“Dune: Part Two”: Another 40 Days in the Loudest Desert Ever

March 17, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Poster for

Fresh off Oscar Quest ’24, we bring you a sneak peek at Oscar Quest ’25.

Previously on Dune: director Denis Villeneuve brought his gloriously ponderous, A/V-intoxicating, starkly symmetrical majesty to Frank Herbert’s universe, the quintessential American “Chosen One on Planet Sahara” space opera, and helped me heal from the childhood trauma of sitting through David Lynch’s compromised beach-ball of confusion. Villeneuve gambled on a dissatisfying To Be Continued ending for Part One with no guarantee he’d be permitted to keep going. Dune: Part Two ties up a thread or two, but to viewers who never pored over the sacred Herbertian texts (or who, like me, tried and failed to slog through), it was perhaps a surprise to find To Be Continued shall apparently be the saga’s status quo evermore, for as long as capricious Warner Bros. execs permit.

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Disney World! Part 9: The EPCOT International Flower & Garden Festival 2023

March 16, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Topiary sculptures of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Pluto, Chip and Dale.

Mickey, Minnie, Pluto, Chip and Dale welcome you to springtime, Disney style!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…

One of the highlights of my EPCOT solo tour was their International Flower & Garden Festival. Each springtime since 1994 artisanal crews have bedecked the park with topiary sculptures of various characters from all throughout the Disney multiverse. I have no idea whether or not I stumbled across all of them, but I felt I captured a lot, as those shapely leaves were everywhere I turned.

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The Academy Awards 2024 Season Finale

March 11, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Kate McKinnon's Weird Barbie invites Jimmy Kimmel into her Barbieland house and unrolls a large presentation map of "Oscarsland", which looks like a Candyland game board with photos of each of the ten Best Picture nominees scattered along its dotted-line path.

Kate McKinnon’s Weird Barbie gives a lost Jimmy Kimmel directions to the Oscars, in ABC’s extended trailer.

Oscar season is over at last! Tonight ABC aired the 96th Academy Awards, once again held at ye olde Dolby Theatre and hosted for a fourth time by ABC’s favorite trooper Jimmy Kimmel. This year’s soiree clocked in at 144 minutes, a surprising 14 minutes shorter than last year’s telecast. That’s after starting six minutes late and keeping the stopwatch running till the very end of the end credits, up to the final boilerplate disclaimer read by announcer David Alan Grier. Kimmel and his writing staff made only a single overtime joke in the monologue, then dropped that annual running gag for the rest of the night. It’s refreshing whenever a tired joke is crossed off the setlist.

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Indianapolis Man Watches All 53 Academy Award Nominees, Receives Pat on Head from His Oscar Widow

March 9, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jon Batiste on stage at Carnegie Hall, viewed from behind as he raises his arms toward an impressed audience.

Jon Batiste playing Carnegie Hall between awards ceremonies.

I am so, so tired. It’s been a loooong six weeks.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’24 has dominated my head space and made me neglect numerous other overdue blogging projects. I’m pleased to report I’m at long last finished: I’ve seen all 38 nominated features and all 15 shorts, marking my first-ever 100% achievement of completing my OQ24 scorecard before the big ABC ceremony. I don’t watch sports, so the Oscars are my Super Bowl, which makes me look weird to most folks in my circles. Nevertheless, once again my traditional hobby-journey was spellbinding, enlightening, maddening, exhausting fun.

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“Io Capitano”: From Naivete to Nightmare

March 9, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Google Wallet screen shot of the mMovie poster for "Io Capitano": Black teen walks through the Sahara Desert while a smiling African woman flies behind him and holds his hand.

When you wish upon a star…

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’24 is in the home stretch! We do our best to see how many freshly nominated works we can catch before ABC’s big, indulgent Academy Awards ceremony ends the viewing season.

Our final theatrical release on the list is the Best International Feature nominee Io Capitano. It opened in Chicago and Cincinnati at least a week before its distributor deigned to grace Indianapolis with its presence on the very last weekend of this Oscar season. Its local “Coming Soon” status had been in limbo for weeks, leaving me to seriously consider road-tripping to Cincy for the sake 100% completion of this annual hobby-project. My patience paid off, and some time and gas money were saved.

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“Robot Dreams”: You’ve Got a Friend in Me (for Now)

March 7, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A cartoon dog and a robot on a skyscraper's observation deck playing around on coin-op binoculars. Other cartoon animal tourists are scattered around the deck, including a yak.

If you love pointing at ’80s stuff or iconic NYC places, have we got a film for you!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest ’24 continues! We do our best to see how many freshly nominated works we can catch before ABC’s big, indulgent Academy Awards ceremony ends the viewing season.

