Murakami and Amer

Yesterday I went to the huge Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. I'm not a fan of pop art and didn't really expect to like it. And I didn't! Sometimes not liking something can be satisfying. It reinforces the idea that you have opinions and have some things that you respond to and some things that you don't. I just found it too kitschy. Too kiddie and cartoony. Some I liked more than others, of course. It was fun and dizzying. But empty and alienating.

A wonderful serendipitous discovery: Ghada Amer! I had never heard of her. (Actually after seeing this exhibition I realize I saw a beautiful piece of hers a couple of years ago at the Brooklyn Museum's big feminist show: boxes embroidered with gold thread). There was an exhibit of her work in the feminist wing of the museum. She embroiders large canvases with patterns of erotic images and lets the string hang down in clumps, so it looks like streaks of paint and the images are kind of concealed. It seems a little like pentimento for a minute. They are very striking. Some look Pollack-like. This image here wasn't my favorite, but I liked it a lot!

Daniel Deronda

I watched the entire, three episode BBC Masterpiece Theater version of Daniel Deronda with my mother the other night. This is one of my all time favorite novels. It is so complex, with such intense, deep character development, and such unique plot lines. I thought the BBC did a great job. Of course so much dimension got lost, but they tend to stick closely to the books they adapt and pay a good deal of attention to detail that they still capture the gist.

It is one of the few novels where the "heroine" doesn't end up with the guy. I put heroine in quotes because it is really Daniel Deronda's story. Gwendolyn is such a strong, sad, unique character, however, that it feels like her story. The tragedy of her marriage to a sadist manages to trump everything else, that you find yourself rooting for her escape and fulfillment more than for Deronda's...

The Letter and All About Eve

I'm just catching up here. Last week I watched both these movies with my mother. I had never seen The Letter before. It was so interesting and different than other old movies. It's about a woman who kills her lover and is being blackmailed by his wife. I just gave away the ending, but whatever.

I had seen All About Eve before, but liked it so much more this time. It struck me as more complex. Before I had been so alienated by Ann Baxter's phony performance. The other night I just looked past it and was drawn into the other relationships. The final turn, where the cold critic catches her and controls her felt particularly dark.

Evan Almighty

You know, I shouldn't even bother to write about how I didn't enjoy Evan Almighty because I never enjoy this kind of low-mid-brow concept pieces. I like the mid-high-brow ones, of course.

This was just so crappy, it was impossible to suspend disbeleif. Nothing was funny. Nothing was wise. Everything was corny and stupid.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

It took me a long time to watch Julien Schnabel's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a beautiful, extraordinary movie about a quadriplegic who can only move one eye.

The imagery and narration went hauntingly, suffocatingly well together that I felt like I couldn't breathe, I felt like I was trapped in a beautiful but horrible dream. It took me a long time to watch because I would feel engulfed after about fifteen minutes and would have to stop, sometimes not coming back to it for a few days (!).

It is based on the man's memoirs, which were dictated by blinking his eyes as his... helper?... translator?... read the alphabet.

I'm not sure what to say about it now, just that it was perfect.

TV Party

TV Party: The Documentary is about this cool cable access show that was on between 78-82. It was that whole super hip downtown early new wave crowd, Blondie, David Byrne, etc. It was a wild mock talk show where people drank and smoked pot and cursed. I vaguely remember having caught a few episodes when they aired, but maybe that is just wishful thinking on my part.

I had trouble getting into it at first. Footage was sliced with contemporary interviews, and because the original show was so chaotic and low tech it was hard to adjust. But once I was in the right place I loved it. I wish you could watch full episodes, or at least longer sections than they showed.

Also, I felt cool because I knew a few people in it. I used to work for a rock and roll biographer who was a frequent guest (or, partier), and a friend of a friend was one of the regulars.

That was the scene I've always regretted missing.

Oh, and Debbie Harry was so, so, so fucking beautiful.

God bless us, everyone

Two nights ago I watched A Christmas Carrol. It happened to be in my queue from way, way back when I was reading some Dickens and felt in the mood to watch it all the way through. Didn't manage my queue and so it arrived in May. A little unseasonal but so what?

Aside from the sentimentality, which you just have to accept, it really is a good movie. Although I tend, always, to resist sentimentality, in this case it is actually the key ingredient, what makes it work. What makes it what it is. Scrooge's fear and joy get me every time. And I won't even mention Tiny Tim. Maybe I'll read the story. In the heat of August.