The Play's the Thing and the start of 500

Word of the day : exigent : requiring immediate aid or action
                           : requiring or calling for much ; demanding


Did I call the Heat victory and point spread or what? 

Julia starts her last week of class today.  Her mom comes to visit us in a couple days; I wonder what Linda will think of Statesboro? 

A Soul Track for today? 

 Marlena Shaw's "California Soul," a sunny song written by Ashford & Simpson that was covered in 1969 by Shaw for her second album The Spice of Life.  Shaw was born in New York City in 1942 and was a jazz, soul, and pop singer for Cadet, Blue Note, and Verve Records.  The song was first covered by The Fifth Dimension, then Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell.  Shaw's version, heard over the final fade-out of The Lincoln Lawyer, is marvelously jazzy.  Other Ashford & Simpson compositions include "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing." 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MMflNf-ocg

*

Julia and I, as mentioned, went and saw Neil Simon's Fools, which got me wanting to get back to reading plays, something I have long enjoyed.   Here are 30 Plays Everyone Should Read: 

- Medea, Euripides
- Antigone, Sophocles
- Macbeth, William Shakespeare
- Hamlet, William Shakespeare
- The Misanthrope, Moliere
- The Beggar's Opera, John Gay
- The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde
- Waiting For Godot, Samuel Beckett
- Mother Courage and Her Children, Bertolt Brecht
- The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov
- The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams
- A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen
- Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen
- Long Day's Journey Into Night, Eugene O'Neill
- Moon for the Misbegotten, Eugene O'Neill
- Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller
- Six Characters in Search of an Author, Luigi Pirandello
- No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre 
- Miss Julie, August Strindberg
- Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw
- The Homecoming, Harold Pinter
- The Mousetrap, Agatha Christie
- Our Town, Thornton Wilder
- Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard
- Cloud Nine, Caryl Churchill
- Fences, August Wilson
- True West, Sam Shepard
- Glengarry Glen Ross, David Mamet
- M Butterfly, David Henry Hwang 
- Rabbit Hole, David Lindsay-Abaire

Okay, and because I want to get back into reading plays, especially more modern ones, here are 30 Plays I Want to Read within the next year or two (many of which have been made into movies): 

- Lost in Yonkers, Neil Simon (1991)
- Rumors, Neil Simon (1988)
- Private Lives, Noel Coward (1941)
- The Deep Blue Sea, Terrence Rattigan (1952)
- Clybourne Park, Bruce Norris (2010)
- Ruined, Lynn Nottage (2009)
- Topdog/Underdog, Suzi Lori-Parks (2001)
- Proof, David Auburn (2000)
- The Iceman Cometh, Eugene O'Neill (1939)
- The Young Man From Atlanta, Horton Foote (1994)
- The Weir, Conor McPherson (1997)
- Talley's Folley, Lanford Wilson (1979)
- Picnic, William Inge (1952)
- Arcadia, Tom Stoppard (1994)
- King Lear, William Shakespeare (1603-6)
- Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Edward Albee (1966)
- Master Harold... and the Boys, Athol Fugard (1982)  
- Dinner with Friends, Donald Marguiles (2000)
- Noises Off!, Michael Frayn (1982)
- A Perfect Ganesh, Terrence McNally (1982)
- The Lower Depths, Maxim Gorky (1901-2)
- A Raisin in the Sun, Lorraine Hansberry (1959)
- A Free Man of Color, John Guare (2011)
- Look Back in Anger, John Osborne (1956)
- The Bald Soprano, Eugene Ionesco (1940)
- The Time of Your Life, William Saroyan (1939)
- Grown Ups, Jules Feiffer (1981)
- Painting Churches, Tina Howe (1976)
- Doubt, John Patrick Shanley (2005)
- All My Sons, Arthur Miller (1947)

*
 

Monday means an Author Profile, so let's get to it!

