What I've Been Doing

Photo by the inimitable Carl Jackson,

I bet you're wondering what I've been doing since I last posted when the year was young -- only two days -- and so filled with promise and resolution and new beginnings. Well, we're eighteen days in, Reader, and so far my favorite thing about the new year is writing 2020 instead of 2019. It looks better, it sounds better, and I'm hoping it gets better.

So, what have I been doing?

1. Reading: I've read Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney which I really liked (she's just such a readable writer), but I didn't like it nearly as much as last year's Normal People. I'm still reading The Water Dancer by Ta Nehisi Coates and finding it difficult. Dare I say he's a better non-fiction writer (beyond brilliant) than fiction writer? As the kids say, IMHO. I'm almost finished with the sensational The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah Broome. It's so good. In the bathroom I've got this great book called Sharp by Michelle Dean.  The subtitle is "Ten Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion," and so far I've gotten through the first profile on Dorothy Parker. I'm not one of those people who spends a lot of time in the bathroom on the toilette or doing my toilette, but I do like to pick up something interesting and short to read that I can come back to and easily pick up where I left off. I've also just begun to read Garth Greenwell's Cleanness because two of my writing mentors recommended it, and the editor of MGDB* touted it as well. I read Greenwell's earlier book, so I'm expecting this to be as good. The sex is very, very graphic. By the way.
2. Going to movies: I've seen "1917," which sucked me in and under as I've always been partial to the Great War, if one can be partial toward wars at all. Aside from sitting on the edge of my seat throughout the movie and being enthralled by the cinematography and the two beautiful co-stars, the main feeling I had was a sort of bemused rage and incredulous sorrow. WE MUST DO ANYTHING WE CAN TO MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO MORE WARS. Honestly, nearly every war movie I've ever watched has manipulated me into this emphatic imperative. Wars are hideous. There is no glory or honor in them. They are madness and insane, and anyone who justifies killing on a grand scale like that is spouting propaganda. Speaking of wars, I've also seen my beloved Terence Malick's "The Hidden Life" which is another war movie, but it's about goodness -- about what it means to be deeply moral and good. I saw Goddess Greta Gerwig's "Little Women" and was utterly enchanted by it, transported in exactly the same way I was transported by the book -- any book, actually -- as a very young girl. That took me by surprise as I had never seen any of the other renditions and only had the book to compare it to. The movie was just as much about writing and reading as it was about being a sister and a woman chafing at societal constraints. I absolutely loved it. I've watched some Netflix and Amazon stuff, too -- most memorably, "The Two Popes" which was more a story of two human beings than the weird fuckery of the Catholic Church. I think that's because Anthony Hopkins and especially Jonathan Pryce were exceptional. Reader, I still can't abide the Catholic Church and that dislike would include Francis, as he is still THE POPE of an institution that I believe should be dismantled.
3. Teaching at two different schools: I have around 60 students that range in age from 13 to 18. The majority are in a small, private, ultra-religious high school here in Los Angeles that is, at the very least, giving me a lot of material for a future memoir. No more need be said or will be said. Stay tuned, though. I have a few students in another, very highly specialized school, each of whom I adore. Truly. One of my students began reading Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and on a day when I wasn't even teaching her, she poked her head in my office and said, Oh my god! I love the book you picked out for me! I was having a particularly difficult time finding something for another of my students to read and relate to -- and then I thought of Flannery O'Connor's short stories. The kid is sucked in and under and very, very into "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and "The Life You Save May Be Your Own." Reader, this thrills me to no end. 
4. Having my mind blown without the use of psychotropics: I attended a 12-hour Holotropic Breathwork workshop last Saturday. I haven't fully processed the experience and don't have the words to describe the journey I went on during the 3 hours of breathing I did, blindfolded and  carried by incredible music that filled the room and my body with sound. You can read about holotropic breathwork on the world wide webs. I released a whole lot of shit and am still feeling the effects in a positive way over a week later.
5. The tedious work of what Divorce Lawyer World calls "Discovery." I will say no more except that I have been set into a Matrix, a strange and mad world of no reason, where everything is transactional and my worth measures in negative numbers. It's a good thing that one of the hallucinations I experienced during the Holotropic Breathwork session was my generous body as Mother Earth, merged with the indigo Cosmos and lit by stars, my children rushing toward me as beings of power, my pelvis on fire and the only thing to fear a strange, searing pain that ran up and down my left side but, allowed to speak for itself, was released and transformed into dance. Honestly.

* My God-damn book, which I have worked on only in my brain with not a thing on paper to show for it for over a year.

