TxMike

I had not heard of this movie but today it showed up on the broadcast TV channel "Movies!" which specializes in older movies. We were having a cable outage and it was a way to pass time with no internet, no streaming.

The premise is that during WW2 there was a Nazi prison camp on a Greek Island. The prisoners hatch an escape plan and their ultimate mission is to get to Athena where they think valuable items stolen by the Nazis are being hidden.

By modern standards, this is not an especially good movie.

The tone of the film is wildly uneven, there are lots of funny bits but also lots of shooting and killing. Often it feels like separate scenes were ineptly joined together. I didn't feel that the mixture of the broad comedy and action-adventure sequences worked.

Also the Germans are depicted as very incompetent, as happened in many post-WW2 movies and TV shows. The movie is mainly interesting for the array of stars in it.

A particular novelty was Sonny Bono as one of the prisoners. He comes across as an inexperienced actor but does fine in his limited role. This came on the heels of the very popular 1970s TV show "Sonny and Cher."

I found this movie when I was seeing if I had missed any Jenny Agutter movies. Her role here isn't large, she plays an "almost 19" girl in the small English community and probably wasn't necessary. But it was still fun seeing her.

The movie starts with a real newsreel from 1943, during WW2, when Hitler sent a rescue party to get Mussolini. That really did happen.

The premise of this movie is that Hitler decided he wanted to kidnap England's Prime Minister, and key to their war effort, Winston Churchill. The directive was just for an inquiry, to see if it were feasible, but the German officer took off and ran with it.

The movie is very interesting both for its concept, and the several big-name movie stars of the time. I viewed it on Blu-Ray from my public library and the video is very nice for a movie filmed almost 50 years ago.

My wife and I watched this at home, on DVD from our public library. We enjoyed it as light entertainment. The animation and sound are done very well and the several songs are performed well.

The premise is that a man became fascinated with magic and sorcery when he was young and he devoted his life to perfecting it for himself. He found a small island in the Mediterranean and established his land there, with himself as king. He would accept wishes from the common people, but would not grant all of them, it depended on what he thought the result would be.

Wishes are depicted as light blue ballon-like vessels, about the size of an adult's hand, and they would float up to the top of the large gathering hall.

For one young girl, she wanted the wish of her old grandpa to be granted but the king never would. So she takes it as a personal mission of hers to correct what she views as a wrong, not only for the old man, but also for the others in the kingdom. She gets surprising help when a small yellow star actually comes down to help out.

As I already said, we were entertained.

Richard Linklater, who wrote and directed this movie, was born in 1960 in Houston, Texas. I suspect that this script is somewhat autobiographical as he would have been a teenager in 1976.

One fascination is the large number of young actors who went on to become movie and TV stars. Also an equal number of young actors who just faded away, which shows the uncertainty of pursuing a career as an actor.

Today in the 2020s a common trait of the speech patterns of many teenagers and young adults is to insert the word "like" one or more times in a sentence, where it is totally unnecessary. "It was like one of the best like experiences I ever had." In this movie the pervasive, unnecessary word is "man", as in "Yeah, man..." or "That was a wild time, man." After a while I got sick of hearing most characters say "man" all the time.

This is an interesting movie for its depiction of the time but in truth not that good a movie. It portrays teenagers in Austin as being rebellious and always thinking about sex, drinking, and smoking pot. The part that bothers me most is the hazing of freshmen by upperclassmen. The older boys chasing down freshmen boys and beating on them with thick wooden paddles.

I attended high school in the 1960s, my children attended high school in the 1980s and 1990s. I don't know if what is depicted here is accurate but they sure have foul mouths in this movie.

At home, streaming on Peacock.

Of the 2018 "Aquaman" movie I wrote, "This is a good popcorn movie, but I watched it at home on BluRay from my public library. It has a lot of very deep bass in many scenes and often rattled the glass doors covering the fireplace." And further, "The computer graphics and special effects are really great, but for my tastes there is just too much frantic battles and destruction in the scenes leading up to the conclusion."

