Tag: movies

Feb. rambling: Manufactured outrage

VOTE for Rebecca Jade!

RESPECT.Lamb's Theater
Pictured: Sydney Joyner, Caitie Grady, Rebecca Jade, Joy Yandell, Janaya Jones & Angela Chatelain Avila.

Manufactured outrage: phneh and giving a horse an apple and Super Bowl edition

How Poland, Long Leery of Foreigners, Opened Up to Ukrainians

SCOTUS will consider whether tech giants can be sued for allegedly aiding ISIS terrorism. You need to know about Section 230, the most important law for online speech.

MTG’s dream of a “national divorce” deserves a serious response

Central Bankers “Punt” on Climate Initiatives

Airlines Are Ditching Carbon Offsets. That’s a Mistake.

New Jersey becomes first state to mandate K-12 students learn information literacy

You Really Can’t Trust Fox News Channel, Ever and How Dominion Voting Systems filing proves Fox News was ‘deliberately lying’

Small World by Nikon

Masks Revisited. Despite common misreporting, a recent Cochrane review, limited in scope and problematic methodology, does NOT show that masks do not work. Check out this

Choose your enemies well

Nathan J. Robinson’s Responding to the Right: Brief Replies to 25 Conservative Arguments

Facebook’s New Penalty System Is Less Harsh but More Informative

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why I Should Not Have Tried to “Walk It Off”: My unexpected journey with Atrial Fibrillation (AFib)

Google’s chatbot panic

Ron DeSantis Shouldn’t Be Covered Like Just Another Republican, Molly Jong-Fast, Vanity Fair

The Tubi commercial that showed a red flag

Kelly is closing a few tabs

Now I Know: The Crows Didn’t Mind Dick Cheney, Though and When Bees Get Too Buzzed and The Worst House Money Can’t Buy and The Secret Writer’s Secret and The TV News Program’s Key Mistake and Why This Reindeer Looks Like It Has a Lightsaber Hat

Culcha

BAFTA Awards. Two days after the awards came out, someone told me several of their friends posted online that the Oscars had taken place. Nah, it was lost in translation; probably, the friends missed that it was the so-called “British Oscars”

The book “Side by Side in Eternity:” by James Robert McNeil and J. Eric Smith is now available. I have my copy. There’s a chapter about Apollo 1, one defining event growing up.

The six-year making of the Wait But Why book What’s Our Problem: a self-help book for societies

Cory Doctorow: Matt Ruff’s “Destroyer of Worlds”  – Return to  Lovecraft Country

“A Poet is Not a Jukebox”

Persi Diaconis, magician-mathematician

“I will seek not the shadowy region”

100 years ago, an animated dinosaur became a sensation

NYC’s The Farmer’s Dog’s emotional Super Bowl commercial is being called the best ad of the game.

Ana de Armas Thinks Social Media Has Ruined the “Concept of a Movie Star.” “For the most part, we’ve done that to ourselves — nobody’s keeping anything from anyone anymore.” This has been self-evident for a long while.

Milestones

60 of 23 and Michael Jordan donates $10M to Make-A-Wish for 60th birthday

Bruce Willis’ Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)

Tom Sizemore Remains in Coma With “No Further Hope” After Suffering Brain Aneurysm From Stroke

Richard Belzer, stand-up comic and TV detective, dies at 78. The only time I ever watched The X-Files is when Munch showed up.

Raquel Welch, actress and model, dies at 82

Tim McCarver, champion catcher turned famed broadcaster, dies at 81

Stella Stevens, RIP

Barbara Bosson, Emmy-Nominated Actress on ‘Hill Street Blues,’ Dies at 83

In Memorium reel at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards

Kareem: Black History Month Edition

United Nations Exhibit Sheds Light on Dutch Colonial Slavery

Two Alexander Macombs: A Slaveholder and a Duplicitious Negotiator

Yale honors the  work of a 9-year-old Black girl whose neighbor reported her to the police

Activist and volunteer Nell Stokes discusses her life of service

MUSIC

Rebecca Jade, the first niece, was nominated for FIVE San Diego Music Awards, which will be taking place on April 25. You can VOTE EVERY DAY. Vote in category 20, Best R&B, Funk, or Soul Song for Show Me; category 21, Best R&B, Funk, or Soul Album, for A Shade of Jade (available for $9); category 25, Artist of the Year; category 26, Song of the Year; and category 27, Album of the Year. You could also vote in category 4, Best Jazz or Blues Album, for Peter Sprague Plays the Beatles – Day Tripper, featuring vocals by Rebecca Jade, which one can download for $10.

