MOVIE REVIEW: Wonder (R.J. Palacio’s books)

WONDER could easily have been an exercise in treacle, but it most assuredly is not

#Choose Kind is a precept of the movie Wonder, based on a series of books by R.J. Palacio. I was pretty sure my family had to see this. The Daughter loves the books, as does my wife’s principal.

I’ve read a later set of chapters in the first book that focus on Augie’s chief antagonist, Julian. But he speaks of his treatment of Augie to his grandmother. So I felt a certain early connective tissue as well.

Wonder is the story of August (Augie) Pullman, played by the extraordinary Jacob Tremblay from the movie Room. Augie has facial differences, despite more than the two dozen surgeries he’s had, and the Pullman family has Augie’s hospital IDs hanging on the wall like a piece of art.

Mom Isabel (Julia Roberts) has put her life on hold since Augie’s birth and dad Nate (Owen Wilson) tries to be the pal Augie otherwise doesn’t have. The decision to mainstream Augie into fifth grade, instead of Isabel homeschooling him, is met with understandable trepidation, and initially for good reason. He makes a friend, or so he believes.

Meanwhile, his older sister Via (Olivia), played by Izabela Vidovic, feels that she’s not getting the attention she needs from her parents. And at her school, she has unexpected difficulties of her own.

You know, life is hard sometimes. All most of us really want is acceptance, and maybe a dose of compassion. As Augie’s classmates struggle to find theirs, the viewer is drawn into the ebbs and flows of many of their lives.

Wonder contains a few cameos by Chewbacca from Star Wars. The Thorton Wilder play Our Town, which I’ve been in back in 1984, is a significant plot point. The daily precepts of the teacher Mr. Browne (Daveed Diggs) are always true.

This could easily have been an exercise in treacle, but it most assuredly is not. As Dr. Wayne Dyer once said, “When given a choice between being right and being kind, choose kind.”

Musicians: Cassidy, Hendricks, Reese, Tillis…

I knew Delloreese Patricia Early primarily as an actress

A lot of noteworthy musicians died in November 2017.

As the New York Times obit notes, Jon Hendricks brought a new dimension to jazz singing. I knew him best as part of the vocalise trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. “They recorded a version of Ross’s 1952 song ‘Twisted‘, featuring her lyrics set to a Wardell Gray melody”; it was later recorded by Joni Mitchell.

After Lambert died in 1966, Hendricks continued to be a genre pushing vocalist.
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I’m pretty sure that my sister Leslie had a Partridge Family album. It may have been Sound Magazine with the hit I Woke Up in Love This Morning.

While I didn’t care much about the music, I was vaguely interested in David Cassidy, mostly because he was the son of actor Jack Cassidy, who was constantly on TV in the 1960s and early 1970s. Jack’s second wife, actress Shirley Jones, became David’s stepmom, and she played his mother on the Partridge Family.

I learned later that only David and Shirley actually sang on those records. The backing vocals were by The Ron Hicklin Singers.

When David was arrested in Columbia County, near Albany, this decade, and then had to make a subsequent appearance in court, it was cause for a lot of local buzz.

My favorite performance of his was on the theme song for the John Larroquette Show in the late 1990s. Dustbury pegged Bandala.

Check out Arthur’s recollections and Mark Evanier ghostwriting for David.

Like a lot of people, I knew Delloreese Patricia Early, a/k/a Della Reese, primarily as an actress, most notably on the TV show Touched by an Angel. But she had a stellar singing career before that. Her big hit was Don’t You Know.

Mel Tillis died, and I thought I’d read more about him. He was a Country Music Hall of Famer and Grand Ole Opry member. When I considered country music, he was among the first who came to mind.

He wrote, among many other songs, Ruby (Don’t Take Your Love To Town) that was a big hit for Kenny Rogers. I’d see him on Hollywood Squares. Here’s Coca Cola Cowboy, a #1 country hit in 1979, from the movie Every Which Way But Loose.

Pete Moore was the bass singer for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and co-wrote some of the hits, such as Ooo Baby Baby and The Tracks of My Tears, and also Ain’t That Peculiar and I’ll Be Doggone, with Marvin Gaye.

Sha-ZAM! Jim Nabors died. He played Gomer Pyle on two TV series that I watched regularly. The Impossible Dream
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I wasn’t a big AC/DC fan. but I appreciated their impact. In fact, the only related album I ever owned was an album of bluegrass covers of their hits. I’m sorry Malcolm Young passed away at 64. When you’re 64, you tend to hate almost ANYONE dying at that age.

V is for Victory blindness (ABCW)

The battle against bigotry and inequality continues.

ANDI MACK – Disney Channel’s “Andi Mack” stars Sofia Wylie as Buffy, Joshua Rush as Cyrus, Peyton Elizabeth Lee as Andi and Asher Angel as Jonah. (Disney Channel/Craig Sjodiin)
In any civil rights struggle, it is natural to want to celebrate the victories, the accomplishments. Yet when I first heard writer Michelangelo Signorile talk about “victory blindness,” probably on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, I knew immediately that it was fundamentally true, and not just with regard to LGBTQ justice.

In this 2015 HuffPo interview, Mike says, “Victory blindness is …a term I use to describe the phenomenon in which we focus on the wins, so starved for validation, that we allow them to blind us to the continued bigotry we face. We become enthralled, intoxicated — spellbound by even a little bit. The effect is that it obscures our reality — literally our vision — and it makes us lose our gumption, not wanting to rock the boat, fearful that we’ll lose what we’ve gained and not get what little bit we think we need, when in fact we need a lot and we should be strong and confident knowing our allies will stay with us.”

