944) or a George Harrison song from 1970 or The Iliad (don’t tempt me – I picked up a copy at an airport a few months ago). There are no rules here.

This is not exactly a new concept for me.

When I was in high school, I had a column in the school newspaper that I called “Pieces of My Mind.” (I blatantly stole the title from a book of essays by the longtime 60 Minutes curmudgeon Andy Rooney – but don’t worry, I got the chance to thank him more than a decade later, on a jet way at the Phoenix airport. But I digress.)

I was deeply into movies and cinema history in my late-teens, and sometimes friends would ask me to recommend “old movies” for them to watch. So I created an offshoot of my column: a series of lists I called “Movies of My Mind.”

These lists were recommendations that I specifically curated for individual friends. I think the first one went to Laurie T. Did she actually watch any of them? I don’t know. But as they say, it’s the journey, not the destination. I liked thinking about, researching, and making those lists, whether my readers watched all of the movies I suggested or none at all.

Now here we are, about 25 years later, and I’m dusting off an old idea for a new era. I’ve had about seven lives since then, but some things just stay with you. So without any further ado…

The Best…

…Series I Watched This Week

Slow Horses (Seasons 1 & 2) – Apple TV+

We’re celebrating my dad’s 80th birthday this week. You know who else turns 80 this year? Mick Jagger (on July 26). A show is either going to be badass or ridiculously cheesy when its theme song has original lyrics composed and performed by Sir Michael Philip Jagger himself. Fortunately, Slow Horses leans in the direction of badass.

I’m generally not into genre stories, but this is a spy show I can support. It’s not about the elite of the elite like James Bond. These spies have all kinds of flaws and weaknesses, which have led these MI5 underachievers and transgressors to be exiled to Slough House, a sort of British spy purgatory. (Sadly, the show is set in London, not Slough, so there will be no David Brent sightings.)

The leader of the bunch is a seemingly washed-up old spy named Jackson Lamb, played by Gary Oldman with endearingly dyspeptic snarkiness. With his perpetually soiled trench coat, undone tie, and repellant personal habits, he epitomizes the Slough House vibe. He and his team of misfit toys aren’t slick. But they’re effective in their own ramshackle ways when they go up against white nationalists (UK variety), Russian baddies, and MI5 itself (Kristin Scott Thomas, who plays the second-in-command at MI5, is both friend and foe).

Two seasons of Slow Horses are streaming now on Apple TV+, with two more reportedly on order. Believable spy stories are notoriously difficult to pull off, but these – thanks to Mick Herron’s novels as source material and the short, 6-episode seasons (thank you, BBC) – are plausible enough. Like anything else, if you buy the world of the story, you can overlook some plot holes, and I bought this world. I wouldn’t want to stand within 10 feet of Jackson Lamb and his odors, but I’d gladly watch him work.

Image: Apple TV+

…Movie I Watched This Week

Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022) – Netflix

Alejandro Iñárritu’s latest film has been dismissed by some critics as a self-indulgent mess. I get that, but I think the self-indulgence is what makes the movie so honest and personal. Shouldn’t artists be allowed to be self-indulgent if someone (in this case, Netflix) is willing to pay for it?

The viewer gives up 159 minutes of their time, but in return they get an incredible, often surreal spectacle of dreams, regrets, and death, told through the eyes of a renowned ex-pat Mexican journalist/filmmaker (Iñárritu’s alter ego, played by Daniel Giménez Cacho).

The film is also shot in 65 millimeter, adding to the feeling that the protagonist is dealing with BIG existential questions and HUGELY complicated relationships. Is it entertaining? I’m not sure. But I don’t think it was made with my entertainment in mind.

Iñárritu probably won’t win his third Academy Award for Best Director for this one, but there are sequences in this film you won’t forget. That said – if you were endlessly annoyed by the dream sequences in The Sopranos, best to steer clear of this one.

Photo: Netflix

…Book I Read This Week

Folk Music: A Bob Dylan Biography in Seven Songs (Yale University Press, 2022) by Greil Marcus

You could spend your life reading books on Bob Dylan, and I’ve devoted a healthy percentage of mine doing so. And any chance to read Greil Marcus opine on Dylan’s work is worth the time.

His latest book looks at Dylan’s life and work through seven songs spanning the entire career of the self-proclaimed “song and dance man,” who turns 82 this year. Each song is broken down into its own cultural and musical history, with Marcus locating each work within the context of folk history, Dylan history, and American history itself.

His opening chapter, an examination of the civil rights era, the musical legacy of slavery, and Dylan’s early years via his 1963 folk classic “Blowin’ in the Wind” took my breath away.

Marcus’s writing is so insightful, his connections so sharp yet poetic, he actually discourages me from being a writer in the same way that the film of The English Patient discouraged me at age 16 from becoming a filmmaker – I look at it and think, “Well, I can’t possibly do that.” But I also love it.

Cover illustration: Yale University Press

…Magazine Piece I Read This Week

“UConn means something. This is how Dan Hurley made it matter again” by Brendan Quinn, The Athletic

Brendan Quinn both had me and hurt me with the first line of this piece: “People of a certain age speak of UConn basketball a certain way.” I’ve never considered myself  to be “of a certain age,” but now it’s happened. There’s no recovering from this. The problem is: he’s right.

I am old enough to remember the glory years of the UConn men’s program. I do remember the “Dream Season” of 1989-90, when as a 5th grader, I commandeered a corner of Mr. Tosun’s blackboard to provide “Huskymania” scores and upcoming schedule updates for my classmates to read.

That team inspired me to practice Chris Smith’s crossover between-the-legs dribble in the basement, to recreate Tate George’s miracle last-second shot against Clemson in the driveway, to emulate Nadav Henefeld’s keen instincts and crafty hands on defense. Jim Calhoun, for better or worse, was one of my childhood heroes.

That season was the start of a glorious 25-year run that included four NCAA titles, a boatload of Big East crowns, and countless memorable moments. So it was painful to experience the breakup of the Big East, UConn’s walk through the wilderness (in the American Athletic Conference, the college basketball version of Slough House), and those years of oblivion.

“Our little Huskies,” as my mother called them in the early days, have won only one NCAA tournament game since improbably cutting down the nets in 2014. But as this piece outlines, past and present may finally be coming together with this year’s team. We’ll just have to see if head coach Dan Hurley can keep his team – and himself – on the right path.

Illustration: John Bradford / The Athletic