I'm still feeling little desire to watch anything unpleasant or too complicated. But I got this on DVD and after running out of all the other DVDs I've been sent by studios for this awards season voting, I decided if I was going to vote for any awards, I should see as much as I can and here this was.
I can say that Saoirse Ronan, the young actress who first impressed me in ATONEMENT, deserves an Oscar nomination for the lead role in this flick. And I'll be surprised if Stanley Tucci doesn't get nominated for his portrayal of "the banality of evil"—but...
The movie itself—based on the novel a lot of people recommended to me but I never read—is a failure to my mind. Maybe it's the brain surgery recovery that's influencing my perspective, but the attempt to marry the other worldly special effects that are supposed to represent some other dimension between life and death, or between death and some kind of everlasting after life, just didn't work for me.
They worked visually at times—in an almost Disney smash Yellow Submarine kind of way (I may have meant "slash" but I like what my post-op brain came up with there better)—but not as ballast to the deeply disturbing "realities" of this fictional story more-or-less based on too real if sensational stories we've read or heard about periodically since they became seemingly (but I suspect not statistically) more common since the missing-child-on-the-milk-carton era began in the 1970s.
But this flick felt so exploitative to me I wanted to turn it off and was glad when it was over. And so much besides the attempt to make the story palatable with the "'tween heaven and earth" special effects didn't work for me, like Mark Wahlberg as the supposedly loving father.
Who decided to cast him in the role of an accountant whose obsessive hobby is ships in a bottle? Wahlbeg has proven himself to be a more than competent actor in a lot of movies, but whether fairly or not the roles that work best for him are the tough street characters, whether heroes or villains, not confused bereft accountants.
It doesn't work, nor do many plot points that make no sense. Wahlberg's character transfers his obsessiveness to the hunt for the predator but he ignores the odd behaving single middle-aged man who lives across the street in this suburban neighborhood of young families and who happens to obsessively make little girl doll houses and little girl doll house furniture etc. and hasn't lived there that long, it turns out, and whose past any obsessive could easily research even before google to discover missing landladies etc.
There's a lot of that, including a devoted mother who abandons her living children to go live in the sun in California and work on a farm leaving these kids to deal with the grieving obsessive confused, maybe losing his mind father, and an over-the-top alcoholic nicotine fiend character played by Susan Sarandon who's supposed to be the maternal grandmother? Was the novel this bad? Or is it just the limitations of my brain-op recovery that make this all seem so ridiculously contrived to milk every element of this greeting card version of horror and despair?
Anyway, I hope Ronan gets some awards for her role, because without it I would have pulled an Elvis or a Jerry lee Lewis and shot the TV I was watching this on. If I owned a gun and if I wasn't quite aware that I could just turn it off. Which maybe I should have, but I was hoping that somehow the ending would justify all the inconsistencies and miscasting etc. I was being put through. It only made them worse.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
EAST OF WEST LA
This new book—subtitled SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN MCCOLLISTER—is one of my favorite works of art from the year just past, or the entire decade for that matter.
Kevin is a friend, I admit, but he is also a wonderful poet I discovered back in L.A. in the 1980s and spent the next two decades trying to get someone to publish his work. His poems come from the walks he's been taking since he moved to L.A. but around parts of L.A. rarely seen in the media—making them basically unknown to the general public. He describes things he sees on his walks or people he encounters and sometimes the thoughts and feelings he has while on these walks.
The clear language and direct honesty of his observations gives his poetry an immediacy and intimacy, as well as what the critics sometimes used to cite my poetry for—""rawness"—but coupled with a self-awareness and intellect that made me often describe him as a more insightful and intellectually curious Bukowski.
After years of having his poems rejected plus the general decline in the publishing of anything not connected to the academy and/or mass culture—despite the growing number of fans his readings, and my and other poets' enthusiasm for his work, inspired—he decided to buy a camera and take that on his walks around the unheralded neighborhoods of Los Angeles.
And then, he started a blog, first called JIMSONWEED and later changed to EAST OF WEST LA, the subtitle of which is "I'm photographing L.A.—all of it"—which consists of photos he takes that are as singular, and as much a combination of that "rawness" plus sensitivity, as his poetry is and with the same kind of power. Now and then he writes something about the people and objects and places he photographs, but most of the time the photos just stand for themselves.
