Category: Film

Tidy Tidbits: Inside & Out

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BOOK OF THE WEEK

Mary McGrory:  The First Queen of Journalism by John Norris.

Although this is a biography, it is perhaps even more a rollicking review of presidential campaigns and Congressional politics from the McCarthy hearings through the Bush eras, all as viewed from the perspective of columnist Mary McGrory and her colleagues.  Brash, yet elegant, Mary McGrory was a wielder of words and winsome charm.  She contrived to never have to carry her own luggage and was both chummy with and critical of presidential and politician friends from Jack and Bobby Kennedy to Gene McCarthy and Mario Cuomo.  Her column in the Washington Star ran for almost thirty years and when that newspaper folded, she joined the Washington Post, but never found its culture as pleasing as the warm, family-like atmosphere at the Star.  A pioneer in the field, her talent and dedication smoothed the way for other women columnists like today’s Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins.

ART WALK

Having house guests can be an incentive to visit a new place.  With my sister and brother-in-law from North Carolina, we took advantage of the Art Walk at the Ringling College of Art and Design.   This small private school is situated on the northern edge of Sarasota, and its charming campus, tucked just off Tamiami Trail, is a mix of attractive Spanish architecture and more contemporary buildings.  For this event, six of the campus’ galleries were open and free to the public.  Included were a display of pieces from the Basch Collection of art glass, a tour of the letterpress lab, and the opening reception for an exhibition of works by alumnus Amer Kobaslija.  Faculty were also on hand to try to entice us to sign up for their continuing education courses, everything from creative writing to zentangle (a new structured way to create art) to metal working, to publishing interactive books online.  The morning downpour was over, the weather had cleared and walking around this snug campus was a different way to spend the late afternoon.

ON THE SMALL SCREEN

Thanks to the Chief Penguin, my treadmill workouts are now enhanced by watching the Spanish drama, Gran Hotel, available on streaming Netflix.  Called the Spanish “Downton Abbey,” and set in 1906, it is the story of the Alarcon family who own and run an elegant country hotel.  The matriarch, Dona Teresa, rules with an iron will and is not averse to employing chicanery, secrets, and lies to get her way.  Add in her beautiful daughter Alicia, a wayward son (Javier), the unexplained disappearance of one of the maids (Cristina), a waiter (Andres) who is the son of the head housekeeper, and the arrival of a young man (Julio) seeking answers about Cristina’s disappearance, and you have the makings of an entertaining and diverting stew.  Full of murders, mysterious letters, and implausible coincidences, it keeps getting better and better.  There are three seasons and I’m now into season 2 or about halfway through the 30+ episodes.  It is subtitled, but I don’t find that at all a problem, even while striding along on the treadmill!

 

Header Photo: Morning on Manatee Beach (copyright JWFarrington)

Tidy Tidbits: Brain Food

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The season is in full swing and that means lectures, plays, concerts and the like.  This week was packed with activity, all of it stimulating and enjoyable.

SARASOTA INSTITUTE OF LIFELONG LEARNING (SILL)

It’s time for my once a year plug for this marvelous organization.  For 40 years SILL has been presenting notable speakers on global issues and introducing or re-introducing audiences to music performers, creators and producers.  The two series, Music Mondays and Global Affairs, are each given in multiple locations and this past Monday morning, 800 people turned out at Church of the Palms for skilled interviewer June LaBell in conversation with the famous opera baritone, Sherrill Milnes, and his wife, Maria Zouves.  Now retired from performing, Milnes and his wife run a program to coach and nurture rising young singers.  On Wednesday, we joined an equally large crowd to hear Michael Pillsbury, a former defense policy advisor, on intelligence operations between the U.S. and China.  Given that I’m currently watching season 2 of The Americans, I found his stories of failed and successful intelligence efforts and agents especially fascinating.

