Time Sure Does Fly, Doesn't It

Here
Miramax (2024)
This movie is not going to be for everyone.  It's the kind of film that I expect most people are either going to love or hate without too much in between.  It has been getting destroyed by most of the critics and audience reviews so far.  It's a shame to see that, but I'm not surprised.

I loved this movie, but it wasn't until around the halfway point that it started to win me over.  If you're patient and stick with it, I think it can win you over too.

Here is based on a 2014 graphic novel of the same name.  It takes place at a fixed spot in New Jersey and shifts through time to show what is happening at this exact location over the years.  Try to imagine an invisible movie camera that cannot be seen or felt in one particular location filming everything that comes into its field of vision for thousands of years before the footage is collected and turned into a video scrapbook which is presented to you out of order.  That's what this movie is.  It shifts between the time of the dinosaurs, to the days when Native American tribes still dominated the continent, to the days of the Revolutionary War, to the days of the Spanish Flu, to the 1940's during World War II, and then through the rest of the 20th century and into the 21'st, to the time of the Covid-19 Pandemic, to the present.  For most of this time, the fixed location is the living room of a home, but the story goes back to the time before the home was built.

The main story involves the Young family.  Al and Rose buy the home when Al is discharged at the end of the second World War.  They have three children, the oldest of whom is a son named Richard (Tom Hanks), who is the star of the film and who starts a family of his own.

There's no getting around the fact that this film is very gimmicky.  The fixed camera doesn't budge an inch until the credits are about to roll.  It continually jumps forwards and backwards in time, with transitions that occur in a way that reminded me a bit of the old picture-in-picture feature that became common in televisions in the 90's.  You'll be watching a scene of something taking place in the 1940's, and then a box will appear in which everything inside the box is from the late 1700's, or the 2020's.  Each of the stories from separate time periods are linear for the most part, so the time jumps take you to an entirely different era.  It's a bit jarring at first, and I probably haven't done the best job in explaining it, but it'll make more sense when you see it.

In addition to this, most of the performances are a bit over-the-top.  It's not done to a ridiculous degree, but it reminded me more of the kind of acting you'd see on stage than in a movie.  To add to all of this, the filmmakers used an AI called Metaphysic Live to show Tom Hanks and Robin Wright as their younger selves.

This is all a hell of a lot to ask an audience to accept, but if you're able to resist the urge to nit-pick at the structure and allow this film to tell you the story that it has to tell in the way that it wants to tell it, its a powerful experience that reminds the viewer that life is short, time flies, and we're all flawed people who have a lot more in common than we think that we do.

The Last Man Standing

Jimmy's Quick Lunch
East Broad Street - Hazleton, PA
Most of the restaurants in my hometown that I went to when I was a child in the 80's and a teenager in the 90's are long gone.  Coney Island closed in 1995 after 73 years in operation.  Knotty Pine closed in 2010, which was coincidentally also in its 73rd year in operation.  Carmen's Family Restaurant was sold in 2007 and closed soon after.  The Blue Comet closed in 2011 after over fifty years in business and has sat abandoned ever since.  The Beltway Diner burned down in 2018.  Two Guys From Italy, Amore's, Rosie's Space, The Copper Kettle, and many others that I remember from growing up in Hazleton are now just a memory.

There are a few restaurants from the 80's and 90's that remain in business today like Eli's, Booty's Place, Top Of The 80's, and a few pizza parlors, but Jimmy's Quick Lunch has a different atmosphere.  It's a feeling that wasn't unique in the 20th century with dozens of mom & pop diners to be found throughout the area, but it's the last of its kind in Hazleton today.

Jimmy's is the only place where I can get a bite to eat and still feel like I'm in the Hazleton that I grew up in.  It looks mostly the same, with the exception of the clear booth dividers that were put up during the pandemic.  It smells mostly the same, with the exception of the absence of cigarette smoke which was so pervasive in town when I was growing up that I didn't notice it at all until it was gone.  It sounds exactly the same, which is a big part of the charm that this place has for me.  Most importantly, the food still tastes the same.  Sitting down to have a meal here is an immersive experience that, for someone who grew up in this town in the 20th century, feels a bit like stepping back in time.

 

The main attraction that has kept people coming back to Jimmy's Quick Lunch for 86 years is the Jimmy Dog.  It's a Coney Island style chili dog topped with their family chili recipe, mustard, and minced onions.  It's not the only thing on their menu, but it's the food that just about everyone from the area will immediately think of if you mention the name of the restaurant.

