Tag Archives: entertainment

Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl

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I was not sure if I was going to go to this. This was a limited release film coinciding with the release of Taylor Swift’s new record, “The Life of A Showgirl.” I would not be considered a “Swifty” by any stretch of the imagination, but I did go to the ERAs Tour film and I enjoyed it well. It worked into the schedule tonight so I wound up in Cinemark with a ton of teenage girls and a few other adults to see this film.

It is not really a film. It is also not really a concert film. It showed us the brand new video for the song “The Fate of Ophelia,” all of the lyric vids of the other 11 songs, and several behind the scenes shots of Taylor in the prep for the video, both with rehearsing and discussion of the creative.

Taylor Swift was the director of the video as well so she was shown to be the definitive creative force behind it. There were times when it seemed that she would speak and everyone else would just agree with her. I would have liked to see someone make a comment that wasn’t just “Oh how awesome you are.”

As a middle school literacy teacher, I did love the fact that she made a comment about a metaphor, followed by a comment on alliteration and then mentioned imagery. I hope the kids in the theater heard those terms.

As for the music, it was a bit of a mixed bag. It was clear that “The Fate of Ophelia” was the best song on the album. They showed us that video at the beginning of the movie and at the end. It was definitely my personal favorite as well.

I did notice that Taylor Swift’s songs on this album had a tendency to be repetitive, in one specific manner. She seemed as if she ended every song in the exact same way. The music slowed or stopped and she repeated one line that she had sung during the song, as if she were really emphasizing it. It was fine, but I did notice it so I would have liked maybe some variety in the end of the songs.

The songs that I did enjoy included “Elizabeth Taylor,” “Actually Romantic,” “Wood,” “Opalite,” and “Cancelled.” There were two songs that I did not like at all. They were “Father Figure” and “Wi$h Li$t.” “The Eldest Daughter,” “Ruin the Friendship,” and “Honey” were good. The album’s title track, “The Life of a Showgirl” was underwhelming, but not at the level of “Father ZFigure” or “Wi$h Li$t.”

The experience in the theater was as much a reason to go to this as anything else. It was fun with the audience cheering and applauding throughout the film. No one sang along in my theater, but it was fun to be part of the mass.

Overall, this was not much of a film, but it was a solid experience and I was happy to have chosen to see it. “The Fate of Ophelia” is easily the hit of this album and was the most important of the songs with this movie.

3.6 stars

{Sunday} Friday Morning Sidewalk

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SPOILERS

“Jig-A-Bobo”

Yes, I know it is not Sunday. I am going to the SiouxperCon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota this weekend and I will not have access to HBO Max Sunday morning. I did not know what I wanted to do about that. I considered skipping a week and just resuming next Sunday, but instead, I decided to make this one time exception and make it a Friday Morning Sidewalk instead. So this Friday Morning Sidewalk is episode 8 of Lovecraft Country.

In “Jig-A-Bobo”, Lovecraft Country tackled the grief and loss brought about by the real world murder of Emmet Till, lovingly nicknamed Bobo. The show had revealed that Till was best friends with Diana, and his brutal murder struck her hard.

However, in Lovecraft Country style, the grief takes on a whole different manner, supernaturally speaking.

Diana is pursued by some demons that looked like Topsys, the character from Uncle Tom’s Cabin… and they were spooky as hell. Jada Harris does a remarkable job showing Diana’s grief and her fear, both transgressing through.

Then, the ending sequence where the police get their comeuppance is so awesome. The protection spell Atticus and Montrose cast came into being in a different way than any of them anticipated. That monster that just ripped through the cops was utterly crazy. When that one cop went flying through the air, it was damn satisfying.

I’m not sure what the scene where Christina hires someone to attack her just like Emmet Till was meant to show. It really felt like a major weak spot in an otherwise strong episode.

I do like Ruby’s development through this episode. Her face off with Leti, who has her own little interaction with Christina this episode that made her invulnerable, felt like it was way overdue.

The arrival of Ji-ah seemed to be unimportant too. Not sure why she arrived and I am not sure why that was important. Leti’s anger felt misplaced.

Only two more episodes remaining. I hope everyone has a great Sunday morning on a Friday day!

