Category: Film

Tidy Tidbits: Latest Viewing & Reading

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We have returned to hot and humid Florida and that means late afternoon trips to the pool, an occasional film, catching up on our favorite TV series, and more reading.  It’s too hot to linger outdoors!

CINEMA

We went to see Indignation on Labor Day afternoon and the audience was all seniors with a few exceptions.  Perhaps because the film is set in the early 1950’s or this audience is familiar with Philip Roth’s work.  In any case, this story of Marcus, a young Jewish guy who leaves New Jersey and his father’s butcher shop for a small college in Ohio, has some surprising twists and turns.  At first, I thought it would be just a classic young love story—unsophisticated boy meets beautiful, worldly girl, becomes enamored of her, and then she dumps him.  Instead, you have a much more complex situation involving sex that Marcus finds confusing and somewhat troubling and encounters with a dean who invents issues where there are none.  The pace is measured and almost deliberate until the final coup de grace.

TV

We’re working through our backlog of recorded programs.  We plowed through several Midsomer Murders 2-parters (some really weird), finished the last (really the end, sigh) of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, and have started Dancing on the Edge.  This series is set in early 1930’s London and concerns a group of rich sophisticates, some of whom actually work, and their jazz band leader friend, Louis Lester, who is black.  A murder in the fancy Imperial Hotel sets the press abuzz and unsettles Music Magazine co-editor Stanley and his friends.

We missed the first episode, but got engaged quite easily with the second one.  Viewers will recognize Stanley, played by Matthew Goode, as Mr. Talbot from Downton Abbey.

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BOOKS

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave

I thought Cleave’s first novel, Little Bee, was superb and I found Incendiary compelling.  Gold, about two Olympic competitors, was good, but not outstanding, and seemed to be geared toward a more commercial market.  His latest, Everyone Brave is Forgiven, is set during the Second World War, and concerns the evolving relationships between four protagonists:  Mary, who signs up for the war and is assigned to an elementary school and later works with problem children not evacuated; Hilda, her best friend; Tom, superintendent of schools and Mary’s boss and later fiancé; and Alistair, an art conservator who enlists as a regular soldier and experiences the brutality of life on the front.

Mary and Hilda ultimately become ambulance drivers rescuing people whose streets have been bombed during the Blitz.  All four are privileged individuals.  Their initial view of the war as something of a short-lived lark is challenged and molded by the carnage they witness.  The tone of the novel is both ironic and off-putting (probably deliberately so) and while the seeds of the novel came from real events in the author’s family, I didn’t feel it totally came together.  Nonetheless, for those of you who are wondering, I did finish it!

La Rose by Louise Erdrich

I’ve had mixed success with Erdrich’s novels.  Some I’ve admired and enjoyed like The Round House; others have left me indifferent.  I was prepared to like her newest novel, La Rose, and the opening chapters were intriguing.  In a hunting accident, a man shoots and kills his neighbor’s young son so he and his wife give their son to be raised by the bereaved parents.  I read 120 pages or about a third of the book, but eventually realized I didn’t care much for most of the characters and was tired of being bogged down in the minutiae of their daily lives.  Ergo, I abandoned the book.  I take some comfort in the fact that blogger Deb of The Book Stop  included it in a short list of books she also didn’t finish.

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 BOOKS ON PAPER

As someone who appreciates the tactile quality of paperbacks and hardbacks, I was pleased to learn that paper books are read more often than e-books. This from an article in the New York Times print edition (get that emphasis) of Sept. 5 entitled, “The Internet Hasn’t Won…”

 

 

Cover photo © JWFarrington;  other images colored by her (some rights reserved)

Manhattan: Culture Notes

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They say good things come in threes, so here you have a play, a film, and a novel.  All deserving of attention, and at least two, of kudos.

BRILLIANT THEATER

Last week we saw Hamilton and it lived up to all the hype. We were seated in the 3rd row of the mezzanine (best seats I could get last September without taking out a loan!)  which actually gave us a good view of the entire stage and the ability to see the dance routines from above. Lin-Manuel Miranda is one very creative guy and how he makes history come live! Even allowing for dramatic license, one will never think of these Founding Fathers quite the same way.

Mairanda is marvelous as the ambitious, verbose, self-centered, self-righteous Hamilton. Thomas Jefferson is foppishly funny in “What Did I Miss?” George Washington is appropriately reasonable and statesmanlike, King George is childishly amusing (got a lot of laughs from the audience), and Aaron Burr is smooth, sometimes slick, and oh, so envious of Hamilton’s rapid rise. The few females, the two Schuyler sisters and Maria, the object of Hamilton’s adulterous affair, have secondary roles although Hamilton’s wife Eliza Schuyler delivers several poignant songs.

