FILMS I WATCHED RECENTLY

“The Return” Russian with English subtitles. Filmed on and around Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland.  In a 2016 BBC critics' poll, The Return was ranked the 80th-greatest film of the 21st century. Anyway, wow….this is a beautifully filmed movie with a harsh, unapologetic story.  Its about a lot of things, fathers and sons, brothers, children of divorce, childhood, masculinity …..there’s a lot here.  Wonderfully structured and emotionally wrenching, the story leaps from something seemingly unexceptional at the start into urgent mystery.

The child actor Vladimir Garin (The older brother) drowned two months before the film's debut.

Synopsis: In contemporary Russia, Ivan and his older brother Andrei have grown a deep attachment to each other to make up for their fatherless childhood. Both their mother and grandmother live with them. After running home after a fight with each other, the boys are shocked to discover their father has returned after a 12-year absence. With their mother's uneasy blessing, Ivan and Andrei set out on what they believe will be a simple fishing vacation with him. Andrei is delighted to be reunited with their father and Ivan is apprehensive towards the man whom they know only from a faded photograph. At first, both brothers are pleased with the prospect of an exciting adventure, but they soon strain under the weight of their father's awkward and increasingly brutal efforts to make up for the missing decade. Ivan and Andrei find themselves alternately tested, rescued, scolded, mentored, scrutinized, and ignored by the man. Andrei seems to look up to his father while Ivan remains stubbornly defensive. As the truck stops and cafés give way to rain-swept, primeval wilderness coastline, Ivan's doubts give way to open defiance. Andrei's powerful need to bond with a father he's never known begins, in turn, to distance him from Ivan. Ivan and his father's test of will escalates into bitter hostility and sudden violence after the trio arrives at their mysterious island destination.

   

"Change in the Air" is a sweet little film but it tends to drag towards the middle and the end because the script (although the concept is great) just isn’t very good. Its dull. I think the purpose of the making this film was create a movie with a soul, but there’s no soul here, in fact, there’s no there, there. The acting is good, no, the acting is great because the cast is incredible, M. Emmet Walsh, Mary Beth Hurt, Peter Gerety, Aiden Quinn.

Synopsis: Wren, a mysterious young woman) moves into a small town where no one can hide from the nosy neighbors. When Walter next door walks deliberately into the path of an oncoming car, Wren witnesses the accident and calls 911, saving his life. However, once a local cop () arrives on the scene, she is nowhere to be found. Word spreads around town to everyone, including Jo Ann & Arnie Bayberry and Donna about Wren. The town's curiosity only grows when the local mailman starts delivering bags of letters to her door every day. Jo Ann's vigil on Walter's lawn quickly expands along with her fascination with Wren. In discovering Wren's secrets, Jo Ann witnesses a series of small miracles that unfold and shake up life in the quiet town. This story embraces the imperfections that make us human, offers a way to set ourselves free and asks us all to take a good, long look at the wild birds in the sky.

“The Unicorn Store”….um, truthfully, I turned it off because life to short to spend time on weak, silly films like this, Again, as it was with “Change in the Air” the acting is wonderful (especially by Samuel L. Jackson, Joan Cusack, Bradley Whitford and Mamoudou Athie) In fairness the film does get reasonably good elsewhere, but it just fell flat with me.

Synopsis: Kit, a failed artist, moves back in with her parents and takes a temp job at a PR agency. At work, Kit meets the vice president of the company, Gary, who is extremely awkward and makes inappropriate advances towards her. Shortly after starting the job, Kit receives a mysterious letter from "The Salesman" who invites her to "The Store," the place that sells "what you need." The Salesman offers Kit the chance to fulfill her childhood fantasy of owning a unicorn. Kit must prepare for ownership of a unicorn by meeting specific requirements detailed in files given to her by the Salesman.

Great American Music: Faron Young

The spectator in art.

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.” Marcel Duchamp

Claes Oldenburg

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Claes Oldenburg is known for his soft sculptures, performance pieces, and installations, as well as for the many architectural-scale public works he made with his late wife and partner Coosje van Bruggen. His works transform the scale, function, and shape of familiar objects, allowing viewers to see the ordinary in unexpected ways.

Art you Own: Works held by the Smithsonian. Alma Thomas, Skylight 1973

Films I watched recently

Dracula: Are you watching Dracula on Net flicks? You should be because its really, really good entertainment. This three-part brilliant series is a clever, intelligent, and well written adaption of Stroker’s Dracula. The photography is occasionally sparkling and inventive, adding to the programs excellence.  The program includes one moronic American, a now standard staple in British program because it makes the English forget that they now have all the internal importance of say, Bolivia, in a bad year. Anyway, the series follows Dracula from his origins in Eastern Europe (Hungary)  to his battles with a clever nun named Van Helsing's and her equally clever descendants but what I found interesting is that the series finally explains why Dracula is a such problem child to begin with.

The Kindness of Stranger: Here’s the key to selling a drama in Hollywood; the human race must be shown in the worst light possible. The script should be mean spirited and all good things on earth should be drowned in contempt. But somehow, this gentle film had it through and we loved it. Yet the critics hated it, but that’s not surprising is it?  These are the same people who thought “Gladiator” should win an academy award.  The kindness of stranger, as an orphan I can tell you its real, is a good idea for a film and showing the decency of humanity never hurts.

