https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018 daily 0.75 2019-05-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1523558720980-ODIN5K3DBKTKBH87CCCZ/tcmfestival.jpg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/5/1/sunday-april-30-2018-at-tcm-festival monthly 0.5 2018-05-02 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525226569727-MGIWU02I0ENCLF12EABF/bushman.jpeg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 - SUNDAY APRIL 30, 2018 AT TCM FESTIVAL https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525226838804-WEH1OSNL0KOFO5KWQP1A/graumans2.jpg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 - SUNDAY APRIL 30, 2018 AT TCM FESTIVAL https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525226720864-SML9326SCOEW0OQVDLMG/graumans.jpeg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 - SUNDAY APRIL 30, 2018 AT TCM FESTIVAL https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/29/saturday-april-28-tcm-film-festival monthly 0.5 2018-05-13 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/28/friday-april-27-at-tcm-festival monthly 0.5 2018-04-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524936450194-SCZ2HLID3QZ6QID2NYE7/malone.jpg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 - FRIDAY APRIL 27 AT TCM FESTIVAL Alicia Malone, Donald Bogle, Scott Eyman and William J. Mann https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524937007883-JVPWZN7GPVM72U36Q3X8/lobby.jpg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 - FRIDAY APRIL 27 AT TCM FESTIVAL The hotel lobby taken over by TCM https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524936202416-2W7UP2L2CPNJSUPGWBMR/tyson.jpg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 - FRIDAY APRIL 27 AT TCM FESTIVAL https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524936660939-66EWKBT3NTA0HI5898NM/malone+and+me.jpg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 - FRIDAY APRIL 27 AT TCM FESTIVAL Here is your reporter hanging out with Malone and TCM fans. Yes, I am at the bar. https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/27/7p7z004irq89l34u55ndp8uff4ufuz monthly 0.5 2018-04-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524855757634-4QOU280TN1IIVTSON44Z/oz.jpeg TCM FESTIVAL 2018 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/26/wednesday-at-tcm-festival monthly 0.5 2018-04-26 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/23/roaring-20s-party monthly 0.5 2018-04-25 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/19/cicely-tyson-honored-at-tcm-2018 monthly 0.5 2018-04-20 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/17/leonardo-dicaprio-to-be-at-opening-night monthly 0.5 2018-04-18 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/tcm-festival-2018/2018/4/11/tcm-festival-2018 monthly 0.5 2018-04-12 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/itsjustaplay-1 daily 0.75 2024-12-28 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1526675803464-DP91A8W1IN4NFH73XWJ5/download.jpg itsjustaplay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1526676361203-SCIJL8S63TZD4OWBCHTP/images.jpg itsjustaplay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1556462772847-0WSHB7726XZI1VZ9KS7N/ALLMYSONS.jpeg itsjustaplay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1638075612178-Y39XTUWSH7KH2W37LH0N/sondheim.jpg itsjustaplay https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1735344246732-M41ASMDF94L7KQ4GPEPJ/gypsy.jpg itsjustaplay https://www.itsjustamovie.com/itsjustabook daily 0.75 2021-08-04 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1526325632770-1H5CHMAP9BQLCQN6S7ZS/51ZZflqoBOL.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1526325780062-6YUD4D713H42BOR4ZJAL/51WxQINCjuL.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1526326638677-5IQSAQO3WO8IGAE0V7GY/51pQ7T3lOiL.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1527112345202-ZPV7Z6MV3OPNFK6L06GO/rothbooks071001_560.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1527534381680-D7NFUWSIZAQJU5E4FJHG/d583795b-a403-47a6-aa61-27dc392ca241_1.eafef47ecb316161ac405b345bded325.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1527739573283-JY7ESDBWJON3SGU4F3ZE/audiobooks01.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1529185720371-CU1PANJ25EN1VMD6SSTY/images.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1533440075280-S1IFE1JIHV8UFGZQYHTD/mailer.jpeg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1534203801615-RDDHCMV2MV38X9R737VZ/girl-reading-on-the-beach-holly-ladue-ulrich.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1534988575488-31Y5BQ91QJYWG0TV5QDA/books.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1541131990817-YQ00Z5WZC8OTHXDTZHEB/10books.jpg itsjustabook - BOOKS BANNED FROM THE CURRICULUM BOOKS BANNED FROM THE CURRICULUM Recently, I have been thinking of all the great books they never told me about in my 20 years of school. It is surprising that the curriculum has not changed much in recent years. Here is a list of the 15 most assigned books in colleges today: 1. Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 2. Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer 3. The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald 4. Oedipus, by Sophocles 5. Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad 6. Paradise Lost, by John Milton 7. The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James 8. Beloved, by Toni Morrison 9. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Ann Jacobs 10. To the Lighthouse, by Virginia Woolf 11. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston 12. The Odyssey, by Homer 13. Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf 14. Hamlet, by William Shakespeare 15. Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain Frankenstein was too popular to be assigned in my day. Beloved hadn't yet been written. Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston was not on the radar back then. We did read Virginia Woolf, but only To The Lighthouse. All of the rest were on the curriculum then and many years later, still there. Many incredible novelists are missing from this list. Just to name a few - Roth, Mailer, Vidal, Hemingway, Dickens, Tolstoy, Joyce, Dostoevsky - the list is too long and I am sure you can name many, too. So here is my list of ten books to read that you didn't read in school: Black Spring by Henry Miller. Miller was damned as a pornographer when he was alive, but now, his shocking look at the world is much more intune with current sensibilities. This book is about growing up in Brooklyn and escaping to Paris. Beware - this isn't a writer looking for your admiration or even understanding. This is a writer who wants to tell it like it is. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. In the mid-1930s, the Spanish Civil War was fought on the front page of newspapers all over the world. Fascism was rising up against the elected democratic government of Spain. Hemingway was first a reporter and he went to Spain to cover the war, then returned with one of the great novels of our time. The Stories of John Cheever. The modern world was gris for Cheever's mill. You will recognize it and, in the process, recognize yourself. Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. As a guy who never lived further than a traffic-filled commute from a big city, how I came to love this book and its author is beyond me. I just do. I think you will too. The King Must Die by Mary Renault. Three thousand years ago, a small group of people living along the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea created Western Civilization. Renault tells one of the great tales about how that happened. Her hero, Theseus, leaves home to find his father and fortune. His story is older than Troy. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Probably, you know the story - or think you do. The various movies and musicals do not do justice to this masterpiece of storytelling. There are hundreds of characters, most of whom you will never forget. I know - it's long. But you have the time and you couldn't find a more entertaining book. The Human Stain by Philip Roth. Sometimes, a great writer can write a novel that is beyond comprehension. Something happens in this story of a college professor who is fired for making a racial remark. Roth takes us to the core of what is destroying our country - and not one mention of Trump. Accordion Crimes by Annie Proulx. In the late 1800s, a Sicilian makes an accordian that ends up in the hands of many different immigrants to America. This is the story of those immigrants and their times. The Comedians by Graham Greene. Hati in the 1960s. A great story full of diplomats, killers, survivors, vegetarian former Presidential candidates and a couple of lovers. Greene specialized in writing about the world's hot spots and making them come alive through his memorable characters. This is what life is like in many countries, even today. The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. OK, so here is a real short one for you - but every page packs a punch you won't forget. Passion is what life is all about, so dive in and enjoy. So have a great read - and yes, it will be on the exam! https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/t/5c75ec1271c10b60aefa9021/1551231040205/ itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1565704513587-OEN67RH21R2L3WT4F3VD/kerr.jpg itsjustabook - PHILIP KERR IS DEAD! by Armen Pandola Back before the ebook and the ubiquitous internet, books were bought at bookstores. Some people liked to go to the biggies - Doubledays, Barnes and Noble, Borders - or the book departments that could be found in most major department stores. Buying a book that was just released and cracking it open on all those clean, never-before-touched pages was a thrill no many how many times you did it. I enjoyed that but even more, I loved perusing the shelves at used bookstores and exploring books that had been read or at least bought before by someone who had given it her tacit endorsement. Sometimes the former reader had written her name on the title page or even left a comment or two inside. Sometimes the book was a gift and a happy birthday or anniversary message was written by the giver to the lucky new owner - "Dear Eileen, I will never forget our all too brief escape and I hope when you read this you will think of me. Tom" That was an actual message in one book I bought - my first book by Philip Kerr. Later, I thought how strange a selection it was for what appeared to be a romantic gift. I wondered what made Eileen sell or give it away - or did her heirs find it a la the children of Francesca Johnson of Madison County? I was lucky enough to find many treasures in used book stores. Books that had been long out of print or were hard to find - or I had never heard of, but seemed to be worth the $1.99 or even $4.99 asked. The book with the message was Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr. I had never heard of Kerr, but I loved books that took place in foreign cities and I loved 'film noir.' Finding this book was like finding one entitled 'A Book Just for You!' Berlin Noir was actually three books in one: March Violets. London: Viking, 1989 set in 1936 Berlin The Pale Criminal. London: Viking, 1990 set in 1938 Berlin and A German Requiem. London: Viking, 1991 set in Berlin/Vienna 1947–48 March Violets (the book title refers to a name given by Nazis for those who joined the party only after Hitler had pushed through laws that effectively made him a dictator in March, 1933) introduced a new character into the gumshoe world, Bernie Gunther, a former cop now private-eye in Berlin in 1936. The idea of a private dick in Nazi Germany seemed so obviously a great idea that, like all great ideas, you immediately wondered why no one had thought of it, before. The plot was appropriately serpentine, bringing Gunther into contact with the SS, the SA, Gestapo and a variety of Nazi nuts, culminating in his meeting with Reinhard Heydrich, one of the main architects of the Holocaust. Some of the action takes place at the infamous 1936 Olympics which were held in Berlin and used by the Nazis as propaganda, showing the world how efficient and peaceful Nazis were, really. In the climax of the novel, Gunther is forced to go to Dachau concentration camp and obtain information from one of its inmates that will help Heydrich keep control of the SS. Here is Bernie describing that hell-hole: How do you describe the indescribable? How can you talk about something that made you mute with horror? There were many more articulate than me who were simply unable to find the words. It is a silence born of shame, for even the guiltless are guilty. Shorn of all human rights, man reverts back to the animal. The starving steal from the starving, and personal survival is the only consideration, which overrides, even censors, the experience. Work sufficient to destroy the human spirit was the aim of Dachau, with death the unlooked-for by-product. Survival was through the vicarious suffering of others: you were safe for a while when it was another man who was being beaten or lynched; for a few days you might eat the ration of the man in the next cot after he had expired in his sleep. The Pale Criminal (the term is from Nietzsche's Zarathustra and the “pale criminal” is a study of the evil of small-minded people, the kind of evil that Hannah Arendt would call 'banal') is no less exciting and Bernie is forced to re-enter the Berlin police force in order to solve a series of murders of blonde hair/blued girls. Again, he gets to work for Heydrich. A German Requiem (the reference is to a James Fenton poem) finds Bernie in post-war Berlin after spending a couple of years in a Russian POW camp. Things are not good in Berlin and his wife (he got married during the war) is forced to have sex with Allied officers to keep from starving. Bernie decides to take a case that gets him out of Berlin. He goes to Vienna where things are somewhat better. Again, the plot is not as important as the prose: These days, if you are a German you spend your time in Purgatory before you die, in earthly suffering for all your country’s unpunished and unrepented sins, until the day when, with the aid of the prayers of the Powers – or three of them, anyway — Germany is finally purified. For now we live in fear. Mostly it is fear of the Ivans, matched only by the almost universal dread of venereal disease, which has become something of an epidemic, although both afflictions are generally held to be synonymous. Kerr tried to avoid the fate of all crime writers who pen a memorable PI, then write the serial books from A to Z about the life and cases of the same shamus, but it was inevitable that Kerr would return to such a nuanced character as Bernie Gunther. While his other books are good, only one, A Philosophical Investigation, rises to the heights of his Gunther books and, perhaps, exceeds them. Investigation takes place in the near future when society is able to detect, by means of genetic analysis, those citizens who are capable of serial killing. By an unfortunate error, one citizen who is so detected comes into possession of this most secret list. Its very existence is state secret. He is appalled not only to know that such a list exists, but to find his name on it, So, in order to serve mankind, he decides to eliminate all the people on this list, thus ridding the world of these potential beasts. Of course, in so doing, he becomes what the list predicted he would. Kerr, also, wrote a series of children's books, Children of the Lamp, which are very popular, and a trio of books about and written from the perspective of Scot Manson, the team coach for London City FC, a soccer team - January Window, Hand of God and False Nine. I have not read those since to do so seemed to me an act of infidelity to Bernie who has suffered a mountain of betrayals. Kerr returned to Bernie 11 more times: The One From the Other – Berlin, 1949: Bernie heads for Munich when his work with the SS in the Ukraine make him a target for Nazi hunters. A Quiet Flame – Buenos Aires, 1950: Bernie heads to Argentina where many ex-Nazis find a home under the Peron regime. If The Dead Rise Not – Berlin, 1934: Kerr takes Bernie back in time to Berlin and the preparation for the 1936 Olympics. Field Gray - USSR and the Eastern Front 1941-44: Bernie has to use all of his formidable powers to break free of the SS and its killing fields in the East. Prague Fatale – Berlin/Prague, 1941: Bernie has to play up to his old friend Heydrich who thinks people are trying to kill him. A Man Without Breath – Berlin, 1943: Bernie must investigate the massacre of Polish troops for his new friend, Josef Goebbels. The Lady From Zagreb – Summer 1942: Bernie gets to work for Goebbels again in tracking down the father of a new Nazi cinema starlet. The Other Side of Silence – The French Riviera 1956: Bernie is now a hotel concierge, and the series is getting a little worn. Prussian Blue – The French Riviera, 1956, again: Bernie is found by the head of the East German Stasi and blackmailed into becoming an assassin. Greeks Bearing Gifts – Munich/Athens, 1956: Bernie goes to Greece but not to visit the sites - he's on a deadly serious job that could be his last. Then out of the blue, I learn that Kerr is dead, at 62, of bladder cancer. I was very sad. There are not many authors I have followed and read as closely as I did Philip Kerr. Every new book was bought and savored. I even listened to a few of those I had especially liked reading and let me add that the narrator of this series is one of the best in the business, John Lee. If you liked any of Kerr's books, download the audio version and enjoy your commute or workout. As someone who has read all of Kerr's Gunther books, I came to feel as if Bernie were an old pal, a boyhood friend and that it wasn't Kerr who died but Bernie. I missed him and his sardonic wit, his deep calm while staring at a Luger pointed at his always all-too-young heart, his way of rolling with the bombs tossed his way by a wake of the deadliest demons west of a gulag. Bernie was fun and always surprising. He was the kind of pal you could turn to at 3 a.m. and find whatever your dreams could handle. Then, I read that Bernie isn't dead. He's coming back, one last time. Kerr penned the book before taking that final trip to the coroner's. Metropolis - Berlin 1928: Kerr returns to the beginning of Bernie's career for the end of the series. I buy it, I download it (yeah, I'm OK with it) and - that's it. I can't break it open. I mean, what would you do if you had a date with one of your best buddies, but you knew - you knew! - that when you saw him and spent some time with him that it would be the last time you ever saw him. Do you rush into it, call him and head out for the nearest rathskeller? Or do you delay the inevitable because you know that every day you wait is another day you have Bernie alive and well? It's been a while now and I still haven't opened Metropolis. In the meantime, I think, why hasn't some enterprising producer made Bernie into a great TV series? Can we get a Swedish company to do it - the same one that did the Wallander series? Or maybe the German one that did Berlin Babylon? I know, all this is just an excuse, just a way to delay the inevitable. Can you give me just a little more time? https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1577038500469-DWVTYWJ48F9RLHJ4YHYO/image.jpg itsjustabook https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1628104830714-A0P2K00UBWAHYETXI0FL/image-asset.jpeg itsjustabook - Empire of Pain or How to Be a Legal Drug Dealer EMPIRE OF PAIN by Patrick Radden Keefe OR HOW TO BE A LEGAL DRUG DEALER By armen pandola Did you know that the prescription drug, oxycontin, has almost twice the power of morphine? Did you know that the Food and Drug Administration’s official who approved Purdue Pharma’s Oxycontin was hired by Pharma only a couple of years after he approved it? For a lot of money? Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain is, at times, painful to read - or listen to, as I did. Keefe does his own narration on the audiobook and does a very good job for a non-professional. He traces the origins of the Sackler family which owns the drug company that manufactured Oxicontin, Purdue Pharma. The Sackler family story starts out as a typical one of immigrants who make good in the New World. The Sacklers had three sons, Arthur, Raymond and Mortimer; each became a doctor of medicine. Arthur turned out to be a genius of sorts. According to Keefe, it was Arthur Sackler who pioneered the use of drugs to treat mental health problems. Before his work in this area of medicine, mental illness was treated with ‘talk therapy’, medical procedures such as lobotomies and electro-shock therapy or other bizarre means of inducing a change in a patient’s behavior. From the very beginning of his storied career, Arthur had dueling duel interests, medicine and advertising. At legendary Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, NY, Arthur was an exceptional student. Among his many interests, he sold ads in the school paper and made an agreement that his salary would be strictly commission - the more he sold, the more money he made with no limits. Decades later, this same compensation formula would be offered to drug reps, thereby encouraging them to get doctors to prescribe as much oxycontin as they could. As a result, the most successful salespersons were those whose doctors ran ‘pill mills’ dispensing thousands of prescriptions for oxycontin each month. As Deep Throat once advised a young Bob Woodward about Watergate, ‘follow the money.’ Reede takes this advice and shows how the Sacklers were blinded by the money to be made in selling a highly addictive drug. Their privately-owned drug company refused to diversify into other types of drugs and, effectively, doubled - down on Oxycontin because no other drug could make for the Sacklers the profits that an opioid like oxycontin could. Revenues for oxycontin exceeded a billion dollars a year for many, many years. But this was a path to riches that the Sacklers took more than once. Arthur Sackler may have been a pioneer in psychotropic medicines, but he made his fortune in his other calling, advertising. Sackler was a genius at marketing medicines, usually by getting doctors to prescribe it for many more conditions than the drug was originally made for. By the time valium came along, he was able to make a deal with its manufacturer to get a percentage of the total gross sales of valium as his company's fee for marketing it. Valium was the first billion dollar drug and it had a commanding 70% of the market share and was the most prescribed drug in the USA. Sackler made a fortune, a small part of which he, and his brothers, gave to various art institutions in the US and throughout the world. Arthur was so successful that he bought a small drug company for his brothers to run in the 1950s - that company became Purdue Pharma. In order to avoid conflict of interest charges with the ad agency Arthur ran, he kept his partnership with his brothers in Purdue a secret and formed with them and a fourth partner, a “tontine” which is an agreement by several people that a business would pass at the death of any partner to the other remaining partners until only one partner survived. Since Arthur died in the 1980s, before oxycontin was formulated, his heirs settled on receiving ‘only’ $22 million dollars since, under the tontine agreement, they were legally entitled to nothing. Meanwhile, the heirs of the two remaining brothers have been dividing up billions of dollars for over twenty years. Ultimately, the story of the Sacklers and the opioid addiction is a story of incredible greed in an era of greed. None of the Sacklers have ever apologized for the part their family paid in getting hundreds of thousands if not millions addicted to painkillers. They point to the millions who were helped by opioids, like the terminal cancer patients who could die in peace with the comfort offered by opiods. Like the gun industry, they can see no blame attached to a product’s manufacturer just because the product is abused by some people. A perfect example of the Sackler family’s clueless reaction to the opioid crisis is one family member’s reaction to the media blitz of 2018 when the Sacklers were being roasted on every comedy show, including John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight. This Sackler mother was disturbed because her teenage son and all of his friends were fans of the show and watched it together every week. What will they think?, she worried and how will my son get into high school?! https://www.itsjustamovie.com/movieindex daily 0.75 2023-12-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1523558360638-7IIYEQOEINLG0V4478LN/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - His Girl Friday Trailer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1523569285416-U8DFHXLO7QC67GSFP3NA/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk - Official Trailer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1523457351273-TV04L5L4UKPHVV1RCRLD/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - BULLIT - Trailer ( 1968 ) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1523740535676-BA1PUEYFNV4GPSS094SA/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - I, Tonya Red Band Trailer (2017) Margot Robbie Tonya Harding Biopic https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1523746883211-4J60R9K2SON3D9WU8HVM/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - Bridge Of Spies Trailer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524018454242-D6ZBPIU3KCI6W48YFV20/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - The Wolf of Wall Street - Official Trailer (HD) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524020969055-9XR6HTU2KHVZNABTTI6R/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - Bull Durham Movie Trailer https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524180432123-J1A6GRCNNSPAA1IMBIJG/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - TULLY - Official Trailer [HD] - In Theaters May 4 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525145267804-6V9OP9P6GC11AJF4J214/strangers.