FILM OF THE WEEK

The Danish Girl.  The opening scenes of Copenhagen’s port area and the rural landscapes are just gorgeous—appropriately lovely cinematography for a film about two artists, Einar and Gerda Wegener.  I think the film could have been more tightly edited, but it is certainly worth seeing and most notable for the stellar performances by its two leads, Eddie Redmayne as Einar, later Lili Elbe, and Alicia Vikander as Gerda.  Set in the 1920’s, it relates the story of a transgendered individual at a time when such a condition was generally unknown and unnamed; you were insane or just plain deluded.  Lili Elbe was a pioneer as this film makes clear, and  it’s an interesting companion piece to a 21st century account, Becoming Nicole, which I commented on in an earlier blog.

AUTHOR TALK

I have not attended that many author talks, but I thought Trompe L’oeil by Nancy Reisman was so beautifully written and such an intricately structured novel that I had to go hear her.  In college I got to hear author John Knowles on stage.  I was very disappointed.  He was shy and retiring in demeanor and so inarticulate I couldn’t imagine how he could have written the much-touted and much discussed, (particularly in high school English classes) novel, A Separate Peace.  I immediately revised my expectation that good writers must be good public speakers.nancyreisman

But Reisman did not disappoint.  Featured at Sarasota 1, our local independent bookstore, she read selected passages from the novel, offered some additional insights into how the work came about and noted that she was interested in the importance of place as well as family dynamics.  Because the work features descriptions of several Renaissance paintings, I asked if she herself painted.  She does not, but her mother is a visual artist and so she grew up surrounded by art.  A professor of creative writing at Vanderbilt, Reisman does most of her writing in the summer.  For devoted fans, like me, that means a longer wait until her next book.

 

 

 

Reisman photo:  www.parnassusbooks.net

Holiday Fare: Food and Film

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CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS OLD AND NEW

When I was growing up, Christmas was celebrated with just my immediate family—parents and three siblings—since the relatives lived many miles away. Dinner then was often half a ham and scalloped potatoes or a reprise of roast turkey and mashed potatoes, both family favorites.  One year we drove to Ohio and Michigan to visit cousins and grandparents which meant we had Christmas three times, something that tickled us kids!

My mother liked to bake and each year made several kinds of cookies: sand tarts or sugar cookies, peppermint kisses, and walnut crescents; also chocolate fudge, foil packages of which her children and grandchildren received under the tree; and chocolate-covered toffee. These were her specialties, but some years recipes from my father’s side of the family crept in—schaben bratle (a rich cookie with ground nuts) and stollen, a German Christmas bread loaded with dried fruit, almonds and cinnamon. Aunt Marie used to make stollen too, but I didn’t like her version as well.

In the earlier years when my great aunts were alive, we’d also receive a box in the mail of homemade German cookies, a holiday treat we eagerly anticipated:  the aforementioned schaben bratle, lebkucken (molasses-based), Springerlie (anise-flavored and embossed rectangles) and simple S-shaped crumbly cookies.  Carrying on tradition, my husband now makes the stollen, drawing on several different recipes to create his rendition. He takes great delight in drenching the currants overnight in cognac before incorporating them!

Since our son is married with a family of his own, we are creating new traditions with a Chinese flavor.   For two years now, we’ve celebrated Christmas Day with his in-laws on the Connecticut shore.  After arriving this year we enjoyed a light Chinese lunch (not really that light) of delicious thin pieces of grilled pork and grilled beef, tasty sautéed cucumber, a hearty healthy green salad with persimmon and avocado slices, soft scrambled eggs with tomatoes, and, of course, rice.

After a brisk walk, followed by some downtime, we decamped to a local restaurant, Fuji, for more Chinese food. Our Chinese relatives do the ordering, in Chinese, of course, and a feast of many dishes quickly appears—everything from green beans to spicy beef with red and green peppers to spicy tofu to a whole fish, and then some. Plus rice!  Dinner is lively and convivial and the Chinese cuisine a welcome and very tasty counterpoint to what we normally eat.  I love this new tradition!

