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Top Picks: 'Both Sides Now,' 'To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before'

College students can get rewards for leaving their phones alone during class when they use the Pocket Points app, the documentary 'Won’t You Be My Neighbor?' looks at the career of Fred Rogers and his creation of the show 'Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,' and more top picks.

  • By Staff

Friendly neighbors

The documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which looks at the career of Fred Rogers and his creation of the show “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” is available on DVD and Blu-ray. Monitor film critic Peter Rainer writes of Morgan Neville’s documentary, “In some not-quite-definable way, the film itself is all of a piece with Rogers’s principled gentleness.... The simple fact is that Rogers ... is exactly as advertised: a genuinely caring man who can unabashedly say, ‘Love is at the root of everything.... Love or the lack of it.’ ”

Phone incentives

College students can get rewards for leaving their phones alone during class when they use the Pocket Points app. Online businesses and those that are near schools offer incentives. You can find it at www.pocketpoints.com.

Science chats

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson brings together scientists, celebrities, and comedians to discuss a wide range of topics, from space exploration to music, on StarTalk Radio. You can find new installments at www.startalkradio.net.

Charming teen tale

The charming young adult novel To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before has been adapted into a film of the same name, which is now streaming on Netflix. High school student Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor) finds her life thrown into chaos when letters she composed to boys she had crushes on are mailed to each of them. At the center of the story is Lara Jean’s family, which includes her widower father and two sisters. 

Tony Russell-Redferns/Courtesy of Getty Images

Woman of heart and mind

The 1970 Isle of Wight festival was England’s answer to Woodstock. But there wasn’t much peace, love, and understanding when Joni Mitchell played her afternoon set. The estimated 600,000-strong audience was riled up by a stage-crashing protester. The new documentary Both Sides Now chronicles how the folk singer, armed with just an acoustic guitar, eventually won over the crowd with classics such as “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock.” Come for the compelling concert; stay for a 2003 interview showing Mitchell’s keen intellect as she assesses the counterculture milieu and her performance.

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