TRUE GRIT (2010 VERSION)

I read that the reason the Coen brothers chose to do a remake of TRUE GRIT, the only John Wanye movie he ever won an Oscar for, was because they loved the Charles Porter [woops: Porter, oy, PORTIS! there, finally got it] novel it was based on so much and wanted to be truer to it than the first movie adaptation had been.

But watching this new version, it seemed to me that with the exception of a few scenes and lines of dialogue, the new TRUE GRIT isn't that much different from the first one, except for the acting, and that, for my taste, makes it worthwhile seeing.

Matt Damon proves himself once more to be one of the most versatile movie stars of our times and gives us such a different and more comic Texas ranger from Glenn Campbell in the original, for my taste that alone is worth the price of admission.

And Jeff Bridges, despite his duplicating Wayne's "Rooster Cogburn" almost beat for beat, still surpasses the original in so many ways his performance too makes watching this flick worthwhile. But I can watch anything Bridges or Damon do, their acting is so original and so good.

Hailee Steinfeld is a revelation as the girl, but then so was Kim Darby in the 1969 version. And all the supporting actors are terrific as well, including Josh Brolin, who excels in a smaller role than his recent film success would warrant, but working with the Coen brothers I guess made it worth his while, and ours.

I'm surprised none of them garnered any Golden Globe awards for this flick and will be more surprised if none of them get any Oscar nominations (Bridges and Steinfeld were both nominated for 2011 SAG Awards for their work in this TRUE GRIT).

BELL ENGINE

"Bell Engine" is the band my older son, Miles, plays in up in "The 'Shire" (The Berkshires).

I've written about hearing them live and how exciting and satisfying that experience can be. But I just found out they're on My Sapce, so you can check out their music yourself.

I suggest you sample several of their songs, because their range musically is wide. There's tunes that feature  the lovely Lisa Anderson's lead vocals that are sheer beauty, and others that feature John Clarke's lead vocals and acoustic guitar work (and most of their songs are his creations) that is so uniquely his, the first time I heard them it felt like discovering buried treasure.

And their duets take the sound in yet an entirely different direction to my ear. The sound quality isn't the same as hearing them live, obviously, but you can get a taste of all of the above, as well as my son's funky bass lines and riffs, the electric guitarist Dan Karp's often subtly flaming solos, and all backed by the solid drumming of Sam Earnshaw

Check them out, and if you're anywhere near Hudson New York on January 10th, go see them live at Club Helsinki and I guarantee you'll enjoy yourself, maybe even as much as they always seem to (though the photo below obviously doesn't capture that creative joy entirely!).

I LOVE YOU PHILLIP MORRIS

What a missed opportunity.

This film is based on a true story, and a pretty interesting one, about a con man who has some success impersonating people he isn't. A lesser version of the real characters played by Tony Curtis in THE GREAT IMPOSTOR and Leonardo DiCaprio in CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.

This guy didn't have as long a career or as successful a one as the con men portrayed in those movies. He ended up in jail sooner, where he fell in love, the main theme of the film's story.

The problem is the director/writers, Glenn Ficarra and John Requa (who based their script on a book by Steve McVicker) decided to present this as a lighthearted comedy of errors and cast Jim Carrey in the lead. No matter how hard he tries, he can't resist going for the broad gesture when the more subtle one would make it so more real.

Ewan McGregor does his best to play the love interest, but the script makes his attempts to bring some realism to the flick seem futile. Because the writing, the directing, and Carrey and Leslie Mann, who plays his wife, keep going for the comic, turning what could have been an intriguing take on an unusual character and the absurd lengths he'll go to for "love" (it needs the quotes because despite McGregor's attempts and even Carrey's, the filmmakers present the case for slapstick sex show over any deeper connection the story seems to want us to buy) into a film so frivolous even the scenes where they all seem to be trying to pull at our heart strings read incredibly cynically and phony.

(The one exception among the actors who pulls off the difficult task of coming across as real—despite the directors/writers sabotaging of everyone else's attempts—is Rodrigo Santos as an earlier lover of Carrey's character. He ought to get an award for transcending the script's and the film's problems and creating a character we can understand, accept as real, and even have some understanding of if not sympathy for.)

Ficarra and Requa are best known for BAD SANTA and CATS AND DOGS, which may explain why they messed up what could have been a really unique and deeply effective movie about the extremes people will go to. But instead is presented as some sort of sardonic lark we're obviously not supposed to take seriously except when we are. It doesn't work, and may explain why the film was made in 2009 and hasn't been released yet, or only briefly.

What a waste of time and talent, despite the moments that work, which only reinforce the disappointment in the so many more that don't.

NO WAY TO DESCRIBE IT (AT LEAST BY ME)

Winter wonderland here in my part of New Jersey. They say it's about thirty inches of snow, but shoveling the walk (it was taking too long so I hired some passing guys to finish it) in front of the house my apartment's in, it was over three feet there. And a lot of drifting to four feet or more.

I don't own a camera and haven't for most of my life. I love the photos of others and they often capture a lot in nature and city life I dig (see EAST OF WEST L.A. or KINDSIGHT or MY EYE AND I et. al.) but I never could.

My feeling, as I was saying to my friend Jamie today when she called from Malibu to check up on the weather here and its impact, that taking a photo of the way the world turned perfectly purely white overnight and trees and cars and walls and other objects became surreal swirls of shapes blown into unique forms by the wind gusts (some of which were over fifty miles per), trying to capture that in a photo would be like getting a photo of an art installation instead of walking into the gallery or museum and being immersed in the artist's vision of a total environment and not just a single object, etc.

I'm on my way out with my older son to catch my grandson and young son snowboarding on the hill in our local park before it gets dark. I couldn't be happier. To experience these seasonal pleasures is one of the reasons I moved back to Jersey from L.A. Another thing to be grateful for.

