July 2017 – Six Degrees of Film

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

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This week we’ve got the 6 Degrees Dunkirk Review going up on the 6 Degrees blog. Great flick, and it has generally been reviewed very favorably, by myself and most critics. Atomic Blonde has opened this week, and War for the Planet of the Apes has opened with good box office numbers. An Atomic Blonde review from NPR is featured in 6 Degrees magazine.
Not faring so well is the new Emoji Movie, which has been widely panned. And the sci-fi film Valerian is generally acknowledged as being a flop.
Also in the magazine this week: There’s a book review of the late director George Romero’s classic horror films, “Nights of the Living Dead.” The other passing was of the actor John Heard, with some of his best films reviewed in an article from flickchart.com.
One of my favorite films from Albert Brooks is reviewed on our site. Lost in America, originally released in 1985, is now out on Blu-Ray. And the New York Film Festival, running from September 28th through October 15th, will close with a debut from Woody Allen called Wonder Wheel, starring Justin Timberlake, James Belushi and Kate Winslet.
Another of my favorite themes-Girl Power-is explored in a Film Inquiry piece this week. With Wonder Woman, Atomic Blonde, and A Wrinkle in Time, we have been able to extend the thematic possibilities well beyond the Frozen symbolism, which started the ball rolling.
There’s a review of the original (of course, still the best) version of The Day the Earth Stood Still with Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal. This film was also directed by Robert Wise of The Sound of Music fame. People often dismiss The Sound of Music as hokum, but Wise was one of those directors that was remarkably successful in different genres, from Film Noir to Sci-Fi and then went on to direct the greatest Family Friendly Film of all time!
Thinking about the iconic films of the sixties: There’s still a question of who will play James Bond in the next go-round. I must say, I love Idris Elba and Charlize Theron, but not as Bond. There are purists out there, and I guess I’m one of them. James Bond posts gets more comments and feedback on the internet than almost any other film article that runs. It’s official-Bond has legs! And we have a review of Casino Royale, one of my favorite Bond films. This review is from the A.V. Club.
For those who like a “deep dive” into film history, the David Bordwell site is featuring a review of a new book by film critic Christine Brinckmann. The book is “Color and Empathy” and the essays follow the treatment of color from silent films, through the fifties, and into experimental films and documentaries as well as the films of Hitchcock.
There’s a post from the LA Times about the director of Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan, and his complicated history with the Oscars. And since Nolan directed Batman (The Dark Knight), we add the article featuring all the Batman movies ranked, worst to first.
Coming Soon: Another documentary is coming. The sequel to An Inconvenient Truth- this one is An Inconvenient Sequel and also feature the talks of Al Gore, who, though never recognized as a dynamic speaker, becomes fiery and animated on the subject of Global Warming. The trailer for the horror film It has gotten good (scary) buzz. And George Clooney and the Coen Brothers have collaborated on another film, called Suburbicon, which is also written and directed by Clooney.
In August: There’s a feel-good Bollywood Musical Comedy called Mubarakan opening. The plot features twin brothers who “are in love with each other’s betrothed”. The long-awaited Stephen King adaptation of his Dark Tower series comes to the screen with Idris Elba starring. Wind River, with Jeremy Renner on a Native American reservation in Wyoming looks intriguing. There are traces of one of my favorite films that got away-Thunderheart-in the previews I saw.
A Ghost Story with Casey Affleck starring as “a friendly ghost” has gotten good advance press. The same with director Kathryn Bigelow’s film Detroit, about the true story of the killing of three black men during race riots in Detroit in 1967.
Well, Summer is in high gear, and we have had some mixed reviews along the way as we make our way slowly into the Fall Film Season. It’s starting to come earlier and earlier, and that means the Oscar Buzz and the Holiday Films and ….it’s too hot to think about that right now.

