Keep my dad in your thoughts and prayers today, readers. His vacation has gotten worse - now he's in the ER!
Hopefully, the cat scan locates what exactly is going on with his stomach.
I'm not really in the mood to post today, but we press on here, folks.
*
HBO's Enlightened had a ten-episode first season; I've been making my way through it. It's an odd, compelling show about a woman who had a corporate breakdown, went to rehab in Hawaii, and then comes back with a different outlook - an outlook that has a bewildering, neutered effect on her colleagues, associates, and mother (Diane Ladd). It's a show about hard it is to generally change who you are in the modern world, how difficult it to get better within a society. In the starring role, Laura Dern is tremendous, as she always is - mixing sweetness and bitter anger, befuddlement and naivety. But isn't Dern always tremendous? We forget about her a lot, but she really is one of cinema's greatest, rangiest actresses.
(***1/2)
*
Brief Movie Reviews
The past decade hasn't been kind to director Rob Reiner (an era with The Story of Us, Rumor Has It, and The Bucket List on his resume) but his 2010 outing Flipped, based on Wendelin Van Draanen's young adult novel, is a fine, likable tale of Julie Baker (Madeline Carroll) and Bryce Loski (Callan McAuliffe), two kids who live across the street from each other. Over the years, their relationship changes: at first, Bryce looks down on Juli and her sloppy, odd family, finding her annoying and pesky; Juli at first adores Bryce but begins to think there's less to him than meets the eye. The film's structure - in which we see the same events from both character's points-of-view - is clever and novel for a kids film, reminding us that there are different sides and perspectives to every story. Because of this sympathy for different viewpoints, the film treats its characters fairly, even allowing the adults - Aidan Quinn, Penelope Ann Miller, Anthony Edwards, Rebecca DeMornay - to be more than just one-characteristic types. The look of the film - a sort of sunny flatness - is kind of cool too.
(***)
Sofia Coppola's fourth film, Somewhere (2010) is an aimless, occasionally affecting inversion of celebrity, with Stephen Dorff as Johnny Marco, a lonely action star who spends his days at the Chateau Marmont (the famous Hollywood hotel above the strip) getting high, lying around, talking to his agent, watching private pole dancers. When his daughter (Elle Fanning) shows up, the emotionless, detached Marco is forced to scrutinize his own lifestyle and fame. Coppola's directorial choices - long shots of characters doing very little chief among them - probably alienate as many viewers as they entice (she even mimics Lost in Translation's open ending, in which Bill Murray whispers into Scarlett Johnassen's ear here, to substantially lesser effect). It's not a bad movie - it's well-shot by the ace cinematographer Harry Savides. Dorff's character is such a bore, though, that he generates little goodwill or interest from the audience. It's a meditation on the alienating effects of fame - that's a decent subject for a movie, if obvious. Fanning is terrific as the daughter.
(**)
*
John Grisham's YA novel Theodore Boone: The Accused (the third in the series) is one of the three books I'm reading right now. I'm trying to get more into YA literature. A lot of bestselling adult novelists, particularly mystery writers, are penning YA books today. Among them:
- Grisham (Theodore Boone, Kid Lawyer series)
- Peter Abrahams (the Echo Falls mysteries and more)
- Harlan Coben (Shelter)
- Kathy Reichs (Virals and Seizure, sci-fi mysteries set in South Carolina about a DNA-altered teen science geeks)
- Clive Cussler
- Meg Wolitzer
- Jodi Picoult
- Philippa Gregory
- umm, surprise, surprise, James Patterson
- Candace Bushnell
- Carl Hiaasen
Gotta start making a list of titles to read...
*
We need a Soul Track for today, don't we?
"Sweet Inspiration" by the, um, Sweet Inspirations. The group was formed by Whitney Houston's mother Cissy in the early 1950s. They flew under the radar until signing with Atlantic Records in the late 1960s. "Sweet inspiration," was, along with "Let it Be Me," one of the group's two biggest hits, a top-20 pop and soul number from 1968. Cissy left the group in 1969, but not before the group had backed up Dusty Springfield and Jimi Hendrix on, respectively, tracks from Dusty in Memphis and Electric Ladyland, and recorded their fourth album in legendary Muscle Shoals.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHL8wQQ3r1Q
Time to go do some yard work. Until tomorrow!
Images:
http://lpcoverlover.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/IMG_4420-500x509.jpg
http://www.toonaripost.com/wp-content/themes/Yen/timthumb.php?src=http://www.toonaripost.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Enlightened-TV-Series-Season-1-November-Episodes-on-HBO.jpg&w=580&zc=1
http://static.muveez.com/media/8873382_Somewhere-movie-image-Stephen-Dorff.jpg
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