Challenging Inequities
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): As I explain fully in the So What? section below, I had a good bit of trouble being able to watch No Sudden Move when I intended to (problems were resolved, though), yet my challenges for getting through this post-Fourth of July-week now continue as when I started to take in our Mini-Cooper for brakes work in an early-Tuesday-morning-delivery with my wife, Nina, following in our other car (a 2013 Ford Focus), it apparently had some sort of steering crisis which shuts down the entire operation, requiring a call to AAA for a tow; although, the Ford problem turned out to be something with the battery so I was able to drive it there myself after all—now both cars are being operated on, allowing me to make my generous, patriotic contribution to the automotive-service-industry, distracting me a bit from my usual posting schedule (which also required a new mouse to keep my computer functional, along with some mystery cuts on my left big toe [possibly from minor foot damage while hauling myself out of the passenger side of the loaner-car after an unsuccessful attempt to put it in my garage—a bit too long, too tight—which led to the surprise sight of a bloody toe). After all that, I’m ready to lose myself in just ruminating about films, so please join me in the attempt. No Sudden Move takes place in 1950s Detroit with the merge of auto-industry-secrets into an increasingly-convoluted-gangster-story that easily-elicits memories of various manifestations of Fargo; I found it a bit hard to follow at times but still enjoyed it quite a bit, thanks in no small part to the excellent work of a crafty director along with a fascinating cast including Don Cheadle, Benicio del Toro, Jon Hamm, Ray Liotta, Brendan Fraser, and Matt Damon.
In the Short Takes section you’ll find comments on a great documentary, Summer of Soul (… Or, How the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), made from current interviews added to footage stored for over 50 years of a multi-weekend music festival in NYC’s Harlem, amounting to a “Black Woodstock” with contributions from many including Stevie Wonder, the Fifth Dimension, Mahalia Jackson, the Staples Singers, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, along with a strong message to the huge crowds about Black Pride. Also in that section I’ll offer suggestions for some choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, tedious software!) plus my standard dose of industry-related-trivia.
Here’s the trailer for No Sudden Move:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $. To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid those important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: 1954 Detroit (opening titles interspersed with black & white photos of the time) finds small-time-hood Curt Goynes (Don Cheadle) needing cash to re-acquire land swindled from him in Kansas City; opportunity comes from mid-range-hood Doug Jones (Brendan Fraser—barely recognizable in this portly-manifestation compared to earlier, muscular roles such as in those Millennium-era Mummy movies [1999, 2001, 2008]) who’s willing to pay a few thousand for a “babysitting” job, which is to hold General Motors-accountant-Matt Wertz’s (David Harbour) family (wife Mary [Amy Seimetz], son Matthew Jr. [Noah Jupe], daughter Peggy [Lucy Holt]) hostage while Matt’s forced at gunpoint to get a certain document from his boss’ locked office safe. What doesn’t work as well for Curt is there’ll be another “babysitter”—Ronald Russo (Benicio del Toro)—whom he doesn’t yet know, doesn’t like when he meets him (both emphatically saying they want nothing to do with upper-echelon-thugs each of them has difficulties with, Aldrick Watkins [Bill Duke] for Curt [who secretly has Watkins' crucial code book for his various nefarious activities], Frank Capelli [Ray Liotta] for Ronald), plus there's also a third guy—Charlie (Kieran Culkin, younger brother of Home Alone's Macaulay)—who’ll escort surprised-Matt to the office while the other 2 keep the family quiet, even forcing Mary to lie, turn away nosey (unconvinced) neighbor Dawn Atkinson (Katherine Banks).
