The Green Knight

 I ventured out to my local cineplex to see The Green Knight because I had heard about it on Pop Culture Happy Hour, and they said it was a gorgeous film and worth seeing. I ended up getting to the theater a half hour before showtime because I didn't check that day's listings, so I sat in the theater eating popcorn until the ads and previews started. There was not a single preview for a movie I wanted to see and most of them were disgusting in one way or another. The movie itself held my attention but left me feeling disappointed. The costumes were great. Some of the set pieces were interesting. But there was no through line that held my interest. The christian allegory of the source material was absent, so that took away motivation for Gawain and nothing was there to replace it. He's a happy-go-lucky jerk in the beginning and ends up being a sad jerk at the end. At no point do we see him engaged in any kind of moral struggle. The business with his own mother and the witches feels completely disconnected from the rest of the goings on, although it seems as if it's supposed to be central to the film. He staggers along between point A and point B, and has a series of encounters but the reason why he's persisting in going to meet his possible doom is not about honor, as he says at one point. He fails all the tests he meets along the way. The most interesting character (until it started talking) was the fox that joins him on his journey half-way through. The most despicable action comes after he has fled from his fate, when he steals his baby from its mother when he becomes the king's heir.  A lot of the disconnect for me was in the pacing. In other words, lots of style but short on story-telling, whether traditional or otherwise. I could see what seemed to be the connections but I just didn't care. There were several important moments where the dialogue sound was so muddy I could not understand what the characters were saying. I didn't recognize that Alicia Vikander was playing both his lover at the beginning and The Lady in the castle toward the end. I was just confused by why they looked alike. Two many questions are raised that are answered by "we never find out for sure." Too long at two hours. The entire sequence when he has become the king feels like an afterthought and the ending was just plain stupid. People over on letterboxd are all thrilled about it but it just made me tired. Oh, well. 

Mo' Meta Blues

 I'm reading Questlove's memoir Mo' Meta Blues right now. He's a great storyteller. I look forward to listening to the music he talks about. Here he is, nerding out about Marvin Gaye's song "What's Goin' On":

Ashfall

So, right after watching three documentaries on Pompeii, I watched a South Korean movie called Ashfall (in English) whose Korean title is BaekDu San (BakeDur mountain. The premise is that Baekdu erupts and a team must find a way to steal nuclear warheads from a North Korean facility, with the help of a North Korean double-agent, and then bring a detonator to a mine near the mountain to set off an explosion that will defuse the next big eruption. The movie has one action set-piece after another, starting with the eruption causing an earthquake in Seoul that knocks down a bunch of buildings while our hero, a bomb-deactivator specialist, drives through the falling rubble to try to return to his pregnant wife's side. The movie doesn't really care how we get from one set-piece to the next. Characters just arrive at their next destination in a very efficient way. There is a lot of buddy-antagonist by-play between our South Korean hero and the North Korean spy. They release him from prison so he can guide them to the nukes, but they struggle with him all the way to the end of the story. He is shot by the Chinese gangsters he was trying to use to escape with his daughter, just before they are in a firefight with Americans who are also getting in the way of the mission. The Americans have barged in and taken over the Korean president's HQ, and fire on our hero team, who fight back and fight them off. Never mind plausibility: one does not simply drive into Mordor,.But our heroes not only manage to get the detonator into the mine with five minutes to spare, one of them sacrifices himself while the other drives away and is not swallowed up by pyroclastic surges or crushed by flaming debris.  The pregnant wife is trapped on a bridge in her car when a tidal wave strikes it, but manages to get out of the car, swim her way out of the river without taking off her coat, and hop onto the bus she needed to catch to head to an American evacuation site in Incheon.  She also gives birth right at the moment the mountain is bombed into submission. All in all it was a fairly enjoyable if mindless disaster movie, with a Korean spin on familiar tropes.

I recognized each and every actor in the film from all my Korean drama viewing. Well-known actors were even in minor roles. The movie was a big box office success right before the pandemic hit.

Pompeii

 Today I went with my family to an exhibition at the Legion of Honor Museum in SF: Last Supper in Pompeii: From the Table to the Grave. The show included considerations of architecture and city life but was focused on the commerce, storage, preparation and consumption of food. On display were objects that were used in all these aspects--made of glass, metal, terracotta--- as well as fresco fragments, mosaics, statuary, even carbonised grains and fruits for sale, The god Bacchus, with his panther sidekick, was a particular favorite of the folks of Pompeii because it was a wine-producing region. 

Further Pompeii follow-up: this BBC documentary "Pompeii:The Last Day" gave a lot of work to re-enactors!

Artist Jennifer Marie Keller is generous with her walk-through of the show. She raises the issue of how we displayy human remains in such an exhibition; she would not have chosen to do so, whereas the musuem does display a resin cast of a woman's body as she was found in death. 

 

Here is scholar Mary Beard showing us life in Pompeii before the eruption:

And here is a guided tour of the site of Pompeii itself:

For All Mankind

For All Mankind is one of the best TV shows I've seen in a long time.  What if the first man on the moon was a Soviet cosmonaut? What if the Soviets put a woman on the moon first, and Nixon decided we had to do the same? What if there was a space race with moon bases? What happens when an arms race expands to space? The show combines the technological events of the space program with a focus on the families of the astronauts and the folks of NASA: the test pilot culture, Werner Von Braun, a young girl whose family crosses over from Mexico, high-ranking NASA officials living as closeted gay and lesbians, under scrutiny by the FBI. The cast and production are up to the task and the special effects are outstanding. The finale episode of season two was gripping and gut-wrenching. I can't wait for season three when we go to Mars in the '90s!

The costume designer Jill M. Ohanneson talks about designing for the late sixties and seventies settings of the show:

Podcast round-up

I have become a person who listens to a lot of podcasts. Most of the time, I listen to them when I am on my daily walks, or right before I go to sleep. Some podcasts have accompanied me during bouts of insomnia, although lately then just help lull me to sleep. I will sometimes wake up and listen to the second half of a podcast when I fell asleep in the middle of it. I decided to try to review my podcast subscription list because there are some that I subscribed to but that are no longer active so I forget I have them. Some podcasts I have also stopped listening to because I'm steering clear of stressful content. Others I subscribed to but just never seem to be in the mood to really listen to, so I should prune them from the list. There are more that I haven't included here because the list is too long, but these are the ones I have listened to lately.

 

Ask Me Another. A game show with funny people and musical cues. It's a great one for my longer walk because I can listen to an episode in the time it takes me to do the whole loop and it always makes me laugh.

Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! I've been listening to this one the longest. Back when my health was suffering, it was something that helped me get through some rough nights.

Go Fact Yourself A game show with two contestants who answer trivia questions about their "areas of expertise" and who then get to interact with a guest expert on their topic. I became a huge fan of Helen Hong from her appearances on Wait Wait, which led me to this show. I love it when the guests are star-struck by meeting someone connected to their passions. A good bedtime podcast because it makes me laugh and feel happy.

Radiolab. Before it was a podcast, it was a radio show I used to catch while I was in my car on my way to work. There's a big back catalogue I should explore.

