Thanks to my food and wine mentor, Annie Smith, for this.
St Helena contains my favorite winery of all-time, Keenan. It has my favorite Michael Three Star Michelin Star restaurant, Market. And, Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen. And, the crazy renovated hotel downtown. We will never stay there again. And, the amazing Cabernet Sauvignon fruit that makes some of the best wine in the world. I love its' toy town feel, and Sunshine Grocery. I love how the winemaking legends have lunch at Market (and other places.) I love the art cinema downtown. I love the down home yet sophisticated feel of the locals.
St Helena is so so so special to me and the Wife. This is my pathetic tribute to it.
That swear word in Paris was appropriate because this is what happened in London (not all that far away from us, actually) on our first night in London.
While we were checking out the Food Hole (25% discount for teamies!) and having a smashing dinner at e&o restaurant in Notting Hill, Chelsea FC were busy eliminating PSG from Champions League two-nil. It was a late goal from Chelsea that sealed Paris' fate.
So, even though, after two matches, both sides were level on points and goals (three each for both for both), it was Chelsea's penalty in Paris that saw them through to the semis. Chelsea scored an away goal, you see. Paris did not.
This is what was happening across "town", if you will, on our first night in Paris. We were so jetlagged and exhausted from our flight, that after a nap, and a snack and some Champers at Cafe de Flore (right across the street from our bedsit), we promptly tried to go to sleep again. It was a bit daunting for me, because the celebration in Paris of this 3-1 Champions League victory over London's Chelsea Football Club was loud and crazy. There was drinking and singing and jubilation (all very good natured and sweet) until five AM all over Paris, and right underneath our window! The next morning, at the street corners where they would have their giant green glass recycling bins, all the bins were completely stuffed with bottles, so the Parisians politely and neatly placed all their wine bottles, upright, on the pavement surrounding the bins. The tourists all got a huge kick out of that, and took a bunch of pictures. (We skipped that photo opportunity.)
But, this video is amazing. It is one of my all-time favorite sports videos ever. I love how he gives us a before and after the match on the streets. I love how close he gets us to the action. I love the sensation I get, that I am really at the match, and that these are real people we are watching. There is none of that fakeness, or eroticization, of a television production. I am not saying our "director" is a genius, or anything, but that it is just so refreshing to witness an amateur up close document of a major sporting event. No commercials. No jumbotron. No replays. And, he edited it! It is slightly less than half of the full match in length. Brilliant!
But, my favorite part has to be when Chelsea converts their penalty (we do not get to see the foul that conceded the penalty), and our director yells, "Merde!", and then scans over to the hinterlands of Parc des Princes where the Chelsea hooligans were all relegated.
He had good reason for swearing. That penalty was huge, because a week later in London, ...
For our last day and night in Paris we decided we would go to Père Lachaise Cemetery, say hello to Edith Piaf, Jimbo, and lay some flowers on Oscar Wilde's tomb. Père Lachaise is north of the Seine, and is not in a particularly touristy part of Paris. Generally, everywhere we had been in Paris to that point, we could count on hearing a fair amount of English, and be comfortable speaking English, too. After paying our respects, the Wife decided we should go to this Thai bistro she had heard about called Sawan. Sawan was closer to where were staying, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, on the north side of the Seine, but was still a considerable jaunt from Père Lachaise. We decided to try and catch a cab, and until we could, just keep walking south towards our destination. Only problem was there was nary a cab to catch. So we walked. And walked. And walked. We must have walked through two or three arrondissements just to get to this restaurant. These were not touristy neighborhoods, either. They were decidedly working class, a little dingy in spots, and no one spoke English. I was getting cranky for sure, but Renee kept us on the path towards nourishment, and we did reach Sawan. Sawan was packed when we sat down, but was fairly empty by the time we left. One thing I noticed was that the menu included prices in Thai Bhat as well as Euros. I suppose you could pay in that currency if you had it. Next to us, packed fairly tightly, by the street window, were two Parisian businessmen, both wearing coat and tie. When our waiter came, Renee took the initiative and placed her order in English. The waiter understood perfectly, and I did the same. But, you should have seen the look on the older (facing me) Parisian businessman when he heard the two of us have the Charles de Gaulle to not even try to speak French. It was pretty funny. The meal was wonderful. I had a beer. It was one of the best restaurant experiences we had on our honeymoon, and it was cheap. But, the punch line comes near the end of our meal, just before the businessmen left. The younger businessman (facing Renee) wanted to do a high five with his buddy. They tried. It was the most pathetic high five I have ever seen. Their hands barely grazed each other, and there was no oomph or panache whatsoever. So. Maybe we are a couple of well-meaning ugly Americans, but the Wife and I sure as hell have mastered the American art of the high five! xxxoooxxx, Ardent
When the Wife and I finally made it to the Rothko Room at the Tate Modern in London, there was a docent, a teacher, and about a dozen and a half French schoolchildren -- I would guess they were Junior High age (?). (I also like to imagine they were from Paris, but I have no idea.) The docent spoke in English to the children.
