Thoughts on ‘La La Land’.

Last week,  my mom and I ventured to the Drafthouse to see “La La Land”! We were both pretty excited to see this movie, having both been fans of musicals since forever, and well, who doesn’t love Emma Stone? Sorry, I’m not huge on Mr. Gosling (and this is when everyone stops reading).

But anyway, I saw the preview for “La La Land” when I saw “Fantastic Beasts”, and I was immediately hooked. It was clear this was a movie about dreamers, and Hollywood, and entertainment, with lots of dancing – so basically all of my favorite things crammed into a single movie. Yes.

Here’s the plot from IMDB: Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.

There’s absolutely no question the singing and dancing in this movie is ON POINT. And in my wildest dreams of having my life burst into a musical, I couldn’t quite imagine something as fun as the opening scene where people are literally dancing on top of their cars during rush hour in L.A. Fantastic!

But, there were parts of this movie that were difficult for me to see the reality from the dream (I’m sure a purposeful move), but at times that line was blurred between downright ridiculous to serious and nearly depressing.

Many critics named this flick the “feel-good movie of the year”, and while yes, there were many scenes that had me smiling, I left the theatre closer to tears, and not the good kind. I won’t give any spoilers, but if you’ve seen the movie I’d love to hear your thoughts on the ending!

Would I recommend it? Yes – I mean, if you’re a fan of musicals… and dreamers, too.

I also have to talk about “Newsroom”, season three (the final season), because I spent Monday laying in bed watching it, in its entirety.

It took me a year to watch all three seasons of HBO’s “The Newsroom”, and I’ll admit that I wasn’t really that into it during season one. Frankly, it wasn’t that well-written, and it mostly did the same thing all shows about journalists do – romanticized what it’s like to be one.

But, I stuck with it and season two was grittier, and way better. So, I was really looking forward to season three – except for the fact that it was the last season! There was a part of me that was putting off watching it because I knew it would be that much closer to being over.

Season three is sadly only six episodes, though it was clearly written to be an end, and it was definitely the best season of all of them.

I came across a review of the series finale in The New York Times (don’t click that unless you want to know how things end), and it talked about how the series continued to struggle, from day one, with relevancy, given that it was a show about journalists and their battle with the digital change, and the show itself was covering events from two years prior.

On the one hand, covering events that moved us in real life was hook-worthy… but no one’s mentioning the fact that ACN was the worst news network anyone had seen. They were the last to cover any story, because they were stuck behind their desks and not actually out in the world living it.

So, Will McAvoy can be a charming playboy and a witty-one liner news anchor, but the folks typing the crap didn’t have it together – but they sure did have a love for their craft (or the one they were being paid for).

Nonetheless, it was a fun show to watch – because, well, writers are an interesting breed. I’ve heard, though, that people really enjoyed watching “Scandal” instead, soooo… maybe I should add that to my list!