Follow My Playlist: Netflix and Roll

A little over a month ago Chance The Rapper released his third mixtape, Coloring Book, and it’s wonderful. So wonderful he’s going on a Magnificent Coloring World Tour to celebrate and the VIP package includes a limited edition coloring book and crayons. Anyway, in my Coloring Book Top 3 (a thing people are doing on the Twitter but don’t @ me it changes every day), alongside “Summer Friends” and “All Night”, is “Smoke Break” featuring Future. It’s so good I decided to make a playlist around it, one for watching movies with the sound off or otherwise slowing things down.

Movie Log Movie Blog: BLUE VELVET

I didn’t write about any movies in July, but it was the month I watched the most movies in so far this year. That’s partly because the BBC released a 100 greatest American films list, which is interesting on a number of levels, but more so gives me a new list of movies to watch.

I caught up with Robert Altman via McCabe & Mrs. Miller, the epic Nashville, the weirder than expected 3 Women, and the L.A. detective noir The Long Goodbye. I also went back and watched Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather just so I could watch The Godfather Part 2 for the first time, and I marathoned them back to back (for the record,
Part 1 is better). However, I didn’t feel like writing about any of them until I caught up with David Lynch and finally watched his acclaimed 1986 film Blue Velvet — currently streaming on Netflix.

Blue Velvet concerns Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), who has returned home from college to Lumberton, North Carolina to visit his father who has suffered a sudden stroke. Passing through a nearby field, Jeffrey happens upon a human ear, riddled with ants and slightly decomposing. Rather than carry on with his day the endlessly curious Jeffrey bags the ear and heads down to the police station.

Movie Log Movie Blog: WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE?

Even though I’ve been on some no new blog ish lately, I have been trying to get back into the swing of watching lots of movies. For instance I finally went out and saw Mad Max: Fury Road at an Alamo Drafthouse (I suggest you do the same while you still can), and streamed
Edge of Tomorrow on HBO GO (I wonder how many times Emily Blunt had to do the cobra pose as a bewildered Tom Cruise — is there any other kind? — approached).

Also, oddly enough, I’ve seen a few good music documentaries over the last few months. In April I made it through the 4 hour, 2 part
Sinatra: All or Nothing documentary produced by HBO and directed by Alex Gibney; and the other day I revisited Shut Up and Play The Hits, the LCD Soundsystem documentary of their final show at Madison Square Garden. However, this post is about Nina Simone and the new documentary directed by Liz Garbus, produced by and now streaming on Netflix, What Happened, Miss Simone?