Films and Feelings

     I came into Craig Brewer's Song Sung Blue with little context for the real-life couple at the center of this movie, for Neil Diamond, or for the world of celebrity  impersonators  interpreters. There are no doubt subterranean connotations to the specific songs that they chose to sing at certain moments in the narrative that are lost on me. I have no doubt, though, that the intended audience will find this movie before long.  But the film was still viable enough that even a relative neophyte like me could still find himself humming along to this musical drama.     The film documents the real-life couple of Mike and Claire Sardina, celebrity impersonators who fall in love, marry, and form a tribute band for legendary singer, Neil Diamond. We track their relationship from its beginning through their career aspirations and the crossroads in their marriage, including a violent accident that changes their family forever.     Again, I don...

Earlier this year, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy and this summer's Superman movie, James Gunn, attributed the chaos of modern Hollywood to one simple factor. Speaking with Rolling Stone, he said , “I do believe that the reason why the movie industry is dying is not because of people not wanting to see movies. It’s not because of home screens getting so good. The number one reason is because people are making movies without a finished screenplay.” Without the insider knowledge that a Hollywood director has, I’m still inclined to agree. While the artistic and corporative threads of filmmaking have always been in competition, watching many tentpole films of the last fifteen years or so has felt more analogous to a dentist appointment than anything I'd call entertainment, and I can almost always trace the problem to something that should have been taken care of before the cameras ever started rolling. Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022)  ...