Let it Begin... Tonight!

Word of the day :
                            reprove
                                          :  to scold or direct, usually gently or with kindly intent
                                          :  to express disapproval of ; censure
                                          :  to express rebuke or reproof

All right, the tourney opens up in Dayton tonight.  I'll keep a running tab of my daily predictions for each and every game.    
North Carolina A&T over Liberty
Saint Mary's over Middle Tennessee St. 

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The Sessions (2012) is a fine film, and I was glad that the movie had enough humor in it to overcome the potential ickiness of its unusual subject matter.  Many people thought John Hawkes would earn a Best Actor nod for his work as Mark O'Brien, the real-life poet whose lifelong battle with polio left him trapped inside an iron lung.  Helen Hunt plays the sex surrogate - a sexual therapist, if you will - hired by Mark to help him... well, lose his virginity. 

The movie - a concise piece of work at 90 minutes - is written and directed with light poignancy by Ben Levin, and his approach to the material makes the film more palatable without being insubstantial.  This is a sad story, but full of uplift.  Every character is well-written, and the evolving friendship between Mark and his surrogate (beautifully played by Hunt, who did earn an Oscar nod) is enacted nicely.  The great William H.Macy gives a sharp performance as the humane, down-to-earth priest who befriends Mark and listens to his adventures in the sack.  My favorite moment in the film is almost a throwaway scene: after visiting Mark at his house, sharing a few beers, and hearing of his exploits, Macy steps outside Mark's door, lights up a cigarette, and smiles to himself -  the sheepish, satisfied grin of a man ever amused and comforted by the secular.  

*

Graham Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a novel centered on a fantastical dilemma - a 16-year old girl goes off into the woods and is taken away by a strange man; she lives with him and his oversexed community for six months, only to return home and find that twenty years have passed in the real world.  Is she crazy?  Is she dreaming?  What happened to her?  

The family and friends Tara leaves behind include her brother Peter - a farrier now, tired and edgy - with his wife and four kids; her bewildered parents, who never got over her disappearance; and her musician boyfriend Richie, who was once Peter's best friend, and was suspected as being behind her disappearance. 

Joyce has an engaging, intelligent prose style and he cleverly teases out the mystery of what happened, concocting various scenarios; the one he ultimately settles on left me a little disappointed and underwhelmed, but in creating a magical-realist world in which strange, unexplainable things just might be out there, Joyce does a highly capable job. 




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