The Kids Are All Right

During the summer when I live in the country with access to only a few multiplexes,  I tend to read more about film than actually see any movies.  When hype accompanies a movie during my desire for any non-Hollywood productions, I become a little too greedy for something better than average.  The Kids Are All Right sounded like it would satisfy my appetite for that.

I have a huge crush on Mark Ruffalo. He does not disappoint.  His charm comes from that gruff voice of his, and his natural, chilled out, thoughtful way of behaving.

The children in the movie are superb especially some very strong scenes with the boy named Laser played by Josh Hutcherson and Ruffalo.  The writing of these scenes is just right. Cholodenko, the director, and her screenwriter partner have created a mostly believable script.

 I found  the character played by Annette Bening  to be unlikeable from the get go.  She is either strident, drunk, or weeping.     It would be nice if we knew what the lesbian couple actually saw in each other.  They don't really work in a believable way.  They are constructs.  Julianne Moore needs to be in more Paul Thomas Anderson movies.  She has been cast badly lately and I wonder if it has to do with her age. Same goes for Bening.   

I did find myself laughing occasionally.  The movie is not hard to watch.  But it has been overpraised probably because there is so little quality to be had during the summer.

Mark Ruffalo

Inside the Confessional

Saturday afternoons we went to Confession.

That gave us all day to play.

The dirt got to be soft with kids going back

and forth, a perfect spot for playing marbles. 

With a stick we drew a circle in the dirt

and in the middle of the circle was a hole.

We aimed at the hole to win.

We fought over cats eyes and keepsies.

Sure, there was cheating in that small place,

leaning down in the dirt. We got really

sweaty in the summer playing there.

After, our mothers turned on the sprinklers

and we rinsed off so we wouldn’t have to take a bath.

Inside the church, by the darkened booth,

 a line would form for the nice priest

who gave easy penances:  three Hail Marys,

that was it, we were off scot free,

safe from the licking flames of hell. 

Monsignor McDowell never had a line.

He said our tongues would turn to worms

 if we kept up our lying to our little brother

about where we kept our candy.    

We held our breath and lied about our sins.

Once inside, we were invisible,

hidden from the world, just us

and the plaited rush partition that let

our sins into the priest and his forgiveness

fly out to us on the other side.  

We listened for the sound of the shift

of the slot.  Then we would begin

to list our wickedness. The penance lifted

the grit and washed the tiny flecks of mud.

All clean,  we were free to go out and sin again.

Black Swallowtail Butterfly on Queen Anne's Lace

I was about to throw out some old flowers I had picked on the side of the road when I noticed a caterpillar on one of the old Queen Anne's lace.  It turns out that Black Swallowtail butterflies like to eat the parsley family which includes that flower.  So I am hanging on to the cluster of broken down flowers, and am going to see what develops. 

They eventually look like this.

You can see from the first picture that caterpillars are not the only insects in our house.

Millipedes

Millipedes are common here. Some of them have wandered into our house, and had to be evicted. I find them fascinating and more appealing than centipedes.

They have reddish stripes to mark off every ten feet (as in pedes, not 12 inches).  Their shell looks hard as armor, and tough to break.

Centipede

Centipedes are hairy wider creatures that are soft in comparison.  They actually look a lot creepier, and have only around 30 or 34 feet compared to the millipede's nearly 80 by my count.  Also centipedes can bite.  Millipedes just give off an ugly smell as self defense, or they roll into a ball so that you can't pick them up or hurt them.

Salt/dir. Philip Noyce

Angelina Jolie works really hard in this movie.  She makes me glad that my job description does not include getting tortured in my underwear, or assassinating the president of a superpower.  For Angelina, it's all in a day's work.  So what if she is called on to invent a small howitzer out of a vacuum cleaner and some chemicals in the office?  She is very well trained.  She also manages to jump from the overpass of a highway onto semi-truck, then switch to another truck, then an oil rig, until finally she infiltrates a cab which slams into a police car, using each of these vehicles like catapults to get to her destination.  Ultimately her destination is St. Bart's Church in Manhattan where a VIP funeral is taking place.  The Russian president attends, so is available to be assassinated.

