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.

Adam

ADAM, from writer/director Max Mayer, stars Hugh Dancy and Rose Byrne as Adam Raki and Beth Buchwald, upstairs/downstairs NYC new neighbors.  Beth is a teacher who wants to be a children's book writer; Adam is an electronics engineer whose true love is all things astronomical.  Early on in their friendship he tells Beth that he has Asperger's Syndrome, which makes empathy and communication challenging.  Adam's recently deceased father's longtime friend, Harlan (Frankie Faison) acts as a guardian/friend/mentor, a gentle and thoughtful philosopher and pragmatist.

Beth has her issues, too: an only child, she's aware that she's spoiled and used to having her own way.  She's her father (Peter Gallagher)'s darling, and one of the plot's complications hinges on her father's personality, his "angles," as her mother (Amy Irving) puts it.

ADAM is quirky; its characters come across as real.  The relationship is what it is, no fluffs or fanfare.  An interesting comparison for ADAM is the recent (500) DAYS OF SUMMER.

District 9

For twenty years, we're told in a series of interviews and news excerpts in DISTRICT 9, an alien spaceship has hovered over Johannesberg, apparently disabled.  Its million-plus inhabitants have thus long been sequestered in District 9, a settlement of scraps and tarps, now referred to with loathing and something like fear and pity by those who don't live there.  District 9 has its own black market, illegal dealings, and shortages of any comforts.  Because of increasing hostility towards the aliens,  the government has decided to forcibly relocate them to a worse area far removed from Johannesberg; the official in charge of the relocation is brilliantly played by Sharlto Copley.  His story is one of slow transformation from obsequious toady to something akin to frightened hero, as he interacts with one alien in particular.

There is plenty of fear-caused violence, mostly from the humans, which makes the movie seem way longer than its two hours, so be prepared.  But it's an effective movie, especially because of its hand-held cameras, and as a metaphor it's wide-ranging: apartheid, internment, immigration, and prison populations, to name just a few.  

Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino has done it again.  This time, in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, he's created an alternative ending to WWII, how it might have ended a year or so earlier if the various chapters of events in this movie had really happened.  Brad Pitt, the most underrated actor in Hollywood, plays a good ole Tennessee boy who's gonna kill him some Nazis (he pronounces that "nazzis") with the help of a crew of Jewish soldiers.  

But the creepiest actor ever is Christopher Waltz, a Nazi official who appears throughout the movie.  He has the sliminess of Hannibal Lecter, but he's scarier because he's not locked up.  Watch him, actually listen to him, as he spears a creampuffy dessert.  

Be forewarned that Tarantino isn't afraid of a little gore here and there.  But the violence, severe though it is, is paced throughout the movie;  it's not like wading through a pool of waist-high blood.  And you can bet that Waltz will be getting a nomination at Oscar time.

Ponyo

The anime director Hayao Miyazaki's newest film, and perhaps his most charming, is PONYO, the story of a little boy and a goldfish, sort of.  The goldfish, whom the little boy names "Ponyo," gets a taste of human life and decides she wants legs, arms, a voice, the works.  The plot includes the boy's parents and Ponyo's, a sea-wizard and a "beautiful but scary" sea-woman reminiscent of some of Disney's most haunting creations: part cloud, part memory, part imagination, part dream.  A storm like no other is a centerpiece.

One of the fun parts of any animated film these days is figuring out who's voicing the characters.  Here Liam Neesom is notably wonderful as Ponyo's sea-wizard father, with the right blend of majesty and frustration.

The drawing is enchanting, the music lovely, the storyline imaginative.  And some would say, best of all, it's not 3-D.

JULIE & JULIA

     So immediately after I saw Nora Ephron's amazing JULIE & JULIA last night, I rushed home to my battered (but largely unused) copy of the first volume of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." I wanted to check my memory: yes! it was signed by both Julia and Paul Child.  I remembered a trip long ago to Vroman's in Pasadena, where Julia was speaking, accompanied by Paul, and I went to hear her.  I remembered also all the PBS shows of Julia and her hooty voice, which in J&J Meryl Streep--of course--has exactly right.  

