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Posts Tagged ‘Film’

When a Tree Falls

Posted in an expository essay, tagged , , , , , , on October 5, 2014| 2 Comments »

This morning I have chain saws in my woods. We’ve hired a man to do what Bob used to do all the time in Windsor, MA, cut down trees.

Except these trees are not for fire wood to be used in our stove, no this time around we installed a gas burning fireplace. We’re felling only the dead trees around the house. Now when Bob gets into the hot tub and there’s a strong west wind, I won’t worry he may never get out! We are seven years down the road from carving out this serene spot in the forest, time enough to know which oaks will live, and which are gone.

And speaking of “gone,” should I see David Fincher’s “Gone Girl?” I’m conflicted since I love a good murder mystery, however I didn’t read the book. Yes, I am part of that small minority of women who didn’t, and I’m not sure why.

Maybe because the idea of someone going missing is anathema to me, and it’s also hitting close to home with our own missing UVA student, Hannah Graham. We have had too many girls disappear in this college town. The FBI has traced evidence, presumably DNA, from Jesse Matthews who is the last person seen with Hannah, to the Morgan Harrington case; which is also related to a rape in Northern VA.

I would not be surprised if we hear about more charges in December, when his hearing is scheduled. This is the hot topic around town. One woman told me had such a sweet demeanor, and then we hear he was a suspect in 2 other college rapes that were never prosecuted. I saw many state police cars parked on the side of the road yesterday, troopers with sticks were walking up and down Barracks Road, past grazing cows near Ivy Farms, an area we lived in when we first moved to town. Helicopters and drones are searching for Hannah. A multinational media circus has taken over the Historic Downtown Mall. There is a $100,000 reward for information leading to her safe return. And yesterday we heard this plea from Hannah’s mother:

“Somebody listening to me today either knows where Hannah is, or knows someone who has that information,” the mother, Sue Graham, says in a video released by the city of Charlottesville, home to the university. “We appeal to you to come forward and tell us where Hannah can be found. Please, please, please help end this nightmare for all of us,” she continues. “Please help us to bring Hannah home.” http://edition.cnn.com/2014/10/04/justice/virginia-hannah-graham-case/index.html

I cannot imagine how her mother is standing, the pain of not knowing must be unbearable. On this too beautiful Fall day, may her family find  grace, courage and healing during this not knowing time.    IMG_1220

 

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Music City

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on August 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

We’ve been singing “Happy Birthday” to a certain two year old all week. She can sing right along too, and dance, like Angelina Ballerina. Great Grandma Ada and Hudson are here too, so it’s a multi-generational celebration. Everything is great except the weather, by 10 am I am melting, literally. The humidity is killer and the temps are in the 90s with non-stop sun. This landlocked state almost had me, if it weren’t for August.

I just have one warning for grandparents. The supposedly feminist, fairy tale from Disney, Frozen, is not for the toddler set. Last evening the Bride went to work, and the Groom had a work-related dinner, sooo we popped in the movie. There’s a huge snow monster, and I’m assuming the King and Queen died at sea. It’s not an obvious death, like Bambi, but still. I stopped that film pronto. And I wished I could freeze the landscape, just a little, with my hands.

What can say, Fall is my favorite season.

Still we toured the Ryman, and I talked with the young girl who was taking pictures of the stage. Of course she’s a singer/songwriter and just got back from a tour…her name is Erin McLendon http://theboot.com/erin-mclendon-fire-and-wine/ What can I say, everyone is talented in Nashville! Then we were stuck in traffic as lanes were closed while they were filming the TV show Nashville and trying to pick up the Love Bug from her preschool.

And speaking of tours, The Parlor Mob is at it again. Check out their current tour and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to get tickets to The iconic Stone Pony in that other musical city, Asbury Park!http://www.parlormob.com
Rock On.

