Year: 2024

Will & Harper (R)

Will Ferrell and longtime friend Harper Steele take a road trip across America in the sweet, hopeful documentary Will & Harper.

Harper Steele was a Saturday Night Live writer, eventually becoming head writer, with Ferrell and is a writer on many of Ferrell’s more delightfully weird projects like the Lifetime movie A Deadly Adoption, the Spanish-language Casa de mi Padre and the charming Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. In 2022, Harper sent an email to Ferrell and others coming out as a trans woman. The responses, at least from Will, Harper’s sister and others we meet in this doc, were positive — though we learn Tim Meadows’ initial response was based on his belief that Harper was basically doing a bit (which feels like an occupational hazard for those in the comedy universe trying to make any big personal announcement).

Before transitioning, Harper had been a regular cross-country traveler with a particular fondness for greasy spoons and dive bars. Can she still visit these places now, especially with the current political climate of the country? To find out, she and Will hit the road together, well aware that Will’s famous face will smooth the way but also provide her kind of a testing of the middle-American waters.

Often, but not always, what they find is people who are generally welcoming and even touching at times as they explain exactly what they are doing — visiting the kinds of places Harper has always loved now that she’s transitioned. A bar in Oklahoma becomes kind of a love-fest, with a group of Native men singing for Harper. They are given a large welcome at an Indiana Pacers game — but only later do they discover that the governor who was part of the event was Eric Holcomb, signer of anti-trans bills. A steak dinner in Texas gets weird, though the true vitriol seems to come out later online. In fact generally the true vitriol seems to come out online — though Harper points out that that stuff takes a toll too, a garbage bag of insults and smears that she hauls around in her mind all the time.

Talking about things — the struggles Harper has gone through to get to this happier place, her fears, Will’s questions — also makes up a big part of the movie. The two of them talk with a blend of emotional honesty and vulnerability and, of course because it’s these two, pretty solid comic timing. It makes for a sweet rumination on friendship as well as a raw but hopeful look at how Harper found her full self in late middle age. A

Rated R for language, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Josh Greenbaum, Will & Harper is an hour and 54 minutes long and distributed by Netflix, where it is streaming.

Rez Ball (PG-13)

A high school basketball team tries to rally after tragedy in Rez Ball, a winning sports story based on the nonfiction book Canyon Dreams: A Basketball Season on the Navajo Nation by Michael Powell.

Nataani Jackson (Kusem Goodwind) is the star player of the Chuska Warriors, a high school basketball team from New Mexico. He is barely hanging on after losing his mother and sister in a car accident but even his best friend Jimmy (Kauchani Bratt) doesn’t realize how dark a space he’s in until Jimmy and the rest of the team learn that Nataani has died by suicide. They are heartbroken and also sort of lost as to how to continue their season without Nataani.

Coach Heather Hobbs (Jessica Matten, who I last saw in Dark Winds; streaming now on Amazon Prime!) seems a little lost in her own life — recently dumped, looking but unable to find her next-step job. She resets the team, and by extension herself, by reaching out to a former coach (Ernest Tsosie III) and getting the boys to play the quicker-to-shoot and faster-in-general “rez ball”-style game that will help to tire out opponents. Jimmy, deep in grief and dealing with his mother (Julia Jones), who is struggling with alcoholism, is maybe the hardest to bring around but also the player with the most potential leadership ability.

This movie hits many of the standard beats — team working to bring itself back, playoffs, a rival team — but it tells that story with details that feel specific to these characters and their world. And Rez Ball is filled with excellent performances — from small roles, like Dallas Goldtooth (Reservation Dog’s Spirit) as a sports announcer and Ryan Begay as Nataani’s heartbroken father, to Matten and Jones and all the boys on the team. A

Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including suicide, teen drug/alcohol use,language and some crude references, according to the MPA at filmratings.com. Directed by Sydney Freeland with a screenplay by Sydney Freeland and Sterlin Harjo (creator of the excellent Reservation Dogs; go watch Reservation Dogs on Hulu!), Rez Ball is an hour and 51 minutes long and is distributed by Netflix, where it is streaming.

