Stop, Drop, and Rollllllll....

Word of the day : gambol : to skip about in play; frolic, frisk

I recently found one of the best movie websites to visit:

http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/

Maltin is a legend in the field and his reviews aren't pretentious.  They're short, skillfully encapsulating movies in theaters that you've heard of and might want to see.  He also pays dutiful attention to what's going on in film restoration, and there's always good interviews.  This is now a must-site for me.  Usually, on Thursdays or Fridays, I check out new film reviews in Entertainment Weekly or Movieline or NPR, but Maltin's site has now become essential.

Okay, so in two days in school, Gabriel has done well; in fact, his behavior has been classified as "great."  He has had speech therapy, learned to sit for a longer period of time than he hitherto knew how to do, had a fire drill, ate his snacks, taken a half-hour nap, and was walked out to the student pick-up twice by his teacher.  Both days, he has come home slightly dazed/relieved and been subjected to a stress-free, familiar surfeit of Special Agent OSO, peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches, milk, and snacks.

So in less than two weeks I finished Norman Mailer's massive, imposing The Naked and the Dead, a fanatically-detailed, long-winded, vivid, unsentimental account of a reconnaissance platoon on the fictional South Pacific island of Anopopei.  The Americans land on the island with the goal of driving out the Japanese, who occupy the interior of the island, the enemies' depleted forces strung out beneath the shadows of Mount Anaka.  Mailer traces the interior life of each member of the platoon, even providing "Time Machine" sections where he shows snippets/summaries of each soldier's existence before the war.   At times, I lost track of the characters, forgetting what Mailer revealed about them two or three hundred pages earlier, but by the end, each of their personalities was distinct again, even emblazoned into my conscience.  (It's okay for your mind to drift a while.)

What's most memorable about the novel is how chiefly the notion of anti-climax plays into the proceedings.  Almost nothing in the various missions goes as planned: the battles end before they're supposed to begin; characters deserving comeuppance don't get it; a planned assignment that more or less takes up half the book peters out when the platoon is forced to run form a swarm of hornets; characters die before they've had any closure.  Mailer repeatedly emphasizes abruptness, a lack of physical or moral order, a sense of worthless accomplishments, empty struggle.  In my Shelfari review this morning, I said this about the book (which was inspired by Mailer's own in a cavalry regiment during the Phillipines Campaign in the second World War):  It's "big, extravagantly detailed, emotional, overlong, passionate, lusty, crude, exciting, boring."  I think that's a fair assessment.  There were sections that drug on and one and others that were so emotionally tuned-in, even shattering.  The writing throughout is a knockout and I can well imagine the resulting explosions that scarred the literary scene when this novel came out in 1948, Mailer only twenty-four then, his literary, ambitious, fearless prowess seemingly invincible.  

Finally, every once in a while I swing over to the Georgia Ornithological Society website to see if any rare bird alerts have been posted.  Well, in the month of January, here are (to name a few) of some of the birds that were seen in this great state:

American woodcock

White-winged dove (seen in Savannah)

 

 

Snow Bunting (seen on Tybee Island)

Red phalarope

While it is not uncommon to see all these birds in the state during the winter, it is indeed a sight (I would imagine) and an unexpected treat, perhaps a last chance to see the bird maybe for a few years or more.  If Julia and I end up staying in Georgia, I'll probably eventually join this society as a Fledgling Member, which is a fancy way of saying that I'll only be paying $15 a year. 

Gabriel's First Day of School

Word of the day : Cook's tour : a rapid, cursory survey or review

A poignant, funny day.  Off to school little Gabriel goes.  When he gets home, he'll need a heavy dose of cartoons, snacks, and cuddling. 

"K - as in knife." 

The Hangover 2 is definitely a funny movie, but it's, as you might have heard, pretty much a carbon copy of the first film, only with a different, sultrier locale: Thailand.  Zach Galifianakis is still hilariously zonked-out, loaded with memorable non sequitirs, Ed Helms and Bradley Cooper still do raggedly confused very well, Ken Jeong is still a wild card, and there's even a drug-running monkey.  I enjoyed it, but wondered where the inspiration was this time out.

No real opinions on the SAG awards last night, other than fact that it's detestable that Alec Baldwin has now win six straight years for 30 Rock - my vehement disappointment notwithstanding the fact that I really like Alec Baldwin and his work in 30 Rock.  My question is: Do the voting actors actually watch other comedy shows?  There will no Oscar surprises in the supporting categories - Christopher Plummer and Octavia Spencer are locks - but the Viola Davis-Meryl Streep battle is getting fiercer.  Davis is a brilliant actress, but can the Academy please just end this anybody-but-Meryl charade?  This will be her 13th straight loss; but then, this will the sixth loss for the never-won Glenn Close and another goose egg for Michelle Williams.  And the statuette might just elude Brad Pitt, too, and that's a shame.   

Oh, well, not much today.  Time to get the boy. 
 

Birthday Eve

Word of the day : bright-line : providing an unambiguous guideline or criterion, especially in law

Of all the Oscar snub chatter, I didn't hear too many lamentations for Joseph Gordon-Levitt's unrecognized turn in 50/50, one of 2011's best movies.  And where exactly was the nom for Will Reiser(whose own story provided the basis for the film), the author of the funny-poignant script?  Levitt has been snubbed a few times now (most recently for 2009's 500 Days of Summer); I guess hope lies on the horizon, for the actor has five films/plum roles in the can or in production, including Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic and Quentin Tarantino's highly-awaited Django Unchained.  The actor is at his best here, natural, charming, low-key and specific, with glimmers of hope peeking through his bummed-out sadness.  As his best friend, Seth Rogen initially seems like he's going to throw the delicate, nuanced proceedings out of whack with his frat-boy Knocked Up persona, but that's the wonder of the script: every one of the characters, even the ones you're sure you've seen before, surprise you; Rogen's funny as ever, but as the movie rolls along, you begin to look at him differently, in a tender light; Bryce Dallas Howard (who, despite the caricature she was saddled with, was one of The Help's gems) as Levitt's girlfriend, who's not sure if she wants to stick with him through the whole ordeal; Anjelica Huston as Levitt's strong-willed, disappointed but loyal mother; invaluable character actor Philip Baker Hall (possessor of one of the greatest faces in American film) as a fellow cancer patient; and Anna Kendrick as Levitt's twenty-four year old psychiatrist.  Kendrick, with her chipmunk face, is marvelously crisp, a master of the chittery back-and-forth.  The movie, directed by Jonathan Levine, finds humor in dire depths and is a real winner.

So, it's Gabriel's birthday tomorrow.  I love that big guy and I'm so excited he is starting school on Monday.  I know he'll do great.  I'll be sad, but not as much now, because he'll only be gone three hours a day.  That's nothing.  I am looking forward to taking him out tomorrow to Your Pie.  Today, we'll take him out to get his school supplies.  These last six months at home with him have been some of the most enjoyable, relaxing of my life, all thanks to the little guy.    
Happy 3rd, Gabriel Owen Fischer!

George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's, 1909

 
And finally, because it's a good sports Saturday - great college basketball games, the Australian Open, the Super Bowl a week away, the Pro Bowl tomorrow night, the NBA in full flush - and I'm reading a good Frank DeFord novel at the moment, it's fine fettle for a good George Bellows painting.  Bellow was of the Ashcan school, a later member of Robert Henri's group of Eight (which I might have mentioned a week or two back), and a former baseball player.  He loved the messiness, the violence, the gritty, sweaty masculinity of the city.  In the early 20th century, prizefighting/boxing was illegal, but athletic clubs - like Sharkey's - did good business, despite being against the law.  The boxers resemble great big horses, poised and graceful, beautifully muscular, full of potential energy; there's something almost classically-sculptured about them, with their pyramidal compositions.  Incidentally, a "stag" is also another term for a prizefight.  Note too the rabid, bloodthirsty fans.  Bellow, who many critics think is in the paintings (the bald man to the right of the referee's right leg) had a studio nearby Sharkey's. 

