Some of you may recall the fun experiment that was done by the astronaut David Scott on the Moon during the Apollo 15 mission when he tested Galileo’s idea that in the absence of air resistance, a hammer and a feather would fall to the ground at the same rate.
Actually, unlike Henry, I did see one superhero film that was in the Avengers series because I was curious as to what all the fuss was about. It did not persuade me to see any more. I also watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy because so many people I know loved the books so I watched the films to see if I might want to read them. The answer is no.
The fascinating Netflix series Dirty Money explores the world of high-level corruption. I discussed in an earlier post an episode of season 2 of the show about how Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is a slumlord who preys on poor and vulnerable people. The show also examines how drug cartels launder their money. When it comes to laundering drug money the problem is always how to convert large amounts of cash in small currency bills collected on the streets into deposits in bank accounts without the authorities being alerted, where the money can be more easily transferred around the globe.
[Read more…]
Get Fuzzy is a funny cartoon strip that takes place in an apartment occupied by a loner Rob, his lovable but dimwitted and gullible dog Satchel, and a sociopathic cat Bucky who loves to torment and exploit Satchel and who often has his weird cat friends over.
I have not seen either the stage production or the film version of the musical Cats but know enough to decide that it is not to my taste and also appreciate the humor of this recent strip.
Here is an actual performance of the song from the 1998 stage production.
The landmark US Supreme Court decision that in 1973 legalized abortion in the US is Roe v. Wade where ‘Jane Roe’ was the pseudonym given to the woman who brought the case who feared using her real name given the highly charged nature of the case and the violence that was, and still is, directed against women who seek abortions, abortion providers, and supporters by anti-choice zealots. Over time, Roe’s name was revealed to be Norma McCorvey and she later created a sensation said in the mid-1990s when she said that she had become a born-again Christian and an anti-gay, anti-abortion activist. (She had been a lesbian for almost all her life.) This was treated as a tremendous coup by the Christian right who would parade her before any media microphone and indeed anyone who would listen.
But in a new documentary AKA Jane Roe made by the TV channel FX that is due to be released tomorrow, in interviews just before she died in 2017, McCorvey confesses that her religious conversion and change in attitudes was all a sham. She said that she was broke and homeless and that she was given a lot of money by the religious right to entice her to do what she did.
[Read more…]
Fred Willard who died yesterday was one of those actors you see all over the place in comedies. He was always in supporting roles, never the star, and sometimes those roles were just cameos. There was something intrinsically funny about him, a kind of appealing goofiness without being slapstick, combined with an ‘aw, shucks’ obliviousness that always made me smile whenever he appeared on the screen. He had a vast number of film and TV credits to his name and the chances are that even if his name did not register in your consciousness, you have seen him. I just learned that he was born in Shaker Heights, OH the town I lived in for thirty years.
[Read more…]
Netflix has just released this four-part mini-series based on a memoir by Deborah Feldman about how and why she left the world of Hasidic Orthodox Judaism, though as is usually the case with film adaptations, the story has been changed in several ways. The film is about a very young woman Esther (known as Esty), who is a member of the Yiddish-speaking Satmar community that lives in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. As is the custom in the ultra-Orthodox community, she has an arranged marriage to a very young man. The expectation in such marriages is that the woman will start having babies immediately, as many as she can.
[Read more…]
The Trump family’s grifting and exploitation of his office is so shameless and obvious to all that the stimulus package apparently has language preventing them from using it to benefit themselves. Although it does not name him but instead says that it applies to the president, other lawmakers, and their families, it is clearly Trump that lawmakers had in mind.
[Read more…]
I am not a fan of opera, having seen only one live performance in my life. It was a long time ago when I was in Germany and we were taken as a group to see Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. My reaction? Kind of meh. But I decided to take advantage of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s decision, during the time when they are shut down due to the pandemic, to broadcast recordings of their past live streams of operas for free with a new one every night. (See this post for details).
[Read more…]
If you are a fan of opera, New York City’s Metropolitan Opera announced that they will, starting tonight and continuing for the duration of their closure due to the pandemic, live-stream, free of charge some of the recordings they have of past performances, no doubt to keep people entertained while they are restricted to their homes.
Since 2006, the company has been transmitting live performances to movie theaters via satellite as part of a series called The Met: Live in HD; now the Met will be streaming those performances for free, one per day, for the duration of the closure.
…Each opera will be available on the Met’s website beginning at 7:30 p.m. Eastern and will remain available to stream until 3:30 p.m. Eastern the next day. They’ll also be available through the Met’s Opera on Demand apps.
You can see the first week’s offerings here. Tonight will be Bizet’s Carmen.
