The Link Stuff

• Salon remembers the 'gentlemanly gruffness' of Fred Ward (Tremors, The Right Stuff), who has passed away at 79. We will remember him best from Henry & June, Big Business, and Short Cuts. 
• IndieWire interesting report on how the streamers are all doing. It was a rough quarter given the expensive (to streamers and viewers) content wars but HBOMax is holding steady and AppleTV got an enormous boost from CODA's Best Picture Oscar win.
• Harvard Film Archives posters of queer movies over the decades from multiple countries

Character actor James Hong, Stephen King adaptations, a royal role for Christopher Walken, smoking hot silent film stars, and more after the jump...

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Review: Your Grandparents Will Love 'Operation Mincemeat'

By Ben Miller

I loved watching films with my grandfather. We called him Peepaw. It was always something he wanted to do. The problem with Peepaw was a measurement of quality. He always wanted middle-of-the-road stories with little challenges and concise, wrapped-in-a-bow storylines. One of his favorite films was the Kevin Costner snooze-fest Dragonfly. The conventionality and Costner’s charismatic banality was exactly what he wanted. He thought it was a masterpiece.

This doesn’t mean Peepaw only liked terrible movies. He was a huge fan of The Guns of the Navarone or The Great Escape. His generation couldn’t get enough of World War II films. These days, when my brothers and I see a film that hit those points, we would describe them as “Peepaw movies” for their ability to appeal to our late grandfather’s particular sensibilities. John Madden’s Operation Mincemeat is THE Peepaw movie...

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Review: Season 1 of 'Pachinko'

by Lynn Lee

from 'Pachinko's opening credits. © Apple TV+

Can a country truly be your home if it never fully accepts you?  Can a country still be your homeland if you left behind your life there and have never gone back?  

These questions haunt the lush, sweeping AppleTV+ period drama series Pachinko, which recently concluded its first season.  So far, so universal: the yearning for roots, for a sense of belonging, should resonate with anyone who’s ever been displaced or separated from their family or place of origin.  At the same time, the show – based on the best-selling novel by Min Jin Lee – focuses on a very specific chapter of history that isn’t well known outside of Korea and Japan, yet in many ways echoes the frictions, tensions, and injustices underpinning the history of race and immigration in other countries...

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Streaming Roulette, May 2022

Okay, time for this month's streaming roulette. You know the rules. We highlight new-to-streaming movies and an occasional TV series by freezing them on the scroll bar at entirely random places and just sharing what pops up. No cheating*!

So when you stopped going to Church is that about the time you stopped seeing your family and your brothers?

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022) on Hulu
A very discomfiting watch just two episodes in, being an Ex-Mormon. Can't imagine how still practicing Mormons are feeling. Always happy to see Andrew Garfield and Gil Birmingham who are paired here as detectives on a double-homicide case that is rapidly growing in danger and disorienting implications...

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Streaming Roulette April '22: Sweet Birds, Edgy Postcards, and Moon Knights

Bridgerton Season 2.

Are you watching Bridgerton Season 2? I'm trying to pace myself but I'm watching it too fast because I am eager for the extremely beautiful pair of Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley to consummate their love instead of just staring angrily at each other. I will never get over how widely accepted the trope of 'people who hate each other are obviously in love!' is in movies and television since it has no parallel in real life. I've never met a couple in real life who discovered their love because they aggravated and hated each other so much. Have any of you? 

Okay, time for this month's streaming roulette. You know the rules. We highlight new-to-streaming movies and an occasional TV series by freezing them on the scroll bar at entirely random places and just sharing what pops up. No cheating*!

Click to read more ...