Robert Durick's reading in 2013

So far this first message is going to be notes to myself about reading, or possibly about plays, concerts, movies, lectures, screenings, but nothing especially organized.

I start the new year with this reading yet to be done on my to do list:

Sunday papers
Daily papers
Find and read Geneva Bible
read Stoics
read Dhammapada
read Snark
read Madame Bovary
read Our Mutual Friend
read Les Miserables
read Matt Taibbi article
read Thesaurus

I also have a stack of magazines and a few scattered magazines to read. And then there are lots of magazines lying about to be read when I get to them.

Put I Could Read the Sky into the rotation

I am eager to get to my Faust project: Faust, Dr. Faustus, and Dr. Faustus.

And I have a book on Evernote (where, among other things, I keep my to do list) to finish reading and to play with.

The only actual plan at the moment is to finish The Swerve before tomorrow night (no movies for me yet this year despite
Mary Stuart must be finished before Saturday in preparation for the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD screening of the opera the half dozen I want to see, some on special screens) and to start Infinite Jest before today ends.
read The Swerve
read Infinite Jest
Anthill is up for discussion at church in early February. I've made a note to myself to start reading this on Wednesday
The Ghost Map on line discussion starts in February, as does the Spring Snow on line discussion.
Will in the World is up for discussion at church in early March.

Some history:

In 2012 hoping to leave room to read longer works I stayed out of challenge groups and stuck pretty close to Club Read in four threads:

First Quarter
Second Quarter
Third quarter
Fourth Quarter

I did not read much in the way of long books, and I got trapped at bedtime, prime reading time, by a game available on my Nook, Bejewelled.

Before 2012 I announced books that I had acquired and books that I had started reading in the appropriate threads of the What Are You Reading Now group. I kept count of books read in one of the challenge groups and was a little more loquacious about my reading in the Club Read group.

2011

75 Books Challenge for 2011
Club Read 2011

2010

25 Book Challenge for 2010
Club Read 2010

Before 2010 I did not keep a systematic record of my reading.

I used to comment on movies first in the movie threads of Literary Snobs and later in Le Salon....

Robert

Reading, probably all books, but possibly articles or magazines. The links are to the message in which I mention what I have read, and in that message there will likely be a touchstone.

January 4, The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, non-fiction
January 18, Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller
January 31, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

February 6, Anthill by E.O. Wilson
February 11, The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
February 26, Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima

March 2, Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
March 5, Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
March 14, Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
March 25, The Iliad by Homer, translated by Robert Fagles

Plays, concerts, movies, lectures, screenings, and any other entertainments I might want to mention with links to the messages in which I mention them:

January 2, Jack Reacher, movie theater, mainstream
January 3, Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, 3D movie theater, limited release
January 3, Les Misérables, IMAX equivalent (Titan XC), mainstream
January 5, Les Troyens, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
January 9, Labyrinth, IMAX equivalent (Titan XC), one night screening
January 13, Zero Dark Thirty, IMAX equivalent (Titan XC), mainstream
January 19, Maria Stuarda, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
January 20. Rust and Bone, movie theater, foreign (France, Belgium)
January 26, Quartet, movie theater, limited release
January 30, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, 3D IMAX equivalent, mainstream
January 30, The Raw and the Cooked, museum theater, documentary
January 31, The Magistrate, movie theater, National Theater Live screening

February 2, Stand Up Guys, movie theater, limited release
February 6, Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013, Animation, movie theater, limited release
February 6, Oscar Nominated Short Films 2013, Live Action, movie theater, limited release
February 7, Step up to the Plate, museum theater, documentary
February 10, Lohengrin, museum screening from La Scala, opera
February 13, Die Hard, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, Die Hard 2, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, Die Hard with a Vengeance, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, Live Free or Die Hard, IMAX equivalent, one day and night marathon revival
February 13, A Good Day to Die Hard, IMAX equvalent, mainstream
February 16, Rigoletto, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
February 17, Amour, movie theater, limited release
February 20, The Savoy King: Chick Webb & the Music That Changed America, museum theater, documentary

March 2, Parsifal, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
March 4, Jack the Giant Slayer, 3D IMAX, mainstream
March 4, Side Effects, movie theater, limited release I think
March 9, West of Memphis, movie theater, documentary
March 16, Francesca da Rimini, Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition, opera
March 23, Dawn Upshaw and Gilbert Kalish, museum theater, live concert
March 26, To Catch a Thief, museum theater, revival series
March 30, The Gatekeepers, movie theater, documentary

Notes:

January independent movies to see
February independent movies to see
March in indpendent movies to see

Books, and maybe CD's and DVD's, that I have acquired in 2013. The links below are usually to the message in which I comment on the acquisition. There should be a touchstone in that message.

Books

1. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 1 translated by Thomas Cleary
2. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 2 translated by Thomas Cleary
3. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 3 translated by Thomas Cleary
4. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 4 translated by Thomas Cleary
5. January 2, Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 5 translated by Thomas Cleary
6. January 5, Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
7. January 5, The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
8. January 12, Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
9. January 12, Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima
10. January 15, The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo
11. January 15, The English Language by Laurel J. Brinton and Leslie K. Arnovick
12. January 15, The Maine Woods by Henry D. Thoreau and edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer
13. January 15, The Book of Enoch translated by R.H. Charles
14. January 15, The Conquest of a Continent by W. Bruse Lincoln
15. January 15, Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life by Mark Francis
16. January 16, A House for Hope by John Buehrens and Rebecca Ann Parker
17. January 19, The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings
18. January 26, I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O'Grady, photographs by Steve Pyke
19. January 26, Moscow, December 25, 1991, by Conor O'Clery
20. January 26, Soul Dust, by Nicholas Humphrey
21. January 26, Reading Music, by Marc Schonbrun
22. January 26, The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones
23. January 26, The Secret Life of Pronouns by James W. Pennebaker
24. January 28, B.S. Johnson Omnibus by B.S. Johnson

25. February 3, Quiet by Susan Cain
26. February 3, Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander
27. February 7, The Art of Living According to Joe Beef by Frederic Morin, David McMillan, and Meredith Erickson
28. February 7, Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith
29. February 9, Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare and edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen
30. February 9, The Victrola Book of the Opera by Samuel Holand Rous
31. February 9, Opera People by Robert M. Jacobson
32. February 9, Fifty Years of Glyndebourne by John Julius Norwich
33. February 9, Opera edited by Rudolf Hartmann
34. February 9, Opera by David Ewen
35. February 9, Opera! by Karyl Lynn Zietz
36. February 11, The Iliad by Homer and translated by Robert Fagles
37. February 12, Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
38. February 19, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
39. February 23, A History of the Connecticut River by Wick Griswold
40. February 23, The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flanagan
41. February 23, The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction by Wendy Northcutt

42. March 4, A Brief Guide to Jane Austen by Charles Jennings
43. March 4, Mapping the Lands and Waters of Hawai'i by Riley M. Moffat and Gary L. Fitzpatrick
44. March 6, Trapeze by Simon Mawer
45. March 6, Drift by Rachel Maddow
46. March 7, A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
47. March 9, Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff
48. March 9, Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon
49. March 9, Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer
50. March 13, Countee Cullen Collected Poems edited by Major Jackson
51. March 16, Beloved by Toni Morrison
52. March 16, When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson
53. March 16, Revelations by Elaine Pagels
54. March 16, Complete Price Guide to Watches 2013 by Tom Engle, Richard E. Gilbert, and Cooksey Shugart
55. March 23, The Ninth by Harvey Sachs
56. March 23, Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton
57. March 26, The Cambridge Companion to Homer edited by Robert Fowler
58. March 27, James Weldon Johnson, Writings, by James Weldon Johnson, edited by William L. Andrews
59. March 27, Chesnutt, Stories, Novels, and Essays by Charles W. Chesnutt, edited by Werner Sollors

CD's

1. January 26, Cold Fact, Rodriguez
2. January 26, Babel, Mumford & Sons
3. January 26, Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons

4. February 23, Love Ella, The Original Versions, Ella Fitzgerald

5. March 14, Strictly Jive, Chick Webb

DVD's

1. February 2, The Heart Is a Loney Hunter

Reserved by a lion.

I was once very interested, albeit at a distance, in Zen Buddhism, and the set of books from Shambala of Thomas Cleary's translations in the field has been on my wishlist since before I had wishlists. It is no longer available as a set (I think it once was), but all five volumes are still available from the publisher. They sent me a coupon before Christmas. I used it finally to get the books; some considerable part of my interest remains. The mailman brought them today.

Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 1 translated by Thomas Cleary
Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 2 translated by Thomas Cleary
Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 3 translated by Thomas Cleary
Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 4 translated by Thomas Cleary
Classics of Buddhism and Zen, volume 5 translated by Thomas Cleary

I have no intention to read them right away.

Robert

On Wednesday I had a free ticket to a movie at the multiplex closest to my route to church where we were to discuss The Swerve in the evening. I used the ticket for Jack Reacher. This is pure entertainment for the male spirit. The hero is a solitary wanderer who takes nothing from anyone and lives by his own (good) code. This is not a movie to look back on in 2014 as a highlight of 2013, nor are there lessons in it for times of trial. It is mostly competently made; I saw a person walking from the back of the set towards Jack at the shooting range; when the camera cut to the discussion, that person was not there. Tom Cruise is a miniature human being and by reputation a good guy; the movie makers were criticized for using him to play a six and a half foot tall hero, but he didn't play a tall man ill; he played a strong man of his own stature.

I had noticed that yesterday was the last time for Les Misérables on the IMAX equivalent screen in town. Another movie I had been meaning to see was playing at the same multiplex. I forced my schedule to fit.

Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away, 3D is likely the closest I'll get to seeing a performance by the company. It has almost no dialogue, but it has a story. The story is a very, very simple excuse to photograph the artful acrobatic performances. The 3D of this film was done by James Cameron, and it was excellent. All of the physical stunts are near miraculous in their execution, and the camera work captured a good bit of it.

I've read the first 130 or so pages of Les Misérables, but know nothing of the performance history of plays, musicals, or movies based on it. Hugo did a better job than the movie Les Misérables. It is all sung, and it is drama; it amounts to a screen opera. The big issues, love, politics, war, crime, good, evil, redemption, all befitting opera are here. The little issues, usually overlooked in opera, are pretty much not here. Some of the singing is better than the rest. The theme that seems to reside in the music is one I'd like to hear more. On the big screen this was a big movie. It falls way short of perfection and was still a very special movie watching experience.