99% Invisible. I started listening to this one when it first got going, but stopped for a long time. They are one of the podcasts that creates a page for each episode that includes the transcript and lots of extra nuggets of content, like this one on Japanese name stamps called hanko. I should explore their website.

Ologies with Alie Ward I am a huge fan of this show. It's nerd heaven--interviews with guests who are -ologists, experts in their fields. It's a great introduction to branches of science, and a chance to hear people who are really passionate about what they do talk about their trajectories as scientists. I am fond of Alie Ward's goofy interview style and her inclusion of questions from Patreon supporters in each episode.

Decoder Ring Willa Paskin and her crew create episodes on topics of curiosity to them like ice cream trucks, the Segway, or the stories behind the Jane Fonda workout craze, trying to figure out what they mean and why. Great storytelling. I am never disappointed.

Invisibilia An NPR podcast that looks at "invisible things" often linked to science or sociology. I have only listened to a few episodes but I like it and I plan to explore their back list. Like a lot of NPR podcasts, there is only a brief summary on the web page for each episode, which I find kind of disappointing.

50 Things That Made the Modern Economy (BBC) I just stumbled across this one and plan to make it my bedtime listening.

Arts and Ideas (BBC Radio) There are over 1000 episodes of this show! I just listened to the one on Rashomon, both the film and the stories it was based on. The format is a panel of four experts who bring different perspectives to a topic and it does a good job of bridging the expertise with the popular.

Bookmarks (writers on a book) a micropodcast, but very dear.

Overdue (books you've been meaning to read). I'm a big fan of Andrew and Craig and have fallen asleep to many of their discussions of books because I find their voices comforting. I wish I had a book buddy like this!

Always Take Notes  is for writers and about writing. I have yet to listen to it, but I should give it a shot.

Working a high-quality podcast with interviews with folks about their work, with an emphasis on creativity. Most recent episode I listened to had a conversation with a couple, James and Karla Murray, who are photographers of the streets of New York specifically of graffiti and storefronts. They finish each other's sentences in a totally charming way.

Today, Explained. I often find these really useful and compelling, when the topic is one I can stand to listen to without triggering anxiety.

The Daily is the New York Times daily podcast; like Today, Explained, it treats the big story of the day in some depth. A recent episode on the assassination of Haiti's president used in-depth reporting among the wives of the Colombian ex-soldiers who were hired by what they thought was a security firm and ended up enmeshed in a murder plot.

Recode Daily. Another Vox podcast, this one on tech.

 

Alt.Latino Another NPR favorite that I used to listen to on the radio when I found it randomly, but now can listen to as a planned experience. I have a Spotify playlist of songs I've discovered through this show. I'm very fond of Felix Contreras and his co-hosts.

Aria Code is a podcast by the Metropolitan Opera with WNYC that goes into an aria, its contexts and performances. I love it.

Fresh Air I enjoy this podcast but lament the fact that they don't have the interns pop up a page with informative links for each episode.

Deeply Human with Dessa. Dessa is a great host for this BBC podcast. I have not yet listened to all of its episodes, but I've liked the ones I've heard. I'm really glad I got to see Dessa perform live.

The Kitchen Sisters Present. Radio documentaries that deserve a better web presence than the one they have.

Overheard at National Geographic. Great shows about a vast array of topics. They have transcripts.

Who Shot Ya? defunct since 2020 but a long-running podcast on film with a pop-culture perspective.

Tom and Lorenzo's Pop Style Opinionfest I can't believe they already have 100 episodes! I am a faithful listener.

Pop Culture Happy Hour I listen to this one every weeknight. I've gotten some great ideas for things to watch from their conversations.

They Call Us Bruce co-hosts Jeff Yang and Phil Yu welcome guests to talk about Asian and Asian-American topics. A good mixture of entertainment and other topics.

Code Switch another NPR podcast that I sometimes have to skip because the topics are too anxiety-provoking for my broken brain to tolerate, but I'm always glad when I listen.

$6.99 Per Pound  no longer broadcasting, but two years of conversations from New York with folks in the hip hop, fashion, and young entrepreneurial worlds. Found this through one of the hosts who interviewed BTS and who is a Korean-American who speaks with a charming heavy Queens accent.

The Envelope discusses every Best Picture Oscar-winner with special episodes on award shows.

Pop Rocket I was a faithful listener of this weekly podcast and burned through a lot of their past episodes, and was so sad when it ended.

Lingthusiasm from within the field of linguistics. I should pay for the bonus episodes.

Accentricity about accents and the ways people talk. Scottish. Very educational.

The History of English Podcast a very leisurely stroll through the history of the English language and the history of the British Isles. Was my bedtime listening until I ran out of episodes.

The Allusionist is a podcast about language with Helen Zaltzman who is an original and charismatic host.

A Way with Words a very long-running radio show and podcast with two lovely hosts which takes questions from callers about words and expressions. Charming and sweet.

Lexicon Valley the eccentric John McWhorter is a linguistics professor who talks about language and plays his favorite music. The show was originally hosted by an abrasive and linguistically prejudiced host. McWhorter is taking his show to another space and the show has been rebranded as Spectacular Vernacular with new hosts.  Hmmm I wonder what's up with that.

Bay Curious Bay Area KQED radio documentaries that I need to explore in more depth.

Bird Note also a micropodcast, but about birds.

Home Cooking was a podcast Samin Nosrat hosted during the pandemic, with Hrishikesh Hirway.

The Splendid Table I used to listen to the original show from Minnesota back in the day. I enjoy Francis Lam, but I will always be fond of Lynne Rossetto Kaspar the original host.

Cooking by Ear only nine  episodes, but great radio.

Gastropod this one is waiting for exploration as well--food through science and history.

Land of the Giants three seasons on tech giants Amazon, Netflix, and Google and their impact on our lives. Really great series.

Bag Man is Rachel Maddow's series on Spiro Agnew, criminal and Vice-President.

In the Bubble With Andy Slavitt I have been following Andy Slavitt on Twitter for years because of his role in the Obama administration who was super-informative on policy and politics of the Affordable Care Act and the pandemic. I can't always listen to the episodes because they trigger anxiety, but from time to time I jump in.

The Osterholm Update is a podcast by epidemiologist extraordinaire Dr. Michael Osterholm, whose Center CIDRAP at UMN promotes research on infectious diseases and policy, not limited to COVID. So Minnesotan!

Summer of Soul

 Today I saw Summer of Soul (...or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised), directed by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson. It's also streaming on hulu, but I wanted to see it in the theater because it's a concert film and I wanted the full experience. It was wonderful. Drawing from footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts held over several summer weekends in 1969,  the film combines performances by an amazing array of Black artists with interviews with performers and with folks who attended the festival. Additional archival footage is used to provide historical context to the event. The film won the Grand Jury Prize and the Audience Award at the Sundance Festival. There were forty hours of footage so we can only imagine the incredible performances that could not be included. Highlights for me were Gladys Knight and the Pips, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples, Sly and the Family Stone, a 19-year-old Stevie Wonder playing the drums, interviews and archival footage of Charlayne Hunter-Gault. The images of the audience are one of the best parts of the film.

