February 2020 – Page 2

Stop Making Sense is Phenomenal

The review:

For most of my life, the Talking Heads have been ever present* and so I never prioritized Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense. This was a mistake, because from the first time David Byrne walks on stage this concert documentary is riveting. It’s fun to watch the set be built through the concert, it’s fun to watch the band slowly trickle in, it’s fun to watch the choreography,** and it breathed life into some very well-worn songs and made me hear them in a new way.***

The verdict: Recommended

Cost: $2.99 via Google Play
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Homecoming
20 Feet From Stardom
The Wrecking Crew
Some Kind of Monster
The Last Waltz
(As in the Miss Americana review this is an aspirational list here. I’ve not seen any of them.)

Further sentences:

*I wouldn’t be surprised if the magic of the internet overlords told me I’d heard some part of “Once in a Lifetime” at least weekly since 1984.
**Which seemed very Jazzercise-esque at times.
***That said, I would have preferred a few more long shots and fewer closeups, because that choreography gets lost, though I have read that the closeups were very innovative at the time. I also love how the crew all came on stage to take a bow at the end. And! No encores in 1984!

Questions:

What’s your favorite concert documentary?
Could you like a concert doc of a band/musician/genre you didn’t like?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

David Byrne’s staggering during the latter part of “Psycho Killer” was directly inspired by Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding (1951) during the song “I Left My Hat In Haiti.”

(I have just watched the clip of this and did not find anything that looked like David Byrne’s staggering.)

Other reviews:

Roger Ebert
Rolling Stone “Talking Heads on ‘Stop Making Sense’: ‘We didn’t want any bulls-t” (An article rather than a review, but a good one)

The Nerve of Concordia

Eight days ago, Concordia, a private college located in northeast Portland, announced that the school was closing. Everyone in the middle of their programs—preservice teachers, nursing students, students with one or two semesters left—would need to find a new college to attend. Not two years from now, not after a year, but after the completion of this semester.

The board knew this was coming, but they said nothing. Billboard space continued to be bought, prospective students still toured the school. Tuition payments were still expected.

The school is run by the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. By withholding important information from tuition paying students, they stole their students’ money.

Concordia built a beautiful campus in Northeast Portland. But I’ve always had trouble with the organization that runs the school. With this move, they’ve showed their true colors and they aren’t looking very Christian.

To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You Is a Very Long Title

The review:

After disliking Noah Centineo so intently in The Perfect Date, I was gun-shy of To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You, but Michael Fimognari managed to include enough good relationship things* that I came away satisfied. And sometimes in a woman’s life there is a period where the boys come out of the woodwork, and this is rarely represented on film, so that was fun. This is solid, middle-tier movie making, perfect for two hours of untroubled movie viewing.**

The verdict: Good

Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99)
Where watched: at home

Consider also watching:

Further sentences:

*The indie drama fan in me is always interested in what happens after the couple gets together and there were a lot of first-relationship troubles.
**There are troubles, of course, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a movie. But no one is dying here.

Questions:

What film comes closest to your own first relationship?
When do you turn to films like this one?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Jordan Fisher plays John Ambrose McClaren in this movie. In To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (2018) the role of John Ambrose was played by a different actor, Jordan Burtchett.
(I wondered about this, but was too lazy to check. Thanks IMDB trivia writer!)

Postcard from Texas

This postcard comes from that other city that advertises itself as weird. (To be fair, they did it first. The “Keep Portland Weird” bumper stickers were copied from already existing bumper stickers in Austin.)

Rachel writes: “I’m going to make a bold statement. Austin is not as weird as Portland. I took the bus into and back from downtown…and people queued up to get on, the buses were clean and silent, and everyone just read or were on their phones. No one farted aggressively at me, told me about hospice work, or tried to convert me.”

So there we have it. Rachel assigns the weirdness crown to Portland.

Starman is Fun to Watch 36 Years Later

The review:

Jeff Bridges is a revelation in John Carpenter’s Starman—full of ticks and a dawning sense of his human self.* Karen Allen is also key to this film because her varying facial expressions lead the audience to accept the alien. The film includes a great combo of early digital and practical effects and was a good choice for a Valentine’s Day viewing.**

The verdict: Good

Cost: $2.99 via Google Play
Where watched: at home with the boyfriend

Consider also watching:

Guardians of the Galaxy
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Superman

Further sentences

*I forget how amazing he is as an actor, because I feel like he’s been playing shades of the Dude for years.
**I was thinking what a lovely little love story this was until the boyfriend (who also counsels domestic violence offenders) started pointing out all the controlling behaviors: “How come when I kidnap someone at gunpoint and make them drive me to a different state it’s a felony? Etc. Etc. Etc. It cracked me up.

Questions:

What’s your favorite human/alien movie?
Kidnapping. When is it okay?

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

Actor Jeff Bridges studied ornithology and the behavior of birds to prepare for his role as an alien in human form for this movie. Bridges particularly used the sudden jerky head movements, among other nuances and mannerisms, of birds for his Starman character.

Other reviews:

All Movies Rented from Redbox October–Present

Good

Where’d You Go, Bernadette (January)

Skip

The Sun is Also a Star (September)
Rocketman (January)
Joker (January)

SKS Postcards from Humboldt County and Beyond

I love these old fashioned map postcards. It would be fun to walk around Eureka and see how many of these buildings are still standing.

Sara reports that Shawn visited an actual coffee farm when he went to Costa Rica. This postcard comes with their coffee club shipment.

This byway cuts across Northern California. In these series of postcards, Sara reports that it’s been a busy weekend.

She expresses a desire for an additional weekend day, which is a feeling I am familiar with.

I’m not sure if all four of these postcards arrived on the same day. My guess is that they didn’t but that they did arrive in quick succession.

The Oscars. On the tiny screen.

I realized the day of the ceremony that my antenna doesn’t pull in the television station that was broadcasting the ceremony, but I figured I would use one of the streaming options. My friends were watching it at the Kennedy School and I could have gone to that, but I had planned for the ceremony to coincide with a block of time for cooking. If I skipped the cooking, I would have no food for the week.

It turned out all the ways I could stream the ceremony involved paying $50 for “live TV” in conjunction with YouTube, Hulu and other services. We had already blown through our free trials.

There were a few hours where I wished I could listen to a radio broadcast. But that was not an option either. Eventually I realized that while Matt had used his LiveTV free trail on YouTube, that I had not. So I signed up and watched the ceremony on my phone in the kitchen.

It was a tough nut to crack, but I did it.

SKS Postcards from California

1/2 and 2/2 arrived on the same day!

This first postcard comes from, you guessed it, the town of Ferndale, the Victorian City, where Sara and Shawn spent the day with Shawn’s parents. They enjoyed strolling in the quaint downtown.

Apparently also Ferndale is the home of Guy Fieri, American restaurateur, author, and an Emmy Award winning television presenter. He went to high school in the town and had his first restaurant job here.

We missed out on Ferdale, opting instead for the county fair. But I look forward to catching up with her charms.

Fire at the Oregon Motel

I was awake and reading in bed when I heard a hubbub at the Oregon Motel. Such hubbubs aren’t unusual for that property, so I didn’t investigate. But then I smelled something. Looking out my window told me what was burning.