My film education continues to unfold nightly.
On the surface, last night's installment of VCU Cinematheque should have been right up my alley. I've gone on record admitting that '60s and '70s movies fascinate me for the shifting cultural mores given voice through Hollywood's eyes.
Of course, the groovy fashions and music don't hurt, either.
So, by all accounts, I should have loved Michelangelo Antonioni's overblown paean to the late '60s counterculture, "Zabriskie Point." Mr. Wright had not only been to Death Valley and spotted the sign for Zabriskie Point, but had already seen the film several times, including as an impressionable young man when it came out. For me, only the title was familiar.
We started at Ipanema and then shifted the action across to the Grace Street Theatre. Both were full of people who weren't alive when Kurt Cobain checked out. Think about that.
When the visiting professor with the German accent got up to introduce the film, he began to wax poetic about the era of student protests and dropping out and turning on, explaining to the clueless student audience that the film was part of a 3-part deal with MGM for the talented Italian director. "Hollywood thought they cold throw big money at Antonioni," he shared and then chuckled in disgust.
Little did they realize that he'd just spend all their money while essentially holding up a giant middle finger to the U.S. To that, I say "well done," although I can see where others might see it as ungrateful and nervy.
Looking around the theater at students born at the tail end of the '90s, the prof instructed them, "Go ask your grandparents about the '70s." If they remember, they weren't there.
It was just too bad that no one had taken the time to explain to these world studies and film students how and why films were being made in 1970. No doubt Antonioni, known for his brilliant framing, cinematography and use of music, would have been disdainful of students today who simply couldn't fathom a film with an extended orgy scene in the desert (first uncomfortable tittering, followed by outright laughter) or a succession of a dozen shots of a house being blown up from different angles.
And don't get me started on their major sighing at the leisurely pacing of the film, which I loved.
If only MGM hadn't cut Antonioni's original ending - a plane sky-writing "F*ck you, America" - they'd have seen something they could understand. As it stood, they'd need to go ask their grandparents why there were so many bad mustaches in the olden days.
Tonight's lesson in film was much more of a treat because there's a particular pleasure to seeing a Hitchcock movie you've never seen before. Even Mr. Wright was in the dark on this one.
Hello, "Shadow of Doubt," nice to make your acquaintance.
After crispy golden rolls and a banh mi at Sen across from the Byrd, we crossed the street for the 1943 psychological thriller written by Thornton Wilder - yes, he of "Our Town" - that Hitch often referred to as his favorite.
And, if not his favorite, according to Byrd manager Todd, his most plausible story.
Because only Hitch would think that a serial murderer coming to live with his older sister's family in the bucolic town of Santa Rosa and talking an unnatural interest in his namesake niece (knowing Hitch, he probably intended the squirm-worthy implications of Uncle Charlie hitting on his sister's oldest daughter) was perfectly plausible.
Not that I cared. From the opening shot, what had my attention was that I was seeing the actor Henry Travers onscreen as something other than Clarence, the angel, from "It's a Wonderful Life." Like a kindergartner who thinks her teacher lives in the classroom, I just assumed Travers had only played that one role.
The funniest scenes in the movie were those between Travers and a nerdy, young Hume Cronyn (whom I only knew as an old man, so I didn't even recognize him until the credits), neighbors who spent their free time trading ideas for how to murder each other creatively and successfully.
Mainly, I reveled in watching a Hitchcock movie I'd never seen before, taking in every dramatically lit shadow, oddball ceiling angle and telltale hand gesture in a crisply black and white movie with infinite shades of gray.
I was so engrossed I missed Hitchcock's cameo as a bridge player on board a train and had to ask Todd on the way out when he'd been onscreen.
Best of all, there were no tittering students and nobody whining about the film's pacing, although a couple in our aisle walked out after half an hour (I was dying to know why). Everyone who'd come to see "Shadow of Doubt" - and many of us were first-timers, evidenced by Todd asking who'd never seen it and more than half the room raising their hands - accepted the film for the 1943 Hitchcock classic that it was.
And if you don't believe me, go ask your grandparents.
Showing posts with label vcu Cinematheque. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vcu Cinematheque. Show all posts
Thursday, November 8, 2018
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
A Soft Five Hours
I spent my evening surrounded by the fruit of VCU's loins.
Next up on VCU Cinematheque's ongoing tribute to Italian director extraordinaire Michelangelo Antonioni was "The Passenger," so I followed my sunny road trip with a brisk walk to the Grace Street Theater.
Brisk because sundown means I'm automatically cold and resenting it, even when culture awaits.
Although I've been to see several of the Antonioni films this semester and in the past, tonight's was the first in English. Maybe even more surprising than that was that the film had been made at MGM, featured a big American actor, Jack Nicholson, and was considered an homage to Hitchcock and, with his main character switching identities, to Hitch's masterful "North by Northwest."
The theater was unusually packed for the Tuesday night screening series, a fact I attributed to the name recognition of the star. That said, the movie was made in 1975 before every role Jack Nicholson played was essentially Jack Nicholson, resulting in the chance to see him disappear into the role and not overpower it with his own persona.
That alone was worth seeing.
But so was the French actress Maria Schneider, whom I knew solely from having seen in "Last Tango in Paris" way back when it came out, who played a strong, assured architecture student at a time when most women's roles were more decorative.
And not that she wasn't lovely (that her haircut in 1975 was eerily similar to mine in 2018 was a side bonus), but I was especially taken with her clothes because they were so spot on for that era. Everything she wore in the film looked like a variation of something I owned that decade, including the over-sized fabric bag she carried for a purse.
When it came to male style, Nicholson had multiple scenes wearing a button-down, short-sleeved shirt which he'd unbuttoned completely and tied at the waist. Whole lot of chest and chest hair there. If that was a thing anywhere but in the gay clubs in 1975, I don't recall seeing it.
Like any Antonioni film, effort was required to stay engaged and within the first 45 minutes, at least a dozen students got up to leave, some of them running up the theater aisles as if they were making a break for it. No doubt they'd be incredulous to learn that some of us had come by choice and not because our professor dictated it.
I got a kick out of a scene where Nicholson is renting a car to begin his adventure as somebody else (a dead man) and when the clerk asks where he's going, he hasn't a clue. She points to a list of potential drop-off countries in Europe and he says, "Yugoslovia! I'll go to Dubrovnik."
I can only imagine how different Dubrovnik must have been in 1975 than it was last month when I saw it.
Walking out of the theater with the hordes of students, I overheard one say, "Once I knew what it was about..." as if it had taken a while to figure out. The irony there is that the professor had read a four-page introduction to the movie, including explaining what would happen in the story, as well as mentioning the notable 7-minute long tracking shot near the end, so if he'd been paying attention (say, not on his phone), he'd have had a clue.
I'm guessing listening to your professor is sooo 20th century.
One thing the professor had not shared, however, was that actual footage of a real assassination had been used by Antonioni, so as one who has great difficulty watching violence of any kind, I was completely unprepared for that. My issues aside, I'd have been curious to know if it even registered for students who've grown up with the ability to see to any horrible thing they care to online.
And, as the professor had warned us, the ending came as a complete surprise. Those who were glancing at their phones undoubtedly missed it entirely.
Another Tuesday night, another Antonioni film. It's like the gallerist I was recently interviewing observed, "Once Fall hits, there's just so much to do in Richmond." Tell me about it.
When I got back to J-Ward, I didn't even bother going upstairs. My next stop was the Rabbit Hole at Vagabond for the Randazzo Big Band doing Charles Owen (not that I knew who Charles Owen was) and I was already late because Antonioni makes no short films.
The room was quite full when I got there, so I slipped into a sliver of space near the door in the back to take in the satisfying sounds of 15 musicians playing in a very low-ceilinged room. Charles Owen, it turned out, was the bearded sax player whose music Randazzo had transcribed and was now being featured in the first set, and he looked mighty happy about it.
Mind you, this is a big band led by bass player Andrew Randazzo, who also plays with Butcher Brown, so besides a dozen horns of all kinds, there were some pretty great bass lines leading the way. And don't get me started on Devonne Harris on drums.
I gotta say, music fans in this town should get down on their knees every night and thank VCU's jazz studies program for the top notch musicians it spits out for us to enjoy.
Just when it felt like the room couldn't hold another person, Randazzo announced, "Okay, we're going to take a ten minute break. Just ten minutes! Then we'll come back and play Beyonce." From behind me at the bar, I overheard a guy knowingly say, "It'll be a soft ten minutes," and I knew he was right.
I think I'm safe in saying that no band in Richmond has ever stuck to a ten-minute break, least of all jazz cats.
The break gave me an opportunity to wiggle in for a better vantage point, which I found on the back corner of a couch where a couple occupying it told me to help myself to the edge of their space. The room was full of hair and lots of it, and looked to be crowded with long-time musicians and jazz students eager to hear their (slightly) elders.
A busy, young server came by, trying to clean up a bit during the break. When she picked up an almost full plate of fries from the couple's table, I joked that it was a waste of perfectly good fries. Her take was purely economical, though. "It's a waste of perfectly good money! Those fries cost $5!"
Clearly a woman who works hard for the money.
Behind me, I heard several musicians lamenting the difficulty of transitioning from touring to being back at home and more than one admitted that when on the road, they don't worry about the regular business of life at all.
I may not have a musical bone in my body, but I can sure relate to trying to balance the reality of daily life with time spent away, constantly trying to play catch-up.
Running into a favorite saxophone player provided the opportunity to learn that he's now teaching music in the Henrico County jail, a job with enormous challenges, I gathered. When I asked how many inmates were interested in music, he laughed, saying maybe one in each class. That's got to be tough.
The second set may or may not have included Beyonce (it's not like I'd recognize anything beyond "Single Ladies"), but it definitely featured several Butcher Brown tunes as well as one by Philly soul songwriter Thom Bell. Still, I think I was the only one who raised my hand when Randazzo asked if there were any Thom Bell fans in the room, although why he'd ask that of a room made up 90% with people born after grunge is beyond me. Optimism, I guess.
Around 10:30, a guy came in, assessed the crowded room and began moving through the tables and chairs, eventually settling himself on the floor beside a front booth, mere feet from the the saxophones. Prime real estate if you're willing to floor sit.
The evening closed with a Vince Guaraldi song the bandleader said was originally called "Minus Lucy" but became "Linus, Single Again," but all I know for sure is that the distinctive sound of brushes on drums and that kind of piano playing could only be Guaraldi.
Sort of like an Antonioni screening followed by a big band on a Tuesday night. Once you know what it's about, it could only be Richmond.
Next up on VCU Cinematheque's ongoing tribute to Italian director extraordinaire Michelangelo Antonioni was "The Passenger," so I followed my sunny road trip with a brisk walk to the Grace Street Theater.
Brisk because sundown means I'm automatically cold and resenting it, even when culture awaits.
Although I've been to see several of the Antonioni films this semester and in the past, tonight's was the first in English. Maybe even more surprising than that was that the film had been made at MGM, featured a big American actor, Jack Nicholson, and was considered an homage to Hitchcock and, with his main character switching identities, to Hitch's masterful "North by Northwest."
The theater was unusually packed for the Tuesday night screening series, a fact I attributed to the name recognition of the star. That said, the movie was made in 1975 before every role Jack Nicholson played was essentially Jack Nicholson, resulting in the chance to see him disappear into the role and not overpower it with his own persona.
That alone was worth seeing.
But so was the French actress Maria Schneider, whom I knew solely from having seen in "Last Tango in Paris" way back when it came out, who played a strong, assured architecture student at a time when most women's roles were more decorative.
And not that she wasn't lovely (that her haircut in 1975 was eerily similar to mine in 2018 was a side bonus), but I was especially taken with her clothes because they were so spot on for that era. Everything she wore in the film looked like a variation of something I owned that decade, including the over-sized fabric bag she carried for a purse.
When it came to male style, Nicholson had multiple scenes wearing a button-down, short-sleeved shirt which he'd unbuttoned completely and tied at the waist. Whole lot of chest and chest hair there. If that was a thing anywhere but in the gay clubs in 1975, I don't recall seeing it.
Like any Antonioni film, effort was required to stay engaged and within the first 45 minutes, at least a dozen students got up to leave, some of them running up the theater aisles as if they were making a break for it. No doubt they'd be incredulous to learn that some of us had come by choice and not because our professor dictated it.
I got a kick out of a scene where Nicholson is renting a car to begin his adventure as somebody else (a dead man) and when the clerk asks where he's going, he hasn't a clue. She points to a list of potential drop-off countries in Europe and he says, "Yugoslovia! I'll go to Dubrovnik."
I can only imagine how different Dubrovnik must have been in 1975 than it was last month when I saw it.
Walking out of the theater with the hordes of students, I overheard one say, "Once I knew what it was about..." as if it had taken a while to figure out. The irony there is that the professor had read a four-page introduction to the movie, including explaining what would happen in the story, as well as mentioning the notable 7-minute long tracking shot near the end, so if he'd been paying attention (say, not on his phone), he'd have had a clue.
