Robert Durick's reading and other Kultur in 2015

Books I have read in 2015 with links to the messages in which I mention them. If I read a magazine or a billboard that seems important to me I could put it here too.

1. January 1, The Dhammapada, translated by Eknath Easwaran and annotated by Stephen Ruppenthal
2. January 12, Essence of the Dhammapada by Eknath Easwaran
3. January 20, Baldwin: Collected Essays by James Baldwin edited by Toni Morrison
4. January 25, My Antonia by Willa Cather
5. January 29, Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse by James Wesley, Rawles

6. February 1, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
7. February 11, The Last Valley by A.B. Guthrie, Jr.

8. March 5, 7 Weeks to 50 Pull-Ups by Brett Stewart
9. March 6, American Nietzsche by Jennifer Rainer-Rosenhagen
10. March 19, The Story of French by Julie Barlow and Jean-Benoit Nadeau
11. March 27, My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor

12. April 6, American Veda by Philip Goldberg
13. April 24, Pogue's Basics by David Pogue

14. May 12, The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes and Zachary Dodes
15. May 18, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza by Carlos Fraenkel
16. May 30, Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

17. June 8, Pogo, Evidence to the Contrary, by Walt Kelly

18. August 3, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
19. August 30, Room by Emma Donoghue

20. September 1, Prevention: The Most Important Treatment of Heart Disease by Gregg M. Yamada

21. October, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
22. October 10, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
23, October 25, Deep Down Dark by Héctor Tobar

24. November 5, The Rim of Morning by William Sloane
25. November 9, Lila by Marilynne Robinson
26. November 26, Hidden Natural Histories: Trees by Noel Kingsbury

27. December 16, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
28, December 22, The Trees by Colin Tudge

Mostly films, but other spectacles which I take in, with links — for films to IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes.

1. January 7, Foxcatcher, movie theater, limited release
2, January 10, Inherent Vice, movie theater, limited release
3. January 13, Selma, movie theater, mainstream
4. January 17, The Merry Widow, The Met Live in HD, opera
5. January 20, American Sniper, movie theater, mainstream
6. January 24, Cake, movie theater, limited release
7. January 25, Quinn Kelsey and Marjorie Owens recital with symphony orchestra, live in person
8. January 31, Les Contes d'Hoffman, The Met Live in HD, opera

9. February 4, 2015 Oscar Nominated Short Films live action, movie theater, limited release
10. February 4, Oscar Nominated Short Films animated, movie theater, limited release
11. February 7, A Most Violent Year, movie theater, limited release
12. February 12, Two Days, One Night, movie theater, foreign (France, Belgium)
13. February 12, Cleopatra, museum theater, lecture and slide show
14. February 14, Iolanta/Bluebeard's Castle, The Met Live in HD, opera
15. February 18, Mr. Turner, movie theater, limited release
16. February 21, Still Alice, movie theater, limited release
17. February 28, Leviathan, movie theater, foreign (Russia)

18. March 4, Focus, IMAX, mainstream
19. March 7, Red Army, movie theater, documentary
20. March 9, Olive Kitteridge, HBO DVD
21. March 14, La Donna del Lago, The Met Live in HD, opera
22. March 21, Timbuktu, movie theater, foreign (Mauritania)
23. March 28, Wild Tales, movie theater, foreign (Argentina)
24. March 31, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, movie theater, National Theatre Live screening

25. April 4, Merchants of Doubt, movie theater, documentary
26. April 11, Kumiko, the treasure hunter, movie theater, limited release
27. April 11, While We're Young, movie theater, limited release
28. April 18, Furious 7, IMAX, mainstream
29. April 25, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci, The Met Live in HD opera

30. May 2, Ex Machina, movie theater, limited release
31. May 6, Globe Theatre Julius Caesar, movie theater, one time screening
32. May 9, Avengers: Age of Ultron, IMAX 3D, mainstream
33. May 16, Black Souls, movie theater, foreign (Italy)
34. May 20, Mad Max; Fury Road, IMAX equivalent, mainstream
35. May 23, Lambert & Stamp, movie theater, documentary
36. May 30, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, movie theater, foreign (Sweden)

37. June 6, Spy, movie theater, mainstream
38. June 7, Yasui Concerto for 'Ukulele and Orchestra and Mahler Symphony No. 1, live orchestral music
39. June 13, I'll See You in My Dreams, movie theater, limited release
40. June 27, Escobar: Paradise Lost, movie theater, foreign (multiple)

41. July 4, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, movie theater, limited release
42. July 11, Testament of Youth, movie theater, limited release
43. July 18, Amy, movie theater, documentary
44. July 25, Infinitely Polar Bear, movie theater, limited release
45. July 28, Train Wreck, movie theater, mainstream

46. August 1, Mr. Holmes, movie theater, limited release
47. August 8, Ricki and the Flash, movie theater, limited release
48. August 15, Kahlil Gibran, movie theater, limited release
49. August 22, The End of the Tour, movie theater, limited release
50. August 29, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, movie theater, limited release
51. August 30, Mistress America, movie theater, limited release

52. September 1, Tangerine, museum theater, limited release
53. September 5, Meru, movie theater, documentary
54. September 5, Phoenix, movie theater, foreign (Germany)
55. September 8, A Walk in the Woods, movie theater, mainstream
56. September 13, Learning to Drive, movie theater, limited release
57. September 20, Joker, theater, play, drama
58. September 27, Grandma, movie theater, limited release
59. September 28, The Intern, movie theater, mainstream

60. October 4, Black Mass, movie theater, mainstream
61. October 7, The Martian, RPX 3D, mainstream
62. October 11, He Named Me Malala, movie theater, documentary
63. October 25, Coming Home, movie theater, foreign (China)
64. October 28, Bridge of Spies, movie theater, mainstream
65. October 31, Tannhauser, The Met Live in HD, opera

66. November 15, Suffragette, movie theater, foreign (Britain)
67. November 18, Room, movie theater, limited release
68. November 21, Lulu, The Met live in HD, opera
69. November 22, Spotlight, movie theater, limited release
70. November 29, Brooklyn, movie theater, limited release

71. December 6, The 33, movie theater, mainstream
72. December 9, Trumbo, movie theater, limited release
73. December 24, Star Wars..., IMAX 3D, mainstream
74. December 27, My Love, Don't Cross That River, museum theater, foreign documentary (Korea)
75. December 29, Joy, movie theater, mainstream

NOTE: Huffington Post must see summer movies for adults
Times summer movies
Huffington Post adult movies of the last three years
Huffington Post's best movies of the year

Books I acquire over the year again with links to the messages in which I mention them. I might put some other things, like DVD's, here.

1. January 26, The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly
2. January 26, Leo Strauss, Man of Peace by Robert Howse
3. January 26, Expatriates by James Wesley, Rawles
4. January 27, The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2015

5. February 4, Confessions of a Sociopath by M. E. Thomas
6. February 4, The Psychopath Inside by James Fallon
7. February 4, American Nietzsche by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen

8. March 5, 7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups by Steve Speirs
9. March 5, 7 Weeks to 300 Sit-Ups by Brett Stewart
10. March 5, 7 Weeks to 50 Pull-Ups by Brett Stewart
11. March 5, The Concrete House by Pieter A. VanderWerf
12. March 5, Gold by Susan La Niece
13. March 5, Don't Believe Everything You Think by Thomas Kida
14. March 5, Dante's Divine Comedy adapted by Seymour Chwast
15. March 5, The Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell
16. March 12, The Nibelungenlied translated by A.T. Hatto
17. March 12, The Jatakas translated by Sarah Shaw
18. March 12, Stevens; collected poetry and prose
20. March 12, My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
21. March 12, Kahlil Gibran: the collected works

22. April 6, Philosophical Reilgions by Carlos Fraenkel
23. April 6, Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
24. April 12, Crane, prose & poetry, by Stephen Crane
25. April 15, David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
26. April 22, by David Pogue
27. April 22, Film Worlds by Daniel Yacavone
28. April 25, Secret Ingredients, the New Yorker Book of Food and Drink edited by David Remnick

29. May 4, NIV Holy Bible
30. May 7, Hidden Natural Histories: Trees by Noel Kingsbury
31. May 7, The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes and Zachary Dodes
32. May 28, Pogo, Evidence to the Contrary, by Walt Kelly

33. June 12, Cloud of the Impossible by Catherine Keller
34. June 12, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
35. June 12, The Improbability Principle by David J. Hand

36. August 30, Prevention: The Most Important Treatment of Heart Disease
37. August 30, A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

