If you want to take a master class in film, you need only watch the movies of Robert Redford. Redford passed away peacefully on September 16, at the age of 89, at his beloved home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah. He was more than a Hollywood icon. He was a visionary who reshaped American cinema and left an indelible mark on the cultural landscape.
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It is not unusual. But it is interesting. This year we celebrate Christmas, as usual, on December 25th. Kwanzaa, the African-American cultural holiday is always celebrated from December 26th to January 1st. Hanukkah, the Jewish holiday, is the wild card falling from late November to December. This year it begins at sunset, December 25th. So we have a triple header in the space of forty-eight hours.
I am tempted to note that confluence with a sense of hope, urging everyone to look to the season as a reason to be optimistic about the year about to start. To steal a line from singer-composer Bobby McFerrin, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy“. I can’t do it. I can’t do it because I am very worried and very concerned about the year ahead.
But I do wish you the very best for the holiday. Let’s make the most of it.
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Its been a long time since I raved about a movie (2016, La-La-Land). But I’ll take a much-needed vacation from politics to rave about this one. Wicked is simply great. And if you are looking for something the whole family can enjoy, it is a perfect outing for Thanksgiving weekend. On the “Rotten Tomatoes” web site, which aggregates reviews, it has a positive rating above 90%. Wicked also sold $114 million in tickets in the United States in its opening weekend and $166 million worldwide. So, it is not just me.
Read moreWe lost two giants of the entertainment world in the month of September, actors who I admired for decades. They each graced both stage and screen. And both filled their mantels with a large collection of awards.
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I still remember the first time I heard the music of P.D.Q. Bach. On the program at New York’s Town Hall were the Echo Sonata for Two Unfriendly Groups of Instruments and the Schleptet in E♭ major. I was immediately hooked.
Each piece was introduced by Professor Peter Schickele of the Music Pathology Department, University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople. Schickele claimed to have discovered the work of P.D.Q, who he described as the 21st and least of the children of the great baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Here is where things get a little dicey. J.S. Bach was certainly prolific. But he stopped at 20 children. And while there is a Hoople in North Dakota, there is no university there. I should have noted that the program listed P.D.Q.’s dates as “(1807–1742)?“
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His mother always liked his brother best. That was his go-to line. Tommy Smothers (left above) was an American comedian, actor, composer, and musician, best known as half of the musical comedy duo the Smothers Brothers, alongside his younger brother Dick. He was born in 1937, in New York City, and passed away on December 26, 2023, at the age of eighty-six in Santa Rosa, California.
When I look back over my blogs, I see that the few obituaries I write are always about people who have had a significant impact on me. Smothers is one of those people. When I think of Tom I think of the Sixties. This was my coming-of-age decade, and one that stands out as a turning point in American history.
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It was my last year of grade school, and I faced all the usual crises. My family was about to move about five miles closer to the center of the city because my parents wanted me to attend a different high school than the one serving our current neighborhood. I was about to lose most of my grade school friends because only two others were switching to the same high school. And for some reason the girls, who I had recently become interested in, were not so much interested in our current hero, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Napoleon Solo, played by Robert Vaughn. They had eyes only for the blood sidekick Illya Kuryakin, played by David McCallum.
McCallum died yesterday in New York City at the age of ninety.
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