Gentefied: Speaking if a little humanity never harming anyone, someone should mention that to the racist who writes this program. In the first episode there are three mentions of “whites” all used in contempt. That’s a shame, there could have been a story to tell with this series.  “Gentefied follows the story of three Mexican-American cousins and their struggle to chase the American Dream, even while that same dream threatens the things they hold most dear: their neighborhood, their immigrant grandfather and the family taco shop"

Life as we know it. This is a God awful movie. The plot can be summed up in the first ten minutes and the script is so, so, so bad.

The two Killings of Sam Cooke. I am a diehard Sam Cooke fan. The man was one of the greatest artists of the 20^th century. If you don’t know any thing about his music, about the man or the odd circumstances around his death, this documentary is definitely worth watching.

Giri/Haji (English: Duty/Shame) I loved it and highly recommend it. Available on Netflicks.   The series is highly stylized, photographed wonderfully, the writing is complex and well timed.

Kenzo Mori (Takehiro Hira), a Tokyo detective, travels to London in search of his brother Yuto (Yōsuke Kubozuka), who was previously assumed to have been dead. Yuto has been accused of murdering the nephew of a Yakuza member which, as a result, threatens to start a gang war back in Tokyo.

As Kenzo attempts to navigate the unfamiliar territory of London to uncover whether his brother is indeed alive and guilty, he becomes acquainted with DC Sarah Weitzmann (Kelly Macdonald) of the Metropolitan Police and Rodney Yamaguchi (Will Sharpe), a young half-Japanese, half-British sex worker. While searching for his brother Yuto in London, Kenzo must also keep his family together back home in Tokyo. However, Kenzo's investigation brings him into contact with dangerous elements of London's corrupt criminal underworld.

Spenser Confidential: Available on Netflicks. This a great film to watch when your too tired to get involved with a good film. Set in Boston in the present day, everybody gets beat up and shot and swears a lot. That’s pretty much all you need to know.

Frank & Lola: Available on Netflicks. One hell of a cast. This is a ….sort of love story, I suppose written around male obsession and domination. Its part drama and psychosexual thriller. There were a few gaping holes in the story. As an example, Frank, the leading man, mentions to Lola, the leading lady, that he lived on so and so Street in Paris.  Lola says “Yeah I live don that street too” …and that’s it. I mean, someone else would have asked “Yeah? What address?” or something.

I also couldn’t relate, even remotely to the Frank. Taciturn is a good word to use here. I emote. Frank emotes but silently, I suppose.  Also I thought that the main actors weren’t paired well (Michael Shannon and Imogen Poots) She’s perky  hap, hap, happy! And he’s brooding.

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke

Leon Bismark "Bix" Beiderbecke (March 10, 1903 – August 6, 1931) was a jazz cornetist, pianist, composer and one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s, a cornet player noted for an inventive lyrical approach and purity of tone.

Beiderbecke taught himself to play the cornet largely by ear, leading him to adopt a non-standard fingering technique that informed his unique style.

Beiderbecke's most influential recordings date from his time with Goldkette and Whiteman, although he also recorded under his own name and that of Trumbauer's. The Whiteman period marked a precipitous decline in his health due to his increasing use of alcohol. Treatment for alcoholism in rehabilitation centers, with the support of Whiteman and the Beiderbecke family, failed to stop his decline. He left the Whiteman band in 1929 and in the summer of 1931 he died in his Sunnyside, Queens, New York apartment at the age of 28.

He composed or played on recordings that are jazz classics and standards such as "Davenport Blues", "In a Mist", "Copenhagen", "Riverboat Shuffle", "Singin' the Blues", and "Georgia On My Mind".

Beiderbecke died in his apartment,  in Sunnyside, Queens, New York on August 6, 1931. The week had been stiflingly hot, making sleep difficult. Suffering from insomnia, Beiderbecke played the piano late into the evenings, both to the annoyance and the delight of his neighbors.

 On the evening of August 6, at about 9.30 pm, his rental agent, George Kraslow, heard noises coming from across the hallway. "His hysterical shouts brought me to his apartment on the run," Kraslow told Philip Evans in 1959.

He pulled me in and pointed to the bed. His whole body was trembling violently. He was screaming there were two Mexicans hiding under his bed with long daggers. To humor him, I looked under the bed and when I rose to assure him there was no one hiding there, he staggered and fell, a dead weight, in my arms. I ran across the hall and called in a woman doctor, Dr. Haberski, to examine him. She pronounced him dead.

Historians have disagreed over the identity of the doctor who pronounced Beiderbecke dead, with several sources stating that it was Dr. John Haberski - the husband of the woman Kraslow identified - who pronounced Beiderbecke dead in his apartment.

The official cause of death, as indicated on the death certificate, was lobar pneumonia. Unofficially, edema of the brain coupled with the effects of long-term alcoholism have been cited as contributory factors.

Art you own: Pieces from the Smithsonian

Henry Moore. During the 1950s he devised many compositions of seated figures, usually in pairs or groups, which allude to the renewal of life in postwar Britain. The couple depicted in “King and Queen,” however, has greater public significance. The subject emerged as Moore worked on figures inspired by an Egyptian Seated Royal Couple from the eighteenth century B.C., a sculpture displayed in the British Museum. The serenity and stateliness of Moore’s figures, completed in the same year as the young Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, may also reaffirm Britain’s monarchy as a symbol of continuity and triumph after the country’s near destruction by war.

Now here's an example, a rare example, of government actually doing something productive and thinking outside the box.

A bill passed by the General Assembly allows all Virginia school districts to create program to distribute any leftover food at the end of the day to students in need of meals.