It wasn't that a million wonderful shows leaped out at me when I was in London last weekend. As it was, I had time to see but one play anyway, amid the other appointments I had manage to arrange. But the more you look at what's on in London, the more you appreciate the depth of offerings for those there to pursue theatre.
I didn't even try for The Habit of Art, the play at the National by Alan Bennett that depicts an encounter between W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten. Bennett's plays are usually stimulating--maybe you caught The History Boys when it played New York?--I'd love to see this one sometime but you don't easily get into the National's hits unless you book way ahead of time. Same is true for the Almeida in Islington, which had what was described as an imaginative production of Measure for Measure.
I considered the original production of Billy Elliott, the musical that has been such a success in New York. And also looked into Enron, in that the Brits do some of these contemporary issue plays really well. Another, also at the National, is The Power of Yes, David Hare's play about the financial crash.
In terms of classics, you have your choice of James Earl Jones doing Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, also All My Sons and Ghosts. There's also plenty of Shakespeare, Moliere and Lope de Vega, and a new production of Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, which we will also get, different production that is, at the Shakespeare Theater here this spring. Kim Cattrall of Sex in the City is doing Private Lives.
So I haven't even given the half of it all. But what did I end up seeing? A comedy called Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth which was one of the most totally English-oriented shows I've ever caught. The title comes from Blake's famous poetic tribute to England's "green and pleasant land" although the focus is on some bounders and misfits, headed by the lead, Johnny "Rooster" Byron who lives in a trailer on the outskirts of some Wiltshire village and imbibes either alcohol or drugs when he isn't putting on a party complete with loud music and strobes. The locals want to bounce him and his group of societal outcasts in St. George's Day. The lead is played by a well-known English actor, Mark Rylance.
The show itself has its moments but although I pride myself on a fair familiarity with both Brit culture and slang, I probably caught about half of it. I was persuaded mostly by raves in the Financial Times and Time Out, neither of which are rollovers for shows. Let's put it this way--I enjoyed an evening that for better or worse, I'd be unlikely to have a chance to have in the U.S.
But it's sobering to consider how many choices I had. And I haven't even gotten to the revivals of musicals like Oliver and Chicago and Terence McNally's A Man of No Importance, from Oscar Wilde's original play.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Sri Lanka--On Both Coasts
It was a long drive out from Colombo , the capital, to Trincomalee. You follow a southwest-to-northeast path that cuts straight across Sri Lanka from coast to coast and the traffic on the first half plus the road construction thereafter makes travel time for the trip about 6½ hours. The train takes eight hours. Roads are still not clear to Jaffna , the center of Tamil culture at the extreme northern point of the island. The Sinhalese-dominated government won the war, as to which reasonable people may differ on whether it was good or bad, but the government thus far has not seemed to be trying very hard at reconciling the two sectors of the population. (Tamils and Muslims make up a total of about 25 percent of the population.)
Right now, politics is in an uproar. The general who won the war then ran for president and lost, and now has been arrested for allegedly planning a coup. Demonstrators for the opposition were tear-gassed and\set upon by thugs apparently in league with the police, who are part of the military. The government has promised reforms, especially after parliamentary elections in April. The chief magistrate in Colombo showed a lot of courage when she excoriated the police two days ago for their behavior at the demonstration.
Trincomalee is one place I had not planned on visiting but being in Sri Lanka to work on an assessment of rule of law here, but I drew the trip to the northeastern coast. And since the regular hotel the people on the project put us up at was under renovation, there was not much choice but to lodge me at Nilaveli Beach . Nor had I recalled that these two locales were the precise ones the N.Y. Times listed recently at the top of their 31 places to go this year, and the paper reportedly was emphasizing the new and different.
So you might ask what’s so special about this place? First, Trincomalee is one of the finest natural harbors in the world. So said Lord Nelson, and he arguably knew something about that. (We’ll pass on his romantic endeavors as well as his dispatch of the French fleet at Trafalgar.) With the town on one peninsula and great bays on either side with mountains in the far background, there are fine views aplenty. Out at Nilaveli Beach , all you have is the Indian Ocean , blue-green breakers with a rocky Bali Hai-like island in the distance and someone mixing lime-and-sodas at your request.