I don't like to think of myself as a vulgarian, but according to criticism I have run across I must be one because I like these movies. First we have a shoot 'em up, beat 'em up blockbuster which marks me as Joe Sixpack. Then we have a documentary masquerading as a drama that did not come up to a reviewer's idea of a well told story. Finally people seem to be falling all over themselves badmouthing the musical; it begins to smack of a poseur attack.

I still have to finish The Swerve. Tomorrow is Les Troyens quasi-live from the Metropolitan Opera. I still have to see what movies are opening today and to make my list for next week.

Robert

Edited to reduce embarrassment. If only I could get the tenses straight.

It falls way short of perfection and was still a very special movie watching experience.
OK then. Now I don't regret my plans to see Les Miserables this weekend. I have read the book - but years ago - and don't remember it that well. I just remember liking it. The only song I'm familiar with is the viral Susan Boyle cover.

Five words and Susan Boyle knocked out the theater: I Dreamed a Dream.

The trailer for the movie, which I saw umpteen times, sold me on it. The word I used when my dental hygienist brought it up a couple of months ago was "magnificent;" I might alternate that with "glorious:" I Dreamed a Dream.

I liked that the movie was all sung, but that song may be the musical high point. I'll be looking forward to your reaction.

Robert

I enjoyed the movie too, even for all that it lacks. Russell Crowe was not harsh or cruel enough to be Javert. The Thenardiers were too humorous; came off as clowns rather than the despicable cretins of Hugo's. But time flew and the bare bones of a story mostly captivated me. That's the power of Les Miz: the story, the redemption, the sacrifice. For all its flaws, it's an incredibly emotional experience.

I'm interested in seeing Les Mis. I do enjoy the musical which I assume is the entire basis for the movie. But the book is a masterpiece. Not for everyone I think, but I personally love all those divergences - something about this style adds a lot of texture for me.

Personally I was disappointed with the fact that I was disappointed with the movie. The book changed my life. I read it in 6th grade after my mother gave it to me for my birthday. I was so proud carrying such a big book around school and it was marvelous. I went from Nancy Drew to Les Miserables and never went back after that. Then, I see the 10th anniversary concert and that also just blew my mind. Amazing, heart-wrenching, powerful performances. I had every song memorized. The movie? Meh.

Nice lion even without the flaming mane.

I saw Les Mis with a group and we all agreed that Russell Crowe's singing was considerably lacking and he mostly just stood around. I was definitely into the movie though and found I remembered a lot of the songs even though I saw the musical some time ago. But even then I remember thinking that it didn't compare to the book which was a five-star, fantastically involving read. Still, it was great to see Anne Hathaway doing the song.

I'll be at Les Troyens tomorrow also - I don't think I've seen anything this long (~6 hours) that wasn't Wagner. I'm excited to see it as it doesn't seem to get performed too often. Also, I heard the replacement tenor is a big improvement.

I can't see the movie Les Mis holding up to a good performance of the stage musical, but I still hope to see it. As far as comparing the musical to the book...they are really different experiences, apples and oranges.

Looking forward to your thread. And I also like your lion, even if it lacks unreadable Bob Marley lyrics as a backdrop.

I took my mother and just-turned 16-year-old son to see Les Miserables today. My son "loved" it. My mother, who knew absolutely nothing about the story or the musical going in, loved it as well. Me too. Your pithy review, IMO, is spot on. It's not perfect; but it is incredible and there are some incredible moments.

I am going to have to return to the novel. I liked the introduction to the priest and his taking in of Jean Valjean. Then there is some tedium, which doesn't come to mind at the moment; I'll have to work through that. Then I'll face another thousand pages or so. It is interesting to me that the movie has stirred so much interest.

Robert

I was able to participate in the discussion of The Swerve on Wednesday although I didn't finish reading it until Friday; the discussion was pretty superficial. I certainly got something out of the book but not as much as a lot of enthusiasts did. That may be because I have read at least superficially about epicureanism already, and I have read The Name of the Rose. The group was enamored enough of Stephen Greenblatt that they picked his Will in the World for discussion in March.

Berlioz's very long opera Les Troyens, which I saw Saturday afternoon, is about two women who don't get their due, and it is a benign review of Virgilian mythology. I slept through the war between Carthage and Iarbus but awoke to watch the victory dance. There's a lot of dancing in this opera -- it is after all French -- and I enjoyed that. My future encounters with Berlioz will be appreciation of his instrumental music.

The Swerve and Les Troyens have in common a reasonably powerful man who takes a mistress with certain long term claims and then abandons her for greater success elsewhere. Poggio Bracciolini having made a fortune for himself after returning to Rome married upscale in Florence and had sons that he acknowledged, leaving the illegitimate ones to fend for themselves. Aeneas took in Dido and made promises to her, but in the end followed the demands of prophecy and went off to found Italy leaving her to a funeral pyre in Carthage; what good has that done anybody? Both men did well for themselves after their romantic disencumbrances.

So after the opera, trundling along, I picked up the Shakespeare book at my customary Barny Noble's outlet. For The 2013 Science, Religion, and History group read discussion thread's first book discussion of the year I also picked up The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson, which seems to be about the mid nineteenth century cholera outbreak in London.

I may be reading Infinite Jest among other things.

Robert

The Ghost Map is an interesting book, and reasonably well written. And I hope you'll read Infinite Jest as I am currently enjoying it quite a bit, although no matter how long I read, there does not seem to be any less book.

First railroad photographs for this year's thread, from promotional literature via Trains magazine.

Robert

18,19> I hope you like The Ghost Map as much as I did. It's a nifty micro-history of the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. The amount of research Johnson incorporates is quite staggering.

A radio station and a local theater chain put on monthly revivals on an IMAX quality screen. Last night I went to a sold out screening of Labyrinth, a 1986 fantasy starring David Bowie and Jennifer Connelly. I don't think I'd heard of the movie, but the promotion made it seem interesting. I liked it, but I wonder what made it special to all of the people who appeared for it, and especially for the people who had seen it before and could win prizes answering questions about it. From her IMDB page, I should know Jennifer Connelly, but I don't. It is about a teenage girl (who looks a lot better in middle age than she did in adolescence) who wished away her toddler brother, then determined she must seek him out in a land, a labyrinth, of goblins. She learns a lesson, sound the trumpets, namely that relations are more important than stuff, a good perhaps oversimplified and very common lesson.

Robert

Wasn't it David Bowie's birthday?

That was Tuesday if IMDB is right.

Robert

Labyrinth is just one of those movies that came at a certain time in youth that made the movie very popular. Like Princess Bride. Watching it now is almost torture (the Labyrinth that is) but back in the day it was like watching crack. Everything was quotable and singable.

Princess Bride was earlier in this series; it was a second time for me, and I still liked it. The people at Labyrinth last night seemed enthusiastic about it. I did not dislike it; I just wondered at the hyperbole, what I took for hyperbole, spilled on it. I was, I must add, not a youth in 1986.

Robert

I decided that I might like to join some people in Le Salon at least at the start of a discussion on Yukio Mishima's Sea of Fertility quartet, so on the way to Saturday night I picked up the first volume, Spring Snow, at Barny Noble's.

I went on to Saturday night where a friend said that he had run across a volume that he thought would fit better in my library than in his, and he gave me Being and Time by Martin Heidegger. My understanding of Heidegger is that one profits more from reading about him than from reading his works.

Robert

I ran into a friend from church at Barny's and lamented in the magazine section that I would buy the latest copy of Foreign Affairs to find out whether America has a future, put it on a stack at home, and never get around to it. She offered to motivate my reading by splitting the cost and giving me until the end of the month to pass it on to her. I realized that that was futile and bore the whole cost; Foreign Affairs is on the stack.

But I seem to be making slow headway in Infinite Jest.

Robert

The schedule did not work well over the weekend, but I got to Zero Dark Thirty yesterday on a premium screen. The big screen I think was not necessary, but I liked it.

This is a story about the eleven or twelve years of doggedness of a CIA agent who makes it her personal goal to find, later to kill, Osama Bin Laden. The movie has been taken to task for legitimizing torture as an intelligence gathering technique; it is probably good that a good film has brought up the issue again -- we can talk more about it. It also brings up the unilateral decision to kill those enemies many of us would believe the culture of the United States of America binds us to capture and bring to justice; that was, however, underplayed in the movie and may not elicit discussion.

There's a lot of desk work and grunt work in developing intelligence, so it is a pleasant surprise to find that it can be made into a compelling narrative. Perhaps the agency level politicking brings some humanity into it and livens the narrative.

I wondered why the air transport for the CIA agent at the end was a C-130 rather than a business jet. Others wonder other things about the movie. Overall it was worth going out of my way for, but not among the very best.

Robert

Early last month I placed an order with Edward R. Hamilton. It was received, according to their records, on December 8 but it just got here today and was in my mailbox when I got back from my quasi-daily walk. The books are pretty solid even if not exciting.

The English Language, a linguistic history by Laurel J. Brinton and Leslie K. Arnovick. This may be the one disappointment. It appears that it's a classroom textbook and workbook for beginners in the field. But it also appears that there may be some details that I haven't seen in more narrative histories of the language.

The Book of Enoch translated by R.H. Charles. In works about early Christianity and some of the details of religious thought in Christianity, the name of this book surfaces more often than can be ignored. So I have a copy that will go with various apocrypha and may be read some time.

The Conquest of a Continent, Siberia and the Russians by W. Bruce Lincoln. I've read a couple of books about Siberia and one about the history of the mass of the Steppe and am still fascinated by its extent. This is fatter than the two popular Siberia books and not so deep in history as the one about Central Eurasia, but it is a serious looking academic work that I can actually foresee reading.

The Maine Woods, a fully annotated edition by Henry D. Thoreau and edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer. I first saw this on a shelf and enthused over it at Barny Noble's. It was heavy, hard-covered, and expensive, so I put it on my waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist knowing that it likely never will be issued in paperback. Edward R. Hamilton offered it at a very advantageous price, so despite its weight I ordered it in hardcover. Now I wish that the company would offer the similar volume of Walden, a fully annotated edition.

Herbert Spencer and the Invention of Modern Life by Mark Francis. We are told by Stephen Greenblatt in The Swerve that the finding of Lucretius is how the world became modern. Here we may have a different take on the matter. I first started paying attention to Spencer's name when it came up in reading about George Eliot. His thought apparently colored the thinking of a lot of people and is at least historically important.

