Movie Desert

These are tough times to be a moviegoer in New Haven, especially if you like smaller movies as I do.

The city’s longtime arthouse theater, York Square Cinema, closed in 2005 after 60 years in business.

But of greater recent consequence was the shuttering of the Criterion Cinemas this past October. The nine-screen theater, which had operated on Temple Street since 2004, was the last commercial movie theater in the city. It was also the only cinema within a 15-mile radius of downtown that shows arthouse movies.

I have a hard time believing that a small theater with a combination of mainstream and independent films, comfortable seats, and advance reservations can’t survive in this college town. But for now, add “movie theater” to the list of entertainment options that have gone by the wayside here.

But maybe I’m just stuck in the past. I remember when film was at the center of pop culture, when going to the movies was a regular night out for people, and when two of the most recognizable faces in the country belonged to a couple of film critics named Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.

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The Best…

…Book I Read This Week

Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever — By Matt Singer

I’m pretty sure that every single American I know who’s my age or older could identify Siskel & Ebert.

From 1975-99, the two rival Chicago newspapermen hosted a weekly TV show on which they reviewed new releases coming to the local cinema. At its core, the program was a reflection of their mutual love of film. But it became a true national phenomenon in part because the hosts frequently expressed genuine hostility, sometimes towards films they hated, often towards each other.

The format was simple. While sitting on a set made to look like the balcony seats of a theater, one host would introduce and review the first movie, showing a clip or two. Then the other would respond, leading to an often contentious few minutes of discussion. Then they’d proceed to the next movie.

At the end the episode, they would recap that week’s selections, noting whether each of them gave the movies a “thumbs up” or a “thumbs down,” a simple (though inarguably reductive) gimmick that helped turn these two schlubs into stars.

I loved watching the show as a kid, even though I could never seem to figure out exactly when or on what channel it was airing. I was always thrilled when I stumbled upon it to hear two intelligent, passionate experts duke it out over whether I should go see these movies. (I probably sided with Roger more often than not.)

At their peak, they were immensely famous, far more so than their weekly viewership — which did number in the millions — would suggest.

Yet assessing their careers in 2023, almost everything about them is comically anachronistic. Consider the following:

• They were film critics.

• They were newspaper writers.

• They got their start on TV at a PBS station in Chicago (despite not being, well, “telegenic”).

• Their influence and viewership dramatically expanded through the proliferation of syndicated cable television.

• Their fame grew through appearances on late night network TV talk shows hosted by people like Johnny Carson and David Letterman.

All aspects of these five bullet points still exist today — film critics, newspapers, PBS stations, syndicated cable television, late night network TV talk shows — but the internet has gravely diminished the impact of them all.

Still, as author Matt Singer writes in Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel & Ebert Changed Movies Forever, the two critics’ fingerprints remain all over American culture.

They essentially invented the now ubiquitous genre of two middle age men arguing with each other on TV. They inspired a great many viewers (including me) to become serious, analytical filmgoers. And they became synonymous with their unique rating system, which, for better or worse, has led us to the Rotten Tomatoes-ization of movie reviews.

Singer’s book tells this unlikely story with respect and humor. No one will confuse it with great literature, but as a piece of 20th century cultural history, I give it a thumbs up indeed.

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…Documentary Series I Watched This Week

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America — Directed by Roger Ross Williams, Yoruba Richen, and Jonathan Clasberry
Streaming on Netflix

Most Americans born here have ancestors or even close relatives who left their homelands to come to this country. As we know, people come to the U.S. for many different reasons. My grandmother and her family, for example, fled present-day Belarus around 1910 to escape the violent persecution of Jews.

There is trauma in fleeing one’s homeland in search of a better life. But I think there’s a different kind of trauma in being kidnapped, taken to a faraway land, and sold into bondage — for those who suffered that experience and for the generations that followed.

It’s an understatement to say that the legacy of slavery in the U.S. has reverberated in all kinds of ways, even today, 160 years after emancipation. Most of those reverberations are painful. But as the Netflix series High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America demonstrates, unmistakable joy and togetherness can be found among them as well.

As the show’s host, Stephen Satterfield, argues, America’s culinary tradition has been shaped, and in some ways defined, by African American food — “from the kitchens of the ‘big house’ to the kitchens of the White House, the frontiers of the wild west to the cobblestone streets of our largest cities.”

With the help of historians, chefs, cooks, and activists, Satterfield traces the history of the African American experience through food across two, four-episode seasons. (The series is based on a book by historian Jessica B. Harris, who also periodically appears on the show.)

Satterfield begins his journey in Benin, where he learns what traditional West African meals were like before the advent of the transatlantic slave trade, then returns to the U.S. to explore how Black food evolved and influenced American culture through the centuries.

In the process, he samples an open hearth mac and cheese recipe in Virginia developed by James Hemings, a French-trained chef who was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson; eats an authentic campfire meal with Black cowboys in Texas; tastes oysters in Brooklyn, while learning about the “Oyster King” of 19th century New York City, a Black restaurateur named Thomas Downing; and has many more unusual and enlightening adventures.

Sometimes the show can feel heavy, as if it bears the burden of slavery and its many legacies. The first episode in particular, during which Satterfield and Dr. Harris visit the Cemetery of Slaves on Benin’s Atlantic coast, is very emotional.

Throughout the show, though, food — and the act of assembling a group for a meal — proves to be a symbol of unity, inspiration, and pleasure that continually uplifts the storytelling and the viewing experience. I recommend it.

Thanks to reader Mark L. for the suggestion.

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…Album I Listened to This Week

History Books (2023) — The Gaslight Anthem

“Where did you go?”
I would say that to myself often
Like I was dressing up for a coffin to lie down in

I can't say I know
I was overcome in the distance
I was lost in my own incidents, in my mind
Were you calling me from outside of a dream?

-The Gaslight Anthem, “Positive Charge”

Like most people, my capacity to accept new music has diminished as I’ve aged, even from artists whose previous work I treasure.

So I’m always surprised when a new album gets under my skin to such a degree that I keep listening to it over and over again, as if I were back in middle school, wearing out my Walkman by absorbing cassette tapes of Guns N’ Roses’s Appetite for Destruction and Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue for months on end.

Such has been the case recently with The Gaslight Anthem’s new album, History Books, which came out this past October.

I’ve always liked TGA, whose best-known songs are probably “The ’59 Sound” and “45”, but I’m admittedly not a hardcore fan.

I think I first discovered them in 2009, when Bruce Springsteen brought lead singer — and fellow Jerseyite — Brian Fallon on stage at a few shows. I dipped into some of their work then and in ensuing years, and I appreciated their blend of emo-punk and nostalgia-infused indie rock. But I don’t think I even noticed when the band went on hiatus in 2015.

History Books, which features a cameo from Springsteen on the album’s title track, is their reunion record and a welcome addition to the catalogue.

The album sounds like TGA — spirited guitar work with energetic vocals tinged with a combination of world weariness and optimism. Yet this batch adds a new maturity and an additional layer of emotional richness, indicating that after going through some grownup shit, songwriter Fallon has happily gotten the band back together to tell us all about it.

These are songs balancing darkness and hope, of characters wrestling with their own hearts and minds, searching for reasons to live and love. And for several weeks now, they represent the only music I’ve wanted to hear.

(For further Brian Fallon research, check out this solo acoustic performance of “Positive Charge” which allows the listener to focus on the lyrics without the electricity of the guitars on the album version; and listen to Yasi Salek interview him on the 24 Questions Party People podcast.)