On the other hand, many in Sri Lanka , especially expats who get around the island, thought the Times was conned. Yes, the beach is fantastic—white sand and sandy bottom about as far out as you can go—but the half board is not exactly cutting edge with a somewhat tired buffet. Since swimming—pool in addition to the glorious white-sand beach—is the only facility, my dad would’ve been in heaven.
You know what I mean when you see the tennis court is missing a net. Management hasn’t yet invested in any English-language tv stations on cable. Nevertheless, the beach and view are great. Since there are still troops and checkpoints, this place, like so many I get to, is not quite ready for prime time tourism, but when it is, it will quickly become one of those places I’m sure I won’t be able to afford.
Trinco, or Trinky, as the locals call it, is part of the minority Tamil region of the country, and the mood is not good, given that they lost their fight thus far for regional devolution and full recognition of their rights as citizens by the majority. This island, when at peace, has been called a tropical paradise and I saw some evidence of that. All kinds of palms are everywhere, wonderful marshlands pass by your window, and animals abound. On the trip I saw a Steinbeckian turtle and a peacock crossing the highway, braces of oxen hauling carts, dogs and goats aplenty, lots of roaming cattle as we drove farther into what is the Hindu section of the country, and, yes, my first elephant here, being led by a workman near an inland resort. (Not counting the wonderful Elephant brand ginger beer.)
Colombo itself has a reputation for being a dull spot amidst an island filled with fascination. I did see a mango tree right in the city overhanging a bus stop but they were still green so there was no low-hanging fruit for strategic planners to get. There are some beach restaurants—places that serve fresh fish and seafood right on the Indian Ocean beach. You cross the railroad tracks by foot on the busy line from Colombo to Galle to reach these places. I went to a different one, I think, from the one I was taken to when here several years ago, and the fish was still good. The deviled crabs are a lot like our Chesapeake Bay blues, broken up a bit and slathered with a tangy sauce—they require the same amount of effort that all crabs do so those without those mid-Atlantic skills often give up.
Pics to folo, in that I can’t unload pictures soon enough to include here. In this part of Sri Lanka , the most popular lunch dish is rice and curry. Sounds rather simple, but in addition to the slivers of chicken and green bits ranging from field greens to mildly hot peppers, there is subtle spicing and some on the side if you want more. The rice is very short-grain and closer to small barley than the usual varieties of longer-grain rice we get.
Colombo has some snazzy restaurants—actually, I don’t mean flashy, although it probably has a few of those too—such as one designed by Geoffrey Bawa, prominent local architect, that has fish ponds and screens and all kinds of metal sculpture and other art. The menus are also imaginative, although a companion was disappointed that they were out of the barramundi but you had your choice of carrot or pumpkin gnocchi. I think you get the picture.
There was also the Cricket Club, actually a restaurant with the titular motif, as well as flat screens beaming the latest from the First South Africa—India Test, with every item on the long menu named after an international star of that other game that lots of other places play, but in this case, we hardly play at all. In a week or so, there will be 200,000 screaming Bengalis in Eden Gardens , Kolkata (formerly Calcutta ), at the Second Test that will determine the world title. The Cricket Club has a burger as good as you get in any ballpark—and no better.
There are lots of shrines all over the country, most for the Buddha; the most are in Kandy , in the central highlands and last capital of the independent Sri Lankan kingdom until 1815 but I saw a famous shrine right by the side of the ocean and you see them at many crossroads.
There’s also the usual melee of traffic you see in large Asian cities, with Colombo driving and quite a way out of town an exercise in avoiding hitting the many small three-wheeler taxis, sometimes called tuk-tuks, the many motorcycles, an occasional horse and cart, large trucks—not as gaily painted as in India, and overstuffed buses—I saw one yesterday literally leaning to one side by the horde hanging out the doors, and I think, the windows. There are marked crosswalks for pedestrians but no one I saw had the slightest expectation that any of that array of vehicles would stop for someone to cross.