Watching Frozen

Watching Frozen

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Carbon Bootprint

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Happy Earth Day everyone. I was reminded of my favorite psychologist, Abraham Maslow’s, saying this morning, “At any given moment we have two options; to step forward into growth, or to step back into safety.”  I loved his theories when I was an undergrad Psych major – only I’d add another option. We could also choose to stand still and do nothing.

Doing nothing is a choice. We all know these people. They are the ones who say, “Oh we tried that before and it didn’t work.” They are the self-involved, solipsistic loners. If they are not talking about themselves, well then what’s the point? Which is why a film about a young environmentalist falling for the middle-aged mom of a prescription-drug addicted daughter caught my attention.

“Bottled Up” explores the life of an enabler. Melissa Leo plays the quirky, lovable mother who flirts with denial like a pro – because for any addicted child to continue to live at home in their childhood bedroom, they would need the full cooperation of someone, right? Getting this reclusive mom to stop doing what she’s always done, and open her heart to a little, light Indie film romance gives this timely, weighty topic a humorous edge.

This Earth Day, instead of committing to changing your light bulbs, or remembering your grocery totes, why not think about what parts of your psyche may need an overhaul. Throw out the cobwebs in your head that keep you stuck in a “monkey mind,” adrift in a sea of indecision and inertia.

Instead of worrying about your carbon footprint, today let’s pull on our work boots. Get out in the yard, make the choice to start living a more healthy life. To make a few small, incremental changes toward growth, thank you Dr Maslow! After all, if we heal ourselves, maybe the planet will have a chance? Our hydrangeas need pruning and food! I’ll  eat more oranges, walk more and complain less. Maybe try to avoid sick/germ carrying people – unless it’s my Love Bug, then all bets are off. I’ve been wondering if all the Puffs tissues I’ve been going through with my latest virus are biodegradable?!

Speaking of my little Easter bunny. This is what you get when your adult children have to work on Easter Sunday. The Bride, my Jewish ER doctor/daughter and her husband the Christian Groom, who was on call in the MICU, sent the Bug off to a day filled with chocolate and jelly beans courtesy of their wonderful Nanny Kristy and her son Caiden. And for this moment, I am eternally grateful.        10271536_10203190002052914_8222434554150655467_n

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The Real and Perceived

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

Londoners wouldn't get Woody

Londoners wouldn’t get Woody

Have you been following the Woody Allen pervert/or/not show? I had not, although I’m aware that I no longer flock to the latest Allen movie. There was a time, around Annie Hall, when I loved him. His jokes, his angst, his heroines, especially Diane Keaton. A sister-in-law from MS once told me you had to be from NYC to “get” Woody Allen, and I suspected she was right. For the longest time I would quote him:  “80 percent of life is showing up,” because I truly believe it! And I dressed like Annie Hall, in a sort of androgynous mix of comfy meets funky vests.

But after Allen was given a Cecil B DeMille Award at the Globes and Mia Farrow and kids took to bashing him on Twitter, I found myself wondering again if he did it. He was accused of fondling his adopted daughter Dylan at the age of 7 in an attic. Now we all know he married his other adopted step-daughter Soon-Yi (who was actually Andre Previn’s adopted daughter), which was creepy enough. That was about the time I had seen Mia Farrow at the Big Apple Circus, in the first row right across from me. She was surrounded by so many adopted kids I was reminded of the woman who lived in a shoe, “…she had so many children.”

Maybe because my BFF had been an assistant DA, and she once told me that kids never lie, I was predisposed to believe Mia’s story, even when a judge and many investigators never found any evidence credible enough to bring charges against Allen. That was when I stopped going to his movies. Knowing what I do now about the proximity of the abuse charges to their separation over Soon-Yi, it does seem possible that Mia may have been vindictive enough and possibly “coached” Dylan to say that he touched her. Will we ever know the truth? Finally Allen is speaking out: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/08/woody-allen-denies-abuse-allegations

