Roger O Green

Movie review: Bombshell (2019)

a pretty good TV movie

The movie Bombshell is about the denigration of women at FOX News. The chief bad guy is the head honcho, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow), who created the media empire. He is sufficiently villainous.

This is a really important story being told. Issues of power, consent, body image abound. It is quite timely in the #MeToo era, with that ripped-from-the-headlines vibe about breaking the silence.

It’s interesting that the two more powerful female news performers operated largely in their own circles. that would be Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) and Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman). Whether by the competitive design of the FOX management or happenstance, this allowed the abuse to go on without people comparing notes.

BTW, the makeup for Kidman and especially Theron, is amazing. But I was distracted by many of the men whose approximation of the real guys went from not bad to laughable.

Also less than satisfying for me was the character played by Margot Robbie. Maybe it was because Kayla Pospisil was not an individual but rather an amalgam of several FOX employees. Still, she suffered the most on-screen humiliation, and it was mighty uncomfortable.

In another era, I’d say this was a pretty good TV movie. Once that term was generally understood as “not bad for television.” Of course, that line has long since been blurred. The storyline was uneven, and somehow not as compelling as I wanted it to be.

Trumped

It is ironic, as one critic noted, that “Bombshell glorifies/reframes notoriously racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic Fox personalities as #MeToo heroines.”

Megyn Kelly, in particular, I found to be a loathsome on-air personality. I did feel for Megyn, both the real her and movie her, when the 2016 Republican nominee for President said untoward things about her. And I thought she was soft on him during their next encounter. So that narrative rang true.

The Pospisil/Jess Carr (Kate McKinnon) relationship did not. I did buy that Carr could be a closet liberal working at FOX, though.

I guess I wanted to pump my fist when – no spoiler – Ailes’ machinations are revealed, as I did in Spotlight or even The Post. My wife liked it more than I when we and our daughter saw it at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany in late December. My daughter thought it was good too.

Lydster: here comes the knight

one could

mountney-coat-of-arms-mountney-family-crest-7 The tricky thing about redoing the family tree is to be representational. On one hand, I have this whole new biological tribe to represent. On the other, I don’t want to ignore the import of my non-biological grandfather McKinley Green.

As it turns out, Ancestry.com has a mechanism by which one could change McKinley Green from grandparent to step-grandparent. Then one could add Raymond Cone as biological grandfather. And by “one could,” I mean my daughter could. Even when I read the instructions, nada. She did it in a couple of minutes.

Then she became a bit obsessed. Once you add a name on an Ancestry tree, it suggests Hints. Some verify what I already knew. Others are frustratingly unclear. Two different names of people with similar names but different dates, e.g. Was that guy a bigamist with wives with the same first name? That sort of thing.

But some Hints, usually coming from Census or other family trees, seem credible. And as she went further and further back on one strand of the Cone tree, the more people from England she found. And there were other Ancestry folks who were keeping track of them.

Ye Jolly Olde

William Garret “Garrard” Sir, Knight of Derby, Brickmason, Immigrated to Jamestown-1607(First ships)
B:1583 Derby, Leicestershire, England
D:1640 St Botolph Bishopsgate, London, England
That’s eleven generations back. And through his wife’s line, she got back to:

Thomas Mounsey V
–1573
Birth 31 JAN • Mountney Plain, Norfolk, England
Death 1573 • Mountney Plain, Norfolk, England
14th great-grandfather
I’m actually thinking it’s Thomas Mountney V from some hints – crests and, more importantly the geography – which suggests investigating even further. I’ll have to double check some of these, but wow.

My daughter worked on this for at least three hours straight. This in lieu of doing homework, I later discovered. The trick is that the more names you accept, the more Hints you’re provided. I had over 300 Hints when she started, and now there are over 600. It’s rather like an infectious disease.

And all of this on this brand new genealogical strand that I didn’t know about until extremely recently.

Bridge Over Troubled Water – S&G

country, disco, soul…

Someone wrote to me this week: “Waiting on your blog post that commemorates [the] 50th anniversary of the “Bridge Over Troubled Water” single.

It is a great song, released on January 20, 1970, the title track of an album released six days later. The single hit the charts on February 7 and spent six weeks at #1 pop and the same on the adult contemporary charts.

Moreover, it was the Grammy Record and Song of the Year, Top 50 on Rolling Stones Top 500 songs, and a bunch of other accolades. It’s my second favorite Simon and Garfunkel song, after The Boxer.

If memory serves, my sister Leslie received the single from her boyfriend that winter. I bought, or was given, the album shortly afterwards. I swear that the single and the album track were in different keys. Maybe that was just the production values of the single.

Who will sing the song?

I suppose Bridge Over Troubled Water makes me sad because it was the swan song of the duet, the last song recorded for their final album. Paul Simon felt his partner, Art Garfunkel, should sing the song solo, the “white choirboy way.” Art initially declined, liking “Simon’s falsetto on the demo.”

“At the suggestion of Garfunkel and producer Roy Halee, Simon wrote an extra verse and a ‘bigger’ ending, though he felt it was less cohesive with the earlier verses.” While Paul is technically correct – the last verse is not as strong, even with Simon’s harmonies – it doesn’t matter.

Even before their breakup, Paul had his regrets over giving the song to Artie. “Many times on a stage, though, when I’d be sitting off to the side and Larry Knechtel would be playing the piano and Artie would be singing ‘Bridge’, people would stomp and cheer when it was over, and I would think, ‘That’s my song, man…”

This is one of the most covered songs, ever. These are the ones that charted in the US, to my knowledge, plus one more.

