Tag: Culture

My Picks of the Year for 2024

Complex pieces, whether successful or not, dominate my end of year list for 2024

2024 was a complex year on many fronts in my life. We moved. Politics and culture seemed to daily turn the world upside down and inside out. And for some reason the movies, TV, and books I enjoyed the most were, while not necessarily the top of class, very complex.

I certainly didn’t see or consume everything during the year. Heading into the holiday movie release schedule I found myself thinking it had been a better year for streaming TV than it had for movies. I think that still holds. Some titles may have been released prior to 2024, but they didn’t cross my radar until this year soon to pass, so they get included.

For the record I don’t believe in “Best of.” As I continue to say, there’s too much good being created by too many good (and some not so good) folks out there, that I pick what attracts and holds my attention.

This year that leaned towards complex pieces that may or may not have been utterly successful. There’s also just some well done entertainment. There is still lots of mediocrity out there, but here’s the complex cream that rose to the top of my list. If I wrote something about the titles, there will be a link.

Movies

Streaming TV

Other Video

I’m not sure where to put YouTube videos on this list, but this presentation of Ubu and The Truth Commission by the Handspring Puppet Company was high on my list of favorite viewing this year.

Books

  • James by Percival Everett
  • The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
  • Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
  • On Freedom by Timothy Snyder
  • The Freaks Came Out To Write by Tricia Romano
  • Infinite Detail by by Tim Maughan

Apps

Either I’m slowing down or software App development is. There’s only one new App that landed on my devices that I would recommend:

  • Croissant. A social media cross-posting app by Ben McCarthy and Aaron Veigh. It’s still got some quirks, but it is handy enough that I use it frequently hoping they’ll work the kinks out.

Have a Happy New Year!

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

The Fun Of Early Morning Movie Going

Movie magic without the crowds.

My wife and I had a holiday tradition of going to see movies around the holidays. We always chose the earliest morning showing because, hey, they are the cheapest ticket. One of the other benefits was the crowds were less. At times it felt like a private screening.

A gentleman siitting alone in a movie theatre, with popcorn and refreshments

All of that was pre-pandemic, and of course that tradition got shelved during those years, and has remained so even longer. But this year we kicked things back off again as my wife gifted me tickets to see Wicked.

If I’m being honest, I like the private screening feel.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

Red One Will Make You Wince and Laugh

Red One won’t save Christmas, but it is quite jolly.

Red One, now streaming on Amazon Prime isn’t a classic, nor is it a loser. It’s fun in all the right places, and bad in all the right places. In the end, it’s worth streaming if you’re looking for some good brainless streaming fun over the holiday.

Overflowing with familiar names in the cast including The Rock, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu, and J.K. Simmons, among others, it’s a romp that tosses a bunch of Christmas themed traditions into the mixer, shakes them up, and sprinkles enough one liners and almost too many special effects on top to keep it entertaining.

I’m not sure it’s quite family fare if you have wee young ones, but for an older mix of generations it’s might be worth the sleigh ride. Explaining Santa Claus might never been the same again.

The different world creation is a well done enough that the movie creates its own Christmas world view allowing a pretty insane mix of mythic magic and technology to propel the story  as the characters try to save Christmas.

If you’re like my families, silly and goofy Christmas movies are a part of the holiday tradition. This one probably makes the cut going forward.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

Sunday Morning Reading

Drones may be circling and society may be circling the drain, but there’s always time for Sunday Morning Reading.

Drones may (or may not) be circling the skies overhead, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep our eyes peeled for some good writing and good reading. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading features a usual mix of writing on tech, Artificial Intelligence, politics, and culture. Buckle up and enjoy.

A man reading a newspaper on a porch with a sky full of drones and a cityscape background. AI generated

Speaking of Artificial Intelligence, Arvino Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor tell us that Human Misuse Will Make Artificial Intelligence More Dangerous. I’ve been saying that for a while and so have any number of science fiction writers. Still, this short piece is worth a read.

Matthew Ingram asks and answers the question Are AI Chatbots Good or Bad For Mental Health? Yes. Good read.