And so is Dylan’s brother, another adopted child, Moses Farrow now 36, now speaking up in defense of Allen. He likened the atmosphere in their home as dysfunctional at best.  “I don’t know if my sister really believes she was molested or is trying to please her mother. Pleasing my mother was very powerful motivation because to be on her wrong side was horrible.” http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/05/woody-allen-dylan-farrow-moses

Whatever happened over 20 years ago we may never know. But I did happen to watch Blue Jasmine on Netflix recently and it was incredible. Allen takes us back out to overly sunny California with a lapsed heiress, Cate Blanchett, who is exquisite in the role. It is a study in social class and psychology, in love and betrayal. It’s a modern day Streetcar. “Blue Jasmine feels like tragedy without catharsis—an interesting thing to pull off, but not particularly moving or maybe even admirable.” http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/07/movie-review-blue-jasmine-woody-allen

It left me feeling strangely sick, and singing Blue Moon for days.

“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That’s the two categories. The horrible are like, I don’t know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don’t know how they get through life. It’s amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you’re miserable, because that’s very lucky, to be miserable.” Annie Hall

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For Art’s Sake

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

There’s good news and there’s bad news this week. On the good side – Our do-nothing-Congress has passed a 1+ Trillion dollar budget deal that should keep our government humming along for the next nine months. On the bad side – Congress has defunded ALL portrait painting, which is pretty stupid since I understand that every single Treasury Secretary or Secretary of Defense doesn’t need an official oil-based portrait painted costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each.

But no more Presidential portraits? Are you kidding me? Even I have had my portrait painted, by my sister mind you! This may have started my fondness for hats.

The Author, age 15 in Oklahoma

The Author, age 15 in “Oklahoma”

You know that gallery at the Smithsonian with all of our Presidents hanging regally along its walls in a continuing line of American history? Well, it’s about to stop short. Someone on the blogosphere somewhere said it’s because we can’t have a “president of color” up there with Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy and really? I suppose this means no more First Ladies either.

The horse-trading was done by only about four dozen of Congress’ 533 members, working in private. What’s supposed to be 12 separate spending bills was combined into one mammoth stack that finances the government through Sept. 30.http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/16/5-things-to-know-about-deal-to-avert-shutdown-of-u-s-government/

It’s the “working in private” part that bothers me, behind closed doors in a secret session, along with the sheer lunacy of stopping a tradition that deserves to be maintained. I tend to think very forest for the trees about art. Artists are really doing our society a favor. They reflect back to us what’s going on in everyday life, with a different spin, giving us a new perspective. Enlightening, illuminating and just plain enriching our thirsty souls. Sometimes art can even change history. Think of the photograph of a child about to be shot in Vietnam. Think about the mini-series Roots. Think about a little Goldfinch.

Today the Oscar nominees were announced. Nothing new or unusual except Ms Oprah was denied again for her role in The Butler. A movie about a man who served how many presidents through sweeping social changes in our country. A true story, but one obviously overlooked in Hollywood. Instead a movie about a real political shakedown in NJ in the late 70s, the Abscam scandal, was the basis for the big winner, American Hustle.

“…today offering bribes in exchange for legislation seems almost quaint. The lobbyists do the same things we did, only to a much greater degree,” said John Good, a former FBI supervisor who oughtta know.http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-the-players-in-abscam-the-real-life-american-hustle-the-bribes-now-seem-quaint/2013/12/26/d67648c2-6c15-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

I wonder who’s writing the Chris Christie biopic now? Maybe we need to get some art lobbyists up on the Hill. You know, bring in the big guns – the owners of auctions houses and film industry moguls, maybe a few museum directors? At least we need to appoint a Secretary of Culture, every other country in the free world has one! We don’t need to paint their portrait either. But we DO need President Obama’s portrait painted.

