Well, it's the end of the week, y'all. Julia has a long double faculty meeting today, so it'll be Gabriel Owen Fischer and me at the house all day today, licking our chops to go to Savannah tomorrow.
I am also happy to announce that Julia has been chosen to teach a 5-week class abroad next summer in Montepulciano, Italy in the heart of the Tuscan countryside. And Gabriel and I will join her. Two days a week, she will be teaching courses, and another two days a week, she will be leading students on excursions throughout Italy. On weekends, the family will go on jaunts around the countryside - Ravenna, Rome, Pisa, Florence, Venice. We're all looking forward to it tremendously. Hopefully, this will be a yearly thing - Georgia Southern University offers study abroad programs in London, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Waterford (Ireland), Chile, China. The program director has also hinted to Julia that he would like her help in getting a program together for SE Asia, perhaps Vietnam or Cambodia. (Julia's mom is already chomping at the bit to come and visit us.)
Here are a few recent movie reviews:
Haywire
Don't let the mystifying 80% positive critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes fool you into thinking that a slumming Steven Soderbergh's vehicle for mixed martial arts star Gina Carano isn't the worst action film of the year. It certainly is, hands down - and it's only May 3. Soderbegh goes minimalist here - meaning, the camera angles are screwy, the lighting is bad, the dialogue is clipped and cool, everyone is granite-faced, the shots are endless. And the script is incomprehensible when it's not just plain stingy with information; apparently it isn't cool to let the audience know what is going on or who any of the people are. Why so many good actors signed up for small parts in this one (Michael Douglas, Bill Paxton, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Antonio Banderas, Ewan McGregor) is beyond me. I wasn't even sure who Banderas - or Douglas, or Fassbender (who shares the movie's one interesting scene), if I'm being honest - was supposed to be playing. Carano is strong and tough and quite a kicker, but she is dramatically woeful, and Soderbergh can't disguise it. It's boring as hell, and for an action film, that's unforgivable. And what kind of a turd are we dealing with when all is explained at the end and we still feel like we don't get it? Why will be a constant audience response throughout. Here's my why: Why was this film ever made?
(*)
The Innkeepers
Another disappointing, supposed-to-be-good 2012 release, with critics praising writer-editor-director Ti West's old-school horror film for its classical compositions, elegant framing, understated maintenance of tension. I guess. He certainly has talent, but I kept wanting more from this film, though there are two really good scares. Sara Paxton (in a charmingly tomboyish performance) and Pat Healy (too low-key for my taste) play a pair of employees at Connecticut's old Yankee Pedlar Inn during its last weekend before going out of business for good. The hotel is reputedly haunted, and the two workers decide to do some ghostbusting. West has an intriguing theme here - lives in transition - and he works carefully, slowly, in a manner many viewers will probably associate with the Paranormal Activity series, in which the audience just waits for something to appear. There are two many unanswered questions; evidently the director is of that ilk of artists that thrusts on the audience the idea that ambiguity is challenging, a testament/by-product of art: Make your own answers. I get so tired of that. I think it's a cop-out, a sign that the filmmaker doesn't know how to answer any of the raised questions. I wasn't bored exactly, just underwhelmed., and I have no idea what I was supposed to see or conclude about the last shot. Kelly McGillis co-stars as an actress-turned-healer. (On a side note, there really is a Yankee Pedlar Inn - in Torrington, Connecticut. West was inspired to make this movie after a stay there. The movie was filmed in the inn.)
(**1/2)
Last Night
An intriguing drama from writer-director Massy Tadjedin about a married NYC couple (played by those iconic New Yorkers Keira Knightley and Sam Worthington) whose fidelity is put to the test when Michael (Worthington) goes away on an overnight business trip with a single, widowed colleague with a crush on him (Eva Mendes). Joanna is tested too, when running errands, she encounters an old Parisian boyfriend (Patrick Dempsey lookalike Guillaume Canet) in town for a day or two. A talky, dreamlike drama with good acting, particularly from Knightley, the film draws the audience in with an alluring what-would-you-do? tension. The characters are pushed to the brink of temptation, and it's compelling to watch them react.
(***)
The #32 artist on our list of the 100 most Influential Photographers, the Queens-born Robert Mapplethorpe, is probably best-known, especially in Cincinnati, for his controversial dirty pictures showing sadomasochistic acts.
He was influenced by Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp and he had a wonderful knack for tinkering, becoming an expert in mixed-media collage. He came of age in photography in the mid to late-1970s shooting Polaroid pics of New York artists, musicians, and adult film stars. He was drawn to the S & M underground. His standards and compositions are those of a classical aesthete, despite how shocking and disturbing the images and content are: nudes, female bodybuilders.
