Reviews

We enjoyed the final episode of the Flash but we will miss Grant Gustin who gave a great performance. Jesse L. Martin was also outstanding as Joe West and Danielle Nicolet made Cecile Horton appealing. I was glad to see Tom Cavanagh back in the final episode: he impressed me by playing the villainous Harrison Wells with conviction and also by showing his range playing the quirky H. R. Wells and the fun Parliament of Wells, showing varied versions of his character from around the Multiverse. It's unusual for us to watch 9 seasons of a show. The Flash kept the stories interesting and the characters were strongly depicted. I'm going to miss watching the show.

I watched Mo Better Blues and I thought it's held up well over the years- hard to believe it's over 30 years old now. The camera work is impressive and the design of the film is fantastic. I was stunned by the use of colour in the scene where both of Denzel Washington's love interests come to hear him play at his club.

I want to say I wanted to watch the film as someone who's loved jazz all my life. The music is very good. I wanted to see more about what jazz meant to Bleek, Shadow, and their bandmates. Bleek's dedication to his music is well portrayed, but I wanted to know how more about how they felt about playing jazz. There are several shots of posters on their walls with Coltrane and Duke Ellington and albums by Billie Holiday in their apartments. I wanted to know more about their inspirations and their drive to play jazz in the 1990s. It would have been great if the film also revealed more about the jazz scene in New York and Brooklyn including more about the fans as well as the performers.

Mo Better Blues reminded me of Born to be Blue, the 2015 biography of trumpist Chet Baker. Born to Be Blue dramatised how Baker was beaten by thugs who smashed his teeth and face, and how he struggled to regain his ability to play Mo Better Blues only shows Bleek's anguish and his attempts to recover fairly briefly: it seems Bleek gives up at his first appearance despite the support from Shadow and his former manager Giant. I was wondering how Bleek supports himself and his family afterwards. I really didn't believe Indigo would take him back after her telling Bleek how selfish he is and how she realises he only wants her because he wants her to save his life - and she must be aware his other old girlfriend is now with Shadow making a career for herself as a singer. It's nice the film ends on a happy note, but it felt a bit too pat.

One thing I want to add: Lee faced criticism for his portrayal of the Jewish clubowners. I cringed when the Flatbush brothers appeared. They are stereotypes: negative stereotypes. I'm not objecting that they were portrayed as being stingy towards Bleek, Giant, and their quartet. There were many performers who felt that they were exploited by clubowners and record industry personnel, and Giant is a poor manager. But Giant is not a stereotype of a bad manager or a stereotype of a gambling addict, he's a person. The other characters are portrayed as having more than one layer. Not Mo and Josh Flatbush: they are exactly alike, obsessed with numbers and money. Even worse they're portrayed with big glasses and big noses. I felt very let down by Spike Lee.

Watching Gentleman's Agreement in 2021, 74 years after it was made and released, made my heart heavy. It's a black and white movie which I saw on TV broadcast in the afternoon like many other pictures from the 1940s. If I had seen it as a teenager back in the 1980s I would have found it dated and too earnest about its moralizing. I grew up in a large Jewish community and I thought anti Semitism like the kind Peck opposes was a thing of the past. I didn't know any restricted hotels; no one I knew had problems getting a job or finding housing just because they had a Jewish name.

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting, the killing of Jews in Poway, and Neo Nazis chanting at Charlottesville that "Jews will not replace us" scared the hell out of me: I couldn't believe that in the 21st century American Jews are facing a rise of hatred and a rise of assaults, attacks, and vandalism of synagogues and Jewish spaces. So much of the dialogue from the film sounded like what I've seen on social media: I've seen many "nice" people express horrible things online and when challenged, exclaim that what they said wasn't anti Semitic and they weren't bigots, they were life long anti racists. I never thought I would live to see American magazines and newspapers publish articles debating whether American Jews should be as "white" in the sense of "benefiting from white privilege". I've told several people about my grandparents facing prejudice and discrimination at work and being barred by restrictive clubs and university quotas for Jewish students. Gentleman's Agreement was very hard hitting for its day for calling out anti Jewish bigotry: few films during the era dared to show openly Jewish characters, let alone speak about anti Jewish discrimination. (As for people who debate if Jews are "white" in the sense of oppressing minorities, I'd like to also mention the decades of support from Jewish leaders and the Jewish community for the Civil Rights movement and immigrant rights .) The exchange about Zionism and Palestine is pertinent for today as well: Phil Green asks Dr Lieberman, the world's greatest physicist (evidently modelled on Albert Einstein) about Palestine and Lieberman responds, "Which? Palestine as a refuge...or Zionism as a movement for a Jewish state?" After Phil answers, " The confusion between the two, more than anything" Lieberman replies, " If we agree there's confusion, we can talk.

