Entertainment

‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ Dominates BAFTA Awards (The Wrap, Feb 18)

"Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri has been named the best film of 2017 by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), which handed out the EE British Academy Film Awards in London on Sunday.  The film from writer-director McDonagh, a dual Irish and British citizen, also won awards for Leading Actress Frances McDormand, supporting actor Sam Rockwell and McDonagh’s original screenplay, as well as a prize in the Outstanding British Film category.  The last film to be honored as both the best film and the best British film by the BAFTAs was The King’s Speech...BAFTA and the Oscars have not agreed on the year’s best film since 12 Years a Slave in 2013."  

The Leading Actor award went to Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour); Director award to Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water).  The article in The Wrap has a complete list of the nominees and winners.

And the winners are...

POSTED 3/5/2018

How 'Shape of Water' took home the Oscar for best picture with its timely love story (LA Times)

"How did "The Shape of Water," a movie about a mute cleaning woman falling truly, madly, deeply in love with a fish-man, wind up winning the Oscar for best picture?  It starts with the power of love, the film's Oscar-winning director, Guillermo del Toro, says. 'Love is much stronger than hatred and it's much more powerful than fear,' Del Toro told The Times in a November interview. "Love is the antidote to what we're living through today." That timely resonance helped "The Shape of Water" become the first sci-fi film to win best picture....'It's set in 1962, but, for me, this is today," the Mexican-born Del Toro said. Pointing to the movie's Cold War era, he added: "When people say, 'Let's make America great again,' they're dreaming of that time. Everything was great if you were white Anglo-Saxon and Protestant. If you were anything else, you were [screwed]. So it's a false memory of that time.'  The film's across-the-board support in the industry — it won top prizes from the Producers Guild and Directors Guild as well — was also probably aided by its baked-in love for cinema. Its main characters live above a beautiful movie theater, and the sound from the venue's showings bleeds into the action, making cinema a constant presence as it is in Del Toro's life."

Complete Oscar coverage from the LA Times

Complete List of Winners 

The Emmys

NBC broadcasts the 70th Emmy Awards Monday September 17, 8pm EDT

POSTED SEPTEMBER 12, 2018

The Emmy's are upon us.  This coming Monday, the best in television today* will be recognized.  Television programming has come a long way from its 1961 status as a "vast wasteland"** to the recognition that, in many ways, today's TV is better than the movies.  

You can find a complete list of this year's nominees at the Emmys official site.

Here are a few trivia questions about television and the Emmys.  Answers are at the bottom of this post.

1. Who invented television?

2. What was the world's first television station?

3. What actor/actress has the most Emmy awards?

4. What TV show has won the most Emmys?

5. What was the first television network in the US?

6. What is the longest running TV show still on the air?

7.  What is the longest running live-action sitcom in US television history? 

8. What was the most watched television event (biggest global audience)?

9.  When was cable television first introduced?

10. What was the first streaming TV service?

*Emmy's are awarded on television programming from June 1, 2017 until May 31, 2018

**The phrase comes from a speech by the FCC Chair of the time, Newton N. Minow

Game of Thrones, Saturday Night Live, and Westworld garnered the most nominations for the 2018 Emmy Awards.

Answers to trivia

1.  Scottish inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television system on 26 January 1926.  This is a bit of a trick question.  Baird's television was a mechanical system.  The first electronic television  was invented in 1927 by 21 year old American inventor Philo Taylor Farnsworth.

2. In 1928, WRGB (then W2XB) was started as the world's first television station. It broadcast from the General Electric facility in Schenectady, NY. It is still broadcasting today.

3. Julia Louis Dreyfus has 9 wins and 24 nominations for her work on Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Veep.

