我家最舒服的一角

The present is unsavory, the future is unfathomable and most people aren't Karl Lagerfeld.  We can all use some magical nostalgia where terror, real or imaginary, was in a distant past and exists in the confine of the screen and we are safe in the comfort of our own place having a good scare without all the nasty consequences.

A Legacy of Spies is the latest addition to John Le Carré oeuvre.  The term legacy takes on a negative connotation just like the word classic, iPod Classic, legacy software, anyone?  It becomes an euphemism for anything that is dated, past its prime but for some pathetic reason still hanging around.  The protagonist Peter Guillam is one of those legacies.  The past has come back to haunt him, his mentor George Smiley and the Circuit as a whole: they face legal challenges from the offspring of the deceased whose deaths were a direct or indirect consequence of his botched operation.  Legacy revisits that past with immaculate details, mainly in the form of memos and letters, and low key suave just like Smiley.  Legacy can be seen as part of a series as the characters appear in Le Carré previous works.  With Legacy, Le Carré may really retire Smiley as his spook exemplary for good.  It's a loss but all good things must end.

I am always suspect of movies or shows that make children as their main characters.  I think it's just an easy way to gain sympathy and is borderline exploitative.  Spielberg's E.T.:  the Extra Terrestrial is the pinnacle of this kind of success or exploitation.  There is no doubt in my mind, Netflix's Stranger Things is in the same vein as E.T.   You have a suburban setting in yesteryear with a bunch of adorable kids running around riding bikes.  The similarity is uncanny and is as much as a homage as it's formulaic.  That being said I like the series.  Above anything else, it's about unconditional and unwavering friendship we yearn for but almost forgot.  What's not to like?  And of course Eggo too.  The show has catapulted some young actors into early stardom: the star Millie Bobby Brown graces the cover of Interview magazine, and resuscitated the fading career of Winona Ryder whom I think is just being herself in the show.  With great success comes more seasons and episodes and the danger of overstaying its welcome with sub par material.  Super natural sci-fi sometimes is just a polite way of saying male bovine excrement.

Mindhunter is one long movie in episodes.  Since The Silence of the Lambs, serial killers have gone mainstream and it's a dime a dozen.  What sets Mindhunter apart and above is the stunning visual and the nuanced multilayered audio.  The opening sequence really set things up and foretells what it is to come visually and aurally.  Mindhunter is the story of the nascent Behavioral Science Department of the FBI in the 70s.  The production is charming and the dialogue is smart.  Wendy Carr, the psychology professor played by Anna Torv has such an inflection that I imagine is what East Coast intelligentsia sounds like.  One thing I don't quite understand is why agent Holden Ford wears a double vented suit jacket.  I think it's too showy and European a sartorial choice for an FBI agent unless Ford is someone who likes to play against type, which I don't think is the intent of the show.

Back in the 70s and early 80s there was no pervasive computing but pervasive smoking.  Both shows are like fifty minute cigarette commercials without the actual commercials.  I certainly prefer any Russian intrigue limited to a page in the novel and sociopaths in the big house than in the White House.  The reality is just too much to bear.  Ignorance is bliss and then you die.