Each year there’s at least one nominee for Best Animated Feature that’s completely unknown to mainstream audiences because they don’t come with a massive corporate brand stamped on the front. This year is no exception: Pablo Berger’s li’l Spanish dramedy Robot Dreams kept me waiting for any kind of release, whether streaming or in theaters. My patience finally paid off: Indianapolis’ own Kan-Kan Cinema was among the few theaters holding exclusive, one-night-only screenings the Wednesday before the Oscars. I showed up alongside three or four dozen other folks at various stages of their own Oscar Quests. Oscar Quest is often such a solitary activity for me that it was nice not to be alone for a little while.

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Yes, There’s a ‘Word of the Day’ After the “Perfect Days” End Credits

March 3, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Sixtysomething Japanese man in a blue jumpsuit labeled The Tokyo Toilet stands in a park in daytime, smiles and waves at someone offscreen.

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays this cleaner from the swift completion of his appointed rounds.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest continues! We do our best to see how many freshly nominated works we can catch before ABC’s big, indulgent Academy Awards ceremony ends the viewing season. As is often the case, candidates in Best International Feature endure the slowest rollout of any category due to the complexities of overseas finances and/or struggles to get Stateside studios to pay attention to them and give them turns at our box offices, especially cities outside NYC and L.A.

So far in the BIF competition we’ve caught Spain’s Society of the Snow set in South America, the U.K.’s The Zone of Interest set in Nazi Germany, and Germany’s The Teachers’ Lounge, whose protagonist is from Poland and whose director is of Turkish descent. Our next nominee for your Oscar consideration is Japan’s Perfect Days, from German director Wim Wenders. Thus the mixing-and-matching of nationalities among creators and works continues, apropos of its main character’s aesthetic tastes.

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“The Teachers’ Lounge”: The Case of the School Sleuth Snafu

March 2, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
A teacher wearing a scarf and holding a Rubik's Cube stands in her classroom, empty except for a single student she's talking to offscreen. Subtitle reads, "It's about mathematics not magic."

In my day, teachers could rest easy knowing Encyclopedia Brown would solve all their mysteries for them.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our fourth annual Oscar Quest continues! We do our best to see how many freshly nominated works we can catch before ABC’s big, indulgent Academy Awards ceremony ends the viewing season. Every year the most challenging category for attaining a 5-for-5 viewing score is Best International Feature. Every single year, three-to-five out of five honored films haven’t even been released in the U.S. before their nominations are announced, so I have to contain myself as they slowly enter the national art-house circuit. Weeks can pass before they reach our Indianapolis theaters. Sometimes my patience pays off; sometimes a straggler or two misses the deadline.

Of this year’s lineup, I watched Society of the Snow on Netflix in early January, and The Zone of Interest arrived here a month ago. Whereas Society was a Spanish film about an Uruguayan ensemble and Zone was a U.K. film entirely about German characters, our next nominee The Teachers’ Lounge (oder “Das Lehrerzimmer” auf Deutsch) was Germany’s official submission for the category, but its main character is Polish and she’s fluent in German and English. ‘Tis truly a solid year for cosmopolitan cinema.

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“To Kill a Tiger” and the MCC Best Documentary Feature 2024 Revue

February 25, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Closeup of a solemn Indian father in front of a courtroom where many motorcycles are parked out front. Subtitles read, "A father fighting for his daughter in a rape case..." and trail off.

…is apparently a rarer specimen in India than unicorns.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: our fourth annual Oscar Quest continues! We do our best to see how many freshly nominated works we can catch before ABC’s big, indulgent Academy Awards ceremony ends the viewing season. Oscar Quest means seeking out every studio feature we didn’t already watch for fun on our own, every art-house film we underestimated the first time around, every short we’d never heard of, and each and every last-minute procrastinator released on New Year’s Eve in New York or L.A., America’s only two cities. I understand a recent rule change will negate the latter cheaters in the future, a limitation I wholly approve.

Relevant to this entry, the Quest of course also covers the documentaries — long or short, foreign or domestic, cheerfully uplifting or fatally dreary. (Uplift was in short supply worldwide this year. I blame humanity.) Most years, the Best Documentary Feature category divides two ways: those readily available to stream versus those frustratingly sat-upon until after the season ends and my Oscarmania has subsided. This is the first year I’ve caught all five nominees on time, though one of them required a little extra effort.

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“Madame Web”: O, What A Mangled Web We Grieve

February 23, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
IMAX poster for Madame Web in a theater hallway. Visual elements include five eyes in separate circles surrounding a falling body. In the middle there's a tiny spider. There are concentric circles and some cluttered webbing.

Note the use of classic spider elements, such as webbing, multiple unmatched eyes, and someone falling down a waterspout.

