Hugh Jackman is nothing but pure joy. That is all. A more extensive review is likely forthcoming when (and if) I ever recover from being utterly awestruck… in the meantime, enjoy these clips and photos.
In sum, know this about The Man. The Music. The Show.: Hugh is living his best inner 8-year-old’s Golden Age-musical-loving life onstage in arenas this summer. And we are all the better for it. His thesis seems to be “reconciliation through culture,” and a more kindhearted and inclusive affair (a loving throwback to sunny variety shows of our youth) you’d be hard pressed to find. Lord knows we all need some vintage TLC these days.
Part autobiography, part greatest hits, part retrospective, part therapy session, this show is all heart. Don’t miss it.
“Some kids play rougher than others,” intones a battle-worn Bo Peep (Annie Potts) to Woody (Tom Hanks), explaining that not every toy has a safe, beloved spot in a child’s play room.
I know someone is going to give me crap for this, but Toy Story 4 is the franchise installment Trump’s America deserves: darker, looser, even more pointedly existential than ever. The series has always had a sadistic tendency to torture audiences with one scene after another of cute, lovable toys in peril (darting through traffic, avoiding incineration, evading plaything-mutilating bullies, escaping the clutches of nerdy collectors), but Toy Story 4, while offering plenty of hair-raising slapstick sequences, has the temerity to ask the most haunting question of all: why are any of us alive?
The tool (no pun intended) whereby our plucky Pixar filmmakers hang the tale is a garbage pail-bound spork whom the film’s young human Bonnie (introduced at the heartwrenching end of Toy Story 3 inheriting Buzz and Woody and the gang from Andy) fishes from the trash to create, with the aid of putty, pipe-cleaners, and craft-store googly eyes, a Kindergarten companion dubbed “Forky.” As voiced with a Dostoyevsky-esque quaver by Tony Hale, Forky is torn between a destiny of disposability and the fact that this little girl has brought him to life as an adored plaything through childlike whimsy and a touch of Dr. Frankenstein hubris.
This is just weird (and welcomed) territory for the series.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
In the midst of Forky’s arrival, it becomes apparent to Woody that his days as a top draw in the play room have come to an end and that his primary mission at this point is to save Bonnie’s heart by keeping Forky from Forky’s more self-destructive impulses. Forky frequently yells “trash” with the longing of a drug addict, hurling himself headlong into any garbage heap he can find. It’s funny. And it’s not.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Along the way, Bonnie’s family rents an RV for a rustic road trip, and Woody and Forky find themselves lost (repeatedly), eventually landing in an antique shop, haunted by a 50s-era “talking baby doll” named Gabby Gabby (a delightfully chilling Christina Hendricks) whose voice box has long ago gone kaput. Her dream, like that of all the characters we’ve met over these four films and multiple spin-off shorts, is to simply have one child to truly love her. She may be the villain of Toy Story 4 but is utterly relatable and darn impossible to loathe.
To the rescue rides Bo Peep and her army of misfit lost toys. Long ago, Bo Peep (voiced brilliantly by Annie Potts, on quite the career renaissance between this and her genius turn as Young Sheldon‘s free-spirited granny) had been given away from the home Woody and Buzz originally inhabited. Sadly, they had all lost track of one another. Bo Peep, in counterpoint to Gabby Gabby, however, finds an owner-less life quite liberating, manning an “underground railroad” of sorts for all of the world’s lost toys, including a charming turn by Keanu Reeves’ as a failed Canadian Evel Knieval knock-off Duke Kaboom.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Toy Story 4 is an odd film and, as a result, may, with time, become my favorite in the series. Yes, there is warmth and nostalgia and a handful of feel-good tears, as expected, but there is also a pronounced, ominous quality, reflective of the free-floating anxiety I think most of us in the world feel these days. When the present is bleak and the future is smoggy, don’t we all just want someone to love us, write their first name on the bottom of our shoe, and believe the sun rises and sets upon us? We sure do. And Toy Story 4 posits that sometimes even that isn’t enough.
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[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
It’s like Elton John said to Bohemian Rhapsody, “Hey, hold my (now non-alcoholic) beer. Let me show you how a biopic of a 1970s/1980s, transcendent, groundbreaking, gay (but sorta conflicted and closeted-ish) rock god should be done.”
Rocketman is transporting, joyous, heartbreaking, bonkers, and damn brilliant.