Reed Albergotti chronicles an interview with Google’s Sundar Pichai on Google going all in on AI and the next move,  Agentic AI. Check out Why Sundar Pichai Never Panicked.

Rounding out this group of links on AI, take a look at this intelligent and very human piece from NatashaMH. In No Society Left Behind she posits that AI will still leave us with uneven playing fields across the different strata of society.

John Gruber has an interesting piece On The Accountability of Unnamed Public Relations Spokespeople. It’s politics specific but it also speaks more broadly about the, in my opinion, decline of PR as an effective tool.

We still haven’t come to grips with the shooting of the United Health Care executive and the reaction to it. Adrienne LaFrance takes that as a cue for Decivilization May Already Be Under Way. I would argue it’s been under way for quite some time now. Itt’s just accelerating.

David Todd McCarty says We’re All Going to Need To Hunker Down For A Long-Ass Storm. I concur, although I fear it’s going to be looked back on as a major climate shift.

Dave Troy in the Washington Spectator gives us The Wide Angle: “Project Russia,” Unknown In The West, Reveals Putin’s Playbook. It will never ceae to amaze me how we let this one slip by us.

Looking back a bit in history take a look at this piece from the Atlantic’s 1940 issue called The Passive Barbarian by Lewis Mumford. With the exception of a few references in the article and the publication date, I bet you would think it had been written in this current moment.

And finally, with the holiday drone buzzing around us David Todd McCarty offers up Struggling To Find Peace In The Midst of Exuberant Joy.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Sunday Morning Reading

It’s a cold late Fall morning, with some crisp and cold writing for you in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Sunday, it’s a Sunday. The Sunday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, although every Sunday these days feels like it’s the Sunday after yet another Black Friday. Even so, it’s time for some Sunday Morning Reading. This week’s edition contains some somber writing, fitting for the onset of a winter of discontent and reflection, along with some thinking on the tech scene and vaccines. For good measure, there’s a history of dive bars at the end. Enjoy.

Leading off, David Todd McCarty’s piece I Was F*cking Wendy Under The Stars, The Night Elvis Died, reflects on the risks we take, and perhaps don’t take, in building a life.

Promises and Scars by Kelly Gawitt is an excellent piece of writing on second chances. We all need them.

Joan Westenberg says We’re Dying. Here’s How to Make Better Decisions. Joan’s Mortality Matrix is something to see.

Sam Roberts gives us a look back at a real heroine in Madeline Riffaud, ‘The Girl Who Saved Paris,’ Dies at 100. I’m thinking we might need some Madeline’s going forward.

Patrick Fealey offers a harrowing and personal inside look at homelessness in America in The Invisible Man.

Tim Berners-Lee, who conceived the World Wide Web is taking a crack at a new way our digital lives are stored online with a new venture called Solid. Harry McCracken takes a crack at explaining it all in The Man Who Gave Us The Web Is Building A Better Digital Wallet. Hope it works.

Christopher Mims says that Googling Is For Old People. That’s A Problem For Google. The lede is fantastic:

If Google were a ship, it would be the Titanic in the hours before it struck an iceberg—riding high, supposedly unsinkable, and about to encounter a force of nature that could make its name synonymous with catastrophe.

Vaccines. Who in their right mind thought we’d ever be debating anything about the miracle of vaccines? Donald G. McNeil Jr. says that Vaccines Will Have To Prove Themselves Again. The Hard Way. Warning: the “hard way” isn’t a pretty way.

And after all of that if you need a drink or two or three, check out Linze Rice’s piece on The History of Chicago’s Dive Bars, Once Called ‘The Vilest Holes In The City.’ Bottoms up.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Robert LePage’s Hamlet without Words, Words, Words

Told through dance, LePage’s Hamlet is a thrill.

What a treat. Last night a group of us celebrated a friend’s birthday by attending the Robert LePage production of Hamlet. Billed as a Hamlet without words Le LePage collaborated with choreographer Guillaume Côté, who also danced the title role, to deliver a piece almost entirely as a ballet performed by a company of nine. It was an exquisite theatrical adventure. 

Hamlet 4 photo by Stephane Bourgeois.

