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Movie review: If Beale Street Could Talk

The narrative is nonlinear, bouncing around in time, but one always knows where we are in the story.

There was a trailer for If Beale Street Could Talk which I must have seen a half dozen times. You know how some previews tell you so much that you feel as though there’s no need to see the film at all? This one was quite the opposite as I could hear, more than once, puzzled utterances from the audience.

The movie was written for the screen and directed by Barry Jenkins, the creative force behind Moonlight, which beat out La La Land for best picture. It is based on the book by James Baldwin. The story is set in 1974, but, in many ways, it could have been 2018.

The movie quotes Baldwin as saying, “Every black person born in America was born on Beale Street.” Though the original Beale Street is in Memphis, this story is clearly in New York City.

Without being a spoiler, I’ll tell you that the movie is primarily a love story in the midst of an unjust system. Tish Rivers (newcomer KiKi Layne) and Alonzo ‘Fonny’ Hunt (Stephan James from the Homecoming TV Series) have known each other forever. Their friendship evolved into love. Tish and her family struggle to prove Fonny innocent of a terrible crime.

The narrative is nonlinear, bouncing around in time, but one always knows where we are in the story. Yes, there are a couple terrible folks. But there’s also great kindness and generosity bestowed upon the couple. And why not? My wife, in particular, LOVED this attractive pairing.

Regina King deserves her Golden Globe for best supporting actress as Sharon, Tish’s mom. In a smaller role, Aunjanue Ellis is also strong as Fonny’s mom. Some critics thought the film wasn’t gritty enough, to which I suggest that not every film about black people need be oppressively bleak. A mote legitimate complaint, I suppose, is too much music doing the atmospheric lifting, but it’s a minor quibble.

Only at the very end does If Beale Street Could Talk become a tad pedantic, and by that point, it was earned. As usual, my wife and I saw it at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany.

Music throwback: banned songs?

Here’s a song – and I think it’s a good thing – that you DON’T hear much anymore.

The discussion about whether radio stations should play Baby, It’s Cold Outside heated up in 2018, with some suggesting that the song should go away and others suggesting the song is not a problem. A LOT of people in this discussion argue, “Don’t they have something better to do?”

I commented about the song back in 2017. My basic belief is that I don’t much care – ban it, don’t.

These posts led to some nifty conversations about what ELSE has been banned. To be sure, a radio station choosing not to play a song isn’t an outright ban unless some government entity actually prohibits it. The FBI checked out Louie Louie by the Kingsmen (#2 pop for six weeks, #1 r&b for six weeks in 1963) but couldn’t figure out what was said.

I recall Society’s Child by Janis Ian (#14 pop in 1967) didn’t get played on certain radio stations because of the interracial reference. Even Love Child by Diana Ross and the Supremes (#1 pop for two weeks pop, #2 r&b for three weeks) got yanked by a couple stations.

The more interesting conversation is what songs SHOULD be axed now. More than one person noted Run For Your Life by the Beatles (1965), “I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man.” I admit it is one of my least favorite songs by the group, and John Lennon himself has dismissed it. It’s possibly the reason the Revolver album ranks higher with me than Rubber Soul.

What about Hey Joe, by the Leaves (#31 in 1966), famously covered by Jimi Hendrix (1968), about actually shooting someone? Ditto Neil Young’s Down by the River (1969). Or do they belong to the genre of “murder ballads” such as Pretty Polly (1968), famously covered by Judy Collins?

Now here’s a song – and I think it’s a good thing – that you DON’T hear much anymore. The Crystals’ He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss) (1962) was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King.

There’s one song that I own a Dr. Demento album that I’ve not heard for decades on the radio. Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun by Julie Brown (1983) was played on MTV in the early days. School shootings were once a rare event, so this was just an absurd, possibly tasteless, joke in the 1980s. I can’t imagine it being played in the era of Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Stoneman Douglas, and Brown hasn’t performed it in two decades.

What songs, if any, would you ban?

Ancestry DNA redux: Bantu, centimorgan

Do I have relatives in Munster, Ireland?

The very day I posted my DNA results from Ancestry.com back in September, I got this:
“We’re always working to improve our DNA science and with more than 150 new regions, we’ve brought even more detail to your results.”

“This update may connect you to additional new regions or migration stories. It’s also possible that some of your previous regions have disappeared, as our data has become more precise. Either way, it’s an update that gives you a clearer picture of your origins than ever before.” They say my DNA hasn’t changed, but their understanding does. Compare with the last one:

So I’m part southern Bantu, which didn’t show up at all the first go round. I’m more from Benin/Togo. I’m more from Great Britain/Ireland, and there’s a potential familial lead in Munster, Ireland.

But I’m less Scandinavian, and less Nigerian. My Native American went from less than 1% to 1%, not exactly a telling statistic.

Meanwhile, they’ve added some additional information to the familial field. There’s some woman they’ve identified as my potential 2nd or 3rd cousin. “Shared DNA: 302 cM across 14 segments”. What the heck is a cM?