 

Great interview with Questlove: "It's Black joy."

Here's a round-table with producers and Questlove hosted by the National Museum of American History:

Easy Living

 Easy Living (1937) was written by Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen. Jean Arthur stars as a young woman whose fortunes change when a sable coat lands on her head while she's riding a double-decker bus. I'd seen it years ago and remembered it as funny and entertaining. It's full of pratfalls, mistaken identity, and a great sequence in an automat.

There are several clips of scenes filmed at an Automat on YouTube. At the height of their success, there were 46 in New York City. The last one closed in 1991. There are still automats in Japan and Amsterdam.

Ali and Ratu Ratu Queens

For cinema club, we watched an Indonesian movie called Ali and Ratu Ratu Queens.   A boy goes to New York to find his mother who had abandoned the family when he was five. He finds a place in a household of Indonesian women who are all working to save money to start a restaurant. The film is an ode to New York as a setting for a painful set of encounters between mother and son as she rejects and abandons him all over again. The found family trope and the unconvincing romance subplot provide some laughs and "heartwarming" moments, but mama has a new family now and doesn't want her unwelcome kid to spoil her new family. Ugh. Inconvenient details about visas and out-of-state tuition for the college happy ending are ignored. 

Ryan Murphy's Hollywood

Well, I am not the target audience for American Horror Show, but I did end up watching the Ryan Murphy series Hollywood after all, despite having heard it was not great. It was definitely entertaining in a trashy way: it's a fantasy "what if" story--what if Hollywood wasn't as bigoted as all that. On the one hand, it was bunk. On the other hand, wouldn't we have loved it if a story like this could have happened, where people defied prejudice and didn't get blackballed? Jim Parsons plays a loathsome agent who abuses everyone, but gets a redemption arc and tries to make amends to "Rock Hudson" and decides to make a movie that's a love story between two men. This made me realize that I don't know what the first movie was that portrayed a real love story between two men, before Brokeback Mountain. I found this list on imdb of films worldwide with LGBTQ+ themes and so many of them seem to be bound up in stereotypes, equating homosexuality with depravity, or punishing gay characters to conform to the Hays code, enforced until 1968.  This slideshow is more centered around how U.S. films and Hollywood represented LGBTQ+ themes or characters, although it doesn't mention underground films like Warhol or Kenneth Anger. I did watch The Celluloid Closet on the plane on my way to Spain.

The Marrying Kind

Number two in my Judy Holliday viewing is The Marrying Kind, another film by George Cukor. This was the follow-up to her Oscar-winning role in Born Yesterday, but she is not a ditzy dame in this movie. She and her husband, played by Aldo Ray, are ordinary folks with ordinary lives. As they recount their married lives to the judge who is hearing their divorce case, we see how their voice-over narration contrasts with  the events-- they whine about how awful things were, but we see them laughing and enjoying life. However, we also see how marriage is a trap for her, in the man's idea that he has the last word in his wife's life--when her former boss leaves her some money, he reacts as if she had cheated on him, yelling, blustering, storming out, and generally treating her as if she were dishonest and unfaithful. Earlier we'd seen how he'd gotten drunk at a party and flirted with another woman, then yelled at her. It's the double standard that gets in their way: he doesn't want her to work; he doesn't listen to her; he's doesn't recognize her autonomy. She isn't very effective at countering his behavior, and that's where both the comedy and the realism come in. I wish they'd gotten that divorce but the Hayes Code had them in separate beds and with a happy ending. I really wish that someone had posted a clip of the dream sequence where Aldo Ray, whose character is a postal worker, dreams that he is hauled out of bed by a conveyor belt that shunts him through the postal warehouse like a package.

Born Yesterday

Today I met up with folks who I've been seeing by zoom for months now in my cinema chat groups. We had lunch at Zut Cafe on 4th Street. It was great to get to know people a little better and to feel their presence.  When I got back home, I decided to watch a Judy Holliday comedy instead of the next in the neo-noir series on Criterion, so I watched Born Yesterday. She's wonderful. The best scene in the movie is the gin rummy game. 

 Here's the story of how she rescued the Broadway play when Jean Arthur dropped out at the last minute, and went on to win an Oscar for her role:

Here's the Criterion clip with an overview of her career:

Pose

 I'm in the middle of season two of Pose right now. I watched the first season, then took a break while I was in Spain. I had started it a while back but didn't get through the first episode because I found the tone a little jarring, but this time around I don't have a problem with the declamatory style of some of the actors, and I love the ballroom sequences. Let Trixie and Katya give you the run-down:

Decoding 'Despacito': An Oral History of Latin Music

 Leila Cobo, a music industry insider, has put together a fascinating overview of songs that represent important moments in Latin music (which the industry defines as music primarily in Spanish) from the past few decades. I found out about the book through The Current's Rock and Roll Book Club. The prologue mentions a Pérez Prado mambo as one such moment, but the book itself begins with José Feliciano's 'Feliz Navidad' as an example of a crossover hit that had lyrics in both English and Spanish. The format of the book is drawn from her interviews with the musical artists, producers, label executives, video directors, and others involved in the process of turning a song into a crossover hit. The songs include hits by José Feliciano • Los Tigres Del Norte • Julio Iglesias • Gloria Estefan and Miami Sound Machine • Willie Colón • Juan Luis Guerra • Selena • Los Del Río • Carlos Vives • Elvis Crespo • Ricky Martin • Santana • Shakira • Daddy Yankee • Marc Anthony • Enrique Iglesias with Descemer Bueno and Gente De Zona • Luis Fonsi with Daddy Yankee • J Balvin with Willy William • Rosalía 

While I'm not a fan of the Julio Iglesias song and I left Feliz Navidad out of the Spotify playlist I made from the book, I really enjoyed the trip down memory lane with some of these songs. 

Los Tigres del Norte, 'Contrabando y traición' --the bass is badass:

If this was their breakout hit, it's worth listening to "Somos Mas Americanos" for the full effect.

J Balvin and Willy William, "Mi gente":

 

Rosalía, 'Malamente' (tra tra):

Bossam: Steal the Fate soundtrack

 Just finished watching this satsifying Korean sageuk drama, with a great soundtrack. Some viewers were upset because there was no kiss for the OTP, just hugs and burning looks. But I thought the historical aspects were handled well, and the cast was good. Jung Il Woo was right for the lead part and the second lead actor did a great job in his role. 

This song in particular was very effective (although they didn't include the whole thing in the actual episodes)

Bossam: Steal the Fate OST  full album

artist: Hwang Eri "Song of Bau"

English translation (popgasa com)

잠시 내 말 좀 들어보소 Listen to me for a moment

가던 길 멈추고 이리 좀 오소 Stop your tracks and come here 

뭘 그리 아둥바둥 몸부림치오 Why are you trying so hard? 

가시나 가시나요 Are you leaving? 

날 두고 가시나요 Are you leaving me here? 

