By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout As the end of hot summer days approaches, it is the perfect time to binge a little on some shows, perhaps during a lazy weekend by the water. Lolling about on a hot afternoon does not mean we have to give up on intellectual prowess, however, so I…
Canadian director Denis Villeneuve has always made interesting films. After his intriguing sci-fi tale Arrival, he was brave and talented enough to make Blade Runner 2049, which is a sequel to the iconic Ridley Scott’s dark vision of an AI-populated future. If you have not seen Dune: Part One directed by Villeneuve in 2021, it…
Long dark evenings are perfect for cozying up with a hot mug in front of a screen, so in winter I went on the lookout for some intelligent mystery and action tales. After trawling through dozens of TV series on half a dozen platforms, I found a few that are a bit more challenging than…
Within one month of its global release, the movie Oppenheimer has grossed $700M in cumulative worldwide box office, making it more successful than Interstellar, the 2014 space movie by the same director, Christopher Nolan. The movie benefited from the social media trend of viewing both Oppenheimer and Barbie on the same day, and word of…
It used to be called counter-programming. Studios would, for example, plan to release a comedy skewed to female audiences on a Super Bowl weekend, reasoning that women who would not want to watch football games all day might want to go with their girlfriends to the movies. No longer. Oppenheimer and Barbie were scheduled to…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout If you, like me, are heading to movie theaters to cool off and to check out the latest blockbusters, you may want to keep in mind that next summer, big-budget movies might be hard to find. On July 13, SAG-AFTRA, the guild of Hollywood actors, announced a strike….
I do not know about you, but I prefer spy and political shows to typical crime shows because they are a little more mentally challenging. A case in point is the first season of the latest, very popular Netflix show The Diplomat (the second season is in production). If you have not had a chance…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout A few weeks ago, we highlighted a few early and interesting contenders for the Best Picture crown at the upcoming Academy Awards. Here we present the remaining candidates following the announcement of the nominations on Jan. 24. EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE This movie is an outlier in…
By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout A few weeks ago, we introduced some new international espionage shows. Two new American spy shows recently got dropped at the streamers, so it’s worth taking a look at those as well. TOM CLANCY’S JACK RYAN, SEASON 3 (Amazon, 2018-) Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan has just premiered its…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout This year, there are hardly any choices of theatrical films to qualify for Best Picture nominations. Current leading contenders in this year’s Oscar race are All Quiet on the Western Front, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as well as Top Gun: Maverick. The last one, already predicted to win,…
By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout For a cerebrally inclined viewer, spy shows have advantages over regular crime series. There is less gore (all those chopped-up bodies and morgue scenes get tiresome after a while), and there are more smart ideas. In celebration of the second season of one of the best spy shows…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Full-length documentaries require what our consumption of entertainment media totally lacks these days—lots of time and patience. We watch short videos on social media and episodes of TV shows, or we check out news videos on our phones. A long, slow art documentary requires an investment of both…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Colder autumn evenings are a perfect excuse for sitting in front of a smaller screen. There are hundreds of choices, from huge fantasy series like House of the Dragon (viewership for each episode numbers in the millions) to popular sci-fi or crime shows on major streaming services. Here…
By Nina Heyn — Your Culture Scout During WWII, Hollywood turned away from hard-hitting dramas toward lighter fare—mysteries, comedies, and musicals—resulting in such classics as The Philadelphia Story, The Maltese Falcon, Meet Me in St. Louis, and His Girl Friday. Perhaps the pandemic offers a similar explanation for the current revival of a genre that…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The Oscar season in Hollywood is like the Baltic sea after a storm, when crumbs of precious amber are churned up to the surface. Various movies that would perhaps go unnoticed at any other time are being re-released and submitted by their producers. That’s how you can discover…
Aerial shot of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. ©Academy Museum Foundation By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout It took years of false starts, changes of leadership, delayed construction, and other birthing pains, but it is finally here—a museum devoted to the craft, art, and history of moviemaking. The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Frank Herbert’s novel Dune was published in 1965, and ever since, entire generations of people all over the world have read the book even if they were not ardent sci-fi fans. Some of them may have even seen the deeply flawed 1984 film adaptation directed by David Lynch…
Photo credit: jovaughn-stephens/Unsplash photo By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout It’s a sign of the times that documentaries now seem to be more interesting than features. While some feature movies this year focus on exceptional situations (such as the last man on Earth’s travels to a polar station, or a moment in history from…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout The 2021 Academy Awards have been moved two months later than usual to April 25, extending the entire awards season to eight long months. Movies are eligible for the 2021 Oscars—as well as numerous other awards (some critics’ organizations, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, etc.)—if released between January 1, 2020…
