Day: December 17, 2021

Questlove’s Summer of Soul is an engaging, well-cut documentary about a series of Harlem Cultural Festival concerts held in Marcus Garvey Park during the mid to late summer of 1969. It’s not my idea of a thematically unified, shoot-and-assemble “documentary” as much as a savoring of found footage — footage that sat in a cellar for decades, and was finally restored and cut just right and punctuated with talking heads.

I love the performances — Stevie Wonder, The 5th Dimension, The Staple Singers, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, Sly and the Family Stone, Chambers Brothers). You can feel the heat and humidity and smell the beer and cigarette smoke. It’s a living, breathing cultural document. A sampling of the mood and politics of ’69. An atmospheric high.

But let’s not kid ourselves — Summer of Soul has been winning Best Documentary awards left and right because critics and industry types want to vote for the right thing. Because it’s not really a doc as much as great-looking found footage plus commentary. I wouldn’t say the award-givers are afraid not to honor a half-century-old celebration of black culture, but they know Summer of Soul is the easiest choice to make from a political perspective, and that they’ll all earn virtue points. So there it is.

I don’t want to make too much of the faintly similar endings of Heaven Can Wait and Spider-Man: No Way Home. It should be said upfront that Heaven‘s ending is a bit more stirring and heart-melty, and it pays off better. And Tom Holland…all right, let’s not go there. But the unrecognized and unspoken recognition thing exists in both. That’s all I’m saying.

“West Side Story’s unsuccessful release tells us that we have undergone a fundamental shift in how we watch movies in America. And the entertainment industry should see it for what it is. Many thought as the pandemic spread and the theaters closed that it would all snap back as soon as the pandemic was over. People would flock back to do what they’ve been doing for more than a century, not only out of habit but tradition: They’d go out to the movies.

“But a technological revolution came; the pandemic speeded up what had already begun, just as it speeded up the Zoom revolution that is transforming business and office work.

“People got streaming services and watched movies at home. They got used to it. They liked it. They’d invite friends and stream new releases together. Or they stayed in their pajamas and watched it.

“I never thought movie theaters would go out of style, but I see that in the past few months, since New York has loosened up and things are open, I have gone to Broadway and Off-Broadway shows five times and to a movie not at all, except this week for this column. Like all Americans, I really love movies. But I can watch them at home.

“The old world of America at the movies, of gathering at the local temple of culture, the multiplex, is over. People won’t rush out to see a movie they heard was great but that’s confined to theatrical release; they’ll stay home knowing it will be streaming soon.

“Movie theaters won’t completely go out of business; a good number will survive because people will fill them to go to superhero movies and big fantastical action films. People will want to see those on the screen together and hoot and holler. But it will never again be as it was, different generations, different people, coming together on Saturday night at the bijou. The bijou is at home now, on the couch or bed, streaming in UHD.” — from Peggy Noonan‘s “West Side Story and the Decline of the Movie Theater,” Wall Street Journal, 12.16.21.

For the sin of praising Dave Chappelle and The Closer, Terry Gilliam was recent hammered on British Twitter by wokester inquisition Stalinists (i.e., the “Old Vic 12”). You don’t want to bore yourself with all the ins and outs; suffice that Gilliam has rebounded, Chappelle is alive and well, and wokester witch-hunters gonna hunt like they used to do back in Salem, Massachusetts.

Sutton Wells is today celebrating her month-old life — cupcakes, candles, party hats. Born on 11.17.21. Now that she’s looked around and lived a little, she has some perspective to draw upon.

World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy is hearing that The Matrix Resurrection, which was tweeted about last night, is “not fan service at all…in some quarters Matrix fans are PISSED.” Press screenings are happening this morning.

HE: “So the fans want a certain thing from Neo or his arc, and it doesn’t give them that?” Ruimy: “It apparently doesn’t give them any of that. Some fans feel that Lana’s gone cuckoo.”