We scientists love confusion..." I don't want to get into politics, but Gentleman's Agreement made me realise how much confusion there still is about what is legitimate criticism of Israel and and what is the reflection of age old hateful ideas about Jews. I wish more people were familiar with history and were more aware of the echoing of hateful tropes.

But most of all, I wish more people would realise like the characters in this film that Jewish people face prejudice, that they're not making it up or exaggerating complaints of anti Semitism for personal or political gain. Gentleman's Agreement is a timely reminder that discrimination and bigotry against any group was never seen as part of the American ideal, that it's not right for Jewish people to be made to feel rejected or threatened or afraid or belittled. It calls out for everyone not to accept bigotry but oppose it, to be unafraid to speak out against it. As one character says at the final, " I know its not the whole answer, but its got to start somewhere, and it's got to start with passion. Not pamphlets, not even your series. It's got to be with people. Rich people, poor people, big and little people. And it's got to be quick."

I wanted to add my impressions of Mr Skeffington, as I saw the movie on TV when I was a teenager and just enjoyed it again on a streaming service- I'm now nearly the same as Mrs Skeffington is at the end of the film ("40... Er, 45... " Glup!) It's a melodrama of a kind that isn't made anymore, yet in some ways the film was far ahead of its time. I've just read an newly published anthology of comics by women about the menopause that addresses some of the themes about women growing older and being devastated to find themselves suddenly invisible and unvalued. In Fanny Skeffington's day a woman's face was her fortune. Fanny is able to rescue her brother and establish a secure future for herself through her looks and by catching a wealthy husband. I have to say Bette is slightly unconvincing at first as a society beauty of the belle epoque. The young Bette was pretty but not a dazzling beauty who can bewitch men into dragging each other to gaze at her and worship her, as the drunks do in the speakeasy scene: "Lady, you are beaut- ti- ful!" Joan Crawford, her main rival, would have had no problems being stunning in the first half of the film but I don't think any Hollywood actress at the time would have been willing to appear as a hag or would have captured the pathos of vain, self centred Fanny being told that she is one of many women who are over the hill, overdressed, overmade up and over perfumed. I felt the blow from the psychologist too. I thought ouch, maybe I'm trying too hard with the hair dye, concealer and clothes from BooHoo. I'm not ready for Oil of Olay yet though. I don't think Elizabeth Taylor or actresses thirty or forty years after Mr Skeffington was filmed would have been brave enough either to show the ravages of time. I saw flashes of Bette as Baby Jane in the older Fanny as well (as another reviewer said) but Bette's performance here is far more subtle; her anguish is revealed not with her smashing mirrors as in Baby Jane but in the scenes that show her eating breakfast in bed with frazzled hair, suddenly a frail crone, and her crying scene when she finds herself abandoned by everyone except her maid and her faithful cousin.

Claude Rains' performance as her cultured and extraordinarily patient husband is unforgettable as well. The film is also unusual for its time in being frank about his Jewishness, the prejudice Fanny's brother and many of her friends have for him, and the threat to him of the rise of the Nazis. I wish it had devoted more screen time to this as by modern standards it treats it sketchingly. The end of the film is still a wallop. As moving as the ending is, the scene on the boat with the newly married Fanny and Job talking about his childhood and his climb from the Lower East Side is handled masterfully: I was charmed by the band playing "Here comes the Bride" for newlyweds, and the band not being able to spot that Fanny and Job are also newlyweds expresses deftly that Fanny is fond of Job but is not in love with him.

Mr Skeffington captures an bygone era of pre WWI America, an era before plastic surgery, fillers, and facelifts, but still has much to say about women who rely on their appearance to social climb and better themselves- pertinent lessons for today's Instagram influencers. Shame they don't make them like this anymore.

I enjoyed the beginning of Replay, the use of the camcorder as a narrative device- I remember them from back in the day. I loved the little devil figure and the nod to the original Twilight Zone episode set in the diner with William Shatner, Nick of Time. I thought the show used the idea of rewinding time very well as we saw the scene again and again return to the diner with the mother and son setting off on the drive to the son's new college.

