THE CIRCLE WILL BE UNBROKEN
Plus Canadian singer Feist takes Pleasure in her new album, Chris Lackner writes.
Big release on April 28: The Circle. Big picture: The Circle is an all-powerful, omnipresent social media platform and tech company — it’s Facebook meets Big Brother. Based on the novel by David Eggers, this cinematic thriller is essentially The Firm meets The Social Network. When a charismatic CEO (Tom Hanks) says things like, “I am a believer in the perfectibility of human beings,” and promises to cure all planetary ills, you know he’s only a block of Kryptonite away from going all Lex Luthor on us.
Enter our heroine, Mae (Emma Watson) recruited to join The Circle’s heralded staff. (The only downside? She must give the corporation an allaccess pass to her life.) When a new colleague tells her to, “have a drink, have a good time and stay excited,” it already sounds fairly ominous. When her boss tells her, “Knowing is good, but knowing everything is better” — and happens to be a bearded Silicon Valley pirate who has taken over the world by convincing everyone to willingly get on his ship — you know she’s screwed. (There’s no Harry and Ron to save the day in this one; not even Voldemort would work for The Circle.) Forecast: Hanks may have found a late-career niche. There is something fun about watching Forrest Gump/Robert Langdon go to the Dark Side. Next up? I predict Hanks will play a Bond villain, or The Volcano in the long-awaited (by me) sequel to Joe Versus the Volcano. Big events: Genius (April 25, National Geographic Channel); Great News (April 25, NBC); The Handmaid’s Tale (April 30, Bravo). Big picture: Genius will make you feel better about just being average. It could have been called: Being Super Smart Kind of Super Sucks. Each serialized season will focus on one of history’s great minds — with Geoffrey Rush playing Albert Einstein to kick things off. We see the famous egghead (warts, caterpillar moustache, and all) as a revolutionary thinker, unabashed womanizer and self-centred eccentric.
“For an expert on the universe you don’t know the first thing about people” says one would-be mistress. Eureka! (Who knew Einstein was essentially Don Draper on a very, very bad hair day?)
Meanwhile, great news is hard to come by these days, so we’ll have to get it from this new sitcom with excellent laughter pedigree. (The 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt duo of Tina Fey and Robert Carlock.) Andrea Martin (SCTV) plays an overbearing mother who becomes an intern in her daughter’s newsroom.
Also, The Handmaid’s Tale brings to life Margaret Atwood’s famous novel about a fundamentalist dictatorship (Gilead) that has replaced the United States (and set the women’s rights movement back a half a dozen centuries, or so). Sadly, it feels much less dystopian these days, and more like tomorrow’s news headline. Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) and Joseph Fiennes lead the cast.
Let’s hope the 10-episode miniseries isn’t must-see White House viewing, or Canada could soon find itself the northern neighbour to Trumpiad. Forecast: The handmaid’s cautionary tale is one worth re-telling again (and again). Great News has the talent to be a breaking comedy. History will followup Genius with a new series called Idiot, which profiles humanity’s worst. Big releases on April 28: Feist (Pleasure); Willie Nelson (God’s Problem Child) Big picture: Feist has called Pleasure “an exploration into emotional limits,” including “loneliness, private ritual, secrets, shame, mounting pressures, disconnect, tenderness, rejection, care and the lack thereof.” That may sound like a lot of ground to cover in 11 tracks, but Canada’s siren songstress is up to the task. The title track is an understated wonder; it combines a roller-coaster of sound intensity, a dynamic vocal range, and brief explosive outbursts to surprise and enchant.
Feist’s take on pleasure: “that’s what we’re here for.” And it will certainly feel that way while listening to her first album since 2011. Feist’s second single, Century, even seems to conjure old Broken Social Scene magic.
Meanwhile, Willie Nelson’s collection of all new material comes out one day before his 84th birthday.
One must-hear track is He Won’t Ever Be Gone, dedicated to Nelson’s friend and frequent collaborator, the legendary Merle Haggard. Forecast: Feist feels it all, and she’ll make you feel it, too.
Meanwhile, with Canada’s new marijuana legislation, I predict Nelson will take his chance on relocating north of the border.