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Writer and editor Home > Blogs > Brain Droppings > Archives > 2010 > February
February 2010
Wow, this guy really hates Clint Eastwood…
… and he doesn’t just hate him a little bit. He hates him a whole bunch.
Check out this posting from the Daily Beast, in which a critic has weighed in on the relative merits of Clint’s career after having watched 35 of his movies, back to back. I admit, he makes a few good points about dreck like “The Gauntlet,” though I still like “Unforgiven.”
Thoughts? Any fans out there?
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‘Avatar,’ finally
Got the chance last weekend to finally catch up with the movie half the planet has already seen twice, apparently, and I’m happy to say that I’m happy I did.
You know what I mean by that, too: Any film — or, for that matter any entertainment — that comes with the level of hype, anticipation and media madness (not to mention cost!) that attended “Avatar” means that the expectactions are high, and you’re ready to to be disappointed. And post-“Titantic,” James Cameron has his share of haters, though over time I’ve stopped being one of them.
Heck, depending on your level of cynicism, you may go in looking for ways to be disappointed.
Didn’t happen.
I had a great time. I was rip-roaringinly entertained. I was thrilled by the whole jaw-dropping spectacle of the thing. I was glad I went. I look forward to seeing it again.
Is “Avatar” perfect? Nope, not by a longshot. A lot of what you’ve already read and heard about the overly simple plot, and the fact that it follows a pretty derivative course that borrows from about a dozen other movies, from “Dances With Wolves” to “The Empire Strikes Back,” are largely true.
However, Cameron gets plenty of credit for finding ways to make the movie feel different from all those influences, and he manages to throw in a few relevant, contemporary political and social messages that are obvious without making the whole thing seem overly preachy.
And of course, he makes the story look different. In fact, it’s safe to say that there is no other film ever created that looks anything like “Avatar.” From the otherworldly landscapes to the creatures who populate it to the blue-skinned humanoids who are the stars of the show, you know you’re seeing something for the very first time — and truly, that’s not an experience you get to have very often.
And yes, go in 3D. In fact, go in IMAX 3D, if you can.
And by all means, have fun. I did!
What did you think?
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Shakespeare online!
I stumbled across this site the other day and had to share… Be forewarned, gentle readerpersons, that one might waste a lot of time here.
Forsooth!
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Our greatest actress
What’s your favorite Meryl Streep movie? Tell, tell….
For me, it’s a “Silkwood”/”Sophie’s Choice”/”Out of Africa” tossup…
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A new view on ‘slumming’
Those of you interested in urban affairs, environmental matters, city culture, global issues and the way people live and adapt might find this essay worth reading.
Thoughts?
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Eye-opening African-American artwork
As usual, Bing Davis is on a mission.
“I felt a commitment to share and bring along as many African-American artists as I can,” he says, with the enthusiasm he brings to all of his many projects.
“I’ve got a list of 65 African-American artists all working right here in the area, and those are just the ones I know. Everybody thinks that it’s just me and Ronnie (Williams), but that’s really not true.”
He’s referring there to his own fame, both locally and nationally, as a skilled artist and teacher who works in a wide array of media, and who with his friend Williams, a long-time painter and educator, are well-known for work that reflects upon their experience as black Americans. His point is that he wants to spread the word that the Dayton area is brimming with talent. He takes great delight in showcasing it.
The latest showcase is the grand, open space of the Wintergarden at the Schuster Performing Arts Center downtown, where until Feb. 28 you can catch “Visual Voices 2010,” a collection of work from 21 African-American artists who live and work here.
Davis curated the February show, the fifth annual one in this space, and was pleased by what he came up with.
“We’re showing the rich diversity of styles and techniques that can be found in the visual arts in the African-American community,” he says, surveying the display. “The pieces here range from drawing to traditional oil painting to fabric dolls, photography, collage and ceramics.
“And people will see they deal with the same universal themes that all good art does — joy, sorrow, pain, love and agape.”
Indeed, at the center of the exhibition is a large pastel by Janice Hamilton, “I Am the First and the Last,” depicting God as a black man, albeit with the same flowing robes and familar symbols that would have been used by Renaissance painters who could only have imagined a white face on the Almighty.
Like Hamilton’s piece, most of the works examine or touch upon African-American experience or perspectives, though the range of those perspectives is vast.
For Dwayne Daniel, it means a beautiful modern woman, whose contemporary braids and hoop earring seem to lead her to contemplate the shadowy image of an African woman from days gone by.
For Frances M. Turner, it means a lively pair of African dolls in bright traditional garb, gleefully climbing a ladder.
