WHAT ARE WE WATCHING ON TV IN AUGUST 2023?

According to Stephen King, August is the only month without holidays, so, when you're not reading, make your own holiday by watching current & past movies, TV or streaming series & specials, etc., whether at home or at the theaters, or on airplanes, tablets, computers, phones, drive-ins (?!) -- the media of your choice -- & let us know what's happening, worth watching, or not.

Freebie week on Xfinity features AMC+, so I’ll be watching Dark Winds (2022-), beginning with S1, based on the Tony Hillerman novel Listening Woman the first week of August. Features a small Navaho Police unit, led by Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McLarnon), with his new associate, Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), who’s also an “undercover” FBI agent reporting to “Highpockets” (Noah Emmerich), and deputy Bernadette (Jessica Matten), supporting cast including Leaphorn’s wife Emma (Deanna Allison), an ob-gyn nurse. Historical setting in the 1970s. I’ve only seen the first 2 episodes so far; lots of Chevrolets, Navaho puberty & purification rituals, witch-curses, Mormons singing along to Speedy Gonzales song, vicious bank robbers. Fascinating so far. Quite a different perspective from The Man From Laramie!

Britbox (streaming subscription via Amazon Prime) just added all 9 seasons of Lewis aka Inspector Lewis 2006-15, each episode ca 90 min. Morse from the Colin Dexter novels was the original series; with the death of Morse (and Dexter), Morse’s DS Robert Lewis appeared in the sequel, promoted to DI Lewis (Kevin Whately), paired with DS James Hathaway (Lawrence Fox), an ex-Cambridge theology student & musician, with Dr Laura Hobson (Clare Holman) as the forensic lead. The prequel series Endeavour, featuring Morse’s early years, began in 2012 & recently concluded. I’ve watched the 3 episodes of Lewis Season 1 & two episodes of Season 2 so far, enthralled. The funny ongoing bit so far is the rather stodgy Lewis, a widower, regularly being pursued by one femme fatale after another. Lots of Oxford scenery.

Finished the first season of Dark Winds via AMC+ during Xfinity freebie week; disappointed that Season 2 is just beginning, so I won’t be able to take it in. Season 1 was interesting in focusing entirely on the tribal police & tribal criminals, with white police, criminals, & civilians playing largely peripheral roles. Some of the writing isn’t clear regarding the logic of events, & the portrait of the primary bad guy is confusing, seemingly an attempt to make him sympathetic at the last moment.

In the waning days of DVD Netflix, my latest has been: The Cunning Little Vixen (1995) 1 hr 38 min. A record of a performance of the Leos Janacek opera. Overall production credit is to Nicholas Hytner. Noteworthy production & costume design by Bob Crowley. Conductor is Charles Mackerras, who is one of the best known Janacek conductors. There are a number of DVDs of this opera out and about; this is my first encounter with this particular work & I thought it was excellent. It’s something of a story that could be for both adults & children when the kids need to be introduced in a non-threatening way to the birds, bees, & fleas doing it, and death. This live performance in France was in the original Czech (the DVD has subtitles in multiple languages). Dance has an important role (choreographer Jean Claude Gallotta), every scene in the forest begins or ends with a dance sequence of the creatures. As to the music, it’s Janacek; to me he sounds closer to Alban Berg than Puccini or Weber, though not nearly as harshly expressionistic. His string quartets would be a good introduction. Two threads; one follows the creatures of the forest, the second the lives of the humans. A fox pup, Vixen Sharp Ears (Eva Jenis) is introduced after the dance of the forest creatures; she is puzzled by a frog, wondering what it is & whether it’s edible; she is soon captured by the forester (Thomas Allen) as a pet. She is tormented by village boys, confused by the forester’s old dog, and laughed at by the forester’s cock & hens. She fights back, biting the boys and killing all of the chickens, then escapes. Sharp Ears is a metaphorical amphibian, a wild creature who temporarily crosses into the human, domesticated realm, then escapes. There is an interlude in a tavern, where the forester plays cards & drinks with a priest & a teacher hoping to marry a woman; the forester laments how time erodes the early passion of marriage. Back in the forest, Sharp Ears meets a handsome fox (Hanna Mantillo), who gets her pregnant. Then we’re with the humans again, with the school teacher & the priest on different paths in the forest, both haunted by erotic issues, observed by the vixen. In the penultimate scene, Vixen & Fox are mature parents with a large number of progeny; she opens the scene showing the cubs (kits?) how to avoid hunters’ traps, but is eventually shot by a poacher (a sort of human amphibian interloper in the forest), who will use her tail to successfully steal the schoolteacher’s love. In the final scene, the hunter returns to the forest & reencounters the amphibian as well as a vixen pup who seems to reincarnate Sharp Ears; he gets lost in the dance of the creatures, and in the moment he recaptures the erotic moment of the cycle of sex, rebirth, & death.

