CHA CHA REAL SOMOOTHMOVIE REVIEW When I heard that 25-year-old, Cooper Raiff, wrote, produced, directed, and starred in the quirky, indie film, Cha Cha Real Smooth, I had low expectations. I remembered suffering through two ponderous movies where Clint Eastwood and Denzell Washington directed their own acting. In both cases, the camera lingered much too […]
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DISPLACED Photo Courtesy of Farid Ershad 0:00 / 0:00 Displaced Mid-August last year, when Fatema* answered her cell phone, she heard her sister Shaima’s frantic voice, “I’m at the airport. Can you bring me my passport right now?” Not a simple request. On a normal day, it would have been dangerous for Fatema, who was
EINSTEIN ON TIME Photo Courtesy of Taton Moise 0:00 / 0:00 Einstein on Time I can’t pretend to understand what Einstein meant when he said that time was an illusion. In fact, I can’t pretend to understand much of what Einstein said. What I do know is that living during these Covid years has shifted
BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES Photo Courtesy of Hans Isaacson 0:00 / 0:00 Bonfire of the Vanities Twenty years ago, a reporter called me with bizarre news, so bizarre that I instantly wrote him off as a prank caller. He claimed he was from a town out West, maybe in Colorado? I am fuzzy on the
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The Kindness of Strangers seems to have slipped into existence with few people noticing. Except for a couple savage reviews, you won’t see much about the film online. The movie was released in December 2019, just before Covid kneecapped the world. Between that and the Rotten Tomato score of 31%, I don’t think it has
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PIVOTING INTO 2022 0:00 / 0:00 Pivoting into 2022 This past Thanksgiving, all our grandkids were visiting. At one point, three-year-old Bea and four-year-old Hank decided to prepare for an imaginary beach trip. Hank packed several face masks into his yellow leather bag and Bea jammed a bunch into her blue vinyl
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SWAN SONGMOVIE REVIEW Last night, I needed to take a vacation from real life, so I watched a movie called Swan Song. Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris play married couple, Cameron and Poppy Turner. Unknown to Poppy, her husband is about to die. Cameron meets with Dr. Scott (Glen Close) to discuss a radical option,
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JACK’S GRANNYA STORY FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES 0:00 / 0:00 Jack's Granny Some grannies knit and some grannies bake bread. But Jack’s granny plays the banjo. Jack’s Granny settled into her rickety rocking chair and began to fiddle with the tuning pegs on her banjo. Both Jack and his granny could hear excited
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MY BRIEF LIFE OF CRIME Jean De La Bruyere says, “If poverty is the mother of all crimes, lack of intelligence is their father.” This was true in my case. My first brush with crime happened when I was eight years old. At the time, we lived across from my school, Smalley Elementary. Weekdays, as
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MY MONTICELLOBOOK REVIEW Jocelyn Johnson’s novella, My Monticello, is a soul-nourishing story that begins on a spring night in the near-future after the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in 2017. White nationalists have returned to town. They are burning down houses and brutally attacking people of color. Da’ Naisha Love, a descendant of Thomas
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