 

Friday Morning Three-Line Movie Review

Green Book

Something about Peter Farrelly's movie made me squirm, and I think you know why. It wasn't the truly great performances of both Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen, both so easy on the eyes that -- well -- they could charm the skin off a snake, as they say, but when the snake is racism and a white man is interpreting it and there's all kinds of gloss and over-arching stereotype, I am not charmed. I am squirming in my seat, like I did while reading The Help and while watching it, too, and should I go on because I think you already get my drift and that drift is that we've got a whole lot more work to do and art to make if this piece of fluff makes anyone of any color not squirm in their seat.










More Three-Line Movie Reviews

Crazy Rich Asians
BlacKkKlansman
Far From the Tree
Sorry to Bother You
RBG
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Learning to Drive
Love and Mercy
Not a Three Line Movie Review
While We're Young
Ida
Force Majeur 
Gone Girl
Saint Vincent
Get on Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

The Limitations of the Tiny Little Mother Mind™ and #SeezJahBoy

It's a big world.

That's what I tell myself when I read about or hear about things that are otherwise incomprehensible. It's a big world, I thought when I read about plushies in a Vanity Fair magazine in the last millennium. It's a big world, I thought when I actually ran into a plushy convention at a resort hotel in Orlando where I was attending a children's healthcare convention. It's a big world, I thought, when people started talking about reality shows and women being famous for being famous,  It's a big world, I thought when Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California, and it's a big world, I thought, when certain celebrities insured their famous asses, literally. It's a big world, I think, when people get all geared up for the season of bashing brains into dementia, otherwise known as football. It's a big world, I thought when people -- some of whom I actually know and love -- voted for and continued to support Donald Trump, even after he imitated and mocked a disabled man and bragged about his prowess grabbing women's pussies. That one was a stretch, to tell you the truth.

A lot of people are excited about last night's Miss America pageant -- how Miss Michigan, a blonde Barbie doll, made a comment about the bad water in her home state and appears "woke" in the newest sense of the word, and Miss New York, a black Barbie doll, won the prize. It's a big world, I'm thinking, wondering how in 2018 we still have beauty pageants (although I've read they're no longer "beauty" pageants, and there's no more bathing suit competition). What's that expression? Whatever floats your boat?

Anywho.*

My tiny little mother mind™ was seriously taxed today when I learned that Netflix released some movie called The After Party that's getting all the raves. Evidently, the main character has a seizure (after smoking marijuana) while rapping on stage, projectile vomits and falls to the ground writhing. The moment is captured on video, it goes viral, he's called "Seizure Boy," and soon everyone is doing the #SeezJahBoy dance.

This is comedy.

Sigh.

Where do we start? The young man who plays the character is an up and coming rapper and has a bazillion followers on Instagram. He sees himself, ironically, as a bullying advocate. People with epilepsy are commonly bullied. This is a fact. I know countless people whose children have been bullied, have been mocked and derided when they've had a seizure in school. The stigma of epilepsy is still so strong that adults with epilepsy often don't tell their employers that they have it. Teenagers with epilepsy are often at higher risk for anxiety and depression, and much of that can be attributed to our culture's ignorance of the disease.

So, yeah, back to #SeezJahBoy. Despite condemnation from different news sources and epilepsy and seizure awareness foundations, the hashtag is viral at this point. I have heard from good friends in the epilepsy community that when people go in to these conversations on Twitter and Facebook, in an attempt to counter the ignorance, they are being called trolls or "racists" (because the movie is predominantly by black people). How many people did this show have to go through to get put on the air? Are we overly sensitive as parents of children with epilepsy or individuals with epilepsy? Do I think the show should be pulled? To tell you the truth, this sort of thing so taxes my tiny little mother mind that I think nothing at all. I don't have the energy to think about some stupid movie that makes a mockery of people with epilepsy. I don't give a fuck about the writers, the editors, the sound people, the young actors and wannabes that made this movie. There is no big world that holds such shit. The big world shrinks in to a dot, and that dot is a portal to my house where my epileptic daughter sits in her wheelchair, the little vein in her forearm penetrated by a needle that brings an infusion of antibodies to her brain, so many antibodies that they literally flood her brain and dilute out the bad antibodies that have been wreaking havoc, causing her to seize, near constantly, in her sleep and subsequently destroying her ability to walk and eat and move in the world.

Dance on, #SeezJahBoy people.

The world is ugly,
And the people are sad.

Wallace Stevens, Gubbinal


















*New Readers should know that I hate this expression and only use it facetiously.