Addenda to Cunning Little Vixen, after a 2nd viewing. Music, at least the dance music, is based on Moravian folk music. The arias seem to me more expressionistic than particularly tuneful, though Allen’s closing aria has power. The original title of the opera was Vixen Sharp Ears. The male fox’s name is Gold Locks or Gold Stripe, and is cast for a soprano. There is an odd opening scene for Act 2 where Sharp Ears mocks a capitalist on a wolf’s head throne, which seems odd & out of place; not sure what Janacek’s contemporary reference intended, or how it relates to the overall opera. In terms of human/animal crossover, I suspect Janacek is hinting at a metaphorical role for the vixen, as a possible (human) adulterous relationship for the gamekeeper, who feels that with age the original passion of his marriage is gone. Another crossover/amphibious motif is in the badger’s burrow, which Hytner stages as an enormous red bed, where Gold Locks courts Sharp Ears with a dead rabbit (fox) & cigarettes (human) – Janacek I assume. The gamekeeper’s dog Lapak functions as a metaphor for the waning of male virility, though it’s cast for a mezzo soprano. Two of the most striking stage setting moments in Hytner’s version: the moon transformed into a balloon that carries off a pair of fox dancers in Sharp Ears’ proleptic dream (Act 1), and the schoolteacher imagining his love appearing at the center of an enormous sunflower (Act 2; in the original staging, Sharp Ears is hiding behind the sunflower, though not in the Hytner version, as I recall). According to Wikipedia, Janacek was originally put on the scent by cartoons based on Moravian folk tales; there might have been an animated version of the opera.

To celebrate the life of Robbie Robertson, who died age 80 earlier this week, I watched The Last Waltz (1978), a documentary concert film of the 1976 “retirement” concert of The Band at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco (via MGM+ on Xfinity cable; I believe streaming rental should be available). 1 hr 57 min., director Martin Scorsese. The Band was formerly a back-up band of Canadian & American musicians for rock and roller Ronnie Hawkins, called, appropriately, The Hawks. They hooked up with Bob Dylan and moved to Woodstock, NY, where together they did a lot of woodshedding & recording (noteworthy: The Basement Tapes, unreleased at the time). On their own, they recorded Music From Big Pink (1968, alluding to a recording studio in Woodstock), combining their own songs with some contributed by Dylan; then, after commercial success, followed it with the even more successful The Band (1969, where the group was responsible for the songs). The Band was: Robertson (guitar), Levon Helm (drums, mandolin), Rick Danko (electric & acoustic bass; fiddle), Richard Manuel (piano, drums), & Garth Hudson (organ, synthesizer, accordion, soprano sax). Principal vocalists were Helm & Danko, with contributions by Manuel; Robertson contributed backup vocals.

