2 posts tagged “the wire”
-quango.comBerlin got a new show in 2006, Belle et Fou realised by four star chef and event caterer HANS-PETER WODARZ and producer/director ARTHUR CASTRO. Besides dance, theatre and refined culinary delights, this new project from the makers of Pomp, Duck & Circumstance has one very special highlight to offer: the soundtrack is by JAZZANOVA.
This track is of particular interest because it was originally sung by Vikter Duplaix. Clara Hill gives it a completely different vibe. I dig it. The whole soundtrack, however, is stellar. Jazzanova can do very little wrong.
I'm staring at the screen, distracted by the corny profile that 60 Minutes is doing on Facebook (although I'm impressed that after the first half of puff, Leslie Stahl is digging into Beacon a bit), and thinking about what I want to share about my week. That's what these song for sunday posts have become. For some odd reason, I want to talk about how I've been postponing cleaning my bathroom all week and using remember the milk to do so. That's not a good story.
I feel like I should say something about the week I had with my sister - it began with us leaving Vegas, the middle was having Ethiopian at Nyala, the end was dropping her off at the airport for her to return to school today - but I'm not trying to get all sappy up in this piece. Especially when I know she's reading. The highlight, however, was switching iPods with her at McCarran Airport and getting her into Björk. She left town with a CD packed with my favorite tracks from across her entire catalog. Bomb.
I could talk about the Murakami Exhibit (that needs it's own post) or the trip we took to Pink's yesterday (but I might turn that into something for laist) or my initial thoughts on the first two episodes of the final season of The Wire or on all the signs that I'm starting to act like a grown-up that showed themselves this week. I could talk about all those things but I don't feel like it.
It's Sunday, Andy Rooney is being crabby, my feet are up and I'm still not going to clean that damn bathroom.
It's enough.
Video: Show us a TV series you own or watched on DVD.
I miss McNulty, Bubbs, Stringer, Greggs and the rest of the fine folks of the fictional Baltimore that exists in the minds of Barry Levinson, Tom Fontana, and David Simon. Thankfully, Homicide: Life On The Street is on DVD.
I didn't get to spend time in this Baltimore the first time around. I was in high school or college or something and spent my friday nights out cavorting rather than watching quality television. Probably the best network television I've seen.
The cast and guest stars reads like a roster of contemporary television's best dramatic actors: Edie Falco, Lee Tergeson, N'Bushe Wright (beautiful and powerful, as always, in her one-shot), Yaphet Kotto, Richard Belzer, etc. etc.
And leading the pack, Andre Braugher. Braugher's Frank Pembleton is probably still the strongest character on tv to ever feature a black face. Full bodied, three-dimensional, dark as night, dressed sharply, smart as a whip, chip on his shoulder like you wouldn't believe, Detective Pembleton is a capital B capital M Black Man.
Why Levinson, Fontana and Simon are able to create such compelling characters in a brown town like Baltimore being aware of the racial makeup, aware of the social problems and curiosities, and not sugar coating any of it when so few others, black, white, or otherwise, aren't able to do so is a mystery to me.
I just know I'm riveted by the conversations on their shows and by the Baltimore they create.
Homicide is a welcome alternative while I wait for another season with the Barksdales and The Greeks and 'McNuttie.'
Highly recommended.
