Category Archives: Cinema and Television

Cinema and Television

Marvel(ous)

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Lughnasa                                                               Lughnasa Moon

At family gatherings I was the one with the stack of comic books reading in the corner, or on the stairs, somewhere out of  sight or at least out of the flow of people. As a teen-ager I was one of those who helped Marvel Comics overcome Dell, the Fantastic Four outstrip Superman, Batman pushed aside by the X-Men. As an adult it makes me grin that Marvel has become a force in movie making, too. Irony, subtly, taking the narrative and the illustration right to the edge then happily blasting beyond it, that’s the hall mark of Marvel comics and their best movies.

Guardians of the Galaxy is mainline Marvel. It’s characters have distinct flaws, an arc and even the villain(s) are complex. Funny, too. Vin Diesel is quite the surprise as Groot, the tree creature and Bradley Cooper voices Rocket Raccoon perfectly. Zoe Saldana (Avatar) is smashing (literally) as Gamora. Chris Pratt manages a level of seriousness combined with insouciance that brings to mind Han Solo, but his character, Peter Quill, Star Lord, has more heft.

Worth seeing if you have any schoolboy crush left for out there sci fi.

 

Cinema and Television, Commentary on the news, Politics

Fame and Race. Four letter words

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Lughnasa                                                                      Lughnasa Moon

Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, both dead. Celebrity is a harsh idea and exacts a penalty from both those who perceive it and those perceived to have it. Celebrity has to do stand in work in American culture for nobility, since the land of freedom and equality for all insists on not discussing its class system. As a result certain of us who become well-known thanks to athletic gifts or a handsome face or an ability to become someone else, perhaps also those who have a lot of money or political visibility, musical talents and in the rarest of cases here, literary ones, have an elevated stature.

In the same period, the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner point to a grimmer side of our passion for those seen to be above the culture’s average and that is our disregard for those seen to be below it. Seeing does not make it so, however, in either case. Lauren Bacall and Robin Williams are not more than the rest of us just as Michael Brown and Eric Garner are not less than the rest of us. But perception in a media saturated public square is often all we have to go on.

Who among you who read this knew Robin Williams or Lauren Bacall, Michael Brown or Eric Garner? If you did, you may have grounds for knowing what kind of persons they were, but for the rest of us, we “know” them only through news report in the case of Brown and Garner and their work in the instance of Williams and Bacall. Neither way of knowing comes close to the fullness of personal acquaintance.

Yes, this is obvious I suppose, except it isn’t. Celebrity carries its own luster, a stage light cast by approval or notoriety. Racism carries its own dimmer light which shades the person from full view, making them appear less than they are while celebrity luster makes people seem more. Both are inaccurate and do a disservice to the people effected.

Racism and celebrity might rarely be considered in the same paragraph, but together they reveal the deep chasm between what we think we know and what is actual. They both teach us to rely on secondary characteristics for taking the measure of a person. And, in both, we lose and so do those we see through those lenses.

Cinema and Television

Ashes to Ashes

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Lughnasa                                                                  Lughnasa Moon

Mary recommended that Kate and I watch Life on Mars and then Ashes to Ashes. These are BBC programs, linked with Life on Mars first and Ashes to Ashes second. All told there are five seasons of 8 programs a season. This is an unusual television experience, a high-minded drama with police procedurals as the episode’s main action driver, but with a long delayed rationale, made clearer only in the final minutes of the very last episode. This is exceptional television and worth following through to the end.

BBC makes a lot of excellent shows, but this is the best of the batch that I’ve seen.

I should add that Kate basically figured out the end. Smart gal.

 

Art and Culture, Asia, Cinema and Television, Colorado, Faith and Spirituality, Garden, Great Work, Humanities, Latin, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., The Move, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

A Purging We Will Go

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Lughnasa                                                     Lughnasa Moon

Over the weekend and as deep into this week as I need to go, I’m packing up my former study. I’ve purged one file cabinet and consolidated its content into boxes for moving. A horizontal cabinet awaits attention. A large plastic tub full of art supplies went into the move with care pile. One small bookcase has been emptied and moved. The shop work bench I’ve used for storage is empty, too. That old printer, the one I bought in 1994, is in the truck and ready to go to a recycler.  An HP laserjet, it still functions.  That leaves three larger bookcases and some miscellaneous things on various surfaces, plus the art on the walls.

(what I hope to create in Colorado, my own version of this.)

When this room has been tidied up, the next and last big push begins. My study. This room has walls of books. Many will go in boxes with red tape, but most will not. The other areas have gone well, but this one will present some difficulty. So many projects. Some of the past, some of the future, some of today. Which ones do I imagine I’ll continue in Colorado? Which ones have enough spark to be valuable in the final third of my life? These are hard decisions for me and packing this room will be both valuable and difficult.

This is a chance to prune my work over the last third of my life, clear out the branches that have grown across each other. Take out that large branch that flourished then died. Increase the circulation amongst the remaining branches so they have air, can breathe. Pruning gives renewed vigor to plants and I hope to achieve the same thing when I pack up these materials, those closest to my heart, leaving behind what I no longer need.