A surprisingly large number of people here—well, lawyers and the like—have been to the U.S. , despite how hard it is now to obtain visas. And speaking of snow, which does not happen here, I much appreciated being advised from home that I sure know when to get out of town. It makes me a little wary of coming back too soon. It also make me recall one human rights lawyer I met today in Trinco and one I worked with in Indonesia, both of whom were invited to and attended conferences on that subject in Oslo: upon arrival, they found they didn’t own any clothing that would work for them in weather they couldn’t possibly have anticipated.
Elephant alert: saw two more on the ride back from Trinco, one giving rides the way they used to at the Bronx Zoo and the other working by carrying branches in its trunk down the highway.
Not quite as fleet as the recently-deceased best pair of guards--Dick McGuire and Carl Braun.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Depression Danger
The U.S. is not in a depression even if it has not yet turned the corner. But we are seeing some of the things that happened in the 30s even if we are not in that awful place economically. And the worst part of this not being a depression perhaps is that the jobs that have been lost are really gone. It will be a long time before the economy produces anything like what we need in terms of jobs.
The awful stuff that is happening is the emergence of the worst sort of right-wing politicos. And the media now is much more powerful than it was then and gives these villains a bully pulpit. People forget about Father Charles E. Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith. And not only are we seeing their heirs--Sarah Palin, Jim Demint, Michelle Bachman, and the like. And of course Rush Limbaugh and all the little screamers on the airwaves--the real dittoheads.
Coughlin and Smith were ugly types who were plugging unvarnished anti-Semitism. They had fertile ground because of the rather genteel but still vicious form of anti-Semitism that prevailed in those days. It was accepted the way all kinds of humor at the expense of ethnic groups was. But just because we do not have this particular version now is no reason for pride.
The other day the supposedly distinguished David Broder of the Washington Post, the definition of a pundit who has outstayed his time, gushed over the rise of Sarah Palin. Broder is right that she has picked up momentum. But he totally ignores her still wildly unprepared and unsuitable character--she has no concept of the world as it is and lives in her own protected right-wing one.
Two-bit right-wing punks on radio get respectful treatment in the major media, based on the size of their audiences. Blame one of our newer citizens, by the way, Rupert Murdoch, for much of this. After rising in Australia, where his forbear had helped lower the media level, he conquered literate Britain, turning The Times (in case you did not know, despite the usage in some U.S. papers, it is not "The Times of London") into a tabloid. The sad decline of the once liberal New York Post was another casualty. Now to be sure, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, that paper could not have become more conservative editorially. But watch out for what happens to the reliability of its once-vaunted news coverage.
After the GOP as usual blew the bankroll, we now have cries of need for balanced budgets and economy. You do not have to be John Maynard Keynes to know that lowering expenditure in hard times is not the way to gin up the economy. We have not had the total housecleaning that the defunct franchise of Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and their ilk deserve--to be bounced from the league of respected economists forever. Remember Murray Weidenbaum, the high priest of de-regulation--thank him for some part of the mess we're in.
Yes, Obama is too rational in his manner for this crowd. But the media is no reliable guide for him. They ate up the lies that got us into Iraq and, I'm sorry to say, Obama fell for some of it by his stand on staying in Afghanistan. The idea was to catch Osama--remember? We really need some people to stand up and talk sense for a change. The Dems should recall B. Franklin's wise advice that if we don't stand together, we'll all perish separately.
The awful stuff that is happening is the emergence of the worst sort of right-wing politicos. And the media now is much more powerful than it was then and gives these villains a bully pulpit. People forget about Father Charles E. Coughlin and Gerald L.K. Smith. And not only are we seeing their heirs--Sarah Palin, Jim Demint, Michelle Bachman, and the like. And of course Rush Limbaugh and all the little screamers on the airwaves--the real dittoheads.
Coughlin and Smith were ugly types who were plugging unvarnished anti-Semitism. They had fertile ground because of the rather genteel but still vicious form of anti-Semitism that prevailed in those days. It was accepted the way all kinds of humor at the expense of ethnic groups was. But just because we do not have this particular version now is no reason for pride.
The other day the supposedly distinguished David Broder of the Washington Post, the definition of a pundit who has outstayed his time, gushed over the rise of Sarah Palin. Broder is right that she has picked up momentum. But he totally ignores her still wildly unprepared and unsuitable character--she has no concept of the world as it is and lives in her own protected right-wing one.
