Wednesday, November 30, 2005
When The City Eats Your Soul
When The City Eats Your Soul
Where do you go when you've had enough of the urban grind but still crave it like heroin?
By Mark Morford
Then come those times, like when you walk out your front door on a calm sunny Sunday morn and find your shiny new car has been smashed by a hit-and-run driver to the tune of 14 grand's worth of repairs and your heart sinks and your normally Zenlike ennui boils over and you look around your grungy metropolitan neighborhood with a sudden mix of resignation and revulsion and an uncontrollable hissing sigh, that you realize how fed up you are with life in the city.
It happens, now and then, like a wave of nausea and heaving frustration, all aimed at the congestion and the traffic and the parking woes, the spitting lunatic homelessness and the lack of space and the lack of quiet and the random urban demons careening around the 'hood smashing windows and exchanging gunfire and peeing on your stoop when you say to yourself, You know what? I've loved and endured the city in equal turns for nearly 10 years now, and maybe that's enough, and isn't it about time I found some quiet and green and a yard and a dog and a parking space to call my own?
It's a question, I'm sure, asked by every city dweller past the age of, say, 32, the age where your hip grungy stained "artist's" apartment with the peeling vinyl flooring and limp water pressure and the horde of twentysomething partyers who live behind you and who smoke like factories and stay up 'til 5 a.m. snorting coke and playing acoustic guitar very very badly, it all switches from being funky and charming and urban to utterly obnoxious and tiring, and don't these people have jobs?
It is the time, in other words, wherein you hit that very special crossroads where you decide either to suck it up and accept the trade-off of calm energy for urban sophistication, or you think about getting the hell out. Or, better yet, you dream of doing both.
I am at this point. I have a lovely and well-maintained and relatively enormous flat in San Francisco and I love it to death, but I've been here a very long time and it can exhaust and frustrate and I've had two cars smashed and endured endless sirens and homeless screams in the night. There is not enough green. There is far too much gray. You cannot rent forever. Or can you?
If you live in the Bay Area, it is a question both complicated and unbearable. After all, where the hell can you go? Where can you still buy a home in this region that's even reasonably city-adjacent and urban-accessible that has its own delicious non-uptight community that will still clock in at well under half a million dollars for something more than 900 square feet of cheaply built, cracked-foundation bliss?
This is the real conundrum: where to obtain city-like charms with cabin-in-the-woods quiet and space for under the cost of selling the ovum of a blue-eyed geisha on the Japanese black market? After all, the Bay Area real estate market is nothing if not a hellbitch of investment discouragement. You take a deep breath and make a few Web site clicks and take one look at prices around the region and you go, Oh holy hell, I guess I'll just stay in my sad rent-controlled limbo a while longer and besides what's a little gunfire and urine when a small fixer-upper in Sausalito is 800K, without windows?
Of course, the ripest bohemian dream is to have, well, both: the hip urban pad and a weekend woodsy getaway, maybe Calistoga or Occidental or Bodega or Russian River or Sebastopol, something up in the rolling pristine fogless green, a place to escape the urban grind, a writing-sex-hot-tub-meditation-bring-some-friends-up-for-the-weekend retreat where you can go and plant some lavender and work on the deck and think about the meaning of single-malt scotch.
I have visited these regions. I have felt the calm verdant hum. When there, it is impossible not to fantasize about sticking around, about buying my own private quarter acre near the organic farmlands and the neohippies and the winemakers, the artist communes and the spiritual renegades and the slightly mad alt-millionaire geniuses who live well off the grid, all while still somehow maintaining a link to the beloved city.
Is such a dual existence possible? Check that: Is such an existence possible on a columnist's salary? Does Bush speak with nuanced polysyllabic intelligence?
Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there is a way and I just don't know it, a way to live the dual urban/pastoral dream without going into 30 years of runaway debt, without cashing in every nest-egg stock you ever owned and without borrowing three-quarters of a million dollars from the bank even as you stock up on tuna and water and canned beans for when the Big One hits and wipes it all off the map anyway.
This, then, is the big conundrum. Because a city like San Francisco, well, it gets in the blood. It is difficult to shake. I want to get out, but I don't want to leave. San Francisco remains one of the most desirable places to live in the world, the most electric and accessible and radiant and walkable urban jungles still without a Wal-Mart in its city limits, all resulting in the eternal S.F. lament, ongoing for the past decade: Relatively young? Make a decent salary (even two, combined)? Love the city? Want to lay down some roots and maybe buy a nice house? Good for you. Now get the hell out, because you can't possibly afford it.
So then, like countless city dwellers, I wait. I long. For the lottery win, for the market to implode (ha), for miracles and magic and time to heal all ridiculously inflated prices. I read the stories that claim the Bay Area housing market is cooling off -- which, around here, is a bit like saying the sun has dropped eight degrees from its recent high of 59 billion Fahrenheit. I dwell in schizophrenia, longing to stay in the city but getting hit by massive cravings to flee to calmer regions whenever the drug dealers four blocks away look at me like they're the hammer and I'm the nail.
Meantime, the yellowish vinyl tile in my rent-controlled kitchen is from 1974. I shall convince myself it is full of urban personality and charm. I shall pretend that I have enormous storage space and a closet larger than a gym locker and that my car will be protected by a magic force field generated by fierce German angels sent me by the Audi corporation. I shall buy more plants, ignore the broken glass in the street, turn up the Supergrass and the BRMC and the Thievery Corporation to drown out the sirens and the screams. It is, perhaps, for the time being, the only way.
Where do you go when you've had enough of the urban grind but still crave it like heroin?
By Mark Morford
Then come those times, like when you walk out your front door on a calm sunny Sunday morn and find your shiny new car has been smashed by a hit-and-run driver to the tune of 14 grand's worth of repairs and your heart sinks and your normally Zenlike ennui boils over and you look around your grungy metropolitan neighborhood with a sudden mix of resignation and revulsion and an uncontrollable hissing sigh, that you realize how fed up you are with life in the city.
It happens, now and then, like a wave of nausea and heaving frustration, all aimed at the congestion and the traffic and the parking woes, the spitting lunatic homelessness and the lack of space and the lack of quiet and the random urban demons careening around the 'hood smashing windows and exchanging gunfire and peeing on your stoop when you say to yourself, You know what? I've loved and endured the city in equal turns for nearly 10 years now, and maybe that's enough, and isn't it about time I found some quiet and green and a yard and a dog and a parking space to call my own?
It's a question, I'm sure, asked by every city dweller past the age of, say, 32, the age where your hip grungy stained "artist's" apartment with the peeling vinyl flooring and limp water pressure and the horde of twentysomething partyers who live behind you and who smoke like factories and stay up 'til 5 a.m. snorting coke and playing acoustic guitar very very badly, it all switches from being funky and charming and urban to utterly obnoxious and tiring, and don't these people have jobs?
It is the time, in other words, wherein you hit that very special crossroads where you decide either to suck it up and accept the trade-off of calm energy for urban sophistication, or you think about getting the hell out. Or, better yet, you dream of doing both.
I am at this point. I have a lovely and well-maintained and relatively enormous flat in San Francisco and I love it to death, but I've been here a very long time and it can exhaust and frustrate and I've had two cars smashed and endured endless sirens and homeless screams in the night. There is not enough green. There is far too much gray. You cannot rent forever. Or can you?
If you live in the Bay Area, it is a question both complicated and unbearable. After all, where the hell can you go? Where can you still buy a home in this region that's even reasonably city-adjacent and urban-accessible that has its own delicious non-uptight community that will still clock in at well under half a million dollars for something more than 900 square feet of cheaply built, cracked-foundation bliss?
This is the real conundrum: where to obtain city-like charms with cabin-in-the-woods quiet and space for under the cost of selling the ovum of a blue-eyed geisha on the Japanese black market? After all, the Bay Area real estate market is nothing if not a hellbitch of investment discouragement. You take a deep breath and make a few Web site clicks and take one look at prices around the region and you go, Oh holy hell, I guess I'll just stay in my sad rent-controlled limbo a while longer and besides what's a little gunfire and urine when a small fixer-upper in Sausalito is 800K, without windows?
Of course, the ripest bohemian dream is to have, well, both: the hip urban pad and a weekend woodsy getaway, maybe Calistoga or Occidental or Bodega or Russian River or Sebastopol, something up in the rolling pristine fogless green, a place to escape the urban grind, a writing-sex-hot-tub-meditation-bring-some-friends-up-for-the-weekend retreat where you can go and plant some lavender and work on the deck and think about the meaning of single-malt scotch.