And if you love Elton John’s music but occasionally have found Elton John himself a smidge unpleasant (as I have), Taron Egerton’s bravura reinvention/translation of Elton John’s essence in the title role will give you reason to love the man again. It’s an Oscar-worthy performance that captures the sense memory of Elton at the peak of his powers while providing a very empathetic yet theatrical glimpse into the insecurity and heartbreak that fueled his greatest work.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
As directed by Dexter Fletcher (ironically, the helmer who came to the rescue of Bohemian Rhapsody when the embattled Bryan Singer walked off the set … too little, too late alas), Rocketman is simultaneously escapist and sobering, a beautifully constructed real-life fairy tale warning us of the false promise of celebrity excess and the corrosive power of self-denial. Oh, and it’s a full-blown g-damned musical with zero f*cks given – no apology, no shame – as a movie about Elton John’s life, depicted in broad operatic strokes, should be.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
The best songs from the storied output of Elton John and lyricist Bernie Taupin (here delicately underplayed by a loving and sensitive Jamie Bell) basically form the blueprint for a Broadway musical anyway. Consequently, re-purposing ubiquitous story-songs like “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road,” “Saturday Night’s Alright,” “Your Song,” or “Benny and the Jets” outside a concert context as integrated narrative commentary becomes a rather effortless exercise. That said, Lee Hall’s script is a thoughtful biographical kaleidoscope, loose on facts and timeline, but laser-focused on allegory and atmosphere, incorporating Elton John’s greatest hits as if they were always meant to populate and propel the arc of the singer-songwriter’s life.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Of course, the costumes are divine and period-specific. I haven’t seen this many marabou feathers, platform heels, and sequins since the heyday of The Match Game. Yet, the film never devolves into camp. This isn’t a movie marginalizing nor ridiculing the extremes of Elton John’s life. This is a film expertly designed to handhold all of its viewers toward greater empathy.
When Elton fearfully confesses his sexual identity to his mother (Bryce Dallas Howard, perfectly fine, but apparently now typecast as cruel, self-absorbed hard-asses until the end of time), she responds, “I know. I’ve always known.” Yet, unlike films with lesser sensitivity toward this particular subject matter, the line is not delivered as a salve to Elton’s broken heart. Rather, it is the ultimate slight, as if she’s saying, “You’ve always been broken.” People may think they mean well with such a statement. Let me tell you, it’s not helpful.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Admittedly, the filmmakers lay on a bit thick how toxic Elton John’s parents might have been. In addition to Howard’s blowsy dragon matriarch, Elton has a frosty, jazz-loving father (Steven Mackintosh) who abandons the family after Elton discovers his mother canoodling with a neighbor man in a sedan parked street-side. Gemma Jones does balance things out a bit as Elton’s sympathetic grandmother, but, at times, the family dynamic in Rocketman seems like cutting room footage from the Harry Potter films of that dreadful, sweaty, sour tribe who foster young Mr. Potter.
Similarly, Richard Madden as Elton’s manager/lover John Reid devolves quickly into Snidely Whiplash mustache-twirling territory in the film’s second act. Thank goodness, Madden has such buoyant gravitas, keeping his portrayal watchable, even as the cliches mount up.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Fortunately, Egerton (Kingsman, Sing) is a savvy enough actor to avoid portraying Elton as a shame-free martyr, embracing the character’s petulant, rage-filled, myopic dark side … and somehow emerging ever more likable in the process. Oh, and he does all of his own singing here, acquitting himself quite nicely with the challenging material
The film is framed by Elton John’s rehab stint in the late 80s/early 90s, and Egerton does a masterful job avoiding the maudlin pitfalls such a set-up could present. Early in the film, a Motown singer for whom Elton is playing keyboards cautions him, “You gotta kill the person you were born to be to become the person you want to be.” I suspect all of us struggle with this existential conundrum in the tricky tension between our personal and professional lives, but none so dramatically nor devastatingly as Elton John. Rocketman walks the tightrope beautifully between reality and parable, leveraging the pinball wizardry of Elton John’s life as a cautionary tale for us all.
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[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).
“If you don’t have anything, you have to act like you own everything.” – Aladdin
“Steal an apple and you’re a thief. Steal a kingdom and you’re a statesman.” – Jafar
“We should only be as happy as our least happy subject.” – Princess Jasmine
(Taken together, all might as well be explaining the current state of world politics.)
I found Disney’s live action reimagining of Aladdin pretty delightful and a welcome, inclusive, and, dare I say, much-needed feminist update of the original. (Note: I liked this spring’s equally critically reviled Dumbo a LOT too, so fair warning.)
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Yes, we all adored Robin Williams, but we forget that he is (arguably) the essential (sole?) reason the original animated film is held in such esteem. I think director Guy Ritchie (Sherlock Holmes) rebalances the proceedings with a well-rounded and integrated effort in his live action remake. Does it occasionally suffer from some TV movie flatness (a la Disney’s own Once Upon a Time or The Descendants)? Maybe. Do the musical numbers look a bit like they were lifted from a 1980s cruise ship commercial? Probably. But on the whole, I thought it was a lot of fun. And don’t get me wrong. I was nuts about the original and saw it about five times in the cinema during my sophomore year of … college. So, yes, I’m a soft touch for this material, and also one who has a well-earned fondness for the original.
Disney’s storied 90s animated output was, on balance, comprised of big Broadway-esque musicals that made it ok for a sh*t-ton of Gen Xers and Millennials to like show tunes, fairy tales, AND cartoons again. The flicks earned oodles of money in process. Nowadays, since just about any movie can be viewed (legally or illegally) on an iPad via YouTube, the idea of Disney “re-releasing” the “classics” from the “vault” via DVD/VHS/carrier pigeon is a quaint memory. Consequently, the Mouse House has to find a new way to monetize their intellectual property for the children of the children of the children of all their original audiences. Hence, remade enterprises like the recent live action Dumbo, the upcoming Lion King, and this Aladdin.