By Any Other Name, by Jodi Picoult

By Any Other Name, by Jodi Picoult (Ballantine Books, 544 pages)

Jodi Picoult does not shy away from heavy-hitting topics. In the same way that she tackles things like abortion in A Spark of Light, teen suicide in The Pact, school shootings in 19 Minutes, and Covid in Wish You Were Here, Picoult dives into the silencing of women today and throughout history in her latest, By Any Other Name.

Many of Picoult’s recent books have frustrated me with their strong political views and cultural commentary, not because I disagree with her, necessarily, but because I don’t want any author’s viewpoints shoved down my throat — put the topic out there and let me think about it. Also, I want my fiction to be a little more fictitious and a little less like I’m reading an op-ed in today’s newspaper.

By Any Other Name explores the history of repressed women in a way that mostly allows the story to do the talking. The book has two storylines: One harkens back to the 16th and 17th centuries and follows the semi-fictional life of a real woman, Emilia Bassano. Based on significant research, Picoult depicts her as a closet writer who is forced to be a lord’s courtesan for many years, then an abused wife for many more — all while writing poems and plays that an actor named William Shakespeare publishes for her under his name.

The second storyline takes place in modern day and follows Melina Green, a playwright who struggles to get her works produced, presumably because she is a woman. This is somewhat proven when one of her plays — about her ancestor, Emilia — finally gets published after its authorship is mistakenly attributed to her best friend, Andre. The irony here is that Andre is gay and Black and far from the cis white male stereotype that Picoult suggests dominates even the modern playwriting field.

Interestingly, given the subject, I felt that Melina and Emilia’s storylines could have been written by two different authors — Melina’s clearly by Picoult, where the moral of the story may as well be bolded, underlined and highlighted. (One of many examples is when Melina is talking to theater critic Jasper Tolle about why plays about “complicated, wholly realized women” don’t make it to the stage. When he says that she’s “painting with a very broad brush when it comes to what gets produced and what doesn’t,” she responds, “That is exactly the kind of thing a straight white man would say,” then waits for him to tell her she’s wrong — “which,” Picoult writes, “of course, would be proof of everything she was alleging.” Tell me, Ms. Picoult, how you really feel…).

Emilia’s story, on the other hand, seemingly could have been written by, well, any other name. Maybe this is a testament to Picoult’s ability to immerse herself in a different time period and develop a narrative based on thorough research, losing her own voice in Emilia’s in a way that she doesn’t with Melina, whose story is entirely fictional. With Emilia, it seems, all Picoult has to do is tell it like it is to get the point across (regarding Emilia’s forced relationship with Lord Chamberlain, she writes that Emilia “had been sold by her family, for her family” — no opinion there, just a fact that speaks volumes).

The difference in storytelling is somehow both fascinating and off-putting.

What I like about Emilia’s story: Emilia herself is a well-developed character whose strengths are best defined in her resilience and her intelligence; she uses both to get her writing in front of an audience, willing to forgo acknowledgment of her work in order to show her words to the world — and to make some much-needed money, as Shakespeare gave her a small portion of “his” earnings.

I also like Emilia’s secret friendship with Christopher “Kit” Marlowe, a well-known Elizabethan poet and playwright who was purportedly gay, a heavy drinker and a spy. Kit is rough around the edges but becomes a great friend to Emilia, adding an unexpected emotional arc and some comic relief. Meanwhile, Emilia’s secret relationship with Southampton is lovely and passionate and shows a spark of brightness that typically lies dormant inside her.

Emilia’s arranged relationship with Lord Chamberlain is not nearly as bad as it could be (as we see later, when she is beaten severely and often by the man she is forced to marry). She isn’t his mistress by choice, but Lord Chamberlain is a kind man, never controlling or cruel, and she benefits from both his wealth and the autonomy he grants her. She is, for those years, “a nightingale in the loveliest of cages.”