What we did with Inception for the heist genre is what Tenet attempts to bring to the spy movie genre – director Christopher Nolan By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Tenet was supposed to be a Warner Bros. blockbuster for one of the hot mid-July weekends you might spend in a shopping mall cooling…
By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout A lot of us are still stuck at home, often unable to travel or work. To alleviate boredom, many media outlets recommend shows to watch, but these recommendations usually focus on American TV shows. So, here is a different list. Instead of watching traditonal U.S. cop shows, full…
By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Stuck at home together with the rest of the world we should, theoretically, have lots of free time. It turns out however that a lot of this time is taken up by fixing. We fix our kids calculus assignments, even if our last bout with calculus was decades ago,…
Streaming gems you possibly missed Winter usually does not offer many exciting movies other than the awards heavyweights (where your choices are between equally soul-dampening entries of 1917 or maybe Marriage Story). So… long dark evenings are perfect for some streaming time. Here are some shows that are entertaining, smart, produced around the globe, and…
“In today’s capitalistic society there are ranks and castes that are invisible to the eye. We keep them disguised and out of sight and superficially look down on class hierarchies as a relic of the past, but the reality is that there are class lines that cannot be crossed.” Boon Jong Ho, director of Parasite…
By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout For holidays, we bring our 12 Christmas Movie Gifts – as diverse as a partridge in a pear tree and maids a milking would be. The only criteria for a recommendation were that movies had to be entertaining (a value much neglected in a majority of films) and a…
“Lawyer: Ready to go to war?” Gretchen Carlson: Oh, yeah” – lines from the movie Bombshell By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Charlize Theron is not only a film star (Oscar for her portrayal of a serial killer in The Monster, accolades for her role as Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road) – she…
“Ransom Drysdale: What is this? CSI: KFC?” A line from Knives Out! By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout Our streaming devices are groaning under the weight of choices – movies, seasons of shows, mini-series, documentaries and so on. So many movies, so little time. This is one of the reasons many good dramas or even…
“Think of this as a fairytale that actually happened.” A line from the movie The Laundromat By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout How do you turn a dense literary account of financial (mal)practices into a mainstream movie? Director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic, Erin Brockovich and Ocean’s Eleven series) and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!, Contagion)…
King George V: “Were you effected by the strikes?” The Dowager Countess: “My maid was rather curt with me. She’s a communist at heart.” From the movie Downton Abbey By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Fall is good for fans of enjoyable dramas – summer superhero blockbusters have had their run, everyone is back…
“-David, we have a celebrity here! This Arab writes “Tel Aviv on Fire.” Do you watch it? -Once. It’s anti-Semitic. -With a name like that, did you expect a Zionist show?” Dialogue from the comedy “Tel Aviv on Fire” By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout The pool of independent movies in Hollywood is shrinking every…
“Everybody’s got a hunger, a hunger they can’t resist; There’s so much that you want, you deserve much more than this.” Bruce Springsteen “Prove It All Night” By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout It is not easy to make a good movie about either racial problems or relations with parents. Either they reek of political…
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” – Upton Sinclair By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Living in the past, for instance in the pastoral 18th century – when nature has not been yet destroyed by industrial revolution and global wars have…
“What’s the use of a fine house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?” — Henry David Thoreau By Nina Heyn- Your Culture Scout The movie The Wandering Earth has already made history as the first Chinese sci-fi blockbuster which garnered $650 million in its native country, and marks the Chinese entry…
“Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” Winston Churchill, paraphrasing George Santayana By Nina Heyn – Your Culture Scout Long winter nights are just perfect for plunging into long TV shows brought to your local computer screen by accommodating streaming services. We thought it might be fun to list some…
“It shouldn’t work. It shouldn’t be magic. You shouldn’t weep happy and then sad and then happy again. But you do. And I do. And we all do.” ― Ray Bradbury, The Cat’s Pajamas By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Foreign black and white movies do not find favor with contemporary American audiences. The 2011 French movie The…
“If someone has to commit a crime in order to survive, society must take a look at itself and ask who the guilty ones really are.” Dr. Chen Zuo Bing, director of Kangfu Medical Center at Beijing University Hospital By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Since Marvel superheros and various American action hits dominate movie…
Sir William Cecil: You must confront the truth, madam. She has a claim to your throne. Queen Elizabeth I: You would have me depose a sister monarch. Sir William Cecil: It is either civil war there, or civil war here. From the 2018 movie “Mary, Queen of Scots” By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout The…