I'm guessing listening to your professor is sooo 20th century.
One thing the professor had not shared, however, was that actual footage of a real assassination had been used by Antonioni, so as one who has great difficulty watching violence of any kind, I was completely unprepared for that. My issues aside, I'd have been curious to know if it even registered for students who've grown up with the ability to see to any horrible thing they care to online.
And, as the professor had warned us, the ending came as a complete surprise. Those who were glancing at their phones undoubtedly missed it entirely.
Another Tuesday night, another Antonioni film. It's like the gallerist I was recently interviewing observed, "Once Fall hits, there's just so much to do in Richmond." Tell me about it.
When I got back to J-Ward, I didn't even bother going upstairs. My next stop was the Rabbit Hole at Vagabond for the Randazzo Big Band doing Charles Owen (not that I knew who Charles Owen was) and I was already late because Antonioni makes no short films.
The room was quite full when I got there, so I slipped into a sliver of space near the door in the back to take in the satisfying sounds of 15 musicians playing in a very low-ceilinged room. Charles Owen, it turned out, was the bearded sax player whose music Randazzo had transcribed and was now being featured in the first set, and he looked mighty happy about it.
Mind you, this is a big band led by bass player Andrew Randazzo, who also plays with Butcher Brown, so besides a dozen horns of all kinds, there were some pretty great bass lines leading the way. And don't get me started on Devonne Harris on drums.
I gotta say, music fans in this town should get down on their knees every night and thank VCU's jazz studies program for the top notch musicians it spits out for us to enjoy.
Just when it felt like the room couldn't hold another person, Randazzo announced, "Okay, we're going to take a ten minute break. Just ten minutes! Then we'll come back and play Beyonce." From behind me at the bar, I overheard a guy knowingly say, "It'll be a soft ten minutes," and I knew he was right.
I think I'm safe in saying that no band in Richmond has ever stuck to a ten-minute break, least of all jazz cats.
The break gave me an opportunity to wiggle in for a better vantage point, which I found on the back corner of a couch where a couple occupying it told me to help myself to the edge of their space. The room was full of hair and lots of it, and looked to be crowded with long-time musicians and jazz students eager to hear their (slightly) elders.
A busy, young server came by, trying to clean up a bit during the break. When she picked up an almost full plate of fries from the couple's table, I joked that it was a waste of perfectly good fries. Her take was purely economical, though. "It's a waste of perfectly good money! Those fries cost $5!"
Clearly a woman who works hard for the money.
Behind me, I heard several musicians lamenting the difficulty of transitioning from touring to being back at home and more than one admitted that when on the road, they don't worry about the regular business of life at all.
I may not have a musical bone in my body, but I can sure relate to trying to balance the reality of daily life with time spent away, constantly trying to play catch-up.
Running into a favorite saxophone player provided the opportunity to learn that he's now teaching music in the Henrico County jail, a job with enormous challenges, I gathered. When I asked how many inmates were interested in music, he laughed, saying maybe one in each class. That's got to be tough.
The second set may or may not have included Beyonce (it's not like I'd recognize anything beyond "Single Ladies"), but it definitely featured several Butcher Brown tunes as well as one by Philly soul songwriter Thom Bell. Still, I think I was the only one who raised my hand when Randazzo asked if there were any Thom Bell fans in the room, although why he'd ask that of a room made up 90% with people born after grunge is beyond me. Optimism, I guess.
Around 10:30, a guy came in, assessed the crowded room and began moving through the tables and chairs, eventually settling himself on the floor beside a front booth, mere feet from the the saxophones. Prime real estate if you're willing to floor sit.
The evening closed with a Vince Guaraldi song the bandleader said was originally called "Minus Lucy" but became "Linus, Single Again," but all I know for sure is that the distinctive sound of brushes on drums and that kind of piano playing could only be Guaraldi.
Sort of like an Antonioni screening followed by a big band on a Tuesday night. Once you know what it's about, it could only be Richmond.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Gone, But Not Forgotten
Go away for 16 of the past 21 days and it apparently gets noticed.
When I walked into the Byrd Theatre last night to see "Out of Africa," I only got as far as the concession stand before I heard a voice from above call out, "Hey, stranger, nice to see you!" Looking up to the balcony concourse, I saw it was manager Todd giving me a hard time with a smile.
And while I allowed that it had been a solid three weeks since I'd last seen a movie there - "Smokey and the Bandit" as part of a RIP tribute to Burt - the fact is, it had only been two weeks since he'd seen my smiling face when I mistakenly showed up only to find that "L'Avventura" had screened two days earlier.
Either way, it hadn't been all that long.
Tonight, I was in my usual seat at the Grace Street Theatre for VCU Cinematheque's screening of "La Notte" promptly at 6:50, when, as usual, right at 6:59 the Frenchman slid into his usual seat one away from mine, immediately launching into chatter. "Haven't seen you in a while here. Supposed to rain for the Folk Fest this weekend. How're you doing?"
Just fine. Eager to get my Italian film fix on. Now be quiet so we can hear Dr. T. talk about the film. And please don't snore once you fall asleep like you always do.
One person who didn't give me a hard time was Mac when we got together this morning to walk for the first time in two weeks, but since she's the one who'd taken me to Dulles when I flew out, she'd known exactly where I was. Seems she'd been avidly following the blog in the interim, since she mentioned how much she'd laughed reading about the lunch at Lady Pipi's and the food tour with the mildly crazy guide.
"Out of Africa" turned out to be an ideal movie to ease me back into the Richmond scene with its unhurried pacing, spectacular photography and unconventional love story. Since I hadn't seen it since it came out in 1985, I'd forgotten how long it was (2 hours, 50 minutes), not that it mattered because I reveled in the sheer eye candy of it, never mind Meryl Streep's superb performance and how much poetry was recited by the lovers.
And what woman of my age doesn't swoon seeing Robert Redford wash her hair or hear him pitching woo?
You ruined it for me.
What?
Being alone.
Oh, sure, there was also humor - "I'd curtsy, but I'm drunk" - and I was caught up enough that by the final scenes, my eyes were welling up and as the lights came up, people all around me were wiping their eyes or sniffling from crying. That includes the guy sitting alone two seats down in my row.
Tonight's piece of classic Italian cinema from 1961 was introduced when Dr. T. said, "Welcome once again to an event of your life: seeing a Michelangelo Antonioni film on 35 mm!" For years now, I've admired his passion for whatever film he's chosen to show his film students and the rest of us film lovers.
Of course, attending a Cinematheque event also means having to listen to the blather of today's youth before the movie begins. Sample: "I think Jim Carrey is a colossal asshole because he thinks he's talented." And don't get me started on some kid's cellphone ringing loudly during Dr. T's introduction.
Seriously? You're a digital native, you should know how to control your devices, son.
"La Notte" was the polar opposite of "Out of Africa:" shot in black and white, the antithesis of Hollywood and full of underlying commentary about the ennui and dissatisfaction of Italy's upper classes as Italy modernized in the post-war era. The film doesn't start in the elevator of a skyscraper for nothing, you know.
What's always weird at these Cinematheque screenings is how kids today react to certain scenes. When a clearly mentally challenged woman in a hospital tries to seduce Marcello Mastroianni, several nurses rush in to restrain her and begin slapping her face. Students tittered and then giggled at that. A brutal street fight between young men in an empty lot also elicited laughter, as did a love scene.
Then there was the student behind me who during a dramatically composed scene said overly loudly to her companion, "I don't understand what's going on, but that's a beautiful shot." So while human interaction may baffle them, at least they get some of the finer points of filmmaking.
Walking home from Grace Street, there was no question that the nights have gotten cooler in my absence, with the only consolation being that out on my balcony, I had eleven moonflowers blooming tonight. That's a record so far this year, so I'm consoling myself with that.
Well, that and the fact that I saw that my neighborhood crab guys still have crustaceans available.
Don't mind me, I'm just over here trying to hang on to Summer with every fiber of my being. The only downside of being away is finding out that time marches on, even in my absence.
Drat the luck.
When I walked into the Byrd Theatre last night to see "Out of Africa," I only got as far as the concession stand before I heard a voice from above call out, "Hey, stranger, nice to see you!" Looking up to the balcony concourse, I saw it was manager Todd giving me a hard time with a smile.
And while I allowed that it had been a solid three weeks since I'd last seen a movie there - "Smokey and the Bandit" as part of a RIP tribute to Burt - the fact is, it had only been two weeks since he'd seen my smiling face when I mistakenly showed up only to find that "L'Avventura" had screened two days earlier.
Either way, it hadn't been all that long.
Tonight, I was in my usual seat at the Grace Street Theatre for VCU Cinematheque's screening of "La Notte" promptly at 6:50, when, as usual, right at 6:59 the Frenchman slid into his usual seat one away from mine, immediately launching into chatter. "Haven't seen you in a while here. Supposed to rain for the Folk Fest this weekend. How're you doing?"
Just fine. Eager to get my Italian film fix on. Now be quiet so we can hear Dr. T. talk about the film. And please don't snore once you fall asleep like you always do.
One person who didn't give me a hard time was Mac when we got together this morning to walk for the first time in two weeks, but since she's the one who'd taken me to Dulles when I flew out, she'd known exactly where I was. Seems she'd been avidly following the blog in the interim, since she mentioned how much she'd laughed reading about the lunch at Lady Pipi's and the food tour with the mildly crazy guide.
"Out of Africa" turned out to be an ideal movie to ease me back into the Richmond scene with its unhurried pacing, spectacular photography and unconventional love story. Since I hadn't seen it since it came out in 1985, I'd forgotten how long it was (2 hours, 50 minutes), not that it mattered because I reveled in the sheer eye candy of it, never mind Meryl Streep's superb performance and how much poetry was recited by the lovers.
And what woman of my age doesn't swoon seeing Robert Redford wash her hair or hear him pitching woo?
You ruined it for me.
What?
Being alone.
Oh, sure, there was also humor - "I'd curtsy, but I'm drunk" - and I was caught up enough that by the final scenes, my eyes were welling up and as the lights came up, people all around me were wiping their eyes or sniffling from crying. That includes the guy sitting alone two seats down in my row.
Tonight's piece of classic Italian cinema from 1961 was introduced when Dr. T. said, "Welcome once again to an event of your life: seeing a Michelangelo Antonioni film on 35 mm!" For years now, I've admired his passion for whatever film he's chosen to show his film students and the rest of us film lovers.
Of course, attending a Cinematheque event also means having to listen to the blather of today's youth before the movie begins. Sample: "I think Jim Carrey is a colossal asshole because he thinks he's talented." And don't get me started on some kid's cellphone ringing loudly during Dr. T's introduction.
Seriously? You're a digital native, you should know how to control your devices, son.
"La Notte" was the polar opposite of "Out of Africa:" shot in black and white, the antithesis of Hollywood and full of underlying commentary about the ennui and dissatisfaction of Italy's upper classes as Italy modernized in the post-war era. The film doesn't start in the elevator of a skyscraper for nothing, you know.
What's always weird at these Cinematheque screenings is how kids today react to certain scenes. When a clearly mentally challenged woman in a hospital tries to seduce Marcello Mastroianni, several nurses rush in to restrain her and begin slapping her face. Students tittered and then giggled at that. A brutal street fight between young men in an empty lot also elicited laughter, as did a love scene.
Then there was the student behind me who during a dramatically composed scene said overly loudly to her companion, "I don't understand what's going on, but that's a beautiful shot." So while human interaction may baffle them, at least they get some of the finer points of filmmaking.
Walking home from Grace Street, there was no question that the nights have gotten cooler in my absence, with the only consolation being that out on my balcony, I had eleven moonflowers blooming tonight. That's a record so far this year, so I'm consoling myself with that.
Well, that and the fact that I saw that my neighborhood crab guys still have crustaceans available.
Don't mind me, I'm just over here trying to hang on to Summer with every fiber of my being. The only downside of being away is finding out that time marches on, even in my absence.
Drat the luck.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Of Heart Shaped Potatoes
What a delightfully rainy day today was.
The most challenging part of my lovely walk was keeping an eye on street puddles because drivers certainly weren't and they had the ability to spray a poor walker on the sidewalk from 20 feet away. Today's weather was ideal writing weather and I banged away for hours, completing more work than I've finished in a week (it's been a busy week, er month, er, couple of months).
Come evening, Mac came to pick me up to drive through rain-crazed traffic for dinner in service of my hired mouth. By that I mean it took 40 minutes to drive what should have taken about 17. After speeding home (I love her, but she's the first to tell you she has a lead foot), we ditched the car and hoofed it to the Grace Street Theater for the final screening of the VCU Cinematheque series.
Whether it was the non-stop showers or that it was the last movie of the year and students are already mentally checking out, the theater had noticeably fewer students tonight and more members of the community (that's code for middle aged adults).