Monday Morning Three Line Movie Review

BlacKkKlansman

I hesitated to even write a review for Spike Lee's new movie because I had so many ideas about it, most of those ideas are floating through my brain like guppies waiting to be swallowed whole by a whale and because -- well -- critiquing it is as overwhelming as the feelings provoked by it. I just wasted a sentence, though, on a movie that deserves, probably, an academic treatise, such is its complexity and craft, and while I didn't think it perfect by any stretch, it made me feel uncomfortable and that's exactly what a movie about race in America should do to a white woman. I don't think there's any need to explain why I felt uncomfortable (and it's a good thing to be white and feel uncomfortable today), but when I wasn't feeling uncomfortable, I was lifted up in spirit by Spike Lee's ability to meld so many seemingly disparate things -- the power of image to influence people, the power (and not so subtle warning of the power) of image in cinema, in particular, to even let people off the hook from truly regarding racism, in this country, the power of laughter to both highlight and horrify, the power of the patriarchy, the obeisance to the patriarchy by even those who are being oppressed, police brutality, anti-Semitism, Trumpism, music and culture and fashion -- into a piece of art that left me feeling both exhilarated and drained.











More Three-Line Movie Reviews

Far From the Tree
Sorry to Bother You
RBG
Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Learning to Drive
Love and Mercy
Not a Three Line Movie Review
While We're Young
Ida
Force Majeur 
Gone Girl
Saint Vincent
Get on Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Risking Delight

Random photo of Sophie that my friend Jody sent me over the internets this weekend

Precious child, Jody wrote when she sent me the photo above.




Isn't everything entirely wacky? Do any of ya'll listen to the podcast "The Daily?" Today's segment was like listening to a thriller. It's all about the Russians and their attempts to mess with the "democracy" that is, arguably, the United States of America. We've all been played like idiots, apparently. I shouldn't be flippant as it's actually pretty chilling. Here's the link.

Holy shitoly.


My friend Moye texted me the other day. What is going to happen to us?


What else? I've been on a novel reading binge of late which cheers me.  While I like to say that reading is my only constant, it's much more difficult these days to fully immerse myself in fiction. I've finished Jesmyn Ward's Sing, Unburied, Sing: A Novel, Jaime Quattro's Fire Sermon and T. Gertler's Elbowing the Seducer. I absolutely devoured each one. I think I'd consider marriage for the third time with Jaime Quattro or at least some kind of long-distance mind meld.


What else? I saw Black Panther on Friday night with The Bird Photographer. It was an exhilarating movie, even if you don't care for action hero sort of movies. It will deeply affect you for days afterward. I figure you've read all about it already, but if you haven't, this New Yorker article by Jelani Cobb is illuminating. I learned something listening to The Bird Photographer's reflections about it. He's an intensely empathic man, a man of few words so carefully chosen and thoughtful, and I'm grateful for his patience. I talk and I talk and I talk and I talk too much. I need to listen and reflect, especially now. We white people have a lot to learn and even more to reflect on. Most of all, we need to listen to people of color, to their words. We need to soak in their art, open our eyes and our hearts, let our minds blow open.

Wise counsel told me to continue to speak clearly. Speak clearly, she said.

Keep resisting, I think. Don't normalize or conform. Be brave.


What else? This post is phenomenal. I have been reading Gabrielle of Design Mom for nearly a decade, and I admire her so much.

Here's a repost of one of my favorite Jack Gilbert poems.

A Brief for the Defense

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Sprung

I wore my pot socks this morning and sprang Sophie from the facility. We're home now.

I also had an intense conversation this afternoon with an administrative RN from The Neurologist's hospital regarding The Neurologist's statement to me yesterday that she was "under direct orders from her boss not to discuss cannabis medicine." I was lying on my bed recovering from the last couple of days and looking at my feet while "discussing" the issue with the administrative RN whom I will call Karen.

I want to record all of this in real time because the emotion that propels me to write is as essential as giving "thought" to it over time. In doing so I am attempting to break the hegemony of not just the neurology/medical/industrial complex but also of the patriarchy that would stifle emotions or otherwise lessen their validity. This has nothing to do with gender. Part of our power is due to our hearts, our emotions, to what is at stake. Quality of Life. Life. Death. Intellect and reason is another part, but not primary and certainly not dominant.

Break is hyperbole, of course, because at best I will make not even a crack.