I have visited these regions. I have felt the calm verdant hum. When there, it is impossible not to fantasize about sticking around, about buying my own private quarter acre near the organic farmlands and the neohippies and the winemakers, the artist communes and the spiritual renegades and the slightly mad alt-millionaire geniuses who live well off the grid, all while still somehow maintaining a link to the beloved city.
Is such a dual existence possible? Check that: Is such an existence possible on a columnist's salary? Does Bush speak with nuanced polysyllabic intelligence?
Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe there is a way and I just don't know it, a way to live the dual urban/pastoral dream without going into 30 years of runaway debt, without cashing in every nest-egg stock you ever owned and without borrowing three-quarters of a million dollars from the bank even as you stock up on tuna and water and canned beans for when the Big One hits and wipes it all off the map anyway.
This, then, is the big conundrum. Because a city like San Francisco, well, it gets in the blood. It is difficult to shake. I want to get out, but I don't want to leave. San Francisco remains one of the most desirable places to live in the world, the most electric and accessible and radiant and walkable urban jungles still without a Wal-Mart in its city limits, all resulting in the eternal S.F. lament, ongoing for the past decade: Relatively young? Make a decent salary (even two, combined)? Love the city? Want to lay down some roots and maybe buy a nice house? Good for you. Now get the hell out, because you can't possibly afford it.
So then, like countless city dwellers, I wait. I long. For the lottery win, for the market to implode (ha), for miracles and magic and time to heal all ridiculously inflated prices. I read the stories that claim the Bay Area housing market is cooling off -- which, around here, is a bit like saying the sun has dropped eight degrees from its recent high of 59 billion Fahrenheit. I dwell in schizophrenia, longing to stay in the city but getting hit by massive cravings to flee to calmer regions whenever the drug dealers four blocks away look at me like they're the hammer and I'm the nail.
Meantime, the yellowish vinyl tile in my rent-controlled kitchen is from 1974. I shall convince myself it is full of urban personality and charm. I shall pretend that I have enormous storage space and a closet larger than a gym locker and that my car will be protected by a magic force field generated by fierce German angels sent me by the Audi corporation. I shall buy more plants, ignore the broken glass in the street, turn up the Supergrass and the BRMC and the Thievery Corporation to drown out the sirens and the screams. It is, perhaps, for the time being, the only way.
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Monday, November 28, 2005
Sunday, November 27, 2005
Capricorn Horoscope for week of November 24, 2005
Capricorn Horoscope for week of November 24, 2005
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
Writing in the Robb Report, Jack Smith reported on the fate of a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite claret from Thomas Jefferson's personal collection. In 1985, it sold at an auction in London for what would today be $187,000. A few months later, while it was being displayed, exhibition lights dried out the cork, which fell into the bottle. The prized collectible was spoiled. The moral of the story, as far as you're concerned, is this: When you obtain a valuable resource from the past in the coming weeks, either use it or protect it from prying eyes. Don't show it off or boast about it.
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
Writing in the Robb Report, Jack Smith reported on the fate of a bottle of 1787 Chateau Lafite claret from Thomas Jefferson's personal collection. In 1985, it sold at an auction in London for what would today be $187,000. A few months later, while it was being displayed, exhibition lights dried out the cork, which fell into the bottle. The prized collectible was spoiled. The moral of the story, as far as you're concerned, is this: When you obtain a valuable resource from the past in the coming weeks, either use it or protect it from prying eyes. Don't show it off or boast about it.
Salon on Harry Potter -Goblet of Fire
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"
Harry and his friends are growing up, but this latest Potter film may leave you struggling with your own childhood demons.
Editor's note: This review contains minor spoilers, particularly for those who haven't read the book.
By Stephanie Zacharek
Pages
Nov. 17, 2005 | Mike Newell's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the fourth film based on J.K. Rowling's popular but not easily categorized series of novels, may be likely to inspire admiration rather than warm affection, at least while you're watching it. There are stretches where Newell's picture, even as it radiates thoughtfulness and integrity, feels more methodical than magical. He and screenwriter Steve Kloves (who also adapted the first three Harry Potter pictures) have taken great care in streamlining the complicated fbplot of Rowling's novel, but even so, you can almost hear the gears turning from scene to scene.
But I now think "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" may be more like a drug that slips into your bloodstream and takes a few hours to get to work. I didn't sleep well the night after I saw "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire": In my dreams, the picture reshaped itself into a somber, shuddering, gray mosaic, a solemn reassurance that, just as I've always feared, everything is not quite right with the world. "Goblet of Fire," nobly faithful to its source material, is an end-of-childhood picture: Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), now 14, has returned to Hogwarts for his fourth year. The school is to host the Triwizard Tournament, an international competition so dangerous it's been put on hold for many years. Students from two other wizard schools -- their fancifully descriptive faux-French and bogus-Bulgarian names are Beauxbatons Academy and the Durmstrang Institute -- will visit Hogwarts for the year; one student from each school will be chosen, after putting his or her name into the mystical Goblet of Fire, to compete in the games. No student under 17 is allowed to even enter.
But somehow, when the goblet spits forth the names of the chosen contestants, Harry's name is among them, inciting rancor and resentment among his classmates, especially Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), who, with Emma Watson's Hermione Granger, is one of his two closest friends. Ron is convinced that Harry put his own name into the cup, and his jealousy is so great that he refuses to speak to Harry, at one point withholding crucial information that could keep Harry from harm. But before long it becomes clear that someone at the school -- we don't learn who until the very end -- put Harry's name into the goblet in the hope that he'll be killed during the dangerous proceedings (which include outwitting a vicious dragon to procure a golden Faberge-type egg that contains the clue to the next task). And although we're never told as much, it's obvious that whoever dunked Harry's name in the goblet is a servant of the venomous Lord Voldemort, who wants to see Harry killed.
]
"Goblet of Fire" is neither as garishly dumb as Christopher Columbus' first two Harry Potter pictures, "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," nor as lyrical as Alfonso Cuarón's beautifully tuned "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." Cuarón's picture was a great romantic fantasy grounded in naturalism, and the first Potter adaptation to show any real understanding of its source material. Newell's movie is equally faithful to the fourth book's tone, but its poetry has a completely different texture. This is a brooding, somber story, a metaphor for the painful segue from childhood to adolescence. It balances the exhilaration of independence -- one of the great joys of growing up -- with the sobering realization that being a grown-up means there's no one around to protect you.
Newell begins building that sense of dread in the first scene: We see an old man climbing a shadowy flight of stairs and peering into a firelit room, where we get a glimpse of a small, pale, pinched embryo of evil -- Lord Voldemort, in his current, weakened form -- giving instructions to two of his henchmen, his voice a cross between a hiss and a purr. Later, Lord Voldemort's mark -- a skull with a swerving snake issuing from its lipless, leering mouth -- appears in the night sky tattooed in bold plumes of smoke, a signal to his followers that he's preparing for his reemergence into the world, stronger than he was before.
But none of this is adequate preparation for what happens at the end of "Goblet of Fire." To describe the unsettling form Lord Voldemort ultimately assumes -- a shape that Ralph Fiennes, with the cunning of a demon himself, has poured himself into -- would be tantamount to giving away the end of a thriller. (And "Goblet of Fire" is, in essence, a thriller.) The last moments of "Goblet of Fire" also contain a mourning scene that's operatic in scale. Its intensity is overwhelming, and it reaffirms the strengths of Rowling's books: Like all great children's literature, the Harry Potter novels are really explorations of the ghosts that haunt adults long after they've grown up and left home -- feelings of longing and loss, of vulnerability and the desire for transcendence.
