The Christophers a (near) Masterpiece

 

 

THE CHRISTOPHERS (2025)

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Neon Films, 100 minutes, R (for language)

★★★★ ½

 

There are more than two actors in The Christophers, but it’s really a pas de deux between Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel. This amazing British film sees director Steven Soderbergh turn in one of his most stellar efforts is quite a few years if, for no other reason, he allowed his actors to act with minimal interference.

 The film’s premise is deceptively simple. Two greedy siblings of famed cantankerous artist Julian Sklar (McKellen), Barnaby (James Corden) and Sallie (Jessica Gunning), are trying to get a jump start of their hoped-for inheritance. Julian was unapologetically bisexual, though his most passionate affair involved his gay lover, Christoper. He painted two series of Christopher portraits that wowed the art world and sold for fortunes in the 1990s.

 As Julian aged, though, his star waned, sales dried up, and now spends his days lounging about in his dressing robe, complaining about taxes–though he hasn’t actually paid property taxes in years–and belittling what he sees as the lack of talent of current popular artists. Barnaby and Sallie know there is a third set of Christopher canvases in the attic of his ramshackle London home that he has vowed never to finish. If they can get their hands on the Christophers and hire a forger to “finish” them, they can pay off debts as soon as their dying old man kicks the paint bucket. Alas for them, the only thing Julian despises more than taxes, his failing body, and other artists, it’s his shallow children.

Barnaby and Sallie turn to a former art school friend, Lori Butler (Coel) to “finish” the third set as she knows Julian’s work well and has worked as a legitimate commercial copyist of famous photos. (Think the person who paints the Monets, Vermeers, and Van Goghs that hang above the sofas of people who could never afford original masterpieces.) Lori doesn’t want any part of their scheming and she doesn’t particularly like the money-grubbing Sklar children either, but her own art career is in the doldrums and she needs money. (Not-so-) dear old dad is talked into hiring an assistant to help catalog his work and suggest Lori as an appropriate candidate. The “interview” consists of Sklar’s uninterruptible monologue of his own genius, venomous rants, and, we suspect, his realization that his offspring’s plotting is as obvious as a severed head on a pike. Lori’s first assignment is to destroy the Christophers in the attic, though Lori copies what Julian has done and destroys the copies while hiding the originals.

 Julian doesn’t fall for that dodge, fires Lori, and unleashes a tirade about her unworthiness to even attempt to duplicate his work. He also tells her that he might be old and dying, but he knows how to use Google and that her own work is awful. Lori fully admits her culpability, but as she is leaving, she delivers a learned dissection of why his second series of Christopher was inferior to the first. Julian has a change of heart, shows up at her apartment, and is stunned by her art when seeing it in person. He rehires her and enlists her help in humbling his children. They decide to make the new Christophers into unmarketable equivalents of Elvis on velvet. Julian attacks the canvas with feathers, glitter, glue, slashes, and thrown paint. To his chagrin, he’s incapable of making bad art! He doesn’t spring the trap right away, but, revenge is a dish best served (when the body’s) cold. 

 

Just sayin' 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 McKellen is among the greatest actors of his generation. He is magnificent in his rants, downright scary in his fury, and never breaks character. (He clearly grows fond of Lori, but do you reckon he’ll show it?) Even when he’s just chewing scenery, McKellen’s so good you’ll beg for seconds. Ms. Coel is nothing short of a revelation. She is British-born, but her parents’ Ghanian features– triangular face, high cheeks, and dark skin–look like Ashanti sculptures, and Coel borrows the ambiguous expressions of such pieces. She sees through Julian like he’s an open window, but hides her insights behind a fiery gaze that dissuades inquisitors. Watching her and McKellen on the screen at the same time is a master class in acting.

 The only thing that mars the film is that the parts of Barnaby and Sallie are underwritten. Though the film is a black comedy, Corden and Gunning are more cartoon-like than they need to be.

 

Rob Weir

 

 

Did the Red Sox Err in Firing Alex Cora?

The answer to the above question is yes. I’m a Yankees fan, but even though Cora is a cheater who cost the Yankees a World Series bid in both 2017 when he skippered the Astros and again in 2018 with the Red Sox, but I’d trade Aaron Boone for Alex Cora any day of the week. What made Cora’s cheating all the more galling is that he’s a very good tactician who doesn’t need to cheat. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred chose to suspend Cora for the 2020 season. Personally, I believe he and several others who got off scot-free (hello Jose Altuve) damaged the reputation of the game and should have been banned for five years, but that wasn’t what MLB decided.

 

Move the clock forward. Over the weekend the Red Sox fired Cora and six of his coaches. Cheating had nothing to do with it. Red Sox Director of Baseball Operations–a title to Red Sox use instead of General Manager–Craig Breslow made the call. At the time the Red Sox were in last place with a 10-17 record. To paraphrase an old baseball adage, no team on a long winning streak is as good as they look, nor is any as bad as they look when losing. Maybe you fire a good manager toward the end of the year, but Cora was just 27 games into a 162-game season. By my math he had 135 games to right the ship!