Have ya'll ever seen the movie Michael Clayton? If you haven't, you should. If you have, I'm sure you remember Tilda Swinton's character -- Karen -- and Swinton's incredible performance. The administrative assistant I spoke with today used all the hems and haws that we in the cannabis community have heard over the years, and she did it so easily that at one point, I lost my composure and said, Karen! Do you hear yourself? You sound like a robot! I wiggled my marijuana toes and Tilda Swinton's Karen flashed through my mind. I imagined GW Pharmaceuticals to be a sort of Dostoyevskian Grand Inquisitor programming Karen in real time.

Things did not end well. I loudly object to doctors not feeling free to discuss their patients' medicine regimens. I believe, from experience, that the relationship between doctor and patient is sacred and should be one of mutual trust, and that in this instance, in this real time when we are on the frontier of revolutionary treatment for refractory epilepsy, complete transparency is incredibly important. That trust is broken for me, but I'm old. I've been doing this for so long that, frankly, other than the incredible panic I feel every now and then that we are truly on our own, I don't give a flying foo what hegemonic Powers That Be think. If they can't have a simple discussion about my daughter's medical cannabis, or even show a modicum of interest in her welfare, I can't trust them. I worry about young families who need far more guidance than I, and it depresses me that all the work we've done to bridge this enormous communication gap between physicians and families is completely ineffectual.

I will be writing some formal letters to The Powers That Be. I am joining with a few other members of our community in a concerted effort to object to what we saw, as well, on that video the other day where an esteemed neurologist directly told his colleagues to report parents using cannabis medicine on children to Child Protective Services.

There's something going on.

Like Michael Clayton says to Karen, For such a smart person, you really are lost.

It Never Rains in Southern California

Well, I guess I should say Happy President's Day!

I posted the following on my Facebook page for an Andy Warhol fifteen minutes and then decided to take it down because it's so vile. Someone I know asked me whether it was real. Yes, it's real. It's true and not alternative fact. It's a transcript of 45's comments from ten years ago, and even as I acknowledge my role as contributor to ugliness, it bears repeating because we're all responsible on some level. I still can't believe that 45 now represents all of us on the world stage.

Let's move on.

On Saturday night, I attended the first meeting of our local Indivisible group. We're called Active Empathy, and we're intent on active resistance to not just 45 but also to the extreme right Republicans in power whose agenda doesn't represent us or -- in some cases -- the majority of people in this country, in addition to its undoing progress to protect our environment and ensure equal access to our healthcare and threatening our first amendment rights. I'd have to make this a Faulknerian sentence if I kept typing everything that's under threat, but our intentions include flipping the legislature with methodical action. The group that attended the first meeting was diverse in age, race, religion, sex and sexuality, a mini-Los Angeles. We introduced ourselves and told the others what issues we were most interested or concerned. The range was wide. Some tears were shed and some expressed anger. Many attendees are originally from the "flyover" states and perfectly aware that not everyone who lives in those states condones some of the more egregious behavior of 45 or the conservative platform. Many expressed the need to be self-aware, to at least acknowledge our part in further dividing the country with our anger and sometimes condescension. Others had more of a screw that attitude, believing it is going to take the adoption of Tea Party tactics to be most effective. Here's the beautiful logo created by one of the founders of the group. Active Empathy is the name that's above the following:

We're not a moderate group, which brings me to the other thing I wanted to write about, and that's the personal war I have going on in my tiny little mother mind.™ I generally use the tiny little mother mind™ expression to describe the relationship between me and the Powers That Be in Neurologyland, how over decades I've learned just how hegemony works. The analogy has some use here, too. What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to be an elitist? When did the open derision of intellect become acceptable? What does it mean to be moderate? Why is moderation a virtue? Why is moving to the center a goal? Is that a construct or something truly admirable? Are there certain principles that should not be compromised? What convictions do I have that are immoveable? I don't have the answers. I have a tiny little mother mind™ and some gut instincts, though, that have served me well and that I have to constantly be vigilant to honoring. To help me with this, I've been reading Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, and it's startling and fairly easy to draw parallels to what's going on today. I'm reminded of my instincts and of honoring them, how difficult it is to do so when I also have to deal with emotions, with a patriarchal culture and values that are more authoritarian than inclusive. There's a good discussion of Arendt's work here, including this choice passage:

“What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part . . . Totalitarian propaganda thrives on this escape from reality into fiction . . . [and] can outrageously insult common sense only where common sense has lost its validity.”

It's exhausting, isn't it?

Let's move on.