“I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.” ~Freddie Mercury – front man of Queen By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Every autumn, various big, showpiece movies that start popping up in cinemas with attendant publicity blitz do not have anything in common other than the fact that they have been groomed…
“Rachel Chu: So your family is rich? Nick Young: We’re comfortable. Rachel Chu: That is exactly what a super-rich person would say.” ~ Dialog from the movie Crazy Rich Asians By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout You don’t need statistics to enjoy a comedy but here it is anyway. There are 637 billionaires in Asia, 594 out of…
“Campaign finance is the gateway to every other issue you might care about – whether it be education or tax reform or foreign policy.” Ann M. Ravel, former chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission. By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Dark Money is a new political documentary that addresses financing for political campaigns at a…
“Debbie Ocean: How long would it take you to make seven pieces of jewelry? Amita: Five or six hours. Debbie Ocean: How long if I told you you didn’t have to live with your mother anymore? Amita: Less.” ~Dialog from Ocean’s Eight By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Hollywood is rocked daily by harassment accusations…
“So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?” Christina Aguilera Check it Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Every May since 1946, the most famous and the most prestigious film festival in the world starts in a small beach resort of Cannes on the French Riviera. Even though there are signs that…
” – 2000 years of revenge, vendetta, murder… -Welcome to Beirut” A dialog in the movie Beirut Check it Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout In the olden days of cinema, circa last century, there have been plenty of political dramas to choose from. You could watch The Deer Hunter about Vietnam War or…
“(The US Banks issued 4.8 trillion in fraudulent mortgages and toxic loans) … but they could not bring them trial because of the institutions were so large and so internationally connected that indicting them could wreck the entre financial system…If you are going pick on a bank, a family-owned company, wedged between a couple of…
“So the Federal Government has armed a cyber terrorist with a digital equivalent of a nuclear warfare. Another fabulous example of your tax dollar at work.” THE BLACKLIST TV show Check it Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout They say that life imitates art but of course much more often it is art that…
“How you live your life is your business, just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now,…
“Ben Bradlee: If we don’t hold them accountable, who will?Kay Graham: We can’t hold them accountable if we don’t have a newspaper.” Dialogue from the THE POST CHECK IT OUT! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout December is the height of the Oscar season in Hollywood and this is when the heavyweight contender movies get…
CHECK IT OUT! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Reading news in the morning and then political or financial commentaries in the afternoon can effectively keep you depressed all day long. So, to cheer everyone up for the holidays, we are offering a list of movies to check out whenever you really feel down, and…
“Thanks to a system of satellites, natural disasters have become a thing of the past. We can control our weather.”~ President Palma in Geostorm Check it out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout As far as disaster movies go, producer/director Dean Devlin comes with a great pedigree. A long-time collaborator of director Roland Emmerich, the…
“Every civilization was built on the back of a disposable workforce, but I can only make so many.”Wallace – a creator of replicants in Blade Runner 2049 Check It Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Space exploration is considered to be potentially one of key industries and investment opportunities in the coming years. For…
“In a few days, there’s going to be this international colloquium. And this place’ll be crawling with rich and powerful people, the world’s leading business people and politicians. – What, four days in the sun and they conclude that global recovery depends on their making more money?” `“The Worricker Trilogy” – BBC TV miniseries Check…
“May be people have kept their patriotism buried for too long” ~Wu Jing in a press interview Check It Out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Wolf Warrior 2 is tearing right now through cinemas in China, making worldwide film history but it is virtually unknown outside its domestic market. It is also a terrific…
“My stress comes from the people who try to not let me do what I want to do. That’s probably why it happens that I’ve worked a few times with a studio, but never for a studio.” ~Luc Besson in Deadline interview July 17, 2017 By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Summer is the time…
Check it out! By Nina Heyn, Your Culture Scout Today, a couple of very different movies about Second World War and how actions of individual, anonymous people could change some big historical events. 13 Minutes is a German movie (subtitles and real German actors, no Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise in sight) and as such…
Food for the Soul Series Check it out: Jack Strong: Movie to Rent “Sovereignty is a word that is used often but it has really no specific meaning. Sovereignty today is nominal. Any number of countries that are sovereign are sovereign only nominally and relatively.” ~Zbigniew Brzezinski – Polish born US National Security Adviser during…
Check it out: [CAF Note: A big shout out for our new correspondent writing under the handle “Your Culture Scout.” They are my best source for great movies, art and music and will be posting great tips in a column called “Food for the Soul” twice a month.] “Knowing is good. But knowing everything is…