My dinner of choice at Jimmy's is usually a Farmer's Iced Tea with a cheeseburger, two Jimmy Dogs, and a cup of rice pudding with whipped cream for dessert.  I'm tempted to try something else from their menu every time I come here, and I have strayed on a few occasions (the breakfasts here are outstanding), but more often than not, I end up sticking with my old favorites.

Playing Bob Ross Monopoly With Jar Jar Binks

Heretic
A24 (2024)
Did you ever want to see Hugh Grant whip out a copy of Bob Ross Monopoly and do an impersonation of Jar Jar Binks in an effort to terrorize two young Mormon girls?  If so, the latest horror/suspense flick from A24 is for you.

Heretic is the story of two young women who are working as missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  They have an appointment to visit the home of an intellectual Englishman, and as the poster suggests, this meeting goes horribly wrong.

This movie starts out strong and kept me on the edge of my seat for the first half, but it went off the rails a bit at the middle of the film and didn't stick the landing.  I'm hesitant to go into any further detail as to why I feel this way because it's a film that's worth seeing and I don't want to spoil anything, but I will say that it's a good film that had the potential to be great if it didn't go over-the-top in the second half.

I'm Glad We Didn't Eat This Fine Family

Venom: The Last Dance
Sony Pictures (2024)
This wasn't bad, but I liked the first two movies in the Venom Trilogy more than this one.  I'm sure that I would be able to appreciate the story more if I were more familiar with the comic books.  I had a bit of a difficult time keeping up when it came to the multiple symbiotes, but it was done well enough that it was still enjoyable with my only background knowledge coming from what I could remember from the first two Venom films.

Come With Me And Be Immortal

Tony Todd
1954 - 2024
Actor Tony Todd passed away earlier this week at 69 years old.  The horror icon is most remembered for his starring role as the title character in the Candyman franchise, but his film resume extends far beyond that, including Platoon, the 1990 remake of Night Of The Living Dead, The Crow, The Rock, Wishmaster, and the Final Destination films.  His list of television appearances is equally impressive with roles on Night Court, MacGyver, Murder She Wrote, The X-Files, Hercules, Xena, Angel, Babylon 5, and a recurring role as Klingon Commander Kurn in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

The Birth Of A Nightmare

A Nightmare On Elm Street
New York Daily News (November 9, 1984)
The movie that kicked off one of the most iconic franchise in horror film history premiered in theaters forty years ago today.  It was initially given a limited release to theaters mostly in New York, New Jersey, and California before rolling out nationwide one week later.

I was four years old when A Nightmare On Elm Street was released, so I didn't have a chance to see this at the cinema during its initial run, however I was able to see it projected from 35mm on the big screen in 2021 and 2022 thanks to the Mahoning Drive-In Theater.

The Reporter Dispatch - White Plains, NY  (November 9, 1984)

The Star Ledger - Newark, NJ  (November 9, 1984)

Here are a couple of newspaper reviews from the day that it was released.  William Wolf's review is about as predictable and cliched as they come from a time when critics didn't have the faintest understanding of the horror genre and whose opinions are about as far from the audience as you can get without deliberately trying to be contrary.  Richard Freedman is far more fair to the film, but you have to chuckle at his closing line that the collective nightmare subgenre has "breathed its last".  Keep dreaming bud.

Time Travel With Taco Bell

Decades Menu
Taco Bell (2024)
Since the days of dial-up internet, consumers have been sharing lists of discontinued foods and beverages that they want to become available again.  There have been quite things from the Taco Bell menu that have been discontinued over the years that are frequently mentioned in these lists.  The fast food chain has finally responded to these pleas by bringing back four products from the past for a limited time.

The promotion is called the Taco Bell Decades Menu, which includes the following items representing the decade that they were introduced.

• Tostada: a flat and crispy tostada shell topped with beans, red sauce, lettuce, and cheese.
• Green Sauce Burrito: a soft tortilla wrap with beans, onions, cheese, and Salsa Verde sauce
• Meximelt: a soft taco filled with seasoned beef and topped with pico de gallo and melted cheese
• Gordita Supreme: a thick soft flatbread folded like a taco, filled seasoned beef, and topped with sour cream, lettuce, and cheese

The Patriot News - Harrisburg, PA  (May 6, 1998)

We didn't have a Taco Bell in my hometown until the 90's, so the only one of these that I've had during their original run was the Gordita.  When the product line was first introduced, you could get them either with beef for 99 cents, or you could get either chicken or steak for $1.49.  There were also three choices of how they were prepared: Supreme (lettuce, tomato, cheese, and sour cream), Fiesta (lettuce, cheese, and pico sauce), or Santa Fe (corn and black bean salsa, cheese, and chipotle sauce).