I would add that engaging in victory blindness often leads to great surprise and disappointment when there is the inevitable backlash. Signorile was speaking specifically about LGBTQ rights. After the victory of marriage equality being confirmed by the Supreme Court comes a county clerk in Kentucky who refuses to issue some marriage licenses, e.g.

More recently, the US attorney general was asked if federal workers blatantly discriminate against LGBTQ people. Jeff Sessions wasn’t sure.

I think America suffered victory blindness in another arena, BIG TIME, when it elected Barack Obama. Racism is solved! We’re in a “post-racial” society! That did not quite turn out to be the case.

I suspect that the optimism following the November 2017 not-evil election results won’t lead to overconfidence. The battle against bigotry and inequality continues. Perhaps November 8 will, in someone’s words, empower and excite, not satisfy and placate.

Still, I was oddly pleased to see the so-called One Million Moms announce a Disney boycott over a gay character. My family happens to watch Andi Mack regularly, and the one boy’s feeling of jealousy that his male friend is interested in the girl who’s the title character rather than himself is just a small part of the texture of the series. The boycott seems to have had little impact on the enthusiastic fan base of the program.

For ABC Wednesday

Albany steamed hams: “Greatest Comedy Scene”

“Skinner’s charade is woefully transparent, but the deception doesn’t completely fall apart until the very last line.”


Jaquandor saw this article from the UK. He wrote to me on Facebook: “‘It’s an Albany expression!’ Hmmm…really? Hey, do you call hamburgers ‘steamed hams’? (I’m guessing, no.)”

The piece from March 2017 refers to a scene from the TV show The Simpsons. I was a fervent viewer of the program in the first decade, but I rarely see it now. So I was unfamiliar with the particular segment.

“This scene comes in at about 340 words, and 67 sentences. Every line serves a purpose – either as a joke, or as character building.”

Cookywook goes into great detail about:

1. The script about principal Skinner trying to impress school superintendent Chalmers. “Skinner’s charade is woefully transparent, but the deception doesn’t completely fall apart until the very last line.”

2. The structure of a faux opening

3. The animation

4. The psychology of space

5. The climax, with “Skinner’s most extravagant lie by far”

Of course, “steamed hams” really isn’t “an Albany expression.” It’s probably a Schenectady thing.

November rambling #3: The American In Me

A time-honored American political tradition: disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination

Australia cut off food and water at an offshore detention camp; asylum seekers there more determined than ever to find freedom

Meet the Teenagers Who Started a Film Production Studio in Their Refugee Camp

Where Brexit Hurts: The Nurses and Doctors Leaving London

From the November 26 lectionary: Matthew 25:44-45 (NIV): They also will answer, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?” He will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.”

When Unpaid Student Loan Bills Mean You Can No Longer Work

The recent tide of apologies by famous men have been ‘awful’

Right-wing troll James O’Keefe fails badly at baiting Washington Post with rape lie

Fear of a Black Princess: Britain’s Royal Racial Problem

Bringing an XX perspective to an XY world of movies

What Latino Film Critics Are Saying About Pixar’s ‘Coco’

I’ve seen a variation of this more than once on Facebook: “If we’re being technical here, Charles Manson isn’t actually a serial killer and never killed anyone that we know of.” I think this is pedantic; encouraging others to kill made him legally culpable

How evidence once thought destroyed helped free a man after 39 years behind bars for murder he didn’t commit

NYT responds to readers’ accusations of normalizing a Nazi sympathizer

Fear of crackdown haunts daily life of undocumented immigrants

Net Neutrality: What You Need to Know Now and Without it in Portugal, mobile internet is bundled like a cable package

Thomas Brunell’s appointment “signals an effort by the administration to politicize” the decennial survey

Supporters backed a time-honored American political tradition, disavowing racism while promising to enact a broad agenda of discrimination

Supporter Says He’d Trust Trump Before Jesus Christ

He Now Says That Wasn’t Him on Access Hollywood Tape

Schroedinger’s Tax Hike

In the Land of Vendettas That Go On Forever

Why the rise of the robots won’t mean the end of work

NOW YOU CAN ENJOY GLUTEN FREE VERSIONS OF FAMOUS ART – As gluten-free options are on the rise in trendy circles, someone had the bright idea to go back into classical art and make it gluten-free too

David Brickman’s Italy photos

#Marie Severin is a Comic-Con Icon Award Recipient

#The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour at 50: The Rise and Fall of a Groundbreaking Variety Show

a few thoughts on bathroom signage

This New York Times Website Comment Is the Single Best Comment of the Year

These Aren’t the Tootsie Rolls You’re Looking For

Lessons from the Worst Food Hack of 2017

The strategically planned implosion of the Georgia Dome, captured by The Weather Channel

MUSIC

The Passenger (Randall Thompson) – Chris Trombley, baritone; Todd Sisley, piano

Simple Gifts (excerpt) – Aaron Copeland

Suite from JFK – John Williams

The American In Me – The Avengers

Abraham, Martin and John – Dion

In My Life – Jose Feliciano and Jools Holland

Obsession – OK Go

R. Stevie Moore

Hero and Leander by Victor Herbert

The True History Of The Traveling Wilburys

Neil Young Launching Online Music Archives December 1

Ramblin' with Roger
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