The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo. Paul Dirac did not seem all that strange at the lecture by him that I attended in the mid-seventies, but apparently he was. Mathematical thought came naturally to him; society, according to his watchers, apparently did not. He said in his lecture that the equations that described particles had square roots in them. Square roots have two solutions, one positive and one negative. They had been treated as an inconvenience, and their consequences were ignored, until he decided to consider them. Ipso facto (presto changeo) antimatter.

And when I got to my doorstep I found that the recentest telephone book from the local telephone company had been left. I haven't read one of those in a long time.

Robert

Happy reading

Mary (Urania) teased us with excerpts from the Book of Enoch early in the bible read. I'm hoping to read it some time.

I was pretty attached to the Unitarian Universalist church for a decade and a half; I probably will stay at least a little attached until the people I get along with well there are dead. So I haven't been going to many of the services, but I was there for a potluck last night. A fellow had told me that he had left a box of books to be shelved, and I was reminded of that last night, so I shelved them (I'm the quasi-official shelver). The books on the shelves often go to new homes, and still we have more books than fit.

A couple of years ago one of the former poobahs from the Unitarian Universalist Association came through and spoke. He also warmed people up to a book he had had a part in writing and about which there were going to be adult religious education sessions held. It was hardcover, and he struck me as a politician more than as a minister so I skipped the sessions but put the book on my waiting-for-the-paperback wishlist and finally on my wishlist. A couple who had attended the sessions suggested that I might not be too eager to read the book.

It was in the box last night, and I brought it home so as to get it off of my wishlist.

A House for Hope by John A. Buehrens and Rebecca Ann Parker. It is subtitled The Promise of Progressive Religion for the Twenty-first Century; that is a notion I would like to inform myself about. I fear it will not be well covered here.

Robert

Not really a lion.

Robert

Not really a lion.

Sure. But try telling the cat that. ;)

One of the books I read recently was by a Unitarian minister. I liked it.

Sorry about two cat pictures in one day, but I had to add this one:



Was the Unitarian minister a lion?

Robert

>35 Mr.Durick: Neat!

Mr.Durick - I'm sure you've seen most or all of the Oscar-nominated movies/performances - did you have any picks? Beasts of the Southern Wild for pic/director?

Enjoying the cat (lion or domestic) pics and videos.

The quotation marks are courtesy of ABC News as is the list in its entirety; I'm too lazy to take them out.

"Beasts of the Southern Wild"
"Silver Linings Playbook"
"Zero Dark Thirty"
"Lincoln"
"Les Miserables"
"Life of Pi"
"Amour"
"Django Unchained"
"Argo"

I have seen every movie nominated for a best picture Oscar this year except Amour which is yet to play here. I thought that every one of them was worth a trip. I know the fusses about Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty and believe that fusses can be made right back at the fussers.

Silver Linings Playbook was the great feel good movie of the lot and an exquisite entertainment. It lacks weight and stick to the ribs nutritional value. Lincoln was a masterpiece and would probably lead the pack except for my favorite; there's a good chance the Academy will go for it. Life of Pi suffers here because I thought both the book and movie were good but not elevated; I am not in the mainstream, however, in that regard. Les Miserables struck me as a special experience, but I understand some of the criticism of it even though I don't think the film is as debased as some of those critics make it out to be. It made me want to finish reading the book.

And there is a pack of good movies of which none breaks free for special recognition.

Then separate and above all the rest is Beasts of the Southern Wild. It is unique in conception and depiction; it is special in quality. It is compelling and engaging because it knows the story it is telling, and that story is a universal one, as it tells us explicitly without, perhaps, our noticing its telling us. It is not the kind of movie that gets an Oscar for best picture, but it is the one that should get it.

I am not good at picking Oscar winners and am not concerned that I am not. The rest of the categories are generally not within my field of focus or expertise. It might be 2012 that I noticed Ryan Gosling, or that might have been 2011, and I thought that Ben Affleck and Dwight Henry did their jobs well this past year. The last time I noticed a director, though, was for Apollo 13.

Robert

Friday night I finished Mary Stuart by Friedrich Schiller in anticipation of seeing Metropolitan Opera's high definition screening of Maria Stuarda on Saturday. There is history, and there is drama; Schiller new that, and, as the program for the opera asserts, "The drama of Maria Stuarda is true to history in a way the facts are not." The opera derives from the play, but is significantly altered.

The play is the conflict of two powerful figures (both horrid women) over what is right and about the influences around them including their affections. In it Elizabeth is never shown to be certain of her path, even after the event. The opera, as the program tells us, shows Elizabeth to be much more nearly fixed in her intent, and does not show us the scene after the fact. Characters absolutely essential to the play, Mortimer and Davison, are absent from the opera.

I read the play in a rush and still noticed a richness to it that I admired. A lot of that is not in the libretto; the singing takes priority, so repeated phrases rather than subtleties carry the day. This is a bel canto opera; there are lots of arias and there's lots of music. The crowd really enjoyed it.

Robert

Enjoying your thread!

I had a coupon from Barny Noble. He has changed the rules. They have been good once at the store and once on line. Now they are good once at the store or once on line. That's in the fine print. From my wishlist at the store I bought:

The Language Wars by Henry Hitchings. As I think I have said, I like English. I also don't like split infinitives or premature alterations of the language.

Robert

EF, I wanted to see Lars and the Real Girl but didn't get around to it before it was gone. I wonder whether I would have noticed him in that; I first noticed him in Drive and right after that, it seems, in The Ides of March.

I wish that I could see all of the movies that catch my attention, and I wish that more movies would catch my attention.

Robert

P.S. Hey, you changed your message while I was replying to it. Oh well, I can just clarify matters by saying that I am talking about Ryan Gosling.

R

To maintain my bonafides I had to see the French movie. Rust and Bone is about a woman who loses her legs in an affair with a whale and a man who is very hard and is a low level professional fighter and what they do for each other. It was good enough to sit through if you happened to be in the theater when it came on.

Robert

Oh thats a great photo of the "Paw on the head". I had a couple of cats and was amazed to see this happening when the elder cat got really fed up with the younger cat and the paw would be placed on the head and the younger cat would sort of freeze.

wandering_star made a hard to find novel sound very appealing and was gracious enough to send it on to me.

I Could Read the Sky by Timothy O'Grady with photographs by Steve Pyke. This appears to be a novel about existential despair and the consequences of alcoholic palliation. I'm looking forward to this and will put it ahead of all but a few others.

Robert

Quartet may be a documentary about Arcadia, but I think it is a fiction. It is set in a retirement home for musicians. The review in the local paper was tepid about the movie; I think the review was written by a young or middle aged reviewer. A young man sitting outside the Whole Foods Market after the film told a couple of young women that the movie was so so; he seemed to think it was a movie about music. Music is used superbly in this artisanal film as an occupation of the characters and as a plot device, but the film is about the people. They are all credibly old. They all lead lives. Some of the older people in the theater applauded after the credits rolled. See this movie if you are old and know it; otherwise stay away - you make too much noise.

Dustin Hoffman did a superb job.

Robert

On the foolishness! After the movie, after I ate from the Whole Foods hot food bar, I went into Barny Noble's with a list of four books from my wishlist available in the store for less than on-line. I came out with those four books and another from the bargain shelves, two periodicals, three CD's, and a receipt for a DVD order. The books:

Reading Music by Marc Schonbrun. This is the bargain book and an exercise in wishful thinking as are all my other music theory books.

I believe that the rest of the books got on my wishlist by mention here or there on LibraryThing.

Soul Dust by Nicholas Humphrey. I have some interest in consciousness and more interest in the idea of emergence. The whence of consciousness is one of the big puzzles of modern day thinking. This book claims to address that puzzle.

Moscow, December 25, 1991 by Conor O'Clery. "We will bury you," declaimed Nikita Kruschev banging his shoe on a United Nations podium, but they did not. This is about the last day of the Soviet Union, a pretty important day, I should think.

The Secret Life of Pronouns by James W. Pennebaker. Language is a favorite. The question of its impingement on consciousness is an interesting one. I was surprised that I couldn't find this book on my own and that it turned up in the psychology section.

The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones. I don't fully understand what gets a novel that attracts me when it is described in the threads on LibraryThing onto my wishlist. Why do I reject so many that are so likely excellent but I do not reject them all. Anyway this is one I didn't reject, a little English cozy that is also supposed to be literature.

Robert

Not so long ago B.S. Johnson was held up on one of the threads on LibraryThing as an important underrecognized author with his novel Trawl called to special attention. The B.S. Johnson Omnibus seemed to be the way to get that novel and two others, Albert Angelo and House Mother Normal, as an introduction to his work. The Omnibus was not, however, readily available. I found it at The Book Depository and ordered it from them; it came today.

Robert

From Trains magazine:



Oregon

Robert

That's a great picture, Robert! So mysterious and evocative...

Interesting list of books. I love your phrase a little English cozy that is also supposed to be literature...it captures a whole genre.

Beautiful picture of Oregon which is somewhere I always want to get to whenever I go to BC, but so far I haven't managed it. I do love train rides.

#52 - always a appreciate pictures of rocks in their natural habitat, even if they are shunted off to the side in this picture, and, well, out of focus.

From the internet

Robert

Yesterday's movies:

After being disappointed in an opera ticket hunt I went to the very popular Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters in IMAX quality and as it turns out 3D. The 3D was apparently add-on, but they did a pretty good job; you could see it sometimes, but other times the figures were full and round. The photography was good; in fact the main attraction of the movie was its sumptuous filming. The script has a few exquisite seconds. The drama stank, and there is no good reason to go to this movie.

The reason I had stayed in town was that I wanted to see The Raw and the Cooked at the museum theater. It is a documentary about recent developments (mostly local foods and organic foods) in eating in Taiwan. Even though the film was not very carefully or thoroughly done, there is enough to it to merit sitting through. I would like to spend some time with most of the dishes served on screen and with the assistance of a local expert. Who would know without being told that a certain dim sum should be pierced with a chop stick so that you could sip the soup out of it? I didn't see anything of skinned and writhing snakes at the food stands, but the train didn't stop in Tainan where I saw them in another century.

Robert

Happy birthday to Grand Central Terminal:



Robert

I have been a constant and enthusiatic fan of National Theater Live screenings in my area despite that it is a thirty mile round trip to the theater that carries them. That theater has made a mess of the presentation many times however, and it is a major disappointment to go there and not see what one expected to see or to see a mess made of it.

