Stick to the Script

This is a tale of two movies.

Despite zero interest on my part, two of my favorite people wanted to spend perfectly good money to see "A Star is Born" Friday night. Putting love and friendship ahead of losing two hours and fifteen minutes of my life that I could never get back, I went.

And I didn't even get popcorn, because I'd just scarfed one of Giustino's Bianca pizzas, so I didn't even have butter to console me.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Mac and Mr. Wright were counting on the film to prove wrong my Negative Nancy prognostications about a remake of a remake of a 1937 movie. And while I've never seen the original, I have seen versions one and two and had no real need for a 21st century version.

As for why, I've got reasons. Of course I do.

I'd only seen Bradley Cooper in one movie ("Burnt") and while he was attractive enough, nothing about his acting said I needed to see him in another. Something about seeing a former alcoholic play an alcoholic was distasteful to me. And while I can appreciate a first time director as much as anyone, I think it takes a lot of hubris for someone to wear both the hats of first time director and leading man.

If that wasn't sufficient, I was equally unimpressed with the choice of Lady Gaga as his costar and not just because I haven't heard any of her songs. Both versions two and three of "A Star is Born" benefited from casting a double threat - actress/singers Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand - so what on earth made Cooper think that casting a singer who hadn't acted made sense?

But despite all my reservations, I went along for one simple reason. If I saw it and hated it, I'd have full justification for trash-talking it, whereas if not, my opinion was based solely on what I'd read and a gut feeling.

Ding, ding, ding, I have my justification in spades.

Plus now I can also speak to other weaknesses: characters with no chemistry, a film that checked the millennial buttons without actually aiding the story, a weak screenplay and some bad directorial calls. Somebody needed to call "Cut!" on some of Bradley's scenes and clearly he wasn't going to do it.

And while the people in the row next to us were sniffing and sobbing by the end, knowing the story and its tragic conclusion meant I didn't have to worry about that.

Best of all, Mr. Wright and Mac didn't hold back once we exited the theater, neither one too proud to admit that it was a disappointment. Mac did allow that she could look at Bradley's bare chest all night long and that Gaga had done a fine job with singing, but not much more.

Except for the hours of my life lost, it was the best possible outcome I could have hoped for.

Now, tonight, that was a whole different ball of wax.

Back in September, I'd bought a ticket for the Afrikana Film Festival's screening of "Sorry to Bother You," but then the threat of Hurricane Florence had canceled the festival. By the time it got rescheduled for this weekend, tickets had sold out, so I went solo to the Grace Street Theater.

Which didn't mean I didn't run into plenty of familiar faces - the retired VMFA pro, the DJ spinning records, the former gallerist, the diversity specialist, a former Floyd Avenue neighbor - as well as being introduced to the couple next to me, film buffs who knew nothing of the VCU Cinemateque series (though I made sure they do now).

Musician and activist-turned first time director Boots Riley came out to introduce his comedy/fantasy/sci-fi film "Sorry To Bother You," a film about the dangers of capitalist exploitation that I'd missed when it played in local theaters. Lauded by critics for its ambition, scathing humor and originality, it nailed the crazy times we live in.

"If you had told me back then that it would take seven years to make this film, it wouldn't have gotten made," he announced from the stage. He also shared that all the actors, including Danny Glover and Armie Hammer, as well as Patton Oswald and David Cross in voice roles, worked for scale because they believed in the project.

Also, P.S. Bradley, Boots wasn't foolish enough to star in the film he was directing.

Interestingly enough, the black comedy had originally had a line about "making America great again," a line he'd had to edit out once the Groper-in-Chief hijacked our country and made it his motto. So while the dystopian tale was written before he began dismantling the country, its ferocious satire felt pulled from the pages of the Washington Post I'd brought to read before the film began.

The story of a lowly black telemarketer in Oakland whose life changes when he's advised by a more seasoned employee to use his "white voice" on the phone, it was one of those films where you had absolutely no idea what was going to happen next. It would have been tough to foresee a plot line about a company that offered people lifetime labor contracts in exchange for room, board and medical care.

Oh, wait, didn't we used to call that slavery?

When the movie ended jarringly, the audience gasped and groaned in surprise, only to be fooled because there was an addendum that changed everything at the very last second. It was impossible not be impressed with how many difficult subjects Boots had tackled in his first film or how thoughtfully he answered questions during the Q & A period with the audience.

All I can say is, kudos to Afrikana Film festival for gathering a full house of black, white and brown people to watch a film that allowed us look at the state of race in our country while laughing at its absurdity.

If you'd told me that I'd swing from soul-crushing mediocrity to trail-blazing capitalistic commentary on film in 24 hours, I might have asked to skip the former.

But where's the satisfaction in that?

Come Here, Mister

Life isn't about being drunk, it's about being merry.

At least, that was the distinction made in "Story of a Love Affair," the tenth and final film in the VCU Cinematheque retrospective of Michelangelo Antonioni. And as Professor T. pointed out ahead of the screening, ordinarily you'd have to go to a major city, say NYC or LA, to be treated to a retrospective of the master Italian filmmaker.

We have it so good in Richmond.

But before diving into Antonioni's first feature-length film, we strolled over to Ipanema, arriving so early that they were still serving the lunch menu. Not fussy about what meal we were eating, Mr. Wright and I scored the front-most booth - the one that used to get removed when bands played so they could occupy the space - and settled in until showtime.

Tuscan salads of greens, tomatoes, cucumbers, marinated artichoke hearts, cannellini beans and olives were topped with smoked salmon, despite my suspicion that salmon would not typically be part of a Tuscan meal. Given the chilly temperatures, we accompanied the meal with hot tea, mine a mint, his a South African Rooibus.

You know it's cold when I resort to drinking hot beverages since they're not my thing, though I must say it was a fine accompaniment for my slice of blueberry pie.

It was while eating dessert and discussing that tonight was the conclusion of the Antonioni series that I overheard the two guys in the next booth talking about another ending, that of the Italian Film and Food Festival. One guy recalled that it had always been at the Firehouse Theater. The other, a DJ I've known for years, thought he'd attended it at Artspace, but his friend wasn't convinced.

Without a moment's hesitation, I turned toward the other booth, called my friend's name and set out to clarify things. Yes, the Italian Film Fest had been at Artspace as well as the Firehouse, I shared. I know I saw Marco Bellochio's "Fists in the Pocket," there in 2010, along with killer eats from Mamma Zu, Edo's and 8 1/2.

"And Karen weighs in!" the DJ announced,  Just trying to help. I could have told him to look it up on the blog for further details, but refrained.

After crossing the street to the Grace Street Theatre only to find someone in my favorite seat, we made do with alternate seats nearby. Mr. Wright offered to go explain to the interlopers that they were trespassing, but I was feeling magnanimous.

Professor T. began the evening by explaining that we'd be seeing an archival Italian print on 35 mm, a rare treat which came with one small glitch. Archival prints don't get spliced to allow for standard two projector screening, so we should expect to see brief periods of black every 20 minutes. It seemed a small price to pay to see an archival Italian print on 35 mm.

And, as Mr. Wright later pointed out, the brief black breaks wound up feeling like scene changes during a play, perfectly appropriate given the high art we were seeing.

The visiting professor gave his usual 12-13 minute reading of his prepared paper on Anonioni and this particular film, his voice an odd combination of monotone, inappropriately inflected words and a question mark at the end of statements.

I'm not knocking the man's knowledge, just his delivery.

After seeing five of the ten Antonioni films this semester, films full of middle class malaise and post-war bleakness, I couldn't have been more surprised at the director's first foray into film. It was a black and white film noir, loosely based on the novel, "The Postman Always Rings Twice."

Hello dark streets, steamy love scenes and piano and sax score to set the mood. I love me a good film noir.

But then, as a bonus, there were scenes set in an uncrowded 1950 Milan, gorgeous clothing and gowns worn by the lead actress and a dead sexy car (see: 1948 Maserati A6G 1500, which surely must have been the inspiration for speedy cars in cartoons for decades to come).

What was strange was how very American the lead actor, Massimo Girotti, looked, a fact which worked fine in the context of the story but left me wanting for a more appropriately Italian actor, say, Marcello Mastroianni or Giancarlo Giannini.

What good are all those vowels in his name if he looks like John Garfield?

As for the distinction between stages of intoxication, it was when the older husband entered his younger, unhappy wife's bedroom late at night with a bottle of Champagne and two glasses that she asked of him, "Are you drunk?" and he responded, "Not drunk, just merry."

I've always labeled the stage before drunk as "loopy," but there's something charmingly dated about referring to it as "merry." As in, I've had a few glasses of bubbly and I'm feeling kind of merry right now. Not "deck them halls" merry, just merry.

Of course, that's just me weighing in. Again.

A Satisfied Mind

You never know which way the wind will blow me.

Yesterday, I was siting on a ferry behind a table of eight New Jerseyans unwilling to go below deck to smoke, so instead playing cards to pass the time crossing ("Who's in? Ten cents a card!" to which someone responded, "No, 20 cents a card!") and tonight I was watching a German expressionist film while listening to Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas play the soundtrack he'd composed for it.

Because I've been away all week, tonight was my first opportunity to take advantage of the James River Film Festival and with Lucas accompanying "Der Golem," I was getting a two-fer: music and movie.  All I had to do to get a hat trick (eat-film-music) was stop by Asado on my way to the Grace Street Theater.

Crowded because it was happy hour, I took the only available bar stool, in between a couple of women razzing their male friend about all the texts he was getting from someone named Jazmyn ("You do know that proves she doesn't know how to spell her own name, right?" one teased) and a sullen young man nursing successive whiskey shots and staring at the wall.

Welcome to Friday, millennial style.