가고 또 오지는 못하리오 You can’t go and come back again 

한 굽이 넘어 두 굽이 One round, two rounds pass  

겨울이 가고 새 봄이 오네 Winter passes and new spring comes 

돌고 돌아 제자리요 It turns and turns, back to the same place  

가시나 가시나요 Are you leaving?

날 두고 가시나요 Are you leaving me here?  

가고 또 오지는 못하리오 You can’t go and come back again  

에헤라디아 흘러간다 Time is flowing 

두둥실 강물따라 흘러간다 Floating along the river, flowing  

에헤라디아 흘러간다 Time is flowing  

우리네 인생살이 Our lives are flowing 

잠시 내 말 좀 들어보소 Listen to me for a moment  

가던 길 멈추고 이리 좀 오소 Stop your tracks and come here 

뭘 그리 아등바등 몸부림치오 Why are you trying so hard?  

가시나 가시나요 Are you leaving?  

날 두고 가시나요 Are you leaving me here?

가고 또 오지는 못하리오 You can’t go and come back again 

한 굽이 넘어 두 굽이 One round, two rounds pass  

겨울이 가고 새봄이 오네 Winter passes and new spring comes  

돌고 돌아 제자리요 It turns and turns, back to the same place  

가시나 가시나요 Are you leaving? 

날 두고 가시나요 Are you leaving me here?  

가고 또 오지는 못하리오 You can’t go and come back again  

잠시 내 말 좀 들어보소 Listen to me for a moment 

가던 길 멈추고 이리 좀 오소 Stop your tracks and come here

돌고 돌아 늘 제자리요 It turns and turns, back to the same place

Taking Stock in July

I did this exercise a few months ago, so it's worth trying it again.

Making : still on hold. Not making anything these days.
Cooking : turkey and vegetables in the crock pot with Aleppo pepper

Drinking: coffee, again, instead of tea in the morning, after two weeks in Spain with coffee drinkers.
Reading: Roger Ebert's memoir Life Itself, and Decoding 'Despacito': An Oral History of Latin Music.
Wanting: to return to visiting museums again
Looking: watching movies for my discussion groups: Jennifer's Body, The Last Wave
Playing: I'd like to do some origami again after visiting the origami museum in Zaragoza
Deciding: to be grateful each and every day
Wishing: I lived closer to my daughter
Enjoying: a beer in the afternoon
Waiting: for a sense of freedom in not wearing a mask all the time
Liking: writing in this blog again!
Wondering: how I can chase the blues away
Loving: my girl
Pondering: how to get someone to volunteer to be Alanon secretary to replace me
Considering: when to go see the next movie in a theater
Buying: vegetables and fruit: gai lan and broccolini, cherries and watermelon
Watching: kdramas again
Hoping: to move out of this rut of stinking thinking
Marveling: at how many blessings I have
Cringing: I got nothing for this one
Needing: to be grounded
Questioning: how I can best handle my situation with my mom
Smelling: my meal cooking in the crock pot
Wearing: my cords
Following: the Decoder Ring podcast
Noticing: my craving for crunchy salty things
Knowing: I am making choices about taking care of myself
Thinking: it's hard to follow a train of thought
Admiring: people with gumption
Sorting: contemplating sorting my wardrobe to get rid of things with stains
Getting: these days I'm not acquiring anything
Bookmarking: meet me at Mike's, the blog of Pip Lincolne, whose idea of Taking Stock this is.
Coveting:Japanese snack subscription boxes like Bokksu
Disliking: my trashbag neighbors and their dog
Opening: ni idea
Giggling: Drag Race España
Feeling: a little bit down after my trip to Spain
Snacking: green beans
Hearing: lots of podcasts

Unorthodox

 I read the memoir Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman yesterday. What struck me was the way reading and books were something the author had to hide because learning and curiosity by girls were frowned upon, in a culture that made scholarly activity by boys the highest value. I know the book was made into a series on Netflix, with one of the actors, Shira Haas, who also starred in Shtisel. I will probably watch it soon, after I finish the drama I’m watching. I need to be in the right frame of mind for stories of oppression, even if the ending is an escape. 

UPDATE. I watched the four episodes of the series. It actually takes place after the book leaves off, when the protagonist, renamed Esty in the show, runs away from her marriage to Berlin, and is pursued by her husband and his unpleasant cousin. The show is more about how she leaves a culture where she is misunderstood and oppressed, and discovers music, freedom, and reunites with her mother in Berlin. The story ends before the struggle for custody over her as-yet-unborn child, so the emphasis is on self-discovery. Shira Haas gives a terrific performance. Several reviewers on Letterboxd commented on how unrealistically nice everyone was to her in Berlin, and I have to agree with that--it was rather like a fairy tale.

Jennifer's Body

 I hate horror movies, zombies, slasher films, scary movies. I have never watched Psycho, or Carrie, and I have no desire to see any of the horror classics. But I made an exception and watched Jennifer's Body because I've liked what Diablo Cody has done in the past, and because it's up next for my cinema discussion group. I still didn't like the horror elements but it was interesting to see how the movie goes against genre expectations. The victims are boys not girls and the monster is female not male. The primary motor of the film is the relationship between the two friends. The film was poorly marketed and lots of folks expected to see Megan Fox in a porny role, and didn't know what to make of the female friendship plot. Some viewers in the years since its release have connected with the scene in which the two friends kiss (one of many elements suggesting a queer romance). The depiction of a toxic BFF relationship is what the director Karyn Kusama and Cody had in mind, and the send-up of indie bands as villains delivers the real horror of the film. Cody, Kusama, and Fox have all talked about how painful the mismanaged publicity campaign and sexist backlash against their film was to them at the time. In fact, this piece appeared today about the film's reception, ten years later.

Here's a video essay on friendship and sisterhood that points to the teen girl horror genre that is Heathers and Mean Girls for context:

The Last Wave

 For our discussion group, I watched Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977). I saw it when it came out, and remember that I was really impressed by it, but didn't remember more than a few images of water and the sense of an unresolved mystery. The film begins with an inexplicable rain storm from a cloudless sky, followed by massive chunks of hail that break windows and wound a child. The entire opening sequence, of children taking shelter from a natural threat in a schoolhouse reminds us of The Birds. From that moment on, the constant rain in the film is ominous and unsettling. When water is discovered to be flooding a house, it seems to be an intrusion of the outside rain, but turns out it be an overflowing bathtub. Later, during yet another storm, trees come crashing through doors and windows. The boundary between inside and outside is transgressed. What kind of explanations is there for the rain of toads, the rain of oil? Are these plagues, omens? As the film explores the aboriginal ideas of dream time and premonitory dreams, the frontier between natural and supernatural dissolves. The final image of the film, of a huge wave, could be a premonition or the actual arrival of a tsunami, but either way the forces of nature will wipe away the urban world of the white Australian settlers in an apocalyptic cycle. 

One of the points of our discussion was that the film takes on the challenge of representing aboriginal ways of knowing as a mystery that the lawyer protagonist wants to solve, even as he is being forced to reckon with his own dreams as a form of knowledge. The film also portrays aboriginal culture as having a presence and a validity which Australian society tries to suppress and deny, and which is does not know. Both Burton the lawyer and Chris, one of his aboriginal clients, are mediators between the colonial structures of the modern white settler society and another way of apprehending reality through dreams, although where Burton's prophetic dream faculty comes from is only hinted at. Chris leads Burton to a cave beneath the sewers, but doesn't go in with him; they will not be allies in this struggle. Burton faces the last wave alone.