I went through misery inducing traffic yesterday. Although I did some shopping and got supper, I didn't need to do that there or then, so my trip was for the play. I wish him no ill, but I am not a fan of John Lithgow. That said, his performance in The Magistrate is a comic and acting tour de force. This could be a marvelous production to see live. To watch it through 3 hours 19 minutes and a few seconds to have it cut off mid-line is just too disappointing to volunteer for. A refund of the ticket price and an extracted movie pass doesn't fix all that.

We'll see, but I am in the mood not to watch or promote these plays any longer.

Robert

I'm sorry to hear about your disappointment, Robert. I haven't had these problems yet, but then, I've only been to three National Theater Live screenings.

Over the past few years it has been failures on the part of the theater and failures on the part of the National Theatre. I want to whine, but won't, not any more than I just have anyway. The people who go to live performances I am sure have a thrilling experience. The people who get the live transmissions likely have a more reliable experience. I am less and less willing to be abused for somebody else's profit.

Thank you for your commiseration.

Robert

So, when I got home I fed the cat and finished up a game of Bejewelled on my Nook that I had started in the theater.

Then I read the last fourteen pages of Infinite Jest which I've been reading all month with almost no other reading. It is a portrayal of the preferability of death by drunkeness or addiction to life in sobriety or being straight. I liked it, but I don't think I will take away much from it.

I have some questions about it (like is it a Novel, does it cohere, is it complete, is there something to take away from it), and if I don't become indifferent to them I will address them in the Infinite Jesters group.

Robert

PS I just looked back over my thread, a sludgy thing to do, and found that I hadn't really been reading Infinite Jest all month to the exclusion of everything else. It just was close to that and seemed that way.

Robert

I have very much been reading other things and still feel like I've been monogamous to IJ. And I'm about a fifth of the way through. I go back and forth between seeing flashes of brilliance and thinking that maybe it goes on for too long.

And, no, a refund and a free ticket do not make up for that.

It all cohere's, IJ I mean, but it's very difficult to see. There are webpages that reconstruct the plot, and much of it is just wildly difficult to pull out. As to what to get from it, there are many answers. I'm still asking that myself, but I do get a lot out of it despite.

I used the free ticket to see Stand Up Guys. Two reviews I saw before going said that the script was weak but that the acting was exceptional. An IMDb review I read this morning after seeing the movie went to stupid lengths to say that. Sure there were old or obvious jokes; it was the telling that was important. Some of the plot turns, for example a burial, were not to be believed. But these three actors, if you count Alan Arkin, just delivered with the greatest of easy grace. This is the second old person movie I've been turned on by recently, and it may be that there is art that youth (under 65) just isn't developed enough for.

Robert

Dan, I think I'll keep exploring Infinite Jest for awhile, but I'll be doing it over at the group.

Robert

After yet another disappointing church service this morning I made my beginning of the month run on Costco and ambled through the book section. I came away with:

Quiet by Susan Cain. I am introverted albeit sometimes loudly so, and I am hoping to see how I might better have survived a misspent life. This was on my wishlist.

Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, whose name on the cover includes an M.D. I think that this is likely to be another disappointing stab at content outside the author's own discipline, but it seems important to be willing to take a look. I had seen this at Barny Noble's and wasn't wiiling to spend full price there for it.

Robert

Robert, I'm sorry to hear about your disappointing experiences at NT Live showings. I've seen well over a dozen NT "live" performances in London, but oddly enough the closest theatre that shows filmed NT Live plays is in Macon, Georgia, about 1-1/2 hours south of Atlanta (and, no, Macon isn't exactly the center of high culture in the state). I do want to see The Magistrate, but your experience doesn't make me eager to see it on the screen.

ETA: I love your animal and train photos!

I met Hushpuppy and her daddy Saturday night. It was such a unique and moving movie. Watched it with my mother (not a movie lover herself) and she's already out to buy herself a copy and an extra one to give away!

'Once there was a Hushpuppy and she lived with her daddy in the Bathtub.' It won't be very long before I watch it again.

Darryl, you know it would have been just fine if it had worked, but, between this theater chain and the National Theatre, things just don't go right. The Magistrate is performed in a big theater, and a good bit of what Johh Lithgow, I suppose as well as the other actors, had to offer seemed to be close up. You'd want to sit in the front row or carry binoculars.

Robert

Vincent Van Gogh's self portrait

Robert

Cool video on link.

71> You win -- that's the most intriguing thing I've come across today.

From a different art form, yesterday I took in two shows at the movie theater across town, The Oscar Nominated Short Films, Animated and Live Action. I wish that the local chain would also carry the documentaries, but they claim that we get enough exposure to them on HBO. I don't have television; oh, well. As often happens these short films often felt a little long. Nevertheless they were worth seeing. And of course there were some standouts or standout elements.

Death of a Shadow was a clever concept and lusciously set, but it was kind of a cheap story. Curfew was a marvelous evocation of mental depression although I'm not sure that the rose tinted glasses folk would be able to see that. The rest of the live action films were okay with an African wise man in Asad who seemed to be from Zen Buddhism just so stories.

I got along easier with the animation. Maggie Simpson in "The Longest Day Care" started the series yesterday and was good humor along the Simpsons' line. Fresh Guacamole is pretty superficial but very clever and very deftly done. Adam and Dog is touching with the dog coming out as the better person. The others were nomination worthy exercises of the craft.

The one I'm taking away from it seems to be Curfew for its spot on depiction of depression, but for somebody interested in the craft of movies the acting of the child in the film is consummate.

Robert

I finished Anthill by E.O. Wilson last night after I got home. I had twelve pages to go when we discussed it in our book group at church. Everybody liked it. Everybody endorsed certain grand generalizations about it. One person said with some agreement that the book was a pitch (I would have said polemic) for negotiated settlements versus activism. Except for the last, nobody said much of anything substantial. The discussion was along the likes of, "Well, I liked Frogman."

As far as I'm concerned, it was not a very good novel. The characters were not richly conceived, and the plot was contrived (although I kind of liked that SPOILER the evil Christians were dismissed with shotgun blasts END SPOILER). qebo opined that The Anthill Chronicles part of the book made it worth the reading, and it is true that I enjoyed a narrative of the life of an ant colony. In fact it may be the only narrative of the life of an ant colony that I will ever read, so my having read it here is valuable. But I bet the telling could have been done better.

The Iliad came up as a structural comparison to this novel, but nobody said anything substantial about it. Nevertheless we decided to discuss The Iliad in April. I recommended the Fagles translation, but then last night I downloaded the Chapman translation to my Nook.

Robert

I had a coupon and I had a new card number which got me another coupon, so I placed a BN.COM order for each. They were in today's mail.

Agent 6 by Tom Rob Smith. I was okay with Child 44 and more for a sort of reification of history than for literary reasons happy with The Secret Speech, so when I saw this novel on the table at my brick and mortar and when I saw that it was not the prequel that I expected I thought I would get it eventually. Eventually arrived.

The Art of Living According to Joe Beef by Frédéric Morin, David McMillan, and Meredith Erickson, the latter sadly unknown to LibraryThing. My kitchen is moribund, but I still like to eat. And I like two fisted eating; I like it, moreover, to be eating of good food. From what I read about this book I could indulge some fantasy here. And I just got a postcard advertisement from Morton's asking me to come in for another meal; I 48 ounce porterhouse is up to $122 so I may not get there soon.

Robert

71> Intriguing, but I must say I prefer the painting to the "photograph" -- more soul.

There is apparently an excellent restaurant in the Pyrenees called something like Restaurant Bras. In the past few years the builder of that restaurant in preparation for retirement handed if over to his son. The movie Step Up to the Plate, or in French, Entre les Bras, documents the coming into his own of the son. This is good enough to watch but it is only a so so movie. Most of the food would require instructions on how to eat it. The locations of the French restaurant and its Japanese relative are not plainly given. But the family was full of life, and the movie made that plain. And I would like to eat there even if the waiter had to hover to tell me what to put on my fork.

This movie played at our museum as part of a two movie series on food that started with the Taiwan movie.

Robert

From Trains Magazine. They didn't say where it was.



Robert

Enjoying your thoughts on movies and books, and your wonderful cat and train photos!

>79 Mr.Durick: What a great picture!

Saturday evening I was in Barny Noble's with a question about my Nook (that they couldn't answer). I saw a book I was quite sure I wanted, and I bought it:

Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare and edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. I heard or read something forty or fifty years ago that made me think I want to read Titus Andronicus; nowadays I would rather watch it. And late last year I saw Timon of Athens on the screen and thought I would like to see it again or in another production or to read it. There they were; I have them.

Saturday night a woman walked into a group in which another fellow and I were sometimes seen to talk between ourselves about the operas we had seen or meant to see. She cornered us and said that later on she would show us some books she had brought that we might want. It turns out that she is a member of the biggest Friends of the Library organization around here and had seen some opera books that were going to be discarded. She thought we might be interested. He is not so much into accruing books, so I got a few more than he did, but I think we are both happy about the division of them.

The Victrola Book of the Opera by Samuel Holland Rous. This is actually the 5th editon of a 1919 record catalog. Oddly enough this is the commonest book on LibraryThing of the lot.

Opera People by Robert M. Jacobson with photography by Christian Steiner who is not recognized by LibraryThing. This is a picture book of prominent singers and conductors in the opera world. It seems to ignore directors, composers, and librettists.

Fifty Years of GlyndeBourne by John Julius Norwich. Apparently he hasn't spent all of his time in Byzantium. Actually I guess I knew that; I've heard him as interlocutor on the radio program My Word. I have seen DVD's of operas staged at Glyndebourne and been happy with them.

Opera edited by Rudolf Hartmann. Another picture book about the subject.

Opera by David Ewen. There are fewer photographs in this book. It is the first volume in the series Mainstreams of Music. The library catalog card in it describes it as, "Opera; its story told through the lives and works of its foremost composers."

Opera! by Karyl Lynn Zietz. This is subtitled The Guide to Western Europe's Great Houses. I might be able to do a little fantasy travel with this one.

The church book group decided as a follow on to Anthill to read The Iliad. My copy came today; I don't think the touchstone will single out this translation, but I'll try.

The Iliad by Homer and translated by Robert Fagles. I read a good bit of Fagles's Odyssey on someone's recommendation in preparation for reading The Penelopiad, and I liked it. I must have other copies of The Iliad around somewhere, but the one I know about is Chapman's on my Nook. Keats's admiration notwithstanding, I may not look at it. This came in the mail from Barny Noble today bought with the aid of a coupon. I forgot to order The Song of Achilles.

