Monuments Men

The monuments men : Allied heroes, Nazi thieves, and the greatest treasure hunt in history.
Edsel, Robert M. New York, N.Y. : Center Street, 2009.

I had never heard of these people (almost every single one a man), nor of their work. Nor of this book. I do remember seeing commercials about the film. A couple of weeks ago a Peninsula Library patron highly recommended I read the book, so I took it out.

It started weak, but immediately got good and strong. A team of art experts was charged with saving the art treasures of Europe that Nazis had stolen. How they went about it is little short of miraculous. Well written book, fast paced, yet a disappointing last chapter fizzles. Nonetheless, a wonderful book.

This is a sample of the writing style, which I enjoyed greatly, and of the people:

“George Stout, who had taught Kirstein at Harvard during his graduate years, was aware of the brilliance of the new private. He was also, probably aware of his shortcomings: his easy frustration, his mood swings, and his distaste for army life. Whether by accident or design — and knowing Stout it was almost surely by design — Kirstein was assigned the perfect  partner: Monuments Man Robert Posey of George Patton’s Third Army.

    If ever there was an odd couple, it was Posey and Kirstein: a quiet, blue-collar Alabama architect and a manic-depressive, married yet homosexual, Jewish New York bon vivant. Posey was steady, while Kirstein was emotional. Posey was a planner, Kirstein impulsive. Posey was disciplined, his partner outspoken. Posey was thoughtful, but Kirstein was insightful, often brilliantly so. While Posey only requested Hershey’s bars from home, Kirstein care packages included smoked cheeses, artichokes, salmon, and copies of the New Yorker.

    Together, the two men could go a lot further in the army than either could go alone.” (225)

Kirstein was a surprise; well, so were the others. These men did great things, and they are unknown. Alas, the film seems to be a sanitized, prettified version. But, such is Hollywood.

The extent of Nazi looting was staggering. No just paintings and sculptures (and, in fairness, it is pointed out that half of the French museums holdings were plunder from Napoleon's military campaigns). They stole church bells, too. Personal belongings, and not just of Rothschilds. Not content to have stolen in victory, they planned to destroy in defeat. Thanks in great part to the Monuments Men, such crimes were not added to the heinous toll.

Roman Holiday (1953)

 

Audrey Hepburn became a star with this film, in which she played Princess Anne, weary of protocol and anxious to have some fun before she is mummified by "affairs of state." On a diplomatic visit to Rome, Anne escapes her royal retainers and scampers incognito through the Eternal City. She happens to meet American journalist Joe Bradley (Gregory Peck), who, recognizing a hot news story, pretends that he doesn't recognize her and offers to give her a guided tour of Rome. Naturally, Joe hopes to get an exclusive interview, while his photographer pal Irving (Eddie Albert) attempts to sneak a photo. And just as naturally, Joe falls in love with her. Filmed on location in Rome, Roman Holiday garnered an Academy Award for the 24-year-old Hepburn; another Oscar went to the screenplay, credited to Ian McLellan Hunter and John Dighton but actually co-written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo. The 1987 TV movie remake with Catherine Oxenberg is best forgotten. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Somewhat, no more than somewhat dated, rather corny, yet fun. Audrey Hepburn's charisma shines through the ages. I am not quite sure why it was shot in black and white.

Love me anyway

Read a story, FAA to allow tablets and e-readers during all phases of flight, (at bottom, story has: First published October 31st 2013, 10:06 am). Near the bottom is this paragraph: Not to mention that passengers will sometimes sneak in a few Words with Friends turns when they think they can get away with it. “You can’t be looking at everybody all the time,” said Tiffany Hawk, a former flight attendant and the author of “Love Me Anyway,” a novel about airline culture. “People are always pretending to turn things off even when they’re not.”

I looked at Kirkus review of that book, which has this: ""Readers will find the book's two heroines well worth knowing."

And they are. I read 185 pages in 2 days. Story is solid, well paced, and has substance.

Publisher's Weekly: Though Hawk provides a fascinating snapshot of an industry seldom explored in fiction, the cycling between first person (Emily) and third person (KC) is distracting, and Hawk's prose turns didactic as the pace slackens.

I did not find the alternative narrators distracting, but I do agree that as the book reaches its last quarter the narrative style weakens.