I saw the extraordinary documentary about James Baldwin called I am not your Negro. Everyone should watch it and the documentary 13. They're both antidotes to the superficial bullshit that reigns in this country. It rained off and on all weekend here in southern California. Everything is green, so green. I've been reading Ann Patchett's novel Commonwealth and love it. I told a good friend that I haven't been able to get into a novel in a long time, that I remain half in and half out, that that was worrying me because reading novels has been really the only constant in my life (that's NOT hyperbole). I'm in Patchett's story -- totally in. The man I love brought me pink roses, and the boys I love showed me how to take pictures with my new iPhone so that the background is blurred out. How wonderful is that! Here's a picture of the roses using this clever technique and one of the cinnamon bread I baked. The boys I loved showed me the scratch and sniff technique on the phone, too. Just kidding. That IS hyperbole.

Reader, what did you do this weekend?

We Interrupt this Nightmare Programming

How to stay WOKE and how to stay sane.

This year, I've officially read THE LEAST number of books ever in my lifetime. How's that for a poorly written sentence? If you look over to your right at my sidebar, you'll see my Bookworm 2016 list, and it's much sparer than those for the previous eight years that I've been listing them. I've also seen the least number of movies of my lifetime this year. I'm making no apologies here -- to you or to myself. I haven't been reading as much, and I haven't been going to the movies as much. I've been preoccupied by cataclysmic changes in my personal life and the world. I know I'm prone to hyperbole, but that is one true good sentence. These changes have been both profoundly awful (the election and the dystopian nightmare that has ensued) and, literally, life-altering in the best way (what causes the most distraction in life? she asks, coyly).

Now I'm going to tell you what my favorite book and my favorite movie of 2016 has been.

Oh, this book. Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter. It's small and it's beautiful and it's about grief and loss and death and children and love and a crow. You know how I feel about crows. I both despise and am seduced by them, regularly, in real life and on the page. Oh, this book. It's so wildly inventive that I am hard put to describe it. I aspire to write like this, to express myself with such economy and wit and truth. It's very short, but I read it slowly in order to savor every word and every bit of blank space. I love the yellow and gray of the cover, the way it feels in my hand. It's a poem and a novel and a visual feast. I read it a few times. You should, too.

Oh, this movie. Moonlight. I don't want to sully its beauty with my words, any words really. I saw it twice with someone I love, and we talked for hours and hours about it, both times. I'll see it again. It's about everything beautiful and sad you can think of, and it's about what it means to be alive and human. It's intensely specific and universal. There's a scene in it of a boy learning to swim in the ocean, his head resting in a man's hand, the water is all around them and the sky above and it's all around you and so is the sky and it's as if all of your life is cradled there, safe. And then there's the moon and the light and so many eyes and deep gazes both inward and out. I'm still trying to figure out how the director did what he did, how the actors portrayed these people so brilliantly and how a piece of art can quite literally make everything all right. I've seen it twice and will again. You should, too.










Reader, tell me your favorite book and movie of the year.




P.S. I have read the recently published books of dear friends, and I choose not to "review" them or pick as favorites. That's a given. Stay tuned, though, for my words about them both.

Hustling Suffragette

I watched the soon-to-be-released film Suffragette this morning with maybe three other women in a cozy screening room in Beverly Hills. Those seats were cream-colored leather, wide and leaned back. The movie was moving and beautiful and informative, even for someone like myself who knows quite a bit about the English suffragette movement. It made me cry, and it made me angry in the same way that a war movie does -- the stupidity of it all, the energy wasted on oppressing human beings.  It never ceases to amaze me -- the mediocrity of oppression -- how men went to such lengths to keep women subservient, stripping them of their property, their dignity and even their children. The actors Carey Mulligan, Brendan Gleeson, Helena Bonham Carter and Ann-Marie Duff were all wonderful, and Meryl Streep had an excellent cameo. At the end of the film, a very effective list of the dates of universal suffrage for different countries in the world scrolled across the screen. I won't give it away, but it's pretty damn shocking.

After the screening we drove over to the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills. I pulled into the driveway, right behind a shiny black Bentley with a license plate that read HUSTLR. I wondered if Larry Flynt was still alive, and later -- much later, like 5 minutes ago -- I googled "Larry Flynt's car" and sure enough, that was it. I looked for a man in a wheelchair when I walked through, but no Larry.

The three other women and I took an elevator up to a suite of rooms filled with twenty-somethings, none of whom spoke to us or even batted an eye or looked up, to tell you the truth, from their phones and laptops. They were arrayed all over the suite of rooms at tables and desks, on small sofas and standing in windows. I guess it was all the publicity and marketing people for the movie -- the business apparatus. I passed a small bathroom with some high stools in front of mirrors and make-up spread out on a table. Again, no one really spoke with us, and everyone seemed to know what they were doing, although it didn't look like they were doing much. I'm sure they were organizing, and making calls and arranging press junkets -- perhaps even hustling? No pun intended.

