Kareem's Weekend Boost (Dec. 17-19)
What to Watch, Read, or Listen to This Weekend
It’s crunch time for holiday shoppers, whether you’re doing it online or in stores. Plus, there’s all the preparation for families descending on each other. So, here I am this week with some de-stressing entertainment suggestions to help you get through it all.
WATCH (movie)
Spider-Man: No Way Home
The only thing I love more than time-travel stories are multi-verse stories in which other possible worlds overlap into each other. There’s something thrilling in seeing a character confront different versions of themself and realize just how narrow our life path is compared to all the possible paths. That’s the basic premise of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the third installment in the latest Spider-Man movie series.
I recently rewatched the three Tobey Maguire versions and found they held up pretty well—better than the Andrew Garfield versions. Tobey’s Spider-Man was just the right combination of nerdy brain, socially inept dork, and insecure-but-committed superhero. But there was a little too much campiness in the side characters like J. Jonah Jamison, the landlord, and others that made it less compelling. Tom Holland’s Spider-Man hits some of those same Peter Parker character notes but everything is much more realistic and believable.
This time, trying to erase the events from the Spider-Man: Far from Home in which his secret identity was revealed to the world, Spider-Man enlists the help of Dr. Strange to hocus-spocus it all away. Of course, things go terribly wrong and the multi-universes collide, bringing back Spidey’s old foes like Dr. Octopus, Green Goblin, and more. It’s all delightful fun filled with nostalgic joys and exciting new twists.
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LISTEN (music)
Jesup Wagon by James Brandon Lewis and the Red Lily Quintet
The gorgeous album cover alone hints at the magnificent work of art that awaits you from these seven tracks and two poems inspired by Black Renaissance Man, George Washington Carver. To create these tracks, saxophonist James Brandon Lewis read biographies of Carver, impressed by the breadth and depth of the man’s knowledge and interests, far beyond what we’ve been taught in school. Carver was also a passionate musician and artist as well as scientist and educator. I find the album bold, celebratory, and joyous.
Here’s “Lowlands of Sorrow” (couldn’t find a video from the album that would play here). The moment you start playing it, your body will begin to move in rhythm.
Here’s an interview with Lewis about the album:
Get Jesup Wagon here.