With the exception of a few supertitles announcing character entrances for identification, the story unfolds and unfurls through dance, and Côté’s choreography was excellent throughout. Although, I felt the vocabulary he established for himself in the title role was not as strong or consistently surprising as it was for the rest of the ensemble. In and of itself surprising, because the entire story revolves around Hamlet’s surprising reactions to the events enfolding him. 

The true standout in the company was Carleen Zouboules as Ophelia. Her descent into madness, her drowning, and the graveyard scene were the highlights among many in the production. The entire ensemble were excellent and each had standout moments of their own.

LePage always surprises and Chicago audience were lucky to have this US premiere here. Thrilled I got to see it. There’s a trailer linked below, although it seems to have a larger ensemble than the nine person version we saw last night.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. 

 

Sunday Morning Reading

Delusions abound in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

If it’s Sunday, it is time for Sunday Morning Reading with interesting writing on a variety of topics, that without intending to all seem to involve delusions in one way or another. There’s also a little Procol Harum on the side. Enjoy reading, while you skip the light fandango.

Speaking of delusions, check out a piece by Michael Connors and Peter Halligan exploring What Delusions Can Tell Us About the Cognitive Nature of Belief. 

It’s no delusion that Artificial Intelligence remains in the news (before it eventually subsumes the news). Harry McCracken takes us a bit into the deep mind behind Google’s DeepMind in The Future According to Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis. That first link takes you to the web version, this one takes you to the Apple News version of the article since the piece is a premium article for Fast Company readers.

Joan Westenberg has caught my eye of late (if you follow Sunday Morning Reading you should know that) and here are a couple of recently published dynamic pieces: Don’t Confuse Volume with Truth and Rebel Optimism: How We Thrive in a Broken World. Both worth your time.

We’re all complaining about a lot of things, the continued enshittification of the Internet being a familiar and well deserved  target. (It’s interesting that I use that term enshittification so frequently and yet spell check or any other type of check hasn’t picked it up yet.) Dave Winer is fighting the good fight on a lot of fronts and he looks at a new kind of enshittification in Billionaire-proof?

David Todd McCarty takes on the platitude “the meek shall inherit the earth” in The Children of Pacifists.

Ronan Farrow takes a look at The Technology The Trump Administration Could Use To Hack Your Phone. You know it’s going to happen. You know it most likely already has.

And to round things out this week, Ulf Wolf spools out an essay on the mostly forgotten Keith Reid of Procol Harum in The Shadow Member of Procol Harum. Not going to lie, I did spin up a copy of Whiter Shade of Pale while writing this week’s column. The Salty Dog album is cued up next.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks, including Bluesky, under my own name.

A Dream Cast Delivers a Dreamy Dream of Autumn by Jon Fosse

Exceptional performances highlight a magical evening with a magical play.

Fantastic! That’s the first, but not the last compliment I’ll issue to the remarkable cast of our staged reading of Jon Fosse’s play Dream of Autumn last night. Matt Keely, Thomasin Savaiano, Gabrielle Brite, Amy Stricker, and Kevin Grubb were each, and as an ensemble, gloriously fantastic. They deserve all the praise that came flying their way after the reading. Producers should hire them.

Dream of Autumn was presented as a part of this year’s International Voices Project festival. Each piece is given a one-night only reading after a limited rehearsal period (more on that later).

For those unfamiliar, the actors read from their scripts, but are expected to bring full life to the text. This group sure did. Dream is a tricky play, dwelling in the realm of magical realism, with time shifts, and in this story character shifts, that can turn on the edge of dime. In a full production there would be production elements to help the audience follow those shifts. In this very barebones reading style, with the actors sitting in chairs and reading from their scripts from behind music stands, those shifts were handled via the reading of stage directions and the acting choices made by each member of the cast. According to the audience during our post-performance talk back, every one followed each twist and turn.

We only had about six hours of rehearsal to prepare, and the cast took the direction that was given and ran with it, culminating in a very “in the moment” experience for themselves as well as the audience. This was the first time this cast had read the play start to finish, together, without stopping. It was also the first time I had heard it. You could feel the entire room caught in the moments of the play and the moments of performance, breathing as one.