Never fear, though, some students were there, including the girl a couple rows back with wet feet. When her friend commented on them, asking why she hadn't worn waterproof shoes, her response was, "I'm sorry. I'm bougie and I like comfort." Clearly she didn't understand that being bougie meant aspiring to a higher class, not a lower.
The visiting film professor who introduced "The Gleaners and I" told us it was his favorite documentary ("Not to set the bar too low") and, as a certified documentary dork, I considered that high praise. He also made sure we knew he'd voted in the 2014 Sight and Sound poll that had rated "The Gleaners and I" as one of the top 10 documentaries of all time.
Alright, already, show the film. We wouldn't be here if we didn't think it was worth seeing. Even a bougie college girl couldn't miss the fact that he was a major fan of French director Agnes Varda, whom he characterized as having a horror of perfection.
Mine is more of a disdain than a horror.
Appropriately, the film began with a discussion of Jean-Francoise Millet's "The Gleaners," a major painting I know solely from books because it resides at the Musee d'Orsay, the one major Parisian museum I didn't make it to. Mac. on the other hand, had.
The painting was the jumping off point for Varda to take her small digital camera (the film was shot way back in 2000) into actual French potato fields once the machinery had harvested and the local gleaners arrived to scavenge what's left, namely potatoes too big or small for the marketplace.
Then she introduces us to a 2 Michelin star restaurant chef who, taught by his grandparents to glean, picks the herbs he needs for his kitchen from a nearby hill rather than pay an exorbitant markup for them at the market. Besides, this way he knows the exact provenance of what he serves. A different kind of gleaner.
In Burgundy, we see unharvested grapes lying on the ground because of an edict in the late '90s prohibiting gleaning in Burgundian vineyards for fear their grapes will be used in lesser wines. No gleaning allowed.
For one memorable scene, Varda is shown plucking over-ripe figs off a tree and sucking the fruit out before tossing the rinds into the air. She giggles, saying come of the fruits are so ripe they've gone to alcohol. "I'm going to get tipsy!"
A lawyer in formal robes carrying a red book of penalties explains the rules of gleaning: it must be done only after the harvest and solely between sunrise and sunset. People in bars and cafes share tales of growing up gleaning.
We are shown urban gleaning after markets close (with advice to look for trash cans near bakeries), artists who glean for materials (painters and sculptors), orchard gleaning and those who glean by rummaging through cast-offs left on sidewalks.
Mac and I could relate totally to the residents of an island who waited until after a storm or an especially low tide to collect oysters. The local oyster companies asked only that they stay a certain distance from their poles and only collect a certain amount (whether that was 7 or 11 pounds per person seemed to be up in the air), but no one seemed overly concerned with enforcement.
Even Varda calls herself a gleaner, collecting, as she does, images and information that tell her where she's been (heart shaped potatoes, a clock without hands) as she shot this film.
Walking home, we chatted about the notion of gleaning and whether it happens in this country beyond dumpster-diving and alley gathering. Mac's guess was that if it does, its immigrants, not mainstream America doing it.
Not to set the bar too low, but isn't gleaning just old school terminology for zero waste? And shouldn't we all be on board with that? Personally, I'm broke, not bougie and I'd love to be gleaning oysters, figs and Burgundian grapes if I could.
And as long as I'm there, I may as well shoot for the Musee d'Orsay, too. I'm ready for my close-up, Monsieur Millet.
The most challenging part of my lovely walk was keeping an eye on street puddles because drivers certainly weren't and they had the ability to spray a poor walker on the sidewalk from 20 feet away. Today's weather was ideal writing weather and I banged away for hours, completing more work than I've finished in a week (it's been a busy week, er month, er, couple of months).
Come evening, Mac came to pick me up to drive through rain-crazed traffic for dinner in service of my hired mouth. By that I mean it took 40 minutes to drive what should have taken about 17. After speeding home (I love her, but she's the first to tell you she has a lead foot), we ditched the car and hoofed it to the Grace Street Theater for the final screening of the VCU Cinematheque series.
Whether it was the non-stop showers or that it was the last movie of the year and students are already mentally checking out, the theater had noticeably fewer students tonight and more members of the community (that's code for middle aged adults).
Never fear, though, some students were there, including the girl a couple rows back with wet feet. When her friend commented on them, asking why she hadn't worn waterproof shoes, her response was, "I'm sorry. I'm bougie and I like comfort." Clearly she didn't understand that being bougie meant aspiring to a higher class, not a lower.
The visiting film professor who introduced "The Gleaners and I" told us it was his favorite documentary ("Not to set the bar too low") and, as a certified documentary dork, I considered that high praise. He also made sure we knew he'd voted in the 2014 Sight and Sound poll that had rated "The Gleaners and I" as one of the top 10 documentaries of all time.
Alright, already, show the film. We wouldn't be here if we didn't think it was worth seeing. Even a bougie college girl couldn't miss the fact that he was a major fan of French director Agnes Varda, whom he characterized as having a horror of perfection.
Mine is more of a disdain than a horror.
Appropriately, the film began with a discussion of Jean-Francoise Millet's "The Gleaners," a major painting I know solely from books because it resides at the Musee d'Orsay, the one major Parisian museum I didn't make it to. Mac. on the other hand, had.
The painting was the jumping off point for Varda to take her small digital camera (the film was shot way back in 2000) into actual French potato fields once the machinery had harvested and the local gleaners arrived to scavenge what's left, namely potatoes too big or small for the marketplace.
Then she introduces us to a 2 Michelin star restaurant chef who, taught by his grandparents to glean, picks the herbs he needs for his kitchen from a nearby hill rather than pay an exorbitant markup for them at the market. Besides, this way he knows the exact provenance of what he serves. A different kind of gleaner.
In Burgundy, we see unharvested grapes lying on the ground because of an edict in the late '90s prohibiting gleaning in Burgundian vineyards for fear their grapes will be used in lesser wines. No gleaning allowed.
For one memorable scene, Varda is shown plucking over-ripe figs off a tree and sucking the fruit out before tossing the rinds into the air. She giggles, saying come of the fruits are so ripe they've gone to alcohol. "I'm going to get tipsy!"
A lawyer in formal robes carrying a red book of penalties explains the rules of gleaning: it must be done only after the harvest and solely between sunrise and sunset. People in bars and cafes share tales of growing up gleaning.
We are shown urban gleaning after markets close (with advice to look for trash cans near bakeries), artists who glean for materials (painters and sculptors), orchard gleaning and those who glean by rummaging through cast-offs left on sidewalks.
Mac and I could relate totally to the residents of an island who waited until after a storm or an especially low tide to collect oysters. The local oyster companies asked only that they stay a certain distance from their poles and only collect a certain amount (whether that was 7 or 11 pounds per person seemed to be up in the air), but no one seemed overly concerned with enforcement.
Even Varda calls herself a gleaner, collecting, as she does, images and information that tell her where she's been (heart shaped potatoes, a clock without hands) as she shot this film.
Walking home, we chatted about the notion of gleaning and whether it happens in this country beyond dumpster-diving and alley gathering. Mac's guess was that if it does, its immigrants, not mainstream America doing it.
Not to set the bar too low, but isn't gleaning just old school terminology for zero waste? And shouldn't we all be on board with that? Personally, I'm broke, not bougie and I'd love to be gleaning oysters, figs and Burgundian grapes if I could.
And as long as I'm there, I may as well shoot for the Musee d'Orsay, too. I'm ready for my close-up, Monsieur Millet.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
A Memento of Another Time
I feel sorry for today's young filmmakers.
Presumably, that's who Mac and I were surrounded by at the Grace Street Theatre for tonight's installment of VCU Cinematheque, or at least, that's who the visiting professor doing the introduction addressed his comments to.
Explaining to these children that director Christopher Nolan (who never went to film school) made his first film for $6,000 ("The limitations create the energy"), he exhorted the future filmmakers in the auditorium to always remember the budget when writing a script. He must have repeated it a half dozen times to stress the point, but you could almost see his words flying right over the heads of the kids in the rows around us.
Hell, half of them were still talking to friends or scrolling on their phones while he explained why the film was significant. Only when he reminded them that Nolan had gone on to direct the "Dark Knight" trilogy and "Inception" did they seem to notice that someone was talking.
One of the joys of the Cinematheque series is that the films are shown on 35mm, so once the lights went down, we were treated to almost a minute of the purr of the projector, a heartfelt reminder that digital is simply not as satisfying. Call me old fashioned.
Made in 1998, "Following" was a brief (70 minutes) neo-noir (having been made long after the golden era of film noir), appropriately shot in black and white (actually done for economic reasons since color is less forgiving when you're on a non-existent budget) and with enough references to Hitchcock to feel stylish.
And voyeuristic, oh-so very voyeuristic.
It quickly became clear that the film switched back and forth in time with nothing close to a continuous narrative, a device now so common that it probably didn't even register with the students, who've never known a world where movies didn't do that as a matter of course.
I still recall seeing "Memento," another Nolan film, when it came out in 2001 and being blown away at how seamlessly the film flashed forward and doubled back and "Following" was obviously Nolan's first stab at that kind of film structure.
Shot for maximum suspense, the film seduced with its hints at different events and circumstances throughout, but no obvious connections. It's only at the end that every last detail is neatly tied together so the audience can finally see the bigger picture, dark as it is.
And yet, during that crucial scene where we were finally seeing the house of cards that had been built, the students in the row behind us were tittering and mocking the dialog. It was almost as if they couldn't wrap their as-yet-unformed brains around how edgy and well-constructed "Following" would have been in 1998. And without that understanding of cinematic history, I have to question how compelling the movies they might make will be.
The last thing Mac and I heard as we walked out of the theater was a student complaining about how many people had liked the film. He just couldn't understand why.
Okay, maybe I should just weep for the future of filmmaking and leave it at that.
Presumably, that's who Mac and I were surrounded by at the Grace Street Theatre for tonight's installment of VCU Cinematheque, or at least, that's who the visiting professor doing the introduction addressed his comments to.
Explaining to these children that director Christopher Nolan (who never went to film school) made his first film for $6,000 ("The limitations create the energy"), he exhorted the future filmmakers in the auditorium to always remember the budget when writing a script. He must have repeated it a half dozen times to stress the point, but you could almost see his words flying right over the heads of the kids in the rows around us.
Hell, half of them were still talking to friends or scrolling on their phones while he explained why the film was significant. Only when he reminded them that Nolan had gone on to direct the "Dark Knight" trilogy and "Inception" did they seem to notice that someone was talking.
One of the joys of the Cinematheque series is that the films are shown on 35mm, so once the lights went down, we were treated to almost a minute of the purr of the projector, a heartfelt reminder that digital is simply not as satisfying. Call me old fashioned.
Made in 1998, "Following" was a brief (70 minutes) neo-noir (having been made long after the golden era of film noir), appropriately shot in black and white (actually done for economic reasons since color is less forgiving when you're on a non-existent budget) and with enough references to Hitchcock to feel stylish.
And voyeuristic, oh-so very voyeuristic.
It quickly became clear that the film switched back and forth in time with nothing close to a continuous narrative, a device now so common that it probably didn't even register with the students, who've never known a world where movies didn't do that as a matter of course.
I still recall seeing "Memento," another Nolan film, when it came out in 2001 and being blown away at how seamlessly the film flashed forward and doubled back and "Following" was obviously Nolan's first stab at that kind of film structure.
Shot for maximum suspense, the film seduced with its hints at different events and circumstances throughout, but no obvious connections. It's only at the end that every last detail is neatly tied together so the audience can finally see the bigger picture, dark as it is.
And yet, during that crucial scene where we were finally seeing the house of cards that had been built, the students in the row behind us were tittering and mocking the dialog. It was almost as if they couldn't wrap their as-yet-unformed brains around how edgy and well-constructed "Following" would have been in 1998. And without that understanding of cinematic history, I have to question how compelling the movies they might make will be.
The last thing Mac and I heard as we walked out of the theater was a student complaining about how many people had liked the film. He just couldn't understand why.
Okay, maybe I should just weep for the future of filmmaking and leave it at that.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
I'd Rather Have Flowers
It's a cryin' shame when the day begins with trying to explain the sorry state of your country to a couple of Canucks.
Mac and I were headed down Second Street to Belle Isle when we saw that our assistance was needed: a couple standing on the corner holding a map. We crossed at the corner to offer our services, only to meet a charming couple from Vancouver trying to find Tredegar.
Come with us, we told them, with Mac taking the husband and me in charge of the wife. They'd been vacationing in Washington - where they'd visited the Senate and heard Bernie Sanders and Marc Rubio speaking and which they'd thought a beautiful city - and had been told to make a detour to Richmond and here they were.
It didn't take long for her to address the elephant in the non-existent room, namely our narcissist-in-chief, and how in the world had he been elected. "Who voted for him?" she mused. "We haven't talked to a single person who did!"
I reminded her that he hadn't won the popular vote and that what votes he had gotten tended to come from the heartland, not the coasts. "He's reckless," she said, stating the obvious. "We're all afraid of his foreign policy!" Join the club, ma'am.