Arnaldur Indridason  

 
Born:  Reykjavik, Iceland, 1951

Career: Indridason is one of the bestselling novelists of Nordic crime fiction; he is arguably the most popular Icelandic novelist at work.  He was the son of a writer and worked a variety of jobs before becoming a full-time novelist: screenwriter, journalist, film critic (Hitchcock was his favorite filmmaker).  He graduated from the University of Iceland with a degree in History.  He lives in Reykjavik, where most of his work is set, with his wife and three children.  His books have been translated into over twenty languages; in America, in our post-Stieg Larsson craze for anything darkly European and mysterious, he is catching on but not as fast as he deserves. 

Although he has written other thrillers, he is best known for his Reykjavik thrillers featuring police detective Erlendur, who has a troubled relationship with his addict daughter and ex-wife, who investigates murders in a dark, always cold, politically changing Iceland, full of social unrest, in which crimes and bad blood carry down through the generations, where an entire country has been rapidly modernized over the course of half a century.   

Indriadson's books are bleak but terse, never overlong or wordy - crisply involving mysteries.  Dark, dark, dark, dark. sometimes bleakly funny.   He doesn't write for a worldwide audience, he has said, but for Icelanders.  His influences are Icelandic classics and the Swedish writing duo of Sjowall-Wahloo.

Noted Books:  2000's Jar City (made into a popular Icelandic film) kicked off the Erlendur series: it's a riveting tale about an old man found dead in his apartment, possibly the result of heinous acts of violence he carried out long ago.  In the fourth book in the series, The Draining Lake (2009), a murder leads Erlendur back into the Cold War period.  Also an award-winning novel, 2010's blistering Hypothermia finds Erlendur investigating a seance gone wrong, an occasion that causes him to remember his own brother's disappearance long ago.

Why You Should Read Him:  Well, he's very good.  His plots are involving without being overly complicated.  His depiction of modern Iceland - unfriendly, lonely, messy, disconnected, scary - draws you in, as do the characters, who are interesting each time out.  His writing style is tough and to the point, and he keeps you turning the pages.

Books I Would Recommend:  Jar City (****) was very, very good.  Silence of the Grave (***), the second entry in the series, was an addictive take on long-ago violence intruding on the present; 2007's Voices (***) was probably my least well-liked book in the series so far but it was still good - a mystery involving a dead Santa Claus in a hotel around Christmas; to me, Hypothermia (*****) is his masterwork, a book that you initially greet with skepticism (a seance?) but whose power and allure just grows and grows.  It haunted me and stayed with me for days.    

Books I Want to Read:  2005's The Draining Lake and the upcoming Outrage (October, 2012). 

I can't find any website for the author. 

*

DRUM ROLL PLEASE...
  
A while back, I posted 200 Must-See Performances of the last 40 years.  Thinking about it now, I think I left a lot out; it didn't feel quite complete.  So I am proud to give it another go...

The 500 Greatest Performances in the History of English-Language Film...

It is what it says it is.
 
This will be a slow, yearlong unveiling.  These are performances that cover the entire span of cinema, the only stipulation being that no actor or actress can appear more than four times on the list; I think that's fair.  No foreign films either.  I won't "rank" the performances (#489, #213, etc.) until I get to the top 100.  I hope you enjoy.

Geoffrey Rush  
as Lionel Logue in The King's Speech (2010)   

As the warm, benevolent, unorthodox Australian speech therapist who cures Colin Firth's King George VI, Rush is every bit as good as his co-star.  He's strange and warm, disciplined and jovial, and he plays beautifully off of Firth.  A terrific movie which gives a good showcase to an actor who can do just about anything (Shine's mentally fractured David Helfgott and the Marquis de Sade in Quills among his more memorable parts), The King's Speech gets most of its humor and heart from Rush, who convinces us with ease that he's a fine father, a fine therapist, a loyal friend, and a bit of a rascal.    











Images courtesy of:

http://www.babelio.com/users/AVT_Arnaldur-Indridason_6394.jpeg

http://www.spinetinglermag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/7896271.jpg


http://www.texasartsproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/clybournepark.jpg

http://myiconcolchester.com/wp-content/gallery/shirts-music-soul/marlena-shaw-california-soul.jpg

http://0.tqn.com/d/movies/1/0/R/M/W/kings-speech-pic-geoffrey-rush.jpg


Information:  

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2006/jun/17/featuresreviews.guardianreview11

It was the third week of June...