38. September 8, The Legend of Morgan's Corner and Other Ghost Stories of Hawai'i by Lopaka Kapanui

39. October 20, Lila by Marilynne Robinson
40. October 20, The Rim of the Morning by William Sloane
41. October 25, French for Cats by Henry Beard

42. November 15, Dog Man by Martha Sherrill

43. December 2, The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
44. December 21, The Dollmaker by Harriette Arnow
45. December 21, In Babylon by Marcel Möring

DVD's

1. January 27, Henry VIII, Globe Theatre production

2. February 18, Olive Kitteridge, made for teevee movie

3. March 4, The Decade You Were Born, The 40s [sic], documentary
4. March 4, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Hollywood version
5. March 4, Dilbert, the complete series, cartoon adaptation
6. March 4, The Interview, notorious movie

7. May 4, Gravity, Blu Ray special edition

CD's

1. March 4, Thelonius Monk with John Coltrane, the complete Riverside recordings, classical jazz

2. November 1, J.S. Bach, The Great Organ Works

I started Eknath Easwaran's translation of The Dhammapada some time back but got distracted by other books. I finished it on the first night of the new year. The work purports to be the teaching of the Buddha and may be close to the early teachings of the institution, but it is unlikely that it is a systematic set of notes taken at his orations. It is wisdom in the sense that it reflects what some contented people found to be a way of life that does not conduce to suffering, otherwise the natural lot of existence.

The translator was an apparently gentle, informed, and generous teacher from India who settled in California, founded a center, and published works explaining Indian religious thought and the way of life that he had inferred from that thought. His translation is lucid, and his introduction is long enough and well enough organized to be truly helpful. There is additional commentary on the chapters by Stephen Ruppenthal. That commentary is helpful, doesn't seem to have an axe to grind, and helps keep the reader oriented in what could be an overwhelming number of points of practice.

This is not especially philosophical. It is more of a handbook of practice. The Buddha was apparently that way.

There is much that I can learn from Buddhism, but I think that I am too old to enter the sangha. I am happy that the Buddha, although recommending associating with other practitioners, demanded individual responsibility in finding the truth.

This is not the first time nor likely the last time that I have read this work, although the translation is new to me.

Robert

Sounds like an interesting read and a good translation. Looking forward to your books, trains, cats, operas and movies.

Looking forward to finding out the best films of the year, Mr D.

Me too!

Robert

I see that there are objections to Foxcatcher* on both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes. On IMDb I rated it nine out of ten thinking it excellent but more admirable and revealing than entertaining. I now have permanently installed the idea of a dangerous rich person, privileged to the extent of owning people.

Here was a guy who had occasional insight into his own essence and at other times who just acted out his pathologies. He could buy truth to plug into his falsehoods. And there was another person who wanted so much to be great, in some way, that he allowed himself to be bought and pretty much destroyed himself although he is still alive.

These people are not just out there. They are among us. I am troubled by this movie.

I read briefly in the news back then how one of the DuPont heirs shot a wrestling coach who lived on his property. That didn't make sense particularly back then; this movie makes it credible even if the motivation is nonsense.

I think that this is a movie to see.

Robert

A couple friends saw this one also and they agreed that it was a movie to see. Well, one friend said it was a good movie, but definitely not a feel-good movie.

There are some lion cubs at the local zoo - here's a picture

They're beautiful, and he is too. Thank you.

Robert

I haven't read Mason and Dixon yet, but the reviews make me think that I might like it. Otherwise V was the novel by Pynchon that I liked and respected. So I also haven't read Inherent Vice but I saw the movie* Saturday. I don't know whether the movie recapitulates the book.

It is not a movie of ideas or interesting drama, although I suppose some people will take the confusion for depth. It is instead a movie to be watched full of light and color. The neon green of the title carries through in the color of the telephone in the home, wherever in the home it might be, of the hero. The tidbits of story are for entertainment and possibly to show some quirks of the times; the escutcheon of the one naked woman in the movie may reflect the sixties.

There is a good bit of humor to the film too. So between the sparkling screen and that humor it is fun to watch but not, maybe, necessary.

Robert

I am too old to start to be a Buddhist although I suppose I could renounce the world at any age. Still the wisdom of the faith is likely to be useful. So more on The Dhammapada. Eknath Easwaran apparently lived the discipline as well as having translated the work. His editors, following his instigation, posthumously assembled his writings on the work and on living with it, and they are collected as Essence of the Dhammapada. There is a plenitude of elements to the practice of the eightfold path and so they are hard to summarize, but non-attachment seems to be a central principal. The author also makes a lot out of the not-I. I may not join the sangha, but when I fear I have some reference for letting go.

Nobody has yet explained to me a reason to be interested in reincarnation or the transmigration of souls other than curiosity.

Robert

I saw the movie Selma*. It is important. It is not over yet.

Robert

>16 Mr.Durick: What do you think of all the LBJ controversy that came up? Is there any basis for that? (I have not yet seen the movie).

ETA: I admire your one sentence review!

I lived through that time. At first I had too much to say about this movie.

I was one of those who despised Lyndon Johnson; I didn't believe that he killed Kennedy, but that was an entertaining notion. Johnson presided over a republic in which J. Edgar Hoover could abuse any citizen (shown in this movie. Johnson knew power well enough to dismiss Hoover, but all he did was put him to his own use), in which the draft could force peaceful young men into roles as warriors (in the Navy I recruited some of them and saw it as not right), and in which we destroyed our youth and attempted to destroy an ancient society that was not one of ours. He saw to the enactment of some important legislation that I and I think a lot of others wrote off to the times being ready for it.

So in this movie Johnson does not support the specifics of the Reverend King's mission. I saw him, however, as a very powerful politician with an important social agenda and the wits to navigate a difficult governmental morass. I did not see him as being a particularly bad person on film. I think that people who saw the political maneuvering as something other than an evil necessity of the moment are one dimensional hero worshippers who would have had everything go smoothly for the people seeking redress. I like to think of myself as a multi-dimensional hero worshipper (I got teary eyed during the opening segment at the Nobel Prize awards (and I cried at the segment that followed)). It was evil, and that evil still drifts within our shadier corners, that these people had even to fight for their rights this way, but the change was not about to come easily, and the hero knew that.

Johnson knew that.

Robert

>16 Mr.Durick: would be a good advertising quote.

I saw that the Oscar noms came out - have you seen the majority of the best picture films?

I have seen all but American Sniper. All of the ones I've seen are very good movies; I most favor Boyhood and wonder a little bit about why The Grand Budapest Hotel is among them despite my enjoyment of and respect for it. I just looked at my list of movies seen last year, and I kind of wish a few more had gotten some recognition, in particular Fury and Guardians of the Galaxy.

American Sniper has opened here this weekend, but The Merry Widow from the Met is also screening, and I will go to the latter tomorrow. If Tuesday is free I may catch the former on a not so big screen then.

Robert

That's a pretty impressive record. I saw The Grand Budapest Hotel also and agree - while I enjoyed it and thought it was a lot of fun as well as great-looking, I'm not sure if it's the Best Picture. I read a lot about how it was based on Stefan Zweig's work, but it seemed pretty different in tone (usually think of Zweig's stuff as somewhat claustrophobic works about various obsessions). I haven't read his autobiography The World of Yesterday though but it is on the pile - so maybe that will be more Grand Budapest Hotel-ish.

I was hoping for a nomination for Phillip Seymour Hoffman in A Most Wanted Man, but it was not to be.

Maybe it was his German accent.

I'm also disappointed that Brendon Gleeson wasn't nominated for his role in Calvary.

Robert

The Merry Widow (there is a link to the cast sheet and synopsis on this page) is an operetta about two people who have loved each other since youth and who finally come to terms with it. For some reason that I have never looked up there is an English libretto for it; both of the times I've seen it, it was in English. I am still happy for supertitles or subtitles.

This Metropolitan Opera production, which repeats in theaters on Wednesday, is directed by a Broadway person who brings a lot of that sensitivity to the production. The dance is especially becoming. There is a singer from Broadway who trained in opera who acquitted herself in the world of big voices.

This worked and was big entertainment.

Robert

>23 Mr.Durick: I agree absolutely about Brendan Gleeson. That was one of the best films I've seen in a long time, but I didn't realize it was a 2014 release.

>16 Mr.Durick:, >17 avidmom:, >18 Mr.Durick: The Nook Daily Find today deals with Johnson and King and their getting the legislation enacted. I've bought it but don't know whether I will get to it anytime soon: Judgment Days.

