Over at the DG, I review "Star Trek Into Darkness."
Here's an excerpt:
"I love Spock.
These new 'Star Trek' films have their flaws, but my love of Spock makes it easier for me to ignore them. Sure, I like the rest of the U.S.S. Enterprise’s crew members, but Spock is my favorite. Whenever he wasn’t on the screen, I was like, 'Where is Spock?' And then I would start noticing the flaws of 'Star Trek Into Darkness.'
'Star Trek Into Darkness' has a slam-bang opening that finds the Enterprise on a primitive planet set to be a destroyed by a volcano; Spock (Zachary Quinto) manages to save the planet by detonating some sort of cold fusion device, but in the rescue mission that ensues, Capt. James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) chooses to violate the Prime Directive, which forbids interfering with developing cultures, and save Spock’s life. As a result, he loses command of his ship. However, he regains it after a rogue Starfleet agent named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) bombs an agency building and nearly kills the entire Starfleet leadership team when the group meets to discuss how to respond to the attack. Kirk initially vows to hunt down Harrison and kill him, but is eventually convinced to arrest him and bring him in alive so that he can stand trial. Naturally, things do not go according to plan."
Click here to read the whole thing.
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The Great Gatsby (2013) ***
Crazy People (1990) ***
The Devil, Probably (1977) ***
The Ballad of Narayama (1958) ***1/2
The Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (1999) ***1/2
Dinner for Schmucks (2010) ***
The Big Blue (1988) **1/2
Over at the DG, I offer some thoughts on the NSA and whether we should trust people in charge of a vast surveillance network.
Here's an excerpt:
"At a wedding years ago, I met a young man who worked at the National Security Agency. He was a groomsman and I was a bridesmaid, and we were spending a lot of time together at various events.
'I hear you work at the NSA,' I said, in an effort to make small talk.
The young man frowned.'I really wish you hadn’t heard that,' he said. 'I’m afraid I can’t talk about it.'
I learned two things from this conversation: People who work for the NSA are highly secretive, and they do not regard 'So what do you do?' as a benign question. Of course, the young man’s evasiveness only made me more curious about the NSA. He was a nice guy, and I enjoyed hanging out with him. But I wondered about his job. What did it entail? Would I disapprove of it?
A few years ago, a mutual friend jokingly suggested I marry the young man, since we’re both single. I wrinkled my nose. 'I’m not sure I approve of his line of work,' I said. 'Whatever it is.'
The NSA has been in the news a lot lately."
Click here to read the whole thing.
I decided to read the 2011 Nicholson Baker novel "House of Holes" out of curiosity.
Baker is a well-regarded writer, which is why "House of Holes" was widely reviewed and discussed, despite being an explicitly sexual, pornographic work. People who wouldn't be caught dead reading "50 Shades of Grey" felt comfortable reading "House of Holes," because it is a work of literature. How do I know this? Because I'm one of those people.
Anyway, I've never read anything like "House of Holes." It's surreal and fanciful and very, very dirty. The plot concerns the House of Holes, a sort of sexual spa where guests can indulge their every fantasy and desire, as long as they abide by arbitrary rules that are enforced by the woman who runs the place, Lila. The book is more of a series of vignettes than a cohesive story, which might explain with the book is enjoyable, but never quite seems to build into a meaningful whole. When I started reading "House of Holes," I thought it was hilarious and brilliant, but even at a trim 260-plus pages it felt long: Perhaps my appetite for sexual explicit, loosely connected vignettes just isn't that vast. "House of Holes" is never boring, but the novelty does wear off.
I'm not a big fan of Tim Tebow.
But the football team I root for, the New England Patriots, just signed him.
Can I still make fun of him, or do I have to stop?
Over at the DG, I ponder this questions.
Click here to read more.
Well, they're reuniting for three shows far away from me.
But since Tommy Stinson lives in Hudson, maybe one day they'll play a show near me. I can dream, can't I?