Word of the day : ahimsa : the Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of refraining from harming any living being

Happy Me Day!  

R.I.P. Rodney King. 
(Why is that if you're a cast member of any season of Celebrity Rehab there's a good chance you'll die relatively soon?) 

I got Miami beating OKC tonight in a crucial game 3 - well, they're all crucial games at this point.  Every game becomes the most important one in the series.  Miami by six in a tight one. 

Rock of Ages bombed.  Oh, well.  Better off not going to the well once too often. 

The play at Georgia Southern Julia and I saw, Neil Simon's Fools, a funny 1981 play about a rural Ukranian village whose inhabitants are all cursed with stupidity.  Reading up on the play, I discovered that Simon wrote the play right after he divorced his wife (I assume Marsha Mason).  It was determined that his wife would get the proceeds of his next play, so Simon tried to write a bad one, a real clunker!  (It worked: The play closed after only forty performances!)   We enjoyed it, though; no one can write one-liners like Simon.  It was giddily silly.    

*

An obvious Soul Track for today? 

Yep, the Temptations singing about a wayward, sneaky father:

Everyone knows the Temptations.  "My Girl," "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," "The Way You Do The Things You Do."  Motown's finest, there were various incarnations and groups that changed and melded into what would be the "Classic 5" era of the Temptations - Melvin Franklin, David Ruffin, Otis Williams, Eddie Kendricks, and Paul Williams.  While at Motown, the group was mostly produced by songwriter Norman Whitfield, who wrote some of the group's hits with Smokey Robinson. 

Every honor and laurel has been bestowed on the group - Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees, Grammy awards, etc.  Their glorious harmonizing soul was responsible for over a dozen hits in the glory years of Motown, and in the late 60s the band produced some really wonderful psychedelic soul - "Ball of Confusion," "I Can't Get Next to You."  The Grammy-winning "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" was written by Whitfield for the band The Undisputed Truth ("Smiling Faces"); this version is largely forgotten.  In late 1972, The Temptations (Otis Williams and Melvin Franklin being the only Classic 5 members left) recorded it and it was a smash hit and a Grammy winner, a #1 pop hot bloated out from its original three-minute Undisputed Truth original.  Released as a single, the song is ranked #168 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."    
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQGdp99_VYs

*

2011's Red Riding Hood, from hitherto interesting director Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Twilight) is one nutty movie.  I grooved along with the silliness, the CGI's alpine village sets (where these medieval French folks speak English and have perfect skin) for a good half hour before I did what any reasonably sane person would do if confronted with the movie on TNT or USA a few years from now: engage fully in something else while watching it (push-ups, blogging, online shopping, napping).  I could say that it got too Twilight-y, that it wasn't scary, that the dialogue was so ripe it wouldn't be palatable to starved bears, that it was abysmally acted (Gary Oldman shows up, as hammy as you think he's going to be), but I don't want to imply that it isn't a little bit fun.  It's bad but never boring; how could one get bored with Amanda Seyfried (as Red or Riding or Hood or whoever, I didn't catch her name), appropriately big-eyed and sensually intrigued as the ingenue who lives in a snowy village that is perennially cursed by a hungry wolf ?  Oldman's priest/hunter shows up, insisting that the wolf has taken human form, leading all to suspect that the lupine terror is a neighbor or family member.  But who?  I can't say I wasn't unintersted - Mandy Walker's swirling camerawork doesn't permit boredom- but I did casually glance over at the screen and gasp a good 'WTF'?

(*) 

*

Making our way through the 100 Most Influential Photographers, we come across...

Mert & Marcus (#49)

A magnificent duo, Mert and Marcus met in 1996.  The Turkish Mert grew up in Ankara, absorbing 60's culture that came Turkey's way from the States and the UK.  Mert (pronounced like 'Maht) moved to London and became a fashion photo modeler; the British Marcus moved to London in the early 90s, knowing he wanted to be a fashion photographer.  They met, became a couple, and moved in together in 1996.  A few professional breaks came, and by 2001, they had shot ad campaigns for Louis Vuitton and Hugo Boss.  The two use digital technology a lot - for re-touching - and often rely on Photoshop.  They like to shoot (and then digitally augment) sexual, confident, powerful, famous women.  They are known as digital perfectionists, seeking the perfect, smooth, flawless visual effect.