4. UPDATE: Saturday Night Live won its 65th Emmy Monday night.   

5. The DuMont Television Network, which had begun experimental broadcasts before the war, launched what Newsweek called "the country's first permanent commercial television network" on August 15, 1946, connecting New York City with Washington. Not to be outdone, NBC launched what it called "the world's first regularly operating television network" on June 27, 1947, serving New York City, Philadelphia, Schenectady and Washington. Baltimore and Boston were added to the NBC television network in late 1947. DuMont and NBC would be joined by CBS and ABC in 1948. 

6. The Hallmark Hall of Fame has aired more than 250 episodes on various networks over the years and currently stands as the longest-running prime-time show in TV history. Its first program was in 1951.

7. The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet ran for 14 seasons from 1952 - 1966.

8.  The 1996 Summer Olympics opening ceremony, where Muhammad Ali lit the torch, was watched by an estimated 3.5 billion viewers globally.  

9.  Beginning almost simultaneously in Arkansas, Oregon and Pennsylvania in 1948, cable originally brought distant over-the-air television signals from miles away to mountainous or geographically remote areas. 

10.  iTunes began offering select television programs and series in 2005, available for download after direct payment.

70th Emmy Awards

POSTED SEPTEMBER 18, 2018

Monday night at the 70th annual Emmy Awards, Amazon's "Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" led the field with 5 awards (including best comedy series), Game of Thrones won best drama series, and Saturday Night Live won its 65th Emmy (outstanding variety comedy series).

Among many others, Hollywood Reporter has the complete list.

The Oscars: "Green Book" takes home best picture; "Roma" best foreign language film

Bohemian Rhapsody leads the field with 4 wins

POSTED FEBRUARY 26, 2019

Links to Juan Cole's commentary [left] and LA Times coverage [right] are given below.

"The Expanse" is back!

POSTED DECEMBER 15, 2019

Amazon Prime Video released the fourth season of the epic sci-fi series "The Expanse"  on December 13.  The series is based on the eight-and-counting space opera novels by  James S. A. Corey, the joint pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.  Set several hundred years in the future, humans have colonized much of the solar system.  Tensions and treachery abound among and within the United Nations of Earth, Mars, and the "Belters", the inhabitants of the planets and moons of the outer solar system.   An ancient alien civilization and an experiment gone terribly wrong are at the heart of the story line. 

Space.com writes: "Over the course of the last four years, "The Expanse" has proved, beyond any doubt, that it has earned its place among the very best of TV sci-fi, an impressive achievement that puts it alongside Ron Moore's "Battlestar Galactica" reboot, "Babylon 5," "Star Trek: The Original Series" and "Stargate SG1." 

If you are a sci-fi fan and haven't had a chance to read the novels or watch the series, you are missing a treat.  You really need to join James Holden, the idealistic captain of the Rocinante, and his crew (a Martian, another Earther, and a Belter) for a heck of a ride.

Links to Space.com's recap of Seasons 1 -3 and Indie Wire's review of Season 4 are below left and right, respectively.

A sweep for "Schitt's Creek" in 2020 Emmy's

POSTED SEPTEMBER 21, 2020

"The hit Canadian comedy "Schitt's Creek" made history on a very weird Emmy Awards night Sunday, sweeping the comedy categories, while "Watchmen" took best limited series and "Succession won four honors, including best drama. "Schitt's Creek" became the first TV show in Emmys history – comedy or drama – to sweep its night. It took seven honors including best comedy series, lead actor and actress for Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, and supporting actor and best writing for Daniel Levy." (USA Today and below left)

"Schitt's Creek," which premiered in January 2015, follows the formerly rich Rose family as they find themselves forced to give up their lavish lifestyle and move to a town in the middle of nowhere called Schitt's Creek. While at first rejecting their new normal, they eventually adjust, reconnecting and rediscovering the love they have for one another." (GMA and below right)

"The Trial of the Chicago 7" airs on Netflix 

POSTED OCTOBER 15, 2020

A film based on the infamous trial of the "Chicago 7" airs Friday, October 16, on Netflix.  The Chicago 7 were indicted because of their role in antiwar demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  The clashes between police and protesters at the DNC  was termed a "police riot" in the official report on the violence (The Walker Report).  Nevertheless the incoming Nixon administration successfully pushed for the purported ringleaders of the protest – including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis – to be charged with conspiracy to incite a riot. On the opening day, the New York Times said on the front page: ‘This is the most significant political trial in American history.'  