Back at his workplace, Matt knows his boss, Mel Forbert (Hugh Maguire), is away at his northern Ohio home with supposedly no safe combination left with secretary Paula Cole (Frankie Shaw), even though the thugs behind this heist knew she’d be cooperative because she’s having an affair with Matt (in later scenes she’s constantly pushing him to go away with her to California, as she's already left lover Phil [Patrick Cronin]); so, in the next shots we see an empty safe (Mel took the document), Matt then giving seemingly what he found (but just a nothing-substitute) to Doug, now in the alley with Charlie. When Matt’s returned home, Charlie gets nervous but before he can act Curt shoots him, then gets a call he's supposed to kill everyone; instead, he gives the gun to Matt with a story for the police about how he had to kill a lone intruder. That’s the bunk Matt tries to sell to Attorney General Task Force-investigator-Joe Finney (Jon Hamm), suspicious, sensing there’s more to the situation, later gets more info from Matthew Jr. who’s stormed outside. Meanwhile, Curt and Ronald call Matt to meet them, then they’re all off to Mel’s home where Matt has to get violent with his boss in order to finally get the prized document which turns out to be some plans for an exhaust system intended for a new GM Cadillac convertible. As Curt and Ronald learn they now have large prices on their heads, they make plans to see how much they can peddle this meager document for, Curt ripping it in half so both of them must be together to finalize any deal as they plan to meet with Capelli who seems to be behind this whole situation; however, Ronald alone sees Capelli at his home, pretends he doesn’t know wife Vanessa (Julia Fox) even though he’s having an affair with her, agrees to bump off Curt so Frank and Ronald can score much more of the ransom for this document.
In the meantime, Curt’s made plans with Watkins for him to get a cut of the money, thereby resolving their debts and antagonism. Then, at a restaurant meeting with Curt, Ronald, Frank, and Doug, Frank’s also set up a double-cross with Doug intended to kill our 2 protagonists, but in the ensuing melee Doug ends up dead, Frank tries to escape before Curt and Ronald catch him, get the name of his contact, Hugh Naismith (Kevin Scollin) of Studebaker, who then offers them $125,000 for the document. Frank escapes from a car trunk, but when he gets home he’s killed by Vanessa, furious over the abuse she suffered from her husband after Ronald admitted the affair. Curt and Ronald now see an even bigger payday in the making, so they return to Mel, demand to know who his contact was, turns out to be independent-auto-shark Mike Lowen (Matt Damon) who’ll pay $375,000 for these increasingly-valuable-goods, which turn out to be the prototype for the catalytic converter which he wants to destroy under the mistaken belief cars aren’t polluting the atmosphere (I wonder if he could keep a straight face on that assertion if he saw the smog in L.A. I wheezed through in 1957 or the enveloping grey cloud over Manhattan I could see daily from Queens in 1972-’73) nor does he want carmakers to reduce their profits by having to adopt this proposed new technology (he’s also behind an urban renewal project that will displace Black residents, much to Curt’s grim annoyance).
⇒Lowen leaves our 2 hapless guys with the promised cash, but then Watkins and his goons show up (arranged by Curt in case anyone else, including Ronald, tried to muscle him out of the payoff), say they’ve already gotten the $125,000 from Naismith (told to wait in the hotel lobby until sent for, easily overpowered), let Ronald leave with all the swag, take Curt with them, seemingly to be rubbed out; however, Watkins lets Curt go, gives him the $5,000 he needs for Kansas City in return for the code book (as a side subplot, Paula runs off to CA with Phil after all because Matt didn’t steal the document himself earlier for their benefit, leaving him with nothing including a family who has little use for him at this point). Ronald runs away with Vanessa, thinks they’re being followed by a cop so he drives off into the countryside where she shoots him, intends to keep all the money, but the cop is there, stops her, takes the suitcase full of cash, gives it to Det. Finney who brings it all back to Lowen (375 K, plus 31 K Vanessa had, plus 50 K Watkins gave Finney supposedly as payoff for killing Curt to wrap up all the other murders) in return for a pricy bottle of booze. Graphics preceding the final credits note that in 1969 the U.S. government sued the Big 4 automakers for keeping the catalytic converter info secret, finally settled in 1975 with the device now standard (and an expensive theft item today from Toyota Prius and other vehicles) but no fines were ever imposed for this scheme.⇐