And I can pretty well say the same for this movie. Right now its IMDb rating is about a point lower than the 2018 movie and that seems appropriate.

The actors in various roles are pretty much the same. In this one Aquaman and his half-brother Orm must cooperate to defeat a menace who has a Black Trident which gives the bearer similar powers to Aquaman's Trident.

I don't consider it to be a very good movie, however it is suitably entertaining if you don't expect too much.

My wife skipped, not her kind of movie.

This is not a movie for mainstream fans. It certainly shares characteristics from other Coen movies, especially "Fargo". The seemingly gratuitous non-sexy nudity. The road trip with the talkative little guy and the goon. My wife watched half of the trailer and decided to skip, streaming on Peacock. For those of us who enjoy many of the Coen movies, this is a very entertaining one. Though more than a bit raunchy.

My main reason for trying it was Margaret Qualley who was so good in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and in "My Salinger Year." Here she is unabashed Lesbian, Jamie, living and working in Pennsylvania. When her good friend and fellow Lesbian says she wants to go to Tallahassee to visit her aunt, Jamie has an idea, she will go too and they will get there by picking up a "drive away" car, one that needs to be delivered to a different city. Thus the name, "Drive-away Dolls."

The road trip gets complicated, there is a flat tire, leading to the discovery of a metal briefcase with surprising contents. There is a Senate candidate, a "family man" with a shady past, and Matt Damon is cast in that small but important role. There is lots of Lesbian activity, but it seemed to me to be a parody of sorts, for laughs.

So yes, its current rating across all audiences is understandably low, but for those of us who enjoy the strange, unusual, often dark humor of a Coen movie it is better than its rating would suggest.

Oh! And the several Linda Ronstadt songs are a bonus.

Through the modern magic that is DVD I managed to finally see this iconic movie, almost 50 years after in was filmed, incidentally in Texas, mostly in the DFW area.

It is set in the future, year 2274, in a time after the "outside world" has been made unlivable. The people here live in very large, interconnected domes. Large enough to have transportation systems inside them. Most of the people wear clothes made of brightly-colored, sheer fabric, and they move about in a happy, carefree manner. The women seem to have long ditched the idea of wearing bras. Skin tones are homogenous.

The old idea of marriage and family have long been discarded, as has birth of children by the old-fashioned way. And, as you turn 30, you and your group go to the carousel to be "renewed." But you are never seen again.

Michael York, who was so good as Tybalt in the 1968 "Romeo and Juliet", with that commanding stage-worthy voice is Logan, who is a Sandman, an enforcer. He and others in that role dress differently, in black uniforms, and carry weapons. Those who try to avoid the Carousel are deemed "runners." The story here is when Logan decides he will run.

Jenny Agutter is Jessica, she has signed up for a role as a sex worker in their world but decides she doesn't really want to do that. She and Logan end up forming a connection.

Agutter was famously in the 1971 movie "Walkabout", filmed when she was 18. She has a great swimming scene in that movie and in "Logan's Run" she has a similar scene in a similar pond at 1:15 into the DVD, joined by York. She was about as pretty as a 1970s girl could be.

Farrah Fawcett wasn't well-known yet, most of her acting was in TV shows and TV movies. A native Texan herself, she has a somewhat small role as Holly who works for a doctor who can give runners a different appearance.

Also fun was hearing Peter Ustinov recite some of T. S. Elliot's "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats" in one scene with lots of cats. This filming was done several years before Andrew Loydd Webber wrote his musical "Cats" based on the same source material.

Overall a very interesting and entertaining movie, how the 1970s viewed a possible dystopian future.

It is sad to read some of the negative reviews, like those who question why this was made as a musical. My reply would be, "See the original if you don't like musicals, just don't watch this one then complain."

The story is a very dark tale of a young black woman in the early 1900s who was abused at home, had two children that were given away without her consent, and who was married off to an older man, "Mister", who also abused her.