Rebecca ALSO appears in a musical called RESPECT about the great music of the female singers of the 1960s at Lamb’s Player Theater in San Diego through April 9.  (Picture above.)

Noah – The Jubalaires. The first rap song?

Concert Overture No. 2 – Florence Price

Of Our New Day Begun by Omar Thomas, performed by the James Madison University Wind Symphony.

Coverville 1432: The Burt Bacharach Tribute

THE ALAN PARSONS PROJECT – Promo “Eye in the Sky,” 4 Tracks by R&UT

Ground Round – Corey Klemow (parody of Petula Clark’s Downtown by MAD magazine’s Frank Jacobs)

Hey! Need some love music?

K-Chuck Radio: The name’s the same … sorta …

All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)

World War I

All Quiet On The Western Front.2022The current iteration of the film All Quiet On The Western Front is the third World War I film I’ve seen in the last four years. I watched 1917 in January 2020, and the documentary footage of They Shall Not Grow Old a year earlier.

There’s a bit of surface similarity between Grow Old and All Quiet. In each case, the potential recruits, from Britain and Germany, respectively, are led to believe that going off to war will be an adventure. They’re so cheerful marching off to battle. But they soon discover they’re mired in a slog of trench warfare.

All Quiet is a remake of the 1930 film of the same name, which I have never seen. The original won the Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, Lewis Milestone, and was nominated in two other categories.  The new film is up for nine Oscars, including Best Picture.

The characters even share the same names. Felix Kammerer plays Paul, the Lew Ayres role. Albrecht Schuch is Kat, played initially by Louis Wolheim. I did not know there was also a 1979 TV movie with Richard Thomas and Ernest Borgnine.

At some level, the charge by the soldiers, which happens thrice, looks almost exactly the same in the new film. Perhaps it’s to show what is explained in the epilogue, that tens of thousands of soldiers were killed to gain or lose only a few hundred meters of territory. This caused me slight confusion for a time.

Recycled

Even in the “quiet” moments, one sees the horrors. The uniforms are stripped from the dead soldiers and shipped to a factory where women sew up the holes created by bullets and bayonets. Often, the names of the previous wearer have not been removed until after the recruit notices the old nametag.

Still, nothing showed the utter pointless insanity of war more than a segment near the end.

The new All Quiet On The Western Front is an excellent movie worthy of its BAFTA win. But it inevitably has lots of wartime violence, some of it up close. Occasionally, the participants consider their actions’ emotional and moral consequences. Then there’s the next skirmish, and a soldier has no time to think.

The eyes. The image that will linger in my mind is often the blue eyes of the living and the dead on faces caked with mud.

Movie review: The Whale

Director Darren Aronofsky

The WhaleWhen I went to see The Whale at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany with my wife in late January, I was concerned.

Would the film be fatphobic? I don’t believe it was.  This is a man named Charlie (Brendan Fraser) who is in pain, and food is his drug of choice. At some level, I understand that. So the reviewers that complain that his eating disorder wasn’t adequately explained confound me.

Yes, the movie was claustrophobic. Long before reading the end credits, I knew the piece had to have been based on a play that Samuel D. Hunter wrote. For me, this works in its favor.

Charlie has closed himself off. He teaches an online English class, but his video on the laptop “doesn’t work.” His only friend, Liz (Hong Chau) is alternatingly irritated with him and understanding. She’s linked to him in another way.

He misses his daughter, who he had left along with his wife when the girl was just eight. The now-seventeen-year-old Ellie (Sadie Sink) unexpectedly shows up at his house against the express wishes of her mother. She plays mind games with both Charlie and the young evangelist Thomas (Ty Simkins), who keeps showing up at Charlie’s place.

Much has been made of Fraser’s Oscar-nominated performance, and for a good reason. Even those who don’t like the film praise the actor. Chau is also nominated. The performance of Samatha Morton as Mary, Charlie’s ex and Ellie’s mom, really jumped out for me..

