Welcome to a new blog (and newsletter) segment I call “Five Snouts Up.” My ten loyal readers may recall that I use a snout-based rating system:
(:) is the worst
(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) is the best — unlike your standard Google and Yelp ratings, I only give five snouts when I find that which I’m reviewing to be outstanding.
These days, I don’t seem to create time to write full reviews, but I want you to know what I love anyway, even if I don’t explain why. This will be a monthly segment.
Five Snouts Up in November:
Movie: The Holdovers, starring Paul Giamatti and directed by Michael Payne (Sideways, The Descendants). Run, don’t walk to see this in an actual theater. It’s worth it. Not only set in the 70’s but a throwback to the time when people made big budget movies about real people having real experiences instead of just super hero and horror movies. Giamatti plays a grouchy eccentric New England boarding school teacher forced to supervise a bunch of boys stuck there for the holidays. So so good. Funny, touching, quirky.
Book: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Yes, this book deserved the Pulitzer prize it won. In creating a hilarious and compelling protagonist and setting the story in the Appalachian opioid crisis, Kingsolver has succeeded in writing the great American novel even while closely tracking the narrative voice and reversals of fortune in Dicken’s David Copperfield (note: It’s great fun to (re?)read David Copperfield now after reading Demon.)
TV Series: Our Flag Means Death now streaming on (HBO) Max. Created by David Jenkins and starring Taika Waititi and others, this is a hilarious show about 18th-century surprisingly nonviolent queer (in all senses) pirates. Think Monty Python’s Flying Circus meets Schitt’s Creek.