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525146919147-VBNNLBUJQEMPHZB1FMPF/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525145636882-969CP4GU38TXGWB5CQ11/producers.jpeg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525197229012-S264LZH2C0ZD1OWS524V/10c.jpeg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525808613920-9BFVJN4SGRB0U67FKDCZ/Daysofwineroses.jpg movies reviewed - THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1527285941956-4TCVBZUYODT0VY1AJTNX/DRBvJVdV4AAKXeO.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1530837601117-VWF1NYW9TGPTSXTBV0GP/M_poster.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1534108402583-9R65BRTVMWT1C15J52FR/FILMNOIR.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1534986927159-G47OFWF8QUUZWOM1NIHR/LOGO.png movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1535068957465-E5HGE0PMRFFBTV7JJWQC/COURTROOM+MOVIES.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1536553906191-X6RMHU7BZS1RG88Y5XPW/09%3A2018.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1538453950535-P6NW9E9Q9Q3KU41PJAP5/OCT2018.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1539736146668-2RYIN0ELYZH8ASLU8O5O/bad+times.jpeg movies reviewed https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/t/5bd1d72ae4966bef0e0d13e7/1540429664775/ movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1540960635078-7JUPJ4DOQ9XTLPKEO4GS/NOVTCM.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1543534788423-IMRH9VWNAV3HEVJRRZ21/dec2018.jpg movies reviewed - TCM DECEMBER 2018 DECEMBER 2018 ON TCM "Tis the season to be jolly! But on TCM, in December, you can watch everything from the the sorrow of a war-displaced mother and daughter in Italy (Two Women) to the tuneful Irving Berlin classic, Holiday Inn. Here are my takes on a month of classic flicks that will bring all the laughter and tears that movies have to give to you on your own TV: 12/1 Crack-Up - for those of you who thought that Pat O'Brien was just decoration for all those Irish-themed movies, here he is in an real Hitchcockian thriller with an excellent supporting cast. 12/2 The Shop Around the Corner - Jimmy Stewart is as good as he gets in this touching Xmas story about the owners and workers in a gift shop. Do yourself a favor, watch this movie. I guarantee it will become one of your favorites. 12/3 King Solomon's Mines - Before there was Indiana Jones, there was Allan Quatermain. 12/4 Norma Rae - with her bio recently released, Sally Fields is in the news - and she shines in this rare Hollywood movie about a female worker trying to make a better life for herself and her family. 12/5 Two Women - Sophia Loren won an Oscar for a displaced mother during WWII trying to keep her daughter safe. 12/6 A Midsummers Night's Dream - watch the stars of old Hollywood make Shakespeare come alive in this magical movie. 12/7 The Graduate - this is the movie that made a star of Dustin Hoffman. I will say one word about it - plastics. 12/8 Meet John Doe - a fired feature writer (Barbara Stanwyck) concocts a story about a homeless man (Gary Cooper) who is going to kill himself on Christmas, and gets her job back. 12/9 O. Henry's Full House - there was a time when Hollywood put out several movies that were 4 or 5 short films in one. This is one of the best, narrated by John Steinbeck. Chock full of stars from Marilyn Monroe to Charles Laughton. 12/10 Paths of Glory - this early Kubrick WWI tale stars Kirk Douglas, Adolph Menjou and incredible performance by the underrated George Macready. 12/11 Stagecoach - John Ford's masterpiece about the West. John Wayne and Monument Valley became staple stars of Westerns after this movie. 12/12 Jailhouse Rock - ok, so it's not Singing In The Rain. It is one of The King's best. 12/13 Page Miss Glory - a screwball comedy that delivers. 12/14 To Sir, With Love - somebody decided to cast Sidney Poitier as a teacher in a lower class London school where he teaches the kids how to grow up - and it works. Lulu's debut. 12/15 The Naked and the Dead - making great novels into movies is not easy, and this one shows why. Still, there is just enough of the fire of the book to keep us watching. 12/16 Children of Paradise - French film about love, life and the theatre. 12/17 Rififi - this is the daddy of all caper flicks, and it's French to boot. 12/18 The Absent Minded Professor - Fred MacMurray does his Disney thing. 12/19 Oliver Twist - David Lean adapted Dickens' classic story of a boy who gets taken in by a gang of child thieves. 12/20 Anna and the King of Siam - the non-musical version of the King and I starring Rex Harrison as the King of Siam. Hey, this was Hollywood in the 1950s where the Jewish-born Ira Grossel (known to us as Jeff Chandler) could get nominated for an Oscar for playing Cochise. 12/21 The Way We Were - Barbra's best acting role. Robert Redford had to be talked into playing the iconic Hubbell by director Sydney Pollock. 12/22 Ben Hur - saw this for the first time in a great, classic movie palace in Philadelphia, The Boyd. Sadly, along with about a dozen other movie palaces in the City Developers Love, The Boyd was demolished. But we still have Ben Hur with a much underrated performance by Stephen Boyd. 12/23 Holiday Inn - Irving Berlin's score introduced the world to Happy Holidays, Easter Parade and White Christmas. The later two songs were so popular, they were the titles of two other movies about the holidays. 12/24 In The Good Old Summertime - this is the musical version of The Shop Around the Corner with Judy Garland. 12/25 Lover Come Back - Doris Day is not everyone's dish, but she will make a believer out of you in this sophisticated comedy with her favorite co-star Rock Hudson. 12/26 Deliverance - if you have a holiday hangover, this is the movie that will snap you out of it. 12/27 Pitfall - did you like Fatal Attraction? Then you will like this film noir look at infidelity. 12/28 A Hard Day's Night - rock groups don't make critically acclaimed movies, except for the Beatles. 12/29 A Tale of Two Cities - this is a great movie from a great novel. Ronald Coleman gives one of the best performances by an actor in a movie. Watching this classic will be a far, far better thing you can do than anything else. 12/30 Love Me or Leave Me - this is Doris Day's best performance as the apple of minor gangster James Cagney's lustful eye. There is a scene at the very end of the movie where she is singing the title tune and he has to decide if he is going to let go of his passion for her - it all happens on his face. 12/31 That's Entertainment - bring in the New Year with some of Hollywood's greatest musical moments. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1545276595133-8I45UAYPUSOSWWM2LETF/ROMA-SOB.jpg movies reviewed - LOOK BACK IN STYLE - ROMA AND SPRINGSTEEN ON NETFLIX ROMA AND BRUCE ON NETFLIX Two movies are new to Netflix this month and both come from other media. Roma is a film by oscar-winner Alfonso Cuarón that was released in a couple of theatres in November, but had already had its world premiere at the 75th Venice International Film Festival on August 30, 2018, where it won the Golden Lion. Releasing it in a limited number of cities is Netflix's strategy for making the movie eligible for Oscars and other film awards. In some areas, you can still see it in a theatre. Springsteen On Broadway was a sold-out hit (grossing over $75 million in less than 300 performances) for rocker Bruce Springsteen that opened on Broadway in October, 2017 and was scheduled for only a two month run, but kept getting extended because of demand and, finally, closed on December 15, 2018, just a few days before a filmed live version appeared on Netflix. The Netflix airing was announced only in July, 2018, but it wasn't hard to surmise that the show would be filmed for posterity - and money. Last June, the show received a special Tony award (it wasn't eligible for a competitive Tony award because it did not provide the 850 or so tickets (+ 1s making it 1700 free tix) to Tony voters within eight weeks of its opening). Both Roma and Springsteen On Broadway share the distinction of being very unusual movies. Roma is Cuarón's look back (to 1970) at his childhood world in Mexico (the title refers to the Colonia Roma, a neighborhood in Mexico City). It is a black and white movie that, on a TV screen, looks like it is always slightly washed-out. Cuarón wrote and did the cinematography, too. Roma looks at a year in the life of an upper-middle class family consisting of parents (the father (Fernando Grediaga) is only in a few scenes) , three children, grandmother, two servants (indigenous descendants as opposed to the obviously European-descended family) and a dog. The movie's principal character is Cleodegaria "Cleo" Gutiérrez (Yalitza Aparicio) one of the family's two live-in servants. We follow her as she cleans the large house and cares for the children. She is more than just a servant - she is part of the family.. When she becomes unexpectedly pregnant, her life changes very little even though she fears being fired by Sofia (Marina de Tavira), the mother of the family. Sofia has her own problems when her husband leaves her early on in the movie although she tells the children that he is on an extended business trip. Very little 'happens' in this movie. The plot is non-existent except for a chilling scene when student demonstrators are attacked by the police and a civilian paramilitary group shoots and kills a student in Cleo's presence. She sees the father of her expected child (who has abandoned her) in the murdering paramilitary group and this incident triggers her water breaking. What happens next is the best part of the movie as Cleo is rushed to the hospital. Many critics have praised Roma as a poetic look at ordinary life, and that it is. While I found much of it slow and less 'poetic" than just an ordinary, it does have merit in showing life as it was lived by ordinary people living with the extraordinary complications that confront most of us in our everyday lives. Roma's greatest asset is the acting of all of the people in the movie - or I should say, the semblance of non-acting. This kind of acting has a long tradition in mainstream movies, dating back to Marlon Brando's performance in The Men (1950) and culminating with Lee Strasberg's portrayal of aging mobster Hyman Roth in Godfather II. Although it has been more than 40 years since I first saw that movie, I remember the shock and thrill of seeing Strasberg in his first scene, sitting in the living room of a simple Florida home, watching a football game as Michael Corleone enters. I had never seen an actor like him. Not a trace of technique, not a hint of a performance, just being. Perhaps Cuarón was able to elicit these magical performances because almost the entire cast consists of first-time performers on screen. Springsteen On Broadway is two and a half hours of just Bruce (his wife, Patti Scialfa, makes a brief appearance) telling stories and playing music. It is NOT a concert and he plays only a few of his many 'hits.' Instead, Springsteen On Broadway is the story of a man who made his living performing the magic act of making spellbinding, story-based music. He uses the usual microphones you see at a musical performance instead of those used in the theatre and this establishes, immediately, that he is not an 'actor' but rather a performer who tells stories. In fact, he ignores the mics and often walks away from them so that his voice has no amplification and this makes his performance even more 'real.' Director Thom Zimny has done a masterful job of keeping the show moving, having unobtrusive stage hands bring out to Bruce various guitars and an harmonica. From the beginning Bruce tells us that he wore 'workingman's clothes' on stage, sang about factory-workers and laborers but he never had a 'real' job, never worked normal hours and never ever was even in a factory. He made it all up. That, he tells us, is how good he is. Actually, he took on the persona of his father who did all the things that Bruce sang about, but never did himself. Growing up in Freehold, NJ, he tells of life in a small town in the 1950s and 60s in his dysfunctional family dominated by a cold, distant father. When he became a full-time musician, he headed not to New York (only an hour away) but to the New Jersey shore, where he was a one-way road to oblivion. He had to get away from the Jersey shore and, more, out of his small-time mentality to make it and to do that he had to take that leap that all artists must take out of their comfort zone and into the abyss. In his case, the abyss was a three day trip across the USA in a van, driving a motor vehicle for the first time in his life. So Springsteen On Broadway is a look back by an artist to his childhood, too, and, just as Cuarón uses storytelling and film to transport us back, Springsteen uses his own artist's tools to transport us to a different time and place - his poetry, his words, his music and his inimitable bravuro style. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1546038992349-9X3EDNAX0YZ5GQNR2BDJ/MARY.jpg movies reviewed - QUEENS HIGH QUEENS HIGH I cannot think of any more popular subject for movies, TV shows, plays and books than the reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I in England and Mary in Scotland. The time period is almost a century long, from Henry's ascension to the throne in 1509 to Elizabeth's death in 1603. Before we get to the fictionalized version of their stories, let's look at the facts. Henry VIII came to the throne when he was only 17 years old. He married a Spanish princess, Catherine, who was Henry's deceased brother, Arthur's, wife (Arthur died at 15 and Catherine swore the marriage had never been consummated.) Henry went through a succession of wives in an attempt to father a male heir. When the Pope refused to allow him to divorce Catherine, Henry broke from the Roman Catholic Church and established the Church of England, bringing Protestantism to England. His marriage to Catherine produced a Catholic female, Mary Tudor, who reigned briefly after Henry's death but was succeeded by Elizabeth I, Henry's child by Anne Boleyn, his second wife, who reigned for forty-five years, but left no heir. Mary Queen of Scots' grandmother was Henry VIII's sister and therefore Mary and Elizabeth were cousins, once removed. In the tangled web of European royalty, this was not exactly a close relationship. More importantly, Mary was raised a Catholic and Elizabeth a Protestant. At that time, the religious affiliation of a monarch could determine whether a country remained Catholic or not. The 1500's saw the rise Martin Luther and the Reformation in Europe, the beginning of Protestantism. The story of Mary and Elizabeth has fascinated writers for almost five centuries. Elizabeth has been played on screen by every generation's great actress from Sarah Bernhardt to Cate Blanchett. Bette Davis played her twice, in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex and The Virgin Queen. Mary, also, has a long cinematic pedigree, dating from cinema's earliest days when Thomas Edison in 1895 made an eighteen second movie showing Mary's execution. In 1936, Katherine Hepburn played her in a John Ford film. In 1971, Vanessa Redgrave portrayed the doomed Queen while Glenda Jackson gave us a preview of her much lauded TV portrayal of Elizabeth I. Now, a new movie, Mary, Queen of Scots, is devoted to the relationship between the two monarchs and has given Saorise Ronon (Lady Bird) as Mary and Margo Robbie (I, Tonya) as Elizabeth the chance to put their marks on these iconic roles. British theatre director, Josie Rourke, makes her film directorial debut of a Beau Williamon (House of Cards (Netflix)) script. The performances of the two divas are very good, but, sadly, wasted in this plodding attempt to light a fire under this oft told story. The movie's sets and costumes are the best part of the movie, and credit must be given to the open casting, giving Adrian Lester the opportunity to play an English Lord who acts as an ambassador for Elizabeth to Mary. The problems start immediately with one of those written prologues we see in so many historical dramas. Whenever I see one of these prologues I want to shout at the screen - a movie should not seem but be! If a fact is important, make it part of the movie, a visual medium, even in its silent era. From there, the movie both tells us too little and too much. For example, it keeps referring to Mary and Elizabeth as 'sisters', which, if they were, would make their relationship very different. Also, the movie has Mary and other characters claim that she has a more legitimate claim to the English throne than Mary. Not true. It does show the importance of religion in the quarrel between the two Queens, but it does not make clear that, at that time, Scotland was a seperate, legitimate country from England. The movie revolves around Mary's marriages, first to an English Lord and then to a Scottish nobleman. She does have one child, James, by the Englishman. Elizabeth never married and we see the physical change she undergoes when she contracts smallpox, scarring her face and causing her hair to fall out. Both women find themselves alone in a court of men, all of whom think that they know better than a woman what is best for her and their country. The founder of the Presbyterian Scottish Church, John Knox (David Tennant), rails against Mary, preaching that a woman can never rule a country. Mary is betrayed by the men in her life, including her half-brother. Elizabeth is shown to be more successful because, as the script claims, she becomes more man than woman. When a country is ruled by a monarch, the monarch's children are not just fodder for tabloids, as they are today - no, having a child to ascend to the throne was one of the most solemn duties of a monarch. Mary succeeded; Elizabeth did not. While history shows that Mary and Elizabeth never met, no fictional version of their story can resist a meeting of the two protagonists. In this version, they meet in what looks looks like a 16th century laundromat, with semi-transparent sheets screening them from each other's view as they walk around in a kind of textile version of Orson Welles's House of Mirrors in The Lady From Shanghai. It doesn't work. Rourke is betrayed by her theatre background as she forgets that five minutes in movietime can seem like a lifetime - the cousins seem to spend an eternity walking among the sheets before coming face to face. A final word to anyone who wants to fictionalize this story in the future, forget the facts and follow the drama. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1546114295922-Z6EZG39LQF1PB3WIBOHJ/badlacage.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1546275804722-KXZHXBIZY5K4WL2WJUKM/jan2019.jpg movies reviewed - TCM JANUARY 2019 ON TCM JANUARY 2019 This month, Kathryn Grayson is the star of the month. From the first time I saw her, in Kiss Me Kate on TV, I was hooked. A beautiful lady with the pipes of a nightingale, Grayson was a much better actress than she was given credit for. So leave yourself some time on Tuesdays this month to check out this great actress with a great voice. 1/1 TWENTIETH CENTURY This is a madcap comedy starring John Barrymore in his best movie performance and Carole Lombard in the role that made her a star. 1/2 VIVA ZAPATA! Elia Kazan directs Marlon Brando and Anthony Quinn in a John Steinbeck script about the rise and fall of Mexico's greatest revolutionary. 1/3 SPARTACUS This is the best epic ever filmed. Stanley Kubrick was brought in to direct when producer/star Kirk Douglas fired Anthony Mann. Every performance in this all-star cast is one of, if not the best, of their careers. The Dalton Trumbo script is the best he wrote and the score by Alfred North is a classic. 1/4 CYRANO DE BERGERAC Jose Ferrer in a virtuoso performance as the greatest swordsman in France. This translation of the original French script is also the best. 1/5 BLUE GARDENIA Fritz Lang directs Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Raymond Burr, Jeff Donnell, George Reeves and Nat King Cole (he's the cafe singer who croons the title song) in this classic film noir. 1/6 THE LETTER Bette Davis emerges from a dark shadow to shoot a man, several times, as the movie begins. Was she defending herself after being attacked by him? Or was he being murdered in cold blood? 1/7 THE CLOCK Vincente Minnelli directs his then-wife Judy Garland in her best non-singing role as a young woman who falls in love with soldier Robert Walker. 1/8 THE NAKED SPUR In the 1950s, Jimmy Stewart made a serious of adult westerns and this is the best of them. 1/9 MAN ON A TIGHTROPE One of Fredric March's best performances as the head of a small circus trying to get his people threw the Iron Curtain. 1/10 THE CONSPIRATORS Hedy Lamarr heads an all-star cast of character actors in this take-off on Casablanca. 1/11 FIVE CAME BACK Did you like the TV series, Lost? Then this is for you. 1/12 A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS Fred Zinnemann directs Oscar-winner Paul Schofield in the best movie about henry VIII and his times. 1/13 A LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN Over 25 years old and still as fresh as the day it was released - but remember, there's no crying in baseball! And Madonna is very good too. 1/14 THE PUBLIC ENEMY James Cagney becomes Jame Cagney in this early crime flick. 1/15 ANCHORS AWAY Kelly, Sinatra, Grayson - they sing, they dance, they make moview history. 1/16 MONKEY BUSINESS There is no reason to watch this movie except for the fact that it is very funny with Cary Grant playing the nerdy scientist who discovers Marilyn Monroe. 1/17 THE HAPPY THIEVES A good caper flick with Rex Harrison and Rita Hayworth. 1/18 KING RAT Prisoner of war camp movie that made s star of George Segal. 1/19 THE BIG CHILL Almost every major actor of a generation gets his/her start in the movie about growing up, finally. 1/20 MURDER MY SWEET Dick Powell grows up and becomes a film noir star. 1/21 A SOLDIER'S STORY African-American soldiers have their lives turned upside down in the tale of murder. 1/22 THE TOAST OF NEW ORLEANS Grayson and Lanza sing. 1/23 BELL, BOOK AND CANDLE Not a great movie but just fun to watch Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon. 1/24 KISMET Minnelli directs this light-weight but fun film. 1/25 THE FOUNTAINHEAD Gary Cooper as an Ayn Rand hero swimming against the tide and picking up a besotted Patricia Neal. 1/26 HIGH SOCIETY Musical remake of The Philadelphia Story with songs by Cole Porter sung by Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Celeste Holm and Satchmo! 1/27 THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY A non-singing Julie Andrews falls in love with a cowardly James Garner. 1/28 BULLIT Tough crime drama with Steve McQueen in the best car chase ever filmed - until The French Connection. 1/29 KISS ME KATE Cole Porter takes on Shakespeare and comes up a winner. 1/30 WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE See why Bette Davis is Bette Davis - an unswerving commitment to a character no matter where it takes her. 1/31 THE PLAYER Robert Altman looks at Hollywood - it ain't pretty but it's a lot of fun. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1546531120909-TLTNOQUTGXFGGB46415V/vice.jpeg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1547063284024-JW2O8P8TEKNXPCHMYB1V/birdb.jpg movies reviewed - BIRD BOX or how to make a hit horror movie. BIRD BOX or how to make a hit horror movie. Netflix's Bird Box, directed by Susanne Bier (The Night Manager TV series) and written by Eric Heisserer (Arrival) from a book by Josh Malerman, has created a sensation. While Netflix never releases audience numbers, Bird Box seems to be a hit. Of course, 'hit' must be in context. Hit shows on the major networks like The Big Bang Theory have upward of 18 million viewers. In-theatre only movies have more viewers - Black Panther sold over 70 million tickets. The consensus is that Bird Box had 26 millions viewers (compare that to the Golden Globes with 18.6 million). Whatever the numbers, Bird Box is a hit, generating not only viewers but buzz: Is it a joke, this 'thing' or 'no-thing' that causes people to kill themselves? What makes this story go? Not the characters who have no or little backstory, or the simple plot: if you see 'it', you kill yourself. Bird Box, for the 300 million or so who have not watched it, is about a woman, Sandra Bullock (I am not using character names because, as I said, the characters have no backstory and, in fact, the movie uses the 'public perception' of the actors to fill-in for character development, like casting John Wayne in a western - you know who this guy is based on who is playing the part), who is pregnant but without a husband or father of the child who left, apparently, soon after he did the deed. Her sister, Sarah Paulson, wants to help her since Bullock is not a happy mother-to-be and is even told by her doctor that most mothers end up loving their child. Bullock is so unconvinced that she doesn't want to know the gender of the baby and, in fact, she ends up calling it "Boy" (and a same-age girl she ends up taking care of, "Girl"). The movie is told in two simultaneous parts, five years apart. So, we see the world-wide epidemic of suicides and how it quickly infects the California community where Bullock and Paulson live. There is no explanation, suddenly, people start doing crazy things - banging their heads until they die, driving cars into other cars, stabbing themselves. These scenes of the 'beginning' of the epidemic are interspersed with scenes from five years later when survivors Bullock and her son and "Girl" are in her care as she tries to get them to safety. The key to survival is being blindfolded whenever outside and not looking at 'it.' The buzz reminds me of the public's reception of Rosemary's Baby almost 50 years ago. That movie saw newly weds, Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes, move into a Manhattan apartment. Cassavetes is an actor up for a big part. He gets it when the actor who was selected, suddenly, goes blind. Soon after, Farrow gets pregnant and is stuck at home getting unwanted advice and help from an elderly couple who live next door. It turns out that they are a witch/warlock pair and her husband sold Farrow to these demons so that her child could be the new Beelzebub. It's a thrilling and scary movie, a roller coaster ride through the terrors of pregnancy and a parent's worst fears realized - little Johnny turns out to be a devil, literally. Just as in Bird Box, the characters in Rosemary's Baby were not fully drawn. The young couple seem to have landed in Manhattan from the moon, no family and very few friends. There are really only 4 characters in the movie - the young and elderly couples. The plot is not explained very much - yes, a few minutes are spent on talking about witches and warlocks, but nothing that makes any impression other than that they do exist. And that is how to have a hit 'horror' movie. One exciting scene after another, keeping the audience occupied with visuals that are arresting and moments that are shocking. In Bird Box, John Malkovich plays his stereotypical angry, bitter, suspecting character. Trevante Rhodes plays the guy we met in Moonlight. There are other stereotypes you will recognize - happy, overweight pregnant woman who is actually a lot better person than we think, odd couple 20-somethings who end up in bed (well, doing it but not actually in ...), sympathetic looking guy who turns out to be a monster, unsympathetic guy who turns out to be right - you've met them all before but not in this movie. Anyway, it's a fun 2 hours. It comes to a kind of conclusion, just like Rosemary's Baby. And at the end, Sandra Bullock gets to go on another scary, dangerous, thrilling ride - this time in a boat not a bus, but it's the same ride and the same plucky Sandra who survives. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1548968710122-O4L65DNX5DK1ZHW0UW8J/feb.jpg movies reviewed - FEBRUARY ON TCM FEBRUARY ON TCM This month starts the 31 Days of Oscar on TCM so each day has a different theme and will feature movies that have won an Oscar. So, February 1 starts with Literary Adaptations into movies and also features Janet Gaynor's Oscar win for multiple movies - Sunrise and Street Angel. Here are my pics for a short month of great movies to enjoy on TV's best movie channel: 2/1 THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER Based on the Carson McCuller novel, this gem stars Alan Arkin as a deaf-mute who tries to find his way in an indifferent world. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie. 2/2 STRANGERS ON A TRAIN Hitchcock at his best. Two men meet by chance on a train and one has an ingenuous scheme to solve each's problems - crisscross: you kill the person I want to get rid of and I'll do the same for you. 2/3 FUNNY GIRL Barbra Streisand's debut as Fanny Brice, directed by William Wyler (his only musical) with a great score and cast. 2/4 THE CHILDREN'S HOUR Another Wyler gem, based on Lillian Hellman's play (Wyler also directed her Little Foxes in 1941). Not as well known as it should be, this features remarkable performances by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine - yes, she can act with the best of them. 2/5 I VITELLONI Early Fellini flick about bored young men in a boring little town - hey, somehow Fellini makes you care and laugh - yes, laugh. 2/6 THE LONGEST DAY Legendary producer Darryl Zanuck made this episodic movie about the invasion of France by the Allies. Great cast - watch for a chilling performance by Richard Burton. 2/7 CAGED Eleanor Parker stars as innocent who gets sent to prison and comes out a hardened gangster's moll. 2/8 THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! One of the funniest films ever made with an incredible performance by Alan Arkin as a Russian sailor trying to find a boat to tow his submarine off a shoal in New England. 2/9 IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT From the opening credits with Ray Charles singing the title song while the camera pans over workers in a cotton field, you know this movie is different. Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger are the unlikeliest buddys in this classic take on that genre. 2/10 A PASSAGE TO INDIA David Lean's last and one of his greatest movies. I had read the E.M. Forster novel and when I heard that it was to be made into a movie, I thought it couldn't be done - the novel is too subtle, to complex. I was wrong. 2/11 MY FAVORITE YEAR Story of the high jinks in early TV will leave you rolling on the floor. 2/12 TO BE OR NOT TO BE This is the original and you will discover what is meant by the Lubitsch touch. Just perfect. 2/13 THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI David Lean visits a Japanese slave labor camp for prisoners in WWII. Sessue Hayakawa is incredible as the conflicted Colonel in charge of the camp. 2/14 FATHER OF THE BRIDE Vincente Minnelli's gem about the joys and sorrows of being the guy stuck with the tab. Tracey, Taylor and a great su[[orting cast. 2/15 THE BAD SEED If you think that you were a bad kid, take a look and see what a really bad kid looks like. 2/16 THE GREAT RACE For unknown reasons, this delightful farce has never found an audience, but let's change that. Blake Edwards directs a great cast: Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon and Peter Falk (yes, another movie in which Falk steals every scene he is in) 2/17 NETWORK They made a play out of this iconic Paddy Chayefsky but nothing can match the movie for sheer chutzpah. Among all the great performances, William Holden's can get lost, but he is the key to the movie. 2/18 HIGH NOON The 'politicians' have let out of jail the notorious killer, Frank Miller who has sworn vengeance on those who put him in jail. Sheriff Gary Cooper is just about to leave town on his wedding day (with Grace Kelly) when he is forced to stay and fight - alone. This movie touches on so many American myths that it could be called, High Icon. 2/19 CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS This is the kind of gem the studios use to produce. Not a great movie, but a very good one with entertainment to keep you stuck to your seat - and oh yea, Spencer Tracy as a Portuguese fisherman. 2/20 THE HIGH AND THE MIGHTY A variation on the 'disaster' flicks, this time a plane full of people who are some of the best character actors in Hollywood. John Wayne toughs it out while whistling a great Dimitri Tiomkin score. 2/21 LA STRADA Fellini brings to life a traveling circus act with Tony Quinn and the strong mans and Fellini's wife, Giulietta Masina, as his much abused assistant. This is the movie that made everyone sit up and watch Fellini. 2/23 BORN FREE Africa in the 60s where a married couple run a farm and adopt a baby cub lion. When the lion grows up, there's a problem. This a delightful movie that you can share with your children. 2/24 A HARD DAY'S NIGHT The Beatles make their first movie under the direction of Richard Lester. The lads play themselves and along the way are all these great songs. The title song, penned by John, who got the idea when the lads were leaving Abbey Road after a long recording session and, as Ringo was walking out the door, he said, "It's been a hard day - (then seeing it was nighttime) night." 2/25 IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT This is the first movie to win all big-4 Oscars, Best Actor (Clark Gable), Best Actress (Claudette Colbert), Best director (Frank Capra) and Best Picture. As opposed to many head-scratching choices made by the Academy over the years, these Oscars were well deserved. 2/26 ANASTASIA When the Czar and his family were killed by the Bolsheviks, the youngest daughter survived and went into hiding (look, it's a movie so forget the facts). Ingrid Bergman makes her grand comeback, winning her second Oscar. Yul Brynner and Akim Tamiroff do their usual outstanding job. 2/27 JOHNNY EAGER Robert Taylor was tired of playing the pretty boy and he gets to play the heel in this crime thriller beside Lana Turner and Van Heflin (who won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his let it all hand out performance). 2/28 THE GREAT WHITE HOPE This is the movie that made James Earl Jones a star, playing the first Black heavyweight fighter, Jack Johnson (they change his name to Jefferson, I assume to claim it's all made up). Jane Alexander plays Jones' white mistress in the early 20th century when interracial marriage was forbidden by law. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1550174436810-07ECN98WAKFYO0NIEYAL/10VAL.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1550727323293-FP28I0G5MXE4ZCB9QCM6/oscars.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1551503457293-O61WX3ZFBPODPZX61L0Q/MARCH.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1553208502944-GO87YU3VTB64D2JZ90HJ/MOCKINGBIRD.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1553454395143-BW48BQZW9PV1IVG7O9E1/PI.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1555303664222-R75BG1MTPMA4Z307SG3W/DUMBO.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1555860774375-0KQ7X2ORZYG8C2HXVHSW/trio.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1557687621874-CZ127X8TR8VUFQSYTRRS/old.jpeg movies reviewed - They Shall Not Grow Old - THE TRUE COLOR OF WAR Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old is a documentary using 100 year old film clips of World War I (1914-1918) taken from the archives of the Imperial War Museum. Also, it uses the voices of the British soldiers who fought in WWI to narrate the film. These voices were recorded in hundreds of interviews with the soldiers done twenty or more years after the war. Jackson had the raw footage 'remastered' so that it is now as detailed as a modern film - the faces and reactions of individual soldiers are crystal clear and allow us to look at them not as distant, barely discernible humans but as full-fledged members of our shared humanity. Jackson is not interested in the history of WWI, its origins and causes. There is no preamble giving the movie context. Instead, Jackson takes the viewpoint of a British male citizen between the ages of 18 and 35 who volunteered and was sent to the front lines, As one soldier says, "We didn't bother with what was happening to our left or right or even back home - all we concentrated on was what was right in front of us." This is the virtue of Jackson's movie and, also, its failing: without giving the war a context, much of the global tragedy and incomprehensible cruelty of WWI is lost. WWI was THE critical event of the 20th century; without it, the rest of the 20th century and the current posture of the world is unimaginable. It was as a result of WWI that the United States became a dominant world power and it was the beginning of the end of the United Kingdom's empire on which the sun never set. The Russian Revolution transformed that vast country from an absolute dictatorship of the Romanov family to a dictatorship of the proletariat. WWI destroyed other monarchies,too, in Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) and established the modern nation-state throughout Europe. The cost of the war was staggering: forty million casualties with most major belligerents having more than a million each (the USA had over 100,000 dead and while its entrance into the war on the side of the Allies proved decisive, it was never a major player during most of the war). These casualties were the 'best and the brightest' their country had to offer. It is no wonder that Europe found itself fighting another devastating war in less than a generation - most of its future leaders were killed in WWI. Jackson doesn't care about all that. Instead, he concentrates on the experiences of the common soldier. The film can be broken down into three parts: the soldier's enlistment and training, his time in the trenches and at the battle front and, finally, his return to civilian life. Wisely, Jackson colorizes only the dominant middle section so that when we leave the homefront for the battlefront, we experience a transformation similar to Dorothy's entrance into the land of OZ - we are no longer in Kansas. Trench warfare dominated WWI. Both sides built and fought out of trenches. One of the earliest trench battles happened during the US Civil War in the siege of Richmond at the end of the war. Little changed in how trench warfare was fought in the half-century between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of WWI except for the vastly increased fire power of machine guns and artillery. How anyone survived in the trenches is a miracle. There was no sanitation. Soldiers had one uniform that they wore for years. There were no field hospitals, no portable toilets (a piece of wood studding was placed over an open ditch for defecating and there was no toilet paper so soldiers used their hands), no clean water and drinking water was distributed in petrol cans that retained the smell and taste of gasoline. The food was horrible and the only ones getting fat were the rats that were everywhere, feeding off the copious number of dead soldiers rotting in the mud. When both armies started using poisonous gas the terrors of the front became apocalyptic (Hitler who served in the German army during WWI was blinded by an Allied gas attack near the end of the war and spent months in the hospital recovering). The images are so clear that the soldiers' bad teeth (soldiers were issued one toothbrush and most used it to clean the buttons on the uniforms), dirty clothes and, horribly, wounds come alive. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers' corpses were unidentifiable because they had been so badly mauled by machine gun fire or blasted to bits by artillery fire. Jackson's film provides an explanation for the similar conduct of many soldiers I knew who fought in the front lines of many wars: his film shows us why so many ex-soldiers don't want to talk about their time in the military. My father was in WWII and won two bronze stars as part of the engineer corps, but he never wanted to talk about his experience. Whenever I asked him, all he would say is, "It's not something I want to remember." One of my best friends fought in Vietnam and was wounded. Not once, in the many days and nights I spent in his company did he ever relate one incident or talk about one moment of his time in Vietnam. Jackson's movie speaks for them. As Civil War General Sherman said, "War is hell." They Shall Not Grow Old shows us, in vivid color, why that is true. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1558114378444-ZAIONUUM1MWY2EV3N61K/FIRE.jpeg movies reviewed - TRIAL BY FIRE HAS A MESSAGE BUT DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU In the movie business, famous quotes are a dime a dozen, or as Yogi might have said but never did, "I never said half the things I said." So a line attributed to Samuel (If it's not broke, fix it) Goldwyn sums up Hollywood's view of polemical movies - "If you want to send a message, call Western Union." And the quote itself shows you how long it's been a movie mantra. Of course, Hollywood always made movies with messages, it's just that the messages were usually the ones that corporate America wanted you to get. The first big box office hit was D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, a dazzling tour de force that created much of the language of film, but as racist and dispicable a piece of propaganda as was ever given a mass audience. Gone With The Wind was not much better even though Hattie McDaniel became the first African-American Oscar winner. The problem was not with movies that had messages because most good movies did have a 'message' or strong point of view. The problem was with the message. Simply put, messages that promoted mainstream America's prejudices or were 'patriotic' were OK; messages that promoted change or showed sympathy for the downtrodden were not OK. As a result, Hollywood rarely took on the fat cats for the simple reason that it was the fat cats who were running the movie studios that were making almost all of the movies. Of course, times have changed, but not much. While the common wisdom is that Hollywood is to the left of Karl Marx, the truth is that Hollywood rarely makes a movie with a populist political message. Trial By Fire attempts to be an exception. It tells the story of Cameron Todd Willingham (Jack O'Connell), 'white trash' Texan and his wife, Stacy (Emily Meade). Todd is convicted of murder for torching his own house while his three young children were sleeping. Directed by Edward Zwick, the movie starts with the deadly fire and the rage that is in Todd seems to be mirrored in the fire that consumes his family. Todd is arrested when the police conclude that the fire was arson. Todd's trial has all the earmarks of a travesty of justice - his attorney can barely stay awake during the trial and put up no defense. While Stacy, who was not home when the fire started, is convinced of Todd's innocence, she is stands alone on his side during the trail, but after Todd is convicted, she abandons him. The scenes of Todd in a Texas prison are pretty much standard movie issue: brutal guards who are only nominally less violent than Todd's fellow inmates. "Baby killer" is all anyone sees when they look at Todd and his violent behavior seems to justify everyone's prejudices about him. Then, halfway through the movie, we jump ahead several years to when Elizabeth Gilbert (,Laura Dern), an upper middle class Texas writer, gets involved in Todd's case. While I just saw the movie, I cannot explain to you how that happens - it just does. Elizabeth has her own problems. She is trying to raise two teenage children while their father/her ex-husband is dying of cancer. Zwick and screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher run into problems trying to tell both Elizabeth's story and Todd's. There is not enough time in this 130 minute movie to do both. When Elizabeth's husband dies, we have to make do with a minute or so of her and the children grieving in bed together. In a later scene, her children accuse her of caring more about Todd than her own children, but that 30 second scene is all we get of that issue. In an interview following the movie, Zwick said that he wanted to make a movie that was all of one piece instead of a 5 or 6 episode TV movie. Sadly, he didn't streamline the story to fit into the movie format. Todd is the story and what happens to him and how he changes is the core of the movie. To fit in Elizabeth, Zwick is forced to jump from out-of-control Todd to Todd as Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) in The Shawshank Redemption without the time necessary to show the transition. Having said all that, this is a movie worth seeing. The acting is first class. Jack O'Connell and Emily Meade are incredible as the arguing, fist-fighting, loving couple from the wrong side of the tracks. Dern, as usual, is simply outstanding. And while I think that Zwick took a wrong turn or two, he has made an emotionally gripping movie. While ostensibly this movie's message is that capital punishment is wrong, the real message is that this world is unfair and you had better get used to it or do something about it. Zwick is on the side of those who want to do something about it. Director Edward Zwick Writer Geoffrey Fletcher Stars Laura Dern, Jack O'Connell, Emily Meade, Jade Pettyjohn, Jeff Perry Rating R (Violence and very brief nudity) Running Time 2h 7m Genres Biography, Drama https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1558288979604-WJF2QVKOS51LM4NAFU4P/IRINA.jpg movies reviewed - IRINA, A STORY ABOUT US Every once in awhile, you see a movie that gives you hope, again. Hope that movies can be more than spectacles, can be about real people with real problems in real places. It's a hope that started a long time ago when you first saw The Grapes of Wrath, then continued with Bicycle Thieves, Shoeshine, Miracle in Milan, Bitter Rice, Two Women (yes, Italian filmmakers created a mother lode of realistic films) Norma Rae - you get the idea. Movies that move us and tell a story about us. Now, you can add Irina to that list. A Bulgarian movie made by first-time feature director Nadejda Koseva, written by Ms. Koseva, Svetoslav Ovtcharov and Bojan Vuletic, Irina tells the story of a young mother, Irina ( Martina Apostolova), with her baby boy living in a cramped house in a poor village, struggling to keep her family going. Her husband, Sasha ( Hristo Ushev), is unemployed as is Irina's sister, Ludmilla ( Kasiel Noah Asher) who lives with them. One day, the roof falls in - she gets fired from her job and when she gets home early discovers her husband having sex with her sister. That same night, her husband has a terrible accident in which he loses both of his legs. We are in a world where things like this happen. It's the real world inhabited not by good guys and bad guys but by people who are sometimes good and sometimes bad. Director Koseva, in a conversation after the showing of Irina, said that the inspiration for making this movie was her experience having a child several years ago when she realized that, contrary to accepted belief, women were not only men's equal in strength, they far exceeded men. Irina proves her resiliency when, desperately seeking a way to make money, she turns to being a surrogate mother for a wealthy couple ( Irini Jambonas and Alexander Kossev) who have their own brand of problems. There are no chases, no one has super powers to surmount their everyday problems of finding money to eat, coal to keep warm and a place to call home. The best these characters can hope for is a chance to be forgiven and to forgive. Irina, its creators and cast have won awards in film festivals all over the world and now have won both the audience favorite award and the judges award as Best Film at SEEfest 2019. This is not some obscure vision of life in the 21st Century, but a timeless tale of one woman's quest for a better world for her family and herself. In that quest, in her journey, all of us can see our own. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1558289182229-EQMK5FBMAJJJEWT95Q3L/ME.jpg movies reviewed - THE DISTANCE BETWEEN ME AND ME THE DISTANCE BETWEEN ME AND ME Directors, Mona Nicoară and Dana Bunescu, in The Distance Between Me and Me have given us a vivid portrait of the poet, musician, intellectual, and committed communist Nina Cassian who lived in Romania from her birth in 1924 until she was forced into exile in 1985. More than that, their film shows us the conflicts between an artist, seeking to expose the world around her, and the government of her country, seeking to cover up that same world. Romania after World War II became a dictatorship under the influence of the USSR. The film shows Cassian being interviewed during this period and also appearing in a state-sponsored film where she appears at a gathering of factory workers and discusses her poetry. The 'workers' express dissatisfaction with her poetry and all modern poetry as being too difficult to understand, even to college educated workers. Cassian tells us, in the lengthy interview done with her by the filmmakers in the United States toward the end of Cassian's life. She reveals that 'metaphors' were banned in Romania for many years. She explains that she was forced to turn to writing music since, she explains, the censors did not know what to make of a major C or minor C - did major C mean freedom or was did it mean that there was a longing to be free? The film examines the files of the State Security apparatus that kept her under surveillance for years. Many people urged her to flee, but she refused since Romania was her country and she loved it, just as she loved Communism which she believes never existed in Romania or the USSR. The Distance Between Me and Me is more relevant today than ever. It shows us what can happen to a country that has https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1564376744490-6FKPBYDFQ3561ZUGHJH2/brando.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1571255820962-FVGVQYHHGF1W3TR8W4FT/joker.jpeg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1571847749248-BE15CEEC8DX47T9WMT5W/laundromat.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1575070392341-JSZKF1VP4ZA9FPGG03VH/irisman.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1576087752536-PIZOI9EZE0J8U655IEV2/marrstory.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1577218161603-5DV53SVRJXOZZ0FN0LZ2/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - BOMBSHELL BOMBSHELL By Armen Pandola In Graham Greene's The Third Man, directed by Carol Reed, an American writer of westerns with the improbable name Holly Martins (Joseph Cotton) travels to post-WWII Vienna to work with his childhood friend, Harry Lime (Orson Welles). When he arrives, he discovers that Lime is dead and the police think Lime committed heinous crimes. Martins tells a book club audience that he is writing a new book based on his late friend's adventures. A shadowy business associate of the late Lime tells him that he is doing something very dangerous - mixing fact with fiction. He threatens Martins by advising him to stick to fiction, pure fiction. In Bombshell, screenwriter Charles Randolph (The Big Short) dangeruously combines the story of two actual victims of sexual harassment by Fox News creator and CEO Roger Ailes (John Lithgow) with fictional characters who are victims of Ailes' scabrous sexual appetite. Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is a star at Fox but her unwillingness to continue to succumb to Ailes' advances leaves her without a friend at Fox and she is demoted to an afternoon show and then to the door. Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) is the rising star at Fox who has been similarly 'Ailesed' and makes the mistake of asking Ailes' other creation, Donald Trump, some embarrassing questions about his demeaning of women. The third member of this trio of graces is Kayla Popisil (Margot Robbie), a fictional character who, the author claims, is a composite of many women at Fox who were forced to kneel at the altar of Ailes. For those who have not drunk the Kool Aid, sympathizing with Carlson and Kelly is a tough sell. Sure, no matter what your politics, you have a right to be free of licentious bosses, but - and this is a big BUT - It is difficult to work up a lot of indignation for women who made their careers spouting right-wing/religious prattle while kow-towing to the sexual fantasies of men who ran Fox. Bombshell director Jay Roach (Meet the Fockers, Austin Powers) tries to keep things light and fast. The only scene of actual sexual harassment that is shown is Ailes forcing Popisil to lift her already short skirt up to reveal her panty. But this scene occurs only after Popisil has followed Ailes' pimp/secretary into the elevator with the intention of getting noticed and sent into the liars' den, Ailes' office. Of course, she didn't know what was going to be expected of her, but she was already in an organization that exploited its women and made no secret of the fact that it wished the feminist movement ill. So, in a movie about work-place sexual harassment, the most powerful scene in the movie is a phone call that Popisil has with her cubicle partner, Jess Carr (Kate Mckinnon) in which she reveals that she has succumbed to Ailes' advances and had sex with him. I cannot imagine that this would have been the case if a woman was hired to direct or write the script. Why are we still allowing Hollywood men to tell these stories? Bombshell wants to tell this powerful story of sex and TV, but without too much politics. It follows on the heels of Showtimes' The Loudest Voice with a bravura performance by Russell Crowe as Ailes. While TLV concentrated on Carlson (Naomi Watts), Bombshell focuses on Kelly and fictional Popisil. Kelly's husband (Mark Duplass) is in a few scenes in which he tries to protect his wife from right-wing bullies, but, ultimately, he is disappointed in how his wife deals with the blowback from her confrontation with Trump - but that is the point! Kelly got where she was at Fox because she knew how to play that game. Carlson is fired at the beginning of the movie and her quest to get other harassed Fox female employees to come forward is the driving force of the movie. The performances are pitch-perfect and, as opposed to The Irishman, the accents and make-up match the acting. As they use to say in movie publicity ads, Charlize Theron IS Megyn Kelly! Bombshell ends with Ailes getting the boot from the boss, Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm Mcdowell), Carlson gets her humongous settlement, Kelly does the right thing and the fictional Popisil rides off into the fictional horizon. A blurb tells us that Fox paid $50 million to various women to settle harassment claims, but $65 to Ailes as a parting kiss. I liked Bombshell, but it could have been better. Ailes did not exist in a vacuum - it takes an entire company to make a serial sexual predator. The entire Fox phenomenon and culture was to blame. There was and is nothing that Fox will not do to feed and grow its audience of right-wing, conspiracy-loving, women-hating, war-mongering red-state viewers. Sure, a lot of very good people watch Fox, but these very good people have to ignore a whole lot of nasty behavior by Fox men, just as the female Trumpsters have to ignore almost every tweet, speech and diatribe by the Predator-in-Chief. That is the real story - not what happened, but how and why it happened. We're still waiting for that movie. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1577654478737-PI2226JM1ZY7V0XSHR0K/2popes.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1579582723916-XD6D6G57WO3F4VDBTN29/1917.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1580930455864-Q8EMOJSZ0OMKLKXCFJHL/amerfactory.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1583025988866-O0CQBVXH40K4LHL92YL7/TLTHW1.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1590793843571-RFM6CPUZETWMJC0CPTCZ/weare1.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1590962520837-4ZIF77I3VCFXHTXK0MXZ/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed FILM AND CULTURE by Armen Pandola A nation's films tell us a lot about it. In almost every movie, a piece of a nation's culture is revealed. We have been exporting American culture throughout the world and for much of the 20th century, American movies, TV and music dominated the airways. That is changing. The WE ARE ONE film festival allows us to look at the movies of other cultures and two of them reveal cultures as different as India and Israel. In Prateek Vats' Eeb Allay Ooo, Anjani (Shardul Bhardwaj), plays a young migrant in New Delhi who has the job of monkey repeller - yes, you read that right, monkey repeller. In India, monkeys are treated as messengers from god and are sacred. As such, they roam New Delhi's government center with impudence and must be repelled - but gently. Anjani must mimic aggressive langurs, the monkeys' natural enemies, with langur sounds - ”eeb,” “allay,” and “ooo.” Anjani lives in a village outside New Delhi with his pregnant ill nourished sister, (Nutan Sinha) and brother-in-law cop (Shashi Bhushan). Their tiny home serves as his sister's workplace, bagging spices for sale. The squalor of their lives is matched only by its uncertainty - each of them is desperate to keep their employment in a place where unemployment means almost certain death. Their employers know this and it is not unusual to see a boss physically reprimand an employee. Eeb Allay Ooo shows us a world unlike anything in America. It does so with a mixture of comedy and drama that mimics the lives it portrays, full of laughter, fear and despair. This is not the new India with a booming tech economy, but the India of over 1.3 billion people and a GDP per capita ranked 139th in the world. It's a vibrant dangerous place where mobs can kill a person who dares injure a monkey. It is a place much like the rest of the world outside of our western world bubble. It's time to take a look. Dover Kosashvili's Late Marriage is an Israeli movie about love, family and passion. Zaza (Lior Ashkenazi), a 31 year old PhD student at Tel Aviv University has never grown up - he studies philosophy and is totally dependent on his parents (Moni Moshonov and Lili Kosashvili - the director’s mother) who shop him around to dozens of prospective brides. Meanwhile Zaza is having a passionate affair with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz), a Moroccan divorcée with a six-year-old daughter (Sapir Kugman). When he rejects another potential bride, his family decides to confront the truth and that's when the movie really begins. Late Marriage shows us a world very different than our love-is-all fairy-tale marriage one. It's a culture that prizes family and tradition above individual happiness - or rather a culture that believes strong family ties and upholding traditions is the only true path to happiness. Taking a long look at the world outside of our own helps us to keep our vision clear - like looking at faraway horizons helps maintain healthy eyesight. Try it - you'll never look at things the same. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1592415738465-Y91EADX3ZQ0H4R1N2SM7/afi-logo.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1624404056361-7YOTAJ19EPB93OAHE7ZB/AFI2021.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1624666186828-8D09LUD28FBPJBCO71HJ/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - 9/11: One day in America Review of the documentary 9/11: One Day in America, about 9/11 and the people who were there. #NYFD #NYPD https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1627512971675-YXC6IDPQ7IPDMUA87UFR/mrsoul.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1637086385620-3I122ABU4KZMD146SGUF/nycdoc.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1639758800700-6B742GRA33SA9G988MLD/image-asset.jpg movies reviewed - WEST SIDE STORY 2021 WEST SIDE STORY 2021 By armen pandola On September 26, 1957, West Side Story (WSS) opened on Broadway to rave reviews. It has not been out of production since then. The story of star-crossed lovers from rival families or clans or gangs is an old one. Shakespeare penned the most famous version and called it Romeo and Juliet. Three Hundred and Fifty years later, Jerome Robbins, an American choreographer and director, had the idea of updating the story and putting it to music. Leonard Bernstein, boy wonder conductor and composer, was enlisted to write the music and an even younger prodigy, Stephan Sondheim, was commissioned to write the lyrics. Veteran playwright, Arthur Laurents, wrote the book. Together, they created one of the great works of the 20th Century - and they never all worked together again. In 1961, a movie was made based on the show and was greeted with even greater acclaim, winning 10 Oscars. One of the multitude of trivia questions about this movie is - what director won Best Director for his first and only movie? Jerome Robbins co-directed with Robert Wise and not only never made another movie but was fired from the job less than half-way through production. It didn’t matter - he had already left his imprint. The new WSS movie, directed by Steven Spielberg and with a script by Tony Kushner, has kept all the elements and characters that are important to the story including its original late 1950s time - rival gangs, the Jets (white) and the Sharks (Puerto Rican), fight for turf on the West Side of NYC when a former Jet (Tony) and a Puerto Rican (Maria) fall in love. Riff, leader of the Jets, is best friends with Tony while Bernardo, leader of the Sharks, is Maria’s brother and lover of Maria’s best friend, Anita. The main characters are rounded out by two police officers and the owner of a neighborhood store, Doc in the original show and movie and his widow, Valentina, a Puerto Rican woman, in Kushner’s script. Kushner also adds another level of conflict by setting the action in the ‘slum’ that is being cleared (destroyed) so that Lincoln Center can be built. The changes are minimal in spite of the news stories about how the new movie has eliminated racist Puerto Rican references. The real change is that the new script provides a more complete backstory for the main characters - Tony is on parole for having almost killed a rival gang member in a previous rumble or fight, Bernardo is a professional prize fighter, Anita and Maria don’t work in a local dress shop but instead Anita works from home as a seamstress and Maria as an overnight cleaner at Gimbels. Chino, Maria’s Bernardo-approved Puerto Rican suitor, is made an accountant-to-be and a more sympathetic character than in the original where he is really just a vehicle for the plot. Go see it. WSS still has the ability to move you in a multitude of ways and the new movie has the most important element from the original - the music and lyrics. There are just very few musicals that have music this good - Gustav Dudamel does the conducting. And the lyrics keep on giving voice to the basic emotions that still drive human actions - the pride of belonging (When you’re a jet, you’re a jet all the way form your first cigarette to your last dyin’ day), the magic of first love (Maria! Say it loud and there's music playing— Say it soft and it's almost like praying), the impatience of youth (Today, The minutes seem like hours, The hours go so slowly, And still the sky is light . . . Oh moon, grow bright, And make this endless day endless night!) and the longing for a place in this world (There's a place for us, A time and place for us. Hold my hand and we're halfway there. Hold my hand and I'll take you there…Somehow, Some day, Somewhere!) A big deal was made about the fact that the Puerto Rican characters sometimes speak Spanish with no subtitles - it does add to the authenticity and is perfectly understandable by anyone. The Doc - Valentina switch is more problematic. Played by Rita Moreno who played Anita in the 1961 movie, Valentina sings Somewhere instead of Tony and Maria which makes the reconciliation of Tony and Maria after the rumble seem forced and choppy. Also, by having Valentina and the late Doc as a ‘mixed’ couple (white and Puerto Rican), it diminishes the difficulty and uniqueness of Tony and Maria’s relationship. Also, there has been much written about how the violence of the sexual assault on Anita by the Jets is more realistic than the original movie - not true. In fact, the violence of this scene in the original is much more visceral. These are minor defects compared to the achievement of bringing this great musical to life for a new generation of cast and crew. Justin Peck did the choreography, borrowing heavily from Jerome Robbins’s original direction. The cast are uniformly very good with a stand-out performance by Mike Faist as Riff. In the end, we have a new WSS to enjoy and that can’t be anything but good news for fans of the much too Disneyfied movie musicals of our time. It makes one long for more - how about a new Guys and Dolls movie? Starring: Ana Isabelle, Ansel Elgort, Ariana DeBose, Brian d'Arcy James, Corey Stoll, Curtiss Cook, David Alvarez, Ezra Menas, Jamie Harris, Jamila Velazquez, Josh Andrés Rivera, Kyle Allen, Maddie Ziegler, Mike Faist, Rachel Zegler, Rita Moreno, Talia Ryder Summary: This reimagining of the beloved musical West Side Story tells the classic tale of fierce rivalries and young love in 1957 New York City. Director: Steven Spielberg Genre(s): Drama, Romance, Crime, Musical Rating: PG-13 Runtime: 156 min https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1663527746169-ZXXNISCWVF73QXR9W7FS/SEEHOWTHEYRUN.jpg movies reviewed https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1691002293463-9X2MLO1SB0S00ZE88KHN/image.jpg movies reviewed - OPPENHEIMER OPPENHEIMER Or How to Make an Atomic Movie Bomb by armen pandola Movies about famous scientists are difficult. The most obvious problem is that most people don’t understand science and many are actively hostile, remembering those numbing lectures in school and being forced to memorize things like the Periodic Table. That’s why Hollywood mostly avoided movies about science and gave people something easier - science fiction. In SciFi, you don’t have to understand anything, you just have to see it. The explanation of ‘warp speed’ is the visual of the Enterprise zooming away into the distance. When Hollywood has tackled bios about scientists, it has concentrated on the personal story a la The Imitation Game. The formula for this kind of movie dates back to The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936). The scientist struggles to get people to understand how amazing his discovery is and spends most of the movie in Sisyphus-mode, struggling to push that boulder (his discovery) up the hill and into the light. Chris Nolan’s Oppenheimer takes a different path. Fractured and polychromatic, he tries to immerse the viewer in the inner world of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the ‘Father of the Atomic Bomb.” While three hours long, the movie provides information on its subject in small packets: Oppenheimer, the student at Cambridge, clumsily failing to perform an experiment in a lab, is punished by his teacher and, in revenge, he prepares a poison apple for his teacher. Oppenheimer meeting a young woman at a party, taking her to bed and reading Sanskrit poetry to her as they have sex. Oppenheimer riding a horse in the wild countryside of New Mexico. Oppenheimer giving a physics lecture in German after learning the language in only six weeks. After the first hour of this fractured story, the movie settles down to tell two interwoven main stories - the making of the first atomic bomb and the government hearing to strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance nine years later. The centerpiece of the first story is Trinity, the name Oppenheimer gave to the test of the first atomic bomb exploded on earth. Nolan attempts to make the audience ‘experience’ the event by showing us the bomb explode in silence, as its first viewers did, since light travels faster than sound. Then, the sound thunders through the theater and finally, we see the blast knock down people two miles from the explosion. It’s the best sequence in the movie. Most of the characters in the movie are mere names - Einstein, Bohr, Lawrence, Truman. That is because Nolan doesn’t care about characters - just as in his previous movie, Dunkirk, Nolan has little interest in the humans in this story (see my review of Dunkirk, here). Cillian Murphy plays the title character with the same wide-eyed, semi-surprised look throughout the movie. While it was universally agreed that Oppenheimer was one of the most charming of men and had affairs with many women, you would never know it by this performance. Yes, Nolan has someone say that he was a ‘womanizer’ but why people, both men and women, adored him is never shown. Nolan makes the audience ‘experience’ the first atomic bomb, but nothing of the personality of his title character. The other main character is Lewis Strauss (pronounced ‘straws’) played by Robert Downey, Jr. Strauss was a very complicated man - financial wizard, adviser to four presidents, philanthropist, original member of the Atomic Energy Commission and a man who was one of the few in government trying to allow more Jews into the US during the Nazi reign. Yet, in Oppenheimer, Nolan portrays him as a simple villain, a foil to the title character’s good-hearted innocence. The source of Strauss’ hatred of Oppenheimer, according to Nolan, is a foolish misunderstanding. Really? While this may even be true, it is a slim thread to hold up a three hour movie about America’s most controversial scientist and the beginning of the atomic age. You don’t end Hamlet with the revelation that he was wrong all along and Claudius didn’t kill his father. Mere misunderstandings do not make for great drama. The other characters are more like line drawings, some with great make-up. Emily Blunt is the drunken, bitter wife of Oppenheimer. Florence Pugh is his unbalanced, sexy mistress, Matt Damon is the tough, no nonsense General in charge of the project. Lots of others are there for a scene or two, mere dots on a ten foot pointillist painting of dread and despair. Stories like this one - about huge, important figures and events are better served by the new medium of limited series television. Told over several one or two hour episodes, characters and events can be given the time and depth needed to tell such monumental stories. In fact, TV has already done that with Oppenheimer. A 1980 BBC Masterpiece Theatre seven part series with Sam Waterson as Oppenheimer did a much better job in telling the story (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppenheimer_(TV_series), with none of the pyrotechnics of modern movies. If Oppenheimer turns out to be a box office success, it will have more to do with the lack of current movies appealing to adult sensibilities than its own merits. Hollywood is desperate for great movies that are also big hits. I wish I could like this movie - I, too, would like to see a great movie that’s a great hit, too. ADDENDUM Since I have reviewed Oppenheimer, many of you have written or spoken to me in disagreement. You like the movie. I thought I should clarify the reasons for my disappointment in this movie. J. Robert Oppenheimer was dismissed from his position as an advisor to the US government not because of some stupid argument with Lewis Strauss, head of the Atomic Energy Commission. Yes, they did have disagreements and yes, Oppenheimer could be ruthless with people who disagreed with him. And yes, Strauss used all of his powers to cast Oppenheimer as a traitor or, at least, a security risk. But the real reason he was dismissed was because of his beliefs. Oppenheimer was a strong advocate for openness - for telling people the truth. Just as science could never progress without open discussion so too, he believed that democracy could never survive in the dark. The secrets that the US government wanted to keep were not secret to the Russians. They knew all about atomic bombs. No, the secrecy was to keep the American people in the dark. The effects of radiation, the impossibility of defending a nation against nuclear weapons, the fact that these weapons were weapons of terror, meant to destroy people and societies and not just win a battle - all of these secrets and many more were kept from the American people. Most importantly, Oppenheimer was against the Cold War and the Nuclear Arms Race. He saw, as President Eisenhower did and spoke against in his Farewell Speech in 1960, the powerful ‘military-industrial complex’ that has kept the US military in clover and consuming over half of the discretionary budget for the past 75 years. And when Oppenheimer was denied his security clearance, the message to all the other nuclear scientists in America was clear - if we can destroy Oppenheimer’s career, we can destroy anybody’s. Now, that is a story worth telling. Also, it happens to be the truth. So a movie about Oppenheimer that does not tell the truth is just too ironic - and sad. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1703345666315-EX45IMY1LDK29PAZA3MZ/image-asset.jpeg movies reviewed - Maestro or How to Conduct a One Note Movie by armen pandola MAESTRO Or How to Conduct a One Note Movie by armen pandola Leonard Bernstein was one of the great musical talents of the 20th century. Like many people of a certain age, I first learned his name and heard his music when I saw the film, "West Side Story." Then, I began watching the 'Young People Concerts' and discovered classical music. Bernstein never talked down to us, his audience. He made classical music approachable and, most importantly, exciting. Whenever I could, I listened to or watched his concerts and bought his records. So, I looked forward to a film biography of him. How did this son of a toupee maker become one of the most admired conductors, composers, teachers and performers of our time? What qualities did he have that made his music so exciting, so life-enhancing. He seemed to conquer every medium he touched. The amazing film score for "On the Waterfront", the hit musical theater shows, TV shows, albums, classical compositions - it was all too much for one person. Bradley Cooper's "Maestro" is not interested in any of these questions. Instead, it is devoted, entirely, to his personal life with a few mentions of his professional successes and one gaudy, Oscar-hopeful scene when Lenny (the movie character) conducts Mahler. If a person knew nothing of Bernstein's life and saw this movie, he would wonder what all the hoopla is about. The movie has no context - none. It begins with an aged Bernstein playing the piano before a film crew and then suddenly jumps back in time (and into black and white - a real cliché). The b/w is supposed to tell you the time period - long ago. Lenny gets a phone call and goes berserk with joy while his male bed companion goes on sleeping. Soon, we are sleeping too. I knew that Bernstein was married and that he was bi-sexual, but I never read gossip and so had no idea and no interest in his private life. "Maestro" is about that private life and his relationship with his wife, Felicia Montealegro (Carry Mulligan). While a couple of other characters have a few moments of screen time, none are 'characters,' but merely background. "Maestro" is a pas de deux. The movie jumps around without any identifiable purpose. Nothing about his music is explored or his beliefs. His early commitment to the state of Israel, his controversial political beliefs, his legacy of creating institutions for musical study - not even his incredible concert at the site of the then- recently fallen Berlin Wall - nothing is explored in this movie but Lenny and his penchant for young men and the effect that has on his marriage. For the first half of the movie, there is no drama, no comedy - nothing. It's as if Andy Wharhol filmed his life in jump cuts. Then the first conflict in the movie is his wife telling Lenny that he is becoming careless and his bi-sexuality is becoming too public. This is strange since early on, presumably in the late 1940s, we see Lenny on a busy New York street embracing and kissing on the lips a male lover. Lenny is never inhibited about his desires. So why the sudden concern? Again, no context. Bernstein avoided all the terrible prejudices against homosexuals during his time by marrying and having children. Yes, he loved Felicia and his children, but it was convenient that he did marry since he probably would never have headed a major orchestra if he had not. No mention of any of this. So the movie jumps along. It ends with his marriage falling apart because of his lack of discretion (but he never had discretion so why it suddenly matters is unexplored), then coming back together when Felicia is diagnosed with breast cancer that has spread to her lungs. Lenny returns to be with her during her final months. After her death, he announces that he must have total freedom if he is to fulfill his artistic goals and the next scenes show his attachment to a young male student, snorting cocaine and dancing wildly in a disco - as if that is what freedom is. I am sorry for Bernstein's legacy. We are the stories we tell about ourselves. Future generations will watch this movie and may think that this was his life. But what we do in bed does not define us. Not even our marriages define us. We define ourselves by all that we do and Leonard Bernstein did more for music in the 20th century than any other American - and telling that story would have been a great movie. https://www.itsjustamovie.com/itsjusttv-1 daily 0.75 2025-02-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1526514300452-AHDI54TLZQ4HDW41DTE9/BLETCHLEY.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525147277887-6XA83N7G6TX8JLM1LAAX/CARDS.jpeg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525530859530-HBNFEO25IHUMCI30XD7P/image-asset.jpeg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525530911757-67155W4EY097O2BO930F/Netflix_Logo.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1525999343606-FEVYSS1B2JY98JJ766G8/61OVS7PdJ-L._SL1024_.jpg itsjusttv - Westworld Season 1 Official Trailer (2016) | HBO (MATURE) https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1528502134928-ECR968YF5YLRTWYV5LD1/download.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1529550655185-9Y35VG7QGO50AWAMS48U/MV5BZTk5OTU5Y2EtY2M1NC00N2E5LWJlMTMtODgzMDc2NDk1MTczXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMjMyMzI4MzY%40._V1_UY268_CR4%2C0%2C182%2C268_AL_.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1529693713495-VLHPWRFB1WAGCSZGV15S/download.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1535332833626-XCZP1UST8IP29YUH1CV9/3+IN+1.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1537501250239-RTPY6S5MTJQV9RDV8H0G/thecode.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1538629388834-4U6X493RNO0VBXXH8LVR/SOPHIA.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1552345925255-TDRLTKB2IJEDAXJ3ZT8H/netflix10.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1552688483972-6Z83E9VJ454OA3EWZ5MQ/resisit.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1554079058152-YX7BWFQL01FUB988GM0Z/vampires.jpeg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1554321848632-PXZOAXHG0JVSCO7DRD0R/HANNA.jpeg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1555005026441-HSZN7QOPJ8Q5G117PVJV/fosse.jpeg itsjusttv - FOSSE/VERDON - A PAIR OF ACES FOSSE/VERDON - A PAIR OF ACES Bob Fosse grew up wanting to become Fred Astaire. Problem was - when he grew up Fred Astaire was still dancing and, more importantly, the public didn’t want another Fred Astaire. Musicals were a dying movie genre. One thing Fosse did have in common with Fred is that they both lost their hair. Unlike Fred who went out and got a great hair piece made, Fosse started to wear hats. Not only did he wear them, he incorporated them into his dances and, when he started to choreograph, into his choreography. Hats went out of style but not in Fosse’s world. Fosse did get to perform in a great movie musical, Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate based on Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. Ann Miller, who played Bianca, tells the story that Fosse did his own choreography in the movie - and with the legendary Hermes Pan (Astaire’s personal choreographer) as the movie’s choreographer, it was incredible that they let Fosse do that, but the result is one of the first modern dance routines to be put on film. Gwen Verdon was a broadway baby who danced and sang her way to four Tonys in six years. She was incredibly versatile, making hits of some musicals that have long since been put in mothballs (Redhead). Her lasting fame is as part of one of the great artist marriages of their time. While they never rivaled the publicity showered on the most famous husband and wife team of their time (Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton), they made more and better art together. Fosse pulled off one of the great trifectas in entertainment history winning a Tony, Oscar and Emmy in 1973 for directing Pippen, Cabaret and Liza With a Z. FX’s new series, Fosse/Verdon wants you to know that the iconic musicals created by Fosse were really a team effort. Written by Steven Levenson and Joel Fields, the series starts with a look at the team in the 1960s. Fosse has directed the movie, Sweet Charity, which he directed on Broadway starring Verdon. Of course, the studio wanted a big name so it hired Shirley MacLaine ( who started as a dancer). If you ever saw that movie, you know that while the movie has some Fosse touches, they get buried in the glitz of then-Hollywood’s idea of a musical - Fosse says that the movie made Times Square look like a Disney set (and of course, now it does look just like that). That movie cost $20 million (a lot of money in 1968) and made back less than half that. Fosse comments, it’s just a movie, but he knows that he has to get back on a movie set to prove he can make a successful movie or he is through as a movie director. Strangely, that same year, Francis Ford Coppola made his own disaster musical movie, Finian’s Rainbow starring Fred Astaire in his last dancing movie role. It would take the The Godfather to revive his career - and to stretch the connection further, Fosse beat Coppola for the Best Director Oscar in 1972 when both The Godfather and Cabaret were hits. Sam Rockwell has transformed himself again, this time as a charming devil who just happens to have a vision of what the musical should look like for an audience that no longer wants to see Fred and (fill in the blank) dance off into movie musical bliss. And Michele Williams does that voodoo that only she does so well, transforming herself into Gwen Verdon. Williams has taken on some of the most difficult roles and made them look easy - from Marilyn Monroe on film to Sally Bowles in theater. While there is much to love about Fosse/Verdon, the series does suffer from some enduring cliches, like the Hollywood producers who never seem to get it, to understand that great art, usually, is very profitable. It seems that Hollywood is always underestimating the geniuses whom it hires in the first place because of their genius. I have heard it so often, it must be true, right? Fosse and Verdon had intertwining careers but as his career took off in the late 60s and 70s, Verdon was having trouble finding good roles as aging actresses always had in those days (are we any better today?). Unlike the streaming giant Netflix, FX is releasing one show a week for eight weeks so you’ll have to be patient - a thing that Fosse never was. Fosse/Verdon airs Tuesdays on FX at 10 pm Eastern. Episodes will be on FX’s streaming platforms after air. ANSWERS: All That Jazz from the musical Chicago which Fosse directed, choreographed and wrote the book while Verdon starred in the original stage version as Roxie Hart. Heart from the musical Damn Yankees which Fosse did the choreography for both play and movie while Verdon starred as Lola in both, too. Cabaret from the movie Cabaret which Fosse directed (winning an Oscar for Best Director) and choreographed. Big Spender from Sweet Charity which Fosse directed and choreographed while Verdon starred on Broadway. Fosse directed the movie which lost a ton of money, many thought because Shirley MacLaine couldn’t do the title role as well as Verdon. From This Moment On from Kiss Me Kate which Fosse starred in as one of the dancing suitors of the Shrew’s younger sister. Take a look at this great dance sequence form the movie. Whatever Lola Wants from Damn Yankees - take a look at Verdon in this classic. It’s Alright with Me from Can-Can which verdon starred in and won her first Tony. Just In Time from Bells Are Ringing which Fosse choreographed along with Jerome Robbins. I Could Write a Book from Pal Joey. Fosse played the lead in the 1963 revival and won a Tony (unlike the movie, the original B’way musical saw Joey Evans as a dancer not a singer and so Fosse was a natural for it). On Broadway from the autobiographical movie, All That Jazz written, directed and choreographed by Fosse. Take a look at this incredible opening sequence of the movie. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1555520445650-AS967DQL62J8YLXTGJIL/ourplanet.jpg itsjusttv - OUR PLANET - ASTOUNDING! All of us remember the various nature shows on TV - at one time or another, we have seen the lions chase the Thomson gazelles or the humpback whales, all 30 tons of them, burst out of the sea and take to the air for just an instant before crashing back down with an explosion of water and sea foam. The BBC's Planet Earth was one of the best, but there are dozens of nature shows on TV every year, from PBS's Nature to Jack Hanna's Wild Countdown. The best of these shows not only introduce us to the world we live in but rarely see, they also give us a sense of the community of all living things that inhabit our blue marble - anyone who was around in the late 60s knows when the environmental movement began, it was the day that the Apollo 8 astronauts sent back this photo of the earth, looking back from the moon: Our Planet, the new Netflix 8-part series narrated by David Attenborough, is to the usual nature show like Stevie Wonder is to the usual harmonica player - they're both playing the harmonica but Stevie is on a totally different level. What makes Our Planet stand out is the incredible photography that will show you things you have never seen before. Oh, I know, you have seen it all - well, as Al Jolson use to say, you ain't seen nothin' yet! The series' eight episodes of about 50 minutes each tells the story of our planet's incredible diversity and, also, its inhabitants' total interdependence by looking at the world through its large communities - Jungles, Coastal Seas, Deserts, etc. Conveniently, the first episode is a preview of all that is to come, so you can take a look and see if this is your cup of tea. What you will see is a world where each plant and animal has found a place, a niche, in which to make a living, that is, to survive, but not independently. No, the wild kingdom ( remember, Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom with Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler) is like a giant puzzle with each piece fitting precisely into his tailored spot. In the Coastal Seas, when predators such as dolphins attack huge schools of anchovy or herring, above the sea, the hunting birds are all waiting for the feast to begin (no one knows how the birds know when to show up) as smaller fish rise up to the top of the sea to avoid the dolphins only to be in range of the cormorants or petrels which dive into the sea, snatch one up and fly away. Or the courtship rituals of various birds, the nurturing instincts of wild hunting dogs, the journeys of elephants for water in the desert - the list of fascinating subjects is endless and all tell the same story - how a particular animal or plant has, over the course of millenia, adapted itself to an environment that is quickly changing and may be gone in our own lifetimes. But Our Planet does not preach, it shows and tells. What it has to show and tell is extraordinary. Our planet has a diversity of life that is astounding - did you know there are spinning dolphins? The best way to convey to you the wonder of Our Planet is to show you the trailer - Take a look and I am sure you will agree. Our Planet is worth your time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1555636667889-6D362UQJMBGJKKT5N0JR/lesmiz.jpg itsjusttv - LES MISERABLES - THE MASTERPIECE Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (The Wretched) is a wonder. At over 1500 pages, it examines a time, a place and various people as well as any novel could hope. Published in 1862 (the US Civil War was a year old), Hugo wrote the novel in exile from France. In 1848, Napoleon III (a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) was elected to a four year term as President of the France with no right to run again. In 1851, he declared himself Emperor of France and created a dictatorship. Hugo was a vocal critic and exiled for his views. Hugo had established his reputation over twenty years before the the publication of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in 1831. Tha novel helped to revive the fortunes of Notre Dame cathedral be making it the central character in the novel (the French title of this book is Notre-Dame de Paris or Our Lady of Paris) As a result, Notre Dame underwent a significant renovation, including the refurbishment of the spire that fell in the recent fire. All of this is to say that when Hugo published Les Miserables, he had a substantial following and the reception given to his new novel was unparalleled in the history of publishing up to that time. The novel follows the fortunes of one man, Jean Valjean, imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread. There are too many characters to name, but the major ones all revolve around the story of Jean Valjean. Javert is a police inspector who vows to bring Valjean to justice when he steals again after his release from prison. For over 17 years, Javert pursues Valjean who has changed his name and become a respectable, prosperuous citizen, a mayor of his town and owner of a prosperous business. One day, he dismisses a female employee, Fantine, for lying and her life slowly slips into poverty and degradation as she desperately tries to keep her daughter, Cosette, from suffering the same fate. Valjean regrets what he did and seeks out Fantine and, later, her daughter whom he raises as his own. Les Miserables has been made into numerous movies and TV limited series, beginning with a 1909 silent version. The story has so many characters and plot twists that no movie, no TV series, can do it justice. Most follow the main branch - Javert's quest to capture Valjean and Valjean's relationship with Fantine and her daughter, Cosette. PBS' Masterpiece Theater brings us a new version in a six part series. What makes this version exceptional is that it is written by Andrew Davies who wrote the original BBC version of House of Cards (take a look at my review comparing the American version with Davies'). Davies knows how to tell complicated stories and, more importantly, is aware of all the previous versions of Les Miserables and knows better than to follow the usual well-worn template. As a result, we see parts of Les Miserables never before explored on film (or in that popular musical version). The cast is outstanding, but then actors have been drawn to these incredible characters for over a century. Dominic West (Jean Valjean) made his mark in The Wire and more recently in The Affair. David Oyelowo (Javert) had his break-out performance as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr in Selma. Lily Collins (Fantine) was in Love, Rosie, and The Blind Side. Olivia Colman, direct from her Oscar winning turn in The Favorite plays the mother of all wicked step-mothers, Madame Thénardier, while Adeel Akhtar slimes along as her husband. The casting is totally blind as it should be. Davies does an interesting thing with the language - all the characters speak English with no phoney French accents but the background talk, say in a crowd, are in French as are all the written materials - like wanted posters of Valjean. In this way, we get the flavor of the original language within an English version of the novel - very clever and I am unaware of it ever having been done before. In the end, West and Oyelowo have the majoring oars and propel this version of Les Miserables to the top among only a handful of great versions of this timeless tale - you really cannot help but use cliches in dealing with a book of this scope and depth - and humanity. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1558224899282-NU3DMMFD2PUP3WY0Y58P/catch22.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1559254215861-TRH908WCL9CLQQAKZ4NJ/chernobyl.jpg itsjusttv - CHERNOBYL In 1986, the world held its breath as a nuclear plant in the USSR was on the brink of a meltdown. Desperately, the Soviet Union attempted to control both the accident at Chernobyl and the news of what happened there. While much blame was leveled at the USSR for failing to inform the world of the true extent of the disaster, a nuclear plant disaster in 1978 in the United States at Three Mile Island had shown that no nation, democracy or not, was willing to face the consequences of a nuclear plant meltdown. The reasons for their recalcitrance can be summed up neatly in a phrase coined by Herman Kahn, a cold warrior, who used it to describe thinking about nuclear war - thinking about the unthinkable. The new HBO limited series, Chernobyl, takes us to the core of the disaster by looking at it through the eyes of Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) First Deputy Director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy. It is Legasov who has to explain the true extent of the disaster to the Soviet officials (and to us) and how it might be ameliorated. Harris is best known for his work on Mad Men (Lane Pryce) and The Crown (King George VI) and turns in an excellent performance as a man who is torn between what he knows and what he is allowed to tell. The story begins with Legasov making a tape recording of his version of what went wrong at Chernobyl, then killing himself (this is true). From there, we go back to Chernobyl on the day it happened and watch the scientists and technicians set in motion the disaster. Nuclear reactors work just like coal power plants work - a fuel (coal or uranium) is used to heat water to make steam which in turn drives a turbine that makes electricity. The big difference is that if something goes wrong at a coal power plant, there is local damage, but no more. Uranium has unique properties that make it far more dangerous than coal. Uranium produces radiation and radiation is deadly. You cannot see, smell or taste it, but you can die from it. Before Chernobyl, it was thought that a nuclear reactor could not explode. The fact is that it cannot explode like a nuclear bomb, but it can explode like dynamite, and that is what happened at Chernobyl, spreading radioactive debris all around the plant and radioactive smoke for thousands of miles. Chernobyl, created by Craig Mazin, tells its story by concentrating on those who were there. They can be placed into three categories: the government officials who try to conceal the extent of the disaster, scientists who are trying to prevent the disaster from spreading and victims. The government contingent is headed by Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård ). He tries to control the message by telling his superiors that all will be well very soon, but the scope of the disaster changes him and he starts working with Legasov to prevent the meltdown which will radiate the entire water supply of the Ukraine (50 million people and now an independent country) by melting down into the groundwater. Like much of nuclear science in the modern times, radiation is difficult to understand. It is something that can be seen only in its effects, but those effects are horrific. The victims' story is told through the eyes of Lyudmilla Ignatenko (Jessie Buckley), wife of a local firefighter, Vasily Ignatenko (Adam Nagaitis). When the firemen arrived at Chernobyl on the date of the accident, they did not wear any special equipment and thought that they were putting out a large fire. Within an hour, all were suffering from extreme radiation exposure. Ignatenko ends up suffering a death that is difficult to explain (Legasov tries to explain it to Soviet authorities) and more difficult to witness. Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson in another stellar performance) is a scientist who forces her way into the small group of scientists and apparatchiks who are dealing with the crisis. She prevents them from making a huge mistake which would have led to a complete meltdown, then is charged with writing a report about how the accident occured after interviewing those who were running the plant when it happened. Those men are dying, quickly, so her interviews serve the dual purpose of providing information on how the disaster happened and, also, allowing the audience to witness the effects of radiation poisoning. These scenes are difficult to watch. It is Khomyak who sees that the hospital treating the victims has allowed Ignatenko's pregnant wife to visit and actually lie next to him in bed. They had no idea of how dangerous and communicable radiation poisoning is. In the end, Chernobyl is a great story about our modern times. We have discovered the wonders of nuclear fission to not only make bombs but, also, to make energy. There is little doubt that it will be nuclear energy which will power our attempts to reach out beyond our own solar system, but until we can better cope with the potential disasters, nuclear power is more a danger than a benefit. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1560298103644-YWDRYI1SPT5OWRREVPR1/the-handmaid.jpeg itsjusttv - THE HANDMAID'S TALE, SLOWLY THE HANDMAID'S TALE - SEASON 3 The Handmaid's Tale (THT) enters season 3, slowly, literally. The number of slow motion scenes is almost equal to the number of shots showing a close up of Elizabeth Moss' face wearing a scowl or an expression that mimics what a person looks like after smelling something really, really stinky. The slow motion scenes are there for a simple reason: what is being shown on the screen is not dramatic and lacks even a modicum of tension so, slow it down to make it look like it is important and dramatic. Everything looks more meaningful in slow motion. Often directors use slow motion in battle or fight scenes to make them appear more balletic. But, THT adds another sure-fire sign of dead-on-arrival scenes - the meaningful song that is supposed to add depth to the shallow slow motion episodes. Why all this trickery in Season 3? Remember, at the end of Season 2, we left Offred/June (Moss) tossing her newborn baby to a fellow Handmaid who is escaping to Canada. June won't escape because she wants to return and save her older daughter who has been given to a new family. Many people died so she could have this chance to escape and she, herself, for two seasons has been doing everything she could to get out of Gilead, the new truncated, theocratic, male-dominated USA. The cynical among you may suggest that Offred had to stay in Gilead for the best of reasons - the series is over if she doesn't. So what is this third season about? Funny you ask because it is not about much. When she goes to the home where her daughter is being raised, she has a 'mom' moment with the surrogate mother of her daughter in which they talk about what a wonderful little girl she is. This scene is repeated when she has a similar moment with Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) about the baby she bore and helped escape. Serena has a fiery moment of rebellion herself, but it leads nowhere. THT has to move forward in the only way possible - active rebellion in Gilead by its female population. Margaret Atwood, the author of the book on which the series is based, knew better than to take the story that far since, if she did, the book would be more like one written by Fredrick Forsythe than her. But, that is this series' challenge - to transform itself from a drama about women caught in a country ruled by conservative evangelicals to an action story about the new civil war for freedom. And that will offer the opportunity for a lot more slow motion scenes, let alone catchy, upbeat tunes telling all women to - what else? - Let It Go! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1563233410715-YT5U1HRO3LUHCMQYHKBU/sound.jpeg itsjusttv - SOUNDBREAKING: STORIES FROM THE CUTTING EDGE OF RECORDED MUSIC Soundbreaking is an eight-part PBS series on the art and evolution of music recording which is currently available on Hulu. If you love or even just listen to music, you should watch this series. The 20th century changed music. Before that, music was made by people playing musical instruments or singing and could only be experienced live, that is, in a place where the musicians and audience shared the same space. Music was ephemeral as performed because it existed only in the moment it was made. Of course, music was written down and preserved by musical notations, so that a piece by Mozart could be played by people who knew the language of musical notation as often as people wanted to hear it. Also, there was an oral tradition, mostly of folk or popular music, which was passed down the generations by those who made music from memory. Recording music enabled its transmission to great numbers of people who could buy the recording that was preserved on a disc and play it on special machines. Then, radio became popular and another outlet was found so that millions of people could experience a performance as recorded on a disc, all at the same time. With the invention of the microphone, performers didn’t have to sing through megaphones a la Rudy Valle or have leather lungs like Al Jolson and Ethel Merman. The great singers of the mid-20th century all used the microphone as an instrument and played it to great emotional effect, such as Frank Sinatra singing I’m A Fool To Want You. You could whisper a lament and every syllable could be clearly heard. With recording and microphones, what was once an oral tradition of often traveling minstrels, morphed into the popular music of the 20th Century that was as diverse as the people who fell in love with it - jazz, blues, country, pop, folk, rock, hip hop, rap - all kinds of music for all people. Soundbreaking in its first episode gives us a preview of the great musical geniuses who will be profiled in the upcoming episodes. The emphasis is on the music of the second half of the 20th century and how recorded music went from recording engineers trying desperately to mimic the sound of a live performance to artists such as George Martin and The Beatles making sounds that could never be made in a live performance, such as the ground-breaking Tomorrow Never Knows from Revolver. If you are like me, Tomorrow is the song I skipped (it was easy because it was the last song on the second side of the album). Soundbreaking will make you go back and listen again - it is this song which started an entire musical movement of invented sounds as music. From there it is but a small step to the Moog Synthesizer and records such as Manfred Mann’s Blinded by the Light. Soundbreaking features stories about all kinds of music, from the revolutionary discovery of the electric guitar and multi-track recording by Les Paul to Elvis, The Beatles, Stones, Joni Mitchell, Jimi Hendricks, The Who, Annie Lennox, Adele - the list includes all the great innovators of the 20th and early 21st century music. One episode tells of Stevie Wonder’s journey to break free from the shackles of the Motown sound to the revolution in music that he created in the 70s with songs such as Livin’ for the City. Like all geniuses, Stevie Wonder perfected the music of his time, then changed it into something new and never heard before. Music changed forever because of the new technologies that were changing the way musicians could make sounds. By allowing artists to make great records in their own homes, on computers, the new technology has broadened the pool of talent that can produce new music and just as the pool of talent was exponentially expanded by the recorded music industry in the early 20th century, so it has expanded again in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In the process, the new music changed us, its audience. Now, music is everywhere - there is rarely a public space that is silent. We are use to experiencing life with our own soundtrack. Working out or falling asleep, music is there to motivate us or to tranquilize us. Soundbreaking tells the story of how that came to be - and hint at where it is headed. Soundbreaking has a great PBS website that has lesson plans for teachers to use and a wealth of material about music and sound recording. It also has playlists that correspond to each episode so you can listen at your leisure to the greatest sounds of our time. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1565307975815-946V9TBGJ8TP3VLEEKPK/VIETNAM.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1566482013496-FQI0C9VSZ12ONIMPKC3S/CHAPERONE.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570640877428-YZUVPM39ZY3QWC31ZSVI/goliath.jpeg itsjusttv - GOLIATH - SEASON THREE by Armen Pandola GOLIATH - SEASON THREE by Armen Pandola Goliath is an Amazon Prime series about a dissipated lawyer, Billy McBride (Billy Bob Thornton) who lives in a seedy motel room on the beach in Venice, CA. Along with his assistants, Marva Johnson (Julie Brister), JT (Paul Williams) and Patty Solis-Papagian (Nina Arianda) he strikes a blow for truth and justice and along the way makes himself rich. In the third season, new showrunners (David Kelly is now an executive producer) Jennifer Ames and Steve Turner had a couple of aces in the hole - the first two seasons were pretty good and so the show was able to attract an all-star third season cast: Dennis Quaid as a billionaire central valley landowner, Wade Blackwood, who is stealing the people's water to enrich himself, Amy Brenneman as his somewhat psychotic sister, Diana, Beau Bridges as their all-too-careful uncle, Wheeler, Graham Greene as a Native-American shaman Littlecrow who runs the casino owned by Quaid and, finally, a return visit from William Hurt as a ruthless (how trite, really) attorney, Cooperman. The season starts with a bang - Sheryl Fenn is co-owner of a central valley farm that is going under because Quaid has stolen all the water. Suddenly, investigating a strange noise in the night, she walks outside into the fields in her pajamas with no shoes and literally goes under as a massive sinkhole envelops her. Billy and she had been friends in law school (you have to wait a couple of episodes before they decide to tell you about that relationship - hey, you knew Fenn wasn't going to get killed in the first few minutes and just disappear) so he shows up to help her husband (Griffin Dunn) get justice by suing Quaid and his gang who are stealing the water and may have caused the sinkhole. The plot is complicated but worse, it makes no sense. For example, Wade and friends spend a lot of time lighting up a pipeful of stuff put together by shaman Littlecrow and in episode one, Wade imagines himself singing "The Rose" (yeah, Bette Midler) to an admiring audience. OoooKay. There are lots of subplots involving Patty Solis-Papagian (Nina Arianda) (there is a running joke that everyone mispronounces her name that gets stale about the 10th time they do it), former prostitute now lawyer wannabe Brittany Gold (Tania Raymonde) and all grown-up daughter Denise McBride (Diana Hopper). The subplots are the best part of the show - they make no sense but at least they go somewhere, like Patty getting pregnant and then finding her birth mother. Everything that looks like it is going to be a major theme just disappears in an episode or two. Why are Quaid and friends smoking dope? What is going on with Billy's daughter taking to booze, then we see her in bed with a fellow student and she tells him to stop so he does and - yeah, I have no idea. She ends up trying to murder now-Mayor Marisol Silva (Ana de la Reguera) who is in bed with Quaid and company on the water thing. In one scene, Silva is seen at a big LA event with her new boyfriend - wait for it - Matthew Weiner. Yeah, that Matthew Weiner of MadMen fame. It's a mess. Maybe the craziest near-plot is the one involving Quaid and Brenneman in an incestuous relationship - or not. Oh, and Brenneman has two adopted kids, twins, both played by Shamir Anderson - yeah, I guess you're supposed to wonder how they do all those scenes that they are both in - I didn't. I did wonder what they were doing in the series. Oh, did I mention Illeana Douglas as casino barfly, Rita. She does nothing, is connected to nothing and has no purpose. I thought she was going to be some kind of Cassandra foretelling doom while being ignored, but, no, she is just a barfly who is just there. A lot like Littlecrow's daughter who inherits everything from Wheeler (apparently he is her biological father) or Applebees (Lauren Tom) who is just a crazy and is there to - wait, what is she doing in this show? I wish I could tell you it gets better - I kept on watching thinking, this has to get better, doesn't it? With this cast? My guess is a lot ended up getting cut or re-written because there is no way William Hurt agrees to play Cooperman again with the role he has in the final product. When I looked up writers Ames and Turner and saw that they were mostly producers before, well, it explained a lot. As someone could say, as writers, this duo are great producers. Need I tell you that justice prevails? It does, and then it doesn't. You'll see. Oh, I know you're going to watch it since this cast has someone for everybody. The producers did a great job. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1575928635458-KE9UFKYIPUZP3F8IX23Q/feedlogo.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1576519620452-QAH4HTIFKYBOTW2B9A7R/reprisal.jpg itsjusttv - REPRISAL by Armen Pandola REPRISAL Binging TV series has introduced us to a new phenomenon - the moving on decision. Say a series is ten episodes long. You have watched the first episode and it seems like the kind of TV series you like. So, on to episode number two. You like two, but not as much as you thought you would. Maybe it gets better. Episode three is good, better than two but not as good as one. So, you try one more - episode four. That is the key episode. If you go on to episode five, you have gone past the point of no return. Five episodes and you are stuck - you have to go on. Reprisal got me to episode five and I was stuck. I went with it to the end, but every episode was a decision - to go or stay. There was just enough glitz and shine to keep me from turning it off before the next episode flashed on, automatically - it was a decision made for me rather than an affirmative action on my part. And Hulu knew enough to start the next episode off in mid-action rather than with credits - I may have turned it off if the credits came first. Hulu's Reprisal has an excellent cast. Abigail Spencer is Katherine Harlow / Doris Quinn, a woman who is part of a criminal gang, but has been tortured and thought killed by her brother, Burt (Rory Cochrane). As they say when Hamlet thinks of killing his usurper/step-father near the beginning of the play - if he does, there is no play, And so Katherine is not dead but returns as Doris to get revenge. She picks up a pair of uber-thieves, Earl (Craig tate) and Cordell (Wavyy Jonez) and concocts a scheme to rob the gang's front, a strip club called Bang-a-rang, owned by Burt. She cons a young man, Ethan Hart (Mena Massoud) into infiltrating the gang. Queenie (Lea DeLaria) runs the place and is a kind of den mother to the strippers who work there, one of whom is Burt's daughter, Meredith Harlow (Madison Davenport). Ron Perlman shows up at the beginning and end of the series as a mob boss and does his usual excellent job of looking bad, yet sounding reasonable. There's a lot of blood and beatings that would put The Rock in traction for a month, but, in Reprisal, turn out to be scratches that barely make a mark on the victims. I don't know about you, but these phony violent scenes are getting old. Hollywood has come 360 degrees - at the birth of talkies in the early 1930s, Hollywood set up a 'code' that didn't allow for the victims of violence to bleed. For the next 40 years or so, characters died from gunshot wounds and beatings that left no wounds, no blood. Then, Sam Peckinpah and others brought blood back to the screen. Now, we have gallons of blood and dozens of wounds, but no real injury. Somebody gets pummeled in the face with too many punches to count and the next minute is fine. After watching this series, I read what its makers said it was about since I couldn't make out any theme: “At its core [Reprisal] is about family. A family that seeks to destroy each other,” executive producer Warren Littlefield claims. “And the family that you build in order to survive and thrive. There will be themes that will be recognizable. It’s quite universal, actually.” And the NY Times offers this: "If you like the combination of violent action, sentimental fantasy, literary pretension and periodic slapstick humor that Reprisal offers, you may enjoy it well enough." In the end, Reprisal is a mish-mash with cell phones and pay phones and 1950s cars, 1980s hot pants and contemporary music. There is something for everyone and enough to keep you clicking to the end, but that's about it. Like Rocky, Reprisal goes the distance, but barely. Hulu. Ten episodes. Running time: 60 MIN. PRODUCTION: Executive Producers: Josh Corbin, Warren Littlefield, Barry Jossen, Jonathan Van Tulleken. Co-executive Producers: Ann Johnson, Graham Littlefield. CAST: Abigail Spencer, Rodrigo Santoro, Mena Massoud, Rhys Wakefield, Madison Davenport, Gilbert Owuor, David Dastmalchian, W. Earl Brown, Craig Tate, Wavyy Jonez, Shane Callahan, Rory Cochrane https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1583102538062-GABLVEJFXMYFPYIYEBG7/BBlogo.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1583603589119-H7QWDV6R9TGH3LWQWHX2/image-asset.jpeg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1584586421100-GAS9F348C43H7KEU3LOE/image-asset.jpeg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1585776935817-WRP4QQKOAM0WY8A3LKYI/ozark1.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1593190170913-F3FZ2YHGHSHNTEJ79NGM/lineofduty.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1599350453692-BKQZX2BX3AMM8WCF9DRX/quinn.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1600121486256-QUM52JL738UV6KF1QK0K/borgen.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1622576752434-Z358KFMTXW5VG0B2VJX3/mare.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1637444082749-OID06MQFFE9W1M7KR05W/dopesick.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1661188436159-BDBS80VK5JEOPO0M6QXC/image.jpg itsjusttv - THE UNDECLARED WAR - 10 REASONS TO WATCH IT The Undeclared War - 10 reasons to watch this British drama about the cyberwar between Russia and the West. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1662499997856-7WZCMD02XK35EJZZQLS3/familysecrets.jpg itsjusttv https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1682788961299-Y733HMXGT4UN62TSCV3U/image-asset.jpeg itsjusttv THE DIPLOMAT by armen pandora The title of Netflix’s new series is ironic, The Diplomat. Starring the incredible Kerri Russell as the title character who is anything but ‘diplomatic’ in the usual sense of the word, The Diplomat tries to be that unusual blend of thriller, comedy and witty drama - you know, the kind of thing that Alfred Hitchcock did twice a year. Co-starring the equally incredible Rufus Sewell as her fellow diplomat/ husband, and including a cast of A-list British TV vets, The Diplomat strives to make you think as you watch - how smart these people are! And just to show you that they aren’t too smart, too high-brow, its creator, Debora Cahn ( a West Wing alumnae who imitates the Sorkinesque banter style) and her fellow writers throw in references to blow jobs for a husband’s good deeds and every five minutes references to peeing. The plot has a vague similarity to today’s headlines: an aging president played by Better Call Saul’s kookaboo brother, Michael McKean (it’s becoming his specialty) has a female VP he is soon going to dump because of some vague scandal and is looking for a replacement, who is not a politician and won’t be looking to run after her job is done. Yeah, right. Like a President doesn’t want to hand-pick a successor. The plot involves lots of twists and turns about who bombed a British aircraft carrier and what should be done about it. To test if Russell can possibly handle the VP job, she is named Ambassador to the Court of St. James - one of the highest-profile diplomatic postings in the world. Reluctantly, she goes there - with her husband. The series tries to make the politicians all so ‘human’ (like we need convincing) while the civil servants - the diplomats and their ilk, CIA station heads, chiefs of staff, etc, are all striving hard to save the world from the crazy politicians. The joker in the pack is that Russell wants to divorce Sewell, but she can’t be VP if she does. They have a ‘she loves to hate him’ relationship that is as stable as an NBA lead with five minutes left in the game. Russell and Sewell make a great match and are like a modern Tracy and Hepburn, but there’s no Garson Kanin/ Ruth Gordon writing team to make the center-court match as good as it should be. The music is the giveaway - a kind of slow beat that provides constant auditory winks at all the shenanigans - and that’s what the plot consists of mostly, shenanigans which is, as Webster defines the word, ‘secret or dishonest activity or maneuvering.’ It’s fun to watch at times, but could be so much more. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1740518304381-MMT9LWTJZI7NZFL7PKO6/images.jpeg itsjusttv https://www.itsjustamovie.com/armen-pandola-1 daily 0.75 2023-08-25 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1547013862014-UZA34ZK3SKWYA0DTV7M7/playposters.jpg ARMANDO (ARMEN) PANDOLA (Bio) - ARMEN PANDOLA ARMEN PANDOLA Armen Pandola won the Walnut Street Theatre’s Forrest Award for his play, Forrest: A Riot of Dreams which premiered there in 2006. In 2012, he was commissioned to write Dino! Dean Martin at the Latin Casino, a play with music about one of America’s great entertainers; it ran at the Walnut in 2013 and is one of its highest grossing shows. His trilogy about post-9/11 America, Terror at the While House (A Stanley Drama Award Finalist), Devils Also Believe (A Smith Prize Finalist for Best New American Play) and Homeward Bound has been produced in Philadelphia and New York. Armen Pandola has written reviews and articles for many online publications, including the Broad Street Review. PRODUCED PLAYS: The Rising 2 FEMALES, 20-30s 3 MALES, 20-50s The Hollywood Fringe Festival 2017 A revolutionary group called The Rising is killing politicians. A murder a minute is killing everyone else. The Rising is committed to change by any means necessary. It is filled with people who have had enough. Rachel is in The Rising and on a mission to kill the Governor. But, first, she has to learn how to use a gun. Enter Clint. He's a snitch or, as they use to be known, a reporter. He’s on a mission too - to expose the Rising. In a world that is just around the corner, The Rising is happening now! DINO! An Evening with Dean Martin at the Latin Casino Premiered May 1, 2013 at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, Pa. I Male, 40-50s 1 Piano Player When a severe blizzard blankets the East Coast, Dino's band gets stuck out of town. Rather than disappoint his fans, Dino gives us an intimate evening of personal stories and classic songs. The man behind the legend reveals the humor, warmth and casual cool that marked his rise from his Italian-only speaking immigrant childhood to one of the biggest legends in entertainment. THE PRINCE 2 males, 4-50s Co-written with Bill Van Horn Premiered January, 2010 at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, Pa. A politician turns to a childhood friend to defend him when he is prosecuted for corruption. “As a whole the show provides a wonderful 90 minutes of laugh out loud comedy for all in the audience. If you're looking for a fun night at the theater The Prince is your show.” HOMEWARD BOUND 1 Female, 30s 4 Males, 20-40s Premiered in New York, NY 2009 A group of wounded US Army vets are stuck in a hospital in Germany, waiting to be shipped back to the States. A pair of Iraqi victims of torture join them and the mixture turns combustible. They all are about to begin the greatest battle of their lives. JUST THE SKY 1 MALE, MID-30-40s ONE ACT Shubin Theatre Premiere April, 2008 Suddenly, one night, a man goes berserk and kills his wife and her chiropractor. Waiting to be executed, he tells us his story. DEVILS ALSO BELIEVE A Smith Prize Finalist for Best New American Play Premiered May, 2006 3 Females, 20-40s 3 Males, 20-40s “Devil Also Believe is about the rigged beliefs that are fracturing America, dividing it as it has never been divided before. In this controversial, emotional drama, we see the effects of 9-11 on an American family as each of them are driven by their beliefs to respond to the War on Terror.” FORREST: A RIOT OF DREAMS Winner of the Walnut Street Theatre’s Edwin Forrest Playwriting Competition Premiered February 2006, WST 1 Female, 20-40s 3 Males, 20-40s “The culture war, celebrity divorce trial and media madness at the heart of Forrest make the play abundantly topical. And Forrest also resonates because of its deeper themes: ambition, jealousy and the struggle for power in relationships between men and women.” FRIENDS FOR LIFE 