Hey, Hey, We're the Monkees...

Word of the day : bosky : having abundant trees or shrubs ; of or relating to a woods

Okay, I finished Douglas Kennedy's The Woman in the Fifth. 

What I liked: The smooth, easy writing style.  A nice feel for Paris and its various neighborhoods.  The plot that hooks you right from the get-go. 

What I disliked: The big plot twist.  The Reveal. 

I knew where this book was going, and I didn't want it go there because I knew Kennedy wouldn't be able to climb his way out of such quicksand.  That said, it was still compulsive reading.  Kennedy, who admits that he was inspired by this time out by Georges Simenon, tries very hard to create a fever dream, and he more or less succeeds.  We're aware of the whole unreality of the set-up from the get-go, the exotic, menacing strangeness, and that's fine, I dug that.  But after that... It just got too silly, but Kennedy, either wisely or unwisely, plays it straight-faced until the end.

Still, I want to read more of Kennedy and I want to see the upcoming film version of it, starring Ethan Hawke and Kristin Scott-Thomas, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski (the intriguing My Summer of Love).

W. Eugene Smith (#2)
 
Professional Photographer's second greatest photographer of all time.  Smith (1918-1978), an American, Wichita-born, set out about on a lifelong quest to find the truth; he died broke, with $18 to his name.

Smith learned the craft of photography from his mother, and he caught a career-defining break at twenty-one when his reputation achieved through numerous magazine work led to an assignment covering the war in the Pacific.  He photographed the war from the air, on land, from the sea, snapping indelible, conscious-raising images of Japanese victims and prisoners.  Back at home, recuperating from a war injury, he created one of his famous photos, of his son and daughter walking through the woods.

For the next decade, Smith worked on a serious of photo essays for Life which were remarkable for the intensity and compassion, the intimacy, of the subjects he shot.  Later projects included photos for a book on Pittsburgh and, during the sixties, a huge collection of photos done from his New York City window, capturing the life on the streets.    

The Walk to Paradise Garden, 1946

Davy Jones of the Monkees died today!  I love the Monkees, I really do, always did, always will.  There was something so infectious, so sunny about them, and talk about hooks!  I thought they were the perfect combination of power-pop and Beatles-lite, their songs a little trickier and fuzzier, garage-y and out there in a way than what I would expect.  And those songs! 

- "Daydream Believer"
- "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"
- "(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone"
- "Pleasant Valley Sunday"
- "Girl"
- "Last Train to Clarksville"
- 'Daddy's Song"
- "I'm a Believer"
- "Randy Scouse Git"

R.I.P.

And musically speaking, every once in a while my mind is truly blown.  Smithsonian magazine has an article this month on influential female bassist Carol Kaye, a woman I had never heard of.  Turns out, she is one of the greatest bassists, male or female, of all time, a truly forgotten figure.  She grew up poor to struggling musician parents in L.A. and, to make money, began teaching guitar at the age of fourteen.  Over her fifty-five year career, she has played bass on over 10,000 recordings, including some songs you might have heard once or twice:

- "Homeward Bound" (Simon and Garfunkel)
- "California Girls," "Sloop John B" (The Beach Boys)
- "I'm a Believer" (The Monkees)
- "Feelin' Alright" (Joe Cocker)
- "Mission Impossible theme" (Lalo Schifrin)
- "You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin" (guitar) (The Righteous Brothers)
- "The Way We Were" (Barbara Streisand)
- "These Boots Are Made For Walkin' (Nancy Sinatra)
- "The Beat Goes On" (guitar) (Sonny & Cher)
- "Then He Kissed Me" (guitar) (The Crystals)
- "La Bamba" (guitar) (Ritchie Valens)
- "Summertime" (Sam Cooke)

Off to join Whitney...

Photographs!

Word of the day : livelong : whole, entire

Okay, I'm always up for something new.  Here goes:  I'm getting ridding of theme-painting week, for now, but I will continue to post a weekly painting or work of art - whatever suits my fancy - just no themes.  Instead, I want to mix it up a bit.  Starting this week, starting today, I will put up one photograph a day by a famous photographer.  I don't know too much about photography, or photographers, outside of those everyone knows (Ansel Adams, Avedon, Leibovitz, etc.).  I consulted a 2010 issue of Professional Photographer magazine, in which the writers and editors voted on the 100 most influential photographers of all time.  So, without delay, let's go right down the list. 

Richard Avedon (#1)

Arguably the most famous portrait and celebrity photographer in the history of this country.  He seemingly photographed almost every influential figure in the 20th century: Eisenhower, Marilyn Monroe, Buster Keaton, Frank Lloyd Wright, Picasso, Oppenheimer, Warhol, Cousteau, Bardot, O'Keeffe, even Barack Obama.  He used stark white backgrounds, often showing only a portion of the subject being photographed.  His well-lit photographs manage to be spontaneous and formal, minimalist, incredibly able to capture the subject's emotions and allure.  He worked for Harper's, Vogue, The New Yorker.

I'm digging the Douglas Kennedy novel I'm reading now.  Here's a nice link I found regarding the well-spoken, interesting author:

http://blog.booktopia.com.au/2011/04/06/douglas-kennedy-author-of-the-moment-answers-ten-terrifying-questions/

And yay! to Meryl Streep. 

I'll be back at my voluminous best tomorrow, I promise. 

And the award goes to...

Word of the day : conclave : a private meeting or secret assembly ; a gathering of a group or association

It's here... Oscar night.

Buh-buh-bum!  I always watch the Oscars, but this year's show seems destined to be sad, drab.  Billy Crystal - okay, obviously a good Oscar host... but come on, take a chance.  What is this, 1992? Prediction: An onslaught of awards to The Artist and there's going to be a lot of flipped channels.

Julia and I have been reading like maniacs likely.  Today, I finished a book I just started yesterday!  George Pelecanos' 2009 The Way Home is a superb book, splendid.  I gave it five stars because I couldn't find anything wrong with it.  Pelecanos' sense of place is so strong, so acute - he's almost a tour guide for Washington D.C. - and his sociological perception is so beautiful, precise, sympathetic, that the exciting plot is almost the least of his achievements here.

The story concerns Chris, a middle-class kid with a good upbringing, a knack for trouble and acting out.  After a stint in juvenile prison, Chris emerges with a desire to change; his flustered, supportive parents (well-drawn, human characters) certainly hope so.  Chris gets a job laying carpet at his dad's installation company and along with his partner, a well-meaning bit of societal detritus who also served time with Chris in prison, comes across a gym bag containing $50,000 beneath the floorboards of a house they're looking at.  The two decide to let it be, leave it alone.  But things get interesting when a couple of truly terrifying ex-cons come around to retrieve the money and find it gone.

Just outstanding, that's all I'll say.

And another surprise lay waiting when I went to George Pelecanos' website and found a section where he talks about and lists all the music he listened to when writing and touring for a particular novel.  This guy has incredible taste.  He's a Deep Soul fan, also with a taste bud for early 1970s funk, My Morning Jacket, Nick Lowe, Uncle Tupelo, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Boss, Sam Cooke, 80s punk, country rock, etc.

Here's a sampling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT8mZHb4kww

I mean, who in the world is Annette Snell?  And how come someone can be so good and yet unknown to me?
 
I've never seen the 1970s TV movie Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  I've read where it terrified many viewers, but that the special effects were laughable too - especially by today's standards.  I will say that the remake has very good effects and quite a lot of scares; there are a satisfying amount of shivery oh-god moments.  Unfortunately, the screenplay, by Matthew Robbins and Guillermo del Toro, needed to be tightened and re-worked.  The pacing is fine, but the adult characters are truly ludicrous-acting.  Guy Pearce's dad, possibly the most unconcerned father in the history of film, is cartoonishly unbothered and unavailable.  Katie Holmes does good work, but her character, who becomes a mother figure to the frightened young girl seeing horrible little homunculi/netherworld bugaboos, all over the place, is also ludicrous.  Over and over again, these adults leave the girl unattended by herself, despite her being scared senseless by the weapon-wielding creatures coming through the vents.  If a little more sense and care were given to realistic, believable human behavior, this film could have been a knockout, rather than the reasonably entertaining, watchable product it is.