Folks, it’s Disney. If they can wring a nickel out of a t-shirt or doll or knapsack featuring some obscure character from, say, The Aristocats, they sure as hell are going to get another billion dollars from one of their most popular animated flicks of all time: Aladdin.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
The nice thing here is that Aladdin is actually pretty good, a pleasant early summer diversion, that leans into Will Smith’s estimable charms while putting a governor on his out-sized ego and that offers us a forward-thinking story line about people of color living as, you know, people and acquitting themselves with agency and wit and heart.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Even villainous Jafar gets a makeover here. Describing the original animated version of Jafar as ethnic caricature would be … kind. In the hands of Marwan Kenzari, Jafar is still pretty despicable, but with a motivation that is more political than icky-for-icky’s sake and who isn’t as creepily fixated on marrying the unwilling Jasmine. The downside is live-action Jafar is, well, a little bland, not-to-mention kinda pretty, so his menace ends up more subtle than overt. That said, it’s a stronger performance than I think many will initially recognize. (His sidekick parrot Iago is toned down too – nary a squawking voice of Gilbert Godfried in earshot.)
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Our leads Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott as Aladdin and Jasmine respectively are, yes, Disney dreamy, but they also have grit and spark underlying all that glamor. Scott particularly approaches each scene with an unselfconscious irony and fiery whimsy that gives us a very un-princessy princess (blessed be). By the way, in this update, Jasmine is less interested in romance than in being named (rightfully) sultan. Yasss, queen!
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Saturday Night Live‘s Nasim Pedrad is great fun as Jasmine’s confidante and handmaiden, the newly created character Dalia, who suffers no fools gladly either. When Scott steps forth to deliver the score’s one new song, the anthemic “Speechless” (crafted by original composer Alan Menken with an assist from The Greatest Showman‘s/La La Land‘s Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), a star is born, and the Disney princess merchandising machine gets a much-needed shot of #ImWithHer feminism:
I won’t be silenced You can’t keep me quiet Won’t tremble when you try it All I know is I won’t go speechless
‘Cause I’ll breathe when they try to suffocate me Don’t you underestimate me ‘Cause I know that I won’t go speechless
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
In the end, though, Aladdin is still a rollicking fairy tale adventure, and Ritchie paces it as such. Musical numbers? Nah, not his forte, but he makes them work in an insular, oversaturated, Bollywood-lite sort-of-way. The marketplace shenanigans and palace intrigues, however, are all rock solid. Will Smith? Not a singer. But he can move and he lights up a screen like no other. (Robin Williams wasn’t exactly Pavarotti.) In Smith’s hands, the jazzy cut-up “Friend Like Me” gets a Fresh Prince hip-hop makeover, and it works far better than my description makes it sound. No one in the production is taking this material too damn seriously. Shakespeare, it ain’t. And that’s just fine.
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[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
“The measure of a person, of a hero is how well they succeed at being who they are.” – Queen Frigga (Rene Russo) to son Thor (Chris Hemsworth)
“No amount of money every bought a second of time.” – Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) to father Howard Stark (John Slattery)
“You look like melted ice cream.” – Rocket Raccoon (Bradley Cooper) to Thor (Hemsworth again) who has discovered a physique-obliterating love of beer, junk food, video games, and sweatpants
Marvel’s Avengers movies are, yes, about superheroes and, by extension, merchandise, theme park attractions, and an infinitely extendable money-minting film franchise. But they are about something else … and always have been: family. Finding one’s family in the most unlikeliest of places and forging new bonds (Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor), rediscovering and healing one’s fragmentation with the past (Black Panther, IronMan, CaptainAmerica), or redefining one’s destiny and defying the limitations others’ have unfairly or unintentionally imposed (Doctor Strange,Spider-Man, Ant-Man) are all themes that have defined this groundbreaking film series.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
I would suggest that is why last year’s Infinity War with its (one-year-later spoiler alert!) decimation of nearly half the beloved team struck such a chord (and blow) with the general movie-going public. We comic nerds (and anyone who paid half a millisecond of attention to box office returns or awards season nominations) realized there was no earthly way a character like Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) was going to remain “dead.” Nonetheless, we were gutted to see newly arrived fan favorites like Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) or Spider-Man (Tom Holland) erode as pillars of collapsing ash, Sodom and Gomorrah-style, after “Mad Titan” Thanos (beautifully glowering Josh Brolin) snapped his fingers (literally), worked his “Infinity Gauntlet” mojo, and made 50% of all living creatures disappear from the universe. You see, Thanos has an unusual solution for chaos theory and overpopulation: get rid of half of us, re-instituting balance in a world run amuck. I suppose there are worse ideas.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Last year, we viewers were left with the mother of all cliffhangers, and, while Marvel Studios’ unyielding production schedule pretty much spoiled the surprise that the surviving Avengers would find a means to bring their missing brethren back, we didn’t know how and, perhaps more importantly, we didn’t know what this dissolution would do to the Marvel family.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
I won’t reveal the plot of this year’s $1.2 billion (and counting) juggernaut Endgame. To be honest, even if I wanted to detail the 3-hour narrative here, I’m not sure I could unravel the plateful of spaghetti that relies as much on the 21 (!) movies that precede it as it does some rudimentary knowledge of quantum mechanics, bad time travel flicks, and somberly-crafted peanut butter sandwiches.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
And, in the end, it doesn’t much matter. The movie is a marvel (pun intended) because directors the Russo Brothers (no relation to Rene … that I’m aware) are smart enough to pepper the proceedings with brilliant action sequences yet ground the entirety in humanity, heart, and deft character development.
