Raise the Black! Netflix will drop a documentary series titled The Lost Pirate Kingdom on March 15. The Pirate Republic of Nassau — the great maritime frontier of the early 18th century. This looks like perfect fodder for the times when inclement weather forces my kettlebell workouts indoors…
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Who’s up for a tale of arduous Arctic exploration?
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Lane Jacobson, proprietor of my esteemed local independent book store, has promised to pass along his copy of this yarn as soon as he’s done devouring it. Lane gets me.
Orphaned as a baby, Ming Tsu, the son of Chinese immigrants, is raised by the notorious leader of a California crime syndicate, who trains him to be his deadly enforcer. But when Ming falls in love with Ada, the daughter of a powerful railroad magnate, and the two elope, he seizes the opportunity to escape to a different life. Soon after, in a violent raid, the tycoon’s henchmen kidnap Ada and conscript Ming into service for the Union Pacific Railroad.
Battered, heartbroken, and yet defiant, Ming partners with a blind clairvoyant known only as the prophet. Together the two set out to rescue his wife and to exact revenge on the men who destroyed him, aided by a troupe of magic-show performers, some with supernatural powers, whom they meet on the journey. Ming fights his way across the West, settling old scores with a single-minded devotion that culminates in an explosive and unexpected finale.
Written with the violent ardor of Cormac McCarthy and the otherworldly inventiveness of Ted Chiang, The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu is at once a thriller, a romance, and a story of one man’s quest for redemption in the face of a distinctly American brutality.
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From The Hollywood Reporter:
Jesse Plemons has joined Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in Killers of the Flower Moon, the big-budget thriller Martin Scorsese is directing for Apple.
The casting is a major coup for Plemons, who for years has anchored productions or stole scenes with his performances in supporting roles. And it coincides with him being wanted for lead roles not just by Scorsese, with whom he worked on 2019’s The Irishman, but also by Jordan Peele, who had offered him a major role in his latest thriller.
The hope was for Plemons to do both but scheduling ultimately could not be worked out. Peele’s movie is to shoot early summer while Flower Moon shoots from May to late summer.
Regardless, Plemons now finds himself in a role was originally to have been played by DiCaprio before the Oscar-winner segued to a secondary lead.
The script, written by Eric Roth and based on the David Grann bestseller, is set in 1920s Oklahoma, against the backdrop of the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.
Plemons will play Tom White, the lead FBI agent investigating the murders. Lily Gladstone will play the role of Mollie Burkhart, an Osage married to Ernest Burkhart, who is nephew of a powerful local rancher. DiCaprio is the nephew while De Niro is the strong-handed rancher.
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David Wrolson says
Working the trapline from my end. I found a republishing of a 1939 memoir coming out this summer that you may not be aware of, but it seems to hit your X-Ring
“The Aimless Life: Music, Mines and Revolution from the Rocky Mountains to Mexico.”
https://www.amazon.com/Aimless-Life-Revolution-Mountains-Mexico/dp/1496222903/ref=sr_1_1?crid=30A8RXTXCDH4N&dchild=1&keywords=the+aimless+life&qid=1613777295&s=books&sprefix=the+aimles%2Cstripbooks%2C189&sr=1-1
>>>”In early March of 1915 news broke in El Paso that Leonard Worcester Jr., a leading mining executive in the border region, was being held in a Chihuahua jail without trial or release on bond. Officials loyal to Francisco “Pancho” Villa had accused Worcester of defrauding a Mexican company related to a shipment of zinc, a charge without merit. While struggling to convince Mexican officials of his innocence, Worcester found himself in the middle of a maelstrom of economic interests, foreign diplomacy, and revolution that engulfed the U.S.-Mexico border region after 1910.”<<<<<
JimC says
Oh HELL yes.
J.F. Bell says
I’m cautiously optimistic for Killers of the Flower Moon. Good stories set in the ’20s – especially anything so far into the hinterlands as Oklahoma are a fair rarity. The last I can recall was probably You Know My Name, Sam Elliott’s telling of of Bill Tilghman’s later days during the oil boom.
With any luck De Niro and Scorcese can atone for the wretched excess that was The Irishman.
JimC says
I have yet to watch The Irishman. DeNiro’s late career has not been glorious.
J.F. Bell says
The real value of The Irishman is seeing a lot of the old mob-movie hands together. Time being what it is it’s doubtful we’ll have another chance. There’s no question of the talent involved – it’s just unfortunate that the story and the production bear up. It’s a product less than the sum of its parts.
It can be sketched as the family reunion with a relative everybody knows won’t make the next. All the cousins know it’s significant get-together, but what mostly comes through is a pre-funereal air that nobody wants to address.
You’d feel bad about missing, but you don’t feel good for having been.