Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

Thanks to a Regal Unlimited card and my wife's masterful handling of our schedule, November has been loaded with movies in theaters. I have thoughts on all we've seen below, including the blockbuster "Frozen II," but first up is the best of the lot, "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood," with Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. Hanks is wonderful as the children's-TV host, capturing his warmth, his thoughtfulness and his challenging of himself and others. I knew Rogers a little; I arranged for him to appear at a press conference for the Television Critics Association, and he gave me a fine interview for my book Television's Greatest Year: 1954. A memorable aspect of the book interview was Rogers's repeatedly urging me to include a section about Frieda Hennock, a crusading member of the FCC in the early '50. An even more noteworthy part of the TCA appearance was Fred encountering some children who had brought him gifts in the lobby of the hotel...

Joker, the disturbing origin story of the character from director (and co-writer) Todd Phillips and actor Joaquin Phoenix, is the bleakest of comedies.  Late in the film, Arthur Fleck, who will become Joker, says that he has long thought his life is tragedy only to realize it is a comedy. But his life, and the film, are comedies only in the sense that the Joker sees the word -- one daring everyone else to admit that they don't get the joke. That Phoenix is brilliant cannot be argued, and with an impressive resume already he may become the second actor to win an Oscar playing the best known of the Batman villains. But the movie overall, as watchable as it may be, is a too-familiar consideration of the connection between private madness and public heroism, of the rage of the disenfranchised against the unfeeling elite, of Bernhard Goetz, of the themes evident in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and King of Comedy . It's no accident that Robert De Niro plays a talk-show host i...

The space scenes in the movie Ad Astra are almost unbearably gorgeous, possessed of the kind of chilly, silent beauty also evident in space films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Gravity. They are further served by the lead performance by Brad Pitt as someone also capable of a chilly silence, only to reveal torment as his walls break down. It's tempting to say this performance tops his engaging one in Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood  but it's better to argue that he's just having one of those stretches where the Oscars should grade not for single works but for the cumulative effort in a year. It would be an even more rewarding performance for audiences if the movie itself was something more. At times it seems like a science-fiction variation on Apocalypse Now, an episodic journey toward disaster, or one of those fat adventure novels that, having carried the reader along for hundreds of pages, abruptly wraps things up before a second volume is required. The film, directe...

It's no secret that promotional spots for movies are not always reliable when it comes to the content of the film itself. Intense dramas may be turned into implied comedies, and vice versa; famous actors in small roles are made large in the trailers, and sometimes scenes shot for trailers have been cut from the actual movie. The problem with such tactics -- however successful they may be in getting people into theaters -- is that audiences' expectations are based on what they have been told in advance. So, if they are expecting a comedy and do not get it, disappointment may follow. Sure, it's possible to sit down with a movie and put aside all preconceived notions, seeing the film solely on its own terms -- possible but not all that likely. And that does harm to the movie itself, because as much as it may be admirable, an audience expecting something else has to fight disappointment. All of this applies to Hustlers, the recent drama about women trying to make a living i...

Here is the official word from the hall: he Nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 are: Pat Benatar Dave Matthews Band Depeche Mode The Doobie Brothers Whitney Houston Judas Priest Kraftwerk MC5 Motörhead Nine Inch Nails The Notorious B.I.G. Rufus featuring Chaka Khan Todd Rundgren Soundgarden T.Rex Thin Lizzy To be eligible  for nomination, an individual artist or band must have released its first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination. Nine  out of 16 of the Nominees are on the ballot for the first time, including Dave Matthews Band, The Doobie Brothers, Mot ö rhead, The Notorious B.I.G., Pat Benatar, Soundgarden, T.Rex, Thin Lizzy, and Whitney Houston. Inductees will be announced in January 2020. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2020 Induction Ceremony, presented by Klipsch Audio, takes place at Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio on May 2, 2020. The Ceremony is preceded by Inductio...

I've been trying out SiriusXM's Covers channel lately and, for the most part, I've been underwhelmed. There is the occasional classic, such as Talking Heads' "Take Me to the River" (previously Al Green's) and tracks I didn't know but found intriguing (Chris Cornell's "Billie Jean" for one) but those are exceptions on a channel that seems most committed to covers of relatively recent songs by current artists, even when the result isn't much. This is all the more disappointing because there are so many great covers. You could spend hours just on Aretha Franklin, famous for taking others' songs and making them better (see "Respect," "Son of a Preacher Man," "Don't Play That Song") or for just interpreting them splendidly (see "96 Tears" and dozens more). There are ample covers by Bob Dylan (especially his series of Sinatra-era tunes), Joe Cocker, Judy Collins, Willie Nelson ... So much...

This is a long catch-up on movies I've watched since late June. As you can see, the emphasis has been on commercial fare but that's what has drawn me to theaters. These are arranged mainly in reverse chronological order, from "Angel Has Fallen" back to "Spider-Man: Far From Home." Angel Has Fallen continues the adventures of president-saving Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler), previously seen in "Olympus Has Fallen" and "London Has Fallen." This time around, Banning is accused of masterminding a massive attack on the president (Morgan Freeman); of course, he is being framed, and the framer is both clear early in the movie and given away in "Angel" trailers. It's up to Mike, then, to clear his name and to keep the president from further harm -- with help from his estranged father (Nick Nolte, who may be the best thing in the movie). There are fights, shootouts and explosions, almost all of them ridicu...

I've carried the above book around for decades. Used to have more MAD books but held onto just one as a memory. And so much of MAD is in my memory: Don Martin cartoons, Mort Drucker drawings, 43-man squamish, "My Fair Ad-Man," Things We'd Like to See, Spy vs, Spy, mockery of all sorts from the usual gang of idiots. I even read some of the old MAD comic books, which my piano teacher had for students to read while we were waiting -- along with some of the EC horror comics which preceded MAD. In college, a student I knew was the son of a MAD artist. Even as I moved on to other forms of humor, notably the National Lampoon and the satire of Pogo, MAD remained a touchstone. Now, we are told, MAD as we knew it is done   ending the development of original content for the magazine, focusing instead on republication of old stories along with some special issues.I can't say this is a loss to today's world, since I can't remember the last time I looked at an issu...

I have been reading Richard Ben Cramer's 1993 book "What It Takes: The Way to the White House" a dazzling, in-depth look at the 1988 presidential campaigns of George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, Richard Gephardt, Michael Dukakis, Gary Hart -- and Joe Biden. Although much of its treatment of politics and technology is outdated, its sense of what it takes to win an election. I was drawn to it by Matt Bai's book about Hart, but the strongest echoes in it for today are of Biden -- a man who 30 years ago was warned about habits that he still has. For example, advisers warned him " this was the big leagues. They’d try to kill him, and Joe would have to watch every move. “Stuff you been saying ... won’t wash ... stuff about your history ... it’s all going to come out. ... stuff you said, ten years ago ... everything comes out.” Indeed, the book notes his gaffes then, and they have never stopped. Or this:  When a woman in Iowa, sitting at a table at a meeting, had her ba...