Month: November 2023

TV Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation (1989-1990)

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In what should be a long-term project, I plan to watch and review every Star Trek television show and movie in the order that they were released.

Title: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Release Date: September 25, 1989 – June 18, 1990
Production Company: Paramount Domestic Television
Episodes:  26
Summary/Review:

During this rewatch, I’d begun to think that the popular conception that the first two seasons were “bad” was overstated.  From about halfway through the first season, I found that the show was consistently good, albeit without any standout, classic episodes.  After rewatching season three, the overall quality of the show has improved in leaps and bounds that it makes the first two seasons less impressive in retrospect. The writing and character development are improved and all of the cast are so thoroughly comfortable in their roles that everything just works, even in some of the wonkier, more experimental episodes. This season also features some all-time classics like “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “Deja Q,” and “Sarek.”  And the whole season leads up to the season-ending cliffhanger with the Enterprise facing down the Borg!

Top 5 Episodes:

  1. Yesterday’s Enterprise
  2. The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1
  3. Deja Q
  4. Sarek
  5. The Booby Trap

And the biggest stinker: A tie between “The Price” and “A Matter of Perspective” but honestly nothing ranks below a B- this season which is a first for any Star Trek series in my rewatch so far.

Related Posts:

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50 Years, 50 Movies (2007): Gone Baby Gone

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I turned 50 years old in November of this year, so my project for 2023 will be to watch and review one movie from each year of my life.  The only qualification is that it has to be a movie I’ve not reviewed previously. 

2007

Top Grossing Movies of 2007:

  1. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
  2. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
  3. Spider-Man 3
  4. Shrek the Third
  5. Transformers

Best Picture Oscar Nominees and Winners of 2007:

Other Movies I’ve Reviewed from 2007:

Title: Gone Baby Gone
Release Date: October 19, 2007
Director: Ben Affleck
Production Company: Miramax Films and The Ladd Company
Summary/Review:

A crime thriller directed by Ben Affleck, starring Casey Affleck, and based on a novel by Dennis Lehane?  This may be the most Boston movie ever.

Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) and Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) are private detectives and romantic partners who search for missing persons in Boston.  When a 4-year-old girl is kidnapped from her home in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester, family members hire Patrick and Angie, even though they’ve never worked an abduction case.  Since they have connections in the neighborhood, Patrick and Angie are able to get people to talk who wouldn’t talk to the police.

The child’s mother Helene McCready (Amy Ryan) is a substance abuser and hangs out with unsavory characters.  This includes working as a drug mule for a Haitian mob boss called “Cheese” (Edi Gathegi).  Patrick and Angie form an uneasy alliance with the cops Remy Bressant (Ed Harris) and Nick Poole (John Ashton), under the direction of Captain Jack Doyle (Morgan Freeman) to bring down Cheese and try to get the child back. Naturally, things go horribly wrong.

In the second half of the movie, the plot gets ludicrous in a typical Lehane fashion.  Patrick pulls on some loose threads and uncovers unthinkable corruption and conspiracy.  I’m not saying it’s bad! It’s gripping drama that is well-directed and well-acted. Ryan, Harris, and Monaghan particularly stand out.  And Patrick is a classic noir character who has a moral compass in a world lacking virtue.  But it does get rather silly.  And the movie’s central “copaganda” message that the police are always doing what’s best even when they’re corrupt is sickening.

Rating: ***

 

Book Review: Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

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Author: T. Kingfisher
Title: Thornhedge
Narrator: Jennifer Blom
Publication Info: Macmillan Audio, 2023
Summary/Review:

Toadling, a fairy who can take the shape of a toad, guards the decrepit ruins of a castle tower surrounded by sharp thistles for centuries.  One day a kindhearted Muslim knight named Halim arrives on a quest to break the curse of the castle.  But Toadling has very good reasons for the princess Fayette sleeping inside to remain in eternal slumber.  This retelling of the classic Sleeping Beauty fairy tale is an imaginative story of friendship, courage, and redemption.

Recommended books:

Rating: ***1/2

Book Review: The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet by John Green

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Author: John Green
Title: The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet
Narrator: John Green
Publication Info: Dutton (2023)
Summary/Review:

The “Anthropocene” is a term used to describe the geologic epoch we currently live in where human activity has significantly affected the course of the Earth’s ecosystems. John Green, author of popular young adult novels such as Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and The Fault in Our Stars, observes that a trend of recent human activity is to rank things on a five star scale (as someone who reviews a lot of books, movies, and music this observation hit hard).

And so he reviews various aspects of our time in this collection essays that are whimsical, thoughtful, and historically-informed.  Essays focus on serious topics ranging from mass extinction to diseases to climate events, but also on popular culture relics such as Diet Dr. Pepper, Scratch & Sniff Stickers, Monopoly, and the Hot Dog Eating Contest. Since many details of Green’s personal life leak into the essays – such as his mental health issues and the time he worked as a hospital chaplain – this book also works as a backdoor memoir.