   

Strange southern ways...

Word of the day : intercalate : to insert (as a day) in a calendar; to insert between or among existing levels or layers

Charles Sheeler Church Street El, 1920

So Tuesday I posted a work by and information on Charles Demuth.  It's only fitting, I guess, that I give mention to the other major American practitioner of Precisionism, also named Charles, also Pennsylvania-born.

Sheeler (1883-1965), inspired by Cubism and Fauvism, came home to America from Europe in the early 20th century and began work in photography.  He specialized, focused on architecture, particularly the architecture of the industrial landscape - his works were stylistically realistic but attuned to, guided by an underlying abstraction in their functional patterns.  From 1910 to 1926, Sheeler concerned himself with the rural Pennsylvania town of Doylestown (where he rented a home); his work during this time was important because the elements of his works done during his time in Doylestown  - doors, ladders, windows - are the same elements he'd focus on during his works of the city.  In 1919, he moved to New York and befriended some of the Dadaists.  It was during this period that he created the above painting, a a sweeping, bird's-eye view of Broadway and Wall Street and the elevated Church Street el.  The artist simplified planes and forms, eliminated textures and details, allowing for a geometric interplay of shapes and colors.  

Other career highlights: In 1927, Sheeler was commissioned to photograph the Ford Motor Plant in Dearborn, Michigan.
In the late 1930s, the artist was hired by Fortune magazine to do a series of portraits (paintings) of six power-generating machines, as a tribute and testament to the modern industrial age.

Rolling Power, 1939

It was photography that was the impetus for Sheeler's drawings; there is little thematic difference between his photographs and paintings.  Sheeler often ignored the human element.                                  
Anywho, let's switch subjects.  A new feature: Every Thursday or Friday, I'll mention the movies that are opening up nationwide - or any major, hyped independent or limited-release films opening on the coasts and occasional dribbling out to middle America.

1/27 releases:
- The Grey   Okay, this is a must-see.  Liam Neeson as an oil roughneck whose plane crashes in the Alaskan wilderness, pitting the survivors against a pack of CGI-created wolves.  Good early reviews, which commend a strong human element and great photography. 

- One For the Money  Not screened for critics, which is often a bad sign.  Katherine Heigl is Janet Evanovich's bounty hunter heroine Stephanie Plum, a character the best-selling Evanovich has featured in, to date, eighteen Plum mysteries.  An interesting (read: odd) supporting cast: Debbie Reynolds, John Leguizamo, Sherri Shepherd, among others.   

- Man on a Ledge, a poorly-reviewed action drama with Sam Worthington, Ed Harris, and Elizabeth Banks.  A few comments: "cheap-looking," "preposterous," "too busy."

And finally, today: If I thought I had heard it all, I hadn't.  If Julia and I couldn't wrap our head around the fact that our real estate agent and landlord/previous homeowner insisted that southerners had no use for window screens ("people don't open windows around here"), then imagine our belief-defying incredulity when we hear our neighbor, a cross between Medusa and the Blair Witch, respond to a complaint I raised to her about her dog pooping all over our backyard (and her not cleaning it up) with a "And that bothers you and Julia because...?"

Statesboro!!!

Oscar, Oscar, read all about it!

Word of the day : yegg : safecracker, robber

Well, let's get right to it.  The Oscar nominations were announced this morning.  Here's the list: http://www.imdb.com/oscars/nominations/

And here are my thoughts:

                                                                      Demian Bichir

Who?  The Latino actor finds himself alongside Brad Pitt and George Clooney in the Best Actor category.  What a thrill!  He beat out DiCaprio, Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Michael Shannon, among others, for his role in the little-seen A Better Life, director Chris Weitz's (About a Boy) tale of a Mexican immigrant in L.A.  The only work I've ever seen of Bichir's (who mostly does Mexican films) is as Mary Louise Parker's boyfriend in Weeds.  I need to see this, quick!

Of the twenty acting nominees, nine are first-timers, which is about on par as far as that annually goes.  Congrats to the finally-nominated Gary Oldman!

Among the many comments I've read today in regards to the nominations (on The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Movieline), a consensus is that Albert Brooks was snubbed for Drive, Ryan Gosling was snubbed for all of his 2011 performances, George Clooney is overrated, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a pile of doodoo.
 
I do think it's strange that the Academy only nominated nine films, instead of ten.  Surely there wasn't one more film they could have thrown in there... With its 48% Rotten Tomatoes review ratings, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close just many be the most critically-reviled movie ever to be nominated for Best Picture.  But Stephen Daldry movies always get nominated for something, even when they're not that good (Billy Elliott, The Hours). And I'm not at all buying that the Academy yet cares for or appreciates good comedy, despite the bone they threw Melissa McCarthy and the Bridesmaids screenwriters.  Given the chance to nominate the universal hit/critically-acclaimed Bridesmaids for Best Picture or nothing, they chose nothing!

I'm ambivalent on this one.  I like Jonah Hill and think he's funny and even kind-of liked his spooky, pathetic Cyrus.  And I thought Moneyball was terrific.  I like to see an actor change pace, go against type.  I'm not entirely sure this performance was that compelling, though.  It was a flat character and Hill didn't really do anything with it.  He just kind of sat there and stared blankly at Brad Pitt and took forever to say his lines.  Put it to you this way: In this category, you should want your Supporting Actor to steal scenes, to not go away.  You want to miss them when they're not on screen.  I can't say Hill met any of those expectations.

Okay, the Best Original Song category is a joke.  Two nominees!  There were only two good songs this year written for films?  Why even have this category?  Sergio Mendes!  The other guy from Flight of the Conchords for his song in a Muppets movie!  A damn joke!

Two performers who haven't been nominated since 1988 (Max von Sydow, the legendary Swedish actor, and Glenn Close), one who hasn't been nominated for his acting since 1989 (Kenneth Branagh), more late-career Martin Scorsese love, a Spielberg snub, no Joseph Gordon-Levitt or screenplay nomination for 50/50, no Madonna, a second acting nomination for an actress nobody knows (Janet McTeer), and a complete ignoring of the extremely well-received Young Adult, despite past Academy appreciation for Charlize Theron, scribe Diablo Cody, and director Jason Reitman.

Woody Allen's nominations are now at 23, though he hasn't won since his was awarded Best Original Screenplay for 1986's Hannah and Her Sisters. 

Hugo led all films with 11 nominations, followed by The Artist with 10.  My favorite non-nominee response, however, the funniest?
Why, that would be the wonderful Albert Brooks.
Just after the nominations were read this morning, he tweeted the following:

"I got ROBBED.  I don't mean, the Oscars, I mean literally.  My pants and shoes have been stolen..."

A few minutes pass.  And then:

"And to the Academy: 'You don't like me.  You really don't like me.'"

Oh, well.  I'll be back in three or four weeks with my predictions.

Having just finished Anne Tyler's 1982 classic Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, I can honestly say that Tyler writes perfect books.  I've praised her before on here, but I can't really say enough about her.  So I went hunting for information (in the form of interviews, etc. ) about her and have found very little, due to the fact that she doesn't do book-tours, very, very rarely allows interviews, doesn't lecture or teach, reputedly, has never ever met her longtime editor, and has maintained a swathing cloak of privacy.  Here is what I do know, however:

- she lives in Baltimore, where most of her books are set.  She was born in Minneapolis, the eldest of four, to a chemist father and a social worker mother.  A portion of her childhood was spent in Quaker communities in the mountains of North Carolina.