   

Let's Get (a) Physical!

Word of the day : pomaceous : of or relating to apples

Got a clean bill of health today at the doctor's, I think.  That is, if the blood work comes back negative on Monday and this damn sty in my left eye goes away soon. 

Gabriel's been a barrel of fun today, a jumping jackal.  Julia is finishing up a book she started a few days ago.  Tonight, we'll watch Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, with Katie Holmes. 

Yesterday, as was implied from yesterday's post, I watched The Debt, a stirring, well-made action drama with parallel storylines taking place in 19997 and 1966.  In the past, three Mossad agents (Jessica Chastain, Martin Csokas, Sam Worthington) go undercover in Soviet Union-controlled East Germany.  Their task is to find a Nazi war criminal, a concentration camp "Dr. of Death," (inspired by Josef Mengele), and bring him back to Israel.  In the present day, the three agents (Helen Mirren, Tom Wilkinson, and, briefly, Ciaran Hinds, respectively), all celebrated for the capture and killing of the doctor, grapple with the truth of what really happened three decades ago. 

It's an exciting movie, although there are some plot holes.  I thought the final scene, set in an mental hospital, was too easy, too farfetched, and I wasn't sure how Mirren's character put two and two together.  (This is one of those movies where the main character breaks into an office to search for a piece of information, only to be forced to hide when a security guard, drunk and horny, comes in and proceeds to fool around inches away from the tense, quietly waiting protagonist.)  There were other stretches in logic, but the moral force of the story, the sadness at its center, really hits home, and the casting, which could have been problematical, works.  Sam Worthington was kind of bland, and I wanted more of Hinds.  Chastain and Mirren are an ideal pair, however.  Chastain's performance is probably more physical than anything she has ever done, but, like Mirren, she can display an entire palette of competing emotions with seeming little effort. 

The Debt is a remake of a 2007 Israeli film, and, while I haven't seen the original, the remake probably does its predecessor justice.  The filmmaking certainly isn't showy, and the film's big twist is indeed surprising.  Director John Madden has certainly carved out an interesting career.  1997's Mrs. Brown and 1998's Shakespeare in Love seemed to hem in in for a path of prestige-y, highbrow, Oscar-mongering (and while 2005's Proof was a solid outing, no one should mention Captain Corelli's Mandolin), this film, along with 2008's not-bad Killshot, demonstrates an ability to get gritty - although The Debt has a movieish sheen to it; the action scenes are exciting.  Check it out.

Stewart O'Nan's new novella The Odds details, with great, inspiring specificity, the last days of a marriage.  Art and Marion's thirty-year union is on its final legs, and as a last resort, the two decide (well, it's Art's decision, really, one that Marion obliges, self-consciously gives in to) to go to Niagara Falls, site of their honeymoon, live it up for a few days and, on the final night, gamble everything they have, at the roulette wheel.

Rather than describing more of the book, it may be best to highlight a passage:

Marion stayed his hand, covering it with her own, and kept reading.  With nowhere to focus his attention, he was always needy on vacation, just as he'd been following her around the house all fall since he'd lost his job.  He was eager - too eager, really - and normally she could divert him with a list of chores.  She put him in charge of the leaves, checking on him surreptitiously from the bathroom window as she would Emma and Jeremy when they were teenagers, glad to have a hour to herself.  One of her worries about this weekend was how much time they would spend together.  At home she could busy herself running errands and making supper, messing around on Facebook and watching TV, and hide behind her mystery in bed.  Here he would want more of more of her... (pg. 6)

The novella is a series of emotional and physical details, seemingly stored away by O'Nan during a lifetime of clear-eyed, sympathetic observation.  On every page, there are three or four thoughts or bits of dialogue we can relate to.  O'Nan has a great time with the tourist trappings of the Falls.  Anybody who has ever been there, let alone stayed there, can smile and nod along as Art and Marion make their way through the hotel and along the street, past tourist shops, waiting in long lines, over to Goat Island, inside Ripley's-Believe-It-Or-Not museum.  And yet there is something very magisterial, truly immaculate about the Falls, too.  Though there is a satirical element to the story (something almost all-seeing and Updike-ian in the factual, middle-aged sadness, and the lack of fancy in its unfolding, especially in a knockout scene at a Heart concert), the novel is a devastating portrait of the concessions made over the course of a marriage.  Let it be said, though: It's warm book too.  O'Nan doesn't take sides; there's no ugliness here, just empathy.  The reader is never quite sure if Art and Marion will be okay, but O'Nan certainly believes in the sodden, if all-mighty endurance of the human race, a working class perpetuity.  

Discovering Stewart O'Nan a few years ago was certainly a treat.  Here are 10 other authors I'm going to try and discover (for better or worse) over the next year:

- Anne Holt (1222)
- Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son)
- Jan Costin Wagner (Silence)
- Christine Schutt (All Souls)
- Daniel Muennuddin (In Other Rooms, Other Wonders)
- George Pelecanos (The Night Gardener)
- Lori Roy (Bent Road)
- Adam Haslett (You Are Not a Stranger Here)
- David Downing (Zoo Station)
- Thomas Berger (Little Big Man)

Finally, on the eve of Oscar eve, I have a dread in the pit of my stomach.  I love Viola Davis, and even though I haven't seen Streep's turn as Margaret Thatcher, I will feel nothing but rue for the eternal bridesmaid Streep, arguably our greatest living actress, who is destined to lose.  That said, can you tell me what the following performances have in common?

- Maggie Smith, California Suite
- Katharine Hepburn, On Golden Pond
- Shirley Maclaine, Terms of Endearment
- Geraldine Page, The Trip to Bountiful
- Cher, Moonstruck
- Jodie Foster, The Accused
- Kathy Bates, Misery
- Susan Sarandon, Dead Man Walking
- Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love
- Hilary Swank, Boys Don't Cry
- Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago
- Helen Mirren, The Queen
- Kate Winslet, The Reader
- Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

Figure it out?

Yep, that's right...

No one loses or has lost more than Meryl.

  

          

Another Thursday, another Jessica Chastain movie

Word of the day : pelf : money, riches

This week's movies:

Tyler Perry's Good Deeds    A Tyler Perry joint, not screened for critics.  I have no desire to ever see a Tyler Perry film, so I don't care about this one here.  It seems like more of a drama then a comedy, with Perry in a somewhat serious role.  Thandie Newton and Gabrielle Union co-star.  As usual, it was filmed in Atlanta.

Gone    Also not screened for critics (uh-oh), this thriller stars saucer-eyed Amanda Seyfried as Jill, a young woman who comes home to find her sister abducted, possibly by the same kidnapper who took Jill years earlier.  Scripted by Alison Burnett (responsible for some truly bad films - including Autumn in New York) and co-starring Jennifer Carpenter and Wes Bentley; filmed in Portland.

Wanderlust    Almost every critic is saying that despite some broadness and sloppiness, this is a pretty funny comedy.  From the filmmakers (director David Wain, co-writer Ken Marino) behind, among others, Role Models, this comedy stars Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston as a downsized Manhattan couple who movie in with Rudd's brother (Marino) in Atlanta (again, Hot-lanta!).  Eventually, the two stumble upon Elysium, a commune whose residents live a very different way of life.  A supporting cast that's a real kick: Alan Alda, Malin Akerman, Justin Theroux, Lauren Ambrose, Michaela Watkins.

In other news, I quit reading Jason Goodwin's The Janissary Tree... just because... I'm still reading David McCullough's book.  I learned a little bit more about Harriet Beecher Stowe, which got me thinking.  What else did Stowe do - in the literary sense?  And, has anyone actually read Uncle Tom's Cabin?