My only criticism is that it was not possible to understand all the words, especially in some of the early numbers, and it was not always clear then what event precipitated that dialogue. We were part of an extremely enthusiastic audience, lots of families with kids and at least one school class, and the cast received many cheers and an immediate standing ovation at the conclusion. Definitely see it!!!

Postscript: I am now reading Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton on which the play is loosely based.

ENTERTAINING TRUTH

I would never ever vote for Anthony Weiner, but the new documentary, Weiner, which tracks his primary campaign for mayor of New York, is intense, funny at points, and vastly entertaining. Presenting the sexting scandal of 2011 with clips of press conferences and TV interviews, the film then goes deep into his daily life in 2013 as he mounts his campaign to return to public office and faces chapter two of the sex scandal. It is amazing to me that Weiner gave the filmmakers such unfettered access to his wife and son as well as to his campaign team. Call it hubris, craziness, or what you will, the man has charisma and determination despite being, literally, his own worst enemy.

SUPERB FICTION

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett

Thoroughly enveloping. Madness, music, siblings and suicide. It sounds like a depressing combination, but rather than being depressing, Imagine Me Gone is a fully imagined portrayal of family dynamics told in the voices of the five family members. In this case, a father who is mentally ill, his wife, and their three children, all of whom bear the scars, be they scratches or full-blown cuts, of his affliction. The eldest son, Michael, is 36 and still single and suffers from his own mental issues. Sister Celia is wary of trusting in her own long-term relationship, and brother Alex is gay and seeking a stable place in the world. Initially each one invests time and mental effort in trying to assuage Michael’s anguish and in managing his anxiety and his ineptitude for daily life. Their mother Margaret goes into debt in her efforts to support her eldest son. Haslett’s writing is tender and exquisite, beautifully nuanced in his depiction of family relationships. You, the reader, feel for each member of this damaged family. But it is ultimately a story with hope. One of the best novels I’ve read thus far this year!

John, the father, about Alec as a kid:

The beast isn’t in Alec.  I have no way of knowing this for certain.  He’s too young.  Maybe I just don’t see it and don’t want to. But in his eagerness to please there is such squiriming energy and a kind of literalness.  He’s up on the surface of himself opening outward, even when he’s embarrassed, perhaps particularly so then, because he finds embarrassment so painful, he’ll do anything to get off the spot.”

Margaret reflecting on her work colleague, Suzanne:

She’s an unlikely librarian, her flair wasted, if not resented, by everyone but the high school boys and their fathers.   Early on, she decided that I was to be her ally against the forces of boredom and small-mindedness. I was too tired to resist.

 

 Header photo: Richard Rodgers Theater before all the seats were filled (JWFarrington)

Round-up: Books & Film

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Books

My recent reading has ranged from the very serious to the quite serious to the more frivolous.

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals that Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor. Sound depressing, but it wasn’t. Yes, Ms. Fechtor did suffer a brain aneurysm at the tender age of 28, but her optimistic spirit and determination along with time in the kitchen saw her through a 2-year recovery period. There are medical details here, but also wonderful passages about the role of food and the emotional as well as physical sustenance good cooking can provide. She is a PhD candidate at Harvard as well as author of the Sweet Amandine food blog.

Consequence by Eric Fair. This is a memoir by a former soldier and contractor who was posted to Iraq and served as an interrogator. It is a disturbing, unsettling read, but one I couldn’t abandon. Mr. Fair grew up in Bethlehem, Pa., was active in the First Presbyterian Church there, and after college became a police officer before serving in the Iraq War.

With its spare, unemotional style, it’s almost as if Mr. Fair is writing about someone other than himself. He made a series of poor choices from high school onward and while stating that he made them and acknowledging that some of them were unwise, he doesn’t seem to own them. And he did things at Abu Graib that he feels guilty about and that haunt him, but he has not reached any closure. It probably took some courage to write this book (neither the military nor his contractor company come off very well), but I found it hard to applaud him for doing so.

Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George. Hard to believe, but this is the 19th Inspector Lynley mystery. Inspector Barbara Havers is the primary mover with Lynley in a more supporting role as she and Nkata delve into the murder of a noted feminist author and the convoluted relationships she had with her personal assistant and her publisher. Not her best, but still entertaining.

The Restaurant Critic’s Wife by Elizabeth LaBan. This is a novel about food and restaurants, but even more so about the trials of being a stay-at-home mother of two young children constrained by a husband’s demands that she remain inconspicuous and invisible. Craig LaBan is the longtime restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer and originally from New Orleans like Sam Soto in the book. For my Philly foodie friends, this lighthearted fare will have you guessing which restaurants are being reviewed!

