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Movie review: Spotlight

Where the Post had Ben Bradlee, the Globe had Ben Bradlee, Jr.

It appears that every movie I’ve seen lately, most recently Spotlight, is designed to tick me off. The subject of my ire this time is the Roman Catholic church that allowed its priests to prey upon its young, vulnerable members. Not only did they do nothing about it, but the system also allowed priests to get transferred to other parishes to continue their misdeeds.

All this I knew coming in. What was interesting in the telling was this: once upon a time, great metropolitan newspapers actually took on the system, even when that system is the mighty RC church in Boston. One truly chilling moment in the movie was one priest’s rationalization of why his actions weren’t so bad. Beyond the pain I felt from the physical and emotional abuse of the victims was the loss of faith and trust the now-adult victims experienced.

Some have compared Spotlight with All the President’s Men, and I think it would be fairly apt. Instead of two disparate reporters from the Washington Post trying to make sense of Watergate, there’s the special unit of the Boston Globe (Rachel McAdams, Brian d’Arcy James, and the headstrong character played by Mark Ruffalo). The group is headed by Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson (Michael Keaton), attempting to ascertain the scope of the church scandal.

Where the Post had Ben Bradlee, the Globe had Ben Bradlee, Jr. (John Slattery), plus a cerebral new boss (Liev Schreiber). The closest thing to Deep Throat is an infuriating, possibly crackpot lawyer (Stanley Tucci) who was representing some of the victims.

At one point, the team asks someone who had studied the phenomenon whether it could be as many as 13 priests in their area. Of course, there were far more, and not limited to the Boston diocese. In fact, the end of the movie lists all the areas in the country, then the rest of the world, where pedophile priests were rooted out. This included Albany, NY, first on the alphabetical list, as the nearly sold-out crowd at the Spectrum Theatre in the city noted.

The other great sadness of this story is that the events happened early in this century, yet the level of investigative reporting has all but disappeared, due to budget cutting. This is not a flashy movie but is a solidly made, occasionally tension-inducing narrative, despite the fact that we largely know the outcome.

David Bowie: Thin White Major Aladdin Stardust

David Robert Jones changed his last name to that of the inventor of the Bowie knife.

In 1971, I won a David Bowie album called Hunky Dory, from WNPC, the New Paltz (NY) college station. I was only vaguely familiar with the guy, from that Space Oddity song. (In the day, I was very good at winning things from the radio stations I listened to because I had very good dialing fingers, an advantage lost when the redial button was invented.) I liked the LP, though it was kind of strange. My roommate Ron HATED it, except for one song, something called Changes.

Then I got Ziggy Stardust. Played it until the grooves practically wore out, especially some songs on Side 2: Star, Suffragette City, and the title track. Got Aladdin Sane considerably later, but I liked Pin-Ups, the covers album; and much of Diamond Dogs.

Two things I definitely watched at the time: Bowie “singing” Golden Years and Fame on Soul Train in November 1975, and the bizarre pairing of Bowie on the 1977 Bing Crosby Christmas special, which aired AFTER the older crooner had died. Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy became an unlikely Christmas standard.

I could go on, through his “comeback” in the early 1980s, and onto Tin Machine, which didn’t click with me. I did find it funny that two of Soupy Sales’ sons were in the band, especially since Soupy and David shared a birthday.

Arthur wrote how David Bowie helped change his life, which you should just read. Like him, I didn’t know Bowie was sick, from cancer, for well over a year, which added to the shock, I’m sure. That and the fact I’d been playing Bowie music this past week in honor of his natal day this past Friday.

Chuck posted a bunch of Bowie songs; oddly, I cried during the Queen/Bowie track Under Pressure. But he didn’t include one of my favorites, Panic in Detroit. Also, listen to the new one, Lazarus, a “parting gift” for fans, which is, in its own way, as resonant as Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt, or Warren Zevon’s last album. I was going to buy the Blackkstar album yesterday from Amazon, but it was temporarily out of stock on CD and vinyl; it will be his first U.S. #1 album.

If you’re on Facebook, you should go to the page of Adrian Belew and read a piece from about 11:30 a.m. on January 12 that starts, “In 1978 I did my first tour of Europe as ‘stunt’ guitarist and singer for Frank Zappa’s band. The night we played in Cologne, Germany unbeknownst to me Brian Eno was in the audience. Brian knew David Bowie was looking for a new guitarist for his upcoming tour.”

