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Movie review: SINNERS

Michael B. Jordan and Michael B. Jordan

Admittedly, I was wary about seeing the movie SINNERS. I can be a bit squeamish when it comes to a film described as vampire horror. My friend Steve Bissette had recommended it when he saw it in April, but that type of film is more in his wheelhouse.

Then my daughter, likewise squeamish, viewed it in Cape Town, South Africa, in June, just before returning to the States. She said I had to see it because it was about the black experience in America, and it was about music.

So I went to the Madison Theatre near my home on the hottest day of the year, Primary Day – they have $5 films on Tuesdays! – while my wife, the most squeamish of the three of us, saw another flick at the same venue.

How do I describe this film? The IMDb notes: “Trying to leave their troubled lives behind [in Chicago], twin brothers (Michael B. Jordan) return to their hometown [in 1930s Mississippi] to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.”

That doesn’t tell you much. Bissette wrote: “A rip-roaring fusion of masterful visual storytelling and toe-tapping music, writer-director Ryan Coogler’s first original blockbuster reveals the full scope of his singular imagination.

“Wildly primal, big and bold, fueled by pain and rage, by community and family, throbbing with love and sex and joy, infused with magic. A sumptuously textured, unmissable howl of a passion project.”

It’s about time

Someone named Corey Creekmur commented on Bissette’s Facebook page: “It’s such a rich sequence. It seems to be drawing upon African models of time, occult notions of time (such as the way vampires move outside of human time and share memories), and rich notions of musical and cultural continuity across eras. (It seems evocative of Sun Ra and George Clinton’s mystical, time and space traveling visions.) It’s dazzling in any case.”

Oh, it’s Afrofuturism, at least in part, which does not become clear to me until near the end.

It was well-acted by all involved. The scenes with the twins, Smoke and Stack, looked realistic. Special kudos to Miles Caton, who is all of 20, for playing the pivotal role of Sammie. And the music is excellent; I have, of all things, Rocky Road to Dublin, stuck in my head.

The Rotten Tomatoes reviews were 97% positive among critics and 96% positive among audiences. Some suggested that at 137 minutes, it was about 15 minutes too long. But I think the time built up the tension and better established the characters.

An audience reviewer on a site thought the vampires were silly, rather than scary-looking. I thought that was the point. The vampire’s life was alluring at some level.

Bissette is right about this: “if (and oh, you should) you catch SINNERS in the theater, be advised NOT to leave when the first of the final credits appears…

“The real ending to the film is mid-way through the final credits” (at least three of the dozen and a half folks in my theater left too early and missed Buddy Guy!), “and after the credits crawl conclude, a sublime post-credits sequence that sent me out of my seat positively elated follows” (I was in an otherwise empty theater.)

1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture

the misinterpretation of ancient Greek

Summer Movie Night: “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture”

Sunday, July 13 at 6:30 pm

Emmanuel Baptist Church, 275 State Street, Albany, NY

Free and open to the public

In partnership with the Pride Center Spirit Committee, Emmanuel Baptist invites you to a screening of “1946: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture.”

I RECOMMEND IT.

This 2022 documentary explores the tireless efforts of researchers who trace the origins of the anti-gay movement among Christians to a mistranslation of the Bible in 1946. The film chronicles the discovery of previously unseen archives at Yale University, which shed light on the misinterpretation of ancient Greek that led to the term “homosexuality” being introduced into the Bible for the first time. Featuring commentary from prominent scholars and opposing pastors, the documentary also includes personal stories from the film’s creators.

Parking Information:

For those with mobility limitations: Accessible parking is available on the east side of the Emmanuel building near the ramp entrance.
Street Parking: Available along State Street, especially heading toward the Capitol building.
Westminster Presbyterian Church: Limited parking is available across the street at 85 Chestnut Street.
First Presbyterian Church of Albany: Additional parking is located three blocks away at 362 State Street.