The running time of Endgame never feels gratuitous (other entries in the Marvel franchise have felt overlong and indulgent occasionally). This much airtime is in fact essential to re-engage with our core heroes: Iron Man (Downey, Jr. who started it all with his character’s eponymous debut), Captain America (Chris Evans, long the heart and soul of the series), Thor (Hemsworth who has evolved from pretty dull to pretty comic dynamite), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo, by far the best actor in the bunch who always makes every other performer just that much better in their scenes with him), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson, who, like Hemsworth, found much surer footing as the series proceeded), and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner, more often than not a cipher who truly comes into his own in this latest installment).
No one is given short-shrift here, with emotionally weighty, at times devastatingly heartfelt, denouement(s) that honor all that has come before and set the entire franchise on an exciting and uncharted path. It’s not all doom and gloom as there is plenty of self-referential/self-deprecating wit, with Captain America himself setting off some of the best zingers in the bunch. The whole enterprise is sweet-natured, entertaining-as-heck, genuinely humorous, and damn moving. Trust me, you will be sniffling throughout the last 20 minutes and downright sobbing at the very final scene.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Possibly for the first time ever, it feels like we can expect nothing but the unexpected from Marvel films going forward. It’s a genius move. For over a decade, Marvel Studios president and executive producer Kevin Feige has teased us with his “phased” master plan, all leading up to these final films. All of Hollywood became covetous of Marvel’s “shared cinematic universe” (less artistic envy, I suspect, than material greed … but c’est la vie). (See: DC Extended Universe, Universal’s Monsters Universe … no, better yet, don’t.) We are at Endgame, and, effectively, Feige and Marvel have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, sun-setting beloved canon while simultaneously thumbing their nose at it. The sky’s the limit, so empty your wallets, moviegoers: who knows what’s next?
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[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital).
When the entire universe seems to loooooooove some performer or movie or show or play. And I mean in that show-offy, fawning, “you MUST see … you mean you HAVEN’T seen?!,” clutch the pearls kind of way? I make up my mind that I’m 110% certain I WON’T like it. And I won’t try it. Nope. Not never.
It’s a pretty stupid and annoying personality trait for me to have, TBH.
Thank heavens we have friends like Rob Zannini and Aaron Latham to kick me in the pants (and buy tickets) when I’m being a stubborn idiot.
This brings us to Hamilton, the national tour of which ended its month-long residency in Detroit yesterday (Easter Sunday) at the Fisher Theatre.
You certainly don’t need my validation to tell you the show is well worth the hype. Just ask the American Theatre Wing. Or the Grammy organization. Or the Pulitzer committee. Or that bragging neighbor/coworker/friend who saw it in New York four years ago (and has seen it six more times already).
Sigh. They are ALL spot on.
The show is a brilliant, clever, pointed, sassy, dare I say, frothy overview of the life of spiky, complex, groundbreaking Founding Father Alexander Hamilton (!). And nary a dancing cat or crashing chandelier in sight. “I’d rather be divisive than indecisive,” Hamilton observes at one point. Amen, brother. And, damn, do we need some of that informed moxie in our politicians now (more than ever).
Based on the 2004 biography that turned our collective view of America’s birth on its head, Hamilton gives us a warts-and-all review of the “young, scrappy, and hungry” Hamilton and colleagues like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Burr. Classic musical 1776 also has great fun with the challenges (and infighting) at the beginning of our nation’s great democratic experiment. But Hamilton is less decorous and revels in the raw and ugly street fighting at play. And makes it all seem fun.
Imagine the Revolutionary War staged by West Side Story-era Jerome Robbins, but with the technical wizardry (and turntable) of Cameron Mackintosh’s Les Miserables and a musical score by Stephen Sondheim, Eminem, Kander & Ebb, the Brill Building songwriters, Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Oh, why not throw in a touch of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s and Tim Rice’s Jesus Christ Superstar for good measure. Creator/wunderkind Lin Manuel Miranda wears his influences proudly on his sleeve, openly referencing Broadway’s vibrant history lyrically, musically, visually.
It doesn’t get much more American than that.
Add in color-blind casting and a steampunk approach to costuming and set design, not to mention evocative, lithe choreography (nary a gymnastic tumble to be seen … thank God), and you have a three hour spectacle that never bores for a second and zips by in a flash.