THE HUMANITIES CONTINUE TO SUFFER AND IT AIN'T NO COINCIDENCE

I can't remember if I wrote a post about this before. I've certainly been talking about it quite a bit with others around the country and the world. That is: the elimination of many arts and humanities programs and departments in way too many universities and colleges.

I first heard about it being language departments. How French, Italian, Russian, even Spanish and other university departments have been shut down to save money, and the excuse given is students aren't as interested in them anymore, or that they aren't "practical" etc.

 This is an extension of (I wrote a version of this in a response to a comment on a recent post) what I saw begin in the 1960s when Nixon got elected. His then vice president, Spiro Agnew, gave a speech at the University of Iowa that I went to just to see what these propagators of some of the worst attacks against anyone who questioned their mostly rightwing agenda had in mind for their next targets.

It became apparent only a few lines into his speech that it was education, as I understood it and had experienced it to that point. It was couched in the usual Nixon era rightwing resentment-based prejudices against anything connected to Ivy League and East Coast educational "elitism" etc. Which were really code words for liberal Democrats and those who would push a  humanist agenda that sought to broaden the human rights of all people, not just the so-called "Silent Majority"—or as they're known today by Palinites "Real Americans" (i.e. white people who don't argue with the takeover of our country by the wealthy and the corporations that create their wealth).

Back then the right was only interested in diminishing the stature and cache of Harvard (e. al.) educated liberals like the late JFK and his brother Bobby, and the economists and politicians and intellectuals etc. who espoused liberal ideals.

By Reagan's rightwing takeover (and makeover) the attack wasn't just on liberal institutions of higher learning and those that supported them or benefited from them in terms of education etc., but any institutions of higher learning or intellectual rigor that espsoused liberal ideals, like equal rights not just for African-Americans, but for women and gays etc.

And not just that, but even the elementary and high school level institutions that were public, because they tended to teach liberal ideals and even personify them, as they had at least since the Depression and WWII and beyond.

The whole "voucher" idea seemed intended to plant the seed of discontent about the whole idea of public elementary and high school (is it an accident that whole "voucher" argument came into prominence on the rightwing Republican scene after busing to enhance racial integration became a hot button issue for "The Silent Majority" (i.e. white people who... (see above)).

And now "teaching to the test" that came out of Bush Jr.s education policy, which emphasizes math and science and quantifiable "language arts" standards to the exclusion of the old humanities and creative arts agenda (most music classes have been eliminated, for instance, even though it has been shown that those who take music lessons do better in the hard sciences than those who don't etc.).

Which led to many students today having little or no exposure to the arts, to the classics, to languages, etc. so naturally by the time they get to the college level they don't have an interest in those areas. It is clear to me at least, that by Bush/Cheney, the right had moved toward making the case for eliminating the liberal arts and the humanities for the most part from colleges and universities with budgetary and/or so-called "real world" concerns about the future of "American education" and its "ability to compete in the world" etc.

Interesting that just as these things are being eliminated in so many schools in the USA, China is moving to incorporate them, realizing that their old system of teaching just the "practical" curriculum made for great scientists and engineers etc. who could follow orders, but not great thinkers and innovators and creative geniuses who could create new industries and solve seemingly irresolvable dilemmas.

Here's a terrific response to one instance of these changes that according to my friends in academia are occurring pretty much everywhere in our country now. Thanks to Tom Raworth's blog NOTES for the link. And please, read this article to the end to get the full impact of his argument and the potential damage he is addressing.

HOPE YOU HAD YOURSELVES A MERRY LITTLE HOLIDAY SEASON AND CONTINUE TO UNTIL WE OPEN THE DOOR ON ANOTHER NEW YEAR

Wonderful couple of days with family and friends, and more to come.

Last year I was still working on recovering from the brain surgery, and though grateful to be alive and functioning, this year feels even more full of reasons to be grateful.

Every night with my youngest, I count our blessings, or as many as I can think of before it feels right to say goodnight. One I'm thinking of tonight, that I didn't mention in our nightly ritual, is my gratitude for this space to express my thoughts and opinions, enthusiasms and objections, and all those who drop by here to  allow me to share them with more than the multitudes I contain (as Whitman said he did and I identified with immediately, even as a boy).

Thanks.

"HOLIDAY HELL"

I wrote this poem in the 1980s, and it was published in the collection CANT BE WRONG from Coffee House Press (which won the 1997 Oakland PEN Josephine Miles Award for "Excellence in Literature"!).

The Google version of that book, stops at the poem right before it, so the only way I could figure out to copy it was to scan the pages and crop them to hopefully make them big enough to read when you click on the images here. I'm sure there's an easier better way, but my brain isn't helping me on this one.

TERENCE WINCH'S CHRISTMAS CLASSIC

On recent nights I've read my youngest Dylan Thomas's A CHILD'S CHRISTMAS IN WALES and Jack Kerouac's HOME AT CHRISTMAS. Two of the best evocations of so much of what Christmas was like when I was young.

Tonight I plan on reading him Terence Winch's poem "Celebration"—which is the closest anyone else has come to my Christmas memories (the closest is my own Christmas poem "Holiday Hell" from my book CANT BE WRONG).

And "as luck would have it" Terence just posted his classic Christmas poem (from his recent book BOY DRINKERS) on the Best American Poetry blog. Here's the link to that. Enjoy!

PRETTY AMAZING DAY IN DC

I have to tip my hat to my great old friend known as "Alameda Tom" in his comments on this blog. His posts on his own blog have been defending Obama's intentions and accomplishments even in those moments when most leftists, let alone even centrist Democrats, were seemingly giving up on the president.

