News You Can Bruise for 2016 August 2

That said, I'm not really clear on who hustled whom or what the hustle was. Perhaps I, the audience member, have been hustled?

This was the consensus Asian Film Festival choice between me, Sumana, and one of her friends; and as often happens with consensus picks we were all kind of let down. Pansori is a genre that's not that interesting to me, and although I'm not qualified to judge, according to the programmer of the film festival, star Suzy Bae's pansori singing isn't great.

Like, just as an example, Norman Lear wasn't just a successful TV guy. At one point he was the producer of five of the top ten network shows. He plowed his millions right back into television, producing a special called "I Love Freedom" to push back against the religious right, a special which featured Robin Williams playing the American flag. He bought a copy of the Declaration of Independence and sent it on a road trip in an attempt to inoculate people against anti-American authoritarianism. And in the interviews he really opens up and talks candidly about the darkest parts of himself. Compare someone like Mel Brooks, who shows up in this movie and spends most of his scene telling one really long joke. Really interesting show.

Unlike a lot of modern action movies (see Star Trek: Beyond: below), I could follow the action scenes even when they got complicated. And looking forward, the end of this film gives me confidence the sequel will avoid the worst problem with Ghostbusters II (1989).

He's got a couple great scenes, but the one that sticks out in my mind has a frustrated Iowan throwing a big blob of generalized resentment at Santorum, and he listens and sympathizes and probes around the conspiracy theory for some normal conservative sentiments he can agree with. It's a sign of how low the bar has been moved since 2012, but I found that really touching. Rick Santorum does the basic job of a politician.

I'd never seen Chicago before, so seeing it in Japanese was a nice stretch. Overall I would rate the musical as "okay". After the show Takurazuka did a medley of their greatest hits, with elaborate costumes and cross-dressing galore. As usual when we go out to a live theater event, I'm unhappy with the cost, but Takurazuka did give me the feeling of seeing something that I'd never be able to experience any other way, so I'm glad we went.

Mirabai, a big Chicago fan, was not impressed by my trivia tidbit: that according to IMDB ratings Chicago was the 155th-best movie of 2002, the worst performance of any Best Picture winner. Maybe you'll be impressed! Who knows? Actually I'm a little suspicious of this number; I did some spot checks on some well-known 2002 movies and the only one I saw with a higher rating than Chicago was The Hours.

This is a fascinating film, partly due to the inclusion of tons of candid footage from two contemporaneous films where people heard about the Chisholm campaign and thought "I must follow them around!" but never actually released a film. Caucus gives you the 'real' candidates by showing the abrasive effect on their emotional defenses of a grueling sequence of public events. These unfinished films achieve 'reality' by going right into Chisholm's Congressional office and convention hotel room. It helps that she's the same person in private as in public. The scene where Chisholm is watching the convention on TV, she picks up the phone and tells her delegates to vote how they want—it's the kind of moment that's often dramatized but that documentaries rarely have the camera running to show you for real.

Director Shola Lynch showed up for a Q&A afterwards and mentioned some fun trivia about Shirley Chisholm's initial congressional run, plus what happened in 2004 when she took the film to Chisholm's Florida home to screen it for her. Chisholm originally hadn't wanted to watch the movie, didn't even have a VCR, but now she was sitting, watching, not saying anything, and Lynch was getting really nervous, until a friend called Chisholm's phone and she went off to answer it. Lynch overheard (paraphrase of a paraphrase): "No, I'm busy! We're going to be late! We're going to be late to the Early Bird Special! I'm watching the most incredible film!"

The Simon Pegg script does a lot to save this movie, at the cost of making Scotty's relationship with Keenser ever weirder. Lots of cool spaceship grunge—Star Trek finally stealing the best thing about Star Wars. Nice character moments between Spock and McCoy, some cleverness during the impossible-to-follow action scenes. We old-school fans have to take our enjoyment where we can, you know?

Oh yeah, I saw this movie in 3D (not my choice) and I totally forgot about it the whole time I was writing this review, until just now. It felt like a normal 2D movie. Don't know what that says about me or the movie.

Behind-the-scenes interview says that Altman had such a great time doing Tanner '88 that he wanted to keep it going after Tanner's inevitable loss. This is an attitude shared by many real presidential candidates, but the amazing DNC episode is the highlight of the series and it's good that HBO pulled the plug afterwards because you can already feel it start to go downhill.