So What? My goal of watching this film on Saturday night, July 3, was rudely interrupted due (as best I can tell) by my switching video service from AT&T U-Verse to Comcast Xfinity because when I went into my Roku service to access HBO Max I was only able to get to the film (my account was recognized) but I couldn’t get it to play. Annoyed, I called the Comcast helpline, was connected to a friendly guy in Seattle who spent about 1½ hrs. with me doing every conceivable strategy of getting my HBO Max service directly connected to Xfinity until success finally occurred; however, by then it was too late to start so I put it off until Sunday, July 4. Well, Nina and I got to watch No Sudden Move easily enough, although we were constantly distracted by ongoing illegal fireworks popping off consistently for hours before, during, and after (you’d have thought we were in Afghanistan [with my deepest sympathies to all who’ve ever had to live there as local citizens or deployed military, given the horrors that consistently seem to consume the place]), with worries that some of these errant “celebrations” would touch off wildfires in our statewide-drought-induced-tinderbox, but fortunately no blazes happened in this neighborhood even as 53 of them were reported in the larger region around us, so at least those who get their kicks from constant-holiday-explosives didn’t cause any nearby-damage (then, while washing our dinner dishes I watched my recording of the NYC Macy’s fireworks spectacular so I finally got some lovely visuals to go with all that noise continuing outside my condo).
Thus, I can’t say I viewed No Sudden Move with the very best set of focused-intentions, which may easily contribute to my saying I enjoyed it but found it hard to follow at times given the increasingly-negative-impact on our 2 protagonists, especially from important characters we don’t see much of until considerably later in the presentation. Overall, the situations and tone of this film reminded me of the FX TV series of Fargo in recent years, notably the latest one (2020) set in 1950 Kansas City starring Chris Rock with contention between rival Black and Italian gangs (maybe one of these thugs is who cheated Curt Goynes out of his land in this area). That Fargo also, with its many characters and storylines, was at times hard to keep clear on regarding events from one week to the next, given such a regular separation of our viewings (no, we don’t binge-watch anything all that often, although a few years ago Nina did a couple of Game of Thrones [HBO 2011-2019] mini-marathons, although she zipped though the more-violent-parts, so she probably only saw about 20 min. of each episode).
I'll admit, in No Sudden Move my initial response to the central plot device, seemingly just a new exhaust system for an upcoming model of the Cadillac (which, when we finally saw it on just a few pieces of paper, looks somewhat like the first rough sketch of Doc Brown’s [Christopher Lloyd] crucial flux-capacitor for his time-traveling-DeLorean car in the Back to the Future trilogy [Robert Zemeckis; 1985, 1989, 1990]), was: “This minor device is justification for all of the violence and hundreds of thousands of ransom dollars that’s driving this film?” However, given the various plotlines are appropriately tied up by the end, those closing graphics finally give some substance to the attempt to destroy this more-crucial-than-I’d-realized-automobile-device, the acting (along with the pacing, flow of the story) is superb on all counts, and anything on screen that gives me a sense of any version of Fargo is something to be celebrated, I came to the conclusion No Sudden Move had finally given me solid reason to break my chain of 9 consecutive ratings-awards of 3½ stars in my most-recent-reviews (Summer of Soul ... reviewed below easily continued the new liberation). Even if it may seem a bit confusing in its intentions as we get about midway into it, No Sudden Move is one of the most intriguing things I’ve seen this year, so I highly recommend it unless crime stories just aren’t intriguing to you for any reasons you might have about such a potentially-complex-subject.