Meanwhile, I overheard one of the bartenders ask his roommate (who was finishing up a mound o' fries) what he was doing next. "I'm gonna go home and take a shower, then sit down and start drinking. When are you getting home?" The bartender explained that he was going to need to shower, too, asking if the drinking could hold off till he was ready, too.

"Not a chance," his roommate said without so much as a grin. Apparently Friday drinking waits for no man, not even your own roommate.

By the time I'd finished my honey sriracha shrimp tacos, there was a line of people waiting for seats, so I graciously gave up mine and walked over to the theater even though it was half an hour till showtime. I wasn't first, though, so I had the conversation of others to provide some entertainment.

I heard two women talking about the good old pre-GPS days of using maps, except one said they were inconvenient because you had to pull over to look at them and they got torn and creased. "Yea, but remember those Trip-tiks AAA used to give you?" the other asked reverentially.

It was funny to hear since Mac and I had just been discussing Trip-tiks and our fond memories of them while road-tripping to Cape May this week.

Then there was the conversation where someone was saying that he'd wrecked his mother's car coming home from an Edgar Winter, Peter Frampton, Bad Company show where he'd had second row seats in front of the Stacks. "When I left the concert, I was functionally deaf," he claimed. "I tried to tell my Mom that's why I'd wrecked the car."

From there they were off on a '70s tear. "I skipped school to see Todd Rundgren and I didn't even know who he was!" one humble bragged.

You get the idea about the make-up of the crowd. In fact, when JRFF organizer Mike Jones ("I'm basically the glue stick that makes this festival happen...with  a lot of help") came out and began talking before the film, at one point he asked how many people had Depression-era parents and the majority of people raised their hands. Young we were not.

And I don't know whether it was the Frankenstein-like aspect to the film or that a musician who's collaborated with everyone from Jeff Buckley to Chris Cornell was playing, but I'm here to tell you that the audience was easily 80% men. Guitar nerds abounded.

Lucas, who is Jewish, spoke about how tickled he'd been to discover this 1920 silent film based on a Jewish folktale ("A Jewish monster and a rabbi saves the day, how cool is that?"), so much so that he'd written a soundtrack with a musician friend and performed it all over the world, earning him a spot in the JAM (Jewish avant garde music) pantheon.

His soundtrack was masterful, taking us through the story of a rabbi who foresees disaster for the Jewish people and creates a clay monster (immense and awkwardly heavy-footed, a precursor to Frankenstein) he asks the spirits to animate to help defend his people. All the potential problems you'd expect from creating a monster ensue, but it ends up dead and the Jews are saved.

Praise Jehovah and pass the Manischewitz.

As if that wasn't enough excellent entertainment for the evening, it was followed by local band Zgomot taking the stage and playing a couple of Lucas' songs set to experimental short films. Then the man himself came back out to join them, doing a couple more, including one he'd written with Jeff Buckley.

If I needed to be baptized back into the cultural world, I couldn't do much better than with one of the top 100 horror films you must see before you die, accompanied by a guitarist who's played the Venice Biennale and Shakespeare & Co. in Paris.

All I can say is, beats the hell out of playing for 10 cents a card. Or even 20.

A Film Supreme

It's in my own best interest to take a musician with me to see a film about music. Or even two.

When I saw that the 2nd annual Afrikana Independent Film Festival was showing "Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary," I wasted no time in inviting a musically-inclined date. Then, for good measure, I invited another favorite musician, because I can never have too many musicians to ask questions of.

And while he wasn't available for dinner beforehand, my date was, so we strolled over to Asado and managed to grab the last two bar stools in a place full of the usual Friday night revelers as well as Afrikana-bound film lovers.

For all we knew, there were counter-protesters eating and drinking away, too.

Given the clutch of people outside on the sidewalk waiting for an opening, one thing no one was doing was lingering, so we ordered guacamole and chips to buy us time to check out the menu and then ordered promptly.

Although I'm not particularly a heathead, I was completely seduced by the honey sriracha shrimp tacos with their reassuring kind of heat - the kind that immediately fires up your mouth and then drops off quickly. All the fire, none of the pain. My date seemed to think his barbacoa tacos surpassed mine, but he was mistaken.

We didn't gulp our meal, but we definitely inhaled it faster than my grandmother would have approved of, mainly because of all the hungry people hovering near the door. I got up to use the loo before we left and a guy swooped in and claimed my stool before I even opened the bathroom door.

Our walk continued to the Grace Street Theatre where we met up with musician #2, a longtime Coltrane fan. One of several festival photographers came over and asked to take a shot of us representing some of the first VIP passholders in line (I'm just hoping it's not captioned, "A musical idiot accompanies two men with a clue").

Inside, we found excellent seats in the center and watched a jazz trio onstage, notable because the sax player's instrument was clear. As in see-through. I don't know about you, but I had no idea clear saxophones existed.

And I'm going to guess that Coltrane himself couldn't have imagined such a thing, either.

The film was a fascinating primer on Coltrane's short life (he died of liver cancer at 40) and for me, it was invaluable in laying out how the man's sound and musical philosophy developed. Equally compelling was learning who had influenced him along the way: Dizzie Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk.

Of the various talking heads in the documentary - John Densmore of the Doors, Carlos Santana, Bill Clinton, Wynton Marsalis and various former bandmates of Coltrane's - by far the most engaging was Cornel West, who managed to add a dramatic element (eyes wide, voice inflection, body lean into the camera) to every comment he made, often eliciting laughter from the crowd.

One of the funniest anecdotes told was about the extended solos Coltrane did while working with Miles Davis. In one scene of Davis' band playing live, we could see Miles taking a cigarette break on the side of the stage with other musicians while Coltrane blew his solo.

Apparently, Trane's solos ran way longer than Davis' and he called him on it. Trane explained that he didn't know how to stop playing and Davis told him to try taking the horn out of his mouth. Hilarious.

And because Coltrane never did any TV interviews, his words from print interviews and liner notes were read by Denzel Washington to accompany still photos and that would be my only complaint about the film. It's impossible not to recognize Denzel's voice, which makes it tough for the words to register as Coltrane's.

There was footage of Coltrane playing at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival, where his atonal, more challenging and exploratory new style caused half the attendees to walk out mid-set.

Interestingly enough, one of those who'd walked out was saxophonist Plunky Branch who, along with hip hop artist Talib Kweli, gathered onstage after the film to discuss Coltrane and take questions from the audience.

Not surprisingly, Plunky had some regrets about walking out that long ago day.

I didn't walk out of the film a Coltrane expert by an stretch, but I did leave with a far better understanding of the man and how his soulful, spiritual tone became a new standard in jazz. Like Santana said, Trane didn't limit himself to any one genre because he "played life."

Walking out of the theater, all three of us acknowledged that we'd learned things about Coltrane we hadn't known and isn't that the point of a great documentary? It only made sense to begin our post-film discussion (and my questions) on the walk home.

Once my date and I were back at my place and comfortably ensconced on the balcony, I played the only Coltrane album I own, not "A Love Supreme," but "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman" from 1963.

It sounds like the ultra hip late night music of the early '60s when the U.S. was on a post-war high and acting like it was the coolest kid on the planet. The kind of sound that inevitably involved a low-ceilinged club, lots of cigarette smoke and a singer, in this case, Johnny Hartman, with the classic jazz vocal range of an Ella Fitzgerald.

And, you know what? His sax solos frequently lasted longer than the verses sung by Hartman. Unlike Miles Davis, though, neither of us had any complaints about that.

Conclusion of a musician and a musical imbecile: no one beats Trane for "playing life" on a warm September night.

Invitation to a Grope

As if any visit to see my parents isn't colorful enough, today's visit included two of my sisters to draw even further outside the lines.

Mom had already asked me to come down today and do their taxes for them when I got a last minute email yesterday alerting me that two of the clan would be coming down for lunch, or, as she phrased it, "A veritable covey of daughters!"

In case you can't tell by that exclamatory sentence, she was thrilled at the prospect of having half her brood in house, while my main concern was who was making the trek so I could gird my loins depending on which two were involved.

Turns out it was going to be a favorite sister and a difficult sister, so I didn't reschedule and deny Mom her covey. Instead, I tried to arrive early enough to get taxes out of the way before the guests arrived. But life on the Northern Neck means the world's slowest wi-fi, so I was still at the computer when they sailed in bearing lunch.

One aspect new to the tax process this year was another layer of identification - driver's license ID number, expiration and issue dates - to thwart identity theft, so I called to Mom that I needed her driver's license as well as Dad's.

Now, you have to picture this: it's a gorgeous day on the river and my father is comfortably ensconced in his favorite chair on the screened porch, crossword puzzle in hand, engrossed in a conversation about sports (something about you don't get to make those kind of mistakes when you're being paid that much money) with Sister #5 when Mom goes out to retrieve his driver's license.

Mom: Karen needs your driver's license for the taxes.
Dad, sighing at the interruption: Okay, let me get my wallet.
Mom: Stay where you are. I'll get it for you. 
Dad, with a leer in his voice: Please do. It's in my shorts pocket. 

What, everyone's octogenarian parents don't make suggestive statements in front of their grown daughters?

Their taxes were filed and accepted by the IRS before we even sat down on the porch for a lunch that included chicken salad, a huge favorite of Mom's when it's made right, which prompted a story I'd heard but the sisters hadn't.

Back in the dark ages, Mom had taught us to make chicken salad using large irregular hunks of chicken meat, not diced or shredded, not minced or finely chopped chicken, but chunks. One day at a coffee shop in a nearby town, she ordered chicken salad, only to be served, according to her, texture-less chicken salad. Soupy and without so much as a hint of a hunk, my usually mild-mannered mother marched up to the manager and complained about the lack of discernible chicken.

