"Fabulous things, stars."

Stuck On Repeat
"Under Control" - Calvin Harris & Alesso feat. Hurts
"Sexy Socialite" - Chromeo
"Another" - Ali Love


Cinema
Parkland - This is an interesting film with several strong performances, but it doesn't quite succeed because it is trying to tell too many stories. While it would be fascinating to delve deeper into the psyches of the doctors at Parkland Hospital and the secret service agents trying to come to grips with the type of tragedy they are charged with preventing, we are only shown the surface of these individuals. Highly charged moments like the doctors (who just days before lost JFK on their operating table) making cracks about not even trying to save Lee Harvey Oswald hint that there is so much more going on below the surface that the film chooses not to show. In fact, the film is so crowded with characters, the only ones who are given any depth are Abraham Zapruder and Robert Oswald. Thankfully these roles are in the capable hands of Paul Giamatti and James Badge Dale, respectively. I do applaud this film for concentrating on those normally on the fringes of these iconic days in history. Even if it doesn't dig deep, it brings what has become legend back down to something of human scale.

Tender Mercies - I saw this film at the Signature Theatre as supplementary programming to their run of Horton Foote's play The Old Friends. Not only do the play and film share an author, they share an actress in Betty Buckley (who also happens to be a fellow Horned Frog!). Since the film is set on the fringes of the country scene in the early 80s, the music is fantastic. Robert Duvall's performance is wonderfully nuanced, bringing many dimensions to a dynamic character whose layers are revealed slowly over the course of the film. That being said, while this is a small, quiet, subtle film, it is not at all slow. Ellen Barkin turns in a terrific performance as Duvall's estranged daughter, one that is somewhat reminiscent of Cybill Shepard in The Last Picture Show. There is something endearing about films set in middle-of-nowhere Texas back when life was much simpler. While it's not a life I think I would ever want, the nostalgia for what can never be is powerful.

Gravity - This film was not nearly as overwrought as I was expecting it to be based on all the fawning reviews, but it wasn't even close to one of the best films of the year. After a gorgeous opening scene that refreshingly contains no music, the film takes an abrupt turn for the worse and relies far too heavily on its score for the remainder of its duration. Maybe I notice this more than most, but if your film can't create emotion without a HUGE assist from music, then you have some problems in other key areas such as story, script, and actors. But in all honesty, the film had lost me before it had even truly begun due to the fact that somebody decided it was necessary for a title card to proclaim that there is no oxygen in space. Who needs to be told this?? Seriously, guys; c'mon. And then *spoiler alert*  Sandra pulls a total Gus Grissom at the end and lets her landing capsule fill with water. My grandfather, who consulted on the Mercury Program, would have some choice words for her, just as he did for Gus.  At least the film movies along quickly - almost too quickly. Its running time is only 90 minutes, and when it was over, I felt like I hadn't just watched a proper film; it was more like a NOVA special on PBS, without, you know, actually being nonfiction and informative.

Kill Your Darlings - I have a weak spot for anything about the beat generation (well, to a certain extent - the recent film version of On The Road seemed a bit sacrilegious to me), so I was drawn to this film like a moth to the flame. Daniel Radcliffe's performance as Alan Ginsberg is a bit uneven, but when it works, it really works nicely. Jack Houston was sort of off as Kerouac as well, but somehow that worked too. However, it is Dane DeHaan who steals the show with his portrayal of Lucien Carr. He does a bang-up job as a master manipulator of affections and a ringleader who thrives in the spotlight but lacks substance. Ultimately, Lucien is a tragic figure, but his decline is a glorious one, allowing Ginsberg to escape from the shadows.  While the story told by Kill Your Darlings is an interesting one, the film is ultimately driven by its characters and the performances that bring them vividly to life.

All Is Lost - This film is a captivating portrait and survival tale. It's beautiful sparseness invites meditation on what makes a person keep going in the face of adversity and what makes him give up. The dogged, methodical approach with which Robert Redford's sailor approaches every setback jibes nicely with all the sailing books I read back in 2011. And I had to chuckle a bit when the sextant and book on celestial navigation were pulled out; all I could think was "What would WFB do?" (Buckley was a bit of a celestial navigation aficionado.) I wonder if I would have found this film to be as nuanced as I did if I weren't so well read on the subject of sailing. While I have never actually done any sailing myself, having read so many books on the topic, I have a great appreciation for both how difficult and how rewarding an endeavor it can be. All Is Lost asks a lot of the viewer, but it is also a triumph of simplicity that rewards the viewer with a thoughtful, well constructed tone poem of a film.

Escape Plan - Here's a confession: I've never seen Rocky. Or First Blood. In fact, looking over Stallone's filmography, I haven't ever watched one of his movies. This seems hard to believe, since he has always been such a pop culture presence during my lifetime. So here I am, with Escape Plan being my first ever Stallone movie, and I've got no complaints. The trailer made it look really fun, and it was in fact a very entertaining evening at the cinema. Sly and Arnold definitely ham it up and play to their (clichéd) personas, but that just adds to the delightful entertainment factor. I also liked the puzzle aspect of breaking out of the prison. Even though all of the twists seemed kind of obvious once they were revealed, I still enjoyed just sitting back and going along for the ride.