Then the show took on a much deeper theme that I didn't anticipate. This was by far the most strongest episode of the new Twilight Zone, which packed a punch as suspenseful as the original series, and all the more moving, as I thought it was expressing what couldn't be said back in the 1960s when the first series was created. I'm not African American and while I had an awareness of the issues of police brutality and Black Lives Matter this show really brought home to me the terror so many have experienced. It resonated with me on a very deep level as I've been very concerned by the growing incidents of anti Semitism and attacks on Jewish people in the US. It made me think of my grandparents and the fears they had remembering the persecution and violence that made them flee Russia at the start of the last century, and the fear many have now of that old hatred catching up to them, after they thought they had escaped it in America.

I was very moved by the ending with everyone standing together, holding up their phones as mirrors to the police. It made me cry. Thank you Twilight Zone for giving voice to dark chapters in our country's history, and encouraging everyone to see each other's common humanity and stand together against prejudice and injustice.

Like another commenter here, I watched A Kind of Loving on the True Movie channel here in the UK, and was drawn to it because of its reputation. I was not disappointed: it's a fine film, and a fine example of the kitchen sink and angry young men films of the period, when British cinema was drawing attention for its unflinching realism.

I couldn't help but think of my parents while I was watching A Kind of Loving. They grew up in a different place than the North of England: Boston in the US, and in the early 1950s rather than in the early 1960s. They also came from a very different background, as children of immigrants from Eastern Europe. However, I could see the film captured their generation. Both my parents lived at home, my mother with her parents and younger brother and my father with his widowed mother. My mother worked in white collar jobs as a bookkeeper and file clerk and longed to marry like her friends did. Both wanted to do what was expected of them: setting down and raising a family.

I can imagine that they saw many of their friends having to marry at City Hall (and not have a religious wedding) because the boy got the girl "in trouble", and many of them having to move in with their in-laws to save enough to get their own place eventually. I can feel the awkwardness and shame when the young couple's relationship breaks down and the husband leaves: shame not only on the part of the woman but the man too. Alan Bates' father points out that Ingrid will have to take Victor back: what is she going to do as a divorcée in the early 1960s? Many women at the time were not seen or treated well by general society if they were divorced, especially if they were divorced and had children. There were very little marriage counseling back then as well. The film ends with a note of hope for Victor and Ingrid- perhaps a touch of resignation as well. Ironic that only a year later "sexual Intercourse began", in Larkin's phrase, and social mores began to change drastically. By the time I came of age, in the 1980s, I didn't understand my parents' attitudes towards sex and marriage, as they appeared hypocritical to me and vastly old fashioned (they were tolerant of young men who were playing the field as long as their eventual goal was marriage and having children, but harshly critical of young women who didn't hope for marriage and children and were working towards having a career and being independent). A kind of Loving helped me understand how it was for many of their generation, coming from families struggling to get by or struggling to improve their lives, and putting pressure on the coming generation to do right as well as make good. I think young people now can also relate to striving not to disappoint parents and trying to cope with meddling in-laws who feel their daughter's partner is not measuring up to expectations. Though it captures the North of Britain on the eve of massive social change A Kind of Loving has much to say about relationships and family that remains timeless.

When I first heard about Moonlight I wanted to see it. I grew up in Miami: not the Miami where the director and writer come from. I grew up in suburban North Miami and went to schools that were predominantly middle class and Jewish. I've never been to Liberty City. There were black and Latino kids in my schools, but they weren't as deprived as the families in Moonlight. Also, I came of age in late 1970s and early 1980s, before Miami Vice, when Miami was seen as a run down tourist town that nobody came to anymore because of crime.

