I make a living

After watching To Kill a Mockingbird, produced by Alan J. Pakula, I decided to look for other films in which he was involved. One was Up the down staircase. Searching on that title led me to this wonder of humanity: When Bel Kaufman sits you down on her sofa and asks, “Are you comfortable?” the right answer, she reminds you, requires a Yiddish inflection, a shrug and the words, “I make a living.” Kevin Kline's character in Definitely Maybe  (Professor Hampton Roth) uses the same line.

Ms. Kaufman’s hard work and the watchful eye of a demanding father led to a master’s degree in literature from Columbia and teaching jobs at a series of public high schools. Her 20-year odyssey became the springboard out of her grandfather’s shadow. In 1965, she published “Up the Down Staircase,” a novel about a new teacher very much like Ms. Kaufman who struggles to keep up her spirits in a school crowded with more than a few hopeful but ornery students and where memo-happy principals issue rules like not walking “up the down staircase.”

Free food for millionaires

Really good book. Read it in four days (Monday was a rainy off day). Koreans live all around me in Flushing, and I wanted to read a book about Koreans in America. This one takes place in New York. The family of the main character, Casey Han, lives in Queens (Maspeth, between the gas tanks {does anyone not a New Yorker recognize that landmark?} and Queens Boulevard). She has graduated Princeton, has no job, an Anglo boyfriend and no plans to go to law school; the last three rankle her traditional father. Punched, tossed out, Casey goes to Manhattan, stays at the Carlyle Hotel (as would an aunt, or grandmother, of her best friend), and begins an adventure. There are numerous characters, many fleshed out nicely, and the narrative technique of going inside each head is used effectively.

Reviews are mixed, but I found it a wonderful read.

P.S.

Laura Linney in a role I have never before seen: sexual. In this 2004 film, she plays the admission officer at the School of Fine Arts at Columbia University, a 39-year-old divorced woman who leads an unfulfilled life and remains friends with her ex-husband.

After processing the current year's admission applications, she finds a letter on the floor of her office as she is about to leave for the day, and is stunned to see its return address: F. Scott Feinstadt, the exact name of her high school sweetheart, who died twenty years back in a car accident. She phones the applicant and makes an appointment to see him the following Monday.

From the quick interview, to which she wore a dress with a very low neckline and revealing lots of chest, she invites him to her apartment and they have sex.

F. Scott is played rather irreverently, and quite well, by Topher Grace. Made me think of Mark Ruffalo.

The script was rather weak, and their two performances lifted the film beyond where that script woul dhave otherwise taken it. A review in Rotten Tomatoes has it about right: P.S. is at its best when it follows the tics and foibles of human behavior; Linney and Grace both give vivid, lively performances. But every time reincarnation rears its head, the movie flounders, particularly in clumsy scenes with Louise's predatory best friend (Marcia Gay Harden, Mystic River), who stole Louise's boy so long ago. Fortunately (or strangely), that element is almost a tacked-on subplot; center stage is the romance between Linney and Grace, which glows sweetly. Also featuring Gabriel Byrne (The Usual Suspects, Miller's Crossing) and a woefully underused Paul Rudd (The Shape of Things, Clueless). --Bret Fetzer

The prime of Miss Jean Brodie

Bravo Dame Maggie. Do not believe that I had seen the film before, and I am glad to have seen it now.


1968. 1969. A tour de force performance which deservedly won an Oscar and launched a career. A surprise is that Pamela Franklin, who also turned in a stirring performance, did not have a successful career; her wikibio has it that she became typecast in horror films.

The emperor's club

I remember having seen this film. This time I took it out because of Emile Hirsch, the actor who plays Sedgewick Bell in this film and played Chris McCandles in Into the Wild.


Good film. Kevin Klein is a superb actor. Hirsch does a very nice job as the rebellious son of the (fictitious) senior US Senator from West Virginia.

Public art for public schools

New book entitled Public art for public schools contains some great pictures of NYC school buildings and art within. The Education Dept. website (within NYC.gov) has a section Public Art for Public Schools.

An example is this detail from History Of Mankind In Terms Of Mental And Physical Labor, 1941. Maxwell Starr. 1901-1978
























New York Old and New, 1936. Sacha Moldovan, 1901-1982. Oil on canvas, 4@ Approx 68 1/2" X 55 1/2"

History Boys

" Centers around eight boisterous-yet-talented schoolboys hoping to gain admittance to England's most prestigious universities. They are aided on their quest by two teachers, a shrewd young upstart and an inspiring old eccentric, whose opposing philosophies challenge the boys to confront the true meaning of education and the relative values of happiness and success."

Even without understanding all of the dialogue (my pesky American ears could not understand all the spoken English), I thoroughly enjoyed this film.

The students are studying for the entrance exams to Oxford University colleges, and are tutored by Hector, an old fuddy duddy teacher of long standing (who likes to fondle his students's genitalia as he gives them rides on his motorcycle - something they all accept), and a teacher brought specifically to tutor them.

21

Fairly good. Smart kids are recruited by MIT Mathematics instructor to count cards and make bundles of money at Las Vegas. Protagonist, a quasi-nerd who is working on a robotic car with his two nerd buddies, is so smart the instructor recruits him to be the lead card player in the scheme.

Las Vegas, MIT and Harvard are featured, glamorized, and used as props in this quest for an easy way out. In the way of the team stands an anachronism, a human being who monitors card players and their wonts, habits and patterns to detect cheating and card counting.

Decent-enough Friday night fare.