But today, it's impossible for even the easily-manipulated-by-the-right mass media to ignore, with the passing of a bill to help the 9/11 responders (and Jon Stewart's deft exposure of rightwing Republicans' hypocrisy on this not only influenced the outcome but is ripe for more parody since the same rightwingers who opposed the bill are now claiming they supported it all along!) and the new START treaty, that Republicans said they would not support, and most importantly from the milestone perspective, the ending of the ban on openly gay and lesbian men and women serving in the military.

Watching the president's speech before signing the legislature that ended the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy I was moved to tears as I had been when Obama first came on the scene and during his campaign a few times and when he won the presidency. His passion came across as not only genuine but personally motivated. Something that had been missing too often in the past year it seemed to me.

Not only was it a great day, but it caps a pretty amazing first two years in office, where more legislation got passed that will help more people than has happened possibly since FDR and certainly since LBJ and his few years that brought us Civil Rights legislation like the Voting Rights Bill and Medicare.

There were compromises made, but in the end, a lot of good things have happened under Obama, many of them things he had promised to accomplish. So let's give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that in fact he has brought about some major and fundamental changes in two short years, and that the "hopey changey thing" is working out just fine, if you're a taxpayer, need healthcare, worked for GM, invested in the stock market, were a 9/11 first responder, are gay or lesbian and want to serve your country in the military, believe that we need to get nuclear inspectors into Russia's nuclear facilities, wanted to see U.S. military engagement mostly eliminated from Iraq and troops drawn down, and more I can think of off the top of my head but I'm sure there's lists on other sites.

All in all an amazing record and especially today. Thank you Mister President.

ONCE IN AN AMBER MOON (AND QUOTE TO GO WITH IT)

Did anyone else get up to watch the eclipse of the moon, occurring on the winter solstice for the first time since 1638(!) and not again until 2094?

My little guy and I did, and his mother came over from her place in the freezing night to watch it together, standing on our front lawn, replacing the neighbor from the apartment upstairs who had been out there a while, other neighbors from an apartment next door—above what used to be a restaurant/catering place that moved and has been vacant for a while—looking out their window (my apartment was on the wrong side of the house it's in).

Tired this morning but worth it, like an art show for millions, a performance piece for the centuries, this mottled disc of varying shades of Autumn colors I have no vocabulary for, with radiant edges displacing each other as the progress of the earth between the sun and moon riffed on what seemed in the moment the inspiration for all art and culture and probably religions, the natural beauty of the familiar made unique.

Made me think of several lines of poetry, but I settled on the succinctness of this quote from Jim Moore's poem "In Romania":

"...the least one can do is look up
and watch as beauty treads its usual path."

("usual" in universe time...)

THE FIGHTER

You can probably tell, it's awards season for the movies, and as usual I'm receiving some DVDs in the mail for my "consideration" as a voting member of a few film guilds. Not as many as usual though, which I'm not sure is a result of the weak economy or the fact that actually fewer movies were made last year than in recent years.

I already have some favorites that came out earlier in the year, and will maybe get up enough discipline to make a list of my 2010 favorites, after I get through all the discs I've been sent.

The most recent I watched was THE FIGHTER, a film that's getting mixed responses. It's on some critics top ten lists, or runners up to the top ten, and missing from others. But most critics are at least raving about the acting. And they're right to.

As you may already know, this is based on a true story, about two boxing brothers, or half brothers I should say, from Lowell, Mass. (where Jack Kerouac came from and wrote uniquely about) before it began getting gentrified (to the extent it has).

Mark Wahlberg plays what you would assume is the title role, except that almost every character in the movie is in one way or another a "fighter"—and as almost always with Wahlberg, he gives a solid performance. Since it's the kind of background he knows firsthand, it could have been a grandstanding self-promoting performance, hitting all the "realistic" beats on the nose, but, in execution, it's one of his more restrained portrayals, which in the end makes it even more powerful.

But there are so many scene-stealing performances in this film, Wahlberg's almost gets lost. Christian Bale has been getting most of the attention, and deserves it. Watch his performance as Dickie Ekland— "The Pride of Lowell"—and then compare it to the real Ekland, who has a cameo in the end credits, or check him out on YouTube boxing, especially the clip of his famous bout with Sugar Ray Leonard.

Bale becomes the man. He lost weight for the role, not anywhere near as distracting as I found DiNiro's weight gain for RAGING BULL (a transformation seen as revolutionary at the time, and now seems commonplace for many actors). In fact, Bale so embodies Dickie Ekland's physical mannerisms and loosey-goosey boxing style and physical persona, it's almost magical.

I found some of the "crack addict" bits not as accurate as those in the know tell me it could have been, but Bale's performance is so good it's hard for me to believe that any other actor this year can beat him in the Best Supporting Actor category.

But his isn't the only best supporting role, Melissa Leo as Bale's and Wahlberg's characters' mother "Alice" is a revelation. It's hard to even recognize her in the role. Being very familiar with tough working-class ladies of her kind, she nails it. As does Amy Adams in the role of Wahberg's character's girlfriend. I don't find Adams always appealing, but there's no denying her acting chops, and they're on full display in THE FIGHTER.

There are a lot more great performances in this flick, including the familiar Jack McGee as "Alice's" husband. But the performance that struck me as closest to the kind of Irish-Americans I grew up around was an actor I didn't know, Mickey O'Keefe, because he's not an actor, but a Lowell cop who trained "Irish" Mickey Ward (Wahlberg's character) in real life.

He's older than he was when the real training was going on, and he's shorter and seemingly milder than most of the men in my clan, but his presence and the solidity of his performance reminded me of many of my relatives, and I was delighted to discover he's the real deal. There's a scene in an eatery where he asks his fellow diners "What are you all looking at?" that is played so perfectly, every actor who ever plays a cop in the future should study it. It's understated, and yet totally grounded in the real power of knowing who you are and what you can do with that.

The director, David O. Russell, deserves credit obviously since there isn't a false acting beat in the entire film, for me. Check it out when you get the chance.