The Huffington Post is a good website, and I found an article on there about great literary one-hit wonders.  I would argue Fitzgerald's inclusion (isn't Tender is the Night regarded by most as a classic?), so let's substitute Stowe for F. Scott.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/19/the-12-greatest-literary_n_580934.html#s91655&title=F_Scott_Fitzgerald

And then this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/03/lying-about-books_n_703762.html#s133798&title=The_Canterbury_Tales

I'll be back with a longer post tomorrow, featuring a review of The Debt.    

73 and sunny

Word of the day : antiphon : a psalm. verse, or verse sung responsively as part of a liturgy

Funny day.  Well, the funniest thing was Gabriel receiving a letter from the Bulloch County Sheriff urging the hearty enforcer to become a member of the honorary sheriff's association or some such hogwash.

The documentary I watched, The Rape of Europa, sure wasn't funny.  It was sobering, clear, intelligent, vivid, sad, very well done.   Astonishing bit of history. 

The Spencer Quinn book I finished, Thereby Hangs a Tail, was kinda funny.  Quinn, aka Peter Abrahams, is always solid, reliable.  His books (the Bernie and Chet mysteries told from Chet the Dog's POV he writes as Spencer Quinn, the young adult novels he writes once a year or so) are never great, but never bad either.  He's a good craftsman.

Women of Tehuantepec, 1939

This week's Mexican masterpiece is Oaxaca-born Rufino Tamayo's Women of Tehuantepec.  Like some of Mexico's other famous artists, Tamayo (1899-1991) came to prominence in the 1930s.  Unlike the Mexican muralists, Tamayo had no political ideology.  His was a universalist art, with often simple subject matter - men, women, animals.  Critics have elaborated on the complex metaphors, thematic transfiguration in his work.  He had an extraordinary knowledge of pre-Colombian art and culture.  His influences include the Impressionists, the Cubists, the Fauvists, the Abstract Expressionists, and the Surrealists.  He had a mastery of color and his works often demonstrate the plasticity of paint (I won't go into this concept; there are places you can go to on the web that describe it, um... clearly, I guess).  He did much independent, intensive studies of the masters, particularly the Europeans, and combined some of their styles with folk themes.

In the above painting, a piece inspired by his native land, Tamayo perhaps makes a reference to his aunt's fruit stand, which he worked at as a kid.  The great Mexican writer Octavio Paz said that Tamayo's paintings are always distinguished by the light of the (often unseen) sun.  Tehuantepec is a town in southern Mexico, and the women of the town (Tehauanas) are often the chief traders of the region.  The colors are bright, the figures almost Cubist in their delineation and contour, the scene both familiar (it's identified by more than a few as "Mexican realism") and exotic.  It can be seen in Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery.

  
Know who this is?  Me neither - that is, if I hadn't been reading David McCullough's book about Americans in Paris.  It's Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to graduate and receive an M.D. in medicine from an American medical school.   She was in Paris in the late 1840s, attending La Maternite, the world's finest maternity hospital.  Before that, in America, the Kentucky-born Blackwell (who lived in, among other cities, Cincinnati and Charleston, South Carolina) was turned down from twenty-nine medical schools before being accepted at New York's Geneva Medical College.  In Paris to study and learn more, she worked with mothers and children; unfortunately, she contracted a virulent form of conjunctivitis that left her permanently blind in one eye, which left her dreams of becoming a surgeon shattered and gone.  Back in New York, she and her sister started a dispensary that later became a college for and operated entirely by women.  She continued to fight for the rights of women to be admitted to medical schools, and she also organized a group of women field doctors during the Civil War.  She fought for women's rights and reform for years afterward.

I just started a new thriller, Jason Goodwin's The Janissary Tree, a historical mystery set in the Ottoman Empire, featuring a eunuch hero (!).  It's going to be challenging, and twenty pages in, I've already had to look up seven time-and-place-specific terms: ewer, seraskier, padishah, gozde, kapudan pasha, ferenghi, lala.  Jeez, all this looking-up is making me want to lala!  (Whatever happened to her?) 

6 Days till Oscar...

Word of the day : javelina (aka peccary) :  a large. nocturnal, gregarious American mammal resembling a pig (there are two varieties to be found in North America: collared or white-lipped)

Collared peccary

Javelinas are mentioned several times in the Spencer Quinn book I'm reading now.  The collared peccary is is found in the Chihuahuan and Sonoran Deserts in the southwest (Texas, New Mexico, Arizona).  It is the only native pig-like mammal in the country.  They have razor-sharp tusks (resembling javelins), poor eyesight, good hearing.  They live about ten years in the wild, subsisting on agave and prickly pears.  They are omnivores and emit a strong, unpleasant smell.  Here's more facts about them:

http://travelexperta.com/2009/09/costa-rica-wildlife-7-facts-on-collared-peccary-smell-fighting-methods-and-reproduction.html

The white-lipped peccary typically weighs 25-40 kilograms, in contrast with the collared peccary's average of 14-27 pounds.  The white-lipped is a more social animal, living in larger herds.  Also, white-lippeds are less territorial, mainly because their range is greater.  However, collared peccaries tend to run away from their threats (pumas, humans), while white-lippeds, because of their size, tend to defend themselves more by attacking; hence, white-lippeds are more susceptible to threats and death.   The white-lippeds are found in the rainforests throughout Central and South America.  If the two species ever find themselves in the same territory, the collared peccaries will most likely flee because of the greater size of the white-lippeds.

White-lipped peccary

 

 

George Healy
(1813-1894)
Portrait Painter
Time in Paris: 1835-?

Known for: The Boston-born Healy went over to Paris at the age of twenty-one and studied under Jacques-Louis David disciple Antoine Gros, who shortly after committed suicide.  He became a close friend of celebrated French painter Thomas Couture.  Portraits of the American minister to France, General Lewis Cass, and John James Audobon strengthened his reputation, leading to a portrait of France's King Louis-Phillippe.

It was a sympathetic portrait of the king, who was well-liked and convivial with the Americans in Paris; during his world travels, the king had stayed for four years in the U.S. (reputedly, although this is in dispute, working as waiter in a Boston oyster house!).

Healy too spent much time in the Louvre, studying the Titians and Rembrandts.  More portraits followed, including one the King's chief advisor.  In 1842, at the king's request, Healy departed for America to make a copy of Gilbert Stuart's portrait of George Washington for the king.  Healy came back with it, as well as with own portraits of John Tyler and Daniel Webster.  He later went back to the U.S., in 1845, again at the king's request, to get a portrait of the dying Andrew Jackson.  He completed it, continuing across the country to get portraits of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams.

Late in life, he resided in Rome and Paris, occasionally returning to the U.S. and composing portraits.  Eventually, his style went oThe ut of fashion, eclipsed by artists such as John Singer Sargent.

Daniel Webster, 1853

 
As the days to Oscar night can now also be ticked off on on hand, let's take a look back at the worst films and performances to be nominated for Oscars since 1990.

(Not that these films or performances are bad or terrible, not at all.  We can just look back and say, Really?  'Well, I guess that was okay,' or 'yeah, he or she is good, but they were nominated for that?')

Picture: Ghost (1990), Braveheart (1995), Life is Beautiful (1998), Chocolat (2000), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Chicago (2002), The Hours (2002), Finding Neverland (2004), Inception (2010)

Actor: Robert DeNiro, Awakenings (1990); Robin Williams, The Fisher King (1991); Tom Cruise, Jerry Maguire (1996); Roberto Benigni, Life is Beautiful (1998); Sean Penn, I Am Sam (2001); Johnny Depp, Finding Neverland (2004); Terrence Howard, Hustle and Flow (2005)   

Actress: Michelle Pfeiffer, Love Field (1992); Sharon Stone, Casino (1995); Nicole Kidman, Moulin Rouge! (2001); Salma Hayek, Frida (2002).