Here is an examination of the trailer that does a lovely job of explaining a lot about the movie:

David Mitchell, Utopia Avenue

 On my long long trip home from Spain, I read David Mitchell's novel Utopia Avenue. I've read most of his novels and enjoyed them. This is a novel about a (fictional) rock band in the late sixties, and is also about being an artist. It weaves in a story-line that he has developed in his other novels, which could be called supernatural or fantastical or science fictional. I was glad I had read the other novels first as this part of the book would have been less evocative without having first read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet or The Bone Clocks.  Here he is interviewed about the novel by Neil Gaiman:

Susan Orlean, The Library Book

On my trip I read The Library Book by Susan Orlean. It is about libraries and how wonderful they are, through the story of the fire in the Los Angeles Public Library in 1986. The man suspected of setting the fire was a chronic liar who gave so many different alibis, it convinced the arson investigators of his guilt. Yet they could never prove conclusively that he had done it, and he died of complications of AIDS with the case still unresolved. My favorite part of the book, which I really enjoyed, was the portraits of some of the head librarians of the past who were amazing characters. Here is Susan Orlean talking about her book:

 

And here is more about the fire itself.

Goya museum in Zaragoza

I have seen Goya's paintings in the Prado in Madrid, and I had seen most of his engravings as well. We made a visit to the Museo Goya in Zaragoza which houses almost his entire collection of engravings. It's in a beautiful Renassaince building and has sections about art in Aragón both before and after his work. There are only a few paintings but almost all the prints of Los Caprichos and the Tauromaquía as well as his series on the horrors of war. I couldn't look at all of them with equal attention because they're so intense, it was hard to stomach. The museum has a YouTube channel with short descriptive video clips on almost all the works in the museum, in French and English as well as Spanish. 

This lecture puts Goya's work in context:

Return

I got back from my trip to Spain last night. The whole return trip was an ordeal. I took a bus at 2AM from Zaragoza to the airport in Madrid, about three and a half hours. The entire time a very large person who was sitting next to me was sprawled all over me, asleep. I had to carry my backpack on my lap while this person leaned on me--my legs hurt. I arrived at the airport at 5:30 AM, then had to wait half an hour for the bus from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1, then had to wait two hours for the check-in location to open up. I waited with a huge group of Cubans who were each carting six or seven bags wrapped in plastic. So glad I only had my one little bag. Luckily my check-in line was not theirs! I answered all the security questions, showed my very expensive covid test papers and got my bag checked. Then it was a long hike to the next security line. Then another line to have the police check my passport while looking at me sternly. Spanish security felt much more real than the TSA theater which always makes me resentful that they don't do a better job. Then there was another long hike to the gate where I had to wait two more hours for the flight. I was glad there was a Starbucks automatic kiosk so I could get a mocha because I was hungry. The flight to JFK was uneventful.  At least the food was decent this time. I couldn't sleep so I read for almost the entire seven hours of the flight. Once in JFK, we had to retrieve our bags and go through customs. My Global Entry card paid off--I got to join the fast line and was through quickly, rechecked the bag, and then waited another three hours. I ended up at a bar having a beer and listening to a couple flirting loudly. When they left the guy next to me struck up a conversation and we ended up chatting about our kids and his wife's upcoming culinary school course in Barcelona. He picked up my tab--what a nice thing to do! More waiting. The flight was full and I had watched all the movies so I finished my book, and found myself still unable to sleep but nodding off and waking up over and over.  I'm so grateful that my brother-in-law came to pick me up so I didn't have to take BART back from SFO. The whole trip took over 24 hours and involved too much anxiety about lines and checkpoints, but the alternative would have been not having enough time between stages and being freaked out about missing a connection.  I won't say it wasn't worth it but it was so much more taxing than any previous trip I've ever made, more than the one on the way over. I really felt my age. I'm glad I went, but it was hard. There's another family wedding in the fall--I wonder how far along Spain will be with their vaccination efforts by then? It was interesting getting the news from Europe. We really are so fortunate that the Biden administration got vaccination efforts on track because it makes such a huge difference to feel safer. 

The wedding was wonderful. Being with my family was wonderful. I experienced so many memories of my previous times in Zaragoza over the years. I was able to see my daughter's grandparents one more time before I left. They are frail. He is hardly able to see or walk, and his mind wanders, but he was lucid and recognized me and he loves seeing his granddaughter. She is much diminished but still sharp. It is really hard for her to take care of him, but there are social workers who come to visit on weekdays to help take him out in his wheelchair or help with the grocery shopping, and Blas goes to see them every day. I hope the situation here at home evolves in a more positive way. I'm not looking forward to trying to deal with it in the coming weeks.

Origami museum in Zaragoza

 Today we visited the EscuelaMuseo del Origami de Zaragoza (EMOZ). In addition to a detailed history of paper folding in Asia and Europe, there were examples of many methods:

Zaragoza

 Vista desde la terraza.

Ruth Reichl, Garlic and Sapphires

I reread Ruth Reichl's memoir Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise. I had read it years ago and liked it, and when I found it in a Little Free Library box, I brought it back home again. It recounts her experience as the New York Times' restaurant reviewer. She had been at the LA Times and was reluctant to move back to New York (where she grew up) at first, but took on the challenge. When she realized that restaurants all over New York had her picture and were on the lookout for her visits, she started wearing wigs and creating characters so she could have anonymous dining experiences; early on she got to see what it was like to be poorly treated when staff perceived her to be an older woman on her own.

 

The book includes some reviews and recipes at the end of each chapter. Before this book she had already published Tender at the Bone, about her childhood and experiences with food growing up, and Comfort Me With Apples, about her early years as food writer and critic. She's an excellent writer, able to entertain and communicate so effectively about the experiences of cooking and eating. I will have to read her story of her ten years as editor Gourmet before the magazine was so stupidly closed down by Condé Nast. Here's a really great interview:

Legendary

 I finished watching the second season of the show Legendary on HBOMax. A reality competition show that pits ballroom houses against each other for a trophy and $100,000, it draws on the legacy of the documentary Paris Is Burning and the series Pose as mass media productions that draw on a culture that started as an underground phenomenon.  The show will end with its third season, and has been noteworthy for casting transgender actors in several roles. I love the voguing and runway performances in Legendary, and the opportunity to get a glimpse of the passions of the house members. The costumes, which are created around the themes for each episodes balls, can be really creative, and the design and make-up crews don't always get the credit they deserve. Each house is represented by five members, with a house mother or father, and four children. The houses themselves are much larger.  I'm less enthusiastic about the judging which can be erratic.The MC is Dashaun Wesley who is himself a voguer, and judge Leiomy Maldonado is someone I had watched perform on YouTube videos of her battles. Both of them were part of a voguing crew called "Vogue Evolution" that participated in America's Best Dance Crew.  While many are happy to see voguing and ballroom culture reach a wider audience, some have been critical of the way a reality competition reframes what happens in the balls, with more emphasis on dance and less on some of the other elements like runway or posing. And the participation of judges from outside the ballroom world has been criticized. Some feel that they aren't qualified to judge if they aren't themselves from the ballroom community. Others see them as participants who bring an outsider's perspective to the competition which has its own value. Each week there is a guest judge as well, and some have been better than others. Like any dance competition show on TV, including So You Think You Can Dance, or America's Best Dance Crew, what you see on TV isn't a faithful recreation of dance practices in their social or even competitive spaces, and show producers lean on tropes of personal stories to try to create fan interest in participants. But there is something about dance that can often transcend the limitations of such a format, so I end up watching the shows anyway (but I truly can't abide Dancing With the Stars because of the way it has become a rehabilitation vehicle for reprehensible characters).

