Movies and a Play

I had to do something to get out of the house and distract from all the horrible news. On Friday I went to see a play based on the Nate The Great books. I've never read them, but it's a boy detective like Encyclopedia Brown. It was fairly cute, with the child actors and the various pets also played by child actors. Nate wore a green deerstalker but otherwise wasn't like Sherlock, and his girl sidekick was just a part narrator and notetaker; she didn't get to do anything cool like Encyclopedia's bodyguard Sally Kimball.

On Saturday I also went to see Hocus Pocus, because I heard it was a fairly mild Halloween movie, and The Hate U Give. Hocus Pocus was enjoyable camp, funny and creepy but not too scary. I liked the talking cat and I guessed ahead of time that the zombie didn't really like obeying the witches; once he cut the stitches on his mouth, he was able to say so. Didn't realize that he was played by Doug Jones until later. Nice film overall, and glad that it's successful on its 25th anniversary.

As for The Hate U Give, I thought it was a really moving drama, and the actors were all excellent. I was rather shocked when we learned that Starr had witnessed another friend getting killed years before Khalil; their other friend Natasha got shot in a drive by when they were just little kids playing Harry Potter. Starr understandably had been too scared to speak up back then, and that guilt makes her want to speak up for Khalil. Though the media portray Khalil as a drug dealer who deserved to get shot, Starr understands that Khalil was just trying to make money because his grandmother had cancer, and there was no other job he could take that would provide enough money. Yet Starr is afraid to bring up Khalil in front of her white friends at Williamson high school. Even her boyfriend Chris naively says "I don't see race" as if that helps.

Starr's family life is fairly complex, since her half-brother Seven is related to Ayesha (girlfriend of the gang boss King) as well as Starr's friend Kenya. Starr's maternal uncle Carlos meanwhile is a cop, so that's an awkwardly close relationship between criminals and police. Starr's father Maverick used to be in King's gang, but went to prison for King, and was therefore let out of the gang. Maverick now owns a convenience store in the neighborhood, and his kids work there. He takes care of his family (but still he cheated on his wife with Ayesha) and tries to instill black pride in all his kids. I did think that Maverick went too far sometimes trying to defend his home and refusing to move out of the neighborhood even when King started threatening to kill Starr for talking to the police. Worse yet, Maverick let his older son Seven go with him instead of stay safe with the rest of the family. This naturally leads Maverick's younger son Sekani to think that being a man means pulling a gun to defend the family, but thankfully Starr defuses the situation, as she realizes how fucked up it is.

There's still no justice for Khalil, but of course police brutality is going to be an ongoing issue. However, Starr's family is able to recover and rebuild. I was beginning to worry about so many things happening to the family, one after the other, until I thought the violence would never stop, but we get some hope in their moving on. I'm glad that in the end Starr is able to drop her fake 2.0 self at Williamson, and that Chris is able to see her true self, including her blackness.

Mail Bombs

It seems like there's no end to all the mail bombs at Democratic targets. The right has the nerve to think that we're the angry mob, and that the bombs are "false flag" distractions from us. They really think that we'd do something that could potentially harm all the postal workers as well as the security people who handle these bombs? It's sickening. Trump doesn't want to take the blame for inciting violence, and now he's talking about sending troops to the border to block the caravan. He's the one looking for distractions. There's news of an arrest now, so I hope that means the reign of terror might be over soon.

So far, early voting totals in Texas are comparable to presidential election years rather than midterm election years. I hope the trend holds, and I already voted myself. I'm worried about voter suppression in North Dakota and Georgia, though.

New Beginnings

Black Lightning continues to have too-long titles, and too much plot per episode. Some of it feels too disconnected to be coherent, but I do care about what happens to the characters. I wonder why the creepy ASA agent is in charge of the pod people, and why they weren't forced to hand them over, since the original experiment was by ASA agents. What ever happened to that mysterious briefcase that Tobias has?

Supergirl premiered well on Sunday, though my recording was bad due to all the rainstorms. Hope I can get a cleaner copy if they rerun it later. It's nice to see President Marsden again, though her alien identity was exposed. I think this season will be more about aliens as refugees/immigrants being targeted for hate crimes, so more political metaphors, but it's not too blatant.

I saw the movie Colette, about the French novelist. Very good, with a glimpse at how radical art and free love were in fin de siècle France. Colette makes friends with a pantomime performer named Wague who trains her to become an actress when she separates from Willy. Colette also has a lesbian affair with Missy, who dresses in men's clothes and sometimes shares the stage with Colette. At one point Colette insists on saying Missy is a "he" yet they don't use the other name Max that Missy sometimes used, so it's a little ambiguous about his/her identity. I like that Paris is depicted to be diverse and cosmopolitan, not all white like some period movies. I hear Keira Knightly is cast in a new movie with Gugu Mbatha-Raw, about the first black Miss World. That will be interesting too.

So Bad

I watched the live-action Cinderella for the first time, and my God, it sucked. Slow, boring, and the actress mainly just breathed hard whenever she was excited or scared. So many scenes were derivative/stolen from The Slipper and the Rose, or the animated Sleeping Beauty. About the only good part was the Captain of the Guards, and the fact that some African and Asian princesses were invited to the royal ball, but that was only a fleeting glimpse.