Fun, worthwhile, nicely done.

America's great debate

Bordewich, Fergus M. (2012). America's great debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the compromise that preserved the Union. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Happened up on this book. Fascinating piece of American history. Far too detailed and long of a book, descending into a miasma of minutiae. Nonetheless, in places the narrative crackles, enlivened by giants from the 19th century: Clay, Houston, Benton.

Rich and Famous (1981)

Richard Brody, in the 16 December 2013 issue of The New Yorker, wrote an essay on the films of George Cukor. I watched A star is born, but could not abide watching it all (his own greatest artistic achievement and also that of Judy Garland, its star.). I watched Rich and Famous, and did finish it.

Brody: An esteemed raconteur, Cukor started to write his autobiography, but his lifelong reticence got in the way, and he made his last film, “Rich and Famous” (1981), as if to explain: it’s a deceptively chirpy comedy starring Candice Bergen as a young society matron in Malibu who launches her literary career—and destroys her private life—by writing a tell-all novel.

 MRQE.com offers this synopsis: Two women find their friendship tested when one rises from obscurity to success in this glossy remake of Old Acquaintance. Liz Hamilton (Jacqueline Bisset) and Merry Noel (Candice Bergen) are close friends who met while they were freshmen at Smith College in the 1950s. Liz has become a highly respected novelist, while Merry wed Doug Blake (David Selby) and raised a family. While Merry is happy, she can't help but envy Liz for her glamorous career as an author. Merry decides to write a novel of her own, and with Liz's help, the book soon finds a publisher. While Merry's trashy potboiler earns few positive reviews, it's a massive best-seller, and Merry's fame and wealth soon outstrips that of Liz, leading to jealousy between the old friends and problems in Merry's marriage. Rich and Famous was the final picture directed by Hollywood legend George Cukor; the guest list at the party sequences include such literary and cinematic notables as Christopher Isherwood, Ray Bradbury, Paul Morrissey, and Roger Vadim

I wondered what Ebert thought of it. It contains scenes that make you want to squirm because of their awkwardness and awfulness, and yet you don't want to look away and you're not bored. The movie has the courage to go to extremes, and some of those extremes may not be art but are certainly unforgettable.
The movie forges ahead through tempestuous fights and tearful reconciliations, while Bergen's alcoholic ex-husband makes a pass at Bisset, and Bergen tries to bribe all of New York to win the book prize. I was not (and am not) sure what this movie was trying to tell me about the two characters -- perhaps that if you stay in touch with someone for twenty years, you can be absolutely sure that at the end of that time you still will be in touch.
Insights into human nature don't seem to be the point of the movie, anyway. It's a slick, trashy, entertaining melodrama, with too many dumb scenes to qualify as successful. A film critic for one of the national newsweeklies said, in reviewing this film, that he has a friend who has a rule: He only attends movies that are in color and are about rich people. I deplore the attitude behind that statement, but in a crazy way, I absolutely understand it.

More than once, during shouting matches, I thought it would do well as a stage play.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops's review: Rich and Famous -- Screen version of the John Van Druten play about two very different women (Candice Bergen and Jacqueline Bisset), both writers, who preserve a friendship for more than two decades despite the strains caused by emulation and jealousy. Directed by George Cukor, the glossy soap opera pays more attention to its glamorous locations than to the human dimension of its story. The sole redeeming feature is good acting by the principals. General air of vapid amorality and two graphic sexual sequences. (O) (R) ( 1981 )
O: morally offensive

Vincent Canby's review in the Times: SOMEWHERE inside ''Rich and Famous,'' George Cukor's splashy, elongated new comedy, there is the material for a possibly brilliant two-character one-act play.

Doble o Nada

Interesting idea. Renzo Franchi sounds just like Carlos Gardel. Juanita falls in love with him, but, really, with Gardel. And the twist is that Renzo replaces Gardel in Bogotá and Medellín when the real Carlos goes back to Buenos Aires. And it is Renzo who dies in the plane crash. So Gradel outlives himself. Fun. Too bad I don't speak Argentinian.

Peace, love and misunderstanding (2011)

Ebert likes it a bit more than I did, but he, of course, captures the film in his inimitable style.