12 Years A Slave -  Oh, where to start. This was the second film of the month that I went into expecting to be underwhelmed, having been already prejudiced by all the sycophantic, white-guilt ridden reviews. I didn't think that this film showed anything worse than other films about slavery have done. It certainly didn't add any new, valuable commentary to the topic. The moments I found the most shocking were those in which various slaves turned a blind eye to the plight of their brethren. Much has been made of the scene in which Solomon is left to hang from a tree gasping for breath. For me, the most appalling thing about this scene was that only one other slave paid any attention to Solomon's plight, briefly pausing to give him a  sip of water. So much could have been done for him in this scene that wouldn't have involved cutting him down and incurring further wrath from the overseer. But it is clear that the owners are not the only ones who are looking out for number one. This point is brought home again when Alfre Woodard's character, who has become the mistress of her owner, explains that she has no qualms with her elevated status. The hypocrisy of these characters was just about enough to bowl me over, especially when all the reviews I've read are going on about how Solomon's condition speaks to the condition of all slaves. Clearly, this is not, in fact, the case. Nor does it help that Michael Fassbender's evil slaver owner is no less of a caricature than Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candy in Django Unchained. These are but a few examples of the ways in which 12 Years A Slave undermines the message it presumably wishes to convey, making it less than a cinematic triumph.

The Counselor - I really wanted to like this movie, but it's difficult to glean any value from a film that fails to disclose about three-quarters of its plot. I constantly felt like I was missing things that I knew perfectly well had never been there in the first place. As Vince Mancini over at FilmDrunk so nicely sums it up: "it’s nearly impossible to work out who is who, what they want, and at times even what they’re doing. Call me a wuss, but I do kind of like knowing that stuff. . . . The plot clearly exists, they’re not covering up something that isn’t there, it just feels like McCarthy and Scott didn’t make it a priority to actually communicate it to us." I must admit, I did enjoy some of the urban-legend-esque small talk made throughout the film. When those off-kilter, yet seemingly throw-away conversations are brought to reality, you realize just how on the fringe this movie and the characters that inhabit it are. Coming to terms with greed is not for the faint of heart.


Book Shelf
Boomsday, Christopher Buckley
If you follow me on Twitter, then you know I was tweeting delightful quotes from this book at a fast and furious rate. Out of all the younger Buckley's satires that I've read, this one is both the laugh-out-loud funniest, and also the one that stands up best to the passage of time. Of course, it was written only six years ago, and Boomers and Social Security are both still extremely relevant issues. The dialog in this book is simply wonderful, and the whole thing is skewed just enough to make it seem like a parallel universe that is just this side of too familiar.

Life After Life, Kate Atkinson
I looooove Atkinson's Jackson Broody books, so when I read that she had written a book that has a time travel-esque element to it, I ran out an bought it in hardcover . . . and then got around to reading it six months later. Let me just say this book is absolutely fantastic. It is beautiful and smart in equal measure. I was *this* close to going back to the beginning and reading it all over again once I turned the last page. It is both thought provoking and soothing in its selective repetition. The concept of having the opportunity to live one's life over and over again is a fascinating one: What can be fixed, and at what cost? What aspects of life are inevitable? Who else's life can be changed? Whose happiness and whose life has the most value? My head was spinning with all these questions and more; this is a rather philosophical book. I enjoyed the WWII London setting of much of the book, which created yet another layer of intertwined beauty and sadness.

Bad Luck & Trouble, Lee Child
I liked this one because it was set in LA and Vegas with the same terrific sense of place and level of wonderfully detailed descriptiveness that Child applied to New York in The Hard Way. I am also a sucker for a let's-get-the-gang-back-together storyline, and it was cool that most of the gang had shown up to one degree or another in a previous Reacher installment. Child is doing such an awesome job building Reacher's world while maintaining his iconic autonomy. Bad Luck & Trouble has a twisty plot that kept me guessing for quite a while. This was certainly a great follow-up to The Hard Way -  switching coasts, but keeping things gritty and highly detailed.

Scoop, Evelyn Waugh
Here is another laugh-out-loud funny satire, but one that was written *seventy* six years ago. It too still holds up quite nicely, and is farce of the highest order. I have a feeling that some of the jokes and digs may have gone over my head since references might have been lost to me in the intervening decades, but I still found plenty by which to be entertained. Mistaken identity bits never get old, nor does poking fun at the press for instigating news for its own sake. Some things never change.

Broken Music, Sting
I opened this month by going to see one of Sting's nine benefit shows at The Public Theater. It was, as they say, AH-mazing. The man's voice is sublime and awe inspiring. He performed all new material from the forthcoming Broadway show (and his new album) The Last Ship, but it was an unexpected rendition of "When We Dance" that quite literally moved me to tears. Naturally, I am now even more obsessed with Sting than I was previously, and here I am closing out the month by reading his memoir. Just from the way he set up and explained each song from The Last Ship during the performance, I knew Sting was a terrific storyteller. His memoir certainly didn't let me down in that department. He paints a vivid picture of his childhood and young-adulthood in Wallsend, Newcastle before moving on to his humble beginnings breaking into the London music scene. Interestingly, he chooses to end the book shortly after the formation of The Police. This works surprisingly well, because it allows the reader to focus on all the factors that shaped his artistry. While I am sure his life as a global superstar is also full of fascinating stories, they probably wouldn't differ all that greatly from those found in other celeb autobiographies. Listening to Sting's lyrics, it is clear that unique working-class culture of his hometown had a great and lasting effect on him, and this memoir serves to provide deeper, richer background to the stories told in all those songs.

Skipping Christmas, John Grisham
Loving to keep track of things as I do, I was reviewing a list of all of Grisham's books and realized that there were only two that I hadn't read (excluding his YA series and his very latest book out this month). Obviously, I needed to read those two books ASAP, and Skipping Christmas is never in short supply at the book sale my mother organizes for my home town library. It took me mere hours to breeze through this delightful (yet oddly stressful -- so much subterfuge!) trifle. It's rather formulaic and silly, thus I can definitely see why it was made into a film. Not one of Grisham's best, but a quick read that allowed me to escape for a few hours without wasting my time.  



Post title from: "Prism," from Averno, by Louise Glück