Friends With Money – From Spring 2006

Friends With Money – Spring 2006

Review originally published in NCC’s The Vignette 

(This review has been updated with better grammar from the originally published version. Significant changes are noted with strikethroughs and/or asterisks. Updated and additional notes are further below.)

"Friends With Money is a difficult movie to absorb. There are so many layers. It is not a feel-good movie. It is not a typical comedy. It does have heart and the largest dose of truth I have seen in a long time. Even though the target demographic seems to be ages 30-45, I can appreciate its messages. (Me being so young, hyperbolic, and confident but kinda wrong here. LOL.)

Three friends are rich (Catherine Keener, Joan Cusack, and Frances McDormand) and married. One friend (Jennifer Aniston) is single and a maid *house cleaner (there is a difference). Including the husbands and supporting characters, any one of these people *characters could exist in reality. The world of the rich is opened up into a new perspective. The general assumption is that those who have money should be happy. Those with money should have less problems. This movie shows that those who have money are still human. Their problems are only different and *that emotions are *still universal. It reminds us that money is only material.

Previously Published With Updates: A Walk Down Critical Lane

This is an introduction to my next series of blog posts. 

In the Spring of 2006 semester at Nassau Community College, I was The Vignette's movie critic. I continued writing reviews when I transferred to Stony Brook University for The Statesman from the Fall of 2006 semester through the Spring of 2008 (including a break while I finished writing my Senior Thesis about remakes). 

While attending the University of Miami for graduate school from 2009 to 2011, I didn't write for the school paper because I was too busy writing essays for courses and my Thesis, You Only Live Twice: The Representation of the Afterlife in Film - which was formally published in August 2011 (after an initially failed draft from May that had to be 75% rewritten and 100% restructured - inspired by a book in my closet while packing to return to New York). 

From 2012 to 2014, I was writing for my own two separate blogs. One was called You Only Live Twice: Afterlife Cinema as a way to keep building upon my graduate thesis. And the other was on the HubPages.com platform. 

Upon taking the paralegal job for the entertainment law firm in Winter of 2015, I took down all of my blog posts to prevent any conflict of interest with the firm's clients. It was heartbreaking but also helped me start this new career chapter with a fresh mindset. And I did not continue writing while working at SAG-AFTRA. 

That's 5 1/2 years without writing after having written continuously for 10 years.

When I was let go from my highly-beloved and hard-earned position at SAG-AFTRA on August 5, 2020 because of staff reductions, a bright light in that dark tunnel was realizing I can start writing again! And I did by creating this AJS Entertainment Appreciation Blog in October 2020. It's been even more so personally rewarding this time around. 

And now it is August 4, 2021. 

I am two days away from my ten year anniversary of publishing my Afterlife thesis (which has been downloaded over 2,600 times!). I am one day away from my one year anniversary of getting that devastating call from HR. And to honor these anniversaries, I will be republishing some of my choice posts from the Afterlife Cinema blog, from the HubPages blog, from my reviews at The Statesman and The Vignette, and for the first time ever to publish not only my undergraduate thesis, Western European Films and Their American Remakes, but also course papers and their grades! Any updates will be noted whether that's related to grammar or opinion.

There is no determined order for republishing posts at this time. But one in particular is set for the morning of August 11th. It will be a paper I wrote for NCC's Film Appreciation Course, taught by Professor Deirdre O'Connor. Because the previous night (Aug. 10th), her first feature film starring the late Danny Aiello will have premiered at the Long Island International Film Expo called, One Moment. Not only did I help judge the festival from 2012 to 2014, but I was the signatory business rep assigned to work with Professor O'Connor through the SAG-AFTRA clearance process. I am incredibly grateful for her class as being one of the main influences of my education and career in entertainment/film criticism. And to be honest, this blog's title of "Appreciation" is part ode to her and that course! 

I welcome you to join me along this walk down critical lane! 

CELEBRITY INTERVIEWING: CONCLUSION

This Celebrity Interviewing Series may have taken a few months more than expected to complete, but I couldn’t be prouder of the final edited posts here! 

(Unfortunately, I couldn’t get around to including more foreign examples and red-carpet interviews. This may be something to do at a later time.) 

And I couldn’t be more grateful for those who gave their time to speak and correspond with me! Mara Webster, Jenelle Riley, and Bethany Watson, you are some of my greatest heroes! You have wonderfully accomplished careers with plenty still in your futures, but also are genuinely good people who ask your celebrity guests some of the best project/career-focused questions! 

The celebrity moderator is supposed to ask questions of the guest they’d like to know answers to, act as a medium by asking questions on behalf of others (the audience, the forum/venue, the project’s producers, and the guests’ representatives), and also share the space with the guest (but usually not take away their spotlight). The best moderators are able to have a professional but also positive rapport with their guest, know when to be serious or humorous, while also actively listening and appreciating their guests’ answers by keeping the conversation going for whatever running time they’ve been given. 