Making it a musical does not take away from the plight of Celie but it does brighten up the whole movie and I thoroughly enjoyed, as did my wife. All the singing is top-notch, as well as the harmonies in many of the musical numbers.

Fantasia Barrino is the grown up Celie and, as a former winner of the American Idol competition is of course very good in the musical numbers plus she is a credible actress.

But my favorite is Taraji P. Henson who I know mostly for dramatic roles, as in the 2016 "Hidden Figures" where she was in the role of the mathematician who solved the orbital issues for NASA. But she is an accomplished singer too, for my tastes better than Barrino, and she plays the entertainer and "loose woman" Shug Avery.

Danielle Brooks is also an accomplished singer with a very strong voice, she is a key character Sofia.

To me Colman Domingo is the best actor here, as "Mister." He is a dangerous, unforgiving man, he has to play this part to perfection to complement the roles of the women and his adult son.

Overall a very good and entertaining telling of the "Color Purple" story, the title a reference to a line about noticing the purple flowers in the field among the other colors.

Spielberg directed the older movie, here he is one of the Producers, which means something regarding the quality of the movie.

My wife and I watched it at home on DVD from out public library.

At first glance this animated movie, not even 80 minutes long, is just mindless entertainment. With very good, very colorful animation. However it has a message, and almost the same message in the 1998 movie "Pleasantville." "Is it better to live a safe and predictable life, or is it better to takes risks and be uncertain of the outcome?"

We meet a family of Mallard Ducks, happy in their little pond. One fateful day a group of strangers, a different species of duck, stop for a rest in their little pond. It turns out they were headed to Jamaica for their winter migration. They were surprised to learn the Mallards, at least this family of Mallards, did not migrate. Papa Mallard was content to keep his family in the safety of their friendly little pond. They would tell the kids stories of young ducks that ventured out and were eaten.

However Papa Duck relents, the group of five take off for Jamaica, but having never been there got lost easy. One experience was an unscheduled stop in Manhattan. Another was a rescue. Then their luck changes when they meet a brightly-colored originally from Jamaica.

I don't think it tries to be profound but simply fun entertainment, and it does that. On DVD from my public library, my wife skipped, not in the mood for an animated movie.

It.

Filmed and set in Ireland, James Cosmo, in his 70s, is Howard, former sailor and now retired to his remote home. His wife, who suffered from depression, died years earlier. He lives alone and his 40-something daughter, a nurse, checks on him periodically. He doesn't seem to welcome her visits and his home is a total mess.

So the daughter hires help, a local lady to come in two days a week. She is played by 60-something Brid Brennan as Annie. At first Howard makes it clear that he'd rather her not come, but eventually he softens up when he realizes she is good company.

The adult daughter is played by Catherine Walker as Grace. She too is having personal issues and she and her husband don't always have time to communicate properly.

As the story develops we see that there are some deep family issues, plus some issues Howard is having that he fails to share. It is all plausible, elderly parents and their adult children can have difficulty with issues that represent a wedge. In fact I have five adult children and there are wedges.

My wife and I watched it at home, streaming on Amazon Prime. Not a happy or uplifting movie but suitably interesting. The acting and cinematography are excellent.

Before I watched this program the word "raptor" conjured images of a Bald Eagle, or an Osprey, birds of prey I watched the summer we spent in Montana on Flathead Lake. But now I have a much broader appreciation of raptors, from the largest to the tiniest. And including owls and vultures, plus a few others I had never heard of.

As with most, if not all, "Nature" programs there is a message of conservation, and this program has it but not as a main point. This is a really good program, it shows a number of different raptors in their natural environments and how they breed and hunt. And migrate.

One raptor has the ability to fly as fast as 70 mph in level flight. Another can dive as fast as 150 mph. Perhaps the largest one, an Eagle in Africa, weights up to 10 pounds and with a 6-foot wingspan. Another interesting explanation is how a dished face of an owl can help it hear faint sounds by amplification, similar to a dish catching sound.