Hope everyone is enjoying some down time and till next week, see you at the movies!-ML

Capsule Review: Dunkirk

As period war films go, this film hits all the right notes. The three stories that are juggled throughout meld together well. It seems most of the action-and we know how this story ends-is played to be heard solely through the mood-inducing soundtrack accompanying the action. The mood of the period piece, the drama inherent in the telling of a compelling story, and all the combined components therein conspire to be in sync with the masterly musical overtures heard throughout the film.

The stories include one depicting a couple of young men struggling to stay alive when faced with the enormity of the situation on the beach at Dunkirk. The second storyline is the Mark Rylance plot, the most compelling of the three. He is a local boatman with a son and his helper who brave the channel when the call comes out for rescue. The third story, which is probably the most disappointing and plebian of all, involves Tom Hardy’s flying spitfire squadron group who are tasked with protecting the evacuation from the sky. The dogfights and the tight shots of Hardy’s face are really the only dramatic plot points carried forward in these unremarkable segments.

The story of ordinary men braving the war is held together by Rylance’s performance, subtle, nuanced and most effective-as was the case in Bridge of Spies which earned him an Oscar nomination. The pop star status of Harry Styles is almost taken to parody, as you see Styles as just one of a vast sea of young men with similar faces all waiting for their fates to be decided in the theater of war. The struggle and the miracle of Dunkirk is only as compelling as the belief that ordinary men can do extraordinary things.

Tom Hardy, so movingly effective in the subtle nuance department ranging from The Drop to his role in Lawless, is here almost obliterated literally with a mask and what amounts to a cameo walk-on as a flyer who is seen in a series of cliched Top Gun-nish style shots from the cockpit. There is one reviewer pointing out that the director deliberately challenged Hardy by covering his features and giving him little to work with, but somehow that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you are watching the film.

The plots for all three stories do sync at some point, with the level of action ebbing and flowing accordingly. Kenneth Branagh is decently served as one of the English commanders who oversees the operation and tries to narrate the action in the finally satisfying denouement that is the culmination of the stories blended together. The point, as mentioned, of the miracle of Dunkirk is only realized if you can convey the scope and breadth of the undertaking that led these small boat owners and ordinary citizens to deliver a victory of sorts to the allies. Although very little time is spent on the actual logistics involved in this operation, the visuals are brought home in stark relief with gloriously monochromatic landscapes that fit the theme.

This film would probably not have worked as well with a lesser director, editor, cinematographer and musical score. That means in the final analysis- the film works well for what it is- a period drama that tells a compelling story with gifted actors, a masterful director, and all the other big-budget elements needed to advance the movie.

It is a moving story in many ways, and has much to lend to the short-range projects we often see projected in lights with CGI, with special effects and with space-age fantasy and plot elements. This is one for the ages-meaning the ages past and those with an appreciation of history. As movie making goes in the modern era, in Christopher Nolan’s case, one might say this was his Finest Hour.

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

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Hello to all Film Fans & Friends! The good news, surprising to some of us, is that Dunkirk has opened to really good reviews. It’s short-107 minutes -Thank God! (Spare me from the overly long Summer serial movies recently that have begged for good editing!). So that’s a pleasant surprise… And the Planet of the Apes film has also gotten surprisingly good reviews. There is always hope that we’ll salvage a fairly blah summer film season.

Wonder Woman has continued to rake in the money. But there comes a point in the summer film season when we start to desperately look around for some good films on the horizon. And there are usually these great little hidden gems of cinema that are a big reason why many of us continue to watch movies.

6 Degrees Magazine: This week, check out these articles online. There’s an article about Director Werner Herzog’s masterpiece of a documentary Burden of Dreams, which is about the making of the film Fitzcarraldo in 1982.

Critically Speaking: As mentioned, the reviews for Dunkirk and War for the Planet of the Apes have been good. Also, there’s The Big Sick, with a supporting cast that includes Ray Romano and Holly Hunter, so that has garnered interest and hope that the Rom-Com’s are not dead (simply in need of a 21st Century upgrade!).