For Curtis Barnes Sr., it means an oil called “Obama,” which piles the letters of the president’s name and the year of his election into giddy, jostling, multi-colored layers of a celebratory alphabet jumble.
For Lillian Herbert, it means using locks of hair from the customers who use her salon to create an unusual but transfixing African landscape of blacks, tans and browns, which the viewer has to struggle not to touch.
For Ronald W. Claxton, it means a stunning collage that reimagines the famously grainy photo of pioneering bluesman Robert Johnson into eye-popping colors, cigarette a-dangle, fingers a-fret.
Each of the 21 pieces brings something. William Pettiford III speaks a warning, with his digital photo superimposing the globe onto a tight line of cartridge shells. It’s chilling. Paula Ramey speaks of joy with a dancing origami construction. “She uses this Japanese art form with African-American approaches,” Davis says happily.
He’s the ringmaster, the teacher, the one who gathers and nudges and constantly pushes who always finds new ways to use art to remind us all, black or white or whatever, of the important things in our midst.
A lot of people will be strolling past these artworks over the next few days, as “Wicked” packs ‘em into the auditorium seats. But remember, if you are one of those lucky ticketholders, to take an appreciative look onto the walls outside the theater. The wicked witches will soon be gone, but these smart, engaged artists will still be here — living, working and creating, and only asking that you pay attention and open your eyes.
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Did you see ‘Wicked’ yet?
Soooooooooooooo … how was it?
Tell, tell, tell.
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Who’s still working on the Great American Novel?
Sometimes, you have to step outside your culture to really see inside it.
This insightful, engaging piece from the Guardian in London takes a look at who’s left from the generation of great American writers who came of age during WWII, now that JD Salinger has died. Add to the list of recent losses Mailer, Updike, Vonnegut and others, and this writer makes the claim that Philip Roth is the only great writer left from that defining generation.
Except, not entirely. He goes on to discuss plenty of other writers who are moving American letters forward, one book at a time. Some interesting names pop up, but there are others who get short shrift, I think.
So, who’s got your vote for the best novelist working?
And what’s the Great American Novel? Don’t say “Moby-Dick.” That’s at least one thing this essay gets wrong.
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Dog show! Dog show!
OK, here’s how much my wife and I love the Westminster Dog Show: We will watch it instead of the Olympics, which we really like a lot, and we will act like goofballs beforehand by imitating the old SNL skit where Molly Shannon and Will Farrell were castoff cheerleaders who cheered: “clap clap, clapclapclapclap, clap clap clap clap clap — dog show!”
Yes, that much.
Sooooooooooo, it’s on now! Gotta run!
Which breed will win tonight? And who gets Best of Show? Not that terrier, I hope… Gimme a real pooch.
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King Tut: Still dead, but now they know why…
This may be of interest to any of you who attended the big Egyptian art show at the Dayton Art Institute a few years back… This study into what may have killed King Tut was led by Zahi Hawass, the head of antiquities in that country who curated the show that came to Dayton and visited here to give a talk at the museum.
Steve Martin will no doubt be pleased to find that he is no longer a suspect…
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Dog show woe!
Soooo, why do the stupidest, sissiest, froofiest dogs seem to do best at the Westminster dog show?
Why don’t real dogs ever win?
And how about a category for “Best Mutt”? That’d be fun.
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Figure skating in Casablanca
Hmmmmmmmmm, we keep flipping back and forth tonight between Vancouver and North Africa, thanks to a fiesty remote, a room full of fairly short attention spans, an inability to snap in too quickly to the Olympics, and the fact that TCM is showing “Casablanca” right now…….
Is that just cannon fire, or my heart pounding? I guess it’s the same no matter what I watch. We did have fun with the skating.
Actually, I enjoy the Olympics on TV. But if you don’t, or if you are just fed up with sports in general, you’ll probably want to read this. Hitchens at his vitriolic finest…
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Emily Dickinson revisited?
Hmmmmmmmmm, not what we thought of the Belle…
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Living the gypsy life … right here in Dayton
There are enough lessons to learn from Katrina Kittle’s story that it would be easy to lose one’s place in the book. But here are a few:
Trust yourself, and your judgment. Listen to what your gut and heart tell you that you want, and find a way to get it. Pay attention to the world around you, and take careful notes. Don’t think you have to do something just because other people think it’s what you should be doing.
That last one crops up a lot, actually.
“I keep running into people who think this wasn’t my choice,” Kittle says with a laugh, describing the reactions she gets to her recent move back to the Dayton area after a year of living the writer’s life off on her own. “That I must’ve screwed something up. They get this look like they feel sad for me, ‘Oh, you had to come back to Dayton, Ohio…. I’m sorry.’