Robert

American Sniper* is playing on the two very big screens in town. It was also playing at my neighborhood multiplex, and it was six dollar Tuesday. It would have been good, I think, to see it in high definition, but I opted for the ease and cost of the local show, and got a crying baby in an R rated movie as a bonus. (It was in the air. Afterward I went to a quiet, albeit not posh, restaurant, and a family came in and allowed their infant to bang something continuously and to cry.)

So anyway war is wrong. Clint Eastwood and his cast captured that. On the English side of conversations the Iraqis were several times called savages. I wondered whether the Iraqis were calling the Americans savages. There were conundrums. If you are in a war with serious intent and some respect for your troops you can't let a child or a young woman blow up your cohort, but that is part of 'war is wrong.' The hero took risks and did important things for the U.S. side, but I saw no glory.

I haven't read the political deconstruction or criticism of the film. I think it could serve a purpose. The apparent military pair behind me cheered some of the deaths, but I think that the deaths will appear gruesome to most of the audience.

Robert

PS. Some of the criticism: http://www.alternet.org/culture/eastwoods-american-sniper-one-big-historically-d...

R

PPS. More: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/american-sniper-is-almost-too-dumb-to-...

R

The journalists recollect James Baldwin when they talk about police killings, and James Baldwin was at Selma for the march with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Just before the murder at Ferguson I accidentally came into the Library of America volume Baldwin: Collected Essays. It took awhile, and I read other things in the meantime, but I have read the volume now and think that I am a better informed person now. It is true that I would like to have his reaction to some more recent doings — police killings continue, we have an African American President.

He is angry in his writing (and that may enrich his expressions of love), and he justifies that anger. He knows the ins and outs of the subjects he tackles as for example (not his words) hurry up and wait. But what impressed me over and over and over even as I admired his presence in the events he joined (a novelist is a person on whom nothing is lost) was his expressiveness in American English. The man can write. It is fluid; nothing calls out, "Look at this." He talks so lucidly that you can count the grains of sand on the bottom.

I hope, but maybe know myself better, to keep this book at hand. When something comes up that he has commented on I would like to turn back to it and glance at his opinion and, impossible to avoid, how he expressed it.

I have never read his fiction, and wonder whether I should.

Robert

The previews for Cake* were pretty good, and, although she can't suck me into a theater the way Sandra Bullock can, I think that Jennifer Aniston is pretty attractive — I think I even read that people regarded the lack of an Oscar nomination for this role as a snub. The review was tremendously adverse, but I opted to see it anyway.

The movie has all of these things to be admired in a movie: drugs, anger and despair, beautiful women, suicide. Snark is fun, but it can't carry a movie. I saw it to the end, and it did not redeem itself.

Robert

Verdi baritone Quinn Kelsey and his soprano wife Marjorie Owens had a recital with symphony orchestra scheduled in one venue starting an hour and a half after the start of a Judy Collins concert in another venue. Both were in town and would require a reshaping of the day to accommodate either. So I wasn't likely to get to either. Then Saturday night a friend asked if I were going to the Quinn Kelsey concert; when it turned out that I was being offered a front row seat, I replied that I was going. Judy Blue Eyes is five years older than me; I wonder whether I will have another opportunity to see her.

A problem for some of us with opera is that we can't hear the music for the singing. That close (for many things that's too close) and with the orchestra up on stage, I could hear all of the music, and it was good. I've seen Quinn Kelsey live a few times and on screen at least once. I believe I haven't seen his wife at all before. Both filled the hall with song, favorites from operas, most of which I had seen at least once. I thought that I couldn't understand opera without seeing it; I suspect that is still true, but hearing these songs pulled out of context when I knew the context at least a little bit worked this time.

My favorites were by him. He opened with the prelude and prologue to I Pagliaccii. He came back after the intermission with Largo al factotum from The Barber of Seville, the piece that has the line "Figaro, Figaro, Figaro," in it. Among the others there were no clunkers, and his wife held our attention just as well, as did their duets. I let my attention wander a little during their closing piece from The Flying Dutchman wherein the Dutchman and Senta come together.

I wasn't sure that this would work for me, but it worked very well. I wanted more, shouted that at them, and didn't get it.

Robert

I have finally read My Antonia by Willa Cather. It is probably at least 60 years since I first heard of it, and it surprises me a little that I would have heard of a novel with an unmarried mother back then. Throughout I had a sense of similar feeling to The Country of the Pointed Firs. I think I read way back then that Sarah Orne Jewett had some connection with Willa Cather.

It is about the coming of age of both Jim Burden, who putatively wrote this when he was a railroad lawyer, and Nebraska as it lost its red grass and gained agriculture and a university. Although it is mostly about him, the story is carried too by the lives of young women who become a variety of successful adults. Nothing happens in the story, to speak of, so I can see why I wouldn't have been interested in it way back then, but I feel very attached to it now and expect it will not be long until I get to Death Comes for the Archbishop which I started once but got distracted from.

Robert

A coupon got me to work on my wishlist, and today I had three books in the mail from Barny Noble.

Expatriates, a novel of the coming global collapse by James Wesley, Rawles. He really publishes his name with the comma in it. Some reviewer liked this, and I like recreational apocalypse.

The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly. I think I saw a rave review of this linked on Arts and Letters Daily.

Leo Strauss, man of peace by Robert Howse. I am curious about Leo Strauss and saw this book mentioned with a scope that might suit my needs.

I hope to start one of these tonight.

Robert

>28 Mr.Durick: - I really loved Go Tell it on the Mountain and need to read more by Baldwin. Sounds like the Collected Essays is a good place to start with his nonfiction.

>30 Mr.Durick: - The concert sounded really fun. I've heard a lot of praise for Kelsey recently. I saw him several years ago, as Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, and thought he was the best singer, although Pinkerton is a pretty sucky role. What did you see him in?

I think I've seen him in a live performance of La Boheme as the artist and as somebody else in the same opera on screen. I've also seen him before as a stand at the front of the stage singer in, probably, Beethoven's ninth symphony. The concert was really fun; today another person who had been at the opera also opined that the last duet was less lively than the rest. I wondered whether it might have been that it was Wagner.

Robert

One thing led to another, and I was in Costco today. There was The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2015 at a very fair price. I hadn't had one for a couple of years, so it came home with me.

It came home with a DVD of a Globe Theatre production of Shakespeare's Henry VIII. One of the things I like about Globe Theater productions is that they dance at the end; I hope they do in this one.

Robert

"He talks so lucidly that you can count the grains of sand on the bottom."

That's just an awesome line. And that was an inspiring review of Baldwin.

When the U.S. economy fails and East and Southeast Asia are in turmoil Australia will have to cancel its environmental protection laws in order to sustain its own economy. A gang of thugs marching ragtag to loot a central Florida community can be stopped but only by a heavily armed and carefully briefed well motivated militia. The Indonesian berserker military Muslims with modern arms in full fall mostly to a few carefully placed but independent clever Christian individuals. Christians get to shoot their enemies and claim righteousness, and Christian men get the girls.

With careful prayer and a multiplicity of arms the right side will prevail and show great generosity within the cohort.

Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse by James Wesley, Rawles, who spells his name with the comma there, is a stupid novel and not an interesting excursion into the possibilities of world economic failure or apocalypse.

Bah, humbug.

Robert

>31 Mr.Durick: Nothing happens in the story, {...}, but I feel very attached to it now
Robert this is it exactly, for me, and I wonder what/how she writes that does it. I've read O Pioneers and My Antonia and mildly liked both while reading, then afterward felt drawn strongly to the rooted-ness and nostalgia. I have the WWI One of Ours and will have to watch her.

I am maybe a third of the way into Death Comes for the Archbishop, and you may have just convinced me to aim for O Pioneers.

Robert

>37 Mr.Durick: thumbed

Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse sounds truly dreadful. I admire your stamina in managing to read the entire thing.

The Metropolitan Opera's current production of Les Contes d'Hoffman screened Saturday. The conductor wore what I took to be a Nehru jacket. It screens again on Wednesday. They've done this a lot.

The production was seriously good. It is a French opera so there was dancing, and the dancing was good enough. The three main singers, Vittorio Grigolo (Hoffman), Thomas Hampson (in four roles as the villain), and Kate Lindsey (as the muse and as Hoffman's best friend) sing very attractively. Kate Lindsey in her muse costume was a pleasure to look at too. Thomas Hampson can sometimes get a little wooden in his singing, but he was almost lyrical in this production.