Simon and Garfunkel
Aretha Franklin, #6 pop, #1 for two weeks RB in 1971
Buck Owens, #119 pop, #9 CW in 1971
Linda Clifford, #41 pop, #49 RB in 1979; remix
Paul Simon, live in Central Park, 1991
Glee cast, #73 pop in 2010
Andrea Bocelli & Mary J. Blige, #75 pop in 2010
Tessanne Chin, #64 in 2013

Keith Barber (1941 – 2020)

service Saturday, January 25, at 11 a.m. at First Presbyterian Church, ALB

If you read the comments about Keith Barber on his Facebook page, you’d detect a common theme. He was kind, gentle, friendly, compassionate, gracious, funny, loving – that’s about right.

Keith was a strong supporter of equality and social justice. As an ordained deacon and elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), he worked for years for full inclusiveness in the church. At our church, First Presbyterian of Albany, he chaired the committee on Social Justice and Peacemaking.

Quite recently he posted on his Facebook ‘The Slaves Dread New Year’s Day the Worst’: The Grim History of January 1. His comment: “A bit of Truth that my own white privilege has previously deprived me of knowing.”

Keith Barber could be a raconteur. He told stories about his time in radio broadcasting, including at WROW in Albany. He shared details with me of stories that took place in the Capital District that took place before I got here. Notably, there was a plane crash in an Albany neighborhood in the early 1970s, which he talked about in astonishing detail more than 30 years later.

Keith was a booster of New York, especially upstate. His Quora page made that quite clear. Although he moved to Florida for a time, he belonged in this region.

The train, the bus

His fondness and support for public transportation was very evident. We shared a love of rail travel, though he did so more than I. Keith became the first public relations officer at Capital District Transit Authority. I’d see him occasionally on the bus, counting people or taking surveys.

The church attempted a Thursday evening Bible study almost a decade ago. Though it started with a half dozen folks, it eventually dwindled down some weeks to just the two of us. Naturally, Keith pulled out his Message Bible written by Eugene Peterson.

Keith LOVED reading from Peterson, because it was “designed to be read by contemporary people in the same way as the original koiné Greek and Hebrew manuscripts were savored by people thousands of years ago.” Genesis 1:1 reads: “First this: God created the Heavens and Earth—all you see, all you don’t see.”

If I’m particularly saddened by Keith’s passing, it’s that, less than a month ago, he “graduated” from getting chemotherapy. It’s likely that the chemo helped create the situation that ultimately killed him, if I understand correctly.

There will be a service for Keith Barber on Saturday, January 25, at 11 a.m. in the First Presbyterian Church, 362 State St., Albany. All are welcome to celebrate a life well lived.

Movie review: Richard Jewell

Paul Walter Hauser

Whether or not I see a movie depends on a variety of factors. Some are obvious, such as available time and whether the premise is appealing to me. For the movie Richard Jewell, it was a combination of factors.

One was a person I respect who didn’t think it’d be worth seeing a drama by Clint Eastwood with a political ax to grind. I’ll get back to that. The other was a person who, when I mentioned it, made a factually incorrect statement. “Richard Jewell: he’s the guy who discovered the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics, but it turned out he set it.”

I had a very visceral reaction: “NOOOOOOOOOO!!” It is correct that the security guard saved lives, and in doing so became an instant celebrity. But no, he was NOT the bomber. And the fact that someone I know well REMEMBERS him as the bomber is reason enough for the film to exist.

Here are the good things about Richard Jewell. The actor portraying the overweight cop wannabe who lives with his mother, is Paul Walter Hauser. I last saw him as one of the bumbling friends of Tonya Harding’s husband in I, Tonya. He’s very good here, even, as the title character with the most screen time, he only gets fifth billing.

Sam Rockwell plays Jewell’s lawyer and unlikely friend Watson Bryant. He is solid, as he was in Jojo Rabbit, Vice, Three Billboards, and The Way, Way Back. Kathy Bates’ Oscar nomination as Richard’s mom, Bobi, is understandable. Jon Hamm, as composite FBI agent Tom Shaw, reminded me that, in too many police procedurals, the cops glom onto the first suspect.

On the other hand

Now we get into the not-so-great parts. The real Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs was known as being flirty. But there was nothing that substantiated she actually traded sexual favors for news scoops. Olivia Wilde’s iteration does; this is not a flaw in the performance but of the storyline.

As to how politics may have shaped the film, David Edelstein’s review is titled “Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell Is Full of Rage and Spin.”

“The actual bomber, Eric Rudolph, a right-wing, anti-abortion homophobe whose killing spree would continue, is named only once, in passing, and his likely ties to Christian militias and white supremacists go unmentioned. (Rudolph, in prison for life, remains a hero in those circles.)”

Edelstein also points to villainizing the press in the person of the aforementioned Kathy Scruggs, who won’t sue, as she is now deceased. Also, Jewell had more than a lone lawyer, but the movie portrayal is far more David v Goliath.

The film Richard Jewell is compelling enough story on the screen, despite its flaws. Not surprising, its reaction from the general public on Rotten Tomatoes (96% positive) is far greater than with the critics (72% positive). My wife, daughter and I saw it at Albany’s Spectrum Theatre in mid-December.