Bottom Line Final Comments: The CCAL's quite supportive of No Sudden Move, as reviews surveyed at Rotten Tomatoes give it 89% positive while those at Metacritic offer a 77% average score (reasonably supportive for them, although not nearly as high as their reaction to Summer of Soul … below; more details on both these critics’-accumulation-sites can be found in the Related Links section, as is the case for anything I review in any posting). If you want to see it, though, your only option is HBO Max (which I hope you can locate more easily than I did, but at least I learned about the Incognito option on Google Chrome, which helped overcome my technical issues although I just have to hope it doesn’t somehow connect me with Russian trolls), a platform you can subscribe to directly or already have access if your TV cable package has HBO. So, at this point I’m out of anything further to say about this film except to highly encourage you to watch it (hopefully with fewer distractions than I encountered), leading me to my usual closure tactic of a Musical Metaphor to speak once again—but from a somewhat different, aural perspective—to what's under review. This one presented a challenge, though, as nothing directly came to mind until I started ruminating on what the essential situation is in No Sudden Move, which I find to be lack of trust among many of the characters as various backstabbing, clandestine negotiations, me-first/you-last-decisions are being made regarding the acquisition of that seemingly-invaluable-little-old-document.
That insight led me to an old Bob Dylan song, “I Don’t Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Have Met)” (on his 1964 Another Side of Bob Dylan album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= XuUXWG5dqnM (best version I could find for our purposes is audio-only from his performance at The Band's final concert, San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, but not included in the documentary film of that event, The Last Waltz [Martin Scorsese, 1978]). Yes, I’m going hyper-metaphorical here (largely because I couldn't think of any alternative), as the song’s about a guy who connects with a woman one night but the next day she won’t even acknowledge his existence, for no reason he can figure out, but in the context of No Sudden Move (a bit of a narrative challenge at times in its own right, at least for me) these lyrics could also allude to a number of shady/self-serving/dangerous decisions woven into the film’s plot where these characters are just as unconnected, ready to sacrifice others for their own benefit: “I’d sure like to know Why she’d go But I can’t get close to her at all […] She said she would never forget But now morning’s clear It’s like I ain’t here […] If I didn’t have to guess I’d gladly confess To anything I might have tried […] I wish she’d tell me what it is, I’ll run and hide […] And if anybody asks me ‘Is it easy to forget?’ I’ll say, ‘It’s easily done You just pick anyone And pretend that you never have met!’ “ You probably have to watch the film to see if this Metaphor makes any sense, so there’s another encouragement to do so—take me up on it! You might end up somewhat confused, hopefully not disappointed at all.
SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)
Way back in the summer of 1969 on 6 occasionally-non-consecutive weekends in NYC there was a musical/pride-enhancing event called the Harlem Cultural Festival featuring many famous Black performers of the day; the event was recorded but never saw much distribution as a film until now when 40 original hours have been boiled down to 2, yet with the original energy and uplift sustained.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.
Over the course of 6 sometimes-separated-weekends from June 29 to August 24, 1969, the Harlem Cultural Festival attracted a crowd of about 300,000 at concerts produced by Tony Lawrence at Mount Morris Park (with estimates of 40,000-50,000 each time but no way to know how many of these attendees were repeats from week to week) so it overlapped with both the historical NASA moon landing (July 24, 1969 [close festival weekends were July 20 and 27]) and the much-more-famous Woodstock Music & Art Festival (actually in Bethel, NY, about 100 miles north of Harlem) on August 15-18, 1969. About 40 hours of footage was shot of the Harlem event but then went into storage for 50 years with few besides the musicians and attendees aware this “Black Is Beautiful” event had even occurred. That omission finally changed when the producers of this documentary, David Dinerstein and Robert Fyvolent, persuaded Thompson, leader of the “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” band, The Roots, to become the director, bringing this footage (along with recent interviews of some who were at the original event) to public awareness, beginning with a debut at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival last January where it won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the US Documentary Competition; now it’s in theaters (752 of them domestically [U.S.-Canada], making $647,634 after 2 weeks in release) along with streaming on Hulu. Watch it, please!