Shot in misty gray tones by Roger Pratt (also the D.P. on "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"), "Goblet of Fire" has the hushed glow of old silver, like a weird treasure that's been locked away in a chest for decades. It's not a particularly pretty movie, and leaving the screening, I heard one moviegoer grumbling about its being "in black-and-white." But its look has the same grudging beauty that, once you get used to it, English weather does: It's so defiant in its grayness that you come to appreciate its conviction. Newell is the first English director to make a Harry Potter movie, and if Cuarón's vision of Potter's world was a dream England, Newell's is one that vibrates with realism -- nostalgic realism, maybe, since so much of the picture's imagery has a late '60s vibe. Early in the movie we see a small city of tents set up by the sports fans who have come to see the Quidditch World Cup, a scene of pseudo-hippie resourcefulness and bonhomie lifted straight from the 1969 Isle of Wight rock festival. (And then there are the movie's small, sly, rock 'n' roll touches, like the psychedelic-looking anti-Harry Potter badges worn by the more resentful students, and the Betsey Johnson-style fur-trimmed rock-star coats favored by the statuesque Beauxbatons' headmistress, Madame Maxime, played by English stage actress Frances de la Tour. There's also a fleeting cameo by Jarvis Cocker, the most English of English rock stars since Ray Davies.)
One of the pleasures of the "Harry Potter" series is reconnecting with familiar characters and seeing how new ones fit into the mix. "Goblet of Fire" brings us Cho, the Hogwarts classmate on whom Harry has a crush, played with great charm by young Scotswoman Katie Leung: She has only a few scenes, but they're lovely. And Brendan Gleeson is Mad-Eye Moody, a roughed-up, curmudgeonly newcomer to the Hogwarts faculty, who's fitted with a fake metal leg and a false eye that rolls around crazily in its artificial socket, like a cue ball with a mind of its own.
Another of the series' pleasures has been watching the actors who play the three leads, Radcliffe, Grint and Watson, grow out of their childish mugging and develop a greater range of subtle emotions. Newell is especially sensitive, as Rowling is, to that strange, underwater period in which girls and boys begin to realize what they want out of life, coupled with the miserable recognition that other girls and boys -- sexually elusive, maddening creatures that they are -- hold the key. This adolescent bewilderment manifests itself differently in each character: Harry, like a doofus, dribbles water from his mouth when he catches Cho looking at him across the dinner hall; Ron's jaw drops when he gets a gander at the twitching bottoms of the Beauxbatons' girls ("Bloody hell!" he mutters, the only appropriate response); and Hermione, most heartbreaking of all, can barely contain her frustration that it never even occurs to Ron to ask her to the big Yule Ball. (She ends up going with Durmstrang's star athlete, the sullen-sexy Viktor Krum, played by Stanislav Ianevski.)
The scenes leading up to the dance, as well as the event itself, may not be the most dramatic scenes in the picture, but they're its emotional center. In spirit, they're a twin to Alex Chilton's great Big Star song "Thirteen," which begins, "Won't you let me walk you home from school?/ Won't you let me meet you at the pool?" before winding its way to "Won't you tell me what you're thinking of?/ Would you be an outlaw for my love?" -- as devastating an encapsulation as any of the way, in retrospect, our first youthful attachments only appear to have been weightless; at the time they're happening, they mean the world.
Ron and Harry, both rejected by their first choices, ask girls they don't really know (very pretty ones, at that), and then, in their cluelessness, ignore them the whole evening. Hermione, who makes an entrance in a jaw-dropping satiny evening dress -- a triumph of Jany Temime's costuming, the dress makes her look like neither a dumb ingenue nor a tarted-up performer in a dance recital -- conducts herself far more gracefully, but at the end of the night, frustrated by Ron's inattentiveness (and, probably, by the fact that she wants his attention at all), she plunks herself down on a set of stairs and removes her shoes, probably her first grown-up pair, which are clearly hurting her feet.
Ralph Fiennes' Lord Voldemort may be the most deeply disturbing image from "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." But the movie's overall aura of impending change is unsettling in itself. At the end of the picture, as Ron, Hermione and Harry are about to part for the summer, Hermione -- usually so brisk and matter-of-fact -- seems unusually troubled by something. She looks at Harry and blurts out, "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" Harry reaches out to her, and with a little laugh of resignation, says, "Yes." Because everything is going to change. Voldemort is back, which is horrible enough by itself. But Hermione, earlier than the others have, has latched onto a disquieting truth. She's just realized they're all on the other side of childhood, looking back. There's nowhere to go but forward.
Harry and his friends are growing up, but this latest Potter film may leave you struggling with your own childhood demons.
Editor's note: This review contains minor spoilers, particularly for those who haven't read the book.
By Stephanie Zacharek
Pages
Nov. 17, 2005 | Mike Newell's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," the fourth film based on J.K. Rowling's popular but not easily categorized series of novels, may be likely to inspire admiration rather than warm affection, at least while you're watching it. There are stretches where Newell's picture, even as it radiates thoughtfulness and integrity, feels more methodical than magical. He and screenwriter Steve Kloves (who also adapted the first three Harry Potter pictures) have taken great care in streamlining the complicated fbplot of Rowling's novel, but even so, you can almost hear the gears turning from scene to scene.
But I now think "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" may be more like a drug that slips into your bloodstream and takes a few hours to get to work. I didn't sleep well the night after I saw "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire": In my dreams, the picture reshaped itself into a somber, shuddering, gray mosaic, a solemn reassurance that, just as I've always feared, everything is not quite right with the world. "Goblet of Fire," nobly faithful to its source material, is an end-of-childhood picture: Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe), now 14, has returned to Hogwarts for his fourth year. The school is to host the Triwizard Tournament, an international competition so dangerous it's been put on hold for many years. Students from two other wizard schools -- their fancifully descriptive faux-French and bogus-Bulgarian names are Beauxbatons Academy and the Durmstrang Institute -- will visit Hogwarts for the year; one student from each school will be chosen, after putting his or her name into the mystical Goblet of Fire, to compete in the games. No student under 17 is allowed to even enter.
But somehow, when the goblet spits forth the names of the chosen contestants, Harry's name is among them, inciting rancor and resentment among his classmates, especially Ron Weasley (Rupert Grint), who, with Emma Watson's Hermione Granger, is one of his two closest friends. Ron is convinced that Harry put his own name into the cup, and his jealousy is so great that he refuses to speak to Harry, at one point withholding crucial information that could keep Harry from harm. But before long it becomes clear that someone at the school -- we don't learn who until the very end -- put Harry's name into the goblet in the hope that he'll be killed during the dangerous proceedings (which include outwitting a vicious dragon to procure a golden Faberge-type egg that contains the clue to the next task). And although we're never told as much, it's obvious that whoever dunked Harry's name in the goblet is a servant of the venomous Lord Voldemort, who wants to see Harry killed.
]
"Goblet of Fire" is neither as garishly dumb as Christopher Columbus' first two Harry Potter pictures, "Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone" and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," nor as lyrical as Alfonso Cuarón's beautifully tuned "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." Cuarón's picture was a great romantic fantasy grounded in naturalism, and the first Potter adaptation to show any real understanding of its source material. Newell's movie is equally faithful to the fourth book's tone, but its poetry has a completely different texture. This is a brooding, somber story, a metaphor for the painful segue from childhood to adolescence. It balances the exhilaration of independence -- one of the great joys of growing up -- with the sobering realization that being a grown-up means there's no one around to protect you.
Newell begins building that sense of dread in the first scene: We see an old man climbing a shadowy flight of stairs and peering into a firelit room, where we get a glimpse of a small, pale, pinched embryo of evil -- Lord Voldemort, in his current, weakened form -- giving instructions to two of his henchmen, his voice a cross between a hiss and a purr. Later, Lord Voldemort's mark -- a skull with a swerving snake issuing from its lipless, leering mouth -- appears in the night sky tattooed in bold plumes of smoke, a signal to his followers that he's preparing for his reemergence into the world, stronger than he was before.
But none of this is adequate preparation for what happens at the end of "Goblet of Fire." To describe the unsettling form Lord Voldemort ultimately assumes -- a shape that Ralph Fiennes, with the cunning of a demon himself, has poured himself into -- would be tantamount to giving away the end of a thriller. (And "Goblet of Fire" is, in essence, a thriller.) The last moments of "Goblet of Fire" also contain a mourning scene that's operatic in scale. Its intensity is overwhelming, and it reaffirms the strengths of Rowling's books: Like all great children's literature, the Harry Potter novels are really explorations of the ghosts that haunt adults long after they've grown up and left home -- feelings of longing and loss, of vulnerability and the desire for transcendence.