4 MALES, 40s ONE ACT When four alumni meet to plan a 25th reunion, it turns out to be a final meeting. TERROR AT THE WHITE HOUSE A Stanley Drama Award Finalist Premiered June, 2004 2 Females, 20-40s 2 Males, 20-40s “Terror at the White House is one of those rare plays that remind you that theatre can be the soul of a society. The final confrontation of the family with the vise (and vice) of political necessity is as chilling and potent a theatrical moment as you are likely to remember. This play deserves to be seen and thought about.” HEDDA WITHOUT WALLS Premiered March, 2005 4 Females, 20-50s 3 Males, 20-50s The actors in Hedda Gabler share the stage with their fictional counterparts. When the actress playing Hedda decides to kill herself on stage at the end of the play , the fun begins. Imaginative, funny, terrifying – these are some of the words used to describe Hedda Without Walls. THE GIFT OF GIVING Premiered December, 2004 2 Females, 20-30s 2 Males, 20-60s A young couple, Jim and Della, struggle to make it in NYC – she’s an actor and he’s a writer. The stories of their lives become entwined with those of a sultry literary agent and a lovable curmudgeon boss – and with the stories that Jim writes. A funny, heart-warming play that takes place in the imagination of its characters and the audience. MRS. WARREN’S e-PROFESSION Premiered In March, 2004 2 Females, 20-50s 4 Males, 20-50s This modern adaptation of G.B. Shaw’s classic play moves the action to the Philadelphia Main Line where Mrs. Warren has a mansion paid for with her earnings as the proprietor of an on-line porno site and “dating” service with branches all over the world. ZELDA & SCOTT: A FOUNTAIN OF FIRE Premiered in September, 2003 1 Female, 20-40s 1 Male, 20-40s The story of the dreams and phantoms Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald chased over two continents and decades as he wrote the Great American novels, The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night and dozens of the finest short stories ever written. The unknown secret is that Zelda wrote some of those stories that Scott put his name on. PLAYS NOT YET PRODUCED: REDEMPTION 2 MALE: FATHER, MID 60s AND SON IN HIS MID-30’s 2 FEMALE: LATE 20’s AND LATE 50’s Berlin, 1944 – 1945. A father and son confront each other in the last days of WW II, fighting their battle for the moral high ground. Each has betrayed his ideals, and each suffers the consequences. DARK ENERGY 2 FEMALES, 30-40s 2 MALES, 30-40s A playwright has blackmailed a local Theatre Company into presenting his play by threatening to set off a bomb near the Theatre. Cooperating with the local police authorities, the Theatre Company puts on the play in the hopes of capturing the obviously deranged playwright. Slowly, the “play” breaks down and reality intrudes. The actors start going off “script” so the playwright detonates a bomb near the theatre – but that isn’t the end to this diabolical fun house of a play. DEATH AND TAXES 1 Female, 30s 2 Males, 30-40s Steve, an African-American, and Teddy, white working class, get lucky and pick up an attractive woman, Galina, at a local bar and take her back to her place. Next morning, they wake up and find her dead, murdered. Teddy wants to call the police but Steve has a history with the police that makes him want to just leave. Soon, they each begin to wonder – did the other one kill Galina or are they both victims of circumstance? DREAMSVILLE 1 Female, mid-30s 4 Males, 30s-40s Dreamsville is about the American Dream - to make a quick buck and live on easy street for the rest of your life. It’s about the dreams that fuel the engines of commerce and selfishness and caring and hope that make our times unique. HOW SWEET IT IS! 2 Males, 20s-50s 1 Female, 20s The story of The Great One, Jackie Gleason. MUMMER MADNESS 5 MALES, 30-40s 3 FEMALES, 20-40s Pat has a passion in life – and it’s not his lovely wife or daughter. Every year, he builds a costume and parades up Broad Street in the New Year’s Mummers Parade. Then, one year, his wife leaves him and he’s having trouble supporting her and his habit. Along comes cousin James, producer of independent films. The union of movies and mummers is an idea made in heaven, if your idea of heaven is drinking a boilermaker while watching Swan Lake. When the funding collapses and there’s no money left to finish the movie, the local mob becomes a producer. Now, more is at stake than ever before. As Joey, the local mobster explains, ‘Something happens to my money, something happens to you.” HAMLET, PART ONE 3 MALES, 20 – 50s 2 FEMALES, 20 – 40s HAMLET, PART ONE is the story of Hamlet and Denmark in the days just before the opening of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet returns to Elsinore when he learns od his father’s death. The state is in an uproar. There are rumors that the late King was murdered. His brother, Claudius, has assumed control while an investigation is completed. This play is a humorous look at what happens when Hamlet attempts to take control of the government as the rightful heir to the deceased King. Mayhem and madness ensue. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1608833464887-M95CYFT3NQJXYFOAKKM5/SPXMAS.jpg ARMANDO (ARMEN) PANDOLA (Bio) https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019 daily 0.75 2019-05-06 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/2019/5/6/irina-the-story-of-us monthly 0.5 2019-05-19 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/2019/5/4/seefests-11th-annual-business-of-film-conference-2019 monthly 0.5 2019-05-05 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/2019/5/3/the-distance-between-me-and-me monthly 0.5 2019-05-03 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/2019/5/2/south-east-european-film-festival-seefest-2019 monthly 0.5 2019-05-02 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/category/movies monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/category/festival monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/category/media monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/tag/mijojlic monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/tag/movie monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/tag/southeast+europe monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/tag/sheri+chandler monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/tag/the+film+collaborative monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/tag/film+festival monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/seeff2019/tag/pluto+tv monthly 0.5 https://www.itsjustamovie.com/itsjustatrip-1 daily 0.75 2023-04-23 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570127454882-OM9RRYUT9CGE8V75H9V2/picasso.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570216903548-LE97SRMZMIURQYDQYE82/Untitled.jpg itsjustatrip - 10 RULES FOR HAVING FUN AT A MUSEUM - NO, REALLY 10 RULES FOR HAVING FUN AT A MUSEUM - NO, REALLY by Armen Pandola The Pompidou Center is an amazing place, a huge building with many levels and functions - it's a movie theatre, an art museum, a restaurant, a conference center, a music school, a boutique store and just a cool place. Named after the French President who inaugurated the project in the late 1960s, the international competition for its design was fierce and the eventual winner, three unknown architects at the time, was as controversial as most cultural questions become in France. Remember, this is the place that rioted when Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring premiered here in 1913. It was one of the first 'inside/out' or 'bowellism' buildings with all its services such as staircases, lifts, ductwork, electrical power conduits and water pipes on the outside, leaving an uncluttered space inside. All the building's 'bowels' are outside. For this reason, the street to rooftop escalator on the outside of the building in a glass tube is one of Paris' most popular spots to photograph Paris - look at a couple of my photos in the collage. I was going there for the art - an exhibit of the work of Francis Bacon, the English modernist with a distinctive style. Later, after lunch, I returned to tour the extensive modern art collection of the Pompidou - its collection mirrors that of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. So, how can going to an art museum be fun? Here are my 'rules': 1. Don't try to see everything. There are some smaller museums (the Barnes in Philadelphia comes to mind) at which it is possible to have a good look at everything, but even there, it can be tiring. 2. Ignore Rule #1 if you want - this is your vacation and that means you can do whatever you want. Really. Nobody is watching - well, they probably are, but ignore them. 3. Prepare for 10 minutes before you spend 2 or 3 hours in a place. Before you go, take a look at the museum's website and its collection and see what interests you, then go there from the beginning. At a museum like the Louvre or the Met in NYC, this is a must. 4. Pick a winner. Every museum is broken into rooms or galleries. When you walk into one, go to the center of the room and look around. What 1 or 2 works of art appeal to you. Pick just 1 if you can. Then, ignore the rest and look at that painting or sculpture. Spend some time with it - look at it with your mind and heart. 5. Don't look at the labels. I can tell you that I have visited many museums and those little labels that strain your eyes to read will tell you nothing important or even useful about the painting. If you see a painting with 3 apples in it, I'd bet a few bucks that it is called, Three Apples or Trois Pommes de Terre. Many will end up being called 'Portrait of ___' and it usually is somebody you never heard of. 6. Ignore the painter's name. Most you won't know and those you do will not help you. There are people who know all the names of all the artists and that is all they know. Like that person described by Oscar Wilde who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. 7. Appreciate that it can be very difficult to be simple. Some art, especially modern art, can look deceptively simple, prompting many to say - why is that art? I could have painted that. Maybe. Maybe you could have written the Harry Potter series too. Its author J.K. Rowling was a struggling single mother on welfare when she wrote the first one. Why didn't you? Anyway, no matter how simple it looks, do you like it? Why? If not, why are you wasting your time and ignoring Rule #4? 8. Ask yourself who you are. A curious person who wants to know all the ins and outs of a thing or one who takes things as they come? If very curious, maybe the audio guides invariably offered for a few dollars will be your cup of tea. It will give you the information you are curious about - BUT, it won't help you decide the big question - do I like it? 9. Don't take pictures of everything. Many people I see on vacation are not on vacation, their phones are. Be in the moment. When you turn a corner and see that incredible painting that draws you towards it like a magnet and makes you hold your breath like the first time you saw your lover - be in that moment. Most museums end in a shop where you can purchase a copy of most of the art on a postcard or in a book. 10. Cut yourself a break. Maybe two hours, certainly no more than three is all any rational person can take of looking at art, especially if you are following these rules and look intensely at only a few. Hours in the museum should be balanced by hours or days out of the museum while on vacation. Those who sit and stare at the passing crowd are appreciating the best art, the art of having fun. And those are my rules. The break I took for lunch led me to Benoit, a Michelin starred restaurant (there are very few that earn a star). I had the fixed price lunch - so for about $40 I had pumpkin with chestnuts soup, plaice fish (a kind of flounder) with mushrooms and sauce and then savrin (pound cake) with Armagnac and chantilly. It was very, very simple - and delicious. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570451808518-GMOMFMBLU09IDT3HAVFK/WEEKEND1.jpg itsjustatrip - A WEEKEND IN PARIS A WEEKEND IN PARIS by Armen Pandola When I was a little boy, six or seven, I woke up one morning and thought, OK, I have to get up, get dressed, go to school - and then, a warm, cozy feeling came over me and relaxed every muscle in my body - no, I don't have to do that, I don't have to do anything - it's the weekend! Many years later, weekends are still special. Time to relax, catch up with friends, see a movie, go to a show, have a BBQ. In Paris, it's the same. The streets are twice as crowded as a weekday, the air itself seems to hum with excitement - especially on this weekend because it is Nuit Blanche! Never heard of Nuit Blanche? Read on. My weekend started early - on Friday I went to Les Invalide, France's Military Veterans memorial. The huge grounds and buildings contain little of interest unless you are a devoteé of medieval jousting and armour. I went to see The Cathedral of Saint-Louis des Invalides and the Dome des Invalides which contains Napoleon's casket. In France, and Europe in general, Napoleon is Julius Caesar, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant all rolled into one. His victories changed the map of Europe and his defeats, the retreat from Moscow and Waterloo, marked the boundary of what military power could achieve before the advent of nuclear weapons. Hitler went there after defeating the French-British forces in 1940 and stared at the tomb for a long time. Apparently, not long enough as he was to suffer the same fate, albeit in a more Wagnerian manner. The highlight of the trip was a late lunch at Le Boulanger des Invalides. There I had a kind of grilled cheese sandwich which is nothing like the American version and twice as delicious. The best way to explain it is to share a link with you to their 'specialties' - take a look. Saturday started with a busted tour. I had booked the 'Paris of Victor Hugo' tour that is run by Paris' history museum, Carnavalet which is currently closed, but which still offers tours. It was a rainy morning and the closing of Notre Dame and its large Parvis or Square in front of it (almost 13,000 sq.ft) left the area in chaos. I was where the tour was supposed to meet, but found no Victor Hugo tour. Of course, if the various tours had signs to hold up indicating what tour they were, it might have helped. But the morning was not lost. I headed to Shakespeare & Company, the famous english bookstore on the Left Bank across from the now closed Notre Dame. This original of this bookstore was famous as the publisher of the original Ulysses by James Joyce. It closed in 1941 under the German occupation of Paris. In 1951, it was reopened and it continued the original bookstore's promotion of ex-patriot American and British authors. It's a crowded maze of a space with new books on the first floor and used ones on the second. I have stopped buying 'real' books because of my having to give and actually throw away hundreds of books when I sold my large house with its library/office - it was a sad day. I did keep a few hundred books that mean something to me - I am sure you have those kinds of books, too. So, I bought books for Jude (11y.o) and Dylan (5 y.o.), my grandchildren - an illustrated children's version of Macbeth for Jude and an illustrated book of the adventures of a little girl in Paris for Dylan (she is totally uninterested in any book, movie or TV show that does not have a female in it). Then I had lunch at a place I found on the fly - Le Reminet, a small restaurant on the Left Bank near the Seine. A delicious salad was followed by a salmon dish with apple liquid (not sauce - it was bubbly - a pic is in the collage) and fennel that had so many flavors it was a thrill to eat each bite. In the afternoon, I had a cheese and wine pairing class at La Cuisine Paris. They have a lovely space on the Right Bank of the Seine. When I arrived, I was happy to see that one of its staff was calling someone who had booked the class but had not yet arrived - a pleasant change from the morning busted tour where I had hoped I'd get a call when I couldn't find them. Our teacher was the very knowledgeable and well-travelled Clémentine who spoke excellent English. The class was small (just 5 of us so we all got to know each other a little), excellent and the cheeses and wine offered, alone, were worth the price of the class (99 euros). Their website is a wealth of information about Paris where you can find everything from an arrondissement by arrondissement look at restaurants to maps that show you where to get the best coffee, cheese - even craft beer and gluten-free eateries in Paris. I recommend it, highly. And now we come to the Nuit Blanche! This happens every year on the first Saturday night in October - the 'white night.' Various art and culture installations, exhibitions, concerts, performances, trails, staged scene sets and creations that explore all facets of contemporary art and offer a new view from sundown Saturday to sunrise Sunday - a big parade and hundreds of events in every part of the city. I went to a sound and light show at Saint Eustache (a beautiful cathedral in the heart of Paris - many events were in churches as the French church seems committed to being part of the city's culture as opposed to most American churches where they refuse to enter the 19th, let alone 21st century), a classical music concert, a participatory art exhibit where the viewers became trapped in a maze - everywhere you roamed in Paris there was something happening. One group of runners commits to check in on as many events as possible in one night, running from event to event. It was an amazing night - take a look. There was so much happening this weekend that I have to write about it in parts - stay tuned for Part II - A Day at the Races! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570531880883-1MG928PAWOKQS1LR4284/LC2019.jpg itsjustatrip - A WEEKEND IN PARIS II A WEEKEND IN PARIS - PART II by Armen Pandola When last we met, I was at Nuit Blanche, touring the City of Lights with a huge (really) crowd. But I couldn't stay up all night (Nuit Blanche is a French idiom for a sleepless night) because I was headed to the races on Sunday, specifically the 98th running of the Qatar Prix De L'Arc De Triomphe held at Longchamp horse racing course in the Bois de Boulogne. The metro took me to Porte Maillot which sits at the top of the Champs Elysee/Blvd. Charles DeGaulle, a ten minute ride. From there I hopped onto a shuttle bus provided by France Galop, France's racing bureau. The park is huge (really :)) and the ride through it was very enjoyable. At the end of the day, a shuttle bus and metro ride had me back in my apartment in 30 minutes. The US could learn a lot about how to run a large event like this from the French. The first thing you notice is the people - almost all are dressed to the nines. Gowns, party dresses, suits and ties were the staples - take a look at the collage to see some of the finest, including the women's hats, many of which were as lovely as they were unique. Since an Englsih horse, Enable, was going for its record third win of the main event, the Prix De L'Arc Triomphe, the Englsih were a strong second nationality in attendance with Asians coming in a distinct third and I did not see another American although I am sure there must have been many there. French horse race betting is different than in the US. There are all kinds of combinations and 'special' bets and some very unusual rules, for example, there are horse from all over the world in the races so if you pick a horse from one country, you automatically are given a bet on any other horse in the race form that country. So, you could lose - but win! There were eight races that day but, unlike in the US, the main event was not the last race of the day, but rather the 4th. I do not know if this was unusual but it did serve a great purpose - lots of people were there for this race, only, so placing it in the middle of the day meant that the crowd had thinned out considerably by the end of the day. The shuttle buses ran from after the 4th race on so when I caught one, there was no crush of people. Betting was made as easy as possible: bet-takers roamed the crowd and were stationed everywhere to supplement the betting machines and usual methods. Many of the bet-takers spoke English and this helped me a great deal since, as I said, French betting is very different than our system. Result - they made it a lot easier for me to lose my money. The winner of the day was the great food - they had food of all kinds, from all regions: Middle East, Asian, Mexican, Italian, American, English and, of course, French. You could eat a pizza, have some dim sum, fish and chips, tacos, French pastry - and the drinks were plentiful from beer to champagne. In fact, I have never seen so many bottles of champagne being consumed (Veuve Clicquot at 75 euros a pop - $82.40). Oh, the horse races - right, the reason why we were all there. Each of the races was exciting since all were close. In the main event, Enable had the lead coming down the stretch but another English horse, Waldgeist (Forest Spirit) overtook him in the final few lengths. In this video you will see another difference between this race and US races - the horse leave the paddock and are galloped around the course to the starting gate. I love this announcer's call, although I didn't understand one word - it just sounded exciting. So that was my weekend in Paris - hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I did doing it. Bonne journee! https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570042832694-ERLLCI1ANQAE8W6JMTXR/paris.jpg itsjustatrip - PARIS - EYES WIDE SHUT by Armen Pandola PARIS - EYES WIDE SHUT by Armen Pandola I was in my teens when I read about Ernest and Scott in Paris, in my 20s when I read Gertrude Stein and Henry Miller (now that would have been an interesting conversation to eavesdrop on) and in my 30s when, finally, I went to see for myself. I have been back many times. There is no doubt that my eyes were permanently vie-en-rosed. Yes, I love Paris. And why not? In one city, there is more to see and do than in any other city in the world. It has the best museums, the best sights to see and the best food. It had these things when I first came here and it has them now, many years later. But it has been over a decade since I made this pilgrimage. Cities change - as all things do, but a city must cope with changes if it hopes to continue its prominence. Sure, the museums and monuments are still there - except for a BIG one that almost burnt down (I will be going to Notre Dame later in my trip). And the restaurants are still the best, but - There is a 1960s Italian movie in which a man is caught in bed with another woman. The other woman quickly dresses and leaves and the husband comes out of the bedroom to his wife’s vocal indignation. He denies it all and when his wife insists, ‘but I saw her!’he asks, ‘Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?’ Like the Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz, I want to believe - I do, I do, I do, but my lyin’ eyes tell me that things have changed. Maybe a rainy autumn Tuesday isn’t the best time to come to Paris, but I carved out a month in my schedule, closed my eyes and let the dice fly high! I am staying for a month in Paris, made possible by Airbnb - more on that experience later. Charles De Gaulle Airport is big and busy and not very user friendly, but Hermes, the god of travel, or St. Christopher, the saint who watches over travellers, was there for me - at first. My American Airlines flight - by way of Air Tahiti Nui Airlines - was a problem free 10+ hours and we landed 30 minutes early. I breezed through passport control, went to grab my luggage and bingo! My elegant, large Hartman suitcase was one of the first to roll through the tunnel. CDG airport is about 19 miles from the center of Paris and, at first, I was going to take the train - it’s fast and cheap. Then a couple of days ago, I decided to book a van - it was double the cost of the train, but the forecast was rain (it turned out to be accurate) so I booked a spot on a van run by Paris Shuttle for $25. The instructions I printed out with my confirmation said to call them after I picked up my luggage. My cell was almost fully charged because I shut it off during the flight - I recommend doing that until airlines join the 21st century and install outlets. I dialed and dialed and dialed and every time, in French it told me the number was not working. If ever you are stuck and don’t know what to do, you will most likely keep on doing the same thing even though it is not working. Yes, 10+ hours in the air, a day without sleep and an unfamiliar place and language will make you crazy. I imagined all kinds of things, mostly that this Paris Shuttle was a scam, yet it did have a very good-looking website. I read more of the instructions and they said to go to Exit 7 in Terminal 2A to meet the van. I looked. There was no exit 7 - really. There was an exit 1,2,3,4,5,6 and 8, but no 7. So, I asked someone - Pardon, parlez-vous anglais? ‘Une peu’ was the inevitable answer. No one knew anything. One guy who had a jacket that described him as a ‘transporte official’ told me to go to exit 4 and sure enough there were many vans there picking up people - but no Paris Shuttle. So, I decided to call the host of my airbnb and guess what? That number was out of order too! Now, I was sure that Rod Serling was going to pop out any minute or maybe Allen Funt. It was then that I remembered the most important instruction for those traveling to a different world - Don’t Panic! I see the signs say there is a tourist office to help those who are far away from home and about to cry in the next terminal. I go there and a nice young woman who speaks English allows me to call the Paris Shuttle on her office’s landline. At first, the same recording which by now I have memorized - I don’t know a lot of French but I will always be able to say, “le numéro ne fonctionne pas et vous devriez essayer plus tard.” Don’t Panic! I dial again, just to be sure and - viola! Paris Shuttle answers. A nice-sounding young woman asks me to spell my name and then confirms who I am and where I am. She asks if she can put me on hold for a minute and, reluctantly, I say oui. When she returns, her voice has the timbre of an undertaker - there has been a technical difficulty and Paris Shuttle will not be able to take me into Paris. She tries to console me by purring that they are fully refunding my payment. I am abandoned. This semi-disaster has taught me a lesson - you have to learn how to dial a number in France. It is not as simple as you might think. Look it up. Now I have to contact my airbnb host and so I decide to write him a message which you can do inside the airbnb app - they tell you to never contact your host any other way. I had done that in the past but my host was not a great communicator and it usually took a day for him to respond. But Hermes must have come back to me out of pity because my host responds in a few minutes and asks when I will get to the apartment. The train will take me an hour, but I am through with problems - I go outside and get a cab from the many that are waiting for just this opportunity. Cabs cost a flat 50 euros to Paris from CDG. They say it should only take 30 minutes. They say that in Los Angeles too. They lie. On a rainy fall Tuesday morning, after rush hour, with no accidents in site, it took almost 90 minutes to get to my apartment in the 3rd arrondissement - the center of Paris. We used a freeway then entered by one of the northern ‘portes’ or gateways that lead into Paris, the Porte d’Aubervilliers. Right there at the freeway exit was a large tent city - hundreds of small tents with who knows how many homeless people in them. Some had baby carriages outside them. This ‘gateway’ street was filled with young, mostly young men, knocking on car windows, begging. The 19th and 20th arrondissements are the poorest sections in Paris. Hundreds of homeless people were on the streets. It is estimated that there are 8,000 homeless sleeping in the streets but that is plain wrong. The number is probably closer to 30,000 homeless assuming that those who live in tents are counted. And just like in LA, the politicians here have no clue. For years they claimed that there were fewer than a 1000 homeless in Paris, then they were forced to revise those numbers, but still they have no clue. Last year, they announced that Paris’ local city halls (every one of the 20 arrondissements has one) will supply shelter for homeless women - the largest of them will house 100 women. Yeah, that’s a real problem solver. Then there was the graffiti. I recall that some well-known artists argued that graffiti is art. All I can see are stylized names or logos spray painted all over the city - on every closed shop’s metal gate, on every construction site, every park. It looked like New York or Philadelphia in the 70s and 80s before there was a concerted effort to stop it. I don’t believe that scribbling, even stylized scribbling, is art. And I know it looks horrible. Time to stop it. And, finally, it’s dirty. In the 1950s and 60s, Philadelphia use to be called Filthadelphia. Yes, all those ladies in the neighborhoods would come out every day and wash their steps and pavements, but the rest of the city was a mess. Many cities were - and we should remember that it was Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady, who started a campaign in 1965 to ‘Keep America Beautiful.” It no longer was OK to simply throw on the ground or from your car window whatever you wanted to get rid of. Dog owners had to take responsibility for their pets’ mess. It changed how our cities looked and how we thought of our communal spaces - they were precious and not open garbage cans. In Paris, the dirt is both surface and deeply embedded. There is actually a hue and cry to try and get men to stop urinating in the street - really, it’s a problem here. So, my eyes have been opened. Paris needs an intervention. It needs its tourists - 90 million went to France last year with almost half of those arriving in Paris. The money it makes on tourism is almost 10% of its GDP - more than 77 billion euros, providing over 2 million jobs. It is time for the tourism industry to wake up Paris and get it to see the mess, https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570788428883-B0XZFAYRP5DOPSQFMAN0/GL-LAYFAYETTE.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1570880166974-8PSEG70TB1887WML6JI1/reimaginedparis.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1571063058916-PRBI18TM5PC9TEYIKQZJ/WOMENPARIS.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1571174822700-06VQKIYVVDTKU4WPK0JE/paris+metro.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1571350020506-XUCYKRQP9G66HMDKGTZQ/CORDONBLEU.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1571673128607-C5RNSNJFTLKW04EFUGQ5/style.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1571866136127-IIXRYC60061QEDD1AGV8/restaurants.jpg itsjustatrip - EATING ON VACATION by Armen Pandola EATING ON VACATION OK, so you've arrived after a plane ride that did NOT include meals and you are looking for a place to eat. Good food at reasonable prices. Where? Most articles about eating on vacation will recommend restaurants, but I am a believer in the old adage - if you give a hungry person a fish to eat, you have fed her for a day, but if you teach a hungry person to fish, you ... So let's talk about how to find good places to eat anywhere. Online there is a wealth of information - most of it only as good as the people who posted it. There are many sites like Yelp that will rate restaurants. Here are Yelp's top-rated restaurants In Philadelphia, a town I know, and not one of the top 30 would I recommend - ok, Reading Terminal because you are bound to find something you like there. Most sites will tell you what the majority of raters like. McDonald's is the most popular restaurant in the world. Do you like to eat at McDonald's? Then those sites will tell you the restaurants you should go to. If Mc Donald's is not your favorite eatery, then more research is in order. Like I did with Yelp, I suggest you ask the site the best restaurants in your hometown and see what the site comes up with. If they recommend the places where you like to eat, bingo! This is the site for you. If not, think about looking up not restaurants but luncheonettes, delis and hoagie shops (subs) or if in Paris, boulangeries. These places sell excellent sandwiches and other food to go - things to eat like hoagies or steak sandwiches or quiche. If the weather is good, there are lots of parks and public places to eat in every European city and most American ones. But you don't want a sandwich - how can you tell the folks back home that your first meal in Paris or Barcelona or Disney World was a great sandwich. You want a nice dinner, not too expensive. There are sites that specialize in naming the best restaurants in major cities, like Michelin. In New York City and other places of that ilk, restaurants vie for a Michelin * - the best get 3 stars. I have been to one of those (there are only 5 in all of NYC), Le Bernardin. Yes, it was great - and rather expensive, dinner for 2 with wine - around four to five Cs. OK, so you want to have a great time but not to where you are going to lose the house. Tripadvisor has a nice break-down of restaurants - seafood, Italian, Chinese, BYOBs - so you can pick a type of food and then see what their readers think are the best. Here, again, beware - they list the 17 best BYOBs in Philadelphia and I can recommend a couple on the list but the best BYOB in Philadelphia is not on the list.. No, they don't take reservations and the wait is long enough without you showing up. So where does that leave us? The human touch. Wherever you go, many people will speak English, especially Europe. Why? Because Europeans take language education seriously and the second language they all learn is English for obvious reasons. So, when you are standing in line and two locals are chatting in French or German, politely ask if they speak english and where they are from. If they are from that city, ask them where THEY eat. Or ask a cab driver or the ticket taker at the museum or - you get the idea. Sure, you might be asking someone who likes McDonald's but then she will tell you that and you can move on. Ask about lunch places - the intruded-upon foreigner is more likely to give you a true answer if the meal is a common, ordinary one, like lunch. In the end, you have to go with your gut - literally. Look in the window at what people are eating and see if it looks good to you. Does the pasta stand up or is it smothered in sauce, looking like Jake LaMotta after a few rounds with Sugar Ray Robinson? Is the fish bright and clear? Is the veal hidden by a half-gallon of something that looks like it just was cooped up out of the lagoon? And remember, hunger is the best sauce. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1572468313742-KVCP95BNW0LQ035LF68Z/LASTDAY.jpg itsjustatrip - HOMEWARD BOUND by Armen Pandola HOMEWARD BOUND by Armen Pandola Journeys or odysseys have been a subject of interest ever since the beginnings of Western Civilization. What is measured is not the number of places seen or meals eaten or even new people met, but, rather, the journey is from who you were when you began to who you became when you ended. It's a journey of the mind more than the body. And there are times when I wished that my body wasn't along for the ride. Nothing is as inherently fearful to humans as the fear of falling from a great height - but we go up in planes and try to ignore that most basic instinct. And nothing is as repugnant as extremely close contact with total strangers - and yet we control that revulsion, too. We do this to travel. To go. To make a journey. To see new places and people. To experience new ways. To find a new us. I took this journey alone. I never had done that before. Journeys with a partner or friends are different. They are shared experiences and, in many ways, are far richer than solo ones. Math is not always true. 1 + 1 = more than 2 in life. But traveling alone does force you to focus on who you really are - no partner to appease or friends to compromise with, no need to explain why you decided to turn left or even all the way around or what makes you want to eat here rather than there. No plan once made that cannot be changed by a whim, no one to remind you that what you say today totally contradicts what you said yesterday. No nuthin' but you and what you really want and are. Of course, along the way, I have remembered past journeys. Places seen many years ago have changed - and so have I. The thrill of turning that corner on Rue Saint-Florentin and for the first time seeing the Place de la Concorde in all its majesty and there in the distance, Tour Eiffel, more a natural outcropping from the soul of this great city than a man-made tower of steel and cement - it happens once, like your first kiss. But this new journey has cultivated new memories, new stories, new tastes, new people. The young woman at the information center at the airport, looking at this very frazzled American who cannot seem to get his cell phone to work, saying to him, "Use my landline, it's more friendly." The children at the Musee Picasso, delighted that the famous artist whose work they have come to see is just as child-like in his art as they. That first taste of pumpkin soup at Benoit. A group of travelers standing in front of a darkened and roofless Notre Dame, silent and mournful. The dancers on Sunday afternoon practicing at Carrefour in an outlying arrondissement of Paris and transmitting the joy of their movements like it was electricity. The beautifully dressed crowd at Longchamps Racecourse screaming encouragement to the British steed, Encore. The crazy revelers of Blanc Nuit, racing from event to event, staying awake all night for the sheer fun of it. Making bread at Le Cordon Bleu with Chef Boudot. Parisians sporting their stylish scarves. The sound of the Metro and the taste of the best bread this side of my childhood. Pain du chocolate and tart citron and soupe de poisson. Heidi taking us to the best chocolate in Paris while leading us on a tour about the great women of Paris. Da Vinci and Monet and the blue of the sky on a perfect Paris day. Rick was right - and so was Hemingway. Paris is a moveable feast and once you experience it, it will stay with you always. Tomorrow I head home. I'll have some time to tell you about my airbnb experience and give you some tips on that and on shopping in Paris. But I want to leave you with a poem that expresses why I did this - and yes, it is a little grand, but then, if you aren't going to strive to do the grand things, then why are you here? Tennyson gave me the inspiration to do this - go find yours. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order, smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1572299918806-0ZYJ1TQGBHWUC9JSKH9Q/louvre.jpg itsjustatrip - LEONARDO DA VINCI EXHIBITION AND MY DAY AT THE LOUVRE by Armen Pandola LEONARDO DA VINCI EXHIBITION AND MY DAY AT THE LOUVRE The Louvre is one of the world's greatest deals. When you purchase your tickets online to both the museum and the DaVince Exhibition, you get change form a $20.. I arrived around lunchtime and had a zero (0) wait time - yes zero. So do a little planning and you will avoid the long lines. The Louvre can be a little confusing - at the entrance the long lines are caused by the security check. Once you get pass that, you enter a very large space under the famous Pyramid. It is there that those who have not bought a ticket online have to get one - and yes, that line can be very long, too so buy online and you can avoid that wait that can be more than an hour. There are signs that will tell you where to go to get into the DaVinci Exhibition. The rest of the Louvre is divided into 3 sections: the Denon Wing, home to many of the best-known works of art such as the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory of Samothrace; the Richelieu Wing, with its wonderful sculpture terraces and the apartments of Napoléon III; and the Sully Wing, best known for its antiquities and its focus on the history of the Louvre. If you go into one section and then back into the main hall, you will need your ticket to get into a different section - so keep you ticket in a safe place. The Leonardo Da Vinci Exhibition at the Louvre is the most talked- about exhibit in the last 50 years. In the 1970s a world-wide exhibit of the Treasures of Tutankhamun became one of the first blockbuster exhibitions. Since then, there have been others, but none to gain the attention of the Da Vinci exhibition. What is so special about this exhibit? The curator of the exhibit says that its purpose if to prove that Da Vinci was not someone “who lived a somewhat dispersed life, dabbling in mathematics, geometry, anatomy, and every now and again, painting." Rather, "His life was spent striving for the most perfect form of painting." I don't know who the curator was talking about, but anyone who knows a paint brush from a toothbrush doesn't think that Da Vinci was a procrastinating failure. His legacy in actual paintings is slight - less than 15 works survive that can be safely attributed to him. But, looking at any one of these paintings will convince even a Neanderthal that Da Vinci was a master of rare genius. Every one of his paintings seem alive - and that is something you notice when they are seen together with his drawings. He didn't just paint people, he painted people who were feeling something, doing something. Of course, his most famous painting, the Mona Lisa, is a still portrait, but one of a woman about to smile or ending a smile. While her face is motionless, it appears to have been captured in the act of expressing an emotion - joy or pleasure. . You will not see the Mona Lisa in the exhibition, but it is in the Louvre in its usual place among the Italian painters of the Renaissance. Lots of the exhibit is taken up with looking at infrared shots of the paintings. I mean, there are not many paintings and so you have to show something. These infrared shots enable us to examine how DaVinci went about painting his paintings; they show any erasures he may have made and, generally, how he painted. Remarkably, most of his works, including the Mona Lisa, show no corrections or false starts. From the initial drawing to the final painting. he painted with complete confidence in what he wanted to depict. There are many drawings in the Exhibition. Many are of his writings - he was left-handed and wrote his notes 'backwards from right to left' so that what I just wrote appears in his notebooks as 'tfel ot thgir sdrawkcab.' Try it for yourself here. DaVinci was one of the last 'renaissance' men. Not only did he paint, sculpt, draw, engineer, build, write and philosophize, he was a scientist who often experimented to get at the truth. When you look at the breadth of his work in so many areas and disciplines, you understand that to be DaVinci was to be more than a painter, more than an artist - a genius who was unique in his mastery of examining the human condition. After DaVinci, I wanted to look at something totally different so I visited the Louvre's great collection of Islamic art. This is something to see - some 3,000 objects are on display, spanning 1,300 years of history and three continents, from Spain to Southeast Asia. From there, I went to the Italian Renaissance collection that includes the Mona Lisa and a score of other great paintings from Raphael to Titan. It is the greatest collection of Italian art outside the Vatican. I ended my day with the art of ancient Greece and Rome, mostly sculpture. The Winged Victory is a thrill to experience and along with all the other great sculptures of ancient Greece, you can actually see the start of western civilization and art. And that was my day - glad you could join me. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1680591054075-C04ODB1GKF3YTMVPLX30/ROME1.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1680941882462-MDXTHJVT7T1D5KCMYMQB/VM.jpg itsjustatrip https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1681046188888-ITS1FO52U50APN49KZT8/image-asset.jpeg itsjustatrip - BOUN APPETITO! IN ROME BUON APPETITO! Eating Street by Street in Rome by armen pandola Rome is a city of tourists and so you must expect that there are places catering to tourists, that is, dumps! As you might imagine, those places are closest to the tourist spots - the Coliseum, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Vatican, etc. But there is another truth about Rome - it’s a city of foodies. Yes, every Roman expects the best food from her morning expresso to her evening gelato. Anything less and - arrivederci! So the answer to finding the best places is easy - ask a Roman. Wherever you are staying - in an airbnb, a hotel, a hostel, there are Romans anxious to tell you where their favorite food spats are. One of the best ways to learn is to take a food tour early on in your stay so you can reap the benefits throughout your visit. We took a food tour with Eating Europe, an international food tour company, and with its Taste of Testaccio Tour. Testaccio is a neighborhood in Rome known for its good - if you are from Philadelphia, think, South Philly. The neighborhood is becoming gentrified but it still has a slew of great eateries, including a food market that we will get to. Valentina was our knowledgeable, fashionably dressed hostess. One of the things you will notice in Rome from the start is that Romans like to dress smartly. We started at a small deli-restaurant where we were served dishes of Italian cured meats and cheeses with a glass of Prosecco, the Italian bubbly wine used for everything from toasts to the major ingredients in ‘spritzs’, e.g. a Campari Spritz. From there, we traveled to a bakery where we sampled the pizza. Roman pizza is thin with a thick crust. It comes with a large variety of toppings - the usual cheeses, artichokes, egg plant, fiore de zucchini (zucchini blossoms), olives, potatoes (yes, very thinly sliced potatoes!) and many others. One of my favs was the pizza with just a slathering of a savory tomato sauce known as the ‘fisherman’s pizza’ because it can be taken out to sea and eaten many days later since there is nothing to go bad with time and heat. Then we went to the market in Testaccio, a large indoor space with dozens of food stalls, some selling just produce, meats or cheeses, but many selling ‘street foods’ to eat on the go. One of my favs and that of many Romans is carciofo romanesco (a much larger artichoke than sold in the US) These are prepared one of two ways: the famous fried preparation called Guidica since they originated in Rome’s Jewish quarter or carciofi alla romana (artichokes simmered with oil and herbs). Both are delicious but my preference is the fired version - the leaves are like the best crispy potato chips you ever ate! We sampled the famed Caprese Salad, fresh tomatoes with Buffalo mozzarella which is much tastier than regular mozzarella. The tomatoes in Italy have an intense, sweet taste unlike any other tomatoes in the world. This food stall sold only cheeses and meats and was run by Lucca and Marina, married for 67 years. One of us asked Lucca what the secret of a happy marriage was and he said, I only handle the cheeses and she only handles the meats. We lunched at a famed Testaccio restaurant near a hillside made up of broken clay pots - Monte Testaccio or Broken Pot Mountain is a man-made mound built from broken terracotta and ceramic pots or Amphora, dating back to the days of the Roman Empire. It is the largest "waste" heap discovered in the ancient world and holds over 500,000 cubic meters of pots. Clay pots were cheap but difficult to clean so the Romans simply threw them onto a heap which grew with the centuries into a large hill. There we had the famed tonnarelli carbonara, a pasta made with egg and “guanciale” an Italian cured meat product prepared from pork jowl or cheeks. Romans are nust for guanciale and put it in almost everything. If you don’t eat pork, beware! For those of us who don’t, there was cacio e pepe, a pasta made with cheese and pepper that has no sauce but makes its own sauce after it is cooked and turned over and over - the steam and the cheese combine to make a delicious sauce of its own! Finally, we headed for the kids (well, and the adults too) favorite spot - the gelato store. Here there were about twenty varieties of gelato. Gelato is made with milk, not cream and so melts faster - and tastes better. Valentina explained that those places with ‘150’ varieties are frauds - usually mass-produced. The true gelato store makes all its own flavors and these are not piled high - those are whipped up and contain mostly air. And so ended one of our most satisfying days. Valentina shared with us some of her favorite restaurants and, more importantly, taught is that eating on the go in Rome can be a real gourmet experience. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1682280299850-QUG8CKAUHL1C3CLUFB94/traffic.jpg itsjustatrip https://www.itsjustamovie.com/itsjustamovie daily 1.0 2020-06-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5acdc409f8370a8efca3c489/1524202750380-F9WFYUWNDFZFDZOKAHYG/Screen+Shot+2018-04-19+at+10.38.15+PM.png itsjustamovie