Film

I'm no superhero fan when it comes to movies. I can't understand their appeal, though I readily admit that I've only seen the first Wonder Woman movie, the first Iron Man movie, and the first Black Panther movie. When someone in my Tai Chi class asks me if I've seen the newest Guardian of the Galaxy movie, what goes through my mind is, Good god, no; if I was confined to solitary confinement and had a choice between seeing Guardian of the Galaxy or staring blankly into space, I'd choose the blank stare. But instead I just say, "I'm not…

Last night, via Hulu, my wife and I finished watching Summer of Soul, a hugely entertaining movie about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that featured outdoor concerts with musicians such as... Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, and The Fifth Dimension. It's been called the Black Woodstock. However, a big difference is that Woodstock, which also happened in 1969, became a cultural phenomenon, with a movie about the festival coming out just a year later in 1970. By contrast, footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival sat untouched for…

Today I praised the In the Heights movie to someone who hadn't heard of it. They pulled out their phone and told me the film's Rotten Tomatoes ratings: 96% positive for critics, 95% positive for viewers. I said, "I'm surprised it wasn't 100%."  In the Heights is that good. My wife and I watched it at home via our HBO Max subscription. It's showing at Regal Willamette Town Center and Regal Santiam here in Salem, plus the Independence Theater. It looked and sounded fine on our TV. I'm sure it would look and sound even better on a really big screen.…

My wife and I came late to The Great, an engrossing ten-episode series on Hulu that is (very) roughly based on the story of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia.  It was released on May 15, 2020. We discovered it last month after looking for something else on Hulu, noticing The Great, and having my wife say, "I've heard it's pretty good." From that moment we watched The Great almost every night until we finished the last episode yesterday. Thankfully, Season 2 is in the works, because we loved the show. It's like nothing else I've ever seen -- not…

Hah! A seventy-two year old father, me, showed in one instance he's more culturally with it than his forty-eight year old daughter, Celeste.  Usually Celeste has seen, or at least heard of, cinematic offerings before me. After all, she lives in Orange County, which is a lot closer to Hollywood than I am here in Oregon. But in a post-Christmas FaceTime call this afternoon, I asked Celeste if she had seen The Prom yet. No, she hadn't. And it appears she wasn't even aware of this Netflix production. I highly enjoyed The Prom. So did my wife. I don't get…

Thank you, Netflix. There's no way my wife and I would have seen Beyonce's astounding  2018 "Homecoming" show at Coachella without streaming it the past two nights, courtesy of our Netflix subscription. For one thing, the many shots of the crowd showed that if anyone our 70'ish age saw the two live performances (over two weekends), they sure weren't in the front rows. For another, our willingness to travel long distances and put up with large crowds to see a concert are long behind us. So it was a gift to be able to sit at home and stare with…