Rothko Room at the Tate Modern
The docent explained about the Seagram's commission, and how Rothko turned it down, and the paintings ended up here at the Tate instead. And, he even told the possibly apocryphal story about why Rothko refused the Seagram's job, where his very large paintings would have been hung in the Four Seasons restaurant on the ground floor. The story goes that Rothko refused the commission because he could not stand the idea that people would be eating in front of his paintings. The docent leaned heavily on the idea that the story was not true. Personally, I disagree. That seems totally like something Rothko would say.
The Wife and I explored the room a bit on our own, and soaked up the religious atmosphere, but you really could not help but be sucked in to the docent's talk. The kids were not having any of it. They were bored to distraction. They seemed to understand the language. That was not the problem. They just did not "get" Rothko, or Abstract Expressionism, I suppose.
The docent even tried some typical English laconic humor out on the kids. I do not remember the jokes. The Wife, the teacher, and I all thought he was very funny. The jokes died with the kids, though. They continued to yawn, scratch their arms, and smack their gum.
A Monet Water Lilies panel at the Tate Modern
Finally, at one point, the docent proclaimed that just about everyone believed that the Rothko paintings at the Tate were considered the finest acquisition the museum ever made. Then, he said, he begged to differ. He thinks the Monet Water Lilies panel is the best.
I love the Water Lilies panel, but I got to disagree with him there on that one, too.
When we first encountered the group upon the entering the room, I thought it might spoil the experience for me. It did not. Everything was just fine.
That Nick C and I were climbing all the way to the top of the Eiffel Tower. The stairs were not metal, they were wooden. The stairs were of impeccable quality, white, with gold moulding. They were very heavy and strong. The staircase made a spiral and became smaller and smaller the further we got to the top. Eventually the room at the top was like Alice in Wonderland in a box. We went through the door, and Nick C vanished. I never saw him again. (Sorry, Nick!) He was replaced by my Wife, Renee.
The Wife and I were overjoyed and excited to explore the "top" of Tour Eiffel, which was actually an expansive verdant neighborhood. This twenty-first arrondissement was essentially a massive park, with restaurants, shops, and hotels sprinkled all around. The Wife and I talked about going to "the edge", "the edge of the world", which was a formidable cliffside where we could view the rest of Paris from below. We agreed to save that for the last thing we would do before we went down.
In the meantime, the Wife and I separated for a while, and I explored a small church on my own. As I left the church, I remember feeling worried about the Wife and I's meeting place, but there she was, sitting at a cafe table, reading a menu. From a distance, I noticed how skinny and pretty she was, and I told her as much as I sat down beside her. She blushed, and we had a sweet small kiss. The menu looked not at all unlike a Denny's menu, with beautiful pictures of all the food on offer, and every thing was done in a typical tricolor French style. It seemed all the cafe had to offer was breakfast. Page after page of breakfast offerings. When the waiter arrived I asked him (in English) whether the restaurant really did serve breakfast twenty-four hours.
