The Krofft Brothers

The Krofft Brothers drove their psychedelic dune buggy right up to the edge of freaky with The Bugaloos in 1970, after toying with televised weirdness with H.R. Pufnstuf the year before. The Kroffts would shift the strangeness into high gear with Land of the Lost four years later. It was almost like my intellectual and creative evolution was being reflected in the shows by these Canadian puppeteers. The Bugs were a mixed band of cheery and playful British human insects who sang tuneful but forgettable songs and battled a whacked out bush named Benita Bizarre -- played by Martha Raye, who never met a scene she couldn't chew to bits. It was all outrageous enough to delight a 12-year-old who had not learned to be annoyed. "Land" was entertaining to a 16-year-old who was constantly finding the everyday world just too "daily" to bear. What was needed was time-travel and parallel universes and nonsensical storylines that replicated an acid trip without the pharmaceuticals. "Land" delivered and negotiated the tight rope well -- neither falling into complete farce nor taking itself too seriously -- at first. It was inevitable that the ridiculousness would spin out of control -- or maybe I just finally grew up.

Lia Kim and cultural appropriation

Questions of cultural appropriation lurk in the wings when Lia Kim does her thing. I think Kim is amazing, and I don't think she's harming Beyonce by choreographing to her music, but some might ask, reasonably, how Beyonce's message about her parentage -- "Negro" and "Creole" -- and some other African American references translates into movement for the Korean choreographer.

Lia Kim choreography to Beyonce's Formation

Da 5 Bloods

Spike Lee might be the most exasperating movie master in Hollywood. His films are important. His vision is distinctively individual. But, while always beautifully shot, his pictures are often excessive, their narratives sprawling. Lee has always staged wonderful set pieces and directs ensembles like few others of his generation, with the exception of Tarantino. I love how characters in Lee's films talk to one another. He delivers exposition through dialogue masterfully. Although he is a true craftsman, perhaps even an auteur, he seems blind (or indifferent) to his indulgences. He clearly loves his work and the work of other great directors, and he loves the messages he wants to convey, but his films, including the new Netflix feature Da 5 Bloods, feel a bit too self-referential and focused on their own cleverness and craft, and that detracts from the work.

In Da 5 Bloods, four black Vietnam vets, with the flinty and troubled Paul (a tremendous performance by Delroy Lindo) in charge, return to the country to recover the remains of a fallen comrade (played in flashback by Chadwick Boseman) and a cache of gold (reparations) they left buried there. The four squadmates (Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis) are joined by Paul's estranged son David (Jonathan Majors) on the excursion. It is here that the narrative gets choppy, implausibilities creep in, and secondary characters and side issues crowd out what should have been more attention to the rudiments of this expedition. Much is glossed over to make room for the interpersonal entanglements and declamations about Lee's most reliable bette noir -- American perfidy and racism.
That is not to say exploring America's mistreatment of blacks has been overdone; in fact, the opposite is true. It's not been done enough, in my view. And that might be why Lee's films feel so overstuffed. He's trying to cover so much ground in a single work that the end result is interesting -- there is no other filmmaker whose work is always worth seeing -- but too often not as enduring or impactful as it might be.

Hoodoo Economics

I don't get economics. I bought this issue when it was first published back in the mid-60s and paid the listed 12 cents. I probably bought a second comic and gave the clerk a quarter for both. In the 50 years since, the price of comics has increased 3,000 percent. Even with the books being really nice and glossy and more substantial how does that price difference make sense? They're not pharmaceuticals! Is it possible that there is no upper limit for the cost of things and at some point in the future we could be paying 40 bucks for a comic book, 15 dollars for a dozen eggs and 75 for a six of domestic beer?