The Indie Film: The Little Hours is reviewed on the macguffin film site as well as the sci-fi film from director Luc Besson, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Film Comment also has a post on the Valerian film, which is based on a popular French graphic novel series entitled Valerian and Laureline by Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mezieres. Film Comment calls the series of books a “travesty of storytelling”, and says the film itself is “bereft of narrative tension” but instead functions “strictly as spectacle.” Valerian reviews as a whole have been mixed, so this explains it as good as any other reason I’ve heard. Rolling Stone has a film review of Valerian with the lead: “Luc Besson makes a Sci-Fi Mess.”

We’ve already mentioned War for the Planet of the Apes, which has garnered good reviews after suffering through a few stumbles in the past with some duds in the continuing “ape” series. There’s a film out called Endless Poetry, from an 88 year old Chilean-French filmmaker which has been getting good reviews.

And finally, Lady Macbeth is reviewed on Ebert.com, and focuses on the performance from the 21- year old lead Florence Pugh. It’s worthy to note that Lady Macbeth is NOT based on the Shakespearean character, but instead comes from a Russian novella by Nikolai Leskov titled “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk”, a book centering on ways women were suppressed and stifled in the 19th century. (It makes a difference!)

Notable Deaths: There’s an interview from Film Comment featured in our magazine done recently with the late Martin Landau, who won an Oscar for his supporting role in Ed Wood. And the other recent passing was of the much-admired Horror Director George Romero, famous for the original 1968 Night of the Living Dead film, as well as the many spawns of that classic: Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead and many others, including the TV series from 1983, Tales from the Darkside.

Well, till we meet again film goers. I’m excited about the films coming soon (Stephen King’s The Dark Tower is one) and the great Armchair Film Festival offerings from Turner Classic. Hitchcock lovers have had a fantastic month in July if they tuned in and recorded the entire catalog of Hitchcock classics. One of my favorite lines will always be from Notorious, when Madame Sebastian learns her son has married a spy. She quietly lights a cigarette and tells him, “We are saved by the enormity of your stupidity.” I have truly come to adore that line, and try to apply it to my own life whenever possible. See you at the movies!-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

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At the movies in July: We always seem to find time to talk about really bad cinema at this time of year. Summertime somehow lends itself to those awful Bad B movies that were staples from the fifties and sixties. In honor of the Bad B’s, 6 Degrees blog will re-post “The Bad B’s of Summer” again this month.

In the 6 Degrees magazine: There’s a profile of Al Pacino from Film Inquiry. And the outofthepastblog.com highlights a new book, Film Noir: Light and Shadow, an anthology of essays about Film Noir. There’s a review of Wild Strawberries from director Ingmar Bergman from 1957. And the indie film The Little Hours is reviewed on the Macguffin.com site.

Critically Speaking: The most interesting tidbit that came out of the indiewire post titled “How ‘Planet of the Apes’ Started Hollywood’s Franchise Obsession” was the fact that the writer of The Planet of the Apes, Pierre Boule, also wrote the highly acclaimed World War II novel, The Bridge on the River Kwai, which was of course, adapted to the screen and won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1958.

The article in indiewire.com expands upon the surprise success of the Planet of the Apes film series. I do remember that it was, in keeping with the above-mentioned Bad B concept, part of the summer scheme of movie executives to keep releasing the Planet of the Apes films after the initial success with the Charlton Heston 1968 hit movie. Eventually, there was an Ape-a-Rama at our local theater movieplex, where the first 100 in the door to the marathon showing back-to-back screenings of the “Ape” movies got free bananas. And if you wore a chimp suit, you could get in free, I do believe. I did attend, (but not in an ape suit), and I didn’t get the free banana.

