HARK!
I hear...an acceptance speech...
Before taking off on the movie scene, let’s explore how the feisty Phoenix bookstore Changing Hands is holding an online author event that sounds terrific and terrifying.
Investigative journalist Peter Robison will talk about his new book, “Flying Blind,” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 30.
The subtitle tells it all: “The 737 MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing.”
Robison’s book is described as “a suspenseful behind-the-scenes look at the dysfunction and mismanagement that contributed to one of the worst tragedies in modern aviation: the 2018 and 2019 crashes of the Boeing 737 MAX.”
Ug.
According to the investigative journalist, “Boeing skimped on testing, pressured employees to meet unrealistic deadlines, and convinced regulators to put planes into service without properly equipping them or their pilots for flight.” Robison covered Boeing as a beat reporter during the company’s merger with McDonnell Douglas in the late ‘90s.
Admission to the online event is free (add $32 if you want the book, as well). Click here to register.
In movieland, the FilmBar is serving up post-Thanksgiving scares:
“The Feast” is a lo-fi Welsh horror flick (not to be confused with American movie “Feast,” produced by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in 2005.)
The plot: A mysterious young woman helps serve dinner at a plush new-money family home in the Welsh countryside. “The assembled guests do not realize they are about to eat their last supper.”
After paying $6.99 to watch it on Amazon Prime, I’d say it’s about the least appetizing food movie since...Peter Greenway’s “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” or the French farce “Delicatessen.”
“The Feast” certainly has its artsy-weird moments, at its best a cross between “Midsommar” and “The Shining,” with some Jarmuschian deadpan slow-takes.
It’s a Welsh spin on the old corporate greed takedown, perhaps with the message: “If you ever meet a ghost, don’t hire it to work your dinner party.”
View the trailer here; https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10738906/
Variety called it “a keen-edged, slow-burn Welsh-language horror that takes no prisoners.”
“King Richard” also takes no prisoners...in a good way.
Stone-cold admission: Up until Thanksgiving night, I wasn’t a huge Will Smith fan.
Not a hater, just wouldn’t go out of my way to watch him.
Then, about 30 minutes into “King Richard” (in theaters and on HBO Max), I decided:
“Get this man an Oscar!”
Smith pays the father of Venus and Serena, the Williams sisters who dominated the tennis world for two decades.
In real life, I’m guessing Richard Williams would be a great guy to meet and talk to...for about 5 minutes. After that, you’d probably be “check, please!” to get away from an overbearing, egotistical know-it-all.
Then again: He talked the talk—and his daughters walked the walk, all the way into greatness and then some.
Smith shows us the aggravating sides of this character in an extraordinarily well-rounded performance. And the patriarch’s wife gives him a brilliant comeuppance in a scene that just might score Aunjanue Ellis a Best Supporting Actress statue.
Before being emotionally knee-capped by his wife, “King Richard” shows the title character getting a few savage beat downs; and this isn’t the kind of movie where “the hero gets payback.”
Not with his fists, that is.
Richard Williams ultimately wins his battles with the low-life characters of savage Compton—and, more important, his self-proclaimed war with the white-bread world of tennis, refusing to play by their rules as his daughters kick in the country club doors and shine with their talent and tenacity.
Their dad, as we see, drilled the idea that they were great into their brains from a young age, spicing long hours on the court with his you-will-shine pep talks.
Saniyya Sidney as the iron-willed older sister Venus and Demi Singleton as the sassy younger Serena are both terrific; this cast could sweep most of the Oscar acting categories.
If this wasn’t a true story, you’d think, “Sure, Hollywood, sure…”
But the whole crazy thing—Richard Williams writing a 78-page “plan” for his daughters to become tennis greats before they were born, then dodging the mines of an American ghetto to fulfill the well-plotted prophecy—is pretty much as it happened. (The movie was made with the cooperation and blessing of the Williams family.)
“King Richard”: maybe the best sports movie...ever.