He died of AIDS in 1989.
I'm not a big fan by any means of Mapplethorpe, but I encourage any one who's interested in him to read Patti Smith's 2010 National Book Award winner Just Kids, which documents Smith and and Mapplethorpe's relationship and lifelong friendship. The book, poignantly and lovingly told by Smith, with a great recall for detail, is especially evocative of the period when Smith and Mapplethorpe lived together in the Chelsea Hotel in the early 1970s. Mapplethorpe even did the album cover of Smith's great 1975 breakthrough Horses.
In light of everyone's tastes, I won't post any of Mapplethorpe's more recognized work, because a lot of it isn't particularly pleasant.
And, finally, in response to a recent discussion I had with a fellow blogger and reader, I want to list 10 Classic Rock bands/artists and songs I never get tired of, that I will love eternally.
- The Kinks
- The Band
- Neil Young
- Led Zeppelin
- Traffic
- CCR
- The Mamas and the Papas
- The Rolling Stones
- Cream
- The Animals
- "Waterloo Sunset," The Kinks
- "We Gotta Get Outta This Place," The Animals
- "Under My Thumb," The Stones
- "Amoreena," Elton John
- "People Are Strange," The Doors
- "The Kids Are All Right," The Who
- "Dixie Chicken," Little Feat
- "Expecting to Fly," Buffalo Springfield
- "Thunder Road," Bruce Springsteen
- "Tangled Up in Blue," Bob Dylan
(and 5 more...)
- "Crimson and Clover," Tommy James and the Shondells ("Draggin' the Line" too)
- "Ziggy Stardust," David Bowie
- "Who'll Stop the Rain?", CCR
- "Moving in Stereo," the Cars (an 80s song, but still)
- "Dear Mr. Fantasy," Traffic
But damn if I haven't at some point loved or admired the following too:
Gene Pitney, Joe Cocker, Bo Diddley, Curtis Mayfield, Paul Simon, Laura Nyro, almost anyone that recorded in Motown in the 1960s, Randy Newman, Dr. John, The Beach Boys, T. Rex, Phil Spector's Wall of Sound artists (the Ronettes, Shangri-Las, Crystals), Tooths and the Maytals, The Police, Larry Williams, both Elvises, Carl Perkins, Little Feat/Lowell George, the Allmans, Skynyrd, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Withers, Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Marley, Bruce, John Lee Hooker, Percy Sledge, Chuck Willis, Aretha, Zappa, War, Sly and the Family Stone, Rod Stewart/Faces, Mitch Ryder, the Shirelles, the Contours, Mitch Ryder, Bowie, the Byrds, Ricky Nelson, Donovan, Jackie Wilson, the Velvettes, the Velvet Underground, Ike and Tina, Wicked Wilson Pickett, the Turtles, Paul Revere and the Raiders, LaVern Baker, Big Mama Thornton, Muddy Waters, the Monkees (love the Monkees), the Bee Gees, Stevie Wonder, the Coasters, Ruth Brown, Roxy Music, Chuck Berry, Stevie Wonder, Boston, Don Covay, the Moody Blues, the Drifters, Roy Orbison, the Talking Heads, the Grateful Dead (not their endless jams, but rather the songs like "Uncle John's Band") the Staples Singers, Cat Stevens, Bob Dylan (a thousand times over), Tony Joe White, Nick Lowe, and about a hundred more.
(And that's just up through the end of the 1970s!)
I think I might even like Soul as much as I like Classic Rock - I find, and this is just my opinion, that it ages better.
My all-time favorite soundtrack is The Harder They Come (a film I haven't even seen), with its reggae and Jamaican artists led by the great Jimmy Cliff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRoJyaZW6SA
My all-time favorite artist is Elvis Presley. (Followed closely by The Band, CCR, Mary Wells, and Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Otis Redding.)
My all-time favorite songwriters are Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Randy Newman.
I think Mary Wells is an incredible artist, maybe the most underrated singer and artists to come out of Motown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH62fCjr23g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD4EZOmYRh0
I also think Tony Joe White is incredibly underrated. His 1972 album The Train I'm On is the greatest unsung great alum I can currently think of. You might know him from songs others made more popular, like "Polk Salad Annie" and "Rainy Night in Georgia." They call him the Swamp Fox. He has a deep voice, a little country-blues-rock sound to him. I would love to see him live, if that would ever be possible.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9IgFr4Afc0
My all-time favorite album is either Neil Young's Harvest or Elvis Presley's From Elvis in Memphis, depending on what mood I'm in!
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