Madonna, 2010

       

Penelope Cruz, 2009

Diane Kruger, 2004

 * 

(Brief) Book Reviews 

- The Man From St. Petersburg, a soapy (in the best sense of the phrase) 1982 thriller is Ken Follett at his best, with layered characters, tensely converging storylines, sex, a relentless villain, and a fast pace.  A Russian anarchist, Felicks, arrives in London, out to kill a Russian prince who is in the city to come to some sort of agreement with Churchill and other government bigwigs so that Russia and England will enter World War I; Felicks wants to keep Russia and its millions of young peasants who will be served up as meat out of war.  The authorities try to capture the elusive Felicks before he completes his task.  There are surprises, romantic backstories, and an easy, effortless style that engages and keeps the reader turning the pages.  Follett is the ultimate popular writer with a distinct style who gives us what we want without writing down to us in order to do so.  

(****)

- John Grisham's Theodore Boone: The Accused (2012) is the third entry in the author's ongoing young adult series about the title character, a wise, ambitious eighth-grade kid who has his own office in his parent's law practice.  In this outing, Theo is framed with the theft of thousands of dollars of electronics from a downtown store.  He, along with his ill-reputed but savvy uncle, has to try to clear his name and find out who committed the crime.  Grisham has always been a fair, solid writer (not bad, far from great) and his straight-ahead plotting and meat-and-potatoes storytelling actually works okay for young adult writing: he isn't subtle, but doesn't seem to be phoning it in either.  The characters and settings are well-drawn and it's a given that Grisham is going to guide us through legal maneuvers and technicalities with ease.  I wasn't impressed but I'd read another one of the Boone books sometime. 

(**1/2)








Images:

 http://www.sensualitynews.com/storage/madonna-mert-atlas-marcus-piggott-interview-may-201013.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1280241515508

http://www.thephotographylink.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/01jpg.jpeg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL0P60AiSF1e2UTyMtWyb0TzMzkbylUasmSjIulrVYTKs_jn4ijECPlLz6XErRqWlFHynDneVVk8UOfO1-2_j-TpzNFz_FTKPCZqVtDKaQHY4DFY_lHoBe-arJ1RdQ3rVQsAEkGrUZeql9/s1600/LV_fw2004_004_diane_kruger.jpg

http://www.english-book-service.com/gfx/items/9/7/8/0/4/5/1/9780451163516.jpg

http://images.indiebound.com/762/425/9780525425762.jpg

http://www.threeimaginarygirls.com/files/uploaded-images/RedRidingHood.jpg
 
Information: 

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/09/27/040927fa_fact1?currentPage=1

No Go

This is my second post for Thursday, in case you're confused.  Or maybe it's the first, depending on how the posts appear on the blog, I'm not sure. 

It has been well-established that I like to read - and read a lot.  However, part of the nature of being a voracious reader is, of course, trying to get through books you don't like.  Well, my philosophy has always been... DON'T.  If I'm not liking it, to the point where I can't finish it, I don't.  That's not to say that I don't read and finish books that aren't good, that I really don't like (Robert Parker, I'm talking to you...).  But we - and I, especially - have dealt with those books that for whatever reason we just can't push ourselves to complete.  Most of the time for me it's because I'm reading other things or I have too many other books that are available to read.  Sometimes, too, I just can't get into a book - the characters, the writing style... whatever it is, it's bothersome.  Most of the time, it's a modernist work that I just finf annoying, too dense or overwritten.  Just as often, it's a work by an author I like - or who has works that I've read and enjoyed!     

