December 5, 2021
I went to see a movie today. My intro was going to be a short review of the movie King Richard. But about 30 minutes into a perfectly pleasant viewing experience a group of unsupervised kids somewhere in the range of 11-15 decided to take up residence directly behind me in the theater.
They were not interested in watching the movie.
In additional to fairly constant chit-chat, exited and entered the theater no fewer than 10 times as the film was running and several times there was a persistent sound of rustling plastic bags as if they were trying to find something in the dark. There was also many flashes of cell phone lights that I saw (and they were sitting behind me).
I did turn around and voice my frustration with the youths and at one point got a manager who gave them a warning that they'd be kicked out if he had to come back. This only moderately improved their behavior throughout the second half of the film. In the end, I did not opt to go for the manager a second time. I could barely focus on the movie, but I did not want to assume the worst about them and get them in some sort of trouble should they get kicked out. None of the other adult viewers went to complain and I didn't want the responsibility for policing their behavior to fall only on my shoulders in case I might have been overreacting. And even if I had them tossed, I probably would have worried about whether I had done the right thing or not for the remainder of the movie, so I grinned and bore it.
I suppose I could have moved down a few rows and hopefully have gotten out of earshot of their shenanigans, but dammit, I was there first. They were not going to win. (Now who was acting like a child.) One of them did apologize to me after the movie, which mollified my anger a little bit. I tried to say it was no big deal, but it did feel like my money and relaxing afternoon had been stolen from me because I really got nothing out of sitting through their distractions for almost 2 hours.
I had dinner at a pizza place next door afterwards and pondered if I should return and bring up the issue again with the manager and see if I could get a refund or maybe a pass to come back and see it again to try and salvage something. It's a small independent theater, but it's across the street from a mall which has been known to have issues with local youths running amok to the point that they had to institute a curfew at one point last year. I imagine the theater has to deal with stuff like this from time to time, but it's not my usual spot so in the end, I decided to try and let it go. (If your definition of letting it go is later spilling a few hundred words about later in a blog post.)
Was I pushover? Was I wrong to attempt to give the benefit of the doubt? Should I have been more forceful about reclaiming the theater for those actually interested in watching the movie?
One last thing and I'll come off this. I like movies and if there's a movie I really want to see, I'll try to see it in theaters. And sometimes I just go because I have an afternoon free and why not sometimes you get surprised? If everyone just streams moves, the experience of going to the theater, an experience integral to how I grew up - from hanging out with friends to first dates and the like - will just disappear. But the last three movies I went to see in a theater were marred by the following:
- Free Guy: The lights came on when there were still 20 minutes left for some reason. When they just stayed on for 2-3 minutes, I was the one that had to leave the theater to the theater staff to turn them off.
- Dune: Significant audio bleedover from the adjacent theater for the first hour or more.
- King Richard: Almost unwatchable experience.
It's hard to justify the investment of time and money unless someone can please offer me a good watching experience.
The movie has been mostly well reviewed, and from what I could tell, I think I agree. Even if I could follow enough of the movie to review it, I'd rather you read Joe Posnanski's take. It's the correct take.
Now then...
The CBS SUNDAY MORNING POWER RANKINGS
This is the type of segment that makes me love Sunday Morning. I love to learn about overlooked and underappreciated. Actually, I just love to learn. It's just that when something is overlooked and underappreciated, I'm far less likely to know anything about it. So Elizabeth Palmer's segment on Josephine Baker hits all the sweet spots. If you are at all intrigued, I'd encourage you to just watch the segment, but just to hit some bullet points:
- She came from a poor African American family in St. Louis.
- She grew up to become a dancer in the jazz era and found fame after moving to France, fame being fairly inaccessible for a black woman in the United States at the time.
- She could fly planes and served as a spy for the French during World War II.
- She helped to integrate shows in Las Vegas and spoke at the March on Washington.
- She adopted 12 children and raised them in a medieval French castle, the Château des Milandes. An experiment in racial equality, they were called the "Rainbow Tribe".
- She died in 1975 and was buried with full military honors. Crowds gathered in tribute.
- She is the first Black woman inducted into France's Panthéon mausoleum.
If you made a movie about her, what do you focus on? Perhaps her exploits as a pilot and spy would provide the most excitement. Perhaps she's best known historically for her contributions to civil rights and her "Rainbow Tribe" experiment. Maybe the most sensational part working her way from St. Louis to New York to Paris where she got famous for dancing while wearing next to nothing, including an act that with a banana skirt that played into racial tropes.
Steve Hartman used to have a segment called "Everybody Has a Story". Josephine Baker has like 12 minimum.
2) Jim Axelrod
3) Mo Rocca
Sunday Morning spent about as much time on Lucile Ball this week as they did on Stephen Sondheim last week - maybe more. However, Lucy just got 2 segments split between Axelrod's overview of the legacy the 70 year old TV show while Mo Rocca interviews the cast of Being the Ricardos.
On the former segment, I remember watching reruns of I Love Lucy on daytime TV from time to time growing up. I say the following without (much) irony. It is the least dated TV show from the 1950s you can watch. The comedy of I Love Lucy is pretty universal. Did TV shows have writers rooms in the 50s? I wonder what joke pitches were like? So much of the show is based on physical comedy and there's a strong case to be made that Lucile Ball is the greatest physical comedian of all time. I just wonder if a joke can land without Lucile Ball to make a face or a gesture to sell it. The candy factory bit is one that is always referenced historically. However, I genuinely always crack up at the "too much yeast" bit:
They cranked out 180 episodes in 6 years, during which time, Lucile Ball had a kid and the pregnancy was integrated into the show (a TV first) and when they had to go a short hiatus so that she could recover from the pregnancy, Desi Arnez invented the rerun. Interesting stuff.