Moonlight blew me away. I related to it completely. I was an outsider kid in school and I knew what it felt like for Chiron. I recognized what Barry Jenkins says in the first extra on the DVD about Miami's beauty and cruelty. During the first scene, I said to my husband, "I bet it was boiling hot when they shot that". I don't miss the summers there, with the temperatures hitting over 95 every day. I don't miss the insects (flying palmetto bugs and roaches especially). Moonlight made me remember how horrible it was to go to school for years with kids who wanted to kick your ass without letup. I was called gay too (I'm not, by the way, it the kids' standard insult). I got hit a lot, and nobody checked to make sure I was okay afterwards. I'm glad Chiron had a school staff member who looked after him. Moonlight also made me remember how beautiful Miami was, even with the flying palmetto bugs and awful people (the people I see online chatting about growing up in Miami are pretty casual about the drugs they did, and the people I talk to who live in Florida think people who live in Dade County are really materialistic.) The beaches take my breath away. There's nowhere else in the world like them, with the warm ocean and white sand. Even back in the day when I went to South Beach and saw the crumbling hotels full of dripping one unit air conditioners and old people staring out at the water- God's waiting room, people my parents' age called it- the beaches were magnificent. Thanks Moonlight for helping me remember that though life in Dade country is tough and people can be horrendous there is still beauty there. Anyone who thinks that this movie is about nothing, consider this- that even in a place of bleakness where everyone seems carnal,callous and inarticulate there can be caring, tenderness, and beauty.

I wanted to watch Made in America not because of what the show said about OJ, but for what it revealed about American society and how it's changed- or hasn't changed- since the early 1990s. Made in America tells several stories, beginning with the story of how OJ rose from his upbringing in public housing in San Francisco to become a sports star. I wasn't convinced by the show's portrayal of OJ as a legend beloved by the whole country. I was in primary school when he was making his name in football, and I wasn't a sports fan. I heard about the Juice from my older brother. In the early 70s though the big event for us was the Perfect Season Miami Dolphins. I spotted the name Mercury Morris in one of the newspaper articles shown on camera, and I hit pause so I could read it.

While I grew up in Miami in the 70s and 80s the city had several riots sparked off by police officers being acquitted for shooting and killing African Americans. My parents lived in an affluent suburb and they didn't pay much attention to the race problems, except to advise me not to drive downtown when the problems were happening. I recognised the feelings of anger and frustration expressed by the African American community and the people interviewed for the film.

I don't know if it was possible for OJ to have a fair trial. I sensed that LAPD and Los Angeles city officials were terrified that a guilty verdict would result in more riots and city wide destruction. While I was watching the footage in the episode about the verdict, I was struck that as the crowds in the streets shouted in joy when they heard OJ had been found not guilty the police horses whinnied in fright and the officers riding them struggled to keep them from bolting. I was shocked to learn that one of the jurors, who raised his hand in a Black Power salute, had been a member of the Black Panthers. Why didn't the prosecution ask for a mistrial? At any rate, OJ's expensive lawyers decided to play the race card from the start. I thought it was despicable, and Made in America's revealing that Simpson had distanced himself from the Civil Rights struggles made me feel it was even more despicable.

Most of all OJ Made in America revealed the fascination that riveted the media in the US to the Simpson trial, and the fascination that the world media had as well. They weren't concerned so much about race-- the trial took place in Los Angeles, and discussed the racism of the LAPD, in the Rodney King case and many others, but above all it was all about Brentwood and Hollywood, celebrity, fame, and money. The People vs OJ Simpson showed that from the very beginning witnesses and people who claimed they they knew the truth were selling their stories to tabloid newspapers and trash TV shows. I wonder if Simpson would have had as much support from the public if he were rich- rich enough to hire big name attorneys- but not a celebrity.

It was the slow chase down the LA freeways that grabbed everybody's attention- here was a celebrity who might blow his brains out on live TV, because he had killed two people - or maybe he was being set up by LAPD because he was black and the victims were white. It was a great show. I don't understand why the prosecution didn't ban cameras from the courtroom like the civil trial did, or why, if they wanted to use cameras, they didn't make them unobtrusive so the people in the courtroom couldn't see them. The trial became the media circus of the century. The last episode, with clips from Simpson's bizarre reality TV show, shows how celebrity and notoriety drive the consciousness of American life. It's significant that Simpson's ultimate downfall took place after an armed robbery to gain control over his memorabilia, which not only has great personal meaning to him, but is worth millions of dollars.