Peacemaker S2 E1

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Spoilers

“The Ties That Grind”

I watched the first episode of Peacemaker season two last night, but, to be honest, I was really tired and I dozed through a bunch of the show. It is not a criticism of the episode as much as it was how tired I was after all day at school and the open house that night.

So I woke up early this morning and rewatched the episode, and I am so glad that I did. I realized that I actually dozed through the entire bit with Chris (Peacemaker) and his father and his brother Keith in the alternate universe, which is a major piece of the episode.

Before we go on, let’s talk the most important part… the dance routine on the opening credits. I have to say, my first thoughts were that I did not love it as much as I did last year. While I did enjoy it, and the dancing of the cast was as corny and over-the-top as ever, I feel as if the song this season, “Oh Lord” by Foxy Shazam, does not reach the level of awesomeness as “Do Ya Wanna Taste It?” by Wig Wam. That is just a personal preference, and I will say that I found it more entertaining the second time, so perhaps this will be a song that will grow on me as the season progresses whereas last season’s song grabbed me immediately.

Moving on, I thought this episode was really strong and highlighted more of the character aspects of the cast, especially Chris, Economos, and Harcourt. Chris’s entire storyline with the alternate world Peacemaker was amazing. The scene where Chris sat silently as his dad and Keith talked was powerful and a bit sad. I wonder if, in this universe, his dad is not the racist piece of garbage that was displayed last season. They do seem to be working together as a trio.

There was less about Adebayo and Adrian Chase (Vigilante) though they do appear in good scenes complimenting the other performances. I expect more from both before the season ends.

Also, shout out to the Bludhaven reference made during the episode. Bludhaven is the city outsie of Gotham where Dick Grayson, aka Nightwing, resides.

Another major switch came in the “Previously on” section at the beginning of the episode where they made a couple of adjustments to scenes from seaosn one. Specifically, we hear Adebayo make mention of the “Justice Gang” instead of the “Justice League.” Another switch was the iconinc scene at the end of season 1 where the Justice League shows up and we see Flash and Aquaman from their movie sides. Here we get the Justice Gang with Guy Gardner and Hawkgirl making comments instead. None of these adjustments bother me any and it makes me wonder if the plan is not to have Chris move into a different world, but to have Chris’s world be the actual DCU.

I know everyone was making the guess that Peacemaker would jump universes, but I think that is not going to be the way they go. With these few retcons, I think the story will be Chris goes to the happier universe with his cool dad and living brother, but he needed to return to his home world which is the DCU. I could be wrong on that, but I am calling it right now.

Peacemaker season two episodes drop every Thursday on HBO Max.

Stick S1 E1, E2

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Spoilers

“Pilot”

“Grossweiner’s Law”

Owen Wilson starred in a new series on Apple TV + called Stick and it had been on my radar recently. With my TV shows currently lacking, I decided to get a few new ones to watch over the next few weeks or so. Stick was the first one to try.

I really love Owen Wilson. Well, to be fair, I was not that familiar with Wilson until he took on the role as Mobius on Loki, Owen Wilson has been one of my favorite actors. And after watching the first two episodes of this series, you can tell that he has found another awesome role to play.

There is an absolute feel to this series, and, although it is early, I can say that the show Stick gave me Ted Lasso vibes. I really enjoyed the first two episodes. Owen Wilson is utterly charming in the role, again making a comparison to Jason Sudeikis’s Ted Lasso.

The plot is Owen Wilson played Pryce Cahill, a former pro golfer who had a meltdown on a course and sent his life spiraling into chaos. The show has not specifically told us what caused the meltdown, but it certainly implied heavily and I feel as if I have a clear idea of what happened without even going into specifics.

Pryce is on the course to give gold lessons when he hears a 17-year old boy driving the golf ball on the driving range. Pryce was unbelievably impressed with the boy’s swing and tries to convince the boy to allow Pryce to take him on the circuit.

The Boy, Santi, had that natural swing that told Pryce that he was special. Santi was not excited about it and worried that Pryce was simply a stalker. Pryce went to see Santi’s mother, Elena (Mariana Treviño) and tried to convince her to let him take Santi on the road.

