Poor Blue Jasmine (spoiler alert!)

I tend to not read reviews of movies before I go see them, I love the surprises movies have in store for me. I went to see Blue Jasmine knowing nothing about it except that Woody Allen made it and Cate Blanchett is the lead. So I knew nothing about the homage to Tennessee Williams but I'm so clever I recognized the story line as soon as the boyfriend bursts into a fit of anger and jealousy. Hey - I know this, I thought to myself, this is A Streetcar Named Desire all over again, and better except Marlon The Great isn't there.

What we do get here, rather than the lines of the old play, is a modern take on the fragility of the rich without their money. Woody is best in propelling drama with dialog like nobody else, in every one of his films, a dialog so brilliant you think the actors are making it up on the spot, not a single word out of place or superfluous. A rare quality in movies.
To his aid come the superb casting and design of sets, clothes, atmosphere so natural you feel you're a fly on those walls, be it in the beautiful Hampton's villas or in the hopeless desolation of a San Francisco apartment. It is a well made film, nasty and dark and perfect.

Woody Allen's a bastard, but he knows what he's doing, the bugger. I still think he is a pedophile and guilty of incest. Why do I go to see his movies still is beyond me. I shouldn't. He should have been writing in jail. That's the ugly life at work here - his crimes are not considered criminal because of his fame and because he never officially married the mother of his children. It doesn't change the fact that he married a girl he raised, 35 years his junior, the adopted daughter of his long term common law wife and mother of his biological children, he married the sister of his own kids. This will never be right, no matter how good a writer he is, no matter how he managed to convince himself, the girl, and the world that technically this is all just fine and dandy.

Wooddy Allen is not the first man in the world and surely not the last to be forgiven for serious bad deeds because of his talent, fame, or wealth. Such is the world we live in. Yesterday's news are fast forgotten, and the world moves on. I wonder what legacy he leaves the kids from his newly constructed family. He was writing their drama of a future even before they were born.
I just wish one day someone will be able to write something equally nasty and good about him, in his own style so the truth will be out there, for those who are seeking it.

The Big Ballet

The world of dance is not very nice or inclusive, traditionally. But every now and then someone makes a breakthrough that shakes things up and push the "refresh" button. Here is a group of Russian dancers who are the opposite of the typical svelte and lanky ballerinas we've been programmed to expect. They are BIG ladies, but they can shake it with the best of them. Presenting and example from The Big Ballet:

Reviving An Old Treasure

The Front Page, a diamond of a movie directed by Billy Wilder, shoots words at you at a speed of a racing car. You miss one, you missed the whole scene. It's the opposite of those TV shows of today where you come back to the same channel 2 hours later and the very same stupid faces stare at each other with "meaningful" looks that say nothing in particular. No, this play makes each and every word that's hurled at you count. Of course every other word is as foul as they come, and the characters are all bad - there are no good people in this screwball comedy. Everyone is stinking rotten, only for different reasons.
It stars Jack Lemon and Walter Matthau, fast talkers from a different era, back when actors knew how to use their eyebrows, before botox took that option away.
Half way through we realized we've seen it before, under the name "His Girl Friday". It doesn't matter, it's brilliant no matter how many times they'll make it over.

Unexpected Gifts

How nice it is when my appreciative customers just drop by to say hello or bring me a treat, or to tell me their latest escapades. I love that aspect of having a community shop. The best one last week was this: one of them is a great poet. He came over just to gift me one of his poetry books. This book is a beautiful thing: Two poets engage in a conversation that sheds light on their daily inner lives, across generations, genders and a wide continental gap. They come together in these pages to bring beauty and quiet contemplation to the rushed voices inside our heads. If we care to lend an eye, ear, thought to their short clear sentences.
The two are David Bateman and Naomi Beth Wakan.

Here is a little quote from the book "Pause":

no matter
how many words we say
to each other
the essence lies in the spaces between
the essence lies in the pauses

P.S. - The long Ships Movie Circa 1964

Don't bother. Awful stuff. Pure rubbish.
Truly disrespectful to the book upon which it is based. An anathema, in fact.
How can someone take a work of art and turn it into a preachy Christian snooze is beyond me.
Apparently a new Swedish produced movie is in the works as we speak. I hope they indulge in true Pagan bloodletting, slave-driving drudgery, lustful flesh, and show us the beauty of Mother Earth with proper cinematography while they're at it.
Why Swedish, when the vikings in this book are Danes, that is my question.