FLURRY OF FILMS

While in New York, when we weren’t with our granddaughter, we binged on films!  These are in the order we saw them, not in order of preference.

The Big Short. Fast paced with flashes of zany humor (a blonde in a bathtub drinking champagne and explaining what a “short is”), this movie based on Michael Lewis’ book of the same title aims to make understandable the events leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, specifically the home mortgage meltdown. The lead agents are hedge fund operators, wizards, numbers guys, and an oddball eccentric, Michael Burry, MD. It is a compelling lesson in what results when no one is minding the store, in this case, the banks. None of us escaped from being affected by this, whether it was a loss of a home or the sale of, loss of a job, or losses in one’s investment portfolio. Ultimately disturbing to witness so clearly what Wall Street was able to get away with and the callousness with which bankers and investors wrenched profits from ordinary folks.

45 Years. That’s 45 years of marriage and the line waiting to buy tickets for the 10:30 a.m. show was all seniors. Set in the English countryside outside a small village, this is a delicate and nuanced portrayal of a startling shock in what seems like a happy, stable marriage. The wife, beautifully played by Charlotte Rampling, is completely thrown by this event which pre-dates her, and fumes, frets, and reflects on their life. Her husband, played by Tom Courtenay is also good. I highly recommend it.

Carol. Cate Blanchett continues to amaze and impress me.  She is cool and elegant and finally passionate as Carol in this 1950’s period piece about a slowly blooming lesbian relationship. Rooney Mara who plays the younger Therese is luminously hesitant and we see her come into her own both as a woman and in her career as she finds her calling as a photographer. A beautiful film to watch and another one this year focusing on the women; Brooklyn and 45 Years being two others.

Son of Saul. I was reluctant to see this Holocaust film, despite praise from some critics, so definitely don’t go expecting to be charmed.  It is brutal and bleak with some of the most horrifying images I’ve seen on the screen. And loud. As one critic noted, sound plays a very important role, and I would add, perhaps a greater role than the meager dialogue. Motivated by a thread of human compassion toward the boy he considers his son, Saul and his quest liberate the film from total bleakness.

Header photo:  Chief Penguin’s Stollen, copyright JW Farrington

Tidy Tidbits: Film Fare

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ON THE BIG SCREEN

There are a lot of adjectives that don’t apply to Spotlight, the new film about the Boston Globe’s uncovering of the Catholic Church’s role in hiding sexual abuse by priests.   It is not sensational, nor is it graphic in its depiction, nor is it fast-paced.  Rather it is a compelling and absorbing story of the journalistic process and of a new editor, Marty Baron, who cared less about whom he and his reporters might offend.  The dogged persistent work of the four members of the Spotlight team turned up a mind-boggling number of involved priests, several lawyers who aided in the cover-up, and direct involvement by the cardinal.  You know the ending, but well worth seeing!

Brooklyn is a beautiful film.  It has a simple plot–a young woman leaves her village in Ireland to go live and work in Brooklyn and slowly makes a life for herself, all the while feeling the tug of home.  Eventually, she has to choose between the new world and the familiar one.  No violence, no explosions, no car chases, just good storytelling.  The movie is based on Com Toibin’s lovely novel of the same name and is faithful to it.

ON THE SMALL SCREEN

I thought the first season of Broadchurch, a British detective series was excellent, but so is the second!  We noticed it on Amazon Fire and so paid the $19.99 to watch and watch we did. We got hooked and completed all 8 episodes in a weekend.  (Two days later it was available on streaming Netflix.)  This season wraps up the case of Joe Miller with his trial and re-opens the failed Sandbrook case which was what brought DI Inspector Hardy to this small Dorset town in the first place.

What, for me, makes this series so fascinating is the attention paid to the feelings and reactions of all the players, including the townspeople and the lawyers.  Here, there are two competing lawyers in court, one the former mentor of the other, one dealing with a son in prison, the other facing the end of her professional life alone.  Charlotte Rampling plays the more experienced barrister and she is amazing to watch.   This is television at its finest!