- she went to Duke University and was married to Iranian psychiatrist Taghi Modarressi for thirty-five years until his death in 1997; they have two daughters.

- she worked as a bibliographer in the library at Duke and worked in the law library at McGill University before moving to Baltimore to write.

- 1988's Breathing Lessons won the Pulitzer Prize and was named best novel of the year by Time Magazine.

I'll have more to say about Tyler, I'm sure, when her novel The Beginner's Goodbye, her 19th, comes out in April.

Today's American Masterpiece takes its inspiration from William Carlos Williams' 1921 poem "The Great Figure."  

                                                        The Great Figure
Among the rain
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
fire truck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city
William Carlos Williams (1883-1963)
Sour Grapes: A Book of Poems
Four Seas Company, Boston, 1921

Williams was a friend of the Precisionist painter Charles Demuth.  Precisionism could also be referred to as "Cubo-Realism."  It's a descriptive form, propelled by geometric simplification.  Precisionist works are usually stripped of detail and tend to be based on sharp-focus photography.  Along with fellow Pennsylvanian Charles Sheeler, Demuth was the major figure in the American-based Precisionism.

During the 1920s, Demuth began a series of abstract portraits of American artist-friends (including Eugene O'Neill, Georgia O'Keeffe, Wallace Stevens).  The portraits were not physical resemblances, but rather paintings that contained images associated with the respective artists: words, phrases, shapes, figures.

In Demuth's work, we see fragments of the Williams poem: wheels, the gold '5', the sense of motion, lights, what may or may be not be the bulky body of the fire truck, the blackened night.  We even see bits of the poet's name: 'Bill,' 'Carlo...'
Williams' own inspiration for his work was seeing a fire truck rush past him on Ninth Avenue in New York City on a hot summer day.
Here's a link to the painting (and commentary) from the MET's website: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/49.59.1

Shaft!

Word of the day : weltschmerz :  mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state; a mood of sentimental sadness

Great word, no? 

A little Hollywood history.  In 1949, Ingrid Bergman was one of the biggest Hollywood stars and one of the world's most acclaimed actresses.  She had seen two of Italian director Roberto Rossellini's films (including Open City) and was a huge fan.  She wrote him a letter, expressing interest in coming to Italy and making a movie with him.  Rossellini accepted and cast the actress (who had had multiple affairs before and a close friendship with Hemingway) in 1950's Stromboli, about a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage on a volcanic Sicilian island.  Almost immediately, the two began an affair.  Bergman wanted out of her marriage, out of Hollywood.  Bergman left her husband and 10-year old daughter, married Rossellini, gave birth to a son, and then twin daughters (including Isabella).  She moved to Italy to live with Roberto until 1956, making five movies with him.  Eventually, she returned to Hollywood, winning an Oscar for 1956's Anastasia.  Moralists in America were furious, unforgiving towards Bergman.  She was denounced on the floor of the Senate.  Longtime fans accused her of immorality.  The below photo of her was done by Life photographer Gordon Parks.

                                                        Ingrid Bergman at Stromboli, 1949

Parks was a talented guy.  Parks was an African-American, born in Kansas in 1912.  Through the 1960s, he worked as a photographer, often depicting rural poverty, crime.  He was hired by the Farm Security Administration in the early 1940s to document conditions of rural poverty to help drum up support for FDR's New Deal programs.  Among the most well-known of these was his 1942 American Gothic, a take on the iconic Grant Wood work. 

The subject of the photo was Ella Watson, a black charwoman (basically, a cleaning woman or maid) whom Parks spent a month with, getting to know.  He spent time in her tiny apartment, met her family, went to church with her, and really got to watch how she made do with her low-wage existence. 

Parks became an in-demand photographer after that and worked at Life for more than twenty years (about 1948-1972).  He photographed celebrities and film stars, a slum in Brazil, people and events associated with the civil rights movement.  He also directed films, wrote novels and memoirs and screenplays.  I had to read his 1963 novel The Learning Tree in high school English class.  It was a sensitive, vivid, moving coming-of-age story about a black youth whose childhood tragedies and obstacles resembled Parks' own.  Parks directed the film version of The Learning Tree in 1969, becoming the first African-American to direct a film for a major studio.   (On a sidenote: Candace Bushnell, the author of Sex and the City, moved to NYC from Connecticut at the age of eighteen.  She arrived in NYC and moved in soon after with Parks, then 60(!),whom she dated for a period; he was her first boyfriend in the city.)

Parks, who was a composer as well, also the film director of the hugely popular Shaft, was also the author of a somewhat controversial article for Life on a family living in a Brazil slum, focusing on son Flavio, suffering from asthma.  The photos brought about a huge swelling of support from the magazine's readers, who donated $30,000 to improve the family's living conditions and pay for Flavio's medical treatments. 

Parks died in 2006 at the age of 93.
 

You can't really praise a film's B-movie pleasures anymore.  That's probably because there are no real B-movies.  How can there be a B-movie when an average budget is, what, 30-50 million?  A film either comes to the theater or it goes to DVD; there are no small, junky little films anymore, no smallness.  Rise of the Planet of the Apes, unfortunately titled, sure would have filled out a 1960s twin-bill pretty nicely.  It has modest pleasures, indifferent acting (James Franco seems freeze-dried and baked, Freida Pinto has little to no presence), and, of course, some truly nifty performance capture photography.  This is when an actor records actions and movements, eye flutterings, head rotations, finger movements.  This behavior is used that to animate digital character models in computer animation.  In the film, Andy Serkis (there are murmurs of Oscar hype in the Best Supporting Actor category) had his behavior and movements electronically tracked and then translated, using CGI, to bring life to the character of Cesar, the ape that leads the revolt.  Serkis may be the world's leading artist in performance capture; he was Kong in King Kong, Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films.  This film was enjoyably old-fashioned, with rotten villains (Brian Cox & co., who mistreat the apes at a animal facility), chintzy effects (I thought Serkis's performance was kind of precise and broad in equal measures), and absolutely nothing resembling a relationship with the original film.

Taylor Lautner's 15 minutes are probably far from up, but the actor will be little more than a punchline if he keeps giving the kind of vacant, awful performances he does in the silly Abducted.  The actor is bad, distractingly bad, as a high school student who realizes that his parents (Jason Isaacs and Maria Bello) aren't, in fact, his real parents.  But everyone's bad, really bad: Lily Collins as Lautner's love interest, who races around scenic Pittsburgh with Lautner after the bad guys start chasing the two around because... well, it has something to with a list; Alfred Molina is boring and utterly colorless as the CIA agent in pursuit; Sigourney Weaver keeps a straight face as Lautner's therapist, uttering lines like "I hate balloons" while trying to help Lautner and Collins escape from baddies in an easy-to-get-around hospital; to say Michael Nyqvist is one-dimensional as the Euro-something villain is to give him credit for being richer and more faceted than he is.  But, hey, give it up for a fun bad movie.  The plot zips along, and if nothing really makes sense, at least my interest didn't flag.  Pittsburgh looks nice too, and Lautner has a great body.  But it's just sad that director John Singleton (who was the first African American director nominated for an Oscar for Boyz N The Hood seemingly a hundred and ten years ago) has thrown away his career, being as a director-for-hire on terrible scripts like this.  But honestly, John Singleton has never really made that good of a movie, although, to come full-circle with this post, he directed the 2000 remake of Gordon Parks's Shaft.  