     The movie combines two books: the one written by Julie Powell, in which she cooks a year of Julia Child recipes and blogs about her experience; the other Julia Child's autobiography, about her years leading up to her fame resulting from the wide acceptance of her cookbook and the subsequent popular PBS shows.  Ephron weaves the stories skillfully, even though they are generations apart. Amy Adams' Julie is a worthy participant in this foodie/love story film.  

     I've dogeared the boeuf bourguignon for later this fall, and then, when my courage and ambition return after this summer, the pate de canard en croute.  Sigh.  I'm salivating.

     

   

(500) Days of Summer

Even though you're told at the beginning of (500) DAYS OF SUMMER that it's not a love story, you'll insist on believing the opposite.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel play the Boy and the Girl: he a would-be architect who writes greeting card copy; she an administrative assistant at the greeting card company.  Their story is told out of order, skipping from day 5 to day 376 to day 43, for instance, showing the intricacies of this particular relationship as it waxes and wanes in its development.

In some ways, the "love story" is the tribute to the architecture of downtown Los Angeles, not the new stuff like the Disney, but the old stuff, like the Bradbury building.  If you haven't taken an architectural tour yourself, do.  Check out the LA Conservancy for ideas.

Complicated and fulfilling, (500) DAYS OF SUMMER is well worth experiencing the heartaches and joys of this relationship.  You'll come away with an understanding how relationships work, including, maybe, your own.

Funny People

Writer/director Judd Apatow has done it again, even better, in FUNNY PEOPLE, his take on what makes a particular comedian tick.  In this case, Apatow's long-time friend, Adam Sandler, plays famous comedian George Simmons, who long ago segued from stand-up to dumb-looking but money-making movies.  Lost and bored with his ostentatious lifestyle, filled with things but no people, George learns he has a potentially lethal form of leukemia. He decides to go back to stand-up.

Seth Rogen plays Ira, a would-be comic and current deli worker, who follows George onstage at a comedy club tryout.  George hires Ira as his personal assistant and possible joke-writer.

The movie is about a lot of things: friendship, mentoring, facing death, reflecting on life choices...It also has a lot of very funny bits, including in the blur of cameo appearances by comics new and old, mostly with very very dark blue--call it indigo--humor.  You'll lose count of the male anatomy jokes.  

Rich and complicated, FUNNY PEOPLE is a triumph.  

The Hurt Locker

THE HURT LOCKER joins HBO's GENERATION KILL in its powerful portrayal of the incredible tension and continual anxiety endured by soldiers in wartime.  Here, three members of a bomb-defusing unit do their jobs: two help the third don a spacesuit/firefighter's gear and then stay in radio contact as he works on the bomb: finding it, clipping the appropriate wires, finding its detonator and whether it is on a timer.  The other two are also constantly looking for enemy sniper fire in the small city where much of the movie occurs.  Such danger can come from apparent civilians with video cameras or young boys selling DVDs. 

Director Kathryn Bigelow has chosen hand-held camera work, for the most part, which adds to the already extreme tension felt by the audience just because of the subject matter.  The movie isn't for the faint of heart, but you'll come away with more understanding of why war is so awful.

The Stoning of Soraya M.

The powerful and disturbing THE STONING OF SORAYA M., based on a true story, is about a contemporary small Iranian village whose inhabitants are quick to anger and even quicker to use the horrific practice of stoning a woman "proved" to be adulterous.  The proof against any woman in this village (and, apparently, in parts of the larger Iranian culture), consists of any three males agreeing that she did what others say she did.  The three men in this case are her abusive husband, who wants a new 14-year-old wife but can't afford two wives; a village widower for whom Soraya works, a job the village male elders pressed upon her; and the widower's son, presented as having less than usual abilities.  