One of the poets who became interested in Kevin's poetry is Brooks Roddan, who considered doing a book of Kevin's poems. But when he discovered the blog he changed his mind and talked Kevin into this book of selected photos.
It's a relatively small book—only 60 pages and the page size is surprisingly small for an art book, a little under 6x8. But it has that unique-art-object feeling that so many of my favorite books have. I can't recommend it highly enough.
To see Kevin's artistry when it comes to his photos just go to the link to his blog on the right, EAST OF WEST LA, and check out anything. Then order the book where it says at the top of his blog. To see the artistry of his poetry you'll have to wait a little longer I guess.
[PS: I think this is the first book I've posted on since the brain surgery. Not surprising it's an art book of photographs since I haven't gotten back into books of only prose yet. I've always dug art books, photographs and reproductions of paintings or photos of sculptures etc. but I've also recently been contemplating buying a few books that would be called "graphic" non-fiction, i.e. drawings or cartoons telling with not too many words real stories, a post-op change in taste.]
[PPS: Here's a link to an article from yesterday's L. A. Times about EAST OF WEST LA]
Friday, January 1, 2010
HAPPY NEW YEAR PS
Thought I'd add to my earlier post that I don't mean to be glib about my recovery vs. others' suffering. I know I'm a lucky man and that others aren't so lucky and in no way did I or do I mean to diminish the difficulties of anyone's pain, of any kind. May anyone who is in any kind of deep pain at this moment find the peace of acceptance and love in their hearts to help them through it.
As for me, [seven weeks after brain surgery this first day of the new year] just wanted to share a photo I finally figured out how to take on my computer several days ago. Seeing the result made me wonder why they haven't made these computer photo-booth thingees work so that the image comes out correctly instead of mirror reversed. (That's the canvas back of one of those movie set elevated chairs from the only time I was given my own named chair on a TV show (that flopped—BERRENGERS) and yes, that's a little soul patch my youngest talked me into cultivating after the operation. I'm growing fond of it.)
[PS: My oldest son, Miles, sent me the flipped version of this photo, so it can be done if you know how (though I still think the computer with all its other bells and whistles should do it automatically), so here's that version. Now the thing I notice that doesn't match reality is how distorted the scale is—my hands look larger than they are and the movie chair back name thing looks much smaller etc. than real life here in my little alcove I call my office.]
As for me, [seven weeks after brain surgery this first day of the new year] just wanted to share a photo I finally figured out how to take on my computer several days ago. Seeing the result made me wonder why they haven't made these computer photo-booth thingees work so that the image comes out correctly instead of mirror reversed. (That's the canvas back of one of those movie set elevated chairs from the only time I was given my own named chair on a TV show (that flopped—BERRENGERS) and yes, that's a little soul patch my youngest talked me into cultivating after the operation. I'm growing fond of it.)
[PS: My oldest son, Miles, sent me the flipped version of this photo, so it can be done if you know how (though I still think the computer with all its other bells and whistles should do it automatically), so here's that version. Now the thing I notice that doesn't match reality is how distorted the scale is—my hands look larger than they are and the movie chair back name thing looks much smaller etc. than real life here in my little alcove I call my office.]
HAPPY NEW YEAR QUOTE
And why shouldn't we all be happy today—we're alive aren't we? I know there's terribly sad and complicated circumstances in most of our lives on some level, and that for some of us, or some of those we love, 2010 may be their last year. And I know that suffering and deep disappointment can twist the heart into hazardous shapes that sometimes feel impossible to untangle.
For any and all in that kind of mental or emotional or psychological or physical pain, I offer sincere sympathy. But for myself, unable to do anything more than eat and carry on a limited kind of discourse only a few weeks ago due to my traumatized brain, and now with most of my motor and cognitive capacities restored, I think of these simple lines from Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS that I've quoted before and probably will again:
"(It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.)"