The show also featured Marc Maron, as Pryce’s friend ad former caddie, and Judy Greer as Pryce’s ex-wife Amber-Lynn.

I really liked the set up of these characters. There are life details that we will be learning as the show progresses that will make these characters deep and well developed. There is something that happened with Santi’s father. Something happened to Pryce and Amber-Lynn’s child. I’m excited to see more of this show.

Sunday Morning Sidewalk #22

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Spoilers

Win or Lose

“Coach’s Kid”

“Blue”

The Sunday Morning Sidewalk starts its third series today. I have watched Band of Brothers and The Sandman so far and this week, the new show is on Disney + and is from Pixar. It is called Win or Lose.

This sets a precedent for Sunday Morning Sidewalk because this is the first time that I will be watching two episodes a week. I had looked at the run time on the episodes and they were all right in that 22 minute sweet spot, so I decided that I would do two a week.

I am very happy about that because the first episode was so good that I really wanted to watch a second one no matter the time.

The show’s concept is that every episode will center around a softball championship game and the lead up to it. Then, with each episode, we will see the perspective from a different character leading to the same point. First episode focuses on Laurie, the daughter of the coach of the Pickles, who is terrible at softball, but she desperately wants to do well. Second episode looks at the umpire of the game, a low self-imaged teacher named Mr. Brown.

I love this concept. What a wonderful idea for an 8-episode series and this show has some awesome Pixar magic throughout. In the first episode, Laurie has a little creature on her shoulder that was born from her self-doubt and who just kept growing as the week leading up to the championship game happened. Kind of an Inside Out-style creature that fed into Laurie’s doubts and anxiety.

Poor Mr. Brown. I related to this guy because it showed him as a teacher. The scene of the overbearing mother trying to prevent a punishment for her cheating daughter, well to say that I understand is an understatement. The magical armor that appears around Mr. Brown to deflect the slings and arrows of criticism and negative comments also keeps him isolated and lonely.

The animation is great. I mean, it is Pixar. That is kind of expected. I had no idea that this short little series on Disney + would be as poignant as it seems to be. I am excited to see who the next characters we focus on next week.

Whitney (2018)

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January 25

One of the greatest voices of music has also one of the most tragic stories is the documentary for today’s Genre-ary. Whitney Houston had so many struggles in her short and successful life, from drugs and pressures of her life. The 2018 documentary Whitney was on Netflix (though it is leaving at the end of the month).

Filmmaker Kevin Macdonald used archival footage, some great performances and interviews to give a picture of Whitney Houston’s life.

The music of Whitney Houston is amazing, and that comes through in this documentary, although there could be more about the music. However, the story of what happens and what led to her untimely death is very tough. The relationships in Whitney’s world was shown as a major part of her downfall. That included her marriage to Bobby Brown and the difficult connection with her father.

It was hard to watch the two sides of Whitney Houston that we saw in the doc. It was such a struggle in her life and how the events took such a toll on her.

It is a difficult doc to watch, even if there may not be anything new revealed of her story. Putting it in one spot like this is powerful.

Goosebumps: The Vanishing S1 E1, E2

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Spoilers

“Stay Out of the Basement Part I”

“Stay Out of the Basement Part II”

I was not that interested in the new Goosebumps series on Disney +. I had watched the previous one a couple of years ago, and I liked it enough, but it did not blow me away. It was clear that this was going to be a new cast in what appeared to be an anthology type show starring David Schwimmer of friends fame. I had a moment to watch episode one Sunday night so I gave it a shot.

Holy cow! I was knocked over with the show. I was able to watch episode two tonight and things only got creepier as the show seemed to go full Audrey II.

I loved these first two episodes. I was completely invested with the new characters and the new scary story.

It kicked off with a flashback to a group of kids who disappeared and were assumed to be dead years before. One of those kids turned out to be the brother of David Schwimmer’s character, Anthony. It is a family mystery that is still very relevant for them.

Anthony’s twin children, Devin and Cece, came to visit him for the summer, kicking off plenty of weirdness and wild encounters. Devin has had several issues immediately, trying to impress an old friend/flame, Frankie. She was dating Trey, a real jerk of a guy who lived across the street from Anthony’s place and kept parking his car in his driveway. It was a deal he had made with Anthony’s mom while she was there. Unfortunately, she has been taken to a home with dementia.