The “final” concert (there were various regroupings & reunions) concluded 16 years on the road, 8 of which reflected commercial success. I had the pleasure of experiencing them sometime in the latter 8 years at New York’s Fillmore East during my college years in the late 60’s. It’s a statement film; Scorsese, along with Robertson, who was the executive producer, as well as promoter Bill Graham, have a vision of rock music as bringing together blues, rock and roll, soul, tin pan alley, jazz, bluegrass, country, & any other strand of popular music of the time. The guest appearances by Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Neil Diamond, Paul Butterfield, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Ronnie Hawkins, Howard Johnson, the Staples Singers (including Mavis & Pop Staples), Dr John (Mac Rebennak), Emmylou Harris (the only country guest?), Neil Young (even more famous Canadian), climaxing with Bob Dylan, can be seen as an attempt to reflect this vision. One of the songs with Butterfield -- a Woodstock neighbor -- is Mystery Train, also the title of a book by Greil Marcus, a book influenced by Robertson, that incorporates that synthesis mythology, if you would. All this Americana-izing originating with a Canadian. Somewhat noticeable is the focus on the role of the musical contributions of (executive producer) Robertson in the concert – although he never sings lead, he plays a number of solos (excellent ones, though in the duel with Clapton, Clapton wipes the table with him), whereas in the Band’s studio recordings, Robertson’s guitar mostly functions as punctuation. Apparently this annoyed Helm, although the suggestion that the contributions of the other members are ignored did not seem the case with me; they all seem so talented, & I regret we won’t see their like again. Nice to experience some of the old tunes anew, with I shall be released seemingly prescient for these times. “Now yonder stands a man in this lonely crowd/ A man who swears he’s not to blame /All day long I hear him shouting so loud/ Just crying out that he was framed.”

At the multiplex: Jules, a sort of AARP E.T. in which retirees Ben Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris, and Jane Curtin befriend an extraterrestrial whose ship crashlands in Kingsley's backyard. Would have benefited from another rewrite to give the characters a bit more depth, but these three actors bring more depth and personality than is given to them by the script, and it's nice to see some talented older actors in a comedy that's more understated and less broadly slapsticky than the Book Club/80 for Brady genre. (Not that those movies aren't without their own charms, of course.)

A Criterion Channel feature is its Collections, gathering representative samples of a director, actor, genre, etc., in this case the complete series Once Upon a Time in China. I believe the series (6 parts?) originated with director/producer Tsui Hark & was generally very successful, though there were other directors. I tried a couple, but was only able to sit through Once Upon a Time in China V) (1994) which in this case was directed by Hark. Jet Li played the top role in most of the series as Wong Fei, but in V the kung fu master is played by Wenzhuo Zhao, though Rosamund Kwan continues in the role of westernized 13th Aunt, who often serves as a translator. These are semi-historical martial arts films dealing with various responses to Western (generally British) imperialism in China (hence the Manchu mandated pigtails on the men, making Zhao & Li interchangeable for the most part). The appropriate response to the West is one theme, nationalism another. To what extent politics vs commercialism interact in this 1994 film I can’t discern. The particular situation involves coping with disorder in a coastal city, where the police are unpaid & demoralized, pirates seem to have the upper hand, and the representative rice merchant uses the disorder to raise prices & deplore lack of protection from thieves. Master Wong Fei & his disciples are the heroes to the rescue. One running trope is the use of Western firearms interacting with traditional Chinese weapons. What made the film difficult for me to engage with is that quite a bit of it involves comedy, and I don’t find Chinese mainstream comedy to be very funny – in this case it mostly involves Master Wong’s disciples, who would make The Three Stooges seem Shakespearean in contrast. I especially found the prosthetics on Roger Kwok’s “Buck Teeth So” to be offensive, reminiscent of the racist stereotypes of WWII (the glasses adding insult to injury) when they were applied to the Japanese. The general vulgarity affected Michelle Yeoh’s early films in the 80’s, as I recall. Stereotype humor goes back to silent films, indeed, back to Shakespeare & Aristophanes, but in mainstream Chinese films it's way too loud for my taste. I’m not sure to what extent Hark is responsible for the action scenes (did he have a fight choreographer in this one?), which generally seem to me to be shot too close; the use of firearms generally is mostly done for comic effect (Kwok does most of the near-sighted shooting), lacking any of the visual brilliance & explosiveness one would associate with John Woo films. There are so many better Chinese films, including martial arts (including Hark’s wonderfully entertaining pre-“imperialism” films), so it’s disappointing that Chinese audiences latched on to these.