Film Fare

Eye in the Sky. There are several female actors whose films I would see no matter what and they include Maggie Smith, Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren. In this film, Helen Mirren is the British colonel in charge of a missile strike on some key terrorist leaders who are holed up in a house in a residential area outside Nairobi. She, working with the general played by Alan Rickman, must evaluate how great are the odds of injury or death to nearby civilians (including a young girl) and get all the stakeholders to agree to the timing of the strike. The stakeholders are scattered from England to Nevada and both British and U.S. leaders and politicians are involved or need to be consulted. A sobering and suspenseful look at how warfare by drone is carried out.

Love & Friendship. This one’s for Jane Austen fans of which I’m one. Based on her short novel, Lady Susan, it’s not a great film, but an enjoyable one. There are lots of characters, the principal ones introduced with name, title and relationship in the opening scenes, which makes for a somewhat slow beginning. The pace picks up once Lady Susan, schemer extraordinaire, is installed at her sister-in-law’s country estate, and begins to weave her web to ensnare Sir James Martin for her daughter Frederica and Sir Reginald deCourcy for herself. But, complications ensue, her true colors start to emerge, and what ultimately results is a complete turnabout.

 

Manhattan Meandering: Fashion & Food

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AT THE MET

A good friend came into the city for the day and she and I were engrossed for several hours viewing two exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a rainy Friday and the corridors were packed with people. Fortunately, the first exhibit hall was less crowded so we could get a close up view of the paintings. Vigee le Brun was a French artist who lived from before the French Revolution into the 1840’s. Initially dismissed because she was female, she became popular in her day and was portrait artist of choice for many royals including Marie Antoinette. After her death, her work seems to have been overlooked or ignored for many years. Certainly, she was unknown to me until this exhibit. Some of the portraits were really stunning and I also enjoyed seeing the several self-portraits she painted over the years.

The Costume Institute exhibit, Manus ex Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology, was dense with museumgoers which made seeing the gowns occasionally challenging.  It is a fascinating study of the hand crafts (embroidery, pleating, beading, feathers, etc.) involved in the creation of haute couture over the years along with the use of the latest 3D printing to create nylon mesh and other unusual fabrics. Gowns by the Houses of Chanel, Dior, and Lagerfeld shared space with very edgy ones by the likes of Alexander McQueen and John Galliano.  The alcove spaces and the ethereal background music gave the whole experience a church-like feel. This exhibit runs until August and is definitely worth seeing.  For more info see The New York Times’ review article which also includes photos.2016-05-06 15.35.11

Flying Saucer Dress
Flying Saucer Dress

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FASHION IN FILM

Following on the fashion exhibit, we went to see Andrew Rossi’s new film, First Monday in May.  Note that Rossi also directed the compelling documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times, about the challenges of staying relevant in the age of the Internet.  First Monday is a sumptuous, gorgeous look behind the scenes at the creation of the Met’s 2014 costume exhibit on China and the extravaganza of a gala that precedes the opening.  Stars here are Anna Wintour (her dresses and suits are almost as much fun to see as all the historical and contemporary gowns) and curator Andrew Bolton.  Running through the film is the idea that fashion equals art, and that it is only in recent times that fashion has been recognized and accepted as such. Visual treats!

 

DINING

Three new places for cozy dinners.

Café Loup on West 13th St. We sampled the chicken with tarragon and the fish and chips and were happy with both at this white-walled French bistro.  Also good were the mesclun salad and the house green salad.  It was crowded the night we were there with what looked to be lots of academics.2016-05-08 19.25.04

Doma na rohu.  A rustic German restaurant on 7th Ave with wood tables and an inviting bar.  Happy hour specials include the usual beer and wine and also pretzels with sausage and mustard.  Skip the veal schnitzel (dry and unadorned), but do tuck into the great sides—German potato salad, reminiscent of my grandmother’s version; very tasty browned spaetzle; and the so-called bowl of greens—a salad with cubes of beets, cherry tomatoes and a few slices of cucumber.

Trattoria Pesce Pasta.  On Bleecker Street, this is comfort food incarnate and perfect when you’re tuckered out from a long day—for us, said long day included a bus trip to Bethlehem and back.  We skipped salads and just enjoyed the sole with artichokes and sundried tomatoes (very saucy and not fancy) which hit the spot.   Sides were a choice of sautéed broccoli or spaghetti with red sauce. One of us was healthy and the other couldn’t resist the pasta which was surprisingly good!

 

All photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

Header photo:  Jackson Square