FENCES

FENCES the movie is a fair representation of August Wilson's play, but it isn't the great movie I was hoping for. Denzel Washington stars and directs and he maybe took on too much. His direction is pretty placid and his acting, always terrific in my memory, needed a better, or different, director in a few crucial scenes, particularly the centerpiece when his character reveals the truth of his early life which helped make him the man he became.

Maybe I just saw too much of Denzel and not enough of Troy (his character) in the performance, particularly that revelatory scene. For me it was anti-climartic and hard to buy that Denzel was really that guy who'd gone through all that. He still has moments of great acting as always, and Viola Davis did her usual seriously committed job, as did the other actors.

But for me, with the exception of Mykelti Williamson as Troy's mentally damaged combat veteran brother Gabriel, nothing rose to the level of the accolades I'd been hearing about it. Glad I saw it. And I do recommend it, for some of Wilson's dialogue and scenes and memorable characters, and the historic importance of the play and the movie's just existing, let alone winning critical acclaim.

NAT HENTOFF R.I.P.

I didn't know Nat Hentoff personally, though I was in the same room with him a few times, and was briefly a colleague of his, you could say, since we were both columnists and writers for The Village Voice, though him for over fifty years and me for only a few years in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

But I knew who he was from my teens on, first discovering his reviews in Downbeat, the jazz magazine, in the 1950s before I discovered The Village Voice and his wider cultural criticism and commentary there. He was also a political writer and a memoirist whose opinions and positions I didn't always share but respected.

He lived a long, productive, fulfilling life, by all accounts, including his, so good for him, and may we all be able to say the same when our time comes.

RAY DIPALMA FUNERAL

My old good friend, poet Ray DiPalma's funeral will be held this coming Tuesday, January 10th, at 10AM, at Saint Xavier's church, 46 West 16th Street, just off Sixth Avenue. I am honored to be giving the eulogy. If you knew Ray, I hope to see you there.

NEW YEAR'S WITH MY LITTLE CLAN

me and my progeny, from the viewer's left it's my grandson Donovan, his father, my oldest son Miles, me, my youngest son Flynn in the hat to my left, my granddaughter Elizabeth in front of me, and her mother, my oldest, Caitlin, next to her, in the kitchen of my apartment in New Joyzee on January 2nd, 2017...

HMMMM...

And by "watched them" they mean Congress, not just repubs...who reversed it when they got called out by media and public response...so for all those who kept insisting during the election season that there's no difference between the dems and the repubs, this is proof otherwise...the dems are the ones that created the independent ethics oversight committee, even though they didnt agree with or like some of the results that followed...but the first thing the repubs did when they got control was to eliminate this independent ethics oversight committee (not create a jobs bill or etc.)...and I'm sure they'll try to slip eliminating it into another bill when the press and public aren't looking..."fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a bumpy ride"...

ANOTHER FAVORITE QUOTE

"The universe is not expanding
It's just coming around from the other side."
—recently departed old friend, poet Ray DiPalma (from "Mansion Avenue")

SOME HUMOR TO START THE YEAR

Gotta watch this short film (seven minutes) all the way through:

[PS: This was filmed in my ex-Jersey nieces and nephews-in-law's restaurant—Never Enough Thyme—in Alpharetta, Georgia]