Until last week, the only movie I’d seen that consisted of nothing but one long conversation was My Dinner With Andre, which I saw forty years ago. But this past Thursday I watched a movie made in 2007 called The Man from Earth. . . . If you liked The Twilight Zone, you’ll probably enjoy this movie. . .
Category: Recommendations
Ted Lasso
. . . Ted Lasso is about an American amateur football coach — played by Jason Sudeikis, formerly of Saturday Night Live — who goes to the UK to manage a struggling professional soccer team. I had seen ads for the show when it debuted last summer but didn’t bother with it because neither Jennifer nor I are into sports. That was a mistake. . . .
Shimmer Lake
Writing yesterday about the movie Small Town Crime, which I had just seen the night before, reminded me of another movie about a crime in a small town and the efforts by law enforcement and other interested parties to solve it. This one I saw almost exactly a year ago on Netflix’s streaming service. I just checked and it’s still there. It’s called Shimmer Lake. . . .
Small Town Crime
I’m a fan of a particular type of low-budget movie, the kind we would have once called “direct-to-DVD,” but today might better be described as “straight-to-streaming.” These movies often feature a well-known actor in the lead role (about 50% of the time, it seems, this is Bruce Willis) surrounded by actors you’ve never heard of. But occasionally that formula is reversed: a relatively obscure actor plays the lead while at least some of the lesser parts are played by actors who are better known. Many of these low-budget movies are espionage thrillers featuring lots of car chases, fight scenes, and gunplay. But the ones I usually like best are less frenetic and more plausible. They are often stories about a crime and the pursuit of justice in some small American town. . . .
Evil Geniuses, by Kurt Andersen
I just finished reading Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America – A Recent History, by Kurt Andersen. The primary thesis of this book is similar to that of Robert Reich’s book, The System: Who Rigged It and How to Fix It, which I read and blogged about a couple of months ago. But Evil Geniuses is a longer and more ambitious book. Andersen tells the story of how conservatives in America — specifically CEOs, conservative politicians and academics, and some hugely wealthy people — set about starting in the 1970s to change the minds of Americans about the nature of markets, the source of American prosperity, and the role of government in managing the economy. It’s a fascinating story, and one I’ve never seen told in such journalistic detail. . . .
In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson
I just finished reading In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, Erik Larson’s recounting of the three and a half years that William E. Dodd spent as U.S. ambassador to Hitler’s Germany, from 1933 through 1937. It is excellent. . . .
The Queen’s Gambit
Jennifer and I are two episodes into a seven-episode miniseries on Netflix called The Queen’s Gambit. We are loving it. It’s about a young girl, Beth Harmon, who is sent to an orphanage after her mother dies and there discovers a love and extraordinary aptitude for chess. . . . Though we’ve still got five episodes left to watch, I’ve seen enough to recommend the series unreservedly. It is riveting. . . .
The Social Dilemma
I just finished watching a documentary called The Social Dilemma on Netflix. (Thanks to my friend Kevin for recommending it.) The movie is horrifying, and I think everyone should watch it. The movie asks and answers the question, What’s the problem with social media? I haven’t been a fan of social media for years. The algorithms behind it are designed to literally addict people to their screens, thereby wasting their time, diminishing the quality of their lives, and harming their relationships. It serves up distortions and outright lies, keeps people in their media echo chambers, and fosters divisiveness. But I didn’t appreciate just how dangerous it really is before watching this film. . . .
Willowood Pottery
Jennifer, my mother and I drove over to our friend Caryn Newman’s pottery sale in Ewing, New Jersey, today. Caryn is an amateur-turned-professional potter, and proprietor of Willowood Pottery. . . .
Trumpty Dumpty
I’m enjoying John Lithgow’s new book, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown: Verses for a Despotic Age, a sequel to his 2019 book, Dumpty: The Age of Trump in Verse. Lithgow did both the writing and the illustrations, including the one shown here. Here’s the title verse . . .