Via DVD-Netflix: Rake’s Progress aka Ruklarens vag (1995). This was a Swedish production of the Igor Stravinsky opera, with (English language) libretto by W.H. Auden & Chester Kallmann (I turned on subtitles nevertheless, though there was generally a time lag in their display). Conductor, Esa Pekka Salonen. Cast: Greg Fedderly (Tom Rakewell), Barbara Hendricks (Anne Truelove), Erik Saeden (father Truelove), Haken Hagegard (Nick Shadow), Brian Asawa (Baba the Turk), Gunilla Soderstrom (Mother Goose). Most of the operas on DVD I reviewed recently (e.g. Marriage of Figaro, Cunning Little Vixen) were documentaries of theatrical stagings, but this one, directed by Inger Aby, was opera as movie, though like theater docs there were too many close ups for my taste with the frames often crowded with bodies. Visually the color cinematography (Gunnar Kallstrom) seemed a little blurry, perhaps due to the age of the print. No issues with the sound. The opera has an epilogue which the film omitted. This is the only version of the opera I’ve seen. The singing was fine; in particular Barbara Hendricks has some nice parts. The Rake’s Progress originated as a series of 18th century prints by William Hogarth, recounting the corruption of a youth in London, who eventually ends up in the Bedlam madhouse. The libretto adds a fairy tale bargain with the devil & an odd marriage. The story opens with Tom & Anne as betrothed lovers in rural England, with Anne’s father concerned that his future son-in-law may be a little too lackadaisical about a career that could support Anna; Tom’s viewpoint is that success is all luck, so why worry? The appearance of Nick Shadow who announces that Tom is heir to his uncle’s fortune seems to bear this out. Tom leaves for London with Nick to tie up some loose ends, but the opera & movie quickly cut to the debauchery. Nick comes up with a plan to marry Tom to Baba the Turk, who turns out to be a bearded countertenor; Anne only learns of Tom’s marriage when she arrives in London in search of him. Tom’s fortune is soon exhausted, and there is an extended scene where his possessions are auctioned off. Now it’s time for Nick to collect what Tom owes him for his services. Graveside in a dark wood, Nick toys with Tom by giving him 3 chances to save his soul by making the correct guess on a sequence of 3 cards Nick selects from a pack. Nick plans to trick Tom by selecting the Queen of Hearts as the first card & then repeating the card on the third selection. But Tom is inspired by his lost love for Anne & repeats his selection of the Queen for the final card. Nick is reclaimed by hell in a burst of flame, but before he goes, he drives Tom mad. In the final scene, Tom is in Bedlam, convinced he is Adonis waiting to be freed by Venus (not sure whether Auden was thinking of Shakespeare or Shelley), where he sometimes imagines being rescued by Anne/Venus. (So after some poetic liberties, Tom ends up in Hogarth’s Bedlam after all)

At the multiplex: AFIRE, the latest from German director Christian Petzold. Four young people find themselves sharing a beach house during tourist season as forest fires near. A Rohmer-esque comedy of manners, in which three of the four are determined to enjoy their summer despite the perpetual stick-in-the-mud gloom of the fourth. Fine performances from all, but particularly Thomas Schubert as the glum narcissist and Paula Beer, who gives her ethereal beauty enough grounding weight to keep her from being merely a (Ger)Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I wasn't completely convinced by a late tonal shift when one too many calamities land on the group simultaneously, but even so, this is a fine movie and a strong addition to Petzold's impressive body of work.