There's a lot more, those are just a few examples. Like the Eagle that attacks and knocks small goats off the mountain, letting the fall do the hard work so that the raptor can clean up. This is a very well made program.

Episode #2 was broadcast one week later, on April 17th. It continued the narrative with a different set of raptors in different parts of the world. They need to do four things - hunt, eat, mate, and raise their offspring. That is in essence what the program covers.

Plus one case of modern evolution, involving the Snail Kite in Florida. Because an invasive species of giant snail was too large for most Snail Kites their numbers took a big hit. But the larger Kites selectively survived and reproduced and now the population of the Snail Kites is on the rise as they now can feast on the larger snails. Evolution, survival of the fittest, in just two or three generations of the bird.

On PBS. Good, interesting program.

The one "but" is Producer Ari Wallach. First off he turned me off with his speaking mode, frequently using 'kind of' or 'sort of', which are weasel words to avoid making a declarative statement.

Then there's the title - "history" of the "future" makes no sense. I suspect he was trying to coattail Hawking's "Brief History of Time" which does make sense.

Then after a brief introductory scene the program switches to a group of young adults in a room, like a conference room, around a table, and each is explaining their own take on what today is, and what the future might hold. Fine, that is a good approach.

But then, for no good reason, we see a participant for a few seconds, then we see Ari Wallach nodding "knowingly" as a person is speaking. Then a different person for maybe 5 seconds, then the camera moves to Ari Wallach's face, looking approvingly. And it continues this way.

What is with all the face shots of Ari Wallach? He is the least interesting participant. A good producer will try to stay mostly in the background but not Wallach, he seems to think this program is better if he gets his face in it constantly, even when he is not contributing.

I couldn't take it any more, a good subject that could be interesting but ruined by Ari Wallach's constant need to be the focus of the camera. It is an example, when you produce a 6-part series then you'd better be SURE that episode #1 starts great and makes potential viewers WANT to see additional episodes. This fails to do that. I did watch some of episode #3 but it didn't seem connected to anything, mostly random snippets from various movies that deal with the future in some way.

Sadly, a big miss, it doesn't do a good job of connecting with its purported subject. Also beware of the two quick "10" reviews, they have similar wording and are of accounts just established, and having only one review, for this program. While I would not accuse them of being shill reviews, it does raise that possibility in my mind.

I browsed a few user reviews here before my wife and I spun up the DVD for this movie. It is funny, the viewers who have some sort of spiritual connection with the Marvel Universe and expected this movie to be totally serious were universally disappointed. Some give the movie silly ratings of "1" or "2" which of course is totally absurd and an insult to the hundreds of craftsmen and technicians who formed this movie is post-production and created the fantastic sound and visuals.

At the other end of the spectrum are folks like my wife and me, plain old 70-something retirees, who just look for an entertaining 90 minutes or so. The viewers who align with this outlook write positive reviews and give the movie a decent rating. No, probably not "10", but maybe 6, 7, or 8 when you compare it to other action movies with a humorous approach.

I won't mention specifics of the storyline here except it has Brie Larson as Captain Marvel and three other powerful young women who fight physically and psychologically for the fate of the universe. When the movie ended my wife said, "I liked the scenes with the cats." Yes, they are very special cats (and kittens).

Part of what makes this such an entertaining movie are the quiet scenes when the characters get to converse with each other, and the families. Plus, for those of us with a well-equipped home theater sound system, which includes a good powered subwoofer, this movie has a great sound track with body-shaking bass during battle scenes.

Entertaining movie! At home on DVD from our public library. No extras on the disc.

So, Rudy Mancuso wrote and directed 'Musica', and in it he stars as Rudy, a person with synesthesia, a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. In this movie Rudy mostly experiences this in everyday sounds, kids playing ball, cooks tapping their utensils, bus and subway sounds, those sorts of things. But to him they are rhythms and music.

