Friends, tonight the Lewis-Prince household is as polarized as our country. (Too soon?)
Dave: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom feels like a Frankenstein movie, made up of a bunch of different parts that haven’t been sewn together too well. It comes off, for me, feeling a bit like an ABC movie of the week. The opening sequence is a blizzard of questionable eating choices and feels like a microcosm of the rest of the film - we’re taken through several loosely connected scenes in a few minutes and either have to make our own context or subtext become text, with the themes that should be subtle absolutely driven into the ground. Strangely, the movie loses the plot afterwards. While Viola Davis is elegantly arrogant as Rainey and Chadwick Boseman is soulful and haunted, the plot veers from one idea to the text: lesbian love affair, White control of the record industry, casual racism in the northern U.S., the changing social and musical landscape of the U.S., and generational trauma. But it doesn’t linger on most of these long enough for them to translate into a theme; instead, it just feels like a series of loosely connected vignettes searching for coherence. Because each passing idea gets such short shrift, the script has to hammer all the points home, giving the entire movie a telling-not-showing soap opera quality. It’s a shame, since the acting was lovely and any of the underlying stories would have made great fodder for a film. Just not all of them at once. (⭐️⭐️1/2)
With both dried coconut *and* coconut extract, boiled in a caramel-like topping with sugar and butter, I’d have thought this popcorn would have been, well, more coconut-y. Instead the chocolate overpowered everything. I’m not complaining too much - I love chocolate - and I might be partly to blame. I subbed dark chocolate for milk chocolate pieces in the recipe, since I didn’t want the popcorn to be too cloyingly sweet, since Joe has an aversion to sweet popcorns to begin with. Still, it would have been easier to just dump some chocolate and coconut on top of popcorn and call it done, rather than melt and boil butter and sugar. (⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Joe: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom is one of four of Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle plays that I hadn't seen either on screen (2016's Fences) or in the theatre (the other five). Wilson writes for actors, and the acting carries the script. That is certainly the case in this production. Viola Davis turns in one of her most powerful performances - she's both restrained and fiery as Ma Rainey. Similarly, Boseman is stellar. His character's hubris and pain bleeds through every line. Like some of Wilson's other plays (particularly King Hedley II - my least favorite), Ma Rainey drips into melodrama, especially in the overwrought showdown between Levee and Cutler. Even so, the over all impact of the film is unshakeable, and I'd be willing to bet that both Davis and Boseman will receive Oscar nods. (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2)
Coconut is one of my favorite fruits (? idk what it qualifies as), and I'll eat it in pretty much any form - shredded, macerated, chunks, strips. Doesn't matter. Drizzle chocolate over it, and it's a surefire winner. There was no way in Hell's half acre I wouldn't love this popcorn. Not much more to say than that. (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Popcorn recipe from: Popcorn Board
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom on IMDB.
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