In the age of globalization, everyone has ample opportunity to connect with others. In John Wilson’s HBO docuseries “How To With John Wilson,” filmmaker Wilson roams the city of New York (with occasional forays outside the city) in search of assistance on how to do different things, documenting the experience with his camera. Young argues that the concept of community is both too homogenous and too idealized to serve as a foundation for ethical life in a diverse society. But we can still learn from them. This is contrasted to the changing social world where New York City becomes a strong, but sometimes loose, way of communicating how she interacts with the world. Release year: 2021. In the last episode, “How to Make Risotto,” Wilson documents his many failed attempts to make the perfect risotto to repay his landlady for her many years of friendship and support. View All Pretend It's a City News . While there may be some readers or viewers who engage Lebowitz to learn something about the strange city of New York, I expect that most of her audience shares her love of New York and some familiarity with it. Here are the most promising TV shows (and movies streaming at home) due... Find a list of the best recent and upcoming film and TV titles added to... Music title data, credits, and images provided by, Movie title data, credits, and poster art provided by, No episode information is currently available for this season. City life clearly entails more encounters with difference, with others who are strange to us, than we might encounter in a small rural town. BrianNaas’s review published on Letterboxd: A few weeks ago SNL had a parody skit that made no sense to me. 1. Wander the New York City streets and fascinating mind of wry writer, humorist and raconteur Fran Lebowitz as she sits down with Martin Scorsese. On living alone during the COVID-19 pandemic . In this episode and others, Wilson takes a risk to engage with many persons both inside and outside New York who live very differently than he does. We learn through a series of both successful and unsuccessful encounters what sorts of topics are best in first meetings. In the episode “How to Split a Check,” Wilson explores issues of justice when we dine out with others, and how difficult it is to make everyone feel that the split check calculations were done fairly. Pretend It's a City (TV Mini-Series 2021) cast and crew credits, including actors, actresses, directors, writers and more. And it is in this transformation that ethical life becomes possible. A series gets an Average Tomatometer when at least 50 percent of its seasons have a score. Jacobs worried about the assault on lively street life threatened by Robert Moses’s plans for highway construction that would have displaced people with automobiles. It is through the transformative process of being a stranger to becoming a community member that we learn to be ethical. Synopsis Pretend It’s a City. Choisir étoiles entre 1 et 10. Lebowitz could have invoked the great urban thinker Jane Jacobs, who called the remarkable way in which both strangers (and neighbors) on the street interacted with one another in ways that required little communication but seemed choreographed as a kind of “sidewalk ballet” (The Death and Life of Great American Cities, pp. Courtesy of Netflix. 10 - Magnifique, à voir immédiatement. In the end, we witness Wilson’s efforts to learn how to live well by accompanying him on his journey in which he looks closely at his city and reflects on his own efforts to live with others. One of the gentle touches of “Pretend It’s a City” is that there are usually other people in the room where Fran Lebowitz and Martin Scorsese are chatting. Whether pointing out the irony of art auctions (“people applauded the price” but not the painting) or mocking her horrific luck with real estate, Fran Lebowitz’s delivery is masterful. Renaud Machart. At the very least, she draws an audience who wants an encounter with New York through the perspective of a quintessential New Yorker. Vous avez vu « Pretend It's a City » ? Pretend It's a City. Pretend It's a City is a 2021 seven-part documentary series directed by Martin Scorsese featuring interviews and conversations between Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz. Lebowitz makes it clear that she cannot imagine living anywhere else and has some disdain for those who do not have the guts to try to live in New York. Quelle est votre évaluation? 7.4 Les Mitchell contre les machines (2021) 6.1 Love and Monsters (2020) 6.9 Judas and the Black Messiah (2021) 5.3 Sans aucun remords (2021) 5.5 Le Passager nº 4 (2021) 5.3 Dans les angles morts (2021) Tout voir Les films VOD du moment. I'll never understand what anyone finds compelling in anything Fran Liebowitz has to say. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Young was very right to worry about the ways that homogenous communities that reenforce members’ views and make difference intolerable are likely to create injustices, but it is hardly the case that only rural peoples face such threats. So when we “pretend it’s a city” we need to think about the ways that cities afford us both the opportunity to live well with strangers but also to negotiate difference and build communities with those who had been Others to us. Pretend It's a City is a tribute to two things Scorsese loves, Fran Lebowitz and New York City, and that affection is contagious for much, if not quite all, of its running time. Best I’ve seen of 2021 so far. All types of dwellers—urban, suburban, and rural, are increasingly drawn to virtual communities through the invitation of social media algorithms that place us on endless feeds that give us more of what we already like or with which we already agree (and therefore reenforce sameness (see, e.g., the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma) and we all need to think about whether we are making an effort to connect with others who are different from us. And rural townspeople are hardly cut off from the world, especially in the age of the internet. Indeed, I would add scaffolding to Lebowitz’s list as the number one thing that has negatively altered sidewalk life and pedestrian encounters in New York. Even the places the series lags a bit are more a product of exhaustion from spending that amount of time with any other person, a sentiment I'm fairly confident Lebowitz would acknowledge. Pretend It's a City is a tribute to two things Scorsese loves, Fran Lebowitz and New York City, and that affection is contagious for much, if not quite all, of its running time. While every encounter is respectful, that does not mean that Wilson endorses everyone’s ideas or behavior. According to her, “[t]he great thing … By Sharon M. Meagher, Ph.D., Marymount Manhattan College.