"Peace, Love & Misunderstanding" is an undemanding formula picture that's a lot of superficial fun and not much more. Would it surprise you that within 24 hours Diane and both of her children have commenced romances with locals, and that many truths will be exchanged between Diane and Grace? Woodstock is presented as a place where the 1969 festival still more or less continues, many of the flower children apparently having never left. It's very upscale in a laid-back way, like Aspen or Telluride, and Grace, for example, seems to have unlimited funds, although there's a reason for that.

 Undemanding, yes, but more than a bit maddening, for someone (me) who lived through the Sixties, even if on the fringes. Fonda's Grace saw everything, did everything, knew everyone: she calls musicians Jimi and Jerry. Her character is actually somewhat wooden; she is a stereotype.

Because Fonda is (very capably) playing a send-up of her image, the character I found most interesting is Catherine Keener's Diane. She's a Manhattan lawyer, nursing anger with her mother after all these years and making it a point not to drink or smoke — as a rebuke, perhaps. She quickly falls under the spell of Jude (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a local furniture maker and guitarist, age-appropriate, handsome, understanding. Meanwhile, daughter Zoe locks hearts with Cole (Chace Crawford), even though she is a vegetarian and he is a butcher. Young Jake is smitten with Tara (Marissa O'Donnell), a coffeeshop waitress who wins him with a shy smile and superb latte.

I agree. But the movie has its limitations, and that prevents the characters from being complex. That was probably intentional.

These three interlocking romances mesh with Grace's non-stop adventures and assorted heart-to-heart talks, and that's about the size of it. Director Bruce Beresford seems content to deliver a charming comedy and sidestep the deeper family issues that the film could have addressed. So, all right, on that level, the film works for me. It essentially focuses on the three women, and Fonda, Keener and the fast-rising Elizabeth Olsen look plausibly like three generations from the same genes. Olsen, indeed, looks a great deal like Keener, and that is a sincere compliment. It's the cheekbones when they smile.

Yeah, it worked. Three of four stars? Seems a mite much; two would've been a mite short. So I give it 2½ stars.Joe Morgenstern liked it less than Ebert, and makes some interesting comments. Rotten Tomatoes critics gave it 29%, its public 31%: cruel, but just.

The Sessions

I forst saw a blub review of this film by David Denby in the 19 Nov 12 issue of NYer by David Denby (Easily the most highly sanctified movie about sex ever made. John Hawkes plays a fortyish man in the nineteen-sixties, a polio victim who lives mostly in an iron lung. He’s never had sex, and he’s desperately horny. After talking it over with his priest (a morose William H. Macy), he hires a sex surrogate, played by a brisk, frequently naked Helen Hunt (looking great, for the record, at forty-nine). Hawkes is inventive and charming, and the writer and director Ben Lewin makes him ruefully funny; the actor is easy to take. The filmmakers know that their therapeutic approach to lust is a bit creepy, and they try to joke their way out of it. They don’t succeed: the sex scenes and the long discussions with the priest—an unhappy voyeur—are all a bit queasy, yet you can’t laugh. The movie is so clammily sensitive and tame that it stifles any strong response. Based on the life and journalism of the late poet Mark O’Brien.)

I did not find Macy morose; on the contrary, he showed a range of emotions, including gloom. He played a priest who, despite his misgivings, talked with a parishioner about sex outside of marriage. As a friend.

Roger Ebert begins his 3.5 stars review: At a time when sex is as common in the movies as automobiles, his need and his attempt to fulfill it requires an awesome dedication. The film is a reminder of how unique sexual intimacy is, and even how ennobling.

And he ends it: "The Sessions" isn't really about sex at all. It is about two people who can be of comfort to each other, and about the kindness that forms between them. This film rebukes and corrects countless brainless and cheap sex scenes in other movies. It's a reminder that we must be kind to one another.

Stephen Holden in the NY Times also liked it: Arriving in a culture steeped in titillation, prurience and pornographic imagery, “The Sessions” is a pleasant shock: a touching, profoundly sex-positive film that equates sex with intimacy, tenderness and emotional connection instead of performance, competition and conquest. There are moments between the client and his surrogate that are so intensely personal that your first instinct may be to avert your eyes. But the actors’ lighthearted rapport allows you to rejoice unashamedly in their characters’ pleasure.

