Category: Film

Tidy Tidbits: Film, Art & Vanessa

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FILM

I recommend Far from the Madding Crowd!  Beautiful countryside, beautifully filmed, and Carey Mulligan is a lovely Bathsheba, intelligent, definite and almost elfin.  And the men—Francis Troy has the required rakish dark hair and eyes, Boldwood (don’t you love Hardy’s choice of names!) is older, but not as sinister seeming as in the novel, and Gabriel Oak, well, he is all that the hero is supposed to be—strong, silent and ever reliable.  I prefer this version to the earlier one starring Julie Christie.  A good romantic film to get lost in!

ART IN SARASOTA

I believe that part of having a successful retirement life is creating something new or at least exploring and experiencing different activities and events.  My spouse and I call this aspect, “the frolic phase,” and we have developed gradations of frolics from micro to mini to mega. Frolics range from dinner at a new restaurant to a museum visit to a full-blown trip like the 5-week one we took to Asia.

This past week, we had what I’d term a mini frolic.  We had been to John and Mable Ringling’s mansion, Ca d’Zan, at Christmas time, but never to the Ringling Museum of Art.  We have now remedied that and were quite impressed.  The Ringlings’ personal art collection, which was bequeathed to the state of Florida upon John Ringling’s death in 1936, is primarily made up of Renaissance and pre-Renaissance religious art, mainly by Italians, but there are representatives of Dutch, French and Spanish artists as well. They are hung in a series of wood-paneled galleries, each of a different wall color, in the original building.  The building itself is modeled on an Italian villa with a bronze copy of Michelangelo’s David looming over the courtyard and is worth seeing.

The addition of the Ulla and Arthur T. Searing Wing provides a contemporary museum space for traveling and temporary exhibits and we got caught up in “Re-Purposed,” sculpture and other art created from trash and cast-off items.  I would also note that we had the pleasure of meeting the late Mrs. Searing several years ago. She was then 92, elegantly dressed and very  proper.  We conversed over tea and Pepperidge Farm cookies on her balcony high up overlooking Sarasota Bay.

NEW BOOK 

Vanessa Bell about 1910 & Virginia Woolf, 1902 [by George C. Beresford/Hutton Archive
Vanessa Bell about 1910 & Virginia Woolf, 1902
[by George C. Beresford/Hutton Archive]
I dashed through Priya Parmar’s new novel, Vanessa and Her Sister, and was simply captivated!  This is Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf, but with the attention on Nessa as she was called.  Parmar has created a chatty diary for Vanessa and her dated entries are interrupted by letters and postcards from other family members and friends (Virginia and Nessa to Violet Dickinson and Dorothy Snow,  Lytton Strachey and Leonard Woolf to each other).  The four Stephen siblings, who had lost both their parents and their half sister Stella, were extremely close and formed a tight little social group which was enlivened by close friends dropping by for their Thursday evenings.  The novel makes clear the steadying influence Vanessa had on Virginia and how much Virginia needed and wanted her attention.  Nonetheless,  death, madness,  Clive’s courtship of Vanessa, and betrayal all conspire to disrupt the balance and seeming harmony of the group..

These are 20 and 30-something writers and artists who, without Facebook or texting, are aiming to be successful in their endeavors and falling in and out of love with potential life partners, be they male or female.  Parmar brings their unconventional social milieu to life—so much so that I felt as if I were there and well acquainted with Vanessa.  It is probably helpful to know something about these noteworthy and ultimately famous individuals (I did, being a fan of the Bloomsbury Group), but even if you don’t, their story and their issues of artistic creation and love of all kinds will engage you.  I didn’t want the book to end.

Tidy Tidbits: Film & Theater

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TIDY TIDBITS:  Film & Theater

This was a week when we gorged on culture, films especially.  The Sarasota Film Festival (SFF) is celebrating its 17th year, and over the course of ten days 270 films, a mix of documentaries and feature films, are screened.  We were late getting tickets, having been away, but still managed to see several noteworthy films.  Most of these are making the rounds of a number of film festivals, and at least some of them are set for commercial release in the next three to six months.  Here are my thoughts and my recommendations:

Dior and I.  An excellent film about the fashion industry and Raf Simons’ first couture collection for the House of Dior.  Featuring both passages from Christian Dior’s memoir and the suspenseful account of the creation of Simons’ collection,  this is documentary film making at its best.  If you ever wondered why haute couture is so dear, then seeing all the hand work involved here, you will understand.  The film was also the focus of a recent NY Times piece in their style magazine.  Not for fashionistas only.

