With the cancellation of film festivals new methods of release are being explored.   For example, starting tomorrow April 16 CBC will start showing and streaming some titles from the HotDocs lineup. Check this out at: https://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/watch-exclusive-first-run-feature-docs-from-the-2020-hot-docs-festival-at-home-on-cbc-1.5523214 The International Documentary Film Festival is also making available hundreds of titles online. Check out: https://www.idfa.nl/en/collection/free?page=1 With Netflix’s “Tiger King” all the rage, it added a new 40-minute episode “Tiger King and I” of interviews with associates of “Joe Exotic”. A sample of the ongoing commentary:   https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/tiger-king-nielsen-viewership-data-stranger-things-1234573602/ https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/claws-out-my-adventure-in-the-court-of-the-tiger-king-92bp2bg2r https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/13/the-crass-pleasures-of-tiger-king?utm_source=onsite-share&a

Viewing in the Time of Covid-19 First I want to wish a very happy 70 th birthday to my wonderful sister Yvonne in Calgary! Good to know there are still many things one can celebrate remotely (we did a Skype call). On the low tech end, for those confined at home it may be time to return to the pleasures of traditional book reading (beyond the flood of online material).   I’m currently making my way through Thomas Piketty’s monumental Capital and Ideology (about which more in a future post). Viewing options abound.   TV and various streaming services may never again be as popular.   The available content is already staggering.   I’m not a big fan of the new Amazon Prime Series Hunters which imagines Jewish vigilantes hunting down Nazis in the U.S.   But I highly recommend the new HBO (on Crave) miniseries The Plot Against America which imagines a proto-fascist turn in the U.S. in the early 1940s (somehow the Trumpian zeitgeist afflicting our neighbor to the south makes that se