PODCAST-TASK-TV SERIES If you’ve read very many of my movie reviews, you’ll know that I love dark movies with redemptive underpinnings. The seven-episode TV series, Task, fits the bill. This crime procedural was written by Brad Inglesby, who also penned Mare of Eastown. Both series do a brilliant job of capturing gritty blue-collar life. Mare […]
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PODCAST-JOYRIDE-MOVIE REVIEW I saw a snippet of Joyride on a long airplane flight. I found the film intriguing and always wanted to watch the whole movie, which I did last night with my fellow members of The Quirky Movie Club. The plot: Twelve-year-old Mully (played by Charlie Reid) is singing in a pub to raise
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PODCAST-SMOKE-TV SERIES Smoke is a nine-episode Apple TV series based on Dennis Lehane’s book, Firebug. This thriller is dark and gritty, with its main theme being no one can escape the negative effects of a traumatic childhood. All the primary characters have backstories that have left them flawed. The writing is good and is often
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PODCAST-NINE DAYS MOVIE REVIEW I watched Nine Days a week ago. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Written and directed by Edson Oda, this surreal film is set in a clapboard house in the middle of a bleak desert. In this house, over the span of nine days, Will (Winston Duke) decides if a
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PODCAST-SLOW WALKING OUT OF BABYLON *This originally appeared in Literally Stories, an international literary journal. One day, I meet Beelzebub standing ahead of me in line at the To God Be the Glory Soup Kitchen. Bathed in the glare of the fluorescent lights that flicker above us, the man glistens. Shards of hard white light
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PODCAST-DON’T ARRIVE BEFORE YOU GET THERE You can read this essay in Streetlight Magazine where it first appeared or down below. *** My writing mantra used to be, Fine is good enough. I made sure whatever I sent out was the best it could be. However, I worked fulltime and was the primary caretaker for
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PODCAST-INSTANT FAMILY-MOVIE REVIEW Straight out of college, I took a job that gave me a year to “de-institutionalize” a group of 17-year-old kids who had spent their lives bouncing from one placement to another. My task was to equip them with the survival skills they hadn’t learned during their formative years. I was supposed to
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PODCAST-PISTOL PACKIN’ MAMA Photo Courtesy of Taylor Brandon 0:00 / 0:00 Pistol Packin' Mama Ninety-five years ago, my grandfather, Gaetano Boccaccio named my mother after his favorite Longfellow poem, Evangeline. Despite raising five children on a barber’s salary during the Great Depression, Gaetano made sure my mother took ballet, tap, and had French horn
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PODCAST-THE GOD OF THE WOODS BOOK REVIEW Liz Moore’s literary mystery is set in 1975 at a prestigious summer camp in the Adirondacks. This place requires coed campers (aged eight through teens) to participate in a minimally supervised survival exercise. They are placed in small groups, given scant supplies, then are sent into the deep
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PODCAST-CODE RED Photo courtesy of Jason Leung 0:00 / 0:00 Code Red Have you ever seen Das Boot (1981), the movie about a German submarine? I don’t recommend it. I don’t remember much about it except a terrifying few moments of sirens blaring, lights flashing, and Germans screaming, “ALARM!” This scene convinced me I’d never