Shot in misty gray tones by Roger Pratt (also the D.P. on "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets"), "Goblet of Fire" has the hushed glow of old silver, like a weird treasure that's been locked away in a chest for decades. It's not a particularly pretty movie, and leaving the screening, I heard one moviegoer grumbling about its being "in black-and-white." But its look has the same grudging beauty that, once you get used to it, English weather does: It's so defiant in its grayness that you come to appreciate its conviction. Newell is the first English director to make a Harry Potter movie, and if Cuarón's vision of Potter's world was a dream England, Newell's is one that vibrates with realism -- nostalgic realism, maybe, since so much of the picture's imagery has a late '60s vibe. Early in the movie we see a small city of tents set up by the sports fans who have come to see the Quidditch World Cup, a scene of pseudo-hippie resourcefulness and bonhomie lifted straight from the 1969 Isle of Wight rock festival. (And then there are the movie's small, sly, rock 'n' roll touches, like the psychedelic-looking anti-Harry Potter badges worn by the more resentful students, and the Betsey Johnson-style fur-trimmed rock-star coats favored by the statuesque Beauxbatons' headmistress, Madame Maxime, played by English stage actress Frances de la Tour. There's also a fleeting cameo by Jarvis Cocker, the most English of English rock stars since Ray Davies.)
One of the pleasures of the "Harry Potter" series is reconnecting with familiar characters and seeing how new ones fit into the mix. "Goblet of Fire" brings us Cho, the Hogwarts classmate on whom Harry has a crush, played with great charm by young Scotswoman Katie Leung: She has only a few scenes, but they're lovely. And Brendan Gleeson is Mad-Eye Moody, a roughed-up, curmudgeonly newcomer to the Hogwarts faculty, who's fitted with a fake metal leg and a false eye that rolls around crazily in its artificial socket, like a cue ball with a mind of its own.
Another of the series' pleasures has been watching the actors who play the three leads, Radcliffe, Grint and Watson, grow out of their childish mugging and develop a greater range of subtle emotions. Newell is especially sensitive, as Rowling is, to that strange, underwater period in which girls and boys begin to realize what they want out of life, coupled with the miserable recognition that other girls and boys -- sexually elusive, maddening creatures that they are -- hold the key. This adolescent bewilderment manifests itself differently in each character: Harry, like a doofus, dribbles water from his mouth when he catches Cho looking at him across the dinner hall; Ron's jaw drops when he gets a gander at the twitching bottoms of the Beauxbatons' girls ("Bloody hell!" he mutters, the only appropriate response); and Hermione, most heartbreaking of all, can barely contain her frustration that it never even occurs to Ron to ask her to the big Yule Ball. (She ends up going with Durmstrang's star athlete, the sullen-sexy Viktor Krum, played by Stanislav Ianevski.)
The scenes leading up to the dance, as well as the event itself, may not be the most dramatic scenes in the picture, but they're its emotional center. In spirit, they're a twin to Alex Chilton's great Big Star song "Thirteen," which begins, "Won't you let me walk you home from school?/ Won't you let me meet you at the pool?" before winding its way to "Won't you tell me what you're thinking of?/ Would you be an outlaw for my love?" -- as devastating an encapsulation as any of the way, in retrospect, our first youthful attachments only appear to have been weightless; at the time they're happening, they mean the world.
Ron and Harry, both rejected by their first choices, ask girls they don't really know (very pretty ones, at that), and then, in their cluelessness, ignore them the whole evening. Hermione, who makes an entrance in a jaw-dropping satiny evening dress -- a triumph of Jany Temime's costuming, the dress makes her look like neither a dumb ingenue nor a tarted-up performer in a dance recital -- conducts herself far more gracefully, but at the end of the night, frustrated by Ron's inattentiveness (and, probably, by the fact that she wants his attention at all), she plunks herself down on a set of stairs and removes her shoes, probably her first grown-up pair, which are clearly hurting her feet.
Ralph Fiennes' Lord Voldemort may be the most deeply disturbing image from "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." But the movie's overall aura of impending change is unsettling in itself. At the end of the picture, as Ron, Hermione and Harry are about to part for the summer, Hermione -- usually so brisk and matter-of-fact -- seems unusually troubled by something. She looks at Harry and blurts out, "Everything's going to change now, isn't it?" Harry reaches out to her, and with a little laugh of resignation, says, "Yes." Because everything is going to change. Voldemort is back, which is horrible enough by itself. But Hermione, earlier than the others have, has latched onto a disquieting truth. She's just realized they're all on the other side of childhood, looking back. There's nowhere to go but forward.
salon reviews RENT
Rent"
Who knew a movie musical could be worse than last year's over-the-top travesty "Phantom of the Opera"?
By Stephanie Zacharek
Nov. 23, 2005 | Oh, the plight of the struggling artist in New York, circa 1989: It's so hard to maintain your integrity when your parents keep leaving annoying, concerned messages on your answering machine, your old roommate marries a rich girl and is suddenly no longer amused by bad performance art, and, worst of all, your friends insist on dying of AIDS.
Chris Columbus' version of Jonathan Larson's alleged rock musical "Rent" spends most of its time congratulating itself on its own open-mindedness. Experimental filmmaking? Neat! Exotic dancing? Yeah! Homosexuality? Everybody into the pool! The movie's spirit of aggressive inclusivity reaches its apex in the noisy song-and-dance number "La Vie Boheme," in which the characters take over a bunch of tables in the middle of an East Village restaurant and mime several mildly non-missionary-style sex acts, just to show how open they are to alternative ways of, you know, living life. "When you're living in America at the end of the millennium," sings one character earnestly, in a different number, after he's tried to sell out and discovers the world of actually making a living just doesn't suit him, "you are what you own." Truer words were never sung, at least not since Florence Henderson donned a dirndl in "Song of Norway."
I wasn't sure a movie musical could be worse than last year's styrofoam-and-gilt swan-boat travesty "Phantom of the Opera," but I'm afraid "Rent" proves me wrong. The early scenes aren't so bad: At least the performers, and the absurd lyrics they're asked to sing, have earnestness on their side. The crushed-by-life rock star (Adam Pascal), the aspiring experimental filmmaker (Anthony Rapp), the beautiful-but-troubled dancer (Rosario Dawson), all prance and pirouette with gusto through the big opening number, wondering aloud, "How we gonna pay last year's rent?" They may be poor, but they know what their assets are: Later Dawson, who has the hots for Pascal and hopes to jolt him out of the funk he's been in since his junkie girlfriend committed suicide, scoots down on all fours and sings, "They say that I have the best ass below 14th Street." The evidence, as it twitches before us, is irrefutable.
But because -- and consider this a spoiler alert -- "Rent" is a story about life, love and loss, someone is going to die, and you can bet it's not going to be the obnoxious, sub-Karen Finley performance artist played by Idina Menzel: The sacrificial lamb here is the sweet, beloved-by-all tranny (Wilson Jermaine Heredia, who at one point offers a reasonably enjoyable number dressed in a cute Santa-girl outfit, even if Columbus shoots the sequence with patchwork-quilt visual craziness). As if that weren't enough, we get a further milking from a shameless almost-death scene at the end of the picture, in which a character goes limp, supposedly hearing the angels' clarion call. Columbus' camera travels with unvarnished deliberateness down that character's dangling arm, lingering on the lifeless fingers, which, lo and behold, begin to twitch with life. Not 30 seconds later, the whole gang is laughing and hugging, remarking on what a close call that was. We get all the poignance of a death scene and still get to go home with our happy ending.
Looking back on that scene, I almost can't believe it wasn't some sort of sick joke. But "Rent" is dead serious. Even though the picture is jampacked with enthusiastic singing, it's devoid of any real feeling -- its robotic, "Up With People" vigor leaves behind a cold, metallic aftertaste. I never saw the stage version of "Rent," so I'm not sure if Columbus has cluelessly trampled on Larson's material or, worse yet, merely presented it faithfully. (Larson died of an aortic aneurym just before the play went into previews in 1996.) But either way, Columbus isn't graceful enough as a filmmaker to navigate the story's smiley-face/sad-face twists and turns. The movie feels cluttered and forced; the scenes clunk along with an oompah-band rhythm.
What's most disheartening about "Rent" is watching all these performers work so hard, for so little payoff: It's frustrating to have an ensemble of young actors who can sing and dance (among them the eminently likable Rosario Dawson, and Taye Diggs, who's wasted here), and to realize that this is the best material anyone has to offer them. There's very little that's remotely musical about "Rent": The songs are like a vaudeville performer's idea of that newfangled rock music the kids are so nuts about these days.
