A movie, a play, a lecture, and assorted chores, a.k.a. I'm not doing much better at titles than fic
In a twist of fate, or something, I only stayed for the first movie Friday night, Bes Vakit, and came home before Se, Jie (Lust, Caution)-"twist" because Se, Jie was the movie that made me want to sign up for the series to begin with. Even as I was walking from the center to the parking garage, part of me wanted to turn around and head back in. But I was really tired, and it was starting to snow, and it's a 40-minute drive home (not much in the grand scheme of things, but it's an unusual hike on Long Island to see a movie 25 miles away when you have everything you need in each town), and the movie wouldn't have ended until at least midnight, so I left. I'll just have to rent it, if I can find the uncut version. I watched SGA bleary-eyed when I got home and then slept 10 hours.
I enjoyed Bes Vakit (Times and Winds, Turkey, 2006, writ./dir. Reha Erdem), a.k.a. In Which Everyone Is Depressed Even Though The Country Around Them Is Beautiful. Slow pace. Not a bad thing; you settle right into it. Beautiful imagery that contrasted the claustrophobia and worn drabness of the Turkish village in which the story takes place with the open, vibrant, wild space around it: a mountain, the sea, the sky, the moon, the tip of the mosque spire, rutting animals.
The story follows four children through autumn into winter, the film itself structured by time of day, backwards: night, evening, afternoon, noon, morning, each division marked by the call to prayer. As you've probably guessed from my subtitle, these kids-about 12 years old, on the cusp of adulthood-don't lead happy lives; one is so frustrated with and disgusted by his sick father that he wants to kill him and spends much of his time plotting ways to do it, one feels trapped by having to take care of her baby brother and never being able to finish her studies, one's a goat herder subject to the villagers' corporal punishment because he's an orphan under communal "care," one has a crush on the beautiful schoolteacher and chafes under his father's preferential love for his younger brother. Aside from the orphan, the three children are cousins (I think); their fathers are brothers, one the imam of the village, and they undergo their own family struggles as their father picks his own favorites. I say "I think" because it was hard to keep the characters straight. I don't know if that was on purpose, to underscore how the village is a single extended family you can't escape, or if it was my fault, in which case, I'm pretending the former is true.
What I liked about the movie especially was its unrelenting bleakness. None of these kids can catch a break. They're trapped, and they don't even have dreams of living beyond the village to carry them forward; all they have to enjoy is the time they spend with each other on the mountain, gazing out over the precipice and practicing adulthood with cigarettes and roasting dead animals another man shot. They watch their parents fight and make love and shrink or shine under their own parents' attention; they watch people die and babies be born into this same narrow life; they watch as most of their hopes are dashed one after another, until, in one of the final shots, they're left crying in some mixture of frustration, confusion, and, still, impossibly and unwanted, love. There were many shots of the kids, who were pretty much all brooding insomniacs, napping during the day in deathlike poses, half-buried in leaves or hay or soil. You see as much of their backs as their faces.
I suppose it wasn't easy to sympathize with the characters, between the cinematography and the subject matter, but I did fall right in to the stories and felt their helplessness along with them. And it wasn't all as emo as I've made it sound. It was also funny and pretty and interesting. However, a woman off to my left made her displeasure with the movie quite clear, starting a few minutes before the movie even ended, when she and her husband had a stage-whispered conversation about whether the movie was over yet, it must be, thank God, and when the credits rolled, her volume rose: That was the worst movie I've ever seen! everyone hated each other! Sigh. Way to let the people around you who liked it enjoy the credits in peace.