Many have made comparisons between the turmoil in 1968 and in 2020, and the timeliness of the movie cannot be overstated.  Below is the official trailer from the movie, a Democracy Now! segment on the 50th anniversary of the protests, and CSN's "Chicago" ("We can change the world").

"The Expanse" is back for Season 5 on December 16

POSTED DEC 3, 2020

Season 5 of the popular sci-fi series "The Expanse" begins streaming December 16 on Amazon Prime video.   "The Expanse" is based on the bestselling book series of the same name from Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (under the pen name James S.A. Corey).  Set two hundred years in the future, mankind has spread throughout the solar system.  An uneasy state of cold war exists among the three main factions - the Earth-Luna confederation, the Independent Planet of Mars, and the Outer Planets Alliance.  A hardened detective and a rogue ship's captain come together for what starts as the case of a missing young woman and evolves into a race across the solar system to expose a conspiracy that threatens the future of all mankind and leads to discovery a portal to thousands of habitable planets developed by a galaxy-spanning ancient alien civilization.  Tensions abound - as they vie to colonize the new planets.  

Amazon also announced a sixth and final season to air in 2022.  The first four seasons are available to stream now, and here is a link to the TV series wiki.  Below are the official trailer and a preview of series 5 from the show runner.

Janis, Jimi, and the Chambers Brothers 

POSTED MARCH 5, 2021

On August 23, 1968, I was one of 18,000 fans at the Singer Bowl in Flushing, New York, enjoying one of the greatest rock concerts of all-time. Two of the superstars of the era - Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix - had joined the Chambers Brothers whose "Time Has Come Today" had made it to #11 on Billboard.  

The concert was just three days before the start of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which would explode into a police riot with Mayor Daley's cops bashing antiwar protesters on national television.  The year had already been one of tragedy with the assassinations of Martin Luther King in April and Bobby Kennedy in June.  But, for this one mild summer night halfway between the Summer of Love and the Woodstock Music Festival, we were transported and energized by music to a more carefree and hopeful place. 

I was unable to find any footage of the concert on YouTube, but did learn that a ticket for the concert is now selling for $725 on ebay.  Here, then, are videos of Janis, Jimi, and the Chamber Brothers from other venues.

 Left to right from the top:  Janis Joplin in Frankfurt Germany 1969; album version of Me & Bobby McGee;  Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" at the 1970 Atlanta Pop Festival; his iconoclastic "National Anthem" at Woodstock; album version of Chambers Brothers "Time Has Come Today" - one of the landmark rock songs of the psychedelic era; promotional demo of Chambers Brothers "People Get Ready".

Post-script: In 1970, slightly more than two years after the Singer Bowl concert, tragedy struck again with the way-too-soon, drug-related deaths of Jimi Hendrix on September 18 and Janis Joplin on October 4.  Both were just 27. 

Boomerland

Three of the films nominated by the Academy for Best Picture feature characters from my generation - the post WWII baby boomers.  Two of the nominees, The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Judas and the Black Messiah, are based on historical events from 50 years ago.  The winner, Nomadland, is based on a 2017 non-fiction book by journalist Jessica Bruder about the phenomenon of older Americans who, following the Great Recession (2007 to 2009), adopt transient lifestyles travelling around the United States in search of seasonal work. 

Taken together, the three films give a somewhat damning picture of late twentieth and early twenty-first century America.

Nomadland

Let's start with the winner.  I am glad I gave Nomadland a second chance.  The beginning of the film set a scene so depressing, which included the desolation of an abandoned Nevada factory town and a lesson on how to get rid of bodily wastes while in a van, that I stopped watching it.  In my second attempt, the expanses of the American West and the vignettes of these decent people down on their luck won me over.  