JON STEWART ( AND FOUR 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS) NAILS REPUBLICAN HYPOCRISY

See it here (and please watch both to get the full impact).

[And check out this coda to the 9/11 first responder situation from Michael Moore.]

CAPTAIN BEEFHEART R.I.P.

The influences are obvious from in front (see first video below) but once he got them down he made them into his own like no one else (see second video below and tons more on YouTube).


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He was an original painter too (scroll down when you get to that link), one of those creators I'm always writing about here whose work opens up whatever form they're creating in to new possibilities and rewards. The man made it all his own.

[Here's the Rolling Stone obit.]

LIFE UNDER REPUBLICANS (IN NEW JERSEY)

So the relatively new governor of New Jersey. Chris Christie has become one of the darlings of the Republican Party and some of the Tea Party groups because he's cutting programs all over the place while refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy elite in the state.

But here's what that means on the ground in just two policy areas.

He stopped the tunnel that would connect New Jersey to New York and cut the time it takes to get from one to the other drastically by eliminating the daily delays that make our greatest city and its environs less efficient than most metropolitan areas of the world, including some in developing countries (as we know, China now has the fastest trains), a tunnel on which work had already begun—so the cost of that work will still be paid for by Jersey taxpayers, mostly by the non-wealthy as usual—despite the fact that the federal government was willing to pay for much of that tunnel's cost and New York was willing to help as well.

His answer to the problems of commuting between New Jersey and New York that will only grow worse since they rely on tunnels that date back to almost a century is to spend more on roads! In a state that is criss-crossed with so many highways it's like some random Marcel Duchamp drop-a-ton-of-strings-on-a-map-and-where-they-fall-build-a-road abstract maze. So he has made the choice for more pollution, more congestion, more taxes going to prop up the profits of oil and gas companies etc. over what's best for the future, the environment, and the non-wealthy of my home state. The wealthy will just continue to take their "cars"—as they call their chauffeur driven town cars and limos—and the new roads and road widening will help them, or they'll hop a helicopter etc.

In education, first his education department hack blew 400 million, yes, four hundred million dollars awarded by the federal government because they filled in the application incorrectly, putting in the wrong year for their budget! Hello!?! And then he just went and cut the budget for education in the state. What that means in my town and the school my thirteen-year-old goes to, is that the teachers' aides used in the classrooms who could help the students with IEPs (special ed issues) were all fired and now those positions are contracted out (great! more money for corporations!) and instead of having aides with years of experience in his school, who know the students and the teachers, who stay after and help out and volunteer their time and effort above and beyond what the job definition is, there are strangers who leave as soon as the bell rings and have no real investment in the community or the school other than a paycheck they get for just showing up.

I asked my son if the aide in the class he was having trouble in had ever helped him, and he said the aide had never even spoken to my son, let alone helped him, or anyone else as far as he could see.

There are many other areas of life in this state that have deteriorated in just the short time Christie has been governor. But that won't stop his rightwing supporters from praising him and holding him up as a beacon of their -back-to-the-future head-in-the-sand ill-informed unreasoning for why making life easier and better for the wealthiest and corporations while the rest of us suffer is somehow the way out of the morass other rightwing Republicans got us into in the first place.

[And for those who always leave comments about how the Republicans and Democrats are all the same, the fact is, under the former Democratic governor, the tunnel was going forward, money was being directed toward mass transit projects rather than more highways, education was a priority and teachers and teachers' aides were not being fired, etc.]

PS TO XMAS SHOPPING REMINDER

Just an update on my plea to help the one-woman label that put out my CD LOST ANGELS by ordering copies for holiday gifts, CD Baby instantly sold out the few copies they had (the whole edition was a pretty limited run to begin with) as did Amazon, but word is CD Baby is now back in stock.

SOMEWHERE & BLACK SWAN

The "auteur" theory is over a half century old now, and relatively discredited at the level it was once held.

The only filmmakers who are the true "authors" of their films are the ones who write and direct them, and often produce and do other work on them as well (Charlie Chaplin the most obvious and maybe original—writing, starring, directing, producing and composing the soundtrack!).

But many directors obviously do have the main impact on a movie—of all those involved in the collaborative art—shaping performances and interpreting scripts so that it's often possible to recognize their style even when their movies hop from genre to genre and writer to writer.

Sofia Coppola is mostly the former, a writer/director, and producer, of most of her films, all of which bear her imprint indelibly. Darren Aronofsky is mostly the latter, just directing, taking other people's ideas and screenplays and turning them into his particular brand of filmmaking.

I admire them both, for different things. Like the old arguments when I was a young writer over Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald, or Beckett vs. Joyce, Coppola and Aronofsky define pretty clearly two distinct approaches to their art.

Coppola compares to Hemingway or Beckett in that the distinctiveness of their art owes a lot to their spareness, what they leave out. Whereas Aronofksy's films display the kind of saturation leave-nothing-out-or-to-the-imagination (or give that impression) of F. Scott and James J.

Not that I'm ranking anyone as equals, just talking about their approaches to making the art they create, for the most part (they all have some exceptions, like Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY in which he proved to himself and the rest of us he could beat Hemingway at his own game).

Sofia Coppola's courageous willingness to hold a shot—and often one where seemingly nothing's going on—longer than contemporary audiences are used to or seem to want, gives her films the quality of old style "foreign" films from a half century ago. She loves to linger and let the scene—the setting and the actor(s) involved—reveal deeper resonances just from being observed. It's almost Warholian.