I suppose I do not have that much to say re Gilmore Girls in its entirety dropping on to Netflix tomorrow. Other than, I am ecstatic, and I could really use a giant dose of Gilmore Girls right about exactly now. But, I was perusing fauxluxe for past Gilmore Girls posts, and happened to notice that I never talked about the show directly. It was always a train a thought somehow connected to the real subject of the post. That is fine, and perfect, actually, for the loony, stream of consciousness, insanely pop culture referenced, His Girl Friday dialogue of the first five essential seasons of the program. So here below is an annotated list (with links) to three Gilmore Girls posts from fauxluxe. One each from 2011, 2012, and 2013. This is from 2012, and is actually one of my fave fauxluxe posts ever. Here I compare Lena Dunham's Girls to Gilmore Girls, and I get it all horribly wrong about Veep. Veep is obviously the best thing on television now, and Gilmore Girls is nine million more times better than Girls, which was already coming apart after just two seasons. This post is from December 2013. Here I compare Gilmore Girls to Scandal, which I think is a pretty decent observation, as well. Plus, Liza Rebecca Weil, who played Paris in Gilmore Girls, was a large part of Scandal's first season. I still have a very soft spot in my heart for Scandal, even if I do not think it is a world beater as a teevee program. This post also has some great Pinterest/Tumblr Paris gifs/memes, which I will prob post onto friendface later today or tomorrow. Finally, this post is from May 2011, right after the Wife and I got married. Now, I am talking about seeing Bridesmaids the day after the wedding, and how much I love Melissa McCarthy, who played Sookie on Gilmore Girls. Even though I am not particularly crazy about the blockbuster films Ms McCarthy makes these days, I can not tell you how proud I am of her that she is now the number one box office draw in American film comedy today. She and her husband deserve all of their success. ************ I do not think I will binge on Gilmore Girls starting tomorrow, but, will prob enjoy a more leisurely pace, and could even skip around from season to season, like I do with The Rockford Files, Peep Show, The IT Crowd, etc, ... Sometimes I am going to want to be at Yale (The Paris years!), and sometimes I am going to want to be back at Stars Hollow when Rory was still at high school. It is going to be a lot of great fun, though, whichever way I do it. Gotta keep my ears open. I want to catch every single reference or spoof all over again. Mwah, ...
So, Ward went ahead and got the pet store owner to open up after nine PM, just so he could rent the annoying parrot for one day. He was convinced to do this because June, his wife, told her own personal sob story to him, about how when she was at boarding school, she was so lonely and homesick that she told all the girls that her mother was a big time movie star, Laverne Laverne. Her mother found out, and instead of backing her up, made her tell the entire school that she had made it all up. June was obviously still carrying shame over this incident, and encouraged Ward to get the parrot, and trust that the Beav would realize the error of his ways, and never put his parents in that kind of spot again.
The Beaver took the parrot to school for the Pet Fair, and won the Blue Ribbon, much to Judy's utter disgust. After the whole class left, Beaver tried to return the Blue Ribbon, explaining the whole situation, about how he lied because he was embarrassed his family did not own a pet. His teacher, Miss Landers, told him that was a very silly thing to be ashamed of, and that his parents were pretty great for backing him up like that. The Beaver told Miss Landers he would never put his parents in such a spot again, and he accepted the Blue Ribbon, after all.
I do not think anybody mentioned the new pet hamster ever again. They probably killed it.
************
In the next episode, Wally had to stay home all weekend and study for his history exam, instead of crash Mary Ellen Rogers house with Lumpy and Eddie Haskell. They were supposed to "listen to records and eat junk".
Lumpy and Eddie went to Mary Ellen's house without Wally, and told him they were not worried about the history test. They had it covered.
What that meant was that Eddie had come up with some cockamamie scheme to cheat on the test, involving them excusing themselves to wash their hands and get the answers, written on paper towels in the bathroom.
Unbeknownst to all three, the history teacher was wise to this scheme, and had planted a quote from Hamlet on the paper towel, removing the illicit answers.
Wally saw this first, however, because he legitimately had a pen explode on him, and actually had to wash his hands. Lumpy and Eddie went to the bathroom, only to find no answers, and both failed their exam, both scoring in the low fifties.
Wally, on the other hand, got a 92, one of the best scores in the class. After learning this, Eddie decided to get even, and wrote a pathetic attempt at an anonymous note, pointing the finger at Wally for cheating.
The very wise teacher, though, saw right through this, and confirmed it to Wally that Eddie and Lumpy were the rascals.
Wally wanted to beat Eddie up, but Ward convinced him not to. He said Eddie would have to figure it out on his own that had done a bad thing.
Sure enough, Eddie came over right then to apologize to Wally, and tell him he was going to try out "this studying thing" that was working so well for Wally.