For the Record.  A documentary about court stenographers and those who do closed captioning for TV shows and the like.  I really enjoyed this film.  My husband got bored and snoozed a bit.  There was the excitement of the competition to see who was the fastest transcriber, and one of the contestants was local, from Sarasota.  I think my librarian and linguistically-inclined friends would enjoy this one.

Blood, Sweat and Beer.  The subject of this film is the craft beer industry and it portrayed two start-ups, one in Ocean City, Maryland, whose owner was having a rough time due to a copyright infringement law suit, and the other in a very depressed former Pennsylvania steel town.  Two energetic recent college graduates took on the challenge of creating a brewery and pub in Braddock in the midst of abject poverty and neglect.  The film could have used more editing, but it gives you a sense of how pervasive the craft beer industry has become.

Wildlike.  A feature-length film set midst the gorgeous Alaskan scenery, this is the story of a teenage girl who is sent to stay with her uncle.  She has problems with his behavior and runs away and attaches herself to a middle aged backpacker who has recently lost his wife and is trying to find some peace and solace in Denali National Park. Sensitively done and worth viewing.

Paradise, FL.  Another feature film, this one shot in the Sarasota Bay area and hence of interest due to its local color.  It’s a depressing tale of drug addiction and family strife straining the friendship and loyalty between two young male fishermen.  Overly long and drawn out, it still held my interest.  It would be better with some judicious cutting.

Theater

Asolo Rep did it again with their marvelous production of Somerset Maugham’s Our Betters!  This was the equal of anything you’d see on Broadway and was both well cast and well staged.  Featuring four women, all of whom were part of the exodus of American heiresses to Britain to find titled husbands, it was funny, fabulous and thought provoking about the role of women.  This director chose to move the time of the play from 1917 to the 1920’s in order to have costumes that were more flowing and allowed the women characters greater freedom of movement.  An inspired decision!

Tidy Tidbits: Boyhood, McEwan & Chocolate

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This Week’s Movie

Boyhood

I loved Boyhood. We watched it almost in one sitting with only a short break and it was so real.  It’s fiction, a scripted story, but because of its pace, it seems like a documentary.  Mason, the boy, is amazing, but there is something satisfying about watching the parent actors, Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawk, age too over the twelve years.   Being a mother, I was reminded of situations when my son was a teenager.

Boyhood is considered groundbreaking, but there is some precedent in Michael Apted’s Up series.  Apted has filmed the same group of people every 7 years since there were seven years old; the latest installment released several years ago captures them at the age of 56.  The difference is these are individual interviews about what has happened in their lives since the last filming and they are great social and life history. Boyhood creates the daily life of one young man continuously over 12 years.  It is fiction, but feels true.  Up is real people, but it is their reflections on events, not the events themselves.  I’m a fan of both.

One critic I read also examined the role of Mason’s sister, Samantha, and stated that she went from being quite vocal in the early years to getting quieter and less present and that this indicated something about the upbringing of girls.  So I watched Samantha more closely than I might have otherwise, but don’t agree with that critic’s assessment.  Samantha is not the focal point of the film to begin with and I don’t think she got lost.

This Week’s Book

The Children Act by Ian McEwan

I have now read several novels by Ian McEwan and find his writing to be concise and pointed.  Compared to some authors, his works are short to moderate in length.  There are no long descriptions, but rather short, pithy sentences that conjure up in the reader’s mind a person’s appearance or delineate a character’s feelings.  He is particularly good at shame and embarrassment.   Judge Fiona Maye in this his latest novel is walking home from work contemplating her feelings about her husband’s recent departure.

