No, that is not a misprint. And no, I didn’t watch the same movie twice—although I’ve been known to do that with a very few carefully selected movies. In this case it’s simply that I watched two versions: the 1974… Read More ›
Movies & (occasionally) TV
Are we now in the Twilight Zone?
This is not the only Twilight Zone episode that one never forgets. At least it’s not the only one that I never forgot, and it seems more and more relevant every year, especially this summer. I first saw it when… Read More ›
Saoirse and Beanie and…[who else?]…add up to…Lady Bird!
Although I’ve never been to Sacramento, and certainly wasn’t there in 2002, the movie Lady Bird felt very realistic to me. Realistic and convincing. Kudos to director Greta Gerwig! As A.O. Scott in the New York Times put it, “Every… Read More ›
A gender-bending version of Stephen Sondheim’s Company
The Great Performances series on PBS just aired a spectacular documentary, “Keeping Company with Sondheim,” all about making the new version of Stephen Sondheim’s great 1970 musical, Company. You can still see it. This new version of the musical differs… Read More ›
Licorice Pizza
You are probably more “with it” than I am, so you probably know that Licorice Pizza is slang for a vinyl phonograph record, that it originates both as an expansion of the abbreviation for “long playing” and as a visual… Read More ›
Stephen Sondheim’s Putting it Together
Twenty-one years ago, Carol Burnett and four other actors performed a Broadway revue of Stephen Sondheim songs called Putting it Together. I didn’t get to see it on Broadway, but I just watched the filmed version on DVD, which you… Read More ›
“Yes, it’s my real name. Shut up!”
You probably don’t believe it’s his real name, so check out the first chapter of Randy Rainbow’s memoir, Playing with Myself. He even includes a photo of his birth certificate (but Republicans will probably claim that it’s a fake—just like… Read More ›
Go hang a salami, I’m a lasagna hog.
Say what? If you don’t get it, just read it backwards! Yes, it’s a palindrome. And I just watched a movie about people who write palindromes: The Palindromists. “How nerdy can you get!”, you exclaim. “And which syllable has the… Read More ›
The Conversation, a 1974 movie
The Conversation is supposedly a great film. Everyone says so. It has mystery, suspense, interesting technology, and excellent acting. So why was I just meh about it? Well, it’s half a century old, so it may just be that it… Read More ›
What are we? “Jewish Americans” or “American Jews”?
The excellent PBS documentary from 2008, The Jewish Americans, is an in-depth account of three hundred years of American Jews. I have no idea why it took me 14 years to watch it! The mix of presenters includes public figures,… Read More ›
This is one movie that is better than the book, right? Wrong.
Nope, not this one. The Bone Collector is a good book by Jeffrey Deaver—not his best by a long shot, but pretty good—and it’s a disappointing movie even though it stars Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, and Queen Latifah. I read… Read More ›
Judging a movie that was made 60 years ago
What a cringy movie! Oddly enough, I had never seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s—neither when it was first shown in 1961 nor subsequently on TV or DVD. But now I have. So here’s the problem. In the throes of cancel culture,… Read More ›
The source material for… (Episode II of these episodic posts: The Queen’s Gambit)
Should you read the book or see the movie? If you do both, what’s the right order? And does a mini-series count as a movie? I promised a couple of months ago that I would re-read The Queen’s Gambit—the original… Read More ›
Five pennies (not 5¢?)
What an under-appreciated musical! I’m talking about The Five Pennies, a 1959 movie starring Danny Kaye, along with Barbara Bel Geddes, Louis Armstrong, Tuesday Weld, and others. If you’re unfamiliar with it—as I had been until last week—it’s basically a… Read More ›
The Source Material for… (Episode I of these episodic posts: The Bicentennial Man)
About five weeks ago I reviewed the movie The Bicentennial Man. I pointed out that it was based on two sources: on Isaac Asimov’s novelette of the same name and on the later adaptation of that novelette into a full-length… Read More ›
A Jewish Christmas, in two parts (Part Two: Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas)
After we got home from our requisite Chinese meal on Christmas Day, Barbara and I watched the requisite movie: in this case the Canadian documentary Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas. If you’ve never heard of it, go find it and… Read More ›
The Bicentennial Man
“One has mixed feelings about the movie” would be my comment if I’m going to speak in Andrew’s style. As usual, I recommend seeing the movie before reading the book. In this case the first version was a long short… Read More ›
The Queen’s Gambit: what’s it all about?
Is it about chess? You may be tempted to say yes. It seems to be about chess. In high school English—a hundred years ago or so—I learned to distinguish plot from theme. If we’re talking plot, then The Queen’s Gambit… Read More ›
The Best Years of our Lives
Even if you don’t know this classic 1946 movie—even if you’ve never heard of it—you will surely suspect that the title is meant ironically. The movie poster (below) even contains scare quotes that belie the obligatory smiles. So yes, the… Read More ›
A Lincoln-Sudbury alumnus stars in Gifted.
Chris Evans—an actor you may recognize, but I don’t—is a Lincoln-Sudbury alum (’99?) and the star of the movie Gifted, which you should definitely see. See it even if you have no connection whatsoever with either Lincoln or Sudbury! Evans… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 