Plus, a round of applause to the actors I featured in these posts: Michael B. Jordan, Dakota Johnson, Leo DiCaprio, Michelle Yeoh, Rebecca Hall, Jake Gyllenhaal, Nicole Kidman, Steven Yeun, Hilarie Burton Morgan, Sterling K. Brown, Pamela Adlon, Constance Wu, and others! You are all so talented! 

Celebrity Interviewing 105: Variety's Actors-On-Actors Conversations

Awards Season is a time of speculation and competition for those in the entertainment industry celebrating itself. The anticipated nominated persons in film & television all gather at various functions for interviews and photo-ops promoting the year’s works to be nominated and then hopefully win.

For those who work in the business, it’s a small world. So even when working against each other they’re also making connections for future collaborations. They’re all rooting for themselves but have to/should/usually remain at least cordial with and respectful of their peers.

Variety’s Actors-on-Actors series gives actors an opportunity to sit-down with each other, talk about their appreciation for each other’s works, their careers, share some behind-the-scenes stories, and also learn more about each other’s processes.

Celebrity Interviewing 104: Radio Interviewing with Some Advice from Bethany Watson

I think we are all guilty at times of even slightly interrupting someone. Not always because of self-obsession to hear your own voice or not waiting for the other person to finish, but because if we’re having a really good conversation, and points keep getting made that spark more ideas and mutual agreeing, we want to share that enthusiasm in the moment. Essentially, these kinds of interruptions are 'Yes, 100%! And…'.  

When you listen to a conversation on the radio, with multiple co-hosts and guests all expressing enthusiasm for something, you hear everyone talking over each other! Some personalities may like to talk more or be louder than others, but the best radio shows get along like a boisterous family dinner party! There is no such greater example of this than the 25-year running long 4-hour daily program, Elvis Duran and the Morning Show on Z100!

So far in this series of celebrity interviewing posts, I’ve examined some entertainment journalists from various publications, channels, and media formats. The inspiration to now include radio host interviewing only came to me last week. And I am so thankful that former Morning Show DJ Bethany Watson replied to my email with some of her tips for a successful and meaningful radio interview!

(Picture Link Here)

Celebrity Interviewing 103: Daytime and Late-Night Talk Shows

I’ve been jeering on daytime and late-night talk shows a lot in these posts, when compared to the longer entertainment-industry Q&A interview series (like Mara Webster’s In Creative Company and Jenelle Riley’s SAG-AFTRA Conversations). But I do like the daytime and late-night format!

Whether it’s watching a television actor cook their favorite dish, a pop star singing competition the host, or still remembering when Oprah gave away cars to each of her audience members, they are indeed very amusing!

Celebrity Interviewing 102: Moderator Interview Styles (Part D - Jenelle Riley)

One cannot discuss celebrity interviewing without Jenelle Riley. She is (in my humble opinion) one of the best! She can talk to anyone, making them feel welcome, special, and like a real person who just happens to be famous.

According to her bio page on Variety’s website, she is the Deputy Awards and Features Editor, has won two Emmy Awards for “Actors on Actors” (a series I will discuss more in an upcoming post) as well as winning awards for her own short films. As an entertainment journalist she has covered EVERYTHING! Her published articles range from ranking an actor’s best performances to award season predictions to in-depth profiles, and of course, regular movie reviews. In a world with so many click-bait titles, Jenelle refuses to pander so low to readers. Instead, she gives them straightforward phrasing and yet still intriguing descriptions. You don’t have to read them twice just to figure out what she’s going to be writing about, and you don’t need to worry about that one item that is so completely wrong there are 100 outraged and disagreeing comments – which the writer was fully aware would cause that kind of controversy. (Looking at you Buzzfeed.)

Additionally, Jenelle has been one of the few preferred hosts of the SAG and then SAG-AFTRA Foundation Conversations series since 2012. And now that it is hundreds of interviews later, she has become even more of a tireless powerhouse whose passion for the industry has not waned. You can tell in every video interview her guests enjoy speaking with her. Perhaps only other than on James Lipton’s and Sean Evans’ in-depth researched interview shows, she is whom guests share unique memories from their professional lives that you wouldn’t hear elsewhere.

Choosing my favorite career retrospective interviews of hers to examine for this blog post would be impossible. Among the prolific diverse list of videos available on YouTube are all of Hollywood’s elite. So instead, I decided to study every 5^th(-ish) video on the search results list, which in (year release order) are:

1. Leonardo DiCaprio from 2014
2. Michael B. Jordan from 2018
3. Michelle Yeoh from 2019
4. Nicole Kidman from 2021
5. Jake Gyllenhaal from 2013 and then from 2016 to do a compare/contrast

…And, wow, this turned out to be a really great list!