Ai

In 2012, Jeff Lynne released Mr Blue Sky: The Very Best of Electric Light Orchestra. Except it wasn’t. It was 11 new re-recordings of classic ELO songs – which isn’t the same thing at all. Lynne, bless him, believed that having gained more experience as a producer, he could now improve the songs that made him famous. ‘You know how to make it sound better than it did before,’ he said, ‘Because I have more knowledge… and technology.’ Sheesh. How wrong can one man be? Pop music is all about the definitivearticle. Not only the bold prefix attached to its greatest practitioners – Beatles, Byrds, Wailers, Temptations, Fall, et al – but the notion of a defining recording of a song. The stage is the place for revision: to jam, change the words, the rhythm, the feel.

At last, there is the Hollywood equivalent of white smoke in the Vatican. After nearly five months, the writers’ strike has at last — tentatively — been resolved, as the Writers’ Guild of America have agreed to terms with the studios, as represented by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). The terms have not yet been publicly disclosed, but are said to be surprisingly generous, and favor the writers. It has been suggested that their major demands have all been met, including improved residual payments on streaming services, an increased number of writers employed on shows and, most importantly for many both financially and artistically, a curb on the way in which AI might be used to generate scripts and screenplays.

A little-known fact about the Fairlight Computer Musical Instrument, the first sampling synthesiser, introduced in 1979, is that it incorporated a psychotherapist called Liza. Stressed musicians could key in an emotional problem and Liza would begin the session with the soothing opening: ‘What is it that troubles you about x?’ She was flummoxed by a frivolous question from my husband, an early Fairlight owner, about a hole in her bucket but dealt expeditiously with my nine-year-old stepson. When he told her to get lost, she shut the system down.

Mrs. Davis, currently streaming on the Peacock network, is my favorite show. It is quirky as all get out, featuring a quest for the Holy Grail, an imprisoned Pope, a journey inside the intestines of a whale, an exploding head (don’t ask) and a rollercoaster of death. The lead character is a committed religious sister who regularly communes with Jesus and who manages, more or less, to save the world. Now if you’re looking to Mrs. Davis for theological precision, you will be severely disappointed (and please don’t write me letters reminding me of how weird its theology is; I know), but there is indeed a spiritual motif of supreme importance that stands at the very heart of the show, and it is well worth plowing through all of the intense oddness to grasp it.

There’s a bit of moviegoing conventional wisdom that says January is the dumping ground for Z-list schlock films, all the genre fare not good enough for the holiday or summer seasons. And that’s why M3GAN — directed by Gerard Johnstone, and boasting story and production credits from legendary horror/thriller director James Wan — is such a pleasant surprise. It’s a nasty little cinematic bonbon packed with memorable images, and one that manages to say a few interesting things about modern life. After eight-year-old Cady (Violet McGraw) witnesses her parents’ deaths in a horrific auto accident, she’s sent off to live with her single aunt Gemma (Allison Williams).