“But this was what I wanted to do.”
The story, see, goes briefly like this: Kittle, 43, diligently pursued her dream of becoming a published author, landing her first novel, “Traveling Light,” with HarperCollins in 2000. With two more, ”Two Truths and a Lie,” and “The Kindness of Strangers,” she became one of the area’s most promising writers and saw her work drawing national attention.
Five years ago, her marriage ended in divorce, and her writing fell off. Needing a change, seeking a way to write full time and sensing that Dayton, the setting for all her books, might not be the place for her anymore, Kittle began what she now calls “my year as a gypsy.”
She dumped her apartment, quit her job teaching English at Miami Valley School, and “sold all but my most beloved possessions — I got rid of a lot of crap, literally and figuratively.” She embarked on a life of house-sitting for friends, to free up the time to write.
And then she left town — first to rural Connecticut, spending secluded months at her agent’s weekend home, and managing to finish her fourth book.
Then she moved to the city, loft-sitting in Brooklyn for four months for a friend on sabbatical, watching over “a blind, ancient, epileptic dog named Stella.” She had a blast. She made plans to live in Europe for a while with friends.
But then?
“I was really loving it, and then suddenly I wasn’t. The whole idea had been to experiment, and listen to what I really wanted.” What she realized she wanted was an affordable place with some room, a yard, and the chance to indulge in her passions for horseback riding and gardening. She wanted, as she put it, “a good place to travel from.”
She wanted a house in Kettering. So she found one, bought it, and moved back last summer.
The book she finished, “The Blessings of the Animals,” will become a HarperCollins trade paperback in August, and like past work it plays along “big, overwhelming issues” and their effects. Addiction, AIDS and child sexual abuse have driven past plots, each time with a sympathetic hand; this book is about marriage, gay marriage and divorce.
Kittle knows how that sounds, but assures that she had the idea before her split, and remembers being inspired years ago by back-to-back NPR news stories that made her realize “that there are all these heterosexual people who have this right and treat it cavalierly, and this other group fighting to get the same right who take it very seriously.”
The same need to tackle Big Topics has also driven her latest project, a young-adult novel that deals with eating disorders. She’s shopping that one around now, with has high hopes, and the outline for a sixth YA novel that will probably feature homelessness.
Even now that she works for herself, Kittle says she still writes on the schedule she followed in her school-teacher days, up early to “to work on new stuff.” Afternoons are for dealing with editors, book clubs and the like.
And when the writing stalls? Well, there’s that garden she put in, in her very own Kettering back yard, where the soil is hers and the analogy of rootedness that comes to mind isn’t lost on her. She’s a writer, after all, “and the gardening fuels the writing.” Not that many gardens in Brooklyn.
There’s another lesson from her story: Don’t listen to the little voice that says you can’t go home again. If it’s where you want go, then go. Just be sure you enjoy it.
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Everybody loves Charlie Sheen (apparently)
I admit, I’ve always wondered about this myself…
I think somehow the answer, whatever it is, unlocks a bunch of other weird celebrity-tab questions about how the culture goes ape-nuts on this sort of thing… Or, as this shows, not.
Your thoughts, please? They are most welcome….
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Snowed-in movie night!
Sure, it’s cold outside, but you know … there’s just something about being snowed in that says, “Movie Night!”
Last night we rewatched a couple of oldies/goodies that were on the tube. One was a fun-fun-fun monster movie we like, “Pitch Black,” from 2000 with Radha Mitchell and Vin Diesel. They’re a on a team of space workers stuck on a planet that goes into a lonnnnnnng nightfall, during which swarms of vicious (hungry!) creatures come out of hiding. It’s a bit of a second cousin to “Alien,” but keeps to itself pretty well and has lots of good jolts. The interplay between Mitchell and Diesel is sexy-strong, too. Check it out.
After that, we popped over to TCM, which has been running a great string of Oscar-winning classics this month leading up to the Academy Awards (don’t forget: two Dayton-area folks, Steve Bognar and Julia Reichert, nominated this year! yay!). The movie that was on was “Stalag 17,” with William Holden trying to stay alive in a German WWII POW camp, and it’s a tremendous old B&W flick. Seen it a dozen times, at least, and will always watch it again. What was it about Holden? He seemed like he was jackhammered from a slab of granite, and yet had some deeper well of feeling he always struggled to hide. Nobody like him today.
I came home to find my wife laughing out loud over “In Bruges,” a recent hitman comedy-action caper with Colin Farrell that she said was dark but hilarious. I haven’t heard her laugh that hard over a movie in a while. “You’ve got to watch this,” she said.