Melina’s story, by comparison, is more straightforward, specifically addressing her challenges as a female playwright. Her friendship with Andre is fun and quippy (at least at first), and her interactions with Jasper are intriguing. Her chapters are a breath of fresh, modern air, if you can get past the heavy-handed feminist commentary.

There’s a lot to like in By Any Other Name, but there’s also a lot going on — a lot of characters and a lot of scenes (if this were a play the stage crew would be marathon-level exhausted by the final act).

There were parts that dragged a bit and sometimes seemed redundant, especially in Emilia’s chapters. If I had been able to appreciate more of the Shakespearean references that Picoult weaves into those chapters — as notated at the end of the book — it probably would have enhanced my reading experience. But I’m a former English major who actually studied some Shakespeare (albeit more than two decades ago), so I have to question how much this will appeal to the masses.

By Any Other Name takes the often questioned legitimacy of Shakespeare’s authorship and makes a compelling case while weaving in a modern story that Picoult uses to show how far we’ve come as a society but also how far we have to go. It’s a long but worthwhile journey if you like strong female characters or you’re captivated by the idea that Romeo and Juliet may have been penned by a woman. B+ —Meghan Siegler

Album Reviews 24/10/03


Randy Ingram, Aries Dance (Sounderscore Record

Often, this Los Angeles-based jazz pianist astutely refers to his playing as “dancing,” a descriptor one could toss out to denote any similar keyboard-meister. Other critics have dubbed his playing “strong,” “personal,” “passionate” and “self-possessed,” adjectives that are also generically accurate when one is trying to paint a picture of a pianist whose mastery evokes ritzy ballrooms as opposed to smoke-filled bars. The thing about this swing-influenced fellow is that he’s devoutly determined to match up well with his drummers, in this case legendary Herbie Hancock/Stan Getz/etc. beat-keeper Billy Hart, who at age 83 doesn’t hold back, and in fact, if I’m forced to quibble with any of the soundscaping on this record, it’d be that Hart’s toms are a tad loud in the mix (usual caveat applies: others would argue that it makes it sound more organic). But anyway, yes, it’s livelier than most of the piano-led trios that wander into my mailbox, and the song selections are first-class, from the almost Beethoven-like interpretation of Wayne Shorter’s “Penelope” to the night-cruising original “Para Milton e Pedro,” it’s an exquisitely elegant trip. A

The Disappearing Act, An Illusion (Happiness [A Record Label])

This on-again-off-again indie band hasn’t released an album since Born to Say Goodbye nine years ago. While researching this outfit I had to check out a few D-tier bands that are cited as RIYL soundalikes, one of them being Motorcade, which do sound like this but with a lot spiffier production values (Apples In Stereo are also mentioned, which couldn’t be farther off). But you don’t want to spend the next three minutes getting caught up with bands that have less than 2,500 YouTube listens and I respect that; the long and short of it is that this sounds like a more animated Pavement that’s on Velvet Underground’s plethora of drugs. As such, if you’re like me — an adrenaline junkie with debilitating ADD — you’ll find that it plods along for the most part, you know, strummy-strum-strum, edgy platitudes piled one on top of the other like it’s a competition, etc. The Beck-begging “Why Is Everybody So Damn Happy” is a sentiment that shows the band isn’t paying attention to all the anxiety and self-hatred on social media nowadays; it’s kind of quaint in that regard. Yucky poo. B-