In real life this is Rudy Mancuso. In real life he is an accomplished musician, he is a puppeteer, so this movie is mostly autobiographical. The fictional part is having a 'gringa' for a girlfriend and realizing that they weren't really a good fit for each other.

Then one faithful day Rudy is picking up fish at the local market and gets hit on his face with a fish thrown by one of the workers. In that process he meets fellow Brazilian, Camila Mendes as Isabella. Continuing the reflection of real life, Rudy and Camilla met during the making of this movie and now, in real life they are a couple.

It also appears that Rudy's movie mother, Maria, is played by his real mother, Maria, although I can't find out anything about her.

All that aside, is it an entertaining movie? Yes, it is. While the bare-bones rom-com story follows a mostly familiar formula, the way the movie is made is unique and quirky. It was refreshing to watch a movie presented in a totally different manner.

My wife and I watched it at home, streaming on Amazon Prime.

Here's the deal. The American Samoan football/soccer team was the worst in the world. In 2001 a record was set. For the worst defeat in an international football match. When Australia beat them 31-0.

This movie is set about 10 years after that, the Samoan team was still essentially non-competitive. Their bar wasn't set very high, they wanted to score one goal. If they could score one goal their program would be a success.

Along comes Michael Fassbender as temperamental soccer star Thomas Rongen, now retired and coaching. He was given a make or break chance, go to American Samoa, the small island nation in the Pacific Ocean, and turn the team around. Get them good enough to score a goal.

Now I admit that does not sound much like a scenario for a good, entertaining movie. But it actually is, in the hands of Taika Waititi who co-wrote the script, directed, and has the role of an American Samoan Priest. Yes, there is a lot of focus on soccer, and building a team. There is also a lot of focus on what happiness is, and how there is much more to life than a sport.

It was filmed in Hawaii, the actors are good, and the whole movie is entertaining.

At home, on DVD from my public library. There are no 'extras' but the end credits include some brief clips of the real people.

This is a really strange story, I don't recall seeing any movie with a comparable theme. That is neither good nor bad, it all depends on the how it is developed and handled. I think for the most part it is handled well, and interestingly, but to me the final scenes and the developments in them are not as interesting as the concepts developed in the first half of the movie.

I always like Nicolas Cage as an actor, I don't always like the characters he plays. Here he is PhD Paul Matthews, a university professor. A sort of vanilla type of guy, short on fashion and short on personality. He doesn't stick out in any particular way, even to his wife and two teenage daughters. In my time all those years ago he might be called a 'square.'

Then we see a scene outside, a back yard, a swimming pool. The daughter is on a recliner, reading, when keys, then a shoe, and finally a body, drop from the sky and into the pool. Paul is there, next to the pool, he just observes dispassionately. No reaction, he does nothing. We wonder if a plane broke apart. At least I did.

Quickly we realize this was his daughter's dream. Then as others, some complete strangers, or some his students, he always just stands around, does nothing. That is the recurring theme. At first. Eventually dreams turn to increasingly darker situations.

Part of the story is the natural attempt for him and others to explain the phenomenon, but no one can. Then the story heads in the direction of the influence of social media. Paul becomes a meme. He becomes well-known for all the wrong reasons. And the outfall is all negative. He gets un-invited to important meetings, he gets harassed at a local diner, prohibiting teaching his class.

In the DVD extras Cage himself explains that he reads lots of scripts that he doesn't think would make a good movie but, when he read the script for this one, he "knew" he had to make it. Frankly, some of it passes over my head, like the book he eventually wrote or why so many turned against him even though he did nothing. They weren't his dreams. And maybe that is just the point, in this day of "cancel culture" it is intended to show how easily and quickly someone can be cancelled when hordes of others jump on the bandwagon even if the person did nothing wrong.

Anyway, my wife and I enjoyed it, at home of DVD from our public library. Nic Cage is great, he even shaved the top of his head to look like an old professor with male pattern baldness.