My sisters were agog at the mental image of Mom trying to educate a stranger in a restaurant about the right way to make chicken salad. I visit her often enough to know that she abandoned mild manners shortly after passing the 3/4 of a century mark and not a moment too soon, if you ask me.

After eating, Mom had a project for us: dyeing Easter eggs for her bridge luncheon tomorrow at the Women's Club. I can't even recall the last time I dyed eggs, much less a dozen and a half of them, but here I was with my sisters filling mugs with vinegar and water to activate the coloring tablets.

I know, I know, it's morally wrong for a card-carrying heathen to be doing something even remotely connected to a crazy Christian holiday I have no use for, but Mom seemed to delight in doing something with us that dated back to childhood and, besides, she's still the boss of us.

Or, as we used to tell each other to signify importance when we were kids, "Mom said." Mom said we had to dye eggs today, so we dyed eggs.

Resurrections aside, we couldn't have asked for a more exquisite April day to be on the porch with a view of the Rappahannock's myriad shades of blue, feeling the soft, humid air around us and inhaling the perfume of the bouquet - tiny narcissus, tulips, pink lilacs, columbine, pussy willows, money plant - I'd plucked from the yard before starting taxes.

The three sisters drove the conversational bus with near constant laughter, with Mom and Dad adding context or claiming not to remember things that were etched in our minds decades ago.

"How come Karen got all the memory and the rest of us can't remember anything?" Sister #5 asked rhetorically. Why does the sun go on shining? How can women who've known each other for so long still have so much to talk about?

By the time I got home, it was with the certainty that I needed no further conversation, or at least only the incidental type (a fellow culture geek's opinions are always welcome), so I walked over to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque's screening of "Russian Ark," memorable for the unexpected line, "Writers always have good hair."

Actually, what made the film notable was that all 96 minutes of metaphoric Russian history played out in the art and architectural magnificence of the Winter Palace of the Hermitage and were shot in one continuous take, one action or conversation immediately leading into the next one.

There it was: life had foreshadowed art, echoing my continuous take afternoon at the river, with a covey of sisters standing in for Russian royalty in period costumes.

Writers and good hair made appearances in both.

Range Rover

If ever anyone wanted to understand the range of my taste, today would have been the day.

To start, it's the first day of the 24th annual James River Film Festival, which means kicking off a whirlwind of films between now and Sunday night, many of which call to me.

The first to get my seat in a chair was at the Main Library for the 1954 cinematic treasure (so says the Library of Congress' Film Registry and now that I've visited, I trust their judgment) made by a producer and director both blacklisted as part of the Hollywood 10 for refusing to name names.

Because of that, film labs refused to process the film and after a week, theaters refused to run the film about an actual 1951 mine strike in New Mexico.

Told neo-realistically with the director using a mixture of professional actors (including Grandpa Walton aka Will Geer, of whom host Mike Jones noted, "Grandpa Walton was a Communist" with delight) and local people - miners and their wives - for the cast, the film lacked any shallow Hollywood veneer.

And talk about ahead of its time.

What was completely surprising were the strong feminist themes as miners' wives fought for a voice in what the miners should strike for in addition to better working conditions and pay (say, indoor plumbing and hot water), but also in being allowed to physically walk the picket lines once an injunction rules that miners who strike would be arrested.

Watching these '50s-era Mexican immigrant women find their voices and take charge of the strike situation was positively inspiring. Matter of fact, the only thing more impressive was the women's expectations at neighborhood get-togethers: they'd make dinner and clean up while the men talked and played cards.

But after that, everyone knew the men were expected to dance with their wives for the remainder of the evening (even if they danced badly, the men, that is) to the radio. Or to a guitar player if it happened to be the night the radio got repossessed in front of all your friends.

So right out of the gate, the JRFF had fed my taste for American social history, early feminism, neo-realism filmmaking and it was only dinnertime.

That meant a trip to the VMFA to meet an out-of-town friend for a few hours before it was time for another film.

For me, taking the scenic route through the museum to get to the restaurant means cutting through the early 20th-century European gallery and midway though them, I saw a nerdy-handsome security guard engrossed in an Emil Nolde painting.

Teasing him about that being a perk of the job, he corrected me at once, "No, that's why I took this job." I liked him already.

Arriving at Amuse first, I scored a couple of mid-century chairs facing the majestic sunset resulting from today's bizarre revolving door of fronts - it's warm and humid, no it's cool and windy, wait, it's warm and drizzly - ordered a hibiscus lemonade of the most gorgeous pink hue and apologized to the older couple in the chairs across from me for interrupting their little cocktail hour.

The bartender was wearing a maxi dress as groovy as the chairs, complete with round holes the size of a quarter all over, making parts of the legs and shoulders visible through the holes. When she mentioned that she was getting the holes stuck on everything, I suggested that the problem was that the dress would be better worn at a party rather than work.

On the other hand, when you have a dress that cute, how can you not wear it?

Once my friend arrived, we moved so we both had a view of the sunset's cloud juggernaut over the former home for Confederate women, only bothering to look at the menu once our server had come back three times.

Creamy white bean soup with Tasso ham and scallions seemed particularly suited to the suddenly cooler temperatures and I followed that with a glass of Rose and a salad of beets, almonds, bleu cheese, pea shoots and mixed greens with an onion vinaigrette, while my companion stuck to variations on a French 75, citing a difficult week.

By the time the clock said that I needed to get to a movie, I'd been characterized as a life explorer, a Renaissance woman and someone unable to live anywhere but a walkable city with a plethora of options on all fronts.

To quote Bing Crosby, guilty as charged, I guess.

After goodnights and dropping off the auto at home, I walked over to the Grace Street Theater for what is easily this year's festival's finest movie title by a long shot: "Rain the Color of Blue with a Little Red In It," essentially a Nigerian remake of "Purple Rain," the clunky title a result of there being no word for "purple" in the Tuareg language.

As soon as I got to the lobby, I found familiar faces: the photographer, the world DJ, the record store owner, the Bollywood DJ, the writer, the pariah, the record collector, the metalhead, the power pop singer. As someone joked, it was all the cool kids, but really, he meant all the middle aged dudes and a couple of women.

Truth be told, not everyone's schedule allows for a 9:30 movie screening on a Thursday night, even one with multiple hooks.

Too bad for them because the film borrowed heavily from Prince's debut - troubled relationship with father, love interest who throws jewelry, envious fellow musicians, purple motorcycle - while being completely original given that it involved nomadic Africans who trade pop music gems on their cellphones as a way to hear what's new and happening.

Our hero even wore purple, albeit what looked like shiny purple African pajamas with flip-flops, which, by the way, is also what he wore to ride his motorcycle around the desert.

And of course the soundtrack was phenomenal, merging Hendrix-like electric guitar with traditional Tuareg music for something George Harrison would probably have loved.

So my second film of the day had satisfied my music lust, fulfilled my appreciation for DIY filmmaking and provided an African cultural lesson.

As for that range, it's only a long way from feminist communism to left-handed guitars if you don't go by way German-Danish painters.

Just ask any Renaissance woman.

Before You Do Anything Rash, Dig This

We must have pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of pie. ~ David Mamet

It wasn't that driving over the Rappahannock River in rainy weather and high winds was stressful. Okay, yes, it was, because even crawling along at 30 mph, every gust felt like it could lift my car up and over the side of the bridge and remember, it's only been a month since that truck - an 18-wheeler, for cryin' out loud - blew off the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.

It wasn't that making potato soup and Irish soda bread for 75 women was stressful, although it was pretty labor-intensive and non-stop for 5 hours, including the period when Mom's bread machine stopped working and she had a mild freak-out.

On the plus side, today's gray skies, Constable-like clouds and wet weather did seem particularly Irish-like and suited to the foods we were making.

It wasn't that VCU Cinematheque's screening of the 2015 black and white Romanian western "Aferim!" was stressful, unless you find watching slurs about every race, religion and ethnicity, not to mention cutting off a captured slave's testicles, stressful.

Spoiler alert: I do.

It's just that after all of the above, my first thought walking out of the Grace Street Theater was that dessert was in order and I got no argument from the agreeable friend who'd walked over, hat on head, with me despite the cold, damp and fiercely windy weather to see such a visually stunning film.

Ipanema offered not only sweets but an open table for two, a lively Tuesday crowd, my kind of music (the wild card was the Main Ingredient's "Everybody Plays the Fool"), ten kinds of hot tea to choose from and desserts. Without even consulting each other, we both ignored the cakes available as I went straight for blueberry pie and mint tea while my companion's heart's delight was Earl Grey and cinnamon peach pie.

Only after our adorable server (clad in the high-waisted jeans I wore in the '80s) left did my friend remind me that today is Pi Day...314, of course it is.

And while I'm not especially mathematically-inclined, I'm all for any holiday that Mike Pence voted against (oh, yes, he did). I'm also all for finding any reason for celebrating, even when it's not intentional.

It's more than enough reason to linger over tea and pie, leaving stress in the rear-view mirror while admiring the idiosyncratic art hung over the booths and enjoying the cozy subterranean feel of the place on a busy winter evening.

A guy walked by in a striped sweater that so closely paralleled the colors and stripes on my sweater dress that I had no choice but to point it out to him. His sweater, though, was 15 years old and so much a favorite that he swore he'll never give it up, while mine is a far more recent find, although I'm just as attached because it's not only cute but ensures reliable warmth on nights such as this.

Walking toward Ipanema's door after pie, multiple cups of tea and a spirited discussion of why some people are afraid to use an ellipsis when writing to the opposite sex (neither of us is), we gave up our table to the next Tuesday night celebrants.

Getting as far as the end of the bar, I heard a familiar voice saying, "Karen, you are not going to walk by me and not say hello!" It wasn't that, but rather that I hadn't bothered to check out the bar's occupants as I passed by. I can't always be ogling people at a bar.