Two-bit right-wing punks on radio get respectful treatment in the major media, based on the size of their audiences. Blame one of our newer citizens, by the way, Rupert Murdoch, for much of this. After rising in Australia, where his forbear had helped lower the media level, he conquered literate Britain, turning The Times (in case you did not know, despite the usage in some U.S. papers, it is not "The Times of London") into a tabloid. The sad decline of the once liberal New York Post was another casualty. Now to be sure, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, that paper could not have become more conservative editorially. But watch out for what happens to the reliability of its once-vaunted news coverage.
After the GOP as usual blew the bankroll, we now have cries of need for balanced budgets and economy. You do not have to be John Maynard Keynes to know that lowering expenditure in hard times is not the way to gin up the economy. We have not had the total housecleaning that the defunct franchise of Milton Friedman, Alan Greenspan, and their ilk deserve--to be bounced from the league of respected economists forever. Remember Murray Weidenbaum, the high priest of de-regulation--thank him for some part of the mess we're in.
Yes, Obama is too rational in his manner for this crowd. But the media is no reliable guide for him. They ate up the lies that got us into Iraq and, I'm sorry to say, Obama fell for some of it by his stand on staying in Afghanistan. The idea was to catch Osama--remember? We really need some people to stand up and talk sense for a change. The Dems should recall B. Franklin's wise advice that if we don't stand together, we'll all perish separately.
Monday, February 15, 2010
The Last Patter Star
The papers in the U.S. haven't picked it up yet but John Reed died on Saturday at 94. John Reed--no, not the revolutionary buried in the Kremlin wall--was the last man on earth to fill the glorious position of comic baritone--he who sang all the patter songs--in the late lamented D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, the original and premier theatre company of the Gilbert & Sullivan Savoy operas.
Think of "I am the very model of the modern major general" or "I have a little list" and it was John Reed who sang those songs in those roles (Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance and Ko-Ko in The Mikado). He succeeded Martyn Green, who is still remembered for his memorable renditions of those roles. Even though G&S themselves may not have intended it that way, everyone always remembers those roles and those songs above all.
I saw him perform once--from the balcony of the Colonial Theatre, when I was living in Boston, and he was Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, Lord of the Queen's Navy, in H.M.S. Pinafore. As always, he made the show. The great patter song of that one, of course, is "Never mind the why and wherefore"--and the tradition it carries with it is the way the cast responds to audience applause seeking endless encores. Seeing Reed come up with new tricks on the sixth encore would make anyone burst into hysterics.
John Reed deserves our thought for more than the passing moment for another great service he performed. After the demise of D'Oyly Carte, which never figured out how to keep itself alive without being stuck in exactly the routines set out by Gilbert's prompt books, he travelled the whole world performing all the great comic G&S roles with all kinds of small, upstart Savoyard companies. His presence--since he was known to every G&S fan in the world--assured the little productions of a nice big night at the box office for the night or two or three he graced them with his presence. We have many of these companies with us today because of the infusion of spirit--and cash--that John Reed gave them.
Think of those songs and comic roles--the Duke of Plaza-Toro, Robin Oakapple in Ruddigore, the title role in The Sorcerer--and then try to recall the strains of what remains to me the most memorable tune in all of G&S, the Ko-Ko--Katisha duet in the second act of The Mikado: "There's beauty in the bleating of the blast"--you'd know it if you heard it. It just means that you're in for a delightful time--and John Reed was usually the centre-piece of it all.
Think of "I am the very model of the modern major general" or "I have a little list" and it was John Reed who sang those songs in those roles (Major General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance and Ko-Ko in The Mikado). He succeeded Martyn Green, who is still remembered for his memorable renditions of those roles. Even though G&S themselves may not have intended it that way, everyone always remembers those roles and those songs above all.
I saw him perform once--from the balcony of the Colonial Theatre, when I was living in Boston, and he was Sir Joseph Porter, KCB, Lord of the Queen's Navy, in H.M.S. Pinafore. As always, he made the show. The great patter song of that one, of course, is "Never mind the why and wherefore"--and the tradition it carries with it is the way the cast responds to audience applause seeking endless encores. Seeing Reed come up with new tricks on the sixth encore would make anyone burst into hysterics.
