Streaming for seniors, ‘The Good Fight’ returns and girls gone mild
Netflix is featuring the new true-crime documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, a look at murder in the world of big-game wildlife collectors in the US.
By HANNAH BROWNTHE GREEN BOOK(photo credit: PATTI PERRET/COURTESY OF YES)
At this point, just about everyone would trade 10 hours of great TV for five minutes walking in the sun, but at least high-quality entertainment can help us make the best of this outbreak.While of course the cinematheques are closed, the websites of the Jerusalem Cinematheque (jer-cin.org.il) and the Tel Aviv Cinematheque (cinema.co.il) are streaming free movies. The programs change every few days and you can enjoy classics from the archives and Israeli feature films and documentaries. These movies are presented with Hebrew titles only, but there are also some English-language films.The Jerusalem Cinematheque is currently featuring a link to a good-quality YouTube presentation of Royal Wedding. The 1951 movie by Stanley Donen features Fred Astaire and Jane Powell starring as brother-and-sister entertainers (based on Astaire’s own early partnership with his sister) who go to London with a show. The musical numbers feature two of Astaire’s best-loved performances, dancing with a hat rack to the song “Sunday Jumps” and tapping across the ceiling in “You’re All the World to Me.”There are also links on the Jerusalem Cinematheque website to clips from the Israel Film Archive, which go way back into Israeli history, including footage of the response to the 1949 TB epidemic.YES is adding to its Quarantine Channel with special programming for senior citizens. Much of what it features will be fun for audiences of any age, including the crowd-pleasing 2019 Oscar winner The Green Book, about a road trip that an African-American classical musician (Mahershala Ali, who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar) takes through the Deep South with an New York-Italian chauffeur (Viggo Mortensen).This channel also includes some obvious choices such as The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the sequel to the hit film about British pensioners who retire to India, where Richard Gere joins the great original cast which includes Bill Nighy, Judy Dench, Maggie Smith and Dev Patel.One thing this new streaming era lacks is enough great old movies, and the Quarantine Channel for seniors is offering such classics as Gone with the Wind, Singin’ in the Rain and Some Like It Hot. I wouldn’t try to get the younger generation interested in GWTW, as it is so politically incorrect it is sadly dated (and the second half gets pretty dull at times), but Singin’ in the Rain and Some Like It Hot both hold up quite well. In fact, Some Like It Hot, with all the cross-dressing and Billy Wilder’s sparkling dialogue, should please contemporary audiences. The seniors’ programming doesn’t include the fourth season of The Good Fight, which starts running on YES VOD on April 10 and on YES Edge on Sundays at 10:45 p.m. starting on April 12, but it ought to. The Good Fight is the follow-up series to The Good Wife that focuses on Diane (Christine Baranski, the world’s most glamorous 67-year-old) who gets a job as the token white lawyer at an African-American firm. In the new season, she is frustrated by a new law that gives wealthy Americans a loophole for getting out of jail (and legal troubles in general) free. Michael J. Fox is returning as the unscrupulous Louis Canning. The first three seasons are available on Amazon Prime through Cellcom TV and Partner TV.Booksmart is a girl-power comedy starring Beanie Feldstein (who will play Monica Lewinsky in the upcoming American Crime Story series) and Kaitlyn Dever (Unbelievable) about two nerds who decide to finally have some fun just before they graduate high school. The joke is that they are just too smart and ambitious to get into any real trouble. It will start running on HOT Cinema 1 starting April 17.Netflix is featuring the new true-crime documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, a look at murder in the world of big-game wildlife collectors in the US. It is a crazy, compelling story but these are not necessarily people you want to spend much time with, certainly not seven hour-long episodes. It might have been better as a 90-minute documentary.
