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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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Adventures in moviegoing: A video store visit and "The Spy Who Dumped Me"

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Last week I was at a local video store. Yes, I still go to video stores. Yes, I know this is an ancient quest, and that Blockbuster has died. Even with movies available for streaming and download, and on various services, I like the physicality of browsing among the disks, looking at the back covers, checking out the prices. While I could scroll through on-demand options and Netflix lists, I prefer strolling to scrolling. And I get to witness scenes like the one that day, where a man with what appeared to be his two grandsons was renting "Ready Player One" and letting the kids look around. "Pop-Pop," the younger one, who looked to be about 7, said, "which is the best Michael Myers movie?" How the kid knew the "Halloween" epics is beyond me. But his older brother eventually said, "They're all the same." I think Pop-Pop declined to do any renting for comparison. As for my own shopping, whether solo or with the wife I have my ph...
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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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