Category: Film

Sarasota Scene: Film & Food Fare

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This week is the annual Sarasota Film Festival, a time when we see movies we know little about and dip our toes into unfamiliar waters (appropriate given that this year’s theme is Sea & Be Seen!).  Also we make a point of trying some new downtown restaurants.

CINEMA

The Unknown Girl.  A Belgian feature film in French with subtitles, it’s about a young doctor who doesn’t answer her office door after hours and later learns that the young woman who buzzed her died across the street a short distance away.  Haunted by what might have been different had she answered, she takes it upon herself to try to find out who the girl was and where she was from.  We see Dr. Jenny Davin as a compassionate, caring, and mostly unrufflable individual who goes about seeing her patients, often at home, and then after hours is driven to seek answers about the unknown girl.  Adele Haenel as Jenny gives a thoughtful, measured performance and it’s a film that will stay with you.

Menashe.  After the gritty, grotty streets of a Belgian city, we became immersed in the life of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn.  In Yiddish with English subtitles, Menashe focuses on a recent widower who in trying to be faithful to himself while still being an observant member of his religious community, comes up against its strictures.  He wants to have his young son live with him rather than with his brother-in-law’s family, but his religion says he must re-marry first.  We see his fumbled and inept efforts at being an organized parent and his first foray into dating.

 

FRENCH FARE

Le Bordeaux.  Sarasota has many more Italian restaurants than French ones, a surfeit in fact, so it was a pleasant surprise to find Le Bordeaux.  Opened just a year ago, it’s on Main Street across from the Hollywood 20 movie theater, and has some of the friendliest restaurant staff I’ve encountered recently.  The menu includes all the French classics you would expect:  onion soup, snails in garlic butter, duck confit, coq au vin, beef bourguignon as well as other tempting selections.  We enjoyed attractively presented green salads with Brie or chevre on toast followed by said duck leg confit and sautéed flounder with capers and tomato.  The flounder came with a timbale of saffron rice and a somewhat mushy ratatouille.  There is also a very reasonably priced 2 or 3 course set menu with several choices for each course.  Overall, the food was good, but not exceptional.  We will return!  

 

THEATER NOTE

We were at the Asolo production of The Little Foxes recently and it was excellent.  It’s a play I’ve long wanted to see and seeing it makes me think about re-reading Lillian Hellman’s two memoirs, Unfinished Woman and Pentimento.

CREDITS:  Header photo (salad at Le Bordeaux) by JWFarrington; Hasidic Jews photo by J W Kash; Le Bordeaux dining room from their website.

Culture Notes: Music, Politics, Movies

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What follows are paeans to lively performers and great theater (Born Yesterday and The Originalist) along with comments on two challenging films.

MUSICAL RICHES

I swear you’d think we live in a big city given all the musical offerings we have!  In the last two weeks, we had the return of handsome baritone John Brancy (this time with pianist Peter Dugan); an exceptional orchestra concert, Estonian Voices, with the award-winning Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir performing the Mozart Requiem; and then a Monday morning brightened by New York based organist and conductor, Kent Tritle.  On the faculty of both the Manhattan School of Music and Juillard, Mr. Tritle is also organist and director of cathedral music at Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  He was bubbly and delightful in conversation and bounced from his seat down to play the impressive digital organ (we learned a lot about the latest digital organs and how the stops operate) at the Church of the Palms in Sarasota.  Demonstrating his musicality, he played works by J. S. Bach, Franck, and a very familiar sanctuary-filling postlude by Widor  It was a most memorable morning!

SUPERB THEATER

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we are blessed with fabulous live theater locally.  Recently, we saw the 1946 play, Born Yesterday, presented by the Asolo Repertory Theatre.   Set in Washington, D.C. it’s about politics and wheeler-dealing, but more significantly about the transformation of junk dealer Harry Brock’s mistress Billie from a so-called dumb blonde to a self-confident assertive young woman.  It starts out a bit slow, but then catches fire and Billie (Christina DeCicco) is wonderful and her evolution both hilarious and poignant to watch.    Beautiful set, great cast—everyone from the leads to those playing maids and doormen was top notch—with a story line that faintly echoes some of the political concerns of today.

Next up was the third of the political plays this season, The Originalist, a three-character drama focusing on Antonin Scalia and two of his law clerks.  Scalia engages in an ongoing sparring match with one of them, Cat, a liberal black lesbian, which is occasionally enlivened by a competitive card game.   Edward Gero has the look and walk of Scalia and when he first takes the stage I felt for sure we were seeing Scalia himself.  This is great drama that is even more relevant as we await the hearings on Judge Gorsuch.

