Vol. 32
No. 02
Pick Hits
At The Movies
One Of Them Days
When best friends and roommates Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA)
discover Alyssa's boyfriend has blown their rent money, the duo finds themselves
going to extremes in a race against the clock to avoid eviction and keep their
friendship intact. The film, directed by Lawrence Lamont from a
screenplay by Syreeta Singleton, is a throwback buddy comedy we
don’t see much of. While that occasionally works against it, One of Them Days is
fun and delightfully absurd. Keke Palmer and SZA are great together and it’s
their chemistry and interactions that largely work.
Stream This
American Primeval (Netflix)
It follows the gritty and adventurous exploration of the
birth of the American West, the violent collisions of
cults, religion, and men and women fighting for control
of the new world. This is America in 1857. Up is down,
pain is everywhere, innocence and tranquility are losing
the battle to hatred and fear. Peace is the shrinking
minority, and very few possess grace even fewer know
compassion. There is no safe haven in these brutal
lands, and only one goal matters: survival. This story
breaks the mold of western series, in several ways. It's
storytelling that gets right to the point without all
the padding that an ongoing TV series always has. We
know right away when a character is a villain, without a
multi-episode side story.
Stream This Too
Severance (AppleTV+)
Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have
been surgically divided between their work and personal
lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of
work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about
their jobs. Remember that feeling you had after watching
The Truman Show or The
Sixth Sense for the very first time? The
feeling that you had experienced something unique? It's
the exact same sensation Severance gives the viewer.
It's odd, it's smart, it's fresh and you will love every
single minute of it.
The Buzz...
David Lynch, the writer-director whose
films and TV series including Blue Velvet,
Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks
portrayed a seemingly bucolic America, only to reveal it
as teeming with the mysterious and macabre, has died. He
was 78.
The legal battle between Justin Baldoni
and Blake Lively in the aftermath of It
Ends With Us expanded its blast zone Thursday
morning, with a new lawsuit by Baldoni including text
messages between Lively and Baldoni, her co-star and
director. In the texts, Lively seemingly alludes to
Taylor Swift as “one of her dragons.” The
superstar is a friend of Lively.
Bob Uecker, who parlayed six laughable
seasons as a light-hitting catcher into a second career
in comedy highlighted by hilarious turns in the Major
League movies, on The Tonight
Show and in beer commercials, died Thursday. He was
90.
Richard Jenkins has joined the cast of the
upcoming HBO limited series DTF St.
Louis. Jenkins will appear in the series alongside
previously announced leads Jason Bateman,
David Harbour, and Linda
Cardellini. The show was picked up for seven
episodes at HBO back in November and is now in
pre-production.
The second season of Netflix’s live-action One
Piece series has added three new cast members.
Rigo Sanchez, Yonda Thomas, and
James Hiroyuki Liao are all set to
appear in Season 2. Sanchez will play Dragon, Thomas
will play Igaram, and Liao will play Ipponmatsu.
Fox’s cozy murder mystery series Murder in a
Small Town will return to swoon and solve
new murders for a second season. Fox Television Network
renewed the part romance part crime series for a second
season on Thursday.
Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, NBCUniversal’s
slate of holiday programming reached a total of 88
million average viewers. That total comes from a
combination of Nielsen’s measurement of broadcast
airings on NBC and the company’s own internal
data regarding streams on Peacock.
A suburban Chicago house made famous by the movie
Home Alone was sold for $5.5 million in a
rare deal that closed above the asking price. The
Georgian colonial, at 671 Lincoln Avenue in the affluent
North Shore suburb of Winnetka, went under contract
within a week of its listing in May. Owners Trisha and
Tim Johnson had sought $5.2 million but they received
multiple offers, upping the price.
Brad Pitt has reacted to the viral story
of a 53 year old French woman who was swindled out of
$850,000 by someone pretending to be the actor. A French
interior decorator who described how she had been
scammed by a fake Brad Pitt, with whom she thought she
was having a long distance romance for a year.
The photographic excellence of The Brutalist,
A Complete Unknown, Conclave,
Maria, Dune: Part Two,
Nosferatu, and Wicked were cited in the
marquee Theatrical Feature Film
category as the American Society of
Cinematographers announced nominees Thursday
morning for the 39th Annual ASC
Awards.