Because it had been several years since we'd last seen each other - though our friendship goes back about 8 - she immediately demanded that we get together soon now that she's living in Richmond full-time again. "Do you still not have a cell phone?" she asked with a knowing grin. Hey, my number's still the same, if that counts for anything.

"I almost didn't recognize you without your legs showing," she told me about starting there and working her way up as I walked by. Sorry, when it feels like 20 degrees outside, fleece leggings with tights over them mask familiar gams. Thank goodness she'd finally moved her gaze northward.

Hey, babe, my pie-hole is up here. Up here...

Be Beautiful But Shut Up

I feel certain that I alone reveled in the table fan.

That the Italian film began with a close-up of a table fan, that said fan seemed to blow our (unexpectedly) blond heroine's hair no matter where she stood in the room while breaking up with her lover, that the fan set the scene for a warm weather plot revolving around love, undoubtedly made me happier than anyone else at the Grace Street Theatre tonight.

I'd gone to VCU Cinematheque to see my second Michelangelo Antonioni film, "L'Eclisse," but if I were honest, I went because I'd read Alain Delon was in it (and the lump sum of my knowledge of him was from reading and let's face it, you really need to see a man in the flesh to fully appreciate him) and because it was a 1962 film, easily one of my favorite periods in movie history (especially in Italy...or France or swingin' London) for its depiction of a cultural tipping point.

Let's just say that the first music played was a variation called "L'Eclisse Twist." Groovy.

But a table fan, I mean, come on, I still have one that does double duty: as auxiliary breeze during warm weather and as white noise every night.

I realize most 21st century people see them as relics of a bygone age, but not me.

And if you think my fan devotion is absurd, know that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. My father still has his mother's table fan, an extremely heavy relic from the '50s, which miraculously still works.

The beautifully shot black and white movie was full of post-war ennui as well as a Rome completely unrecognizable from the one I saw four years ago because "L'Eclisse" was shot during a period of massive urban renewal and aerial shots particularly showed huge swaths of the city as no more than empty lots and barren wastelands.

I wish I didn't love you or that I loved you much more.

Alain was rakishly handsome as anticipated, but he was also shallow, materialistic and incapable of love, as much a problem for our heroine as for any smart woman.

Two people shouldn't know each other too well if they want to fall in love.

Although the audience had several familiar adult faces - the Frenchman, the book reader, the record collector, the theater critic - the crowd was mostly students and while film students may have appreciated the 54-year old movie, many of the others apparently did not grasp our heroine's distrust of the frenzy of the modern world.

I feel like I'm in a foreign country.
Funny, that's how I feel around you.

But if they occasionally drifted out when the story got slow, they left in droves during the last 7 or 8 minutes when neither character showed up for their supposed rendezvous, leaving the audience to watch the business of life - buses, pedestrians, water - at the intended place of the assignation.

Too bad for them. Life doesn't always happen in a quick cut, rapid-fire manner but the beauty of Anonioni's film is that he demonstrates with exquisite beauty how hopeless the pursuit of love can be.

It's then that you shut yourself away from the modern world, turn on your table fan and drift off to dreams of somehow getting it right.

As an old friend said at dinner tonight, if not now, when?

Trouble Finds Me

It's seasonal change time for new people in my life.

Ye gads, I don't mean I switch out friends when Fall inches toward Winter, I mean that people - those new in my life who've yet to know me through cold weather - haven't yet learned to be prepared.

Translation: always dress appropriately for possible hoofing. My date had proper layers on, but decided against bringing his scarf, a move he later regretted on leg three of our evening.

They live and learn or fall by the wayside. I believe that's called survival of the fittest.

After dealing with especially dense traffic traversing the city from Carytown to chez moi (I could empathize after a recent 23-minute trip from Chop Suey home at rush hour), he was more than happy to put foot to pavement en route to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque.

Along the way, he was providing an impromptu history lesson about the area, from clubs I'd never heard of to Grace Place, which I had, as well as a hilarious explanation of why he hadn't frequented the Lee Art Theatre for its porn programming.

It's always a lighter than usual crowd at VCU's screening before Thanksgiving and tonight was no different for the 76-minute "River of Grass," director Kelly Reichardt's first film and recently restored to its glorious 1994 brilliance.

Who knew films needed shoring up after only two decades?

The reigning visiting Prof introduced the movie by reading what would have been a fairly compelling paper on Reichardt and the development of her films, but came across as flat yet inquisitive when read aloud because each sentence ended with his voice going up so it sounded like a question.

It's a film that deals with later wave feminist issues?
It's far from a perfect film?
This is a getaway film in the style of Bonnie and Clyde?

Well, it is or it isn't? For god's sake, man, mean what you say and stop sounding so damn tentative.

Two unhappy people - the kind of young mother who puts Coke in her baby's bottle and a n'er-do-well who's finally kicked out of Grandma's house at age 30 - meet in Florida, think they killed someone and take off in his car.

Looking very much like an old school movie, it also delivered a smack upside the head about the role of Fate in our lives, but always with a wink and a sly nod.

There was narration that didn't always match the action ("He told me to stay home while he was on his crime spree," as he goes through his grandmother's underwear drawer). Languid pacing that appealed to seasoned audience members but only a millennial film student could stand. Jazz music and a character who practices that kind of drumming throughout the story.

It's love on the run seen through a post-Coen brothers lens, not to mention wearing its '90s indie heart on its sleeve. Dreadful things happen that seem very funny in the moment. Lotsa deadpan reactions.

Not to be missed is the marvel of watching our lovers smoke a joint by passing it to each other using only their toes. I would doubt this scenario more if I hadn't once been able to open a man's wallet and remove a credit card from it using only my toes.

But enough of that...

After a thoroughly satisfying 76 minutes of sun-drenched Florida seediness, characters born to hopelessness and an ending emphasizing the inevitability of Life, some bracing cold air was just what we needed.

That we had to walk a half a mile to eat may have resulted in a tad more bracing than He Who Shuns Scarves required, but so be it. Inside 821 Cafe, there was a heater practically with my name on it positioned right next to the booth in the front window, so the decision was made.

Our server was new to me, so she was unaware of my standing order, but when the bearded guy delivered my black bean nachos, he nodded, saying, "Oh, of course" when he recognized me. The 821 virgin called his choice of a grilled cheese with turkey and a side of chili a "sick day lunch," but he didn't wolf it down like he was ailing, if you know what I mean.

Besides, sick days always involved ginger ale at my house.

Walking back, I teased him that he'd shown up at my door with a record so I'd invite him up to show off my new (old) turntable again, but he insisted his motives were purer than that. Did I mention his decided sense of humor?

Still, he didn't hesitate to accept my invitation upstairs for a listening party that included his gift: a double album, the National's 2013 "Trouble Will Find Me," and my first vinyl of theirs. Even four sides in, Matt Berninger's voice never sounded so warm.

Just the thing on a cold night involving traipsing all over with a fair weather friend who seems motivated to get the hang of Winter with a walker.

And who, like me, is already counting the days to Winter Solstice. In the meantime, there will be scarves.

Give Peace a Chance

Some intersections are once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

I seriously doubt I will ever again listen to a poet laureate and living legend on the same night I witness a woman in a mini-trench coat lip sync-ing to "Man, I Feel Like a Woman."

The great January snowstorm Jonas had caused "An Evening with an Icon: Sonia Sanchez" to be rescheduled, allowing even more anticipation for it, so waiting in line for 40 minutes just to get in to the Grace Street Theater despite having bought my ticket two months ago shouldn't have surprised me.

Inside the theater, I sat down between two men, both wearing Bernie buttons (one of whom who had been a Sanders' HQ this afternoon when a 4' cutout of Bernie being arrested during a '60s demonstration had been delivered) and both dedicated jazz nerds.

My only value in the conversation was when it came to current jazz cats (their term) in the local scene, many of whom I've seen play at Balliceaux. The Bernie fan to my right, formerly very active in Detroit's jazz scene and a come-here eight years ago, even asked for a list of local acts to check out.

In return, he gave me a book recommendation, so we're even now.

When he found out I'd done the piece in Style about Sanchez, he leaned in and said, "I wanna thank you for writing that article because otherwise I'd never have known about this." Interestingly enough, he had seen her read her poetry back in the '80s.

First we saw the recent documentary about her, "BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez," a fascinating look at her life as an activist, member of the Black Arts movement, teacher and poet as well as the challenges she'd faced - FBI, being a single mother, recriminations from her father, lack of tenure - for being politically active.

When she was introduced, suddenly scores of phones were held up to capture her arrival and a lot of what she had to say, so I could barely see her onstage for the first ten or so minutes..

Asked about being poet laureate, she told a story of neighborhood children about to fight in front of her house and teaching them how to breathe to unwind. She then surprised everyone in the audience by telling us to stand and do deep ten deep breaths with her as a way of calming, a  practice she teaches her students.

"That's what I've been doing as Poet Laureate," she said to much laughter.

She also said many meaningful things, such as, "Each generation has to continue the struggle of the generation before," and "It always comes back to peace," but the most significant admonishment was, "Don't tell me you came and enjoyed this film and you're not going to go back and do something."

I think that's why my seatmates were wearing Bernie pins.

When one man, during the Q & A, asked how his generation could come together in the same way the '60s and '70s generations had, she corrected him, explaining that that only happens once people begin working toward what's important to them and finding like-minded individuals.

Another man asked how to clear his head of negative energy so he could write better and she  became my hero by asking, "Do you walk? Walking frames you for the day. It clears the brain," and went on about the benefits of daily walking. As an 81-year old, she would know.

All I can say is, major props to the Afrikana Film Festival for bringing such a culturally important woman to Richmond to share her life and stories with a sold-out audience. This city's cool points were off the charts tonight.