Again, the business of movie-making -- something to mull over -- suites in the Four Seasons to entertain the press and to high tea some bloggers. It's hard for me to not feel there's something gross about it all.

Eventually, we were led to another and larger room with two long tables laden with high tea -- or at least high tea, Four Seasons Beverly Hills-style. I saw some cucumber tea sandwiches, but I also noticed some lobster salad on blinis that placed me square in Beverly Hills in the Four Seasons in 2015.  Back in the last century, I was High Tea Girl at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City. I  was a real hustler, then, no pun intended, making literally tens of thousands of sandwiches, and scones and Devonshire cream and tiny little tarts and chocolates (yes, real chocolates where you temper the chocolate and pour it into thick, frosted French molds that I later tapped on the edge of the marble pastry station and they'd fall out, shiny and perfect). But I digress. I took a scone and some cream and some lemon curd, filled a glass with French bottled water and placed a lime wedge inside of it, using silver tongs. Then I sat down at a round table with four other women and waited for the director, the producer and the screenplay writer to come in for the "roundtable discussion."

They were all lovely, and our conversation was spirited and interesting and mostly about how little people really do know about the suffragette movement, how much young women, in particular, take for granted their relative freedoms and how harrowing the path to suffrage. The filmmakers were then hustled, no pun intended, out of the room for their next meeting, so I ambled back downstairs, through the lobby and gave my ticket to the valet who brought up my sexy White Mazda, into which I jumped and drove off back to my normal life -- which I vastly prefer.

I do recommend that you hustle to see Suffragette -- take every boy and girl and woman and man you know -- and then say a little prayer of thanksgiving for those women that went before you. Oh, and exercise your right to suffrage, when the time comes. Hustle. Vote.









(I was not paid to write this post, but I did get a free screening of the movie, as well as delightful treats!)

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

love and mercy

This is a movie that you don't want to see alone as I did yesterday, as I've done a thousand times in order to keep what's sacred in my head, not have it be disrupted by opinion or someone breaking the spell, but love and mercy so overwhelmed me in its beauty and intensity that I left the theater in tears wishing there were someone, anyone, to hold. Paul Dano literally gets inside of Brian Wilson's head, at least I think he does, and I'm hard put to figure out whether it was the movie or the acting or Brian Wilson's head and thoughts and genius and soul or the whole shebang that left me so undone. I was one of those east coast girls who listened to The Beach Boys through a set of giant puffy headphones connected to a smoky plastic-covered turntable that sat on my green shagged carpeting, the beaches of southern California only a dream, but I had no idea, just absolutely no idea.












More 3-Line Movie Reviews


Not a Three Line Movie Review
While We're Young
Ida
Force Majeur 
Gone Girl
Saint Vincent
Get on Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

On Oscar and Lady Mary

It dawned blue sky and puffy clouds after last night's downpours, and even now the clouds are skittering across the sky, the air washed clean and cool. I watched the Oscar ceremonies last night and was grateful that my favorite movie of 2014, Ida, won for best foreign picture. The Polish director was utterly charming and went on too long, but I loved him anyway. I was glad, too, that Patricia Arquette won an award for her performance in Boyhood, and her acceptance speech was one of the few that didn't make me squirm in either boredom or embarrassment at the pretension of it all. I'm not a big fan of the host, and all that song and dance makes me even more squirmy than the sanctimonious stump speeches. The worst and most distasteful joke of the night had something to do with the horrible movie American Sniper, and if I sound all righteous and pretentious, it's because I just can't wrap my brain around anyone joking about a ridiculous war, started on lies, that's destabilized an entire region of the world, unleashed some of the worst terror man has ever known, ruined hundreds of thousands of young men and women's brains and killed even more people across the globe. That a bazillion dollars was paid to a hunk of an actor to portray a guy whose modus operandi is to kill as many people in as efficient a way as possible and then be glorified as a hero -- well -- I can't bear it. And before I end this rant, let me say that I really didn't like the movie Birdman, despite the wonderful acting of Michael Keaton and Emma Stone, that I found it pretentious and slick and soul-less, so when it was announced by one of my least favorite Hit You Over the Head With My Acting actors -- well -- I was off to looking for redemption for poor Lady Edith and some sort of lightning to hit Lady Maaaaahhhhry at Downton Abbey. Whether rich and tittering at the plight of those at the other end of an American Sniper's sights, or at one's unmarried, sour spinster sister, I'm sick of them all.

