Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

More notes .... "Last Chance U."  While the current, third season of "Last Chance U" has been mainly about the Independence Community College head football coach, Jason Brown, and his team of players trying to find their way to Division I and other kinds of self-fulfillment, the hero of the piece is an English teacher, LaTonya Pinkard. More than anyone else, Pinkard -- pictured above -- demonstrates not only the determination to move her students toward academic success but a mission to help young black men understand their place in the world, on and off the football field. We saw a similar figure in Brittany Wagner, an academic advisor at East Mississippi Community College in the first two seasons of "Last Chance U," but the contrast here between coach and teacher is even stronger. Brown has an appallingly limited vocabulary consisting mainly of variations on the f-word, and a fury that is so hard to control that he not only gets into disputes wi...

Some items from the list on my desk ... Leslie Moonves. The head man at CBS is under fire for accusations of repeated sexual misconduct, as reported by Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker.  When I was a TV critic and on press tours, Moonves was a popular figure with many because of his charm and his accessibility, not to mention he was a smart guy. But that does not remotely excuse what appears to be years of aggression and threats on his part; in fact, it makes it worse because his public likability hid so much. And, as Farrow reported, CBS had a toxic environment which must be blamed on the man in charge.  As my friend Mo Ryan tweeted about Farrow's p iece, it "gets at the core of my frustration in reporting on these issues: The institutional complicity & enabling. For decades. Systematic silencing." Also from Ryan: " without real, *systematic* change on an *institutional* level, those abused and assaulted will continue to be driven out & abusers wi...

The latest "Mission: Impossible" film, subtitled "Fallout," exemplifies some issues facing action-moviemmakers, and not necessarily to its credit. First, the success of the "Fast and Furious" movies has made a case not only for big action, but for over-the-top, outrageous pieces so absurd that people cannot help but laugh. I've laughed at sequences in the last couple of "F and F" films, and a recent screening of "Fallout" found people laughing at the end of several crazy action sequences. "Fallout" also underscores how some moviegoers will come only for a grandiose adventure, one suitable for IMAX and 3-D, both of which formats are available for "Fallout." I saw it on a big but not huge screen, in 2-D, and felt as if a couple of the action sequences had been imagined just for the special formats, with no concern about how they would play in less elaborate form. Now, why do these ideas suggest a problem? B...

It's a good year for Cher, back on the big screen in "Mamma Mia." Here's CBS's Kennedy Center announcement: The Kennedy Center Honors announced today that its honorees for 2018 will be actress Cher, composer and pianist Philip Glass, country music entertainer Reba McEntire and jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter. Additionally, the co-creators of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Hamilton” – writer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, director Thomas Kail, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler and music director Alex Lacamoire – will receive a unique Kennedy Center Honors as trailblazing creators of a transformative work that defies category. These artists will receive tributes during THE 41 st  ANNUAL KENNEDY CENTER HONORS, to be broadcast  Wednesday, Dec. 26  (8:00-10:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. CBS has broadcast the special each year since its debut 41 years ago. “The Kennedy Center Honors recognizes exceptional artists who have made en...

There are those who think film should be art. But it’s commerce, and even very good actors will at times bend to commercial demands. After all, if you have generated a following by appearing in big dumb action movies or throwaway comedies, then you may have the clout to make an occasional movie you care about. And I can’t really object to the commercial-movie strategy. I like commercial movies, even some badly made ones, if they provide a measure of escape. Put it another way: I’ve seen all the “Fast & Furious” movies, voluntarily. I bring this up because I saw Dwayne Johnson’s “Skyscraper” not long ago, and Denzel Washington’s “The Equalizer 2” today. Each movie is aimed squarely at the commercial moviegoer, and especially the fans of previous box-office-friendly work by these two actors. (Both allow for action-heavy trailers, although the action element of “The Equalizer 2” has been oversold in its ads.) Both are largely derivative. But that does not mean they’re complete...

For most of my adult life, I’ve not been a big fan of horror movies. Well, of a certain kind, anyway – mad slashers with no clear motivation, exercises in gore, movies where narrative takes a back seat to the slaughter of the innocent and the guilty (with both categories including a lot of young people, and a fair amount of sex. Classic horror – where tension was as important as terror – I still embraced. But newer movies would roll out, and I would roll on. Except lately I have not rolled as much. I credit “Get Out” for a renewed willingness to see horror, because “Get Out” was about far more than carving up victims; it used that for a meditation on race and identity, doing so in a way that could still be unnerving – that argued the Old South was still around, and still eager to maintain white superiority. It was a movie for the it’s-OK-to-be-racist times that Donald Trump and his minions have brought back to Main Street. So now I will risk getting the willies, in selected c...

Spoilers included. At dinner with friends recently, the conversation turned to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and the ending of the second season. I thought the season as a whole was powerful in the way it repeatedly emphasized the ruthlessness of the powerful – that the men in charge of Gilead were going to maintain control no matter how brutal they felt they had to be. And that control was not over some women, but all women, as we saw in the execution of a misguided teen (who had been betrayed by her own, control-minded father) and the repeated punishment of Serena. As one of our friends said, Serena thought privilege gave her a pass on society’s worst treatment of women – only she learned otherwise, and finally saw that her “daughter” would be denied even those few things Serena had carried over from the pre-repression years. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the portrayal of women, men and power – not only because of what we see from the men ruling the country (and their, w...