Saturday was the last astronomy lecture of the season, this time on the life cycles and classifications of the sun and stars. I remembered most of it from college-oh, fond memories of the 11-year butterfly sunspot cycle and main sequence diagram-but the lecturer was the best we'd had all "semester," and it was a pleasure listening to his presentation, which went along at a fine clip (for a change). Afterwards, it was clear and dark enough out to really focus on Saturn in the 14-inch telescope upstairs; that may have been the sharpest image of Saturn I've ever seen, even though it still looked like someone cut out a planet-and-ring shape in a piece of black cardboard and back-lit it. Two of the moons were visible, too. It was an especially nice treat after the bizarre cloud cover we'd seen on our way over a couple of hours earlier, when the sky had been clear to the south, brown to the north, and slate gray-blue straight ahead. When we parked, we had a sudden burst of snow in 39-degree weather with the sun shining brightly.
On Sunday, we went to see The Seafarer in the city. Much fun! We somehow landed front-row seats with same-day tickets, and so we found ourselves an arm's length from David Morse on many occasions, since the tiny coal stove was situated at stage right directly in front of us and it was his character's job to kneel down and keep it stoked. On several occasions, I could have reached out and poked him in the butt. Fortunately, I have well-developed impulse control.
It was great. Not exactly what was advertised, but still great. Very funny, actually. The trailer and ads, and what I know of Conor McPherson, namely The Weir, made it sound like it would be two hours of five men sitting around a poker table uncovering secrets and playing for souls, but that was really only in the second act, with just one or two secrets and one soul; the rest was about fussy older brother Richard (Jim Norton, who deservedly won an Olivier for his performance back in London), who'd recently gone blind after an accident, and put-upon younger brother Sharky (David Morse, who is even larger on stage than when facing Hugh Laurie on TV), back from a chauffeuring job in the countryside for a little while over Christmas to take care of him, plus a couple of drunken acquaintances (Conleth Hill, who seemed at home in the role, and Sean Mahon, who was very, very attractive, please be in more things thank you) to stir things up. And a lot of alcohol. A lot. It was like a sixth character. And the Devil (Ciaran Hinds, whom everyone except me seems to know from Rome and Persuasion), who's out enjoying his special day on Earth among the humans on Christmas Eve. It seems the Devil has come to collect on a 20-year-old bet with Sharky; a game of cards, and the winner takes Sharky's soul.
It wasn't as tense or profound as the ads had implied, but we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, perhaps because the humor was so unexpected. The brothers' relationship was easy to identify with and also shifted as the play went on, or rather our understanding of it shifted as we learned more about them now and when they were growing up, which was nice; where we'd first sympathized with Sharky for being bossed around and unappreciated, we began to sympathize with Richard for being afraid and long-wronged and for trying to be happy on the holiday.
There was a bad moment where David Morse came in from the cold wearing a knit hat with a pom-pom and he looked like his own caricatures on capslock_house with his big ears and scowl, but everyone was laughing at him in the hat with his sour face anyway, so it was okay. We also laughed at a great line (I thought!) from the Devil when he made an frustrated remark about the body he'd possessed being left-handed, but hardly anyone else in the audience reacted. Weird. He fell a little flat for me in the beginning when he was announcing who he was to Sharky, who was at that point writhing on the floor in Devil-induced pain while the lights flickered, but he was better in Act Two, and had some really fantastic moments, including the very funny instances when he clutched his head and moaned in agony when two of the men sang "Ave Maria" and played hymns on the stereo, not because they sounded bad but because he couldn't stomach religion. Hee.
Altogether a good time, despite a slight neck cramp. It's definitely a play I'd recommend seeing up close, to see the actors' faces; they were acting as-closely? subtly?-as if they were being filmed, and it was a pleasure to watch; really added a depth of feeling to the performances that you wouldn't get from the back rows or from the exaggerated whole-body movements of a musical or somesuch. Not that they weren't using body language and their voices too. Just saying.
Dropped out of SGA_Genficathon, sigh. Still on board for Wilson_Fest, in theory, though Monday's deadline is looking highly unlikely. Then it's Get_House_Laid and RemixRedux08 in April. I think I've settled on the story I want to remix. Next step, deciding what to do with it.
Great Performances: James Taylor is on PBS. I think this was on in a Starbucks I went to with moonlash_cc in December, and I'm glad to have the chance to listen to it. He's showing a home video of the boy behind "Sweet Baby James" and making jokes about not liking kids.