For any and all in that kind of mental or emotional or psychological or physical pain, I offer sincere sympathy. But for myself, unable to do anything more than eat and carry on a limited kind of discourse only a few weeks ago due to my traumatized brain, and now with most of my motor and cognitive capacities restored, I think of these simple lines from Walt Whitman's LEAVES OF GRASS that I've quoted before and probably will again:
"(It seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy,
Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave let him know he has enough.)"
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
PUBLIC ENEMIES
This Johnny Depp movie seemed to come and go, but I never felt the urge to see it. I finally got to see it on DVD and now know why. There are a lot of terrific actors in it, and not just the leads. But the direction and writing are a little less than terrific at times.
It's like the movie can't make up it's mind whether to be BONNIE & CLYDE or ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. There are bits where the soundtrack's lively and almost light and joyful, ala B&C moving the action and the images along like an upbeat song.
Then there's long drawn out scenes where it seems to take every character three or ten times as long to say their lines than it would you or I in real life, or for that matter, screen actors back in the 1930s, the era of The Great Depression that the movie's set in. And we know we're supposed to be taking these slow scenes more seriously because the music underlying them is either incredibly epic, to the point of almost parodying what old Italian-influenced epics used to sound like, or it's Billie Holiday singing on a recording she made after the 1930s.
But why worry about veracity in a film that has John Dillinger (Depp) as the most wanted man in the USA—Public Enemy Number One—get out of his car with a gun in his hand and walk half way across the middle of a street in the midst of dozens of cops holding machine guns and pause while another one of those drawn out scenes is drawn out some more before he turns and walks back to his car and gets in with all these cops and citizens not noticing an armed non-cop who happens to be the most famous and sought criminal of his day etc.
But there's so many great actors in this flick that I still enjoyed watching it and was just sorry that some of them didn't have bigger parts. There are the obvious ones like Stephen Lang, long one of my favorites and he does a great job, ending up with the last words in the flick.
And of course Depp is always fun to watch work even when the writing and direction don't work so well.
And his co-stars Christian Bale and Marion Cottilard are also fun to watch, though their acting styles are almost exact opposites. Bale being best as the stoic handsome man-of-few words. In scenes where he plays that in this film his work is fun to watch. In other scenes where he's trying to maintain a good old boy accent or a 1930s G-man straight shooter posture, he's almost unintentionally funny.
Cottilard on the other hand plays her mob moll character with a lot more range, but because of the direction and writing, in some scenes she seems like a bright new discovery (even though most of us remember her from her awe inspiring Oscar winning role in LA VIE EN ROSE as Edith Piaf) and in others like she's in the wrong movie, at least to me.
But there are many smaller roles in this attempt at an epic, some that work and some that don't (the actor playing Baby Face Nelson is so over the top I thought I was back in O BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME? only in that movie it works because it's intentional, in PUBLIC ENEMIES it doesn't because it isn't).
I'd like to just mention three undersung film actors who don't work nearly enough, and all of whom I consider friends even though I haven't seen most of them in years.
James Russo—who blew me away the first time I saw him act (before I met him) in the debut run of the stage play EXTREMITIES—has an almost wordless part at the beginning of PUBLIC ENEMIES as an older convict who helps in a breakout but is shot and literally slips away from the other escapees.
Don Harvey's another terrific stage actor who I did a small film with a long time ago and who I first noticed as an actor before I met him in the film CASUALTIES OF WAR. In PUBLIC ENEMIES he has only one small scene with Depp and Cottilard as an anonymous customer trying to get his coat at a nightclub hatcheck stand. But he plays it totally realistically.
And John Michael Bolger, an actor I've known well for years. He has a relatively big part in PUBLIC ENEMIES, in terms of all the character actors. He plays a crooked Chicago detective who persuades "the woman in red"—as we knew her as kids from the legend we grew up with—to give Dillinger up to the cops in the famous scene at the Biograph. Only in PUBLIC ENEMIES she's the woman in orange and white. Bolger plays his scenes so authentically you wish he had a bigger part.
Man, a gangster flick with those three actors in the leads—Russo, Harvey and Bolger—now that I'd pay some money to see. As it is, I had to be satisfied with watching a too-long attempt to recreate a 'thirties gangster flick without a 'thirties feel for the times and the movies of those times.