Well, after much ado, here is a list of the books over the course of the last... oh, say, three years or so... that I wasn't able to finish.  Some of them I got about halfway through, most of them far less than that.  Who knows?  Maybe you fight this list as interesting, as amusing or telling, as the list of books I have read over the same period of time:

- A Sport and a Pastime, James Salter
- The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford
- To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf (twice!)
- The Sportswriter, Richard Ford
- The Women, T.C. Boyle
- Sanctuary, William Faulkner
- Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
- So Much For That, Lionel Shriver
- We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
- Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence
- I, Claudius, Robert Graves

- An American Tragedy, Theodore Dreiser
- Point Counter Point, Aldous Huxley
- Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller
- Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
- Spies of the Balkans, Alan Furst
- In One Person, John Irving
- Memories of the Ford Administration, John Updike

- Twilight, Stephenie Meyer
- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, Stieg Larsson
- A Great Deliverance, Elizabeth George
- The Janissary Tree, Jason Goodwin
- Nostromo, Joseph Conrad (twice!)
- The Bronze Horseman, Paulina Simons
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
- On the Road, Jack Kerouac
- Ten Days in the Hills, Jane Smiley
- La Brava, Elmore Leonard
- Quentins, Maeve Binchy
- The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon
- Field Gray, Phillip Kerr
- I'd Know You Anywhere, Laura Lippman

- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera
- Hollywood Station, Joseph Wambaugh
- Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
- The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow
- Beloved, Toni Morrison
- Falconer, John Cheever
- Loving, Henry Green
- A Passage to India, E.M. Forster
- The Terrorist, John Updike
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John le Carre
- Case Histories, Kate Atkinson


I could probably summon up a few more, and I might occasionally update or, if I'm in a forgiving mood, cross some titles off this list if I feel like giving them a second chance. 

Do you think I should have stuck with any of these? 

Hit Me With YOur Best Shot!

Word of the day : mandarin : marked by polished ornate complexity of language ; 
                                               : 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

Word of the day : doughty : marked by fearless resolution; valiant

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

Tip Off Time

Word of the day : verjuice : the sour juice of crab apples or unripe fruit

Well, it was a fun weekend in Hilton Head.  The weather wasn't as tempestuous as gloomy as forecasted, but it never got that hot, meaning the ocean and pool water was nippy.  It was good to see the family - although it was unfortunate that my dad got so sick.  I hope he is doing better today!

Gabriel had a great time, as did Daisy, who really had the time of her life.  She became fast friends and lovers with Dexter and Duke.

Gabriel has started summer school today and was glad to see his teacher this morning. She hugged and kissed him and whisked him away for a morning of intensive learning and studying of the classics.  Julia is now down to her final two weeks of summer classes.

The NBA Finals start tonight; I have correctly predicted 11 of the 14 series so far.  It looked grim for Miami for a stretch, and going into game 6 with Boston, I thought that, even if they managed to come back and beat Boston, there was no way they would beat the machine that was OKC; it just didn't seem like the Thunder had any weaknesses.  I still don't think they do, and their bench is marvelous - see: James Harden - is marvelous and clutch.

That said, I just don't see Lebron and D-Wade and Bosh going quietly for a second year in a row.  It seems like it's their time, and they'll get it done against an equally fast, lengthy, athletic Thunder squad.

Prediction: Miami over Oklahoma City in 6 games.

*

Monday's Author Profile was bumped back to today.  The author this week?

Stewart O'Nan 

 

Born: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1951.

Career:  O'Nan, perhaps the most underrated American writer now working, had a plethora of childhood interests: comic books, Tarzan, cartoons, horror books, TV, World War II, the first novels of Stephen King.  He studied aerospace engineering at Boston University and went on to work as a structural test engineer at a Long Island aerospace plant.  He read voraciously - Walker Percy, William Burroughs, John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Camus - and began writing short stories.

His wife, a social worker, encouraged him to go back to school, which he did, earning a Master's in Fine Arts from Cornell when he was thirty years old.  His breakthrough success came in 1993 with the publication of his blistering drama Snow Angels, a sad, acute look at the violence that tore apart a Pennsylvania town in the mid-1970s; it was a made into a fine, if downbeat, 2008 film with Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale.

