Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
Dedicated to the citizens of Mason County, Washington since 1886
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It's hard to convey to those who didn't experience the 1980s firsthand what a huge deal Michael J. Fox was, and how much he seemed to remain a down-to-earth guy. I'd say (as a compliment to both men) that he was the Will Smith of his day, except Smith and Fox's heydays weren't that far removed - "Family Ties" ran from 1982-89, while "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" ran from 1990-96. And of course, Smith was never diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. The title of the Michael J. Fox biopic on Apple TV...
In retrospect, "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" feels like the true capstone to the Marvel Cinematic Universe up through "Infinity War," because it finally addresses the last loose plot threads left untied after Thanos (and Bruce Banner and Tony Stark) snapped their fingers while wearing the Infinity Gauntlet. Thanos' brief mid-credits appearance at the end of the first "Avengers" film in 2012 obscures the fact that his first full, substantive role was in the first "Guardians of the Galaxy"...
Hoodsport, Union and Belfair’s calendars are active with arts, entertainment and community events in the coming weeks, starting with the Hood Canal Improvement Club’s community market at the New Community Church of Union, at 951 E. Dalby Road in Union on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Kerry Meyers, vice president of the Hood Canal Improvement Club, anticipates one to two dozen vendors, and hopes for clear skies, since that’s enough vendors to fill the church and start to spill outside, even bef...
After members of the Shelton High School Drama Club considered possible plays to stage this spring, they whittled their choices to "Beetlejuice" or "The Addams Family Musical." This illustrates their current mood for black comedy, said Wendy Burr, adviser to the group and an arts and CTE instructor at the school. Burr directs the school's production of "The Addams Family Musical" at 6:30 p.m. Friday, and 2:30 and 6:30 p.m. Saturday in the school's Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $10 for...
'Mrs. Davis' on Peacock I should have suspected I'd encounter this problem with a miniseries co-created by Damon Lindelof. Between co-creating the ultimately disappointing TV series "Lost," co-writing some of the worst installments in the "Alien" and "Star Trek" film series, and helming the controversial TV adaptation of the "Watchmen" comic, Lindelof has a checkered record. But "Mrs. Davis," which he co-created for the Peacock streaming service, came with positive recommendations from folks I...
This past week delivered a season finale, a series finale and a season premiere of a recently revived series, so join me as I reveal some MAJOR SPOILERS while reviewing all three shows. "The Mandalorian" wrapped up its eight-episode third season on Disney+ on April 19, and was followed by "Picard" completing its 10-episode third-and-final season on Paramount+ on April 20. While both shows' most recent seasons were entertaining, well-made and mostly satisfying, I've seen comments online that...
I had intended to see "Renfield" last weekend, with Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult, but since it's not screening at a theater near me yet, I decided to take advantage of this "happy little accident" by seeing "Paint" instead, starring Owen Wilson as fictional pastoral painter Carl Nargle, who is very obviously based on legendary real-life artist Bob Ross, who died in 1995. More than a quarter-century after his death from cancer, it's a testament to Bob Ross' artistic legacy and his aesthetic...
The approach of Easter had me in a kind of contemplative mood, so I finally got around to seeing a documentary I'd first heard about when it debuted in 2012, but which, for whatever reasons, I simply never managed to watch at the time, until I found it on Amazon Prime Video. It's a story for the ages, as an oppressive despot wages war in Eastern Europe, and a decidedly unserious actor suddenly becomes the unlikely voice of an opposition movement fighting for freedom. While it has parallels to...
The biggest mistake the 2000 "Dungeons & Dragons" movie made, even a year before the 2001 release of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," was to try and compete directly with the works of J.R.R. Tolkien. Tolkien was a scholar who researched and curated his own awe-inspiring mythos, but "Dungeons & Dragons," the game, was created by nerds like Gary Gygax, who simply knew they wanted Tolkienesque fantasy, but more of it, so its mythology plagiarized from any set of...
All hail "John Wick, the most perfect unplanned action film franchise ever. With every other series of action films whose sequels were propelled more by the previous installments' unexpectedly outsized and enduring popularity than by any premeditated plots their creators might have had in mind, there is always some misstep, however minor, that the series has to either retroactively erase or else compensate for in the later installments. The "Fast & Furious" franchise has made an admirable art fo...
The ides of March yielded great fun for nerds, with intriguing developments in the third season of "The Mandalorian" on Disney+ and bombastic, mostly all-ages adventures in the sequel "Shazam! Fury of the Gods." Three episodes into its third season, there's less of a sense of urgency to the ongoing plot arcs in "The Mandalorian," which is, I suspect, why they're getting resolved more briskly, to ensure the viewership doesn't succumb to what's already been alleged in the entertainment press as...
In the end, they pulled it off. The problem with measuring any sequel to Mel Brooks' "History of the World, Part I" against the film that inspired it is that Brooks' original film in 1981 somehow managed to feel like much more than the sum of its somewhat uneven parts. In one sense, Hulu's "History of the World, Part II" streaming miniseries, whose debut ran March 6 to 9, learned the best lesson possible from its predecessor's mistakes, because while it spans eight episodes, each one lasts less...