OK! More snowed-in tonight!
Sooooooooooooo, there’s snow on the ground at your house, too, I bet: Any recommendations to share?
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Brits loves them some books
A fun list of books of the last decade from a reasonably prominent London daily. Happily, I have read a few. Unhappily, not enough.
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Would you like a daily poem?
It won’t be from me…
It’d be from the Writer’s Almanac!
If you are a public radio listener, you probably know this feature, by Garrison Keillor and his crew, which offers up daily encouragement and information for anybody who lives and loves the writer’s life. The website is cool and worth checking out, a printed mirror of the broadcast version, which is narrated by Keillor himself, in that deep bass voice.
But the fun part is that you can have the site send a new daily poem right into your email inbox! It’s a great way to start your online day, and the poems are always well-selected. You’ll also get a few choice tidbits about writers born on that day, and other literary historical notes.
There you go: My gift to you on this snowy, slushy day.
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Why Hollywood doesn’t matter anymore…
Well, OK, it still does. I’m overstating to make the point, which would be obvious from the last story you read about “Avatar.”
But this piece from NPR.com shows how new media are endlessly creating new opportunities for young, up-and-coming, non-mainstream filmmakers that didn’t even exist even a year or two ago. Fascinating.
And by the way: They’re making money with the new ways. That’s the thing that matters. Because not everyone is James Cameron, but they still should get to have their movie seen.
Thoughts?
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NYTimes: Dave snuck Leno into secret taping
All in all, I thought the Super Bowl commercials were better than most of the pundits and DJs seem to be saying this morning, though I’m also getting the sense each year that dissing the ads as unfunny is some new kind of cool. The folks at Bud, Doritos and Coke did pretty well, if you ask me (loved the dog who garrotes his master with the shock collar so he can snarf his chips).
But the best of the lot, for sheer surprise value alone, was the spot for Dave Letterman’s show that featured him, Oprah and, yes, Jay Leno. The Times this morning has a piece on how they pulled it off, the main problem being just how to sneak Leno into Letterman’s building.
Fake mustache! Works every time.
What was your favorite ad?
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Losing a local arts-scene leader, alas…
Since you’re reading an arts blog, you probably know Cityfolk, the Dayton arts organization that has been bringing folk music, dance, jazz, world and Celtic music to local stages since 1981.
You might not know, however, that its executive director, John Harris, has given the word that he’s moving on. His departure is a real loss.
Harris, who arrived in Dayton in 2003, has emerged as a mainstay on the local arts scene, a quiet and effective leader whose legacy will be that he stabilized and very likely saved one of Dayton’s most important arts groups.
“I think the biggest concern was the finances,” he says of the Cityfolk he found. “They were pretty precarious.”
Cityfolk, after dazzling local music lovers with a great three-year of the National Folk Festival in the late 1990s, fell on tough times. A leadership vacuum, layoffs and interruptions in programming left some people wondering if the group would survive, let alone thrive.
Over time, Harris and a stronger board calmly turned things around. He rebuilt relationships around town, strengthened the annual Cityfolk Festival that is the organization’s biggest event, and raised Cityfolk’s education and outreach efforts — notably, the “Culture Builds Community” program that brings folk art and music to local schools, churches and neighborhoods.
“We expose people to new things,” says Harris, 47. “That’s what we do. Our No. 1 obligation is to put on programs that represent the cultural traditions in our communities — Appalachian, African-American, Hispanic, among others.
“Our second obligation is to give people the opportunity to learn about cultures other than their own; that’s where world music and other things come in.”
There are plenty of metro areas that don’t have an organization like Cityfolk to do such things, and Dayton has always responded well to it. The group operates on an annual budget of about $900,000 with five full-time staffers and several part-time consultants, and things are steady for now.
Harris is sorry to be leaving, but family needs are calling. His father died last summer and he wants to be closer to his 77-year-old mother, who lives in Lexington, Ky. Harris’ wife, Natalie, has taken the job of leading the Coalition for the Homeless in Louisville, and Harris will look for work when he gets there. He admits it’s both “cool and exciting” and “a little scary” to be plunging into the unknown at mid-life, but looks forward to doing something creative.
Mainly, though, he’ll miss Cityfolk. “I’m sad to go, and I’ll miss everybody,” he says. Harris is staying through the next Cityfolk Festival, in July, and the hope is that he will be around to train his replacement. He’s about to start a spring fundraising campaign for the festival, and hopes to leave the group on a solid footing. “I’ll tell him, or her, that there are a lot of people here who care about Cityfolk and what it does, and that he should listen to what they say and consider the support they offer, because there is a lot of it.”
