SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

I saw this a week or so ago and was pleasantly surprised. It's one of those indie style stories where almost everyone is a quirky character who in the end is redeemed in some way. A feel good movie with enough real life drama to seem relevant and meaningful and give Bradley Cooper another shot at an Oscar.

I love Bradley Cooper in everything I've seen him in, which I think is pretty much everything he's done so far, but have to admit that when the flick started I couldn't stop feeling like I was watching him do an out of character character. It was as if the entire world his character lived in didn't notice he's such a hunk he was voted sexiest man in the world.

Then his father comes in, played by Robert DiNiro doing his unfortunately way too familiar shtick. So I couldn't help thinking I'm watching DiNiro play a character. The woman playing his wife I didn't recognize, Jacki Weaver, maybe because as I later discovered she's from Australia. Fooled me though, I totally bought her character and was impressed with every choice she made as an actor. She was totally coming across as the person she was playing.

And then Jennifer Lawrence entered the movie and everything got more real, even Cooper's and DiNiro's characters. She was like a force of nature no one could resist, least of all me. She reminds me of Jennifer Jason Leigh when she was first getting my attention by making every character she played so real I wrote that she was the Marlon Brando of her generation. Now Lawrence is the Jennifer Jason Leigh of hers.

Only different.  Lawrence comes across, even in this quirky SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK character (as she did in WINTER'S BONE and THE HUNGER GAMES) as so much more grounded in a definite sense that she knows who she is, even though in real life she has almost nothing in common with the characters she plays. What I mean is her characters have a strength that's based on integrity, which wasn't always the case in the ones Leigh played in her heyday. Or Brando.

Which means that Lawrence is a great character actor and a great movie star. I can't wait to see what she does next. But in the meantime, watching her in SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK will do.

DOWNTON ABBEY (SEASON 3)

I don't know about anybody else but I still love this show. Of the few TV series I watch, which includes BOARDWALK EMPIRE and HOMELAND, DOWNTON ABBEY is the most satisfying. The story line(s), no matter how contrived and/or tied to historic explication, never make me think WTF (as in both the other shows), but rather make me laugh out loud in satisfaction at their daring to throw in last minute wedding cancellations even when you know the wedding, or at least this one, will go through etc.

But what made me keep disturbing with loud laughter my neighbors in the apartment above me and next door in this old house I have an apartment in was the match up of Maggie Smith and Shirley McClaine. Their tart exchanges, so well written by Julian Fellowes, make their encounters all the more juicy, but even if they were just throwing random lines from some textbook at each other the duel would be no less sharp. They are so evenly matched (except in the ravages of face lifts which my old eyes see no evidence of in Smith but unfortunately can in McClaine) it's like a championship fight or game with the two best in their divisions, only the outcome I can already tell is a tie.

A total delight and the perfect antidote to the post holidays let down. Picked me right up.

JANYE CORTEZ & PATTI PAGE R.I.P.

Jayne Cortez was a dynamic poet and woman, who was a major force in the small press world for decades, as well as in spoken word, performance art, and women's and African-American poetry scenes. She passed late last month [here's the NY Times obit] and I kept meaning to post at least a small homage to a wonderful woman whose work could be challenging and comforting at the same time. Here's an example:

There It Is

And if we don't fight
if we don't resist
if we don't organize and unify and
get the power to control our own lives
Then we will wear
the exaggerated look of captivity
the stylized look of submission
the bizarre look of suicide
the dehumanized look of fear
and the decomposed look of repression
forever and ever and ever
And there it is

And here's what she was like performing only a few years ago:

This is the way I remember Patti Page when I was a kid. Best known for what seem like cheesy or schmaltzy songs in retrospect, as a kid they were fun and comforting [not surprised that latter word is part of both these small tributes]. I commented on Doug Lang's tribute to Page, she was sort of the flip side to Peggy Lee back in the early 1950s. Both beautiful blondes who managed to transcend their natural genres (jazz for Lee and country for Page) to become pop stars for a while.

Where Lee was sultry and still, Page was joyous and expansive. But the main thing about Page, for me, was her unpretentiousness. Lee was more musically skilled, especially as a song writer and arranger, but both had great control as vocalists and Page made it clear she was here to entertain and please and wasn't ashamed to sing about "How much is that doggie in the window" a song that became so ubiquitous it became almost too much to bear but when first heard was just a delightful novelty song.

But my first memory of noticing her as a singer was her first hit: "With My Eyes Wide Open, I'm Dreaming" that made me fall in love with her as a little boy. Here's a YouTube posting of that, not the best reproduction, but listen to the end and you'll hear how skillful a singer she was. 