My point is that this was not a high-brow film series. So when the Planet of the Apes movies took off, they simply rolled them out in the same way they did the Frankie Avalon-Annette Funicello beach movies. And from that, it was theorized in this piece that the dawn of Hollywood’s obsession with franchises and series was born. My belief is that the Star Wars trilogy success changed the model, along with the Blockbuster Summer movies, and what became known as “the juvenilization of film.” That term was coined by Peter Bogdanovich and I used it in my book, 6 Degrees of Film to emphasize the sea change that occurred after the dawn of the age of Star Wars. I believe this was the real reason for Hollywood’s fixation on the franchise.

As I’ve mentioned many times, money has always driven Hollywood, and it has been a successful business model for over a century. The Art that exists in film-making is real, but it’s always been a secondary concern for the Hollywood Executives. The dollar and making a buck has driven the film industry since the days Thomas Edison tried to corner the market.

Film News: Filmschoolrejects.com has a post on Nicole Kidman and the arc of her career. And the New York Times reviews the British drama, Lady Macbeth, stating the film isn’t really about Lady Macbeth at all. The quote from a critic continues: “the film plunges a cold, sharp knife into the back of bonnet dramas.” So there!
There’s another “list of greatest hits” from Rolling Stone. This one features the Greatest movies of the nineties. At some point, we really need to stop the greatest hits and the lists, as the point is to review great movies, and on some levels, there really isn’t a way to capture a decade or an era on one list. Yet critics are always looking to do this. Or perhaps it’s editor’s who simply run out of ideas and start reaching for compiled lists of things (People love to read lists on the internet, it seems!)

Next week, Dunkirk will drop, and it has already garnered some good reviews. The War for the Planet of the Apes has also had very good buzz around it. And Baby Driver has also opened to good press. Valerian has had some mixed reviews, so far, but nothing like the extremely bad pre-screenings seen for Baywatch or Will Ferrell’s House.

There have been several articles that have reported Daniel Craig is returning as James Bond, so the wild and frenzied speculation to crown the next Bond may be a bit premature. The interest in James Bond is still incredibly high for my blog post and magazine, and it sparked intense debate when there was a chance that the film series would need a new master spy. In returning to the roots of the long-running franchise, it seems that Bond is one of the all-time winners in the endurance stakes.
Hope everyone is having a good summer, with vacation plans and some down time to spend at the movies! Till next time-ML

