When they repatriated back to the US this summer they signed up for Comcast digital cable with the On-Demand and DVR features. Which surprised me because my folks are notoriously cheap about these things and tech-phobic. Sure enough, it didn’t take my father long to claim he had been hoodwinked into the service once he received the bill. He keeps on threateneing to terminate.
Of course I completely enjoy the service and take full advantage when I housesit while babysitting my dog (the Kid can’t handle my downtown house). The folks need me there a lot - they enjoy a jet setting lifestyle (which is completely killing me with envy right now – especially since my Asia trip next month is most likely not going to work out because of obligations and financial constraints here in stoopid DC.)
Whatever.
But God forbid they cancel the digital cable!
So I’ve made valiant efforts to justify their subscription and to warm them up to its joys and myriad entertainment possibilities.
Of course it would help if they could figure out the remote and how to navigate the guides. All three TVs in their house are DVRd to the max (by me, of course) with a variety of selections for their possible viewing pleasure and in my not so discrete efforts to lobby and on hold on to the digital.
The folks are often difficult in taking me up on my recommendations but when they do, it’s clear I’m the ultimate arbiter of taste for them and I never fail to hit the mark.
So far, the winners I have programmed for my father have been various BBC mystery series, a select foreign films, and thrillers of the more intelligent variety. Also Dad likes The Sopranos, having missed much of the run while overseas, and I keep on fudging the truth in saying the new season will start soon.
While I personally prefer the IFC, Sundance, & BBC- but don't lose the HBO!!!!
My House in Umbria was a big hit with them. A student exchange experience in Italy was the reason my dad became a diplomat and we have spent some time there. And I figured I hit the jackpot formula.
So for their entertainment, I DVRd Pane e Tulipani (Bread & Tulips), a whimsical, somewhat surrealist, unconventional middle-aged love story which takes place in Venice and that I had enjoyed at an International Film Festival in Manila a couple of years ago.
So my father calls me the other night to thank me for taping it for them and to tell me how much they enjoyed it.
And we get to talking a bit about German actor Bruno Ganz, who plays the “romantic” male lead in Pane e Tulipani, but plays an Icelandic (?) émigré in the film, and I am reminded about how much I always enjoyed his work. Especially Ganz’s work with Wim Wenders. Ganz is the Man.
In fact, there is a Bruno Ganz retrospective going on in DC right now, sponsored by the Goethe Institute, which I need to partake of before it is over the second week of May.
And it is this the roundabout sort of thinking that often leads me to poor film choices:
Bruno Ganz is in Downfall, currently playing in DC. I’d read mixed reviews about the film, mostly negative. Also the subject matter is very depressing. Bruno Ganz plays Adolph Hitler in his last hours in the bunker. I don’t need any more awful stuff in my world right now. But some people told me it was good. (I should have known better not to trust them.) And I dig Bruno Ganz. And the actor has been sort of a recent “topic” in my life.
So I went to see Downfall last night.
I did not like it one bit at all.
Got nothing out of it – not even a lesson in history, we all know what happened. Downfall was banal and boring and long and played like a bad TV docudrama and I really can’t find anything redeeming to say about it. I was so turned off by the whole thing but not in a thought provocative way. Are we supposed to sympathize with these monsters – see them as human beings? Apparently, the film has been a big thing in Germany and is helping the nation reconcile, acknowledge, come to terms with, whatever… the “past.”
I highly don’t recommend.
And absolutely will not DVR Downfall for the folks.
That would KILL the Digital.
Sorry about the Asia trip perhaps not working out. But house buying in Baltimore will make you feel better :) Also, you're more than welcome to come to southern Spain with me in September...Seville, Gibraltor, Marbella, Malaga. I've already booked a great apartment for a week.
Posted by: Donald | April 29, 2005 at 03:26 PM