In 1996, Britain's Granta magazine named him one of America's twenty best young writers - a list that also included Jonathan Franzen.  Throughout the 1990s and early part of this century, a string of acclaimed novels (often horror) followed: 1996's Names of the Dead (about a man haunted by his Vietnam combat experiences); 1998's A World Away (a World War-II story); 2003's The Night Country (a Halloween-set New England horror story reminiscent of Shirley Jackson).

In 2004, he co-wrote with his friend Stephen King Faithful, about the Boston Red Sox's (of whom King and O'Nan are diehard fans) 2004 ending of the World Series curse.  O'Nan constantly switches genres, displaying a marvelous virtuosity, but it was with 2002's Wish You Were Here that he began to build his reputation as the "poet of the working class."

2007's Last Night at the Lobster, a short, great novel about a harried manager of an underperforming, about-to-close strip mall Red Lobster, was one of O'Nan's biggest hits, and it sort of set him on the path he is on now: compact, amazingly-detailed, lived-in slices of working-class, American life.  2011's Emily Alone, the follow-up to Wish You Were Here, is a year in the life of an octogenarian Pittsburgh widow.  2012's The Odds, reviewed a few months back on this blog, is a weekend in the life of a divorcing couple who try to revive their marriage in Niagara Falls.

Noted Books:  Snow Angels; Wish You Were Here; The Good Wife, a 2005 novel about a woman forced to carry on through the course of her husband's decades-long incarceration; Emily, Alone (which received, arguably, the highest accolades of O'Nan's career); 2009's Songs For the Missing, a 2009 tale of a teenage girl's disappearance and the effect it has on her family.

Themes, Style, Etc:  O'Nan is a fabulously sympathetic writer, almost never harshly judgmental of his characters; he's a great humanist.  When you read one of O'Nan's realist novels, you'll be taken aback by how fairly he treats his characters; there are no stereotypes.  His attention to details, the observation of daily life, is fanatical.  Talk about lived-in!  There's the sense that O'Nan has been living alongside the character of Emily (in Emily, Alone) his whole life.  O'Nan has the glorious talent for making private lives - private fears, private behavior, private behavior and neurosis - interesting and vital.  Most of his works are set in New England and, especially with the Pittsburgh novels, O'Nan's details (a word I keep coming back to) are glorious; it really is the details that make O'Nan as good as the authors he reads and is influenced by - John Updike, Alice Munro, etc.  He makes the quotidian interesting.  There are no great shakes, no big plot twists - just the hum and thrum of modern existence, an allegiance and empathy for frustrated, relatable working class people.  

Why You Should Read Him:  Because realism gets no better than this.  American writing gets no better than this.  
 
Books I Would Recommend: Snow Angels (***1/2); Last Night at the Lobster (*****), one of my all-time faves; Emily, Alone (*****); and The Odds (****).  I'm afraid some might find his realist novels skirting the line of boring, but in his ability to delineate the fullness of life via the mundane, he is a special writer.

Books I Want to Read by Him:  Songs For the Missing, The Night Country

O'Nan has taught at several universities - University of Central Oklahoma, University of New Mexico, Hartford's Trinity College - and now lives with his family and writes full-time in Pittsburgh, the city of his youth.  He tours and publicly speaks as much as any author.  (I just missed seeing him at last February's Savannah Book Festival!).
 
His website is very well-done.  I like the posts about the novels and short story collections he recommends:  http://stewart-onan.com/  
 
Here's a great article on him done by the online website Salon a few months back:

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/29/stewart_onan_our_best_working_novelist/singleton/


*

No reason not to plow forward with the list of the 100 Most Influential Photographers of All Time, is there?

 Larry Clark (#48)

Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1943, Clark (the son of an itinerant baby photographer) carried a camera with him from an early age, shooting his friends as they, like Clark, did drugs, shot amphetamines.  These photos - limning the drug-induced boredom and aimlessness of the Vietnam-era midwest - went a long way towards shaping Clark's artistry.  Over the course of his career, he has focused his lens on male prostitutes, hustlers, teen criminals, Washington Square Park skateboarders.  Clark has always been interested in the social dynamics of young people within groups, influenced by society's image of them.  The dysfunctions within families, the allure of sexuality, casual violence - these themes pop up time and time again.  Clark has even directed a few films, including the controversial 1995 feature Kids, which garnered a lot of hate and hype (and introduced Rosario Dawson and Chloe Sevigny).  His first two books, 1971's Tulsa and 1983's Teenage Lust (documenting Clark's move to New York City, quest for a hippie utopia in New Mexico, and coterie of hustler acquaintances in NYC), are Clark's signature works.  It's incendiary stuff, often tough to look at, flirting with an almost age-inappropriate, perverse voyeurism.    