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

Happy post-Fourth of July week, readers and moviegoers! We are seeing lots of films debut this month, and I’ve included some of the summaries up front so you can judge for yourself. One of the things that I’m excited about is the line-up on Turner Classic this month, which is showing so many of the great Hitchcock classics in July. Make sure, especially if you haven’t seen them, to set the DVR to record some of the top films: Psycho, Rear Window, The Birds, Notorious, and many more.
Armchair Film Fest: The Hitchcock list of films on TCM is phenomenal. They start with his early silent work and run through his classics all month long. This is definite fodder for the Armchair Film Festival devotee. The Armchair Film Fest is my favorite kind of film festival personally! One thing has always stuck with me in the biography and studies of Hitchcock-Hitchcock was asked about his penchant for horror films, and what his idea of something that was really funny would be. He said that a party where the food was all dyed blue was something that struck him as hilarious. There are some people that are originals. Hitchcock was a one of a kind, unique character in films-one who will never be replicated.
Also on TCM this Saturday, one of the films that is certainly unique, is the comedy with Eleanor Parker, who is remembered as the Baroness in The Sound of Music. She stars with Robert Taylor in Many Rivers to Cross. The film is light and at times a “fluff piece”, but the portrayal of a strong pioneer woman by Parker remains one of the highlights of the era.
Most of the fifties women were at times even sycophantic in their deference to men. Parker plays this role with a gusto and a physical presence that makes it memorable for most women of the 21st Century to relate to the character.
Some of the political films playing this month will also seem tailor made to this era in our political life. They are showing the original The Manchurian Candidate which was thought to have been banned at the time due to the controversial content. It turns out, that wasn’t accurate, but the film wasn’t seen for many years, due to contractual agreements. It is a very gripping 1962 Cold War thriller about a U.S soldier who is captured and brainwashed to be used as a political assassin.
The other film for Armchair Film Fest is Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy. I would invite anyone, on the left or right, to watch this great classic with the memorable opening soundtrack pulling the camera back with the folk spiritual “Old Time Religion” playing solemnly as the shot pans to small town, USA . In this case, it’s a small town where the famous Scopes Monkey Trial was held in Dayton, Tennessee, and Tracy delivers one of his best performances as the distinguished lawyer Henry Drummond, who is defending a high school science teacher, (played by Dick York), who was teaching the theory of evolution in his class. The film is powerful, as is the message which is derived from the play of the same name. We are still debating the Evolutionary theory with the creationists defending their viewpoint well into the 21st Century.
What’s Playing: Here’s a quote about the film, Okja, which says a lot. The film has generated a lot of good buzz, but ….”somewhere in here lies a great film wanting to come out” This review and more are featured in this week’s 6 Degrees magazine. Here’s a recap of the plot.
The Plot of Okja: A CEO-played by Tilda Swinton, announces that a new breed of super-pig has been developed. A cross between a pig and a hippotamus has been created with the animal having the disposition of a puppy. The purpose of breeding them is to solve the world’s food shortage, and to create an eco-friendly food source. Twenty-six super pigs are to be grown over a period of ten years as the corporation has a competition. At the end, they will be taken back to America to be hailed as a success.
Okja is the name of the pig raised in South Korea by a young girl, who bonds with the animal. In the end, the film is a cross between Animal Farm, Charlotte’s Web, The Yearling, and a slew of films that come to mind about kids and their pets.
The Big Sick has been getting lots of good reviews. It’s an updated modern-day version of a romantic comedy. The two lovers are star-crossed, with their life situations updated for the modern era. He is a comedian and a Muslim, and she is a WASP. They break up and are reunited when he learns she is sick and going to be placed into a medically-induced coma. At this point, he must confront his deeper feelings for her and reconcile his hostility to commitment with his love for her. And there is comedy! Holly Hunter plays the mother and Ray Romano is the father of the sick girl. So there are laughs to be had along the way. We haven’t seen too many good rom-com’s since When Harry met Sally, so this is a re-fashioned kind of plot for the new age.
Spider-Man:Homecoming has also debuted over the holiday weekend. And Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled is reviewed on the Macguffin site, as well as the afore-mentioned films.
Film Comment has a post on The Dirty Dozen, released in 1967. It was a landmark war movie, but not really in the same class as Saving Private Ryan or even The Longest Day. The Stranger, also from 1967, is reviewed and it’s another 1967 release, starring Marcello Mastroianni. Based on The Stranger by Albert Camus, it has rarely been seen since its release, due to distribution rights disputes. It is faithful to the book by Camus, and is generally regarded favorably by critics who’ve seen it.

