Friday, February 26, 2010

Snow Day

 
Snow day

See slide show for more images of Friday, February 26
when all teachers and students had the day off.

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Reading today at Cornelia Street Cafe



 

6 PM





A Single Man

A Single Man contains one glorious performance, and too many dream-like images of a naked man submersed in water. 

I think my favorite scene occurs when Colin Firth's character comes upon a dog, the same breed as the ones he lost when his lover died suddenly in a car accident, wiping out in an instant not just his love, but his whole family and history for 16 years.

He pets the dog lavishly through the car door window while its owner looks on, at first indulgently, then warily as Firth burrows his nose into the animal's neck and mutters, "They smell of lavender and soap," as if taking a hit of a drug he once depended on.  And much as I resented the slow speed of the film and its pretentious lingering on superficial details, I confess that I have gone back in my mind's eye to the scene in the apartment when the two men sat happily together, reading, listening to music, discussing their dogs and silly neighbors.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Avatar

What it made me think of --

--all of those movies like Hombre where the infiltrator takes on the values of the alien society
--Gunga Din, the noble savage dying nobly
--how much better a filmmaker Miyazaki is, and his delicious visual palate when the subject is the beauty and vulnerability of the earth
--cowboys and Indians and how great a director was John Ford
--every ordinary war movie and some really good ones that have this one beat (Das Boot, Galipoli, Empire of the Sun, Casablanca)
--Apocalypse Now (Duvall coming in to beat down the savages)
--Alien with Sigourney Weaver holding her own among the testosterone
--Titanic, and other disaster movies on an epic scale (the big tree standing in for the big boat)
--adolescent boys' fantasies and little boys' miniature soldier sets and GI Joe
--Star Wars and  the disappointment of watching a conventional war movie.

What I really like about movies is the human part, and how good acting can tell a story simply.  But first you have to suspend your disbelief and see the characters and situations as believable.  These characters were wooden, reciting familiar lines ("They are fighting modern warfare with bows and arrows!").  While watching what I was most aware of was how expensive and long the movie was.  

I guess that  James Cameron wanted to do what  Kevin Costner did in Dances with Wolves.  Okay.  So that is why the movie feels so flimsy and so expensive at the same time.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Crazy Heart



Jeff Bridges has played a character sort of like this before, in the Fabulous Baker Boys.  In the earlier movie, his bad boy piano player worked  those sad piano bars in the lounges of second rate hotels.  In
Crazy Heart, when he works in seedy little joints to sing his country music, it doesn't seem as depressing.  It seems authentic.  The Baker Boys didn't have to sing, just play, the old standards.  Bad Blake, his character in Crazy Heart, wrote all his songs of heartache that he is still living through.

The movie centers on a broken down 57 year old talented drunk named Bad Blake and whether he can get his act together before it is too late.  He had had success on the road with another musician, Tommy Sweet (played by Colin Farrell who strangely is not given top billing even though he is an important part of the plot, and has some of the most satisfying musical scenes with Bridges), who is now more successful than he is, and younger, and better looking, etc. causing all sorts of resentment and wounded pride.

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Jean, a journalist who enters his life when Blake is working a small club in Santa Fe and she approaches him for an interview.  The softening of Blake's crusty character brings some tender moments to the movie, with Gyllenhaal and her slow flirtatious smile that fills in for a host of emotions.  She is an attractive person to watch, with great physical appeal, and when she gets mad, as she must in this film, she is very fine.  

I loved the way the two men sounded when they were singing, and I loved the way Robert Duvall can act circles around anybody just by standing still.  In this movie, he gets to sing a little too.  And it is a beautiful thing.