Book review: The Gospel According to the Beatles

In March 2015, the youth director of our church is putting on a musical review based on The Gospel According to the Beatles, which will feature The Daughter. This compelled me to buy and read the book. Author Steve Turner, as the book sleeve, informs me, has been writing about pop music for over three decades. This is, and I don’t want it to come off as a pejorative, a scholarly book, well-researched

MOVIE REVIEW: The Theory of Everything

When I heard the buzz about the movie The Theory of Everything, I expected that the movie making would be less conventional. But it’s just a standard romantic biopic of boy meets girl/boy and girl fall in love/boy discovers he has ALS and has two years to live/boy and girl get married anyway/they live happily ever after (for a while).

The “boy” is astrophysicist Stephen Hawking (Eddie Redmayne from the movie Les Misérables), who will eventually become one of the most famous scientists in the world, and author of the bestseller A Brief History of Time. The “girl” is fellow Cambridge student Jane Wilde (Felicity Jones), an unlikely pair.

Jane: So, I take it you’ve never been to church?
Stephen: Once upon a time.

MOVIE REVIEW: The Grand Seduction

The Wife and I went to the Spectrum Theatre on a recent Saturday night. I knew little about any of the movies, so we opted for the film down from four showings per day to two, The Grand Seduction.

From the IMDB description:
“The small harbor of Tickle Cove [probably Newfoundland, Canada] is in dire need of a doctor so that the town can land a contract to secure a factory which will save the town from financial ruin. Village resident Murray French (Brandon Gleeson) leads the search, and when he finds Dr. Paul Lewis (Taylor Kitsch) he employs – along with the whole town – tactics to seduce the doctor to stay permanently.”

This film is an English language remake

MOVIE REVIEW: Million Dollar Arm

I suppose I should not have been surprised that the Daughter expressed tremendous interest in seeing the film Million Dollar Arm. She watches these annoying Disney shows on TV, and I imagine they have promoted the movie incessantly. A Memorial Day matinee trek to the Spectrum Theatre was in order.

There is an inherent problem with most movies based on real life. Additional issues come from sports movies, which generally slip into cliche. Still, the premise was interesting: a struggling sports agent, JB (Jon Hamm) comes up with a wild idea. What if he could find a baseball pitcher or two from India

MOVIE REVIEW: The Grand Budapest Hotel

In the first scene of The Grand Budapest Hotel, a young woman or girl walks through a cemetery, and I realize “She looks like a Wes Anderson character.” Is it the sensible shoes, or the way she walked? Not sure. Strange, because I had only seen two earlier Anderson films, The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), which I did not love, and Moonrise Kingdom (2012), which I enjoyed greatly.

This is “The adventures of Gustave H [Ralph Fiennes] , a legendary concierge at a famous European hotel between the wars, and Zero [newcomer Tony Revolori], the lobby boy who becomes his most trusted friend”

Movie Review: The LEGO Movie

The Wife recently purchased, as a fundraiser item for our school’s PTA, this coupon book called SaveAround; I had never heard of it.

One of the items in the Albany edition is an opportunity to go to one of the Regal Cinema locations, for free, on one’s birthday. Hmm, I had a birthday coming up, AND I had taken the day off from work, per usual.

Took the bus up to Colonie Center, and indeed got a free pass to see The Lego Movie. I was the first to arrive, and for a time thought that it might be a private showing.

MOVIE REVIEW – August: Osage County

I was not sure I even wanted to see it. The reviews were decidedly mixed on August: Osage County. Worse, the campaign promoting the film changed from being a scene-chewing drama to a dark comedy, so I was suspicious. But then

MOVIE REVIEW: Nebraska

When we can’t get a child sitter, sometimes the Wife and I will see the same movie different weekend days, so we can compare notes. I went to NYC with The Daughter and I went to see the Broadway musical Newsies on a recent Saturday, so The Wife visited the Spectrum Theatre and saw Nebraska. She deemed it quite worthwhile, so I went to watch it on that Sunday; she was right.

This is a rare starring role for long-time character Bruce Dern, playing Woody Grant, who is convinced that he has won a million dollars some Publisher’s Clearing House-type mailing

MOVIE REVIEW: Inside Llewyn Davis

I had this perfect Saturday date planned with The Wife. She had a church meeting all day until 3:30 pm. I would walk The Daughter to a friend’s house, drop her off, catch a nearby bus at 2:45, catch another bus at 3:03, get to the Spectrum Theatre about 3:15 to buy tickets for the 3:45 showing of the movie Nebraska, which I had been trying to see for a while. The Wife would meet me there.

Unfortunately, no one was home at 2:30 or 2:45. We had to take a bus downtown at 3 to go to church and intercept The Wife

MOVIE REVIEW: Dallas Buyers Club

Here is why Dallas Buyers Club is getting all those awards and nominations: it’s a basically true story of a Texas cowboy and electrician named Ron Woodroof who is a homophobic, womanizing, substance-abusing schmuck who discovers he has AIDS, and apparently, just thirty days to live. The viewer goes from repulsion at his antics to admiration and affection for his intelligence and even compassion.

Ron is portrayed by Mathhew McConaughey,