I had to ask myself, why did I watch Made in America? I felt sorry for Nicole - she must have found it difficult to make a life for herself apart from OJ, who not only gave her fame and money, he supported most of her family. I felt sorry for Ron Goldman for being caught up in OJ's rage because he was seen a rival for Nicole's affections, and sorry for Ron's family who saw OJ walk free from a double homicide. I felt empathy for people who felt they had been denied the justice that was given to other Americans (I felt however that the film could have included how other people of other races have been treated by the white majority- there was nothing said about how the Hispanic community felt about how they were treated by the LAPD and the US government) Mostly I was appalled by how Simpson went back to a luxurious life after the trial, selling his autographs for 3 million dollars while in jail, and was still schmoozed by people who wanted a piece of his fame. It's telling that the Goldmans struck back with court orders grabbing Simpson's money, yet Simpson managed to make more sliding into sleaziness in South Miami Beach with coke addict blonde girlfriends. People wanted to keep watching him, keep collecting his signed footballs and t shirts, and keep trying to be associated with him. Made in America holds up a mirror and finds disturbing portraits: not just of OJ, and OJ's actions, but American society's obsession with wealth and fame.

I stumbled across the opening of "Deep in my Heart" one afternoon on the True Movie channel here in the UK. I think it was at the end of a recording I made of another movie. Anne Brancroft's monologue captivated me. I couldn't forget her character's story of how she was attacked as a young married woman, walking home late one night from a movie, the first night she left the house after having a baby, now four months old. "They said there must have been another man, and there was... his name was Elvis". I was also captivated by her character's proud statement that she wasn't just another Boston Irish... she was part French. It's unfortunate that the movie has a title that suggests it's sentimentalized and cliché ridden. What could have been a sensationalized, melodramatic "true life story" reveals the life of the child that was born after the attack, with sympathy for all the main characters. The series of monologues of each of Barbara Ann's mothers works well to give their viewpoints, reveal their characters, their hopes, and how each sought to do the best they could to give her a good life. The last monologues by Gloria Reuben as the adult Barbara Ann are poignant as they depict how she learns about her origins, finds her birth mother, comes to terms with her estranged adopted mother, and strives to come to terms with her heritage from her white biological family and the issues that affected the direction of her first years. My parents grew up in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s, and I often visited the city's neighborhoods and suburbs on family trips (I grew up in Florida, where my parents moved in the 1950s). "Deep in my Heart" reminded me of what the city was like when my cousins and I were young. Cara Buono's performance as the young Gerry made me cry. I was deeply moved by her courage to stand up to the racism of the era. I knew from my parents' stories of what happened to their old neighborhoods that many areas of Boston were torn apart by racism, riots, urban renewal, and manipulation by real estate sellers. My parents once drove through Roxbury with me during one of our visits and my father pointed out the areas that he knew as a child, that were once seen as well off and now were deprived and neglected.

I was riveted too by Lynn Whitfield's portrayal of Corrine and her love for her foster child. I felt deeply for her when she was denied the possibility of adopting Barbara Ann, and when Barbara Ann had to leave her care for adoption in Wisconsin. I found the social agency's thinking hard to understand. I suppose they believed that Barbara Ann would be better off with professionals as parents in the Midwest rather than living with other foster children in a poor family in Roxbury, an area that became known for crime and violence.

I felt for Alice Krige's Annalise, who wanted to give a loving home to a needy child. She was caring but was let down by her husband deserting her and their adopted child- Albert Schultz shows the husband's flaws and his inability to put the child's needs first without making him look like a complete jerk or a villain. I empathized with Annalise and Gloria Reuben's teenage Barbara Ann: I could see how Annalise struggled to make a better life for both of them, and how Barbara Ann, feeling lonely and abandoned, cold shouldered her, believing that the time Annalise spent studying and working was an indication of her indifference, and turned to her boyfriend for the love she missed, longing for Corrine.

The movie ends with a four handkerchief family reunion scene that does seem idealized- I wondered why Annalise was attending a reunion party of the Cummins family in Boston, when she and Barbara Ann hadn't communicated in decades. The highlighting of Barbara Ann's three mothers at the event is a little cheesy, especially at a gathering for the entire Cummins family.

But overall "Deep in My Heart" considers the difficult and complex issues of racism, the civil rights struggle, single mothers, discrimination of lower income families, and the changing attitudes towards them without allowing them to dominate the movie or allowing the characters to be determined simply by their response to them. I wish more of the movies based on real life stories would reflect their eras and the history behind him as respectfully and thoughtfully.

When I saw a trailer for Wish I was Here on a DVD my husband and I watched last week I knew I wanted to see it. On our trip back to the library I was delighted to find Wish I we Here on their DVD shelves. I enjoyed the film tremendously.

