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There was news this week on the TRON front: Jeff Bridges is returning to the franchise for the third film that is apparently getting made soon. I’m a longtime TRON fan, all the way back to the original film in 1982, and I enjoyed the eventual follow-up, TRON LEGACY, which doesn’t seem to have been received terribly well, but who cares about those people, anyway. The 1982 film featured a “futuristic” (for 1982) score, dominated by synthesizers, by  composer Wendy Carlos. Carlos is a noted pioneer of electronic and synth music, and her work for TRON at this point in time sounds both groundbreakingDown the rabbit hole….

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A few days after Richard Nixon died (on this date, 1994), I was out riding around with my father as he did some errands. We stopped at the post office in the town where we lived, and Dad noticed that the flag was at half-staff. He asked why, and I said something like, “Well, a former President died–“ At that my father sputtered and said, “The flag’s down for Nixon? That piece of shit?!” Dad hated Richard Nixon. Hated him. Mom did too. Dad hated Nixon so much that he was angry at Gerald Ford for the rest of his politically-aware life (“Nixon shouldDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a topic that just keeps coming up, and up, and up on social media: seeing movies in the theater versus waiting to stream at home. The latest go-round of this topic came up just in the last day or two, via this news report: A new poll by HarrisX, exclusive to IndieWire, found that 34 percent of U.S. adults prefer to watch movies in theaters, which means a solid two-thirds would rather wait for them to be released on streaming. “The competition continues between streaming services and the Hollywood engine. While we still see evidence of loyal movie-goers in recent box office numbers,Down the rabbit hole….

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I love a great bit of character writing, and this is terrific. By way of set-up: at this point we’re probably, oh, two hours into the movie. Oskar Schindler started the film by using Jewish investors’ money to buy a factory and he staffed it with Jews after the crackdowns resulted in Jews being forced to give up property and ownership and move into ghettos. Throughout the film, as the crackdowns become more and more severe, Schindler deftly spreads money around to many Nazi officials–including, most prominently, labor camp commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes)–to keep his factory running with moreDown the rabbit hole….

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Last week I watched not one but two musical movies. These two movies are about as different from one another as you can imagine; in fact, about the only thing they have in common is that they are musical movies. One is a “traditional” style of musical in which the characters do the “break into song and dance” thing, a la the old classic musicals of the MGM and Warners era, while the other is a kind of mashup of a rockumentary and romance film about a performing duo, so the music is a part of the movie in termsDown the rabbit hole….

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This is a slightly-modified repost of something I first wrote years ago, back in the Byzantium’s Shores days. It’s fresh on my mind because The Wife and I rewatched Love Actually last night, and it’s the first time I’ve seen it in seven or either years, after a period during which I watched it every year. I don’t know why it fell out of rotation; I certainly didn’t stop loving the movie, even though hating on it seems to have become a fashionable viewpoint in recent years, judging by the think-pieces that circulate social media about how bad Love Actually is. I didDown the rabbit hole….

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It’s that time of year again: the annual debate over whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie! My personal opinion is that this one’s easy: yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. But a friend on Facebook made an interesting argument against Die Hard‘s Christmas status the other day, and I want to tease it out a little more. Basically his view is that there is nothing intrinsically Christmas to Die Hard, at least not in the same way that Christmas is intrinsic to Miracle on 34th Street (his example). Basically, my friend argues that you can’t have Miracle on 34th Street take place any otherDown the rabbit hole….

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The title quote comes from Amadeus, when Mozart protests to Salieri that his new opera, The Marriage of Figaro, has closed after just nine performances. The opera’s fate, according to the film, was doomed when Emperor Joseph II of Austria yawned during the fourth act. Demands upon audiences have been a concern of artists for…well, pretty much forever, I suppose. When an orchestra puts, say, Mahler’s Third or Bruckner’s Eighth on the program, those symphonies take up the entire evening’s work. Do the performances include intermission? I honestly don’t know. I’m thinking about this after reading Mark Evanier’s post about the newDown the rabbit hole….

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Netflix released a trailer for the upcoming movie Maestro today, and let me tell you…I am well-and-truly excited to see this movie. It will be on Netflix in late December, right in time for my Christmastime vacation. I’ve watched this trailer three times, and not only does it make me want to listen to Mahler’s Second, it also leaves me honestly astonished at how deeply Bradley Cooper seems to have disappeared into Leonard Bernstein. There are times in this trailer when the artifice is so convincing I can barely spot it. Leonard Bernstein is one of my musical heroes–and my writingDown the rabbit hole….

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I don’t have much in depth to say about some of these, so I’ll limit myself to two sentences each! ::  Happiness for Beginners: This cheerful and utterly unsurprising rom-com, which unfolds on a hiking trip, is worth watching for some STUNNING nature shots. Keep the PAUSE button at the ready. ::  Always Be My Maybe: This, on the other hand, is a cheerful but actually occasionally surprising rom-com, featuring Randall Park and Ali Wong as Asian-American friends from youth who wander in and out of a relationship over the years. It has some big laughs, lots of heart, and a terrificDown the rabbit hole….