Like many, I thought that season two's Haus of Tisci should not have gone home as soon as they did. When asked in an interview what she had learned during her season, Mama Jia of the House of Tisci said, "This is not ballroom. This is television."

To Spain

I am going to Spain for two weeks for a family visit. The last time I was there was in 2015 --parece mentira. Spain has just opened up for tourism from the US for people with vaccinations. There's conflicting information out there about the requirements for entry. Up until June 7, US citizens were barred, and you could only enter with a negative Covid test taken within 72 hours of departure. Now, supposedly, we can enter if we have proof of vaccination. But the flimsy little CDC card I have does not state in print the country of vaccination, so I've been flailing around, trying to find a site I could reach without a car that would give me test results within that period, but every place I found said it would send the test out to a lab and results would not be available for days. Finally, I found a site at SFO which will give the rapid test for a hefty fee. I also found a statement on the Delta Airlines site, (only available through the app I downloaded because Delta's web site is the absolute worst) that said it was a negative test OR proof of vaccination. That syncs up with what I understood from the Spanish Health department site. But I don't want to show up to JFK and be refused boarding by some random gate agent who is confused about the requirement, so I'm going to pay the fee and get the test. Anyway. I used my frequent flyer miles to get a discount on my airfare, and that about covers the cost of the Covid test. I'll have to go to the airport to get the test the day before, on BART, and then I'll go to my sister's place in Daly City because my flight leaves at the crack of dawn the next day, and it's a lot easier to get to the airport from her place than from mine. If all goes well, I'll have the test results as well as the document the Spanish government is requiring.  I'm trying really hard not to stress about all the ways this can go wrong. It's going to be a long trip since I'll essentially have to start the day before.

We were supposed to go to France and Spain last May and we all know how that worked out. I am sitting on a coupon for a flight with United and another one with Alaska Airlines from trips I had to cancel last year. When the government gave us all Covid money, I broke even on the airfare expenditures. For this flight,  I was not able to use those coupons because I'm flying Delta in order to get on the same flight as my daughter and her dad. We'll convene at the boarding area of JFK and arrive in Madrid the next morning. From there, we have train tickets to Zaragoza. I haven't been to Spain for years now, and my daughter's grandparents are getting very frail. This will probably be the last time I'll get to see them so I really want to go. Her cousin is getting married and I want to be there. Things in Spain are still semi-locked down, so I understand that this trip will not involve any tourism, just hanging out with family, but that is fine with me.

The Disciple

As a follow-up to The Cloud-Capped Star, which had so much music, some of us decided to watch The Disciple on Netflix, a film in Marathi directed by Chaitanya Tamhane. It's about a singer of North Indian classical music who is a purist about his art but whose talent doesn't qutie live up to his own high standards. The measured pace of the film allows tension to develop between his ascetic ideals and moments of musical connection and the harsh realities of practice, performance, lessons, self-doubt, impatience, jealousy: what to wear to a performance, caring for his teacher's aching joints, a sore throat before a concert, mean comments on a video, a music historian's contempt for his masters.

A recurring motif in the film is the singer riding his motorbike through the streets while listening to the taped lectures of Maai, a revered singer whose impossible standards he holds over himself. The film manages to show the motorbike alone on the road as if in a dream, and these sequences are hypnotic counterpoints to the inventory of insecurities he endures as a student, as a performer, and finally as an entrepreneur attempting to preserve North Indian classical music with a production company. The last sequence shows the singer with a wife and child on a train, as a busker sings in the aisle; the music hasn't disappeared but it's heard in completely new contexts. If he wasn't able to reach the heights of his youthful ideals, he has made a life with his music and beyond his music. That has to be enough. 

    There are quite a few musical performance set-pieces in the film. I wish I knew more about the music iself., but I appreciated the opportunity to get a glimpse of that world. I lived with a singer (in the Western classical tradition) for a while. I thought of him as I watched this movie. He worked incredibly hard and was very talented. But I got a back seat view of just how difficult it is to make it as a singer of any kind. It's not enough to be good; you have to be great. It's not enough to work hard; you have to have luck, connections, incredible persistence, an entourage of agent, manager, and probably a partner who picks up your tuxedo at the cleaners. You have to make so many sacrifices. There's no money in it for most. You may end up singing or teaching, but very few make a living as performers, and even fewer reach an audience that will consecrate their talent. My friend ended up singing for free in small regional productions, sang in a major opera chorus, and eventually giving voice lessons, but the elusive goal of getting hired in Europe to start a career never worked out. It's hard to adjust one's expectations and ambition to these limits. The Disciple really communicated the love and anguish of that vocation so well.

The Cloud-Capped Star

For cinema club tomorrow, we are watching The Cloud-Capped Star (Meghe Dhaka Tara), directed by Ritwik Ghatak in 1960, is set during the aftermath of the partition of Bengal, an event that marked the director's life and work. A woman sacrifices herself for her ungrateful family as they struggle with the gap between the middle-class expectations of education and their poverty. Nita works to support her refugee family while the rest of them badger her for money every time she gets paid. The oldest son doesn't work because of his musical ambitions, and is constantly begging for money. The younger son wants new cleats for soccer; he quits school to work in a factory that wants him to play on its soccer team, but suffers a work accident. The younger sister steals Nita's boyfriend, whom she has also been supporting. The mother nags and chides. The father has had an accident that prevents him from working, but is also shown to be willing to overlook his daughter's plight. Nita works herself to the bone, coming down with TB. Eventually, though, the oldest has become a successful musical artist and is able to help out his family, but it is too late for Nita.  Filmed in expressionist black-and-white, the movie uses sound, music, and musical performances in ways that are both obviously meaningful to the uninformed viewer, and also deeply rooted in Indian musical traditions in ways that benefit from explanation. 

 

He also makes great use of natural sounds--birds, the train, sounds of cooking--but also symbolic sounds like the cracking of a whip, as at the end of this song.

Bicycle by RM

It's June, so it's time for the annual BTS FESTA celebration, two weeks of music, photos, and a concert called MUSTER to celebrate their debut. Last year I bought a ticket to the online concert (which you have to watch live in the middle of the night in my time zone) only to discover that my laptop's OS is too old to support the stream. I ended up having to watch it on my phone, not optimal. So this year I think I'll reluctantly skip the concert. This is the eighth year, and we've already received some great photos. Today RM released a song on Soundcloud called Bicycle, and it's very much in the vein of his solo mixtape mono. The art is by Moon Sungsic.   