Action

Director Darren Aronofsky is the source of much of mixed feelings about the movie. One critic said The Whale didn’t need the director’s “heavy darkness to be effective.” I thought it was appropriate.

Another said the adaptation was “empathetic and soulful,” which I agree with. A third:  the “questions about its purpose – why is this difficult movie about a very difficult man even made – unanswered.”  I don’t understand that observation.

Aronofsky directed one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. In Requiem for a Dream (2000), Ellen Burstyn was nominated for Best Actress. She should have won but lost out to Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, who was fine in that picture.

While I saw The Whale at a cinema, I think it could survive being streamed more than, say, the current Avatar film.

Review – Avatar: The Way of Water

sequel to the 2009 film

way of waterHere’s my problem when I watched Avatar: The Way of Water – I never saw the original 2009 film. So I didn’t know what supposedly terrible, traitorous thing Jake (Sam Worthington), the primary male character, did to trigger the massive military response. I’ve subsequently read a  summary of the first movie. Oh, THAT’S what was going on.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed trying to figure out the relationship among the primary family. Jake and his wife Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) have sons Neteyam and Lo’ak and daughters Tuk and Kiri. There’s also a  human boy named Spider,  who relates more to the Na’vi culture.  Jake accepts him, but Neytiri is distrustful.

Their tranquility is broken when a spaceship of humans returns to Pandora to capture it. Quaritch (Stephen Lang) has been cloned into a Na’vi body. The attack, even out of context, reminded me of how powerful the military-industrial complex is. Even in this fictional space, it always seems to find a way to pay for heavy-duty armaments and technology.

Jake, Neytiri, and their family flee from the Omaticaya Clan and retreat to the coast of Metkayina. It’s at this point that not knowing what had happened previously didn’t much matter. There is a period of adjustment for both the sojourners and their hosts.  Eventually, the space invaders come looking for the family.

Loverly

I found these worlds visually stunning, and even without the story were almost worth watching, irrespective of the narrative. This is probably a movie that is best seen in a cinema.

The story addressed imperialism, racism, and environmental injustice, sometimes with success and occasionally a bit hamfisted.  It was interesting to me that the parenting skills of Neytaki and especially Jake sounded very much like almost every parent I grew up around.

The movie, at 195 minutes, is LONG, maybe overlong. I assume James Cameron allows his editors to work.

Ultimately, I guess I need to watch the first film to ascertain whether Way Of Water has fixed the flaws of the original or if it is too much of the same thing. I’ve read multiple reviews with each point of view.

I saw the film at a weekday matinee at Madison Theatre in Albany, and as has happened twice before, I was the only person present.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

The legendary James Hong

Everything Everywhere All at OnceWhen my wife and I went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany in late January, the cashier said, “It’s a wild ride, but it’s worth it.” That’s true.

The IMDb description: “A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led.”

It’s very clever that it starts in such a mundane manner, with Evelyn Wang  (Michelle Yeoh) trying to sort through the business receipts for the laundromat that she and her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), own. She’s preparing for their meeting with scary IRS agent  Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis).

Also, she’s trying to say the right thing to her daughter Joy  (Stephanie Hsu), who’s in a relationship with non-Asian Becky (Tallie Medel).    To boot, she needs to tend to her father, Gong Gong  (the legendary James Hong).

Then the film takes an unexpected and surreal turn. Which Waymond is she talking with, her familiar or someone from another metaverse? Explaining this further is both difficult and ultimately pointless.

Ultimately

Yes, EEAAO is weird, bonkers, strange, absurd,  often hilarious, and occasionally exhausting. Sentient rocks, a dangerous vortex, and my need to rethink eating hot dogs are all here. The costumes, especially those worn by Joy, are fantastic in every sense of the word.

Yet, at the core of the story by Oscar-nominated writers/directors The Daniels, who are Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, is the conventional story. It’s about a second-generation, sandwich-generation American woman who is contemplating her life choices. At some level, I liked it more when it was over than when I was watching it. My wife wants to see it again.

The Academy Awards buzz is warranted for all the actors nominated but also for costume designer Shirley Kurata.

Ramblin' with Roger
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