The assassination involves trap doors, spider venom, and more chases and spills and car crashes and our Angie, she walks away without so much as whiplash.  She is a human torpedo.  Wait, there is a moment when she has to dress a wound, and finds a kotex machine which she rips off the wall in order to get at one of those paper wrapped cotton products.

Also in this movie, and holding his own with such a superhero presence is Liev Schreiber.  

Jolie as Salt

Liev Schreiber

Leave it to Chance: a Tribute to Merce Cunningham

It’s not something too common, dancers over forty, over fifty even.  At the  Leave It To Chance concert at the Beaver Brook Cottage, Karen MacIntyre and Loretta Thomas began the program with a tribute to Merce Cunningham who recently died at age 90, and continued to perform past his middle years.  But these women were not performing Cunningham’s choreography. They had created six dances with the music of David Anderson to express how they felt about “the Einstein of dance.”

Karen McIntyre

Loretta Thomas

Mary Greene read words by Cunningham that described his philosophy of movement.    Thomas and McIntyre, two seasoned dancers, knew how to move to this  monologue and convey to the audience what the movements meant.    I was moved by the beauty of the balance of the two women, how carefully they intersected each others’ spaces, especially in the first dance entitled “Radical and Formal.”

     

In "Trio," a third dancer, Leah Giles, who had been trained by MacIntyre since a very young age, joined the two older women and we were able to see the contrast between the very young and the middle to older bodies. 

The small space at Beaver Brook allowed me to sit so close I felt open to a very sensory experience, not only seeing the detail of every body on stage, but also noticing textures, sounds, smells.  A large avocado plant in the background framed stage right and an altar with threeunlit candles gave an aura of a sanctuary.  Three elegant light fixtures hanging from the high ceiling  cast a curved shadow. 

Merce said, "First you have to begin with the most difficult thing, getting up."  These words were repeated several times in "In the Mean Time..."  in which the Gaia company of dancers, young and old, joined the two principals.  What a feast for the eyes, to see so many body types and faces all crowded into the large living room, dancing to David Anderson's  excellent music which aptly matched the movements.  Even though Cunningham made an eloquent case for his dances not needing music (there is so much to notice in the movement, the music is a distraction), I have to admit I much prefer it.  There is something so satisfying about watching a well trained, well rehearsed body move to the rhythm of great music.

After the intermission, the Gaia Dance Collective performed, each dance choreographed by one of their dancers.  The program closed with  a very winning  "Swing Guitars," full of  humor, whimsy and fun. 

Karen McIntyre explained somewhat wistfully that this would be the last performance of her Triad company in Sullivan County.  It is difficult for her to come to New York from Texas where she lives and teaches.  But she left us with a humorous series of monologues in the voices of the residents who first greeted her when she was just establishing her dance studio. 

Inception

When did Leonardo DiCaprio grow a vertical line in his brow?   In Inception, he plays Cobb, an expert at prompting other people's dreams to be available to him so that he might steal what secrets lie therein.  Cobb has a lot to worry about since his wife in the dream state keeps trying to murder him or get back at him or get him back.   His new mission is to go into a man's dreams and plant an idea there, an idea that will benefit a corporate client mightily.  It will be necessary to outwit or outshoot the security police who guard the dreamer's dreams.  There is also the risk of landing in limbo if after the third level of dreaming you get stuck between levels one and two.

Besides learning how the invasion and creation and manipulation and suspension of dreams work, the viewer is treated to hair raising action scenes, one piled on top of the other.   It is hard to keep from admiring the visual mastery of the dream sequences mixed in with these action scenes.

Joseph Gordon Levitt plays the part of Arthur, one of the team of experts who help Cobb on his missions.   He is supposed to lack imagination but he walks on the ceiling with ease.  I can't wait to see Gordon Levitt's next movie, not that he outshines anyone else in a cast that includes Tom Hardy as the shape shifter, Michael Caine as a concerned father, Ellen Page as a wizardly architect and Cillian Murphy as a very well protected victim.  

Next day, remembering the scenes of the architecture breaking up and going sideways, and of the mazes the dream architect invented, and of the van falling off the bridge for what seemed like days, I hoped that my dreams would become a bit richer in visual content. But poor Leonardo.  He has lost his boyish look. The groove in his forehead is there to stay.