THOUGHT-PROVOKING FILMS 

We didn’t see them in the theater so we watched two notable films at home on our biggish small screen.  One was Jackie.  Natalie Portman (nominated for best actress) is most convincing as Jackie Kennedy, but for those who idolized the woman, this film will not necessarily endear her to you.  Contained, reserved, and always smoking, this Jackie is unto herself ever mindful of her image and that of her now late husband.  The film focuses on the short period of time right after Kennedy’s assassination when Jackie gives a key interview and re-lives the events of that horrible day.  If you accept, as I do, writer Barbara Leaming’s theory that Jackie was suffering from PTSD (something not yet identified in 1963), then her behavior is more understandable.  Not an easy film to watch.  

Moonlight won best picture—much to the surprise of everyone, especially the creators of La La Land who were winners for an instant—and we felt we ought to see it.  It is a raw and powerful film that I think I kept on appreciating after it was over.  Chiron’s story is the maturing of a poor black boy wondering about his sexuality.  It unfolds in three chapters from his grade school years as he is bullied for his difference, to his teen years and his fragile friendship with Kevin, to his adult life alone working the mean streets of Atlanta.

His mother is a drug user and mostly unavailable to him.  As a kid, Chiron is rescued by Juan, a drug dealer.  Juan and his partner, Theresa, offer Chiron warmth and stability and regular meals.  The interactions between these three individuals are some of the brightest spots in the film.  Years later, Kevin surfaces and prods Chiron into a bit of reflective conversation.  For more on what this intimate film achieves, I highly recommend this review in The New Yorker by Hilton Als.

Notes:  Header photo from Asolo Repertory Theatre; Moonlight image from www.indiewire.com

More Manhattan: Movies & Meals

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More gorging on films and satisfying meals.  We saw three more movies, the best being Hidden Figures, and returned to a recent restaurant find on W. 13th Street called Gradisca.

Things to Come. While the Chief Penguin saw Neruda, I settled myself in for Isabelle Huppert in L’Avenir, The Future. I much prefer the French title for this film about a professor whose husband of 25 years leaves her for another woman. It’s both an intellectual film, and to me, very French. Both Nathalie and her husband, Heinz, are philosophy professors.  She exposes her students to Rousseau and has had a successful track record of publication, including several widely used textbooks. Nathalie has two almost-adult children and a mother who is both ill and demanding.

When her husband departs and her responsibilities for children and mother cease, she must figure out how to live her life now that she has no ties and is free. Her closest relationship apart from her children is with Fabien, a former student and a radical who has moved to the mountains. The film employs none of the plot devices (an affair, e.g.) one might expect from an American version of this situation. Rather it’s Nathalie’s slowly unfolding journey from resignation coupled with grief and loneliness to a subdued acceptance of life as it is now. It’s subtitled with bits of English and German and an occasionally haunting soundtrack that ranges from classical to American popular music.

Patriots’ Day.  Some might wonder why we would go see a film about a catastrophic event, but we did and it was mostly an uplifting experience. This film about the Boston Marathon explosions of 2013 is a sensitive depiction of the events of that tumultuous week. The scenes of the actual event are graphic and horrifying, but most of the focus of the film is on the city and law enforcement’s race to find the bombers. Local and state politicians, FBI, and police officers are all portrayed along with the lead, Tommy Saunders, a police sergeant played by Mark Wahlberg.  Saunders is a composite of several real individuals.

I had forgotten some of the particulars of the ferocious gun battle in Watertown and that it took almost a week before the two brothers were located and dealt with. While one critic thought the coda was unnecessary and too long, I found seeing and hearing from some of the individuals injured or involved further testament to the spirit of a city that became Boston Strong. Director Peter Berg also directed Deepwater Horizon, released earlier this year.

Hidden Figures. Off all the films we’ve seen in New York this trip, this was the best! It deals with the long overlooked achievements of three extremely smart and feisty black women. They worked for NASA in Virginia in the early 1960’s when overt racism was the norm. There were separate restrooms and separate coffee pots for black people and, heaven forbid, if women thought they could become engineers or anything other than seemingly low level calculators. The NASA team at Langley is working hard to prepare for John Glenn’s launch.  There’s a key scene when he visits and is being introduced to some of the staff.  The black women are standing off separately and he’s being hurried along past them.  But Glenn slows down and insists on greeting them and shaking hands with several, a wonderful moment of human inclusiveness.

The audience was about two-thirds black and at the end of the film there was a spontaneous round of applause. After photos of the real pioneers appeared on the screen receiving awards including one given by President Obama, a black man in the back of the theater quietly intoned, “our president.” This is a seriously good film with notes of humor as you get pieces of the private lives of Catherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. See it!

