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Showing posts from February, 2013

Silver Linings Playbook

Jennifer and I are watching a lot of movies lately.  Some I have not blogged about.  Today, for Our Valentine's Day, we saw Silver Linings Playbook after a nice lunch at Chili's .  This marks our 25th Valentine's Day together.  We had one before we married.  At any rate it is a very good romantic comedy and I'd rank it a 7 maybe an 8.  I think the screenplay is excellent, and is Oscar-winning calibre, the acting is totally up to par (it is the first film in over 30 years and only the 14th movie in history to be nominated for all four major acting awards in tomorrow night's Oscars), and it is comparable with Lincoln   (to the degree a romantic comedy can be compared directly with an historical drama), which joins it with other films for the Best Picture nomination in this year's Academy Awards .  I have not seen Argo , nor any of the other Best Picture nominees save for Zero Dark Thirty .   If I rank the three contenders I have seen as of today, I give Zero D

Some Like It Hot

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Tony Curtis (as Joe or Josephine) and Jack Lemmon (as Jerry or Geraldine, erm, oops as Daphne)    Curtis (as the wealthy yachtsman) argues with Lemmon as he (she) can't stop dancing the rumba. Last weekend Jennifer and I enjoyed the great film Some Like It Hot (1959) directed by Billy Wilder . The comedy features wonderful performances Jack Lemmon , Tony Curtis , and Marilyn Monroe . It is interesting that this movie scores high (98%) on Rotten Tomatoes and is ranked 88 (as of this post) on the Top 250 list at the Internet Movie Database and yet almost no one I know has ever seen or remembers the film. Of course, with a few exceptions, the older the film is the less likely it is for anyone to see it in our times. Still, Some Like It Hot is a 9 in my book and possibly a 10. We are talking about one of the greatest movies ever made and it is absolutely hilarious as well. It is funny on the screen with several gags and humorous situations, even a little slapstick. But,

A Most Amazing Thing To See

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This collected footage from the recent Russian Meteor Event seems like a Hollywood movie.   More than 1000 people were injured , mostly from glass breaking due to the largest meteor blast since 1908 . Otherwise, it seems surreal to me and reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's idea of Simulacra .  Life imitating film imitating life.  The meteor was so perfectly framed in the automobile windshields that it all looks rehearsed.  Nothing could be farther from the truth, however.  It turns out odds were good that some Russian would capture the event due to the fact that dashboard video cameras are commonly deployed and used by Russian drivers . A worthy topic for this blog's first embedded video.  The House Space, Science, and Technology Committee plans a hearing on the matter .

Great Unnumbered Symphonies

Note: This is the twelfth and final part of my personal tour of the greatest symphonies in classical music.  In this portion, I examine symphonies that are designated by name or title rather than by number, as is the case with all the previous symphonies considered.  Click on the keyword “ Classical Music ” at the end of this post to see all parts of this tour and other posts on this significant genre of art. Ludwig van Beethoven was clearly a revolutionary composer but the true break between traditional classical composition and genuinely romantic music came with Hector Berlioz .  With Berlioz structure was subservient to fancy; convention was secondary to enrapturing the audience with stirring effect. The Symphonie  Fantastique (1830) was Berlioz’s first major work for orchestra.  It remains one of the greatest symphonies ever conceived.  It is a symphony accompanied by a specific program.  Berlioz submitted a detailed description to his audience on what each movement of the work

Kaufman Does Kundera

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Sabina, Tomas, the mirror, and the bowler hat.  One erotic moment among many in the film. Shortly after I married Jennifer, we watched Philip Kaufman's adaptation of Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being .  I remember watching it alone at first and then encouraging Jennifer to see it with me on a repeat viewing.  I thought it was an excellent film , a sleeper of a 9, which means that it was a truly great movie but one that almost no one is likely to automatically recall 10-15 years afterwards.  This is not because it is not a memorable film, it has to do with getting lost in the passage of time with so many other good and great movies coming along.  The lack of friends who have probably seen it means it doesn't come up in conversations as the years pass, so it can easily slip from memory.  Kundera actually wrote another excellent novel that approaches this mechanic of memory, in part. But, like the (more famous and discussed) novel upon which it is bas

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In early 1986, I was landing in Dubai on an Air India passenger flight.  The sun had come up an hour or so before and I remember looking out the window at a sea of white rolling sand.  I had spent the last couple of hours since take-off from Bombay (now known as Mumbai ) reading a book I picked up at a small store there.  The novel was The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera .  I was attracted to the title but knew nothing else about the book or the writer, who would go on to become my favorite living author today. I read the book during my return trip from India , finishing up after our stop in Dubai on the way to London and then on to New York.  I reread it immediately as I adjusted to life after India.  Kundera writes in short sentences and breaks his ideas into small chucks of wisdom.  This gives the illusion that he is simplistic or easier to read than is actually the case.  When you take his books apart they often seem rather basic.  But, when you step back and s

An Unseasonable Interruption

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My grandmother's house last Wednesday. This past Wednesday, a tornado ripped through a nearby town and much of our county, destroying dozens of houses, knocking out power and phone service to 2/3 of the county.  The estimated wind speed was 160 mph.  There were two fatalities.  Total property damage was at least $70 million.  More than 260 structures were affected throughout our county with over 30 homes completely wiped out.  One of those homes used to belong to my grandmother and is pictured above. My mom's mother died a couple of years ago and the family sold the property to a locally known investor who remodeled the house and turned it into rental property.  Apparently, the structure took a direct hit and was blown off its foundation, along with two large oak trees planted by my grandfather in 1952, into the major highway that runs about 100 feet in front of the house.  The highway was a dirt road when the house was built in the early 50's.  My mother wasn't bor