The only way to follow something so wonderfully high-brow was with, um, something quite the opposite?

Tonight was Late Night Lip Sync Battle at the Basement and it's impossible to convey how much fun it is to watch teams of local theater types compete for nothing but bragging rights.

Tonight's battle was even more special because both teams - the Velvet Rope and Cats Don't Care - were all women teams who, as Sonia had proven, are fearless and brilliant (one, a doula, had participated in the delivery of a 9 1/2 pound baby yesterday). They can even dance.

So much estrogen at battle also opened the door to multiple costume and wig changes, a lot of pumps and lipstick as prop.

You have to understand, there's a million points at stake for each round and three million for the final round. That's millions of meaningless points.

In between, there are erotic vegetable poses, scavenger hunts (Sarah won because I gave her my ballpoint pen, the requested item) and beer chugging to determine who goes first.

The Velvet Rope killed it with their opening song, "Alexander Hamilton," complete with whisky bottle and umbrellas to further the story and followed strong with Mary singing lead on Beyonce's "Formation," performed in camouflage jackets while tossing out packets of hot sauce.

Pretty impressive, right?

But then Cats Don't Care retaliated with a song from Disney's "Hercules," which Sarah had never heard before yesterday, having been a late addition to the team and having had parents who didn't let her watch Greek mythology.

Or maybe that was just her story and she was sticking to it.

The Improv round is always terrific because the teams don't know the upcoming songs and have to decide on the spot who will handle each. Their consternation is part of the fun of watching.

Watching these woman take on gems like "Man, I Feel Like a Woman," and "What's Love Got to Do With It?" and "Don't You Want to Dance?" and "My Heart Will Go On" was like a primer in the classic gay karaoke repertoire, pure emoting and overacting that worked the crowd into a drama kid frenzy.

The big finales took it even further with TVR doing "Hey, Now" in fur coats and hats and CDC doing "Bang, Bang" complete with black banged-bob.

For those keeping score at home, Cats Don't Care took home the non-existent prize, but, of course, they didn't care and a dance party ensued.

Mind and body got a workout tonight. Tomorrow, like the icon Sonia Sanchez, I will walk to clear the mind.

Only then can doing something follow.

Under African Skies

I'm always thrilled with the cosmos when real life dovetails with what I'm reading.

For the past week or so, it's been Ralph Abernathy's autobiography, "And the Walls Came Tumbling Down," an absorbing memoir of the Civil Rights struggle told by one of the major players. Even his godliness (he was, after all, a man of the cloth), such a stark contrast to my raving heathenism, comes across as just part of who he had to be to accomplish what they did.

So imagine how thrilled I was when I saw that the Southern Film Festival's final offering of the weekend was the documentary, "We Shall Overcome" about the song that was the de facto anthem of the movement.

What I didn't know until I got to the Grace Street theater was that a Civil Rights activist would speak beforehand. Man, I get lucky sometimes.

Although I'd never heard of Joan Trumpauer Mullholland, I only had to hear that she'd been a frequent participant in sit-ins and a Freedom Rider to be completely intrigued by everything she had to say. In a testament to the time, because she had been white and southern, her sanity had been called into question for her activism.

Today she showed off her t-shirt commemorating the 50th anniversary of SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and spoke about her years working for the movement. Despite that I'd been reading about people just like her, I'd never expected to hear from one.

Narrated by Harry Belafonte, the 1989 documentary told the story of the iconic song and its place in the movement through interviews with everyone who mattered: Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, to name a few, plus singer Guy Carawan, apparently a major figure whom I'd never even heard of.

While I'd known the song had originally been a black spiritual, I'd had no clue it had been adopted by the labor movement in the '40s, long before the Civil Rights movement picked it up and carried it forward. Since then, it's been used for movements all over the world, including the woman's movement, and in Ireland, Korea and South Africa. Desmond Tutu spoke in the film of its power in the anti-apartheid movement.

Someone said it was the glue that held movements together, a way for disparate groups to recognize their connectedness.

Best of all were the myriad versions we got to hear: Peter, Paul and Mary's, Pete Seeger's, the Freedom Singers performing it in the '80s, the finale of the 1963 Newport Folk Festival with an all-star cast, Taj Mahal, who said he'd learned the song from his mother as "I'll Be Alright Someday" and, as is only fitting, Joan Baez - the woman who'd sung it at the March on Washington.

Needless to say, this was all pretty wonderful and hugely compelling to me because of the book I'm reading. But, wait, it gets better.

After the film, we were treated to a performance by the VCU Black Awakening Choir, a group that probably numbered 60 or 70 black-clad college students plus a three-piece band.

They sang "O, Happy Day" and I'm not exaggerating to say that when they all lifted their voices to the rafters, I felt goosebumps. The sound produced by that many talented voices was soul-stirring even for a non-believer.

I don't think the Southern Film Festival could have ended on a higher note.

So where do I go from there? Straight to Hardywood, of course, for the sixth installment of the Cover to Cover series. In what I choose to see as yet another tenuously connected thread, they were covering Paul Simon's "Graceland," the album that exposed American pop culture to African music.

Such an ambitious album had not only been the original inspiration for the C2C series but necessarily required a bigger band than usual. Tonight's group of musicians included horns, accordion and an extra guitar player. They even had a gospel choir, albeit of 7 rather than the 70 I'd just heard.

"Who's a Paul Simon fan?" organizer and lead singer Matt asked the beer-drinking crowd and a roar went up in affirmation. "We are, too. Wish us luck!" Then they were off, and by they, I mean that crack band and choir with Matt and Maggie on vocals.

"These are the days..." Matt began singing and the room exploded with the energy of "The Boy in the Bubble." Around me, people sang along and those who didn't were dancing.

"Graceland" got the choir onstage for the first time, causing Matt to note, "The stage just got a lot more good-looking." They left when Maggie got singing (rapping?) rights for "Gumboots," saying afterwards, "I love Paul Simon. He just had to tell that story."

Behind the music, Cover to Cover version.

The choir was back for "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" and Maggie used the opportunity to sit down in front of the choir and give her soles a rest while they belted it out.

Directly in front of me, a girl sang every word, usually directly in her boyfriend's face and danced non-stop. During a pause between songs, she looked at him and sighed, "I'm gonna cry! This is so great!"

Cover to Cover tends to inspire fanaticism, I'm telling you.

During "You Can Call Me Al," I saw lots of people singing the familiar chorus to each other but everyone was amazed when choir member Anthony Smith pulled out a penny whistle for the distinctive solo. The audience went nuts for it; ditto the brief but muscular bass solo.

When the song finished, Matt gave three big snaps up and down. "Y'all weren't expecting a whistle were you? You thought, there won't be a whistle, but there was!"

He was right, it was pretty spectacular.

They pulled out the tambourine and accordion for, as Matt put it, a trip to New Orleans and "That Was Your Mother," taking me back to the Big Easy of this morning's "King Creole," except not in black and white.

By then, it was so hot in the brewery that if your arm or leg touched someone else's while dancing, you were likely to stick together. Matt and Maggie looked just this side of soaked in sweat by the time they finished the album.

After a ten-minute break, the band returned for some Paul Simon favorites such as "Cecelia" and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard," with Matt noting, "I'm really more of a Garfunckle based on my look," no doubt referring to the blond curly locks falling in his eyes as he danced and sang all night.

Saying they were going to slow things down and do Matt's favorite Paul Simon song, we got "The Only Living Boy in New York," which was enough to get the millennials motivated to pull out their cell phones in place of Bic lighters to hold up and sway. So post-modern.

Then because it's become an unwritten rule that they always repeat one song from the evening's album during the encore, we heard "You Can Call Me Al" again and the night was complete. And completely wonderful.

"For those of you who've never been to a Cover to Cover before, that's what it is," Matt said to close out the night. Say goodnight, Maggie.

I've been to all six and they continue to be as fabulously impressive as (geek alert) having the pages of the book you're reading cross over to real life. Oh, happy day...and night.

Nothing Lost in Translation

I shall draw two conclusions from the evening's fun: the Scots are a resilient lot and Brazilians never forget a face.

Yes, of course I'm making blanket generalizations.

Arriving at the Grace Street theater to find only one other person in the auditorium, I briefly wondered if I'd been mistaken about there being a film tonight. Taking my usual seat anyway, I soon heard my name called and was joined by a familiar face who introduced me to his companion.

Talk quickly turned to film and I learned from the newcomer that Richmond has a Bollywood connection. No kidding, this woman who is married to an Indian informed me that new Bollywood films are screened at the VCC theater on the same day as they open in India.

What? How had I not heard of this fascinating offering?

When I expressed regret for having missed out so far, she assured me that I could watch some of the films on YouTube, at which point I had to clarify that I watch movies in public on big screens, the way god and Shiva intended. She immediately understood.

Interestingly enough, she also gave me a source for English translations of Indian reviews of new films. This woman was turning out to be invaluable.

Another familiar face showed up, a guy I run into at all kinds of events, including this one. The three of us who'd seen "Wild Grass" last week as part of VCU Cinematheque got into a big discussion of its protagonist and whether the film's events had been real or imaginary.

It was soon clear that each of the guys had completely opposite takes on the plot. One saw nut case, the other saw sex offender. I saw a lonely woman with bunions who fell for the stranger who found her stolen wallet. Never the twain shall meet.

Tonight the Cinematheque was showing a documentary, an infrequent offering but one the Professor said spoke to their mission to show lots of different things. He also warned us there'd be no Q & A because the film was self-explanatory.

Reminding us that there are four more films in the series before the semester ends, he instructed us to tell our friends (as I do) or even bring them. "It's  a cheap date!"

I hear that, Prof.