My favorite Gordita from the late 90's was the Santa Fe with either chicken or steak.  In fact, I think those are my all-time favorite food from Taco Bell.  Unfortunately, the only one that was brought back as a part of the Decades Menu is the Supreme Gordita with Beef.  You could always customize your order for an upcharge and swap out the seasoned beef for chicken or steak, but I don't think they have the chipotle sauce or the corn and black bean salsa.  It seems like it'd be an easy enough thing to replicate at home if you want to try it.

I wanted to try everything from the Decades Menu as intended without any customization.  This meant getting my Gordita with sour cream, which I am not at all a fan of.  Seriously, I don't think I've ever eaten anything that had sour cream that wouldn't have tasted better if the sour cream was left out of the recipe, whether you replace it with something else or not.

My favorite out of the four was the Green Sauce Burrito because the Salsa Verde is especially tasty.  The good news is that they have the sauce on the menu all the time, so I'll have to remember to customize my order to include it in the future.  I don't usually get crunchy tacos, but the Tostada was surprisingly great.  The Meximelt wasn't bad at all, but it didn't strike me as anything more special than their regular soft tacos, and the Gordita was good, but it would have been a whole lot better if it was the Santa Fe style.

Finally, there are four different retro style soda cups available at Taco Bell during this promotion.  The one that I got is from the 60's.  I'm not sure who had the bright idea of slapping a large QR code on something that was meant to evoke the restaurant's aesthetic from sixty years ago.  Seriously, when's the last time you've ever actually scanned one of these things?  Oh well... the cup gets an A for the idea, but a D+ for its execution.

The Ghost Of Redbox

Redbox
Turkey Hill - Hazleton, PA
Most of the Redbox DVD rental vending machines have been removed from their locations or turned off with a printed notice taped to the screen to inform customers that the service has been shut down since the company filed for bankruptcy five months ago.  You'd never know that was the case in Northeast PA because we've still got them, and you can still walk up and get a DVD out of them whenever you want.

Judging by the movies that are available to rent or purchase, I'm thinking that this kiosk hasn't been restocked since this time last year.  It'll be interesting to keep an eye on this to see how long it stands as a time capsule to the films of Fall 2023.

If you want any of these movies on DVD in a snazzy Redbox case, get 'em now.

Reflecting On The State Of The Nation

Calvin and Hobbes
Bill Watterson (July 8, 1988)
That last panel really says it all.

Voting and Ice Cream

Churn Out The Vote
Ben & Jerry's (2024)
You can't go wrong with vanilla ice cream with fudge, pretzels, and chocolate moose, but what's written on the outside of the carton is more important than what's inside.

Harris/Walz 2024

At Some Point, You Have To Blame The Sheep

Paul Noth
The New Yorker (August 29, 2016)
The most terrifying thing about the convicted felon who is running for office is the fact that half of the population is some combination of ignorant, greedy, foolish, and/or hateful enough to support him.

173 Days Until Opening Weekend...

...but who's counting?

That's A Wrap On The 75th Year

2024 Staff Party

Mahoning Drive-In Theater - Lehighton, PA
The burn ban is unfortunately still on so we weren't able to have a bonfire like we did last year, but it was still an awesome night of good films, good food, and good friends getting together to bid a fond farewell to another incredible season.

The Galaga Masters Prize

Video Game Masters Tournament prize voucher
Aladdin's Castle (1986)

A photo of a strip of three of these vouchers was shared earlier this year on the Aladdin's Castle Arcades Facebook group by Randy Loose.  In 1986, he won 25 of these (100 tokens) as a prize for winning a Galaga tournament at the arcade.  Man... if I won 100 free tokens at Aladdin's Castle when I was six years old, you wouldn't have been able to sandblast the smile off of my face!

What's In Your Halloween Bucket?

The Halloween season will soon be over and the only seasonal goodies that I've written about so far are the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Werewolf Tracks and the annual Mountain Dew Voo Dew soda.  Instead of dragging this out into the Christmas season, I've decided to lump together all of the spooky things that I've had the opportunity to try over the past few weeks.

Glowberry
Prime (2024)

I'm not sure how to describe the flavor.  I've read reviews where it was described as tasting like green apple, berries, or Jolly Rancher candy.  I'm tempted to say that it tastes a little bit like honeydew, but I'm not sure how accurate that is either.  One thing I can tell you for sure is that it's very good and it doesn't taste like any other beverage I've ever had.