Trying to change the subject, I asked how, of all Richmond's attractions, they'd decided to visit Tredegar. She said the hotel had told them that it was the center of the slave trade. I explained that that wasn't true. When she asked where we were headed, I said Belle Isle. "They told us Belle Isle was sketchy and to avoid it," she said, confused.
Where are you staying, I wanted to know. The Graduate, it turns out. What the hell is wrong with the staff at the Graduate that they'd be passing out so much misinformation?
When we parted ways, it was with sincere best wishes for a fabulous (and truthful) stay in Richmond for them as we made our way across the pedestrian bridge to sit on rocks and put our our feet in the (bracing, but not cold) river before that becomes impossible.
After last night's rain, today wasn't quite as warm as it's been, but the air felt scrubbed clean and it seemed like a fine evening for a picnic, so I stopped at 8 1/2 for a hero - passing a sign board that read, "Autumn is a second spring with every leaf a flower" and resenting its positive take on impending cold weather - and took it to a bench at Scuffletown Park to enjoy.
There, with my mouth full of one of the best rolls in Richmond, I chatted with a succession of friends who sat down on the bench with me for a visit.
The activist told me about being on a Greenpeace boat (a boat that used to be used for hunting seals) with scores of ruggedly handsome activists. The silent music master told me about his upcoming Halloween show and how he didn't want it to be quite as disturbing as last year's.
And the star of the evening, the puppet master, thanked me for the article I'd done about her upcoming Halloween parade and hugged me for making sense of our long-winded conversation.
By that time, a good-sized crowd had formed and with the ringing of a cowbell, the show began under dusky skies. Not long into it, the event's organizer for the past five years made the seat next to me his own.
The over-sized puppet show was downright magical, full of fascinating creatures like a fire rooster and a chicken god (aka the phoenix), along with animals - an owl, donkey, raccoon - against racist humans, set to the sounds of an accordion and drums, one played by a fox and the other by puppet master Lilly.
There was a coterie of beautifully colored butterflies who danced, the Bones of Resistance, a group elatedly celebrating that the Confederacy is dead and a group of black-clad women leading a line of song as they moved through the crowd and added onlookers to their ranks.
By then, the sun was down and another performance in the park nothing but a memory.
The evening was closed out with a reminder that the final show will be in two weeks and will feature reprise performances by some of this season's musicians. "But you're not allowed to come if you didn't vote that day!" Patrick said, to great applause. "Party at my house afterwards!"
If for no other reason, do it so the tourists will have fewer reasons to pity us.
From there, I took my car home and walked over to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque for some nice Danish modern.
The film professor introducing "Teddy Bear" explained that the director intended the 2012 film as comedic in a gallows humor kind of way (a concept he had to explain to the students), although, he pointed out, it's tough to pull off comedy in a story about Thailand's sex tourism industry.
He was also adamant that there's nothing funny about an adult child being bullied by a parent, as if it was a subject he knew well.
Meanwhile, all around me, film students looked at their phones or talked to their friends while he explained Freudian theories. If there's one thing I can always count on at these Cinematheque screenings, it's being reminded that youth is wasted on the young.
Just after the lights went down, a French guy I know unexpectedly dropped into the seat next to me, forcing me to share the arm rest. His saving grace was that he didn't titter at any scene related to sex like the 19 year olds around us did throughout.
The film's story could only be described as sweet: 38-year old Danish bodybuilder find love, or, more specifically, has no personal life and lives with his domineering mother. When his uncle returns from Thailand with a beautiful Thai bride, our boy decides to try the same, only he has to lie to Mom about where's going because she's so controlling. While he can't get interested in prostitutes, he meets a widow who runs a gym and finally feels something for the first time. Naturally, Mom wants him to forget her.
During the scene where he tells her about the woman he's fallen for, she asks, "When is she leaving?" and her emboldened son says, "She's not. I'm moving out." Immediately, the students began snapping their fingers loudly to show their approval of this massive 308 pound man finally standing up to his tiny, overbearing mother.
Once the post-film discussion began, the Frenchman looked at me and shook his head. "They don't get it," he said and he was right. They were confused about why he didn't want to have sex with prostitutes, why it was important to him to talk to women to make a connection and why he felt any obligation to his aging Mom when she was so controlling.
Sigh. And these are the future filmmakers of tomorrow? Heaven help us.
But first, heaven help us with this shambles of a government. It's so bad that innocent Canucks are worried they're witnessing the end of the democratic experiment.
That's bad.
Mac and I were headed down Second Street to Belle Isle when we saw that our assistance was needed: a couple standing on the corner holding a map. We crossed at the corner to offer our services, only to meet a charming couple from Vancouver trying to find Tredegar.
Come with us, we told them, with Mac taking the husband and me in charge of the wife. They'd been vacationing in Washington - where they'd visited the Senate and heard Bernie Sanders and Marc Rubio speaking and which they'd thought a beautiful city - and had been told to make a detour to Richmond and here they were.
It didn't take long for her to address the elephant in the non-existent room, namely our narcissist-in-chief, and how in the world had he been elected. "Who voted for him?" she mused. "We haven't talked to a single person who did!"
I reminded her that he hadn't won the popular vote and that what votes he had gotten tended to come from the heartland, not the coasts. "He's reckless," she said, stating the obvious. "We're all afraid of his foreign policy!" Join the club, ma'am.
Trying to change the subject, I asked how, of all Richmond's attractions, they'd decided to visit Tredegar. She said the hotel had told them that it was the center of the slave trade. I explained that that wasn't true. When she asked where we were headed, I said Belle Isle. "They told us Belle Isle was sketchy and to avoid it," she said, confused.
Where are you staying, I wanted to know. The Graduate, it turns out. What the hell is wrong with the staff at the Graduate that they'd be passing out so much misinformation?
When we parted ways, it was with sincere best wishes for a fabulous (and truthful) stay in Richmond for them as we made our way across the pedestrian bridge to sit on rocks and put our our feet in the (bracing, but not cold) river before that becomes impossible.
After last night's rain, today wasn't quite as warm as it's been, but the air felt scrubbed clean and it seemed like a fine evening for a picnic, so I stopped at 8 1/2 for a hero - passing a sign board that read, "Autumn is a second spring with every leaf a flower" and resenting its positive take on impending cold weather - and took it to a bench at Scuffletown Park to enjoy.
There, with my mouth full of one of the best rolls in Richmond, I chatted with a succession of friends who sat down on the bench with me for a visit.
The activist told me about being on a Greenpeace boat (a boat that used to be used for hunting seals) with scores of ruggedly handsome activists. The silent music master told me about his upcoming Halloween show and how he didn't want it to be quite as disturbing as last year's.
And the star of the evening, the puppet master, thanked me for the article I'd done about her upcoming Halloween parade and hugged me for making sense of our long-winded conversation.
By that time, a good-sized crowd had formed and with the ringing of a cowbell, the show began under dusky skies. Not long into it, the event's organizer for the past five years made the seat next to me his own.
The over-sized puppet show was downright magical, full of fascinating creatures like a fire rooster and a chicken god (aka the phoenix), along with animals - an owl, donkey, raccoon - against racist humans, set to the sounds of an accordion and drums, one played by a fox and the other by puppet master Lilly.
There was a coterie of beautifully colored butterflies who danced, the Bones of Resistance, a group elatedly celebrating that the Confederacy is dead and a group of black-clad women leading a line of song as they moved through the crowd and added onlookers to their ranks.
By then, the sun was down and another performance in the park nothing but a memory.
The evening was closed out with a reminder that the final show will be in two weeks and will feature reprise performances by some of this season's musicians. "But you're not allowed to come if you didn't vote that day!" Patrick said, to great applause. "Party at my house afterwards!"
If for no other reason, do it so the tourists will have fewer reasons to pity us.
From there, I took my car home and walked over to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque for some nice Danish modern.
The film professor introducing "Teddy Bear" explained that the director intended the 2012 film as comedic in a gallows humor kind of way (a concept he had to explain to the students), although, he pointed out, it's tough to pull off comedy in a story about Thailand's sex tourism industry.
He was also adamant that there's nothing funny about an adult child being bullied by a parent, as if it was a subject he knew well.
Meanwhile, all around me, film students looked at their phones or talked to their friends while he explained Freudian theories. If there's one thing I can always count on at these Cinematheque screenings, it's being reminded that youth is wasted on the young.
Just after the lights went down, a French guy I know unexpectedly dropped into the seat next to me, forcing me to share the arm rest. His saving grace was that he didn't titter at any scene related to sex like the 19 year olds around us did throughout.
The film's story could only be described as sweet: 38-year old Danish bodybuilder find love, or, more specifically, has no personal life and lives with his domineering mother. When his uncle returns from Thailand with a beautiful Thai bride, our boy decides to try the same, only he has to lie to Mom about where's going because she's so controlling. While he can't get interested in prostitutes, he meets a widow who runs a gym and finally feels something for the first time. Naturally, Mom wants him to forget her.
During the scene where he tells her about the woman he's fallen for, she asks, "When is she leaving?" and her emboldened son says, "She's not. I'm moving out." Immediately, the students began snapping their fingers loudly to show their approval of this massive 308 pound man finally standing up to his tiny, overbearing mother.
Once the post-film discussion began, the Frenchman looked at me and shook his head. "They don't get it," he said and he was right. They were confused about why he didn't want to have sex with prostitutes, why it was important to him to talk to women to make a connection and why he felt any obligation to his aging Mom when she was so controlling.
Sigh. And these are the future filmmakers of tomorrow? Heaven help us.
But first, heaven help us with this shambles of a government. It's so bad that innocent Canucks are worried they're witnessing the end of the democratic experiment.
That's bad.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
The Happiness Meter
Don't ask college students to recognize happiness and unhappiness.
Or if someone does - say, their film professor - prepare to be wildly entertained by how they interpret both.
Tonight kicked off another semester of VCU Cinematheque with Mike Leigh's "Another Year," a film I'd seen in 2011 when it came out. But my date had never seen it and I can always enjoy rewatching a Jim Broadbent performance.
You can always tell it's early on at the Grace Street Theater because the place is packed. I know from past years that attendance waxes and wanes over the semester depending on what else is going on. Or perhaps college students just can't sustain a whole semester's interest in anything, hard to say.
Before the film began, the visiting professor told the students to watch the film with an eye for what makes some people happy while others remain unhappy. He even went so far as to tell them to ponder what would make each of them truly happy.
Sorry, prof, but that's far too big a question for a roomful of teenagers.
The film moves through four seasons in the life of a happy older married couple, Tom and Gerri. It was interesting, though, because where my middle-aged date and I saw every sign of happiness between the couple, the students saw smugness and condescension.
The role of unhappiness was played by Mary, a co-worker of Gerri's, a divorced woman who claimed she was happy and yet whined and drank to daily excess. A woman so desperate she would unabashedly hit on the couple's 30-year old son. A woman perpetually having a crises.
In my opinion, a woman not happy with herself so unable to find happiness with anyone else.
As the film cycles through the year, we see the couple enjoying their life together - gardening, reading and talking in bed, making meals for themselves, family and friends - which often includes comments and looks between the two that are meant for no one else.
To my middle-aged eyes, it was easy to see the intimacy and affection of this couple who had been married for 30+ years and how they shared their bond with others.
When the movie ended, I told my date we needed to stay for at least part of the discussion, because past screenings have proven how entertaining and illuminating they can be.
Because once the post-film Q & A began, we were treated to a completely different way of viewing the film's story: through a millennial lens.
In a key scene where the divorcee meets the son's new girlfriend, she is rude and dismissive of the young woman, despite being at dinner in the home of his parents/her friends. Her disdain for the girlfriend and obvious disappointment that the son has a love interest is palpable. As a result, a rift develops between Gerri and Mary.
That rift is acknowledged in the next season, with Gerri suggesting Mary see a therapist and while Gerri is a therapist, she insists Mary see someone else. Ethics and all.
The college students were convinced something had happened in between the seasons that the director hadn't shown. Something unknown had caused the rift and they thought Gerri was callous not to be willing to counsel her friend.
And while I can chalk up them not knowing that a therapist wouldn't treat a friend to being millennial (and not having much life experience), not one of them realized that it was Mary's deplorable behavior at Tom and Gerri's home to their son's new girlfriend that had caused the problem.
Did a guest's obvious lack of civility and basic manners go completely unnoticed by the students in the theater? Sure did. That's why they were convinced something else had happened in the interim.
Even more bizarre was how the professor stressed that happy people were boring and only the unhappy ones were interesting. Including himself in the latter category, he found plenty of support among students who had a completely different read on Mary than we did.
Where we saw dysfunctional, they saw something they could relate to. Where we saw desperate, they saw gutsy. Where we saw depressed, they saw someone who couldn't catch a break.
It was bizarre.
Our differences in perception extended to Tom and Gerri because the students saw their pithy commentary and knowing looks as condescending, whereas we saw them as evidence of the kind of verbal and non-verbal shorthand that couples develop over the years.
