Rich Heldenfels, Pop Culture Wanderer

One of the oddities in the new season of Brockmire  is that, in the 2030s, Jim Brockmire's pornographic fantasy includes Ann-Margret. Brockmire seems too young to have connected with the singer-actress who is a major element of '60s iconography in the Mad Men  Season 3 episode "Love Among the Ruins." Her performance in Bye Bye Birdie  (some of which is above) was so ... invigorating that even the closeted-gay Sal recalls seeing a Broadway actress in the role who, when compared to Ann-Margret, "didn't have that. "* And Ann-Margret did have that: a sexiness that was not coy and coquettish; she was unabashed, hungry, eager -- and knowing. One of the flaws in her casting in Bye Bye Birdie is that she seems too smart for some of the fan-girl excesses in the part. Consider her instead in Viva Las Vegas, nominally a cornball Elvis Presley movie but one where attention diverts to Ann-Margret whenever she is onscreen, no matter how badly a sequence itself has...

The song "Blue Skies" has a long history , longer in fact than I realized. I think the first version of the song that I know was Benny Goodman' s, and the song predates that vintage gem, For that matter, I did not know that "Blue Skies" has an extensive connection to "Star Trek: The Next Generation ," which explains its appearance in the season finale of "Star Trek: Picard." What was strikingly resonant about its inclusion was that the season finale of "This Is Us" also involved the song, lovingly, in a monologue by Dr. K (the great Gerald McRaney), the doctor who delivered Kate and Kevin and brought Randall to the family. The monologue was pretty good, although the show conceded that it was not as good as a previous Dr. K chat, and much the same could be said of "This Is Us" overall this season. Yes, there were astounding moments, including the nothing's-sacred verbal brawl between Kevin and Randall in the final...

Most of my recent reading has been on the lighter side: easily digested detective stories to distract from daily events without demanding too much. A major exception is Allison Moorer's book, above. Moorer is a well-regarded singer-songwriter and the sister of another fine musician, Shelby Lynne. In addition to their solid solo work, they collaborated on the album Not Dark Yet, which everyone should listen to. But Blood is only partly about music and sisterhood; the driving force to it is Moorer trying to deal with a family nightmare: her father killed her mother and then himself outside the family home when the girls were in their teens. Working through events, memories, life before and after, relationships, songs, family and how to understand something that is basically incomprehensible -- Moorer has created a poetic examination of what pain does to the heart and the soul. Moorer has also released a deeply wrought album called Blood, but you do not need to hear it to feel ...

I have been keeping a running list of binge-worthy shows on various pieces of paper around my desk, certain that I would get around to a post about them. Then I didn't. Part of that had to do with my wanting to get through shows, then being sidetracked. I have started Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access   at least three times, and I like it, but somehow I have never gotten out of Season 1. While Picard (also on All Access) is intriguing, I am several episodes behind and therefore withholding judgment.  On the other hand, there are shows I have binged and found wanting; Amazon's Jack Ryan  comes to mind, as mostly meh, especially in a second season that reworked large chunks of Clear and Present Danger, though not very well. Why Women Kill on CBS All Access I may go back to The Boys, or not, since it didn't thrill me one way or another. And there are shows that await my bingeing, like Dare Me, which is so artfully unsettling that I'd rather devour it all at once ...

Just about the only live sporting on TV these days is discussion of Tom Brady's contract. No argument here -- there are too many risks in the world right now to take unnecessary chances. But the absence of sports creates the opportunity to revisit some great sports movies and TV shows. More than one writer has offered up a list. Below is mine, with minimal notes since you should know most of these. Some are flawed, a few are perfect, but all are worth killing time with. Enjoy the search, and the watching. All American (CW series) Any Given Sunday  (pictured above) The Bad News Bears (the first one, only the first one) Bend It Like Beckham Blue Chips Brian's Song (the James Caan/Billy Dee Williams original) Bull Durham Cinderella Man Creed (see Rocky, below) Draft Day Fighting With My Family Friday Night Lights (movie and TV show) Hoosiers (as if anyone would omit it) The Hustler and  The Color of Money (watch them back to back) Last Chance U (Netflix series)...

We all have stories lately about the ways our lives have changed. Here's one of mine: Yesterday we headed toward NY to visit family. We were cautious, with wipes and gloves for dealing with strange surfaces. But the travel itself proved strange.   Every rest area on I-80 was either closed or had bathrooms closed or was marked only for truck parking. We coped — Sheetz locations were open — and got to Lamar, PA, where we stop for the night. (Yes, we split the trip. We are old.)  Few cars were in the lot of the Hampton Inn where we usually stay; breakfast was cancelled but the room was OK as usual. Then we heard that the governor of PA had ordered a bunch of shutdowns including, it seems, hotels. The hotel association said places will be open but our hotel couldn't tell us for sure if the hotel would be open in a few days when we came back. And who knew what else would be shut or locked down before we returned?  So, back to Ohio we came this morning. There was p...

My mother, Alice Heldenfels, has passed away. This is her obituary. Alice Davis Heldenfels is now in heaven, asking everyone if there’s anything she can do for them. Mrs. Heldenfels, 93, passed away on Saturday, Feb. 1, following a brief illness. She had most recently lived in Warwick Forest but resided most of her life on Crittenden Lane in Newport News. Born on May 16, 1926, in Crisp County, Georgia, the former Martha Alice Davis early on demonstrated a knack for mathematics and science, and the precision of those fields was something she applied to everything else in life. As a child of the Depression, she learned early on about the importance of hard work and careful living – along with the need to have fun. How else to explain the certificate that 13-year-old Alice received for completion of a course in Hawaiian guitar? She graduated from the former Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College & State University) in 1948 with a B.S. in mathematics and...

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...

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...

The above title comes from James Agee, who used it for short takes on several movies he had not yet gotten around the reviewing. In a previous column he had lamented, "I should review several of the films mentioned below at some length, and I hope that at length I will. But I have left so many films unreviewed, some of them weeks or months old by now, that I can begin to catch up only be reviewing them now, somewhere near as briefly as possible." I know the feeling. While I have posted some full reviews below, I've had a long list of other movies I've been meaning to get to. This is the peril of trying to see a lot of films (more than once, Agee wrote round-up columns) and then to find the right words -- or the right energy -- only to never get around to it. So here, in short form, are other films I've been seeing. Judy. Grade: B plus. Yes, Renee Zellweger is spectacular as Judy Garland in this portrait of the singer-actress after her career had largely wan...