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Closing the doors of the Liberty Theater, clearing the marquee, wiping everything down with sanitizer, cancelling all our film bookings for the time being and issuing notices of postponement for all the live shows we have been planning…none of this is happy work. It is sobering. It wakes you up to the things you took for granted and hope you won’t ever take for granted again. Michael and Cathy Lee Haight, of Dayton, have generously responded to the crisis with a gift of $10,000 to Touchet Valley Arts Council on March 16. This has boosted our sp...
I am a dog fan. The few books I’ve read about the connection between a human and a working dog are especially fulfilling to me. It’s harder for me to read books about rescued dogs that have been abused. Animal abuse is a capital crime in my book. Now Disney (under its newly acquired brand of 20th Century Fox) has successfully brought a new vision to the big screen with Jack London’s classic story of Buck, a big-hearted dog whose blissful domestic life is turned upside down when he is suddenly and brutally uprooted from his California home...
Murder mysteries are a favorite past time of folks in Dayton and surrounding acreage. A hotel here, has sponsored murder mystery weekends for guests and locals to enjoy. Live productions at the Liberty Theater have been known to showcase a mystery or two. And how many of you grew up playing the board game, "Clue"? We do love a mystery. Rian Johnson ("Star Wars: The Last Jedi") has helmed a murder mystery in the film "Knives Out" with an all-star cast–which is something you want if everyone's a...
As a writer, I’m well aware that the most compelling stories–and often the ones most meaningful to witness–are those that are born from personal experience. I want you to know this because the Academy-Award winning film “1917” was written by Director Sam Mendes, based on stories his grandfather told him about World War I. This means that the story has deeply personal meaning for Mendes, as the experience of putting together this cinematic story is rooted in that relationship. Mendes is connected to a generation that proceeds him, but which als...
Louise May Alcott wrote “Little Women” in 1869, in response to her publisher’s request that she write a novel that would appeal to girls. Alcott balked: she herself had been something of a tomboy, and she said she preferred boys. Nevertheless, the finished work was an immediate success. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. It is loosely based on the life of Alcott and her three beloved sisters. In it, Alcott expresses her own temperament through t...
They did a decent job of resurrecting the “Jumanji” film franchise without ruining the loyalty of the original film with Robin Williams. However, Hollywood doesn’t like to do too many things without a sequel…provided the first release did well financially. So, now we have “Jumanji: The Next Level.” In this episode, the gang is back but the game has changed. As they return to rescue one of their own, the players will have to brave parts unknown from arid deserts to snowy mountains, to escape the world’s most dangerous game. Again however, wher...
It’s been a long time since I looked forward to seeing a race car movie like “Ford v Ferrari,” with Christian Bale and Matt Damon. I don’t usually pay attention to car racing anyway. Having a step-father who builds award-winning custom autos has threatened to change my style of late. I’ve grown in my appreciation for the double discipline involved in building special cars: art and engineering. I already knew about Carroll Shelby–the once chicken farmer turned car enthusiast who built a reputation for adding his own special touches to American...
I enjoyed the 2018 documentary film about Fred Rogers - “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” - so much that I was skeptical about bringing in the new film, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks has played so many real-life characters (Captain Phillips and Captain Sully, to name two), that even he got tired of it. He sent out word through his managing agency that he would not look at any more scripts portraying real people. However, he had already met Director Marielle Heller, who got discovered at Sundance in 2012. So,...
Kirsten Bell and Idina Menzel reprise their voice-acting roles as Anna and Elsa in “Frozen 2,” playing at the Liberty Theater, just in time for Christmas break. In this sequel to “Frozen,” Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven leave Arendelle to travel to the ancient, autumn-bound forest of an enchanted land they heard of from their father when they were small. With Arendelle threatened by the four spirits of the forest (Earth, Water, Fire and Air), the groups come to discover the origin of Elsa’s powers - just in time to save Arendelle...
Romantic comedies are popular around the holidays, especially on TV and I’m one of those guys who can happily ignore most of them. But for the big screen this season, Emma Thompson herself has helped pen a new take on the old formula: “Last Christmas,” Starring Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”) and Henry Golding (“Crazy Rich Asians”) as the erstwhile lovers. Kate (Clarke), a wannabe singer, works as an elf in a Christmas gift shop run by a woman who goes by the name “Santa” (Michelle Yeoh, “Crazy Rich Asians”). Kate is detached from her native...
In 1938 Samuel Charles Addams began drawing and publishing a series of single-panel cartoons for The New Yorker magazine called, “The Addams Family.” Meant to be a satirical inversion of the ideal 20th-century American family, Addams populated the cartoon with the kind of dark, macabre characters he favored in his work. The series continued until Addams’ death in 1988. Meanwhile, the characters’ gradually increasing popularity spawned a television series in 1964 and two live-action films – “The Addams Family” in 1991 and “Addams Family Values...
“Ad Astra” is the new science-fiction film starring Brad Pitt as astronaut Roy McBride and Tommy Lee Jones as his late astronaut father, Clifford. The title is Latin for “To the Stars” and points to the perilous journey Roy must make to find out what happened to his father’s doomed expedition 30 years earlier as the first to the outer reaches of the solar system. It’s a journey he must make because the state of literally everything is at stake. What really happened to his father? Roy must try to unravel a mystery and uncover secrets tha...