The next day at class Eddie amazed everyone with his knowledge of the founding members of the League of Nations.
************
Then, Daniel Boone was captured by the Spanish Army. They wanted to take back the Virginia territories for Spain. I had to go to work, though.
And, I am just so in love with the Vignellis. I just want to hug 'em, you know what I mean? I wish they were our next door neighbors, and the Wife and I could have them over for tea, and they would bring over their awesome tea cups that they designed. Or we'd have pasta in their beautiful modernist pasta bowls. We would look at all their catalogues, or architecture books that they designed, or Renee & I would marvel over and play with Lella Vignelli's insanely fun jewelry that she designed. That would be perfect, you know.
Vignelli tea cups
The Vignellis are an Italian married couple that have been changing millions of people's lives every day, without them ever knowing it. They have been married for over fifty years now, and they are still working as hard as ever. They design everything. They are not specialists. Jewelry, flatware, cups, chairs, interior design, a cathedral in Manhattan, architecture books, the US National Park brochures, clothes, anything.
Their personal motto is: "If you can't find it, design it."
Of course, what they are best known for, though, are the corporate identities that they designed and that Massimo Vignelli designed the New York City Subway and Transit identity.
Many of the corporate identities that they created have still not been changed, forty or more years on.
Below, are some of their 'Greatest Hits':
And, on and on and on and on. Plus, they are just the nicest sweetest people ever. I just want to hug 'em, have 'em over for tea. You know what I mean?
No matter what Joni Mitchell says, I did not see folks kissing on the Main Street. (I did see an Eastern European twentysomething couple snogging in front of Tour Eiffel one day.)
What I did see a lot of, and it was to beautiful to witness, was that just about every older couple on the streets held hands as they walked down the grand boulevards. You do not really see a lot of that kind of sweet affection here in Urban or Suburban US of A.
I was fully expecting to see Lily Allen Sheezus hand bills plastered all over London while I was there. That was not the case. (btw, Sheezus entered at No 1 in the UK album charts. Sweet!)
But, I saw two wonderful hand bills all over the London Underground:
That is Lesley Sharp and Kate O'Flynn, starring in A Taste of Honey, which was its author, Shelagh Delaney's first play ever. She was twenty years old.
I fell in love with Lesley Sharp aboot twenty years ago, when she was in Mike Leigh's masterpiece of a film, Naked. I fell in love with Ms O'Flynn about five years ago when she was in Mike Leigh's masterpiece of a film, Happy-Go-Lucky.
Moreover, I knew about A Taste of Honey before I had even seen the script, thanks to The Beatles, and The Smiths. The Beatles covered the song from the film version, and Morrissey referenced the play in a song, and also made Ms Delaney (a Mancunian) a cover star for their Louder Than Bombs double lp.
I did not catch on to those facts until I actually read the script, and did some scene work for a graduate student playwright. It was some of the best work I ever did. Stephanie Swenson played the Kate O'Flynn role. I can not remember the name of the woman who played Lesley Sharp's part, and I played O"Flynn's sort of boyfriend. We did it in untutored Mancunian accents (and did it quite well!) I just channeled Paul McCartney crossed with Ringo, and even though Stephanie and I were crushed back stage after finishing, thinking we had done an epic fail, it was one of our finest performances. I got a number of other off-Main Stage roles from writers and directors just on the strength of that performance.
Also saw this on the Tube walls:
Well, I love both of these guys. A lot. And, apparently this show has won a bunch of awards, but Jeeves and Wooster will always be Fry and Laurie to me, so, I do not know.
There is also a production of this play with one of my sweetie's favorite stars, Matthew Macfayden, too. Macfayden plays Jeeves. Renee would definitely be down with that!
The Wife & I were on the Metro in Paris, I think it was when we were looking for that fantastic cheese shop in a decidedly non-touristy, non-English speaking part of Paris, (and The Wife just had the sweet non-English speaking lady cheese monger pick five cheeses for us. The highlight was a raw milk St-Marcellin cheese that I could write a whole other entire blog post about), and as we were boarding our train, one of the ubiquitous Parisian Metro accordion players boarded with us. (It was not the dude in the video above. I just pulled that from YouTube.)