 

Exactly who was calling for Cora’s head on a platter? The Red Sox infamously went 86 years (1918-2004) without a World Series championship. Think of it. Some sources will tell you that the Red Sox have won 9 World Series championships, but that’s funny accounting. There was no American League team in Boston until 1901 and they were called the Americans when they won in 1903. They weren’t the Red Sox until 1908, and didn’t play in Fenway Park until 1912. (Note: Early Boston teams called the Bees, the Doves, Red Caps, Red Stockings, Rustlers, and Beaneaters played in the National League and eventually became the Braves.) During the “live ball” era from 1920 on, the Red Sox won zero World Series championships.

 

The Red Sox had considerable success in the dead ball era, but it was not until the 21^st century it mastered the baseball as we know it today. If we think of a World Series title as the ultimate measure of a manager’s worthiness, there are just three Red Sox managers who can boast such success: Terry Francona (2004, 2007), John Farrell (2013), and Alex Cora (2018). Only Joe Cronin (1071 wins in 13 years) and Francona (744) won more games as a Red Sox manager than Cora’s 621 over 8 years. It hasn’t escaped notice that during his 12-year pitching career Breslow was 23-30.

 

What did in Alex Cora? Not another cheating scandal; it was a relative lack of success with a flawed roster and Breslow’s quick trigger as he seeks to shape the team in his own image.  Thus, he handed over the reins to AAA manager Chad Tracey, the theory being that he managed many of the younger Red Sox players in the minors. To repeat a point I’ve made elsewhere, very few MLB teams (over-) hype their prospects like the Red Sox. They gave big contract extensions to several youngsters before they even made the team. Roman Anthony makes sense, but Wilyer Abreu, Brayan Bello, Kristian Campbell, Jarren Duran, Marcello Mayer, and Ceddane Rafaela? Maybe they will become good players but other than flash some good leather, none of them has yet justified a multi-million contract. Whose idea was it to throw $90 million over five years to Masataka Yoshido? Or to trade Rafael Devers, one of the few players on the roster with power? Who thinks that 5’6” Caleb Durbin is the answer at third? Not the Braves, Yankees, or Brewers who had him in their systems.

 

Don’t get me wrong. Payton Tolle and Connelly Early look like legitimate Sox prospects. Nor should anyone think Garrett Crochet will have a 6.30 ERA by the end of the 2026 season.  Or that the Yankees will continue to win at a .643 clip over the next 134 games. The firing of Alex Cora is a portrait of administrative ineptitude, not of Alex Cora’s ability.

 

Rob Weir

Good Ideas: The Wonder of Stars

When I was in grade school, my Aunt Evelyn took me to Philadelphia to see my great Uncle Dave and Aunt Pearl. My visit involved a trip to the Fels Planetarium. I was, so to speak, star-struck! We went into an old building–allegedly the second oldest planetarium in the US–the lights dimmed, and the only things visible was a projector and the only sound was that of our guide. He took us on a journey across the cosmos, which was decidedly smaller than the one we now know. (Only a few galaxies beyond our own, and no Big Bang, quarks, black holes, telescopes in space, or human space flights.) I was enthralled!

I never wanted to be an astronaut, but going to the Fels and perusing my Great Uncle Dave’s entire collection of National Geographic magazines for articles on outer space was an eye opener. At one point I could look into the sky and pick out a few constellations. (Full disclosure: I never did figure out how anyone could imagine Zodiac figures in the stars.) Many years later, my boyhood met my young adulthood. 

 

The Old Fels Planetarium*

 

My college had several courses for non-majors nicknamed “(fill in the black) for Poets.” To qualify for a teaching license, I had to take one called “Basic Physical Science,” that was divided into three four-week graded units: Biology, Physics, and Astronomy. I took the first two in high school, though I was such a right-brained guy that Mr. Science would have renounced me if I were his only son! The Bio part was boring, but I eked out a C. Physics was another matter. I loved the first week of Chem with my hippie/dippy prof, but then disaster hit in the form of an emergency appendectomy. I missed three weeks of school and flat-out flunked Chem. I needed to have at least a C to get credit for the course. Next up, Astronomy. My boyhood enthusiasm was rekindled and I aced it. My transcript has a C+ for the course, but I’m sure I would have gotten a B or B+ if my appendix hadn’t burst.

Forgive the long intro, but I smiled from ear-to-ear when I read about a local middle school program sponsored by the Northampton Education Foundation (NEF) to interest kids in astronomy. It’s a good idea on its own, but NEF contact [sic] Llama Maynard worked with the middle school’s Matt Heaney on a way to bring a Fels Planetarium-like experience to the kids. Who among us does not love a simple solution to a complex problem? Theirs was a pop-up planetarium!

 

Pop-Up Planetarium

 

A what? The idea was an inflatable dome fashioned from black opaque material. Once blown up it looks a bit like a Coleman tent crossed with a flat-bottomed Hostess Snowball. A slit on one side allows students to enter, take a chair, and enjoy a show like mine at the Fels, except it was brought up-to-date. Kids spoke of the excitement of seeing a supernova, learning how galaxies formed, and traveling through Saturn’s rings. They even witnessed a simulation of the Big Bang. Now that’s creative teaching for impressionable young folks.

Who knows what they will carry with them from the experience. An uptick in telescope sales? An obsession with star charts? Future space voyagers? I’m still not going up there until science builds something akin to the Star Trek Enterprise. But if the planetarium experience sticks and inspires some young “poet” to get a good grade in a college science class, the pop-up planetarium will have been a very good idea!

 

Rob Weir

 

* I may be wrong, but I believe the old Fels was abandoned and that the new one is inside of the Franklin Institute.