AMERICAN MASTERS - BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD

The PBS series American Masters has been around since its debut in 1986. Season 36: Episode 5 features BRIAN WILSON: LONG PROMISED ROAD. The series is clear in how it wants to celebrate an artist and it does so with tremendous gusto. If you are going to have a series celebrating the arts and artists you certainly want to throw every laurel at their feet. There are times when the viewer doesn't understand the decision to laud over some of the people defined by American Masters and then there are times you practically find yourself weeping with joy over the complete and total brilliance of an artist. The American Masters on one of the founding members of the iconic band The Beach Boys is one of those times. Brian Wilson is one of the most celebrated songwriters of the latter half of the 20th century and deservedly so. The man who never learned to surf created, designed and mastered so many outstanding melodies that it is even all these years later difficult to comprehend. One must keep in mind that Brian Wilson was a man verbally abused by one of the bad dads of the last century, but Wilson didn't grow bitter, angry, miserable or mean-spirited. He became a gentle giant. A man full of a sweet spirit and a tender heart. 

Wilson is and this is no embellishment - the single most humble public figure I have ever witnessed. You see it in the interviews, but I had the good fortune to meet Mr. Wilson on a couple of occasions. He really is that guy! The American Masters special finds much of the 90 minutes with Brian Wilson driving around various locations in the L.A. basin with Rolling Stone reporter, Jason Fine. They are going from one Wilson moment to the next. Visiting the house he and his brothers, Dennis and Carl grew up in (I met their mom when I first moved to SoCal to begin a career in the entertainment industry - she happened to be a good friend to a local family friend) is a fun throwback to another era. They visit various recording studios and other homes Brian lived in. It's a delightful and free-wheeling chatfest that is compelling conversation. 

We hear many of the melodic whirlwinds Wilson crafted from his gifted brain and wow a boatload of gigantic tunes. Wouldn't It Be Nice, Good Vibrations, California Girls and many more, but nothing and I mean nothing comes close to the most definitive of all harmony achievements in the rock era - God Only Knows. God Only Knows sounds as good, if not better in 2022 than it did upon its release back in 1966. Since the special aired I have listened to this remarkable song a dozen or so times. I look forward to it each and every time. We learn during the special that Wilson actually wrote some songs in a sandbox. He may be the only person ever to do that. 

God Only Knows was recorded while every musician and singer was in the same room at the same time! They can't and won't do that today! The piano, harmonica, banjo. Baby brother Carl Wilson was blessed to get the opportunity to sing lead on the vocal; and that gorgeous double-back harmony by Bruce Johnston still kind of takes my breath away. 

Brian Wilson has suffered severely from mental illness since the mid to late 1960's, but his memory has not faded one bit. He is now 80 years old (I'm writing this in 2022) and his amazing memory is fascinating. Talk about having significantly strong cognitive abilities well into these late years in life. 

In these documentaries one always gets to see and hear a variety of talking heads, but this go-round you listen to talking heads who obviously wanted to do this. Elton John (he inducted the Beach Boys into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) waxes beautifully on Brian's talents, skills and abilities. Bruce Springsteen, as usual is a stand-out in his reminiscing. Springsteen himself is a great writer of words and in my opinion second only to Bob Dylan as a lyricist in the rock era. Springsteen's use of words is on full display in this documentary. Springsteen digs in with discussing the joy of his youth and all these years later the sadness of the autumn and maybe even the winter of his years. Springsteen can and usually does bring a tear to the eye.  Fellow Beach Boy Al Jardine is featured, along with producer/musician Don Was, Jakob Dylan and Nick Jonas. 

Goodness, sweetness, tenderness, positivity and innocence - who in their right mind would have thought all those years ago that one of the most accomplished and successful songwriters of the 1960's would be described that way.

American Masters: Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road recently premiered on PBS. Watch it and watch it now. Absolutely glorious in its every single second. 

Original Beach Boys: Al Jardine, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Brian Wilson, Mike Love

Copyright The Flaming Nose 2022  

       

             

       

DOMINA - THE WORST TELEVISION SERIES CURRENTLY ON IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!

This is my opinion...

I rarely write negative reviews. I prefer to offer up positive perspectives and hopefully motivate people to watch programming that is to varying degrees worth watching. Every once in awhile I run across something that is just so significantly awful that I will weigh in with an opinion. I think so poorly of this disgusting piece of junk I will not even upload any images. DOMINA is not worth one single image. 

The Roman Empire is a fascinating and long period of history and much of it is covered in blood, (Jesus Christ's crucifixion is the most life transforming example) corruption and evil. Eventually, the empire would wear itself out with of all things, laziness. There are few times in filmed entertainment that have gotten anything right about the Roman Empire, but DOMINA is the single worst piece of garbage to ever pretend to be based in some sort of historical period. 

DOMINA which airs on the EPIX channel in the United States (it was a SKY presentation out of the U.K.) may very well be the single worst series not only currently on television, but it may be the worst television series of all-time; and all of this is saying a whole lot. Imagine being the worst series of the nearly 600 series on television in the U.S. at the moment? Imagine being the worst series of all-time? Well, this is it.  EPIX will soon be rebranded as MGM+.  The once iconic MGM brand soiled. 

The best casting directors in the world aren't capable of knowing every single actor currently working on some format of a series that airs on television. We have the broadcast networks, the cable networks, the premium services and the ever expanding number of streaming services.