(The Wife & I have a joke, that whenever I am watching a French film, and she is doing something else in the house, and can not see the teevee, as soon as she hears an accordion -- which apparently are in every French film ever made, even a lot of Godard films -- she exclaims, "French film! You are watching a French film!")
Anyroad, the accordion player played for the folks in the carriage, and then got off a few stops later. He then set up in the normal spot in the passageway right before travelers reach the landing. But, as the train pulled away again, Renee and I could see another accordion player coming down another ramp, ready to set up.
You should have seen the absolute look of disgust on our second musician. He heard the other player first, and then poked around the corner to see who his competition was. Renee and I bust out laughing, trying to figure out just what the rules and etiquette for these guys is.
I hope there was not a fight.
Mwah, ...
Here's the Saint the cheese is named after. He looks more likely to be in the Beach Boys to me.
I lost my chic glasses,
Just reading frames,
In a Parisian taxi
On our way
To L'Atelier
On the Champs-Élysées
Near the Portobello Road,
In London,
Did I later
Refresh my eyesight
At a bookstore
The sweet shop girls there
Spoke of Cumberbatch
As Richard the Third,
But,
I know he is too tall
This new prescription is intense
And stronger than before,
But,
Now through these glasses
I can see in to your soul
************
So, we were waiting to go in to the most fabulous department store evah, in London, called The Liberty, and we were waiting because it was Sunday, and on Sundays The Liberty don't open till noon.
The Wife is furiously working on her mobile, researching The Liberty, and I keep drifting further to the left, with both my eyes and my feet. Because, just to my left are some crappy cafes with Hull FC Tiger supporters, sitting down for an early lunch. (Hull FC would win its FA Cup Semi at Wembley later that day.) And, also further to the left is the real honest to goodness Music Hall where Mister Memory from The 39 Steps had his last breath. Not really. Hitch did it in a studio, of course. But, that is the very same Music Hall that Buchan and Hitchcock based their whole masterpiece upon.
I wander down, the Wife wonders why.
The Wife wis right. There are a tourist group in front of the Music Hall, and the Hall is plastered with an obnoxious giant neon sign of the travesty that is pretending to entertain Londoners at the present time. I did take a picture. It is bad. Here t'is:
The London Palladium, where Donat, Carroll, and Mr Memory saved the day.
That's right. The London Palladium.
Meanwhile, here is what London department stores look like:
The Liberty. Badass old school department store.
Anyroad, The Liberty is on our right, The Palladium is on our left, and I wander back to The Wife, and she has been doing some furious research on her iPhone about The Liberty. And she says, "Ugh. Sometimes it is better to do Wikipedia. Know what I mean? I do not want The Liberty's version, right?"
"Yes," I say, "The public relations point of view? The Pee-are version, right?"
"Look," Renee says, "The doors are opening."
************
The Wife is right. Most of the time.
Sometimes the PR version is done so well, you can do nothing but admire.
To wit,
All apologies to my Mexican friends, and their Cinco celebration (which is basically, yet another crappy reason for United States of America citizens to get loaded and embarrass themselves), but my new idea is to make a holiday out of Chanel No. 5. The fifth day of the fifth month, which was Mademoiselle's lucky number, and when she launched the most famous perfume ever. Seriously, ever. This is not some, "I like The Stones, The Beatles suck" kind of thing. There is Chanel No. 5, and there is everybody else.
But, let me get back to what I was saying: Sometimes the flipping industry can give you the great story. And the Inside Chanel videos, which you can watch on YouTube, and are a product of Chanel, are the best video representation of Coco Chanel's life I have yet seen. (The last two videos with Lagerfeld speaking in French suck, but it is all animated magic till then.)
Those animated videos are better than both of the Chanel bio films I have seen. Coco Before Chanel is not bad, actually good. Fudging the truth in a pleasant sort of way.
As I like to do.
fauxluxe isnae dead.
"Realize all things have their place/And live my life with dignity and grace"
All my love,
fauxluxe isnae dead.
You will be bombarded with fab posts re Paris et Londre, so get used to it.
And, made me miss my old theatre days back in college.
Maria Kochetkova
I have seen a fair amount of ballet in my lifetime, but this was the first time I had seen this kind of world class talent before. The Nutcracker (even by SF Ballet) just does not count. It is a different thing altogether.