If this song were to be released on a paid service like iTunes or Spotify, we'd blow it up, but it's a gift to us for free. A person I follow on Twitter made this great Soundcloud playlist: BTS for Healing

Vincenzo

Finished my Game of Thrones watch/rewatch. I had only seen the first four seasons, so the second half was only vaguely familiar to me because of all the gossip and chat about it when it first aired. I was not as offended by the final season as some, probably because I was just not that invested in the characters to begin with. 

Now I'm watching Vincenzo, a kdrama on that was apparently a big hit on Netflix. It was originally broadcast on Korean cable. This means it can be a little edgier than regular broadcast TV dramas in its use of violence. It is an odd mix of regular kdrama tropes, like the "truck of doom" as murder weapon, and a more international framework that brings guns into the story. It uses the usual kdrama set-up of eeevil chaebol/prosecutor corruption/psycho killer vs. plucky found family surrounding the OTP, but the male lead, played by Song Joong-Ki, is supposed to be a Mafia consigliere who was adopted as a child in Italy. He has blood on his hands, and is shown as more effective in punishing the bad guys through dirty means than the institutions of law and justice which are all crooked. It is interesting to see how the drama uses over-the-top humor to leaven the idea that the protagonist is just as bad as his enemies since they are all murderers. We have lots of shows in the U.S. with amoral protagonists, but it's really unusual for a Korean drama to bring the cynical revenge stories so common in Korean movies to  a TV series since those usually include a moralizing punishment or death. After all, you still can't show characters openly smoking on Korean TV, so the show goes through all kinds of contortions to show characters about to smoke. The moment where Vincenzo is shown holding a smoking cigarette is the first time I've seen the main lead actually light up even though he still isn't shown inhaling. Yet the same series can show all kinds of sadistic violence. 

The Italian word 'consigliere' is misheard as the Korean pronunciation of Corn Salad:

The Ties That Bind

 The Ties That Bind is a film by Su Friedrich in which she interviews her mother about her experiences growing up in Nazi Germany and during WWII. Her mother recounts how she was not allowed to go to the university and was taken from her home and forced to work by the Nazis because she did not join the youth group. She also had experiences of Allied bombing campaigns, and of having her house trashed by the occupying American forces after the surrender. The mother's voice-over narration accompanies archival footage of Germany along with footage of the director's own experiences with protest and documentation of pro-Nazi groups in the U.S. in the mid-eighties. The images of her mother are not conventional documentary close-ups of her face but rather glimpses of her feet, her arms, her shoulders, sometimes her whole body as she spends time in the water at a beach on a lake. Friedrich's questions to her mother are not heard but are scratched words on the film itself.

Blogging again

I've been making an effort to maintain my commitment to writing in the blog every day. OK, every day-ish. But it's a struggle some times. Who am I writing to? I miss the feeling of blogging as a conversation, when I had comments and relationships with other bloggers, when I had the sense that I was talking to people. How did that even happen? I don't really remember.

Almost none of the bloggers I first became attached to as a reader, back in 2006 or so, have blogs any longer. Most just stopped: one writer I adore is mostly on Twitter these days; another migrated her activity to a Flickr photostream and now I no longer remember the name she was using so I can't even look her up. To be honest, I was more of a lurker/reader than an interlocutor, but I read many blogs faithfully, commented on some, and felt I "knew" the folks who shared something about their lives. I appreciated the way people were able to create conversations. Some spaces had such healthy comment sections that I learned a lot from them. I think the kind of blogging I am remembering was personal or confessional, even when it was academic or about a theme, not a substitute for journalism or marketing, but a place where you encountered a voice. And in the beginning, the kind of writing and publishing activity that was academic blogging was entwined with concerns about anonymity and publicity, especially as we academics negotiated our semi-public personae in our forays into digital teaching spaces.  

Some of the changes in blogging happened because of money--when bloggers were able to monetize their blogs, what they did changed as a result of the pressures of writing for advertising. Some single-topic bloggers got a book deal, others became paid consultants. A "successful" blog was the goal, and readership or subscribers were leveraged into ad revenues.  The proliferation of platforms also led to a fragmentation of connections. Now a lot of that conversational energy animates social media, where writing a short personal essay is not the goal. A subset of bloggers has migrated to Instagram where the impulse is to put out aspirational content; others are (still) on the evil Facebook, or vlogging at YouTube, or podcasting. Some changes in blogging happened when platforms like Tumblr or Livejournal were sold to companies that gutted them.  Maybe the short personal essay on Medium is where some of that confessional energy has gone, and some survives in the form of a personal newsletter and link round-up by subscription.

Who are the audiences? So much of what is published about blogging today treats audience as the target market for a brand. Blogging as a form of journaling isn't about building a brand. I know at least some of my posting here is a way to take notes on the things I learn, or to embed YouTube videos about the movies I watched, so in that sense the audience is me. If there's no uptake for one's personal ramblings, why write in a blog as opposed to a notebook at the breakfast table? Maybe because writing in a journal these days feels a lot like whining while writing in the blog forces me to do more than blurt.

The Road Home

 For the Asian/Asian-American cinema chat club, we watched The Road Home (1999) directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Zhang Ziyi in her screen debut. A gorgeous film, it frames the love story of a village girl and the new schoolteacher with the story of how their son returns after the man's death and tries to satisfy his mother's demand for a traditional funeral procession, in which people would carry the coffin from the hospital back to the village. Because so many young people have left to work in the city, it seems there won't be enough to carry out her wishes, so the son attempts to hire men from a neighboring town. The black-and-white present-day tale, a snapshot of a society in transition and in which the old ways are being abandoned,  lovingly frames the son's narration of his mother and father's courtship, filmed in color. When a new teacher comes to the village, the two young people see each other and are enamored without words. She woos him with food; he gives her a hair clip--so chaste! In a social world of arranged marriages, theirs is a love match. Through the materiality of daily life in a pre-modern rural village, Zhang evokes values that he seems to want his viewers to recall, just as he shows how the villagers will return for the burial procession out of respect for their former teacher. But is this just nostalgia for village rural life, or should we also notice that he portrays a relationship that stands in contrast to the norms of village life for being the result of the woman's desire, initiative, and stubbornness?

Barely have the two managed to acknowledge their interest in each other when they are separated, as he is called back to the city. Although no clear explanation is given, it is likely that it is for political reasons that he is first called back, and then punished for two years because he tried to return to the village when he heard she fell ill waiting for him in the snow. But he does return, they marry, and we see how her devotion to him after his death is as fierce and stubborn as was her determination to make sure he noticed her fetching water from the well near the school. 

You can either see this as a pure and simple love story as do most of the reviewers on Letterboxd, or as nostalgic schmalz, as do a few cynics (including one of my chat group colleagues). Or both. Sometimes we just want our pure and simple beautifully filmed schmalz.

