** "I thought it was really tough being Ed Begley's son. I tried to find tranquility in a bottle of vodka - you can't rush serenity, certainly with pills or alcohol..."

Ed Begley Jr. Talks 'To The Temple of Tranquility...And Step On It!', Brando, and Better Call Saul. The actor revisits among survival challenges in his memoir, filling his father's enormous shoes - and giving strange meaning to his wild stint in 'Son Of The Invisible Man.'

Along with conjuring from his past 'winding up in these incredible situations, not sure how the hell I got there,' old attic rooms; a tree house next to a saloon, smoking a joint with Charles Manson - and 'summoned to Marlon Brando's house to discuss the practical use of electric eels...'

** "I'm thinking to myself, I don't know, should that bother me - but for some reason it does..."

'I smell a rat!' Pacifica host Garland Nixon dives into Hollywood from a black political perspective during the awards season. With connections to Red Dawn, Jurassic Park and the CIA, Ronald Reagan, and Mexican soaps...

** "There's a reason that Broadway was called The Great White Way. Because it did not welcome black artists into its theaters - and even on television there were programs that didn't want Ella Fitzgerald to appear in front of a mixed race group..."

Music Corner: Ella Fitzgerald - The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song. A continuing conversation...

** "Exploring the strange yet sublime cinematic underworld..."

The Success Of Failure: Movies So Bad, They're Good - and 'the quixotic predicament of the flailing artist trying desperately to express himself.' Brett Gregory in a conversation with British film studies professor, James MacDowell - on cult pleasures, the nuclear weapons politics of Plan 9 From Outer Space, Ed Wood, Reefer Madness, and 'an awkward school Nativity play with wonky scenery.' 

Our (Almost Completely True) Love Story Review

When Bette Davis proclaimed that 'Old age is not for Sissies' she likely had in mind the acting world as well. And 'Our (Almost Completely True) Love Story' is a marvelous tribute to that struggle, a defiant romance playing out simultaneously on and off screen between thespian veterans Mariette Hartley and Jerry Sroka, long term lovers with a passion for acting and each other, and in eventual wedlock. 

Co-written and starring the delightfully daffy when not heartfelt duo, the film is likewise peppered with a playful procession of surprise memory lane cameos. Featuring older but no less vibrant long time screen luminaries Tess Harper, Morgan Fairchild, Love Boat's Bernie Kopell, Peter MacNicol and Mindy Sterling among them.

And though intermittently facing off against daunting realities candidly like declining health or discriminatory career obsolescence, Hartley and Sroka rarely lose their sense of humor or determination - embracing when not in resolute insistence of their continued place in the world, warts and all. Whether the specific elder lunacy of online dating, or the dehumanizing encounter of late in life auditions. Though Sroka apparently eludes the fate of the older actress in Hollywood like Hartley with up to 140 credited films - relieved to at least find voice work in Family Guy.

Clearly one of the three most genuine, outstanding movie romances this year, counting The Taste Of Everything and Memory, 'Our (Almost Completely True) Love Story' also shines as an example, following the brutally challenging SAG-AFTRA strike, of actors defying the way things are - as documentaries have been cynically promoted to eliminate the cost of paying actors - and not just with AI, for work in movies.

In that sense, Hartley and Sroka have taken the power into their own hands, crafting this extraordinary film about their lives with nearly documentary dimensions - telling it all their way. Or at least 'almost completely' so.

Prairie Miller

Review on Rotten Tomatoes