Best actor? The octopus
If you are looking for a great film to watch
The Front Page
Evening update
Thursday, March 25, 2021
By Ken Tingley
I’ve become pretty obsessive about watching movies around Oscar time. My ultimate goal is to watch every movie - including animation, international, shorts and documentaries - nominated for an Academy Award before the awards ceremony at the end of April.
It forces me to watch movies I would not normally watch, like foreign films, documentaries and animated features. What I inevitably find are several jewels that will never find their way to the multiplex, especially when it comes to documentaries.
Documentaries get a bad rap.
The average movie goer believes a documentary will be boring. It is exactly the opposite. What could be more exhilarating, inspirational and heartbreaking than real life people and situations.
I’ve already seen five of the seven movies nominated for best picture, but the best movie of the year was not nominated for best picture, it was nominated for best documentary.
If you are going to see any movie this year, sit the family down to watch “My Octopus Teacher” streaming on Netflix right now. Note where the apostrophe is not. That is important. It is the octopus who is professor to a documentary film maker who is burned out.
The stunning underwater photography alone of a kelp forest off the coast of South Africa is a good reason to watch this movie, but the back story of a documentary film maker looking for something missing from his own life is equally important.
For any movie to be successful, you have to care about the characters. That’s where this movie succeeds beyond any other movie this year. We form a bond, a relationship with, yes, the octopus. We care about it and it is clear so does the film maker.
Her life and how she survives in this foreign world is fascinating.
I haven’t watched the other four documentary entries yet, but I can’t imagine any measuring up to “My Octopus Teacher.”
Vaccine Day, Part 2
My wife and I will be getting our second vaccine Friday. We have remained essentially isolated since getting the first one, although we have ventured to downtown Glens Falls and Lake George for walks.
What has been even more encouraging was to see that so many of our friends and relatives - through social media - have also begun the vaccine process.
Vaccine Day, Part 2
My wife and I will be getting our second vaccine Friday. We have remained essentially isolated since getting the first one, although we have ventured to downtown Glens Falls and Lake George for walks.
What has been even more encouraging was to see that so many of our friends and relatives - through social media - have also begun the vaccine process.
