Reviews: "The Fabelmans" and "The Crown"

Before getting to the normal business of this Blog - sports, movie, TV, and book reviews, and obituaries - I need to acknowledge one very important and very personal event that took place one week ago today, on December 3, 2022:

Yep, Linda and I made it official and got married.  There is great joy in our lives.

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Okay, on to the usual business.  It has been awhile since I've offered any reviews for you, so here are two of them.

No movie of 2022 has received as much acclaim and Oscar buzz than Steven Spielberg's "The Fabelmans".  This is a not-at-all disguised biographical piece based on Spielberg's own life as a young kid growing up in Arizona, and being captivated by the movies and the art of making movies as a pre-pubescent child and teenager.  Great artists, we learn, grow up just like real people do.  They go to school, they deal with bullies in school (virulent anti-semites in young Sam Fabelman's case), they have quirky families, they join the Boy Scouts, experience young love for the first time, and, in Spielberg's case, deal with the trauma of broken families.

Throughout it all we see young Sam's development as a film maker as he makes movies with his neighborhood buddies.  Many of the movies that Sam makes are, in fact, the very same movies that young Steven made in his teenaged years.   We have learned over the course of the last fifty years that no one can tell a story on film better that Steven Spielberg, and he tells his own story in just as wonderful a way as he told stories about war heroes, alien creatures, killer sharks, and Abe Lincoln.

This movie stars Michelle Williams and Paul Dano as Mr. and Mrs. Fableman and young Gabriel LaBelle as Sam.  There is also a small but significant appearance by Judd Hirsch.  Williams, I believe, is a lead pipe lock to secure a Best Actress Oscar nomination for this one.  She is terrific in it.

Three stars from The Grandstander.

Season 5 of Netflix' "The Crown" dropped a few months back, and we finally got around to watching it over the past two weeks.   Season 5 has given us a new cast of older actors playing the  main roles.  We now have Imelda Staunton, Jonathan Pryce, Dominic West, and Elizabeth Debicki playing Liz, Phil, Chuck, and Di, respectively.  This season focuses on the travails of the marriage, separation, and divorce of the Prince and Princess of Wales, so, yes, it is very soap opera-y, but a very high class and stylish soap.

Some observations:

• With the exception of the Queen herself, the Windsors are one batshit crazy family.
• Throughout the series, members of the Royal Family, Charles and Diana especially, are shown getting in their cars and driving all by themselves.  No driver, no security guy in the car with them, and no palace entourage following them.    Could this possibly be true?  Do Will and Kate drive around solo today?  (We know that Harry and Megan do when they need to make a run to the local Target in California.)
• Debicki is an absolute clone of Diana, right down to the doe-eyed upward look while her head is bowed downward.  
• One of the best critiques of the show was of Dominic West. "He's way too handsome to play Prince Charles."
• One episode depicted Princess Margaret rekindling her relationship with the true love of her life, Peter Townsend.  The actor playing Townsend looked familiar, but it wasn't until I saw the credits that I realized that it was one-time double-naught spy, Timothy Dalton.  Bond.  James Bond, himself.
• There was a scene in the last episode where Charles shows up, alone, of course, at Diana's place, where she too is alone, shortly after the finalization of the divorce.   They have one of those where-did-we-go-wrong conversations, she attempts to make him an omelet (must have been the cook's day off), screws it up, makes scrambled eggs instead, and they continue their heart-to-heart until Chuck storms off in huff.  It was an interesting scene, but I can't believe for a single moment that any conversation remotely resembling it ever actually happened.
• This season also depicted a warm grandmother/grandson relationship between Elizabeth and William.  I hope that that is true, but at the same time, I find it hard to imagine.
• History has painted Diana as a sympathetic figure, deservedly so, but if there is any truth at all to her depiction in "The Crown", she was as big a screwball as any of the other Windsors.

One more season remains for "The Crown".  I am wondering how forward into history it will go.  My guess is that Season 6 will end with Diana's death, but will they now include an epilog that will show the recent death of the Queen and Charles finally getting to wear The Crown?   We're going to have to wait until next year to find out.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Next up on the streaming circuit: Season Two of "The White Lotus".  We're only one episode in so far.