Following the previous episode’s last-minute production, Dara does another late night recording, this time in the wind and rain, with at least two interruptions from a sleeping dog. He’s determined to maintain his line, and that means he refuses to put out another delayed episode.
This week it’s all about Maestro, Bradley Cooper’s biopic of the American conductor and composer, Leonard Bernstein. Dara enjoyed the film so much he watched it back to back. He tries to explain why he found it so beguiling, but it is very much about the film’s aesthetic pleasures, particularly how it sounds and how it is shot.
He wonders if Cooper is trying to render them as a proxy first couple of American beauty and success, a la the White House Kennedys of Camelot.
He also has thoughts on the weighting of female characters in movies like this, and the policy of an Irish supermarket on broken bottles of alcohol.