(I would recommend scanning the show’s Wikipedia entry before viewing, if, like me, your memory of American history from your high school coursework is far away in the rear view mirror.)
The first act takes us through the Battle of Yorktown; the second addresses the much messier work of building a new nation, and the spiraling life of a man (Hamilton) who gave far too much to his work and far too little to those who loved him.
Our cast (below) included understudies Tre Frazier and Wonza Johnson in the pivotal Jesus/Judas roles of Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr respectively. They were phenomenal, bringing nuance, empathy, heart, and fire to their depictions.
Other standouts were the commanding and wry Paul Oakley Stovall as George Washington (we had the pleasure to meet this gracious actor and his lovely family after the show – learn more about him here); luminous Stephanie Umoh as Angelica Schuyler; impish and adorable Bryson Bruce as Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson; riotous and effete Peter Matthew Smith as the Elton John-esque King George; and heartbreaking Hannah Cruz as Hamilton’s long-suffering yet stoic wife Eliza. Cruz brings down the house with her turn in the second act, wronged repeatedly by Hamilton’s high-minded, myopic ways. If you aren’t a puddle when she “removes herself from his narrative,” you ain’t human.
Hamilton repeatedly asks the audience to consider “who tells YOUR story?” All I can say is that if someone decides to do a show about my life (cue laughter now), I sure as hell hope Lin Manuel Miranda is still around to write it.
P.S. We ended our day with an astounding dinner at Lady of the House, a Beard Award-nominated restaurant in Detroit’s historic Corktown district. OMG. I’m no “foodie” (reference the sentiments of my opening paragraph above), but this place (veg friendly BTW) is to die for. Our server eventually became accustomed to (possibly amused by?) my plebeian ways. She wanted to “sequence” our “courses” of innumerable shared plates. I wanted a grilled cheese.
Perhaps inspired by the political wrangling in Hamilton, we found our common ground (though I never got that grilled cheese). Nonetheless everything we consumed was out of this world, with locally sourced flavor combinations to knock your socks off. Run don’t walk to this fab, shabby chic establishment. And be prepared to pay a pretty penny. It ain’t cheap, but like the pricey Hamilton, well worth the outlay.
Thank you, Rob and Aaron and our pal Rachel Green for an incredible, enriching Easter in Detroit!
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
…this year, I perceived a seismic shift in Atlanta.
If there is one thing you can count on following the Legal Marketing Association’s annual conference, it is a sparkling flood of think pieces, inspired by a collective gathering of the best and brightest our industry has to offer.
Sometimes, I fear my own conference reminiscences bear the uncanny resemblance to “what I learned on my summer vacation” essays written in grade school days. So be it, as these annual sojourns are among the most energizing three days legal marketers spend each year. A “listen to me, please” summer camp for sharp, creative souls who may spend the other 362 days a year talking lawyers out of sponsoring church basement banquets and holiday baked good distributions.
But this year, I perceived a seismic shift in Atlanta.
I felt like we’d been heard. Solidly. This year, post-conference, I no longer had the urge to complain about being dubbed a “non-attorney.” Nor did I want to tap dance urgently to justify the need for social media in legal.
Perhaps, it’s been this way all along, but this year it seemed like we finally arrived. This year, our capstone session / general counsel panel – rife as always with old saws of “give me value, not trinkets” and “don’t take me to a football game, make my job easier” – added something new: “I don’t just want to talk to your attorneys. I want to talk to YOU. You, legal marketers, with your data, and your insight. YOU … you get my business. Now, can I go home to my kids, please?”
Others have captured the details of the panel, far better than I (here and here). I walked away with sense memory. And a feeling of professional pride, one which, yes, LMA has always engendered, but which arrived this time with no apology nor rationalization.
Yes, true culture change remains mired in what sometimes feels like “death by a thousand cuts” miasma. That’s corporate life. Yet, we left LMA this year with as recognizable a mandate as I’ve heard. As one GC intoned, gesturing to the assembled marketing pros, “I predict this room will double in size in five years.”
That said, here is my obligatory “book report” on what I learned – and what inspired me – at #LMA19:
– We are in an industry in need of radical transformation.
The large consulting firms and other alternative legal service providers will avail themselves of any client frustrations over pricing, transparency, access, and responsiveness to shift clients away from traditional legal services to integrated consultancies. We must pitch as a team with predictable pricing models and measurable outcomes.
–GCs are not interested in being entertained.
They want value add, user-friendly analysis and advice. They get plenty of client alerts. They want insight and anticipation and, chiefly, an understanding of their business priorities. The data is available and apparent. The law firm that will win their business doesn’t invest in tickets or gifts or parties but in actionable intelligence that helps them achieve their business objectives. Do not speak in “if/then” statements.
– The conversation is increasingly occurring online.
Create a digital footprint that is accessible and speaks in the language of the purchaser, not the purchased. Attorney profiles should show expertise and humanity. Furthermore, those purchasing legal services are looking for diversity and representation. They want to see themselves in their legal providers.