It's bad enough that Cinderella's dress is made blue, when it was originally sparkling silver in the cartoon, but the transformation scene where the fairy godmother changed the pink to blue reminded me that Aurora's dress was blue/pink, transforming back and forth throughout Sleeping Beauty. Cinderella has stolen both her dress colors, and now has even stolen her "meet the prince anonymously in the woods" meet-cute too. Fuck Disney. I don't want to watch the Ralph Wreck-it movie with the Disney princesses in it because I'm afraid it's going to screw over Aurora yet again.

Kenneth Branagh sucked big-time as the director of this movie, just like he sucked in the Poirot adaptation he cast himself in. It's starting to make me wonder how he ever got a reputation as a good director. Thumbs down again to him.

Not Good

The Good Place is kind of frustrating. I do like the new character Simone, and how the show avoided a love triangle by having Eleanor support them. She's fun and gives good advice. But I wish the writers would stop trying to do time jumps and resets. I hated the episode last season that was just Michael rebooting the neighorhood 800 times. We're just supposed to believe that all the demons were fine with that and not one of them tattled to Michael's boss, until fake Eleanor finally started to blackmail him after the 800th time?

I don't want another reset. I just want Eleanor/Tahani, and Jason/Janet, now that they've found someone for Chidi. But instead, they flirt with Tahani/Jason again before bringing up Larry Hemsworth for an excuse to get Tahani to leave. And we're not supposed to wonder how Michael and Janet, with no powers whatsoever, are able to live on Earth for over a year and not get discovered, despite all the manipulations and money being spent? The Judge just yells at them from afar and doesn't try to send someone to punish Michael and Janet? That key is really the only key they have? How did the Bad Place demon sneak through without authorization from the Judge? I don't like that "consequences" are so spotty on a show that's supposedly about ethics and philosophy.

Oh well. Murphy Brown pushed back the Jim Dial episode until next week due to the #MeToo episode this week. The stupid app plot took away from the main message, and made it seem like the rules about sexual harassment are ambiguous or confusing. Also didn't like the ICE jokes at the bar.

Black Lightning came back this week and finally did something with the Vice Principal character, who killed Syonide. Also, the police detective finally figured out Black Lightning's identity and confronted him on it. Not sure if he's going to tell anyone else.

Supergirl comes back soon. Hope it will be better now that Reign is gone.

Wishful Thinking

Hoping for a miracle on Saturday's vote was like wishing that the electoral college would vote for Hillary Clinton instead of the popular vote loser in 2016. Didn't happen, and I think I remember there was even somebody's futile protest vote for Bernie Sanders. These senators don't care about the will of the people. It's party over country, and now we have a second sexual abuser on the court. Fuck them, and I do hope that Maine finally gets rid of Susan Collins at the next election.

As if to match the gloomy mood, it's now rainy and cooler in Texas. Hope there won't be flooding this time.

But I wouldn't mind a Blue Wave in November. Vote 'em out, and then impeach Kavanaugh. Trump too, if Mueller comes out with enough stuff by then.

Worth Rewatching

Well the new TV season has begun. I was sad that the new Murphy Brown doesn't have Jim Dial as a regular, but then I heard that he'll guest star on episode three, so that will be good. I'm trying out new sitcoms but only like a couple so far. Hoping that the new Magnum stays light and breezy, though they still keep doing flashbacks to the guy who died in the pilot. At least they had an interesting lost fish case on the 2nd episode.

The drama A Million Little Things has a mystery going on about why Jon killed himself. He apparently left a whole packet explaining things to his wife, but his damn secretary took it and won't tell anybody. His last voicemail message, though, said "Love each other" which reminds me a little bit of how that line recurred in Arrested Development season 4. The insurance policy puzzles me, though, because I thought that insurance doesn't pay in the case of suicide, so how would his beneficiaries inherit? If he planned everything so carefully, surely he'd know that. Confusing, but I do like many characters and touching moments. However, there's also weird moments like a daddy/daughter dance where one of the songs is a breakup song by James Bay. What is up with choosing weird, inappropriate songs for your show?

I also saw a couple of movies, The House With the Clock in its Walls and Smallfoot. Both were entertaining. I usually don't like horror films, but the House movie was pretty mild. It was more family-friendly adventure with magic, and the trailers warned about the things that would be creepy, like the dolls/automatons that came to life, so I could handle it. I also liked the diverse casting even though it was a period movie. Strangely I found that some reviews by parents online kept claiming that it wasn't for kids, and that it was full of satanic rituals. The movie portrayed both good and bad magic, so the villains did do dark, evil stuff (or trick the boy into doing evil), but it's not any worse than Harry Potter fighting Voldemort. Anyway, I liked it, and it will probably be the only Halloween-themed movie I'll see this year, because I'm not into scary movies usually.

I was surprised by how much I liked Smallfoot. I guess the trailers made it seem more silly and slapsticky. The movie is actually kind of thoughtful, with its emphasis on integrity, and learning the truth. The backstory about how Yetis have encountered humans before, but it went badly, hinted at past colonialism and hunting species to extinction. The movie had really good messages about communication and tolerance between cultures. I also liked the song about being curious and asking questions. Good movie, and a good alternative for whichever parents think that House was somehow not family friendly.