Cinema and Television

Mild Fun

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Summer                                                              Most Heat Moon

While a thunderstorm rattled windows and scared dogs up here in Andover, Kate and I sat in the past, watching Clint Eastwood’s love song to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. If you grew up in the era, it’s a fun movie for the singing of such hits as “Sherry, Baby”, “Walk Like A Man”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.”

As a work, it’s downright hagiographic about St. Frankie. Who knows, maybe he was like that, but his feet must have found at least a little clay during his long singing career. He emotes for his daughter, lost to the streets and to drugs. He takes on a large debt because a neighborhood friend, one of the Four Seasons, gets behind on the vig. Through it all he remains impeccably dressed and blessed with a voice a castrata could love.

If you’re not of the era, and all the folks at the Andover Cinema 3:45 pm showing today were, this movie will probably appear a bit cheesy and you’ll wonder what all the fuss is about.

Cinema and Television, GeekWorld

Second Decade of the Third Millennium Television

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Summer                                                                     Most Heat Moon

Kate and I finished the final three episodes of 2014’s run of “Orange is the New Black.” We’ve been saving the last several episodes of “House of Cards” like hoarding candy against a day we can’t make it to the store. We did that by finishing up “New Tricks” and “Single-Handed.”

Now for those of you who still watch TV with the cable tuner and channels into the 400’s this may not be familiar ground for you. “Orange is the New Black” is, like “House of Cards”, a made for Netflix tv series. Both are really more like a novel with 13 chapters available all at once, and right now anyway, once a year. When ready, Netflix puts up all 13 episodes at once, available for streaming. If you wanted, and I imagine some do, you can watch all of them in one session.

Kate and I tend to do it a couple of episodes or one episode at a time. The second decade of the third millennium experience, watching video shows with no advertisements, feels like a luxury, like we’re getting away with something. Yet, I imagine there is a whole audience of kids for whom advertisements would be the odd experience, not their absence.

“New Tricks” and “Single-Handed”, on the other hand, we watch on Huluplus. It collects current tv shows (and all the episodes of older ones) and streams them, albeit with brief advertising, more like the old broadcast experience. There are though the important exceptions of being able to choose when and what to watch and to stop/pause it whenever desired. Huluplus also has movies, including 800 movies from the wonderful Criterion Collection.

We also watch certain other programs on Amazon Prime. Having a Prime membership in Amazon comes not only with “free” two-day shipping, but over a million downloadable songs and many movies and tv series available for “free.” Free in this case means no additional charge.

So that’s our new millennium television experience. No Comcast. No Timeswarner. Only our Roku box and three subscription services whose net cost is $30 a month. It may sound like we watch a lot of TV, but we only watch when we want, what we want. It is, as always, an excellent way to decelerate the mind in the evening.

And best of all, we’re shelling out much less to Comcast. All of this comes in over our broadband link for which, unfortunately, we still have only one choice. Comcast.

Asia, Cinema and Television, Literature

Her and Journey to the West

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Summer                                                          New (Most Heat) Moon

By way of cinema reviews. Saw “Her” last night and “Journey to the West” tonight. Though very different culturally both encourage us to stretch our understanding of reality to include the fantastic, Her through science fiction and Journey to the West through very loose adaptation of Chinese classic literature.

Kate found Her too slow, too odd, too much altogether and declared, “This isn’t holding my interest.” got up and did other things. In spite of the dorky ear plugs that signaled connection to the Operating System (btw: OS seemed like a bad techno-term for Samantha, the artificial person created through use of computers. Not sure why they didn’t go with program, but the oddness of the choice distracted me.) I found the questions raised by the movie intriguing.

What would it be like to be an intelligent, feeling entity with no body? What it would be like to have a non-corporeal lover? What algorithm could cause us to fall in love? What would fidelity mean to such an entity? All these questions get raised. Ironically the main character, Joaquin Phoenix’s job is to write real letters, often love letters, for other people.

Yes, it was a little slow at times, though I felt the time necessary to play with the idea of a computer/human relationship.  Amy Adams and Scarlett Johansson (voice of Samantha) added contemporary female starpower.

Journey to the West was a major disappointment. It combined the sometimes entertaining but very broad comedy sometimes seen in Chinese cinema, think Kung Fu Hustle by the same director, Stephen Chow, with ridiculous set piece scenes and a remarkable lack of fidelity to the Chinese class, Journey to the West. The Monkey King is the key character in Journey to the West as literature, but here he comes in very late in the movie, well into the final third and he comes in as a caricature and not a good one.

The original Monkey King is mischievous and unpredictable, but he also has a noble, courageous side that this movie ignores. The CGI effects were often very good, but used in the service of a juvenile script. China can do better than this with their own literary classics.