Dwindling days of DVD-Netflix. Bluray of Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (2006). This is a documentary-type production of a performance (or performances) at Zurich, with pretty much one camera showing the stage, coming in for a close up now and then, and singers stopping for applause & in one case an encore in the midst of the performance! I liked the staging, which consists of a revolving set. The sound was rather recessed, which I suppose was documentary-realistic, but I would have preferred more brightness. Conductor, Nello Santi. Principals, Juan Diego Florez (Ernesto), Ruggero Raimondi (Don Pasquale), Isabel Rey (Sofronia/Norina), Oliver Widmer (Dr Malatesta). Raimondi was the only singer name I recognized. His vocals seemed a little weak; the others all were excellent, particularly the tenor Florez & Rey. The only issue was that Rey looked to be in her 40s, and did not look like the virginal Sofronia or the secret lover of young Ernesto; she came across more as Auntie Mame. This was my first experience with the opera & I enjoyed it.* Dr Malatesta convinces rich old Pasquale to marry his “sister” Sofronia, fresh out of the convent. Much of the comedy involves Pasquale humiliating himself (the wig!) as the 60 year old fantasizes that he’s a bit younger, only to be immediately to find himself under the thumb of his bogus wife, whose spending & antics put him on the path to the poorhouse. Ernesto is Pasquale’s tennis playing good for nothing nephew thrown out at the beginning of the story, in love with Norina, whom Malatesta passes off as his (the doctor’s) sister in a bogus marriage to teach the old lecher a lesson. Also, what’s with Pasquale’s teddy bear fetish?

I’ve been on a reading binge in August so my viewing was largely limited to an episode of Lewis over dinner (would watch a bit of TCM’s Summer under the Stars & Criterion Channel’s Leaving at the End of August, but too much good stuff to read). Watched the last episode & season of Season 9 on Britbox (subscription via Amazon Prime) last night. Seemed the weakest of the Morse spinoffs in terms of plotting, which at time seemed mailed in (confessions out of nowhere; murderer assignment sometimes appeared arbitrary). The interaction of the regulars (Whately, Fox, Holman, Front, & later Angela Griffin as DS Maddox) was the best part. In Season 9, Front as Chief Super Innocent was replaced by Steven Toussaint as CS Joe Moody, properly awkward. Also, the hostility toward Oxford intellectual activity seemed obnoxious to me. Still worth a watch.

*Footnote on Pasquale. Listening to a 1978 (1990s remastering) version conducted by Sarah Caldwell, with Beverly Sills, via Spotify. Beverly Sills: WOWZA!

Freebie week on Xfinity, my cable provider features Great Courses collections, normally a subscription service (also available for subscription on Prime Video I believe). These tend to be long & full of content, so I chose to focus on one; fingers crossed that I can finish. In this case, a 24 episode World’s Greatest Churches with the lectures by William R. Cook, State University of Genesco, NY. Cook’s a practicing Christian, so the perspective is insider; note that “churches” do not include synagogues or mosques or temples, the congregations are assumed to be Christian. Each episode is ca 30 min. Lots of sharp, excellent photographs in episode 1; he says there are ca 2000 in the entire course, mostly taken by him. Also uses 3D models to illuminate architectural features. I chose this one because Cook is the lecturer on a set of discs on cathedrals from Great Courses that I own (& the visuals seem to be even better than what I assume is the earlier series). He’s elderly, enthusiastic, & seems to bring much insight; thanks to the discipline of the series & company, he does not ramble, sometimes the case with real life lecturers.