"Touch the Sound: A Sound Journey with Evelyn Glennie"  began with a woman playing snare drum in Grand Central Station and only later do we learn that she is profoundly deaf (and Scottish, but understandable) since a neurological disorder during childhood claimed her hearing.

She adapts by using a sense of touch and bare feet to play mad percussion with all kinds of talented people, including making a wholly improvised record with experimental musician Fred Frith in an abandoned warehouse ("The nature of improvisation is your whole life up to that point.").

In one scene, she improvises on the floor of a restaurant using drumsticks on two plates, a metal ashtray, a glass and a metal box.

A large portion of the film was her playing alone and with others in all kinds of locations, but apparently there weren't enough quick cuts and car chases to entertain the ADD set because a surprising number of students cut out early. A guy near me kept leaning forward as if to stave off sleep.

Some of the stuff that came out of her mouth was profound such as, "Silence is one of the loudest sounds you'll experience," something I discovered trying to sleep in the country after a life in the city. Or, "The absence of sound is the closest thing I can imagine to death."

But what earned her the crown of most resilient was her take on life. "My role on this planet is to bring the power of sound." As we saw, that she did over and over, whether on a farm, a rooftop or Japan.

When the movie ended, I noticed one acquaintance had already cut out. Another asked what I was up to next. When I said more music, he showed little interest. Too much music? No such thing.

Gallery 5 was hosting a Brazilian band that played South by Southwest this past Saturday night and were swinging up the east coast since.

I ran into two friends leaving on the way out ("We were working"), arriving partway through Richmond band Candy Spot's set. I didn't know the band but just the sound of the jangly guitar alone was enough to get me interested even before I rounded the corner.

Hints of psychedelia, definite shoegaze elements and catchy songs. Yup, I liked these guys and hope to hear them again sooner rather than later.

It was after their set ended that I looked up to see a favorite girlfriend busy talking to a group of musicians (you can always tell) before heading my way.

Neither of us had expected to see the other, so we were busy catching up when one of the handsome musicians in the back walked up to me and said, "You were at our last show, weren't you?'

Now let's be clear, yes, I had seen Marcelo Fruet and Os Cozinheiros exactly two years ago this month at a house show on southside at the mid-century modern home of a glamorous friend. How in the world he recognized me is beyond me.

Surprised, I assured him I had been at that show and had fallen in love with their sound and energy. "Thank you so much for coming out tonight," Marcelo said in his Portuguese-accented English.

You know that feeling when you're really happy you decided to go somewhere? That was me.

My girlfriend and I chatted while the band got set up: Marcelo on guitar and vocals plus a drummer, bassist and a percussion master with killer triangle skills (the man could shake and strike anything).

Their set was more raucous than the one I'd seen in my friend's living room in 2013 and the band was even tighter, if that's possible, playing their hybrid of samba, rock and jazz.

By the second song, Marcelo said, "We better play more Brazilian music so you know we're from Brazil tonight." He may have been shredding his guitar, but his hips were swaying sinuously.

In fact, the instrumentation and the way they played came across like indie rock while the lyrics and groove made it clear they were from the southernmost state in Brazil.

Almost everything sung was in Portuguese until Marcelo said, "I don't write as good in English as I do in Portuguese but here's a song I wrote in English when I was 14." The only obvious Latin touches on the rocking "Land of Moons" was Marcelo's elongated and sibilant ending on  "moonssssss."

Leaning in toward me between songs, my friend whispered, "Marcelo is cute as a button, isn't he?" Indeed, and earnest too, a swoon-worthy combination.

If the set they played in Austin was half as powerful as the one they played for the small crowd tonight, the critics must have eaten them up with a spoon. Their Latin roots were the underpinnings for every song, so no matter how hard guitar and bass were wailing or how much of my beloved reverb they were using, you could never lose sight of their heritage.

Which is exactly why I wouldn't have missed another chance to catch them after two years.

"We wish we had a place like Gallery 5 in Brazil," Marcelo said from the stage before the last song. "But we don't."

Here's the thing, Marcelo: We wish we had men who remembered our faces after two years and were thrilled when we showed up. And if they have liquid hips, all the better.

But we don't. Which makes us very happy when guys like you stop by.

You Read That Right

You miss something the first time around, you go back and catch it later.

Meaning I finally got to see Scorsese's "Mean Streets" not just at the theater, but on 35 mm thanks to VCU Cinematheque.

I arrived in time to get a great seat and spent the time waiting reading an article in the Washington Post (physical copy) entitled, "Why Digital Natives Prefer Reading in Print. Yes, You Read That Right," while all around me, I saw not a single millennial reading on anything other than a device.

But apparently it's been researched and the resulting evidence compiled in a book proving what anyone over the age of 40 already knew: people who read online skim, are easily distracted (ooh, a Facebook message!) and don't comprehend what they read as well as they do when reading print.

Tell me something I didn't already know.

The theater was especially crowded tonight and I had to think that was because Scorsese's first major film was on the bill. That said, I saw at least 8 or 10 people walk out mid-film.

Naturally, I knew next to nothing about the story, although even I was savvy enough to recognize dozens of things directors have stolen from this movie and used repeatedly over the years. It was even clearer how many of Scorsese's bag of tricks had their seeds in this film about the neighborhood where he grew up.

And of course there were all those fabulous 1973 details: mailboxes that were still red and blue, bars that didn't serve tequila, cops smoking on the street, chefs smoking in the kitchen.

Italian restaurants with pictures of JFK, RFK and the Pope on the walls. Every man wore a watch and carried a handkerchief (handy when they wanted to sit down on a tombstone in a graveyard). Slurs were thrown at blacks, Jews and women with the casual nature of a different time.

As for the cinematography, elements of red ran throughout the entire film, punctuating the bars, restaurants and streets of the city, an echo perhaps of all the blood.

After having seen "Taxi Driver" for the first time a few years ago, I knew to expect an even younger DeNiro and he was, all angles and youthful coiled energy, but I was totally unprepared for how freaking young Harvey Keitel looked. He would have been 34 at the time and his face and abs were as chiseled as a model's. I don't remember that Harvey at all.

Another big surprise was all that '50s and '60s girl group music that underpinned such a gritty story. I suppose I'd been expecting '70s music which wouldn't have offered nearly the contrast that oldies did.

Now that I've seen it, I'd guess that the reason I didn't see it back when it came out was because of a perception that it was violent (which it was) and dominated by men's stories (ditto), but I can finally overlook all that to place it in the context of the time.

Once again, the film professor who usually steers these screenings was absent, meaning no thoughtful discussion afterwards, something I would have enjoyed except I didn't have time for it tonight. I didn't want to have to choose between film dissection and music legend and fortunately, I didn't have to.

I made it to Black Iris a few minutes before the Ar-Kaics got started. When I first saw them nearly two years ago at Steady Sounds, they'd been a young trio who made a lot of noise with three chords. Since, they've become a quartet who make a lot of noise with three chords and short song titles (either about the pleasure of love or the pain), but are noticeably tighter these days.

They sometimes lacked in between-song banter, as in, "This is a little song about getting my way. It's called "Getting My Way."  Or, the more humorous, "This song is called "I Don't Need Your Love" and it was on our first 45 so many years ago. It still holds up well."

"So" is a relative term here.

After their scream-filled rambunctious set, I ran into a friend who was more than happy to dive into discussion of "Mean Streets," a film he'd seen in a film class and been strongly impressed by.

Since I could have run into any number of friends who barely recalled it or hadn't formed such well-considered opinions about its place in the Scorsese canon, I felt fortunate that he was the one there.

And of course he was there. Like me, he knew enough to want to see Chain and the Gang, the latest project of D.C.'s Ian Svenonius, he of Nation of Ulysses and The Make-Up.

A while back, I'd seen Ian do a wide-ranging talk at Candela Gallery about his latest book about breaking into the music world, followed by a seance. He'd bemoaned the absence of candles.

Naturally I was curious to hear such a man's music, described by some as "crime rock." Hilarious.

Appropriately, he  was dressed in a shiny suit and skinny tie with female guitarist (who'd come down on Amtrak today) and bassist and a talented drummer anchoring it all. Like any good rock star, he shook his dark curly hair a lot, jumped off the low stage into the crowd to sing and dropped to his knees as appropriate.

And, you gotta love it, they began with the band's theme song.

He instructed us to keep tonight a secret, "Don't text anyone, don't call anyone about what's happening here. It's our little secret."

That said, he sang a sarcastic rant about our freedoms- press, speech - and another crowd-pleaser called "Mum's the Word" that had people singing and dancing along.

Lyrics aside, the basic garage music itself wasn't difficult, with steady drumming and solid bass lines meant to keep everyone grooving in place against each other. Like a whirling dervish, he never stopped moving either, punctuating some songs with howls that had him bent over backward and screeching them to the ceiling.

Favorite song lyric: "The logic of night," a subject about which I might know something.

The banged bassist joined him on certain songs, adding her distinctive voice to lyrics meant to be mindful but also move your behind. There's no complacency when Ian Svenonius is at the helm.

By the end of their set, he looked mighty sweaty under all that hair and encased in a totally synthetic suit, but the band obligingly came back for a one-song encore to finish off the night.

Since I didn't catch any live '50s and '60s garage rock (although some guitar riffs sounded positively Monkees-like), tonight's show had given me a glimpse of what I'd missed.

Unlike the film, no discussion was called for afterwards. Removing our hot bodies to the cold sidewalk was more than enough to wind down.

Friend and I hugged in the middle of Broad Street and when we lived through that, went our separate ways.

That's the logic of the night.

Catfish Thai Style

For me, it will always be a love/hate relationship.

I love the VCU Cinemtatheque series, but I hate when it coincides with a VCU basketball game, like tonight. Despite only having to go a half a mile to the Grace Street Theater, it's like competition dodge ball to run the gauntlet between focused fans on foot and in vehicles.