And I did not find it entertaining. About the time of the second great love I closed my eyes. I paid attention but tried to find a good opportunity to nap. I never did. I was just as glad when it was over.

Robert

>32 Mr.Durick: Hello! I had to read a fair amount of Strauss in college, and when Howse's book on him came out last year, it went on my list. I won't get to it for a while, but I'm looking forward to your review. Everything I've read about the book seems to indicate that it is, at the least, a provocative read.

I expect to pick up another book tonight, but so far I am leaning toward a novel. The Strauss book may prevail, however.

Robert

The good life has purpose, weight, and success. Willa Cather shows us that in Death Comes for the Archbishop. She also tells us that it takes some luck and some support from individuals and institutions, as well as from circumstances. We see in this story a man relating to the universe through a variety of people around him; this was going on at the same time that the transcendentalists were developing their influence in the uniformity of the east coast. It was hard, and that brings my one big problem with the novel — hard work against a hard life brought success. But it doesn't always.

Still I don't very often see maps of fulfillment as well developed as this, and I am very happy that I've turned to Willa Cather for a couple of books.

Robert

>42 Mr.Durick: How did your opinion change from "The production was seriously good." to "And I did not find it entertaining." in such a short time/review span?

It was not a change in opinion. The staging, acting, and costuming were all good, but they amounted to tedium in my experience. I must say that some of the other audience members applauded several times during the work and at the end. There were moments that deserved applause, but on balance I thought that I didn't need to see Les Contes d'Hoffman again, nor could I, from that experience, recommend it to people.

Robert

>47 Mr.Durick: Fair enough.

I occasionally have the ability to recognize a work of literature as well-executed even if I don't enjoy it. Since I am less able to do that with other art forms, your review puzzled me! :)

>45 Mr.Durick: What a wonderful expression: maps of fulfillment. I have always been intrigued by the title of this novel. Your thoughts make me think I should read it.

My book group met Wednesday night so I went out a little bit before noon.

En route I stopped to see The Oscar Nominated Short Films, live action and animated. Nothing was transcendent, but they were all watchable although the Disney submission might have been so full of sugar one might want to rinse one's teeth after being exposed to it. If one got to see only one of the sequences, I'd recommend that they see the live action.

The live action: Parvaneh scared me, but it actually shows that as there is deceit and betrayal among us there is also new friendship and trust to be found. It has a happy ending without being too sweet.The Phone Call shows a woman at a crisis center trying by telephone to deny a man his suicide. Boogaloo and Graham is about affection, for chickens and within families. I really liked Butter Lamp in which nothing much happened, yet it still progressed and had real people in it. Aya perplexed a woman in the audience who had struck up a conversation with me; it was shot mostly in a car. It showed how some chance played out and how a person can play on mistakes to find something new and different.

The animated: In Feast a dog gets all the food he can eat and is pretty demanding about it. But when he sees that there is more to the family he is in than his gluttony he saves a relationship, and it pays off for him — very sweet. A Single Life never went anywhere for me, nor did The Bigger Picture get much farther. Me and My Moulton was warm and got a little farther thematically; it contrasted kids' lives with adults' lives and their understanding of their lives. The Dam Keeper could be sketched out fairly simply, but it has details and complications that take a sweet story of childhood friendship and the importance of young lives and make it substantial.

There were a couple of other animated films, not nominated, in the series screened. I can't read my notes on the titles so I don't remember all of them, but a movie about a girl who realizes her dream of becoming a school bus driver struck me as being pretty much inspired.

I hope that the art museum theater screens the nominated short documentaries.

Robert

So the mailman was here when I was on my way out. I was able to claim my box from Barny Noble from him before I left home. And I opened it before our book group started.

American Nietzsche by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen. How has the USA specifically received Nietzsche's writings and thought? I am an American and a fan of the philosopher so the question is interesting to me, and somewhere I saw this book recommended.

The Psychopath Inside by James Fallon and Confessions of a Sociopath by M.E. Thomas. Both of these books address the problem of sociopathy from the inside. The former author has brain structures of a psychopath, and the latter author is a diagnosed sociopath (the two pathologies are generally regarded, although not always, as the same). Betty recommended one of these.

Robert

Sometimes I think you are as surprised by what's in the box as I am. Enjoy the new books.

There's considerable truth to that, I think. I know the titles, of course, but hefting them out of the box I get to see their weight and color, get to read their backs and have a look at the table of contents, get a feel for how eager I am to read each one (often enough, as with these, I want to read them all tonight).

Robert

>37 Mr.Durick: - Expatriates sounds truly awful, but your review was amusing. The comma seems like some sort of affectation. Where did you hear about that one?

>42 Mr.Durick: - I didn't catch the screening this time around, but saw the same production with Calleja and Netrebko. I read some bad reviews of that production, but I really liked it. Kate Lindsey has been wonderful in everything that I've seen her in, and yeah, I have described Hampson as wooden before. Aww, I really love the opera - it's one of the loopiest pieces in the standard rep, I like all the metafictional bits, and there is some really catchy music.

>51 Mr.Durick: - The short films never get as much press as the big movies, so enjoyed reading about them. What would be your picks for live action and animated winners?

I'll be looking forward to your reviews of the psychopath books. I have several on the list at the library including Confessions of a Sociopath.

>37 Mr.Durick:

Loved your review. Sounds like a book that noone should read (but then an author that insists on a comma in his name is not an author I want to read really anyway - call be snobbish if you want).

>54 Mr.Durick:

This is why all my non-fiction stays on paper (even if I have the software to read it properly on electronic gadgets). Enjoy your books :)

>55 DieFledermaus: I trace a morning path through the World Wide Web. The pundit who mentioned Expatriates was on that path visiting one of my regulars. I don't remember the details except that I thought that the pundit was ready to engage the novelist on his own terms, even to the comma in his name, and I happen to believe that the world, at least the world of orderly humanity, is not long in the future. It may be that it is not long because of idiots like this; the idiocy may prevail. The rich will not be able to afford hand pollination of all of their vegetables and will find that they need vegetables for their pharmaceuticals and food. The rich will not be able to survive without healthy peonage. And the rich are too arrogant to do their own taxes, but the people who do taxes are in the middle class that is being destroyed. Oops; too much. I want to be rich and to walk through vast, healthy forests; neither is likely.

I cannot predict the winners. The Academy votes politically as much as aesthetically. I like them all well enough as I said. My favorite live action might be Butter Lamp, but it is a portrait, not a drama, and so may be lost on people who have to be entertained, who need a sharknado. The one animated film that I saw and preferred was the one not nominated about the school bus driver. I've been getting to the nominated short films for a few years now, and I think that they do deserve attention, although there can be some slack years.

These two books go on a stack of psychopath, difficult people, and narcissist books. It's hard to tell when I will read them. I feel pretty well informed by the books I've already read on psychopathy, not so well informed about narcissism. I read these because of the difficulties of dealing with these people but also to look at myself. I am apparently not a psychopath even if that is a continuum. I suffer some narcissism which I see getting out from time to time; I hope to stem its effect on other people and still keep my vanity for my own pleasure.

Robert

>56 AnnieMod: Annie, the book does encapsulate the silliness of these empty prejudices. Prejudice serves us, of course, but it has to be reviewed, and this fellow does not even see his contradictions.

Robert

>58 Mr.Durick: So he had the proper ideas in mind but did not know how to develop them - which usually makes a very bad and silly novel... Cases like that really get me angry because when someone actually writes a novel that uses similar ideas but does it properly, this guy will be the first to cry "plagiarism". Or at least this is my experience with this kind of "novels"... The prejudices need to be called out and discussed - but sounds like this comma fellow really had no idea how...

Well, you know that there is a notion afoot that the unfettered individual accomplishes the most. There is another second amendment notion afoot that a good defense of our way of life requires a well-armed militia. He had to use both notions, and his use turned out to be silly. His Christian virtue seemed undeveloped, and such as there was of it also silly. Now I know that there are neo-atheists who tell us religion is evil, but charity need not be silly and he found a way to make charity into grandiosity.

It is a failure. It is likely that some of the ideas are not proper; the human condition is complicated.

Robert

>52 Mr.Durick: I hope you find Confessions of a Sociopath as interesting as I did! (For the record, the author of that one does regard the two terms as essentially synonymous, but prefers "sociopath" as it doesn't have quite the same stigma.)

I watched James Fallon's TED talk a while back, and found it utterly fascinating. I didn't know he had a book out as well.

