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Happy musical holidays

During my years at the Beacon Journal I wrote or co-wrote with Malcolm Abram a bunch of columns about holiday music. You can still find a compilation of those pieces here . Over on Facebook, I've been posting a holiday song every day since December 1.
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"Uncut Gems": Grand illusions

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An actress not long ago said it did not matter if she liked or disliked characters she played; it was only important to understand them. Pretty much the same thing might be said about moviegoers: they won't mind if a screen character is terrible as long as they can see why. The biggest problem, then, with "Uncut Gems" is that the explanation for the central character is only that he is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is; beyond that, we see that he is an ass to everyone around him, but never why he is such an ass. This, I admit, is contrarian. The movie has gotten raves from reviewers -- 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at this writing -- with Oscar talk attached to Adam Sandler for adding this bold, bracing performance to his short list of departures from often stupid comedies. The comedies, of course, are his bread and butter; "Murder Mystery" was reportedly the most-watched original on Netflix in 2019, and many of my Film Appreciation students last ter...
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Women in the realms of men: "Bombshell," "The Testaments," "Little Women"

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The latest version of "Little Women," written and directed by Greta Gerwig, is a lovely adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's much-adapted novel, one made especially so by its emphasis on what it meant to be a woman in a world run by men. The options left to women are few: marriage is the main path to solvency, and writers of fiction must have young women married or dead by the end. That life turns out all right for most of them is appealing, but it's built on the idea that "Little Women" is a romance, and that in the real world sometimes you have to sell out a cherished idea in one area to achieve what you need elsewhere. And even though "Little Women" is set in the past, the idea of What Women Must Do is also part of the contemporary "Bombshell," as well as Margaret Atwood's novel "The Testaments." These are all blending in my head because I saw "Bombshell" and "Little Women" on consecutive days re...
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