John Reed deserves our thought for more than the passing moment for another great service he performed. After the demise of D'Oyly Carte, which never figured out how to keep itself alive without being stuck in exactly the routines set out by Gilbert's prompt books, he travelled the whole world performing all the great comic G&S roles with all kinds of small, upstart Savoyard companies. His presence--since he was known to every G&S fan in the world--assured the little productions of a nice big night at the box office for the night or two or three he graced them with his presence. We have many of these companies with us today because of the infusion of spirit--and cash--that John Reed gave them.
Think of those songs and comic roles--the Duke of Plaza-Toro, Robin Oakapple in Ruddigore, the title role in The Sorcerer--and then try to recall the strains of what remains to me the most memorable tune in all of G&S, the Ko-Ko--Katisha duet in the second act of The Mikado: "There's beauty in the bleating of the blast"--you'd know it if you heard it. It just means that you're in for a delightful time--and John Reed was usually the centre-piece of it all.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
The Old Knick(s)
It was fascinating to read the accounts of Dick McGuire's career after his death yesterday. Not too many readers of this piece probably recall him. After all he was starring for the New York Knicks as a sharp backcourtman in the early 1950s. These were the Knicks who made the playoffs, and with Dick McGuire, No. 15, made the finals most years, before settling down into desuetude. And his standout career at St Johns came even before 1950--even I can't recall that part of his story.
He was an old-fashioned ballplayer, whose style, however, penetrated the play of the really great Knick teams, those teams in the early 70s who won championships--the only ones who ever did. Dick McGuire was the playmaker with the uncanny feel for when to pass, or as they say in bball stats: "assist." Good enough to put him in the Hall of Fame and they didn't have treys then.
Yes, the obits say he was born in the Bronx but McGuire was a Queens product. His parents ran a bar out there and Dick and his brothers--Al won an NCAA title coaching Marquette--played out in Far Rockaway and then for Joe Lapchick at St Johns. Joe was also a legend--lived in my own birthplace, Yonkers, and later coached the Knicks himself. I met Joe at the summer camp I went to, where they ostensibly brought him up as a special feature of the camp--totally wasted on wretched basketball player me. He impressed the parents on parents' day: "Hey, that's Joe Lapchick, remember, he coached the Knicks!"
Dick McGuire was one of the last members of the old New York City sports fraternity--mostly Irish, some Italians, but room for a few Jewish stars, too--and he worked for the Knicks in one capacity or another, mostly as a scout, for 54 years. He coached them but was not a great coach--players used to say that when he tried to set up a play during a timeout, he was totally incoherent. His biggest move as coach was to switch jobs with Red Holzman, the chief scout, who then led the club to its only NBA titles.
These guys were playing in the non-glory days of the NBA--riding the midnight New York Central back to Gotham from a stint playing the Rochester Royals and Syracuse Nats on the road. The Knicks lost one title to the Royals, and then two to the Minneapolis Lakers (you always wondered what the hell lakes had to do with L.A., didn't you?) with the league's big man, George Mikan out of DePaul.
The Knicks were owned by Madison Square Garden, and headed by the appropriately-named Ned Irish. They didn't draw enough to play all their games in the Garden--some were in the 69th Regiment Armory. That was the "old Garden" to my generation, that is--the Eighth Avenue arena between 49th and 50th Sts. and Ninth Ave., where you saw Mickey Walker's saloon diagonally across 8th Ave. from Andy Murphy's. And the Nedicks and Adams Hats on the main entryway. And per tv boxing commentator Jimmy Powers of the Daily News: "The smoke's so thick you can't hear the bell."
..
From late March to mid-May, if you wandered down the wrong staircase, you might end up among the tigers brought in for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. The circus also offered you advance admission into the basement to see the menagerie and sideshow. You could get into a lot of great college basketball games with your high school G.O. card. There was that great Holiday Festival--yes, the one Cornell won this year but in those days, there were eight teams, not four--when Cazzie Russell's Michigan five met Bill Bradley and the four guys named Joe from Princeton.