The television people (we have all worked or continue to work in executive roles in television or film) that write for this blog watch a great deal of programming and this writer wants to shout it from the housetops that DOMINA is the worst television series in the world. I literally couldn't loathe anything more than this piece of cheap trash. By the way, sometimes cheap trashy programming can at least be mildly entertaining, but this isn't even close to the most minor of entertainment moments.   

First off, it is a series set in the early days of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire as we know it from a historical perspective lasted around 500 years. It was led by a wide variety of emperors and assorted other leaders with different titles - some of those leaders were profoundly influential and others were blips on the radar of human time. Julius Caesar and Constantine were clearly the two who were the most influential as we peer back into the history of the Roman Empire. DOMINA picks up right after the death of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar's life has been written about and filmed before, but no one has made a consequential film about Julius Caesar.  

The Roman Empire was the most notable of all historical leading empires and that would include the British Empire which lasted for a couple of hundred years and the empire of the United States. The U.S. empire has been in decline for the last 20 to 30 years and it is continuing to slide into irrelevance with an ever growing debt and a complete lack of leadership. 

Having studied the Roman Empire in some detail through formal education and by reading more than forty books on the subject matter I know I am qualified to state that DOMINA is the single most ridiculous attempt at bringing the Roman Empire to your television screens. 

First off, it's cheap looking and I mean cheap looking. They shoot at the Cinecitta Studios in Rome. Famed film directors, Sergio Leone, Bernardo Bertolucci and Italian-American Martin Scorcese have all filmed at Cinecitta Studios, but for some wildly bizarre reason this piece of mayhem doesn't look anything like the film classics used by the masters just mentioned. This series is similar to a stunned teenager whose incompetence and recklessness just totally demolished the family car. It's the old symptom of upheaval and collapse - nothing works and I mean nothing works in DOMINA. 

It looks like it was shot in an unused mechanic garage and from 1932 to boot. Even the exteriors look cheap. You would get a better backdrop of the out-of-doors in almost any forest preserve in a suburban location.  EPIX couldn't deliver a second season of BELGRAVIA, but they have managed to greenlight a second season of DOMINA.       

DOMINA means lord and/or master. The only lord and master in this production is post-feminist character of Livia. Livia gives women a bad name. A reputation for bad is all the way around for this character, including lots of bad acting. Beyond the despicable (and, not in a morbidly fun way) lead character, the viewer doesn't like a single character and you don't care for anyone either. The first two episodes you see the younger versions of the lead characters and they were better than the adult versions, but that isn't saying a great deal. Kasia Smutniak plays Livia. Plays is an odd word to use here. Smutniak is not a good actor. I hate to use the word actor in conjunction with whatever she is doing here, but acting is not a word that should be used.  

Overall, the acting, if one can call this acting, is absolutely horrific. There are way too many people working in an industry that needs some level of craft and art; and this series has no art and/or craft. I have seen better performances at high school presentations. The writing is even worse than the acting and that's another loaded moment of thought.  It is predictable and sometimes predictable is good. At times, I like predictable. I find comfort in predictable, but this AIN'T that type of predictable. The silliness and the non-historic elements of the dialog and the narrative drive is absurd. To even say narrative drive in conjunction with DOMINA is an overreach of any of one's critical thinking skills. By the way, the use of the F BOMB scattered throughout is not only ridiculous, it is loathsome. The F BOMB was not used during the Roman Empire. Note, even John Milius used the F Bomb in his famed HBO drama on Rome, but the rest of it was masterminded by John Milius, so it gets off the hook a bit! More importantly, it is used repeatedly and none of these people are exactly characters out of a gangster film (or are they?). Right about now, you can use a good gangster film.     

Keep in mind, the Roman Empire contributed some good to the societal norms of the world and obviously a whole lot of bad. They created the most heinous form of death ever conjured up with crucifixion, but with Constantine's conversion to Christianity they actually destroyed crucifixion. Without the Roman Empire we would have waited a whole lot longer for relatively safe drinking water! The concept of roads - give credit to the Romans!  Make note: you would never know anything good about the Roman Empire by watching this madcap (and I don't mean madcap in any humorous way) awfulness of a series. 

One more time with the bad acting. If some financing company said "hey, find me some of the worst actors out there" then you would conjure up this mishmash of an ensemble. One is worse than the other, but the proverbial holy grail of this solidly bad ensemble is the lead female actor. Of course, the worst actor in the entire outing happens to be the person in the series with the most screen time. Not one moment of instinctive acting. There isn't one single shred of credibility or skill in this performance. It is a weird vibe of a performance. I repeat, I do not like giving bad reviews, but somehow, someway the hired actors need to know how to act. Then, I ask why is Matthew McNulty in this drivel? McNulty has given some wonderfully interesting performances (Deadwater Fall, The Musketeers) and seeing him languish in this drizzled mess of a bad storm is disappointing.   

Everyone is awkward and seemingly uncomfortable. By the way, you hate everyone in it and you are uncomfortable watching it. 

I started this post out by saying I rarely write anything negative and I sure hope nothing this bad will motivate me again to take to the keyboard. I sure hope there will not be a season three. This type of bad programming gives television a bad name and EPIX (again, soon to be MGM+)  should be embarrassed by this mess of a series. It is unforgivably stupid and the awful and awkward dialogue is incomprehensible. EPIX (distributing in the U.S.) should be beyond embarrassed by this cheap looking silliness.  

I believe in God. May He in all of His wisdom not allow a third season of this junk.

Copyright The Flaming Nose 2022