Considerations...: Thursday

Word of the day : amative : indicative of love
; of or relating to love

It's going to be another hot and humid day here in SE Georgia. Plans for today consist of taking Gabriel to school, going out for coffee and breakfast (the former not for me) showing Julia's mother around Statesboro and the university, going out for lunch, and then trying to stay out of this swampy heat.

Linda made in softly yesterday and is ready to soak in as much "Georgia flavor" as she can in her week here.

Tonight, I'll DVR the Heat-Thunder game because the ladies will probably want to watch a movie or something. But I'll go out on a limb and press my luck and try to guess correctly again. The Heat will win the series tonight in Miami and Lebron will get his ring.

Miami 98, Oklahoma City 90.

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It's Thursday, and that means it's time to look at the new movies opening this weekend:

To Rome with Love The ever-prolific Woody Allen makes another stop on his European City tour with this subpar-reviewed outing. After last year's wondrous, appealing Midnight in Paris, this one is bound to be somewhat of a let down. It's okay, though; I see all his films regardless of what critics say. The story is the same as it always is - neurotic, doubting characters searching for, scraping at, questioning love. There are always good, if by now moldy, one-liners, references to philosophers and classical musicians and therapists... you know the drill. Allen himself is on-screen (for the first time since 2006's washed-out Scoop), playing an opera aficionado married to that great bitter harridan Judy Davis. For the younger generation, there's a group of actors born to be in an Allen film - Jesse Eisenberg, Greta Gerwig, Ellen Page - and Penelope Cruz (who won an Oscar for Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona in 2008), Roberto Benigni (where has he been?), and Alec Baldwin are here too. Bound to be enchantingly photographed.
Verdict: Very Interested

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World    I'm not sure about this one. A lightly romantic, soft comedy that just happens to be about the apocalypse. Steve Carell and Keira Knightley (I always saw them as a romantic pairing, didn't you?) play two people - he an insurance agent, she his free-spirited neighbor - who have to deal with the fact that an asteroid will collide with the earth in a few weeks' time. Well, what you do? The two take a road trip, encountering all sorts of people who are trying to wrap their heads around the fact that life as they know it will end not with a whimper but a bang. Decent reviews, with a good supporting cast - Friday Night Lights' Connie Britton, William Petersen, Martin Sheen, Derek Luke, Patton Oswalt. Could be a low-key pleasure. Written and directed by Lorene Scafaria.
Verdict: Mildly Interested

Brave    The latest Pixar adventure is about a spunky Scottish princess (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) who gets magically turned into a bear. It's getting good-not-great reviews; this isn't one of Pixar's masterpieces, but still a worthy summer entertainment for kids. Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, and Billy Connolly are among the vocal stars.
Verdict: Not Interested

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter    As junky as it sounds. Critics are calling it cartoonish, plodding, unsatisfying. Out tall 16th president, as it goes, was actually a nocturnal hunter of the undead. Based on Seth Grahame Smith's mysteriously popular novel (he also wrote the screenplay), the film contends that Honest Abe was called into duty when, as a boy, he witnessed his mother murdered by a vampire! Stars the unknown-to-me Benjamin Walker as Lincoln, Dominic Cooper, Anthony Mackie, and Rufus Sewell.
Verdict: Not Interested

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All right, day 3 in the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time. Up next?

Claude Rains
as Alexander Sebastian in Notorious (1946)

As the sly, intelligent, simpering Nazi whose wife (Ingrid Bergman), unbeknownst to him, infiltrates his group, Rains is a dandy in one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films. The slow-burning chemistry between Bergman and Cary Grant is as great as expected, but it's Rains who steals the film right out from under them. Rains' Sebastian is cold on the surface but Rains makes him likable and engaging without diminishing the secret, cultivated nastiness he and his cronies are up to behind closed doors. When he realizes he has been betrayed by Bergman, Rains' heartbreak is subtly conveyed and when he realizes that it is now he who must answer to the higher-ups for letting a traitor into their midst, Rains beautifully crumbles from within, revealing the fact that he is a momma's boy who was in over his head from the beginning.

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Book Review

Anne Tyler has written her share of wonderful novels, but her new novel The Beginner's Goodbye (2012) isn't one of them. Alarmingly short (less than 200 pages), it's just okay, which isn't to say it's not worth reading, but as an introduction to a great writer, it's bound to be a disappointment.

A handicapped Baltimore man, Aaron Woolcott (one of Tyler's fubsy, clumsy, understated, somewhat unfulfilled men), loses his wife when a tree falls onto their house and kills her. His period of grief is made murkier when he begins to see his wife in the flesh around town - at the farmers' market, outside the house. Although Tyler downplays these encounters, implying that the prosaic quality to these ghostly visits are life-like and bespeak of the ambiguity of the afterlife (nothing is lost, nothing goes anywhere), they're not particularly engaging. I understand that Tyler wants to show us that if we were visited by dead loved ones, it wouldn't be movie-like encounters, but she underplays it to the point where it's numbingly boring.

And that's the problem. This just isn't a very engaging book. The plot involves Aaron moving back in with his controlling sister, plowing through the days at his family's publishing company, and hiring a crew to fix up his demolished house. It's all kind of blah. Tyler is as good as any writer alive at showing human foibles, the everyday human behavior that can frustrate, infuriate, and draw us closer to those around us; she is a master at details. And there is some good writing here, but Tyler, uncharacteristically tin-eared, seems to have lost her gift for dialogue. Does Tyler no longer grasp how people talk? Has she - or you - have ever heard a 40ish man say "Goodness" or "Oh, my goodness"? I haven't. And I'd be willing to be she actually hasn't either.

I get the feeling that Tyler has scrunched the entire universe down into her cozy, cutesy Baltimorean snow globe. And that's become a problem. Nothing feels vital, none of the characters are particularly memorable, and while there are beautiful descriptions and sentence work, not much feels fresh or recognizable. Tyler is so good at making the small things in life feel big. Here, her work just feels small; you just brush it off, like a gnat.
(**1/2)

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A few months back, we started making our way through Professional Photographer's list of the "100 Most Influential Photographers." We're on #51 now.

Cecil Beaton (#51)

The British Beaton (1904-1980) was influenced as a child by the postcards of societal ladies that accompanied the Sunday newspaper. In the 1920s, he was a staff photographer for Vanity Fair and Vogue, known for taking his models/sitters and placing them in front of strange, odd backgrounds. He flattered his subjects, playing up to them, arranging them in settings inspired by modern art - mirrors, cellophane, torn paper. He was societally savvy, knowing how to mingle and mix with socialites and celebrities. He also dabbled in fashion design, was a writer and a diarist, and was an in-demand romantic photographer, making his women look really great. He became famous for photographing the First Family of the 1930s - stammering King George VI, his brother Edward, the Queen, Wallis Simpson. He wasn't particularly beloved - he was somewhat of a persnickety, self-important snob who created an image of himself much the same way Cary Grant did. He was also a painter and stage and film set designer, winning four Tonys and winning an Oscar for My Fair Lady (1964). Beaton was knighted in 1972. He influenced countless other photographers.