Four films that I want to see and haven't were playing Saturday at the multiplex that carries limited release and European films. Time constraints got me to A Most Violent Year*. People looking for a lot of action and fight scenes will be disappointed although there are some of those. This is a story about violence done to one's hopes and to one's integrity.

It is about a couple of other things too. The couple in the lead love one another deeply and do not see things in their lives the same way, but they respect one another. In particular, and there may be some of-course-it's-the-woman-who-has-to-compromise in this, the woman, the daughter of a mobster, supports her husband, despite huge fears for her family, throughout it all. It is also about turning threats into challenges and meeting those challenges as hard as that may be (it would be beyond me).

This is a pretty good movie.

Robert

>62 Mr.Durick: I saw this last week and thought it pretty good. The lack of action scenes made it more convincing.

My favourite movie of the year so far is Whiplash. Have you seen it?

I did. http://www.librarything.com/topic/177068#4921641

It wasn't my favorite, but I did think it was very good.

Robert

This past weekend, the kids wanted to see Big Hero 6, and so we took them, despite not wanting to see it ourselves. Feast was shown before the feature and a few minutes in I remembered that you'd seen it and liked it well enough. I thought it was sweet, in a non-cloying way. It made me less annoyed at having to see the animated feature, which then turned out to be engaging and imaginative and also sweet.

Big Hero 6 has legs and got good enough reviews that if it stays around long enough I could get to it despite some initial indifference.

Feast was maybe too sweet.

Robert

It is a movie for kids, so the story is not complex, but the animation is worth looking at. The level of detail is amazing.

I liked Big Hero 6 too! A recommendation from my 9-year-old cousin.

>62 Mr.Durick: the multiplex that carries limited release and European films That is the thing I miss most about not living in a city any more.

Unfortunately that multiplex, a large corporate one, is fifteen miles away. Still I used to go to it and nowhere else for an individual film or screening — that's where the National Theatre screenings happen. They've botched it too many times by now, though, that I go only when I have something else to do in that direction. Now it is true that I manipulate things to achieve that effect, but I haven't seen any of the National Theatre screenings in a couple of years. The sound went bad in the previews before A Most Violent Year; the length of time it took them to get to it made me think that maybe I should just look for somewhere else to go on my way to Saturday night.

Robert

We live in a place with two movie theatres (3 actually, if you count the renovated historic one that shows old movies for next to nada) but no independent films are ever shown or foreign films, or National Theatre. *grrrrr* The cruelty is that they advertise those things on the screen but never show them.

My son (the big college kid) is a fan of Big Hero 6.

There's one English language cinema here in Munich and they seem to think that 50 Shades of Gray is going to be a huge, huge hit as nothing else is playing there for the next few weeks (except for the Saturday children's matinee, thank God!). They do show the National Theatre productions, although only a few shows inconveniently scheduled.

I am going to stay away from 50 Shades of Gray. I see that Behind the Beautiful Forevers will be screened in the National Theatre series; I'm sorry that I will likely miss it.

Robert

I have over time enjoyed the Big Sky series by A.B. Guthrie, Jr., although I have felt that the first two novels The Big Sky and The Way West were the strongest elements in it. The other night I finished The Last Valley, a story set in the Montana of the first half of the twentieth century. I enjoyed it well enough. It was among other things the coming of age of Montana as My Antonia was the coming of age of Nebraska. The population grew. Top soil was washed and blown away. Rivers were dammed.

It is curious that this book published in 1975 and set in the depression and World War II had conservative criticism of FDR that rings absolutely true to the conservative objections nowadays to the socialist threat in America. Anaconda owned the government. Using power from a publicly owned dam was socialist encroachment on the capitalist ideal.

There were people in the story who were good enough. They were, however, more icons than characters.

I may have others in the series to read; I may even own one of them. But I haven't kept a list.

Robert

Depression is a pretty dull subject for most of us, and even for those of us interested in it, say because of intimacy, in ourselves or in people close to us, it can get dull or overbearing. The stoics allowed someone who couldn't cope to commit suicide but for a limited range of issues; insufficient funds was one of the acceptable reasons. And nowadays one in five suicides is associated with unemployment. In Two Days, One Night* we have a Belgian movie in French on the subject. The film is held in high regard by some who admire the performance of Marion Cotillard as the depressed woman losing her job.

I am not so taken by the film and think that if it were set in Springfield and scripted in English it would sell fewer tickets than foreign films in the U.S.

Robert

The Archaelogical Institute of America has an educational mission which is sometimes accomplished as free public lectures. I got to one on Cleopatra, An Archaeological Perspective on Egypt's Last Pharaoh, last night given in an accessible venue. Dr. John R. Hale of the University of Louisville spoke of his work and others'. He is known especially for his underwater work in the Mediterranean.

He seems to have been enamored of the woman. He saw her as a woman, a mother, a ruler, a goddess, and a scholar. He said that when Stacy Schiff came to his University he interviewed her. The result was that he disagreed with her, who apparently saw Cleopatra as a woman who treated everything, including her children, with political expedience. He wants her remembered as a special person.

He didn't doubt that she partied, but he thought that she was very much more than that. She was not beautiful, but the hook nose in her later representations was artful sympathy with her lover, Marc Antony.

Robert

I was four paragraphs into this when my Lenovo keyboard's idiosyncrasies ate it. I hope I remember what I meant to say.

This week's Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition screening is a double feature of Iolanta and Bluebeard's Castle, two operas about love and light, that both seem very literary to me. They were interesting in prospect, the idea of them, but it took some progress into each for them to become compelling. The director apparently had greater experience in film, and he worked light to strong affect in both works; color in a mostly monochrome presentation drew special attention.

As much as I admire Anna Netrebko's singing, it wasn't until King René had been singing for awhile that I began to enjoy Iolanta. He was not engaging in appearance, but his deep voice drew me in. God and Allah get almost equal attention in this, and it is not overbearing although the religiosity of the last few minutes seemed a little de trop to me. The idea of an adult's living without knowing that she is blind and then of being presented with light is fascinating even if only sketched in this work.

Bluebeard's Castle is something of a recitation of a long poem about dark metaphysics. There are two singers holding the whole burden of the not very long work. When Nadja Michael is going on about the darkness of the castle and the blood on everything there is the possibility of admiring her engagingly robust figure. This too started slow, but I came away feeling enriched by it.

The conductor, Valerie Gergiev, didn't feel it necessary to wear a necktie or to shave for this performance. It repeats Wednesday. The Saturday performance started twenty five minutes early, and I don't know when the encore starts.

Robert

>73 Mr.Durick: - Too bad, it would have been fun to read your pithy comments about 50 Shades of Grey the movie.

>77 Mr.Durick: - I saw the Mariinsky film of the same production (also with Netrebko) - it was a little creepy but creative. There was some pretty music but it didn't stick in my head - maybe one to listen to some more. Bluebeard's Castle is a funny one to play on Valentine's Day.

I think being disheveled is Gergiev's thing. He conducted something I saw before, but it was an opera so I couldn't see him, but at a concert he also had no tie and didn't stand on a podium. He was probably the most idiosyncratic conductor I've seen - he has fluttering fingers like he wants to play the piano and one foot seems like it's impatient.

There was some superficial comment about these works on Valentine's Day, but apparently they are both romances of a sort. I think it was most likely a funny coincidence of their scheduling for the season.

I had, I think in the New York Times review, seen that the setting in this production of Iolanta was not the luxurious setting called for by the composer; I had in mind something like the palace Siddhartha was reared in. But it went along plainly with the plain play of black against white which was consistent enough that I thought it must be purposeful.

Robert

Getting more than one use out of a trip to town I took in the movie Mr. Turner*. There isn't much of a story to it, but there is plenty in its better part of three hours to make it admirable. It is a depiction of a specific style of life in a specific set of circumstances.

The lead character (I think that the title character is the artist and not his father) is fully and uncompromisingly rounded. I don't think we see much dynamic in his character although he ages visibly, but we see a deep unfolding of his character. He is reprehensible, especially in his dealings with women, but then he is tender to the end with one that I at first thought he was conning. He disdains many of his fellows and treats them all fairly. And he demonstrates his competence in his craft and I think in his art.

The motion picture itself opens with and continues to be photographed in a very painterly way. Motion only comes into it slowly. This could be a gimmick if made too obvious, but it all looks like a movie so it works. It works well.

It is probably not great, but it is very good.

Robert

I was very taken by the book Olive Kitteridge and happy to see that it was being filmed. But it was filmed for teevee which I don't generally do, and it was available on DVD only in the United Kingdom.