Scandals helped downplay college basketball in New York. Boxing was already dying from overexposure on TV--there were fights on several nights a week--and from its takeover by organized crime. The Garden's last great fight nights were Cassius Clay (as he was then) against Doug Jones and then, of course, the first Ali-Frazier battle. I remember staying late in the Garden to see John Thomas take the high jump at the Millrose Games, the track meet sponsored by the old John Wanamaker department store on Astor Place that packed the place. I understand it still has its night at the "new" Garden but is a shadow of its old self.
He was an old-fashioned ballplayer, whose style, however, penetrated the play of the really great Knick teams, those teams in the early 70s who won championships--the only ones who ever did. Dick McGuire was the playmaker with the uncanny feel for when to pass, or as they say in bball stats: "assist." Good enough to put him in the Hall of Fame and they didn't have treys then.
Yes, the obits say he was born in the Bronx but McGuire was a Queens product. His parents ran a bar out there and Dick and his brothers--Al won an NCAA title coaching Marquette--played out in Far Rockaway and then for Joe Lapchick at St Johns. Joe was also a legend--lived in my own birthplace, Yonkers, and later coached the Knicks himself. I met Joe at the summer camp I went to, where they ostensibly brought him up as a special feature of the camp--totally wasted on wretched basketball player me. He impressed the parents on parents' day: "Hey, that's Joe Lapchick, remember, he coached the Knicks!"
Dick McGuire was one of the last members of the old New York City sports fraternity--mostly Irish, some Italians, but room for a few Jewish stars, too--and he worked for the Knicks in one capacity or another, mostly as a scout, for 54 years. He coached them but was not a great coach--players used to say that when he tried to set up a play during a timeout, he was totally incoherent. His biggest move as coach was to switch jobs with Red Holzman, the chief scout, who then led the club to its only NBA titles.
These guys were playing in the non-glory days of the NBA--riding the midnight New York Central back to Gotham from a stint playing the Rochester Royals and Syracuse Nats on the road. The Knicks lost one title to the Royals, and then two to the Minneapolis Lakers (you always wondered what the hell lakes had to do with L.A., didn't you?) with the league's big man, George Mikan out of DePaul.
The Knicks were owned by Madison Square Garden, and headed by the appropriately-named Ned Irish. They didn't draw enough to play all their games in the Garden--some were in the 69th Regiment Armory. That was the "old Garden" to my generation, that is--the Eighth Avenue arena between 49th and 50th Sts. and Ninth Ave., where you saw Mickey Walker's saloon diagonally across 8th Ave. from Andy Murphy's. And the Nedicks and Adams Hats on the main entryway. And per tv boxing commentator Jimmy Powers of the Daily News: "The smoke's so thick you can't hear the bell."
..
From late March to mid-May, if you wandered down the wrong staircase, you might end up among the tigers brought in for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus. The circus also offered you advance admission into the basement to see the menagerie and sideshow. You could get into a lot of great college basketball games with your high school G.O. card. There was that great Holiday Festival--yes, the one Cornell won this year but in those days, there were eight teams, not four--when Cazzie Russell's Michigan five met Bill Bradley and the four guys named Joe from Princeton.
Scandals helped downplay college basketball in New York. Boxing was already dying from overexposure on TV--there were fights on several nights a week--and from its takeover by organized crime. The Garden's last great fight nights were Cassius Clay (as he was then) against Doug Jones and then, of course, the first Ali-Frazier battle. I remember staying late in the Garden to see John Thomas take the high jump at the Millrose Games, the track meet sponsored by the old John Wanamaker department store on Astor Place that packed the place. I understand it still has its night at the "new" Garden but is a shadow of its old self.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Catching Up With Oscar
Two long flights allowed me to watch two Oscar nominees I might otherwise not have seen, or seen anytime soon. My wife and daughter make it their business to try to see all the Best Pic nominees--well, they did that when there were only five of them. Ten may be too many for anyone.
I'd already managed to see "The Blind Side" and "Up in the Air"--liked both of them, but were either in the run for Best Pic? Based on my past performances, don't go by me. Now I've doubled the entry: on my flights I caught "The Hurt Locker" and "An Education"-- if there were only five nominees, all I would have missed was "Avatar" which I still may miss.
