The IHOP Papers

Ali Liebegott's The IHOP Papers is FANTASTIC.

I just finished reading it and I miss the narrator already.

A wry and amusing voice, very self aware. Great story about a terribly nervous/neurotic young lesbian in San Francisco back in the days where people left messages on each others answering machines.

Terrific read.

Snow White and the Huntsman

I was very disappointed in Snow White and the Huntsman, the new movie starring Charlize Theron (who I think is fabulous) and Kristen Stewart (who I know nothing about).

I suppose I should not have expected anything more than B flick schlock, but the reviews and the trailer deceived me, leading me to believe it might be intense and dramatic and scary and interesting.

Instead I felt like I was watching TV of the Xena and the Warrior Princess ilk, the likes of which I have never gotten into. Oh well.

Jasper de Beijer at Asya Geisberg Gallery

Wow, what a powerful show! The Jasper de Beijer exhibition, Marabunta, at Asya Geisberg Gallery is astounding.

de Beijer's photographs look like dramatically distorted collages, although they are constructed from an elaborate process of creating models in his studio out of paper and other materials.  There is a vibrant and vital sense of destruction and reconstruction in his work, an intense reflection on history and violence. The overall effect is breathtaking.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Yesterday afternoon I saw the New York City Ballet's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, a two act ballet set to a Mendelsohn score.

The ballet was lovely and dreamlike. Intoxicating beauty. Although parts of the first act dragged a bit for me (I suspect I am not a fan of Mendelsohn), the second act completely popped. The set was gorgeously precious and each dance was masterful and exuberant.

Cindy Sherman at MOMA

I've always been impressed with and enthralled by Cindy Sherman's portraits, and for a couple of decades have considered her among my favorite artists.  She exposes various facets of our social world, particularly gender and beauty ideals, in ways that make the viewer uncomfortable.

The retrospective at the MOMA is wonderful. It is large, but not overwhelming, providing a good sense of each of her important series.  I really enjoyed them all, but my favorites were the centerfold series and the masters series.

I accidentally showed up for their free Fridays, and it was so crowded. I thought about it, and at $25 admission, I'm pretty sure membership is the way to go.

Moonrise Kingdom

Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom includes all that is wonderful in the director's other movies, and, in spite of the familiarity of his visual and narrative tropes, it is altogether special.

Wes Anderson is a truly unique American talent, and his bringing together of sweetly alienated flawed characters is always engaging. Sometimes there is too much woodenness and visual flair, overwhelming or blunting the emotional dimensions of the movies, but Moonrise Kingdom conveyed a deep, constant current of pathos. The characters all had stoic good cheer or at least reasonableness, covering up type of internal or existential suffering, and Anderson treated each of them with respect, sympathy, and dignity.

Moonrise Kingdom is about two 12 year old runaway lovers on an island. Precocious and alienated kids. Their being missing mobilizes the adults (and other children) around them, as several search parties cover the island to find them. The adults are no more or less together than the children, and the mixture of lost, inept, but fundamentally decent characters was wonderfully moving.

Bel Canto

I started reading Ann Patchett's Bel Canto earlier in May, on a plane ride to SF from NYC. I became engrossed in it on the plane, but when I got back to SF I was so distracted by finishing the semester and moving that I hardly picked it up.

I returned to it last night and finished it this morning. It is a beautiful novel about a group of hostages and terrorists in a mansion in a South American country. The development of relationships between the characters is the heart of the story, and the richness of Patchett's description created a wonderful emotional texture.