Supporting Actor: Al Pacino, Dick Tracy (1990); Harvey Keitel, Bugsy (1991); Cuba Gooding Jr., Jerry Maguire (1996); Geoffrey Rush, Shakespeare in Love (1998); Ethan Hawke, Training Day (2001) (the same can be said for Denzel); Ed Harris, The Hours (2002); Djimon Hounsou, In America (2003); Jamie Foxx, Collateral (2004); Jonah Hill, Moneyball (2011).

Supporting Actress: Diane Ladd, Wild at Heart (1990); Jennifer Tilly, Bullets Over Broadway (1994); Kathleen Quinlan, Apollo 13 (1995); Mira Sorvino, Mighty Aphrodite (1995); Gloria Stuart, Titanic (1997); Brenda Blethyn, Little Voice (1998); Queen LAtifah, Chicago (2002).

Then, of course, to continue on a similar thread, let's give brief mention to outstanding actors and actresses who have been nominated but only once, and, curiously, sometimes perhaps for performances that are far from their best:

- Greg Kinnear, As Good As It Gets
- Toni Collette, The Sixth Sense
- Laura Dern, Rambling Rose
- Kristin Scott Thomas, The English Patient
- Gwyneth Paltrow, Shakespeare in Love
- Naomi Watts, 21 Grams
- ummm, Harvey Keitel, Bugsy
- Harrison Ford, Witness
- Samuel L. Jackson, Pulp Fiction
- James Cromwell, Babe
- William H. Macy, Fargo
- Chris Cooper, Adaptation
- John C. Reilly, Chicago
- Alan Alda, The Aviator
- Clive Owen, Closer
- Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
- Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones
- Uma Thurman, Pulp Fiction
- Lauren Bacall, The Mirror Has Two Faces
- Barbara Hershey, Portrait of a Lady
- Catherine Zeta-Jones, Chicago
- Jake and Maggie Gyllenaal, Brokeback Mountain (2005) and Crazy Heart (2009)
 

End of Winter Break 1

Word of the day : extemperaneous : composed, performed, or uttered on the spur of the moment ; impromptu ; makeshift

What a great day yesterday at the Savannah Book Festival!  Perfect weather, authors walking right by us.  Julia got to meet Jamie Ford, I got to listen to and meet Peter Abrahams, and all three of us met Pat Conroy.  Can't wait for next year. 

Which got me thinking...

There are loads of book festivals all over the U.S.  Hopefully, Julia and I will get to attend some of them.  And here are 50 authors I would like to meet at some point: 
(Call it a life list)

Sherman Alexie                                                                                                                             
Benjamin Black (aka John Banville)                               
James Lee Burke                                                              
Harlan Coben                                                                   
J.M. Coetzee                                                                     
Michael Connelly                                                              
Jonathan Dee
E.L. Doctorow
Jennifer Egan
Aaron Elkins
Jeffrey Eugenides
Ken Follett
Jonathan Franzen
Elizabeth George
Tess Gerritsen
Joanne Harris
Carl Hiassen
Oscar Hijuelos
Arnaldur Indridason
John Irving
Kazuo Ishiguro
William Kennedy
Barbara Kingsolver
Jhumpa Lahiri
Erik Larson
Dennis Lehane
Cormac McCarthy
David McCullough
Larry McMurtry
Claire Messud
Toni Morrison
Kate Morton
Stewart O'Nan
Ann Patchett
Tom Perrotta
Arthur Phillips
Annie Proulx
Ruth Rendell
Marilynne Robinson
Phillip Roth
Richard Russo
Lionel Shriver
Scott Smith
Zadie Smith
Michael Stanley
Elizabeth Strout
Donna Tartt
Brady Udall
Daniel Woodrell
Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Oh, well, that's it for today. 

TGIF

Word of the day : catercorner : in a diagonal or oblique position ; kitty-corner

Read this book!  Read this book!

I'm not sure I'll come across a better novel this year - certainly not a better mystery novel.  It's the best book I've read in a long time.  Since almost any "foreign" thriller will find itself inevitably compared to Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, let me come out and say that this novel blows away any of those books.

It's simple, elegant, moving, extremely well-thought out, beautifully diagrammed, with a stunning twist.  You can't possibly guess the ending.

The plot: An abusive ex-husband comes around, threatening his ex-wife and stepdaughter.  When the women kill him, they're unsure how to dispose of the body.  Luckily, the shy math professor next door - hopelessly infatuated with the woman - has a plan.

A day later, a body is found along the bank of a nearby river.

Two Japanese detectives consult with a brilliant physics professor, who begins to try and piece together the case.  Both of them suspect the woman, though her alibi is rock-solid.  How'd she pull it off?

It gets complicated when the physics professor realizes that the woman's neighbor, a mathematical genius slumming at a local high school, might have abetted her.

Higashino gives us a unique look at Japanese culture.   It's a book rich in thematic heft - loyalty, selflessness, problem-solving, respect, friendship.  The ending is shattering.

It's equally worth noting that mathematics plays a strong role in the book.  Both adversaries, the math teacher and the physics prof (old friends, it turns out), try to stay one step ahead of each, continually constructing problems and theories or trying to un-prove them.   

(Warning: In my edition, there were a couple of editing typos.)

Check this out: http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2011/02/11/is-this-guy-the-next-steig-larsson/

One object that plays an important part in the book that readers might be unfamiliar with is a kotatsu table.

This is a low, wooden table frame often covered with a futon or thick blanket, upon which a table top  sits, common in most Japanese homes.   Modern kotatsus have an electric heater attached beneath the table.  Most Japanese homes don't have central heating, so people tend to sit with their legs beneath the warmed blankets - kotatsus are very similar to our heated mattress pads, etc.   In the winter, especially, families sit around kotatsus eating and watching TV.

 
Samuel Morse
1791-1872
Inventor
Time in Paris: 1829-1832, 1839

Known for: Inventing the electric telegraph, Morse code.  It was when he was coming home from Europe in 1832 that he overhead a conversation about telegraphs.  Within a few years of his return, he pretty much gave up painting and focused all his energies on electric telegraphs.  (Morse would face many lawsuits in his life about the rights of the telegraph).  Short-distance landline telegraphs would play an important role in the Crimean War and American Civil War.  When in Paris in 1839, Morse met up with Louis Daguerre and, returning home, became one of the first Americans to make dagguerotypes in the U.S.

In The Greater Journey, author David McCullough focuses on Morse's first stay in Paris, when Morse was recognized as one of American's premiere painters.  (In an attached article below from Smithsonian, you can read how Morse's eventual failure as an artist led the way for him to switch careers and focus to become the important inventor he was.)  In Paris, he went to the Louvre every day and painted all day long, studying and reproducing the artists he most admired.  His major work during the Paris years was Gallery at the Louvre (1832).  This was a massive work, the result of a long ordeal, not a terribly original work, but ambitious as all-get-out. 

There are 38 pictures on the wall (all to be found in the Louvre), mostly Italian Renaissance works.

Here's a key to the painting:

www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2011/morse/morseinfo.pdf 

Morse didn't complete the painting until he got back to the New York, for he still had to paint the frames around each of the paintings in the piece.  During its exhibition, the painting actually lost money!  A few years later and Morse was focused on his new career and the rest is... heee-story!

Why'd he go to Paris: In part, because he was sad.  His wife had just died, leaving him alone with his three kids (who didn't end up going to Paris with him).  In another respect, he felt incomplete as a painter.  He was primarily doing nothing but portrait paintings at that time.  He felt his education wouldn't be fully realized until he went to Paris.  While there, he became close friends with James Fenimore Cooper and his family.   

Savannah Book Festival tomorrow!

A Rainy Thursday

Word of the day: barmy : full of barm, foamy ; eccentric, daft

This has been the first week in Georgia when it hasn't been sunny at least 5 of the 7 days of the week.  Tears...

