Finally, I'm watching Seinfeld - all nine seasons

With the exception of three or four episodes, I had never watched the enormously popular 1990s era sitcom Seinfeld. Chalk that up to not having a TV or cable. Now, with Netflix making available all nine seasons – and with a dearth of appealing movies both online and in cinemas – I’ve found refuge this summer in the comedy series “about nothing.” I’ve now binge watched, over more than a week, over a hundred episodes and am in the middle of season five. The few episodes I did catch during Seinfeld’s primetime I found enormously funny because they made fun of things no one had ever made fun of before. The show advertises itself as “about nothing.” But it is indeed about something. It’s just that the something’s are the nuances, crevices, margins and subtleties of everyday life. They are the things we think don’t matter but matter enormously. Yes, we’re looking forward to attending that ball game but freaked by the idiot in the parking lot or how long we have to wait in line for a hot dog. And we’re happy to celebrate a cousin’s wedding but concentrate on the tacky dress of the woman across from us or the tablemate with a piece of vegetable in his teeth. That’s what this show is about – the minor craziness of everyday life you think doesn’t matter but does. It’s hard to believe the series is 30 years old. And it’s surprising how much it shows. Take the fashions. Men with tucked-in overly large shirts look dorky. There is too much hair, including on men, on everybody! Interior décor from offices to restaurants to apartments have an overwrought formality or chintziness. And in the post-Covid era it’s hard to believe so many people once dressed so formally – dresses and hose on women and men in suits – on the job. But the humor remains intact. Because it’s universal. People from time immemorial have made judgments about others, often on the most superficial grounds like hairstyle, weight, clothes or matters of taste. Even how someone irritatingly speaks, walks or smells, bad or good. This is the 1990s and obviously some topics couldn’t be done today, like Jerry dating a Native American and catching himself before emitting phrases like “reservation” (for a restaurant) or “Indian giver” (for returning a gift). It’s hilarious but our overly sensitive environment wouldn’t permit it -  and to paraphrase Jerry, not that that’s a good thing. Even joking about gay people – “not that there’s anything wrong with that” – could draw a red flag. The characters are an oddball nexus of jerks – George (Jason Alexander) the fat perennial neurotic loser, Kramer (Michael Richards), the spaz hipster who thinks he knows everything and always has the inside track. The saner two are Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Jerry himself. But both elicit neuroses and from time to time odd fixations. With the show being so incredibly funny one is apt to forgive certain aspects, like the fact the men seem to have an endless stream of girlfriends, and who other than the equally neurotic or crazed would date George and Kramer? The show’s format opens and closes with Jerry, a stand-up comedian, doing his shows in a club. They’re the most boring elements and should have been axed. Otherwise, it’s on with the insanity of each “plot.”

This 'summer' film will haunt, and Arcand's prophetic 'Testament'

There are few films that have haunted me as much as Frank Perry’s 1968 The Swimmer with Burt Lancaster. It’s now been more than a month since I’ve watched it (on the Criterion Channel as part of its swimming pool-themed summer films; yes, it's a genre) and I still think about it almost daily. I’ve always admired Lancaster, a mid-century icon, but this film reinforced just how intense an actor he is. The story is admittedly bizarre. But that underlines its mystique. Lancaster as Ned, one fine hot summer day, shows up at the backyard swimming pool of his Connecticut neighbors. He’s clad only in swimming trunks. He surprises his well-off neighbors, who welcome him and say it has been so long since they’ve seen him. He regales them whimsical stories about life and how, on this very fine summer day, he has this zest to swim. He concocts a scenario on the spot: in fact, will now “swim” right across the valley to his own suburban house. He’ll accomplish this by visiting all the neighbors along the way and swimming across their pools, portaging if you will, by foot, between houses. As he “swims home” he of course inevitably visits other neighbors, lounging by their pools or having pool parties. As he travels – again, only in trunks and barefoot across wide swathes of field and woodland – he is a beacon of goodwill and friendliness. And virtually everywhere he goes his neighbors remark that while it’s great to see him, it has been a long time. The story or theme is in what occurs as he stops off at one neighbor’s house after another. I will not go any further because this is a film the plot of which one must not in any way give away. Janice Rule and even Joan Rivers have roles. The setting is an affluent suburb of Westport Ct. and Ned Merrill, appropriately enough for the era, is an advertising executive in Manhattan, part of the gray flannel suit brigade that took the New Haven RR from suburbia each day into the city. The film is based on a John Cheever short story, so that might give you an inkling into the territory we’re heading. Watch it and this surreal tale will have you thinking and thinking and thinking. 

The great Quebec filmmaker Denys Arcand’s Testament (in 2023) is prophetic given a decision by Quebec City last month to cancel an historic painting. In the film, a jab at political correctness, protesters successfully force an institution to paint over an historic mural of indigenous people welcoming gun-toting European settlers. "There's a painting in there that's an insult to First Nations," scolds one protester in the film, of course a contemporary stereotype. In Quebec City last month, a city hall painting (left) depicting the moment famous French explorer Samuel de Champlain meets a First Nations chief, was ordered removed by the city's mayor Bruno Marchand because it was "offensive."