#1. Introduction. Church from Greek ekklesia, from “people;” a church is people, & its greatness stems from how it functions for its particular congregation (whether Amiens or a Quaker meeting house), its function (a monastery church where monks attend services 8x daily), a shrine or pilgrimage church, its geography (available building materials), and, in recent times, technology. The earliest surviving churches date from the 4th century; prior to this time, when Christianity was a minority & in some cases persecuted, congregations met in homes. From the 5th century Christianity had Roman patronage & support (Constantine converted end of 4th century), & Christianity was the majority faith within the empire, though Cook reminds us that government support in Rome was preceded by the separate kingdoms of Georgia, Armenia, & Ethiopia. Christian buildings were not modeled after pagan temples (part of my binge reading has has me absorbed in Rene Girard’s efforts to distinguish pagan sacrifice from Christian transubstantiation), noting that a temple like Athena’s Parthenon in Greece was an inner sanctum where priests performed ritual sacrifice, a place that excluded the public, while the Christian buildings were based on Roman public, secular buildings where people of all classes met. The Roman public buildings became the characteristic early church basilicas, rectangular with a rounded east end, where the altar was located (though Cook has examples of early rounded Christian temples). In one of his basilica photos, he notes that chairs were not used in the early churches, that the early basilicas often had cloister/courtyards in front. He notes how Roman floor mosaics were moved up (often above the altars, though also above the aisles) to direct the worshipers eyes heavenward, and not trample on the holy stories. One of the standout decorations (he theorizes that Christianity became a majority in the empires & kingdoms due in part to better imaging/art – with some striking mosaic examples) is a wooden door, miraculously preserved from the 5th cent at the church of Santa Sabina, Rome on the Aventine hill. One panel has the earliest known depiction of the Crucifixion. One of the striking altar mosaics is illustrated by one above the altar at Santa Pudenziana in Rome, with allegorical animals representing the apostles, and Jesus whom Cook theorizes was modeled after depictions of Zeus, king of the gods/superheroes.

#2. Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (continuing the tour of The World's Greatest Churches). This is obviously a major pilgrimage church, and ecumenical within the Christian community. With Constantine having made Christianity the state religion, his mother Helena visited Jerusalem to identify the holy sites of the life of Jesus. There she discovered what she believed was the tomb of Christ, & had a church built around it (4th cent). It was located in a cave, and a round room was built around it, with a rather boxy room before it, then a rectangular basilica. Most of it (including the tomb) was destroyed after the Byzantine/Roman empire became more and more embattled & Jerusalem was won by the Persians and then the Arabs, who took turns destroying it, but it was rebuilt by Crusaders following the first crusade (1099). Surviving columns from the original church, with ornate capitals, are still part of the structure, but the rest is all post-Crusade, though definitely not recent. What’s interesting is that the current church has built into it a number of separate chapels administered by different Christian denominations (?), e.g. the Golgotha Chapel, purportedly where Helena discovered the location of the crucifixion, is administered by the Greek Orthodox Church. Other chapels are administered by the Ethiopian, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Catholic churches. Cook notes that changes to the church as a whole depend on agreement among all the denominations; he gives the example of a ladder that hasn’t been moved for 200 years due to lack of agreement. Another tidbit is the Chapel of St Helena, administered by the Armenian Church, located where Constantine’s mother discovered the 3 crosses of the crucifixion. The “true cross” was determined by laying each of the 3 on a dead man; the true cross resurrected the corpse. Cook also does a quick tour of the Via Crucis, the 14 stations of the Cross, the painful journey of Jesus from jail to crucifixion to burial, a tour that combines stations outside the church (e.g. Here is where He fell for the third time) to the various chapels within. Seemed a bit touristy, with merch for sale at some of the stops. If I understand correctly, there is also a Chapel of Adam, below (?) the former tomb of Jesus (or the Golgotha Chapel?) where the blood of Christ was drained into the skull of the first human. This becomes a motif in the iconography of later church decoration. Another iconographic theme that recurs has to do with the Trinity. In the Ethiopian church iconography – Cook provides an example from one of their chapel decorations – it is represented by 3 old men, rather than the Catholic Old Bearded Man, Jesus, & the dove-spirit. All fascinating stuff. (Also next door to the church is the Mosque of Omar, and Cook also has a photo of a nearby sign quoting the Koran, where Jesus declares he is Allah’s slave; lots of cross currents going on in Jerusalem; he notes that the Protestants got there too late, so they don’t have a chapel in the Sepulchre church).

