Heavy Rotation
My friends are busy people (but who isn’t these days?) and I see them less than I would like. When we’re finally face to face I want to know what they’re reading, watching, listening to and generally excited about. In that spirit here are some recommendations that are very current, at least by my standards. Now they can see me and be assured that they can do most of the talking.
-Rob Mahoney. The latest and greatest podcast talent. My favorite podcast personality remains Chris Ryan. But Rob Mahoney is a fantastic relatively recent addition to The Ringer. His area of expertise is the NBA and he’s very good about that. But the revelation is Rob talking about films. His first appearance on The Big Picture unexpectedly turned into absolute bedlam and was a master class in the form.
-Metrograph Streaming. New Yorkers know the Metrograph as the great cinema on the Lower East Side. But they’ve developed a surprisingly good streaming service, which focuses, as you would expect, on independent film. Here you can find a few Eric Rohmer pictures and Downtown 81 (hey now Glenn O’Brien!). There’s also A Bigger Splash, an early 70s documentary about David Hockney that moves from London to Los Angeles to New York that’s wonderfully mundane and occasionally profane. There’s also The French, the wonderful William Klein documentary about the 1981 French Open. All of this for five dollars a month. Eat your heart out Netflix.