It seemed that the students felt that the couple was looking down on people who weren't happy, while we felt like they went out of their way to share their home, hearth and happiness with a string of miserable people.
When one kid tried to bring some religious connotation that wasn't there to a scene, the more senior and knowledgeable of the professors clarified by saying director Mike Leigh took more of a communist than religious approach.
You could almost hear the gasps from some young filmmakers-to-be.
Another guy, in trying to explain his point, suggested that we all know the path to happiness is "marriage, have some kids and provide for them to eat," although his thesis soon ran (understandably) aground. Not a one of those things guarantees happiness, son. For that matter, they're not even required.
One movie, two viewpoints.
Happiness is being able to appreciate a screening where the discussion is almost as illuminating as the film.
Or if someone does - say, their film professor - prepare to be wildly entertained by how they interpret both.
Tonight kicked off another semester of VCU Cinematheque with Mike Leigh's "Another Year," a film I'd seen in 2011 when it came out. But my date had never seen it and I can always enjoy rewatching a Jim Broadbent performance.
You can always tell it's early on at the Grace Street Theater because the place is packed. I know from past years that attendance waxes and wanes over the semester depending on what else is going on. Or perhaps college students just can't sustain a whole semester's interest in anything, hard to say.
Before the film began, the visiting professor told the students to watch the film with an eye for what makes some people happy while others remain unhappy. He even went so far as to tell them to ponder what would make each of them truly happy.
Sorry, prof, but that's far too big a question for a roomful of teenagers.
The film moves through four seasons in the life of a happy older married couple, Tom and Gerri. It was interesting, though, because where my middle-aged date and I saw every sign of happiness between the couple, the students saw smugness and condescension.
The role of unhappiness was played by Mary, a co-worker of Gerri's, a divorced woman who claimed she was happy and yet whined and drank to daily excess. A woman so desperate she would unabashedly hit on the couple's 30-year old son. A woman perpetually having a crises.
In my opinion, a woman not happy with herself so unable to find happiness with anyone else.
As the film cycles through the year, we see the couple enjoying their life together - gardening, reading and talking in bed, making meals for themselves, family and friends - which often includes comments and looks between the two that are meant for no one else.
To my middle-aged eyes, it was easy to see the intimacy and affection of this couple who had been married for 30+ years and how they shared their bond with others.
When the movie ended, I told my date we needed to stay for at least part of the discussion, because past screenings have proven how entertaining and illuminating they can be.
Because once the post-film Q & A began, we were treated to a completely different way of viewing the film's story: through a millennial lens.
In a key scene where the divorcee meets the son's new girlfriend, she is rude and dismissive of the young woman, despite being at dinner in the home of his parents/her friends. Her disdain for the girlfriend and obvious disappointment that the son has a love interest is palpable. As a result, a rift develops between Gerri and Mary.
That rift is acknowledged in the next season, with Gerri suggesting Mary see a therapist and while Gerri is a therapist, she insists Mary see someone else. Ethics and all.
The college students were convinced something had happened in between the seasons that the director hadn't shown. Something unknown had caused the rift and they thought Gerri was callous not to be willing to counsel her friend.
And while I can chalk up them not knowing that a therapist wouldn't treat a friend to being millennial (and not having much life experience), not one of them realized that it was Mary's deplorable behavior at Tom and Gerri's home to their son's new girlfriend that had caused the problem.
Did a guest's obvious lack of civility and basic manners go completely unnoticed by the students in the theater? Sure did. That's why they were convinced something else had happened in the interim.
Even more bizarre was how the professor stressed that happy people were boring and only the unhappy ones were interesting. Including himself in the latter category, he found plenty of support among students who had a completely different read on Mary than we did.
Where we saw dysfunctional, they saw something they could relate to. Where we saw desperate, they saw gutsy. Where we saw depressed, they saw someone who couldn't catch a break.
It was bizarre.
Our differences in perception extended to Tom and Gerri because the students saw their pithy commentary and knowing looks as condescending, whereas we saw them as evidence of the kind of verbal and non-verbal shorthand that couples develop over the years.
It seemed that the students felt that the couple was looking down on people who weren't happy, while we felt like they went out of their way to share their home, hearth and happiness with a string of miserable people.
When one kid tried to bring some religious connotation that wasn't there to a scene, the more senior and knowledgeable of the professors clarified by saying director Mike Leigh took more of a communist than religious approach.
You could almost hear the gasps from some young filmmakers-to-be.
Another guy, in trying to explain his point, suggested that we all know the path to happiness is "marriage, have some kids and provide for them to eat," although his thesis soon ran (understandably) aground. Not a one of those things guarantees happiness, son. For that matter, they're not even required.
One movie, two viewpoints.
Happiness is being able to appreciate a screening where the discussion is almost as illuminating as the film.
Wednesday, April 12, 2017
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
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...
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...
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Taking Some Air
My reputation as a heathen precedes me.
After inviting Mac to join me for some Fat Tuesday revelry, she mentioned her plans to her Mom on the phone, being sure to tell her that it was the most religious inclination she'd seen in me in our nearly two years of friendship.
My Catholic upbringing has nothing to do with it. It's all about dressing gaudy by layering on pattern, purple, green and orange (tonight while blasting Sergio Mendez and Brazil '66), eating pancakes and hearing a brass band.
We walked over to 821 Cafe for brinner (their word, not mine) and our adorable server - cut-offs, midriff and enormous red plaid flannel shirt - thanked us for reminding her it was Fat Tuesday since she'd forgotten.
Debating whether or not to share an order of buttermilk pancakes, when pressed, I had to admit that I could eat way more than half an order.
So it was that we shared an order of bacon, I got basic buttermilk pancakes, dousing half in syrup and half in strawberry jam as is my family's habit, and Mac got Union cakes, essentially the same pancakes except hers were mounded with berries, bananas and chocolate chips.
Deciding that it was an ideal evening for Espolon with pancakes, I ordered some, only to hear that they were out and that it was our server's favorite tequila, too. Seems it's what she always orders when she gets off her shift, which makes me suspect it was her fault they were out.
And I was right about the pancakes, I could devour far more than half a plate, yet I was still the recipient of pancake shaming. Mac ate exactly half her order and asked for a box, while I worked my plate down to nearly gone, yet guess who got the comments?
"Really, you can't finish that?" the server asked incredulously. "That's like four bites!" The problem was I'd been too full to eat the previous four bites, so I certainly didn't need anymore now. Convinced I'd want them later, she insisted on bringing me a box, too.
Leftovers in hand, we walked to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque which was tonight showing "Black Girl" from 1966, the first film made by a black director on the African continent and focusing on colonialism (the French in Senegal), religion, education and a host of social activism-motivated themes.
The professor giving the pre-film talk prattled on about depictions of women and race, but also casually slid into her rambling that the main character commits suicide, a fact we were both furious to be told in advance. I don't even read movie summaries because I want the story to unfold for me with no prior information.
We'll call her a spoilsport.
Because it had sub-titles, we had to put up with simplistic translations like, "I'm going for a walk" when the character actually said, "I'm going to take some air," a far more lyrical way to say the same thing. But overall, the film was a fascinating look at an unfairly tilted colonial situation, replete with mid-century modern furniture, frosted lipstick and entitled white people.
It was while we were watching the film that the skies opened up and we heard rain beating so hard on the theater's roof that it competed with the soundtrack. No dummies, we'd both brought umbrellas for just such an eventuality.
The rain had lessened but not stopped when "Black Girl" ended, so we stayed for the Q & A despite wanting to tell the prof she'd spoiled the movie for us. Stepping outside, puddles were everywhere but nothing was officially falling.
We got as far as Broad Street when a guy asked for money for food and Mac inquired if he liked pancakes. When I turned around to check, he was devouring hers as we rounded the corner to Belvidere. That's a good egg, giving up her leftover breakfast like that.
She was also stoked about heading out for a brass band, saying, "You always know how to show a girl a good time!" I pride myself on it, actually.
Our final stop was the Gypsy Room because Illegal States was playing, albeit not for another hour. We made ourselves at home at the bar next to some of the musicians getting their dinner on beforehand, several wearing Mardi Gras beads.
When the bartender asked what we'd like, I told him to slide the absinthe drip our way because tonight was going to be Mac's first absinthe drip. She'd told me recently that she wanted to try the green fairy and there's no time like the present, especially on a night devoted to one last indulgence before sacrifice season sets in tomorrow.
It's not like I don't know this stuff, it's just I have no use for practicing any of it, well, except tonight.
Once our drips were cloudy and the green fairy in attendance, we turned our attentions to nearby strangers. Her first score was a Puerto Rican drummer playing with the band tonight, while mine was a Belgian woman who just last week sold the Fan house she'd owned for decades and moved to a cottage in Goochland.
One guy arrived with a sequined silver mask on. Another had on an '80s sweater worthy of (dare I?) Cliff Huxtable. A lawyer came in and asked for a tall bourbon and ginger. "Tall or double?" the barkeep inquired. "Tall, but that's a good question to ask, especially on Fat Tuesday!" True that.
A bearded guy showed up bemoaning the abundance of what he called neo-Christian teenagers lined up next door at the National (not exactly how I'd have described them given the number of girls in fishnets and booty shorts), only to be told it was an Excision show - dubstep, in other words.
"You mean dumbstep?" he cracked. "No, thanks."
Turns out the Belgian was the mother of one of the band's drummers and she told me that her son had no idea she was coming tonight. When a young man walked up, he didn't look surprised in the least to see his Maman, and she couldn't figure out how he knew she'd be there.
"Call it a hunch," he grinned. Leaning into the bar, he said he wanted a Hurricane. "Hey, it's Fat Tuesday," he shrugged. The bartender had already told me he'd stopped by Lady N'Awlins on his way to work in order to score a Hurricane and some of the crawfish boil they were serving up.
The drummer Mac had been talking to had warned us that the Belgian's son's drumming was going to make things loud and when I shared that with him, he looked pleased as punch. "Wait, was he saying that was a good or bad thing?" he wondered aloud.
"No, that's cool," he concluded.
One of the band's trumpet player's came over to order a drink and I couldn't resist commenting on his magnificent sweater of white elephants on a black background, curious about where one acquires such a unique garment.
"Actually, Forever 21's men's section," he admitted softly, as if it were a secret. "They have some hidden gems there."
Finally, it seemed, the 10-piece Illegal Sates - 2 trombones, sax, 2 trumpets, tuba and 4 drummers/percussionists - got started and the sound of horns and rhythm filled the low-ceilinged room in an appropriately Mardi Gras manner.
The Belgian's son had his cowbell clipped to the side of the drum hanging from a strap around his neck. These guys weren't fooling around and girls were soon dancing with abandon in front of the band, while some of us kept our dancing on our bar stools.
"I like the WASP-y guy with his eyes closed," Mac whispered about a guy standing near us and so totally grooving to the music that he seemed oblivious to the rest of us.
When the band paused between songs, the Belgian looked at me and said, "We need a samba!" Considering she had an in with the band, I told her to tell them, not me.
It was easy to get lost in the band's energetic sound and never more so than when the horns stood to the side and let the drummers and percussionists steal the show playing off each other for an extended period.
Things got so heated that one guy called out from the crowd, "Is my girlfriend on fire?"
We didn't see any girls in flames, but she could have been radiating a heat others couldn't see. No question about it, these guys were tight on a night devoted to getting loose.
That's cool. And may Lent begin now that good times have put another Fat Tuesday in the bead-bedecked rear-view mirror.
After inviting Mac to join me for some Fat Tuesday revelry, she mentioned her plans to her Mom on the phone, being sure to tell her that it was the most religious inclination she'd seen in me in our nearly two years of friendship.
My Catholic upbringing has nothing to do with it. It's all about dressing gaudy by layering on pattern, purple, green and orange (tonight while blasting Sergio Mendez and Brazil '66), eating pancakes and hearing a brass band.
We walked over to 821 Cafe for brinner (their word, not mine) and our adorable server - cut-offs, midriff and enormous red plaid flannel shirt - thanked us for reminding her it was Fat Tuesday since she'd forgotten.
Debating whether or not to share an order of buttermilk pancakes, when pressed, I had to admit that I could eat way more than half an order.
So it was that we shared an order of bacon, I got basic buttermilk pancakes, dousing half in syrup and half in strawberry jam as is my family's habit, and Mac got Union cakes, essentially the same pancakes except hers were mounded with berries, bananas and chocolate chips.
Deciding that it was an ideal evening for Espolon with pancakes, I ordered some, only to hear that they were out and that it was our server's favorite tequila, too. Seems it's what she always orders when she gets off her shift, which makes me suspect it was her fault they were out.
And I was right about the pancakes, I could devour far more than half a plate, yet I was still the recipient of pancake shaming. Mac ate exactly half her order and asked for a box, while I worked my plate down to nearly gone, yet guess who got the comments?