And then there are the lyrics: "I'm looking for baggage that will go with mine," coos one troubled character to her potential soul mate. "You'll be my queen, I'll be your moat," sings another character to the guy he's fallen hard for. Larson wrote "Rent" as a reimagining of "La Bohéme," an exploration of the beauty and pain of being young, poor and artistically inclined and striving to express yourself. It's a fine idea in theory, but in the end, "Rent" is about nothing more than the oppressiveness of other people's self-expression. The depressed rock star in "Rent" takes a year to write one song. But the three minutes we spend listening to it seems interminable.
Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.
Story finder (3 ways to search S
Who knew a movie musical could be worse than last year's over-the-top travesty "Phantom of the Opera"?
By Stephanie Zacharek
Nov. 23, 2005 | Oh, the plight of the struggling artist in New York, circa 1989: It's so hard to maintain your integrity when your parents keep leaving annoying, concerned messages on your answering machine, your old roommate marries a rich girl and is suddenly no longer amused by bad performance art, and, worst of all, your friends insist on dying of AIDS.
Chris Columbus' version of Jonathan Larson's alleged rock musical "Rent" spends most of its time congratulating itself on its own open-mindedness. Experimental filmmaking? Neat! Exotic dancing? Yeah! Homosexuality? Everybody into the pool! The movie's spirit of aggressive inclusivity reaches its apex in the noisy song-and-dance number "La Vie Boheme," in which the characters take over a bunch of tables in the middle of an East Village restaurant and mime several mildly non-missionary-style sex acts, just to show how open they are to alternative ways of, you know, living life. "When you're living in America at the end of the millennium," sings one character earnestly, in a different number, after he's tried to sell out and discovers the world of actually making a living just doesn't suit him, "you are what you own." Truer words were never sung, at least not since Florence Henderson donned a dirndl in "Song of Norway."
I wasn't sure a movie musical could be worse than last year's styrofoam-and-gilt swan-boat travesty "Phantom of the Opera," but I'm afraid "Rent" proves me wrong. The early scenes aren't so bad: At least the performers, and the absurd lyrics they're asked to sing, have earnestness on their side. The crushed-by-life rock star (Adam Pascal), the aspiring experimental filmmaker (Anthony Rapp), the beautiful-but-troubled dancer (Rosario Dawson), all prance and pirouette with gusto through the big opening number, wondering aloud, "How we gonna pay last year's rent?" They may be poor, but they know what their assets are: Later Dawson, who has the hots for Pascal and hopes to jolt him out of the funk he's been in since his junkie girlfriend committed suicide, scoots down on all fours and sings, "They say that I have the best ass below 14th Street." The evidence, as it twitches before us, is irrefutable.
But because -- and consider this a spoiler alert -- "Rent" is a story about life, love and loss, someone is going to die, and you can bet it's not going to be the obnoxious, sub-Karen Finley performance artist played by Idina Menzel: The sacrificial lamb here is the sweet, beloved-by-all tranny (Wilson Jermaine Heredia, who at one point offers a reasonably enjoyable number dressed in a cute Santa-girl outfit, even if Columbus shoots the sequence with patchwork-quilt visual craziness). As if that weren't enough, we get a further milking from a shameless almost-death scene at the end of the picture, in which a character goes limp, supposedly hearing the angels' clarion call. Columbus' camera travels with unvarnished deliberateness down that character's dangling arm, lingering on the lifeless fingers, which, lo and behold, begin to twitch with life. Not 30 seconds later, the whole gang is laughing and hugging, remarking on what a close call that was. We get all the poignance of a death scene and still get to go home with our happy ending.
Looking back on that scene, I almost can't believe it wasn't some sort of sick joke. But "Rent" is dead serious. Even though the picture is jampacked with enthusiastic singing, it's devoid of any real feeling -- its robotic, "Up With People" vigor leaves behind a cold, metallic aftertaste. I never saw the stage version of "Rent," so I'm not sure if Columbus has cluelessly trampled on Larson's material or, worse yet, merely presented it faithfully. (Larson died of an aortic aneurym just before the play went into previews in 1996.) But either way, Columbus isn't graceful enough as a filmmaker to navigate the story's smiley-face/sad-face twists and turns. The movie feels cluttered and forced; the scenes clunk along with an oompah-band rhythm.
What's most disheartening about "Rent" is watching all these performers work so hard, for so little payoff: It's frustrating to have an ensemble of young actors who can sing and dance (among them the eminently likable Rosario Dawson, and Taye Diggs, who's wasted here), and to realize that this is the best material anyone has to offer them. There's very little that's remotely musical about "Rent": The songs are like a vaudeville performer's idea of that newfangled rock music the kids are so nuts about these days.
And then there are the lyrics: "I'm looking for baggage that will go with mine," coos one troubled character to her potential soul mate. "You'll be my queen, I'll be your moat," sings another character to the guy he's fallen hard for. Larson wrote "Rent" as a reimagining of "La Bohéme," an exploration of the beauty and pain of being young, poor and artistically inclined and striving to express yourself. It's a fine idea in theory, but in the end, "Rent" is about nothing more than the oppressiveness of other people's self-expression. The depressed rock star in "Rent" takes a year to write one song. But the three minutes we spend listening to it seems interminable.
Stephanie Zacharek is a senior writer for Salon Arts & Entertainment.
Story finder (3 ways to search S
thanksgiving week
I went to leave town on tuesday afternoon, after a beastly Monday afternoon. I left the parking lot late and headed home to get my cat and get back on the highway. 1/2 way home, i was flagged by an old lady and younger man (her son) in their car alerting me that i had a flat tired. I pulled into a FLAT place on HOward Ave in East NY and couldnt save my back tire that had a nasty screw deep in it. It cost me 50.00 CASH to get my ass on the road. I didnt like the sound of my new brakes, they have been back at the shop and i didnt like the sound but they screached Once and it was a rainy rainy day.
I decided to go to MAssachusetts and see how hte brakes were.
well 95 became a 3-6 parking lot and my new brakes got broken in. when i cleared 95 for 91 and then 84 i was cruising on at a great clip but i lost 2 hours travel time on 95. I made it to my parents with kitty o' love none worse for the wear. i picked up dinner and ate talking to my dad.
i got up wednesday and dropped my car off at the glass place. on my trip back from philly recently, i got hit by the flying rock and it nicked my windshield pretty bad so my dad called MILFORD GLASS and they could do my car wednesday and Bill my insurance directly for NO OUT THE POCKET costs to me. GLASS coverage is great.. so the toyota went to the shop and i went to WEight watchers in my father's maxima..
my mother went to meet my aunt and i met up with dad at home. i changed and we went to the bank, to get coffee, to the grocery store and the post office. we came home and i made these jello and yogurt and cool whip pies that i had made before.
MY neices have elevated PKU levels so they cannot have any sugar or fat free products, Those disclaimers that warn for Phenylalaine is for them. so they asked if i would make these pies especially for them. SO i did.
I then went to target with my dad and got home and my car was ready. I didnt have time to go to the outlet mall so i went to dinner with my parents.
Thursday, i woke up to a blanket of snow. I went out for coffee and the papers and ended up at BRooks or CVS twice for crap my mom forgot. Applesauce, PAM etc. it was cold in Massachusetts and my sister in law came over to start to cook. I had to run interference with her use of butter on veggies. She uses a stick of butter on everything. I baked butternut squash and a baked YAM and baked haddock and ate broccoli. I was able to avoid her peas, corn and pearl unions, mashed potatoes.
i played Rummy with my neices.. well i coached heather for a while. I looked at paiges cards and katies cards and cheated for heather. I didnt talk to my brother or my brother in law really. i dont have anything to say. My sister and i charted her black friday shopping.
i took her kids and she hit the stores. She hit the doorbusters on wednesday night and got some great bargains. She was going to sears and jc penny to get TVs and play station crap.
Paige and heather and i played cards and talked about current events. THey said they didnt care about the environment til we started talking about the ozone layer and hybrids and the oil prices and how the rainforest is being killed off. Paige talked about the second world war and hitler and asked alot of questions about the crematorium and the holocaust. she lives in a town where racism is rampant and she cannot disclose she is a jew. Kids walk around saluting hitler and we got to talk about how the town she lives in has the KLAN and the history of having the KLAN. crosses were burned on the neighors yard. my parents were talking with us about current events . i told paige about Anne Frank and how there were christians in europe who helped save jews. My dad will get them Schindlers list and i will send Paige the Diary of Anne Frank.