Questions? Call the church office at 518-465-5161 or e-mail pastorkathy@emmanuelalbany.org

Lydster: plane ride home

Thandeka Dladla

The day before the daughter took the plane ride home, I asked her, on WhatsApp, if she had her ticket and passport. She wrote back, “I hope so.” Of course, she did, but it wasn’t the answer I had been seeking. She arrived at the airport in Cape Town about four hours before her scheduled flight on June 17, as recommended, which was beneficial because loading began over an hour before takeoff.

So it wasn’t precisely a plane ride “home” but to the DC metro. Meanwhile, my wife was driving us from the Poconos to a Hampton Inn near Dulles International Airport. We could follow the 14-hour flight on the United Airlines app.

The daughter has landed!

On the morning of June 18, we took a hotel shuttle to the airport, and after the driver spoke with the daughter on my phone, he was able to locate her. We see the Daughter! After brief hugs, we returned to the Hampton, ate breakfast, and then went back to the Poconos. Since her internal clock was six hours ahead of Eastern time, and she hadn’t slept much on the plane, there was a period of adjustment.

Still, she shared gifts with us, including some various flavored salts and teas for my wife. I received a University of Cape Town hat and t-shirt. Additionally, I got CDs of Miriam Makeba and a live album by Thandeka Dladla, a devotee of Makeba who my daughter has seen perform. As my daughter predicted, she fell asleep listening to Dladla.

The next day, after breakfast, we went to the miniature golf course. It was two 18-hole courses, one on the plains and the other on the mountains. It was accurate in that the latter involved far more steps to climb. It also started getting very warm and muggy as we swatted some mosquitoes.

We stopped at the general store for lunch, then stayed for ice cream when a quick deluge fell from the sky.

The next day, we went home, stopping at Milford, PA en route. About three hours after arriving home, the daughter went out with a friend. It’s good to have her back.

“Librarians aren’t the flashiest people”

liars aiming to avoid accountability will become more believable

My friend Catbird wrote:

Hi Roger—

I just saw Carla Hayden on PBS NewsHour. She made a remark (something to the effect of )“maybe maybe librarians aren’t the flashiest people, but they’re trusted,” that took me right to “information without the bun.”

Information Without the Bun was the name of my blog on the Times Union website from 2008 to 2021.

I got excited to be reminded of you. … it was a happy surprise!

I hope you are sufficiently happy in your life right now.

And in case I forgot, happy Father’s Day.

This was very touching. I strive to provide accurate data on this blog diligently. On Facebook, I often post police reports of traffic jams and parking restrictions because it seems useful.

Librarians, by training and perhaps upbringing, want information disseminated. That’s why shutting down the Voice of America, PBS, NPR (Protect My Public Media!), Radio Free Europe, and gutting the Smithsonian breaks my heart.

Tactics designed to make us more stupid, such as book bans or getting rid of people, as well as departmental websites due to “DEI,” etc., which happened to the former librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, are extremely troubling to me. Incidentally, I never met Dr. Hayden, but librarians I know in real life who have are monumentally impressed with her.

However, it’s challenging, and it’s becoming increasingly complex always to get it right. The things I see on Facebook and other social media that are stated as fact but are wrong cause me some mental pain.

From WIRED: “When I read a tweet about four noted Silicon Valley executives being inducted into a special detachment of the United States Army Reserve, including Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, I questioned its veracity. It’s tough to discern truth from satire in 2025, in part because of social media sites owned by Bosworth’s company. But it indeed was true. According to an official press release, they’re in the Army now, specifically Detachment 201.”

Of COURSE, Steven Levy didn’t believe it. The concept seems absurd.

The liar’s dividend

John Oliver discussed AI Slop on Last Week Tonight. He explains “why you’ve been seeing more AI-generated content online [and] the harm it can do.” This leads to a more toxic spinoff: the liar’s dividend.

From Cambridge Core: “This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians ‘crying wolf’ over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal.