“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization,” President Kennedy once remarked, “than full recognition of the place of the artist.” http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/should-the-us-have-a-secretary-of-culture/277409/

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Three Dog Night

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2014| 6 Comments »

It was a chilly 3 degrees this morning in our neck of the woods. The wind has died down and there’s a peacefulness about this arctic/polar/vortex. Ms Bean sits at the kitchen door and looks outside resignedly. No hawks circling, no sounds of woodpeckers, just the gentle whoosh of gas fireplaces upstairs and down.

Speaking of a house divided by a staircase, let’s talk about the latest Downton Abbey episode. It was near midnight by the time I got home from our expedition to the Paramount Theatre on Sunday. On my way to Kay’s house (she was driving into town with 2 other friends), the woman directly in front of me hit a deer. The poor thing was just sitting wide-eyed in the middle of the road, while we waited for the police to put an end to its misery.

The incessant rain/fog coupled with such a morbid beginning made me wonder if venturing out so late at night would be worth it – but the season premiere of Downton, surrounded by so many other like-minded-Edwardian-loving women, proved otherwise. We feasted on a substantial array of English appetizers, swigged champagne, and thrilled to a lecture by Richard Will, Chair of the McIntire Department of Music at the University of Virginia,.

‘The Music of Downton Abbey” and film scoring was on the docket before that hound’s white rump started wagging along to those famous opening notes. Will and two UVA students performed music of the 20s and 30s, explaining how American ragtime permeated Europe after the war. There was a tension between old and new, the Edwardian and the Modern age. Young women could be seen in a public restaurant unescorted, and all classes were mixing it up on the dance floor. The Jazz Age ushered in a staccato subtext to the romantic, sentimental music that dominated the turn of the century.

I’ll not ruin the plot for those of you without cable, but the new season is shaping up well. There is frisson between fathers and daughters, maids and lady’s maids, and one or two surprising losses. I for one, am still getting over the loss of Matthew, and have to remind myself that the actor is in fact alive and well and appearing on Broadway at the moment. Having just finished reading “Lady Catherine and the Real Downton Abbey,” fact and fiction collide on a regular basis in my brain.

The only cure is take one of those Viking cruises and tour Highclere Castle for myself! Anyone else interested, maybe this Spring? http://www.highclerecastle.co.uk/index.html

Today I’ll cozy up with Ms Bean and search for a Corgi rescue and a good Highclere tour. Stay warm everybody! In the words of Al Jolson:

“Come on along, Come on along, Let me take you by the hand.”

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Before Fame

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on September 12, 2013| 4 Comments »

I remember once going out to dinner with the family, and arranged before us on the table were your typical paper placemats. Except that on these cute little mats were a number of what looked like high school portrait pictures. The mats were titled something like “Before They Were Famous.” There in the corner was the key, and you had to match the picture with the star. So long before smart phones and portable gaming devices, long before reality TV produced celebrities, a family had the chance to actually interact by guessing which adolescent girl was now Cher.

Tonight, if you’re lucky enough to live in the New York metropolitan area, or have access to WNET channel 13, http://www.wnet.org, you can tune into a documentary at 10:30 that shines a light on some of our generation’s most acclaimed modern artists.  But it’s like a dream within a dream, because we get a glimpse of the early life of these men, before Studio 54 threw stardust around them, through the lens of a friend and photographer, William John Kennedy.

