Bite Me, Tony

  Sirens Billed as a satire, the new Netflix series, Sirens , sends up the ultra-rich in this tale of two sisters, Devon and Simone. Simone, having left her hardscrabble life behind, has scored a coveted gig working as personal assistant to socialite Michaela ("call me Kiki") Kell. Kiki and her billionaire husband, Peter, live in a sprawling mansion on an island off the New England coast. Pampered and kowtowed to by a coterie of servants, Kiki smiles and purrs to all and sundry, while Simone barks Kiki's orders to the hired help via a megaphone. Despite her high-profile status as a hostess and fundraiser (for predatory rescue birds), Kiki has a few quirks. Primarily, Kiki has cultivated a devoted cultlike following of Stepford Wives who hang on Kiki's every word and whim. They smile incessantly, maintain an illusion of warmth, and don't seem to have any life outside Kiki's orbit. Under Kiki's mentorship, Simone has drunk the Kool-Aid and become a brittle ...

Cult Movies #5 In 1967, when director Franco Zeffirelli, was busy filming Romeo and Juliet in Italy, he spent his down time trying to seduce the young actor cast as Benvolio who, in turn, was having none of it. At least that's according to the actor who played Benvolio. A couple decades later, in 1987, that actor--Bruce Robinson--exacted his revenge by writing and directing the hilariously melancholy  Withnail and I , part of which satirizes a gentleman of a certain age  as he pursues a reluctant young straight man. Withnail and I is not an easy movie for some viewers to embrace; perhaps it's too squalid, what with all the drunkenness, profanity and drug use. Also, the lead characters are consistently awful and hardly endearing. That's part of what makes the film so funny: these two young actors, penniless, unemployed and living in a filthy flat, are continuously overwrought, acting out their frustrations offstage instead of on. I think it's a masterpiece but since th...