Soraya's aunt tries to reason with the elders and, earlier, with Soroya, pleading with her to recognize the limits within which she lives.  Failing that, the aunt agrees to care for Soraya's two young daughters.  Soraya's two young sons have already been co-opted by her husband.

The stoning itself begins with Soraya's father, who has disowned her but who still has trouble hitting her with the three stones he throws.  

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE is a worthy entry into the HP series.  More than any of the other HP movies, this one really requires that you've either read the books and/or seen the movies, or you might find yourself quite lost.  Here, Harry is about 17, in his penultimate year at Hogwarts, the British school for Witches and Wizards.  His friends Hermione and Ron are worried about his preoccupations and dark moods.  Any older audience member, parent or not, will recognize the moods as teenage angst, although Harry's specialness provides a serious difference.  All three teens are beginning to face romance: the unwanted kind, the wanted-but-rejected kind, the mutual kind.  Where does friendship leave off and romance begin?

The first of the series to be rated PG, this HP is darker both in mood and in actual screen brightness, fitting for its serious subjects.  Our favorite characters are back, including the ones we love to hate.  Enjoy them while you can.  

Memorial Day 2009

MEMORIAL DAY, 2009

 

From a hill picnic with nameless purple flowers,

the dead appear to us in dreams, ours and theirs,

remembering what it was like, how we were together,

 

Wondering

how we are

how are the tomatoes this year

how about the Dodgers, the election.

 

In dreams, in memories, we catch them up,

tell them

we’re doing fine

or not,

depending.

 

We tell them we miss them

we wish they were here

Alive

this broad May morning,

these clouds,

this stillness,

the smells and sights of barely summer.

 

Grateful for all we have,

which includes the dead,

we name them:

mother, father, son, daughter,

brother, sister, cousin, aunt…

 

The unspooling of the soul takes time.

 

Gentle ghosts of our memories,

we are grateful for all you gave us.

We continue your uncompleted work.

THE HANGOVER, from writers Jon Lucas and Scott Moore and director Todd Phillips, is a buddy/road movie, full of the tangles guys can get into on legendary bachelor parties, especially in Las Vegas.  The groom (Justin Bartha) and his groomsmen (Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis) drive from LA to LV in the snazzy Mercedes of the groom's prospective father-in-law (Jeffrey Tambor).  Right away you know, if you've ever been to the movies, that that car will not survive intact.  

The groomsmen awake the next morning with amnesia, a tiger in the bathroom, and a missing groom.  As their search elongates, it includes Mike Tyson in a cameo and a very naked guy in the trunk.  (Not the only naked guy, and no, none of the naked guys are the groom.)  In addition to its intended audience of junior high boys, THE HANGOVER is supposed to be drawing large female audiences because they enjoy watching how stupid guys get when they've been drunk, and the movie is funny in a nightmarish kind of way.

What a waste: Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Robbie Coltrane, Maximilian Schell, Ricky Jay--excellent actors all, but not in writer/director Rian Johnson's THE BROTHERS BLOOM. (Hint: Tom Cruise had a three-hour meeting with Johnson that improved the script.)  

It probably sounded like a good idea to fool around with the Odysseus story, retold by James Joyce as Ulysses (characters of Penelope, Stephen, and Bloom--get it?  Never mind.  Not important unless you were an English major).  But this movie is a true mess.  Nothing makes much sense;  the movie doesn't even follow its own logic.  And logic should be in quotes: here, "logic."  Gratuitous explosions every two seconds, the kind of cliff-hanging teasing that would embarrass even 24...Just don't bother.

If you want a good retelling of the Odysseus story, check out a DVD of the Coen brothers' O Brother Where Art Thou?  Fabulous.