“In genetics, a centimorgan (abbreviated cM) or map unit (m.u.) is a unit for measuring genetic linkage. It is defined as the distance between chromosome positions (also termed loci or markers) for which the expected average number of intervening chromosomal crossovers in a single generation is 0.01. It is often used to infer distance along a chromosome. However, it is not a true physical distance.”

Got it. OK, don’t “got it.” What? BTW, the person I know IRL who is my second cousin- Shared DNA: 250 cM across 17 segments. Lillian Bell Archer, is our common ancestor, our great-grandmother. Lillian is my mother’s mother’s mother.

As my cousin once said, “This is addicting stuff.” Will I share my DNA with greatness?

Boxer George Foreman turns 70

With this historic victory, George Foreman broke three records.

George Foreman There was a time in the United States when most people could name the current heavyweight boxing champion. My paternal grandfather McKinley Green probably could have named them all, from John L. Sullivan through Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, the undefeated Rocky Marciano to Floyd Patterson.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title that he’d won in 1964 (as Cassius Clay) by beating Sonny Liston. This was due to his refusal to be inducted into the military during the Vietnam War. “Smokin'” Joe Frazier eventually won the confusing alphabet soup of titles when he defeated Jimmy Ellis in 1970. Frazier then beat Ali, who was by then allowed to make his comeback, in the “Fight of the Century” in 1971.

On January 22, 1973, Frazier lost his title when he was defeated for the first time professionally by George Foreman. Foreman had won a gold medal in the heavyweight division at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. He turned professional in 1969. After he beat Frazier, he had two successful title defenses.

Foreman’s lost the title in his first professional defeat, to Muhammad Ali, in “The Rumble in the Jungle” in October 1974 in Zaire. George retired from boxing after a loss to Jimmy Young in 1977 and had a religious conversion. He became an ordained minister and opened a youth center in Houston, TX.

In 1987, at the age of 38, George announced he was returning to boxing to raise money for his youth center. From the Wikipedia: “By 1989, Foreman had sold his name and face for the advertising of various products, selling everything from grills to mufflers on TV….his public persona was reinvented, and the formerly aloof, ominous Foreman had been replaced by a smiling, friendly George.” In fact, it was the George Foreman Grill that made him far more money than he made in his boxing career.

Still, in 1994, he fought a guy named Michael Moorer. “With this historic victory, Foreman broke three records: he became, at age 45, the oldest fighter ever to win the World Heavyweight Championship; 20 years after losing his title for the first time, he broke the record for the fighter with the longest interval between his first and second world championships; and the age spread of 19 years between the champion and challenger was the largest of any heavyweight boxing championship fight.” He eventually ceded the title.

He has a dozen kids. “On his website, Foreman explains, ‘I named all [five of] my sons George Edward Foreman so they would always have something in common. I say to them, ‘If one of us goes up, then we all go up together, and if one goes down, we all go down together!'”

Movie review: Vice (2018, re: Dick Cheney)

My disdain for Dick Cheney has been quite high for years

Vice.movie In many ways, it’s the early scenes in Vice, the movie about former US President – I mean Vice-President – Dick Cheney, that are the most interesting to me. It was how Cheney (played with eerie physical precision by Christian Bale) went from being a Yale dropout to one of the most significant political power players in recent history.

It is the equally brilliant transformation of Amy Adams, a performer who I’ve seen in a number of films, that really wowed me. She disappears into the role of Lynne Cheney, motivating Dick before they got married. Also strong were Steve Carell as Cheney’s early mentor Donald Rumsfeld, and Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, whose own youthful lack of self-control parallels that of Cheney.

One finds out only late in the proceedings why Kurt (Jesse Plemons) is our narrator, and that was a useful device. Even those characters with little to say – LisaGay Hamilton as Condoleezza Rice, e.g. – had the right look.

For me, one of the best laughs came with the fake credits midway through the movie. Oh, if only THAT narrative had actually played out. Since my disdain for Cheney has been quite high for years, not much of the parts after that point were particularly surprising to me. To be honest, I was feeling a bit of confirmation bias. Cleverly, the last scene, which some theatergoers missed because they left too early, addresses that issue.

I enjoyed Adam McKay’s previous movie The Big Short quite a bit more. Maybe it was because I had a lesser understanding of the topic, the market manipulation that helped bring about the Great Recession of 2008. I definitely found the earlier film to be flat out funnier, even as it ticked me off. Dark humor is a tricky thing thing, which is why the critics are so divided over Vice.

Still, despite these qualifiers, I recommend the film for its amazing ability to transform these people, via acting and makeup, into their roles in our recent history which resonate even to this day. For example, just this month, Dick and Lynne’s daughter Liz Cheney rips progressives in preview of House GOP attack plan.

I’m glad my wife and I got to see Vice at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany a couple weeks ago.

Only somewhat off topic: I Was A Cable Guy. I Saw The Worst Of America. A glimpse of the suburban grotesque, featuring Russian mobsters, Fox News rage addicts, a caged man in a sex dungeon, and Dick Cheney.