While the entire lineup's too much for a standard 2-hr.-film (even the director’s cut of Woodstock [Michael Wadleigh, 1994] at 224 min. [1970 version ran 185 min.] couldn’t begin to present all that went on there over 3 days and nights, well into Monday morning for the Jimi Hendrix finale, hours after his scheduled start time) you do get partial or complete single songs in Summer … from Stevie Wonder (also an accomplished drummer), the Chambers Brothers, B.B. King, the Fifth Dimension, the Edwin Hawkins Singers (“Oh Happy Day”), the Staples Singers, Mahalia Jackson (a great duet with Mavis Staples, “Take My Hand, Precious Lord” on gospel day, July 13), David Ruffin (just left The Temptations, does a great version of “My Girl”), Gladys Knight and the Pips (“I Heard It Through the Grapevine”), Cuban Mongo Santamaría, Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln, the Puerto Rican stylings of Ray Barretto, drummer Max Roach, Hugh Masekela, a powerful performance by Nina Simone (“Young, Gifted and Black”), and soon-to-be-Woodstock-stars Sly and the Family Stone (Harlem on June 29th [when the NYC Police declined to provide security so it was done instead by the Black Panthers]; Woodstock on Sunday, August 17th at 3 AM after more of those considerable rain delays).
Other notable figures who appear in this doc (with all events done during daylight because there wasn’t sufficient backing to afford night lighting, although Maxwell House Coffee kicked in a lot of financial support) are NYC Mayor John Lindsay (a liberal Republican [!], well received by the crowd) and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who recalled the sorrow of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s death a year prior. While there’s plenty of music in this film the true focus is on showing some recognizable images of the Harlem community enhanced with commentary (from then and now) about the need for Black pride, liberation from systematic racial oppression along with the constant violence in the community—my, how things have changed over the decades … or not! There’s also an interesting collection of brief comments from attendees about how the money spent on getting Americans to the moon could have been better used for improving schools, providing jobs, etc., the same arguments currently being made by some about how the fortunes certain billionaires are spending to launch themselves and some well-heeled-fellow-travelers into the bare-limits of outer space could be put to use today for those same social aids, rather than satisfying outlandish egos trying to top each other.
Woodstock, the event along with its subsequent record album and documentary, leaned more on celebrating the music but—especially in the film where it was noted that the crowd of 500,000 managed to remain peaceful during its duration, with even local cops impressed—also got across a brief image of hope for societal change and inter-generational dialogue (until those dreams were shattered just a few months later by deaths at the Altamont, CA festival, then basically buried for good by Nixon's landslide-Presidential victory in 1972). By contrast, the social messages in Summer … sound like they could have been said at a “protect the vote” rally yesterday as so many Blacks (and other people of color, along with impoverished Whites [although some of the latter get a sense of satisfaction in their rabid support of Donald Trump]) in this country of ours still struggle for equal acceptance, opportunity, respect, dignity. Likely for such reasons, the CCAL’s extremely supportive of this film, with a massive 99% positive reactions at Rotten Tomatoes (same as Citizen Kane [Orson Welles, 1941] after a single negative review finally surfaced from decades ago [oddly enough, that 1 negative splat is noted at their site but not listed with the 116 positive reviews]), with an even more astounding result from Metacritic’s 96% average score (far and away the highest of anything both they and I have reviewed in 2021), so on that note of uplift I’ll leave with what’s essentially the finale of Summer of Soul …, Sly and the Family Stone’s “I Want to Take You Higher” (from their 1969 Stand! album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fQvlN8Aizw, although this clip is the multi-image-version from the Woodstock doc as I merge aspects of these 2 seminal music events of 1969.
Suggestions for TCM cablecasts
At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees. While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week. All times are for U.S. Pacific zone so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed. These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some of those early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you might like even better; feel free to explore their entire schedule here. You can also click the down arrow at the right of each listing for additional, useful info.
I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present. Please dig in further for other possibilities.
Friday July 9, 2021
9:00 PM Chinatown (Roman Polanski, 1974) Had it not been for The Godfather Part II also in 1974 Chinatown would easily have been Oscar’s Best Picture. Set in 1930’s L.A., stars Jack Nicholson as a seedy-but-generally-effective detective who runs up against situations he’d never imagined in the person of powerful Noah Cross (John Huston) and his distraught daughter (Faye Dunaway), as our private eye seeks to solve her husband’s death. Nominated for 11 Oscars (including Best Picture, Director, Actor [Nicholson], Actress [Dunaway], won for Best Original Screenplay [Robert Towne]).
