Reflections on films, politics, and everything else.

Just last night I read a Washington Post article about a woman in Arizona who was told the child inside her, that she wanted, had died. Her choices were to continue with the pregnancy, regardless of the child being dead inside her, have the fetus surgically removed, or take a pill that would cause the fetus to be fully miscarried. She opted for the last choice, but the Walgreens she went to was not obliging, specifically the male pharmacist who refused to service her due to HIS religious beliefs. The fact that a male pharmacist, who will never experience pregnancy, could be so heartless to treat a woman whose just found out that the child she wanted was dead inside her, because his religious views were more important than taking care of a patient in need shows why these so-called religious liberty bills will never work (and also shows he may be in the wrong profession). These growing bills and laws favor the holder of one particular religious view over the other person ...

Normally I’m a believer that if you’re open for business, you’re open to servicing everyone, but that concept is changing for many of us. Thanks to the right-leaning Supreme Court allowing a baker to refuse service to a same-sex couple, supposedly due to his religious beliefs, then why can’t a restaurant owner , who is a conscientious objector to the Trump administration, ask his excuser-in-chief to leave the restaurant? Making discrimination legal and valid in one case just opens the floodgate for more. It’s going to be hard to put this genie back in the bottle. I’m sure the right wing will claim they are only following their deeply-held religious beliefs, but what about deeply-held environmental beliefs, or fashion style beliefs? My experience with religion is that this discrimination won’t stop at LGBTQ individuals, but will soon target women, minorities, people of other religions (ironic, I know), and all sorts of other “others.” After all, look at Mississippi’s HB 1...

I’m old enough to have seen Star Wars: a New Hope in the theaters (not the initial release, but the re-issue a year or two later), and was a fan, mostly more in my younger years. Still, I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Solo after all the bad reviews. Last week I got the timing off and would have had to wait a while to see the film I’d planned to see, so instead I saw Solo and was pleasantly surprised. It won’t be my favorite Star Wars film, but it was rather enjoyable. A film podcast I listen to – At the Movies with Arch and Ann – features Washington Post columnist Ann Hornaday, who had made repeated negative comments about the film and criticized Ron Howard, calling him “workmanlike.” Another listener called her out on that in the recent podcast, reminding her that he directed A Beautiful Mind , Frost/Nixon , and Rush , all great films. Hornaday did agree to that and then went on to blame the screenwriters (Lawrence Kasdan and his son Jon), and made mention that if a ...

Last Friday I did what I do most Friday nights – watch the PBS NewsHour for Shields & Brooks . While mainly I appreciate their analysis, at times, and for me, this is one of those times, I find them out of step with the populace. This has to do with the comments Samantha Bee used to describe Ivanka Trump recently. Shields claimed the word was “nuclear,” and that there was no worse word that could be used in regard to women. My husband had been at a Fringe festival show , so had missed it, and streamed that portion of the show later. I was just as baffled then as I was Friday night, since all I could think about the original phrase was: “yep, that’s Ivanka.” Maybe all those years of Deadwood and the Sopranos have caused me to be immune to the power of such a word. I think I also feel that Ivanka is one of the worst types of hypocrites for women. She’s claims she’s a modern woman and understands working women, yet she lives a completely 1% gilded life. Plus, her ...

If Bill Clinton won’t say it, I will. I’m sorry, Monica Lewinsky. Bill shouldn’t have found it surprising to be asked about the affair in his recent interview with NBC in this era of MeToo . He claimed the event had been litigated 20 years ago and that two-thirds of Americans supported him. That’s the problem – it was 20 years ago. Yes, he is right that he was supported then, and that much of this movement has to do with a predator in the White House whose supporters don’t care how many crimes he has committed or will commit, but Bill should realize that times are different now. I’m different now. I had stood proudly in a northern Kentucky polling station while in college to vote for Bill in 1992, but after way too many real and imagined scandals it all just got to be too much. By 1996, I had moved to Cincinnati and hadn’t realized the timing of getting registered, so I wasn’t able to vote, and wasn’t terribly upset by it at the time. Bill was re-elected, but I was d...