A chance to win

Having finished One shot at forever, I wanted another baseball book, and this one looked good. Challenging, too: inner city kids and baseball. It is far more than that, and far less than about baseball. Oh, it is there, baseball, but so are drugs, losers, broken families. This is more a sociological ract than a baseball book. Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with either sociology or a tract about the inner city, but it was not the book I wanted. I stayed with it, but could not finish it. I gave up. I guess I have that luxury. To me, it is just a book.

Liberal Arts

Very good film. No special effects. No wanton sex. Very cerebral (characters read books!). In other words, a mature film —which, of course, had terrible box office. Ebert quite liked it, as did I.

Josh Radnor's "Liberal Arts" is an almost unreasonable pleasure about a jaded New Yorker who returns to his alma mater in Ohio and finds that his heart would like to stay there. It's the kind of film that appeals powerfully to me; to others, maybe not so much. There is a part of me that will forever want to be walking under autumn leaves, carrying a briefcase containing the works of Shakespeare and Yeats and a portable chess set. I will pass an old tree under which once on a summer night I lay on the grass with a fragrant young woman and we quoted e.e. cummings back and forth.

The  entire review is worth quoting, really.

"Liberal Arts" has been criticized in some quarters as a sitcom, in part because Radnor stars in a famous one, "How I Met Your Mother." Those who see it that way are well-guarded. God forbid that they would ever "fall for anything." I strive to leave myself vulnerable.
There is a word to explain why this particular film so appealed to me. Reader, that word is "escapism." If you understand why I used the word "reader" in just that way, you are possibly an ideal viewer for this movie.

Merci beaucoup .

Safe house

Incredibly violent. In my eyes, even Denzel could not save this form being a worthless piece of shit. A waste of time. I wish I could get the two hours back.

Maggie Smith

One of my very favourite actors. A couple of weekends ago I was in the mood to watch an old favorite of mine, in which she stars, so I got My house in Umbria. Still delightful. I've watched so often, I know much of the dialogue — even some in Italian.

Last weekend, Saturday, specifically, I needed a film to watch. Looked through TCM's list, and picked out a couple. Watched Travels with my aunt — after five minutes, zzzz! Awoke an hour later, and turned it off. Oh, well.

A small town, an unlikely coach, and a magical baseball season

Saw it on display on a table at PN, and took it. A gem. Ballard goes back to 1970, in Macon, IL, and looks at the baseball team. Managed by an unlikely coach, a nonconformist who allowed the players to call their own practices, their own signals, their own games, the team makes a run at the Illinois state championship before being disqualified (and that by the initiative of its school's principal, who di dnot like the coach). In 1971, the team goes back to the state championship, and loses the final game. Along the way, the young men develop an abiding respect and love for their coach.
Ballard then finds the men, grown up, and traces their life's trajectory. Two did play pro ball, and one is in the majors, as a coach (or was, in 2010).
Well written, nicely paced, thoroughly enjoyable. My only complaint: it ended too soon; I could've read another hundred pages.

This Bird don't soar

Bird!

After reading this review of Crouch’s book, I was excited, and reserved the book. Why? Don’t I know enough about Charlie Parker? Of course I do; I’ve been listening to Phil Schaap for decades. DO I need to know more? Of course not. But … this is Bird. So I took the book. I read to page 41, and, disappointed, and annoyed, I shut the book. And returned it. Crouch relies on metaphors, similes, cliches, and other grammatical tricks, tries to come up with a cadence that he supposes, I suppose, will make the reader feel Bird’s music … But, it don’t work.

    Example: discussing Coronado’s exploration of the territory above the Rio Grande led by Marcos de Niza. Included in the group was an African slave named Estevan. This Arab Negro, Crouch writes, died up there, Niza said, for some foolish and arrogant act; the promotion from slave to scout had yeasted his head to self-destructive proportions. You know, give them an inch. (41) What?

And: But the things his fellow band members were thinking was of no consequence to Charlie Parker. He had his mind on other matters. How does Crouch know? Conjecture? Sure, it is easy to suppose Parker wanted to score dope before playing music, but that can not be assumed, not in a biography. In fiction, sure.