Full Circle: Before They Were Famous
FULL CIRCLE: BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS is the story behind a series of photographs of Andy Warhol and Robert Indiana taken by William John Kennedy in 1963/64 just as the 2 artists were on the cusp of fame. It includes terrific footage of a rare interview with Robert Indiana at his home in Vinalhaven, as well as moments with Ultra Violet and Taylor Mead.
The Director of the Warhol Museum, Eric Shiner, is interviewed and we gain his insight while we watch the evolution of an artistic icon. But if you listen carefully, you’ll hear the musical score of this film, and those of you who know him may recognize a certain something.  Because the music was created by my son, the Rocker, and like any good mom I’d recognize that sound anywhere. From the moment he picked up a violin in first grade, and our Corgi accompanied him, throughout high school with his band in our garage, I’ve become his biggest fan.
I was thinking about him yesterday, on the anniversary of 9/11. Because I knew where my daughter was; I had called her in DC to tell her what was happening and I knew she had left the federal building she was working in and started walking back to her apartment in Adams Morgan. And I knew where Bob was; he was waiting with rescue personnel at the dock in Highlands, NJ for burn patients who never came. But I didn’t know where my son was. He was supposed to start his first after-high-school job on that beautiful Fall day, and they had called to tell him not to come in, but I couldn’t find him.
He was out at Sandy Hook with his friends on the beach, watching the plume of the Twin Tower’s smoke drift out to sea. And the collective trauma of that day was familiar, that sense of suffering brought me back to 1963 when I learned that our President had been shot while I was in gym class at my NJ high school. What does that say about a generation marked by such a tragedy?
Because even before his band, The Parlor Mob, became famous, before the world tours and the Paris Vogue cover shoots and the iTunes Best Rock Band of the Year award, I was always proud of my son for following his own heart, for playing outside of the lines. As the Bard likes to say, and I may have quoted this in his senior yearbook, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.”
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At the Pillow

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 19, 2013| 2 Comments »

A quick post about a documentary “Never Stand Still” that will be on PBS next Friday the 26th at 9 on PBS.

Episodes

When we lived in the Berkshires, summertime meant we’d drive over to Jacob’s Pillow every week for an evening of astonishingly beautiful dance.

You may remember, I used to dance. First at the Martha Graham studio, and later I minored in dance at SUNY Purchase when Bill Bales was the Dean. When the Bride was little, I would dance in the Nutcracker when she was a little reindeer.

So it’s more than thrilling to let you know that a dear friend, Nan Honsa from Rumson, Imagehas produced this dance documentary with her husband. http://mpny.tv

I hope you tune in, and imagine the wall at the back stage opening up and the wind and the sounds of birds and insects coming through with the twilight. Imagine the music as the dancers float onto the stage.

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Word for the Day

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 14, 2013| 2 Comments »

The word for today on Dictionary.com is “Quacksalver.” I love it when I’m unfamiliar with a word so I eagerly clicked on its meaning:

Noun  1. a charlatan. 2. a quack doctor.
Origin: 
1570–80;  < early Dutch  (now kwakzalver )
Of course, quacksalver is onomatopoeic. Someone who is hawking his snake oil cure-all from the back of a pioneer wagon, someone who’s home made salve promises to do everything. Someone who is not who he appears to be, like Jay Gatsby.
Bob scooped me up on Mother’s Day from my self-induced TCM mom/alone/coma, and deposited me in our town’s newest movie theatre symposium. We didn’t see Baz Luhrmann’s 3-D version of The Great Gatsby, which was screening later in the evening, but we sat through 20 minutes of previews until F Scott Fitzgerald’s characters materialized onscreen in all their digitized glory. I’m so glad I waited until the next day, on the bike at the gym, to read one critic’s take on this classic American novel turned screenplay.
Fitzgerald coined the phrase, “The rich are very different from you and me,” and this was his most subtle way of proving the point. It was the Jazz Age, skirt lengths were going up while the price of bootleg liquor was going down. The reason the love story of Daisy and Jay has lasted so long is because it’s a pretty universal one. Boy meets girl, boy can’t have girl for a myriad of reasons (like class or clan differences) and chaos ensues. But more than a romance, it’s a morality play. Fitzgerald’s genius is in his elegiac prose:
“It was all very careless and confused. They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Gatsby creates an empire and holds lavish parties at his Long Island mansion with one thing in mind, winning Daisy back. But he didn’t go to Yale with Nick and Tom, and he didn’t graduate from Oxford or Cambridge. He will never fit in with this polo-playing crowd; Gatsby created an image of himself built on his shadow world of respectability – a precursor to the celebrity culture of today. Old money vs new money. Like Juliet or Zelda or Anna Karenina, Daisy Buchanan could never be his happy ending.
I was 23 in 1972, attending SUNY College at Purchase when I drove to one of those “cottages” in Rhode Island with a friend from the Dance Department to audition for the ballroom scene in The Great Gatsby with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. My friend Nadjia made the cut, they told me I “…didn’t look the part.” Little did they know that I was the daughter of a real Flapper, a Dime a Dance girl, who shimmied with Cab Calloway at a speakeasy. But then again, I didn’t know that either. My Mother kept a few secrets too.
When the Flapper was in her 80s, my brother Michael arranged for Cab Calloway to surprise her at a party on Lake Minnetonka. And I realized that my Mother must have felt very much the same way I did my whole life, the way Fitzgerald felt:
i.2.s-great-gatsby-farrow-redford-dicaprio-mulligan
“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”