Take Shelter is the kind of film you might want to jump ship from in the first ten minutes, but if you stick with, you'll be rewarded: it has a steadily accumulating power and two great performances. 

It's a joke that Michael Shannon wasn't nominated for an Oscar.  I'm convinced that a majority of Academy members didn't watch this film.  Or is that some think this kind of role comes too easy for Shannon?

Shannon has a twisted countenance, pained, that of a constipated bug with bad thoughts.  I mean, the Academy nominated his intense work in Revolutionary Road and this, if anything, is a longer, more blistering take on psychiatric madness, only more fleshed-out, haunting.  I don't know how Shannon is able to sustain and make exciting such inner turmoil, but he does.  He plays Curtis, a northeastern Ohio construction worker (the film was shot in 24 days up around Lorain and surrounding counties) who starts having terrifying visions of an approaching storm - well, of something.  His wife (Jessica Chastain) and deaf daughter are at his mercy, dependent on him as the breadwinner.  Curtis begins acting very strange: he chains the dog up in the back yard; he urinates in his sleep; he starts building a bomb shelter; he loses his job.  In a scene destined to be a classic, he freaks out a local fish fry.

So what's going on?  Is he mentally ill, like his mother (Kathy Baker)?  Or is something meteorological really coming?  Writer-director Jeff Nichols shoots the Ohio landscape ominously, the skies filled with portent, but Nichols is tuned into the national mood too, one of anxiety, suspicion, trepidation.  Nichols has a brilliant knack for detail, of specificity of behavior (though I noticed one gaffe that I won't mention), and he doesn't overdo allegory either; this feels like a very specific family, at a very specific place in time.  Health care and insurance play a significant role in the story too.  Nichols asks: Who can even afford to be crazy these days? 

The tension mounts and mounts, and Curtis' plight more and more resembles our own.  We all at times feel as if no one gets us, understands us, that we know something everyone else should and don't.  It's a sad story, and the ending is divisive.  Some find it appropriate, striking; others hate it.  I assumed it was another vision, and. as that, it worked for me.

As good as Shannon's work is, Chastain's is even better.  Is there anything this actress can't do?  She was terrific in The Help, a scene stealer, but it doesn't compare to the talent she displays here.  She takes something of a second banana role and imbues the part with real integrity.  She manages to be compassionate, angry, confused, understanding, scared - sometimes all within the same moment.  She's so good here, she makes everyone who has ever played a wife seem one-dimensional.  Her reaction to Shannon's outbreak at the fish fry is single-handedly the most moving scene I've seen all year.

What's Your Number? is pretty good too, far better than I thought it would be.  Anna Faris excels in the kind of role that's tailor-made for her elastic physical skills and dumb-blonde, oversexed silliness.  She plays a recently-fired Boston woman who realizes that she has slept with far too many guys.  Her plan is to find one of the guys she bedded in her past and forge a relationship with him - and, hopefully, a marriage.  Her partner in the task is her always-hungry musician neighbor (Chris Evans).  The film is raunchy but not distractingly, forcedly so.  It's genuinely funny, if predictable. The supporting cast - Joel McHale, Chris Pratt, Anthony Mackie, Blythe Danner, Zachary Quinto, Ari Graynor, and Ed Begley Jr. - makes the most of their scenes.  There's some zing to the dialogue, particularly between the appealing leads, who have terrific chemistry.  It may disappoint some that the film eventually plays out in the old choice between the so-called Mr. Right (here embodied in Dave Annable's boring politico) and The True Love (Evans).  Oh, well.  I still enjoyed it a lot.   

- I'm no longer reading Philip Kerr's Field Gray, so I won't make any more references to it, as I said that I would during the last post.  Too dense.  Too many names, ranks, organizations. 

- As I also mentioned in my last post, I want to go ahead and focus on one of the Americans abroad in the David McCullough book I'm reading now, The Greater Journey.

James Fenimore Cooper  
(1789-1951)
Author
Time in Paris: 1826-1833

Known for: The most successful novelist American writer of his time (and, arguably for a good century or so), the first successful popular American novelist.  Created an indelible character - the leathery, savvy woodsman (the son of white Americans, but raised by Native Americans) Natty Bumppo, the hero of Cooper's five Leatherstocking Tales: The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, The Prairie.  Last of the Mohicans is his most famous work. 

Why'd he go to Paris:  His father (whom the town of Cooperstwon, New York - site of the Baseball Hall of Fame - is named for), a renowned judge, had racked up too much debt and James (whose siblings had largely fell to ruin) was forced to become self-reliant.  He had no training as a writer, but, on something of a dare, was urged on by his wife Susan to do so.  (According to a story told by his daughter Sue, James was reading aloud to Susan an English novel, which he then threw aside dismissively, saying he could write a better book than that, to which Susan laughed.)  Despite beginning his career at the age of 30, he was an immediate success.  He was very popular, very well-known when he set out for Paris, his Last of the Mohicans just being published.  His books were all over Paris bookstores. 

He went because he thought it would benefit his off-and-on health (he had spleen problems) and he also wanted to improve his children's education.

- He went to Paris with his wife and five children.
- He was revered by other Americans for his American patriotism.  Cooper loved America and exemplified the American spirit.  He enjoyed the attention he received from Parisians, but he wasn't fond of socialites.
- In one of the works completed by Cooper during his time in France, Notions of the Americans, Cooper ridicules British and Europeans for their misconceptions of America.  It wasn't an attack on American principles or behavior, as was commonly thought.  It was a satirical take on how Europeans assumed they knew about Americans, but really didn't.
- He played the flute too!

- Finally, let's talk about the new movies this week as well.

-  Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance   What is there to say, really?  Nicolas Cage is back.  Idris Elba and Ciaran Hands are here, presumably in epic battles with their dignity.  Not screened for critics, but there is a lot of Oscar buzz on this one. 

-  This Means War    Not good reviews for this one, and apparently it's been in development hell for a long time.  Whoever was originally slated to star, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, and Tom Hardy now do.  Two CIA operatives fall for the same woman.  McG directs.  Entertainment Weekly is one of only 28% of critical outlets (as of Thursday noon) that like it, but Roger Ebert calls it an "incompetent stupid action comedy."

- Thin Ice    Sort of Fargo-meets-A Simple Plan here, well-reviewed.  Who-doesn't-like Greg Kinnear stars as a fumbling Wisconsin insurance agent who tries to bilk a retired farmer (Alan Arkin) out a rare, but highly prized violin.  Naturally, Billy Crudup, as Kinnear's hotly-tempered partner, shows up, and everything goes to shit.  Directed by Jill Sprecher, who made a pretty good movie with Arkin over a decade ago, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing.

- Return     It actually opened last week, to blisteringly good reviews.  Linda Cardellini, after spending six seasons on ER, one on the mighty Freaks and Geeks, and two romps as Velma in the truly detestable Scooby Doo films, finally finds a role for his talents as a soldier home from Afghanistan, unable to connect with her husband (Michael Shannon!) but befriending a A.A. member/Vietnam vet (hooray for John Slattery), who may or may not be dangerous.  Quiet, subtle, kind of slow, familiar in concept to The Lucky Ones, Stop-Loss, and the end of The Hurt Locker, if the film was released at the end of last year, there might be some Oscar nom talk for Cardellini.