The cliche is to say “he was an original,” but seldom has it been more true. Here’s his 1996 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame description. Watch David Bowie as Pontius Pilate, from Martin Scorsese’s movie Last Temptation of Christ.

David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), who changed his last name to that of the inventor of the Bowie knife, so he would not be confused with a Monkee, rest in peace. I am very sad.

Picture

Bowie’s mugshot, posted on Facebook by Jeff Sharlet.

For weed, in Rochester, with Iggy Pop. The local paper reported: “His biggest greeting was the screams of about a half-dozen suspected prostitutes awaiting arraignment in the rear of the corridor outside the courtroom.”

As someone on my FB page commented, “Oh, you pretty thing.”

A for Arthur Ashe

Arthur Ashe’s mother had suffered from cardiovascular disease before she died at the age of 27.

Arthur Ashe (July 10, 1943 – February 6, 1993) was a top-ranked tennis player in the 1960s and ’70s, despite experiencing the slings of segregation, which did not allow him to participate in the sport, growing up in Richmond, VA. Tennis was not a sport I much paid attention to until Ashe came on the scene.

He was the #2 ranked men’s player in 1976, and he was competitive at many levels of the sport, from making the Davis Cup team in 1963 to being the only black man to win the singles title at the US Open (1968), Australian Open (1970), or Wimbledon (1975) v. Jimmy Connors, against whom he had never won previously.

Ashe was committed to issues of social justice, health, and humanitarian issues. He fought against South African apartheid, and the US crackdown against Haitian refugees, and was arrested in protests regarding both these issues. In 1988, Ashe published a three-volume book titled A Hard Road to Glory: A History of the African-American Athlete, which was more important to him than his tennis titles.

Ashe’s mother had suffered from cardiovascular disease before she died at the age of 27. His father had suffered a first heart attack at the age of 55. Arthur suffered a heart attack in July 1979, while holding a tennis clinic in New York. “In view of his high level of fitness as an athlete, his condition drew attention to the hereditary aspect of heart disease.” He went through two rounds of heart surgery, in 1979, and after developing chest pains, in 1983.

“In September 1988, Ashe was hospitalized after experiencing paralysis in his right arm… [Eventually] Doctors discovered that Ashe was HIV positive. Ashe and his doctors believed he contracted the virus from blood transfusions he received during his second heart surgery. He and his wife decided to keep his illness private for the sake of their daughter, who was then two years old.

“In 1992, a friend of Ashe’s who worked for USA Today heard that he was ill and called Ashe to confirm the story. Ashe decided to preempt USA Today’s plans to publish the story about his illness and, on April 8, 1992, publicly announced he had contracted HIV. Ashe blamed USA Today for forcing him to go public with the news but also stated that he was relieved that he no longer had to lie about his illness…”

I own a copy of Daddy and Me: A Photo Story of Arthur Ashe and His Daughter Camera by his wife Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, a sweet book published after his death. It is a “photographic portrait of Ashe’s relationship with his six-year-old daughter during his illness, accompanied by the child’s reflections on living with and helping her father.”

“After Ashe went public…, he began to work to raise awareness about AIDS and advocated teaching sex education and safe sex. He also fielded questions about his own diagnosis… In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on World AIDS Day, December 1, 1992, he addressed the growing need for AIDS awareness and increased research funding saying, ‘We want to be able to look back and say to all concerned that we did what we had to do when we had to do it, and with all the resources required.’

“Ashe founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS. Two months before his death, he founded the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health to help address issues of inadequate health care delivery and was named Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year. He also spent much of the last years of his life writing his memoir Days of Grace, finishing the manuscript less than a week before his death.”

The main stadium for the US Open since 1997 is the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Queens, New York City.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Movie review: Concussion

Director/co-writer Peter Landesman was trying to explain WHY and HOW Dr. Omalu went on this crusade.

The Daughter, an avid news watcher she is, thinks it’s weird that I was watching football on Week 17 of the National Football League. She thinks it’s a stupid sport, where the chances of getting a concussion, or worse, is quite great.