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A Musical Mission

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on March 29, 2013| 2 Comments »

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Why is it I’m always drawn to any story about reinvention, or finding your purpose? The woman who worked in a cubicle for years, is now selling goat cheese she makes on her farm. The ex-Governor of NJ, Jim McGreevey, is now advocating for lost women in the prison system and trying to be ordained a priest. For some of us, it’s that small intuitive voice we’ve been ignoring for so long that just has to surface. We’ve been devalued, ignored, unfulfilled. For others, the change doesn’t start within, but comes as a shock, maybe through loss or circumstance. In every life we hit a crossroad, what will you do now?

I thought I would share my son’s story this morning. If you’ve been following along on my journey from the Jersey Shore to the Blue Ridge, you know that we left my then 20 year old behind in college. I think in retrospect, he went to college to please his parents. It was an excellent program at The College of NJ (TCNJ), a new synthesis of computer engineering and design that was planning to include the music department in its curriculum. The Rocker had been in a band almost since he could stand. We insisted he study the violin for 2 years before he acquired his first Fender guitar, at the age of 9. It was the first thing he picked up in the morning, and the last thing he touched at night. He has perfect pitch, so if he heard a song he could play it. And we had wonderful neighbors in Rumson, band rehearsal was always in our garage.

One day when the Bride (who is 5 years older than her brother) came home from college, she sat out in the garage on an old couch and watched that first band. When she came back into the family room she was teary, she said she gets it now. The joy, the passion, the camaraderie. She had always excelled at everything she tried, but she still didn’t know what her major would be in college, what she wanted to be her life’s work. For her brother, there was no question. Music flowed through his fingers and possessed every fiber of his being. I shouldn’t have been surprised when he left TCNJ to play guitar with What About Frank. When the band changed their name to Parlor Mob, it was like a rocket ship took off from NJ and landed in LA at Capitol Records.

But the music business today is fickle. Labels have no time to nurture artists. When Capitol dropped their contract, Warner Brothers signed them to Roadrunner Records. More of a boutique operation, they thrived for years touring Europe twice. You can hear their music in TV shows and at professional sports arenas. We were so proud of the Rocker. We’d tell new friends our daughter was in med school, but the conversation shifted when they learned about our son the Rock Star. I went to some of their shows, and the vibe was amazing. Kids singing along to their songs, rapturous. Their last album “Dogs” was voted “Best Rock Album” in 2011 by iTunes. I was picking out my Grammy dress.

And then slowly, over the past year, the rocket ship paused. One of the guys got married, another wanted his own solo career, and Parlor Mob ended. Like any good mom, I worried, what’s next? Since the Rocker had always done session recordings with friends and performed live in other bands, I knew he had many contacts in the business.

Today my son the Rocker is composing music for film. It’s a new start, but in the same old business, where he can call the shots. His purpose was and always will be to make music, and his talent is celestial. Maybe I better start looking for an Oscar dress.
http://www.davidjamesrosen.com/#!about/mainPage

David is pictured above, looking ahead with Aunt Caitly

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