Sometimes this works beautifully, as in her masterpiece, to my mind, LOST IN TRANSLATION. Sometimes it just leaves the audience, or at least me, wanting to shout: "I get it! I get it! Now what?!" as in many of the scenes in her latest film, SOMEWHERE, including the opening. It's daring to shoot a car driving in circles time after time, disappearing out of the frame on each side as it makes its loops, leaving only the sound of its engine revving, in a flat desert landscape that leaves little else to focus on, but it only takes a time or two to get that this is about someone going around in circles and getting nowhere (which the film had me at times thinking should have been the title: NOWHERE).

There are scenes and bits of dialogue and editing jumps and acting and cinema verite sequences that pretty well capture the life of a movie celebrity as I've witnessed it and obviously Coppola has. But Stephen Dorff doesn't have enough screen presence to make the ordeal of extended scenes of his ennui (I assume meant to read as more than that) work. Elle Fanning (Dakota's little sister) does, and she's been getting a lot of well-deserved critical attention. But in the end I'd wait and catch this one on cable.

BLACK SWAN is like an antidote to SOMEWHERE that the director packs the film with to such an exorbitant extent that it made me feel he was trying to cause a kind of mass o.d. for the audience. The extremes he makes Natalie Portman go to in the lead role, and the way she pulls that off, make me think she's got the Oscar locked. I'm not a big fan of her movies once she grew up, or of her, from what I've read in interviews. But she kills in this movie, in every way.

But the film and its story are so over the top, it makes most movies seem like cheek kisses compared to BLACK SWAN's personalized nuclear bomb. The casting is almost diabolical. [I mean particularly in having a current and a faded and a fading movie star playing a current and a faded and fading ballerinas...sort of forcing us, and them, to recognize their lost prominence and success—Ryder found the parallels "cool"!]

Barbara Hershy as the controlling stage mom remakes the archetype into something out of DAWN OF THE LIVING STAGE MOTHER DEAD. This aging actress—who resembles the Barbara Seagull some of us once had crushes on but in a way that is at times startlingly dismaying—is cast as the over-the-hill missed-her-chance harridan while Winona Ryder plays the slightly over-the-hill star ballerina Portman's character is doomed to replace, I mean trying to replace.

(Ryder's presence and talent seemed wasted in her relatively small role, and Mila Kunis as the seductress from hell outshone her in a more meaty and bigger role as Portman's character's nemesis, I think, though they're all nemesises (!) in ways that are so frustratingly confusing it took me hours to sort most of it out later in conversation with a friend I saw it with and then in my own head and there are still parts I'm not sure about.)

I noticed that all the credits, except for production design and costumer, at least the ones I stayed to watch, were all men. And I wondered if that had anything to do with there being no woman in the movie you, or at least I, could feel any real empathy for.

There is some brilliant movie making going on, and there's no denying that the movie has an impact, it's still dominating my brain over twenty-four hours since I saw it. Some of the early dance sequences with close-ups of ballerina's feet balancing on their toes as they whirl and spin and go up and down from flat on the floor to on their toes is excruciatingly beautiful, almost painful to watch.

Other scenes were just plain painful to watch, some of them meant as metaphors for the obsessive body consciousness of dancers, not just ballerinas (I went with a dancer once and hung out with some of her friends and they were all constantly distorting their bodies into odd shapes, their form of stretching, or asking you to pull their arm out etc.) and some as metaphors for much deeper troubles and for compulsive addictive self-destructive behavior of all kinds. Only BLACK SWAN seems a backhanded attempt to justify that, or maybe justify the director's obsession with the extremes of self-destruction as a path to some sort of negative glory.

At times the melodrama of BLACK SWAN was so extreme I felt like I was watching an updated version of the kind of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? histrionics of the aging Bette Davis and Joan Crawford parodying their younger selves. Only in this case, two of the main actresses, Ryder and Portman, are still young and doing the same kind of scenery munching.

But, and it's a big but, Aronofsky, like Coppola, is, at least for my taste, an incredible filmmaker (though I had caveats about THE WRESTLER as well), and there is much to admire and even be impressed by in BLACK SWAN technically, and performance and direction-wise. But it made me feel like I wanted to leave the theater before it was over or jut shoot myself when it finally did end. Not because it was so disappointing, but because it was so disturbing. And his previous most pull-out-the-stops dark adventure, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM didn't bother me at all. Phew!

QUOTE FOR TODAY

Thanks to RZ for passing this one on:

"Things turn out best for people who make the best of how things turn out." —Art Linkletter

THIS SAYS IT BEST

What I've been writing about on this blog, and for decades before it in newspapers and magazines and books etc. is articulated much better in many ways in this article.

THIRTEEN MONTHS SINCE BRAIN SURGERY AND...

...I'm thinking about how my taste has changed in some things and people, how my lifelong compulsion to make lists in my head and out has not only disappeared it would seem for good but any desire to do so has too (and how that makes me feel at times like a different person, a different personality at least in my interior monologue)...

..and how I get agitated now sometimes when I am confronted with perplexing possibilities, too much stimuli too, but especially when feeling the need to make a decision or respond to something that begins to feel urgent and my mind doesn't seem to be able to do that, at times...

...and how only a year ago I was slowly rediscovering the ability to read and recognize what moves me in a painting or a story or a movie etc...rediscovering my joy in more than just thinking and eating and being alive...

...and how one of the most difficult things to readjust to and accept was and still is the inanity of so much of the public discourse and where our country, our society, our media, our conversation about reality has come to...

...as in the inability of our politicians and many voters to recognize the common sense of a national healthcare system that is guaranteed...

..not too long ago I met a couple who had been living in Germany for a few years. The husband worked for a big "American" corporation (but really international as most corporations are). He made more money than his German counterparts in his division there, but they seemed in many ways to him more fulfilled, happier, less anxious and driven. And he realized eventually that it was because they never worried about things like medical expenses and emergencies because when they needed to see a doctor they just went without worrying about cost...

...I won't get into the fact that the results of our supposed "free enterprise system" of healthcare has left us behind other so-called "developed nations" in terms of longevity and infant mortality and just general wellbeing when it comes to health...