'Star Trek: Picard' Three episodes into the third and allegedly final season of "Star Trek: Picard," and too much of it has already been wasted on recreating the hide-and-seek fight inside of a nebula from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," which seems to be the all-too-obvious inspiration for other key aspects of our protagonist's intended character arc this time around. In terms of pacing overall, this season has already introduced two new adult children of core cast members from "Star Trek:...
Last week saw two compelling releases from Netflix, plus a friend's recommendation of a streaming release that premiered last year, in which the ghost story was the most lighthearted and family-friendly. 'The Strays' The racial commentary of "The Strays" is as confrontational as "Get Out," but stripped of Jordan Peele's satirical edge, while also infused with a distinctly British flavor of internalized racism. Ashley Madekwe plays a dual protagonist role that takes cultural code-switching to...
The third and ostensibly final season of "Star Trek: Picard" premiered on Paramount+ on Feb. 16, but with only one episode released as of press time, I'm waiting for another episode or two to drop because the luxury of a streaming series is that you, the home viewer, can catch up on the episodes that already aired, anytime you want. Fortunately, when "Hello Tomorrow!" premiered on Apple TV+ on Feb. 17, it did so with three of its projected 10 half-hour episodes at once, which is a big part of...
There's a good chance you can soon see Allyn photographer Brent McCallister's work displayed on Belfair Self-Storage's art wall. McCallister and Barbara Treick, manager of the self-storage business, were put in touch with each other by a friend of McCallister's who, like many who know him, has more confidence in McCallister's photographic skills than he does. McCallister told the Shelton-Mason County Journal that his self-confidence and his photographic skills are areas he needs to work on....
It took me a while, in the midst of other assignments and recommendations, but I finally finished watching both seasons of "Reservation Dogs" on Hulu, per the suggestion of reader John Skans, and I find myself wishing I'd made more time for this show before. Like "Northern Exposure" did with its fictional small town of Cicely, Alaska, "Reservation Dogs" depicts the amusing and occasionally discouraging idiosyncrasies of everyday life in its isolated rural community, trading traditional sitcom st...
The last week of January and first week of February saw intriguing variations in the formulae of some weekly TV shows I've recommended in this space before, so I thought I'd touch upon each of them briefly. 'The Last of Us,' Sundays on HBO Season 1, Episode 3, "Long, Long Time" on Jan. 29 began with Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) making their way west from Boston, before it detoured into a 20-year-long, nearly episode-length flashback, fully encompassing the relationship of...
Ever since COVID reacquainted me in 2020 with Peter Falk's "Columbo," I've considered how neat it would be to see the murder-mystery genre diversified by creating a female version of the Columbo character. Until recently, one niche of character portrayals where women have been underrepresented, especially outside of relationship-oriented dramedies, is the "clever mess" category. You'd recognize this character as a man, because he's Hugh Laurie as Dr. Gregory House and Peter Falk as LAPD Lt....
I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about a sitcom that has arguably always been designed to be entirely disposable. I was a huge fan of the original "Night Court," which ran for nine seasons from 1984-92 on what became known as NBC's "Must See TV" Thursday night primetime lineup, and I was far from alone. John Larroquette, who played the unrepentantly randy and acerbic prosecutor Dan Fielding, won four consecutive Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series...
Recommended viewing: 'The Last of Us' on HBO I have noted before that I am not an avid video game player, but I have several friends who are, and they all recommended I check out the TV series adaptation of "The Last of Us" on HBO. I'm glad they did, because what the first episode on Jan. 15 delivered was a genuinely novel twist on the zombie apocalypse genre, that managed to be both surprisingly plausible and all too relevant to our modern era of global pandemics and ongoing climate change....
Writer-director Brion Rockwell knows film, and he knows the Northwest, so he's hoping the next year or two will help him launch his latest in-progress feature films, set in the Northwest, to an audience of his fellow residents, and possibly beyond, starting with a select screening at the Roxy Theatre in Bremerton on Jan. 21. Rockwell boasts a bicoastal film and writing education pedigree, with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from The Evergreen State College in 1990, a Trustee Scholarship...
What occurs to me first, after having watched a sampling of four films by Brion Rockwell, is that some of the best film footage of the Pacific Northwest comes from those who spend just enough time elsewhere to appreciate this region more deeply. David Lynch's childhood began in Missoula, Montana, Sandpoint, Idaho, and Spokane (one of my own early hometowns) before the rest of his youth was spent in the South and Northeast, and he captured this region's flavor flawlessly in "Twin Peaks."...
I'm starting 2023 by recommending a streaming series I was remiss in not reviewing in 2022, even though it was easily one of the best TV shows of last year. "Severance" was the show that persuaded me to subscribe to Apple+, and not only is its first season still available on the streaming service, but it's been confirmed to receive a second season this year. "Severance" is like Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner" if it was remade for the post-COVID era. In an unnamed wintery state, the Eagan busin...