PLAYLIST

A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Onward we slog, me hardies, onward we slog to this Friday, Oct. 4, when new music albums will wash over our decks and near-drown our persons in twerking butt music, poorly written (on purpose, as we’ve seen) indie rock, nepo baby nonsense and probably tons of metal albums, because those guys never shut up, even for a minute. Oh, well, at least it’s Halloween month, and who better to usher in the festivities than British arena-indie legends Coldplay, with their suuuper-scaaary frontman Chris Martin, who was married to the even scaaarier Gwyneth Paltrow for a week or however long it was. As you may or may not know, Coldplay is widely considered indie-rock’s answer to Creed in too-online circles, in other words not too many people take them seriously. However, the band does have a fan here at the Hippo’s front offices (it’s either Coldplay or Five For Fighting, I’m not really sure, but let’s just proceed), so I will be nice and listen to their forthcoming new album, Moon Music, with an open mind and a full bottle of Southern Comfort, because it’s only fair! In case you’re intelligent and ignore celebrity gossip like most people avoid open elevator shafts, things have changed for Chris Martin! After Gwyneth yelled “Seize him!” and her scimitar-wielding guards threw him out of her weird-smelling mega-mansion, he hooked up with alpha nepo-baby Dakota Johnson of really-bad-movies fame, and that’s where we stand at the moment, waiting for him to announce another thing that’s really strange about him! But in the meantime, this new album is already available on YouTube, let me go check it out and start typing things about it before I bag the whole idea and just find a decent kazoo-and-jaw harp band that’s releasing an album of Metallica covers to review instead of Moon Music. Right, the first song on here is called “feelslikeimfallinginlove,” see what they did there. Ha ha, the video has people hand-dancing like Napoleon Dynamite, and the tune is mellow soccer-parent somnambulism, very polite, appropriately melodic, it’ll be a huge hit on Good Morning America and such. Is Coldplay the Aughts version of The Beatles/Pearl Jam? Discuss.

• Hold the phone, guys, something interesting is here, namely a band called Memorials, with their new album, Memorial Waterslides! Why are they interesting? I’m glad you asked: The band features Electrane’s Verity Susman and Wire’s Matthew Simms, and as you know, I’m one of those inappropriate misfits who loves Wire, so I’ll listen to anything any of those guys puts out, including this, even though Simms only joined the 48-year-old band as their guitarist in 2010. Yikes, there’s like no promotion for these guys, I had to dig around YouTube for an entire eight minutes before I found the single, “Cut It Like A Diamond,” how am I the only person on Earth who cares about Wire? In short, it’s awesome, a psychedelic-art-rock tune that makes like Flaming Lips trying to be David Essex, won’t you people please love this?

• Alicia Keys is a fan of San Diego band Thee Sacred Souls, so they might be good, I don’t know! Their new LP Got A Story To Tell includes a torchy reggae-soul tune called “Lucid Girl,” you’ll probably like it if you dig both Bob Marley and Smokey Robinson. They’ll be at Roadrunner in Boston on Nov. 10.

• Finally it’s Canadian indietronica act Caribou, aka Dan Snaith, with a new album, called Honey! The title track has been around a few months and it’s really quite good, a wub-wubby, jungle-infused IDM track that’ll fit your brain like a pair of thick comfy socks. Very kyewl.

Behind God’s Back

This is an extremely good cocktail, with an even better name.

  • ⅓ ounce cinnamon syrup (see below)
  • ¼ ounce orgeat (an almond syrup used in tropical drinks) – I buy mine online or at the liquor store
  • ½ ounce pineapple juice
  • ¾ ounce fresh squeezed lime juice
  • 2 ounces golden rum – I used Planteray’s “Stiggin’s Fancy” Pineapple Rum; it’s smooth and a little sweet and marries well with the other ingredients in this cocktail
  • 2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters
  • 2 dashes Angostura Bitters
  • Ice
  • Mint sprig for garnish

Wrap several handfuls of ice cubes in a tea towel, then smash repeatedly with something heavy. (I use the pestle from my largest mortar and pestle; it’s the size and shape of a billy club.) This will provide you with a variety of ice, from one or two full cubes, to broken cubes, to crushed ice, to snow. If you have a Pilsner glass, fill it with the ice; otherwise fill any medium-sized tall glass.

Pour the syrups, juices and rum over the top of the ice. Stir with a bar spoon or a straw or a chopstick, then top it off with the bitters and garnish it with a mint sprig.