Word of the day : xylography : the art of making engravings on wood, especially for printing

More about xylography, folks.  It's the oldest form of relief printmaking techniques.  It originated in China, later making its way to Europe, even influencing Gutenberg.  It is similar to rubber stamping.  A xylogapher cuts and carves wood away from the pieces that of the design that will not be inked.  The parts that aren't carved, the parts that stick up, will form the print.
(Does that make sense?) 

Yep, Etta James died today in Riverside, California at the age of 73.  The singer had suffered from leukemia complications.  A blues and soul legend, James had a career spanning from the late 1950s to the present; James' last album was released in November of 2011 and featured covers of, among others, Guns N' Roses "Welcome to the Jungle" and King Floyd's sex-starved, slinky "Groove Me."  The artist, whose biggest hits came on Chicago's Chess label (if you ever a get a chance, it's worth checking out Beyonce's triumphant portrayal of her in 2008's wonderful Cadillac Records) in the early 1960s, toured consistently until the end of her life.  Rolling Stone rated the singer #22 on the list of the Greatest Singers of All Time.  Everyone likes "At Last" but my favorite James song?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmexOmLyuVU
I used to own a few James albums: her triumphant 1961 album, At Last (with the great title track and the equally stirring "A Sunday Kind of Love") and an album of recent vintage, 2002's Let's Roll, with the churning, demonstrative "The Blues is My Business" (and "Business is Good!).  Outstanding career.

If you want to know my Oscar picks, go back to this post: http://wwwconsideringcjf.blogspot.com/2011/12/word-of-day-conversazione-meeting-for.html
I'm sticking with them, except for the following:
Gary Oldman instead of Ryan Gosling in the Best Actor category.
Melissa McCarthy will nab that fifth spot from Janet McTeer in the Best Supporting Actress category.

It's hard to imagine that Oldman, one of Brad Pitt's inspirations/favorite actors, has never been nominated for an Oscar, despite triumphant performances as Sid Vicious, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dracula, Beethoven, playwright Joe Orton, Rosencrantz, and all those inspired villains - in The Contender, The Professional, etc.  Strange.  I don't think Oldman gives two damns, though, so I won't be feel bad if Gosling or someone slips in.  

Interesting article on William Nicholson in ArtNews: http://www.artnews.com/2012/01/17/command-performance/.  Did you know that Nicholson was a top-tier illustrator, too?  He worked on dozens of children's books, including, most notably...

Lazy, Sunny Day

Word of the day : fustian :  high-flown or affected writing or speech; anything high-flown or affected in style; a strong cotton and linen fabric

What's new this Thursday?  Hmmm.  Not much.  I think Gabriel might have fallen asleep for a change.  Julia'll be home in a few hours.  She'll probably wanna watch Top Chef, I'm guessing.  Daisy and myself will take a nice long walk at some point.  (Nix that on the Gabriel napping.  He's up and about...) I just started The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer.  I've never read Mailer before; so far, so good.  I just got on Facebook under my account for maybe the second time in a year and cleaned out "friends" I don't care about anymore, pretty much wiping out one-third of my companions. 

Hmmm... What else?  Julia and I re-watched The Joneses last night, a nifty, underappreciated little tragi-satire with David Duchovny and Demi Moore as the head of a family just moved to the wealthy suburbs.  For a while, assuming you don't know what the film is about, you might think it's some sort of unhappy-family-with-a-blemishless-facade sort of thing, but the movie has slyer, craftier tricks up its sleeve: This family is actually a team of stealth marketers out to promote their goods to their envious neighbors. 

The movie was shot in Atlanta, which, along with Pittsburgh, has become a hot spot for location shooting.  Check out the list of films that have been shot in Atlanta over the last few years, partly or fully:
- Joyful Noise, What to Expect When You're Expecting, Contagion, American Reunion, The Change-Up, Footloose, X-Men: First Class, Fast Five, For Colored Girls (along with pretty much every Tyler Perry movie), Hall Pass, Zombieland, The Crazies, Killers, Get Low, Life as We Know It, Due Date, The Blind Side.  

So it's just another drowsy day here in southeast Georgia.  Mid-50s, quiet.  It's always quiet here!  Fine with us, just strange!  I'm not sure how many of these neighbors I really wanna be too familiar with, truth be told.  The only young couple on the block are a bit too religious for Jules and I.

Here's an article for my wife: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Oldest-Modernist-Paintings.html 

Happy 173rd birthday, Paul Cezanne! 

Wednesday, Wednesday

Word of the day : graupel  : granular snow

Well, Julia is back in school.  Gabriel, who had an evaluation today, starts his preschool in a couple of weeks.  That leaves Daisy and I (and the nefarious cats) at home, taking our sojourn-like walks. 

I just finished The Paris Wife by Paula McLain.  It was a solid book.  There's not much I can really say about it.  McLain tries to make Hemingway sympathetic and partially succeeds but Hadley Hemingway, Ernest's first wife and the focus of the novel, didn't really do much for me as a character; she's stodgy, flat, lacking dynamism.  And if some of the dialogue is stiff, McLain mostly writes fluidly and well and the novel is a fine introduction to Paris at the time - a great deal of research went in to it (it can provide delightful companionship to Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris) - here's Alice Toklas, here's Ford Madox Ford!  It just didn't surprise me or really lead anywhere new and exciting.  You know from the beginning what is going to happen and when it does, it just leaves you unmoved.  I appreciate McLain's ambition, however, and some of her deft characterizations, and am looking forward to what's up next from her. 

You might be wondering who Michael Fassbender is.  The drop-dead gorgeous Irish-German actor has made quite a splash this year (the male equivalent of what Jessica Chastain has done) in, to my count, four well-received turns showcasing a dazzling display of range: the dashing Rochester in Jane Eyre, Magneto in X-Men: First Class, Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method, and, in the role that very likely will garner him an Oscar nod, a sex addict in Shame, for director Steve McQueen (nope, not that one), for whom Fassbender gave an award-winning performance a few years in Hunger (about the 1981 IRA Hunger Strike), which put the actor on the map and led to roles in, among others, Inglorious Basterds  (as the ill-fated Lt. Hicox).  Fassbender has two other movies in the works, not counting this Friday's Haywire.  
Here is a good article, if you're interested, on Fassbender in the Hollywood Reporter.  Is it just for me or does Fassbender give Pitt and Clooney (his likely comrades in the hunt for Best Actor glory) some contention for Sexiest Male Actor?  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/THR-cover-michael-fassbender-shame-nudity-dangerous-method-282859  (Just sayin'... If I were gay, Fassbender would be in my top 5...)

Julia, check out this article about some of the Spanish-built Baroque churches nestled within the villages of the Andes: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-Sistine-Chapel-of-the-Andes.html

What else? 
- Paula Deen vs. Anthony Bourdain.  I'm going with Bourdain on this one.  Deen cooks for fat southern people like herself and it's caught up with her.
- Michael Jordan verifies what basketball fans have long suspected.  The one player today who's truly worthy, in MJ's opinion, of being "Jordanesque" is Kobe Bryant.
- LL Cool J is hosting the Grammys.  File this under Who Cares? 
- Tonight, a-n-o-t-hh-eee-rrrr season of American Idol kicks off.  I would also file this under Who Cares? if it weren't for the fact that tonight's audition takes place in Savannah.  Still, I probably won't watch it. 

This week's American masterpiece is John Singer Sargent's The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, from 1882.  Sargent's work was inspired by Velazquez's Las Meninas, viewed by Sargent when he was traveling in Spain.  It was a highly-praised, yet somewhat baffling painting to critics, who couldn't understand how any of the four girls were related to each other.  Sargent (1856-1925) studied in Europe and was schooled in Old World painting by a friend of Manet, himself an admirer of Velazquez.  Sargent became a master of portraiture, but he was equally adept in Impressionist brushwork. 

