THE GOLDEN GLOBES

Missed the first half hour, but the next two and a half hours was pretty inspiring, lots of powerful speeches and comments about it being time for women to have parity in pay and opportunity and recognition and calling for an end to sexual harassment and abuse across the board in every situation and occupation.

The highlight being Oprah's acceptance speech (she won The Cecile B. DeMille award) that got a standing ovation and a series of stand-up-again ovations and brought tears to the eyes of many of the "stars" in the audience, and I'm sure to many viewers at home, certainly mine.

And Frances McDormand has got to be the coolest and most unpretentious award winner ever with her blunt manner and acceptance speech, and same for Barbra Streisand's little speech before she gave the award for best movie, first pointing out that they announced her as the only woman director to win a Golden Globe and that was in 1984!

And, as others pointed out, LADY BIRD won for best actress in a comedy or musical for Saoirse Ronan, and it won for best comedy or musical movie, but even so the creator of the movie, writer/director/producer Greta Gerwig wasn't even nominated for best director! Time's up indeed.

PEAKY BLINDERS

PEAKY BLINDERS is an English TV show friends have been telling me for a while that I must see. So I binged the first season this week and can see why. Set in Birmingham, England, just after WWI ended, it tells the story of the Shelby family who run a gang called The Peaky Blinders. There was historically a gang called that but mostly before the war. This is a fictional story using some historical characters (like Winston Churchill) but mostly fictional ones to create a compelling mix of fantasy and reality all flavored with brutality.

It's as if Guy Ritchie had been hired to make BOARDWALK EMPIRE. Lots of contemporary music and authentic period other stuff, from costumes to stylized versions of the male haircuts of the time. The star is Cillian Murphy, an actor who never disappoints, and this may be his greatest performance yet. He's supported by spectacular performances by Paul Anderson as his older but less stable brother and Helen McCrory as his fearless clear-eyed (mostly) aunt.

If you don't mind graphic violence, it's an engaging if exaggerated bit of alternative early 20th century English (as seen mostly through the eyes of Irish, "Gypsies," and various other ethnicities) history.

ANOTHER OLD FAVORITE QUOTE

"...human affairs still continue to be the consequence of mistakes, misunderstandings, and myths."   —William Saroyan (from DAYS OF LIFE AND DEATH AND ESCAPE TO THE MOON)

SOME RANDOM PHOTOS OF POETS AND MORE

 Joel Lipman, Michael Harris, Hubert Selby Jr., me, and Eve Brandstein at Poetry In Motion in L.A. c. 1987?

me and Rachel E. Diken Thanksgiving or Christmas in NJ 2016

me and Lee Ann Brown outside The Poetry Project at St. Marks NY early 2017

ANOTHER WAY TO PLAY

That's the name of a big collection of a lifetime of poems (subtitle: Poems 1960-2017) due out on April 24th from Seven Stories Press and distributed by Penguin/Random House.

I am humbled and honored by Seven Stories taking on such a big project for poetry, my poetry, and can't help feeling it is the reward for my lifelong commitment to poetry and my life as a poet.

I am especially blown away, as they used to say, by the quotes about the collection from poets and creators whose work I respect and honor. You can read them (but have to hit the phrase "see more" to get all that are posted) here:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/564282/another-way-to-play-by-michael-lally/9781609808303/

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME is receiving a lot of praise, and rightfully so. It's a sweet, small, quietly revelatory film. Some are criticizing it for being unrealistic in its portrayal of a sexual and romantic connection between two males in 1981, or for using two "straight" actors to play those roles, or for not actually showing their sex acts more explicitly. But I haven't read any criticism, though I suspect it's out there, that one of the two males is seventeen and the other older.

It's not a revolutionary film, and the story it tells is not unique or original. But it's still rare for a love story, or even a love-affair story, to be told with the leads being of the same gender, even if it is a bittersweet but poignant tale. I could quibble with the story details, but the script was written by James Ivory (adapted from a novel by Andre Aciman), who knows how to use brilliantly concise dialogue to tell a story.

The actors are all terrific, Armie Hammer fulfilling the role of an American hunk interloper with a restrained charisma, and Timothee Chalamet playing the smitten young man (though I guess in the terms currently used in our US culture since he is supposed to be seventeen, boy would be the term, or even according to some, "child") with charm and what seemed to me the realistic amount of human confusion.

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME is a throwback to numerous French romantic movies of the 1960s and '70s and '80s, only with the lovers being male instead of the usual heterosexuals. A "coming of age" (or at least of sexual initiation) movie the French have almost always done better than any other culture. The best descriptive term, especially in these times, for the whole ambience of the movie is "civilized"—in the best sense of that term.

And for me, the presence of Amira Casar was the icing on the cake, and as her character's husband, the currently ubiquitous Michael Stuhlbarg doing his usual great job elevating another stereotype (the repressed but oh so civilized art lover/professor) to more than meets the eye. The whole endeavor seemed like a refreshing respite from our current affairs, in all senses of that term.

FAVORITE MOVIES OF 2017

My number one favorite movie of 2017 and
the one I want to see win best picture Oscar:

THE FLORIDA PROJECT (and Brooklyn Prince
should win all the acting awards)

Other favorites (in no particular order):

GET OUT

WONDER WOMAN

LADY BIRD

THE SHAPE OF WATER

THE GLASS CASTLE

THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING MISSOURI

THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES

PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMEN

THE BIG SICK

CALL ME BY YOUR NAME

THE LOST CITY OF Z