 

V-Day

Word of the day :  aubade : a morning love song ; a song or poem greeting the dawn : a song or poem of lovers parting at dawn

Happy V-Day, wife!  Love ya!  Remember last year when I posted 100 things I loved about you?

http://wwwconsideringcjf.blogspot.com/2011/04/my-wife.html 

Well, I think they still apply... lol

When you think of February 14, of course you think of love, romance; only freaks or hopelessly ugly people don't.  So why not come up with 25 great things to listen to, watch, and read on this amorous day?  And I'm going for the not-so obvious picks here (ala The Notebook):

1.  The gorgeous 1964 French musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg with all-time hottie Catherine Deneuve
2. Bob Dylan's "I Want You"
3. The combo of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
4. Harry Nilsson's affecting, timeless, simple "Me and My Arrow" (though I think it's about his dog)
5. Audrey Niffenegger's beguiling The Time Traveler's Wife

6. The Bee Gees' "To Love Somebody"
7. 500 Days of Summer
8. Either Smith's "Baby, It's You" or Adele's cover of it
9. Bobby Bland's sexy "Ain't No Love in the Heart of the City"
10. Willia Cather's My Antonia

11. Graham Greene's The End of the Affair and then Neil Jordan's sumptuous, haunting 1999 adaptation of it (with Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore)
12. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
13. Chet Baker's enduring "My Funny Valentine"
14. Of course, Love Actually
15. U2's "All I Want is You"

 
16. Anne Tyler's Pulitzer Prize-winning Breathing Lessons
17. Bounce, the underrated 2000 movie with Ben Affleck and Gwyneth Paltrow
18. Jackie Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops" (..."say you will-lllll...)
19. Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms
20. Dan in Real Life

21. No Strings Attached
22. Patti Smith's "Because the Night"
23. Bill Withers' "Lovely Day"
24. Amelie
25. The Great Gatsby

(I'll try to make this a yearly list)

Quickly:

- A shame about Whitney Houston.  Too bad she threw her career and life away because of drugs and Bobbie Brown.  My favorite songs by her?  I remember having a VHS called NBA Superstars or something which showed highlights from eight to ten stars of the time (Karl Malone, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, etc.) and each superstar had a song that accompanied his highlights.  I don't recall who the player who's footage was accompanied by "The Greatest Love of All" but, hey, I've always remembered the song.  "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" is criminally catchy.   Will she be missed?  I guess, I don't know.  (Maybe if she had released anything like "How Will I Know" in the last sixteen years I would feel more of a sense of loss)

- In the Phillip Kerr book I'm reading now, Kerr briefly brings up the old, much-debated argument about whether or not Lutherans supported Hitler or if they were coerced into siding with him.  This is a morally complex novel that I'm sure I'll write about more soon.   

- I'm also reading David McCullough's The Greater Journey about Americans in Paris.  Starting tomorrow, I'll feature one of the Americans McCullough writes about. 

Kiss kiss! 

Winter Break (Part 1)

Word of the day : vade mecum : a book for ready reference, manual; something regularly carried about by a person

Happy Sunday, all!  My wife continues to impress me with her informative blog.  Check it out if you haven't already.  Here's the link again: http://arthistorymusings.tumblr.com/

There were some good basketball games this weekend.  In the NBA, it's Lin-fever in NYC.  Hooray for the undrafted Harvard kid!  On the college level, it doesn't seem like anyone can topple Kentucky right now.  There are a few more weeks until March Madness, so it'll be interesting to see who will, along with the Wildcats, begin to elevate themselves from the pack. 

 - Most painter biopics aren't worth anyone's time, but 1956's Lust For Life, adapted from the Irving Stone novel, isn't half-bad.  Kirk Douglas is actually pretty good as Vincent Van Gogh.  Douglas' often earnest, strident, manly intensity is well-suited to the part (he was nominated for an Oscar), and Anthony Quinn won the Oscar for his portrayal of Paul Gauguin.  It's a straightforward, more or less linear retelling absent bad, shorthand dialogue (though Douglas' dialogue occasionally generates a howler), well-shot, sometimes floridly framed to resemble a Van Gogh piece, colorful.

- Final Destination 5 is a fond, fitting closing act to a nifty little series.  The last entry, #4, was a clunker, atrociously acted, but this time the direction (Steven Quale) is playful and fun, and while the film is more or less diagrammed the same as the earlier ones - a subset of teens escape death and then one by one, every five to eight minutes of screen time or so, they die in a horribly, explicitly gruesome way.  Damn if it's not fun, though, and the ending is clever - an exercise in the circuity of destiny.

- Julia and I just finished the first season of Parenthood.  What a show!

- All right, it's two weeks to the Big Night, but I'll go ahead and give my Oscar picks:
 
- Picture:  The Artist    I'm thinking the popular The Help is going to get muscled out here by this tribute to the early, glorious days of old Hollywood.  The number of reputed audience walk-outs is disturbing, though.  Is it because they weren't sure it was going to be a silent or was it just boring?

- Actor:  Jean Jujardin, The Artist    Clooney already has one.  Pitt will give a good race - being in The Tree of Life helps too - but Jujardin, hopefully not a one-hit wonder in this country, sings and dances and acts without talking.  A lot of groundswell support here. 

- Actress:  Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady    Just a hunch here.  It'll be between Streep and Viola Davis, and I think Streep's long streak of non-winning will finally be addressed - and stopped. 

- Supporting Actor:  Christopher Plummer, Beginners    A given.  Great career, great performance. 

- Supporting Actress:  Octavia Spencer, The Help    This is the movie's surest shot at a win. 

- Director:  Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist    If Martin Scorsese didn't win this five years ago, I'd say he was the favorite.  But I think the Frenchman has the edge right now.  

The Two Fridas, 1939

This week's masterpiece is Frida Kahlo's The Two Fridas, done during the period of her tumultuous divorce from Diego Rivera, her largest painting (and on display at Mexico City's Museum of Modern Art).  The Frida on the left, with her blouse ripped open to reveal her beating, exposed heart, is the Frida that was left behind by Rivera.  The Frida on the right has a heart that hasn't been cut up and bruised; she holds a small amulet with a portrait of Rivera on it (which, incidentally, was found amongst Kahlo's belongings after she died). 

There is, of course, more to the painting.  Kahlo returned home after a 1939 exhibition of her work in Paris and decided to divorce the womanizing Rivera.  Needless to say, this was a period of self-doubt, turmoil.  The left Kahlo wears a colonial white dress, lacy, similar to a wedding dress.  The right Kahlo wears a traditional Tehuana costume (Rivera liked to see Kahlo dress in the native style).  A vein runs from the amulet of Rivera, through both hearts, finally cut by the rejected Kahlo's pincers, blood spurting on the dress.   In her diary, Kahlo revealed that this painting originated from her memories of an imaginary friend she had as a girl.  Regardless, she is alone now, herself her only companion.  The clouds indicate storminess, inner pain.  It's a graphic painting, medically gruesome, though no one would ever assume such inner pain from the placid, serene expressions on both Kahlo faces.  Kahlo seems to be implying that somewhere along her journey from a rather provincial, native girl to more worldly, continental artist, she lost a bit of herself, her very lifeline; the pain is very apparent.  However, her and Rivera would get back together and remarry the very next year.  Here's an interesting take on Kahlo: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/davis/davis8-28-08.asp 

- What else?  Here's a good article from Smithsonian about the Oscars and Short Films: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/movies/2012/02/what-ever-happened-to-the-short-film/

- So, a book I'm reading right now, The Boy in the Suitcase, deals with child trafficking in Denmark.  I went on CNN's website to see how prevalent a real-life problem human trafficking is.  Prostitution isn't illegal in Denmark.  Pimping is, however.  And to work as a prostitute, one must be a legal resident.  In reality, though, about half of the prostitutes working in Denmark, though, are not Danish: many come from Africa and eastern Europe.  There are tons of pimps too, many of whom are prostitutes and traffickers themselves.   There have been reports of the children being forced into street crime too.  Some "au pair" organizations are actually fronts for trafficking too, though this is very rare.  It's hard to get a number of how many kids are trafficked because it's such a clandestine affair.  In 2007, Denmark adopted a four-year plan to combat human trafficking, but the country still hasn't created any national plan to deal with the issue of child exploitation. 

Regardless of how prevalent this disgusting practice is, it makes for good fiction. 