PS: As for my post-brain surgery progress, well watching this complicated flick was a milestone for me, though the rhythms of it may have seemed even more uneven due to my still recovering to some extent. And I drove my car today for the first time in a few days but my brain wasn't functioning entirely the way it used to. When I got in and started it the radio was on. I had my friend Sue with me and it was too much stimuli so I turned the radio off. Only I pushed the wrong button (I drive a Prius which is run by buttons) and turned the car off instead, missing the radio button by many inches (and the starter is a big round one the size of a half dollar, while the radio one is a slim little rectangle, not easy to mistake them, which I didn't, my mind just confused what I intended). So, life goes on, interestingly and carefully and joyfully and mildly confusingly.
It's like the movie can't make up it's mind whether to be BONNIE & CLYDE or ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. There are bits where the soundtrack's lively and almost light and joyful, ala B&C moving the action and the images along like an upbeat song.
Then there's long drawn out scenes where it seems to take every character three or ten times as long to say their lines than it would you or I in real life, or for that matter, screen actors back in the 1930s, the era of The Great Depression that the movie's set in. And we know we're supposed to be taking these slow scenes more seriously because the music underlying them is either incredibly epic, to the point of almost parodying what old Italian-influenced epics used to sound like, or it's Billie Holiday singing on a recording she made after the 1930s.
But why worry about veracity in a film that has John Dillinger (Depp) as the most wanted man in the USA—Public Enemy Number One—get out of his car with a gun in his hand and walk half way across the middle of a street in the midst of dozens of cops holding machine guns and pause while another one of those drawn out scenes is drawn out some more before he turns and walks back to his car and gets in with all these cops and citizens not noticing an armed non-cop who happens to be the most famous and sought criminal of his day etc.
But there's so many great actors in this flick that I still enjoyed watching it and was just sorry that some of them didn't have bigger parts. There are the obvious ones like Stephen Lang, long one of my favorites and he does a great job, ending up with the last words in the flick.
And of course Depp is always fun to watch work even when the writing and direction don't work so well.
And his co-stars Christian Bale and Marion Cottilard are also fun to watch, though their acting styles are almost exact opposites. Bale being best as the stoic handsome man-of-few words. In scenes where he plays that in this film his work is fun to watch. In other scenes where he's trying to maintain a good old boy accent or a 1930s G-man straight shooter posture, he's almost unintentionally funny.
Cottilard on the other hand plays her mob moll character with a lot more range, but because of the direction and writing, in some scenes she seems like a bright new discovery (even though most of us remember her from her awe inspiring Oscar winning role in LA VIE EN ROSE as Edith Piaf) and in others like she's in the wrong movie, at least to me.
But there are many smaller roles in this attempt at an epic, some that work and some that don't (the actor playing Baby Face Nelson is so over the top I thought I was back in O BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME? only in that movie it works because it's intentional, in PUBLIC ENEMIES it doesn't because it isn't).
I'd like to just mention three undersung film actors who don't work nearly enough, and all of whom I consider friends even though I haven't seen most of them in years.
James Russo—who blew me away the first time I saw him act (before I met him) in the debut run of the stage play EXTREMITIES—has an almost wordless part at the beginning of PUBLIC ENEMIES as an older convict who helps in a breakout but is shot and literally slips away from the other escapees.
Don Harvey's another terrific stage actor who I did a small film with a long time ago and who I first noticed as an actor before I met him in the film CASUALTIES OF WAR. In PUBLIC ENEMIES he has only one small scene with Depp and Cottilard as an anonymous customer trying to get his coat at a nightclub hatcheck stand. But he plays it totally realistically.
And John Michael Bolger, an actor I've known well for years. He has a relatively big part in PUBLIC ENEMIES, in terms of all the character actors. He plays a crooked Chicago detective who persuades "the woman in red"—as we knew her as kids from the legend we grew up with—to give Dillinger up to the cops in the famous scene at the Biograph. Only in PUBLIC ENEMIES she's the woman in orange and white. Bolger plays his scenes so authentically you wish he had a bigger part.