SO

The housing market is improving more rapidly than expected, the auto industry has had the best year in many years and the number of jobs cut last year was the least since 1997.

Anyone hear any Republicans or Tea Partyers or rightwingers or even most progressives and lifting [wow, that was really a weird typo my brain did, I have to leave it in, but I meant "leftwing"] critics of the president give him, or Dems in Congess any credit for any of that?  I didn't think so.

GOTTA LOVE THIS GUY SOMETIMES

WHATEVER YOU'RE DOING...

When I was a kid the old folks would say whatever you're doing New Year's Eve when the clock strikes midnight you'll be doing for the new year. The idea being do something fun and positive etc,

I was in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, at The Gypsy Joynt watching earlier (a little after nine) a band of seventh and eighth graders (keyboard/trumpet/guitar/bass/drums) with my grandson Donovan on drums rock a packed joint with the precision rhythm and hot licks. Really. Not proud grandpa talking, objective observer watching. They had the crowd going bananas. [I'll hopefully get some phone footage from my youngest downloaded soon.]

They were followed by my oldest son (my grandson's dad) Miles playing bass in a band (guitar/drums/lead singer and front man whose band it is also playing some guitar) for a mostly reggae set at which my oldest child, Caitlin and I dance to her brother's rocking out, the crowd taking to the small dance floor or dancing where they were in the bar/restaurant/club.

Meanwhile my youngest, Flynn, was swaying and doing his own minimal cool moves to the music as he stood among a small crowd of friends from the area he's known since he was little (actually towered over them, at fifteen he can look me straight in the eyes, I assume soon I'll be looking up at his).

Total love and joy as we rocked the old year out and the new one in. I started moving when my grandson' band, Highland, took the stage and didn't stop until sometime after one in the AM when the teenagers actually had had enough, but Miles and the band he was playing in, Jordon Weller and The Feathers (I understand there's some footage of them from another gig on YouTube which I'll also try to get a link to or download later today) kept the groove going.

Hope the old folks were right.

IT WAS A VERY GOOD YEAR

Happy New Year to all. But as we wave goodbye to 2012 I want to pay tribute to how good it was, despite the events that occurred that seemed to make so many despair that things have never been worse.

But as I've written here and elsewhere, there is always good with the bad and sometimes much more good than bad, as in the fact that the world has never been as destructive, violent and murderous as it was in World War Two. So despite the horrors of 2012, it was an enormous improvement over the mid-20th Century years. And 2012 had many many many many more people, so it's even more miraculous that it was so peaceful in comparison to what has come before.

And part of the reason for that was a president who, despite his faults, helped bring one small war in Iraq to a close as he promised. And another good thing about 2012 was that he got reelected. Despite the narrow-minded reactionary anti-science deniers of factual evidence, as in rightwing Republicans and others. The politicians who represent that sad perspective were defeated for the most part, except in Congressional districts that have been designed to contain a solid majority of those people. No matter what your criticisms of Obama, his policies were better than the other guy's and he has done a lot of good, including help an economy that was close to the worst the worst the world has ever seen collectively, i.e. The Great Depression, but he helped avoid that and it has steadily improved. No matter how bad it is or feels to any individual, including this one, the economy is better than it was four years ago, and that's a good thing.

If you want a more progressive Democratic Party, then get involved in that party and work to change it as so many did in the 1960s. If you prefer a progressive third party, then start one and do the necessary work to make it viable. In the 1960s when I was active in the Civil Rights struggle and the anti-Viet Nam war movement I helped create a third party and ran for office and spent most days and nights not just earning a couple of degrees and supporting a growing family but in churches and synagogues and Quaker meetings and even Chamber of Commerce meetings and farmers organization meetings and more speaking out for what I and my fellow leftist activists believed in and debating those who were on the other side, and all that when I wasn't taking part in demonstrations all over the country calling for progressive changes etc. etc. etc.

Those activities paid off in laws that ended bans against interracial marriage, gave equal rights in all government activities and public places and businesses to all "races" (an unscientific term, as used in the U.S.,  I was actively against but unfortunately is still with us) and led directly to the election, TWICE, of a mixed race president who made even more progressive changes. The world, our world, is still way imperfect, as it will always be. And there were terrible things that happened in 2012, for sure, some of them to people I know and love, but compared to many other years throughout history, and how bad things could be and have been for many more people, especially given the huge population growth and lack of serious engagement in some places with the challenge of global warming and resultant climate change, even still 2012 was a very good year in more ways than it was a very bad one, and for that I am grateful.

Now let's get to work on 2013.