I was in Costco after a computer monitor and dessert for a potluck when I stumbled across the US compatible DVD* at a steep price. I plucked it up and now have it at home.

I hope to watch it.

Robert

>82 Mr.Durick: I saw that the other day and was sorely tempted! Maybe I should read the book first.

The book is worth the time and attention.

Robert

>82 Mr.Durick:. I loved reading Olive Kitteridge, and I watched the miniseries when it was on HBO in December. Frances McDormand was a great choice as Olive.

>85 NanaCC: agree completely. Frances McDormand: perfect. Some other excellent casting, too.

Obvious product placement by Apple, Tivoli Audio, and probably a plumbing fixtures company. The credits were too long and crowded and not alphabetized so I was able only to confirm Apple computers. Rohypnol is illegal in the United States, yet Alice was able to get a prescription for it (she unfortunately spilled her carefully sequestered stash when it came time to use it). Maybe I've had enough of Alec Baldwin what with his announcing the New York Philharmonic program on public radio. Julianne Moore is reported to be a shoo-in for best actress tonight; I prefer Reese Witherspoon.

So, Still Alice*: It is clinically interesting, but the storytelling is not very sophisticated. All of the acting is by the lead character who deserves some attention for it.

I don't have teevee, but I'll be watching the Oscar results among other things to see how she does.

Robert

Leviathan* has finally opened here. It is a beautiful, beautiful film; it is also devastatingly tragic.

I see that it is taken from the story of Job, and that story is explicitly cited in the narrative. Possessions and family are fungible in the Bible story; after the whirlwind replacements are issued to the sufferer. It is true that the hero of the movie has a second wife, and at one time she asks him if he would like to have a child. The movie ends before there is any opportunity for replacement.

Love, honesty, and truth are all both cited and demonstrated in the movie. A man of ordinary good virtue wants to live undisturbed with his family on his family property handed down for generations. He makes a living through hard and careful work, as a mechanic. And he drinks a lot of vodka. There is a stronger person whose interests are not congruent with those hopes. There is a powerful betrayal of all of the virtues. Power prevails. Justice is mocked with a triumvirate of jurists reading prepared verdicts stiffly.

This shore of the Barents Sea is gorgeous and gorgeously photographed, although I was confused a little by treeless barrenness in many shots and thick stands of trees in others. This is not a standard warm weather Eden, but it is a richly attractive land where one should be able to lead an Edenic life; that life is stymied by humanity itself.

Robert

In the features section of the local newspaper which carries the movie reviews, Focus* got three out of four stars and lavish praise for its plot twists. In the Friday entertainment supplement to that same paper it was give a star and a half. I did not have high hopes for it, and I didn't see why it would need IMAX, but I was going to town and wanted to get out of life for awhile so I went to take it in.

It is better than not bad, a full entertainment. Nothing about it is excellent, none of the performances. Nothing is particularly exciting. It is mostly talking heads (and a few minutes of manipulating hands); that doesn't require IMAX. But it was pleasant enough, an entertainment. I like big extremely clear screens, so the IMAX wasn't entirely lost on me, but I couldn't rebut anybody who said they got nothing out of the format in this case.

A benefit of confirmation bias, I believe in e.s.p. I knew on my way out to the movie that a package from Edward R. Hamilton would be in the mail so I checked it rather than leave my mail for today. I expected books, but it was a package of DVD's and a CD. And at Costco after the movie I found The Interview DVD which I don't expect to be any good but which I felt I need because of its notoriety.

Robert

The box of books was in Thursday's mail.

7 Weeks to 100 Push-Ups by Steve Speirs, 7 Weeks to 300 Sit-Ups by Brett Stewart, and 7 Weeks to 50 Pull-Ups by Brett Stewart. I am seventy years old and expect to live another thirty-six years, so I am in need of fitness, some of which I have. As a young man I could do a dozen palm out chin-ups; I am strong enough now, but I can't do any chin-ups. So I am most interested in the last of these books and decided to get the others just because of my respect for the particular exercises. I hope to get into the pull-up book in the morning and start on it right away. Embarrassment or vanity will decide whether I report on the results.

Gold by Susan La Niece. I like gold. This is a little hard back in which to savor gold in photographs and some descriptions.

Don't Believe Everything You Think by Thomas E. Kida. I first saw the words of this title on a bumper sticker and adopted it as a motto. If I can read about it all the better. I thought I had Thubten Chodron's book by the same title, but LibraryThing doesn't show that I do. This one is about how our thinking can go awry.

The Concrete House by Pieter A. VanderWerf. I like sometimes to go in fantasy to France. I like sometimes to live in a fantasy house. I can imagine a house that is fireproof in a forest. I thought his might be about ferro-concrete homes or other poured concrete houses. It is a little bit of a disappointment; it is only about homes made with insulating concrete forms. I will probably go live in one of them anyway.

Dante's Divine Comedy adapted by Seymour Chwast. This is a graphic interpretation. It looks to me like it doesn't have enough of the poetry, but I think that I will glance through it anyway. I have never made sense of The Paradiso, but I don't think it is beyond me.

The Ring of the Nibelung by P. Craig Russell. I go to the opera from time to time and like to understand what's going on. There is a Germanic ring story, but I have read that Wagner got his story from farther north. Anyway, this is a colorful graphic representation of Wagner's story. I think I can get some mileage out of this.

Robert

7 Weeks to 50 Pull-Ups by Brett Stewart is less informative than I had hoped. Essentially it tells us to do progressively more pullups in some variety, but it will actually take more than seven weeks to get to 50 of them. If you (I) can't do any, you should do assisted pull-ups or lat machine pull-downs. He warns us to work out only three times a week to allow for recovery, a commonplace. On the other hand a high school friend went to the park everyday one summer and did pull-ups until there was something more compelling to do and became very strong at them. The author distinguishes between pull-ups, palms forward, and chin-ups, palms toward you; this is not a distinction we made as kids.

I may try anyway.

Robert

I was very good at pull-ups when I was a kid and used to challenge the boys. I usually beat them. I was quite the tomboy. Now I have all I can do to push myself up out of a chair. :-)

The book cites some pull-up records. Though they confirm that men have greater upper body strength, the records that women have set are pretty remarkable.

I was able to pull up four times today, the first to eyes level with the bar; succeeding repetitions were lower and lower. Then I did about an equal number of chin ups and actually got my chin above the bar on the first attempt. I think I'm going to work at this.

Robert

I haven't done American Nietzsche by Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen full justice. There are facts that I didn't master and intricacies that I didn't work out. But I have a great deal of respect for it. Ralph Waldo Emerson was nearly unique among Americans while he was quintessentially American. Nietzche derived a lot from him.

What we have from both of them is the importance of each individual to find himself through perfecting himself and the notion of anti-foundationalism, that there are no absolutes and there is no ultimate authority. His name may not be on everybody's lips (and I didn't master the spelling of his last name until the past decade or two), but his thought and consequences of his thought have pervaded society in several ways from the first arrival of excerpts of his writings until now, with influence on Richard Rorty, Harold Bloom, and others.

He has influenced American religion both in refuting him and in adopting him.

Robert

Around 1994 a documentary movie named Hoop Dreams* had considerable success. You could recommend it to some people, though, and they would say, "Oh, I don't like basketball." You could tell from that that they were not ever likely to be substantial participants in a real conversation.

Now we have Red Army† a documentary set in the world of hockey. But it is about certain team mates, and it is about the Soviet Union and Russia since. Stalin gets a little bit of screen time, but it really starts with the childhood of Viacheslav Fetisov and ends with his role as minister of sport in Putin's Russia. He went through a lot of transitions in that time in both personal relations and response to national and international politics. He can look like a jerk, and he can look like an admirable athlete and lover of his country.

This is a good way to spend a couple of hours (including buying tickets, getting popcorn, drifting about in the lobby afterward checking your smart phone for messages).

Robert

Anxiously looking at your thread, to ensure that you are still posting after all those pull ups.

The book said to take a day off from the pull-up routine, so I have, later on, finished watching Olive Kitteridge*.

It is not all of the book, but it is a rich story, and I think it might be richer for being allowed the four hour format of a mini-series rather than a two hour theatrical film. The four hour format also allows a very deliberate pacing, which I think is made explicit by the tempo of the theme music. The two leads are superb; I didn't know, although I think I've seen him once before, Richard Jenkins who played Henry Kitteridge. There are a couple of dialogue gaps or somesuch that made me think that they printed the first take when they might've better shot it over, but for the most part the narrative flows.