  

 


*

I have not forgotten our daily Soul Tracks.  Today we'll go with...

The Dells' "Oh What a Night."  This was their best-known song.  The first version of the song was released by the group in 1956 and re-made by them, in an attempt to gain a larger audience, in 1969; the 1969 version was ranked #260 on Rolling Stone's "Greatest Songs of All-Time."  The later version, which we'll hear, is more of a soul song than the doo-wop-ish original.  All but one members of the 1956 version of the group was still around 13 years later.  The 1969 version hit the top 10 in the Billboard Pop Singles chart,

The Dells, who formed in Harvey, Illinois, started out, as mentioned, as a doo-wop group for VeeJay Records.  In the 1960s, they transformed into more of a soul outfit, recording for Chess Records.  The group rarely changed over the course of 50+ years.  In 2004, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jehvFHQb0uE

*

This week's 5 Things...

5 Underrated Actors:

Aidan Quinn

see: The Eclipse, Unknown, Empire Falls, Sarah's Key

Sam Rockwell

see: Snow Angels, Joshua, Matchstick Men, Galaxy Quest, Conviction

Woody Harrelson

see: The People vs. Larry Flynt, Friends With Benefits, The Messenger, Zombieland, Natural Born Killers

Timothy Olyphant

see: Damages (season 2), all seasons of Justified, Deadwood, A Perfect Getaway, The Crazies

Anthony Mackie

see: The Hurt Locker, The Adjustment Bureau, Half Nelson, Million Dollar Baby, 8 Mile

Images:

http://www.sportsbarbanter.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/heat_photo.png

http://gaithersburgbookfestival.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/StewartONanHeadShot.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjFabToGlgD2RL72Knl77F64wfQl8WOWA1csZzASueKHba3y98A6GHI-xIWCua3m-Pfl32sPJeDM1yCsrit5CxHdfrgQdfi23Lul7W6h9zvM8SZDaf5gdYquh3mW2BthLQOjetuqGZqdw/s400/LarryClark_Tulsa-701001.jpg

http://nogoodforme.filmstills.org/images/Larry-Clark-New%20York%20City-Speedy-and-Barb-1968.jpg

http://jfmartins.lesdemocrates.fr/files/2010/10/larry-clark_630420_scalewidth_630.jpg

http://d.yimg.com/ec/image/v1/release/159533748;encoding=jpg;size=300;fallback=defaultImage

http://greenobles.com/data_images/aiden-quinn/aiden-quinn-11.jpg

http://images.hollywood.com/cms/500x625/7297261.jpg

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/woody-harrelson-image.jpg

http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/8900000/DAMAGES-TIMOTHY-OLYPHANT-timothy-olyphant-8976246-800-584.jpg



Information taken from:

http://inspiredminds.de/detail.php?id=11

http://museum.icp.org/museum/exhibitions/larry_clark/[[[[

It's Mini Vay-Cay time...

Word of the day : periphrasis : use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter form of expression

This will be my last post until next Tuesday, as we're headed up the coast to SC for a few days to see the larger Fischer fam.

Today we'll just be getting ready to go, doing a little cleaning and packing.  Daisy's going with us.  It's her first trip and she's real excited.  

One word to describe the play of Lebron James last night in the Heat's furious win over the Celtics in Game 6: amazing.  One of the greatest performances I've ever seen by a single player in the playoffs. Game 7 tomorrow night should be exciting, thrilling.  But I want to make sure to catch the Belmont Stakes too, as I'll Have Another goes for the Triple Crown...

Actually, scratch that.  It has just been reported that the horse won't be racing because he has a swollen left leg. 

Darn!  

I can't think of too much else to post today because my brain is on vacation.