The 1999 "Talented Mr Ripley" with Matt Damon and Jude Law is one of my favorites to re-watch. However, being a movie and required to fit the time allowed, we don't learn much about Tom Ripley's back story, his normal life, nor of the many side stories in Europe. We know that, when he is mistaken for a Princeton guy, he doesn't correct the record. We learn early that deception is his friend.

In this 8-part series called just "Ripley" we see more clearly that this Tom is a bit older and how he lives the life of a grifter in New York. For example, he encounters the mail carrier and pretends to be going into the Dr Office, is handed the mail, he finds checks that he can cash. Or he pretends to be a bill collector and has a new check sent to his "agency." Using a variety of fictional identities, if a bank gets suspicious he just walks away and destroys that identity. He is slick and unperturbed, a man on his mission.

So the entire series has the same core story, with the same core characters and their relationships, but it treats Tom in a distinctly different light. It starts when Mr Greenleaf hires a P. I. to find Ripley, we are not sure why he knows about him, but that is how Tom gets the paid assignment to go to Italy and find Dickie.

There are a number of other differences but Tom is forever the grifter and when he realizes what Dicky has he wants it too. He wants that life, and the first episode ends with him practicing in the mirror, introducing himself as Dicky Greenleaf, foreshadowing what the rest of the series will be about.

The show is shot in B&W, which I see some complain about. But I love it, to give it that 'film noir' look and feel. With much more running time to play with it goes a bit deeper in some familiar scenes and also adds some that were not included in the movie. And finally, the last scenes and the ending are heading into a completely different direction.

In my mind there is no value trying to compare this 6 1/2 hour miniseries to the 1999 movie, they are quite different takes on the same core story. I like what they did here, I like the more deliberate pace, I like the B&W approach, to me it helps it feel like 1960s Italy.

Dark but good series, entertaining.

This program was broadcast this evening on PBS. The first 15 minutes or so give the general viewing audience a brief history of Solar eclipses, where and when the April 8th shadow will travel across the lower 48 states, and how to safely view the eclipse. And several people saying, "You don't want to miss it, a life-changing experience." We will see it, weather permitting, when we visit friends in the Texas portion of the path. Let's hope Mother Nature helps with clear weather.

The remainder of the program delves deeper into the Scientific aspects of predicting Solar eclipses, with modern technology and the understanding of Sun-Earth-Moon movements and gravitational interactions, the position of the shadow is predicted to 1/100th of a second and within 100 feet or so.

Then it goes into the various ways we are able to study the Sun, including analyzing the temperature and composition of the corona and the solar flares.

I am a Scientist and a project that really impressed me is sending four Solar telescopes into Earth orbit, presumably geosynchronous, and they are spaced apart so each can observe the Sun at the same time from different angles. What this does is allow triangulation to create a three-dimensional view of what is happening in the coronal ejections and the Solar wind. This isn't idle curiosity, the hope is that the data will help build prediction models to help us better deal with the Sun's impact on Earthly systems.

Another neat thing, the Parker Solar Probe, which has been in an elliptical orbit around the Sun already for several years, will be in a position to observe Solar activity at 90 degrees from Earth-based observations, to further enhance the ability to interpret the data.

This program has something for everyone, the basic eclipse explanation, how the relative sizes and distances of the Sun, Moon, and Earth are just perfect for a total eclipse that allows the corona to be visible. Plus the added detail on Scientific studies of the Sun.

Great presentation and it is free to watch as a 53-minute program on the web.

Edit: We watched it from the back porch of friends in Austin and, while it was a cloudy day, there were enough breaks in clouds that we able to experience it nicely.

And thus it is with session musicians, or hired guns who join a famous musician or music group. As Vincent Damon Furnier explained, "I only hire A-list musicians, I don't have time for the B-listers." (That is Alice Cooper, for anyone who doesn't know his birth name.)

