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Year: 2016

Remember–This is the Year of the Monkey

  For those of you who didn’t get a chance to read my Chinese New Year’s post on The Year of the Monkey–Anything Can Happen, here it is again!  This has been a crazy year — the most volatile in the Chinese twelve-year Zodiac cycle and who can argue with that after this Tuesday’s election.  Inauguration Day 2017 is January 20 and the Year of the Monkey officially ends on January 27, 2017. “As the Year of the Sheep comes to an end and the Year of the Monkey arrives, 2016 will be a year of invention and improvisation, unpredictability and unexpected change. The...

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“Bates Motel”–Season Four: A Masterpiece

“Bates Motel” continues to be A&E’s number one drama of all time. I think it is a modern masterpiece! I’ve reviewed the first three seasons earlier this year (see my June 13, 2016 review, Bates Motel, Seasons 1-3: A Mother-Son Obsession) and thought there was nowhere else to go with the plot except to the classic Hitchcock film, “Psycho”.  I am so wrong. Continuing to push boundaries of what constitutes a dysfunctional, hypersexualized relationship between mother and son, in Season Four we see Norma (Vera Farming) and Norman (Freddie Highmore) play off...

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“Goliath” — A New Amazon Prime Winner

  This is a binge–worthy new eight-episode series from Amazon. “Goliath” characters are deeply flawed and yet vividly human and at least, to some extent, understandable. “Goliath” is extraordinary television. Part film noir, part legal drama similar to “Good Wife” or “Law and Order”, with a bit of “Damages” and “House of Cards” thrown in, “Goliath” tells the story of a derelict, drunken grizzled lawyer, Billy McBride (played by Billy Bob Thornton in a star turn).   McBride was once a leading legal...

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“Bron”—The Original “Bridge”

  “Bron”—the original “Bridge” is a well written, well balanced story in which every episode is riveting, complexly plotted, and occasionally funny. The Bridge has earned the honor of two versions being produced: an American/Mexican and a British/French one (renamed “The Tunnel”–see my August 7, 2016 review). With three seasons now completed and only the first imitated in the other versions, we are seeing one of the best narratives in a television series ever.   This detective series, in its second and third seasons, outdoes its own standard of excellence. The main character—Saga...

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“Snowden”—A Companion Piece to “Citizenfour”

  In Oliver Stone’s new biopic thriller, “Snowden”, we see the humanization of a young 20-something US software engineer who is self-taught and brilliant in his deciphering the surveillance agenda of the CIA and the NSA in 2013. In what is now the most well-known disclosure of US intelligence and surveillance practices, Snowden has opened a window to how counterintelligence is carried out in the global arena. “Snowden” opens with the naïve yet idealistic twenty-one year old going through Army bootcamp. Injured, Snowden is discharged, obtains his GED and a master’s degree online and then...

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“Catfish” –Virtual Relationships and Cyber Fantasies

The 2010 American documentary film “Catfish”, directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, involves Ariel’s brother, Nev, as he fantasizes about a “friendship” with a beautiful young woman on Facebook. A documentary reflecting our times, “Catfish” is a riveting story of love, deception and grace within a labyrinth of online intrigue. The film tells the unsettling story of cyber-friendship: who we are in real life versus the way we present ourselves online. The Facebook friendship begins with an 8-year-old child prodigy artist , Abby, in rural Michigan, sending Nev a painting of one...

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