In French with English subtitles is the lovely and complex SUMMER HOURS, written and directed by Olivier Assayas.  It's the story of an extended family facing what could be the last summer visit at their family ancestral home, now in fragile repair, as is their mother, the family matriarch (Edith Scoh).  Juliette Binoche, Charles Berling, and  Jeremie Renier are the adult siblings celebrating their mother's 75th birthday with assorted significant others and children.   During the visit, their mother has "the talk" with her oldest son, repeating what she has told him many times about her wishes regarding the house, the valuable pieces of art, and its furnishings.  When the family has left, their mother says to her housekeeper that she knows what is embedded in the house are "stories, memories, and secrets."  

Some of those stories, memories, and secrets are revealed, almost unpeeled, through the course of this poignant film about aging, family, and the inevitability of loss.  Don't miss it.

Tony Scott's remake of THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 is a movie movie, sure to get some nominations at Oscar time.  It's really a fantastic production: appropriate pacing, exciting editing, excellent writing, and two bravura performances from Denzel Washington as the good guy and John Travolta as the bad guy.  It's really fun to compare this production with the original 1974 version, with Walter Matthau as the good guy and Robert Shaw as the bad guy.  What Scott and his team have done is to update the time period to today in all kinds of details: computers, cell phones, $10 million ransom versus the miniscule $1 mil in 1974, and some character qualities most specifically relevant to today's economy.  

Be sure to allow some cool-down time for your heart rate.  You'll need it.

AWAY WE GO is a charming indie film about a quirky young non-slacker couple--he sells insurance to insurance companies; she's a medical illustrator.  They've just become pregnant when his parents (hers are already dead) inform them that they're moving to Europe for the next two years.  So much for interested grandparents...The young couple decide to check out where might be a good place to have and raise this child: near his brother? her sister? former work buddies? etc.  Since both their jobs are so portable, they head out on a road trip to explore their possibilities.  

The writing is terrific, ditto the acting.  The quirkiness factor is subtle enough that it's barely noticeable, actually, once you get over the first few scenes.  I loved AWAY WE GO.  I hope you do too.  For production details, check imdb.com.

DIM SUM FUNERAL is mildly successful, with pretty good writing and some good acting.  The plot concerns the successful but distanced adult siblings of a wealthy Chinese family, whose mother, frequently known as a dragon lady, is a widow in Seattle.  The sibs have as little contact with her as they do with one another.  They are brought together, spitting and fuming,  by a phone call from their mother's longtime housekeeper/caregiver/confidante.  They arrive separately in Seattle to be told by the housekeeper that their mother wanted a traditional seven-day Chinese funeral, complete with chanting monks and blazing replicas of a house and a Mercedes.  The one complete misfire is Talia Shire as the housekeeper.  And there's a cheat-y plot device that's saved only marginally by the movie's good heart and good generational advice.  Details are available on imdb.com

THE GIRLFRIEND EXPERIENCE is a fascinating movie, which often appears unscripted and documentary-like, in a good way.  It follows a few days in the lives of an established professional escort and her boyfriend, a personal trainer, who knows about her professional life and--sort of--supports it.  The couple has been together for a year and a half, so you'd think--at least I would--that some of their more obvious issues would have been worked out.  But they're only twenty-somethings, so they each have a lot of maturing to do, apart from their work lives and their personal lives as a couple.  It's a sad and often disturbing movie, quite lonely in the way that being in your twenties can be, even after you're in your twenties.  For cast details, check out imdb.com

UP, the animated feature from Pixar, is a wonderfully touching film, probably best seen in 3-D, although it doesn't have missles flying at the screen.  It begins with the story of  Carl and the adventuresome Ellie, getting together in what looks like the 30's or 40's.  It then takes up when Carl is an old man, now alone except for the annoying (to him) Wilderness Explorer, Russell, who needs just one more badge, that of Helping the Elderly.  Just what Carl doesn't want, or need.  Carl decides on one more adventure, which will help him escape the encroaching skyscrapers bearing down on the house he and Ellie once renovated.  UP is an amazing movie, bringing together generational concerns as well as individual reflections on what it means to grow up after you've grown old.  There may be, indeed, late blooms, prolific and beautiful. (For movie ratings and cast lists, etc., check the web.)