This documentary is a series of interviews with the musicians, interspersed with film clips of the times, snippets of performances. It is a 2016 documentary so it was put together somewhat before that. It features the late 1970s and the 1980s, so those interviewed were mostly in their 50s and 60s. It mostly features drummers and guitarists, and man can they still play!

They are the guys and ladies most of us never heard about but they in fact are responsible for the sound we love. Their common trait is their love of making music. But not being a headliner their employment is always tenuous. One mentioned making $400 a week in the 1980s, that is about $20,000 if you work 50 weeks a year. With the inflation rate since then it would be equivalent to about $60,000 yearly now. Hardly a way to get wealthy.

I thoroughly enjoyed this film which I found streaming on Amazon Prime. I am a musician, definitely a B-lister, I am in awe of how accomplished these A-list musicians are.

Kathryn Newton plays Lisa, a school girl who lost her mom and now her dad is married to another woman (Carla Gugino, one of my favorites over the years). Lisa is a bit different from her classmates, a bit Gothic, and enjoys visiting the old cemetery. She often takes along paper and charcoal to make impressions of the interesting headstones.

One day "a creature" (Cole Sprouse who I so enjoyed as Jughead in the 'Riverdale' series) follows her home. In a seemingly unlikely development she is not afraid of him but he is dirty and smelly so she orders him to take a shower. He is from the cemetery, he is now an undead and has the peculiar attribute of very smelly, gag-worthy green tears when he is sad. He is also missing a few body parts and there are humorous scenes where Lisa finds replacements and sews them on him.

The whole movie is a dark comedy, as it turns out there are some deaths. And the ending with Lisa and the creature together comes as a bit of a surprise.

I found it on one of my streaming services, it is just a fun 'something different' movie and the acting is very good.

This musical production is essentially the same story in the 2007 movie "Waitress" with Keri Russel. This 'movie' was filmed in a theater with a live audience, and it has all the looks and feel, including moveable sets, of a real stage play.

Sara Bareilles is 40-something Jenna. She is a waitress and pie-baker at the local pie and short order food place. She is married to a real cad. (Incidentally her real-life husband plays her husband here.) They aren't close in any manner but after a night of drinking and frivolity she finds herself pregnant.

Most of the story involves her interactions with her co-workers, her maternity doctor, and her regular customers. It is her journey to come to grips with who she really is and what she wants out of life. Including, a few months later, for her daughter.

Bareilles, who also produced and wrote songs, is really good in the role. All the singing is good, it seems veterans of the stage were in all the roles. Although I had a career as a Scientist, in graduate school I was in a four week, 28-performance musical so watching this brought back good memories. There is something about a stage play, a musical with live singing, that is more personal and more enjoyable than a slick movie.

I thoroughly enjoyed this. On DVD from my public library. My wife skipped, she isn't a fan of musicals.

My wife and I became a Lucy Hale fan in 2018, when she starred in the TV series "Life Sentence". She starred as Stella, who in her teens developed a case of terminal cancer but had to re-imagine her life after she surprisingly became cured.

I became a Grant Gustin fan with his role in "Glee", he is a very talented dancer and singer. Then his lead role in the TV series "The Flash." He does a bit of singing in this movie.

Both Hale and Gustin are very good in their roles. Because the movie is very quirky, it would not have been enjoyable with lesser actors. I found myself thinking "If Seth Rogan and Amy Schumer had played the leads it would have been unwatchable."

Gustin plays Max, he has lots of issues, is a neatness freak, sees a therapist via Zoom, he has low self-confidence and usually prefers being alone in his apartment instead of joining a crowd. His therapist recommends, actually persuading him, to get a dog.

Hale plays Nicole who is pretty much the opposite of Max. One day she sees a dog looking homeless, in the afternoon she sees the same dog, so takes it in.

So the story requires that the two dogs bring the two people together, they immediately dislike each other and how the other lives, but as time goes by each finds things favorable about the other.

