Movie Night: Star Trek, Where Men Have Boldly Gone Before, Happily

categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies

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Both are bold, neither are men!

A tribble makes a brief but important appearance in the new Star Trek adventure, Star Trek Into Darkness. Part of the importance of the role of this small ball of fluff is that it indicates a plot point without which the movie would shriek to a halt. The other part of its importance is that it shows us precisely the tone that the new movie is aiming for, so we can all quit worrying.

            There have been plenty of hints already, a lot of them in the previous movie, 2009’s Star Trek, where we first met the current cast, portraying the familiar starship crew as babies. A lot of audience time was spent studying the young actors, asking how close they came to the old guys; fortunately the answer was, pretty darned close, and they did it in a relaxed and warm-hearted way that avoided any charge of gimmickyness, if that’s a word. Continue reading →

Night at the Movies: Silver Linings Playbook

categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies

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About to not kiss, whoa.

I wasn’t in the mood yesterday and needed to get new glasses over in Waterville anyway, so to Railroad Square for a couple of movies, Silver Linings Playbook and Life of Pi.  I live in a cave so I hadn’t heard of Silver Linings Playbook nor read a single word about it, always the best way to enter a theater.  What’s more, I didn’t know who that actress was till after, when I stared at the poster outside in the rain: Jennifer Lawrence, whom I’ve written about here, for her performance in The Hunger Games. And that’s the mark of a great performance–I simply didn’t recognize her, not for one second, wondered who this unknown person might be.   The kid’s got range.  She pops out of nowhere to intercept a fellow jogger, several times.  Her character is anti-suburban, which you know is my highest praise.  People Magazine has named Bradley Cooper the sexiest man alive.  But I think Jennifer Lawrence is much sexier. I didn’t recognize him, either, but that’s just creeping senility.  Robert DeNiro I recognized, and was slowly won over–that is, I slowly forgot the actor and saw a character.  Football, dance, mental health–wait a minute! Continue reading →

Life Among Giants: An Amateur Makes a Trailer, and Hooks it to a Star

categories: Cocktail Hour / I Used to Play in Bands / Movies

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They say a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client.  But what about the man who makes his own book trailer?  I’m thinking I’ll charge myself double, as I know a fool and his money are soon parted.  But as Cato the Elder said: Wise men learn more from fools than fools from the wise (Cato the Younger was in The Pink Panther, as you’ll recall).  So a word to the wise: much to learn here.  For me.  Or as my mother liked to repeat: Fools’ names and fools’ faces, always appear in public places.  In HD!  I wish I’d had a better director!  Don’t worry, I’ll get back to I Used to Play in Bands soon.  What’s that you say?  Right.  Better to read the book!  Next: What do you call the writer who makes his own web site? Continue reading →

The Video Essay: A New Way to Say (with John Bresland)

categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies / Table For Two: Interviews

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John Bresland

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John Bresland found me on Facebook a few months ago to ask if I’d want to take part in a video project for TriQuarterly Online.  Yes, of course.  Now he’s completed it, it’s up and running, and you can find it here.  But before you do that, let’s ask John a few questions: Continue reading →

Movie Night: Marley. Bob, not the Dog.

categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies

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Marley and Me

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Up and to Waterville the other night to see Marley, the new documentary of Bob Marley by filmmaker Kevin McDonald.  It’s great.  If you adore Bob Marley, go see it.  If you don’t love him, go see it.  If you think you hate him, go see it.  If you don’t know him, go see it.  It’s not a concert film though there is a lot of tantalizing footage of shows from across the Marley years and around the word.  But at heart, this movie is a biography, maybe a bit of a hagiography, even, but still great.  How pleasing to see Bob Marley’s mother in her colorful home, like a queen holding forth from her throne.  How fascinating to learn she left him on his own in Trenchtown and moved to Continue reading →

The Hunger Games, Movie and Book. Is this for kids?

categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies / Reading Under the Influence

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It’s been a long time since I read a book and saw the movie in the same day.  Last time was “To Have and Have Not,” the Hemingway potboiler, not bad page for page, and I read it in an afternoon.  The movie happened to be on TV that night, and I remember watching in my parents’ basement (I would have been home from college), really surprised: aside from the title and the names of the characters, it had nothing to do with the book.  Turned out that William Faulkner (“Out of work and broke”) had re-written the screenplay under contract with Warner Bros, putting together what amounted to a parody of his rival’s work.  Starring Bogart and Bacall.

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My daughter is eleven and read The Hunger Games before either her mother or I had heard of it.  Of course, the kid loved it, and downplayed the violence we’d begun hearing about.  To me it sounded like an allegory for life in high school, which is in turn an allegory for corporate life, if Continue reading →

A Night at the Movies: “The Island President”

categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics / Getting Outside / Movies

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President Mohamed "Anni" Nasheed

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Another trip over to Railroad Square Cinema in Waterville, Maine, to see Jon Shenk’s The Island President, a brand-new documentary featuring the incredibly charming and very courageous (and sadly now former, after threats of violence and a coup d’etat) president of the Maldives, a 400-mile chain of 2000 inexpressibly beautiful (as the film shows) islands off the southwestern tip of India.  The movie, though, is sad: the Maldives are in imminent danger of sinking under rising sea levels as global warming proceeds unchecked.  The happy part is that a man like Anni Continue reading →

R.I.P. Mighty Waddles: A First-Class Rooster

categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside / Movies

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Click above [>] to hear Mighty crow, and to see him strut his stuff.

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Our beloved rooster, Mighty, a handsome barred rock, has died.  He started life as a chick among chicks, but slipped on newspaper bedding (we didn’t realize that newspaper is too slick for chicks), damaging his feet early on.  And then, we noticed, he was far smaller than the other birds.  We babied him, thought him a girl.  Elysia named him Carmen, as he sang a lot more than the others.  About the time the pullets began laying their first eggs, we noticed that Carmen was growing.  Soon, he was the biggest bird in the yard, half again as large as everyone else.  He grew a magnificent plume of a tail.  And he grew spurs at his ankles.  And with those sharp thorns he came after us when we went to tend the coop.  With them, he held the dog, Baila, at bay.  He mated with the pullets, frequently, a process that looked like a stomping and a squashing, but which is known in ornithology circles as a cloacal kiss.  His carriage was erect.  His wattles were elegant, but froze some in winter.  The feathers of his neck were subtly layered in black and white.  He was a one-man op-art painting.  Elysia renamed him Mighty Waddles: that foot injury.  Soon, however, he was merely Mighty.  First to the food!  Last out the door!  Irritable as my Continue reading →

Movie Night: “Pina: A Movie for Pina Bausch”

categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies

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I’ve just come from the beautiful new Film Society theater at Lincoln Center, where I saw Pina: A Film for Pina Bausch, made by Wim Wenders, a genius on the subject of a genius with a cast of geniuses, and I’m not kidding.  The movie is in 3D and it’s the best use of the recently revolutionized medium I’ve seen yet, stage spaces taking on form and outdoor spaces vastness incomparable.  The film as conceived wasn’t meant to be one but became a memorial to the great German dancer and choreographer (also actress, in at least on Fellini movie), who died five days after diagnosis with an unannounced cancer (the film never mentions it at all), two days before Continue reading →

Movie Time! The Tarball Trailer…..

categories: Cocktail Hour / Movies

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It’s five in the morning in Mobile.  Yesterday walked the beaches at Fort Morgan and it was deja vu all over again.  Tarballs and orange smears and dozens of tarball farmers with giant nets.  Same as it ever was.  Too bad the story is over!

Here’s my trailer for The Tarball Chronicles.  Hope you like it!