All posts by Steve Stern

Nebraska with a little Winter’s Bone

Film

We saw Nebraska Saturday night. All the reviewers like it – love it – and it is on alot of Academy Awards short lists, so it is embarrassing to say that I didn’t particularly like it. Don’t get me wrong. it had its charms, It was endearing, as Michele, who liked it alot, said, I just didn’t particularly like it.

One reviewer said that It was pitch perfect and realistic, it seems you are there with these people, watching their lives unfold before you as it happens, and I think that was part of the problem for me. I felt like we were watching these people… not with empathy, but in a voyeuristic way. Everything was just so bleak, but bleak in a way that seemed – in the movie – so hopelessly unredeemable. I once dated a young woman who lived in a “view” apartment on Alta Street, on Telegraph Hill. If you went out on the balcony and stood on your tip-toes, you could just see the view down Alta to the Bay. I felt the same way about this movie, there was redemption and hope, but I had to stand on my tip-toes to see it.

I also felt like a voyeur while watching Winter’s Bone which, again, got rave reviews and for which Jennifer Lawrence got an Oscar (I know, they said it was Silver Linings Playbook, but it was really because they neglected to give her one for Winter’s Bone). Gail Cousins posted a short cartoon on facebook which purported to show the the Power of Empathy Versus Sympathy and Make You a Better Person. In Nebraska – and Winter’s Bone – I could never connect enough to get past sympathy (maybe compassion, but not all the way to empathy). In both movies, the people seemed more like characterchures than flesh and blood characters.

It didn’t help that Nebraska was shot in black and white like a Diane Arbus photograph. The movie is in black and white partially because it makes the place seem even worse; one of the characters says, Apart from drinking there is absolutely nothing to do here and it has never seemed more believable. It was also shot to look very cold. It is probably late fall and the movie opens with a roadside sign flashing 28º. The bleak cold and the black and white also say that This is an Art movie.

In many ways, Nebraska seems to be like David Lynch’s Straight Story with Richard Farnsworth playing the old man on a weird road trip – through Iowa and Wisconsin – rather than Bruce Dern, but Straight Story is about the old man and Nebraska is really about the son, played by Will Forte. Forte – who I have probably seen in twenty movies but don’t remember him from any particular one – is excellent. All the actors are excellent – Mary Louise Wilson Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk – and are actors that have been around for years, playing background roles. In a former time, they were called character actors as opposed to leading role actors; they are people who have been – unnoticed – in dozens of movies and they shine here.

Director, producer and screenwriter Alexander Payne was born in Omaha, Nebraska and I can’t help but think that Nebraska is a somewhat snarky comment on the state and its natives. On the other hand Miss Nebraska Teen USA 2013, Jasmine Fuelberth, who was invited to the premiere in Norfolk was thrilled, saying I feel so blessed to have attended the Nebraska movie premiere last night! It was a wonderful night filled with amazing and talented people as well as great memories made! 🙂 God is so good, and I will forever be thankful for this opportunity! 

There will always be an England department

Uncategorized

Swan upping   According to the guardian , The Queen of England owns all the UK’s mute swans. The way that is written, I am not sure if she just owns the swans that are mute or if the swans are mute and she owns them all. If this worries you, it might help to know that she only exercises her right of possession around Windsor.

Still, the swans have to be kept track of – counted and weighed – and somebody has to do it. That job falls to the Royal Warden of the Swans, biologist Christopher Perrins, and the Marker of the Swans, David Barber. The counting is called Swan Upping, and As they row past Windsor Castle, the swan uppers salute “Her Majesty the Queen, Seigneur of the Swans” in a time-honoured ceremony.

It is nice to know that the Old Ways still live.

 

 

 

Wolf Hall

Books

Cromwell-ThomasTo achieve anything, you must be prepared to dabble on the boundary of disaster. Stirling Moss

I started reading Wolf Hall, a week or so ago, and I am both admiring the audacity of the book and loving the writing. A confession is due here, when I started reading the book, I thought it was a book about Oliver Cromwell and I couldn’t figure out why the dates didn’t line-up. The book is about  Thomas Cromwell, one of England’s, agreed upon, bad guys – I am told every English schoolchild knows that, like we know John Wilkes Booth is a bad guy – and is most remembered as the foil to the good guy, the Man of All Seasons, Thomas More.

First off, it is a book complimentary – at least so far – of Thomas Cromwell. But history is written by the victors, and Cromwell was not, eventually,  one of them, so who know if he was really a bad guy? Either way, the entire book is written from Cromwell’s point of view and it can be confusing. In a sentence like, The king walked into the room. He says Good Morning, it is Cromwell saying Good Morning. Often, I have to circle back to understand what was said, by whom.

The lyrical, almost poetic – no! really poetic – writing, however, is the book’s biggest joy. Sometimes it just stops me in my tracks, like when, at Christmas, Cromwell is thinking about the last year: No year has brought such devastation. His sister Kat, her husband, Morgan Williams, have been plucked from this life as fast as his daughters were taken, one day walking and talking and the next day cold as stones, tumbled into their Thames-side graves, dug in beyond reach of the tide, beyond sight and smell of the river; deaf now to the sound of Putney’s cracked church bell, to the smell of wet ink, of hops, of malted barley, and the scent, still animal, of woolen bales; dead to the autumn aroma of pine resin and apple candles, of soul cakes baking.

Often I don’t finish a book like this, my ADD and dyslexia kick in and I just get bogged down. I have tried Gravity’s Rainbow a half dozen times and Infinite Jest about as much. I marvel at the language  of the first twenty five pages and then the rowing gets too tough. I end up saying I will read it tomorrow, for two weeks, while I read New Yorker Book Reviews and an Economist article on riots in the Ukraine. But Wolf Hall is pulling me along with its story. I am concerned for Thomas and still thrilled at how well he is doing.