–Law school grads are increasingly going in-house for work-life balance.
Money is not their sole draw. With that in mind, these individuals will be making more of the hiring decisions. On average, it costs a company $174/hour for in-house legal counsel. They are also continuing to develop AI solutions. GC is tasked as much with controlling costs as ensuring positive outcomes for their organizations. Transparency of pricing and differentiation of value for increased outsourced cost is essential in order to land business.
So, there you are. My annual tithing to the gods of legal marketing in gratitude for three days that fill my intellectual and emotional coffers for the rest of the year. We legal marketers work hard, play hard, care hard. This year’s GC panel felt like a long-overdue external recognition of that.
It’s nice to have someone else write your “book report” for once.
P.S. I’ve got the best mom. Susie Sexton. Don’t be jealous. Hoppy #Easter!
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
The entirety of the superhero film genre deals with issues of identity and family and belonging. The best entries – Superman, Dick Tracy, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Wonder Woman, Thor: Ragnarok, Black Panther, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – transport us to escapist realms while metaphorically helping reconcile the harsh reality of our daily lives vs. our wish fulfillment fantasy to champion all underdogs and right all wrongs. This disconnect between the inner child who still feels all things are possible and the jaded adult who fears the best of life has passed one by keeps us spinning the wheel at the superhero box office in the hopes of finding our ultimate champion on the silver screen.
And Shazam! comes pretty damn close.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Based on the classic Fawcett Comics character Captain Marvel, Shazam was acquired by DC Comics in a copyright dispute in the 1950s over the character’s (overstated) similarities to Superman. DC, ironically in turn, lost the rights to use the name (but not the character) “Captain Marvel” to Marvel Comics in the 1970s, and Marvel’s version of “Captain Marvel” had her cinematic debut one month ago. Consequently, DC’s “Captain Marvel” now goes by “Shazam,” which in actuality is the magic word young Billy Batson exclaims to become “The Big Red Cheese” Captain Marvel (but we can’t actually call him “Captain Marvel” any more). Clear as mud? Thanks a lot, intellectual property laws. (It’s all explained much better and in much more detail here.)
None of this matters one whit to your ultimate enjoyment of David F. Sandberg’s film treatment of Shazam (which was also a corny Saturday morning Filmation live action series in the 1970s and a Republic serial in the 1940s). For the casual film-goer, the more relevant comparison is to Tom Hanks’ classic comedy Big as a wish fulfillment fantasy of a little boy lost who assumes adulthood (and superpowers) will solve all his real-life problems (spoiler alert: they don’t). Shazam even offers an onscreen nod to Big’s FAO Schwartz super-sized floor piano keyboard duet.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Asher Angel (think young Zac Efron, but a bit less precious) plays foster kid Billy Batson, ever on the hunt for the birth mother he lost years ago at a winter carnival and who mysteriously never reclaimed her son. Batson bounces from group home to group home until he lands at the beautifully blended foster home of Rosa and Victor Vasquez (warm and earthy Marta Milans and Cooper Andrews). Overeager and lonely foster brother Freddy Freeman (It‘s Jack Dylan Grazer in a dynamite and heartbreaking turn) introduces Billy to the nerdy joys of super hero trivia, and, before we know it, flash-bam-boom!, Billy finds himself one subway stop away from the magical “Rock of Eternity,” imbued with magical abilities by an ancient wizard (an almost unrecognizable Djimon Hounsou).
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
When Billy shouts “Shazam!” (acronym of Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury and the respective abilities of each), the young boy transforms into 6’3″ Zachary Levi (Chuck, Tangled, She Loves Me) whose sitcom/musical comedy ethos paired with a physique that now seems to have muscles-on-top-of-muscles makes him the perfect choice for this whimsical hero.
The film is saddled, as are most comic book adaptations alas, with a “take over the world” megalomaniac antagonist. This time, Mark Strong plays Dr. Sivana, and, in his typical glowering skinny/tall-British-Stanley-Tucci-with-dodgy-dental-work-way, Strong meanders about the film, saying vaguely apocalyptic things and shooting energy bolts from his hands. He’s completely unnecessary.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Thematically, Strong’s primary contribution seems to be to further the film’s exploration of family lost and family gained. Sivana’s father is a Lex Luthor-esque SOB, played by the go-to actor for Lex-Luthor-esque SOBs John Glover (Gremlins 2, Smallville … where, in fact, he played Lex Luthor’s dad) whose brutal parenting style predictably turns his little lad into a grade-A psychopath.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Shazam! works best when the film turns its gaze toward the adorable band of misfits in Billy’s foster home. The child actors are loving, lovable, believable, and kind. The challenges Billy endures embracing his new home and relinquishing his dream of reuniting with his birth mother are poignant and accessible and juxtapose nicely with the comic farce of him learning to be a proper super hero. Levi is an utter delight playing a 14-year-old boy in an (overgrown) man’s body, attempting superheroics when all he really wants to do is gobble junk food and play video games. At one point, Batson in his superhero persona observes, “If a superhero can’t save his family, he’s not much of a hero after all.” Amen to that. Amen to that.