Gradisca.  A small Italian restaurant where grandmother makes the tortellini by hand at a small table at the side of the dining room.  Pastas are excellent and the main dishes, especially the veal with fungi, very tasty.  Wait staff are gracious and helpful.

Header photo:  www.cinemablend.com

Big Screen in the Big Apple

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Bingeing. When we are not happily engaged entertaining our granddaughters, we go to the movies. Some might say we binge. Yes, good films come to the Sarasota/Bradenton area, but not as quickly and not all of them. We are now well acquainted with several cinemas in the West Village and are not averse to settling for a hot dog as lunch before the first showing of the day. Here are several of the films we’ve seen so far. More to come.

La La Land. Going in, I knew that this film was being touted as a contender for Best Picture and that it was a musical. In the first 20 minutes or so, I thought, oh no, we’re in for two hours of fluff and the Chief Penguin will soon be snoozing. Not so! Yes, this movie is sort of a musical (the leads do burst into song at emotion-laden moments) and boy meets girl and gets girl (at least for awhile), but it is much more. Scenes of true-to-life conversation and conflict are interspersed along with creative visions of an alternate reality. That the setting is Los Angeles, Hollywood to be precise, only adds to the magic.
Ryan Gosling as Sebastian and Emma Stone as Mia are likable and believable 20-something adults, each aspiring to realize a dream; he to own his own jazz club and she to make it as an actress. I left last week’s performance of Guys and Dolls feeling happy and uplifted. While La La Land is a more nuanced work, I was both entertained and satisfied as it played out. Perhaps it’s a tad too long, but it’s fun on several levels.

Fences. If you know ahead of time that this was first a stage play, then you’ll be prepared for the static nature of this film. It’s probably the one weakness or drawback to it. The year is 1957, the setting is Pittsburgh, and it’s the depiction of one stressed and poor black family.
The acting is powerful, especially the lead performances. Denzel Washington is Troy Maxson, the illiterate, storytelling garbage collector who craves recognition for who and what he is, a husband and father who has a strong sense of responsibility. He also feels responsible for and possibly guilty over his brother Gabe, brain damaged in WWII. Viola Davis is his wife Rose, his staunch advocate and compass who seems to work as hard as he does, but with little appreciation from him of her unexpressed wishes and desires.
Troy’s sons, Lyons, 34, and Corey, 17, are sources of tension and conflict when Troy won’t accept that their needs and wants don’t dovetail with his. And when Troy doesn’t heed his best friend Bono’s wise advice and is promoted at work, he no longer sees Bono every day and the friendship languishes. (Note that Bono is played here by a black albino which confused me since I initially thought he might be white.)
Fences is the best known play in August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle. The world is slowly changing for the better for blacks, but not enough that Troy can or will see it. Moving and messy as only human relationships can be, this is a film worth seeing.

Arrival. This is a strange movie. Science fiction which we don’t often go see, but more cerebral than one might expect. When twelve space ships containing aliens from somewhere else land around the world, one in Montana, linguistics professor and language expert Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, is recruited to communicate with them. Their language is a graphic one, and Banks and Ian, a physicist played by Jeremy Renner, struggle together to make sense of who they are and why they have come to earth.

The scenes of Louise and Ian suiting up and making the journey into the black space egg and then communicating with the looming, long-armed heptapods in front of a glass wall are appropriately unnerving and even somewhat harrowing. Tension rises when several countries with similar craft threaten to use force against them. How the day is saved is an interesting twist.
Throughout the movie plays with time and how time is perceived. Louise is plagued by visions and memories of past events, or are they really past? The movie takes a short story by Ted Chiang, “Story of Your Life,” and expands its scope to create the international crisis. I didn’t fully understand what filmmaker Denis Villeneuve was doing until I read several articles including one in Verge. Telling would spoil the film for you, so I won’t. If your curiosity is piqued, see it.

DINING FIND
It’s easy and tempting to return again and again to just our favorite restaurants, but it’s better to not get into a rut and to try new restaurants. After yesterday’s film at the IFC on 6th Avenue, we glanced at the menu at Tertulia and then wandered in. We had enjoyed very much the food in Spain and thought this tapas plus place looked inviting. And it was.

Warmly lit with brick walls, a long bar and tables in front and an arched dining area farther back, it was just right for lunch on a cold day. We indulged in a glass of sherry (lots of choices here) and then tucked into ham croquettes, a plate of blistered shishito peppers, and some Iberico ham along side tomato bread. We were aiming for a light lunch and this turned out to be the right amount of food. We look forward to a return visit!