Annie Glenn, Disability Advocate Who Gave First Public Speech on Memorial Day, Dies of Covid

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Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said President Ronald Reagan won the Cold War without firing a single shot. In another war, America’s socialists have achieved the country they want without a single vote being cast.

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The world is seeing a jigsaw Renaissance during pandemic stay-at-home orders. It’s a time to dream and piece together your next vacation.

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Concerned about us seniors venturing into a supermarket filled with virus-laced carts, shelves and containers, our daughter and her husband sent us a thoughtful gift of several Blue Apron dinners a week For those still unfamiliar with this company, it furnishes you with a recipe and all the pre-measured ingredients you will need to make, for example, Seared chicken and Spicy potatoes. The recipe is printed on an 8 x 10 piece of cardboard with a photogenic shot of the finished product along with smaller pictures of a hand flipping a hunk of chicken or a shot of roasted potatoes sunbathing on an aluminum pan.

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Hope Gap begins with great promise: a movie about two aging characters whose marriage is fraying after almost 30 years They are both intellectual - he a teacher and she a writer currently creating an anthology of poetry written by the masters of English literature and dealing with emotional situations They live in a modest, comfortable home in England and are welcome prototypes of people who seem normal, upper middle-class and stable. We imagine that they will work out their problems with equanimity and restore the missing vitality to their relationship

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I can’t call this a review because I will admit that I cannot give a coherent plot line to this Rumanian film about crooks and cops and an ancient whistling language developed for sending messages across hills and valleys in the Canary Islands. I got that info from Joe Morgenstern’s review in the WSJ. He must have learned that from a helpful press release along with some other information that allowed him to sketch a thin line of action sufficient to find a “witty riff on Hitchcock” and a “surreal flow between reality and movie tropes.”

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I haven’t read Jane Austen’s original version of Emma since college, but judging from its latest incarnation, a title that better suits it is Much Ado About Nothing. By now, after so many treatments of the source, everyone must know that Emma is a privileged young woman who fancies herself a do-gooder, particularly vis a vis her friendship with Harriet Smith, a young woman missing everything Emma has - wealth, lineage, social standing and personality. Unfortunately, that last quality is not in evidence in either the screenplay or bland performance by Anya Taylor Joy. But, even if it were, it’s hard to see what the two women would ever have in common except the endless flattery of Emma herself.

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The quote was originally a response to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.’s request to Emerson to critique the paper he was writing about Plato for the course he was taking as a Harvard undergraduate Emerson, obviously concerned about the loose ends Holmes had left in the paper, gave the young student some strong metaphoric advice: Plato was the king and though Holmes had struck him, he had not successfully completed his arguments against him.

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If you’re sick of being accused of racism, white privilege, toxic masculinity, insufficient attention to Climate Change, MeToo’ism and the LGB alphabet; if you’re exhausted by the long-winded House Managers’ vitriolic performances and if you’re depressed by the diminution of old-fashioned flag-waving, anthem-singing patriotism - run to see The Last Full Measure.

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In order to succeed, satire and parody require a common understanding of what is being satirized. If the audience doesn’t have this, satire quickly degenerates into flat-tire. Sadly, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, most Americans have little idea of the history of World War II and the extent of brutality that tortured and murdered six million Jews, one million of whom were children.

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One of the main handicaps in watching the latest incarnation of this classic novel is the difficulty in recognizing that any of these “girls” is meant to be truly young. Amy, the youngest sister, looks as developed and fully grown as Beth, Jo and Meg. Because of this, the audience has no way of contextualizing her behavior as that of the little girl who is frequently excluded from some activities because of her tender age. It’s impossible to understand her unforgivable and un-fixable act without recognizing that it’s driven by the uncontrollable impulse of a child, not yet a teenager. Serendipitously, the viewer has a chance to see what I mean by watching the 1994 version of Little Women which will be on Showtime Showcase at 7 pm tonite - Friday, Jan 3rd. Record it.

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Memo to writer, director and producer: Kadish the Hebrew prayer for the dead, is not pronounced like radish; it is pronounced like Kahdish or Coddish. Though this may seem picayune, it’s a word that comes up often in a movie about the Holocaust, and particularly one that deals with showing respect for murdered Jews, it’s inexcusable to hear it constantly mispronounced by the Jewish protagonist as well as others. Imagine a movie about French people who call their capital Parees - could we take it seriously?

