The Zeitgeist

          

Cameron Diaz in leggings and boots (left). The new FX drama, "Lights Out," The main stars of "Big Love" Colin Firth and Helena Bonham Carter in "The King's Speech" and Britney Spears' new album cover.

Things to Love About New York

Yeah, snowstorms and weather in the 20s with a wind chill in the teens is not exactly Margaritaville weather. More like Moscow with Napoleon besieging it. This week we got about nine inches which were quickly dispatched in the City and which is still frosting the suburbs on top of the 27 inches we got at the end of December. Whole bushes in my front yard are still buried in snow. It’s pretty though, as in the ‘burbs the snow doesn’t turn black and gray like in the City, so everything has that Currier & Ives kind of look. If you squint, Long Island can look like New England in the snow. One great thing about this kind of inclement weather is that the fashion gods have devised flattering female attire for it. Just as miniskirts are essential in warm climes, up in the Big Apple women are now presenting themselves in my new favorite outfit – rubber (or leather) high rain/snow boots on top of black leggings and a short-cropped jacket. This has become kind of a uniform on the streets of Manhattan for the svelte and fashionable but it affords a measure of sex appeal to the members of the male gender who in these desperately cold times of indoor hibernation crave some flattering female visages to cast their gazes upon live and in 3-D. All good, ladies, and thanks!

Speaking also of New York, New York Magazine has a “New York’s Greatest Ever Everything” issue this week (Jan 17-24). One of the points being argued by the pundits and editors of that periodical is New York City’s best-ever year. They nominated several for contention: 1898 when the Five Boros came together in the unified megalopolis we see today, 1947 with Brando on Broadway, Toscanini at Rockefeller Center and Jackie Robinson making baseball history in Brooklyn; 1963 with its “Mad Men-esque” appeal, 1978 because “there was nowhere to go but up” and finally 2011 (now). Coincidentally, I just happened to have been living in Manhattan in both 1963 and 1978 and they were very, very different. In ’63 they were burning everyone’s garbage every day in individual apartment building incinerators combined with ConEd generating electricity from coal, cars, trucks and buses running on leaded gas and littering seen as an inherent right. Let me tell you, if you think Manhattan is dirty now, you have no idea how it resembled Dickens’ 19^th Century London smog in ‘63. Yes, everyone was all dressed up all the time, people ate everything bad for them and drank and smoked and drank and smoked and everyone was having a great time in the last days of Camelot. But best ever? In ’78 I was living at 67 East 11^th Street at Broadway and attending NYU. As New York says, things were cheap in the City. My roommate and I were paying all of $360 a month (combined) to share a one bedroom apartment with a huge view of Grace Church. My Dad was upset with me because most everyone else was paying $250 a month for the same size space, but my building was one of the first renovations of those old cast iron industrial factories, so everything was new. The City was disgustingly filthy and crime was rampant. The economy (Carter was President) stank but things were still cheap. Everyone still rented, the subway was 35 cents, steins of beer at McSorley’s on 7^th Street were just 25 cents, you could get a sandwich and ice cream sundae at Schrafft’s on 5^th Avenue for about $2-$3. Best ever? You decide. Here’s the link: http://nymag.com/news/features/greatest-new-york/

New On TV

FX, the network that gave us “Nip/Tuck” and “Rescue Me” premiered a new boxing drama “Lights Out” on Tuesday evening. This is the story of an Irish-American (and who isn’t Irish in boxing in films and television?) family comprised of a retired former champ, his neer-do-well brother, his dad the boxing coach and his hot (yeah, like in “Rescue Me,” the Irish-American women are hot) wife, teenage daughter and extended group of family and friends. Great cast starring Holt McCallany (CSI Miami) in the title role, Stacy Keach (he’s still alive?) as his dad and “Braveheart’s” Catherine McCormack  as his wife. Long story short: Through ineptitude, generosity and mismanagement, “Lights” Leary (our hero) loses all his millions earned from years in the ring and is now faced with the dilemma of how to maintain his wealthy suburban New Jersey lifestyle and support his extended posse. Does he become muscle for sleazy debt collectors? Does he go back in the ring against his wife’s wishes? Will be succumb to injuries from his days in the ring? This is not presented in a black and white fashion. “Lights” Leary is not all good nor all bad, but a complicated character both likeable and despicable in that Tony Soprano way, loving his family but full of human failings and bad deeds. I give this a B+ for execution and photography and a C+ for originality (this story has been done before) but worth setting your DVRs for at 10 on Tuesdays.