Greenberg (2010)

Ebert liked it (This is an intriguing film, shifting directions, considering Greenberg's impossibility in one light and then another. If he's stuck like this at 40, is he stuck for good? What Ben Stiller does with the role is fascinating. We can't stand Greenberg. But we begin to care about him. Without ever overtly evoking sympathy, Stiller inspires identification. You don't have to like the hero of a movie. But you have to understand him — better than he does himself, in some cases). I'm not so sure.

A. O. Scott liked it, too. I am not so sure.

The best exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)

an ensemble cast consisting of Judi Dench, Celia Imrie, Bill Nighy, Ronald Pickup, Maggie Smith, Tom Wilkinson and Penelope Wilton, as a group of British pensioners moving to a retirement hotel in India, run by the young and eager Sonny, played by Dev Patel.

Gets 78% & 79% in Rotten Tomatoes. About right. Wilkinson charcater is very well portrayed. Patel's seems a stereotype that nearly drowns in syrup. Ebert liked it. As did Stephen Holden in the Times: The screenplay does a reasonably skillful job of interweaving its subplots and of creating some mild surprises. This is a programmatically feel-good movie whose tempered optimism and insistence that it’s never too late to leave your comfort zone and explore new horizons stays mostly (but not always) on the safe side of sentimentality. Besides its sterling cast, its ace in the hole is its pungent depiction of Jaipur’s teeming streets, which give an otherwise well-mannered movie a blinding splash of color.

Finding Forrester (2000)

Fondly remembered, I went looking for it. Watched. Liked it; watched it twice. Ebert gave it three stars.
Ebert: The movie contains at least two insights into writing that are right on target. The first is William's advice to Jamal that he give up waiting for inspiration and just start writing. My own way of phrasing this rule is: The Muse visits during composition, not before. The other accurate insight is a subtle one. An early shot pans across the books next to Jamal's bed, and we see that his reading tastes are wide, good and various. All of the books are battered, except one, the paperback of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, which looks brand new and has no creases on its spine. That's the book everyone buys but nobody reads.

Both Connery and Brown are superb in their acting. 

Devil in a blue dress (1995)

Early Denzel smokes the role of Easy Rawlins.
The film begins in noir fashion when Easy Rawlins (Denzel Washington) says "A man once told me that when you step out of your door in the morning, you're already in trouble. The only question is, are you on top of that trouble or not?"

The Great Debaters (2007)

Denzel in an excellent performance as the coach of a debateteam from Wiley College, a small East Texas school. The team slays the dragons of competition and racism.

Based on a true story, the plot revolves around the efforts of debate coach Melvin B. Tolson (Denzel Washington) at historically black Wiley College to place his team on equal footing with whites in the American South during the 1930s, when Jim Crow laws were common and lynch mobs were a pervasive fear for blacks. In the movie, the Wiley team eventually succeeds to the point where they are able to debate Harvard University. This was their 47th annual debate team.
The movie also explores the social constructs in Texas during the Great Depression including not only the day-to-day insults and slights African Americans endured, but also a lynching. Also depicted is James L. Farmer, Jr. (Denzel Whitaker), who, at 14 years old, was on Wiley's debate team after completing high school (and who later went on to co-found C.O.R.E., the Congress of Racial Equality). According to the Houston Chronicle, another character depicted on the team, Samantha Booke, is based on the real individual Henrietta Bell Wells, the only female member of the 1930 debate team from Wiley College who participated in the first collegiate interracial debate in the United States. Wells also happened to be a minor African American poet whose papers are housed at the Library of Congress.
The key line of dialogue, used several times, is a famous paraphrase of Augustine of Hippo: "An unjust law is no law at all."
Another major line, repeated in slightly different versions according to context, concerns doing what you "have to do" in order that we "can do" what we "want to do." In all instances, these vital lines are spoken by the James L. Farmer Sr. and James L. Farmer, Jr. characters.

The major characters are very well acted. Denzel delivers a soliloquy about Negroes and racism that is a perfect example of the excellence of his acting. Wonderful film.

Definitely, maybe (2008)

An old favorite that holds up nicely.

Great opening sequence. Kevin Kline shines in a small role ("be a man; drink." "Are you comfortable?" a nurse asks him as he lies in a hospital bed after a heart attack. "I make a living," he answers, continuing, "give us a smile, sweetheart, I've been waiting all my ife to use that line."). And Maya ("What's the boy word for 'slut'?"). The five main characters are good. Quite enjoyable. Still.