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Thanks to my boss Susan and coworker Megan for this! #wishfulfillment
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
“Oh, I went to the emergency room last night. They took me from the veterinarian’s in an ambulance. The EMS boy looked like Aquaman.” – Susie Duncan Sexton
Wait. What?! So began a phone call with my mother about a month ago. To clarify a few things: no, she does not receive her health care AT the veterinarian BUT got light-headed while she was there and, then … nearly passed out. And, no, Jason Momoa is not moonlighting for Whitley County EMS, but my mom is threatening to call 911 again, just so she can hang with the young man who apparently bears a striking resemblance to Game of Thrones’ Khal Drogo.
My mom has gone through a battery of tests over the past month, and the good news is that her exuberance for life and her candor and her irreverence have apparently served her well physically in that an army of doctors have found no issues of concern. As my mother notes, “I don’t want to go into that medical world if I don’t have to.” Who can blame her? I do wish she wouldn’t have such a propensity to read and believe all of the side effects listed on any and all medications, but, hell, that wariness has likely served her quite well in this pharmacologically reckless culture.
What my mother has learned from this experience is that when others don’t listen or behave like outright jackholes, it can cause her to experience justified exasperation to the point of plummeting-elevator-wooziness. I think too many of us are still trying to learnthat lesson.
“At 46, I’m coming to the realization that I want life to be less about ‘stuff.’ I’ve had so much fun collecting and gathering and accumulating, but now it all just feels like a weight around my neck.” – Roy Sexton
Two weekends ago, I went to visit my parents. After her chance encounter with a hunky Momoa-look-alike, life flashed before my mother’s eyes, and she wanted to call a family meeting to discuss our “plan.” Note: we are NOT a “family meeting” kind of family, and we might have “plans” but for some reason we don’t actually share them. We are more of a “something unanticipated just happened so let’s light our hair on fire” kind of family. My mother has always been the one who says the things that need to be said but aren’t always heard. This time, it felt like my father and I stopped being idiots long enough to listen. I was cautiously optimistic that we might talk about what the future could hold. And, then …
“I’m getting up at 10 am tomorrow to take the LaCrosse in to trade for an Impala.” – Don Sexton
Unclear if that was invitation for me to assist in the car-buying process or not, but I volunteered to tagalong on a task that has pretty much eluded me my entire adult life. I inherited a hand-me-down Buick Century from my grandmother when I was in college. My parents were kind enough to buy me a Honda Civic when I was in graduate school. Then, I was wise enough to marry an automotive engineer, and I never set foot in an auto dealership again.
My father used to call on auto dealers across northern Indiana in the late 80s when he was a lending officer for Merchants National Bank. He knows a thing or two about this world; the finer points of operating an iPad may befuddle him but he knows his Carfax from his Kelley Blue Book. Nonetheless, the game of buying a car remains one rife with swaggering toxic masculinity.
“I’m sorry. With whom am I negotiating on this? You or your dad or John,” whined the auto salesman as I handed him my cell phone and asked him to work everything out with an auto engineer stationed at his home computer in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
My father and I both gestured toward the phone and then promptly closed our traps. The best way to cut through toxic masculinity? Introduce a well-informed curve ball who doesn’t cotton to preening peacocks. We walked out of there with a gently used Ford Fusion at a third of the expected price, paid in cash, leaving behind a small army of Dockers-wearing salesmen scratching their heads.
“Good. I’m glad John got involved. He reminds me of me. When he gets to talk about what he loves, he’s unstoppable.” – Susie Sexton, upon our return.
You see, all along, my mom had suggested their ancient Buick LaCrosse needed a retirement. My mom is the one saying, “Can we slow down and just take care of the things we love before time is completely gone?” My mom is the one urging people to live their best lives and to enjoy the moments they are in. My mom is the one asking for authentic conversation that isn’t transmitted via digital device in tweets, texts, and cynical memes.
KNOCK! KNOCK! “We’re at the door here for breakfast and swimming and to tell you our plan.” – my parents at my hotel room door the last morning of my weekend visit. (I may have asked for them to call before heading over … that didn’t happen.)
At some point in the past couple of years, my parents and I transitioned to that mid-stage milestone of the child (gleefully) staying at a hotel when he/she comes to visit said parents. It’s not meant to be rude or controlling, but as one ages, as one becomes set in their ways, as one’s midsection grows more pear-shaped … the idea of retreating to a hotel room, collapsing in a heap, and breathing solitary air at the end of a day’s family visit carries a touch of appeal.
And my parents get to come use the pool like two 12-year-olds who’ve just run away from home.
Here’s the thing: those two 12-year-olds who these days spend as much time plotting each other’s demise as they do reflecting wistfully on their 50 (!) years of wedded “bliss,” came bounding into my room, speaking a mile a minute, finishing each other’s sentences, sharing their “plan” with me. I was half awake and a little cranky, but their zeal was a tonic.
