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    Movie Review

    Female-centric The High Note can't find the right tune

    Alex Bentley
    May 29, 2020 | 12:03 pm
    Female-centric The High Note can't find the right tune
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    The list of professions that women usually play in films is depressingly small, so it’s notable when a movie goes beyond the stereotypical roles. The High Note gives its two female leads plenty of agency in their careers, but somehow still keeps them down in their personal lives.

    Grace Davis (Tracee Ellis Ross) is a world-famous singer trying to keep her career current after a heyday in the 1990s and 2000s. Maggie (Dakota Johnson) serves as her personal assistant, but aspires to become a music producer. Maggie works on her passion surreptitiously, even going so far as remixing one of Grace’s songs in hopes that she will include it on her next album.

    Grace believes that she still has what it takes to be a major player in the music industry, but her manager Jack (Ice Cube) thinks she should rest on the laurels of her earlier success and transition to something like a residency in Las Vegas. The push and pull of both women’s professional desires drives the narrative, with their personal relationship and other non-work parts coloring it in.

    Directed by Nisha Ganatra and written by first-time screenwriter Flora Greeson, the film seems to have all the right pieces but not a great idea of how to put them together. It starts with a quick montage at the beginning meant to show how popular Grace is, but which only serves to confuse things by intimating that her best days are happening currently, not years in the past. The lack of clarity on the state of her career continues for much of the film, muddying various plot points.

    Maggie, though, is the main character of the film, as it’s her ambitions and desires that are given the most focus. Whether it’s her trying to horn in on Grace’s music, discovering the undiscovered talent of David Cliff (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), or showing her being Grace’s put-upon assistant, the film is much more interested in her state of mind than Grace’s.

    In this way, it’s almost a carbon copy of Ganatra’s previous film, Late Night, in which Mindy Kaling played an up-and-coming writer for Emma Thompson’s late night host. In both cases, though, Ganatra couldn’t find an effective way to showcase her leading women. For every bit of forward momentum this film has, it’s undercut by silly and unnecessary aspects.

    The film is a mix of drama and comedy, but Ganatra and Greeson go too far sometimes. They include weird comic interludes that don’t mesh, as well as a comic relief character played by June Diane Raphael who is wholly out of place with everyone else in the film. They also never land on what kind of person is Grace supposed to be. Is she an out-of-touch diva? Is she a slightly alcoholic ditz? Ross plays her many different ways, and the conflicting traits make the character unknowable.

    But the oddest thing about the film is its music and place in music history. There are multiple lines schooling the audience on the importance of certain real-world singers, but the film doesn’t do a great job in establishing the bona fides of Grace’s music. The few original songs shown are okay, but do nothing to support her supposed superstar status.

    Johnson is working hard to become a movie star like her parents, and while she’s perfectly enjoyable in this role, she has yet to show the ability to carry a film. Ross has been great on ABC’s Black-ish, but doesn’t display the full chops to inhabit a character like Grace Davis. Ice Cube is similarly stunted in his role, but Harrison (who was heartbreaking in 2019’s Waves) shows oodles of charisma.

    The High Note deserves plaudits for telling a female-centric story with women who do more than just pine after men. But it never seems to know exactly what to do with its characters, and winds up spinning its wheels for most of its running time.

    ---

    The High Note is available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Xfinity, Vudu, GooglePlay, and FandangoNow.

    Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross in The High Note.

    Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross in The High Note
      
    Photo by Glen Wilson / Focus Features
    Dakota Johnson and Tracee Ellis Ross in The High Note.
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    Book News

    Barnes & Noble to open 2 new Dallas-area stores but will close Plano

    Teresa Gubbins
    Jun 12, 2025 | 6:56 pm
    Barnes & Noble
    Barnes & Noble
    Barnes & Noble, new look.

    There's good news and bad on the bookstore front: Two new locations of bookstore chain Barnes & Noble are opening in the Dallas area, one soon and one very soon, but a third is closing this week.

    Closing
    The store in Plano at 801 W. 15th St. is closing on Sunday, June 15. According to a company representative, the Plano store is an older, larger store model that the chain is turning away from, in favor of a new smaller model it's embracing for all new stores.

    It also has three other locations within close proximity: West Plano, Allen, and Richardson.

    Other DFW stores that still have that similar larger/older floorplan include Preston & Park in Plano; Prestonwood Center in North Dallas, and Lincoln Park in Dallas across from Northpark Center.

    Opening
    There are two new stores opening in summer/fall:

    • Rockwall, at 1009 E I-30, will open in late summer.
    • Prosper, at 1191 Gates Pkwy., in the newly developed Gates of Prosper, will open in the fall.

    According to a spokesperson, the new Rockwall store will follow the chain's new design seen in their most recent store openings, featuring "all the best books, toys, games, vinyl, and gifts our customers have come to expect." It will also house a B&N Café.

    The store is approximately 20,000 square feet and will be located in the space formerly occupied by Staples, which closed in January 2025.

    The store in Prosper will be nearly 20,000 square feet and is anticipated to feature the same model and selection as the Rockwall store, including a B&N Café.

    In August 2019, Barnes & Noble was acquired by Elliott Advisors (UK) and taken private. Elliott’s acquisition of Barnes & Noble followed its June 2018 acquisition of Waterstones, the largest bookseller in the U.K.

    Barnes & Noble is experiencing a period of growth, the result of a strategy to hand over control of each bookstore to its manager. They're enjoying strong sales and have opened many new stores after 15-plus years of declining store numbers. In 2022, they opened more new bookstores in a single year than in the entire decade from 2009 to 2019.

    They've continued to open more locations, including three in the DFW area in 2024: a store in Allen as well as stores in Flower Mound and Richardson — part of a wave of store openings that show the chain in the midst of a major comeback.

    Barnes & Noble, Inc. is the largest retail bookseller in the United States. The company has more than 630 bookstores across the U.S., as well as its online bookstore at bn.com, the Nook Digital business which offers both e-books and an audio book subscriptions service, the SparkNotes educational service, stationery and gift retailer Paper Source, and the publisher Union Square & Co.

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