"Really, you can't finish that?" the server asked incredulously. "That's like four bites!" The problem was I'd been too full to eat the previous four bites, so I certainly didn't need anymore now. Convinced I'd want them later, she insisted on bringing me a box, too.
Leftovers in hand, we walked to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque which was tonight showing "Black Girl" from 1966, the first film made by a black director on the African continent and focusing on colonialism (the French in Senegal), religion, education and a host of social activism-motivated themes.
The professor giving the pre-film talk prattled on about depictions of women and race, but also casually slid into her rambling that the main character commits suicide, a fact we were both furious to be told in advance. I don't even read movie summaries because I want the story to unfold for me with no prior information.
We'll call her a spoilsport.
Because it had sub-titles, we had to put up with simplistic translations like, "I'm going for a walk" when the character actually said, "I'm going to take some air," a far more lyrical way to say the same thing. But overall, the film was a fascinating look at an unfairly tilted colonial situation, replete with mid-century modern furniture, frosted lipstick and entitled white people.
It was while we were watching the film that the skies opened up and we heard rain beating so hard on the theater's roof that it competed with the soundtrack. No dummies, we'd both brought umbrellas for just such an eventuality.
The rain had lessened but not stopped when "Black Girl" ended, so we stayed for the Q & A despite wanting to tell the prof she'd spoiled the movie for us. Stepping outside, puddles were everywhere but nothing was officially falling.
We got as far as Broad Street when a guy asked for money for food and Mac inquired if he liked pancakes. When I turned around to check, he was devouring hers as we rounded the corner to Belvidere. That's a good egg, giving up her leftover breakfast like that.
She was also stoked about heading out for a brass band, saying, "You always know how to show a girl a good time!" I pride myself on it, actually.
Our final stop was the Gypsy Room because Illegal States was playing, albeit not for another hour. We made ourselves at home at the bar next to some of the musicians getting their dinner on beforehand, several wearing Mardi Gras beads.
When the bartender asked what we'd like, I told him to slide the absinthe drip our way because tonight was going to be Mac's first absinthe drip. She'd told me recently that she wanted to try the green fairy and there's no time like the present, especially on a night devoted to one last indulgence before sacrifice season sets in tomorrow.
It's not like I don't know this stuff, it's just I have no use for practicing any of it, well, except tonight.
Once our drips were cloudy and the green fairy in attendance, we turned our attentions to nearby strangers. Her first score was a Puerto Rican drummer playing with the band tonight, while mine was a Belgian woman who just last week sold the Fan house she'd owned for decades and moved to a cottage in Goochland.
One guy arrived with a sequined silver mask on. Another had on an '80s sweater worthy of (dare I?) Cliff Huxtable. A lawyer came in and asked for a tall bourbon and ginger. "Tall or double?" the barkeep inquired. "Tall, but that's a good question to ask, especially on Fat Tuesday!" True that.
A bearded guy showed up bemoaning the abundance of what he called neo-Christian teenagers lined up next door at the National (not exactly how I'd have described them given the number of girls in fishnets and booty shorts), only to be told it was an Excision show - dubstep, in other words.
"You mean dumbstep?" he cracked. "No, thanks."
Turns out the Belgian was the mother of one of the band's drummers and she told me that her son had no idea she was coming tonight. When a young man walked up, he didn't look surprised in the least to see his Maman, and she couldn't figure out how he knew she'd be there.
"Call it a hunch," he grinned. Leaning into the bar, he said he wanted a Hurricane. "Hey, it's Fat Tuesday," he shrugged. The bartender had already told me he'd stopped by Lady N'Awlins on his way to work in order to score a Hurricane and some of the crawfish boil they were serving up.
The drummer Mac had been talking to had warned us that the Belgian's son's drumming was going to make things loud and when I shared that with him, he looked pleased as punch. "Wait, was he saying that was a good or bad thing?" he wondered aloud.
"No, that's cool," he concluded.
One of the band's trumpet player's came over to order a drink and I couldn't resist commenting on his magnificent sweater of white elephants on a black background, curious about where one acquires such a unique garment.
"Actually, Forever 21's men's section," he admitted softly, as if it were a secret. "They have some hidden gems there."
Finally, it seemed, the 10-piece Illegal Sates - 2 trombones, sax, 2 trumpets, tuba and 4 drummers/percussionists - got started and the sound of horns and rhythm filled the low-ceilinged room in an appropriately Mardi Gras manner.
The Belgian's son had his cowbell clipped to the side of the drum hanging from a strap around his neck. These guys weren't fooling around and girls were soon dancing with abandon in front of the band, while some of us kept our dancing on our bar stools.
"I like the WASP-y guy with his eyes closed," Mac whispered about a guy standing near us and so totally grooving to the music that he seemed oblivious to the rest of us.
When the band paused between songs, the Belgian looked at me and said, "We need a samba!" Considering she had an in with the band, I told her to tell them, not me.
It was easy to get lost in the band's energetic sound and never more so than when the horns stood to the side and let the drummers and percussionists steal the show playing off each other for an extended period.
Things got so heated that one guy called out from the crowd, "Is my girlfriend on fire?"
We didn't see any girls in flames, but she could have been radiating a heat others couldn't see. No question about it, these guys were tight on a night devoted to getting loose.
That's cool. And may Lent begin now that good times have put another Fat Tuesday in the bead-bedecked rear-view mirror.
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
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?
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?
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Son of a Biscuit
I have to laugh when a speaker begins by asking his lecture audience, "Why are you here?"
The lecture was another installment in VCU's race, citizenship and memory series, the man in question was professor William Maxwell, and his topic was that of his new book, "F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African-American Literature."
Oh, right, and his question was based on what ridiculously gorgeous October weather we had abandoned for the sake of hearing his talk.
His lecture was a dense one and at one point he read something and then asked rhetorically, "Did I really write that sentence? Obviously I did." You could tell he'd relished getting access to the scads of recently-released FBI files to figure out the lengths the FBI had gone to trying to police black literature.
As if the FBI hadn't had better things to do.
One of the first men he spoke of was Hoover's #4 man, Sullivan, who, as it turned out, had written the so-called "suicide letter" to Martin Luther King, suggesting he'd failed in his mission and that he should "do the right thing," along with sending Coretta recordings of MLK with other women.
As a full-on geek, I was fascinated by Sullivan since I'd learned plenty about that letter from recently reading Ralph Abernathy's autobiography and now I was hearing about the perpetrator. It never stops amazing me how often that kind of coincidence happens.
He talked about how Hoover's bureau had targeted black organizations and all of the artists involved in the Harlem Renaissance, right on through 1972. How they had ghostreaders to try to suss out upcoming black protests.
But, of course, black writers knew they were being watched and read by these morons. Many wrote works addressing the surveillance, such as Richard Wright's "The F.B. Eye Blues" from 1949, to my mind, a brilliant and nervy way to protest such an unwarranted invasion of privacy.
He explained how white agents tried to "write black" in the forms of poetry and newspaper articles, their intent being to sway black opinion with fake black writings.
The biggest problem with Maxwell's lecture was that the topic was enormous and we could barely scratch the surface in the time allotted. Even so, I managed to glean the fascinating tidbit that Yale had produced an inordinate amount of spies from its English department during the mid-20th century.
That's a book there waiting to be written, if you ask me.
Talking about how there were files on every black literary figure and artist of the era, he said, "There was one on Billie Holiday. There's one on Duke Ellington. I'm sure it's very elegant." He said his father, an activist during the '60s, was disappointed to learn that the FBI had no file on him. Should've been black, sir.
He has to be one of the few to be disappointed not to have been in J. Edgar's cross-hairs.
While you might think, well, the logical thing after such a heavy lecture, Karen, would be something completely opposite, something frothy and fun, but no. Next on my agenda was VCU Cinematheque's screening of the documentary "Salvador Allende."
I've gone on record as saying how much I enjoy the eclectic programming of the Cinematheque series, but a weekly free film also comes with a price: VCU students in attendance.
I've got nothing against students, but at times, the vapid and inane conversations I'm privy to make me wish I was anywhere else. Case in point: tonight.
Some kids come in and one begins addressing the guy sitting nearest me. "Dude, your talk today was great. I was really into it. You should get a job selling something."
The object of his admiration seems genuinely touched by the compliment. "Thanks. Like what, man, sell informational videos and shit?" It's suggested he's good enough to give a TED talk, the benchmark of accomplishment for millennials.
Meanwhile, a nearby girl playing with her hair says to no one in particular, "The only thing I could give a TED talk on is, like, walking back and forth." No one acknowledges her.
There, I submit, are tomorrow's leaders.
And they must have been film students since I'm not sure a documentary about a former Chilean president trying to move the country to socialism would appeal to your typical 19-year old otherwise.
The problem is, they just don't appreciate the time capsule element of a good documentary. It's not just about the time depicted - in this case, early '70s - but also about the time the documentary is made, here 2004.
And in another impressive coincidence, waiting for the film to start, I passed the time reading about Bob Woodward's new book, "The Last of the President's Men" about Nixon aide, Alexander Butterfield, all but guaranteeing that Tricky Dick would be all over tonight's documentary.
I'm telling you, life is weird that way.
My grasp of Chilean history was negligible, so I found the story of a man elected by the people who sets out to lead a non-violent revolution to create a socialist country completely compelling.
Like all great documentaries, director Patrico Guzman uses amazing historical footage to tell the story and here that includes scenes of a virile and smiling Castro on a visit to Allende after his first year in office.
There's Allende addressing the United Nations, abut multi-national companies answering to no one, a speech that garnered him a standing ovation. The man is basically talking about globalization before we were sick of the word.
And there was terrific footage of rallies and marches, with all those handsome '70s-era Chilean guys smiling and posturing for the sake of a fair and free world.
But back to Nixon, who was worried about a Cuban/Chilean alliance and the spread of Marxism in that part of the world.
In an interview with the former US ambassador to Chile, we hear delicious details of how pissed Nixon was - calling Allende an S.O.B. and a bastard, both funny when coming out of the mouth of such a proper-looking man - about all that was happening.
Nixon was, of course, the man who ordered the CIA-sponsored coup that overthrew Allende's regime and put Pinochet in power. History's proven just how long the "bad choices" side of Nixon's accomplishment list is.
Totally unexpected was hearing a recording Allende made shortly before killing himself as the coup was happening. Let's just say tonight's Cinematheque offering was a hell of a history lesson.
Even a fine, fall day couldn't keep a girl from so much learnin'.
The lecture was another installment in VCU's race, citizenship and memory series, the man in question was professor William Maxwell, and his topic was that of his new book, "F.B. Eyes: How J. Edgar Hoover's Ghostreaders Framed African-American Literature."
Oh, right, and his question was based on what ridiculously gorgeous October weather we had abandoned for the sake of hearing his talk.
His lecture was a dense one and at one point he read something and then asked rhetorically, "Did I really write that sentence? Obviously I did." You could tell he'd relished getting access to the scads of recently-released FBI files to figure out the lengths the FBI had gone to trying to police black literature.
As if the FBI hadn't had better things to do.
One of the first men he spoke of was Hoover's #4 man, Sullivan, who, as it turned out, had written the so-called "suicide letter" to Martin Luther King, suggesting he'd failed in his mission and that he should "do the right thing," along with sending Coretta recordings of MLK with other women.
As a full-on geek, I was fascinated by Sullivan since I'd learned plenty about that letter from recently reading Ralph Abernathy's autobiography and now I was hearing about the perpetrator. It never stops amazing me how often that kind of coincidence happens.
He talked about how Hoover's bureau had targeted black organizations and all of the artists involved in the Harlem Renaissance, right on through 1972. How they had ghostreaders to try to suss out upcoming black protests.
But, of course, black writers knew they were being watched and read by these morons. Many wrote works addressing the surveillance, such as Richard Wright's "The F.B. Eye Blues" from 1949, to my mind, a brilliant and nervy way to protest such an unwarranted invasion of privacy.
He explained how white agents tried to "write black" in the forms of poetry and newspaper articles, their intent being to sway black opinion with fake black writings.
The biggest problem with Maxwell's lecture was that the topic was enormous and we could barely scratch the surface in the time allotted. Even so, I managed to glean the fascinating tidbit that Yale had produced an inordinate amount of spies from its English department during the mid-20th century.
That's a book there waiting to be written, if you ask me.
Talking about how there were files on every black literary figure and artist of the era, he said, "There was one on Billie Holiday. There's one on Duke Ellington. I'm sure it's very elegant." He said his father, an activist during the '60s, was disappointed to learn that the FBI had no file on him. Should've been black, sir.
He has to be one of the few to be disappointed not to have been in J. Edgar's cross-hairs.
While you might think, well, the logical thing after such a heavy lecture, Karen, would be something completely opposite, something frothy and fun, but no. Next on my agenda was VCU Cinematheque's screening of the documentary "Salvador Allende."
I've gone on record as saying how much I enjoy the eclectic programming of the Cinematheque series, but a weekly free film also comes with a price: VCU students in attendance.