Waiting for tomato-barley soup to cool and laundry to dry. Need to pack for Atlanta (which I just mistyped "Atlantis") tomorrow evening, since Thursday's Rock 'n' Roll and I'm leaving from work for the airport on Friday. Thank goodness for a half-day that day. It's like being hung with lead weights every day there lately.
I enjoyed Bes Vakit (Times and Winds, Turkey, 2006, writ./dir. Reha Erdem), a.k.a. In Which Everyone Is Depressed Even Though The Country Around Them Is Beautiful. Slow pace. Not a bad thing; you settle right into it. Beautiful imagery that contrasted the claustrophobia and worn drabness of the Turkish village in which the story takes place with the open, vibrant, wild space around it: a mountain, the sea, the sky, the moon, the tip of the mosque spire, rutting animals.
The story follows four children through autumn into winter, the film itself structured by time of day, backwards: night, evening, afternoon, noon, morning, each division marked by the call to prayer. As you've probably guessed from my subtitle, these kids-about 12 years old, on the cusp of adulthood-don't lead happy lives; one is so frustrated with and disgusted by his sick father that he wants to kill him and spends much of his time plotting ways to do it, one feels trapped by having to take care of her baby brother and never being able to finish her studies, one's a goat herder subject to the villagers' corporal punishment because he's an orphan under communal "care," one has a crush on the beautiful schoolteacher and chafes under his father's preferential love for his younger brother. Aside from the orphan, the three children are cousins (I think); their fathers are brothers, one the imam of the village, and they undergo their own family struggles as their father picks his own favorites. I say "I think" because it was hard to keep the characters straight. I don't know if that was on purpose, to underscore how the village is a single extended family you can't escape, or if it was my fault, in which case, I'm pretending the former is true.
What I liked about the movie especially was its unrelenting bleakness. None of these kids can catch a break. They're trapped, and they don't even have dreams of living beyond the village to carry them forward; all they have to enjoy is the time they spend with each other on the mountain, gazing out over the precipice and practicing adulthood with cigarettes and roasting dead animals another man shot. They watch their parents fight and make love and shrink or shine under their own parents' attention; they watch people die and babies be born into this same narrow life; they watch as most of their hopes are dashed one after another, until, in one of the final shots, they're left crying in some mixture of frustration, confusion, and, still, impossibly and unwanted, love. There were many shots of the kids, who were pretty much all brooding insomniacs, napping during the day in deathlike poses, half-buried in leaves or hay or soil. You see as much of their backs as their faces.
I suppose it wasn't easy to sympathize with the characters, between the cinematography and the subject matter, but I did fall right in to the stories and felt their helplessness along with them. And it wasn't all as emo as I've made it sound. It was also funny and pretty and interesting. However, a woman off to my left made her displeasure with the movie quite clear, starting a few minutes before the movie even ended, when she and her husband had a stage-whispered conversation about whether the movie was over yet, it must be, thank God, and when the credits rolled, her volume rose: That was the worst movie I've ever seen! everyone hated each other! Sigh. Way to let the people around you who liked it enjoy the credits in peace.
Saturday was the last astronomy lecture of the season, this time on the life cycles and classifications of the sun and stars. I remembered most of it from college-oh, fond memories of the 11-year butterfly sunspot cycle and main sequence diagram-but the lecturer was the best we'd had all "semester," and it was a pleasure listening to his presentation, which went along at a fine clip (for a change). Afterwards, it was clear and dark enough out to really focus on Saturn in the 14-inch telescope upstairs; that may have been the sharpest image of Saturn I've ever seen, even though it still looked like someone cut out a planet-and-ring shape in a piece of black cardboard and back-lit it. Two of the moons were visible, too. It was an especially nice treat after the bizarre cloud cover we'd seen on our way over a couple of hours earlier, when the sky had been clear to the south, brown to the north, and slate gray-blue straight ahead. When we parked, we had a sudden burst of snow in 39-degree weather with the sun shining brightly.