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Blessed by serendipitous synchronicity, Clint Eastwood’s movie, eponymously titled “Richard Jewell,” concerns the FBI mishandling of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing and opened two days after the release of the Horowitz Report found 17 omissions or incorrect commissions in the Carter/Page application submitted by the FBI to the FISA Court. It is startling to see the same malfeasance brought to public attention in 1996, including a sexual relationship with an officer of the FBI, as well as other unlawful behavior in the bureau’s interrogations and investigations. Beyond that unusual coincidence, the movie is noteworthy for its restraint, particularly considering that its producer and director was Dirty Harry at the beginning of his career.

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Words of wisdom imparted by many parents to their kids: “Never get in a car with a stranger.” Yet, when we hail a LYFT or UBER from the app, that’s exactly what we’re doing. Laws vary from one jurisdiction to another; a valid drivers license and car inspection is all that’s required in some.

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870 and moved to its present location on Fifth Avenue ten years later. It has benefited from the work of many illustrious architects from the 19th century on - all adding to the elegance and majesty of America’s premiere neo-classical palace of Art. Its collections are priceless, ranging from ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Chinese and many other cultures to contemporary painting and sculpture with an emphasis on international presentation of art in all its myriad forms.

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The NYT rails against white privilege and purports to be the defender of public schools, champion of the homeless, illegals, petty criminals, ex-cons and other disadvantaged members of our society, especially on its editorial page. But if you check its advertising, you won’t find Chick -Fil-A or Target and if you go to its restaurant reviews you’ll find the truth that can’t be masked and certainly deserves mocking.

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The real measure of a clever script in a suspense film is the aha moment at the end when the viewer realizes that there were clues scattered throughout the film which were either missed or more likely misinterpreted. In other words, the writer or director’s talent was in pulling you in the direction he orchestrated and doing that so well that you failed to connect the dots that were there all along. Hitchcock spoke about providing the audience with a suggestion and sufficient information to figure out the rest. This is a challenge in film since the audience only sees what the director allows us to see but frequently, on second view, you will realize that a line of dialogue, or something in the background, on the night table or hanging on the coat rack might have helped to solve the puzzle.

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If, like me, you are an educated senior who watches the news on t.v. more than once a day, you may be as bewildered as I am at some big pharma commercials and their casual use of esoteric language. I used to pride myself on spelling and vocabulary but here are some examples that baffled me before I turned to google.

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Barely a trace of hurricane damage, but there is an abundance of island sounds and smells and plenty of sunshine at the southern most tip of the US. Only 90 miles from Cuba, Key West is as close as you’ll get to the Margaritaville state of mind. This town has a personality of its own.

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This Israeli movie won the Golden Bear Award at the Berlinale Film Festival this year, also getting rave reviews from Manhola Dargis (NYT) and Joe Morgenstern (WSJ). Written and directed by the Lapids, pere et fils, it purports to be a movie about an Israeli soldier who has completed his service with a profound hate for the militaristic nature of his country and the determination to abandon it for France. Along with becoming an expat comes the decision to forego his mother tongue and speak only French, carrying a pocket thesaurus for assistance, hence the title.

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Parasite bears an immediate resemblance to Jason Peele’s US, a horror film in which underground tunnels are the habitat of dopplegangers cloned by our government in a failed experiment and condemned to live below eating rabbit meat. In the Korean film, things are a bit better - there is a window to the street above the basement dwelling but the view is of a repeat urinator who chooses that corner for his daily excretions. To summarize the plot, we have a family living in close quarters who manage to insinuate themselves into excellent jobs working for a wealthy family living in the most architecturally dazzling house in recent film history. That and the score are two sufficiently good reasons to see the movie but there are more.

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If you like your biopics of legendary celebrities reducing them to formulaic caricatures, here’s one not to miss. Think of Alec Baldwin’s skillful skewer of our president which gets a laugh in a five minute skit on SNL and then imagine it stretched out to a feature length film with familiar side characters who are mostly evil in ways that are now shopworn tropes. Louis B Mayer, head of MGM, here a huge man towering over a petite Judy Garland, lives up to his reputation as a tyrant who forces the teen-aged girl to diet and keep working till all hours of the night His assistant, a nameless version of Annie’s Miss Hannigan, is brutal in snatching away hamburgers from our hungry heroine and adding to the cruel atmosphere of “the studio.” If reality were added to the film, we would meet Judy’s most formidable enemy - her mother - who began feeding her pills at the age of 10 and who saw all three of her daughters as viable meal tickets for her own unsuccessful marriage and life. Louis B offered the multi-talented young Frances Gumm a new name and an opportunity to find a big life her own - something that Shirley Temple most famously achieved despite a childhood spent in similar circumstances.