Aging, Cinema and Television, Family, Feelings, Memories

A Hole

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Beltane                                                              Summer Moon

Sometimes these moments reach out, grab a part of you unexpectedly. Evoke a feeling long forgotten. In unusual places. Kate and I went to see How to Train Your Dragon 2, better than the first installment and worth seeing for any proud Scandinavian. It’s a touching story, dramatic and funny by turns with a quality of animation that shows how far we’ve come since Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker. If you have a kid in your life, see it. If you have a kid left in your heart, see it.

Here’s what got me. Spoiler alert. Hiccup, the lead character, a boy just grown into young manhood (since his youth in the first picture) meets a mystery figure who loves and helps dragons, just like he does. The surprise is that she’s his mother, thought dead. There was a scene where this animated mother reached out and hugged her 20 year old boy for the first time since he was in the cradle.

A sudden wave of longing swept over me. For a second it was my mother, met again, reaching her hand out, a hug, the smell of her hair. The feeling rose from somewhere long forgotten. To be hugged by my mother. I miss it. Still. At 67 and her having been dead for IMAG016150 years this October. It reminded me of the hole I’ve lived around, never filled since her death and of the simple joys not possible for all those years.

It’s not regret nor nostalgia nor something I even wish for, just a hole, the hole that death leaves. And yet in its own way it was affirming. I loved my mother and I know she loved me. I know, if we found ourselves together, even over this long span of years, that she would hug me and caress my cheek. Kiss me. Tell me she was proud of me. That was her way. And, thankfully, I’m sure she would be proud of me.

 

Art and Culture, Cinema and Television, Letters, Politics

Media Diet

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Beltane                                                            Emergence Moon

My media diet. A while back, maybe 5 years or so, I heard an NPR piece on the concept of a daily media diet. It’s simple. What do you read, listen to, watch during the course of an average day? Yes, it probably changes from one day to the next, but it’s also got some bones that stay in place most days. Since the question of information sources came up at the Woolly meeting-not everyone gets their news from or trusts the NYT for example-I decided to raise this media diet issue again.

Your media diet is important because it is your intellectual nourishment. What you take in through various media may be grouped: information, news, education, entertainment. In terms of informing ourselves we all need a balanced diet, but research shows that instead we have narrowed our range of inputs, often tailoring them to our preconceived views. This is dangerous and, like a varied diet is good for the body, so is a varied media stream good for the intellect.

I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. I’m going to put down my media diet in as much detail as I can muster. If you have the time and inclination, I’d love to see yours.

Daily:  Minneapolis Star-Tribune print, New York Times online, Star-Tribune online, Wired online.

Magazines(print): New York Review of Books, The Economist, Wired, Dwell, AARP, Funny Times, National Geographic*

 

Most days: online e-mail subscriptions Foreign Policy Situation Report, Big Think, Brain Pickings, DeLancey Place, Beacon, Gizmag, Chronicle of Higher Education, Scientific American, Tablet, PCMag, Trendland, Nieman Lab, Economic Policy Institute, Think Progress, various other Foreign Policy.* Poem-a-day.

Most days:  Accuweather, NOAA, MPR Updraft and Paul Douglas weather online.

Websites:  Cool Tools, Perseus (Latin text of Ovid), various political websites, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Walker Art Museum, MIA (and others less often like War on the Rocks, Small Wars Journal, USAF Journal, Internet Movie Data Base, Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes, Slate

Museums: The Walker, the MIA, rarely the Russian Museum, the Science Museum, the Minnesota Historical Society

Radio: MPR News, Classical and KBEM Jazz (only when driving and not often then anymore)

Music: little during the average day except as above

Television: Kate and I watch a couple of shows on Huluplus. I might pick up one more plus whatever I have on while I exercise.

Books: I may look at several books during the course of an average day. These days many of them relate to Latin, Ovid, the Metamorphoses and translation. I’m also reading material on emergence, the Arabian Nights and Colorado.

Usually I read one book for leisure at a time until finished. Right now I’m reading a Brian Sanderson fantasy novel. This kind of reading usually happens later in the evening.

*Both the subscription e-mails and magazine subscriptions can overwhelm me and my time. It’s a balancing act to get useful information while being able to maintain forward motion of projects like writing and translating and gardening.

You might have plays, concerts, dance performances, clubs to add to your list. We do occasionally get out to these, but much less often than when we lived in the city.

 

Cinema and Television

Catching Fire

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Spring                                                                     Bee Hiving Moon

And, in the evening we saw the Hunger Games:  Catching Fire.  I read these books quite a while ago and enjoyed them.  They combine a clever teen fighting for her life and the life of those she loves with a dystopian future modeled on ancient Rome.  The movies are flashy because the books offer up great visuals.  In fact, one of my favorite parts of this movie was the sequence at President Snow’s home where the capital’s gliterati were out in all their decadent attire.  It reminded me of the French era when women would wear representations of naval engagements in their hair.

The Quarter Quell game itself was less interesting, kill or be killed on screen is a teen version of the movie where some bored white guys hunt street people for fun.  It plays better in a book where the inner lives of the characters are clearer.

This is a movie about making money from movies, but it was entertaining in its way.  It was not, however, profound.  And it might have wanted to be.