...but I will quote an excerpt from poet Tom Raworth again, the author of the blog that generated my post before the last one about healthcare. In an e mail response to my post he informed me that:

" just for the record, I had open-heart surgery for an atrial septal defect in 1956....8 1/2 hours, heart stopped, blood through a freezer, adrenalin shots, etc. etc.  Since when I've had pneumonia, a stroke, appendicitis, various heart problems, a stent, broken bones; Val had five children, eye surgery for glaucoma. The children have had various things in their lives, from knee cartiledge repair to death from AIDS.  Never once has the thought of money been inserted between us and the necessary treatment."

...which about says it all for me concerning healthcare...

JAMES MOODY R.I.P.

Moody was a giant hero of mine. I loved his music and I loved the fact that he was from Newark, New Jersey, which when I was a boy we thought of as our "downtown," our city, and where my mother and maternal grandparents came from and grew up and where I had lots of cousins and friends and where I went to high school and played football and dated girls and played some of my earliest music gigs and just hung out.

He also wrote a tune called "Last Train from Overbrook," which was almost like my theme song when I was young. Overbrook was a mental hospital they put James Moody into in the 1950s, a common tactic by the authorities for jazz musicians who also happened to sometimes be on illegal drugs (and also happened to be geniuses, ala Bird et. al.). I worked at Overbrook when I got out of over four years in the service. My father was part of the Essex County Democratic machine back in those days and helped get me a job as a "recreational assistant" in what was closer to the institution in the classic film SNAKE PIT than what exists now.

I felt honored (in an inexplicable way, I'm sure for those who I worked with) because I was working where Moody had once lived and where he wrote some great tunes, or right after he was released, including "Last train from Overbrook." The miracle is, he outlived all those who harassed him in his younger years for being the "black" genius he was and just died at 85.

I am grateful for all the great music he left us. I couldn't find a video of him performing "Last Train" but here are two great vidz, one of him talking about his life and music, and another of him playing with the kind of inspiration that so impressed me back when I first encountered him and his music and ever after.

CAN I JUST SAY...

In many ways, this post on friend and poet Tom Raworth's great blog says it all.

And after starting my day with the new TIME magazine with Palin on the cover and a story that allows her to make all the accusations and soundbites and sloganeering and propagandizing she wants to (including misrepresenting the recent healthcare legislation, that the press continues to allow the right to get away with calling "Obamacare" as if Congress didn't vote for it and "American" voters didn't vote that congress into office as well as the president, democracy at work doesn't count for rightwingers) without the writer refuting any of it with facts, just citing some of her adversaries' positions vaguely.

This is the tribulation of our times, news that often ignores facts for opinions and even more often ignores any perspective for the framing of any event or argument or occasion other than the right's.

But back to Tom Raworth's post and experience, his first heart operation (was it the first heart transplant in England as I once heard?) was in a still recovering post-war Britain that had established national healthcare, and all the care he has received since that has kept him alive and able to write and travel and have a full life has come from that same national healthcare, while, as he points out in his post, so many here (did anyone hear the NPR interview with the blues singer Robin Rogers who is dying of liver cancer and for whom there was a recent giant benefit concert to raise money to pay for some of her medical expenses?) are left to their own devices and either go broke, are unable to afford proper treatment, or they and their family and friends go deeply into debt to enable them to have some healthcare that should be a right for anyone, and is in many countries...but not ours, yet, and if Palin and the right have their way: never.

CHRISTMAS SHOPPING REMINDER

Hey, not to be all self-promoting but to help out the people who were kind enough to put out my latest CD, LOST ANGELS—me reading some of my poems from the '70s, 80s and early '90s to music by my oldest son Miles and some of his bandmates and musician friends in 1996—may I remind you that there's only fifteen "shopping days" left until Christmas?

It's X-rated, as I was back then (and a lot of my writing was too) so not for the kiddies. But just so you know, you can order it from Amazon (here's the link—or just type in "lost angels michael lally"). [You can also download it from iTunes (again, type in "lost angels michael lally") or downlond separate poem/tunes.]

So, even though I think it's a kind of unique recording and gift, if you've got adult friends who like some of the "artists" I've been compared to over the years by critics, interviewers, publishers and introducers, (and not necessarily all I would agree with though I'm flattered by the comparisons)—like Francois Villon, Walt Whitman, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank O'Hara, John Garfield, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane, Mick Jagger, Charles Bukowski, Gil-Scott Heron, The Last Poets, Clint Eastwood, Sam Sheperd, and more I can't remember off the top of my head—you might consider giving them a copy of LOST ANGELS.

[Or even if you'd just like the photographic portrait done of me by the great film director Gus Van Sant around the time he was casting for DRUGSTORE COWBOY.]

[PS: Some folks have let me know that Amazon and CD Baby are already sold out of LOST ANGELS (it was a small edition) so you might try this link to the label itself, Monomania Records.]

HERE'S A THOUGHT AND A QUOTE/POEM

The thought is, I still feel no compulsion to make lists, even though for every waking hour of my life I can remember before my brain surgery, I did.

But I found a poem (in Court Green magazine #7) about "making lists" (though a different kind from the ones I used to do) that I think is original and satisfying in some of the ways my listmaking used to be for me, so here it is:

"ON SATISFACTION

Make lists
Of things you have already done.
Pleasure exists
In crossing them off one by one."

—Suzanne Buffam from LITTLE COMMENTARIES

JOHN LENNON R.I.P.

Thirty years since he passed. Still missed.

HERE'S THE PRESIDENT'S FULL STATEMENT ON THE BUSH TAX CUT "COMPROMISE"

Okay. I can see why a lot of Democrats and other progressives and liberals are angry about this compromise on the Bush tax cuts.