#3 World’s Greatest Churches: Haggia Sophia. Now a museum in Istanbul. Means “Holy Wisdom.” It’s basically the third version, dating from 537 CE. While most Western Medieval churches were modeled after the basilica (the rectangular Roman public gathering building), Eastern churches seem to favor domed buildings. HS is structurally a massive central dome with half domes on either side. Domes are a way to let in light without side windows, flying buttresses & all that, while domes seem to float like the Eye of Heaven. Most of the original decorations (gold mosaics) long destroyed; keep in mind that the Byzantine/Roman empire had a spate of iconoclasm in the 8th cent that predates any Muslim vandalism. Still intact are the layers of colored marble overlaying the walls, from quarries across the Roman empire. The spatial organization of the inside beneath the dome is enormous & awesome, to the extent that it converted one of the Eastern kings to Christianity, who was convinced he was looking up into heaven. Cook says one of his favorite entertainments is watching tourists entering the dome space for the first time!

Addendum. Forgot to mention the empress’s balcony, with slides from that perspective showing the view below. Back in those days, women weren’t allowed in the area where the mass was celebrated, so a special place needed to be constructed for the empress. Also, as a reminder that the building had to be adapted for Islamic usage, to the right of the altar is a stairway leading to the mirab, where the call to prayer was made.

#4. Cave Churches of Cappadoccia. Central Turkey. Seemingly unique local geography; a mountain range consisting of “fairy chimneys,” hundreds of stone formations in the shape of pointed hats. The area was a Christian hotbed in the days of early Christianity; monasteries were carved into the sides of some of the stone mountains, and churches were carved from the chimneys. The insides mimic the insides of stone or brick churches, down to the supporting pillars. Although carving your church out of a stone mountain seems like a good idea, erosion eventually starts to destroy the carving; you can’t do maintenance as with a built church; that seems to be happening with many of the churches. Some of the smaller fairy chimneys were homes for ascetic hermits. Since most of the Christians moved to Greece during the Ottoman period, the churches aren’t much used, and most of the documentation is non-existent regarding their construction. Cook is much interested in church decoration, and he is fascinated by frescoes on stone in the Dark Church (a church carved into a cave), noting the iconography of a main course fish, representing ichthys, Greek for fish & abbreviation for Jesus Christ Son of God Savior; plus a new tool of the Eastern Roman Empire, the fork – slowly imported to Italian Rome, where folks ate with a combination of spoons & hands.

#5 Russia. The signature church building is Moscow’s St. Basil the Blessed, which apparently is not to Cook’s taste (“atypical”). This is the one with multiple onion domes (he never uses the term for some reason), with swirly colors on the domes & the supporting towers that resemble rainbow barber poles or Dairy Queen. It was apparently one of the Tsars who was bowled over by the Haggia Sophia & who made Christianity the state religion in the 10th century. Cook seems to prefer the St Valdimir church, seat of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch (apparently a big Putin ally nowadays; the lecture precedes the invasion of Ukraine), with its paintings by Andrei Rublev, which seem to be in very poor condition. Cook zips through a number of Russian churches; the one that got my attention was the brick and tilework of St John the Baptist.

#6 Painted Churches of Romania. These are in the Moldavia region of northern Romania, mostly dating from the 16th-17th century. Monastery churches; because they were near Islamic fighters the churches are surrounded by walls & fortified towers. What characterizes them are the frescoes that cover not just the insides, but the outsides of the churches. Cook notes one on the western wall (not an entrance as would be the case for a Western basilica) of the Last Judgment. He notes a common iconographic theme in Eastern painting, representing The Good Thief next to Abraham (often with souls of the Blessed gathered like babies on his bosom); a reminder that last minute repentance is always possible (but does this promote mischief up to the last minute?). Also noteworthy are animals spitting out human body parts; the artist(s) working out the logic of the resurrection of the human body on Judgment Day; and see the signs of the zodiac being trashed (because the End of Time). Meanwhile, Cook shows us the Ladder of Heaven, with the Blessed welcomed into the portals of Heaven, while demons drag off the ones who didn’t repent, though NOW they try to cling to the ladder! The inside is crammed with frescoes of the life of Jesus and scenes for each of the calendar’s Holy Days.