Man, a gangster flick with those three actors in the leads—Russo, Harvey and Bolger—now that I'd pay some money to see. As it is, I had to be satisfied with watching a too-long attempt to recreate a 'thirties gangster flick without a 'thirties feel for the times and the movies of those times.
PS: As for my post-brain surgery progress, well watching this complicated flick was a milestone for me, though the rhythms of it may have seemed even more uneven due to my still recovering to some extent. And I drove my car today for the first time in a few days but my brain wasn't functioning entirely the way it used to. When I got in and started it the radio was on. I had my friend Sue with me and it was too much stimuli so I turned the radio off. Only I pushed the wrong button (I drive a Prius which is run by buttons) and turned the car off instead, missing the radio button by many inches (and the starter is a big round one the size of a half dollar, while the radio one is a slim little rectangle, not easy to mistake them, which I didn't, my mind just confused what I intended). So, life goes on, interestingly and carefully and joyfully and mildly confusingly.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
SOME CHRISTMAS PS'S
This is a great family time, despite all the challenges and usual family problems that most of us face. So I thought I'd share a little beyond my children to my immediate progeny (all of whom have been in my apartment for the past few days, the first time all my kids and grandkids have been with me without their spouses etc.) and beyond.
So first of all, here's a holiday take from my slightly younger cousin Kathi, who has tried to comment on some recent posts and couldn't get it to happen, so I thought I'd quote an e mail she sent me that gives a different version of some of my Christmas stories (she and her sister lived with my Uncle Lydie (full name Michael Lydon Lally) and my Aunt Peggy and my Irish immigrant grandparents down the street from my family's house, where there were six siblings still living including my dear departed sister Joan and next door four cousins that included David, who would become another cop in the extended family):
"Hi My Cool –
If you have forgotten, your Uncle Lydie’s favorite story about your toddler years concerned him dubbing you 'Mike' and you responding to him with your hands on your hips: 'My’s not Mike…My’s My Cool.' I always thought that was so cute because I didn’t know you as a toddler – not yet a sparkle in my dad’s eye - and very appropriate…a harbinger, since I always thought you were the coolest being on the planet. I have been reading your blog and keeping up with your recovery. Amazing how you can now and have been able to analyze your thought processes and intuitive reactions, every day improving. See? Still the coolest guy on the planet. Perhaps someday you will collect all of the blog entries to publish. In addition to the assist such a book might help creative persons figuring out the paths of creativity, it could also help anyone who might be facing their own fear of upcoming surgery. I’m sure the medical industry would be interested in such a book as well.
I have tried [many times] to respond in 'comments' to your blog, but alas…either I am hopelessly technically deficient, or my security system is too damn vigilant. I’ve been crazed with Christmas plans – shopping, wrapping, making fudge and other candies, planning the trip to Connecticut, packing, yadda yadda… and should have responded to your blog sooner via email – but here I am now, so very happy that this brain surgery was successful and not fraught with bad news. I was one of those 'pray every moment' people when Irene told me you were in a bit of trouble.
Reading the last two blog entries about Christmas prompted me to write now – because your memory of standing in the cold waiting for the trees to be bought or donated reminded me of what I like to call the years of insane Christmases on Hixon Place. There was the 'year of the ice skates' when Mickie and I came down to discover brand new white sparkling skates under the tree – only to discover them gone the next day, replaced by hand-me-downs. In Mickie’s case, they were Joan’s gently used ones…and in my case, David’s black hockey skates – hardly used. It seems that your dad had someone in town that 'needed' the new ones more than we did. Hahahha!! Then there was the 'year of the sleds' – where we both saw brand new sleds under the tree – and then they were gone – replaced by our old sleds – painted up to look new. And the year of the 'kitten' which was brought in late Christmas Eve because the only pet grandma would allow was a 'ratter'. The damn thing sprung out of the Christmas tree and attached itself with its little deadly claws to my face. We remember these and other crazy things each year, but not with bitterness or envy, or even a sense of umbrage. We laugh heartily about it all, [a very consistent Lally trait through all the generations] trying to imagine what was going on in our parents’ inner life. They were bizarre, bawdy, and fun and also malfunctioning alcoholics that loved each other passionately yet fought like vipers. Christmas just brought out all of those traits. The piece of my life I am most grateful for is getting to know my father sober for 20 years before he died – and my mother sober for 9 years before she died.