The family element was stronger than I expected with the actors involved playing things deeper than a show like this would normal have. Schwimmer was excellent with the sadness and the confusion on how to deal with the problems he is facing.

Anthony is a botanist and that leads him to find a spore (or so he thought) on his brother’s clothes, which had just now been released by the police. That spore turned out to be an animal and a carnivore. So Anthony did his best Seymour Krelborn imitation and started feeding it dead mice from the pet store. Guess what… it started growing. Feed Me Seymour.

Trey gets eaten too… or transformed… or something.

All of the episodes are currently on Disney +, but I do not have the time to binge the rest. Maybe some time in the next week I will get to the remainder of this show, and I am excited because I really liked the first couple.

Battlestar Galactica S3 E16, E17, E18

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Spoilers

“Dirty Hands”

“Maelstrom”

“The Son Also Rises”

I have not had the opportunity to watch many Battlestar Galactica episodes recently, so I decided to do a run of them tonight. I hope to try and wrap up season three tomorrow.

These were some wild episodes. “Dirty Hands” looked at the working class aboard the Galactica. Chief Tyrol was the intermediary in the episode as he was trying to help the people doing the horrible work keeping Galactica going. This was tough to watch because Roslin and Adama were brutal during the episode and they seemed really like the villains of the episode. When Adama told Chief Tyrol that he would have Cally executed if Chief did not call off the strike that he had initiated, I could not believe it. Of course, mere moments later, both Roslin and Adama were back all smiles and reasonable again. The whole story wrapped up in a third act switch, like it was a sitcom that had reached the end of the episode. It was a real whiplash effect.

Then was a shock. It was a Starbuck episode, featuring on the trauma in Kara’s past, including her relationship with her mother. The shock came at the end of the episode where it appeared that Kara flew her plane into a storm and it exploded into pieces, effectively killing her before the very eyes of Lee. LOST used to do this all the time, focus an episode on the back story of certain characters and then kill them off at the end. I do not know if this was the final episode for Katee Sackhoff and the character of Kara Thrace, but it sure seemed final. Kara had been in a downward spiral for quite awhile now and this felt like a fitting end to the character. I actually hope that there is no more sign of Kara Thrace outside of flashbacks. I have a feeling that we have not seen the last of Starbuck though.

Then, it seemed as if we focus in on Baltar’s lawyer. It was a weird episode where we have a new character named Romo Lampkin. Lee was assigned by Adama to protect him after the last lawyer for Baltar wound up dead from an explosion. The episode saw both Lee and Adama dealing with their grief over Starbuck in different manners. Of course, when Roslin was pulling random names out to form the tribunal for the trial of Baltar, Adama wound up on the panel, which was about as cliche as you are going to get. There is no reason why he should be anywhere near a tribunal in Baltar’s trial because, as we saw a couple of episodes ago, he was willing to shoot a woman as a “co-conspirator” to try and torment one of his friends into giving up a strike. He hid it under the guise of ‘following orders’ but it was a cruel use of extortion. I really get the feeling that Roslin just wants this trial over and I am not convinced that she will allow a truly fair trial to happen. Both Roslin and Adama are characters that I consider very much tainted since this season began, if not prior to it.

Season three has not been my favorite season so far. Perhaps it is because there is so much shade of grey in the storytelling, which I normally enjoy, but I would like to have a character or two that can rise above that. A character or two that I could really root for, knowing that they will always do what was right, and I do not thing that character exists currently on Battlestar Galactica.

Of course, the tension is always great and the acting is top notch, so there are still many reasons to love this show.

The Greatest American Hero S2 E4

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Spoilers

“Hog Wild”

Ralph and Bill are on the way back from a communication seminar and they come across a biker gang that was itching for trouble.

Now, Bill is anything but subtle and his borderline obnoxious personality ended up getting him three broken ribs and taken hostage by the gang.

Oh, and the gang wound up with the suit.