Big Hunk of Love

Back on HBO for its final season starting this Sunday (Jan 16^th) at 9:00 is “Big Love,” that HBO drama set in the wilds of Utah’s polygamist Mormon community. Bill Pullman is back as the holy family patriarch (who also just happens to own a gambling casino) with three wives living in three adjoining houses along with his crazy extended family of dysfunctional polygamists living on a “compound” in the Utah desert and following a deviant stream of Mormonism. “Big Love” is “The Sopranos” set in the Southwest and if you’ve missed the prior seasons, shame on you. Easily one of the five best dramas HBO has come out with, and by extension, one of the best on television.

The King’s Speech

Let me say right off that I love British movies, primarily for the chance to hear English spoken at its highest levels by the folks who invented the language. “The Kings Speech” is actually a film about language and the ability to communicate it effectively. It’s the story of King George VI (the current Queen Elizabeth’s father) who suffered from a terrible stutter and speech impediment, particularly in public. This was brought on by a 19^th Century overbearing father (George V) and cold mother and older brother (Edward, played by Guy Pierce) who tormented him. Propelled by events beyond his control, namely Edward’s abdicating the Throne to marry Mrs. Simpson, George (played tremendously well by Colin Firth) is thrust into the limelight. As George V told his son earlier in the film, “It used to be that all a King had to do was look good in a uniform and not fall off a horse, now we have become actors,” as he said that monarchs now had to be the faces of their country because of the advent of mass media. So, Firth’s character needs to be able to deliver speeches on radio. To that end, George’s wife, Mary (the Queen Mum, played with precision by Helena Bonham Carter) seeks out a speech therapist, played by Geoffrey Rush. Rush’s character is a character of the highest order and therein lies the humor and pathos between the two protagonists. Rush does help George but I won’t say more in case you’ve not yet seen the film. British filmmaking at its best, on a par with last year’s “The Queen.”

Pop Music

Britney Spears, in many respects the Ur-blonde dance music nymphet, is back from her post-partum depression. And because she has kids to support and alimony to pay to K-Fed (or “Fed-Ex”) needs to keep working. She’s got a new song out called “Hold It Against Me,” which kinds of echoes the old number one Country and Western song “If I Said You Have a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?” by  The Bellamy Brothers in 1979 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAVUrq7jvtM). Britney also wants to have it held against her, but in a different genre, pop dance. Pretty decent song that will grow on you. Already all over the radio and number one in 16 countries on the iTunes charts (including the U.S.). Just released, here it is, so please don’t hold it against me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJSm_QMO6zA (audio only, video isn’t out yet).

The Wonder of It All

One of my Top 20 favorite films is a Tom Hanks’ production called “That Thing You Do.” It seems to be on TV nearly every day on one channel or another. Probably because it’s the feel good story of four young garage band members from Erie, P.A., circa 1963 and their improbable rise to stardom with a pop tune by the same name. Hanks is in the movie as was the very funny Steve Zahn and the luminescent Liv Tyler. Great tune. I like the whole soundtrack actually. Maybe with this song, 1963 really was the best year ever in New York? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzllVlzzeuo.

But my favorite song in the movie is the only one fronted by Zahn called “Dance With Me Tonight,” which I think is even more rockin’ than “That Thing You Do.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29pZdMDDhJY&feature=related. Have a look and catch the film if you’re one of 10 Americans who hasn’t seen it yet. Will warm your heart.