Secret City, James Kirchick s 800-page tome on the history of gays and lesbians in Washington, D.C., is not a book about gay politics. It is a book about politics. More importantly, it is a book about the nation s capital, which is to say it’s about power as well as the gay people who lived in the shadow of its marketplace the ones who bought it, sold it, used it, lost it, and fought it.
Domhnall and Brian Gleeson star in the new Irish comedy
Sharon Horgan is listed as an executive producer of Channel 4’s new Irish-set comedy, Frank of Ireland. But it’s hard to imagine a series further removed from the urbane wit of Horgan’s Catastrophe than this supremely crude lark, in which real-life brothers Domhnall and Brian Gleeson play dysfunctional pals.
Frank (Brian) is an unemployed 32-year-old musician obsessed with Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and still living with his mother (Pom Boyd) in suburban Dublin. Doofus (Domhnall), his best friend (though not his sibling), works in a convenience shop. Both are essentially sociopaths unable to relate to other humans: with just a little tweaking, Frank of Ireland could be a horror movie about a duo of psychopathic Forrest Gumps terrorising their neighbourhood.
Now streaming on: You re not a kind person, a husband says to his wife of many years, after she won t give a doggie bag to a homeless man who asks for it. This is something he didn t realize and can t live with. There are other people, kind and unkind, in Three Days of Rain, and as a storm crouches over Cleveland, we wonder if it makes much difference. It is not a kind world.
Consider John (Don Meredith), a taxi driver, who has just learned that his son is dead. He runs a red light, is distracted, tells a customer of his loss. The passenger (Blythe Danner) is not sympathetic. I m