Pumpkin Spice Caramel Creams
Goetze's Candy Company (2024)
I love Goetze's Cow Tails and Caramel Creams, and I put any white girl to shame with my love of pumpkin spice, so the combination of the two is a match made in heaven.  These would have been better if the pumpkin flavor was turned up a bit, but they're still delicious!

Harvest Chews
Tootsie Roll (2024)
I'm not a big fan of chocolate Tootsie Rolls, but I tend to really like their other flavors and this seasonal mix is no exception.

 

There are four flavors in the Harvest Chews variety bag: Pumpkin Spice, Candy Corn, Caramel Apple, and Sweet Cinnamon.  If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be the Caramel Apple ones, but they're all very good... even the Candy Corn one.

Kit Kat: Ghost Toast
Hershey (2024)
These were the Halloween candy that I was looking forward to trying the most this season.

They're getting pretty good at making Kit Kat bars taste like just about anything because these things taste exactly like buttered toast sprinkled with cinnamon, and they're outstanding.  Out of all of the products in this list, this is the one that I think would be a hit if they were available all year long.

Kit Kat: Breaking Bones
Hershey (2024)
They've really got vanilla flavored candy down to a science at Hershey.

Breaking Bones have a very pleasant and creamy vanilla flavor that goes well with the crunchy texture of a Kit Kat bar.  This is the kind of candy that I'd want to have with my morning coffee.

Mini Friends
Kinder Chocolate (2024)
I didn't find these little chocolate vampires to be crispy at all, but they were good.  There wasn't really anything special about the flavor other than the fact that it was a good quality chocolate.  The seasonal attraction here is limited to the cute little vampire wrapper.  The chocolate inside looks less like a vampire and more like a Minion who has had its facial features sandblasted off.

Kit Kat Spooky Break
Nestle Canada (2024)
Our friend Carrie bought these to the drive-in during Monster Mash Weekend and I instantly fell in love with them!

 

Seriously, how could you not love these!  They come in five different shapes: Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster holding a trick-or-treat pumpkin, a witch behind a bubbling cauldron, The Mummy, and a spooky bat hanging upside down.  I didn't get a picture of the bat before all of them were gobbled up, but this is what the other four look like.

There is one thing about this candy that will cause folks to complain, and I can say this from personal experience.  I worked for a number of years for Nestle consumer services.  I began my time there handling inbound calls and emails before moving up to the social media team and eventually to the trainer of the Confections, Baking, and Ice Cream team.

We didn't handle this product, or any other Kit Kat branded products for that matter, because Kit Kat is licensed to Hershey for production and distribution in the United States.  However, in every other country in the world, including Canada where these were produced, Kit Kat is a Nestle product.  Although we didn't have this product stateside, we had something like it.

One of the first things you learn when you work in consumer services for a candy company is that people don't read the package.  One of the lesser known products in Nestle USA's Butterfinger portfolio was a giant candy bar called Butterfinger Pieces In Milk Chocolate.  It's not like a traditional Butterfinger bar.  It's more like a Nestle Crunch bar, but with little bits of the orange Butterfinger center mixed into the chocolate instead of crisped rice.  The overwhelming majority of the consumer contacts that we received on this product were complaints from consumers who were expecting a product with a traditional Butterfinger center.  These complaints ramped up around the holidays because a lot of the more widely distributed Butterfinger seasonal products, such as these Nest Eggs that were sold for Easter, were based on the Butterfinger Pieces In Milk Chocolate recipe.  You can kind of see why people would complain.  If you're just glancing at the bag and not reading the small blue print, it certainly looks like you're buying a Butterfinger, but although the product was pretty tasty, it didn't taste anything like a Butterfinger bar.

These Kit Kat Scary Breaks have the same thing going on.  Their taste and texture is absolutely nothing like a Kit Kat bar.  It has a little bit of a crisp to it, but if you were blindfolded and ate a few of these and I asked you to guess what kind of chocolate candy you were eating, I highly doubt that anyone would say Kit Kat.  If you live in Canada and you still have these in your local stores, try it for yourself and see.  I'd be willing to bet that you could give your subject a dozen guesses in a blind taste test and they wouldn't say Kit Kat.  They're still a very tasty product, and the designs are freaking adorable, but I'll bet that the folks who are working on the consumer services team for Nestle Canada have had more than a few complaints about these.