Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

Close to 20 years ago the ACLU released a report, "Driving While Black: Racial Profiling on Our Nation's Highways."  It's not new. Neither, for that matter, is getting shot just for being black, too many times by police, on the flimsiest of excuses. But for too many people, there's no connection to those victims because the news audience does not see itself in the people who have been wronged. This is where the movie The Hate U Give, and the thematically similar third episode of the CW drama All American, titled "i," become important. Each takes its time to let us know the characters, to see lives, to understand fears -- before we see the terrible wrongs done to them. Although they are fictional, the characters force us to look at the real world. And it does not do it through allegory -- the way, for instance, Supergirl is a prolonged discourse on immigration -- but by direct presentation of incidents which should dishearten any audience. The...

When writing about director Damien Chazelle's "La La Land " back in 2016, I said, " Too often the homages seemed too calculated to generate real feelings, the lush settings overdone to the point that the eyes wandered away from the character." There's something of the same problem in "First Man," Chazelle's chronicle of astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon. Although it has some breathtaking visuals, it never gets an emotional grip on Armstrong, or a way to his interior life. For some, that is not the only problem. Articles such as this one  have pondered why "First Man" has not done as well at the box office as some expected. (Theories include conservatives' ire over the omission of a flag-planting scene, a comment by Ryan Gosling, strong competition from more obvious crowd-pleasers, and more.) None of those issues factored into my thinking. As the son of a NASA engineer*and a pre-NASA NACA mathemati...

At times "Bohemian Rhapsody" threatened to collapse under the weight of some much-repeated ideas, such as Queen as not just a band but a family, and Freddie Mercury's wanting love and respect for his offstage, oft-hidden, real self. Some audience members may have been on edge during a key late scene which, like too many movies, found heavy rain pouring down on our main, mournful character. But the rain passed, and so did the fear that "Bohemian Rhapsody" would be no more than a remarkable performance ("Mr. Robot's" Rami Malek as Mercury) and a phenomenal soundtrack. Instead, the movie regained its early footing as Mercury, facing his own mortality after contracting AIDS, rejoined Queen at the mammoth Live Aid concert and an explosive set which as much deserves to bring moviegoers to their feet as the real thing did the fans at Wembley Stadium for Live Aid in 1985. While Mercury died in 1991, "Bohemian Rhapsody" uses Live Aid as ...

"A Star Is Born" surprised me. Not because it is good. I had seen the trailers enough times to expect that. And I was ready to see a good movie, having come off a couple of moderately interesting ones ("A Simple Favor" and "Searching," more about which another time) and a stinker ("Night School," a horrible waste of Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart). Still, I was not prepared for how very, very, very good "A Star Is Born" proved to be, and how often it moved me. Even most of you tuning in late know that this is the fourth go-round for the "Star Is Born" story, and I've seen two of the previous ones, the James Mason-Judy Garland gem and the misguided Kris Kristofferson-Barbra Streisand version. (Find John Gregory Dunne's essay about his and Joan Didion's involvement in the writing of that one, a process that -- as Dunne says in "Gone Hollywood" -- included "three drafts, an arbitration, a threa...

There was a time when Burt Reynolds was, well, the coolest. His masculinity came with self-deprecation that underscored his self-confidence, his aggressiveness made room for some vulnerability. He could pose for Cosmopolitan -- you knew I couldn't leave that out -- and it was just a little romp. Men and women liked him, and -- key to his leading-man appeal -- he came across as someone who really liked women, and not just for a hop in the sack. Women could look at his relationship with Sally Field, onscreen and off, and think, well, if Sally Field  likes him. ... He was, in short, George Clooney before Clooney. And he knew how to reach across demographics: appealing to a Southern, drive-in kind of audience in some films; the action crowd in others, and the people who took movies seriously in a third. I was a southerner who loved action movies and good films, so I saw a lot of Burt Reynolds in the '70s: Fuzz, Deliverance, Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex ,...

From a Motion Picture Academy announcement: While remaining committed to celebrating a wide spectrum of movies, the Academy announced today that it will not present the new Oscars category at the upcoming 91st awards. The Academy recognized that implementing any new award nine months into the year creates challenges for films that have already been released.  The Board of Governors continues to be actively engaged in discussions, and will examine and seek additional input regarding this category.  “There has been a wide range of reactions to the introduction of a new award, and we recognize the need for further discussion with our members,” said Academy CEO Dawn Hudson.  “We have made changes to the Oscars over the years—including this year—and we will continue to evolve while also respecting the incredible legacy of the last 90 years.” Changes to the 91st Oscars (2019) include restructuring and shortening the length of the telecast to three hours.  To honor all...

Tim Conway, it's been reported, has dementia , That diagnosis would be a blow to anyone, but it's especially awful for people prized for their intelligence and wit. Tim had both of those, especially when it came to improvisation. When he did the improvisation-laden TV series "On the Spot" in 2003, working with people like Michael Hitchcock who were adept in the field, there was still a clear sense that Tim was the grand master, and once he got going, watch out. The stories of Tim cracking up the folks he worked with are legend. He became the perfect guest star, juicing up shows for decades, Look at the clip from the old "Hollywood Palace" TV show, above, where Tim pretty much reduces David Janssen to laughing tears. Or the way this monologue cracks up Johnny Carson: Those are hardly rare moments; on "The Carol Burnett Show," there was no shortage of footage of Tim taking flight, and taking apart Harvey Korman's attempts at keeping ...

The latest seasons of “NCIS” and “Blue Bloods” come to DVD on Aug. 21, and with them comes still more reason to talk about eventful developments on both those shows. “NCIS: The Fifteenth Season” (24 episodes, six discs) includes the departure of Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette), for many the most-loved character on the drama, as well as the killing off of Clayton Reeves (Duane Henry), a relatively new series regular. “Blue Bloods: The Eighth Season” (22 episodes, six discs) begins with references to the between-seasons death of Danny Reagan’s wife Linda (Amy Carlson). Perrette’s leaving “NCIS,” though announced well in advance, still feels shrouded in mystery. She said at one point that, after being part of the show from the beginning, it was just time to move on; but after she left, she tweeted about “Multiple Physical Assaults” and an unspecified “ machine” “keeping me silent, and feeding FALSE stories about me .” Viewers in addition noticed that Abby and Gibbs (Mark Harmon), ...

In 1974, Aretha Franklin performed at the Hampton Jazz Festival, and I was in the audience. She was radiant, powerful, beautiful, commanding -- all the things we had known her to be for years by that point. Although she would later acquire a reputation as a diva (even recording a collection of covers of others' "great diva classics"), she was also gracious in her success; a reporter covering that Hampton performance was surprised not long after to receive a postcard from Lady Soul thanking her for the review. Of course, that reporter (and no, I wasn't the one) was thankful for having seen Aretha in concert. So was I. She was a transcendent figure not merely in soul music but in music generally, and one of my favorite artists; I've been hearing and feeling Aretha's songs for 50 years and have about 200 in my iPod. What made her the Queen? The voice, especially in her '60s heyday, was not only powerful but melodic, steeped in her church  background b...