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One of the more interesting aspects of the long-running television series was how skillfully Julian Fellowes managed the transition from 19th century British mores to the 20th. From the introduction of the automobile to the radical concept of a chauffeur marrying into an aristocratic familly, almost every episode had some element of gradual change in the lives of upper class gentry and glimpses of how the downstairs servants could begin to see their aspirations materialize, frequently with the support of their benevolent upper class employers. While all this was happening, we had the best-written character of Lady Grantham, played to perfection by Dame Maggie Smith to represent the other side of these “advances” with her clever and witty pronouncements of the old-fashioned way of thinking and doing.

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Why not approach each day as horses do? Wake up each morning, go for a walk, smell the flowers, be in the moment and feel thankful.

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Here are some things you should know before skipping Ad Astra: It is very long and boring. As a substitute for characters and plot, it has space jargon, space gibberish, space clutter and Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones as attempted compensation for all that. Neither one can save this movie from its emptiness and glaring inadequacies. Best to try to find 2001 and replay Part 1 of that to see what Stanley Kubrick was able to do with infinite space and limited time - even if you’ve seen it before, it will seem fresh compared to watching Ad Astra for the first time.
Since it isn’t possible to spoil something as dull as this, I can tell you that Ad Astra ends with the same heart-warming message as Wizard of Oz - without the music, talent and joyfull ebullience of course. Now if Brad Pitt had worn those spangled red shoes, this might have been a movie deserving of a real review. As it stands, I’ve sent you a warning instead - proceed at your own risk of feeling very stupid as you empty the theater and don’t dare say I didn’t tell you so!

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As reported in various media outlets, a Swedish scientist has proposed the eating of humans as one way to combat climate change. Swedish? Scientist? Could he by any chance be a socialist?

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The first time I heard John Lennon’s “Imagine” in 1971 I hated it, interpreting it as a call for worldwide socialism. What could not have been predicted way back then was that the song could easily be the anthem for the Democrat Party in 2019.

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Well-loved actor, Valerie Harper aka Rhoda Morgenstern, succumbed to cancer at 80 after a lengthy and well-fought battle.

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Coaching is big biz these days, but “horse coaching?” Paula and Pete Lambie are convinced it’s a healthy way to heal.

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If New York City taxpayers want to know how their money is spent by the Dept of Education, they can consider the program to train computer science teachers to help students see this subject connected to their own lives. You might guess that ordinary inducements such as doing better in school, doing better in an increasingly computerized job market, earning more money - all of which apply to all races and ethnicities - would be reason enough to be grateful for having computer science courses available in school. You might imagine that by the time a Muslim student is in school, it is no longer essential to capture his attention by the fact that he can make a 3 D symbol of Allah’s name in Arabic script. You would hope that infantilization would not be so rampant that a teacher would boast of making up a song similar to “the head bone connected to the neck bone” in order to stimulate interest in computers. These examples are from an article in today’s WSJ and make us wonder whether school is synonymous with Sesame Street and whether all we are really doing is encouraging the soft bigotry of diminished expectations (WSJ NYC Teachers Get ‘Culturally Responsive’ Training, 8/14)

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The NYTimes chose the following headlines to characterize the mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton “In Texas Gunman’s Manifesto, An Echo of Trump’s Language,” “Manifesto Posted by El Paso Gunman Echoes Trump’s Words,” “Mass Killers Emboldened by Rhetoric of President, Some Candidates Say.” (NYT 8/5/19)

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For moviegoers old enough to remember the sickeningly grotesque details of the Manson family’s massacre of Sharon Tate, her unborn child and the other victims in her house, it will be hard to believe that the alternate massacre in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film is greeted with gales of laughter throughout that sequence. The theater was full at the 4pm weekday screening, and I was shocked to see how many of the viewers were at least middle aged and could be expected to have at least read about this shocking mass murder that took place in 1969.

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Early on in this film about Argentina, we see a solitary man sitting at a table in a crowded restaurant. Another man walks in and stares at him unrelentingly, eventually telling the waiter that he should be given that table since he is ready to order while the man already seated is waiting for his late wife To tell you more about what happens next would be a spoiler except to say that most of it is unexpected and the degree of tension the director (Benjamin Naishtat) builds from this mild beginning is unnerving, brilliant and a sweeping foretelling of events to follow.

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