This section of Watts Street has been featured before on this blog. It’s the street of cascading house renovations. I’m not sure if the residents of this street coordinated their sign creation efforts, or if they fed off of each other. But either way, most houses on this streets have put up signs of support for essential workers. Let’s take a tour!
I’ve always liked this house, both the shape and the color. I like how the “thank you” has a slant like their roofline does.
I like this sign with printed coloring sheets. The house is cute too. They always have nice lights up in December.
I appreciate how many groups are included in this sign.
This also has a similar amount of people, and I like the “no COVID 19” symbol. Plus the general “all those helping”
This is a great use of markers and polka dots.
There were more, but my camera battery died. Alas.
Here’s the before picture. These postcards have been up for quite some time. But now I have time to put up the new postcards that have been waiting in the wings.
Here’s the new batch. These are pretty old. I actually have enough postcards to do a new round tomorrow. But I like how even though postcards are mostly pretty standard thing (a rectangle with a picture on one side) they still manage to be different sizes.
Will it be years or months before these cards are changed? Stay tuned.
While this may have been in a postcard package meant for Sara’s students, there’s no way I wasn’t going to receive it. The reason? Our high school mascot was the lion.
And while the tiger is affirming that it isn’t a lion, Sara spent the back of the postcard affirming that Lions are king. Because that’s what the cheer taught us 20+ years ago.
Céline Sciamma’s Girlhood* has a similar pace to Portrait of a Lady on Fire** but with a completely different subject matter.*** And the girls in this were just great, especially Karidja Touré as Marieme/Vic. It’s the kind of film where it’s apparent from the first scene that things aren’t going to go well, but the journey is an interesting one.
The verdict: Good
Cost: free via Kanopy (also on Hoopla) Where watched: at home
Three of the above recommendations have to do with white teenagers’ experiences, the other is about a young woman pre-marriage.
Read this article to find a great list of coming of age films about black girls. I’ve just added a bunch listed to my to-watch list.
Further sentences:
*Interestingly, the translated name of both this and Portrait have been revised a bit to better draw English-speaking audiences. The title of this film, Bande de filles, Google translates as “bunch of girls.” I’m guessing the title was changed to Girlhood to draw the interest of people interested in Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. The original name of Portrait of a Lady on Fire is Portrait de la jeune fille en feu,Portait of a young girl on fire. The English translation is more evocative of Henry James’s novel The Portrait of a Lady which is a title people are familiar with, even if they haven’t read it. **Languid ***Contemporary French teenage girls who are either the children of immigrants or immigrants themselves.
Questions:
What did you think of the opening scene?
What decision do you think Vic made after the final scene ended?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
The most daunting task for the film was to obtain the rights to the Rihanna song “Diamonds.” She gave them the authorization once she had seen the sequence dedicated to the song.
Sam Hargrave’s Extraction is a great opportunity for Chris Hemsworth to show off his action fight scene skills (plus emoting)* and educated me that in Bangladesh the cars are driven on the left side. The cast is sufficiently international, with Rudhraksh Jaiswal (Ovi) and Randeep Hooda (Saju) giving outstanding performances as the kidnapped boy, and the factotum tasked with recovering him. While it does seem for a while to be one very long fight scene, things do eventually slow down for some character growth before picking back up again.
The verdict: Good
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99) Where watched: at home
Morgan Neville’s 20 Feet From Stardom brings light to that visible but invisible maker of music: the backup singer. As we follow the careers of singers from the 1960s onward, we see the pleasure and pain that comes of lending your talents to music that becomes famous while only sometimes crediting your work. Given the stories of the backup singers,* this could have been a depressing catalog, but the film is celebratory and hopeful; still, it left me wondering how a woman would have captured the dismissal of such talented women.**
The verdict: Recommended
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99) Where watched: at home
Further sentences:
*While Darlene Love’s story starts as gaspingly awful, she seems to have come out of it okay. Whereas Claudia Lennear’s career trajectory caused both myself and the boyfriend (who was only partially watching) to make audible noises of protest. **”There can be only one Aretha, only one Whitney.” A lot of backup singers swinging for stardom ran into that sentiment. But why can there only be one woman, when there can be so many men?
Questions:
Do you think we’re yet past the “there can only be one” sentiment when it comes to women artists?
Which was your favorite story?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
The film has been compared to the similarly themed book The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll’s Best-Kept Secret, which chronicles the stories of uncredited studio musicians.
Noah Baumbach’s Kicking and Screaming is full of really low-energy, quasi-adult men dithering about things for ninety-six minutes that feel more like three hours; it has not aged well.* Now that it’s not the 90s, well-educated white guys who can’t figure out what to do after college are not quite the selling point they once were.** It was interesting to see actors in their younger years,*** and I really enjoyed looking at the details of the craftsman bungalow**** the post-college students lived in, but this is not a good film.
The verdict: Skip
Cost: Netflix monthly fee ($8.99) Where watched: at home
*It reminds me ofSwingersin that regard, though this is if you took Swingers, extracted all the humor, the whirling friendships, dialed down the energy to 10%, and eliminated the fun swing dancing scene. **This has a Metascore of 75, which is pretty high. The last boring movie I watched (One and Two)had a meta score of 47. I can only think that those reviews must have been from 1995, when the movie was released. ***Eric Stoltz is always fun. The big surprise that the main character, Josh Hamilton (Grover) is someone I’m familiar with as Clay’s dad in 13 Reasons Why and also Kayla’s dad in Eighth Grade. I would not have noticed, except I started looking up things on IMDB before I was finished watching it. The true sign of an uninteresting film. ****The floors needed redoing, but man, those built ins! To die for!
Questions:
Did you happen to watch this in the 90s? What did you think?
Can you think of an equivalent slacker movie with women as protagonists?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
The film was almost accepted in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, but Noah Baumbach refused to cut 15 minutes as they requested, and the film was ultimately rejected.
Christopher Nolan’s 2002 remake of 1997’s Insomnia (also called Insomnia) is a slow thriller* where the point is not really who done it,** but how this is all going to play out.*** Much like what I’ve heard about 2019’s Midsommar, the endless light makes for a fun turnabout setting for the noir plot. Both Hilary Swank and Al Pachino were fun to watch: her turn from a fan to a questioner and him from calm and confident to shambling mess.
The verdict: Good
Cost: $2.99 via Google Play Where watched: at home
*Thus making it not actually thrilling, but interesting. **A wikipedia article on the term whodunit/whodunnit. **I liked this setup as the big name star who didn’t appear on screen until minute 58 was clearly the guy who done it.
Questions:
Do you think he meant to do it?
Are you more of a fan of serious Robin Williams, or funny Robin Willimas? Why?
Favorite IMDB trivia item:
Similar to the 1999 movie, Mystery, Alaska; all of Insomnia was shot in Canada. Only aerial photography of Alaska was used.
