A Safe European Tour

Fausto Coppi and Gino Bartali chase each other in the Italian Alps.

It's over, and there's a little hole in my life. The Giro d'Italia, Tour de France and the Tour de France Femmes have ended. I subscribe to a service that provides coverage of the three grand tours, the biggest professional cycling races – the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the Vuelta a España – which are each 21 stages over three weeks and often cover over 3000 KM, and a handful of minor tours, which are usually a week long, such as the Tour de Suisse or the Critérium du Dauphiné, and a smattering of classics and monuments such as Paris-Roubaix or Milan-San Remo, which are gruelling one day races.

I will admit I don't understand why someone would watch golf, but this admission comes with the realization that watching cycling races is very similar. It can be slow without anything much happening except the commentators commentating. They may note the history of a castle, monument, or manor house that has come into view from the aerial camera. They may discuss what's good to eat in this or that part of France. This may lead to a discussion about what the cyclists eat before the stage, during the stage, and after the stage. What is that odd red drink they guzzle after the stage? (Cherry juice, apparently appropriate for race recovery but not after training rides). It takes a complex Jenga stack of technology, including five to seven motorcycles, three helicopters, a small airplane, and at least two satellite dishes to capture and broadcast the race. Over the three weeks in the summer, you can watch the mesmerizing colours of the peloton snake and pulsate through some beautiful European scenery and forget you have a job or anything else worth doing. You don't need a passport or a visa. You don't need local currency or do any conversions or figure out train schedules. You sit and watch while Europe washes over you.

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Seen in July

Chadwick Boseman as Jackie Robinson Jr.

A busy and hot month full of boxing, selling, donating and recycling an old life, led to a shallow watch list. Here's what I saw.

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Crave
Chadwick Boseman is Jackie Robinson Jr. as the ball player who broke Major League Baseball's colour barrier. It's a fairly typical biopic - good but perhaps not as powerful as a documentary might be. It's strange how you can feel the difference, but this film has that "made for TV" feeling. I'm not sure what makes me say that other than every scene has a certain formulaic economy to it, as though what we are seeing are a first run-through without any rehearsal. Particularly Harrison Ford, who portrays the larger-than-life Brooklyn owner Branch Rickey as a kind of one-note good-natured curmudgeon.

Alan Cumming's Most Luxurious Train Journeys: Scotland
TVO
Well-known actor and Scotsman, Alan Cumming was paid to sleep on a train with a group of older tourists all enjoying an unbelievably fancy sleeper train through some stunning Scottish landscapes. Not everyone can afford such a holiday, but everyone can have a wee holiday from their couch.

Aren (Justice Smith) with his mentor Roger (David Alan Grier).

The American Society of Magical Negroes
Prime Video
It's become a popular trope in many American films of a character, a Black American, who appears to support the protagonist - always white - to reach their full potential, often using a little magic or magic realism to help the character along. The one that comes to mind for me is the Coen Brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy, wherein Tim Robbins' small-town stooge is aided by a custodian who maintains a large clock, which he uses to stop or start time to save Robbins' character from certain death. The conceit in this film is that there is a real society of magical negroes who are trained to help make white people more comfortable and support them in their goals. It's a funny idea, but along the way, you begin to wonder, isn't the love interest in this movie just another kind of "Magic Pixie Dream Girl" stereotype, until the end, when you find this has been intentional all along. Thus, the film deconstructs one stereotype while using another.

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