Yuck

All right, keeping with the spirit of Final Destination 5, here are my top 20 horror/scary films of the last ten years, in no order:

- The Descent (2006)
- The Host (2006)
- Eclipse (2011)
- The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
- The Final Destination series (2000-2011)
- Insidious (2011)
- Frailty (2002)
- The Ruins (2008)
- The Orphanage (2007)
- 28 Days Later (2002)
- The Mist (2007)
- Open Water (2004)

 

 

Uh-oh

 

- Wolf Creek (2005)
- Rogue (2007)
- The first two Paranormal Activity films (2009, 2010)
- Drag Me to Hell (2009)
- The Ring (2002)

We're not dead, mummy!

- The Others (2001)
- Vacancy (2007)
- Turistas (2006)

What did I miss?  Let me know. 
(One correction: In Thursday's post, I accidentally said that Tony Scott directed the new Denzel Washington thriller Safe House.  He didn't.  Daniel Espinosa did. 

Thoysday

Word of the day : prescind : to withdraw one's attention

Couple things today.  Gabriel ended his second week of school with a flourish, running into the arms of his young teacher who he may or may not want to elope with, and Julia and I found out that next week is winter break for his class.  A week off already! 

I'm reading two books right now, and it behooves me to bring up just how good of a movie one of the film adaptations of one of them is, The Talented Mr. Ripley.  I'm sure by now anyone who has at any point in their life desired to see the movie most likely has, so my recommendation of it isn't warranted.  Suffice it to say, it might even be better than Highsmith's great, classic novel, and that's no blasphemy.  Yes, you heard me right.  It's that good of a movie.  It's not just that the late writer-director Anthony Minghella so accurately captures the range of Highsmith's moods - languid yet tense, calm and broiling.  It's not just that the film takes its time, drawing out the coiled suspense, just as Highsmith does, often downplaying the dramatic.  And while the scenery and location work is impressive, it's the cast/casting that does it.  You'll never ready any book in the Ripley series without seeing images of Jude Law as Dickie (who is occasionally referred to in later books), actually accentuating your appreciation and visualization of the character, doing it more with it than was there in the book.  Matt Damon goes so far under Tom Ripley's skin that we can only lament that there were never more treatments of the Ripley series for screen with him in the role.  Gwyneth Paltrow isn't quite the blocky, chunky bland girl of the novel, but Philip Seymour Hoffman is every bit and more Freddie Miles.

I'm also about done with Oscar Hijuelos' wonderful Mr. Ives' Christmas, about the life of an orphaned boy in New York City who grows up to be an illustrator (and eventual vice president of the creative division) at an Madison Avenue ad agency.  The book is about the sights and sounds of the city, the second-generation immigrant's experience in a teeming melting pot, and faith.  Religion indeed plays a major role in the book, as Ives grapples with the question of whether or not God exists - and if he does, what exactly his role is.  Hijuelous is a marvelously descriptive writer - the novel is fecund with details, inundated with sense memories,  It feels autobiographical too and is very open-hearted, often bluntly sad and funny, a modern Christmas Carol.   

So who is Oscar Hijuelos?

Born in 1951 New York City to Cuban immigrants (his mother was a homemaker, his father a hotel worker),  Hijuelos attended public schools, getting his B.A. and M.A. in English from City College.  His first job was at an ad agency. where he worked for seven years (1977-1984), a period that found him writing numerous short stories.  His first novel, 1985's Our House in the Last World was critically-praised, and Hijuelos found himself the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts.  1989's The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love won the Pulitzer Prize.  Along with Mr. Ives' Christmas (1995), Hijuelos has written the following works: The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien (1993), Empress of the Splendid Season (1999), A Simple Habana Melody (2002), Beautiful Maria of My Soul (1999), centered on one of the secondary characters in The Mambo Kings... and a 2011 memoir, Thoughts Without Cigarettes.  Hijuelos has taught at Hofstra and now teaches creative writing at Duke University.  He collects old maps, turn-of-the century books.  He is one of the most acclaimed Latin American writers of the past few decades, the first Hispanic to win the Pulitzer.     
Pretty cool guy.     

The character of Mr. Ives is actually named after James Merritt Ives, of Currier & Ives, the famous printmaking team.  Everyone has seen a Currier & Ives lithograph.  (For a history of the firm, go here: http://www.currierandives.com/) In 1988, the American Historical Print Collectors Society decided on a list of what they felt were the best 50 large and small curio Currier & Ives prints around. 

Their #1 Pick?  Road - The Winter (1853)

#2.  Midnight Race on the Mississippi (1860)

 
This week's movie releases:

- The Vow  An unabashed, old-fashioned romance starring Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum about a wife who coming out of a coma with memory loss and the husband who tries to reconnect with her.  Kind of The Notebook/While You Were Sleeping-y, mediocre reviews.  If you like Nicholas Sparks, you won't miss it, and the supporting cast is interesting: Jessica Lange, Sam Neill, Scott Speedman.

- Safe House  Usually Tony Scott movies turn me off, but his last collaboration with Denzel Washington was the exciting Unstoppable.  Besides, Ryan Reynolds is here, too, and he's always watchable, as are Vera Farmiga (yowza!), Sam Shepard, and the wonderful Brendan Gleeson.  The reviews are right down the middle, as expected - trashy action junk with explosions and car chases right on cue. 

- Journey 2: The Mysterious Island.  Blah is the theme of this week.  Did we really need a sequel to the un-memorable Journey to the Center of the Earth?  The Rock replaces Brendan Fraser, Vanessa Hudgens is in the cast too, as are a paycheck-cashing Michael Caine, Kristin Davis, and Luis Guzman.  The plot is hardly worth a bother: mysterious island, natch, volcanoes, gold, scary creatures.

- Rampart.  Directed by Oren Moverman (of 2009's terrific The Messenger) and scripted by Moverman and novelist James Ellroy, this sounds intriguing.  Woody Harrelsom is reputedly brilliant as a crooked, downward-spiraling cop in 1999 L.A.  Grungy and violent, intense, although some critics are turned off by the handheld camera.  With more push, Harrelson could have gotten an Oscar nod.

Also, Star Wars Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace is being re-released in 3-D.  WHO CARES!!!! 

Sneeze, Wheeze, Cough

Word of the day : cacography : bad spelling or bad handwriting

Today was Gabriel's first day sick from school.  He's fine, believe me.  He was shivering and chattery-teethed this morning, but I think it was cold tiredness.  He's been his usual self since the call-in from Julia. 

What a wonderful Super Bowl this weekend.  Too bad the Patriots didn't win, but it was a good game.  Madonna's show was outstanding, though the controversy over MIA's bird-flip seemed ridiculous; who even saw it as it happened live?  The prudes and turds in this country, probably Republicans.

The first artist in our Mexican celebration is the great muralist Jose Clemente Orozco, one of the three major Mexican muralists who came to prominence in the 1920s during the Mexican revolution, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros being the other two.  Critics and other Mexican artists contend that Orozco (1883-1949) was every bit as great, as influential, as Rivera, but less flashy, less proselytizing, less grandiose, less self-promoting, less dedicated to progress and the future.  He had a rough, sickly middle-class childhood and studied in Mexico City before moving to the United States where he created his most famous murals.  Common themes in his work include the human penchant for greed, destruction, violence, deceit, social protest, anti-authoritarianism.  As with the other great muralists, Orozco celebrated Mexico's cultural nationalism, challenging American stereotypes of Mexico and its artistic heritage and relevance.

There are lots of Orozco masterpieces - including the "Man of Fire" mural on the dome of the Hospicios Cabanas, a beautiful, famous hospital complex in Guadalajara - but the one I chose was one of the works he did for Dartmouth College, The Epic of American Civilization.