Baby Driver is still making waves with critics this week. And the independent The Little Hours is reviewed favorably on rogerebert.com. Will Ferrell’s The House has bombed badly, with a quote in a review reading: “movies require scripts.” Ouch.
Critically Speaking: There’s a podcast from Vanity Fair titled: “How Hollywood Ruined Zombies, According to George A Romero”. And there’s an interesting post from Barron’s: “Is Hollywood Finally Desperate Enough to Give up on Theaters?” The thinking here is that since there is a massive wave of talent and energy moving to the small screen, in the form of Netflix, HBO, Hulu, and others, that eventually it will make more financial sense to release them to the cable pay-tv audience format. To have on-demand movies simultaneously available for the home viewing audience. I hate to tell these people, but we are just about there now. There simply isn’t a lot of lag time from the debut at the theater to the home screen.
Vox has released a list of 50 films that we are supposed to be excited about yet to be released this year. One of my big beefs is with the titles that list this incredible number of films that are supposed to be: the best of the year, the century, the top 50 films in Sci-fi, the top 100 action films, etc. I have a top 100 list of best films in my book, 6 Degrees, but that is from all films-starting at the turn of theth Century. I cannot believe that there are 50 really good films lurking out there waiting to be released this year, but there are a few that I did agree on regarding 2017 releases.
A Ghost Story has been getting good buzz from the Sundance debut. It stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck. Dunkirk is coming soon, with Tom Hardy, and directed by Christopher Nolan.
The Dark Tower is the Stephen King adaptation that has been long awaited by fans of the serial novels. Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey star in the horror/fantasy/action/adventure…and oh yes, Western! Epic. Ingrid goes West was another popular Sundance Film Fest release, said to be dark and funny, with Aubrey Plaza and Elizabeth Olsen. Another Stephen King adaptation is It, releasing on September 8th. The sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle is coming this fall and Colin Firth returns along with Taron Egerton.
Blade Runner 2049 is coming in October, with Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford. Much anticipated, this one is set 30 years after the first film debuted. Also in October, a biopic of the Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, in a courtroom drama depicting one of his biggest cases, defending a black chauffeur accused of sexual assault and attempted murder.
The Holiday Season is anticipated to begin early with Murder on the Orient Express dropping on November 10th. Kenneth Branagh directs the Agatha Christie remake with an all-star cast. Also in November, the indie film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri looks interesting, with a cast including the great Frances McDormand, of Fargo fame.
Pixar has Coco debuting in November, a children’s movie with a cast of Hispanic and Latino actors. But nothing will matter after December 15th, because as everyone knows, Star Wars sucks all the oxygen out of the room! Star Wars: The Last Jedi debuts and that is almost all she wrote. Still….Steven Spielberg is directing a film about the Pentagon Papers, a timely subject for this era where we hear lots of rumbling about the days of Watergate and the sixties. Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep star in this one. Opening on Christmas Day: The Greatest Showman starring Hugh Jackman, about the life of P.T. Barnum.
And also at Christmas, the soon to be retiring Daniel Day Lewis is reunited with director Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood) in a film called Phantom Thread, set in the world of fashion during the fifties.
That’s a wrap for this week, folks! I’m looking forward to some of these big screen releases, as well as the Hitchcock Armchair Film Fest all this month on TCM. Stay tuned later this week as we offer a complimentary download of my Hitchcock chapter on my 6 Degrees blog site. See you at the movies!

6 Degrees: Friday Flix

168816805 FOR 6 DEGREES COVER PHOTO SHOT Happy Fourth of July to all who are going to be celebrating this weekend! 6 Degrees Magazine has some reviews of the big Blockbuster movies out over the holiday weekend.

Critically Speaking: Despicable Me 3 has had mixed reviews, as has the Sofia Coppola remake of The Beguiled with Nicole Kidman. The Netflix film Okja, has garnered some good reviews, as has the action flick Baby Driver with Ansel Elgort and Lily James. The dark comedy about randy nuns, The Little Hours, an adaptation of a 14th century collection of novellas known as “The Decameron”, hasn’t fared well with critics.

Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler are starring in The House, a comedy about a suburban couple who start a casino to raise money for their daughter’s college tuition. Wonder Woman is still a dominating force at the box office, and we are seeing some trailers for the upcoming releases…

Trailers are out for the Jumanji remake, as well as Dunkirk, the war drama set for release July 21st. There’s one for Emily Blunt’s My Little Pony: The Movie with lots of pastel ponies floating around…making a colorful splash. The multi-talented Hugh Jackman is starring in a musical biopic of P. T. Barnum, and the trailer looks promising.

