“She can sing anything. She can sing Three Blind Mice. Any-thing,” the Reverend James Cleveland tells the congregation gathered at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in South Los Angeles. It’s January 1972, and Cleveland is welcoming the congregation to the 2-day recording that Franklin is about to begin — a recording that will go on to become the best-selling album of her mighty career. The late Cleveland, who died in 1991, was the best person for the job of introducing Franklin and setting the scene for the recording. As Franklin’s father — he, too, no longer with us — will later relay towards the end of the session, Cleveland…
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Of Popstars and Addicted Boys – The 2018 Toronto International Film Festival
This year’s Toronto Film Fest overlapped in theme for more than a few movies. There were tales of addiction and rehabilitation in Ben is Back, Beautiful Boy, Boy Erased — and yes, about boys. There were tales of female pop singers – from Vox Lux to Teen Spirit to the much-anticipated A Star is Born. Then there were films we need, and want, to see more of: the female-fronted heist drama with a touch of social commentary from Steve McQueen in Widows, the understatedly brilliant tale of Black love in the face of incarceration in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk, the of-our-times The Hate U Give, the exquisite this-is-why-we-have-movies…
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Blindspotting
At a time when so many incredible indie films are being made, Blindspotting sits well amongst the list as one of the must-sees. It’s a feature film that channels the talent of spoken word artists, Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, into an urgent, compelling fresh take on contemporary America. On screen, as in real life, the actors are friends, co-workers, and co-writers — in the film their co-writing takes place more spontaneously, in between deliveries in their company truck, rather than in room with pen and paper (or keys and a laptop). Diggs, a Tony-winning Hamilton alum, plays Collin, who’s spent a year in prison and has three days left of his…
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Eighth Grade, the Movie.
Eighth Grade’s Kayla Day — played by the excellent Elsie Fisher — is the heroine I wish I’d been for myself when I was 13. When we first meet her, in comedian Bo Burnham’s directorial debut, she’s making one of her YouTube videos, a series of “tips” and self-help advice dished out to an audience of 1 or sometimes none, following a model that’s seemingly worked for others. She dolls out advice on “how to get out there” or “how to have confidence,” – after all giving advice is the best way to boost one’s social standing online. Most of the time, though, Kayla is making these videos based on…
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Hearts Beat Loud
If you love Once & Begin Again and treasure record stores & sweet summer romances, and have never quite appreciated how empathetic Nick Offerman’s eyes can be, and if you have ever been to Red Hook or have never been to Red Hook, and you need a tonic of hope & love to help you be brave in whatever way you need to be, you must watch Hearts Beat Loud. Set in a part of Brooklyn that’s super hard to get to (unless you, like me, run there), Red Hook, the film tells the story of a single father named Frank, played by Nick Offerman, and his daughter, Sam, played…
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