We interrupt our annual Oscar Quest for this breaking announcement:

“If you take on the responsibility, then will come great power.”

Is your mind blown yet? Your life irrevocably changed? Your latent Spider-powers activated? Your craving for scrambled Marvel Easter eggs whetted?

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The MCC 2024 Oscar-Nominated Short Film Revue

February 18, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks, TV/DVD Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Tenebroso illustration of a giant pink pig with pinprick eyes looming in the shadows over a girl rendered in black-and-white.

Some pigs are nice, like Wilbur or Arnold Ziffel. Some pigs are made of rage.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my annual Oscar Quest continues! I’m still trying to catch all the Academy Award nominees I can before the big ceremony regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family will care in the least bit.

Each year since 2009 (except for 2021’s pandemic lockdown marathon) I’ve ventured out to the few Indianapolis theaters carrying the big-screen releases of the Academy Award nominees for Best Live-Action Short Film and Best Animated Short Film. Results vary each time and aren’t always for all audiences, but I appreciate the opportunities to sample such works and see what the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences deemed worthy of celebrating, whether I agree with their collective opinions or not. My wife and adult son usually accompany me on the journey and we make a family outing of it, even though Oscar Quest is not their problem. Since 2019 I’ve also given myself extra credit for catching as many nominees for Best Documentary Short Film as possible, depending on their availability online, for the most complete shorts experience possible.

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Disney World! Part 8: Welcome to EPCOT

February 11, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments
EPCOT's Spaceship Earth geodesic dome looming high about the crowded park entrance gates in the morning.

At last I would see the world’s largest golf ball for myself.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…

Lo, there shall come at long last an actual Disney Theme Park in this saga! Well, for one of us, anyway.

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Disney World! Part 7: Our 50th Anniversary Gold Statue Scorecard

February 5, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Gold statues of kid mariachi hero and happy ghost dog, in the middle of a garden. A lagoon is in the background.

It’s Miguel and Dante from Pixar’s Coco! And they’re golden!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…

As glimpsed in previous chapters, in 2023 Disney World celebrated its fifty years in business, one year younger than me. Among the myriad commemorations was the “Disney Fab 50 Character Collection”, dedicated September 15, 2021. 36 gilded statues starring 50 characters from the biggest brands in the Disney IP portfolio were scattered throughout all four parks. The “Disney Fab 50 Quest” encouraged fans to see how many familiar gold faces they could spot throughout their vacation(s). Any superfan who splurged on a Disney MagicBand+, an electronic bracelet designed to unlock special features throughout the Disney World lands, could wave it at each statue for interactive responses.

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Disney World! Part 6: Lights Across the Lagoon

February 4, 2024 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Distant fireworks over water. Red Mickey head, ears drooping.

The closest shot I got to officially Mickey Mouse-looking fireworks.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Each year Anne and I take one (1) road trip to a different part of the United States and see attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. One thing we rarely do is fly. We’d much rather drive than be flown unless we absolutely have to…or are given some pretty sweet incentives to do so. Fast-forward to December 2022 and a most unexpected opportunity: The Powers That Be at Anne’s rather large place of employment recognized her and several other employees nationwide for outstanding achievements in the field of excellence. Their grand prize was a Disney World vacation! We could at last announce to friends and family, “THE GOLDENS ARE GOING TO DISNEY WORLD!”

For Anne it was officially, legally a business trip. Much of the time, she’d have to work. Not ME, baby…

After my one-man tour through the Grand Floridian grounds and around the Disney Resorts’ monorail track, I had three reasons for an early retreat to our room: (1) exhaustion from the long day; (2) I’d run out of things to do around the grounds and barhopping isn’t my thing; (3) I was curious whether we could watch fireworks from the convenience of our luxurious view across Seven Seas Lagoon.

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“The Zone of Interest”: Where the Grass Is Not Greener

February 3, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
The wife of Auschwitz's commandant shows off her massive garden. At the backyard's edge is the ten-foot stone wall surrounding the concentration camp.

A tour through a spacious, beautiful backyard garden. Meanwhile out of sight, thousands are murdered.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: my Oscar Quest continues — that annual ritual where I catch as many newly Academy Award-nominated features and shorts as I can before the big, fancy, low-rated TV ceremony. In the case of The Zone of Interest, though, as soon as I learned of it from last autumn’s professional film-festival write-ups. I’d already decided I’d see it once it was available to us commoners, with or without the compulsory power of statuettes. Back in 2000 its writer/director Jonathan Glazer first made his mark with Sexy Beast, in which Sir Ben Kingsley terrified one and all as a gangster whose supernova force-of-will nearly pulverized every other actor in frame. If Glazer could coax the Gandhi Oscar-winner of all people to go there, I figured the sky would be the limit for him.