#7 Armenia. Best Armenian church isn’t in Armenia, but on a (Turkish) island off the coast of Turkey: Church of the Holy Cross, with raised sculptural decorations in the Armenian style done in the 9th & 10th centuries. Also typically Armenian (lecture returns to geographic Armenia) are Khachkar, small stone blocks with carvings of a cross over a sun, a common feature of the churches – lack of human figures the result of popular iconoclasm? Symbolism of Christianity triumphing over pagan sun worship?

#8 Georgia. Cook’s tour continues to a country north of Armenia. Notes that St. Nino, a woman, is credited with the conversion of Georgia to Christianity (plus Stalin came from here). Cook provides a shot of a form of cross associated with St Nino, 2 sticks (the cross piece a crooked branch), bound together with human hair. Cook notes that the church decorations & frescoes are in better condition than the churches in the previous Armenia episode. Interesting iconographic example of a pomegranate sculptural decoration as a symbol of Christianity, since the pod contains multiple seeds. An interesting fresco example of a rare image of Mary drinking, based on a tradition (the apocryphal Protogospel of James) that she was made to do so to prove that she was telling the truth about having been impregnated by God (she didn’t drop dead, so …). My favorite was actually the modern Holy Trinity Cathedral in Tbilisi, a massive building consisting of what seem to be 3 back to back facades which give a receding effect to the building.

#9 Rock-hewn Churches of Ethiopia. This episode was very impressive! Unlike the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, Christianity came early to Ethiopia, in the 4th cent, when the royal family was converted, though the rest of the population was converted via Syrian Christians in the 6th. Ethiopian tradition, however, has them as descendants of King Solomon through the lineage of the Queen of Sheba’s son Menelik, who stole the Ark of the Covenant where it & copies are kept in the original capital Aksum, & that an Ethiopian converted in Acts 8 propagated the faith to a Judaic population from the 1st century. The local tradition also has it that Jesus, Mary, & Joseph lived in Ethiopia following the flight into Egypt before eventually returning to the Holy Land. A later king, Lalibela, established a new capital with the same name at the end of the 12th century, and it was here in the early 13th that these distinctive churches were carved. The Cappadoccia churches were carved from the sides of mountains & small stone hills. The Lalibela churches were created by first carving deep stone pits and then from the remaining monolith in the pit carving the church itself. The interiors are dark and carved in imitation of churches constructed from stones, but are in fact all one sculptured stone!

#10 Mosque Cathedral of Cordoba. The Cathedral represents layers of religious history in one spot. After invasion & conquering of the Roman province in Spain, a pagan Visigothic temple is erected, then is covered by a Christian church after the goths converted in the 7th century, then in the 8th century it's replaced by a mosque when the Muslims conquered that part of Spain, then when a King Ferdinand reconquered Cordoba in the 12th century, the mosque was absorbed by a Christian cathedral that was placed in its center. The mosque was already within a walled courtyard, and one goes through that then through a long nave that was the original mosque which is a forest of repurposed double arched pillars. Cook points out that it’s one of the rare mosques from the period that non-Muslims can view. The interior cathedral was not completed until the 16th century, and a noteworthy bishop’s seat dating from the 18th century with amazing wood carving with contrasting OT & NT narrative sequences.

#11 Stave Churches of Norway. These date from the 12th century conversion of the Viking communities. As can be seen by Viking ships, the Norwegians were masters of wood, especially bending the material in graceful curves. After being immersed in stone or brick buildings in the earlier tours, it’s a sight to see the wooden gabled exteriors, & the interiors with the vaults and arches all of curved wood. There aren’t many surviving buildings, due to the material. “Stave” refers to the pine pillars that held up the slanting vaults/ceilings and the outside roofs (the staves were set on stone platforms). Because of the weather, the outside roofs are slanting, gabled constructions so the snow can slide off, and the churches look black because of the pine tar used to seal them from weather. The black color & the layered series of gabled roofs caused the churches to resemble Japanese castles to my eyes. The capitals of the staves often have painted grimacing faces that reminded me a bit of the prows of Viking ships. As Cook notes, the original settings of these churches by the fjords is something to see. The church decoration seems to be largely wood carving, echoing the vine-like animals that again reminded me of Viking ship decorations.

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