Most of these essays originated in the podcast, also called The Anthropocene Reviewed, that I listened to avidly although I didn’t remember many of the details.  Green revised and updated the essays during the peak period of the Covid pandemic and the experiences of that crisis offer another lens through which to view the Anthropocene.

Recommended books:

Rating: I give The Anthropocene Reviewed four stars!

50 Years, 50 Albums (2017): Turn Out the Lights by Julien Baker

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I will turn 50 in November of this year, so my project for 2023 will be to listen to and review one album from each year of my life, 1973 to 2022.  The only qualification is that it has to be an album I’ve not reviewed previously. 

2017

Top Grossing Albums of 2017:

  1. DAMN.. – Kendrick Lamar
  2. 24K Magic – Bruno Mars
  3. Starboy – The Weeknd
  4. ÷  – Ed Sheeran
  5. More Life – Drake

Grammy Award for Album of the Year of 2017:

Other Albums I’ve Reviewed from 2017:

 

Album: Turn Out the Lights
Artist: Julien Baker
Release Date: October 27, 2017
Label: Matador
Favorite Tracks:

  • Appointments
  • Turn Out the Lights
  • Sour Breath
  • Everything to Help You Sleep
  • Claws in Your Back

Thoughts:

With the boygenius album one of my favorites of this year, I thought it worthwhile to check out the individual members’ solo project.  Baker’s sophomore album features songs that start off spare with Baker’s voice accompanied by a solo guitar and/or piano but build up to orchestrated denouements.  The music accompanies Baker’s deeply personal lyrics. It’s melancholy but still maintains hope.  Honestly this music is right up my alley.

Rating: ***1/2

 

Song of the Week: “An Open Letter to My Cousins in Israel” by Gabriel Teodros

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Gabriel Teodros – An Open Letter to My Cousins in Israel

This protest song from Seattle-based hip hop artist Gabriel Teodros is an up-to-the-minute response to the ongoing crisis between Israel and Palestine.

Songs of the Week for 2023

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

25th Anniversary Film Festival: The Truman Show (1998)

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Title: The Truman Show
Release Date: June 5, 1998
Director: Peter Weir
Production Company:  Scott Rudin Productions
Summary/Review:

The Truman Show is really messed-up!  Which is a good thing as far as movie-making goes, but the more you think about the logistics that would be necessary to make a show like this in real life and how that would damage the person at the center of it the more messed-up it gets.  And then you realize that there are people who’d happily make a show like this if they could get away with it and people would watch.  That’s messed up.

Screenwriter Andrew Niccol is called “prophetic,” not so much for seeing the future, but noting the qualities of popular culture that would lead to an explosion of reality television, and the social media phenomenon of the camera capturing every moment of our lives.  Jim Carrey stars as Truman Burbank, adopted by a corporation as a baby and placed in an idyllic village beneath a dome with 5000+ cameras capturing his every moment.  Everyone else he knows is an actor, including his wife “Meryl” (Laura Linney) and best buddy “Marlon” (Noah Emmerich).

The film depicts Truman’s growing awareness that he’s at the center of something that doesn’t make sense. It’s played like a conspiracy thriller set in a sitcom.  There are people from the outside world in a “Free Truman” movement who sometimes infiltrate the set, including  Sylvia (Natascha McElhone), an extra Truman falls for in his younger days who was not in the script. But we don’t get to see the “real world” much at first except for brief cuts of audiences watching the show.  It’s not until an hour into the movie that we meet the show’s creator and producer Christof (Ed Harris) in an interview that fills in the backstory of The Truman Show.

The whole structure of the film is expertly done and the camera work frequently reflects the surveillance of the show itself.  This is Carrey’s first “serious” role and his goofy sitcom charm fits the character perfectly.  Harris is also great as the godlike Christof whose every instinct is clearly evil but he’s not entirely unsympathetic.  It’s hard to believe that a movie built on such a disturbing premise is so entertaining.  What else is on?

Rating: ****

25th Anniversary Film Festival: Central Station (1998)

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Title: Central Do Brasil
Release Date: 3 April 1998
Director: Walter Salles
Production Company: Europa Filmes
Summary/Review:

Dora (Fernanda Montenegro) makes money in her retirement writing letters for illiterate people in Rio de Janeiro’s Central do Brasil train station.  One of her customers is a woman whose 9-year-old son Josue (Vinícius de Oliveira) wants to send a letter to the father he’s never met.  When Josue’s mother is killed in a bus crash outside the station, he ends up homeless. Dora is it first indifferent to Josue’s plight, then tries to exploit him, but eventually decides to take him on a road trip to a remote region of Brazil to try to find his father.