Robert

I have for a few years meant to get to the opera of Richard Wagner, and I have a few DVD's toward that end. But I haven't looked at any of them. I have seen the Metropolitan Opera's production of The Ring in high definition on a big screen almost twice. So when the museum announced that they would screen the La Scala 2012 opening night production of Lohengrin I decided to make an effort to see it. And an effort it was. It takes almost five hours. The music and singing were to my naive ear good, but the staging and acting were tedious and freaky in the extreme. We get no swan, and the knight is not wearing his shiny armor. He lies on the ground and twitches a lot. The noble setting appears to be a tenement. René Pape as the king sang well as he usually does, but I couldn't hear the voice of Jonas Kaufmann as Lohengrin for the oddities of his performance.

Some of the people around me (a local opera commentator, a professor of music, a few competent enthusiasts) had their own negative opinions. One person opined that she didn't like the soprano's (Annette Dasch whom I haven't seen before) singing; she looked like a child. Others were perplexed by the staging and acting.

There are enthusiastic reviews of this performance on line.

If you need a performance about the ruin that greedy women can rain on innocent men and someone offers you the opportunity to see this one skip it on the grounds that life is too short and find something else.

(Oh, I don't think Wagner got it right. There were a couple of quibbles including his failure to let the people comprehend the power of God's omnipotence; magic can not influence it. Bah!)

Someday I'll watch a different version.

Robert

I thought the Fagles translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey were very good, Robert. I'm interested to hear what you think.

That part of the Odyssey that I read struck me as credible and eminently readable, so I'm expecting the same from the Iliad, although I expect the story to be less enchanting. I don't know when I will start the Iliad. I have to be ready to discuss it on April 3, and I want to have read The Song of Achilles by then too.

Robert

Sour talk ahead: The lesson of The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson is that one should not eat other people's feces (there are alternatives in modern first world cities), but if one does and one becomes ill from it one should drink lots of Gatorade [product placement not actually in book]. There is no similar preventive regimen for nuclear weapons.

The book is very readable through the acceptance by the authorities of the hypothesis that cholera is waterborne, even including the nod to the social responsibilities of government. The back half or so of the book is weaker with opinion about the workings of scientific investigation and the advantages and disadvantages of urban centralization. It never seems wrong, but it seems like rather than bore us with more information on the cover subject the journalist wants to entertain us with something easy enough to read.

Having said all that I can recommend this book for a clear exposition of something done well.

Robert

PS This is for discussion in the 75 Books in 2013 group.

R

Today's errands led me directly in front of a used book store. I went inside to see what versions of The Iliad they had; none. There was Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton , a book I should read some day. It was only a dollar. It came home with me.

Robert

Wednesday I got up early so as to get to an in-town multiplex for a day of Die Hard, from a little after 10 am until a little before midnight. I cannot explain the appeal of doing such a thing. Die Hard was a high rise thriller with a clever and strong man fighting for his wife and justice; there were lots of bullets, kicks to vulnerable parts of the body, official foolishness, and live steam escaping here and there -- not bad. Die Hard 2 had the built in joke that a fellow could have two such adventures in a lifetime, but this time with the flat expanse of an airport. The movie got aviation way wrong and generally was not very good. There was some cleverness back in Die Hard with a Vengeance, a movie I was surprised to find I had seen before; my memory of it didn't include Bruce Willis. Live Free or Die Hard brought the franchise into the computer age; Kevin Smith was good as the computer Warlock even if he was a cliché figure (give him a minute and he can run the world on his computer), but the rest of the movie was just a so so depiction of what might be if things go wrong. It was pretty hard to suspend disbelief. I suppose there was a story in A Good Day to Die Hard, but it was over with so little told that it felt like the movie owed us more. As one review I read implied, the original character is no longer in the films; the new guy, still played as John McClane by Bruce Willis, is invulnerable. The person who doesn't want to be with him, this time his son, comes once again to love him in a routine that was overplayed in the series.

Bonnie Bedelia disappeared after only two films.

This wasn't worth doing except that if there's a sixth movie in the franchise I'll go see it. But he's already being played as something of a geriatric, impervious though he may be, character.

Robert

I heard a review on the radio this morning which said the Bruce Willis character would be taken over by the son so that the series would continue. Do you suppose this is so? I should add that I know very little about these movies.

I saw the first one. I've done the "see a movie series in a day" thing, with the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but that was more of a continuing story. I might do that with The Godfather trilogy if I was given opportunity and time.

The son was a cipher (as a character; his role was as a plot point) in this latest movie. Unless reviewers fall all over themselves promoting a sequel focussing on him, I'll skip it. I've sat down to one or two series on DVD, and I was at a Batman marathon the night of the shooting. I can get involved, but I think that Die Hard just didn't have the stamina.

Robert

One to miss and one to see:

Saturday we had The Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD screening of Rigoletto. This is about a curse made on a man and how it plays out. It is the opera in which the aria La donna è mobile is sung. The opera was originally a nineteenth century production set in the sixteenth century. The present director set it in Las Vegas in 1960 matching the characters to members of the Rat Pack. It didn't work. To my ear the opera sounded great; to my eye it looked awful. I ran into somebody who heard it on the radio and liked it; I on the other hand would have left the theater if I had had someplace to go.

Sunday after church seemed like a good time to see Amour, the one film nominated for a best picture Oscar that I hadn't seen. It is heartbreaking. It is unique in its focus on its subject. It is nearly perfectly executed.

I believe that the real best picture contenders of the lot nominated are Amour, Lincoln, and Beasts of the Southern Wild. The others are all good but lack substance. Of these three, Academy politics is most likely to hoist Lincoln up the flagpole, but we'll see.

Robert

PS There are those who would disagree with me about the opera.

R

Sounds like you should just close your eyes and let your ears do the enjoying (on the Rigoletto)

The group's having decided to read The Iliad and the respect given hereabouts to The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller, I thought it would be an opportune time to read them side by side, and ordered them, separately. The novel was in today's mail. I have until April 3 to read them both.

Robert

Die Hard is one of my favourite Christmas movies. :)

I cut the second one some slack because I'm a sucker for aeroplane-related disaster movies, and the third just for its opening sequence (including the look on Samuel L.'s face when he sees you-know-what). Beyond that, I got nuthin'.

Chick Webb was born in the first decade of the twentieth century (roughly contemporary with my father) in Baltimore. Tuberculosis of the spine kept him short and hunchbacked. He took up drumming, possibly at the suggestion of a doctor, and carried drumsticks with him that he tapped out rhythms with here and there and everywhere. He saved money from selling newspapers to buy his first drum set. He moved to New York City as a teenager and began performing professionally.

He went on to form bands that toured and that were featured at the Savoy Ballroom. He auditioned and immediately hired Ella Fitzgerald. His band won many playoffs with bands that have names more familiar to us nowadays than his. He was pretty much known as a good person. He died too young and was buried by his home church in Baltimore.

The Savoy King: Chick Webb & the Music That Changed America documents a good bit of that. It is a movie with a lot of still photographs and a lot of music. Some famous people do voice overs of texts from other famous people of the times. It is sad that there isn't more documentation (happily enough BN.COM shows 19 results from a search in music on his name), but this film captures much of what there is fluently and leaves us with a good feeling about the man and his music.

Jeffrey Kaufman, the principal in the making of the film, was at this screening. He didn't add much beyond enthusiasm, although he did tell us how he depended on luck and how sometimes persistence just didn't pay off in researching it. He also introduced a member of the Tuskegee Airmen who happened to be in the audience; that along with this movie emphasized for me how quickly life becomes ancient. The swing era and World War II are less and less living memories.

Robert

White House Marine Band Beasting It

Robert

I'm impressed with your Die Hard marathon - that's a long day.

Hope you're not Wagner-ed out after Lohengrin. I heard that the Met Parsifal is 6 hours long despite the fact that the music is only 4 hrs or so. That seems like unnecessarily long intermissions. I would have liked to see the La Scala production but I don't think they show them around here.

I actually didn't think the Rigoletto was as bad as I was expecting it to be. Also, it's one of those operas that is hard to kill with a production. The singing and playing were good so I generally enjoyed it. Most of the reviews I read were middling to bad, but since I read them, I was familiar with what I thought were the stupidest bits - Monterone is a sheikh??? and the creatively-translated subtitles. The garishly ugly and over the top sets seemed to fit the ugly behavior of most of the characters.

Jonas Kaufmann and René from Lohengrin are back in Parsifal who is I guess his dad. My local listing shows it as starting at noon instead of the usual 12:55. Fandango shows that it lasts five hours and forty five minutes. I expect to be there.

The local museum apparently has its own batch of ballets and operas it is showing. I haven't seen them listed as being from any particular vendor.

Because of my fearful anticipation of those creative subtitles a friend brought along the libretto with English translation, but I wasn't able to use it. I'll see a DVD of Rigoletto in a more 19th or 16th century setting some day. I can understand the twentieth century setting, so I can understand that if you bought into it you bought into it; I didn't buy into it.

I agree that the singing was good, and it is only my naiveté that keeps me from opining about the music; I liked listening to this opera. As I've said I can't get opera without the drama. I suppose the drama was good enough in this production for me to get the music, but still it was disappointing as drama.

Robert

I spent my first 17 years in a city on the Connecticut River. I am still a little attached to that personal history, so when I learned that there was A History of the Connecticut River (by Wick Griswold) I put it on my wishlist. With the latest coupon offer from Barny Noble I ordered the book, and it came today.

It disappoints, however, in that it appears to be mostly about the river within Connecticut, and I was in Massachusetts. I've also seen the river farther north and wished the book to take in the full extent of the river. Also it is an awfully thin volume; the index ends at page 125.

Robert

Saturday also took me into a Barny Noble's store mostly to check on magazines, some of which I bought. But I also made two impulse buys from the bargain books section.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference by Eileen Flanagan. This is a self help book that I will probably never read, but I use the prayer often enough that the title said to me, "Buy me." I had just seen another book in the religion section entitled Don't Believe Everything You Think another phrase that figures regularly in my coping with the world. This book shows up as unique with the ISBN that I bought, but the touchstone points to the a version that many people have.

The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction by Wendy Northcutt. I like this series of books, but I've lost track of which ones I have, so I haven't bought the most recent ones. This apparently the sixth book in the series and was cheap enough it won't hurt to have a second copy especially if I read it fairly soon.

I also picked up an Ella Fitzgerald CD. They had plenty of them, but this was the only one they had with a cut with Chick Webb. I'll have to dig a little to get to hear him.