Giselle is basically the oldest classical ballet that is still a part of any company's canon of works. And, Helgi Tómasson, SF Ballet's Artistic Director and Principle Choreographer has made a special point of staging Giselle a few times now. Moreover, Tómasson has consistently chosen to play the Giselle tragedy straight, without setting the tale in say, an insane asylum, or tacking on a happy ending. Which satisfies me immensely.
All too often, folks that have perhaps a cursory knowledge of ballet, forget that ballet is theatre. Those dancers (in front of their exquisite and carefully rendered sets, and wearing their exquisite and sensibly built costumes) have an actual acting responsibility in addition to their dancing performance. And, I believe, that Tómasson understands this, and relishes the fact that a piece such as Giselle also gives his dancers an extra layer of depth with which to communicate to an audience.
Maria Kochetkova's acting performance, as Giselle, was as exemplary as her sterling stunning technical prowess on display. Which is what moves you.
But there were other splendid performances, as well: Taras Domitro as Albrecht; James Sofranko as Hilarion; and (especially) Sofiane Sylve as Myrtha. The corps de ballet had their moments, too. The corps performing as the Willis spirits righteously earned three rounds of applause three separate times executing a swan like turn as a group.
Even though I had never seen this kind of ballet excellence before, it still left me with the feeling that I should just see more dance, period!
The SF Ballet is prohibitively expensive for the Wife and I. It is a special treat. Giselle (and the hotel, and the restaurants we ate at) were an Xmas present for her. Renee was so thrilled from the experience that she expressed a desire that we see another SF Ballet program next month!
************
I used to root for the home team.
I can not tell you how much tooth pulling it took for my mother to get me to go see Ballet Austin back in the day when she used to work for them. But, once I got to meet the dancers, and learn their stories, and see their stagings and performances, I was enthralled. An actor by birth, I was immediately sucked up in to the whole theatre of it, and instantly became a balletomane for life. (Albeit one with lapsed tendencies. I am certainly not in a latent phase re the ballet now.)
And Ballet Austin also reminded me of my own few walks across the boards as an actor in the Austin theatre scene. And, how Michael Barnes, at that time the theatre critic of the Austin American-Statesman taught me that you should reserve your harshest criticism for the truly spoiled and enriched artists, and cut the little local guys a break; accentuate the positive, if you will, for the home team.
Which is why I told the Wife I would like to start seeing local dance companies perform, such as Diablo Ballet. She said, "But did you not just tell me how amazed you were at finally seeing some truly World Class Talent?"
Sure. But, the theatre-ness, the magic of art is not wholly exclusive to those of the greatest talent. In fact, you can find it in a warehouse in Oakland, or a garage in Liverpool, or in a tiny space in Walnut Creek. There are magical and mysterious experiences of art everywhere you look. If you make a point of searching for them.
I was pulling up a wine stack, as I am wont to do around here, and a customer asked me where she could pick up her cheese platters. She said she was working for Diablo Ballet, and that the Walnut Creek Food Hole had donated two cheese platters for a fund raising dinner for the ballet company.
I took her over to where the platters were, and then said, "You know, the Wife and I are going to see SF Ballet's Giselle tomorrow."
"Oh, how lovely," she said. "I went to the Gala Opening last week!"
"You lucky duck," I said.
"Our company director got me the tickets. It was marvelous. It was my first gala."
"What fun."
Then she asked, "Who are you seeing tomorrow?"
I knew that she meant who would be playing Giselle tomorrow, and I said, "I think it is Sarah Van Patten."
"Oh, she was wonderful last week at the Gala!"
Sarah Van Patten
"I was kind of hoping to see Maria Kochetkova," I said, "But I think she is dancing tonight."
"Oh, well she is wonderful, too!"
She loaded the platters in to her basket, and we said our goodbyes, and I told her that I hoped she had a great time at her fundraiser.
Maria Kochetkova
I just loved that two strangers could have a conversation about the ballet and two ballerinas as if we were speaking about the Oakland A's players and chances this season. It was a delightful treat.
The wife and I are v excited to see the ballet tomorrow. It will be a splendid date for us.
Sundays right now are just an unbelievable bounty of riches. Renee has a program she is recording, and then, there will be Girls, True Detective, Sherlock, and Downton Abbey.