On Sunday, we went to see The Seafarer in the city. Much fun! We somehow landed front-row seats with same-day tickets, and so we found ourselves an arm's length from David Morse on many occasions, since the tiny coal stove was situated at stage right directly in front of us and it was his character's job to kneel down and keep it stoked. On several occasions, I could have reached out and poked him in the butt. Fortunately, I have well-developed impulse control.
It was great. Not exactly what was advertised, but still great. Very funny, actually. The trailer and ads, and what I know of Conor McPherson, namely The Weir, made it sound like it would be two hours of five men sitting around a poker table uncovering secrets and playing for souls, but that was really only in the second act, with just one or two secrets and one soul; the rest was about fussy older brother Richard (Jim Norton, who deservedly won an Olivier for his performance back in London), who'd recently gone blind after an accident, and put-upon younger brother Sharky (David Morse, who is even larger on stage than when facing Hugh Laurie on TV), back from a chauffeuring job in the countryside for a little while over Christmas to take care of him, plus a couple of drunken acquaintances (Conleth Hill, who seemed at home in the role, and Sean Mahon, who was very, very attractive, please be in more things thank you) to stir things up. And a lot of alcohol. A lot. It was like a sixth character. And the Devil (Ciaran Hinds, whom everyone except me seems to know from Rome and Persuasion), who's out enjoying his special day on Earth among the humans on Christmas Eve. It seems the Devil has come to collect on a 20-year-old bet with Sharky; a game of cards, and the winner takes Sharky's soul.
It wasn't as tense or profound as the ads had implied, but we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, perhaps because the humor was so unexpected. The brothers' relationship was easy to identify with and also shifted as the play went on, or rather our understanding of it shifted as we learned more about them now and when they were growing up, which was nice; where we'd first sympathized with Sharky for being bossed around and unappreciated, we began to sympathize with Richard for being afraid and long-wronged and for trying to be happy on the holiday.
There was a bad moment where David Morse came in from the cold wearing a knit hat with a pom-pom and he looked like his own caricatures on capslock_house with his big ears and scowl, but everyone was laughing at him in the hat with his sour face anyway, so it was okay. We also laughed at a great line (I thought!) from the Devil when he made an frustrated remark about the body he'd possessed being left-handed, but hardly anyone else in the audience reacted. Weird. He fell a little flat for me in the beginning when he was announcing who he was to Sharky, who was at that point writhing on the floor in Devil-induced pain while the lights flickered, but he was better in Act Two, and had some really fantastic moments, including the very funny instances when he clutched his head and moaned in agony when two of the men sang "Ave Maria" and played hymns on the stereo, not because they sounded bad but because he couldn't stomach religion. Hee.
Altogether a good time, despite a slight neck cramp. It's definitely a play I'd recommend seeing up close, to see the actors' faces; they were acting as-closely? subtly?-as if they were being filmed, and it was a pleasure to watch; really added a depth of feeling to the performances that you wouldn't get from the back rows or from the exaggerated whole-body movements of a musical or somesuch. Not that they weren't using body language and their voices too. Just saying.
Dropped out of SGA_Genficathon, sigh. Still on board for Wilson_Fest, in theory, though Monday's deadline is looking highly unlikely. Then it's Get_House_Laid and RemixRedux08 in April. I think I've settled on the story I want to remix. Next step, deciding what to do with it.
Great Performances: James Taylor is on PBS. I think this was on in a Starbucks I went to with moonlash_cc in December, and I'm glad to have the chance to listen to it. He's showing a home video of the boy behind "Sweet Baby James" and making jokes about not liking kids.
Waiting for tomato-barley soup to cool and laundry to dry. Need to pack for Atlanta (which I just mistyped "Atlantis") tomorrow evening, since Thursday's Rock 'n' Roll and I'm leaving from work for the airport on Friday. Thank goodness for a half-day that day. It's like being hung with lead weights every day there lately.