Robert

Holy cow! I finally finished reading another book, Spring Snow by Yukio Mishima. I don't know what good it did me except to sort of involve me in the discussion. It would be perverse of me to continue in the tetralogy, but my perversions tend to be benign.

I continue on in Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt, another book I don't much care for and from which I am getting little, albeit more, it seems, than from Spring Snow.

Robert

In the first act of The Metropolitan Opera's 2013 production of Parsifal, which screened Saturday live in high definition, the women are in black and wearing shoes; the men, knights of the grail, are in suits. They remove their jackets and ties. Some of them have buttoned collars; others have open collars. Later in the act all of the men have open collars, and I don't know where the ones with buttoned collars went; they may have just unbuttoned them. The shirts are white. The shirts have no pockets. The men are barefoot. Amfortas enters with a blood stain on his white shirt; he is not wearing shoes nor is he wearing a belt. Kundry is wearing a black outfit; I didn't notice in the first act whether she was wearing shoes -- she's separate from the cluster of women I mentioned a few sentences ago. Parsifal whom we don't know is Parsifal is wearing black; his tunic covers his waist line. I also didn't notice whether the woman in white who brought in the dead swan was wearing shoes.

In the second act Kundry in black is wearing shoes. Klingsor has a nominally white shirt on, but it is fully bloodstained. He keeps his jacket on. He is wearing shoes. The women in white, the demons in Klingsor's castle, are not wearing shoes although their feet are sufficiently bloodstained that they look like they are wearing slippers. Kundry returns to try to seduce Parsifal, whom we now learn is Parsifal, in white; she is barefoot.

In the third act at first there seems to be a hodgepodge of shoes. Then things begin to resolve. Kundry is back in black, but she is not wearing shoes. Parsifal shows up, and Kundry removes his shoes. His tunic comes off and that he is beltless is resolved. Before he goes to save Amfortas with the lance he is dressed in a white shirt, without a pocket.

Parsifal becomes king of the knights of the grail. Amfortas is relieved of pain and duty. And Kundry in the most touching aspect of the six hour plot is laid to rest after, in this production, a couple of thousand years of not being able to cry, only able, in respect to expressing emotion, to laugh. In fact I think that Kundry's redemption is the great triumph of this story.

This production, the only one I have seen of this opera, I suspect does at least journeyman's duty to the work. I think it would be worth the six hours to sit through it at the encore performance for somebody who hadn't already seen it.

Robert

There is enough good content in Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt to make it interesting reading. But the conjecture and the pointing out of the conjecture become pretty annoying. He could have written the connection between the plays and the writer in a more palatable way I think. If he had said that such and such paralleled Shakespeare's life in ... rather than so Shakespeare could have been such and such as he shows in the play it would feel a lot better. Anyway we can do that for ourselves, see that, for example, marital disatisfaction in the plays comes from a playwright who spent little time at home and left a second best bed to his wife in his will.

I'm not sure that I'm making sense here, but I feel that I learned something about Shakespeare's life that I didn't already know, that I got to see a possible connection between the art and the man, while at the same time I was irritated by the implemenation of the concept. I don't remember being irritated by Anthony Burgess's book on the poet.

Robert

97 - I was going with Beastie Boys and was expecting to see the Marine Band fighting for their right to party.

Loved your thoughts on Parsifal, Robert. Is doing away with the period costumes a trend in opera? I guess after awhile you have to do something to make them seem fresh. Some day I hope to see a live Met performance, but six hours?

How did you happen upon that Marine Band YouTube clip! I'm always surprised at what ends up on the Internet. Did you know that I am a member of the Marine Band? I wasn't on that particular event, though.

Enjoying your thread!

Linda, costuming in opera productions and Shakespeare productions is a mystery fresh out of the director's mind. I saw Timon of Athens in a National Theater screening last year with modern dress; I was moved by the drama, so when I read the play last night in my mind's eye it was still in modern dress. Now why would they do that? I've heard it explained for both opera and Shakespeare that we are so weary of the old costumes and setting that we need something with pizazz to hold our attention. Well people who need pizazz to hold their attention don't go to opera and Shakespeare no matter the production, and most of us who go are not so jaded. There are, however, those people who might be jaded, but instead get angry when anybody upsets their notion of how the work should be performed. We saw Rigoletto a couple of weeks ago set in 1960's Las Vegas, a nineteenth century opera in an originally medieval setting; I don't know how it was first staged, but probably not in authentic period costumes. So I don't know whether this mucking about is a modern trend, although I know that I've heard of it for at least half a century.

Most operas are not six hours, and in a first attempt you probably want to hear more arias than there are in something like Parsifal or even Pelléas et Mélisande compelling though it may be. The Metropolitan Opera's Live in HD series is a marvelous way to get to see and hear a variety of operas that one likely wouldn't get to see unless one were in New York City with a wallet full of money. It is not the same experience as sitting in a theater watching and listening to a live performance. The moving camera and tight focus make a big difference.

japaul, your being a member of the Marine Band does not strike me as being unfamiliar although I don't think of it whenever I read one of your posts. I have forgotten where I found that link. I guessed when I first read your question that it had been posted on Facebook where I have liked the page for the movie Beasts of the Southern Wild, but when I went to that page to confirm it I couldn't find it. If I stumble across the answer I'll post it. I love that music.

I found it. It was on this page, down a way. There is another clip of the song which I have posted on LibraryThing already that I really admire; it should be on that page too, but it is not popping out at me now. It shows a live performance of the song; here it is from my Facebook timeline.

Robert

On the way to the multiplex I stopped by Costco for some hot dogs, still had time, and went in to look at books and stuff. I came away with:

A Brief Guide to Jane Austen by Charles Jennings. I probably won't reread Austen for several more years, but I am still enamored of her novels. So I thought I might stay in touch with what looks like a light, congenial volume about her life and work.

Mapping the Lands and Waters of Hawaii by Riley M Moffat and Gary L. Fitzpatrick. This is one of three volumes on the mapping of the Kingdom of Hawaii. This volume focuses on a government survey made between 1870 and 1900 and which still has effects on land ownership in the state. I like maps.

Robert

I had seen the previews for Jack the Giant Slayer a few times. I suspected that the story would be treacly, but I admired the pictures on the screen. The review in the local paper confirmed that with special effusion for the 3D cinematography; 3D was not an add-on to this movie. Meanwhile the movie wasn't taking in much money, and Oz the Great and Powerful will be pressing at the IMAX gates on Friday. I had a free ticket for a regular movie in the same multiplex as Jack. The sleeper Side Effects was playing there, but sparsely scheduled. So I went to town.

The only reason to see Jack, and one would have to see it in 3D IMAX for that, is to admire the sets and photography. There may not be as much detail in this movie as there is in, say, Avatar, but the attention to detail is close as in that movie. The colors are spot on and rich. Everything of three dimensions has bulk and heft. It is gorgeous and intricate. And the story is stupid; that's not always bad, but this one radiates its stupidity.

Major depression is one of my enthusiasms, and I expected Side Effects to be about that. It is not. It has a very well executed plot twist. The movie was disappointing in that regard and doesn't make it into my top ranks because of it, but it is compellingly plotted and worth seeing. It doesn't require a very big screen so a DVD of it would do.

Some of the previews I've been seeing have caught my attention. Oblivion looks good on both the IMAX screen and the regular theater screen; it will appeal to science fiction fans. I saw the preview for an animated movie that could be beautiful; the title is in a notebook in my pocket upstairs -- I will try to post it later. Pacific Rim looks like it might be as good as Battleship. There are more, but my memory fails me.

Robert

PS The animated movie that may be watchable based just on its beauty is Epic. The movie will give Christoph Waltz a shot at yet another supporting actor Oscar (if animated characters can get Oscars).

R

I saw Timon of Athens presented by the National Theater in a screening last year and was moved by it. Meanwhile as early as high school I had heard that Titus Andronicus was a very violent play, and I think that Harold Bloom said of it that it was to show that Shakespeare could do the rough stuff that Marlowe had put on stage. So I bought the book Titus Andronicus & Timon of Athens edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. The church book group was taken by Stephen Greenblatt's The Swerve and decided then to read something else by him lighting on Will in the World. Having read that I thought I might enrich the experience by reading the two plays and their trappings.

The book is in the RSC Shakespeare series. It is well annotated. It has act by act summaries for the plays, and there is a substantial performance history for each one. At the end there is a short piece on the poet and a chronology of the plays.

Both of these plays were not Shakespeare's alone which I didn't know until I read this book, but they stand up well enough. Titus Andronicus is as violent as its reputation has it; some of the violence is gratuitous. Some people find humor in parts of it, for example where three of the characters argue to be the one to sacrifice a hand to ransom Titus's sons. The resolution is as violent as the rest and is possibly humorous as well in the serving of a couple of pies.

Timon may in everybody's eye have been King James, but to me he was a poor rich schmuck who found out who his friends were. This play has not been much performed so I think I'm kind of lucky to have seen it on screen. There is a philosopher, the subject of several dog references, who counsels Timon (who rejects the counsel) whom I liked in the screening and again in the reading. I think that if I found a vast cache of gold in the woods and the law allowed it I would not stay to die in a cave, but the play builds to that rejection of life.

The Tempest remains my favorite, and Hamlet remains the one I honor most, or something like that.

Robert

say hi to the seagulls for me

>103 Mr.Durick: - I don't think I caught whether Kundry had shoes in the first act but since she and Parsifal were barefoot in the last act, I wondered if Dalayman and Kaufmann had to spend the whole second intermission dousing their feet with shaving cream. I felt bad for all the women who had to stand in the blood pool, as well as the singers, so it was good to hear all the technical talk about how it was heated etc. during intermission. Also wondered if the overlong intermissions were so they could move the giant mounds of earth and get the giant blood pool in and out.

Other than that, I thought the production was very good, though it seemed a little post-apocalyptic instead of contemporary, and the singing was fantastic. I saw another production on YouTube - the one baswood linked to awhile back - but it's different to watch the whole thing in one sitting - a bit overwhelming.

I agree with you in regards to Jack the Giant Slayer. It had two things going for it; that it was a movie the entire family wanted to see and Ewan MacGregor was in it. I should have stayed home and rewatched Beginners instead.

Kundry took Parsifal's shoes off in the last act, which must have been symbolic of something. She was shoeless from the beginning of the act. Apparently some of that scene changing can be done as the work goes on; they have those giant something-or-others, for which they have a name, that move laterally with most of the set on them. I liked the production, too, and I noticed that René Pape seemed much more pleased with things than he often is.

