: of, relating to, or typical of a public official in China
Happy Thursday to you! What's happening today? Well, Gabriel is in school, Julia's swamped with work, my dad is still in the ER (my mom is calling their week in Hilton Head "the costliest vacation from hell"), Game 2 of the Finals is tonight (Miami will rally with fresh legs), Gabriel has speech therapy, and Julia and I are both going to see a play at Georgia Southern this weekend - alas, not at the same time; it's Neil Simon's "Fools."
Need a Soul Track today? Here's one for you.
How 'bout "Hey Pocky-A-Way"!
The Meters were the funkiest band to ever come out of New Orleans. They were essentially an instrumental band, piling all sorts of rhythms and layers on organic, down-home grooves. They backed up a lot of other acts and groups too. Longtime New Orleans fave Art Neville started the band, which basically originated from a jam session with Art, his brothers Aaron and Charles and a few other players; Aaron wasn't really a consistent member of the band. They had a couple of hits in 1969 - "Cissy Strut" and "Sophisticated Cissy." The band, longtime produced by Allen Toussaint (a legend in his own right), split in the mid-70s, breaking off into The Neville Brothers (Art, Cyril, Aaron, Charles). The Meters' 1970 album Look-Ka Py Py is regarded as a masterpiece (ranked #218 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time). The band reunited in 1990 and, under various combinations of rolling members, still tours. "Hey Pocky-A-Way" is off the band's 1974 album Rejuvenation, ranked #138 on Rolling Stone's list.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEtXT9w9AYU
New Movies Opening This Weekend:
This is the best weekend so far of the year. Four big movies and I'd see all of them.
Rock of Ages The Broadway smash musical makes it to the screen, courtesy of director Adam Shankman, who also brought Hairspray to the screen five years ago. Reputedly, it's a slumming, flimsy mess, but Tom Cruise, as a louche, charismatic hair metal rocker, is supposed to steal it. An attractive cast - Julianne Hough, Alec Baldwin, Paul Giamatti, Russell Brand, Bryan Cranston, Catherine Zeta-Jones - runs through this fake, nostalgic trip through the 1980's Hollywood Sunset Strip and the heart of the rock and roll of the period: Def Leppard, Foreigner, Guns 'N Roses, Journey, Pat Benatar. The musical numbers should be fun. It looks like Footloose meets Burlesque, but I'll see it because of Cruise.
Verdict: Very Interested
That's My Boy Another year, another lethargic, critic-resistant Adam Sandler vehicle. He plays a lowlife who fathered a son, raised him badly, and then shows up in his life when the kid, now a man (Andy Samberg), is about to get married. Silly hijinks ensue. I generally like Sandler, though I see about every other one of his movies - for my own sanity. I'm sure there will be goofy voices, semen jokes, gay jokes, hot women (check: Leighton Meester and Eva Amurri Martino), slumming co-stars (check: James Caan and Susan Sarandon), SNL appearances (check: Rachel Dratch, Will Forte, Ana Gasteyer), odd cameos (check: Vanilla Ice, Ian Ziering and Tony Orlando).
Verdict: Mildly Interested
The Woman in the Fifth Douglas Kennedy's oddly compelling novel makes it to the screen, written and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski (who made the exquisite My Summer of Love, which introduced Emily Blunt to us back in 2004). Ethan Hawke stars as a down-on-his-luck, depressed writer who moves to Paris and meets a mysterious woman (Kristin Scott-Thomas) who may or may be not be his guardian angel or savior... or something. The novel sort of fell apart in its last half, but the movie, the same kind of meditation/thriller that the book was, is getting good reviews. Hawke's performance is supposed to be one of his best, and the direction is said to be gorgeous - a hazy, moody fever dream. It's short too, just 83 minutes.
Verdict: Very Interested
Your Sister's Sister Great reviews for this independent drama with a terrific cast. A depressed man (Mark Duplass) stays at his best friend's (Emily Blunt) cabin in the Pacific northwest, seeking solace. When his friend's sister (hot hot hot Rosemarie Dewitt, from Mad Men and The United States of Tara) shows up too, equally lost and broken, the two unite and find comfort in each other. They have sex, which leads to awkwardness when Blunt shows up. Critics are describing it as loose, low-key, intimate, funny, and engaging. Written and directed by Lynn Shelton.
Verdict: Very Interested
*
I'm reading Ken Follett's The Man From St. Petersburg right now. I knew about the Suffragettes in the first couple decades of the 20th century, but I wasn't aware how the English authorities dealt with the activists' hunger strikes.
http://www.johndclare.net/Women1_Forcefeeding_Purvis.htm
*
Pierre L'Enfant died on this date in 1825. Enfant (155-1825) was a French major, artist, and engineer who served for the colonies in the Revolutionary War, where he became friends with George Washington.
In 1791, president Washington announced the location of the nation's capital; a 100 square mile diamond Congressional designated the District of Columbia, a smaller piece within this diamond to be the city of Washington. Enfant was selected to design a plan for the city. Enfant's blueprint allowed for grand radial avenues, ceremonial spaces, respect for the natural contours of the land, intersecting diagonal avenues laid atop a grid system, all the avenues radiating from the buildings that would house the President and Congress. L'Enfant's plan, which was to create a place that symbolically went above and beyond the appearance of a mere city, is still more or less the plan today.
This was quite impressive, this from-scratch design for an area that was, at the time, essentially all marshes, hills, forests, and plantations. Handpicked by Washington, Enfant's model, best exemplified in the National Mall, was European and egalitarian, to be appreciated and enjoyed by all. One of the only features in L'Enfant's design that never materialized was a natural waterfall cascading down Capitol Hill. Oh, well.
Stay tuned - I'll have another post later this afternoon. Or perhaps this is the second post for today - I'm not sure in which order they'll appear on the site.
Images courtesy of:
http://cdn.wegotthiscovered.com/wp-content/uploads/tom-cruise-rock-of-ages-movie-image1-492x3001.jpg
http://www.torontoscreenshots.com/images/your_sisters_sister_still.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/610yoStguDL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
http://www.bryanleister.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Pierre_LEnfant.jpg
Information:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/610yoStguDL._SL500_AA280_.jpg
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/brief-history-of-lenfant.html?c=y&page=1
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