As for the movie, I want to see it because I am an Aaron Sorkin stan. I also think very highly of Nicole Kidman, although truth be told, I feel like her relationship with required accents to be of a mixed bag. She seems to have Lucy down pat in the clips shown though and when I first saw her as Lucile Ball, I did something a double take as in "Is that Nicole Kidman?" The makeup is quite good, because the resemblance is striking wihtout being overbearing. Also JK Simmons is William Frawley (Fred Mertz) is pretty genius casting. Of course, you can cast JK Simmons as almost anything and it's pretty genius casting.
Lastly, I must acknowledge that pre-90's TV is one of Mo Rocca's two obsessions. (The other being presidential history.) I feel reviewing the legacy of the show would have been more up Mo's alley than Axelrod's, but we're splitting hairs.
4) Techno Claus
David Pogue's Techo Claus has grown on me over the years. I rarely actually see something I'd want to give or receive as a gift in this segment which is always presented in dubious verse. And I'm still uncertain of the origins of what I'm pretty sure is supposed to be an intentionally ridiculous New York accent are supposed to be, but it's all a tradition at this point. And you know what they say about tradition?
Even holiday traditions that start out seeming annoying or pointless have a way of finding their way into your hearts over the years.
Anyway, I kind of feel like Techno Claus usually visits a little closer to Christmas. Maybe I'm wrong about that, or maybe it was bumped up to squeeze in before Hanukkah ends or to account for the gift buying crunch caused by supply chain problems. If there was one item I did find mildly interesting from his gift bag, it's the inCharge X Max ($39). Regarding the Personal Rise Garden ($279), everyone who buys it uses it for marijuana, right? I'm sure there's a "third-party" app for growing weed.
5) Leaves of Buffalo National River
There were a few spots of fall color here and there this year, but I went riding along the Ohio River yesterday and it looked like this:
The last time I rode by (in late October) leaves were starting to come down, but what was still on trees was mostly green. So, fall color mostly passed me by this year. But apparently there are some nice colors still to be had in northern Arkansas. And some little fishies swimming in some chilly water. Don't they get cold?
Also, this is the second time Arkansas has been featured in the moment of nature this fall. Bully for Arkansas, but I'm officially filing a grievance on behalf of all other states that have had their moments of nature overlooked by CBS. I'm talking Kentucky. I'm talking North Carolina. I'm talking Ohio. Well, maybe not Ohio. Eh, why not Ohio?
Ohio: If you can get over the pollution in Lake Erie and on the Ohio River... there are some nice spots.
6) Jane Pauley
If you visit the This Week on Sunday Morning page, every week it says:
Host: Jane Pauley
Sometimes it doesn't, and that's fine because the fill in host (usually Lee Cowan) always does an admirable job.
However, any week some else fills for Jane, for a brief moment I will think, "I hope nothing happened to Jane." Someday Jane will move on and we'll get a fourth host of Sunday Morning. Kuralt did it 14 years and Osgood did it for 21. Maybe she'll make it to double digits - this is year 6, and I would hope she has another 5-6 more in her if she wants to do it. But whenever she does choose to move on, well, as Jonie Mitchell taught us, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."
7) Tracy Smith
Tracy Smith interviews Meryl Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Adam McKay about Don't Look Up, McKay's new satire about a comet that's about to hit Earth. The comet is climate change. McKay tries to argue that climate change seems intractable and that by making a movie that satirizes the crisis, he might nudge enough people towards acknowledging the problem by making them laugh because when a problem feels intractable, what else is there to do except ignore it?
I don't know. I might be more on the side of Leonardo DiCaprio who seems kind of fatalistic about by this point and that going to see the movie will just heighten my feeling existential dread. Which is a shame because it is an amazing cast.
I'm also not 100% sure I'm on board "issues" portion of Adam McKay's career. I liked The Big Short, and really he had already primed the pump for that movie by making The Other Guys, an underrated and overlooked movie if you ask me, but beneath the surface is a take down of Wall Street investment banks that essentially got through the 2008 recession without much lasting damage done, while the average person took it on the chin by losing homes, retirement savings, etc. While I'm no fan of Dick Cheney, I'm not sure if I ever got on board with Vice despite an undeniable performance by Christian Bale.
I know Vice was not a comedy, but if McKay is making a comedy in Don't Look Up, I'd like to laugh without the existential dread. Maybe I can binge a few episodes of I Love Lucy instead.
8) Steve Hartman, Jim Gaffigan (tie)
If I had to categorize the this week's Hartman in to the Venn youngs/olds Venn diagram, this entry is an olds. But the "A community bands together" segment really deserves it's own Hartman category. This week, the community (several of them retired - hence the "olds" subcategorization) bands together to save a general store.
Previous things a community has banded together for include rescuing a wedding after a fire, and buying a pizza delivery man a car. I did like the pizza delivery man story.
Gaffigan does a commentary on COVID that does not involve cell phone video of his children. Is it weird that I kind of miss getting updates on Gaffigan's kids?
In the US, the inevitable wave that's coming with Christmas is the 5th wave, right? We're up to five now? Perhaps I need to find a way get out work related travel that is planned for each of the next two weeks. Sigh.
At no point in my life was I the target demographic for Sex and the City. Nor will I be for the rest of my days.
My favorite movie with Kim Cattrall is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.
10) Holly Willimas
I have nothing of value to add to the Ghislane Maxwell/Jeffrey Epstein case. But I cannot in good conscience Teichnerize Holly Williams interview of Sarah Ransome because the last thing I want to do is diminish the voices of victims of sexual violence that want to speak out. Jeffry Epstein's suicide turned into a conspiracy theorist's political football. I.e. It was hit orchestrated by the Republicans/Democrats... I feel like focusing on that takes the focus off the victims.
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