About Bond: One of the things that bring in the most comments of all film articles in the magazine are pieces about the hunt for the new James Bond actor, and the ongoing discussion of some of the greatest portrayals of Bond on film. I must say, it sometimes gets surprisingly intense I’ll have to admit to being a fan of Timothy Dalton’s Bond, which is apparently sacrilegious. The pecking order, as always, begins with Sean Connery, and the most widely accepted list goes from Connery to Moore to Brosnan to Craig, with few giving even passing remarks to Dalton in The Livng Daylights and his follow-up (much weaker film) License to Kill.

Coming Soon: Some of the buzz in Hollywood openings is for the new Spider-Man: Homecoming, with Tom Holland in the starring role. War for the Planet of the Apes is continuing the series; and Dunkirk, as mentioned above, will be much anticipated with director Christopher Nolan and starring Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh and Harry Styles of One Direction fame.

Catherine Deneuve returns to the screen in The Midwife. The Big Sick has been garnering good reviews, being hailed as one of the best rom-coms (romantic comedies) of 2017. The release is set for July 14th. And for something completely different, there’s a documentary about Syria that has been garnering lots of praise tackling one of the tragedies of our modern world, the ongoing war in Syria. The film is called City of Ghosts, and it’s set for release on July 7th.

In Hollywood, there has been some progress made in swelling the ranks of the Academy members to include a more diverse group of judges for the future. 800 new members were issued invitations, but the march of progress is interminably slow.

Due out in July, 6 Degrees has an article about an upcoming book on the noted film critic James Agee. The collected writings of Agee have been compiled by Charles Maland, the film historian. Agee also wrote screenplays, most notably The African Queen and The Night of the Hunter.Agee died in 1955, and many of his Time magazine reviews were compiled in the book, Agee on Film. This book will be a more comprehensive look at his body of work as a film critic from the thirties until his death in the fifties. The book, “James Agee: Complete Film Criticism: Reviews, Essays and Manuscripts” should be an interesting read. Another book on film, ‘Showman of the Screen: Joseph E. Levine and His Revolutions in Film” is also recently released. Levine was a legendary producer and promoter in the 20th Century, producing films as diverse as Godzilla: King of the Monsters in 1956 to The Graduate in 1967. That’s Hollywood for you! Speaking of The Graduate, 6 Degrees features an article on Dustin Hoffman’s greatest performances. The Graduate, his big debut as a major star, can never be overlooked.

Of note: Carl Reiner will appear in a new HBO documentary If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast, with Reiner looking for stories of people who are not just getting by but are thriving in their advanced years. Reiner is funny in everything, so this should be good for some laughs as well as making a statement about how we sometimes tend to overlook people in their Golden Years and what they might still be able to achieve.

One last thought: This is about some of the articles that I have had the privilege of editing and reading to present in the weekly newsletter and in the magazine. Some of the writing leaves much to be desired, particularly when the titles contain grammatical errors and again when some of the titles are contrived to be dubbed “click-worthy”-known as click-bait.
It’s hard to write something off the cuff, and that’s true for bloggers as well as for news writers and opinion writers…all of us who write on deadline on a weekly basis. But one of my personal “beefs” is the ever-present Search Engine rules that are always looking for the correct formula to achieve the approval of the internet overlords, but fail to factor in rational thinking or critical writing.

Many of these stories are passed over by the editor of 6 Degrees on a weekly, if not daily basis. That editor is, of course, myself, and if my own writing doesn’t hold itself up to a higher standard, then I would ask other bloggers and writers to also have some hard and fast rules to follow when writing and reviewing other articles about film and writing in the ever-increasing blogosphere.

If there are interesting stories out there on film, I certainly do want to hear about them and read about them. However, there is no amount of money that will compel me to become beholden to those who are simply looking to exploit certain algorithms or data-driven polls to include the worst of banal claptrap that passes for film criticism or blogging about anything, for that matter.

Having stated all that, I invite everyone to have a wonderful Fourth of July Holiday weekend, having fun at barbeques and picnics on the beach, and of course, at the movies! We will be back next week, with a review of “House” with Will Ferrell. Until then, readers, see you at the movies!