I've got nothing against students, but at times, the vapid and inane conversations I'm privy to make me wish I was anywhere else. Case in point: tonight.
Some kids come in and one begins addressing the guy sitting nearest me. "Dude, your talk today was great. I was really into it. You should get a job selling something."
The object of his admiration seems genuinely touched by the compliment. "Thanks. Like what, man, sell informational videos and shit?" It's suggested he's good enough to give a TED talk, the benchmark of accomplishment for millennials.
Meanwhile, a nearby girl playing with her hair says to no one in particular, "The only thing I could give a TED talk on is, like, walking back and forth." No one acknowledges her.
There, I submit, are tomorrow's leaders.
And they must have been film students since I'm not sure a documentary about a former Chilean president trying to move the country to socialism would appeal to your typical 19-year old otherwise.
The problem is, they just don't appreciate the time capsule element of a good documentary. It's not just about the time depicted - in this case, early '70s - but also about the time the documentary is made, here 2004.
And in another impressive coincidence, waiting for the film to start, I passed the time reading about Bob Woodward's new book, "The Last of the President's Men" about Nixon aide, Alexander Butterfield, all but guaranteeing that Tricky Dick would be all over tonight's documentary.
I'm telling you, life is weird that way.
My grasp of Chilean history was negligible, so I found the story of a man elected by the people who sets out to lead a non-violent revolution to create a socialist country completely compelling.
Like all great documentaries, director Patrico Guzman uses amazing historical footage to tell the story and here that includes scenes of a virile and smiling Castro on a visit to Allende after his first year in office.
There's Allende addressing the United Nations, abut multi-national companies answering to no one, a speech that garnered him a standing ovation. The man is basically talking about globalization before we were sick of the word.
And there was terrific footage of rallies and marches, with all those handsome '70s-era Chilean guys smiling and posturing for the sake of a fair and free world.
But back to Nixon, who was worried about a Cuban/Chilean alliance and the spread of Marxism in that part of the world.
In an interview with the former US ambassador to Chile, we hear delicious details of how pissed Nixon was - calling Allende an S.O.B. and a bastard, both funny when coming out of the mouth of such a proper-looking man - about all that was happening.
Nixon was, of course, the man who ordered the CIA-sponsored coup that overthrew Allende's regime and put Pinochet in power. History's proven just how long the "bad choices" side of Nixon's accomplishment list is.
Totally unexpected was hearing a recording Allende made shortly before killing himself as the coup was happening. Let's just say tonight's Cinematheque offering was a hell of a history lesson.
Even a fine, fall day couldn't keep a girl from so much learnin'.
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Go with the Flow
On a day such as today, I want every bit of that 74-degree weather I can experience.
Before I even make breakfast, I open every window in the apartment and it smells like Spring is really coming..
On my walk past the Science Museum, I see a tree hanging with dozens of origami paper cranes, each one containing a child's thoughts on trees (I only know this because of a sign nearby about the Giving Tree project).
Plucking a bright orange one, I reluctantly unfold its beautiful precision to find that William, age 10, from J.B. Fisher Elementary, has written, "Trees are important because we make pencils out of woods." He's also drawn a sheet of 3-hole notebook paper and a pencil, for reference.
Sounds to me like young William was trying to impress his teacher.
Later in the day, I have two interviews to do and opt to do both sitting outside on the stoop of my neighborhood's 166-year old firehouse facing the sun, wrinkles be damned.
Neither of the artists I'm interviewing seems to mind my choice of location while it's all I can do to stay focused on asking questions and recording answers on a day that feels more like a May holiday than a March work day.
Tonight's dinner plans are at Postbellum. Driving over, it belatedly occurs to me that I've chosen a popular bar on a major drinking holiday. Oops. Upon arrival, I am directed upstairs to the deck because "that's where everyone else is." One green-clad person after another passes me on their way up there.
My dining companion and I instead choose the empty bar because we're not ready to enter into St. Patrick's Day revelry quite yet. Okay, probably never, despite my O'Donnell roots.
It had been ages since I'd been to Postbellum but one bite of food was all it took to remind me of the talent in the kitchen. My salad of Romaine, fried brussels sprouts, crispy fingerling potatoes, rosemary-smoked peanuts and the mildest of blue cheese dressings was a finely-tuned symphony of textures and flavors.
As we ate, tonight's topic was moving cross country: routes, stops (so far only Austin is confirmed) and how much furniture to take. There's something quite romantic about just pulling up stakes and restarting on the other side of the frontier and I applaud those inspired enough to try it.
Despite lingering for a while, only two other people join us at the behemoth of a bar. One is a middle-aged guy in a t-shirt with a long-winded message that contains the word "Irish" in it, but I can't be bothered reading it to find out if it's at all humorous.
Maybe it's that St. Patrick's Day celebrations began last Friday night, but it already seems like this made-up holiday has gone on too long. As a result, I've done the only logival thing: chosen to celebrate with a French new wave movie.
Director Alan Resnais' "Wild Grass" is being screened as part of the VCU Cinematheque series and tonight's audience is the smallest I've ever seen (although I do spot two people I know) and I've been to a fair number of them. I can't decide, is it the movie or the green beer that's keeping people away?
The film professor who's been noticeably absent at the past few showings was back tonight, but only long enough to give us some background on the 88-year old director's body of work. "It's a comedy. I'm not saying it's an easy film. Just let it flow over you."
I was ready to lay down and let it flow.
When I looked up almost two hours later, I knew the film had been visually lovely, the story deliberately obtuse and that French women age much better than we do. And it had, at least to me, clearly been made by someone with a lot of life experience poking fun at traditional notions of love and life.
The story, such as it was, follows two middle-aged people attracted to each other who only meet because her purse is stolen and he finds her wallet, which leads to a fateful ending and some pretty absurd moments along the way.
Interestingly, no one laughed harder than the Frenchman I know who was seated behind me. No doubt understanding the dialog was a far superior way to experience the movie than reading subtitles.
"You're here because you're in love with me," the wallet finder tells the woman when she inexplicably shows up on the street and they meet for the first time. The nervous laughter of students around me convinced me that they weren't quite sure if that was intended as humor or not (it wasn't).
What I liked about it was the fine line the movie walked. It wasn't quite a romance except that there was something very romantic about two people who meet randomly and surprise themselves by being caught up in the chance nature of it all. What if it was supposed to be? What is it's just life playing out?
Apparently when you're an 88-year old French director, you don't have to answer those questions, you can just toy with your audience.
Afterwards in the bathroom, an older woman told me that she'd come because her sister had insisted. Why? Because, like the main character, she'd taken flying lessons so her sister thought she'd enjoy a film about a woman who has her pilot's license.
"But I learned on a Cherokee Piper," she informs me casually. "Ohio state offered flying lessons so cheap you had to learn." Here I'd been excited to take a pool lesson last week and this woman is talking about learning how to fly planes. People are moving cross country and I'm sitting on local stoops.
Clearly it's time to up my game.
Before I even make breakfast, I open every window in the apartment and it smells like Spring is really coming..
On my walk past the Science Museum, I see a tree hanging with dozens of origami paper cranes, each one containing a child's thoughts on trees (I only know this because of a sign nearby about the Giving Tree project).
Plucking a bright orange one, I reluctantly unfold its beautiful precision to find that William, age 10, from J.B. Fisher Elementary, has written, "Trees are important because we make pencils out of woods." He's also drawn a sheet of 3-hole notebook paper and a pencil, for reference.
Sounds to me like young William was trying to impress his teacher.
Later in the day, I have two interviews to do and opt to do both sitting outside on the stoop of my neighborhood's 166-year old firehouse facing the sun, wrinkles be damned.
Neither of the artists I'm interviewing seems to mind my choice of location while it's all I can do to stay focused on asking questions and recording answers on a day that feels more like a May holiday than a March work day.
Tonight's dinner plans are at Postbellum. Driving over, it belatedly occurs to me that I've chosen a popular bar on a major drinking holiday. Oops. Upon arrival, I am directed upstairs to the deck because "that's where everyone else is." One green-clad person after another passes me on their way up there.
My dining companion and I instead choose the empty bar because we're not ready to enter into St. Patrick's Day revelry quite yet. Okay, probably never, despite my O'Donnell roots.
It had been ages since I'd been to Postbellum but one bite of food was all it took to remind me of the talent in the kitchen. My salad of Romaine, fried brussels sprouts, crispy fingerling potatoes, rosemary-smoked peanuts and the mildest of blue cheese dressings was a finely-tuned symphony of textures and flavors.
As we ate, tonight's topic was moving cross country: routes, stops (so far only Austin is confirmed) and how much furniture to take. There's something quite romantic about just pulling up stakes and restarting on the other side of the frontier and I applaud those inspired enough to try it.
Despite lingering for a while, only two other people join us at the behemoth of a bar. One is a middle-aged guy in a t-shirt with a long-winded message that contains the word "Irish" in it, but I can't be bothered reading it to find out if it's at all humorous.
Maybe it's that St. Patrick's Day celebrations began last Friday night, but it already seems like this made-up holiday has gone on too long. As a result, I've done the only logival thing: chosen to celebrate with a French new wave movie.
Director Alan Resnais' "Wild Grass" is being screened as part of the VCU Cinematheque series and tonight's audience is the smallest I've ever seen (although I do spot two people I know) and I've been to a fair number of them. I can't decide, is it the movie or the green beer that's keeping people away?
The film professor who's been noticeably absent at the past few showings was back tonight, but only long enough to give us some background on the 88-year old director's body of work. "It's a comedy. I'm not saying it's an easy film. Just let it flow over you."
I was ready to lay down and let it flow.
When I looked up almost two hours later, I knew the film had been visually lovely, the story deliberately obtuse and that French women age much better than we do. And it had, at least to me, clearly been made by someone with a lot of life experience poking fun at traditional notions of love and life.
The story, such as it was, follows two middle-aged people attracted to each other who only meet because her purse is stolen and he finds her wallet, which leads to a fateful ending and some pretty absurd moments along the way.
Interestingly, no one laughed harder than the Frenchman I know who was seated behind me. No doubt understanding the dialog was a far superior way to experience the movie than reading subtitles.
"You're here because you're in love with me," the wallet finder tells the woman when she inexplicably shows up on the street and they meet for the first time. The nervous laughter of students around me convinced me that they weren't quite sure if that was intended as humor or not (it wasn't).
What I liked about it was the fine line the movie walked. It wasn't quite a romance except that there was something very romantic about two people who meet randomly and surprise themselves by being caught up in the chance nature of it all. What if it was supposed to be? What is it's just life playing out?
Apparently when you're an 88-year old French director, you don't have to answer those questions, you can just toy with your audience.
Afterwards in the bathroom, an older woman told me that she'd come because her sister had insisted. Why? Because, like the main character, she'd taken flying lessons so her sister thought she'd enjoy a film about a woman who has her pilot's license.
"But I learned on a Cherokee Piper," she informs me casually. "Ohio state offered flying lessons so cheap you had to learn." Here I'd been excited to take a pool lesson last week and this woman is talking about learning how to fly planes. People are moving cross country and I'm sitting on local stoops.
Clearly it's time to up my game.
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
For Once in Your Life
You learn better when your belly's full.
Since I had plans to attend honors film class, I made plans to meet up first with a fellow film lover at Cafe 821, where it turned out to be "breakfast all day" Tuesday with discounted mimosas.
Fittingly, since when I go to 821 for breakfast I always order black bean nachos, I did the same tonight.
Only hitch? I requested a half order and was told there's no such thing.What, I dreamt it?
The strange thing about that is that I'd ordered those nachos for five years before the day a server asked me if I'd prefer a half order since I was never able to finish a whole.
Why, yes, a half order would be ideal, I'd told her, surprised that no one had ever told me it was a possibility to do so.
Tonight I was informed that it's not a possibility, just something that particular server does. Fortunately, my companion was willing to nibble off my plate in a vain attempt to help me do justice to the mega plate of food in front of me.
I still sent back as much as I ate, thereby proving I should be allowed to get a half order.
My fellow film lover took off to pick up his date while I strolled over to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque's screening of "Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
It was my first Cinematheque of the fall season and instead of just the usual blase film students, tonight also included an honors class so nearly every seat was taken with earnest artistic types.
Dr. Rob began by listing out the staples of any Stanley Kubrick film: creative cinematography, use of ironic, contrasting music, a melding of genres, realism and innovative visual effects.
"You're really fortunate to get to see a 35mm print of this," he said of the 50-year old classic. "This is probably the only time in your life you'll see this."
Since I've never seen it before, it seemed only right to get to see it the proper way my first time.
Although I'm not big into war movies, I am a huge fan of satire, period details and '60s movies, so except for the absent girl parts, it turned out to be very much my kind of movie.
There was one female character in the entire film and she wore a bikini and high heels while laying on the bed reading under a sunlamp, waiting for her man to come out of the bathroom.
You see, kids, this was back before we knew that tanning was bad for us.