And that plan? It’s a pretty good one. It’s not for me to tell, but I feel good about the future. Possibly for the first time ever. You see, I have a vision of the fun we will have, reminiscent of those special days I lived at home and had nary a care in the world, other than what cartoons were airing on Saturday morning or passing an algebra test. And that vision is shared. That makes all the difference.
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It was quite an honor to offer the keynote address alongside ProfessionalMovers.com’s spectacular Andrew Androff at last week’s Sterling Heights Regional Chamber of Commerce/Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Sales & Marketing Conference. Video of my presentation “How to Win the Room (When You’d Rather Stay Home)” courtesy the lovely Brenda Meller of Meller Marketing: https://youtu.be/xnvDZFDYGI8
I adore Brenda whose kindness and generosity know no bounds. She authentically cares and celebrates. That is a rare quality. And thanks to the equally loving and supportive Heather Morse-Geller who got this ball rolling with a lovely post last year and to my sweet friend Blaine D. Fowler for reading it aloud at this very conference (same day it was posted, in fact, when HE gave the keynote).
Thank you, Melanie Hughes Davis and Sterling Heights Regional Chamber of Commerce for this fantastic opportunity. #BeARoySexton😊❤️
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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
Well, I REALLY don’t understand the critics on this one. Tim Burton’s live-action remake of Disney’s Dumbo is a treat, correcting the dated/troubling politics of the original, expanding the story in logical ways, and making strong declarations for animal rights and compassion overall. My eyes still hurt from ugly crying for two hours earlier today. Highly recommend.
The original animated Dumbo is a beautiful film but deeply odd, held in affection more in our collective foggy sense memory than in the reality of its execution. There is a downright racist depiction of crows as a minstrel chorus (one is even named, yes, “Jim Crow”). Dumbo and Timothy (the mouse) get drunk on champagne and have a hallucinatory trip this side of Woodstock (“pink elephants”). The flick is only 64 minutes long. And there’s an anthropomorphic train (“Casey, Jr.”). Oh, and we all pretty much hate circuses now and the horrors they’ve exacted upon brilliant, beautiful pachyderms over the decades.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
So, as much as I love the original film, and I truly do (in great part because it’s one of those seminal movie-going experiences that shaped a lifelong championing of animal rights and a loathing of bullying of any kind), Dumbo is, in fact, rife for updating and reinvention as Disney continues to strip mine their classic film library to pad quarterly profit earnings … er … expand artistic horizons.
Tim Burton is a director who specializes in Technicolor bad dreams. His relentless storybook/Edward Gorey-book sensibility is a logical fit for a narrative dripping in creepy circus tropes (clowns! leering audiences! mustache-twirling carnival barkers!), focused on the magic of mutant deformation (those ears! that flight!), and the central tragedy of which is the heartrending separation of mother and son (“Baby Mine”). I’ve often found Burton’s cinematic output wildly uneven and maddeningly frustrating with its unrealized potential, but I, for one, found Dumbo one of his stronger efforts in years.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
The script by Ehren Kruger is not terribly inventive but fills out the thin story line of the original with predictable but welcome subplots. The movie’s second half literally bites the hands that feeds in a fairly wicked satire of the antiseptically brutal capitalism of the Disneyland theme park concept itself.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
The cast is a starry array of Burton regulars: Danny DeVito, Eva Green, Michael Keaton (who has developed a lovely niche playing country club sleeze). In that battery-acid tone that is her trademark, Green who portrays a glitzy diva trapeze artist in Keaton’s employ observes: “I am one of many gems he wears to reflect the light back on him.”
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Colin Farrell is in fine form as a widower who returns from the war-front (WWI) sans one arm and with two young children who desperately need him to reclaim his heart and soul. He and his wife had been equestrian performers in DeVito’s shaggy “Medici Bros. Circus,” and Farrell is faced with the economic pressures of reframing his career amidst familial heartbreak. Enter one too-cute-for-words little blue-eyed-big-eared elephant to heal this tiny clan (see: Paddington, Mary Poppins) as Dumbo seeks to reunite with his own mama.
[Image Source: Wikipedia]
Maybe I’m too soft a touch for a movie like this, but any film that ends with as a strong a statement I’ve seen from Hollywood in years that animals (CGI-generated or not) belong in nature and that they should be admired and respected and left alone is a winner in my book. Is it a cliche that pretty much every major character rallies by the film’s raucous conclusion to restore Dumbo and his ma to their jungle lives (save two or three souls who, spoiler alert, are grimly punished for their cruelty)? Maybe. But that’s a cliche I’ll take all day long.
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Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking here (print and digital). In addition to online ordering at Amazon or from the publisher Open Books, the first book is currently is being carried by Bookbound, Common Language Bookstore, and Crazy Wisdom Bookstore and Tea Room in Ann Arbor, Michigan and by Green Brain Comics in Dearborn, Michigan. My mom Susie Duncan Sexton’s Secrets of an Old Typewriter series is also available on Amazon and at Bookbound and Common Language.
Reel Roy Reviews is now TWO books! You can purchase your copies by clicking 
