MA RAINEY, MIDNIGHT SKY and TWO 100% NETFLIX SERIES

I'm trying to avoid Trump and COVID-19 for the rest of the year. I saw two films and started watching two Netflix series rated 100% by Rotten Tomatoes:

ROTTEN TOMATOES

Reviewers Audiences My Grade

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom 99 80 C+

Midnight Sky 54 25 B

Travelers 100 97 B+

The Uncanny Counter ? 100 B-

I won't say much about each so you can yourself assess the productions. Plus, I only saw one episode each of those two series.

With such high ratings by Rotten Tomatoes, I'm somewhat shocked that I just did not enjoy Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. The acting was superb. But the whole movie was one-dimensional in many ways.

Viola Davis was commanding as Ma, the female founder of the Blues. But she was so despicable that the mood of the whole show was a downer. The late Chadwick Boseman showed why he will be missed into the future. He showed signs of becoming the next great black movie actor. The usual racial animosities pervaded and the music was so-so.

Conversely, I would not have even bothered to watch Midnight Sky for such abominable scores. But I did because I'm a fan of extrasolar planets. It is entirely possible that if you're not into this subject matter, you too will react as did the RT reviewers/audiences. George Clooney was everything: actor, director and producer. Seven years ago there was Gravity (RT: 95/80) where he also starred. I thought MS had more to offer than that space adventure.

Travelers is a time travel film, with a nice twist. Earth in the future is doomed by something that occurs in our time frame. The technology then is such that they can transpose consciousness to people in the past. Not whole bodies, which makes for greater reality. So several travelers are sent into the body of current individuals, coincidentally all in their twenties/thirties, who were just about to die anyway. The flaw is that they have no memory of that person's past, so acquaintances wonder what is happening. This group, some with greater physical skills, then work as a team to fix the problem. They're doing something right, for the series is into season 3.

The Uncanny Counter is a South Korean effort that on the surface should turn me off. Superhuman strength is afforded to certain individuals to neutralize malevolent spirits. I hate comic book films, and this is one of them. That's why I will refuse to watch the current Wonder Woman. Plus there is a lot of kung-fu-type fighting, which I disdain. Upon observing these defects, I was close to leaving, but stuck around just enough to convince me to watch episode 2. The 100% score, plus that something extra that is special in Korean productions is sufficiently intriguing. However, you would think, though, that they could have come up with a more meaningful title.

I end with just a deviation, a Johnny Carson spoof as President Ronald Reagan with an Abbott and Costello twist and two or three.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 204 to an all-time high of 30,404.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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