What? You did not really think he was dead, did you?
Downton Abbey has been an enormous guilty delight so far. I adore Lady Mary and Lady Isobel walking around their rooms like wraiths, so wracked with grief over Matthew's death. All the Abbey team need to do now is add some Smiths songs underneath. (And Abbey directors! Please stop shooting profile shots of Lady Mary -- Michelle Dockery - -because as much as I love her, she has got to have one of the most unflattering profiles I have ever seen on film.) The whole gramophone scene last week was too much campy goodness. Downton is great right now.
Girls last week was meh to me. The Wife was much more impressed. I did like that they threw a nod to Orange is the New Black, though, with Jessa's "romantic encounter" at the rehab clinic. And, Withnail was in it. (I will write about the whole nudity controversy next week.)
Sherlock starts tomorrow, and I am definitely looking forward to that. I read in the NYT that Watson is getting married (!) Interesting.
True Detective is a new series on HBO, and it is fantastic. The Wife and I both love it despite it being yet another brooding serial killer psycho drama. It stars Matthew "El-eye-vee-eye-en" McConaughey and Woody from Cheers. More importantly it is directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, who directed one of my most favorite films of the last five years, Jane Eyre.
McConaughey is on absolute fire right now. He has always been one of my favorite actors, but now he is picking superb projects, and delivering fantastic results.
If there are future seasons of True Detective (trust me, there will be) there will be an all new cast and a different mystery in a different part of the country. The current one is set in Louisiana. And McConaughey plays a mopey weirdo detective from Texas. (Shocker!)
Which is directed by and stars Ralph Fiennes, is a meticulously nearly perfect creation. It is absolutely gorgeous to behold, and the very first shot of the film, which holds just long enough on the coast of England to remind you that there are still parts of this beautiful world that still look as they did over a century ago, is a marvelous way to start the picture. Then Felicity Jones walks in to the frame, and we are all pulled back in to the reality that we are watching a movie, a period film.
In addition to the lovely cinematography, the film is also masterfully edited, with a phenomenal use of sound effects that remind us that urban life has always been noisy. The original score is very good, and was used in an extremely smart way. Fiennes obviously knows what he is doing as a director, and has done a great deal of good work here. There are some very fine performances, too. Ms Jones has her moments, as does Kristin Scott Thomas and Tom Hollander, but the real star for me was Joanna Scanlan as Mrs Dickens. And, Fiennes is still an extremely beautiful man, and looks ever so handsome in Victorian fashion.
Jo Scanlan is also great in Spaced, In the Loop, and The Thick of It.
The problem is that the film is an absolute crushing bore. They have spent so much time and effort on a story that Renee and I had little or no interest in. There is no story there. The script is by Abi Morgan, who has her CV filled with good things (The Hour, Shame) and bad things (The Iron Lady, The Invisible Woman).
You just do not care about the people in this picture, and you never really get a sense of just how talented and important Charles Dickens was as an artist. And, where is the comedy and panache and irony that made Dickens' books so special in this script?
The Invisible Woman is, in the end, a beautiful dud; a gorgeous failure.
Have to say that The Wolf of Wall Street is not quite good.
There is a lot of really good stuff in it, but it is way too long (one-hundred and seventy-nine minutes), and it contains some insanely gratuitous nudity, and for stretches veers towards Mommie Dearest camp-lite.
It is, like American Hustle as well, what I call a Pop Film. It is a collection of Set Pieces without a really solid coherent satisfying believable through-line.
Sometimes the scenes, the set pieces, can be so good that you do not really care, and you begin to appreciate the film more as a Revue Film. Five Easy Pieces is like that for me. And, oftentimes these Pop Films are righteously over the top and deliriously camp. They tend to have lots of sex in them, too. Or, at least a sexy sensibility.
"Leo, I got us some Lemmon ludes!"
Whatever. The fact is that there are about ninety minutes that could be cut from this film. If it had been perhaps even more helter skelter, and bewildering, and incomprehensible, but still contained all the great scenes that I loved (everything with Matthew McConaughey -- the film desperately cries out for more McConaughey -- and the sales meetings; the breaking the fourth wall stuff; the great scene on the boat with the FBI agent) then I dare say The Wolf of Wall Street might have become a personal cult fave.