I do so little teevee my reaction to the mini-series aspect may be jejune.

I wish I knew where my copy of the book is.

More pull-ups tomorrow.

Robert

Out and about today, I was briefly near a used bookstore:

The Nibelungenlied translated by A.T. Hatto. This is the serious Penguin edition that will go with the graphic version that came the other day.

The Jatakas translated by Sarah Shaw. Entertainments from early Buddhism

Stevens: collected poetry and prose edited by Frank Kermode and Joan Richardson. I have heard that I should be interested in the poetry of Wallace Stevens. I have a hard time passing up a Library of America volume for five dollars.

When I got home there was a Barny Noble order in my mailbox;

Kahlil Gibran: the collected works. I had thought that Gibran was an aphorist and sugary offerer of life advice. Then I read in American Nietzsche that he derived from Nietzsche, so I thought maybe I should take another look at him.

My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor. The reason for my order. The book group decided to discuss this in May. I don't think I care, but I'll read it which means I could change my mind.

Robert

This week's Metropolitan Opera Live in High Definition screening is of La Donna del Lago. It received a couple of credible very enthusiastic reviews and starred a couple of people whom I admire, Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flores. It will screen again Wednesday. In the intermission the discussion emphasized how great and challenging the music and singing was.

I apparently am not competent to judge the music and the singing. The drama and libretto were insipid. I will almost certainly never watch this opera again.

Robert

Sounds like you'll have some Wagner-related reading. Not sure if I already asked you this, but have you seen the Rackham illustrations for the Ring Cycle? They are very nice.

I was debating about whether to see La Donna del Lago on Wed, but I don't think I'll go. I'm not a huge Rossini fan, although with nice productions and good singers it can be an enjoyable experience. I saw the ROH production with JDD and JDF, otherwise they might tempt me to see it. I have to agree with the not much drama and insipid libretto. What did you think of the production? I heard some negative things.

No, I am pretty sure I have never heard of the Rackham illustrations. I wonder whether they would engage me. In re Dante for example, sometimes I'll home in on a Dore or a Blake illustration and admire it, then open a bunch of them and find myself turning pages just to get through them.

I'm curious what you heard negative about the opera production. If by production you mean the stage settings and the way people moved around the stage and expressed themselves (which is what I usually mean by it) I didn't see anything wrong with it, except sometimes there was louder operatic belting than the dramatic moment called for, even if there was nothing special about it.

Robert

When I bought and finally opened The Story of French by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow I was hopeful of having a book on the development of the language from its roots, neighbors, and outside influences. What I got was a good enough sociology of the language with some information on where French comes from but more about who is using it.

The future of French is kind of in the hands of the Quebec French speakers, but that may depend on its fate in Africa. What that means takes a couple of hundred pages to explain.

Some of the developments of the language are discussed. So as Lilisin told us Victor Hugo can be hard for a non-native reader because of the argot; this book explains the change in linguistic temper that Hugo brought to the novel that allowed it.

This book will mostly be interesting to those who are interested in it; huh?

Robert

Wow! I got spammed. The spammer made it to the spam reporting thread, but this spam didn't.

Robert

>104 Mr.Durick: Congratulations. ;)

Seeing the movie Timbuktu* was congruent with my having read The Story of French but was actually a coincidence. The movie is partly credited to France, but it was mostly, though set in Mali, actually from Mauritania.

I don't believe that I can say what I need to say about this film. It is beautifully photographed. It captures the trials of having someone else's self-righteousness (in this case Muslim fundamentalism) imposed on a society. It has a couple of very real and sympathetic central characters who are honorable in their attempts to lead a desert life. It shows the mud feet of the self-righteous. But it is not at all simplistic. This was well worth the watching.

Robert

I have read My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor because our book group will discuss it in May. Someone interested in the subject would have liked it a lot more than I did. Clearly for a Puerto Rican girl in the low rent apartments of the Bronx to decide in childhood when she discovered she had diabetes that she wanted to be a judge and then go on steadily working towards and becoming a Supreme Court justice there must be a tale of some substance. So my judgment as I read it of 'so what?' is not entirely on the mark.

But I had friends who went to Harvard. I don't much know what has happened to them since (although one became a big firm New York lawyer), but I know that their stories are about as interesting as hers.

The justice credits a writer for her assistance and repeatedly speaks of her own failures as a writer. This is a fairly well written book, so I wonder who actually wrote it.

Anyway for somebody interested this is an interesting book, and I will not say that I am sorry I read it.

Robert

So how much humor and satisfaction is there in violence? Wild Tales*, a movie from Argentina and set there, explores the matter with a great deal of wit and vividness. The movie comprises six vignettes of anger, humiliation, and satisfaction that are related only by theme and country of origin. The audience in the theater laughed, even at scenes of painful death.

Robert

PS That last comment was not about a scene of dying; it was of the aftermath. We had also seen what led to it. An investigator at the scene commented all wrong, and we laughed.

R

To be done in three hours, the stage play of Behind the Beautiful Forevers has to omit a lot of the detail in the book and concentrate on a narrative. For awhile with dancing and noisy music I felt underwhelmed by the National Theatre Live screening. But there are a couple of roles very well played, Abdul and his father, that drew me in. It is played for the morality tale, and although nothing is hidden it is not simplistic.

I left glad that I had risked the common failures of this multiplex and driven thirty miles round trip. The traffic home after 10 pm was an abomination, but I made it.

Robert

One can doubt reality, and it can profit some if enough do. The movie Merchants of Doubt* shows how some of those who profit by that kind of doubt instill it in the people from whom they might profit or who might prevent that profit. It is a little more glitzy than substantial although it does have good information in it. It mentions a number of pollutions that have been protected this way but mostly compares smoking tobacco and climate change.

It is nice on the big screen but probably insubstantial enough to watch it on a monitor.

Robert

Our book group had only a couple of suggestions before it. Somebody suggested a vote; I suggested consensus. We had consensus for Desert Solitaire and so are not reading Elizabeth Warren's book. When I got home there was a Barny Noble coupon.

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey. Many of us had read this but were entirely willing to read it again. This is a mass market paperback; they were common in my childhood, but I may have forgotten how to read them. The author's name is big on the cover; the title is small.

Philosophical Religions by Carlos Fraenkel. This is a relatively expensive trade paperback which increased the value of the discount coupon. If as I believe religion is how we relate with what is ultimate and important, say the universe, then there is thinking to be done about it, and there are some religions or religious disciplines that lend themselves to doing that thinking.

Robert

Some of the people who have thought most closely about relating to what is ultimate and important are the Hindus (although that may be a misnomer). Several of them have brought their findings to America, and the history of their reception can be interesting.

The history of their reception is the subject of the book American Veda by Philip Goldberg. It touches only lightly on the thinking. I have heard a lot of names over the years even having sought and read The Autobiography of a Yogi in my young adult days when one had to chase it down. In the recent documentary about Paramahansa Yogananda Goldberg was cited a few times, so I chased down his book, an almost instantaneous chase with the internet.

To get two hundred years into fewer than 400 pages requires some thinning, but I still think that there is a solid survey here. The author does not grind any axes, and you can see in it how the problem the Transcendentalists faced about whether to restructure the interior or do justice in the exterior has impacted the reception of the Indian message in America. It starts with Emerson and runs through some of the less obvious diversions like Unity and Religious Science. But it concentrates on the people bringing the Vedas even as it recognizes the secularization of asanas and meditation.

I think I got quite a bit out of this book.

Robert

On Saturday I saw two movies in which a man in a restaurant offers a paper napkin to a woman to wipe her tears.

Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter* is about an abandoned rabbit and about the folly of treating despair with hope. It is a beautifully filmed and very well told story, and it is very dark.

While We're Young† is about something else, but I am too old to understand it. I liked, even respected some of it, but it is a movie best approached by middle class, artful young adults and middle aged people. There is a love story that is not badly presented. It may also ask the question whether documentaries have any duty to the truth, but that is probably more of an excuse for the development of the relationships.

Robert

Sunday took me in a different from usual direction, and I got to a bookstore I haven't been to in a couple of years just before closing. I didn't have time to browse closely. The wide spine of a paperback Library America Volume caught my eye, and so I have Crane, Prose & Poetry, a collection of the writings of Stephen Crane. I didn't know what of his I already have except to know that I have read in the past decade or so Maggie, a girl of the streets and The Red Badge of Courage. At a used book price I thought that this would assure me of having some of his work that I want.