Having directed a number of these staged readings I’ve seen similar quite a few times, but rarely as well and as thrilling as last night’s effort. I often maintain that one of the true tests of an actor’s mettle is watching them carry the day with little preparation, trusting their skill and instincts. This team certainly carried this play last night further than most.

My hat’s off to each of them. Job exceptionally well done.

All photos by Scott Dray.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. Check out the categories for this blog to read more about my theatre work. 

Sunday Morning Reading

Tough reading for tough times in today’s Sunday Morning Reading.

It’s a Sunday. I’ve been reading. As usual I’ll share some of that with you in today’s Sunday Morning Reading.

I started out the week thinking I’d try to avoid politics. That didn’t work. Sort of like getting a cancer diagnosis and not wanting to know anything about the disease taking over your body. So, apologies if there isn’t much “light” reading today.

I’ll start of with an anonymous piece published in The Guardian. We all knew misogyny was a feature of the incoming frat party that will be the new administration. I don’t think anyone thought it would filter down so quickly to high schools. The Boys In Our Liberal School Are Different Now That Trump Has Won, tells that story. Woe be onto us and our children.

David Todd McCarty is working out how to get through the day these days. Check out We’re All Just Killing Time.

Sherrilyn Ifill calls her piece The Truth. It is. And it’s hard.

Joan Westenberg says the way to destroy a generation is to make them think the word runs on feelings and then use those feelings against them. Check out How To Destroy a Generation.

David French thinks Donald Trump Is Already Starting to Fail. Great. Too bad he’s going to take the rest of us down with him.

Norman Solomon is optimistic about Hope In A Time of Fascism.

Margaret Sullivan tries to debunk some of the lies rolling around this history changing moment in As Trump Plans Become Clearer, Reject These Four Dangerous Lies.

Life may feel too short to worry about some things. But it’s all a matter of perspective. Check out Natasha MH in Life’s Too Short for Matching Socks.

And to close things out, BlueSky is the latest social network to experience a burst of new users. This time the the burst is due largely in reaction against Musk’s rape of Twitter/X, and dissatisfaction with Zuckerberg’s Threads, which had been the darling for awhile. Mike Issac takes a look in Bluesky Is Growing Up. Maybe Too Fast.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here.  You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks, including Bluesky, under my own name.

 

Politics and Theatre: Demonstrators Wave Nazi Flags Outside Performance of Diary of Anne Frank

Like everything else the theatre and the arts are in for turbulent times ahead.

Most of my theatre professors earned their bones in the 1960’s. So it’s no suprise that one of my favorites once told us that “you aren’t doing real theatre unless someone shows up with guns to stop people buying tickets at the box office.” I’m not sure this was what he had in mind.

CleanShot 2024-11-12 at 14.33.42@2x.

A group of people showed up outside a community theatre performance of The Diary of Anne Frank in Livingston, Michigan waving Nazi flags. Obviously this upset the play goers and the play doers. Some were escorted to their cars following the performance. The demonstrators left the American Legion parking lot, where the play was being performed, after being told to by local police, but did exchange words with patrons across the street.

Here’s a quote from The Fowlerville Community Theatre via CNN:

The Fowlerville Community Theatre, which put on the production, said in a statement the play “centers on real people who lost their lives in the Holocaust” and added the cast and crew “endeavored to tell their story with as much realism as possible.”

“On Saturday evening, things became more real than we expected,” the group said. “The presence of protesters outside gave us a small glimpse of the fear and uncertainty felt by those in hiding.”

“As a theatre, we want to make people feel and think. We hope by presenting Anne’s story, we can help prevent the atrocities of the past from happening again.”

Something tells me theatres, and the arts in general, are in for more of this, and not just on topics that bring out anti-semitism, given how we’ve just turned this country upside down and inside out, revealing all the ugly that I think my professor genuinely thought that theatre and the arts should be protesting against and illuminating.

Of course the theatre and the artists have also shown throughout history that they can be important voices against ugliness and hatred as well even in times when they’ve been shut down and persecuted. Art and storytelling always finds a way.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.