My wife watched it streaming on FreeVee on Saturday evening after our weekly steak and red wine dinner, with chocolate cake, of course. Some of this movie is hard to watch, at some points the main characters head so far off the rails. But in the end it is mostly enjoyable and sweet.

As this movie ended my 72-yr-old wife simply remarked, "Well that was lame." Let me add a few comments to amplify.

It is the near future, ten years earlier a nuclear bomb was exploded in Los Angeles, about a million people died, and the US government believed rogue A. I. was to blame. At the other extreme, a coalition of Asian territories were embracing A. I. and creating many human-like robots powered with A. I. This conflict of values leads to a war.

In a sense the A. I. issue is a MacGuffin, a device or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters but unimportant in itself. While the A. I. angle is not really unimportant, the same movie could have been made with a different issue. My wife and I both looked at the story as an excuse for lots of gunfights, explosions, and various special effects.

John David Washington (Denzel's son) is the lead character, Joshua, a soldier who has a bionic arm and a mechanical leg. On assignment, he falls in love and through a complicated set of events is later matched up with young actress Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alphie, a sentient robot child. Together they work to try to discover a method to help end the war.

I must commend the special effects teams, for the most part it is all done very well and very interestingly. Not every event made sense to me but it didn't keep me from admiring what I saw.

At home on DVD from our public library, I mostly enjoyed it but can't rate it very high and would not care to watch it again.

It can be argued, and I will make that argument, that this movie was the kick-start to the great career Julia Roberts has had. Yes, I enjoyed her in the 1988 "Mystic Pizza", but here she became a star.

Richard Gere is Edward Lewis, wealthy high-powered businessman, in town for a deal. His company doesn't produce anything, they take things apart. He buys struggling companies then breaks them into pieces to sell off, making money in the process. "Sort of like stealing cars then sending them to a chop shop", Vivian muses. Except legal. For him it is strictly business, he doesn't care what becomes of the companies or the people who work for them.

Quite by accident he meets Julia Roberts as Vivian Ward, when he is out in his lawyer's car and asks directions of her. She is the opposite of Edward, she is a high school dropout, she followed a boyfriend to Los Angeles, after they broke up she worked wherever she could, like parking cars, to pay rent and eat. But she couldn't survive so she became a hooker.

At first Edward just wants to hire her for the night, just for the company. Then, finding out he needs a date later, hires her for the week, to be his employee for $3000. Being a Garry Marshall movie, what transpires becomes Vivian influencing Edward to change, to care more about the impact of his deals. At the same time Vivian changes, learning how to be a bit more normal and aspiring to go back to school to complete high school.

It is all a modern fairy tale, it even has fairy tale references where she says she used to dream of a Knight climbing a tower to rescue her. It is all a highly unlikely story but we enjoy it for the sweetness, and of course the two stars.

I found it streaming today on Peacock, I had watched it before but a long time ago. Gere was about 30 and Roberts about 22 during filming. Gere is a musician, he even plays a piano piece that he composed.

This program was first broadcast in 2020, and re-broadcast tonight in March 2024.

I learned a lot. I only really had paid attention to two rabbits, the kind my F. I. L. Used to raise in cages for eating, and the cute little wild rabbits that occasionally show up in my back yard. But I now know there are at least 100 kinds of rabbits.

I also learned the distinct differences between rabbits and hares, even though they strongly resemble each other in some ways, they also have a few significant differences.

The program shows us the desert-dwelling Antelope Jackrabbit which isn't really a rabbit but a hare. And its ability to run up to 45 miles per hour with 20-foot strides to evade attacking hawks.

A project to re-introduce rabbits to certain areas of New England.

The Missouri swamp rabbit which is a willing and capable swimmer.

The giant rabbits a lady in Stratford Upon Avon in England raises, one is a full 4 feet long and weighs over 35 pounds.

And very interesting is the 2018 rabbit show and competition where different 49 breeds compete for Best in Breed and then Best in Show, much like the dog show competitions.

Overall an excellent and interesting program on rabbits and hares. Broadcast on PBS.