Pandemic productions: Coastal Elites (2020) and Father of the Bride 3 (2020)

Jack and I loved these, both shot zoom-style, with single cameras on single actors.

Coastal Elites is five fictional monologues, 87 minutes total, starring Bette Midler, Dan Levy, Issa Rae, Sarah Paulson, and Kaitlyn Dever. They all play NY or LA residents, talking one at a time about politics and COVID. It's an HBO original, directed by Jay Roach and written by Paul Rudnick.

The haters at Rotten Tomatoes rate this only 55%. There is no audience rating, possibly a casualty of the pandemic. See above. We loved it.

Father of the Bride Part 3 (ish). is the official title. I read director/writer Nancy Meyers' New York Times article first and then eagerly watched the 26 minute segment on YouTube (it was a benefit for World Central Kitchen–we made a donation–and now the short is on Netflix). She reassembled the original cast  playing their original parts and it's expertly edited together, with clips from the first two Father of the Bride Movies (1991 and '95). Happily it has none of the distracting sound problems such a big zoom call would normally have. Starring Diane Keaton, Steve Martin, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Kieran Culkin, George Newbern, Robert De Niro, Martin Short, and some surprises. I'm counting this as a movie, but apparently Rotten Tomatoes does not so I can't give you a rating.

Midler was last blogged for The Addams Family, Rae for Little, Paulson for The Post, Dever for Booksmart, Roach for Bombshell, Meyers for Home Again, Keaton for Book Club, Martin for The Jerk (which I watched in 2017), Culkin in Wiener-Dog (years before his Emmy nominated turn in Succession), De Niro for The Irishman, Short for Inherent Vice.

Levy is best known for creating and starring in Schitt's Creek; Rudnick wrote, among others, both Sister Act movies (1992 and '93), In & Out (1997), and The Stepford Wives (2004); Williams-Paisley, married to the country singer Brad Paisley, has plenty of credits since the original movies but I've seen none; and Newbern, busy as well, is best known to me as psychopathic hit man Charlie on 69 episodes of Scandal.