Some of the most memorable scenes were Fern's (Best Actress winner Frances McDormand) conversations.   Here are two which had she done nothing else in the film might have won her the Oscar.

• Seeing a young man who had begun traveling with the nomads, Fern walks over, asks if he's hungry and offers him a sandwich.  "Where are your mom and dad?"..."Back home in Wisconsin"..."You think they worry about you?" Fern then asks if he ever gets lonely, if he has a girl friend.  He relates that he does and that she is living happily on a small farm in the North Country.  He writes but she never answers his letters.  "I just can't ever write about anything I reckon she'd care about"..."You ever write poems?"..."I can't say a know a one.  You know any?"..."How about one I used for my wedding vow when I was not much older than you"..."Mind if I hear it?" Fern then begins a Shakespearean sonnet, one of the most beautiful poems ever written,  "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?  Thou art more lovely and more temperate..."

• It's the morning after a remembrance service for one of their fellow travelers, who had recently died back home.  Fern tells Bob, who had been on the road for longer than most and who was one of the "leaders"' of the group, why she never left Empire after her husband Bo died.  "If I didn't stay, if I left, it would be like he never existed...Same town, same house.  It's like my dad used to say What's remembered lives" ...Bob then opens up about the tragedy that led him to life on the road - the death of his 28 year old son.  "Today would have been his thirty-third birthday...And for a long time, the question was 'How can I be alive on this earth when he is not?'  And I didn't have an answer. But I realized that I could honor him by helping people, and serving people.  It gives me a reason to go through the day.  Somedays that's all I've got."  Their conversation ends with Bob telling what he most loves about this life on the road.  "There's no final goodbye...I don't ever say a final goodbye...I always just say, "I'll see you down the road."

One character in the film suggests that Fern is fortunate because she, as well as the other nomads, can go anywhere they want.  Rather than making me feel happy for Fern being so liberated, it reminded me of Kris Kristofferson's lyric, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."  These men and women have experienced so much and done so much in their lives.  Was this the best the American brand of neoliberal capitalism could offer?    

The excellent review of Nomadland at the Irish Times [link below right] touches on this:  

Playing out in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crash, the picture encounters no whispers of nascent Trumpism among the travelling disenfranchised.

But there is unquestionably a sense here that the United States has left too many of its citizens behind...Communicating in an evasive murmur that conceals more than it reveals, [Fern, Frances McDormand] forms a stable core around which the largely superannuated eccentrics can safely rotate. Tensions are rare. Disagreements are contained. Yet the economic realities offer a constant threat.  It is hard to imagine Nomadland working in any other contemporary democracy. That is partly to do with the overpowering landscape. It is partly to do with the particular outrages of American capitalism. But there is also a sense of Fern standing in for a unique class of individualist you find only in certain parts of the United States.

The Trial of the Chicago 7

Nomadland raises a good question: Why can't the richest nation the world has ever seen provide for all its people? 

The answer is found, in part, in the peculiar American world view that eventually led to The Trial of Chicago 7.  The Cold War era was one of rabid anti-communism, and, like all eras since WWII, it was characterized by huge defense expenditures supported by Congressional members of both parties.  This peculiar world view is still with us:

• The rabid anti-communism morphed into a form that now scares people by claiming programs designed to help the vulnerable and the at- risk members of society are "socialist."  As a result, the United States has one of the weakest social safety nets of the Western democracies.

• Defense expenditures continue to take enormous amounts of money from domestic programs.  As President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe in WWII, said: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." Biden's 2022 defense budget calls for $753 billion - an increase of 1.6 percent.  

The misguided Cold War era "Domino Theory " led us into Vietnam, a foreign policy fiasco even greater than the Iraq Invasion.  In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. [1]  Total US deaths in the Vietnam War numbered 58,000.  

