Happy Saturday Before Mother's Day

Good morning, friends, and Happy Saturday. Tomorrow is Mother’s Day, which my own mom thought was kind of a dumb holiday when she was alive, but which I view as a good excuse to go out for sushi with Chris and Nic. I do love being a mom, though, and I’m excited for my kid to have a great summer before he enters high school in the fall. (Insert sobbing face emoji here.) If you are a mom, if you have a mom, if you no longer have a mom, I’m thinking of you.

Thanks so much to everyone who offered their well wishes after my skiing accident. Quick update: I got my MRI results back this week, and it looks like I tore my MCL almost entirely and my ACL partially. So I’ll have to wear a leg brace in the locked position for a while to allow the MCL to heal, then I’ll have surgery on the ACL. My orthopedist says I could be back to running in 8-10 weeks. The FOMO is real, but hey, this gives me more time to watch movies.

As for the new releases we discussed this week at our Breakfast All Day YouTube channel:

• KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. The last trilogy of “Planet of the Apes” movies ending in satisfying, deeply moving fashion with 2017’s “War for the Planet of the Apes,” starring Andy Serkis and directed by Matt Reeves. This one, which takes place several generations afterward, never really justifies its existence, but the effects look great and it features some thrilling action sequences. In theaters.

• POOLMAN. Chris Pine makes his feature filmmaking debut as director, co-writer and star in this wacky comedy noir. He plays the titular pool man: A Lebowski-esque L.A. oddball who gets sucked into a scheme involving water. This movie got savaged when it premiered at Toronto last fall, which made me want to see it even more. It is indeed terrible. In theaters.

• I SAW THE TV GLOW. Writer-director Jane Schoebrun’s sci-fi-indie is a trippy, Lynchian exploration of the power of pop culture. I love the look of this film: The TV glows, but so does everything else in this suburban landscape in ways that are both wondrous and menacing. In theaters.

• MOVIE NEWS LIVE! It’s a thing we do on Fridays at Noon Pacific time, so come hang out with us. Among this week’s topics were the new “Lord of the Rings” movie, the Tom Brady roast and Met Gala fashions. We love seeing our folks in the chat!

Did you see John Mulaney’s “Everybody’s In L.A.” this week? Mulaney is one of our favorite comics around here — Nic watches his stand-up specials all the time — so we had to tune into this live talk show series he did while everybody was literally in L.A. for the Netflix Is a Joke festival. There were six episodes total, with each one featuring a Los Angeles-themed topic (coyotes, palm trees, earthquakes) and a truly mind boggling array of talent, including David Letterman, Bill Hader, Nikki Glaser, Sarah Silverman, Jon Stewart and Jerry Seinfeld. The always endearing Richard Kind served as his Ed McMahon, L.A. bands including Weezer and Los Lobos performed, and amusing interstitials broke up the segments. It was shaggy and at times hit-or-miss, but there was an unpredictability and a giddy energy that made the show refreshing. I’ll miss my nightly hangouts with John Mulaney. You can catch up with them on Netflix.

My good friend Ryan Hockensmith gets to go long on inspired topics at ESPN.com. Most recently, he wrote an article about “The Fall Guy” director David Leitch, and his path from being stuntman to making his own dazzling action movies, including “Atomic Blonde” and “Bullet Train.” Sometimes Ryan asks me to share a few thoughts on his film-related stories, as he did here and in an earlier piece about whether Tom Cruise is actually a good runner. Lots of enjoyable anecdotes in this one, including Leitch’s wild time living in Redondo Beach with a bunch of other aspiring stuntmen. Read and enjoy.

Thrilled and delighted for my good friend Justin Chang, who won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism this past week for his work at the Los Angeles Times. He’s since moved on to The New Yorker, which I mentioned in a recent newsletter, but he’s incredibly deserving of this honor no matter where his work appears. Not many film critics have won the Pulitzer — Roger Ebert, Joe Morgenstern and Wesley Morris are others — so Justin is in rare company. Congrats to this brilliant sweetheart of a guy.

I also have some sad news to share with the passing of Sam Rubin, veteran entertainment journalist here in L.A. and an all-around lovely guy. Sam had been a reporter and anchor at KTLA since 1991, and was a fixture on morning television with his upbeat personality. I had the pleasure of working with him a bit at Reelz Channel when I did guest appearances there, and I’d often see him at events like the early-morning Academy Award nominations. Sam was always warm and energetic — there was really no difference between the person you saw on air and who he was in real life. And since his death, countless people have come forward with stories of his generosity. Sam died Friday of a heart attack at his home at age 64. He’ll definitely be missed in this town.

Thanks so much to all of you for sharing some of your time with me this weekend. I hope you go out and see something you love, or at least something that inspires a lively conversation. If you’ve found value in my newsletter, I’d be honored if you’d share it with a friend. Have a great week, and I’ll see you back here next Saturday.