Come on, people, I just want to see a free movie.

Twice, I almost got mowed down by people, heads down and charging toward the Siegel Center, oblivious to those of us not caught up in fandom. It's not like I don't want VCU to win, I do, but I don't have to watch it to make it happen.

I made a quick stop at Ipanema to buy a ticket for the upcoming Bijou/Byrd Theater fundraiser (showing "Finding Vivian Maier," up for an Oscar as best documentary), chatted with the man with the magnificent mutton chops and scooted across stopped traffic on Grace Street to the theater.

Not only were students pouring in, several saying they'd heard the movie was good, but grown-ups, too. The king of Video Fan sat down behind me, ideal because I then had someone to talk film with. He's busy working on the upcoming Twin Peaks festival and shared that they'd nailed down showing "Eraserhead" during the event. Can't wait.

I inquired what he knew about tonight's Thai film, "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives," the 2010 winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or prize and he confirmed that he'd heard it was terrific. In fact, they'd just recently gotten it in at the store, but he'd held off watching it to see it on the big screen. That's a smart man.

Just as the lights were dimming, a Frenchman I know slid into the seat next to me, saying, "There were too many kids on their phones around me. I had to move." There ought to be a law.

The film professor with the booming voice who usually leads off these screenings with an explanation of why the film was being shown and what the director is known for was absent tonight, leaving us in the hands of an assistant professor who mumbled a few words and rolled the film.

"If he'd talked much longer, he'd have put everyone to sleep," the Frenchman observed dryly. He should know since I once heard him snoring at a Russian film screening at UR.

From the opening shots of a buffalo in the woods, which probably lasted close to ten minutes without a single word being spoken, you could tell this was going to be an exquisitely shot movie. It was soon just as clear that belief needed to be suspended.

The tale of a man dying of kidney failure who assembles his loved ones for his last days began to cross into mystical territory when the ghost of his dead wife shows up on the veranda to chat with him and the others. Before long, his long-lost son arrives, only he's become a monkey ghost, complete with black fur and glowing red eyes.

What was most interesting about all this was how matter-of-factly it was presented. No explanations were offered for how dead people could just show up and talk to humans, but it came across plausibly.

What if our dead loved ones do have the ability to reach out to us as we slide toward death and help us make the transition to the other side? I can't say that's not possible.

One of the oddest scenes involved a princess who gives herself up to a catfish who thinks she's beautiful and, yes, there is woman/catfish sex shown as she floats on the water. It no doubt sounds far stranger written out here than it played out in the movie.

As a whole, sitting in the darkened theater, the meandering movie was trance-like as it unfolded, every Thai landscape enthralling, every conversation a consideration of what life and death mean. When the spirit world begins to recede at the end, we know it's because our hero has died and they're no longer needed.

Absent out usual professor, there was unfortunately no post-film discussion like there usually is. Given how enigmatic the movie was, it was particularly missed. I'm always curious what others have to say.

As the credits rolled, a student near me turned to his friends and said, "I liked it. It took you to another place." And as a 19-year old, it's probably a place he wouldn't have gone to on his own. in the lobby, a girl announced, "I'm going to have to go home and Google that movie."

Outside in front of the theater, a cluster of students was deep in discussion when I passed them. "And then she gave birth to a fish...right?" one asked tentatively. "No, I think she just had sex with it," another proclaimed.

Potato, potahto. My takeaway came from the ghost of the ex-wife. "Heaven is over-rated." Well, there's some good news.

Ultimately, it was a film not to be dissected, but one to be enjoyed in the moment. Kind of like life.

Heeding Spring's Hints

I'm over the moon about how Spring is busting out all over.

Opening all my windows the moment I got up, I eagerly put on short to go for my walk. Near the Library of Virginia, a guy pointed at my shorts and said, "You're glad Spring's here. Look at those pretty legs!"

Better yet, look at how I don't have four layers on top and two on the bottom anymore. Look at how I'm walking on the shady side of the street instead of the sunny side. Look at how Spring fever is oozing out of every pore.

I'm still getting used to having the windows open again, meaning there are constant distractions from bustling Clay Street below.

People walk by singing to the music in their ear buds. The recycling truck clatters along picking up containers formerly full of bottles and cans of beer (lots of students). Bits of conversation drift up as people walk down the street out of ear range. Horse hooves clop by as the mounted police patrol the streets to keep me safe.

It's not that I mind hearing all this, it's just a matter of getting used to it (and gradually tuning it out) after being closed up in the isolation booth of winter on the second floor.

What I knew for sure was that I intended to walk to the Black Maria Film Fest at the Grace Street theater tonight and I left in plenty of time to lollygag.

I browsed the tables outside the quirky Richmond Book Shop, admired fancy cycles in Balance Bike Shop and ogled VCU's Depot, the old streetcar station that's starting to be filled with student art in anticipation of tomorrow night's opening.

It was a splendid day for a second walk.

At the theater, I found a seat among familiar faces from the local art and film scene, students and other grown-ups with an interest in film shorts. This was my eighth year going to the Black Maria and it always delivers satisfying, challenging and creative takes on filmmaking.

This year, as a bonus it was free.

Once again, it was hosted by John Columbus, founder and director of the festival, and after his opening remarks, he made his way up to my row and squeezed by, saying, "I'll sit here."

Now I knew I was in the important row, despite my lack of filmmaking experience.

Well, that's not entirely true. When I was in college, a filmmaking friend had written, directed and produced two films and he'd asked me to be in both, despite an utter lack of acting ability.

If I were to see them today, I'm sure part of me would cringe at my woodenness and part of me would marvel at my youth. But mostly cringe.

Nothing we saw tonight was cringe-worthy, although partly because so many of the shorts were conceptual or abstract in some way.

Using "appropriated" footage (which used to be called found footage before finding came into question), "Inquire Within" showed a series of contrasts, including one of a mean elephant named Topsy being electrocuted in 1903, something I never really needed to see.

"Solaristics" was 48 variations on the theme of the sun and after about 12 - sun through a  windshield, through the slats of a fence, reflected in water-  it lost my interest entirely.

I tried not to let John Columbus see that I was unimpressed.

Far more compelling and upsetting was "Chop," based on a sculptural installation using old chopsticks.

Turns out it was a statement about how we could save 400 million trees if we stopped making disposable chopsticks, something I'd like to think is a reasonable goal.

From the very thought-provoking to the buoyant "Globe Trot" we went for a film made from footage shot in 40 countries of people all doing the same dance. All colors, all ages, all body sizes, all choreographed and edited together. Very cool.

"Night Blooming Flowers" brought us crashing back down to earth with a dreamy meditation on flowers watching the demise of a person in the hospital dying.

John had said that at his age, he was thinking more about death and dying, so perhaps that accounted for the film's inclusion, but with no such thoughts on my mind, I found it a bit of a buzz kill.

Luckily, it was followed by the absolutely delightful film within a film within a film, "Sleight of Hand," a story in stop motion.

A claymation figure (strong-jawed and thick-haired like Dudley DoRight) builds a claymation figure and starts stopping and starting him until he accidentally notices that someone is arranging also him. I found it to be a very clever construct as the camera panned out further and further until we saw the director and crew who had been making him so he could make his own figure.

It was a regular hall of mirrors.

But lest we get too giddy, next up was "Through the Tubes," a closely shot, challengingly surreal piece that wandered through the memory and experiences of an old woman.

Winning my vote for longest, most pretentious and obscure title was "Little Block of Cement with Disheveled Hair Containing the Sea," but it turned out to be an exquisitely shot black and white film chronicling the journey of a horse and dog, both of whom were excellent actors.

As a bonus, there was a pig strolling across a bridge, not something you see every day. All those happy animals almost, but not quite, made up for seeing Topsy shocked to death.

By the time we saw the experimental "Water Color (Fall Creek)," I had little patience for 11.5 minutes of water under a bridge at different times of day and night with changing sound.

But boring water was soon forgotten with the utterly charming "Salmon Deadly Sins," a film made using 5,000 salmon-colored index cards in a flipbook-style movie. Steven Vander Meer began his film with the words, "I love anagrams" and proceeded to show us how much.

Subtly pastel drawings illustrated the seven deadly sins humorously until the finish, which read, "This is the end. Heed its hints."

I did and took the long way home enjoying the cool night air of my last walk of the day.

Spring, please say you're here to stay.

The Speed of a Lush Life

This I learned on my walk today: everywhere has a center.

In Virginia, the center is under the Harry Byrd memorial, a monument I noticed for the first time today strolling through Capital Square toward the Arts Commission.

It's apparently ground zero and the point from which all distances in the commonwealth are measured. Now who the hell knew that?

After adding to my mile marker knowledge and making a deadline this afternoon, it was time for some NASCAR.

VCU's Southern Film Fest kind of lost me this year with a sports theme, but the double allure of Richard Pryor and Pam Grier was enough to get me to the Grace Street theater to see 1977's "Greased Lightening."

I asked the woman next to me why she was there and she said her husband was chairman of the history department, the ones presenting the film fest, so she thought my reason for coming far superior.

The true story of Wendell Scott, a Virginian and the first black stock car racing champion, was being introduced by Scott's son and grandson who told us the film had premiered in Danville, Wendell's hometown.

He also advised us to take note of the way racial issues were portrayed, unnecessary because it would have been hard to miss ("Don't let him knock you up, young lady. You know how you people are").

Although this was not a comedy role for Pryor, he's so innately funny that a hapless look on his face and a side step became hilarious.

Wendell developed his speedy driving habits while running moonshine on the back roads of Franklin county, which he knew like the back of his hand. When he finally gets caught and jailed, a racetrack owner works a deal to get him out if he'll come race at his track.

