Perspectives from a Professor
Took me awhile to get around to seeing Now You See Me, but I’m glad I did. This is an entertaining caper film with enough magic (and explanations of how the tricks work) to keep viewers intrigued and engaged. Well-crafted. Solid performances. A bit old-fashioned in the sense that it is polished storytelling without a lot of edge, but that is not a criticism.
Congratulations to my former student (BA WFU then BFA UNCSA) for being invited to join The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! Adam is an accomplished cinematographer who shot Mud and Take Shelter among other films.
I still remember a conversation Adam and I had when he was an undergraduate student and trying to decide how to pursue his passion for cinematography and am so very proud of his work. Can’t wait to see what is next…
Lennie Gerber and Pearl Berlin gave a terrific interview last night on MSNBC with comments on yesterday’s Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage and advice on how to sustain a loving relationship over many years.
Take a look:
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/45755883/ns/msnbc-the_last_word/vp/52325231
Icons? Yes.
If you want more of Lennie and Pearl, check the Living in the Overlap site www.lennieandpearl.com regularly for a peek at the trailer for the documentary and webisodes.
Lennie Gerber and Pearl Berlin will make an appearance on The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell tonight between 10-11 p.m. EDT on MSNBC to discuss today’s Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage.
Lennie and Pearl’s 46-year relationship is the subject of the documentary Living in the Overlap (www.lennieandpearl.com) that I have co-directed with Cindy Hill.
Consult your local listings and check them out!
I have only watched a handful of episodes of Walking Dead. The series just didn’t grab me. It’s true, I chuckled my way through Zombieland and thought 28 Days Later was entertaining, but I don’t go out of my way to see a zombie movie.
So, it should mean something when I say that World War Z is one zombie picture worth checking out for viewers looking for an escapist, popcorn flick.
To the naysayers who thought zombies had peaked in the marketplace and those saying that the huge amount ($190 million budget) spent on a reportedly troubled production would produce a bomb, the film is performing above preliminary projections at the box office – second only to Monsters University this weekend – and opening bigger than any previous Brad Pitt picture.
But, what of the movie itself?
I went with modest expectations, which were surpassed. I found the film entertaining, and engrossing except for the very, very end. The main character’s closing statement seems anti-climactic and a bit preachy in direct contrast to the tone of the film leading up to the conclusion. What a letdown, but it doesn’t undermine all of the good things about the film – good action sequences, good performances, some effective dialogue and plot twists.
I can’t speak to criticisms that World War Z deviates too much from the book by Max Brooks because I haven’t read it and always believe that films should stand of their own as creative works separate from the forms that inspire them.
Unlike Man of Steel, World War Z is not too long, not too loud, and not too sterile. Like Man of Steel, a hunky lead actor is pleasant to watch, and Brad Pitt is a perennial favorite of mine more because he can act than because of how he looks.
World War Z is the best of the big summer blockbusters thus far this season overall, and while I won’t be racing out to see it again (and haven’t been bowled over by any of the big films this summer so competition is modest), I enjoyed it.
And, the film may have the best line of dialogue so far this year, “Mother Nature is a serial killer.” Don’t like to think about her that way, but there is a lot of truth there!
Jo Maeder’s engaging memoir depends on the sort of unsettled childhood that drives so many fine examples of the genre (The Glass Castle and The Liar’s Club come to mind as two I have appreciated), but there is also a sweetness to her journey of self-discovery that reminds me more of my friend Martha Mason’s autobiography Breath: Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung.
Putting Maeder’s book in such company is high praise from me and richly deserved. The full title says a lot about the scope of the memoir: When I Married My Mother: A Daughter’s Search for What Really Matters — and How She Found It Caring for Mama Jo.
What motivates a “not-so-young” New York City DJ to pack up her mother’s huge doll collection, rid her house of decades of hoarded odds and ends, and move Mama Jo further south to “Greens-something,” “Greens-boring,” Greensboro, North Carolina into a home they will share?
The answer is both complicated and simple: love sometimes reveals the right thing to do with a persistence that cannot be denied.
There are many hilarious passages in Maeder’s memoir – and many tender and poignant points in the narrative – but I am most taken by the nuance that marks the storytelling. This happens in two important ways throughout the book.
The first is related to craft.
Maeder shifts back and forth in time between real time – getting her mother out of the house to her brother’s wedding, realizing that she can no longer live alone, excavating the house and moving her mother to North Carolina, and caring for her mother during the last few years of her life – and the past as she recalls and contextualizes important things from her childhood with the understanding she possesses now as an adult. The author navigates and paces the temporal with considerable skill.
The second is related to self-awareness.
With each family secret that is uncovered and explored and with each obstacle Maeder confronts and overcomes related to the house they move into, her mother’s health care, and seemingly exotic Southern culture, the author learns something about herself and softens in intriguing ways that seem authentic and, not incidentally, charming. Most memoirs are journey stories, and this one is as much internal as external.