Unfortunately when you are the minority in a small new england town, you tend to want to hide. I still found myself putting my star of david in my shirt in NO WHERE North Carolina. Growing up as one of 35 jewish families, you learn to be unsafe. WE got to talk to paige about how unsafe being a jew facing anti semitism can feel.
paige and i watched FLY AWAY HOME and heather and katie watched Finding NEMO. they asked if they could sleep in my bed while i slept on the couch. Friday, i made em breakfast as my mom went to get her hair done and then i went to Kohl for their doorbuster. I scored the kids, Disney SCENE IT. These scene it games are DVD guessing games. So they had Harry Potter and wanted disney. I got it for more than 10.00 less then it was being offered. I went to get myself the MAGIC BULLET and got two pairs of levis and some socks.
i got home and we were ready to leave to go see Harry Potter. I liked this movie better than the last one. Paige has a learning disability so she doesnt read the books, Heather and Katie absorbed them this summer and read em all so they know more of the story and quoted me names and places. i had them bring me HP 1-3 so i could read em. so i brought them home with me. I will fill in the story and ill see the movies again
I really liked the movie. My father wanted more magic and my mom drifted off. She too is learning disabled and cant follow the plot lines easily. THe kids stuffed themselves on popcorn. I ate an apple. and we went back to my parents after a trip to the dollar store.
my sister, brother and their spouces were at my moms and we ate dinner. I then went shopping at Target again. i wanted the 4.14 crock pot for two and a new coffee maker for 4.14 as a spare.
saturday, i went to the outlets in wrenthem after i went to Kohls with my mom to get my neices some bras. I got two bras (thanks mom) and some cash from her. She paid me for the Kohls cash i got on friday and for some gift cards i had. I ended up with cash, she got the product
i went to the gap outlet and Liz Claibourne and ended up with sweaters and some shirts. I went to corning and bought some muffin tins (buy one get one free) and some pyrex bowls. I got gifts for Carol my favorite WW leader and i got my secret santa crap. I bought water proof boots for winter at BASS for 35 dollars and i bought gloves
i met up with my parents and we went to RENT. i was self conscious because of the topics and characters in the movies and was concerned about my parents response. They liked the movie and the characters. My mother thought that it was typical NY bohemia of the late 80s and thought some of it was dated. My dad didnt say much. I think i will see the movie again. I remember when they were filming it on Wooster street. I really understood better than the stage play. I think Angel needed a larger role and tie the characters together like she did in the play. The play was more confusing due to the limits of the setting but the plot is the same. I liked the movie alot.
i saw rent over 10 years i think. we had tickets for kids and i sat in the back of hte balcony on a snowy snowy january night. the theater was warm. it was cold and it was around my birthday. I remember the winter in the play and in the movie. I remember the night i saw them filming the scene where MIMI and Roger hook up and how they were making snow in soho while i walked to canal street. The large street that abuts the LOFT is supposed to be canal and Thompkins square park and 2nd ave are in the movie. I love seeing NYC in movies
i will not see KiNG KONG but ill see memoirs of a geisha and Munich. I remember the night Jim McKay reported the Israeli wrestling team was killed. I woke my parents up to times. i stayed up later and woke them when ARmstrong walked on the moon and the night the israeli wrestling team was killed. I remember being in tears for the loss.. the jews of the world felt that loss.
last night, i went to dinner with parents and i got up early and drove back to NY. I am going back to work a day early. my new boss seems to sign off on time off and then use it in emails or verbally as punishment. I dont need the day so i cancelled a day off. i emailed her and informed her that i would be back at work.
so i will go back to work... ho ho ho
I decided to go to MAssachusetts and see how hte brakes were.
well 95 became a 3-6 parking lot and my new brakes got broken in. when i cleared 95 for 91 and then 84 i was cruising on at a great clip but i lost 2 hours travel time on 95. I made it to my parents with kitty o' love none worse for the wear. i picked up dinner and ate talking to my dad.
i got up wednesday and dropped my car off at the glass place. on my trip back from philly recently, i got hit by the flying rock and it nicked my windshield pretty bad so my dad called MILFORD GLASS and they could do my car wednesday and Bill my insurance directly for NO OUT THE POCKET costs to me. GLASS coverage is great.. so the toyota went to the shop and i went to WEight watchers in my father's maxima..
my mother went to meet my aunt and i met up with dad at home. i changed and we went to the bank, to get coffee, to the grocery store and the post office. we came home and i made these jello and yogurt and cool whip pies that i had made before.
MY neices have elevated PKU levels so they cannot have any sugar or fat free products, Those disclaimers that warn for Phenylalaine is for them. so they asked if i would make these pies especially for them. SO i did.
I then went to target with my dad and got home and my car was ready. I didnt have time to go to the outlet mall so i went to dinner with my parents.
Thursday, i woke up to a blanket of snow. I went out for coffee and the papers and ended up at BRooks or CVS twice for crap my mom forgot. Applesauce, PAM etc. it was cold in Massachusetts and my sister in law came over to start to cook. I had to run interference with her use of butter on veggies. She uses a stick of butter on everything. I baked butternut squash and a baked YAM and baked haddock and ate broccoli. I was able to avoid her peas, corn and pearl unions, mashed potatoes.
i played Rummy with my neices.. well i coached heather for a while. I looked at paiges cards and katies cards and cheated for heather. I didnt talk to my brother or my brother in law really. i dont have anything to say. My sister and i charted her black friday shopping.
i took her kids and she hit the stores. She hit the doorbusters on wednesday night and got some great bargains. She was going to sears and jc penny to get TVs and play station crap.
Paige and heather and i played cards and talked about current events. THey said they didnt care about the environment til we started talking about the ozone layer and hybrids and the oil prices and how the rainforest is being killed off. Paige talked about the second world war and hitler and asked alot of questions about the crematorium and the holocaust. she lives in a town where racism is rampant and she cannot disclose she is a jew. Kids walk around saluting hitler and we got to talk about how the town she lives in has the KLAN and the history of having the KLAN. crosses were burned on the neighors yard. my parents were talking with us about current events . i told paige about Anne Frank and how there were christians in europe who helped save jews. My dad will get them Schindlers list and i will send Paige the Diary of Anne Frank.
Unfortunately when you are the minority in a small new england town, you tend to want to hide. I still found myself putting my star of david in my shirt in NO WHERE North Carolina. Growing up as one of 35 jewish families, you learn to be unsafe. WE got to talk to paige about how unsafe being a jew facing anti semitism can feel.
paige and i watched FLY AWAY HOME and heather and katie watched Finding NEMO. they asked if they could sleep in my bed while i slept on the couch. Friday, i made em breakfast as my mom went to get her hair done and then i went to Kohl for their doorbuster. I scored the kids, Disney SCENE IT. These scene it games are DVD guessing games. So they had Harry Potter and wanted disney. I got it for more than 10.00 less then it was being offered. I went to get myself the MAGIC BULLET and got two pairs of levis and some socks.
i got home and we were ready to leave to go see Harry Potter. I liked this movie better than the last one. Paige has a learning disability so she doesnt read the books, Heather and Katie absorbed them this summer and read em all so they know more of the story and quoted me names and places. i had them bring me HP 1-3 so i could read em. so i brought them home with me. I will fill in the story and ill see the movies again
I really liked the movie. My father wanted more magic and my mom drifted off. She too is learning disabled and cant follow the plot lines easily. THe kids stuffed themselves on popcorn. I ate an apple. and we went back to my parents after a trip to the dollar store.
my sister, brother and their spouces were at my moms and we ate dinner. I then went shopping at Target again. i wanted the 4.14 crock pot for two and a new coffee maker for 4.14 as a spare.
saturday, i went to the outlets in wrenthem after i went to Kohls with my mom to get my neices some bras. I got two bras (thanks mom) and some cash from her. She paid me for the Kohls cash i got on friday and for some gift cards i had. I ended up with cash, she got the product
i went to the gap outlet and Liz Claibourne and ended up with sweaters and some shirts. I went to corning and bought some muffin tins (buy one get one free) and some pyrex bowls. I got gifts for Carol my favorite WW leader and i got my secret santa crap. I bought water proof boots for winter at BASS for 35 dollars and i bought gloves
i met up with my parents and we went to RENT. i was self conscious because of the topics and characters in the movies and was concerned about my parents response. They liked the movie and the characters. My mother thought that it was typical NY bohemia of the late 80s and thought some of it was dated. My dad didnt say much. I think i will see the movie again. I remember when they were filming it on Wooster street. I really understood better than the stage play. I think Angel needed a larger role and tie the characters together like she did in the play. The play was more confusing due to the limits of the setting but the plot is the same. I liked the movie alot.
