Metropolitan Opera in HD: Aida, Turandot, etc.

I have come quite late in my life to opera, tippy-toeing from, say, Hansel and Gretel to The Magic Flute, then maybe a few years later to, perhaps, Manon, skipping past Madame Butterfly and the weeping Mimi, she of the cold tiny hands.

But now the New York Metropolitan Opera is presenting live matinees through the magic of HD and your local AMC (and other) theaters.  They're every couple of weeks, on the west coast at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning.  There's a reprise two weeks later on Wednesday evening at 6:30 p.m.  You can google all the info: Metopera.org or fathomevents.org.

If you're a senior, $20 will get you the full opera, live, on a huge screen, with subtitles, plus interviews before each opera and during each intermission.  You don't even have to dress up (although people do).  It's a super way to learn about this art, and presented this way it's very viewer-friendly.  

Michael Jackson's This is It

The music documentary, Michael Jackson's This is It, has a limited run in theaters right now. Directed by Kenny Ortega, it's a behind-the-scenes look at the preparations for Jackson's planned London show, before his untimely death a few months ago.  It includes archival footage as well as interviews, all attesting to the enormous power of Jackson the performer and Jackson the person.

While being a Jackson fan probably adds to an audience member's enjoyment, anyone can appreciate the enormous talent: he was a marvelous singer, a gifted dancer, a consummate showman.  What a loss.

A Serious Man

Those Coen brothers are at it again.  This time, they've created a modern Job story, with Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) as a beleaguered 1967 physics professor, who does all the right things.  And yet, his wife plans to leave him, his kids keep ragging him about their tv antenna, his unpleasant drippy brother continues to camp in his guest room, and he has a particularly insistent student who demands a grade change.

Larry seeks help from three of his temple's rabbis.  One, and then the second, and finally the third: zip.  In spite of/because of his travails, you're laughing, probably because he just keeps wondering why, and really can't/doesn't take any real action to correct any of these awful messes that keep happening to him.

It's not exactly a downer of a movie; but it does defy most attempts at a full understanding.  Maybe the title is ironic: maybe Larry is just way too serious, and he'd be better off chucking everything that surrounds him and spending the afternoon watching Laurel and Hardy wrestling that piano.  Or maybe a Coen brothers movie.

Where the Wild Things Are

Director Spike Jonze has created a marvel.  From Maurice Sendak's 1963 children's book by the same name, Jonze and Dave Eggers have written a screenplay that deepens and enriches the original book.  9-year-old Max (the amazing Max Records) doesn't know how to handle his perfectly normal (to grownups) rage, anxiety, and fear.  He's only 9, after all, and how many of us grownups can handle these difficult emotions, even though we're supposed to be adults?  When, for instance, Max's teen sister won't pay attention to him and hangs with her friends, Max takes on her whole crew in a snowball fight, not realizing he's outnumbered as well as outweighed.  When in the ensuing battle the teens inadvertently crush Max's snow fort, burying him inside, he's not only terrified of being suffocated but also humiliated that he's unable to play successfully with the big boys.

This scene, like most of the others involving the "real" world, has an inversion later in the movie, when Max is King of the Wild Things.  All the enormous furry Wild Things pile onto each other, including Max in their warm tumble.  While for a moment he's in danger of more suffocation, the outcome is instead blissful, comforting, entangled sleep.

The cast includes the luminous Catherine Keener as Max's mom, and the voices of such notables as Lauren Ambrose, Chris Cooper, and James Gandolfini.  Gandolfini is particularly effective for adult audiences members, because even though he is--at least at first--playful and friendly to Max, you recognize that voice as Tony Soprano's, and you know what he's capable of.

It's a fabulous, rich, touching movie.  Don't miss it.

poem: La Verne Salute to Heroes 2009

Our privileged lives

here in this valley

are what we decide

despite fragile courtesy

and limited access to greatness.

So what about this hero business?

The term's tossed to the famous, the noisy.

But working quietly, doing their jobs and beyond,

are better heroes than those on the covers.

The elders: hardworking Betty, a Pride of La Verne,

her business, her charities, her life all one;

There's Anna, an Outstanding Older American,

computer guru, helping young and old with their toys;

And we know about Jon, our most visible,

public hero: teacher, principal, mayor;

Alicia's a Pride of La Verne, an active parent,

valuing how sports teach her kids and others';

Our youngest hero's Logan, at 10 a tutor, a Scout,

an athlete, a helper wherever he's needed.

These our heroes

the big sisters of our lives

the fond aunts and uncles

see us through,

nurture and protect

steering us by example

doing what needs to be done

cheerfully, with joy.

Let us pay them deliberate honor

by offering what we can,

with new resolve and opening hearts.

The Informant!

Matt Damon reportedly gained 30 pounds to prepare for his role as whistleblower Marc Whitacre in Steven Soderbergh's THE INFORMANT! , based on a true story.  Damon doesn't look like he's wearing a fat suit, but he's certainly not playing Matt Damon. He's terrific in this role, taking it over and convincing us to believe just about anything he says and does.

It's 1992, and Whitacre is a young executive at Archer Daniels Midland.  In the heartland plant where he works as a chemist, a virus is attacking a new food additive.  He eventually agrees to the FBI's request that he wear a wire in order to find out what's gone wrong.  

Without giving too much away, it's safe to say that the plot doesn't unravel as much as it gets more and more focussed.  You think you know what's going on, and then you realize that you don't, and then you think you've finally got it straight.  It's a movie to see with friends, maybe more than once, so that you can compare clues.

Watch for small roles featuring standup comics, such as the Smothers Brothers as judicial figures.

Love Happens

WARNING!  Despite how you may feel about Jennifer Aniston's good work elsewhere (The Good Girl, for instance, not to mention her years on tv's Friends), stay away from her latest, LOVE HAPPENS, if you value your sanity.  It's a total piece of trash.  

Directed by Brandon Camp, who also co-wrote the script, it stars Aaron Eckhart, best admired for the special effects in the most recent Batman film, as Burke Ryan, a creepy self-help guy who can't take his own advice.  Everyone should have known that a premise like that just can't be sustained for an entire movie.  At least not this movie.  Picture, for instance, a short scene that's apparently  supposed to be funny: a recovering elderly widow hands Burke a cookie jar full of oatmeal cookies infused with her husband's ashes.  Yikes!  

Go see anything else or just stay home.