Listening to: Missing Richard Simmons

 Somehow I stumbled upon the podcast series Missing Richard Simmons and ended up listening to all the episodes at once instead of getting out of bed. It's a investigative documentary type of thing. A television producer, Dan Taberski, who used to attend Richard Simmons' exercise class in Beverly Hills, and socialized with him for a while, is as baffled as everyone else when Simmons stops coming to his class and stops communicating with (almost) everyone, refusing to respond to inquiries of any kind as to whether or not he is OK. On the one hand, people should have the right to make their own decisions about how they engage with the world. On the other hand, Simmons had been an inspiring and deeply engaged mentor to lots of people for years, and when he suddenly cut off all contact and stopped appearing in public in any way, after years of boisterous presence on TV and in a wide range of arenas, it was normal for folks to be concerned for his welfare. His silence was so diametrically opposed to the way he lived his life for decades. Over the course of the podcast's episodes, we hear how Simmons helped people who faced great challenges in their relationship to their weight; not only through his videos, classes, and advocacy, often he would call people every week, counseling them for free and aiding them in making the changes they wanted to make. It's likely that he just reached a level of burnout, and applied the same ferocious determination to his abrupt retirement as he did to everything else he did: losing his own weight after a childhood of being bullied; becoming successful and wealthy with his studios, his products, his weight-loss cruises; making dozens of performance videos that he posted on social media. At the end of the podcast, Simmons continued to refuse to respond to almost every inquiry, but a few people with whom he remained in contact did share that he is OK. 

The podcast doesn't spend much time on speculation about Simmons' sexuality or the lawsuit he filed against tabloids that claimed he disappeared because he was transitioning. Maybe he is just tired of all the noise.

Saving Face

 Tonight one of my cinema chat groups is going to talk about the Alice Wu film Saving Face (2004). It was her first film and received a lot of critical acclaim for a small independent feature. It was the first Hollywood movie centered on Chinese-Americans since The Joy Luck Club--amazing. Much of the story is drawn from Wu's own experience of coming out to her mother (who rejected her at first but came to a reconciliation after some years of estrangement).It's a sweet rom-com, with dialogue in both Mandarin and English, and a great New York setting in Flushing.

In the film, the main character, a doctor named Wil, finds herself living with her mother, a widow who has gotten pregnant at 48 and who refuses to tell anyone who the father is. (I have to say that the idea of having a baby at 48 made me tired. I was late enough having mine at 37!)  Wil is also beginning a relationship with Vivian, a dancer who is part of her extended Chinese community. Wil is not out to her family and we see how Vivian is impatient with her for not being open. But when Wil finally tells her mother she's gay (although her mother already had reason to know) her mother responds by saying "I'm not a bad mother. My daughter is not gay." The denial is devastating. Everyone's experience of coming out is unique, and the stakes are high if you might lose your primary family connection. I was a little impatient with Vivian's lack of empathy although I understood her feelings.

I did like how the trope of rushing to the airport to stop the loved one from leaving is a failure. You can't just stop an airport. But there is a happy ending for both the mother (whose lover turns out to be a much younger very handsome man) and for Wil and Vivian.

Daebak Realty/Sell Your Haunted House

 To take a break from my Game of Thrones marathon (I'm midway through season four, which is about how far I got when I watched it the first time) I just binge-watched a Korean drama called Daebak Realty, with the alternative title of Sell Your Haunted House. Ten of the sixteen episodes have aired so far, and I watched all ten over the last few days. The premise is that the protagonist, Hong Ji A (played by Jang Nara)  is a shaman who performs exorcisms to get rid of ghosts that are haunting real estate properties and preventing them from being sold, or lowering the property value. To perform an exorcism, she needs a medium as an assistant, or"psychic"--a young man who is a virgin (explained as: hasn't mixed his yang with yin!) who can be possessed by the spirit. The spirit is trapped in the medium's body and  the exorcist-shaman then stabs him with a special magical needle containing a talisman with the spirit's name on it, thus releasing the spirit. A side-effect is that the spirit's memories and habits are passed on to the shaman, leaving a huge emotional residue. In this framework, we learn that our exorcist is living in a house haunted by her mother's spirit. Brusque, ill-tempered, dressing only in black, Ji A has shut down after years of emotional toil. Her mother was a shaman who died twenty years earlier, apparently in a exorcism gone wrong, when Ji A was a girl. Ji A can see her, as she can see other spirits, but has not been successful in finding a psychic strong enough to exorcise her mother's spirit. 

The story begins when a con man, Oh In Bum, gets tangled up in one of her jobs and they discover that he is a strong medium who can assist her in her work. Each episode has a "spirit of the week" while the over-arching mystery is how Hong Ji A's mother's death is related to Oh In Bum's uncle's death, and how both are related to powerful and crooked developers who use violence to take over properties; they've been trying to dislodge Ji A from her home, Daebak Realty, but she refuses to sell because her mother's spirit is attached. In Bum proves to be such a strong medium that he absorbs the spirits' memories, rather than Ji A, and their shared experience creates a strong bond between them.

The attention to the details of the exorcism rituals, the great casting of guest actors for the weekly spirit stories and the secondary roles, and the charisma of the two lead actors, have made it a good watch. The relationship between the two main characters is complicated and evolves as they discover more and more about how their pasts are connected. A running gag is how her exorcisms require so much energy that she eats gargantuan amounts of food.  After so many recent drama disappointments (even good actors can't save a poor script), I'm glad to have found one that combines its supernatural elements with believable psychological portrayals, and that is not about a serial killer.

The other drama I am watching is called Doom At Your Service, and also has a supernatural twist. It's two main stars are super popular but I am watching for one of my favorite actors, Lee Soo Hyuk. 

OK, back to Game of Thrones!

Battle at Versailles

Since there is a new show about the designer Halston, it's time to revisit the "Battle At Versailles" from 1973, a moment in fashion history, when French and American designers came together for a show to raise money for renovations to Versailles. It became a kind of face-off, and the American designers pulled off a stunning display of energy and innovation: Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Anne Klein, Halston and Stephen Burrows. The African-American models lit up the show. For me, Burrows is the revelation:

 

Soleil O

 For cinema club today* I watched Soleil O (1970) by director Med Hondo. Fifty years after it was screened at Cannes, it was restored as part of a group of 50 African films by Martin Scorsese's World Cinema initiative, and issued by the Criterion Collection, allowing it to be seen by a new audience. Hondo worked as an actor, founded a theater company that produced works by black authors, and directed several films. In France, he earned money and was well-known as the dubbed voice of black actors such as Eddie Murphy, Morgan Freeman, and others. Early on, he used some of the money earned by dubbing to finance his films. I'm glad to know that he was able to participate in many screenings of the restored Soleil O and see audiences' reactions to his work.

*well, actually it turns out it's for next week. Did my homework early!

Watching: Search Party

I hesitated to start Search Party on HBO. Did I want to watch a show about awful people doing horrible things? Wasn't that why I stopped watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills? But I listened to the folks on NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour get all enthusiastic about it, and that was enough to get me to give it a shot. So now I've watched the third of four seasons and I'm stopping here.