I grew up in Miami in a large Jewish community in the 1970s and 1980s. The story of the Bloom family- Aidan, Noah and their father- brought back a lot of memories for me. When they turned the pages of the family photo album I had to click pause on one picture, because it looked just like the pictures of my family at weddings and social events. Same colors, same hairdos, same fashions. The palm trees of LA reminded me of South Florida too.

My relatives and the people I knew in school are not religious and feel like Aidan when it comes to religion: skeptical. I enjoyed the scenes of the religious school and the scenes with the rabbis.

I appreciated that while Aidan didn't agree with his father about sending his children to a yeshiva the movie didn't criticize Grace's beliefs, the school, and the rabbis. I didn't mind the poking of the elderly rabbi: the sequence where he rides a segway in the hospital and crashes into a wall was hilarious. I'm glad that the movie didn't show Noah and Aidan rejecting their religious background in favour of being completely secular. Wish I Was Here could have just shown Aidan telling his children to forget about the yeshiva and religion and embrace "normal" contemporary life. I appreciated that Aidan found guidance from the younger rabbi, and Grace found ways to carry on her beliefs while adapting to their new lives after Aidan's father passed away. The pink wig was a nice symbol of her growing more confidence and openness to new experiences while maintaining her values: she was wearing a wig like a religious married woman, but it was bright pink.

I'm a big fan of comics and I've been to the San Diego comic con a few times. It was great to see the convention in the movie and see the cosplayers walking outside the center and around the rooms, taking pleasure in showing off their costumes. Noah's space man costume was terrific. I saw a lot of amazing costumes at San Diego- I would have loved to see more cosplayers, especially the Star Wars costumes and the people dressing up as superheroes and supervillians.

It's wonderful to see movies being made now that celebrate fan culture like the cosplayers and Comic Con. It's a pleasure to see a movie that presents growing up in a Jewish family, and explores aspects of Jewish identity, how adults and parents like Aidan and Noah feel about their heritage, and passing on values to their children.

I've given National Lampoon: Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead a 5 out of 10. It's entertaining to watch: I was happy to find it on the Sky Arts channel here in the UK. But while the film traces the history of the magazine and its creators, and richly describes how the success of the magazine led to its expansion into radio comedy, comedy albums, stage shows, and movies, its images and interviews fly past quickly without the film explaining what factors led to the creation of the magazine and how it was related to other magazines, newspapers, comics, and cultural products of its time.

As the documentary pointed out, the magazine grew from the Harvard Lampoon, a Harvard humour magazine that didn't reach a national audience. In the 1920s there were nationally published magazines that collected articles and cartoons from universities around the US: "College Humor" was probably the largest, and was published from 1920 to the 1940s. These college humor magazines were aimed at a young but mainstream audience.

It surprised me that Drunk Stone Brilliant Dead didn't mention Mad magazine. It was Mad. first published in 1952, that brought radical and subversive humour that poked fun at authority figures to a country wide audience. Without Mad, there probably wouldn't have been a National Lampoon. It also surprised me that the documentary made no mention of the Underground press and Underground comics of the 1960s. The art style of the first issues of the Lampoon looked very reminiscent of the style of Robert Crumb and other artists from Zap.

I didn't like National Lampoon very much in the 1970s. I read my older brother's issues. Even back then, I thought they were indulging in printing pictures of naked girls and making jokes about drugs and sex simply for the sake of it. They didn't have the force of the Underground comics, which were breaking ground in discussing subjects that before then couldn't be mentioned, and were using the archaic spirit of Mad to take apart the establishment and cultural heritage of the era. I remember the issue of National Lampoon that printed a spoof of Mad, taunting that Mad was stuffy, middle aged, and had long forgotten the meaning of satire. I thought that while Mad didn't print cartoons of naked women and guys smoking pot and snorting coke, it still featured strips that aptly commented on society: strips that have been reprinted and discussed in many studies about US history and the growth of graphic novels.

I thought while I was watching the documentary that National Lampoon branched out very quickly into other media and became a brand: while Saturday Night Live wasn't officially associated with National Lampoon the show clearly stole their talent and their style of satire. I think the magazine pulled its punches keeping an eye on their advertising revenue and growing empire. I'm not saying it wasn't funny- I thought the record albums and movies were funny- but I think the humour of the magazine was aimed at pleasing its creators and audience of liked minded readers, rather than exposing the darker aspects of its targets. The publisher of Mad, William M Gaines, didn't allow advertising in the magazine because he said a satire magazine couldn't make fun of an advertising campaign and then print an ad a few pages later for the same product or a similar product. He also saw it as a practical issue, saying that the magazine would then try to attract more advertisers, and if it started losing some of its advertisers and the advertising income, the readers would still expect the same fancy package, but without the advertising income to pay for the higher production costs, the magazine was sunk. Which it seems, along with loss of readership, was what ultimately happened to National Lampoon.