This drink will hit you differently depending on how you drink it. If you go at it immediately, with a straw, it will be pretty sweet. Only a hint of cinnamon on the back end keeps it from being a little syrupy. If you sip it from the lip of the glass, the bitters will give it a slightly savory backbone. If you start with just a sip or two, have an in-depth discussion about the relative merits of bagpipe jazz or Klingon love poetry, then come back to it 10 minutes or so later, the crushed ice will have melted, diluting the cocktail a bit as well as chilling the drink.

Cinnamon Syrup

  • 2 cups (396 g) granulated sugar
  • 1 cup (227 g) water
  • 7 cinnamon sticks

Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Remove from heat, cover, and leave overnight or at least six or seven hours. Strain and bottle. This will last at least a month in your refrigerator. It is outstanding in cocktails, of course, but even better over French toast.

Featured Photo: Photo by John Fladd.

Label adventures

A&E is reinvented as Rare Breed

Emeran Langmaid has been on a voyage of reinvention.

Langmaid is the owner of Rare Breed Coffee (2 Pittsburgh Ave., Nashua, 578-3338, rarebreedcoffee.com), one of New England’s most innovative coffee and tea companies. For more than 20 years it went by a different name: A&E Coffee and Tea. At the 10-year point, Langmaid felt that her company needed to go in a new direction, but she was advised against it.

“I was working with a marketing company at the time,” Langmaid remembered, “and they told me, ‘Don’t change your name because you already have a loyal customer base and it gets confusing. So just stick with your name,’ which was probably not great advice. It makes sense on the surface, but then the specialty coffee market became a big thing. Like craft beer, a lot more people were opening in on it. And so we actually wanted to rebrand to tell more of what our story was and to connect with people and to really have a much better online presence.”

By 2021 it had become clear to Langmaid that she needed to tap into a new pool of customers, and she made the decision to not only change the name of her company but also completely change the look and marketing of her products.

“We were doing something that was different in our area than really anybody else,” Langmaid said. “Green Mountain [Coffee] was the region’s first or second most popular coffee brand out there, behind Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ was predominantly a drive-thru business and Green Mountain was Keurig and a brew-at-home business. So they didn’t really compete in terms of who their end user was necessarily. So the genesis of Rare Breed is stepping outside of the lines and doing something different and following your own passage.” A company like hers needs to be unique and vibrant, she said — a Rare Breed.

Langmaid was confident about her coffee. She is one of very few certified coffee specialists to pass the prestigious Q Grader exam, making her one of the most qualified coffee producers in the world. She knew she could depend on her team.

“I totally depend and rely on everybody that’s part of the team,” she said. “We all are moving in the same direction.”

Langmaid knew that roasting and processing Rare Breed’s coffee and tea would involve continual fine-tuning, but one of the highest priorities for her and her team in reinventing themselves was the look of their products. They decided to adopt an audacious brightly-colored look for their packaging, with strong graphics and bold images on the containers.

“You have to really market and brand your company to get attention and to get noticed,” Langmaid said. “It’s a very fast-paced world and eye candy is so important.”

Rare Breed worked with a branding company that was known primarily for its work for craft beer companies with the same market that Rare Breed wanted to target.

“Our core customer is about 25 to 40, whereas it used to be like 35 to 60. As kids mature and grow up, they move away from energy drinks and some of the other caffeinated sugar products into a more sophisticated palate. We wanted to be their first choice. That’s our target audience.”

“If you go to the beer store and you see all of the cans, those labels are bright and fun and dynamic and a little irreverent at times, and that was our inspiration,” Langmaid said. “We wanted to push the envelope a little bit within the coffee space. We also want to be in grocery [stores]. And again, when you walk through the coffee aisle, it’s all in bags. So we ended up going with cans, kind of a throwback to the old coffee can, where it’s completely recyclable, it retains its shape, so regardless of how it’s stocked on the shelf it will look really sharp and clean.”

A&E Coffee and Tea officially became Rare Breed in October 2023. The visual changes have been just a small part of Rare Breed’s rebranding, but so far the results have been promising.