The most reader-friendly element of When I Married My Mother is the structure; short chapters let the reader easily dip in and out of the memoir or just tear through it as I did. The photos that mark the beginning of each chapter are evocative as visual referents and suitably chosen.
As a final note, I appreciate the subtlety with which Maeder challenges her own pre-conceptions about Southerners and Southern culture. She begins the journey with a sense of the superiority of big city ways and migrates to a position from which she can appreciate both the pleasures of New York and the comforts of North Carolina. As a North Carolina native, I appreciate that perspective.
Check out our new webisode for the Living in the Overlap project. You don’t have to be a cat lover to love hearing about Sappho, a truly extraordinary cat, but you’ll definitely want to share the link with all of your cat lover friends and acquaintances.
Hope you enjoyed this one! To check out other webisodes related to the story of Lennie Gerber and Pearl Berlin’s life together, check out www.lennieandpearl.com.
For your viewing pleasure!
If you like Cameron Diaz or like to read about depictions of teachers in the movies, check out my essay that has just been published (open access) in the Journal of Popular Film and Television.
Here’s the abstract in case you want a little more information before following the link:
This article establishes a context for evaluating bad teacher characters and provides a close reading of the 2011 film Bad Teacher by focusing on the plot, the depiction of major characters, and aesthetic elements followed by an assessment of the implications of this film for audiences.
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/yNtKX3g95uvrHFCifMw8/full#.UcL_EeuKQ7A
This special issues of the academic journal is called “Teaching Popular Film and Television: Critical Media Literacy and Narratives in (Teacher) Education.”
Take a peek!
Earlier tonight I took a photograph and shared it on Instagram (marymdalton). It was nothing special, a shot of the Harris Teeter parking lot (Adams Farm location), but the sky was beautiful. I wrote “Even the Harris Teeter parking lot looks good in this light…”
And, it does, doesn’t it?
This is the magic hour – the hour surrounding sunset and sunrise. There are so many subtle colors, and they change so quickly.
When I think of the magic hour and cinema, which I do often, the very first movie that comes to mind for me is always Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick’s 1978 film shot by Nestor Almendros. Breathtakingly beautiful images…
I didn’t blog about Before Midnight yesterday right after seeing it because I wanted a little time to let the film wash over me, a little time to mull over why I love it so much.
Before Midnight is part of a trilogy of films directed by Richard Linklater and starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy. Before Sunrise (1995) is followed by Before Sunset (2004) and now Before Midnight emerges as the next (but I hope not last) installment in Jessie and Celine’s unfolding love story.
Linklater wrote the first film with Kim Krizan, but the second and third films were written by Linklater with his two stars, Hawke and Delpy.
In the first film, Jesse and Celine meet on a train and disembark to spend a romantic night falling in love in Vienna before going their separate ways. Before Sunrise is a charming, smart, romantic movie.
In the second film, which is shot in approximate real time during the magic hour in Paris (this seems worth noting), Celine comes to a book signing where Jessie is talking about his new novel (conveniently about their night in Vienna), and they reconnect in the most authentic and passionate way.
It’s easy to see why I fell for Before Sunset because this is the kind of love story a nerdy girl like me dreams about, and just thinking about the movie makes me involuntarily smile a soft smile before I quite realize it has spread across my face – soft like the sunset in Paris.
Beautiful lighting that plays magically across the timeless landscapes of Greece and the familiar countenances of our lead actors is a supporting player of no small scale in Before Midnight. Enhanced but not defined by the light, this is a gem of a film that draws me in from the beginning and holds me captive long after the credits have run.
Jesse and Celine have adorable twin girls of their own, and the film starts with Jesse dropping his son off at the airport for the boy to return to his mother in the States after spending six weeks on summer vacation with Jesse, Celine, and his half sisters at a bucolic writer’s retreat by the sea. It doesn’t get more perfect than this.
Or, does it? Turns out that the frazzled daily lives of two busy Parisians with two careers and with two young children don’t include a lot of time for talking – and talking is what helped draw Jesse and Celine together in the first place as the intimate connection formed by their disclosures led them to fall in love.
Connections not nurtured can fray. This film, like the two that precede it, is filled with talking (and glorious ideas delight me in their playful, earnest, poignant, sexy, sweet, difficult, probing, ethereal, intellectual, and honest incarnations). But, in these films, it is never pointless conversation.
Talking is about revealing, sharing, and binding together for Jessie and Celine. We watch them fall in love over and over again in ways that loom large and small, but this time there are undercurrents of what is not spoken, and therein resides the tensions that are played out in the first two films in terms of time and distance and played out by holding back in Before Midnight.
Eventually, circumstances and events take Jesse and Celine to a hard conversation that they have needed to engage in for a long while but probably have not found time for amid their complicated daily routines.
After sunrise and sunset, reality sets in, but that doesn’t mean the opportunity for enduring passion and love need disappear overnight.