I want to add my review of NW because I read Zadie Smith's novel a few years ago. I've just watched the film and enjoyed how it captures Smith's portraits of life in a working class area of North London. The film aptly condenses the book's events and highlights further Smith's comments on life in modern Diversity Britain.

The film made clearer that the tension in Leah and Natalie/Keisha's relationship now they are adults is mostly due to class difference. They were from the same background, the same estate, the same school, and still lived in the same area. Natalie managed to become a Oxbridge student, attend law school, become a barrister and marry a man from a wealthy family (the film doesn't show that her husband's parents were an African student and the daughter from a rich white family but the character is played by a man with a light complexion). Leah was troubled by how her friend had changed, and how she was perceived by Natalie's new friends, particularly at her dinner parties. She worked in social care, was married to a ambitious man, but still felt, comparing herself to Natalie, she had achieved nothing, and she was trying to figure out how to live her life.

Zadie Smith's novels also reflect on race, and the fact that Natalie's fortunes rose, while Leah's didn't, and her (white) family was also still living in council housing, added more tension to their relationship. Leah was by no means racist, but both Leah and Natalie remembered their growing up together and fancying the same boys at school. Natalie feels guilty that she was now socially above her school friends and people she had known all her life. Shar's comment about her being up herself and a coconut- black on the outside and white on the inside- is included in the opening scene of the film. The film elaborates further on how Natalie, at the start of her professional career, is advised to tone herself down so she won't be threatening to white judges and white barristers. One of her older white colleagues squeezes her breasts and apparently she feels helpless to complain.

In the book and the movie all of Leah and Natalie's school friends became criminals, drug addicts, or both. In the book Natalie's mother lost all the money the family had because she gave it to a project building churches in Africa that turned out to be a scam. The movie made me realize how much both Natalie and Leah were anxious and felt guilty about trying to rise above the people they grew up with. I think Leah didn't want children out of fear she would become like the people around her - the movie suggested that Natalie emotionally neglected her children sometimes, and left them in care of the nanny.

The film made me empathize more with Nathan, as it makes him more sympathetic than the way he is portrayed in the novel (the film cut a long sequence where he visits a female friend in Soho before he travels back and is killed on his way home). He struggles to improve his life and tries to help his troubled father, but ultimately he falls victim to a local thug (Nathan is his accomplice). I appreciated the portraits of strong and kind black men: both Leah and Natalie have partners who care for their families and work hard to provide for them and protect them. Nathan's killing is a memento mori for Leah and Natalie, and by informing the police they rise above the violence that was part of their background growing up. Nathan's killing also shows how vulnerable life is for them and the people they live with: Natalie cries when she sees how the little boy she passes in the street is already used to seeing murder sites in their neighborhood.

The film's ending is much more powerful than the book's: it eliminates part of the encounter between Natalie and Nathan I found hard to believe. I still don't understand Natalie's attraction to internet sex sites and sex with strangers. Perhaps she felt that her new life and new identity was so unreal she had to mix with people like the ones she grew up up to atone for it, or to feel more like she did when she was growing up in an area surrounded by drug use and constant danger. I appreciate how the film doesn't capitalize on her sex addiction for sensationalism. It's a moving account of individuals who are stuck between bettering themselves and allowing themselves to become resigned to their difficult environment and backgrounds.

So "Loving Leah" is a little schmaltzy, even for a love story. I loved it anyway. It's a real pleasure to watch a movie that is respectful of Jewish customs and presents a non sensationalized, exploitative, or prejudiced view of Jewish religious practice. Usually the only portraits of Jewish life I see on TV are tragic stories set during the Holocaust or comedies. I appreciated that Leah's mother was strict and scared her daughter enough for her to put up a show of the pretend marriage, but ultimately she cared for Leah, wanted her to be happy, and encouraged her to go back and make up with Jacob, even if he wasn't Orthodox, and even if he and Leah would attend a Reform Temple with a woman rabbi. I appreciated that none of the characters were stereotypes or played for laughs. Well done Hallmark!