He knows Wendell will draw blacks to the track (in the "colored only" section, of course), meaning more business for him, and that the white drivers will try to annihilate him, making for an exciting race. A sign outside the track that day read, "See the one and only negro race car driver."

Beau Bridges' character, a former driver who quits and befriends Wendell to become one of his mechanics, about stole the movie in a scene where he defends the two steak dinners he and Wendell are trying to eat in a whites-only restaurant by holding the rowdy customers at bay with a nearby Confederate flag.

Wendell's life made a great story, overcoming odds to become a champion, a near-fatal crash, a comeback and victory and all set in southern racetracks with the stands filled with people in mostly '70s clothes, a glaring mistake since no one, and I repeat, no one was wearing mini-dresses in 1947.

But at least I now know what the checkered flag means.

I left the '70s and images of Pam Grier's bodacious body for Joe's Inn and a travelogue about Nicaragua over drinks, BLTs and mozzarella sticks.

The returning traveler had scads of photographs of rain forests, low-hanging clouds, living rooves, strangler trees and adorable big-eyed children in colorful clothes.

Joe's was an early evening mob scene with strollers, tables of guys talking about "the" game and a line waiting for a table.

I wasn't sorry to get out of there.

By the time I got to CenterStage, the symphony was already warming up.

Tonight's program, "An Evening of Jazz with Rex Richardson" had its seeds in a show I'd gone to at the Singleton Center back in 2006.

Richardson had been playing in a group called Rhythm and Brass and that night's program had ranged from the Beatles to Radiohead with bits of everything in between.

That was the night I'd fallen for Rex's trumpet playing. I might have even gone up to him afterwards and gushed a bit.

Fast forward and now he's fronting an evening with the Richmond Symphony and you can be certain I'd gotten my $10, next-to-the-last-row ticket two weeks ago.

Waiting for the music to begin, I listened to the discussion behind me of the altitude of the seats, the fact that people were sneaking drinks in ("This is my first time, so I followed the rules. I did throw back a martini across the street first, but next time I'll know better," one woman said), and what was on the program, with one woman singing a snippet of "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing). Badly.

I saw a higher than usual percentage of faces from VCU in addition to the usual mothball-scented crowd like the gent next to me who exuded eau de camphor every time he applauded.

With guest drummer Nate Smith and symphony pianist Russel Wilson front and center, they launched into the first piece called "Ellington Portrait," swinging the room through everything from "Sophisticated Lady" to "Prelude to a Kiss."

Then Rex came out to take us through "Rextreme," a piece composed especially for him by James Stephenson to highlight Rex's ability to jump around between wildly separate notes and blow incredibly long note sequences.

Watching and listening to him, it was hard to conceive of how he could hold enough air to make possible the sounds he was producing.

When the three-movement piece ended, the guy behind me wailed, "Yea!" not what you tend to hear at the symphony.

As intermission began, the center front of the stage began to slowly drop below main stage level, taking away the drums and piano for the start of the second half.

That began with Gershwin's overture to "Of Thee I Sing," which the conductor told us was the only musical to win the Pulitzer prize. What the what?

The things I was learning today!

Then the stage rose back up and Rex (his suit history and now wearing an untucked blue shirt), his three horns and friends - musicians playing drums, sax, upright bass and piano- played through more Gershwin and Ellington, including a very different version of "Caravan" than the one the symphony had done in the first half.

For me, one of the best parts of "Caravan" was watching pianist Russell Wilson's masterfully improvised solos because a few years back, I took a jazz appreciation class from Russell and that man has forgotten more about jazz than most of us will ever know, so hearing him play is always a treat.

VCU's Doug Richards, whom Rex called "one of the best arrangers in the world...and he lives right here," had done a beautifully inventive take on Billy Strayhorn's classic "Lush Life," which came next.

Before the last piece, Rex warned us not to be afraid even though it had been arranged by James Stephenson, he who'd done "Rextreme."

From the start of "A Tribute to Louis Armstrong," the crowd's pleasure in the joyous melodies everyone knows was palpable.

"Hello Dolly" about caused apoplexy and "What a Wonderful Life" got everyone sentimental.

But they couldn't leave us like that, so they finished with "When the Saints Come Marching In," a surefire way to get everyone in the cheap seats clapping along.

And while those of us up there hadn't paid $76 to hear a night of jazz, I'm willing to bet we enjoyed it just as much as those who did.

Mile markers and mozzarella, racers and Rex, what a wonderful life indeed.

Besides, you know how we people are.

Warm Me Up

I am not happy about this sudden shift to freezing cold weather.

Sure, I knew I wasn't going to be able to continue wearing shorts on my walk indefinitely, but did we have to jump from shorts on Saturday to a fleece today?

Heck, I finally had to turn on the heat today for the first time since March. Not good.

So I have to admit that when I was considering my options for tonight, I decided on a movie and that was it. I was willing to go outside briefly for the sake of some culture, but then I wanted to come back home, crawl into bed and read.

Could I be any more boring or a bigger weather wimp?

At least the movie was worth seeing: "Kuroneko," a 1968 Japanese horror film that was the final screening for this fall's VCU Cinematheque series.

By way of introduction, the film professor told us it was a movie that blended naturalism and surrealism to achieve its effects.

Then he remembered he was talking to a theater that was 90% film students and cautioned, "It's a horror film beautifully shot in black and white. But it's from 1968, so there's no gushing blood. It's more psychological horror."

I could hear the 20-year olds around me groaning in disappointment.

Prof said there's be no Q & A period tonight because of the possibility of snow, more evidence of weather hampering fun.

What none of the audience anticipated was that the opening scene would be of a band of samurais raping and killing two women, and torching their house as they left. A black cat licks their bloody faces.

Heavy stuff.

The story, set in the 15th century, centered on how these two women, the mother and wife of a samurai, come back as ghosts who lure samurai back to their abode, get them drunk on sake and then, cat-like, rip their throats out.

A little like "Arsenic and Old Lace" except instead of tossing the bodies in the basement, they toss them in the bamboo grove where villagers scavenge their pockets.

Unfortunately, scenes of drinking and sex caused tittering amongst the underage set, making me doubt the professor's admonition that if they're going to be filmmakers one day, they need to know more than just independent American films.

Don't they also have to, oh, I don't know, be able to understand drinking and sex in the context of the plot without acting like children?

It truly was a lushly-shot film with odd angles of light, ghosts who could somersault in the air and horses who made loud clopping sounds even when they were walking on dirt and leaves.

Obviously, this was not the naturalistic part of the movie.

Plot-wise, the problem arose when the samurai who approaches is her son/her husband so neither wants to kill him.

The tragedy is that the wife makes a deal with the underworld to make love with her husband for seven days but then she must go directly to hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Of course, this devastates him but there's no bringing her back.

Mom then becomes the problem because as part of her deal to come back to life, she was under obligation to kill every samurai, even her baby boy.

He cuts off her arm, she comes back to retrieve it and flies through the roof while he lays dying with snow falling on him.

There it was again, cold weather...ruining people's lives since the 15th century.

Adolescence, Italian Style

Maybe I needed to go to Italy before seeing a Fellini film. Or maybe I just have gaping holes in my film-watching history.

Whatever the reason, I finally began righting that wrong tonight with "Amarcord," which translates as "I remember," and was the latest installment in VCU's Cinematheque series.

Waiting for the film to begin, I eavesdropped on the students near me for some entertainment. "Promise me you won't make any bad Italian jokes," one said to the curly-headed Italian in the group, who looked pained at the suggestion.

"That was the funniest thing I've heard in ten years," another cackled, "and I'm not even that old." Son, if you go back ten years, you were in elementary school.

Introducing the 1973 film, the professor told the audience he was curious to see how the film held up after 40 years because, "It was a huge film in the pantheon of great film-making for my generation."

In other words, I should have seen it way before now.

The semi-autobiographical story of Fellini coming of age in 1930s Fascist Italy was a compelling look at life in a small Italian town full of crazy characters, Catholicism and customs.

There was a lot of lusting, as teen-aged boys are inclined to do, for almost every woman they came into contact with. Teachers, shop girls, the local prostitute, the local beauty.

They're the reason Fellini's alter-ego, Titta, finds himself making regular confession to the local flower-arranging priest. "Saint Louis cries when you touch yourself," the priest says before assigning him major penance.

The film had an episodic narrative, minimal plot and followed the town through a year of seasons and the accompanying happenings.

It wasn't long into the film before it became clear that the mostly-student audience didn't know how to react to many of the scenes they were seeing, especially the lewd ones.

When a gigolo tells another that he did so well scoring with a woman that she even offered him "posterior intimacy," many of the kids around me started sounding very uncomfortable. Wait, middle-aged people do that?

Another scene where Titta visits the tobacco shop and flirts with the magnificently-breasted shop girl until she is forcing them on her had people near me squirming in their seats with discomfort.

Even a scene where Titta and his pals look through a window into an empty ballroom and begin silently waltzing in the street as they imagine the dancing they might someday do in such a room made people around me laugh hysterically and inappropriately.

Which made it all the more surprising when, during the discussion afterwards, several students said they thought the movie held up well.

I would have said the same, having found the two hour-plus story engaging throughout, but I wonder if they realize that some of the things they took for intentionally funny were not meant to be that way at all.

The professor had told them that the reason he was showing "Amarcord" was because, as future filmmakers, they needed to have an understanding of film history and how influential Fellini had been on many films with which they're more familiar.

If you'd seen the looks on their faces when he said that, you'd know it was probably the funniest thing they'd heard since third grade.

But then, that's why I go to the cinematheque. It's as much about seeing a worthwhile film as it is about learning how the current crop of students think.

I have a feeling more than just Saint Louis is crying about that.