Movie, Music, and TV Reviews

[swampboots]

Ok let me pull out my low brow credentials to post to an audience which may have 10% believe we did not land on the moon, or 25% who do not believe the towers indeed fell on 911:
I love Bonanza as all the world major bad behavior occurred on the Ponderosa.
But to all the high brow scalawags ( if there are any) I wish to offer this review to my first 3 episodes of "My Brilliant Friend":



In terms of not just plot but revealing character studies, American movies were almost all always "fake" movies to me ( yet many sort of thrilling the first time) with some exceptions: "To Kill a Mocking Bird", "The Heiress" and the raw short glimpses of honesty ( but bizarre odyssey) of James Stewart in "Its a Wonderful Life" Other movies I do not wish to leave out "Fried Green Tomatoes" and some others like "Driving Miss Daisy" are rare examples I could recall easily.
The point I am making is that it was foreign movies Italian and French and many others in dozens of countries to a lesser degree that offered to me distinct realistic glimpses of unguarded thrilling character revelations. And in the passing years I have found less and less of these types of movies suitable to praise.
I make these foregoing remarks because I wish to indicate the frame of mind I was in before I was quite astonished to watch the first of an 8 part series called "My Brilliant Friend" in Italian (with English subtitles).
The author and this series is revealed in this link and the radical tone of some of her other works may be unsettling and easily to dismiss, but those sharp dark thoughts do not infect the wonderful story she has created which has been somehow cast with stunning acting and directing, I was on the edge of my seat throughout each episode (one a week). So many things had to come together once the story was elected to be broadcast and it is to me remarkable that in this year 2018 they could do it:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/21/women-on-the-verge