But I can also see that the Republicans have already voted against eliminating tax cuts for the richest among us so if Dems stand firmly unified against compromise working folks' taxes will go up, and given the record of how a lot of "Americans" don't get that the Republicans do whatever they can to protect the rich and the Dems do whatever they can to help the rest of us, I doubt that would be spun as anything other than "the Democrats raise your taxes again" which  the Republicans have managed to convince many working people of even though the opposite is the truth.

So, even though the president is doing a lousy job of making clear all he and his fellow Democrats have done for those of us who aren't wealthy (it's obvious all he and everyone else in politics have done and are doing for the richest among us) his position in this statement does seem reasoned and justified in terms of getting unemployment extended for the two million for whom it is about to expire and further tax cuts for most of us.

Here's his statement:

PS TO STOCKHOLM SYNDROME

Okay, President Obama's press statement about why he's willing to compromise on the tax cuts was pretty intelligent and reasonable and logical. So maybe I was too hasty in criticizing him on this. I'll see if I can post his statement or a video of it when it becomes available in case anyone's interested.

[I didn't see it, just heard part of it while waiting for triple A to come for a busted up tire etc. So until I can get it in a complete form and think about it, I'll hold off on the kind of judgements I'm hearing from many Democrats and liberals and progressives who seem to be up in arms and/or quite anguished about it. Understandably, because it means adding to the deficit and to the richest 2% of us who already have more than enough obviously.]

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME?

Frank Rich's column yesterday viewing President Obama as a victim of Stockholm Syndrome (where the captive victim identifies with their captor/guard/oppressor) sparked a lot of conversation among folks I know, including my oldest son, who sent me a link to it with his wife's observation that race plays a part as well.


As my son commented, he had


"been using battered wife syndrome to explain Obama's self negotiating (if I act nicer, he won't hit me next time), but Stockholm Syndrome is a better explanation.  Also, [my son's wife] thinks (and I agree) that there is likely a racial component influencing Obama's willingness to ignore his captors' abuse."


I've been using the battered wife syndrome to explain some Democrats' responses to rightwing Republicans in general over the past many years, and unfortunately Obama's recent behavior has seemed to reflect that same syndrome, or as Frank Rich and my son say more accurately Stockholm Syndrome.


His giving in to the completely illogical and ridiculous demand from the Republicans that the wealthiest among us should get continuing tax breaks while the rest of us, including the least wealthy, have to sacrifice because of the debt and deficit, is a major disappointment [and yes I know he didn't have the votes in the Senate to override the Republicans refusal to even consider letting the taxes on the wealthiest go back to what they were before Bush/Cheney started two wars without any taxes to pay for them but instead cut taxes for the rich!]. As is his freeze on wages for federal workers (excluding the military) but not on profits from corporations that pay no taxes and in fact often get tax refunds while raking in profits larger than any in the history of humankind! [See my last post of Bernie Sanders' great speech on that subject.]


The strategy of trying to placate the right has never worked in our history, but sadly, Obama and some Democratic Senators and Representatives have yet to learn that lesson.


As I wrote back to my son Miles, Obama's "negotiating [his] mixed-race background in mostly white and then mostly brown and then mostly black worlds (or at least scenes and circumstances) has diluted his core beliefs into negotiable bargains for barter [it would seem], but as [my old friend Hubert Selby Jr.] used to say whenever I got involved in a new relationship, 'There are no bargains Michael. You think you're only going to have to pay 98 cents, but it turns out to be your right leg!'"

Only in this case, it's the collective right leg (financial security) of the poor and working non-wealthy majority of us going to give even MORE to the wealthiest among us that the rightwing Republicans have always been in the service of, and too-many right-leaning or easily-manipulated-by-the-right Democrats as well. I hate to add Obama to that latter group but it's beginning to seem illogical and unreasonable not to.

YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS

This may be the best speech given in the Senate since Byrd gave his impassioned speech against the War in Iraq. You have to watch it all the way through to get the full impact and importance. It isn't anything a lot of us haven't already said and written, but Bernie Sanders articulates it better than most of us, at least in this speech. Check it out:

 

MORE WIKILEAKS OBVIOUSNESS

It's so unbelievably predictable that if I had written a screenplay that had this plot or even a novel or short story, the powers that be—studio head, producers, editors, publishers, etc.—would have said nobody would buy it because it was too obvious.

But nonetheless, here we are, with the media and popliticians (wow, that's an interesting typo, just coined a new term, now watch it be co-opted by someone out there who'll claim it as their own) acting as if anything revealed in the cables so far reveals anything we didn't already know, or at least those of us who get our news from anywhere other than the rightwing outlets, and even some of them.

So Yemeni leaders are pretending our drone attacks are originating with them and not our military and spy outfits, and Sunni Arab leaders would like to prevent Shiite Iran from getting nuclear weapons, and U.S. diplomats and others have negative opinions about Karzai and his corrupt government, et-endless-cetera.

And now Wikileaks is having trouble getting their stuff online because of cyber attacks against them by, hmmm, you think some of the governments whose lies or double-dealing or lack of "transparency" (the current favorite bugaboo of the media that is anything but transparent) the Wikileaks expose?

And even when I go on some of the sites I use for analyses and more rigorous reporting, if I click on a Wikileaks story—one that's about what's IN the leaks not about reactions to them—I can't access that information. Also entirely predictable, as in, I'm shocked, shocked that governments don't want their hypocrisy exposed and will use whatever means necessary to prevent it.

All of which lead me to support even more strongly what Wikileaks is doing, despite some misgivings about their spending so much time and effort on U.S. hidden info and not enough on other players, major and minor (i.e. China, Russia, India, Brazil, Israel, Nigeria, etc.).