The protests in Chicago were protests against that war.  The Chicago 7 were indicted because of their role in antiwar demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.  The clashes between police and protesters at the DNC  was termed a "police riot" in the official report on the violence (The Walker Report).  Nevertheless the incoming Nixon administration successfully pushed for the purported ringleaders of the protest – including Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden and Rennie Davis – to be charged with conspiracy to incite a riot. On the opening day, the New York Times said on the front page: "This is the most significant political trial in American history."  

The powerful closing scene in the movie has Tom Hayden reading the names of the US servicemen who had died in the war since the trial began.  That the convictions were overturned does not detract from the wrongness of the Nixon Administration's prosecution of the protesters or from Judge Hoffman's biased handling of the case.

[1] Britannica 

 Judas and the Black Messiah

The Trial of the Chicago 7 began with eight defendants.  Partway through the trial, the prosecution of Black Panther Bobby Seale was severed from the trial.  The event leading to this was the killing of Fred Hampton.  Bobby Seale's outrage at the killing and his courtroom reaction had Judge Hoffman order Seale bound and gagged.  The Federal prosecutors decided this would surely lead to a mistrial and decided to sever Seale's case from the other seven defendants.

Judas and the Black Messiah is a film about the betrayal of Fred Hampton, chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party at the hands of  an FBI informant.  It's also a story about police violence.  

On December 4, 1969,  fourteen plainclothes Chicago Police officers quietly filed out of an undercover truck, armed with pistols, a shotgun, a machine gun, and a detailed map of their target, an apartment occupied by leaders of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party.  Two were killed and four were critically wounded.  One of the dead was Fred Hampton, the 21-year-old the leader of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party, gunned down in his bed as he slept beside his eight month pregnant fiancée. [below right]

Black people are still being killed by police in their homes and on the streets.  The Academy Awards were presented on the Sunday after Derek Chauvin was convicted in the murder of George Floyd.  Several of the nominees and  winners spoke about the America of 2021.  

Regina King, who directed this year's Oscar-nominated film One Night in Miami, in her opening speech at this year's Academy Awards: "It has been quite a year, and we are still smack dab in the middle of it," she said, acknowledging the difficult year the country (and world) has faced during the coronavirus pandemic...[She] also referenced the recent verdict of Derek Chauvin..."We are mourning the loss of so many, and I have to be honest, if things had gone differently this past week in Minneapolis I may have traded in my heels for marching boots...I know that a lot of you people at home want to reach for your remote when you feel like Hollywood is preaching to you, but as a mother of a Black son I know the fear that so many live with, and no amount of fame or fortune changes that, OK? (USA Today, Apr 25)

Co-directors Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe won the Best Live Action Short Oscar for their film Two Distant Strangers, the story of a Black man stuck in a time loop forcing him to relive a fatal interaction with a cop.  Travon Free's acceptance speech was one of the most powerful moments of the night. "Today the police will kill three people. And tomorrow the police will kill three people. And the day after that, the police will kill three people because on average the police in America every day kill three people, which amounts to about a thousand people a year. And those people happen to disproportionately be Black people."  The filmmaker continued his speech with the James Baldwin quote "The most despicable thing a person can be is indifferent to other people's pain," and concluded by saying, "I just ask that you please not be indifferent. Please don't be indifferent to our pain." (Entertainment Weekly, Apr 25)

A tribute to Charlie Watts

POSTED AUGUST 26, 2021

On Tuesday, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts passed away in a London hospital surrounded by his family.  

He was the quiet one.  There from the very beginnings of the most iconic band in rock and roll history, Charlie Watts gave the Rolling Stones its signature driving sound.  Without him, the Stones, even with the histrionic performances of Jagger and Richards, might not have achieved their legendary status or kept the continuing appeal of their distinctive sound that somehow never seems dated.  

Tributes to Charlie Watts and his music poured in from musicians around the world.