“At times it is an uphill battle,” Langmaid sighed. “You’re swimming upstream. Or against the tide. I’m sure there’s like a lot of phrases that kind of define what we’re doing. We’re just pulling it into coffee.”

Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.

Expo is a fountain of tastiness

The New Hampshire Chocolate Expo returns

If Willy Wonka weren’t tied down to one location, his job might look a lot like Christy Charest’s. Charest is the Social Media Manager for the Chocolate Expo, a company that holds convention-sized chocolate parties throughout the Northeast. Her next event will be the New Hampshire Chocolate Expo at the Doubletree Expo Center (700 Elm St., Manchester) on Sunday, Oct. 15, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Charest said that the goal of a chocolate expo is to introduce people to chocolate producers and chocolate-adjacent crafts, but even more, to help them relax and be happy.

“It’s a way for guests to come and unplug and reconnect with friends and family and just enjoy a chocolate,” she said. “We’re not a typical event where people come and they’re buying food or chocolate or drinks. There are lots of different aspects to the event, including a stage where we have lots of presentations, demonstrations that involve chocolate making, and even special guests. For this [the Manchester] event we have the top Freddy Krueger cosplayer coming. The event takes place on Elm Street. We found that it was very fitting, especially with the time of year.”

Although it is called an Expo, Charest said this event is very much designed for the general public.

“[When guests come in] they’re greeted with giant chocolate fountains — white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate fountains. They can pick their Rice Krispies treats, or chips or strawberries — anything they want. You put it on a skewer and you’re able to dip it right in the chocolate. There’s anything you can imagine. There’s slow-roasted nuts, whoopie pies, macarons, jumbo peanut butter cups, chocolate buns, [and] chocolate covered bacon. [For] children we have a Kid Zone; included with admission for any of the littles is free face painting and balloon twisting.”

She said that the Chocolate Expo is meant to be a memorable experience.

“There are free photo ops as well at all of our events. We have a step-and-repeat banner [photo backdrop] with all of these different photo props — with giant cardboard cutouts of chocolate-dipped strawberries and bonbons and truffles — and we have a photographer that’s there that will take your photos for you at no additional charge.”

Rachel Mack will be one of the exhibitors at the Chocolate Expo. She will also give one of the presentations. “It will be just a short little talk,” she said. “‘I’m going to discuss what goes into making a chocolate bar, but specifically how our cacao comes from all over the world.” She will discuss how her company, Loon Chocolate (195 McGregor St., Manchester), sources local ingredients. “We have a couple of different collaborations that we have with local, other local businesses. [Our ingredients range] from the global cacao bean to local maple sugar — everything that goes into one of our chocolate bars.”

Mack said there is something special about the Chocolate Expo in Manchester.

“There are chocolate expos that we’ve done all over the Northeast,” she said. “We’ve done chocolate expos in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, in New York, in New Jersey, and I love the crowd at the New Hampshire one. It is a crush of people who show up. Everyone wants to have fun. Everyone wants to try chocolate and people really like to take time to appreciate the chocolate. I really love that.”

The crowds at expos like this one aren’t made up solely of chocolate connoisseurs.

“It’s just anyone who loves chocolate shows up,” Mack said. “Actually, I shouldn’t even say ‘anyone who loves chocolate.’ There was a guy who came to our booth at an event who had a T-shirt that said ‘I Hate Chocolate.’ We did get him to admit that he’s still not a fan of chocolate but if he had to [eat it] he would like ours.”

The New Hampshire Chocolate Expo
When: Sunday, Oct. 15, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Where: Doubletree Expo Center, 700 Elm St., Manchester.
Tickets: General admission “timed-entry” tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for children. Late Day Special tickets for admission after 4 p.m. are $10. Online VIP tickets are $30 for adults and $15 for children, which allows admittance one hour early. These are available through eventbrite.com. General admission tickets at the door are $30 for adults, and $15 for children.

Featured Photo: Courtesy photo.

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