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

This flick has been getting a lot of attention in terms of Oscar predictions—it's already garnered the most nominations for the independent film world's Spirit Award (not like real "independents"—meaning truly low budget movies—since the Spirit Award qualification is budgets of under 20 million)—and it's easy to see why.

The subject matter is a little "alternative"—domestic troubles in a marriage between two women and their two children, one from each with the help of the same donor sperm. As you probably already know, the drama in the classic story line is fueled by the sperm donor showing up when the oldest child, the daughter, is asked by her younger brother when she turns 18 to contact their biological "father."

There are a few quibbles I could make with some of the plot points, and it's hard for this male viewer to see the male lead, Mark Ruffalo, being more attracted to Julianne Moore's character than the character played by the stunning  Yaya DaCosta (she photo below). But I never found Moore that attractive. On the other hand, I don't find Ruffalo attractive either, which made it seem all the more ludicrous that he would even be lucky enough to have the DaCosta character in his life.

But aside from the question of believability for me in a few instances, I still bought the story and its resolution because the actors, whether I'm attracted to them or not, are so incredibly good. And since everyone in the film gives a five star performance, I have to attribute it to the director and co-writer (with Stuart Blumberg) Lisa Cholodenko.

They say that directing is ninety-nine percent casting, and though I didn't buy some of the sexual attractions in the film, in terms of acting skills that is definitely the case here. And it seems to me Annete Bening is way overdue for an Oscar (as far as I can tell she's only been nominated but never won, though I thought she should have for AMERICAN BEAUTY, for instance).

She too is an actress I don't find personally attractive as so many others seem to, but I've always dug her acting chops. She's like Katherine Hepburn or Vanessa Redgrave, it seems to me, in that she never gives a weak performance, is always at the top of her game. In THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT she is equally matched by Julianne Moore's performance, which following her tour de force act in last year's A SINGLE MAN, seems to me she also deserves some kind of award, though since they share pretty much equal screen time they'd be competing in the "Best Actress" category.

And the young actress who plays the daughter "Joni" (Mia Wasikowska) deserves a supporting actress nomination herself. As well as the actor playing her younger brother, Josh Hutcherson, who pulls off an amazing, powerfully understated performance with so much nuance to it he was constantly surprising me with his actor's choices (or Cholodensko's direction, probably a mix of the two).

At any rate, I wouldn't miss this movie. No matter what you end up thinking about it, you'll experience some movie acting and directing at its best.

[PS: After thinking about this film for a day or so, it strikes me in retrospect that the male characters weren't treated so well, a bit of revenge of the women kind of subplot going on, sometimes justified sometimes not. That doesn't change anything I wrote above, just an observation I should have made.]

PS TO LAST POST

The charges of some kind of sexual misconduct are being reported in various ways so maybe it's too soon to draw any conclusions.

And as for the mainstream media, CBS Evening News tonight (Wednesday) had a pretty accurate report on the "Bush tax cuts" and their history that incorporated a very fair accounting of how Clinton balanced the budget and produced a surplus, and how Bush/Cheney ran up the deficit and left Obama holding the bag. Quite surprising and unusual in its thoroughness for a mainstream evening news report.

THE WIKILEAKS FREAKOUT (AND THE USUAL RIGHTWING HYPOCRISY)

Although when it comes to personal "truth" and "honesty" I'll go with my late great friend Hubert Selby's admonition that "Honesty without love is attack"—when it comes to governments and the media, the more transparency the better.

Unless people's lives are truly at stake. The brouhaha over the Wikileaks US government cable disclosures has reached the level of mini-mass hysteria, with rightwingers calling for the execution or assassination of the man behind the leaks. But so far, no one has been able—as far as I have read or heard or seen—to link one death or any physical harm directly to these leaks. Even the political damage doesn't seem to have been all that serious. Unfortunately in many cases.

But the hysteria over the man behind Wikileaks and now a worldwide household name—Julian Assange (or however you spell it)—is pretty transparent as well. Rightwingers who didn't make a peep when Valerie Plame was outed by the right as a CIA agent, something that has been linked to deaths and physical harm, or else defended those who outed her, suddenly are outraged by the exposure of diplomatic and military cables that don't disclose anything the liberal and leftwing press hasn't been pointing out for years, though the mainstream media with its right-leaning owners or manipulators has of course been ignoring (so therefore now acts like these are incredible revelations, like The Saudis don't want the Iranians to get nuclear weapons—I'm shocked, schocked!) though the media has mostly ignored other cables making it clear the Saudis also funded Al Queda while pretending to be our allies and we respond by selling them our weapons etc.

(And speaking of the mainstream media and it's right-leaning bias, Nancy Pelosi pointed out in an interview in a recent New York Times magazine what I've been posting here for awhile, that John Boehner has been on the cover of Time magazine twice already, even before he officially becomes the Speaker of the House. But Pelosi, who was THE FIRST FEMALE IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES TO GAIN THAT POSITION—and under her leadership was able to not only win a huge majority for her party against a sitting president of the other party, but twice pulled off wave elections, for which Boehner and his party are now being celebrated in the media—AND YET SHE HAS NEVER BEEN ON THE COVER OF TIME!)

All the media outlets I watched last night also talked about how Interpol had announced they're looking for Assange because of "rape" charges brought against him in Sweden, but it turns out those charges have not been sustained, the actual charges are of sexual harassment, charges that came out when Assange made his first big Internet "dump" of the communiques from the U.S. government, mainly the military, about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hard to dispute his claim that the charges are meant to stop his web leak enterprise.

FIRST DAY OF THE LAST MONTH OF THE FIRST DECADE OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM (OR OF THE FIRST YEAR OF THE SECOND DECADE DEPENDING HOW YOU LOOK AT IT, IS THERE A POLITICAL PARTY FOR EACH POV ON THIS?)

Amazin' ain't it?

[PS: And for a painful laugh that summarizes the current political climate check this out.]