Over at the DG, I review the new Noah Baumbach film "Frances Ha."
Here's an excerpt:
"The films of Noah Baumbach often find characters at unsettled moments in their lives.
His brilliant debut, 1995’s 'Kicking and Screaming,' focused on a group of directionless friends in the year following their college graduation. His 2010 film 'Greenberg' cast its lens on an abrasive middle-aged man who moves home to Los Angeles to housesit for his brother and winds up reuniting with and alienating his old friends. Baumbach’s latest film, the extremely enjoyable 'Frances Ha,' tells the story of a young woman who just can’t seem to grow up and get her act together, even though her friends are making the transition to adulthood and leaving her behind.
'Frances Ha' is filmed in lustrous black-and-white, and its fluidity, attention to young adults and sense of joy and heartache recall the films of the French New Wave. But the movie is also clearly influenced by the low-budget American independent films that fall into the so-called mumblecore subgenre. These movies often focus on the dysfunctional romantic lives and career dissatisfaction of aimless young adults. At their best, they have a blunt honesty and sexual frankness that tends to be lacking from more mainstream films; at their worst, they are poorly shot and ugly. It’s as if Baumbach watched these films and thought, 'I can make a better mumblecore film,' rolled up his sleeves and went to work."
Click here to read the whole thing.
Over at the DG, I list the summer concerts I'm excited about.
Click here to see what they are.
Over at the DG, my colleague Margaret Hartley writes about gardening and living without pesticides in her column Greenpoint.
Here's an excerpt:
"We live in a hilly place, naturally forested enough that an unmowed field will turn to brush, then pines, then mixed woods within a decade.
Where we live, you have to work hard to keep a field. My husband does some of that work, haying some of the little fields around us. That gives us some fodder for our animals and helps the neighbors keep some land from growing to forest.
This place is not considered good agricultural land, but it’s ideal for us. In fact, we moved to the Adirondack foothills on purpose to garden, just because it’s not prime for agriculture."
Click here to read the whole thing.
Over at the DG, I humbly suggest that it's OK to be friends with the people you work with.
Here's an excerpt:
"I used to hang out with a colleague who didn’t believe in forming close friendships with the people she worked with.
'We can’t really be friends,' she once told me, during a day spent sailing and picnicking. 'At least, not good friends. We work together.'
I didn’t really know what to say to this.
For one thing, it seemed like the sort of thought you might just keep to yourself. Even if it was true, why point it out? But it was also the sort of comment that made me feel like just packing up and going home. Why would I want to spend the day with someone who could never be anything more than a good acquaintance? Wouldn’t I rather devote my limited energy for socializing to people I actually care about? And who care about me?
Not surprisingly, my friendship (or nonfriendship) with my colleague eventually fizzled out. We drifted apart, as people sometimes do, but the nature of our rupture was ultimately philosophical: I believe that you can be friends with the people you work with, and she does not.
If you Google the words 'workplace friendship,' you’ll find countless articles and essays and blog posts on the topic. They have titles such as 'The Three Rules of Workplace Friendships' and 'Workplace Friendships: Asset or Liability?' and 'The Top 10 Tips for Workplace Friendships.'
This last piece, from U.S. News and World Report, offers such tips as 'keep your business and personal lives separate,' 'use the friendship to your benefit' and 'don’t complain about your boss.' Another piece, on The Daily Mail website, seemed to view workplace friendships as a tragic consequence of modern life, suggesting that our 'work colleagues are our closest friends because we are too busy to keep in touch with old mates.'
I read the articles on workplace friendship with the same curiosity I might bring to an etiquette guide from an alien planet."Click here to read the whole thing.
Music: Barry Wenig on his favorite Beatles songs
Movies: Annalisa Parent on schmalty summer sci-fi, and Sara Foss on "The Great Gatsby"
Parenting: J LeBlanc on her second pregnancy
Television: J.K. Eisen on "Hemlock Grove"
Over at the DG, I make my NBA finals pick.