Robert

David and Goliath leapt off the shelf at Costco yesterday. I don't find Malcolm Gladwell to be all knowing, but I do find him to be interesting. Standing up to bullies also is interesting to me, and that seems to be a big part of the thrust of this book.

Robert

Sounds interesting! I am not really drawn to this kind of book mixing anecdote and science, but I could try this one I think. There is a very good (in the sense of informative and balanced) LT review on the book page, with several links. I read the first one, a NYT review of What the Dog Saw which was also informative.

Furious 7* is a seriously bad movie. The script is bad, bad lines demonstrating wooden emotions. The story is not credible...how does the bad guy get his car to where the good guys had to parachute in? There is one provocative line, "You can't tell someone they love you." Two guys battling, Vin Diesel and Jason Statham, are about the least expressive actors I have every watched.

So this was a lot of fun. There was a C-130 that I didn't recognize as a C-130 despite a couple of thousand hours in the models I flew, and cars went out of the back of it backwards. One very expensive car leaps crashing through windows from upper story to upper story of buildings. A building topples; a parking garage caves in. And this can all be seen in IMAX or other large, high definition renditions.

Robert

>118 Mr.Durick: Sounds like fun! I used to love this kind of movie.

I don't think I could take too many of this kind of film, and I put it off a week not worried that it would no longer have been available on a giant screen. But from time to time they are a lot of fun.

It came with previews for a lot more in the way of action flicks. I don't know that any of them will be important for me.

Robert

The circumstances of Barny Noble's brick and mortar stores in my area offend me. I shop occasionally at the remaining store, but if I find that BN.COM has a book for less than the store I'll redirect my business to the web site.

So I had a coupon inspiring an order.

Pogue's Basics by David Pogue. This was on the shelf at the store. I am getting more and more frustrated by technology — I can no longer synchronize my Outlook calendar with my Android smart phone for example. I'm thinking of going back to paper for things that should be more manageable as software but aren't because Google, say, wants to be master of the universe. I hope that the author will point me in the right direction.

Film Worlds: A Philosophical Aesthetics of Cinema by Daniel Yacavone. I see that 'hermeneutical' and 'phenomenological' are used in a blurb on the back of the book, so maybe I shouldn't have bought it. But I am curious about what it is about a film that makes me engage with it, so I bought this to score free shipping.

Robert

American Veda sounds intriguing.

'Intriguing' might overstate the case, but it is interesting.

Robert

Guardian again but this time with the emphasis on France.

Robert

Friday night I finished Pogue's Basics by David Pogue. It offers a wide array of technical tips for using electronic devices. There are too many to quote them here; there may be too many for me to use them without the book at hand. They are interesting and there is one installati.on I will look up in the book before I undertake it. If ever I lose my phone I will use his procedure to hunt for it.

Saturday afternoon I sat through the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD screening of Cavelleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. I was sorry that I finished my coffee on the way to the show; I would have liked to have dozed off during the first. Important figures in the first talked about the great music and the long lyrical Italian lines in it, but I was bored. The second, on the other hand, had some real interest, and I could hear the music. For those who would like to see and hear for themselves they rerun Wednesday night.

Saturday evening I ran into a friend who handed over, without forewarning, a copy of Secret Ingredients, the New Yorker Book of Food and Drink edited by David Remnick. I thought I might already have a copy; he said, "Well, now you have two." I do have another copy, and I have even read at least chunks of it. But it won't hurt to have it around.

Robert

Three or four movies that I want to see are playing at the multiplex across town. I got there Saturday afternoon at the right time for Ex Machina*. I didn't see in any of the previews or reviews mention of the beautiful setting, done in Norway.

I've been trying since I saw it to think about whether the film gives us anything to think about; I think maybe it only pretends to. Still I liked the movie a lot. It gets some things wrong, at least in my opinion but maybe even more strongly under closer analysis...like where would she get her power outside her origin or why is it necessary to conflate good robotics with successful artificial intelligence. Still it has good intricacies and handles them well.

Robert

Running errands took me by the used book store. I found an NIV Holy Bible for a dollar, so I scooped it up in hopes, probably vain, of reading Isaiah. Someday I'll find one of my real Bibles.

There was a package by my front door when I got home. Awhile back I had an e-mail from someone I didn't know about something not quite comprehensible, so I deleted it. The package was from, if I recall correctly, the same person. It is a Blu Ray of the movie Gravity. The packaging is upside down. I think I won a sweepstakes which got rid of the faulty product.

Robert

Globe Theatre Julius Caesar* was scheduled to screen Wednesday afternoon across town. I was going to be in town anyway in the evening so I decided to risk their bumbling, and I got to see it. I like the Globe Theater productions and have from the first time I saw one although the set up has changed — there are no longer any interviews or back stage revelations.

Within the past couple of years I read the play at some, possibly minor, instigation and was not very impressed. I probably hadn't read it since ninth grade. Seeing it well performed I was impressed, not so much by the drama or characterization but a lot by the language (how things regardless of import were said well) and by the production. The staging was gloriously noisy and there was lots of color not least of which was the brown of the woodwork and a good bit of the costumes.

And they closed as with every Globe production I've seen with the whole cast dancing leaving me in good cheer to go back into the world.

Robert

A coupon led me to nibble at my wishlist, so I had two books in today's mail from Barny Noble.

The Sober Truth by Lance Dodes and Zachary Dodes. Addiction, alcoholism, obesity and possibly a few other things are so far nearly intractable health problems. Everybody has a final opinion; everybody comes up short. I hope to see how this comes up short but also to see how it informs the field.

Hidden Natural Histories: Trees by Noel Kingsbury. I like trees. Apparently the majority does not. We destroy our major natural resources. People in charge can't believe a tree should grow without being trimmed and maintained as a candidate for removal. I don't like those people; here's a book to stir my animosity.

Robert

The review I read of Avengers: Age of Ultron* was right — lots of colorful technical action and nothing to remember, a fungible bit of excitement. If you want to see the action, it will serve, although the story doesn't hold entirely together, and if you miss it there'll be others; it is not Gravity or Avatar.

I saw it in IMAX 3D. Because of what it is, I think that is the way to see it. I did, however, see what looked like some pasted on 3D in at least one scene, and the credits included 3D makers. I don't think there'd be much point in seeing this on a teevee.

Robert

My kids, in honor of my birthday/Mother's Day weekend took me to see this one. I thought it was an incredible amount of good fun and I realized that as much as I'd like to pretend otherwise - cause I am a grown up after all - I really do like watching stuff blow up! And fly ....

I had to point out to my kids that the dog did make it onto the rescue boat near the end.

We saw the first Avengers movie at the theatre, with a rather large-ish crowd and it was a lot of fun. It's still fun on the small screen, but not as much.

>129 Mr.Durick: As one who shares your dislike of those who can't accept trees for themselves, I had to look up Hidden Natural Histories: Trees. You are the only LT member with a copy, surprising since Noel Kingsbury is well regarded in the field. Yet another book to search out!

I looked up Noel Kingsbury, and I have a book by him that I got from the University of Chicago Press as free e-book of the month: Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding. I guess that moves it up in my TBR list.

>134 Mr.Durick: He looks more ready for Monday than I am.

That's apparently a stock photograph to color the article, but he looks pretty good, doesn't he?

Robert

he does. Very graceful.

The Saturday movie was Black Souls* an Italian revenge movie. Goats are slaughtered and people are shot. The local Italian consul went to one of the first screenings, but I missed it so I don't know what the official take on it is. The movie held my attention, but I can't tell why it might be interesting.

Robert

Nice to see you back here! I was beginning to worry.

>138 Mr.Durick: Reminds me of our backyard.

great picture.

Some natural tears they dropped but wiped them soon. The world was all before them where to choose their place of rest and providence their guide. They hand in hand with wandering steps and slow through Eden took their solitary way.

I have certainly not been allowed to rest in Eden, but what if Adam and Eve had not eaten fruit from the tree of knowledge and had been allowed to. What would their lives have been like in old age (presuming they were not immortal after all)? There is a glorious love story in the movie My Love, Don't Cross That River* that may, without any intent to do any such thing, show us.

The museum projectionist told us that the movie is a documentary. Some of the action, especially in the beginning, felt staged. Some of the Korean histrionics did not wear well. I think that nevertheless I may never have seen such a grand depiction of personal love and think that a lot of people could really like this film.

Robert

Good to see you back, Robert.

Nice seeing you back. (I miss your reviews of all these movies I can never get out to go see and otherwise might not know about )