Monday July 12, 2021
6:30 PM King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack, 1933) Original tale of a huge ape on a secluded island with natives and dinosaurs, taken away by an entrepreneurial filmmaker as an NYC stage attraction until all hell breaks loose. Marvelous stop-motion-animation by Willis O’Brien of the island’s creatures (racist stereotypes of the natives, though), culminating with Kong’s capture of Fay Wray, carrying her with him to the top of the Empire State Building for the (sad) grand finale.
8:15 PM Gone with Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939) I may lose readers for mentioning this movie with its despicable, sappy presentation of slavery (although it gained a crucial Oscar for Hattie McDaniel, first for a Black actor) but from a production-values-perspective for its time it’s a triumph of the old studio system (even as it glorifies the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy). Famous for romance of scheming Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh), dashing Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). Won Oscars for Best Picture plus Director, Adapted Screenplay (Sidney Howard), Actress (Leigh), Supporting Actress (McDaniel), Color Cinematography, Film Editing, Art Direction plus a Special Award to Production Designer William Cameron Menzies for use of color, and a Technical Achievement Honorary Award. Still box-office champ, adjusted for inflation; will TCM address Black Lives Matter considerations?
Tuesday July 13, 2021
7:15 AM His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940) Adapted from Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur play, The Front Page, this turns a sensationalistic-journalism-story into something with those aspects but also becomes a screwball comedy where now-divorced newspaper editor Walter Burns (Gary Grant) conspires to get ex-wife Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell) back (and on the payroll to cover a big story) despite her upcoming marriage to mild-mannered Ralph Bellamy. Famous rapid-fire dialogue.
9:00 AM Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938) Quintessential screwball comedy: Cary Grant as an easily-befuddled paleontologist on the verge of finishing a Brontosaurus skeleton and marrying a prim woman we know isn’t a right match especially after he meets a cute, flighty heiress (Katharine Hepburn) who gets him in increasingly-embarrassing situations even as romance develops between them. Only movie I can recall featuring 2 leopards. Somewhat remade as What’s Up Doc? (1972).
If you’d like your own PDF of ratings/summaries of this week's reviews, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: In quick fashion, here are some extra items you might like: (1) Entertainment Weekly's opinion of the best movies of 2021 (so far) (a couple of them are really 2020 releases; of the actual 2021’s I’ve reviewed In the Heights [June 17, 2021], Summer of Soul [this posting], Luca [June 24, 2021] but haven’t seen the others); (2) Universal product will soon move from HBO to NBC's Peacock; (3) Movie theaters slowly recover but box-office still down 81% from 2019. As usual for now I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder that you can search streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problems’ been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
Here’s more information about No Sudden Move:
https://www.hbomax.com/series/urn:hbo:feature:GYMzEGg049ruJvQEAAAAW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMFOCJw_xMc (20:43 interview about acting with actors
Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Jon Hamm, Ray Liotta, Brendan Fraser, David Harbour,
Kieran Culkin, Julia Fox, Bill Duke, Noah Jupe, Frankie Shaw [ad interrupts at about 15:00])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/no_sudden_move
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/no-sudden-move
Here’s more information about Summer of Soul (…Or, How the Revolution Could Not Be Televised):
https://www.searchlightpictures.com/summerofsoul/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgtyuUyJjW4 (8:31 overview of the film [ads interrupt at about 1:00, 4:25])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/summer_of_soul
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/summer-of-soul-or-when-the-revolution-could-not-be-televised
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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game," offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker. But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"
—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest,
a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come. But, just as we can raunchy at times (in private of course) Neil and his backing band, Promise of the Real, on that same night also did a lengthy, fantastic version of "Cowgirl in the Sand"
(19:06) which I’d also like to commit to this blog’s always-ending-tunes; I never tire of listening to it, then and now (one of my idle dreams is to play guitar even half this good).
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