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In a Field Somewhere, Noticing “The Color Purple”

February 1, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Movie poster for "The Color Purple" focusing on its three proud Black leading actresses.

Remember what happens when you walk past purple in a field and don’t notice it.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Oscar Quest 2024 continues! I’m still seeing how many of this year’s Academy Award nominees I can watch before the big night on March 11th. Used to be, I’d only hold myself accountable for the Best Picture nominees, but this is my fourth year trying to track down all works from all categories, even those with a single nomination to their credit. If I left the house to catch them in an actual theater, they get their own entry. That’s the MCC rule, no matter how much I might end up rambling.

That brings us to The Color Purple, the movie based on the musical based on the novel, not a movie based on the musical based on the movie based on the novel, because that would just be silly. The 1985 adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel, directed by Steven Spielberg and written for the screen by a white Dutchman (one of three guys credited for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade), was nominated for 11 Oscars but left the ceremony statueless. The latest version, from first-time feature-length director Blitz Bazawule (one of the co-directors of Beyoncé’s Black Is King) and screenwriter Marcus Gardley (The Chi, Foundation), has only a single nomination, tying with several other wannabe-luminaries such as the fifteen short films and Flamin’ Hot. But it’s still in the running.

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“Ferrari”: The Big Race Not in the Oscar Race

January 28, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Adam Driver playing the white-haired Enzo Ferrari, sitting at a dinner table with his hands held out palms-down, staring into the camera as he explains what happens when two particular engine parts don't line up perfectly.

What this pic and movie really need are some Photoshopped 3-D Force-lightning.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: I tried starting my annual Oscar Quest three weeks early by catching several potential nominees before the Academy’s official announcement, in hopes of reducing my eventual legwork. Two of those screenings proved useless to my Quest in the end: Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon (which was on the Best Visual Effects shortlist, but got justly bumped by Godzilla) and Ferrari, a vehicle for Adam Driver to explore a matured variation on his House of Gucci accent. Rendered irrelevant like that, this entry could’ve been procrastinated another week or two, but then I realized maybe it’d be a good idea to slot something between the entries for American Fiction and The Color Purple, which really would not work as a double feature.

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I Would’ve Voted for “American Fiction” Three Times If I Could’ve

January 27, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Jeffrey Wright as an author sitting at his laptop in a very nice house, thinking hard about his next sentence.

“It was a Black and blackly night…”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as a lifelong lover of satire, I was annoyed at missing American Fiction when it played the Heartland Film Festival months ahead of the current Oscar season, but its one and only showtime and location were lousy for me. The drive would’ve been a nearly-hourlong construction-zone slog to Central Indiana’s most upscale area, arguably a breeding ground for the very crowd that the film’s most withering commentary targets.

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My Oscar Quest 2024 Quick-Start Scorecard

January 24, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in one of the black-and-white flashbacks. He's seated at a table, incredulous during testimony and reaching for his coffee mug.

“Now I am become Oscar, the booster of careers.”

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: every winter is my annual Oscar Quest, during which I venture out to see all Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, regardless of whether I think I’ll like them or not, whether their politics and beliefs agree with mine or not, whether they’re good or bad for me, and whether or not my friends and family have ever heard of them. I’ve seen every Best Picture winner from Wings to Everything Everywhere All at Once, and every Best Picture nominee from 1987 to the present, many of which were worth the hunt. You take the good, you take the bad, and so on.

Starting in 2020 I upgraded to the Oscars Quest Expanded Challenge, in which I see how many nominees I can watch in all categories before the big ceremony. Thanks to the expansion of streaming services I’ve seen every Oscar-nominated feature and short for the years 2021 and 2022, even in minor categories like Best Original Song. I enjoyed surprises and suffered regrets. Sometimes I have to wait for smaller nominees to arrive at the art-house theaters here in Indianapolis. Sometimes I luck out and they’re on our subscribed streaming services of choice. Sometimes I go for a streaming rental. In extreme cases a Redbox disc rental might be warranted. I go wherever the Quest takes me.

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“Poor Things”: Terry Gilliam’s Frankenhooker

January 21, 2024 By in Movies/Films/Flicks Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments
Poor Things movie poster on display at a shopping-mall theater. It has the logo, Emma Stone with dark hair and thick eyebrows, and weird stuff at the bottom.

Winner of two Golden Globes! Too bad I’ve never cared about the Golden Globes.

Show of hands, who wants to hear opinions from a prude who avoids buying any Criterion Collection releases about “sexual liberation” or “sexual awakening”, who went to see a shamelessly, zealously “sex-positive” film?

No? No one? Understood. G’night! See you next entry! I’ll let y’all know when I post some more Disney World photos!

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