Since it was 1964, she had a soft, curvy body, so unlike the hard body norm of today. It was lovely.
When we see the soldiers aboard the top secret B-52 Bomber, they're reading a Playboy magazine, with the centerfold sporting a newspaper over her bottom.
You know, for decorum.
When they have to go inside the B-52's safe to get the bombing instructions, more nudie picks are taped to the inside of the safe door.
Ah, for the good old days when men had to cut and paste their porn and not just click a mouse.
Because it was a college-aged crowd, there were the usual tittering at that which with they weren't familiar, such as when one of the three Peter Sellers characters had to use a pay phone and insert coins.
OMG, pay phonz, LOL!!
Spare me.
Watching Sellers play three such different characters - the President, the RAF officer and the demented German Dr. Strangelove- was like watching a master class in comedy.
Sometimes you could even spot another actor cracking up in the background.
But honestly, it was just as fascinating to watch a young-looking George C. Scott go absolutely bananas in his scenes, as only a younger man can do.
Clearly most of my memories of his film roles were older roles when he was more staid.
After the film, half the room cleared out and the remaining film devotees discussed it.
I was thrilled when Dr. Rob asked who'd seen the movie before and pointed out that seeing it on a small screen - TV, computer or god forbid, phone- made it come across more rational whereas seeing it on the big screen made it more visceral, the way Kubrick had intended it to be.
Pshaw. Like he had to tell me that.
Discussing Kubrick's influence on subsequent directors, he appealed to the students. "What big film of your youth had a similar plane interior and flying shots?"
It took two guesses before someone came up with the obvious: "Star Wars." Even I knew that and I haven't seen "Star Wars" since it opened in 1977.
Please note, I did see it, though.
After more discussion of how much of Sellers' dialog was improvised (a lot), how Kubrick would do up to 50 takes on a scene and about the importance of editing for impact, he dismissed class.
Walking out, I saw a friend and we stood outside discussing the film on the sidewalk.
He'd been taken with the race issues raised in the film and I'd been struck by the feminist issues.
You see, at the end, Dr. Strangelove proposes a plan for post-nuclear survival where people live underground breeding to replace all those killed.
To do this, he says, there must be a ratio of ten highly stimulating women for every man.
George C. Scott's general character immediately sees the benefit of this, asking if this means that men would have to give up monogamy. That old male fantasy.
Naturally, all the men now see this as a fabulous idea. Culturally speaking, it's obvious there's been no consciousness raising prior to this film.
After ten minutes of film dissection, he suggested a drink and we headed to the Village Cafe for hot tea with honey (him) and a chocolate shake for me.
You know, the good, old Village, where you can count on some rummy at the bar reaching for his backpack, only to have a half-full 40-ounce roll out of it, clanking on the floor on the way down.
And nobody bats an eye.
A fine place to wile away a couple of hours talking about Hillary's chances, lowering the drinking age, good websites for music shows and historic preservation of the heart of Grace Street corridor.
It's interesting, when you're having your first in-depth conversation with someone you've only known casually socially, you have no idea when you might cross a conversational line or offend with your opinion.
We even trash-talked Smart phones and people who don't like going to movie theaters.
He posited a theory that the older you get, the more comfortable you get striking up conversations with strangers and expressing your opinion to new people.
Hell, by that measure, I was born old.
Tuesday Evening or: How I Never Started Worrying and Love the Conversation. Anywhere, anytime.
Since I had plans to attend honors film class, I made plans to meet up first with a fellow film lover at Cafe 821, where it turned out to be "breakfast all day" Tuesday with discounted mimosas.
Fittingly, since when I go to 821 for breakfast I always order black bean nachos, I did the same tonight.
Only hitch? I requested a half order and was told there's no such thing.What, I dreamt it?
The strange thing about that is that I'd ordered those nachos for five years before the day a server asked me if I'd prefer a half order since I was never able to finish a whole.
Why, yes, a half order would be ideal, I'd told her, surprised that no one had ever told me it was a possibility to do so.
Tonight I was informed that it's not a possibility, just something that particular server does. Fortunately, my companion was willing to nibble off my plate in a vain attempt to help me do justice to the mega plate of food in front of me.
I still sent back as much as I ate, thereby proving I should be allowed to get a half order.
My fellow film lover took off to pick up his date while I strolled over to the Grace Street Theater for VCU Cinematheque's screening of "Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."
It was my first Cinematheque of the fall season and instead of just the usual blase film students, tonight also included an honors class so nearly every seat was taken with earnest artistic types.
Dr. Rob began by listing out the staples of any Stanley Kubrick film: creative cinematography, use of ironic, contrasting music, a melding of genres, realism and innovative visual effects.
"You're really fortunate to get to see a 35mm print of this," he said of the 50-year old classic. "This is probably the only time in your life you'll see this."
Since I've never seen it before, it seemed only right to get to see it the proper way my first time.
Although I'm not big into war movies, I am a huge fan of satire, period details and '60s movies, so except for the absent girl parts, it turned out to be very much my kind of movie.
There was one female character in the entire film and she wore a bikini and high heels while laying on the bed reading under a sunlamp, waiting for her man to come out of the bathroom.
You see, kids, this was back before we knew that tanning was bad for us.
Since it was 1964, she had a soft, curvy body, so unlike the hard body norm of today. It was lovely.
When we see the soldiers aboard the top secret B-52 Bomber, they're reading a Playboy magazine, with the centerfold sporting a newspaper over her bottom.
You know, for decorum.
When they have to go inside the B-52's safe to get the bombing instructions, more nudie picks are taped to the inside of the safe door.
Ah, for the good old days when men had to cut and paste their porn and not just click a mouse.
Because it was a college-aged crowd, there were the usual tittering at that which with they weren't familiar, such as when one of the three Peter Sellers characters had to use a pay phone and insert coins.
OMG, pay phonz, LOL!!
Spare me.
Watching Sellers play three such different characters - the President, the RAF officer and the demented German Dr. Strangelove- was like watching a master class in comedy.
Sometimes you could even spot another actor cracking up in the background.
But honestly, it was just as fascinating to watch a young-looking George C. Scott go absolutely bananas in his scenes, as only a younger man can do.
Clearly most of my memories of his film roles were older roles when he was more staid.
After the film, half the room cleared out and the remaining film devotees discussed it.
I was thrilled when Dr. Rob asked who'd seen the movie before and pointed out that seeing it on a small screen - TV, computer or god forbid, phone- made it come across more rational whereas seeing it on the big screen made it more visceral, the way Kubrick had intended it to be.
Pshaw. Like he had to tell me that.
Discussing Kubrick's influence on subsequent directors, he appealed to the students. "What big film of your youth had a similar plane interior and flying shots?"
It took two guesses before someone came up with the obvious: "Star Wars." Even I knew that and I haven't seen "Star Wars" since it opened in 1977.
Please note, I did see it, though.
After more discussion of how much of Sellers' dialog was improvised (a lot), how Kubrick would do up to 50 takes on a scene and about the importance of editing for impact, he dismissed class.
Walking out, I saw a friend and we stood outside discussing the film on the sidewalk.
He'd been taken with the race issues raised in the film and I'd been struck by the feminist issues.
You see, at the end, Dr. Strangelove proposes a plan for post-nuclear survival where people live underground breeding to replace all those killed.
To do this, he says, there must be a ratio of ten highly stimulating women for every man.
George C. Scott's general character immediately sees the benefit of this, asking if this means that men would have to give up monogamy. That old male fantasy.
Naturally, all the men now see this as a fabulous idea. Culturally speaking, it's obvious there's been no consciousness raising prior to this film.
After ten minutes of film dissection, he suggested a drink and we headed to the Village Cafe for hot tea with honey (him) and a chocolate shake for me.
You know, the good, old Village, where you can count on some rummy at the bar reaching for his backpack, only to have a half-full 40-ounce roll out of it, clanking on the floor on the way down.
And nobody bats an eye.
A fine place to wile away a couple of hours talking about Hillary's chances, lowering the drinking age, good websites for music shows and historic preservation of the heart of Grace Street corridor.
It's interesting, when you're having your first in-depth conversation with someone you've only known casually socially, you have no idea when you might cross a conversational line or offend with your opinion.
We even trash-talked Smart phones and people who don't like going to movie theaters.
He posited a theory that the older you get, the more comfortable you get striking up conversations with strangers and expressing your opinion to new people.
Hell, by that measure, I was born old.
Tuesday Evening or: How I Never Started Worrying and Love the Conversation. Anywhere, anytime.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The Sacred and the Profane
With the French Film Festival looming on the horizon, of course the weekly VCU Cinematheque series would show one, too.
We wouldn't want to dilute the cultural blood this week with a stray Russian or Japanese film.
Knowing nothing about the film, this heathen showed up to see Bruno Dumont's "Hors Satan," which means outside Satan, although several times Satan was inside one girl or another.
Sorry to give that away.
During an introduction by Rob, the film professor, he said that Dumont makes films about religion even though he's not a religious man.
Sometimes I go to religious films even though I'm not a religious woman, so we're even.
I wasn't familiar with the director but apparently he's one of those you either love or hate and it didn't take long to see how his long takes and close ups of impassive faces along with very limited dialog and no music whatsoever (none? zut alors!) would be challenging for some people.
Expecting that it would be the youngest members of the audience - the film students - who would get bored first, I was proven wrong when a late arriving group of four adults (including a gallerist I know) got up and left within ten minutes and the duo who sat down in front of me (including a Frenchman I know) soon did the same.
Both had missed the opening scene where a disembodied hand knocks on a door and a sandwich is passed through the door anonymously or they'd never have made it any further than that.
Had they stuck around, they might have been engrossed by the story of a nameless man who comes to a small, seaside village in France and proceeds to behave partly like a savior and partly like a devil.
Sometimes he's protecting a teenager from her abusive stepfather and sometimes he's murdering a man and in this movie, it's all the same.
The ocean scenes of France are beautiful and rugged, the village where the story takes place quaint and overgrown, so it's the people who populate the film who stand out.
And in a Dumont film, that seems to mean a demonically possessed girl, an amorous park ranger, a lusty backpacker and a scary dog owner. You know, your usual French village occupants.
There was a moment of cultural confusion for some of the students when the actress playing the young backpacker stripped down revealing a far from perfect young body (so un-Hollywood-like!) and with (gasp!) unshaven arm pits. The group near me had some trouble processing both.
Personally, I was taken in with how ambiguous the plot was. That and all the wide angle landscape shots, how the director used only direct sound shot on location (many times the wind was sweeping over the mic as characters walked) to give you a sense of place.
Although to those requiring non-stop action and dialog, apparently not a place they wanted to find themselves.
Tant pis. Sometimes you just have to have faith in a talented director and see what you get, even if it ends up confounding you.
Isn't that one of the things the French excel at?
We wouldn't want to dilute the cultural blood this week with a stray Russian or Japanese film.
Knowing nothing about the film, this heathen showed up to see Bruno Dumont's "Hors Satan," which means outside Satan, although several times Satan was inside one girl or another.
Sorry to give that away.
During an introduction by Rob, the film professor, he said that Dumont makes films about religion even though he's not a religious man.
Sometimes I go to religious films even though I'm not a religious woman, so we're even.
I wasn't familiar with the director but apparently he's one of those you either love or hate and it didn't take long to see how his long takes and close ups of impassive faces along with very limited dialog and no music whatsoever (none? zut alors!) would be challenging for some people.
Expecting that it would be the youngest members of the audience - the film students - who would get bored first, I was proven wrong when a late arriving group of four adults (including a gallerist I know) got up and left within ten minutes and the duo who sat down in front of me (including a Frenchman I know) soon did the same.
Both had missed the opening scene where a disembodied hand knocks on a door and a sandwich is passed through the door anonymously or they'd never have made it any further than that.
Had they stuck around, they might have been engrossed by the story of a nameless man who comes to a small, seaside village in France and proceeds to behave partly like a savior and partly like a devil.
Sometimes he's protecting a teenager from her abusive stepfather and sometimes he's murdering a man and in this movie, it's all the same.
The ocean scenes of France are beautiful and rugged, the village where the story takes place quaint and overgrown, so it's the people who populate the film who stand out.
And in a Dumont film, that seems to mean a demonically possessed girl, an amorous park ranger, a lusty backpacker and a scary dog owner. You know, your usual French village occupants.
There was a moment of cultural confusion for some of the students when the actress playing the young backpacker stripped down revealing a far from perfect young body (so un-Hollywood-like!) and with (gasp!) unshaven arm pits. The group near me had some trouble processing both.
Personally, I was taken in with how ambiguous the plot was. That and all the wide angle landscape shots, how the director used only direct sound shot on location (many times the wind was sweeping over the mic as characters walked) to give you a sense of place.
Although to those requiring non-stop action and dialog, apparently not a place they wanted to find themselves.
Tant pis. Sometimes you just have to have faith in a talented director and see what you get, even if it ends up confounding you.
Isn't that one of the things the French excel at?
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