LATEST FACEBOOK POSTERS ROUNDUP

LEONARD NIMOY R.I.P.

IF YOU'RE IN OR AROUND MANHATTAN ON MARCH 7TH

[click on it to enlarge and read the small print]

CITIZENFOUR

CITIZENFOUR won the Oscar Sunday night, and filmmaker, Laura Poitras, deserved the win and gave a good acceptance speech though her nervousness and self consciousness made it come out a little stiffly. As others have observed, what makes her film work is her falling into a major story (or actually being chosen by Snowden because of her previous films) by being present for and filming the most dramatic part of the story's timeline, i.e. the exposure by Edward Snowden of the massive spying on U.S. citizens being done by government agencies (here and in the U.K. as well) and then the exposure of Snowden himself as the source of the whistle blowing and the permanent altering of his life and his future as a result.

As we all know, Sowden is stuck in Russia, (ironically, since Putin's government is worse than our government in terms of repressing political activism partly through the collection of personal information on private citizens) because it is one of the only countries that would have him, just to demonstrate their independence from the USA. There's a good chance if Russia hadn't taken him in he'd have been at worst "disappeared" or at best brought back to the USA to face a trial based on a too broad almost century-old law that would have put him behind bars for the rest of his life, a sacrifice he was willing to make if necessary to let the rest of us know we were being spied on and lied to about it.

It's an almost accidentally great documentary, just as Snowden seems to be an almost accidentally heroic figure, in the right place at the right time with the right beliefs about our freedoms supposedly guaranteed by The Constitution and the courage to act on those beliefs. Snowden is a true "American hero." Any politician who doesn't get that is suspicious and should be called out whenever they speechify about the freedom we citizens of the USA supposedly have.

NEW FAVORITE QUOTE

"Fear is the condom of life. It doesn't allow you to enjoy things."  —Alejandro G. Inarritu (director of Birdman backstage at the Oscars)

THE OSCARS SHOW

Maybe I say this every year, but tonight's (technically last night's) Oscar Award show was one of the weirdest ever it seemed to me. Neil Patrick Harris is mostly adorable no matter how old he is, even in his underwear (if you didn't see it take my word) but at times his adorableness seemed to get a little dismissive and even nasty, or maybe that's because I believe Snowden didn't commit treason, etc.

There seemed to be many moments when the presenters or Harris seemed unsettled or distracted or unsure of what was going on. I saw feathers dropping a couple of times so guessed maybe a bird got into the place and was flying around and it, or people trying to catch it, was the distraction.

But that couldn't explain Terrence Howard's weird almost breakdown when he was introducing three of the nominated films. It seemed like the teleprompter wasn't working, or something, but he could have just said that and not started to cry and seemingly be having frightening flashbacks or worse.

Most of the winners were predictable if well earned. I'm happy Patricia Arquette won for Best Supporting Actress for BOYHOOD, she earned it, and I was even happier to see how terrific she looked in her gown despite the fact she doesn't conform to the usual movie actress skinny or even just slim look. She looked healthy and sexy to me, and she gave the best acceptance speech, which for the most part weren't that memorable. But I think BOYHOOD deserved more than just that award, it's a precedent setting enormously impressive achievement and should have won best picture for my taste.

As usual the show went way over the scheduled time allotted, and the last Harris joke about his predictions could have been cut, as well as the many references to it throughout the show, especially since the payoff did not live up to the build up, and it would have made the show fifteen minutes or more shorter.

The best thing about the show was that the Academy obviously felt stung by all the criticism aimed at how white the nominees were this year (though mostly people meant the acting categories) so there were more "black" faces presenting awards this year than ever, by a lot. And the tribute by Lady Gaga to the songs from THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Unexpectedly moving and show stompingly powerful.

Common and John Legend's performance of GLORY from the film SELMA was also a powerful moment and seemed to have the greatest impact on the live audience of anything in the show, but despite Common's obvious skills his performance and speech, good as they were, seemed a bit forced to me, [I liked John Legend's part of their GLORY acceptance speech better, it felt less "canned"] whereas Gaga sang CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN with such amazing control it brought me to tears (as did GLORY for many in the Oscar show audience, but it's just not as good a song to me despite Legend's superb singing).

Life goes on and by June we'll all have a hard time remembering who was nominated or even who won, let alone who was there. But I'll still watch it next year, as always, because it's live and always on some level, pretty unexpectedly weird.

PHYLLIS WAT'S WU GOING THERE

It seems so appropriate that the only photo I could find online of the cover of poet Phyllis Wat's latest book, WU GOING THERE, is radically reduced in size, as though it was deliberately being humble in announcing itself. Much like Wat's poems.

Though that seemingly natural humility is supported by an iron like certainty in its word selection and juxtaposition. In other words, her poems illustrate the confidence of a poet who knows the language she writes is her own, that it's her voice and the gift she has for articulating it that drives her poetry and thus it speaks for itself with no need for calling any extra attention to it.

This book has become a new favorite of mine. Pick it up and read around in it and I think it will be obvious why. Wat has the same kind of notational dailiness to her poetry as another favorite poet of mine but who I've been reading for many more decades, Joanne Kyger. But where Kyger has the intense succinctness of Emily Dickinson combined with a kind of indirect Buddhist detachment, Wat has a more architectural approach to structure, like some of Frank Gehry's early and smaller creations.

That may all be a little too opaque, so here are two poems from WU GOING THERE to illustrate:

"A Walnut Looks Like a Brain
  
I was reading about flying brains,
   possible alternate universes,
      Boltzmann's brains to be exact... he's a cosmologist.
   About half the people in the U.S. are crackpots.
      About half thinks science is nuts.
I was orderly from the get-go,
   a kind of ascetic.
I thought of mathematics
   as matter matics;
      it limited the options,
         eliminated.
My home is an Indian bedspread,
   wooden eating bowl, saki-jar flower vase,
      hand's width of book.
         Master the details."


"Sensifying

I'm an animist;
I think rocks think.
Exceedingly slowly, but deeply as well.
Brains and legs make the world more uncertain.
Satisfyingly so, to be sure."

There's longer poems and poems that spread out more on the page and resonate with space and placement, but the two above give a sense of the voice in all of them, humbly unique.