Still, there is enough camp-lite and big time stars doing insanely dopey things that the film probably will become a decent sized home video cult classic for certain types of folks, and Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio devotees.
Was quite good, and the Wife and I both enjoyed it. Plus, seeing the film on Xmas Day with a packed house made it even more fun. (It sounded like one person tried to applaud when the credits began to roll, saw it was not on, and gave up.)
It is a film I think I would like to own, and Renee said she would like another crack at it, just so she can try and work out some kinks in the somewhat convoluted story line. The film is kind of a mess, and seems rushed. I think it definitely could have used an edit job, and I wished it was funnier.
"Christian, honey, there is something in your beard."
There were certainly some very funny moments in the picture. I just wish they had gone more in the direction of, say, Lubitsch or Hitchcock. More laughs. More Champagne.
As a critic and viewer I am toughest on this genre than any other. And, I have been personally searching for my personal Holy Grail of this type of film. Moreover, now, I think I have made it even tougher after seeing American Hustle. I want a major Hollywood production, loaded with star power that is an adult sexy thriller of a film, and is perfect all the way through, that truly merits applause in the theater. Carlos is close. Body Heat. Chinatown. But, like I said, after seeing this latest attempt, I think now I want the film to be really funny, too.
American Hustle came pretty dang close, though.
I would like to say that as much as I admire Christian Bale's formidable acting talents, I kind of have a hankering for him to start doing more comedies and 'personality actor' roles. I am a little over the beards and the accents, and the massive weight fluctuations. I would like to see him play Christian Bale in a movie, I think. That is sort of what he did in Velvet Goldmine. I want more of that.
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Sorry I have not posted in a while. You know I love you all. It has been a long crazy busy hectic holiday, natch, and I still have one more holiday to go, me being in the wine biz, and all.
My folks get in town today for the weekend! That is going to be a lot of fun.
Of witnessing Dallas Buyer's Club. And, I can not blame her for having those feelings. It is the holidays. We both work in retail, and her job is v stressful, and we do not get a whole lot of time together, just the two of us. Plus, Dallas Buyer's Club is not by any stretch your typical holiday movie fare.
In addition to her worries about the sadness and "heaviosity" of such a film, I also suspect that she really did not want to see the beautiful Matthew McConaughey portraying a tragic wasting AIDS victim. Or Jared Leto, for that matter. I tried to suggest to her that regardless of the sadness and pain displayed, that ultimately this was a really very beautiful story about some frankly heroic people that educated themselves and fought for their survival, and others like them, and for the survival of all the others that would be afflicted long after they had passed away.
And, even though I never mentioned it to her, it is one of the main points of the film that it was exactly that so many beautiful young men like McConaughey and Leto, who were not movie stars or rock stars, did die in the brutal first waves of this tragic pandemic.
Yet, as moved as I was by sections and/or moments in Dallas Buyer's Club, it still ultimately fell prey to the problems with biopic filmmaking. Sometimes the documentary footage is just bound to be more powerful. Seeing documentary footage of the NAMES Project quilt being displayed on the Washington Mall in 1987, or "reading" the special November 1989 issue of the Bay Area Reporter wherein they provided photographs of all the San Franciscans that had died of AIDS that year, is heartbreakingly a much more potent and poignant experience than seeing Dallas Buyer's Club, for all its merits.
Bay Area Reporter, November 1989.
I had the same issue with Gus Van Sant's very fine film, Milk. (And, I was extremely pleased to see Sean Penn win Best Actor, too.) But, the finest moment in Van Sant's biopic is the opening credits, which is pre-Stonewall documentary footage of gays being rousted out of gay bars; harassed and beaten. The rest of the film was never as gripping or important.
Dallas Buyer's Club did do one very important thing, though. It made Renee want to learn more about the pandemic in real time, so to speak. She wanted to learn more about the early days of the pandemic and what was actually being done to fight it.
So, I played We Were Here for her last night. I have already spoke of this masterful documentary in this space before. Here, and here. The Wife han't seen it before, so last night was a revelation for her.
Which is what makes Dallas Buyer's Club worth it in the end. That this film can bring greater awareness and empathy to the awful AIDS pandemic, and tell the stories of the innumerable heroes that struggle every single day to vanquish this wretched blight, well, than that is enough.