From the Brennan Center: Scholars “posit that liars aiming to avoid accountability will become more believable as the public becomes more educated about the threats posed by deepfakes. The theory is simple: when people learn that deepfakes are increasingly realistic, false claims that real content is AI-generated become more persuasive too… Deepfakes amplify uncertainty.”

And there are other AI informational flaws. From The New York Times: They Asked an AI Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling. “Generative A.I. chatbots are going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort reality.”

I try to double- or even triple-check items I post. But if I muff it once in a while, it’s not for lack of trying.

On the road to see the daughter

Anticipation

On the road to see the daughter, there were moments. As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I decided to drive to Dulles Airport to pick up our daughter, who had been away at the University of Cape Town for 4.5 months for her semester abroad.

She was initially supposed to fly back to Newark on June 16th, but that made us uncomfortable. Instead, she flew back to Dulles on June 17th. To make this trip, my wife took time off from work and made reservations at a timeshare her mother owns in the Poconos of Pennsylvania for four nights, as well as at a Hampton Inn near the airport in Virginia. BTW, Dulles, which I’ve never been to, is at least 40 minutes away from the nation’s capital.

Monday, June 16

My wife started driving down the New York State Thruway, I-87. We passed Exit 20 (Saugerties) in the right lane. Suddenly, a small car started passing us on the shoulder. It was terrifying because, among other things, it was deafening like a lawnmower.

My theory is that it had decided to take exit 20 and then realized at the very last minute that it was the wrong exit. Why it didn’t just fall in behind us, then merge onto the road is beyond my comprehension. (Other weird driver behaviors on this trip were too tricky to explain.)

For lunch, we stopped at a Perkins Pancake House, which I have an odd affection for. When we were in high school, my sister Leslie was a hostess at the location on Main Street in Binghamton, NY. Sometimes, my not-so-friends and I would come in for a late-night meal.

This Perkins in Pennsylvania also included, in the adjacent building, a standard Thruway snack shop. Next to that was a gas station. A bus of tourists going to Las Vegas stopped in.

While waiting for our food order, a couple of folks at a nearby booth were discussing the musical concerts they would be attending with their kids. One said they were going to see Kendrick Lamar; I wasn’t expecting that, which reveals my own biases. The other person asked who that was; I thought the first would say the guy from the last Super Bowl, but merely said, “a rapper.”

Everything’s legal in New Jersey

We traveled through the small town of Milford, PA. It looked charming, like a small city in New England, such as Stockbridge, MA. (We stopped on the return trip; it even has a castle!)

I was navigating via the mapping device on my wife’s phone. On PA 209, I couldn’t tell quite where to go, so I directed her left, across the Delaware River into New Jersey. She wondered if she should turn around. I said, “Nah.” We could take Route 206 – or was it 209? – and eventually cross a bridge back into Pennsylvania. However, we ended up crossing what I believe was Dingman’s Bridge, a narrow and old, nay, historic construction. At the end, there was signage indicating that we were to pay $2 for the privilege of crossing this private bridge, with a fellow present to collect the fee. No E-Z Pass either.

DQ

We got to our destination, unloaded the car, and then stopped at the local Dairy Queen. We’d only been to a DQ once in years. I was at the register when the young staffer had to break open a roll of quarters. He was rapping it on the counter, and when he finally broke through, the coins flew all over. I shared with him something I learned from my one month as a teller at Albany Savings Bank in 1978: hold BOTH ends of the roll, and break. The paper breaks easily, but the coins don’t fly away. Naturally, he then opened the roll of dimes as he had the quarters, with the same result.

Tuesday, June 17

Onward to Virginia. The trip involved being on US Route 15 for dozens of miles, passing through various types of highways, including four-lane and two-lane roads, and traveling through small towns. In one town, there were, at all four intersections, signs indicating “Do Not Cross.” This meant that the only legal way to get from a bank to a Wendy’s, kitty-corner away, was to drive?

On our family WhatsApp group, our daughter was giving us a blow-by-blow account of her trip, including details about getting to the Cape Town Airport and boarding the plane (with an aisle seat and no one in the middle).