As I reported in my post of April 19, Weston High School’s spring musical this year is My Favorite Year. Yesterday’s opening-night performance was thoroughly enjoyable, with some surprising casting and some unusually strong performances. Joav Birjiniuk, Laura Caso, Todd… Read More ›
Movies & (occasionally) TV
My Favorite Year (I)
I finally watched My Favorite Year, in anticipation of Weston High School’s production of the musical version of this classic 1982 film. A slightly disguised roman à clef about Mel Brooks, Sid Caesar, and Errol Flynn, this movie manages to… Read More ›
An Inconvenient Truth
As I reported yesterday, part of Weston High School’s Earth Day observances was a screening of An Inconvenient Truth. This event was attended by everyone — students and teachers alike. (Almost everyone, actually. A few kids skipped out, and some… Read More ›
I, Robot
So why did I bother watching the movie I, Robot? It’s because I rarely read reviews ahead of time, since reviews too often contain spoilers. But I found this movie poorly done, disrespectful to the memory of my hero Isaac… Read More ›
Arsenic and Old Lace
Arsenic and Old Lace is definitely a classic film, so that means I’m supposed to like it — right? I don’t know why I had never seen it before, but I finally got around to it the other day. Unfortunately… Read More ›
Somersault
We tried to watch Somersault, acclaimed all over Australia. It looked like it might be of interest to film buffs and to anyone who works with teenagers (or anyone who has a teenager in the family). But neither Barbara nor… Read More ›
New Year's Eve at the Ashmont Grill and High Fidelity
To celebrate the New Year, Barbara and I just had dinner at the Ashmont Grill, which offered a special menu for New Year’s Eve. Although we hadn’t really intended this to be a “going out in public” experience — like… Read More ›
Wordplay
Many documentaries are Serious with a capital S. Wordplay is lighthearted, as befits a film about crossword puzzles. If that sounds boring to you, don’t watch it. But for those of us who like to cross swords with crosswords, Wordplay… Read More ›
A Prairie Home Companion
Just saw A Prairie Home Companion, the late Robert Altman’s star-studded movie about Garrison Keillor’s wonderful radio show of the same name. And star-studded it truly is, with a cast that includes Meryl Streep, Lily Tomlin, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen,… Read More ›
Numb3rs and the MAA
The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has generally been enthusiastically positive about the well-known television show, Numb3rs. So has the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). These reactions are to be expected: both organizations want to promote interest in… Read More ›
Melinda & Melinda
Barbara and I just watched Woody Allen’s 2004 film, Melinda and Melinda. It’s well worth watching — and thinking about. It won’t give anything anyway to say that it opens with a scene that deliberately recalls My Dinner with Andre,… Read More ›
I Heart Huckabees
What a strange movie! I definitely enjoyed the unconventional film I Heart Huckabees, but it’s more than merely unconventional. I can’t do better than to quote a few sentences from Roger Ebert’s review: …the moment a movie is over, everybody… Read More ›
Spellbound
Just finished watching Spellbound —the 2002 documentary, not the 1945 Alfred Hitchcock classic. (I do highly recommend the Hitchcock film, but that’s not the subject of this post.) What’s so interesting about the national spelling bee, anyway? Yes, that’s what… Read More ›
Black Orpheus
Just watched Black Orpheus on DVD. I hadn’t seen it for at least 35 years, but it still holds up as a classic masterpiece, especially the cinematography. Highly recommended.
Two kinds of skepticism
As I mentioned in my post of March 11, some interesting issues were raised on the unfortunate March 10 episode of Numb3rs. There was no explicit mention of the dispute between two kinds of skepticism, but that was actually the… Read More ›
Law and order and suicide
Catching up on last week’s television shows with the wonders of the VCR — soon to be replaced by the greater wonders of TiVo — I just watched the excellent January 18 episode of Law & Order, Heart of Darkness…. Read More ›
Numbers and Palindromes
Numbers and Palindromes. No, not numbers that are palindromes: Numbers and Palindromes, the television show and the movie. I wrote about Numbers six months ago; at that point I had only seen three episodes, and it would have been premature… Read More ›
Mercury Rising
Just finished watching Mercury Rising. Cryptology and the NSA. An autistic boy. Bruce Willis. Alec Baldwin. Generally good acting. What more could one want? Well, characterization and depth, to name two. More cryptology. More NSA. Less conspiracy theory. Generally a… Read More ›
Bullet voting, pro and con
On Tuesday, Boston voters will go to the polls in the “preliminary election” for City Council. Something like a primary, the preliminary election narrows each race down to a number of candidates equal to twice the number who will be… Read More ›
Super Size Me vs. Outfoxed
Having recently watched both Super Size Me and Outfoxed — well, only a bit of the latter — I was wondering why I had such different reactions to these two tendentious documentaries. Super Size Me held my attention and kept… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 