But the question remains: Who are the girls?  The daughters of the bourgeoisie?  The daughters of the servants?  What are they doing?  Okay, we know they're the daughters of Edward Darley Boit, a fellow expatriate American painter, and his wife, but the isolation, the way each girl seems slightly, but ineluctably, different from the others, is still beguiling.  Sargent painted the picture in the Boit's apartment in Paris, the girls informally, asymmetrically posed.  From Velazquez, Sargent obviously learned the importance of of dark tones, shading, distant light sources.  The gigantic vases in the picture really existed.  There is so much empty space!  What's really spooky is that none of the four girls (at the time of the painting ranging from ages four to fourteen) ever married; it is known that two of them became to some extent emotionally or mentally disturbed over the years.  Only the two girls  in the foreground remained close over the years.  Sargent was a Modernist through and through; there may not be any loaded meaning here, no allegory.  What is, is. Perhaps.  (Two years ago, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston temporarily loaned out the painting to Madrid's Prado so that it could hang next to Las Meninas.)  Henry James, a fellow expatriate, praised the painting and the work has gained more and more relevance and esteem since its 1883 Salon debut - the loneliness and isolation the painting captures continues to stand out, intrigue..  Some critics think these themes Sargent captured were related to the plight of the expatriate: always itinerant, always moving, never at home anywhere.   

MLK Day

Word of the day : ostensible : intended for display; open to view; plausible rather than demonstrably real or true

Happy MLK Day!  Fun, relaxing weekend indeed.  Some good NFL games, although darned if I'm not the worst game-predicter.  Out of all eight games so far, I've correctly picked two of them.  2.  So next Sunday's (tentative) guesses?  New England over Baltimore, San Francisco over New York. 

How about the Golden Globes last night, too?  Here are ten things I think about them:

1) I'm glad Claire Danes, Idris Elba, Meryl Streep, and Christopher Plummer won. 
2) I thought Seth Rogen's joke about having an erection standing next to Kate Beckinsale, William H. Macy and wife Felicity Huffman's singsongy introduction, and Madonna's retort to Ricky Gervais's introduction of her, were the funniest bits of the night. 
3) And speaking of Madonna?  At 53 (! Madonna's 53!), she looks incredible.  Her arms are insane!  (Or just really creepy, in a Gollum-like way)
4) With Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Woody Allen all winning, the GG's saluted three of the greatest directors of this - or any - era. 
5) Best speech of the night?  Claire Danes or Michelle Williams.
6) Speaking of Williams, how exactly is My Week With Marilyn a comedy? 
7) Surprisingly, only one win for The Help: Octavia Spencer.  This doesn't bode well for its Oscar chances. 
8) Ricky Gervais was funny, although he wasn't around much and you could clearly tell he had toned it down from last year - although I thought it was funny when he introduced Colin Firth as a "racist." 
9) Nothing for Bridesmaids! 
10) Well-deserved lifetime achievement award to the great Morgan Freeman.   Although, and it must be said, no montage of his body of work should include The Bucket List or Deep Impact. 

And you could make a case - as I'm sure you could for any of the nominees - that Brad Pitt deserved the award just as much as Clooney did for his outstanding performance in Bennett Miller's Moneyball.  He's in every scene, and the actor is at his compelling, knotty best.  He looks great - a little weathered, some lined, rugged grooves.  And he's so charismatic and forceful, unafraid of making his character diffident and stingy, propelled by his own will and stubbornness.  A great star turn.  The movie is impeccably adapted from Michael's Lewis non-fiction bestseller by top-flight screenwriters Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin (a dream team of scriptwriting talent), with an authentic, lived-in feel, attention to detail.  It's funny and sharp, verbose, but it's Pitt's MVP turn that you remember. 

Interesting facts about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr (courtesy of socialwayne.com):

- Originally named Michael Luther King Jr;,  he changed it to Martin to honor the founder of Lutheranism. 

- At the age of 35, he became the youngest man to win the Nobel Peace Prize

- Was the first black American to be awarded Time Magazine's Man of the Year. 

- He was arrested more than twenty times, assaulted at least four times. 

- He was a big Star Trek fan, claiming that it was the only show he and his wife, Coretta Scott King, let their kids stay up and watch with them. 

- He was a vegetarian. 

Savannah!

Word of the day : thole : endure   (This is one of the English language's oldest words.) 

Not a long post today, since we're getting ready to go to Savannah and I wanna try and finish a book before we go (and possibly start Downton Abbey). 

It's Girl Scouts cookie season, so here's a post for you: ttp://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/food/2012/01/when-did-the-girl-scouts-start-selling-cookies/ 
(Be sure to hit on that link of 'expired' cookies.)
Julia and I will pass the Juliette Gordon Low home/museum in Savannah again today; one of these days, Julia will go in and look around.  

Smithsonian.com also had an article on the 2012 movie landscape.  Here are three movies I'm looking forward to seeing:

1) Darling Companion 
Directed by Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist); starring Diane Keaton, Kevin Kline, Dianne Wiest, Richard Jenkins
Here's the premise, according to IMDB: The story of a woman who loves her dog more than her husband.  And then her husband loses the dog. 

2) This is 40  
Directed by Judd Apatow; starring Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Megan Fox, Jason Segel, Melissa McCarthy, Albert Brooks, John Lithgow
A follow-up to Knocked Up, checking back in on the lives of the Rudd and Mann characters.

3) Life of Pi 
Directed by Ang Lee; starring Tobey Maguire, Irrfan Khan and Tabu (the parents from The Namesake) 
An adaptation of Yann Martel's best-selling novel. 

 

The above painting, Horseneck Falls (ca. 1889-1900) by John Henry Twachtman, is on permanent display at the Met.  Twachtman was a Cincinnati-born member of the The Ten, the group of American painters inspired by Impressionism, whom I mentioned the other day,  (As an amendment, I want to add that the group came about in the late 1890s - I think I suggested that it was the 1920s the other day.)  Twachtman was a landscape painter who studied in Venice with William Merritt Chase for nine months and then in Paris too, with, among other lifelong friends, Childe Hassam and Robert Reid.  Back in America, Twachtman taught at the Art Students League and was eventually able to purchase a home in Greenwich, Connecticut on seventeen acres, through which ran the Horseneck Brook.  Twachtman, aided at times by the architect Stanford White, was able to modify his home from its origins as a common farmhouse to a rambling, low-lying structure that appeared unified with the land around it.  Throughout the rest of his life, until his death in 1902, Twachtman used the area around Greenwich as the subject of much of his work.  Twachtman liked soft tonal qualities, but he grew fond of broken brushwork and colors blended directly on the canvas, reminiscent of Monet. 

Snip Snip, Daisy

Word of the day : laity : in Christianity, members of a religious community that do not have the priestly responsibilities of ordained clergy

Today's big going-on: Daisy went to get spayed.  Get home soon, girl!   

Julia and I were a little late to the party for the box-office hit (and Oscar hopeful) The Help.  What a wonderful, satisfying film, full of humor and heartbreak.  The cast was, to a person, outstanding: Viola Davis, peerless, as the maid whose years of devotion and service belie a wounded, angry heart; Octavia Spencer as the big-eyed, sassy help who backs down to no one; Emma Stone as the budding writer whose idea it is to publish a book recounting the relationship between the black maids and their white employers in 1963 Mississippi; Bryce Dallas Howard (playing a caricature but doing so with razor-sharp, unnerving nastiness) as the snobbiest white woman around; Jessica Chastain as a vivacious, sunny newlywed shunned by the other wives.  In the two reviews I read of the film, I don't recall any mention of what a nice job writer-director Tate Taylor did adapting Kathryn Stockett's hugely popular bestselling, book club staple.   Taylor forgoes civics-lesson preachiness for the most part but doesn't do disservice to the black characters by turning them into disenfranchised saints either.  I suppose Howard's character is too one-dimensional of a villain, though, and some of the white characters aren't as well-drawn as the black characters are; the men remain blank-faced, largely muted ciphers. The plot moves well and the sentiment is generally well-earned, however. 

