I didn’t realize that after-credits scenes are now a thing

I recently saw the film Black Panther. I am not a fan of action films in general and superhero films in particular because the long fight and chase scenes bore me and I wait impatiently for them to end so that the story can move along. In my experience, nothing is lost by fast-forwarding to the end of these scenes. The resulting films would be at least a half-hour shorter and immeasurably better. But I know that I am not the target audience for these films.
[Read more…]

Film review: Crazy Rich Asians (2018)

This film and the book it was based on has received quite a bit of buzz about being one of the few films that feature an all Asian cast. In this case ‘Asian’ is used in a highly restricted sense of being just Singaporeans of Chinese ethnicity. No other groups made an appearance other than in bit parts.

The first half of the film can be categorized as ‘wealth porn’ where we are regaled with the lifestyles of exceedingly rich Singapore Chinese families who show that they can be as obnoxiously ostentatious about flaunting their wealth as any gauche Westerner. At that point I was going to give up on the film but the sunk-cost effect kicked in and I thought I might as well watch a bit more.
[Read more…]

TV review: Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (no spoilers)

I watched this show yesterday and have to agree with Kevin Fallon that it was a gimmicky disappointment, not up to the level of earlier episodes of Black Mirror that I found thought-provoking even if somewhat dark. Set in 1984, the main conceit of this latest offering is that it has a ‘choose your own story’ interactive structure where at various points you, the viewer, are asked to make a choice between two options that the chief protagonist Stefan is confronted with as he designs a ‘choose your own adventure’ computer game based on a ‘choose your own adventure’ book. You can already see the interweaving of multiple layers of reality.
[Read more…]

Film review: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

People either love or hate this film, with very few falling into the lukewarm category. I personally love it. I was blown away when I saw it when it first came out 50 years ago and watched it again a few days ago, perhaps for the third or maybe the fourth time, It as always risky to watch a film or read a book that one loved a long time ago when one was much younger because of concerns as to how well it would stand up. I watched it this time with a more critical eye and found that it stands up incredibly well and is as engrossing as ever. I enjoyed it so much that the next day I watched it all over again, this time with a commentary by actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood who play the laconic astronauts Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, who discuss what it was like working with legendary director Stanley Kubrick and how some of the effects were produced. They say that he was meticulous in his preparation for filming but gave very little direction on how they should play the scenes.
[Read more…]

Film: Green Book (2018)

Some time ago, I wrote about the The Negro Motorist Green Book , which was a travel guide written by Victor Hugo Green. It was first published in 1936 and regularly updated to inform black Americans during the Jim Crow days what places they could shop, eat, and stay the night during road trips across the US, and what towns were “Sundown Towns” where black people were banned from being outside after dark.
[Read more…]

Film review: BlacKkKlansman (2018) (no spoilers)

I just watched this film, based on a true story, that is set in the town of Colorado Springs in 1978. John David Washington plays Ron Stallworth, the town’s first black police officer who, pretending to be a white man, responds by phone to a newspaper advertisement placed by the Ku Klux Klan for new recruits. For actual meetings with the local KKK branch members, he sends in his colleague Flip Zimmerman (played by Adam Driver) who is Jewish. The two of them continue to play their parts as Stallworth, once the KKK people were satisfied that did not “have any Jew in him”, rises in the organization and he even becomes friends over the phone with David Duke, then the Grand Wizard of the KKK (played by Topher Grace).
[Read more…]

Inside the world of social media personalities

The BBC has produced a very absorbing 22-minute documentary titled Fake Me: Living For Likes (below) about the life of people who live for likes on Instagram and other social media platforms. They follow an extremely thoughtful young woman named Joey who is a college student and aspiring fashion designer in Nairobi, Kenya. Joey hated social media and did not have any presence on it at all because of what she saw it doing to her friends who had become so addicted to that online world that they would ignore the real people around them.

[Read more…]

Goodbye HAL, you were wonderful

Anyone who has watched the film 2001: A Space Odyssey will never forget the voice of HAL 9000, the computer that was the real star of that film. Douglas Rain, the Shakespearean actor who provided the voice, died on November 11 at the age of 90. That somber, flat, atonal, imperturbable voice, concerned and yet somehow menacing, is etched in the memory and I can recall it easily and immediately. For those who cannot, here is one key scene. (Keir Dullea’s performance is often overlooked. He deserves a lot of credit for his reaction shots to a disembodied voice.)

[Read more…]

Hasan Minhaj’s new show is brilliant

I just watched the first two episodes of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj on Netflix and was blown away by them. Each show focuses largely on one issue, somewhat like John Oliver does, but whereas Oliver mixes hard news and analysis in the form of a news show with him as the anchor seated behind a desk, Minhaj uses a high-energy stand-up comedy format to mix hard news with analysis, with him moving around on a stage with large screens behind and below him and talking in a fast pace. He, like Oliver, provides lots of facts and background information that one does not often hear even on news shows but interspersed with plenty of comedic analyses. It really kept me glued to the show. The fact that I agreed with everything he said on both shows may had aided my enjoyment.
[Read more…]