i saw rent over 10 years i think. we had tickets for kids and i sat in the back of hte balcony on a snowy snowy january night. the theater was warm. it was cold and it was around my birthday. I remember the winter in the play and in the movie. I remember the night i saw them filming the scene where MIMI and Roger hook up and how they were making snow in soho while i walked to canal street. The large street that abuts the LOFT is supposed to be canal and Thompkins square park and 2nd ave are in the movie. I love seeing NYC in movies
i will not see KiNG KONG but ill see memoirs of a geisha and Munich. I remember the night Jim McKay reported the Israeli wrestling team was killed. I woke my parents up to times. i stayed up later and woke them when ARmstrong walked on the moon and the night the israeli wrestling team was killed. I remember being in tears for the loss.. the jews of the world felt that loss.
last night, i went to dinner with parents and i got up early and drove back to NY. I am going back to work a day early. my new boss seems to sign off on time off and then use it in emails or verbally as punishment. I dont need the day so i cancelled a day off. i emailed her and informed her that i would be back at work.
so i will go back to work... ho ho ho
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Sunday, November 20, 2005
thanksgiving
thanksgiving day growing up in Massachusetts always included a trip to Plimouth Rock and learning about the Pilgrims. School days leading up to thanksgiving was day trips and drawings of turkeys and buckle shoes.
Then thanksgiving day became about going to the HIgh School football game. when Milford HIgh school played St Marys it was weeks of rivalry and the winner had bragging rights for a year. It was the Public education against the only Catholic high school in the area. THere was always an undercurrent of tension, Thanksgiving day allowed it to be played out in the open. Medway vs Millis, the high school of my mother and my cousins still have a 60 or 70 year rivalry today.
when St Marys closed down, it was milford vs Shrewsbury. We didnt know them, they didnt know us. they were people, just a team to beat.
going to the games in sweaters and leather gloves was more about being seen and who was with who then about the game, To fit in you went to the game
once i went to college, it was about coming home and being with relatives who i realized i didnt like. My cousin Norma loved the Macys day parade. the holiday became about who did the work and who didnt and sneaking off to smoke cigarettes. Thanksgiving day didnt have the same meaning
one thanksgiving, my aunt and her clan decided not to come over at the last minute. Leaving my mother like a deflated balloon as my cousin's wife was cooking for them. Years of tradition... 40 years of tradition down the drain. The holiday changed again
my mother cooked and i invited my neices for a sleep over to cheer my mother. That sleep over continues. the kids come over and we watch movies and we eat popcorn and get goofy. My mom has them to replace the fact that her sister stiffed her and left her deflated. My neices will get donuts for breakfast (they love em) and we will go to see the latest HOTEST movie. Again, another Harry Potter movie.
another thanksgiving, now my sister in law cooks at my moms.. her sister refused to come to her so she and her dad will come to my mom.. she uses too much butter and really isnt flexible in her cooking. so i end up with separate meals.. i will take my neices for a walk and watch DVDs and play cards with them.
maybe ill take pictures of them and let them take pictures of me...
i am leaving on tuesday and will be there wed- monday..
i have lots to be thankful for this year and every year
Then thanksgiving day became about going to the HIgh School football game. when Milford HIgh school played St Marys it was weeks of rivalry and the winner had bragging rights for a year. It was the Public education against the only Catholic high school in the area. THere was always an undercurrent of tension, Thanksgiving day allowed it to be played out in the open. Medway vs Millis, the high school of my mother and my cousins still have a 60 or 70 year rivalry today.
when St Marys closed down, it was milford vs Shrewsbury. We didnt know them, they didnt know us. they were people, just a team to beat.
going to the games in sweaters and leather gloves was more about being seen and who was with who then about the game, To fit in you went to the game
once i went to college, it was about coming home and being with relatives who i realized i didnt like. My cousin Norma loved the Macys day parade. the holiday became about who did the work and who didnt and sneaking off to smoke cigarettes. Thanksgiving day didnt have the same meaning
one thanksgiving, my aunt and her clan decided not to come over at the last minute. Leaving my mother like a deflated balloon as my cousin's wife was cooking for them. Years of tradition... 40 years of tradition down the drain. The holiday changed again
my mother cooked and i invited my neices for a sleep over to cheer my mother. That sleep over continues. the kids come over and we watch movies and we eat popcorn and get goofy. My mom has them to replace the fact that her sister stiffed her and left her deflated. My neices will get donuts for breakfast (they love em) and we will go to see the latest HOTEST movie. Again, another Harry Potter movie.
another thanksgiving, now my sister in law cooks at my moms.. her sister refused to come to her so she and her dad will come to my mom.. she uses too much butter and really isnt flexible in her cooking. so i end up with separate meals.. i will take my neices for a walk and watch DVDs and play cards with them.
maybe ill take pictures of them and let them take pictures of me...
i am leaving on tuesday and will be there wed- monday..
i have lots to be thankful for this year and every year
walk the line
i went to see Walk the Line on Friday.
Walk the Line From Imbd
Finding the trauma in his life whisked away by the power of song, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) commits his early years to understanding how music works, and looking for his big break. After marrying young (Vivian Cash is played by Ginnifer Goodwin), Cash soon takes to the road, touring along with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and June Carter (Reese Witherspoon) while his records climb the charts. Unsatisfied with his situation, Cash soon starts to chase Carter, who reluctantly gives in to him and soon regrets her decision when Cash's life dissolves into a kaleidoscope of anger, pills, and disappointment.
Writer/director James Mangold clearly has a soaring affection for Johnny Cash, since "Walk the Line" is a straight-up love letter to the late, great singing legend. However, in his effort to illustrate the power of will Cash demonstrated in his life, Mangold's focus is thrown askew, making "Line" all about Cash's demons, and displaying almost none of his joy.
Cringingly, "Walk the Line" is as formulaic a biographical picture as can be made. "Line" follows the same route as last year's Oscar winning "Ray," taking the audience on a ride through broken childhood, professional growth, heavy womanizing, and ultimately drugs and despair. It seems that anything related to music has to follow these pathways; yet, these films continue to be made, completely oblivious that they are all alike. Mangold is a director with some sense of personality ("Girl, Interrupted," "Cop Land"), so it's a surprise that he would stoop to keeping "Line" so attentive to the familiar. Thankfully, Cash's cinematic story is a convincing one, taking the singer from the tragic loss of his older brother as a child to the heights of fame to his stormy courtship with the unresponsive June Carter. "Walk the Line" is basic to a fault, but it has the raw materials to get it at least halfway to success.
Taking the film the rest of the way are the performances, which are spellbinding. Joaquin Phoenix takes the challenge to impersonate Cash very seriously, and he sweats, glares, and stalks his way to a meticulous performance. In a dramatic choice, Mangold has instructed his cast to do their own singing, allowing the performers to slip into the skin of the songs and feel around. Phoenix does a spot-on job mimicking Cash's baritone and swagger, at times becoming one with the man in black. Phoenix is no stranger to jittery, internalized roles, so his domestic Cash is decent work. It's only when Phoenix hits the stage does the audience see just how far the actor has dug into his role. The concert sequences are electric, and prop the film up when Mangold finds himself wailing the audience over the head with Cash's dark moments.
Reese Witherspoon's performance is the real surprise here. Also doing her own signing, Witherspoon has the perfect twang to bring June Carter to life. Her chemistry with Phoenix onstage is worth the price of admission alone, with the two actors making every moment together in performance glowing (also crucial to their characters). Unfortunately, when Carter is off the stage, the script reduces her to a nag, constantly berating Cash about his lifestyle choices. Mangold isn't particularly kind to women in "Line," and maybe that's the way Cash saw his own life. For the film to work, however, Carter needed to be seen as a siren that Cash couldn't live without, but that feeling is never solidified. Instead of swooning over the couple and their battles to love each other, "Line" becomes a giant exercise in figuring out just what Carter saw in Cash in the first place. Not quite what Mangold had in mind, I'm sure.