                                           Horse Drawn Cabs at Evening, c1890.

Today, I was inspired by the artwork on Julia's daily calendar by Childe Hassam, one of the most well-known of all the American Impressionists in the early 20th century.  Hassam ((1859-1935) was the very definition of prolific and was one of the founding members of The Ten, an influential circle of American painters (John Twachtman and Edmund Tarbell were among the others).  Hassam was born in Massachusettes but studied in Paris during the height of Impressionism.  Hassam wanted to bring Impressionism to America and to do away with conventionally accepted academic styles - such as classicism and romantic realism, not to mention the use of outdated exhibition installations.  Hassam's favorite subjects were the streets of New York City, imbuing the buildings and sidewalks with an Impressionistic, bright light.  He painted the New York and New England countrysides as well.  He declared that he was more invested in the emotional content of the painting than the color-application techniques.  He's most famous today, however, for his Flag Paintings, which became to him what Haystacks were to Monet.  From 1916 to 1918, Hassam completed a series of over twenty flag paintings as a way of commemorating the flags of all the Allied Force countries during World War I.  Before he died, he was working a lot as a graphic artist, completing hundreds of lithographs and and etchings.   Below is Allies Day, May 1917.  This painting served as a commemoration of the visit of both the French and British war commissioners to America after the U.S. had entered the war.  It was the first time the flags of three nations had hung together in public.  

A note before I proceed.  In case you were wondering where I get my information, I'll tell you.  I use a variety of non-Wikipedia websites, paraphrasing and re-wording facts and information from history websites, academic journals, artist home pages, newspapers and magazines.  I get as much information as I possibly can, parse out the most concise, important information I want to get across, and then voila!  I make sure I go to reputable, encyclopedic sites.  If I ever have to quote directly from a source, I would surely do so. 

Robert Irvine, chef from Restaurant: Impossible, has a restaurant on Hilton Head Island.  Here is its website: http://www.eathhi.com/  Irvine has lived on Hilton Head since 2007 - that is, when he's not on the road 300 days a year, often consumed with the Food Network shows he appears on.  Here's a list of other dishes he recommends on the island: http://www.foodnetwork.com/chefs/robert-irvines-top-five/index.html

Roll Tide!

Word of the day : mantic : of or relating to the faculty of divination; prophetic

Sweet Home, Alabama! 

As promised, here are the first ten of what I call Charles Fischer's 200 Essential American Films. 
(Note:  I chose the films based on entertainment value first, historical and critical importance second, but I also considered timelessness, relevance, influence, appeal.)

 - L.A. Confidential  (1997, directed by Curtis Hanson)
               One of the greatest films of the 1990s, a labyrinth of corruption, femme fatales glamorous big-city rot, crooked cops, hookers from Arizona, brilliant dialogue, and a cast for the ages.  The film made stars of little-known Australian actors Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce, gave Kevin Spacey one of his best roles, won Kim Basinger an Oscar, and even found memorable parts for James Cromwell, Danny DeVito, and David Strathairn.  A masterful script from the underrated Hanson and Brian Helgeland, from the novel by James Ellroy. 

- Lost in Translation  (2003, Sofia Coppola)
               The film, which people either swoon over or are bored by, marked the arrival of a major directorial talent.  Even if you don't fall for the film's dazzling evocation of bewilderment and displacement, and even if you don't really care what Bill Murray whispers in Scarlett Johansson's ear at the end, it's impossible not to be hypnotized by what has become something of an iconic Murray performance, deadpan and touching.   

- Make Way For Tomorrow  (1937, Leo McCarey)
                See my post from two days ago. 

- North by Northwest  (1959, Alfred Hitchcock)
                Where do we even start?

- "Roger O. Thornhill?  What does the 'O' stand for?"
- "Nothing." 

- "That's funny.  That plane's dustin' crops where there ain't no crops." 

- "When I was a little boy, I wouldn't even let my mother undress me."
- "Well, you're a big boy now."

One of the most entertaining movies ever made.  And capped by off by one of the greatest sex jokes then seen in film. 

- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest  (1975, Milos Forman)
               Perhaps Jack Nicholson's definitive role.  And one of only three films to win the big 5 Oscars: actor, actress (Louise Fletcher), director, screenplay, and picture.

- Psycho (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)
                 Whose list wouldn't this be on?  Movies, especially horror movies, were never quite the same again.  There perhaps is no figure in film so complex as Norman Bates.  Critics have always hated the final scene, where the psychiatrist explains to use for five minutes about why and when Norman becomes mother.  But to Hitchcock, who hadn't the slightest use for psychiatry, this was the ultimate joke, the great kiss-off to the whole profession: No way in the world could anyone begin to understand the psyche of Norman Bates.  No way could anyone make his dilemma tidy.  We were the crazy ones if we think we could.    

- Schindler's List (1993, Steven Spielberg)
                Not a fun film to watch by any means, but a profoundly important, personal one, a great director's finest achievement.  Ralph Fiennes was truly terrifying as the desensitized SS officer and Liam Neeson was a tower of strength as Schindler. 

- Sideways  (2004, Alexander Payne)
               Arguably the best romantic comedy of the new century, Payne's film gave us characters and plights we could all understand and relate to.  The human comedy was very real, the performances fresh and invigorating (Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, and Sandra Oh).  A perfect mixture of laughs and sadness, a wonderful postcard of the dripping, lushly fresh northern California vineyards.  Payne, adapting Rex Pickett's novel with Jim Taylor, always finds these under-the-radar novels (The Descendants, About Schmidt, Election) and mines them for gold.

- The Toy Story trilogy.  (1995, 1999, 2010, John Lasseter)
               I can't wait to watch these films with Gabriel one day.  They're so smart and knowing, funny, with moments that stick in your throat.  Technical achievements, yes, with dazzling voice work, yes, but any animated films that can make kids and adults laugh, gulp, and be moved at the same time, are works to be treasured.

- Unforgiven  (1992, Clint Eastwood)
               Clint Eastwood set out to make one final statement about violence in cinemas, violent men in general.  This was it.  He hasn't done a western since.  No one did a western as good as this one since - I don't know, John Ford?  The Searchers?  This is a guy's movie, through and through.  Oooh, that ending fires us up.  Oooh, we hate Gene Hackman's Little Bill!   We laugh when Clint tells Little Bill that the man he just gunned down should have armed himself!  We too nod with satisfaction and recognition when Little Bill tells Eastwood's William Munny that he'll see him in hell.

National Championship Day

Word of the day : piecemeal : one piece at a time; gradually

Okay, wrong on my NFL predictions for the week.  1-for-4, I think.  All right, here are this weekend's picks:
On Saturday, New Orleans will beat S.F.  N.E. will knock out Denver. 
On Sunday, Baltimore will beat Houston.  Green Bay will dominate the G-Men. 
Tonight's National Championship: Alabama 20, LSU 17

Interesting science facts from Smithsonian.com today:

- Bigfoot did exist.  Well, sort of.  An ape as big as a polar bear did live in South Asia until 300,000 years ago.  The ape most likely walked on its fists, like modern day orangutans.  He or she weighed up to 1200 pounds (three times that of a modern gorilla) and stood more than ten feet tall.  These apes ate figgy fruits, plants, bamboo.  They lived in a forested environment.      

