Peckerwood Manor

  The holiday movie season officially starts this later this week. If you find yourself fed up with the relatives on Thanksgiving Day or dealing with belligerent shoppers on Black Friday, then head out to the movies. You can deal with outrageous ticket prices and stale popcorn instead. Here are a few of the vanity projects and Oscar bait movies to select from.  Edit: The movies below will be released starting late this week through end December. Maestro: The Leonard Bernstein bio pic that's directed, co-written, and stars Bradley Cooper and his fake prosthetic nose. Bradley desperately wants an Oscar, and this movie is his second shameless attempt to convince everyone he’s the next Orson Welles or Frank Capra.  He's going to be campaigning hard for those Academy votes. The real Leonard Bernstein (left) vs. Bradley Cooper with fake nose: Photo: The New York Times Leave The World Behind: A paranoid thriller about a family who rents a vacation home. Think AirBnB + inte...

Are you watching anything good lately? And do you want to steal all the costumes for your own wardrobe? Me, too! Despite the various strikes having delayed production for new shows - we won't see anything truly spanking-new until spring - there are still some out there worth your time, three of which, in their own ways, are well above average. And get this, they all have something in common: amazing costume designers. First up is "Lessons in Chemistry." As usual with an AppleTV production, it's sumptuously overproduced, which in most instances means a bloated, great-looking show without much of a pulse. It the case of "Lessons in Chemistry," it likely helps that the show is based on a beloved novel in which Elizabeth, a brainiac scientist, finds her gifts ignored by the sexist scientific community in the 1960s, then pivots to become, of all things, a home cooking TV star - and all without sacrificing her nerdcore attributes. Was Brie Larson born to play this...

Have you ever been friends with a narcissistic blowhard? I have been, when I was much younger, naive and susceptible to their charms. Only later did I realize that these so-called friends leeched the energy from every room they entered, dominated conversations with half-truths and lies to prop themselves up, and ensnared anybody within reach in their largely petty dramas. These friends lived for attention, and if you dared to cross them, the backlash could be fierce, especially if they were in your friends circle, which enabled them to turn everyone against you.  Take this basic personality and multiply it to the nnth degree and you have Michael Organ, the subject of "Mr. Organ," a new and genuinely hair-raising documentary by David Farrier, whom you may be familiar with from his previous documentary, " Tickled ," or his documentary series, " Dark Tourist ." Yet nothing Farrier has done before quite prepared me for "Mr. Organ," which begins innoc...

Are you running out of TV? Or more accurately, out of good TV? Then you'll want to know about "Survival Of The Thickest"  (on  Netflix )  and "Platonic" (on AppleTV ), two genuinely funny, though under-the-radar, half-hour comedies, both of which have two key story elements in common: close friendships and career struggles. Nothing new at face value, of course, yet  they explore them with surprising freshness. And, yes, deliciously spiky humor.  "Survival Of The Thickest" stars Michelle Buteau (pictured above), an actress, author and stand-up comic who you've likely seen in countless supporting roles in TV shows, from "Key and Peele" to "Russian Doll," along with her ensemble work in "First Wives Club" and more. Like Judy Reyes , the camera's in love with her, and not only because of her beauty, though that's there, but her unaffected, almost dumbfounding naturalness on screen. You can't help but be beguile...

John Boyega plays a brooding, down on his luck drug dealer who's shot dead at the beginning of "They Cloned Tyrone," a loosely plotted, fitfully delightful sci-fi suspense-comedy which mixes Michael Crichton-type paranoid thriller vibes from the 1980s, a seedy Blaxploitation grind house look from the 70s, along with stiletto-sharp modern satire.  It also has one of the best comic performances of the year from Teyonah Parris, who just about steals the show.  Minutes after Boyega is shot dead, he awakens at home. He wasn't dreaming, we learn, he was cloned, and for reasons too amusing and ghastly to spoil. Some have compared "They Cloned Tyrone" to " Sorry To Bother You ," a masterpiece of social satire and suspense, and though it's not quite as ambitious or as successful, it priorities are also different. More than anything, "They Cloned Tyrone" is out to deliver a groovy good time. If a joke doesn't always land, or a scare is less...

A friend of a friend who has a cousin who has a best friend who knew this guy who dated this girl recommended  Nick Johnson's "Unboxing" series on You Tube. Just kidding. I actually found it when I was on You Tube doing a search on rudest cities in the US and I went down a rabbit hole watching his videos. Nick Johnson's "Unboxing" is series on each US state. He combines history and current facts and presents it with humor and snark over videos that show different parts of the state he's covering.  At the end of each video he sings a parody about the state, usually to the tune of a popular song. Here's the video about Minnesota. He discusses their love of casseroles, ice fishing, their accent and what it's like living in different parts of the state. When I I started watching it, I thought, "hey this dude knows what the hell he's talking about" when it comes to describing each US state, what its like living there, and their funny ste...

Bring tissues. Or pretend you have allergies. Netflix's new "Wham!" documentary charts the stunning worldwide rise of the namesake pop group in the early 1980s - they were the first Western music group in history to play mainland China - and while the story may be familiar to some, it's newly bittersweet given the death of George Michael in 2016. The tone is upbeat - and the hair, all that crazy-big 80s hair! - but the undercurrent is melancholy.  What's new, at least to me, is Andrew Ridgley's role in both Wham and Michael's life. Ridgely has long been written-off as a lucky, semi-useless, hanger-on - by your truly included! - but Michael never would have had any kind of music career at all if it weren't for Ridgely, as Michael reveals in posthumously released audio recordings. It was Ridgely who brought him out of his shell as a child, encouraged his talents and wildest dreams of pop-stardom, and protected him early-on from prying press and fans, sin...