Click here to read it.
Over at the DG, I review the new Baz Luhrmann spectacle "The Great Gatsby."
Here's an excerpt:
"Maybe 'The Great Gatsby' just wasn’t meant to be a movie.
Not that director Baz Luhrmann’s take on the great F. Scott Fitzgerald novel is a bad film. It’s engaging and absorbing, with a bright, sumptuous and sometimes dizzying style that almost always makes for a visual feast. And it’s well-acted and fairly faithful to the book. But Luhrmann’s reverence for the novel is actually a bit of a hindrance after a while: He makes such liberal use of Fitzgerald’s stirring prose (at times, quotes from the book dance across the screen as Nick Carraway types) that almost every frame makes you think, 'What I should really do is re-read this book.' In the end, 'The Great Gatsby' is a decent enough film, undone by its inability to achieve the same level of greatness as the book from which its adapted.
Of course, it’s a bit unfair to knock the new film version for failing to reach the same impressive heights as the novel — one of the greatest in American literature. And 'The Great Gatsby' is actually better than anyone had a right to expect. I’m actually a fan of two of Luhrmann’s earlier films, 'Moulin Rouge!' and 'Strictly Ballroom,' but I wasn’t sure 'The Great Gatsby' would benefit from his flair for excess, anachronistic use of pop music, and big, bold emotional flourishes. Could he capture the subtleties and nuances of Fitzgerald’s book?"
Click here to read the whole thing.
OK, I'll admit it. I'm that annoying person you go to the movies with - not the one who talks through the whole thing or whose cell phone rings. I'm the one who always knows the plot before it happens.
Last night I went to the drive-in. (Yes, we still have a drive-in, and it's a thriving business in our Vermont summers.) What I like about the drive-in, among other things, is that it offers you the chance to see a double feature (for those of you who weren't teenagers in the 1950s' height of drive-in popularity, that's “two movies in a row, Dawg.”)
Sometimes it happens that the two movies you want to see fall in the same time slot, and so last night instead of watching Iron Man 3 as I’d hoped (perfect drive-in fodder, by the way), my friend and I watched M. Night Shyamalan's After Earth. Yeah, I said M. Night Shyamalan. Are you as surprised as we were that he's even affiliated with the film? It’s probably because all of the billing has been about Will Smith and his son Jaden who feature in the film, with nary a mention of this famous director.
It’s almost as if Shyamalan’s not a part of the family. (Mostly because he isn’t.) To be sure, this film is a family affair. Smith wrote the screenplay. His wife Jada produced. And his son starred.
And Another Thing!
I’ve been a Beatlephile (I’ve been told that’s what they call us; “Beatlemaniac” is undignified) since 1969 when I bought the 45 of “Get Back” as a seven-year-old. I had been very impressed by the film “Yellow Submarine” earlier that year, and off I went into Pepperland.
I began my Beatles’ “jones” in earnest in 1976, when I starting purchasing their albums with my Long Island Newsday (NY) carrier money. At first, I bought the Beatles' Capitol L.P.s. But once I found out that the American albums had fewer songs on them (a mere 10 compared to the 14 tracks on their British counterpart label, Parlophone), I started buying the English album versions. If my local T.S.S. (Time Square Stores) didn’t have them, I’d have them special-ordered.
I had just moved out to a new county (Suffolk) and a new school district (Middle Island) from Queens that summer, and it was hard to make friends as I entered my first year of High School. And so … the Beatles became my friends. They offered rock and roll and romance.
I thrilled to the discovery of each new album, and was proud of my rarer selections: a German bootleg of a 1966 live concert in Japan (!); a Dutch version of Magical Mystery Tour (with the songs on Side 2 in true, rather than “reprocessed” stereo); a Parlophone album called “The Beatles in Italy," which featured the set list from their 1965 concert in Italy (not live, but I could settle for that).
