“What is this ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’ thing?” I remember thinking this in 1978, when I heard about a movie of that title somehow playing midnights for weeks (months?) on end in a multiplex near Western Michigan University. Being an impressionable college student who liked movies (but hadn’t yet grown to love them), I thought I ought to give this one a try.
It might seem difficult to think of the 1990s as the “Golden Age” of anything. No offense to the ’90s, but they just don’t seem so long ago.
If you watched the recent Academy Awards telecast, you will remember its strange and stunning conclusion. The show’s producers unwisely broke tradition by saving the announcement of the Best Actor award until last, presumably to honor the posthumous expected winner, Chadwick Boseman.
Film festivals have come and gone in Flint, but the longest continuous cinema fest in Genesee County is going strong – even during the pandemic.
Watching “Nomadland,” as I did the other day, was an experience I will never forget. And not just because the movie was exceptionally good.
Hollywood loves to make movies about its own history – and audiences and reviewers, generally, have liked them. Witness Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” last year, “La-La Land” and “Stan & Ollie” before it, and the Best Picture Academy Award-winning “The Artist” prior to those.
Those who have seen “Searching for Sugar Man,” the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary about the search for a long-forgotten but influential ’70s musician from Detroit, will recall its more-or-less happy ending. In a similar vein now comes “The Changin’ Times of Ike White,” another small slice of pop music history with a back story just as interesting – if not as ultimately uplifting.
When I was introduced to “Cat’s in the Cradle” over the Top 40 airwaves in 1974, I was a teenager who was attracted to Harry Chapin’s wistful song about father-son relationships. When I listen to it now on satellite oldies radio, I connect with it from the other end of the age spectrum, as a dad who wonders where all the years went.
There are movies about Christmas that embody high, holy ideals – peace, joy, fellowship, generosity – expressed through familiar images of the manger in Bethlehem or even Santa Claus coming down from the North Pole.
“So, Ed, what did you do on your ‘summer vacation’ from movies at the FIA?” Well, since you’ve asked, I had enough time to finish work on a book that was published in June – with an inadvertent reminder of the current global pandemic.
To paraphrase wording used frequently in these trying times, I am older than 60 and have a pre-existing condition. That’s right: I am a Monster Kid.
“Marty, I’ve got to tell you I love the first season of ‘The Irishman,’” Chris Rock quipped from the Oscar-night stage last month. His comment was ostensibly aimed at director Martin Scorsese, who from the audience good-naturedly accepted the ribbing of his 3½-hour gangster epic.