What does he see, down the road, for the city he’s leaving and its arts community? “I think there are going to have to be changes in the ways arts organizations are funded,” he says. “The arts community here was built on money from corporate entities and their employees, and that is going to have to shift to small- and medium-sized companies, or individual support.” The recession, he says, “will force systemic changes” on the arts.
“But overall, the future is bright. People here think the arts are important, and they won’t let the organizations they love fail or let the arts scene diminish — because they know it’s one of the best things about this community.”
Harris, who politely brushes aside suggestions of his own importance, has been a big part of making that true.
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The White Death arrived!
Well, those wacky forecasters got this one right … the snow arrived, in the amount foretold, and more or less at appointed time. Bravo for modern weather modeling!
As I emerged from hibernation this morning to the scratching sounds of dogs needing to be let outside, I looked outside and saw a miraculous sight: My back yard transformed into a delicate filigree of frozen lace, branches gently swaying in the wind clad comfortably in their soft new coating of white.
The change brought out the inner puppy in my old dogs, who tore through drifts with glee, leaping and prancing and searching for critters under the deep snow. And I found myself smiling as well, enjoying the scene and thinking, yet again, that there may be nothing more transformative on any landscape than that first clean new blanket of white. Ahhhh.
And yet, with it comes a lot of work and headache. We tell ourselves that we’ll just burrow happily into our cribs, staying inside all day and not bothering to go out in it, but that rarely is the case. The need to live intrudes and becomes an inconvenience, as cars get stuck and walks must be dug out. Driving becomes a crawl at best or a danger at worst — something I was reminded of just last night as I struggled to get home safely from Cincinnati as the storm was blowing in and making the darkened interstate a slick, perilous mess.
So with the beauty comes the beast. And isn’t that makes winter the Most Complicated Season, the one that causes us to reflect upon the balance of all things?
Spring’s loveliness is simply what it is, and we we are able to enjoy without irritation or cost as it gradually blooms and unfolds. Summer’s heat can be bothersome, but more of us seem to prefer it to the cold and the frost. Fall and its paintbrush color are simply gorgeous, and the season asks nothing more of us than to clean up after it a bit in the yard — a pleasant enough chore and a good excuse for exercise. Plus, it smells so good.
But winter? Winter is different. Winter demands tribute. It comes with cost. You want to feel the thrill of my beauty? it asks us; fine, but it’s on my terms: I’ll shut you down. With the transcendent sigh of pleasure that comes with that first morning peek into the yard comes the realization that much of the day will be spent with a shovel in hand.
Pretty but painful. Complicated, indeed.
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What’s the best movie year ever?
NPR.com raises that very fun question with this entry on a spin off of the new decision by the Academy to raise the number of top films to 10, from five…
Their vote: 1962.
A good year indeed, but how about 1973? Serpico, The Getaway, High Plains Drifter, Save the Tiger, Papillon, Paper Moon, The Exorcist, American Graffiti, Badlands, The Last Detail, Mean Streets, Bang the Drum Slowly, The Sting, The Way We Were, Sleeper, The Day of the Jackal … In that group you’ll find among the best movies ever, arguably, by Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford and others…
By ANY stretch, a hell of a movie year…
What’s your fave?
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Blog fatigue?
Ran across an interesting story this morning from the Associated Press about some polling that suggests young people are starting to grow tired of a medium that they once actively, enthusiastically embraced: The blog.
Seems that other social networking media such as Facebook and Twitter, with their short and quick status updates, are taking the place of blogs in young folks’ affections and interest.
If this is true, I wonder if it’s all that surprising — not because flashy new things always fade with time, but because blogs are per se designed for writing, and because not that many people are writers. My guess is lots of people, old and young, tried blogging because it seemed cool, but that many of them didn’t really have the writerly itch and urge that makes somebody a real writer. Oh yeah, and talent.
A bit of selectivity in terms of content generation on the Web might be a good thing, and fewer blogs might actually not be such a bad thing — and please, withhold your comments about the world being a better place without this one, OK?
What do you think?
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A record price for an artwork…
… and what, for a Giacometti scuplture?????
Are you kidding? What the hell? I even LIKE Giacometti, and I don’t get it…
The world is a funny place…
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Your cells may not be your own
This may be one of the most amazing stories I’ve read in a while… Go all the way to the end.
Thoughts?
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How Salinger got away with it.
How did JD Salinger become the world’s most famous recluse?
Turns out, by not actually being all that reclusive… That, and he had help. What’s that saying, again? “It takes a village to make a recluse…”
Interesting piece on how the late author lived out his secretive life, not secretly at all, in the Times…
Anybody started re-reading “Catcher” yet?
