Thursday, October 27, 2016 at 3:00PM By Steven Fenton
Welcome back to Bay Saint Lucille, readers. Join me in wrapping up the last few episodes of this fine comedy's short first season.
Wednesday, October 26, 2016 at 5:58PM 
The marvelously special Amazon show Transparent, keeps on delivering dynamically as season 3 wraps up. When Chris left us off, faith and religion had begun to take a firmer hold on the show and its characters, and Josh (Jay Duplass) was on his way to visit his biological son Colton to tell him of mother Rita’s death...
Tuesday, October 25, 2016 at 10:09PM Netflix has a paltry offering of new movies coming in November but they're losing a lot of titles (which is their MO of late) so you have just a week to watch the following titles. Amazon Prime is also losing a lot (though they have very strange and sometimes very short streaming schedules and the following titles may be back again before you know it).
It's your last week to watch these titles. You know how we do -- we'll freeze frame a handful of titles and random places just for fun and share what we found. Share your memories of these movies, too.
Thursday, October 13, 2016 at 9:01AM 
In honor of Christopher Guest’s long overdue return to the mockumentary – the costumed cheerleader saga Mascots, hit Netflix at midnight – let’s take a moment to celebrate some of the most indelible characters in his filmography. This collection of ordinary folks in extraordinarily amusing niches – small town actors with big city dreams, obsessive dog owners, outdated folk musicians, awards show hopefuls – could easily be milked for laughs through condescending jabs. Instead Guest and his repertory cohort of improvisational comics imbue their creations with rich empathy and heartfelt humor, no matter how ludicrous their worlds. This marks theirs as a distinctly humanist cinema that revels in personal idiosyncrasies rather than repelling from them, and chooses ironic optimism over sarcastic defeat. While refreshingly full-bodied, they’re, above all else, very funny.
For me, all roads lead back to Libby Mae Brown, the spirited, slack-jawed (low-fat or non-fat) Blizzard queen from Waiting for Guffman, the first of Parker Posey's slamdunk soul-searchers in Guest’s company films. Who among us wouldn't like to meet some guys, some Italian guys, and watch TV and stuff? But the competition is stiff and the runners up are numerous; the distant loss of Catherine O’Hara’s Mickey Crabbe in A Mighty Wind tugs at the heartstrings between laughs while (runner-up at the 2001 National Society of Film Critics Awards for Best Supporting Actor) Fred Willard’s class clown motor-mouth in Best In Show surely pioneered the archetype of lucid and silly sports announcers for performers such as Jason Bateman or Elizabeth Banks. And then there’s always Guest’s own restless dreamer Corky St. Clair, the community theater iconoclast who pops up in Mascots for a second time.
Of all the peculiar characters in the Christopher Guest universe, which is your favorite? The one that most fuels your stool boom, if you will.
Wednesday, October 5, 2016 at 12:30PM It's that time again when we receive a new batch of instant movies to watch. As per usual Amazon Prime is running circles around Netflix in terms of selection because Netflix's focus has long since shifted from movies and TV to movies and TV that they create themselves. After becoming the 21st century Blockbuster they ditched it to become the new HBO. Which is fine except those of us who like to watch movies need better streaming services that function more like the way rental houses used to so that we can find the movies we want when we want them.
Okay. Let's play our game of freeze framing the new streaming selections at random moments and seeing what comes up, no second guessing...
NOW STREAMING ON AMAZON PRIME
-Oh no, I'm not talking to you. At all.
-I just waited up all night for you!
- Oh She waited all night? How Cinder-fucking-rella.
Stonewall (2015)
I need more of you to share my pain of having watched this. Sacrifice yourselves immediately so that we may discuss.
Seven more streaming entertainments of vastly varying quality after the jump...