I noticed that both big, high resolution screens in town will be switching from Jack the Giant Slayer to Oz the Great and Powerful tomorrow. I have not actually been exposed to the whole Oz panoply so I don't know what I should look for in it. My memory of the previews is that the picture is good; the drama can hardly be worse than Jack, which I think I must remember was a beautiful movie.

Robert

On a jillion errands yesterday I incorporated into my day a not very hopeful search for Runaway Horses by Yukio Mishima for discussion in Le Salon...

I went to a store in a store that sells used books in both Japanese and English. I found that they didn't have it in English, but I had to ask whether they had it in Japanese. Even if I couldn't read it in the original I could have waved it under the noses of the others in the group and said, "See here; look at this." She thought they had it, but on inspection she found they didn't. They did, have, however, Trapeze by Simon Mawer, a book on my wishlist from my affection for his book The Glass Room; I came away with it.

The Barnes and Noble on line listing for Mishima showed it not in stock at their store in that shopping center, but I wanted to check anyway. I didn't find it. I did, however, find Drift by Rachel Maddow, another book on my wishlist, on their new book table (they don't really mean it). It was available on line discounted 13%; my card got a 10% discount. I decided I could afford the difference to try to keep a brick and mortar in town (even though I don't like this particular branch). I showed both books to my book group in the evening, and we will be discussing this one in May.

Robert

I thought that yesterday I should go by the neighborhood branch of the used book store I had been to on Wednesday to look again for Runaway Horses. They didn't have it.

When Patrick Leigh Fermor died he was spoken well of on LibraryThing, so I put the three books describing his walk from Holland to Constantinople on my wishlist. A Time of Gifts, the first volume, was on the shelf yesterday for five dollars; I bought it. I wish the rest had been there.

Robert

I decided that two movies would be too much of a squeeze for yesterday afternoon, so I opted to skip Emperor which I may catch later on.

What I did see was West of Memphis. Three young men were convicted in West Memphis, Arkansas, of the satanic murders of three eight year old boys. One was sentenced to death and the others to long time jail terms. There were some things seriously wrong with the police investigation and with the prosecution. Some high powered people expressed some substantial sympathy -- Peter Jackson put up money and is listed as one of the producers for the film. Those connections got things moving albeit very slowly, 19 years in prison.

Finally to get the accused out of prison an unusual plea was accepted, an Alford Plea, by which the accused maintain their innocence but plead guilty to satisfy some overbearing condition. The sleazy, elected prosecutor in the case maintains, despite all the evidence, that with the guilty pleas justice is satisfied. The real killer, probably the one identified in the film, remains free and will not be investigated.

This film was incredibly well made which may argue for getting Peter Jackson or a similar cinematic power on your side if you want to convince certain movie goers of your case. I recommend this film whole heartedly. This is the kind of government abuse that should be protested, not Tea Party nonsense.

I talked with a fellow I know last night, a Legal Aid attorney, about the film and the prosecutorial misconduct, and he couldn't believe it. He said that there must be more to the story. The prosecutors as I described them would face disbarment. I would like him to watch the film and report back to me on it, but he won't.

Robert

With the time I had free from not going to see Emperor I reviewed my Barny Noble wishlists and found three books about the same price in the store as on line and availbable at the store in the shopping center with the mutiplex I was going to for the other film. I found them and bought them.

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon. This is a novel set in the on line social media world. Somebody must have said something really compelling about this book because I wouldn't have picked it up based on its cover.

Man in the Woods by Scott Spencer. I don't remember the recommendation for this, but the moral issues presented in this novel are what made me put it on the wishlist. Apparently it is about a man who kills another man and must live with his moral lapse; I will also, whenever I get to it, be looking for empathy in the killer even if he is justified in the killing.

Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff. This is presented as a happy skewering of modern day, high end hedonism. I'd like to be a hedonist, and I wonder what the shortcomings might be.

Robert

Oh Robert my husband and I went to see that last week. It was indeed excellent, if depressing. The "more to the story" is simply more corruption do you think? From looking at the photos of the body and mistaking turtle bites for serrated knife wounds e.g.? Holy moly! I have personally seen too much corruption locally where I knew the people involved to think for a minute people are disbarred when they should be. And the corruption has been ongoing since I was old enough to see it and realize what was happening. I've thought a lot about what it would take to corrupt me, only to realize it has probably already happened according to some people's definition. I think it is human nature and we all have that shadow side, but I hope my shadow hasn't been as hurtful as this case has been. What is your opinion (not about my personal shadow side!)?

I read Damien Echols book Life After Death and didn't think it was great, but do think it is an important book and should be read. I think Echols is pretty amazing. I hope that he is able to keep his perspective and peace for the rest of his life, but I worry about that. He has suffered too much. It is also pretty awful to think the murderer is still free.

The more to the story assertion from my friend was on the order of his expectation that the film was made as propaganda and that we haven't really seen the prosecutor's side of the story. I personally think that we have seen enough, and i wished that he would see the movie.

I have since e-mailed another attorney friend asking him to see it at his convenience, but I think that the law may be only a job for him and not a vocation, so I probably won't hear from him about it either.

Prosecutors tend to go for the kill. That means that they from time to time compromise their oaths to support the constitution. One of my bosses had been in the prosecutor's office, and he told me one day that he didn't quite trust prosecutors.

I got into the municipal bureaucracy and was immediately compromised. Seven or eight years later I realized that I had compromised or been compromised, that I couldn't become totally uncompromised, but that I could stop compromising myself from then on. I think that I was largely successful but doubt that I was entirely successful. A year after I retired an attorney's paralegal or assistant called to offer me a job dealing with that agency, and a tremendous amount of anger welled up in me about the agency and its cohort; I didn't take the job. I've since realized that such compromises happen widely; I think that what I saw of the United States Navy in my ten years was a horribly dysfunctional system.

I once wanted to read Jung's take on the shadow, and didn't get around to it. I suspect that I would find it too new agey now.

From your recommendation, I'll have a look at Life After Death, but I don't know that I'll actually bring it into my house.

Robert

I'm a subscriber to Library of America's American Poets Project. I hadn't received a volume in the series for a long time, but a couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail talking about this and that and telling me to expect one in the mail.

Countee Cullen Collected Poems by Countee Cullen and edited by Major Jackson. I have known Countee Cullen's name for some time, but I have never gotten around to reading his work. I am hopeful that I will turn to this volume sooner than I turned to earlier volumes in the series.

Robert

From Trains magazine:

Don't Get Too Comfortable by David Rakoff is a set of congenial essays about being in situations that most of us won't get into, like a Latin American Playboy shoot at a resort, a flight on Hooters airline, the Paris fashion shows, a Concord flight. They are not eloquent and they are not stick to the ribs, but they were a pleasant way to get through a cold when The Iliad was too heavy for me.

Robert

alkan played blues for me

Following the West Memphis discussion, a friend in Boston posted this link today of an interview With Damien Echols:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/03/15/damien-echols-west-memphis-finds-com...

In the second circle of Hell Dante comes on Francesca da Rimini and Paolo joined together eternally in a whirlwind:

And I began: "O Poet, willingly
Speak would I to those two, who go together,
And seem upon the wind to be so light."

And, he to me: "Thou'lt mark, when they shall be
Nearer to us; and then do thou implore them
By love which leadeth them, and they will come."

Soon as the wind in our direction sways them,
My voice uplift I: "O ye weary souls!
Come speak to us, if no one interdicts it."

As turtle-doves, called onward by desire,
With open and steady wings to the sweet nest
Fly through the air by their volition borne,

So came they from the band where Dido is,
Approaching us athwart the air malign,
So strong was the affectionate appeal.

" O living creature gracious and benignant,
Who visiting goest through the purple air 89
Us, who have stained the world incarnadine,

If were the King of the Universe our friend,
We would pray unto him to give thee peace,
Since thou hast pity on our woe perverse.

Of what it pleases thee to hear and speak,
That will we hear, and we will speak to you,
While silent is the wind, as it is now.

Sitteth the city, wherein I was born,
Upon the sea-shore where the Po descends
To rest in peace with all his retinue.

Love, that on gentle heart doth swiftly seize,
Seized this man for the person beautiful
That was ta'en from me, and still the mode offends me.

Love, that exempts no one beloved from loving,
Seized me with pleasure of this man so strongly,
That, as thou seest, it doth not yet desert me;

Love has conducted us unto one death;
Caina waiteth him who quenched our life!"
These words were borne along from them to us.

As soon as I had heard those souls tormented,
I bowed my face, and so long held it down
Until the Poet said to me: "What thinkest?"

When I made answer, I began: "Alas!
How many pleasant thoughts, how much desire,
Conducted these unto the dolorous pass!"

Then unto them I turned me, and I spake,
And I began: "Thine agonies, Francesca,
Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.

But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs,
By what and in what manner Love conceded,
That you should know your dubious desires?"

And she to me: "There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery, and that thy Teacher knows.

But, if to recognise the earliest root
Of love in us thou hast so great desire,
I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.

One day we reading were for our delight
Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral.
Alone we were and without any fear.

Full many a time our eyes together drew
That reading, and drove the colour from our faces;
But one point only was it that o'ercame us.

When as we read of the much-longed-for smile
Being by such a noble lover kissed,
This one, who ne'er from me shall be divided,

Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.
Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.
That day no farther did we read therein."

And all the while one spirit uttered this,
The other one did weep so, that, for pity,
I swooned away as if I had been dying,

And fell, even as a dead body falls.

They kissed once, were murdered by her husband, his brother, and were consigned to eternal punishment for their love. Dante's was apparently the first mention of her, and it doesn't say much. Boccaccio and others later embroidered the story. Wikipedia traces the story to some extent.

Robert

Francesca da Rimini, continued:

When I found that there was an early twentieth century opera based on the story as it was told by Dante I bought a DVD of one performance of it, and we watched it in our opera group at church. Since then I've pretty much forgotten it, but I did remember that there was much more story to the opera than I had remembered from The Inferno.

When I read that the Metropolitan Opera would stage a performance for screening in high definition I made a point to put it on my calendar, and I watched it yesterday afternoon. The sets and costumes were from a 1985 production, much more sumptuous than we expect in post Bush productions (the excessive taxation of the rich has reduced funds for the arts). The principals in the show admired the music, but I thought the opera was more interesting than entertaining. Here is the backstory to that little clip in the message above, and something of an alternative to Dante's story though based on it. I was surprised by my rereading in the clipping above that they had kissed, but so they had and so they were condemned.