Reader, how are you?

Two War Movies That Made Me Sick and One That Makes Me Cry

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Henry and I went to see a matinee of Unbroken, and I'm glad we were able to walk out of the theater into such blue clarity. I've seen two war movies in the last few days -- that and American Sniper. Despite having seen all the big war movies of the past, I don't generally go to see them anymore. That's mainly because they make me nearly physically ill. American Sniper (I saw a screener at a friend's house), despite the excellent acting and general hunkery of Bradley Cooper, definitely made me feel sick to my stomach. The main words that come to mind are not hero, liberty or patriotism. They are waste, stupidity, tragedy and folly. No matter how honorable, I don't see any glory in being capable of 160 kills, and while the movie did a good job of showing the collateral damage of such a feat, I can't help but think of how many young and impressionable people -- maybe even old and unswerving people -- will be impressed, will think that whole shitstorm in Iraq was a necessary evil, will fancy themselves as Bradley Cooper with his steely precision.  I thought the movie entirely predictable, too, and like many war movies, it manipulates the viewer, laying out moral dilemmas in simplistic ways that do more to shore up predictable responses than change ways of thinking about war.  Like I said, I feel physically ill when I think about the invasion of Iraq, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people and thousands of soldiers, the decimation of towns and cities and infrastructure and the destabilization of an entire region, all wrought by us, the United States of America.

Angelina Jolie's Unbroken is one hell of an intense movie, and while I can't say I enjoyed it, I was impressed by the story-- impressed by Zamparini's grit and heroism and, finally, story of forgiveness. I'm also impressed by Jolie and how she told the story. The relentless scenes of torture by the psychopathic Japanese war camp commander made me think of Dick Cheney, to tell you the truth, and the mindless minions who carried out torture in our name, for our country, on prisoners and alleged terrorists. I know Cheney himself didn't do the water-boarding, the beating, the forced standing and no sleeping, the rectal feeding and the psychological tormenting, but he helped to authorize it. The Watanabes and Cheneys of the world remain obdurate and unapologetic about their actions, and there's not much we can do about that, I guess. I told Henry that anyone who believes it's okay to torture war prisoners collaborates with and is no different than that Japanese commander. I mean that.

Madness and absurdity.

I think what I need to do now is watch my favorite war movie, King of Hearts, where the madness and absurdity bring only tears, not physical revulsion:

Umbrian Angel

I landed up going alone last night to see La Dolce Vita, even after asking at least ten people to go, including the person with whom I saw it first about thirty years ago. I'm a big solo movie-goer, often preferring it to having company. That's mainly because after a movie, a really good movie, I don't want to hear anyone talk but would rather sit under the spell of it all. But I didn't want to go to this one alone, felt sad in the going and when I sat down in my seat, next to a young man with ripped-up jeans who was sitting in my seat and who moved when I told him, I felt a tiny bit irritated. He had weird breath and said incoherent things. He spoke aloud even as the opening credits rolled. He knew nothing about Fellini, laughed and asked what language is this? before he settled in his seat. I imagined the glorious and wild opening scene of Jesus floating through the air, hanging from helicopters, the waving rooftop girls in bikinis and the gorgeous Marcello and Paparazzo gesticulating to them finally silenced this guy, because that opening stunned me into thinking that maybe I'd never seen this movie on the big screen after all. The entire rest of the movie I kept thinking that, too, because how could I have lived this long and not remembered the nearly bodily sensations of joy and humor and disgust that I felt last night in my solo seat? The guy next to me pulled a quart of juice out of his backpack, noisily slurped it throughout the first hour and then finally muttered I don't understand what's going on in this movie!, got up, stumbled over us and left. I breathed an audible sigh of relief, the guy on the other side of me whispered, Was he on something or what? and then he sighed and I relaxed into the rest of the movie and relative oblivion. I'm not going to review the movie because, really, why bother? I don't know whether it was the giant screen or whether I am old now, older than when I first watched it, but dear god -- what a movie. I am prone to hyperbole, true, but this time it decimated me. I wrote as much to the person who I had seen it with thirty years ago -- then I cried all the way home. A very different experience when the screen is so big and you're 51 years old. I was decimated. 

But the Umbrian angel Paola still smiles, my friend replied.

Yes. The Umbrian angel still smiles.