Of course, it only works on Ralph, but it still led to a whole bunch of trouble as the biker gang returned to a town that had run them off the day before and blackmailed Ralph into being their “muscle.”

Bill was really over the edge in this episode, displaying how he is too stubborn and hard headed in most situations. Ralph, although too involved with the communication from the seminar, does a great job doing what he could. I liked how Ralph and Bill used some other characters in the show to help the overall scenario. It was neat to see Ralph working with others without having to hide the suit.

I do think that Ralph could have taken this biker gang out much easier than he did, but I understand they needed to stretch the story to make it a full length episode. Overall, it was a fun show, but probably the weakest episode of the second season so far.

The Detective Daniel Prophet Podcast

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Welcome. This is the first ever EYG Podcast. I am a teacher at a middle school and we do a weekly squad. My squad was the Actor’s Guild and we would do some improv and acting exercises.

Then I took a class for license renewal that dealt with podcasts in the classroom, and i was inspired. I decided that the Actor’s Guild could do a podcast. I would write up a ficitonal “true crime” type story and we would record it.

I set the podcast in my ficitonal setting of Dalton hill, which is one of the books that I have written. We then spent our time in squads working on recording these scenes.

I am very please with how it came out. A goal was to get this on Spotify, and I am proud to announce that epiosode one is live on Spotify.

We are not professionals and a lot of the voices are kids, so there are some stumbles and some errors, but I am overall very pleased. If we had more time allotted to the recording, we could have really done a fabulous job.

There will be six episodes of this podcast, entitled “The Detetcive Daniel Prophet Podcast” being released over the next few months. I am very proud of these kids and I am proud of the podcast, warts and all.

Here it is…

Ray (2004)

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Okay, so today I am cheating.

I watched Ray, the biopic of Ray Charles, starring Jamie Foxx, which lead to Foxx winning the Academy Award for Best Actor. However, it absolutely falls into the category that I spoke about at the beginning of the Genre-ary DailyView. It is not a musical. 

It did have musical listed on the summary for the movie, but it is one of those movies that has music in it, is even about music, but is not a musical. I did say at the beginning of this month that I might not follow that rule as I was going through it and so I have broken it.

According to IMDB, “The story of Ray Charles (played by Jamie Foxx), music legend. Told in his adult life with flashbacks to his youth we see his humble origins in Florida, his turbulent childhood, which included losing his brother and then his sight, his rise as pianist in a touring band, him writing his own songs and running his own band, and then stardom. Also includes his addiction to drugs and its affect on his working life and family life.“

Jamie Foxx is sensational as the legendary performer. He seemingly brought back to life the larger than life character of Ray Charles Robinson, better known to the world as just Ray Charles. 

The biopic sections of this movie are the best parts. Watching Foxx develop Ray through his relationships, his struggle to find the right sound, his drug habit and other problems was the standout of this film.

The music was used well, but I could have used more of it. It seemed to only give a flavor of the songs in the film. Again, another reason why I would not consider this a musical, necessarily.

I thought the weakest part of the movie were the daydreams/delusions that Ray would have flashing back to the traumatic event of his brother’s death. The appearance of water in his suitcase or on the floor were too cartoony for what the movie was trying to go for. This felt way too artsy for the story. The straight up flashbacks were considerably more powerful and more effective than that.

I do appreciate that the film did not shy away from some of the negative aspects of his life. Many of these types of musical biopics leave out major issues in favor of a more positive spin. We see Ray Charles and his drug addiction, which led to his arrest, and his extra-marital affairs, one which even gave him a son.

Along with Jamie Foxx, the strong cast included Regina King, Kerry Washington, Clifton Powell, Sharon Warren, Richard Schiff, Larenz Tate, Terrence Howard, Wendell Pierce, Bokeem Woodbine, and even Moonlighting’s Herbert Viola, Curtis Armstrong, himself. I was able to get past my dislike of that actor because of his Moonlighting role. Being fair, he did a solid job here.

This was a movie with a lot of good and some areas where I would have liked something different. Jamie Foxx is tremendous as are the rest of the cast (shout out to Kerry Washington for her role as Charles’s wife, Bee). Ray is a touch long and, not really a musical, but it is a solid film overall.