This is panel 16, Hispano-America.  Front and center is the Mexican peasant, self-sufficient in the face of imperialists and government officials.  The peasant (possibly Zapata) is armed and ready to lead the rebellion.  Amidst him are various modern symbols of death, greed, tyranny, subjugation, deception.  It is in contrast to the panel 15 (Anglo-America) , which we can see the eastern tip of - the schoolchildren huddled around schoolmarm.
It's hard to go into too much detail about the specific panel without seeing the entire panel as a whole, in one sweep.  Nevertheless, Orozco was in American for ten years before he returned to Mexico.  Somewhere along the way, along with Rivera, he became a symbol of the public arts movement, his expressionism inspiring a new generation of artists, including Pollock and Jacob Lawrence.

Quick fact: Robert Mitchum, more so than Humphrey Bogart, is the definitive Philip Marlowe.  Although Raymond Chandler plots still don't make a lick of sense.    

Fact #2:  Jeff Daniels has never been nominated for an Oscar, nor has Kevin Bacon.  I'm always fascinated this time of the year by the great actors who have yet to be acknowledged by the Academy.

Finally, a random article for the day: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/adventure/2012/02/new-zealands-darkest-bloodiest-secret-the-sandfly/

      

Will the game ever start?

Word of the day : gam : to have a visit or friendly conversation with; to spend or pass time talking

Happy Super Bowl Sunday

My beautiful wife, who has a big day tomorrow, has a new blog that I love:

http://arthistorymusings.tumblr.com/

Whenever the discussion of the greatest writers of all time comes up, one almost never hears the name Graham Greene bandied about.  I can't imagine why.  Everything I've ever read of his - the classics The End of the Affair and The Heart of the Matter and The Power and the Glory, A Burnt-Out Case, Travels With My Aunt, Our Man in Havana - has challenged and stirred me on a deep level.  Green plunks you down in thick, convoluted exotic worlds teeming with intrigue.  His characters grapple with spiritual questions.  Morality is muddled.  Believing in nothing can be transformative, as defining, as believing in God, who is often a silent comedian.  Almost everything you expect in a master writer, Green has in spades: comedy, irony, tragedy, abstruseness in plot, symbolism, flawed characters, redemption, knowledge of specific places (Africa, Cuba, London, Mexico) during specific points in time, and, of course, the ways and manner in which individual consciousness is shaped by the political.  I finish a Greene novel often feeling burnished, spent, relieved, amused, wise.  Greene never resorts to modernist tricks, but his style is very distinct.        

As a way of steering our discussion, I need to mention Greene's work for cinema.  Two of his short stories, he adapted for film: The Third Man, one of the greatest movies ever made, and, one year earlier with the same director (Carol Reed), 1948's The Fallen Idol.  I'm spending this afternoon re-watching The Fallen Idol, and what a doozy it is.  Booby Henrey is Phillipe, the young son of a diplomat, who's often away from their London home.  Phillipe's idol is the butler, Baines (played superbly by Ralph Richardson), who entertains young Philippe with tales of his adventures abroad, including Africa.  One day, Philippe follows Baines to a cafe where he sees Baines deep in conversation with a young woman the startled, chagrined Baines identifies as "his niece."  (It's clear to the audience, though, that this is the married Baines' mistress).   When Baines' own wife, a maid working in Phillipe's household, falls down the steps to her death, the only witness to the incident is young Phillipe.  Was it Baines that Phillipe saw at the top of the steps, pushing his contentiousness wife to her death?
Greene is always fascinated by sin and this is a tight, penetrating examination of a young boy's introduction to it, in the guise of veddy British thriller, with plenty of fanciful, clever camerawork as young Phillipe often eavesdrops and hears conversations he doesn't quite understand.  (I think it would make for a great remake, with maybe Ralph Fiennes in the role of the butler) 

It's almost impossible to love Contagion.  How can you love an unsatisfying movie?  The film is well-shot, nicely scored (by Cliff Martinez), but it leaves a pit in your stomach.  It has an amazing cast (Oscar nominees and winners all over the place - Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, John Hawkes, Marion Cotillard, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Elliott Gould) but there are no amazing performances.  Only Matt Damon is allowed to give his character a roundedness - his quizzical, muddled grief is palpable.  The urgency of the first hour fizzles out by the end.  By the end, you don't feel too much of anything; you just want more of something and you're not sure what.  I though Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter Scott Z. Burns did a nice job at showing how society would probably break down if an epidemic of this magnitude ever did occur, particularly in terms of political selfishness.  But the movie is essentially all surface - not that that's a bad thing, but I actually enjoyed Outbreak more.     

One final thing:  Go Patriots!  

SB Weekend

Word of the day : consul : an official appointed by a government to reside in a foreign country to represent the commercial interests of the appointing country

Every month, I go on the Turner Classic Movies website and browse the schedule for the month, paying close attention to the monthly Martin Scorsese monthly column in which he comments about some of the upcoming titles, the TCM-selected star of the month, the newly-premiering titles.  I try to pick out 3-6 films I'm interested in seeing, some of which I've already seen before.  In this blog, I'll try to give a terse, brief account of anything interesting I see.  

Albert Finney gives arguably the greatest performance as a drunk in the history of cinema in John Huston's 1984 adaptation of Malcolm Lowry's staggeringly great 1947 novel Under the Volcano.  Finney is Geoffrey Fermin, an ex-British consul tripping and blabbering sozzledly across Cuernavaca, Mexico during the Day of the Dead, waiting for his ex-wife (played tenderly by Jacqueline Bisset) to return.  It's a dense, incredibly challenging novel, all but unfilmable, but Huston and screenwriter Guy Gallo do a fine job with it.  Good film. 

When the Spanish Conquistadors landed in Mexico more than half a millenium ago, they found the natives practicing strange death-celebrating rituals.       

This celebration still goes on today in Mexico, many Latin American countries, and even in southwestern parts of the U.S.  During the Aztecs time, the celebration went on for a month.  Once the Spanish arrived, however, the celebration was more or less incorporated with the Catholic All Saints' Day and Day of the Dead now officially takes place on November 2, thought it is celebrated from October 31 to the 2nd of November.  It is said that the spirits of dead children arrive on the 31st and then leave the next day; the adult spirits come on the 1st and leave on the 2nd.  

Why celebrate it?  And what is it?  First of all, it's a remembrance of those that have died.  The celebrating cultures acknowledge death as but one stage of life and that the dead must pass on to the next stage, wherever that might be.  In the days before the Day of the Dead, the spirits of the dead are believed to be amongst the people, amongst their loved ones, but on the Day of the Dead, they depart, pass on.  The holiday is festive, joyous, with dancing, parades, graveside reunions and gatherings.  In homes the following can be seen:

- candles, flowers, pan de muertos (Bread of the Dead) in the shape of skulls and skeletons, papel picado (perforated tissue paper cut-outs), silk flowers, wreaths, votive lights, marigolds, candy skulls.

It is believed that the spirits of the dead make a temporary visit to their former homes.  A hardy meal will provide them repast, substance for their next journey.  The person's favorite foods when he or she was alive might be served, along with breads, beer/tequila, corn gruel, mole sauce, rice, etc.

The graves are, of course, decorated too, with lights often lining the way from the gravesites to the home, so that the spirits can find their way.  

What else this Friday?  I finished Frank Deford's Bliss, Remembered , a fine fictional account of a love story during the 1936 Berlin Olympics.  I went on to NPR, where Deford has a weekly column, "Sweetness and Light," and found among the archived articles this interesting one:

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/21/140591732/no-respect-for-the-women-on-the-sidelines

He's right.  I guess subconsciously I had noticed this before, but I never really ruminated on it to any extent. 

Speaking of NPR, here's another interesting article for the weekend:

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/02/146288063/painting-sheds-new-light-on-the-mona-lisa

Finally, since I won't be back until Monday, here's my Super Bowl forecast.
I think it's going to be very hard for Eli Manning, despite the fact that I think his Giants are the better all-around team, to beat Tom Brady three times in a row.

New England 34, New York 27.