Dora is an interesting character because she tries to do the wrong and selfish thing multiple times and only does the right thing seemingly out of desperation.  Josue is a sweet kid who deserves better.  The film is well-made and features great acting by it’s too leads, so I can understand why it’s highly-regarded.  But forgive me if I say that this movie has qualities that some might call “Oscar bait,” that need to manipulate emotions to make a tearjerker.

Rating: ***

25th Anniversary Movie Festival: Fucking Åmål (1998)

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Title: Fucking Åmål (a.k.a Show Me Love)
Release Date: 23 October 1998
Director: Lukas Moodysson
Production Company: Memfis Film | Zentropa Productions | Film i Väst | SVT Drama Göteborg | Svenska Filminstitutet | Danish Film Institute
Summary/Review:

This Swedish teen comedy-drama (starring actual teenagers not people in their 20s) focuses on a few days in the life of two girls at the same school in the town of Åmål.  Elin (Alexandra Dahlström) is popular and conventionally attractive but tired of small-town life and the shallowness of her friends. Agnes (Rebecka Liljeberg) is new to town and having trouble making friends, partly because the other kids correctly guess she is lesbian and mock her.

Through a complex series of events, Elin and Agnes come together and form a romantic interest.  Elin then rebels against her own desires by ignoring Agnes and dating a boy who is interested in her, but she doesn’t like.  While this movie has a positive message and a happy ending, it is very true to life in the depiction of the cruelty of children. Be warned that you may have a visceral reaction if you also experienced bullying and ostracization in your younger years.

Rating: ***1/2

DEEP DIVES – Album Review: 20Ten by Prince

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I am doing a deep dive into the work of the musical artist Prince.  Each week until December I will post my thoughts on albums released by Prince (and his bands and side projects) focusing on one year of his career. 

This week I’m reviewing Prince’s 2010 album, uh, 20Ten.

 

Album: 20Ten
Artist: Prince
Release Date: July 10, 2010
Label: NPG
Favorite Tracks:

  • Laydown

Thoughts:

Bizarrely, and not for the first time, Prince released this album as an insert in British and German newspapers.  Like U2’s direct-to-iTunes release of Songs of Innocence a few years later, it was a gift few people were happy to receive.  Prince had been mining his own past for sometime, but unlike LOtUSFLOW3R/MPLSoUND, this album has no bite.  It’s like listening to a facsimile of a facsimile. The fact that Prince released only one album this year should have been a positive, but then again, Prince recorded Welcome 2 America that same year but held it from release.  I think he chose poorly of which album to release, although both albums suffer from lyrics that comment on current events with no subtlety.

Rating:  *1/2

 

 

For You 1978 ***
Prince 1979 ***1/2
Dirty Mind 1980 ****
Controversy 1981 ****
1999 1982 Prince and the Revolution *****
Purple Rain 1984 Prince and the Revolution *****
Around the World in a Day 1985 Prince and the Revolution ****
Parade 1986 Prince and the Revolution ****
Sign “☮︎” the Times 1987 ****1/2
8 1987 Madhouse ***
16 1987 Madhouse ***1/2
Lovesexy 1988 ***1/2
Batman 1989 ***
Graffiti  Bridge 1990 ***1/2
Diamonds and Pearls 1991 Prince and the New Power Generation ***1/2
Logo. Hollow circle above downward arrow crossed with a curlicued horn-shaped symbol and then a short bar [Love Symbol] 1992 Prince and the New Power Generation ***1/2
Goldnigga 1993 The New Power Generation **1/2
Come 1994 **1/2
The Black Album 1994 ***1/2
The Gold Experience 1995 **1/2
Exodus 1995 The New Power Generation ***
Chaos and Disorder 1996 **1/2
Emancipation 1996 ***
Kamasutra 1997 The NPG Orchestra ***
Crystal Ball
 1998 ***1/2
The Truth 1998 ***
Newpower Soul 1998 The New Power Generation **
The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale 1999 **
Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic 1999 ***
The Rainbow Children 2001 **1/2
One Nite Alone… 2002 **
One Nite Alone… Live! 2002 Prince and the New Power Generation ***1/2
Xpectation 2003 ***1/2
N-E-W-S 2003 **1/2
Musicology 2004 ***
The Chocolate Invasion 2004 ***1/2
The Slaughterhouse 2004 ***1/2
C-Note 2004 **1/2
3121 2006 **1/2
Planet Earth 2007 **
Indigo Nights 2008 ****
LOtUSFLOW3R/MPLSoUND 2009 ***1/2
20Ten 2010 *1/2
Plectrumelectrum 2014 with 3rdeyegirl
Art Official Age 2014 with 3rdeyegirl
HITnRun Phase One 2015
HITnRun Phase Two 2015