A FEW COMPARISONS TO SET THE RECORD(S) STRAIGHT

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ARBITRAGE

Saw this tonight and have to say, felt tense through almost the entire film. On the surface (and underneath for that matter) it's like one of those 1940s melodrama/thrillers that often were labeled "women's movies" like most of Joan Crawford's oeuvre (as they say). Only in this case Richard Gere is Crawford. And, like her, he makes it work (full disclosure, I used to know Richard and liked him very much, he's a nice guy in my experience).

The story is contrived and half the plot points don't hold up when considered in the light of street lamps on your way home, but while you're watching the film, or at least while I was, I bit every hook and held on. Because, though some of the storyline twists don't really make sense in retrospect, the story moves so fast and and plot points pile up so high I made quick adjustments (yeah, I was hurt in an accident and it looked like internal bleeding, but I survived by holding the part of my torso where the pain came from and my bruised spleen supposedly was located while ignoring doctors orders to stay in bed for a week and went out to the Peppermint Lounge instead to dance the night away) etc. so I could keep up with the unfolding story.

It really made me tense, while at the same time I was admiring some of the acting and critically observing the rest. Gere is up to a lot of his old tricks but, again, they work. And Susan Sarandon is as always brilliant. Tim Roth plays a New York cop with his usual panache (though I kept thinking wtf there aren't actors who are actual New Yorkers available?!). A young actor named Nate Parker does a great job with a more or less thankless role and cameos by all sorts of interesting actors would have been enough for me to have felt I got my money's worth.

I thought Brit Marling as the daughter, one of the major roles in the film, was uneven, some moments worked perfectly, some didn't. But that didn't keep me from still feeling the rush of tension and fearful expectations. Great soundtrack too, and great tracking shots and editing. A "great" film: no. A great escape for a couple of hours: yes. I forgot what had been on my mind before the movie started. Which is one of the main reasons I go to movies and watch them on TV. And though I had read somewhere that Gere looked his character's age, sixty, I was thinking he looked better than ever with some lines of experience and that leonine gray mane. Like the kind of wealthy successful character he played, and is.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"The first thing the whites liked to do with a great hostile was to dress him up and whisk him off to Washington to meet the president and other high potentates, thus, it was hoped, impressing him with the immensity of white power. It usually worked, too. Even Sitting Bull, once he saw the east, was impressed by white power, but was correspondingly depressed by the homeless beggars he encountered on the streets of the white men's cities. Such a lack of charity would never have been allowed among the Sioux, he pointed out."

—Larry McMurtry from CRAZY HORSE

HERE'S WHAT I'VE BEEN WRITING FOR AWHILE (BUT SHE DOES IT BETTER)

Read it here.

BEFORE THE FALL

Found this photo of me and my late oldest brother sometime before he moved to Japan, where he lived and worked until a few years before he passed not that long ago. He remained a humble, moral, committed, spiritual, good Franciscan friar to the end. It wasn't until I was older and went through my own "spiritual growth" that we came to be as close as you would want to be to a sibling you loved.

He was a beacon to me through all my wayward years, never judging me, at least not to me, always praising my attempts to help create a world with more love and kindness, tolerance and fairness. I miss him, as I do all my siblings who have passed. Which is reassuring, because I couldn't wait to get away from them when I was a rebellious teenager. Isn't life a beautiful mystery?    

BEST TV POLITICAL AD EVER? (OR ONE OF THE)

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