- Elephants in the wild don't eat peanuts; zoos don't feed them to elephants either.  The elephant's closest living relative is, believe it or not, the rock hyrax.  Yes, this thing: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/science/2011/09/what-in-the-world-is-a-rock-hyrax/  Elephants avoid ants like the dickens, not because they're scared of them, per se.  But, rather, ants get inside elephants' trunks, which are full of sensitive nerve endings.  Asian and African elephants are as different from each other as elephants and wooly mammoths are.  What else?  Elephants throw sand on their backs and on their head to prevent sunburn.  Elephants can recognize themselves in mirrors, too.  Also, folks, they have a sixth toe. 

- Good stuff.  Here's an article too that you might like: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/hominids/2012/01/why-do-humans-have-chins/

I think Larry Crowne got a bad rap.  Maybe critics expected more from a Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts pairing than a loose, low-key, shambling comedy - with its tossed-off, downsized charm - but, hey, what you get is what you got.  This is a fun movie - maybe a kid brother to NBC's Community - with Hanks earnest and intentionally damped-down, playing it straight, while Julia gets to fluster and flap; she is an excellent physical comedian.  Maybe some think there's just not much to it, but I was smiling throughout.  The supporting cast is eclectic and fun.   

The National Film Registry is a result of the National Film Preservation Act of 1988.  That year, the Library of Congress established the U.S.  National Film Preservation Board, which annually selects twenty-five films - these 25 films are known as the National Film Registry for that year - to be preserved in the Library of Congress. This is a huge honor for a film - an equivalent to a work of art being displayed at MOMA or the Louvre.  The first selections were chosen in 1989. among them were The Wizard of Oz, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Sunset Boulevard, Vertigo, The Grapes of Wrath, High Noon, and Gone With the Wind.  The films range from Hollywood studio films to short subjects, newsreels, non-feature length films, non-theatrically released titles, documentaries, home films, music videos.  The members of the Board, which advise the Library of Congress on what films should be chosen and preserved, include Martin Scorsese, the great cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, members of the Screen Actors Guild, NYU, the Writers Guild of America, and the National Association of Theater Owners, among others.  (A film has to be at least year ten years old to be eligible for the register)
As of the 2011 listing, there are 575 films on the total register now in the Library.  The 2011 listing included the following titles: Bambi, Forrest Gump, Norma Rae, Silence of the Lambs, and Stand and Deliver, co-starring Lou Diamond Phillips, currently misidentified by the Food Network Channel (Phillips is appearing, natch, on a celebrity cook-off challenge) as an "Academy Award nominee." Edward James Olmos was, however, nominated for his work in the film. 

Once a month, starting tomorrow, I will select ten films that I think should be preserved.  These won't necessarily be my favorite films or even what I would consider the greatest American films ever.  Rather, these 200 selections (to be revealed over 20 months) will be the films that are something more than what can be listed under any heading or label.  So I guess they're the films I'd want to show my great-great-grandkids 50-80 years from now (my theoretical grandchildren) as a way of introducing them to what entertainment and film art was from the silent era of movies to 2013.  But that's tomorrow. 

 

Playoff Sunday

Word of the day : mordant : biting, caustic, incisive in thought, manner, or style; burning, pungent

Is Leo McCarey's Make Way For Tomorrow the Great American Film?  Possibly.  Long-neglected, only recently discovered a few years back at the Telluride FIlm Festival, this tearjerker (part of a particularly astonishing year for McCarey, 1937, which also saw his legendary The Awful Truth) is one of the most poignant, unsentimental experiences imaginable.  Even for those who are somewhat resistant to black-and-white films, the movie's power is a bit undeniable.  There are no movie stars here - just superb character actors Victor Moore and Beulah Bondi as an elderly couple whose home is being foreclosed.  The couple is forced to move in, separately, with their children, neither of whom wants them.  It's a deceptively simple premise, but McCarey milks it for all its worth.  Who can't relate to these scenes?  Moore's folksy, stubborn father moves in with his daughter, but is largely ignored by her family, finding sole companionship with a store owner nearby.  Bondi's character moves in with her son, but is largely a nuisance to him, her daughter-in-law, and her granddaughter, all of whom are embarrassed by her.  There are superb scenes here, that McCarey lets unfold with a wonderful application of the nuances within the mise en scene: my favorite was when Bondi's character intrudes on the bridge class her daughter is teaching.  But first and foremost is the relationship between the old couple - coy, tipsy, unadorned.  And the final shot truly is one of cinema's great achievements.  As Orson Welles exclaimed, this film could "make a stone cry."  It's Ozu's Tokyo Story, only shorter. 

I've seen Rogue, Greg McLean's follow-up to his startling Wolf Creek, twice now and was unsettled by it both times.  It's worth checking out.  An Australian wildlife tour is stranded on a tidal island after the guide, responding to a distress flare, wanders into the domain of a territorial giant crocodile  Michael Vartan, Radha Mitchell, and Sam Worthington are among the cast members, but it's a director's film all the way.  The pacing is tight, the special effects are good, the locale vivid and well-evoked, and there are some outstanding, vise-tight sequences.  There isn't a wasted frame in the picture - and you never know who's going to get chomped, either.    

Reviews

Word of the day : tome : a volume forming part of a larger work; a large or scholarly book

Does Sarah Jessica Parker ever underplay anything?  Watching I Don't Know How She Does It, director Douglas McGrath's film version of Allison Pearson's 2001 chick-lit bestseller, it would be impossible for anyone in the audience to want more of Parker.  Everything she does is big and broad and loose and fast and spasmodic; she wears out her welcome fairly soon, and her character seems idiotic as opposed to the film's comprehension of her, which is that she is overworked, a frazzled juggler.  It's an entertaining, easy enough enough movie to watch, with some good one-liners.  The problem isn't so much Parker - whose every mannerism and actorly choice cries out "Carrie Bradshaw" - as the whole Hollywood anachronistic conception that working women are in over their heads; that women who leave the house for the workplace are misguided, destined to fail, that husbands can't raise their properly.  The supporting cast helps: Christina Hendricks, as Parker's friend, and Olivia Munn, as the assistant, are delightful, unfortunately saddled to second banana statuses; Greg Kinnear is likable to the bone as Parker's saddled husband; Pierce Brosnan does nice work as the New York businessman who falls for Parker; Busy Phillips is amusing as an ultra-aerobicized stay-at-home mom.  Only Kelsey Grammer is wasted as Parker's boss.                

Alafair Burke's Long Gone is a winning mystery with enough believable twists in its final act to keep readers on their toes.  Alice Humphrey is a former child actress who is embroiled in a imbroglio of suspicion after a mysterious, handsome art-world big shot picks her out to manage a gallery, and the same man ends up dead on the empty gallery floor days after the grand opening.  Burke paces the story nicely, but the pleasure in the experience lies just as much with Burke's sly observations as it does the tortuous, addictive plot; I got a kick out of the small nuances and timely social commentary.  There's sexting, Facebook, Ponzi schemes, controversies that recall the Roman Polanski rape case and Robert Mapplethorpe's culture-war battle in Cincinnati, a publicity-seeking preacher; for me, it was the little things, like Burke acknowledging that too many people today have no idea what they mean when they say "literally;" this isn't an author phoning it in. There's a lot going on here in terms of the plot but it never felt like too much, to this reader.

Burke is the daughter of acclaimed novelist James Lee Burke, whose The Tin Roof Blowdown was one of my favorite books of 2007, a great novel.  James has written 31 novels and two short story collections.   

Definition of a Ponzi Scheme, according to the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity. 

