31 March 2020 - Best films and series to watch during lockdown
Best kids films and TV shows to watch during lockdown with your children
Abigail Blasi (The Telegraph, 30/03/2020)
It looks like we may all be spending a lot more time at home over the next few months, which is tricky if you’re trying to keep children entertained. If you’re concerned about resorting to screens, remember that psychologists agree that it’s not screen-time that’s harmful, but the quality of what children watch. It’s also a bonding experience to watch as a family, whether you’re viewing highbrow adaptations or trash, glorious trash.
Lockdown watch: Mark Cousins on why he's only seeing films from 1940
Mark Cousins (The Guardian, 31/03/2020)
For absolutely no good reason, I’ve decide that the theme of my quarantine should be the number 40. To pretend to keep fit, I’ve been doing 40 sit-ups and 40 weight-lifts a day. I did an online talk for film students and called it 40 Days to Learn Film. And I decided that, in my free time, I’d watch films released in 1940.
I skipped the famous ones – Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story, etc – because I’d seen those and I seldom watch a film twice. I wanted to know what I didn’t know about movies in 1940. I wanted an adventure. I feel alive when I’m discovering something new.
Five TV sitcoms to help get you through lockdown
Alec Charles (The Conversation, 27/03/2020)
It’s a truth frequently acknowledged that laughter is the best medicine (at least when paracetamol isn’t available). A few months after the British government launched the National Academy for Social Prescribing – whose aim is to refer vulnerable people towards cultural and community activities to underpin their mental wellbeing – this truth has rarely felt more timely. Art may disturb and challenge us – but it can also console and inspire us in our darkest hours.
There’s something remarkably reassuring about the situation comedy. It embraces a homely nostalgia, an old friend to which we return time and again from the comfort of our couches, a pleasure to share with family and friends. It’s ingrained in our memories – its best lines as easily parroted as those of Monty Python’s parrot sketch.
What the Coronavirus Means for Watching Movies
Richard Brody (The New Yorker, 14/03/2020)
Measures to contain the outbreak of the coronavirus have put a stop to the performing arts; as my colleague Michael Schulman reported, Broadway shows have been suspended, and so have concerts and dance performances, sporting events, readings, museums and art galleries, and more or less any event where people gather in large numbers. It has also led to the postponement of many movie releases, including such high-profile ones as the new James Bond movie (unfortunately titled “No Time to Die”), “A Quiet Place Part II,” and Disney’s “Mulan,” plus the cancellation of screenings at Lincoln Center, moma, Anthology Film Archives, and elsewhere. South by Southwest, the New Directors/New Films series, and the Tribeca Film Festival were cancelled or postponed. Strangely, multiplexes still seem to be open—though why people would risk their health and that of others for a viewing of “The Way Back” or “The Invisible Man” is beyond me.
Of all the arts, only literature lends itself more to domestic consumption than movies. Recorded music and theatre and photos of paintings and sculptures are far removed from the physical experience on which the live versions depend; with movies, the image is (more or less) the same, whether consumed in a theatre or at home, in a crowd or alone—and the difference in size is one of degree, not of kind. The proof, of course, is the modern prevalence of streaming, preceded by the prevalence of various forms of home video, all of which were taken by the movie industry as the devil’s tool to wreak the end of movie theatres. (This fear was even the subject of congressional hearings in 1982.)