“She went slowly along Theobald’s Road, still holding off the moment of her return, wondering again whether it was not love she had lost so much as a modern form of respectability, whether it was not contempt and ostracism she feared, as in the novels of Flaubert and Tolstoy, but pity.  To be the object of general pity was also a form of social death.  The nineteenth century was closer than most women thought.  To be caught enacting her part in a cliché showed poor taste rather than a moral lapse.  Restless husband in one last throw, brave wife maintaining her dignity, younger woman remote and blameless.  And she had thought her acting days ended on a summer lawn, just before she fell in love.”

Childless Fiona is an intriguing character; I was drawn into her personal and professional life and the family law cases she must adjudicate.  Although I figured out much of the ending, I could sympathize with the approach she took in the Jehovah’s Witness case, the crux of the novel.  She is an appealingly imperfect human.

chocolates Sweet Treats

Valentine’s Day is this week which brings to mind candy hearts and flowers, but especially chocolate.  When I was a child, candy was a special treat and fancy boxes of chocolates something rare.  I have fond and tasty recollections of the special candies my parents received for their birthdays.  My grandparents would send them each a box of Gilbert Chocolates on the appropriate days in February and April.

The box was white and more square than rectangular with a green banner on it.  This was the era of milk chocolate and Gilbert Chocolates were milk chocolate that had tiny bits of nuts in the chocolate surrounding the caramel or cream center.  The favorite collection in our house was called Panama.  With four children eager to share in them, I’m not sure how many pieces my folks actually got for themselves!  I was pleased to discover that the Gilbert company, founded in 1900, is still doing business in Jackson, Michigan, with an expanded line including truffles, fudge, dark chocolate, and of course, the Panama Collection.  The web is wonderful!

Tidy Tidbits: Movies, Music & Charleston

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Movie recommendations:  Before the holidays, we saw several of the Oscar contenders and I would recommend them all.  This is a season of men, all of these films portray famous or infamous males, all but one no longer here.  I’ve listed the films in order of my preference.

Imitation Game.  Alan Turing was a genius and his codebreaking achievements secret for many years.  Benedict Cumberbatch is wonderful in the starring role although I’ve since read in a New York Review of  Books article that the portrayal of Turing is skewed and that he was not quite as freakish or nerdy as the film makes out.

The Theory of Everything.  No question, Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking is simply stunning.  Hawking’s accomplishments coupled with the sweet and bittersweet love between him and Jane make this film refreshing and a joy to see.

Foxcatcher.   We lived in the Philadelphia suburbs when these events happened and so it was essential to see the film.  A lot of wrestling scenes and a bit slow, but Steve Carell gives a creepy and compelling performance as John DuPont.

Mr. Turner.  I didn’t love this film, but found it worth seeing.  Turner communicates mostly by grunts so there is not much in the way of meaty dialogue and the narrative arc is shallow to almost non-existent.  Nonetheless, you get a sense of Turner’s place in the artistic society of the time.

This Week’s Book

Charleston by Margaret Bradham Thornton.

This first novel draws strongly on the author’s own experiences.  Thornton grew up in Charleston, she edited Tennessee Williams’ notebooks and he is referenced in the novel, and the main character spends a lot of time doing historical research.  The book is a testament to the pull of the South and the history and charm of Charleston (readers who know Charleston’s streets and sights will be more engaged) and Charleston society.  It’s a familiar plot–girl attached to boy, girl re-encounters a past love, and girl must decide whether her heart lies with the new love or the old.  But there is a surprise twist which I won’t divulge.  I would characterize this as a pleasant diversion, a bit like indulging in a slice of Lady Baltimore cake on a summer afternoon.

Sarasota Spot

We continue to be impressed with the cultural offerings in our area.  The Music Mondays series charms, informs and delights us with conversation and performance from a different artist each week.  And last Thursday’s Sarasota Orchestra concert was over the top.  Put together a masterful rendition of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No.4 given by pianist, painter, composer Stephen Hough, add in Elgar’s Enigma Variations (all 14 of them) under Anul Tali’s expressive conducting and you have a wonderful evening!  We enjoyed it as much as or more than some San Francisco Symphony concerts!