The opera does not speak of their condemnation. It is about their lot on earth, how Francesca is misled, and how both feel a great passion. I would like to see yet another production, or it may be time to dig out the DVD and watch it again. For someone who has not yet seen any production, the encore performance of this one could be worth the attendance, but it is not always riveting.

Robert

I was happily surprised yesterday morning when post office tracking showed that my package from Barny Noble was out for delivery. I checked my mail on the way out to the opera:

When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson. I am an avid admirer of the author and have read, I think, all of her other books. I've been waiting for this and ordered it shortly after it became available in paperback. The night that I ordered it a friend said that he had found something for me and hauled out a hardcover copy of this book; I prefer trade paperbacks so I suggested he give it to someone else.
Revelations by Elaine Pagels. The last book of the New Testament is something of a trial to the understanding. The last book I read on it was difficult and not very enlightening. Mrs. Pagels is a clear writer who has served me well in the past so I ordered this book hopefully.
Complete Price Guide to Watches 2013 by Tom Engle, Richard E. Gilbert, and Cooksey Shugart. I haven't bought a pocket watch in a long time, so I haven't bought one of these annuals in a long time. I may take a two day course in pocket watches around the beginning of summer, so I thought I might like to have this guide -- it is not just about prices. It is, however, green this year, so maybe I should have put it off. I had a coupon for this one which sparked the whole order.

I swung by Barny's brick and mortar after the opera:

Beloved by Toni Morrison. I have long thought that I would not read this novel, but Dan wrote compellingly about it. From that I came to think that I might read it. The book was available in store for not much more than on line so I got it there. I wonder whether I will read it; it is in my bag of unread novels now.

Robert

Trains magazine says that there are six engines and 93 cars in this train.



Robert

Interesting that you saw another version of Francesca da Rimini - not a popular opera. Nice to see the Dante as I haven't read it yet. I knew it was based on lines from the Inferno as I was aware Rachmaninov had done an operatic adaptation and I saw a performance of Tchaikovsky's tone poem. The Met's production certainly was sumptuous but I often felt very uninvolved watching it, even with some attractive music. Not sure whether to blame Giordani, who I don't like, or the opera - probably wont' have to many opportunities to reassess my opinion.

I'm currently reading Adam, Eve and the Serpent by Pagels and picked up a pile of her books after reading The Origin of Satan. I remember reading reviews of Revelations and they all made the book sound fascinating - I'll be looking for that one as well. Will be interested to see what you think of it.

Some cat + train pictures

Thank you.

Robert

On my way to Saturday night in town I crossed town to get something to eat and look in on Barny Noble. Two books had recently gone on my wishlist from favorable comments on LibraryThing, and they were allegedly available for about the same price in store as on line. With help I found them.

Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. The cover quotes Vogue, "An indelible portrait of a peculiar society." I think that I am interested in the peculiarity or peculiarities suggested here. Once upon a time I would have read this as wish fulfillment; there's probably some of that left.

The Ninth by Harvey Sachs. This is apparently a history of, analysis of, and reaction to Beethoven's ninth symphony. I like Beethoven in general, and I like the ninth symphony. There has got to be enough of substance to be said about it. So here I go.

Robert

*shakes fist*

Darn you, sir! The Ninth looks so good, I've added it my own wishlist. So it goes...

Saturday night was sublime.



Dawn Upshaw is probably the best singer. I got that mostly from Górecki's third symphony and Barber's Knoxville Summer 1915, but it's been confirmed every other time I have heard her. I learned my lesson when I missed Chanticleer a few years back. When I heard that she would be performing here I determined to be at the concert. When tickets were announced I went for my credit card and got one before I did anything else; the concert sold out.



Her accompanist, Gilbert Kalish, apparently is himself well known, even though I had not heard of him before, and the concert materials gave him equal billing with Ms. Upshaw.

I had a front row seat in the museum theater and could put my feet up on the stage.

They did not perform any of the Barber or try an outtake from the symphony. Mr. Kalish got to do one thing on his own, the Alcotts movement from Charles Ives's Piano Sonata number 2. That sonata is now on my audio-visual wishlist. Ms. Upshaw sang songs from Ives, Schubert, Bartok, Ravel, and Bolcom; the lyrics, original and translated into English where need be, were handed out before the program.

In one of the books I have read, it might have been Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise, the author dismissed the question of how Schubert's songs are better than the Beatles'. I'm still interested in that question, naïve as I am, but I learned an appreciation for the Schubert songs Saturday night that I never had. There is a sprightly musicality to what she sang that I had never heard. This amazing woman stands unpretentiously at a piano and without bellowing fills a room, her audience's world, with great song. I am amazed by it as much as I am enchanted by it.

Her last songs, save the short encore, were by William Bolcom with lyrics by Arnold Weinstein. I had never heard of either of them, but I came away from the concert looking for more of them and have the CD sung by Joan Morris on my wishlist now. These are bittersweet songs of the demi-monde; she sang Song of Black Max, Waitin', and George.

The encore was Stephen Foster's Beautiful Child of Song which seemed to me nice but almost a throwaway.

Her range over material is a marvel. The beauty of her singing can move me out of my daily world.

Robert

I've been reading The Iliad translated by Robert Fagles forever now, maybe most of the month, without enjoying it, without admiring the things I have always heard about it and now read, without recalling in wonder things I had forgotten from my first reading 45 or 50 years ago. I finished it last night. Achilles is a shit. The gods are not noble. Nobody is good. The text is repetitious and portrays violence tediously. The human drama is superficial even dealing with death. This book is among the roots of Western culture, but it should stay underground left to the specialists. Bah.

I have The Song of Achilles at hand which I expect to start tonight. The Cambridge Companion to Homer is in town, but I expect the post office won't get it to me until tomorrow. I will read each in hopes of having my mind changed, but I expect that they will merely be for my education.

Our church group will be discussing it a week from Wednesday.

Robert

PS Now I see that I already have a copy of The Cambridge Companion. I wonder where it is. I'm sorry that I had to spring another thirty bucks on this.

R

Enjoyed reading about your Saturday night concert.

From Trains magazine:



Robert

> 136

As a classics major, I had the odd joy of witnessing an impromptu debate between the classics faculty at my school over which Homeric poem was better. I tend to agree with you: I prefer The Odyssey, with its more introspective portrayal of the hero's journey home. But they insisted that the Iliad was a better work of art, which I have to take their word on since my Greek is not yet ready to handle Homer. LOL!

Barry, if she comes to Marciac, take her in.

Jonathan, when I was an undergraduate for awhile I was used to sitting in the student union drinking coffee with some graduate students. One day one said credibly that he had been unimpressed by Homer. He was told to learn Greek to read him. He learned Greek, read Homer, and felt the latter justified the former. Perhaps for someone fluent in the poetic tongue, with no teevee, and with ancestors in the story The Iliad is listenable. I have happily read a big chunk of Fagles's Odyssey, so I think it is the narrative itself that I object to. Stick a spear into another human being and glorify yourself, meanwhile picking up a few banquets and some sexual congress; repeat. Bah!

Robert

Last week when the museum theater ran Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief I was inert, but it was scheduled again for today. I got up with the intent of getting to town and seeing it, and so I did.

The movie opens with a slick black cat crossing tile roofs at night. Later and often throughout there is gorgeous photography of Mediterranean France. And there's a cheesy little plot pulled off well enough by famous screen actors of a time long ago, mainly Cary Grant and Grace Kelly. Sometimes there is dialogue but the actor's lips aren't moving.

I've never paid much attention to Grace Kelly. I remember when Prince Rainier came to America looking for a wife and that he picked her. I recognized her when she came on screen. I suppose she fit well in Monaco.

The import of this film is more to see something of what Hitchcock can do than to be entertained although it was sufficiently entertaining. It was not among the films in a boxed Hitchcock collection that I have.

Robert

I didn't check the mail until a while after I came home from the movie. As I expected The Cambridge Companion to Homer edited by Robert Fowler was in it. I will crack it open tonight and see whether it takes over from The Song of Achilles.

Robert

Too bad about the Illiad.

A while back I was wandering around the Library of America web site probably for good but light reason. I stumbled across for a couple of steeply discounted volumes. Though they are not books I would have rushed to get, they are books that I will like having. They were in today's mail.

Chesnutt: Stories, Novels, and Essays by Charles W. Chesnutt and edited by Werner Solors. I've heard the author's name mentioned respectfully.

James Weldon Johnson: Writings by James Weldon Johnson and edited by William L. Andrews. The name feels familiar, but I bought this more on speculation.

Robert

126 thanks for posting that link.

Back to movie - the last statement made in court by releasing judge was congrats and appreciation to the filmmakers for doing a good thing.

Robert, I have the Charles W. Chestnutt LoA but not the one by James Weldon Johnson. So far I've read The Conjure Woman and Other Conjure Tales, which I reviewed on LT in 2009. I look forward to your comments about both collections.

Robert - Coincidentally, I have just this week read two of Chestnutt's stories for a seminar in African-American literature that I will be attending: “The Wife of His Youth” and “The Goophered Grapevine". I am being introduced to some great authors that deserve to be better known.

The Library of America web site looks interesting. Thanks for the link.

Last year's revelatory reading was about sociopathy or psychopathy. It included Jon Ronson's book The Psychopath Test. Here he is giving a TED talk.

Robert

The documentary movie The Gatekeepers makes up in informativeness for its tediousness. Talking heads, almost all surviving heads of Shin Bet, talk about what they did and why over the years to preserve Israel from the terrorists on its fringes and in its midst. They all conclude, if I saw correctly, no matter what violent harshness occurred on their watch, that talking with the enemy is important and productive. The Oslo accords didn't work because nobody, a finger points at the Israelis, worked them.

It is not all talking heads. What looks like stock footage is cut into the interviews. It is relevant and relieves some of the tedium.

This documentary was apparently nominated for an Oscar in 2012.

Robert

Oh, yeah. After the movie I went upstairs to Barny Noble's and didn't buy any books, magazines, CD's, or DVD's. I checked in at the Nook desk, asked a couple of questions, wandered about, and went back to the Nook desk to buy two new Nooks for the price of the big one. I wonder at my foolishness.

And Costco is closed today so I can't go in for a couple of memory cards.

Robert

Hey you only go round once!

Sometimes I wonder, just because of that, whether I should be making more of it.

Meanwhile here's a pretty picture from Trains magazine:



Robert

I'll keep The Gatekeepers in mind.

152 and do you too hear Mary Oliver saying "Tell me what it is you plan to do with this one wild and precious life."?

Thank you for the link to Ronson's TED talk.

wainwainer

i can run and jump