DEPARTURES, an indie film from Japan, with subtitles, concerns a young cellist whose 2nd tier orchestra has to shut down.  He finds himself another job as a person who helps prepare bodies for burial, with loved ones in attendance, in what seems to be an ancient ritualized ceremony, one which I myself was completely unfamiliar.  DEPARTURES does have a really good, complex plot in addition to this fascinating look at a specific and beautiful cultural practice.  DEPARTURES is one of the best movies I've seen this year, and I recommend it highly.  (For details of cast list, director, writers, and where it might be playing near you, check the web.) 

I'm the last on my block to see The Soloist, starring Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers and Robert Downey Jr. as LATimes columnist Steve Lopez, who wrote the book the movie is based on.  Ayers is a solid musician with mental problems, probably schizophrenia that developed when he was under tremendous pressure in his late teens at Julliard, especially as the only African American in the high-powered, elite music academy.  Lopez first encounters him in the Second Street tunnel of  LA, homeless but connected to himself through--and often only through--music.  As usual, the book is "better" than the movie--more complete, more complex.  But the movie is excellent, especially the tension between Ayers and Lopez.  In their mid-fifties, both men are complicated and often not very nice.  But then, they mirror the streets of LA.

Monsters vs. Aliens review

It's Susan Murphy's wedding day.  Her groom is a self-absorbed Modesto weatherman, but Susan can't see how inappropriate he is for her until she's hit by a meteor-like object and becomes Ginormica, with an eventual host of four friends, "monsters" like her: a British-accented cockroach scientist, a blue blob, a hairy insect even bigger than she is, and a missing link of a lizardy thing. 

Part Gulliver's Travels and part Alice in Wonderland, the 3-D Monsters vs. Aliens is a coming-of-age story in which Susan not only rescues most of the galaxy but also discovers through her trials that her strength is internal as well as external.  A kind of feminist fairy tale, it could be paired with Shrek and any of the Alien series for lessons in the unimportance of superficial appearance and the fact that girls are not meant to be subservient.

Just saw the movie Earth, a documentary from the Disney megamovie business, at my local IMAX.  Spectacular scenery from a variety of camera positions, including the most incredible shots of elephant migrations.  Narrated by James Earl Jones, who is sometimes over the top with anthropomorphizing.  Many pertinent comments about the effects of global warming on the habitats of these magnificent creatures with whom we share space.

Just saw the new documentary EVERY LITTLE STEP.  Fabulous, especially if you're familiar with A Chorus Line, the wonderful Broadway show on whose recent revival this current movie is based.  Starting with hundreds and hundreds of hopeful performers at the open auditions, it documents the grueling process of winnowing down these amazing singer/actor/dancer folks to the twenty or so who finally make it into the revival.  This movie is for anyone who's seen A Chorus Line, ever, as well as for those who've ever known or been or hoped to be a dancer, or really, any kind of performer.  Anywhere.  It may remind you of the recent MET AUDITIONS documentary a few weeks ago detailing a similar winnowing for the finalists in the Metropolitan Opera young performers positions.  Okay to wait for it on DVD, if you have a decent tv.  But no matter what, don't miss it.  And bring plenty of Kleenex.

New at This

So I just posted a couple of reviews in the form of papers that I wrote for a conference in Hawaii this January.  But I can't figure out how to see them here.  What I did was to copy and paste, but I apparently did something wrong.  Sigh.  I did figure out how to get my photo on my blog, so that's a start, I guess.

I loved the Academy Awards show, all of it!  I thought having the former Oscar winners offer tributes to this year's nominees was warm and engaging;  in comparison, past Ac. Aw. shows seem now to be kind of cold.