Paris: The original Kardashian
Bad Blood
2 series, available Friday Tom Hanks’s character in You’ve Got Mail said that nearly any of life’s questions could be answered by attentive viewing of The Godfather. Like that cinema classic, to which it harkens, this sprawling series takes age-old, almost Shakespearean, themes of betrayal and love and interweaves them with some rollicking crime drama.
A huge hit in its native Canada (where it was also filmed), the first season is based on the 2015 book Business or Blood: Mafia Boss Vito Rizzuto’s Last War, by Antonio Nicaso and Peter Edwards; a dramatisation of the rise and fall of the real-life Rizzuto crime family, a Montreal-based mafia organisation.
It tells the story of the mayhem that breaks loose in the city after the patriarch of the Rizzuto family is sent to prison — like Hobbes’s ‘iron fist’ — his presence kept a host of other undesirables in check.
There is plenty of action, violence and it moves along with a compelling momentum while maintaining, discreetly, a sometimes predictable take on family, business ethics and the essence of soft power. As with many of these kinds of series, the female roles feel quite underwritten, but if mafia drama is your thing, this may scratch your itch.
The American Meme (2018)
Available Friday When Paris Hilton is a documentary’s sole voice of wisdom, you know for sure you’re watching something extra special. Yet wise she is — and surprisingly vulnerable — in Bert Marcus’s clever and quotable exploration of meme makers and their self-inflicted need to go viral at all costs.
Like the BBC’s documentary on life behind the scenes at the Foreign Office, this shows the humour and slightly pathetic side of famous folk who are slaves to their Twitter feeds. Suffused with vapidity, the documentary somehow finds its way to an unexpected sadness and maybe something deeper and cautionary. There’s Brittany Furlan, a 31-year-old small-town Pennsylvania girl who came to Los Angeles to be an actress, at which she didn’t have much success, and wound up becoming the superstar of Vine, the now-defunct short-form video hosting service in which she created satirical alter egos. There’s Kirill Bichutsky, the party maestro whose brand activity is lining up women in nightclubs so that he can spray their sexually suggestive open mouths with champagne.
And then, of course, there’s Paris, who proves herself to be something of a philosopher of this new, more democratic kind of fame. She was, she points out, a Kardashian before there were Kardashians and perhaps the first in a long line of icons who are famous for being famous.
Mowgli : Legend of the Jungle (2018)
Available Friday Acclaimed actor and director Andy Serkis reinvents Rudyard Kipling’s beloved masterpiece, in which a boy who would become a legend, wants nothing more than to find a home. Torn between two worlds, that of the jungle and that of humankind, Mowgli must navigate the inherent dangers in each on a journey to discover who he really is.
Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Benedict Cumberbatch, Freida Pinto, Matthew Rhys and Naomie Harris lead an all-star cast along with newcomer Rohan Chand (‘Mowgli’) in this spectacular and emotionally moving adventure, which, surprisingly lives up to the magic of the classic cartoon.
About A Boy (2002)
Available Friday Nick Hornby’s answer to Bridget Jones gets the Brit flick treatment here from a surprising source, with American Pie directors Chris and Paul Weitz at the helm and Robert De Niro’s Tribeca Productions as a backer. But, unlike the Americanised version of Hornby’s High Fidelity, this movie remains on home turf.
Hugh Grant is on excellent form as Will, a 30-something singleton who intends to use single-parent support groups to pick up women. One of his would-be conquests introduces him to Marcus (Nicholas Hoult) — a troubled boy with a suicidal mother — who forcibly “adopts” the unwilling Will. All goes surprisingly well until the confirmed bachelor falls for single mum Rachel Weisz, which puts a strain on their friendship.