HAVING READ THE NOVEL, it’s hard to imagine any other medium delivering the inspiring effect that Dickens achieved. This film version, in four episodes, nearly achieves it. The Dickens story, for a brilliant plot and all else that it contains, features the most famous opening and closing lines: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….. [Opening] “It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done….[Closing] I don’t recall that the series version included the opening lines, but it did allow the closing ones. The trip back in time to the years leading up to 1789 and the French Revolution is worth the fare alone, but this production features some strong performances worthy of

[Authors Note: This content is created for entertainment and educational purposes only. Investment decisions should include professional assistance or guidance.] THE THREE BUBBLES: Trump trades, the Fed lowering rates, and Everything AI, are collapsed or at least the premises behind them are invalidated. But the last phase of the multi-year mania that brought day-traders the world over together, has yet to occur. The last phase of any mania is that money leaves the stock market and goes to cash or bonds. That’s what happens next. Right now, Bitcoin is down 45% from the high, Gold and Semiconductors have each fallen 25% from the high, but the broader Nasdaq 100 is only down 6% and the S&P500 is only down a few percent from the high.

  THIS COLD WAR COMEDY got my attention because Kenneth Branagh played a Russian double-agent. I have probably watched him do comedy, but that doesn’t matter; I will watch him do anything. Reynolds—who usually gets the job done for comedy—is a US Air Force pilot who is downed well into the Soviet Union. I was skeptical at first about the dynamic, but it didn’t take long at all to like the mix. Branagh’s character speaks English, but with just the right amount of Russian accent. He’s funny (maybe funnier) as the straight guy with Reynolds as the comedian. Look at it this way; you get the action of a spy thriller with some good laughs along the way.   –WRH

  [This is a seasonal piece from Unit Three Writings] MY SEASON APPROACHES and with it arrive my best prospects for redemption. I refer to September, both as the ninth month and as a stage of Life–the ripeness of being that precedes the bitter cold. I refer to the September I was born to and those sweet, sad days that invite surrender to Melancholy’s caress. This belief takes shape in me only now, at fifty. It formed in increments by way of three separate and eclectic experiences. The first came while I was away at college, that blissful period when my future was indiminishable by doubt or skepticism, and a writing pad stuck out of my back pocket that I might recognize and record rare

  I REVIEWED season one and later found myself intrigued by Spider Noir—which was more purely a split genre from themes born 80 or 90 years ago. Sugar splits the genres between Sci-fi and PI— which share some roots from the middle of the last century certainly, but the scene is present day Los Angeles, not some 1950s New York (Queens). The first two episodes of the new season are just as compelling, and Farrell, as actor and narrator, continues to carry the action. I love a detective tale, and I was weaned on Sci-Fi TV, so this was easy. I am also a big fan of Colin Farrell who co-starred in Minority Report and starred in In Bruges–an outstanding film. WRH

I HAVE BEEN in Streaming Heaven with two very good series offering a second season, The Agency and Sugar.  Right now, The Agency is some of the best drama out there. With Michael Fassbender’s hypnotic screen presence, and people like Katherine Waterstone, Jody Turner-Smith, and  Richard Gere (who is even better in this season) among several others, you’re getting the cream of the crop along with a gripping storyline. The story migrates by location and the plot twists like a cyclone. WRH