Saturday Three Line Movie Review

The Trip to Italy
dir. Michael Winterbottom


Two handsome in the way that I like middle-aged men go on a culinary tour of Italy, retracing the steps of the Romantic poets, namely Lord Byron, keeping up a steady stream of witty banter and driving along the requisite Italian roads with breathtaking views of the Mediterranean . They do brilliant improvisations of famous actors while bemoaning their own advancing age, receive the exquisite offerings of food brought to them in perfect Italian restaurants, converse with their families back home and people they meet on the road, conveying in a charming and poignant, utterly original way what longing means -- even what it means to be human. I floated out of the movie to strains of Italian opera and am now officially completely smitten by Steve Coogan.











Other Three Line Movie Reviews


Get On Up
Begin Again
Chef
The Immigrant
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

I couldn't call it a day without replacing those raptor-headed women on the previous post with these lovely children

Home from camp for less than 24 hours, Oliver was already outside in our yard, watering the lemons and vegetables. We have a serious drought going on, if you hadn't heard, and we're obeying water restrictions. That's why our lawn looks so awful. I wish I could enlist someone to do a complete overhaul of our front and back yards -- make them drought resistant. Maybe we'll do it ourselves in a grand, homeschool-style effort this fall.

Henry and I went to see the movie Boyhood the other evening and then took a bunch of photos on the top of the Arclight Cinemas parking garage. The glorious sunset helped to mitigate the obliteration I felt watching the film. It was incredibly beautiful and interesting, and I haven't gotten around to writing a three-line movie review, but I will. Here's what the sky looked like:

And here's Henry's hand in the sky:

I'm going to miss those boys. They're leaving tomorrow for a trip to my parents' house in Atlanta and then onward to Hilton Head Island. We've been joking all night on when they might catch sight of a person carrying a gun -- legally -- in either state. Good Lord. I will join them for a few days next week, but this house is going to be quiiiiiiiiieeeeettttt, for sure.

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Begin Again

It took a sold-out afternoon matinee of another movie that I really wanted to see and had driven too far to see, that propelled me toward buying a ticket to a movie with the ubiquitous Kiera Knightly (whose acting chops, in my opinion, are minimal and who has that irritating quality of seeming always to be projecting an aren't I a beautiful and thin Actor?).  The presence of Mark Ruffalo, one of my favorites, and Catherine Keener, who makes me glad to be middle-aged,  looked to be redemptive, so I plunged in and was delightfully surprised by this quiet and not-always predictable little gem of a movie. As a down and out alcoholic music producer who drives an old beater Jaguar and lives estranged from his wife, struggling to be a decent father to his almost-lost teenaged daughter, Mark Ruffalo's character gave me that weak-in-the-knees feeling, and even Kiera's reedy singing voice was charming enough that I was lost, lost, blessedly in other people's stories.





More 3-Line Movie Reviews

The ImmigrantChef
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

The Immigrant

The reason why I was particularly happy watching this movie was not because it told the sad story of an immigrant from Poland whose luck ran out the moment she hit Ellis Island, but rather because I sipped a fruity draft beer while doing so, having literally run out of the house in the late afternoon to a 21+ theater after punishing both of my sons for -- well -- that has nothing to do with the movie. I love Marion Cotillard's face, and she appears in nearly every single frame of this poignant film, as does her co-star, Joaquin Phoenix who I grew to love after his performance in Her, but that has nothing to do with this movie either. I think the only thing I have left to say is that The Immigrant was beautifully crafted and well-acted but entirely predictable (the sacrifices of our forefathers! the dismal outlook for women! the promise of America dashed!) except for the fuzzy yet brilliant opening shot of the back of Lady Liberty which should have told me right then how it would all turn out.







More 3-Line Movie Reviews

Chef
Cesar Chavez
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle

Saturday Three-Line Movie Review

Display at the Arclight, Los Angeles, CA

***

Watching Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel was like listening to a bedtime story told by a group of men I adore while tripping on mushrooms (the only drug I can honestly say that the two times I tried it were about as good as it gets) without a hangover and a tray full of beautiful pastries right beside my bed. The movie was as visually beautiful as you could possibly imagine (the pinks! the blues!) and as zany as a Wes Anderson movie can be, and while there were moments where I wondered what the hell, everything worked with a near-Felliniesque aplomb. Oh, and Ralph Fiennes -- Rafe, Rafe, Rafe, je t'adore.






***The photo is of a display in the theater's lobby and is the original model created by the art team. One of the many reasons that I love this nutball city is that we get to see things like this at 11:30 on a Friday morning.





Other 3-Line Movie Reviews:

Gloria
Labor Day 
Philomena

August: Osage County

Her

American Hustle