Speaking of this particular Christmas, it was lovely. How can Christmas not be lovely in Brookfield CT, home of Mickie’s youngest, Patrick, his wife Susan, and their two spectacular kids? We went to an afternoon Mass Christmas Eve to watch the youngest grands [John Michael’s kids] in their pageant. Michael Lydon, 4, was one of the three Kings and John Peter, 5, was the innkeeper that had room in his stable. Soooo cute. Everyone was there with the exception of Joseph and his new bride Carrie, who traveled to Kansas to Carrie’s family.
I am still praying for you and I pray that this new year, 2010, brings you even more inner peace. It is wonderful to read how Cait and Miles are helping you in your recovery. How blessed you are to have such caring and loving children. Keep up the good work.
Love,
Kathi"
And then this morning I got turned on to another family goodie by my older son who got his 11-year-old boy to show me a little Youtube video he, my grandson, made, so I share that here too, a little grandfatherly chest puffing. (That's his father's, my older son's, classic shoebox Ford in the snow in the early shots.)
So first of all, here's a holiday take from my slightly younger cousin Kathi, who has tried to comment on some recent posts and couldn't get it to happen, so I thought I'd quote an e mail she sent me that gives a different version of some of my Christmas stories (she and her sister lived with my Uncle Lydie (full name Michael Lydon Lally) and my Aunt Peggy and my Irish immigrant grandparents down the street from my family's house, where there were six siblings still living including my dear departed sister Joan and next door four cousins that included David, who would become another cop in the extended family):
"Hi My Cool –
If you have forgotten, your Uncle Lydie’s favorite story about your toddler years concerned him dubbing you 'Mike' and you responding to him with your hands on your hips: 'My’s not Mike…My’s My Cool.' I always thought that was so cute because I didn’t know you as a toddler – not yet a sparkle in my dad’s eye - and very appropriate…a harbinger, since I always thought you were the coolest being on the planet. I have been reading your blog and keeping up with your recovery. Amazing how you can now and have been able to analyze your thought processes and intuitive reactions, every day improving. See? Still the coolest guy on the planet. Perhaps someday you will collect all of the blog entries to publish. In addition to the assist such a book might help creative persons figuring out the paths of creativity, it could also help anyone who might be facing their own fear of upcoming surgery. I’m sure the medical industry would be interested in such a book as well.
I have tried [many times] to respond in 'comments' to your blog, but alas…either I am hopelessly technically deficient, or my security system is too damn vigilant. I’ve been crazed with Christmas plans – shopping, wrapping, making fudge and other candies, planning the trip to Connecticut, packing, yadda yadda… and should have responded to your blog sooner via email – but here I am now, so very happy that this brain surgery was successful and not fraught with bad news. I was one of those 'pray every moment' people when Irene told me you were in a bit of trouble.
Reading the last two blog entries about Christmas prompted me to write now – because your memory of standing in the cold waiting for the trees to be bought or donated reminded me of what I like to call the years of insane Christmases on Hixon Place. There was the 'year of the ice skates' when Mickie and I came down to discover brand new white sparkling skates under the tree – only to discover them gone the next day, replaced by hand-me-downs. In Mickie’s case, they were Joan’s gently used ones…and in my case, David’s black hockey skates – hardly used. It seems that your dad had someone in town that 'needed' the new ones more than we did. Hahahha!! Then there was the 'year of the sleds' – where we both saw brand new sleds under the tree – and then they were gone – replaced by our old sleds – painted up to look new. And the year of the 'kitten' which was brought in late Christmas Eve because the only pet grandma would allow was a 'ratter'. The damn thing sprung out of the Christmas tree and attached itself with its little deadly claws to my face. We remember these and other crazy things each year, but not with bitterness or envy, or even a sense of umbrage. We laugh heartily about it all, [a very consistent Lally trait through all the generations] trying to imagine what was going on in our parents’ inner life. They were bizarre, bawdy, and fun and also malfunctioning alcoholics that loved each other passionately yet fought like vipers. Christmas just brought out all of those traits. The piece of my life I am most grateful for is getting to know my father sober for 20 years before he died – and my mother sober for 9 years before she died.