Today's work of art - just a brief landscape painting by one of the members of the Group of Seven, a collection of Canadian painters committed to portray the character of the Canadian landscape, particularly around Ontario, in the 1920s.  Though inspired by post-Impressionism, the artists broke free of European tradition and tried to create nationalistic sentiments.  Today, they are still renowned as some of Canada's most important painters.  The piece below, Clouds, Lake Superior (1923) is by Lawren Harris.  

Birds, Predictions

Word of the day : calaboose : jail; local jail

It's official: Gabriel can hear and see just fine.

I'm so lucky to live in a place where the bird-watching is so rich.  In the last week alone, I've seen the following birds:
-red-winged blackbird (below)
-red-bellied woodpecker
-blue jay
-bluebird
-northern mockingbird
-great blue heron
-snow egret
-little blue heron
-American coot
-red-shouldered hawk
-cardinal
-(some kind of sandpiper)
And lots of sparrows!

I'm watching the PBS Nature episode devoted to the "Birds of the Gods," the spectacular birds found deep in the heart of New Guinea and nowhere else: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/birds-of-the-gods/introduction/6229/

Here are some photos of the various God-birds: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/birds-of-the-gods/photo-gallery/6273/

Have you, like me, ever wondered what the difference was between New Guinea and Papua New Guinea?  No?  Well, I have, certainly.  New Guinea is the island - the second largest in the world - and Papua New Guinea is the eastern half of the island; Papua New Guinea is a country that declared its independence in 1975 from Australia.  The western part of the island of New Guinea is divided into Indonesian provinces.

Papua New Guinea has slightly more area to it than does the state of California and it's about 96% Christian - the primary religions being Catholic, Evangelical Lutherans, and Seventh Day Adventists.  The climate is tropical, of course, the terrain mostly mountainous.  The country is a slave to active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.  It's a remarkably heterogeneous society, and the government is a constitutional parliamentary democracy.

In terms of nature, the island of New Guinea itself is a paradise, a smorgasbord of wealth.  In 2011, scientists reported that over a ten-year period (1998-2008), over 1000 new species had been discovered on the island's mountains and lowlands and foothills.  Check it out: http://news.discovery.com/animals/new-species-discovered-in-new-guinea-110627.html
Among the new species discovered was what is thought to be the world's smallest kangaroo - a dwarf wallaby:

I'm reading a book by Larry McMurtry book right now.  I went browsing for recent on-line articles about McMurty and was surprised to learn that McMurtry, 74, had gotten married this past year on the day of the Royal Wedding, to the widow of Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest).  Apparently, Kesey and McMurtry were classmates in the graduate writing program at Stanford in the late 1950s.  They had a long-time competitive friendship.  McMurty still lives in Archer City, Texas, the town he was born in and the basis for the town of Thalia, the setting of his Last Picture Show series.  (Incidentally, the film versions of The Last Picture Show and Texasville were shot in Archer City.)
I was aware that McMurtry was one of the most famous booksellers in the country.  He has been in the bookselling business longer than he has been writing, and I knew that his store in Archer City, Booked Up, was supposed to be one of the great antiquarian bookstores going.  I was sad to hear that it was on the verge of closing shop in the midst of the lingering economic crisis, but, lucky, the bookstore came through and is there for the presumable future.
Take a look: http://www.bookedupac.com/index.html

With the Golden Globe Awards nine days away, here are my predictions:

Film:
Motion Picture:  Drama: War Horse  -  Comedy/Musical: The Artist
Actor: Drama: Brad Pitt, Moneyball  - Comedy/Musical: Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Actress: Drama: Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady  - Comedy/Musical: Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn
Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Supporting Actress: Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Director: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Animated Film: The Adventures of Tintin
Screenplay: The Descendants

TV:

Drama:  Homeland
Comedy: Modern Family
Actor: Drama - Jeremy Irons, The Borgias   Comedy - Matt LeBlanc, Episodes
Actress: Drama - Claire Danes, Homeland   Comedy - Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation
Miniseries: Downton Abbey    Actor: Idris Elba, Luther   Actress: Kate Winslet, Mildred Pierce
Supporting Actor: Guy Pearce, Mildred Pierce
Supporting Actress: Jessica Lange, American Horror Story

Quick Post

One more for Wednesday: 

Check out this article from Lonely Planet.  (Check out #3) 

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/usa/travel-tips-and-articles/76941?affil=fb-fan

The Dreaded Hearing Test

Word of the day : headlong : with the head foremost; recklessly, without deliberation; without pause or delay

It's over, that's all I can say.  Gabriel can hear just fine.  No more need be told about that long morning in the Savannah hospital. 

I'm still catching up on PBS' American Masters and I'm watching the episode devoted to the life and career of the great Jeff Bridges - who, along with Gene Hackman, just may be my favorite American actor.  While it's nice to learn more about Bridges (while I knew he was a somewhat revered photographer, I had no idea he was a potter, too), it's worth it just to see all the clips of the wonderful performances over the years: (chronologically) dewy and elegantly raw in The Last Picture Show; terrific in the hard-nosed, spare boxing movie Fat City; silly in Thunderbolt and Lightfoot; compellingly confused in Winter Kills; intelligently languid in Cutter's Way; very solid in Against All Odds, Starman (Oscar nominated again), and Jagged Edge, and The Morning After.  And then, starting with Tucker: The Man and His Dream, a lot of indelible performances, my favorites being the following: The Fabulous Baker Boys, The Fisher King, The Big Lebowski, Arlington Road, The Door in the Floor, A Dog Year, Crazy Heart, True Grit.  What a career!

Okay, why stop?  Here are some specific highlights:

- "I Don't Know" in Crazy Heart
- playing the piano in the empty lounge with his dog while Michelle Pfeiffer watches unnoticed, both of them falling in love with each other - but both of them dancing around it, neither admitting it, neither giving an inch, in The Fabulous Baker Boys
- the staccatio, clipped, horizontal head movements in Starman, based on the behavior of birds
- coming across the lawn naked in The Door in the Floor
- the Dude's body language
- as the President of the United States, asking a faceless assistant over the phone to whip up some kung pao chicken, in The Contender

In honor of Michelle Bachman dropping out of the race, I'll forgo a political cartoon and, instead, give you this little piece about political cartoons in art: http://www.artnews.com/2011/12/20/when-satire-becomes-art/

Okay, here are my NFL playoff predictions for the weekend.
- Cincinnati over Houston
- Pittsburgh over Denver
- New Orleans over Detroit
- Atlanta over the NY Giants

(In case you're wondering, I entered six Fantasy Football leagues this year.  Six teams.  Three of my teams finished in 4th place.  The other three teams finished in 1st place.  Hooray for me!)

I'm glad that Julia and I will get to watch Parenthood tonight.  It's one of our favorite shows, one of the best shows on the air.  The writing is first-rate (it helps that Jason Katims, who was the head writer on Friday Night Lights, has a big hand in it), the characters so warmly believable and relatable, the ensemble first-rate (Craig T. Nelson, Peter Krause, Monica Potter, and Joy Bryant particular standouts, Max Burholder astonishing as the autistic Max).  The show isn't afraid to tackle thorny, unsettling issues, and the series is full of piercing, unflinching honesty.

One final note.  This bird?

This is a painted bunting, a near-threatened species whose epicenter is in coastal Georgia.  Why is it threatened?  Here are all the reasons I could find:

- the old abandoned farmlands that these birds love to nest in is now dense forests in a lot of places
- hedgerows they too nest in have been decimated for conversion into manged farmland
- there's too much pine plantation now, not enough agricultural land

Their last refuge is in the wetlands now, so, Charles Fischer, get thee to St. Simons Island and the Golden Isles to see them, stat!