As "Line" delves further and further into Cash's addictions and downward spiral, less time to given to his musical triumphs, robbing the film of a true depiction. The legendary Folsom Prison concert, which lightly bookends the film, is a powerhouse, cleanly displaying the fire in Cash's belly, as well as his mischief. There isn't enough of that in "Line;" the dedication to the drug abuse encompassing way too much screen time, and steals away focus from the romance in the Cash and Carter union. "Walk the Line" only tells part of the Cash legend (the film ends in the late 1960s), with a heartbreaking coda (which states that Cash died in 2003 a mere four months after June), hinting that perhaps Mangold was looking in the wrong era to find out what made Johnny Cash tick. ---- 6/10
___________________
my personal opinion is that is a good movie. not a great movie. I liked that JP and RW did their own singing and i think that the chemistry between them waxes and wanes. I love the love story. The committment as friends. Their relationship is the centerpiece of the movie and i love how the movie is organized. From FOLSON PRISON and then in flashback
its similar to RAY but so wasnt CAsh's story.
i love that the other SUN artists were cast and did their own singing. I walked out wanted to know more about JUNE, maybe cuz i know alot about Johnny. I loved Reese WItherspoon in this role.. OSCAR NOMINATIONS all round
its a MUST see
Walk the Line From Imbd
Finding the trauma in his life whisked away by the power of song, Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) commits his early years to understanding how music works, and looking for his big break. After marrying young (Vivian Cash is played by Ginnifer Goodwin), Cash soon takes to the road, touring along with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, and June Carter (Reese Witherspoon) while his records climb the charts. Unsatisfied with his situation, Cash soon starts to chase Carter, who reluctantly gives in to him and soon regrets her decision when Cash's life dissolves into a kaleidoscope of anger, pills, and disappointment.
Writer/director James Mangold clearly has a soaring affection for Johnny Cash, since "Walk the Line" is a straight-up love letter to the late, great singing legend. However, in his effort to illustrate the power of will Cash demonstrated in his life, Mangold's focus is thrown askew, making "Line" all about Cash's demons, and displaying almost none of his joy.
Cringingly, "Walk the Line" is as formulaic a biographical picture as can be made. "Line" follows the same route as last year's Oscar winning "Ray," taking the audience on a ride through broken childhood, professional growth, heavy womanizing, and ultimately drugs and despair. It seems that anything related to music has to follow these pathways; yet, these films continue to be made, completely oblivious that they are all alike. Mangold is a director with some sense of personality ("Girl, Interrupted," "Cop Land"), so it's a surprise that he would stoop to keeping "Line" so attentive to the familiar. Thankfully, Cash's cinematic story is a convincing one, taking the singer from the tragic loss of his older brother as a child to the heights of fame to his stormy courtship with the unresponsive June Carter. "Walk the Line" is basic to a fault, but it has the raw materials to get it at least halfway to success.
Taking the film the rest of the way are the performances, which are spellbinding. Joaquin Phoenix takes the challenge to impersonate Cash very seriously, and he sweats, glares, and stalks his way to a meticulous performance. In a dramatic choice, Mangold has instructed his cast to do their own singing, allowing the performers to slip into the skin of the songs and feel around. Phoenix does a spot-on job mimicking Cash's baritone and swagger, at times becoming one with the man in black. Phoenix is no stranger to jittery, internalized roles, so his domestic Cash is decent work. It's only when Phoenix hits the stage does the audience see just how far the actor has dug into his role. The concert sequences are electric, and prop the film up when Mangold finds himself wailing the audience over the head with Cash's dark moments.
Reese Witherspoon's performance is the real surprise here. Also doing her own signing, Witherspoon has the perfect twang to bring June Carter to life. Her chemistry with Phoenix onstage is worth the price of admission alone, with the two actors making every moment together in performance glowing (also crucial to their characters). Unfortunately, when Carter is off the stage, the script reduces her to a nag, constantly berating Cash about his lifestyle choices. Mangold isn't particularly kind to women in "Line," and maybe that's the way Cash saw his own life. For the film to work, however, Carter needed to be seen as a siren that Cash couldn't live without, but that feeling is never solidified. Instead of swooning over the couple and their battles to love each other, "Line" becomes a giant exercise in figuring out just what Carter saw in Cash in the first place. Not quite what Mangold had in mind, I'm sure.
As "Line" delves further and further into Cash's addictions and downward spiral, less time to given to his musical triumphs, robbing the film of a true depiction. The legendary Folsom Prison concert, which lightly bookends the film, is a powerhouse, cleanly displaying the fire in Cash's belly, as well as his mischief. There isn't enough of that in "Line;" the dedication to the drug abuse encompassing way too much screen time, and steals away focus from the romance in the Cash and Carter union. "Walk the Line" only tells part of the Cash legend (the film ends in the late 1960s), with a heartbreaking coda (which states that Cash died in 2003 a mere four months after June), hinting that perhaps Mangold was looking in the wrong era to find out what made Johnny Cash tick. ---- 6/10
___________________
my personal opinion is that is a good movie. not a great movie. I liked that JP and RW did their own singing and i think that the chemistry between them waxes and wanes. I love the love story. The committment as friends. Their relationship is the centerpiece of the movie and i love how the movie is organized. From FOLSON PRISON and then in flashback
its similar to RAY but so wasnt CAsh's story.
i love that the other SUN artists were cast and did their own singing. I walked out wanted to know more about JUNE, maybe cuz i know alot about Johnny. I loved Reese WItherspoon in this role.. OSCAR NOMINATIONS all round
its a MUST see
Saturday, November 19, 2005
dreams of tickets and the mcgarrigles/wainwrights
i dreamed that i received a parking ticket. I then looked at all the cars on the same block and then they had tickets too for expired parking meters. I came back to my car after being away and i saw a slip of paper. I thought NO i cant get another ticket. it wasnt a ticket it was a note that someone put the fare in the meter and saved me from getting a ticket. it was Donna, the woman who cuts my hair. I went into the shop and i thanked her. I raised the issue of getting the ticket and her paying my meter fare. I wanted to thank her. I turned the leave and then reached in my pocket and handed her a dollar
I dreamed that i was at brownstone, like the ones in park slope and in the basement or lower apartment was the Mcgarrigle sister, I saw the family clan. Rufus Wainwright and Martha heading into the apartment. The feeling of the dream was i was watching it more than i was in it
I dreamed that i was at brownstone, like the ones in park slope and in the basement or lower apartment was the Mcgarrigle sister, I saw the family clan. Rufus Wainwright and Martha heading into the apartment. The feeling of the dream was i was watching it more than i was in it
Thursday, November 17, 2005
dreaming again
last night i had a crazy dream about chicago
dont ask anything else about it.
i have been sleeping fine except that oNE Time i wake up about 4am...
chicago has been a dream theme
dont ask anything else about it.
i have been sleeping fine except that oNE Time i wake up about 4am...
chicago has been a dream theme
Wednesday, November 16, 2005
Capricorn Horoscope for week of November 17, 2005
Capricorn Horoscope for week of November 17, 2005
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
In their new book The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare, Brenda James and William Rubinstein make an interesting case for the theory that the real author of Shakespeare's works was the diplomat and courtier Sir Henry Neville. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject to evaluate their arguments, but I'm pretty sure that you will soon have a feeling similar to what Neville might be having if he were alive. Some reward or credit that has long been denied you will finally be yours. Vindication is nigh.
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
In their new book The Truth Will Out: Unmasking the Real Shakespeare, Brenda James and William Rubinstein make an interesting case for the theory that the real author of Shakespeare's works was the diplomat and courtier Sir Henry Neville. I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about the subject to evaluate their arguments, but I'm pretty sure that you will soon have a feeling similar to what Neville might be having if he were alive. Some reward or credit that has long been denied you will finally be yours. Vindication is nigh.
dreaming again
Eilat
I dreamed about something having to do with Chicago. The city not the musical but i saw a version of the word Eiliat or Eilat or Eliat in my dream and i am not sure if it refers to hte Israel city or some other obscure reference from my subscious
i know that I had something to do in Chicago...
snippets anyone
I dreamed about something having to do with Chicago. The city not the musical but i saw a version of the word Eiliat or Eilat or Eliat in my dream and i am not sure if it refers to hte Israel city or some other obscure reference from my subscious
i know that I had something to do in Chicago...
snippets anyone
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