Speaking of this particular Christmas, it was lovely. How can Christmas not be lovely in Brookfield CT, home of Mickie’s youngest, Patrick, his wife Susan, and their two spectacular kids? We went to an afternoon Mass Christmas Eve to watch the youngest grands [John Michael’s kids] in their pageant. Michael Lydon, 4, was one of the three Kings and John Peter, 5, was the innkeeper that had room in his stable. Soooo cute. Everyone was there with the exception of Joseph and his new bride Carrie, who traveled to Kansas to Carrie’s family.
I am still praying for you and I pray that this new year, 2010, brings you even more inner peace. It is wonderful to read how Cait and Miles are helping you in your recovery. How blessed you are to have such caring and loving children. Keep up the good work.
Love,
Kathi"
And then this morning I got turned on to another family goodie by my older son who got his 11-year-old boy to show me a little Youtube video he, my grandson, made, so I share that here too, a little grandfatherly chest puffing. (That's his father's, my older son's, classic shoebox Ford in the snow in the early shots.)
Monday, December 28, 2009
JULIE & JULIA
I notice I also get tired a lot more easily since the brain surgery. Which has allowed me to skip things that seem too tedious, like articles I'm reading etc. Quite a liberation since I have always had a reading compulsion that made me need to read every word from the front cover of a book to the back cover, or in a magazine etc. Nice to be able to realize I don't want to read something and just stop.
It's like that with a lot of things right now. And for all I know may stay that way, which has its benefits even beyond the one I mention above. Like I watched another DVD sent to me for the awards season, this one of JULIE & JULIA, and like the one for CRAZY HEART, this one skipped too.
But only in two spots and very briefly. In the old days I'd feel compelled to go out and find another copy to see what I missed, but these post-skull-sawed-open days that seems unnecessary. I enjoyed the flick anyway, a lot. I didn't have any problem with the Amy Adams parts as some of my friends did. Although I did prefer the Meryl Streep parts only because as with IT'S COMPLICATED I again found Streep incredibly attractive as Julia Childs!
I don't know if it's the changes in my brain or what, but I never found Streep attractive before. I mean I recognized what others found physically attractive in her and I dug some of her acting, particularly her comic roles, but she just wasn't my type or anywhere near it. But her acting in IT'S COMPLICATED especially, but also in JULIE & JULIA, just made me want to wrap my arms around her and...
Anyway, it's an incredible acting job, and she gets a lot of support from Stanley Tucci playing her slightly unbelievably always loving and understanding husband. But despite the obvious distortions of reality in almost all the characters in this movie, it's still a unique take on relationships, I found, and worth watching if only for that, let alone the Oscar worthy performance by Streep.
It's like that with a lot of things right now. And for all I know may stay that way, which has its benefits even beyond the one I mention above. Like I watched another DVD sent to me for the awards season, this one of JULIE & JULIA, and like the one for CRAZY HEART, this one skipped too.
But only in two spots and very briefly. In the old days I'd feel compelled to go out and find another copy to see what I missed, but these post-skull-sawed-open days that seems unnecessary. I enjoyed the flick anyway, a lot. I didn't have any problem with the Amy Adams parts as some of my friends did. Although I did prefer the Meryl Streep parts only because as with IT'S COMPLICATED I again found Streep incredibly attractive as Julia Childs!
I don't know if it's the changes in my brain or what, but I never found Streep attractive before. I mean I recognized what others found physically attractive in her and I dug some of her acting, particularly her comic roles, but she just wasn't my type or anywhere near it. But her acting in IT'S COMPLICATED especially, but also in JULIE & JULIA, just made me want to wrap my arms around her and...
Anyway, it's an incredible acting job, and she gets a lot of support from Stanley Tucci playing her slightly unbelievably always loving and understanding husband. But despite the obvious distortions of reality in almost all the characters in this movie, it's still a unique take on relationships, I found, and worth watching if only for that, let alone the Oscar worthy performance by Streep.
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