She’s not entirely wrong. The Wife and I returned to Oneonta on New Year’s Day and got to see the movie Concussion the following day at their mall. It’s about pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith, looking just slightly not like himself) discovering the linkage between brain damage in football players who suffer repeated concussions in the course of normal play.

It’s a steady, unglamorous process, as science is wont to be. The cast is solid: Albert Brooks and Paul Reiser, almost unrecognizable as other doctors, and David Morse as Pittsburgh Steelers retired center Mike Webster, who is the initial driving force of the film. Alec Baldwin, as retired Steelers team doc Julian Bailes, ALMOST ceases to be Alec Baldwin.

The reviews are lukewarm in that the critics thought, perhaps correctly, that the story should have been more about the exploration, and perhaps less about his budding relationship with a woman from church (Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Prema Mutiso), but I think director/co-writer Peter Landesman was trying to explain WHY and HOW Dr. Omalu went on this crusade when he didn’t even know about American football.

I think it’s a good, solid film, 3 stars out of 4. Will Smith deserves his Golden Globe nomination. Yes, the film could have been more dramatic. Still, the National Football League comes off as obstructionists, not looking out for the safety of its current and former players. And it does address the fact that I was watching the NFL that weekend, not because of the mindless violence of the sport, but because of the poetry in motion.

8 Things I Am Too Old For

Just as get to the point that I don’t care, I have to figure out what someone else would consider a guilty pleasure.

In the HuffPo, Michelle Comb, who owns up to be 52, suggests there is an octet of things she’s too old for. “Time does change a person and I am finding that it is easier to accept these changes than to fight them.

“These are things for which the ship has sailed:”

1. Shutting up. There IS something about 50. I started this blog at 52, and I think people know that I have opinions, and I’m willing to share them. (Whereas some people who read my Times Union blog are willing to attribute to my thoughts that I did not express.)

My current feelings about politics and religion are rather clear, with the caveat that they can be changeable. However, writing about things sometimes codifies my thoughts, such as why Daylight Saving Time is stupid (doesn’t save energy, causes accidents, and heart attacks).

The librarian’s caveat is that I try not to go off half-cocked about an alleged injustice that is easily disproved in Snopes. There are a LOT of problems in this world, and I don’t have time for tilting at imaginary windmills.

2. Worrying how I look to others. For some reason, my receding hairline, or graying hair and beard has seldom been a source of distress.

I realized a long while back that I’m fat, and that fat people on bicycles are funny to some passersby.

3. Guilty Pleasures. Just as get to the point that I don’t care, I have to figure out what someone else would consider a guilty pleasure. Listening to ABBA? Nah.

Maybe it’s watching the TV show Grey’s Anatomy, still. I remember one summer, when my family was at his family’s house, when Fred Hembeck explained how he was loyal to shows, no matter how much off the rails they went. He was probably talking about Desperate Housewives. Well, Grey’s is my DH. It has an absurd number of regulars whose characters have been killed off

4. Uncomfortable shoes. Going back at least to 7th grade, my feet have always been a problem. I’d been wearing sneakers, usually Chuck Taylors, for years. If I had to wear something more formal, they’d still be Rockports. Now, at the Wife’s suggestion, I wear a couple of pair of Keen shoes (pictured), which are more like sandals.

5. Making excuses for my messy house. This is slightly trickier because my somewhat younger wife is still holding on to the notion that the house can be neat. And we have different senses of “neat”; her papers on the kitchen counter is clutter to me, while the pile of clothes in the corner of our bedroom is problematic to her.

6. Accumulating stuff I don’t need. This is definitely true. Except for books. And an annual Hess toy truck.

7. Spending unnecessary time with people I don’t like. This doesn’t seem to be an issue with me at present.

8. Finding the good in every person I know. Well, not EVERY person. But I DO see good in a lot of people with whom I vigorously disagree. I don’t think that is the issue.

One of my sisters was having an issue with someone, and this other person, ancillary to the primary conflict, started inserting himself in the conversation, attacking her on the phone and in email; I’ve seen the latter. Oh, yeah, he’s a “pastor” of some sort. And he’s a tool. I COULD say he’s being a friend to the other guy, but he’s just feeding him poison.

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