The last two were far more serious. But before we go to the dark side, so to speak, let's note that George Clooney has all the charm of Cary Grant in "Up in the Air" and Sandra Bullock exudes personality in "The Blind Side," the way Claudette Colbert managed to keep up with Clark Gable in "It Happened One Night."
No such star quality in "An Education" or "The Hurt Locker"--didn't recognize anyone in these pictures but it hardly mattered. These were both dramas and intense, one a fascinating study of a bright middle-class British high school girl aiming for Oxford, only to be tempted to change course by a charming rake and, naturally, fake; the other a study of a bomb-defusing unit in Baghdad during the war and the remarkable interplays of personalities among the squad as well as with the inhabitants. It's also the first feature based in the Iraq war I've seen and an impressive one.
Two performers, Carey Mulligan and Jeremy Renner, one from each of these two pictures, are up for Best Actress and Actor, respectively. Ms. Mulligan reminds me of Ellen Page, the girl in last year's "Juno," who benefitted from a clever script. This young woman is given even more range, including a climactic scene with the only known face I spotted in either picture: Emma Thompson as the school principal. She pulls it all off nicely, including managing to hold her own against an over-the-top father and a crisply well-matched mum, much less the smooth fellow who holds out the promise of a life of glittering prizes far from academe.
Mr. Renner's character is also winning, and immediately draws you in to his clear delight in his capability in the dangerous line of master bomb disdmantler. The action among the company of soldiers is well portrayed and rapidly intensfies as danger lurks in seemingly every corner of banged-up Baghdad.
Going back to "Up in the Air" makes me note that once again, the Oscars have pitted two nice supporting performances in the same picture against each other--Vera Famiglia and Anna Kendrick. Famiglia gets my nod if only because she manages to hold her own as a romantic interest with Clooney. Kendrick plays the ingenue--here a recent graduate out to show her stuff in the business world. I'd love to find out who on the picture made her a young Cornell grad who imports a new degree of impersonality to firing people. If that's what they're teaching them at my alma mater--not sure if she's an ILR School product too--they ought to torch the place.
These are two terrific pictures. Should either win the Oscar? Or should it be one of the other two more heart-warming ones? My guess is that one of the two dramas I saw in flight will win something big--be it Best Pic or Best Actor or Actress. I'm not taking anything away from Clooney or Bullock, who both give the performances of their careers.
I'd already managed to see "The Blind Side" and "Up in the Air"--liked both of them, but were either in the run for Best Pic? Based on my past performances, don't go by me. Now I've doubled the entry: on my flights I caught "The Hurt Locker" and "An Education"-- if there were only five nominees, all I would have missed was "Avatar" which I still may miss.
The last two were far more serious. But before we go to the dark side, so to speak, let's note that George Clooney has all the charm of Cary Grant in "Up in the Air" and Sandra Bullock exudes personality in "The Blind Side," the way Claudette Colbert managed to keep up with Clark Gable in "It Happened One Night."
No such star quality in "An Education" or "The Hurt Locker"--didn't recognize anyone in these pictures but it hardly mattered. These were both dramas and intense, one a fascinating study of a bright middle-class British high school girl aiming for Oxford, only to be tempted to change course by a charming rake and, naturally, fake; the other a study of a bomb-defusing unit in Baghdad during the war and the remarkable interplays of personalities among the squad as well as with the inhabitants. It's also the first feature based in the Iraq war I've seen and an impressive one.
Two performers, Carey Mulligan and Jeremy Renner, one from each of these two pictures, are up for Best Actress and Actor, respectively. Ms. Mulligan reminds me of Ellen Page, the girl in last year's "Juno," who benefitted from a clever script. This young woman is given even more range, including a climactic scene with the only known face I spotted in either picture: Emma Thompson as the school principal. She pulls it all off nicely, including managing to hold her own against an over-the-top father and a crisply well-matched mum, much less the smooth fellow who holds out the promise of a life of glittering prizes far from academe.
Mr. Renner's character is also winning, and immediately draws you in to his clear delight in his capability in the dangerous line of master bomb disdmantler. The action among the company of soldiers is well portrayed and rapidly intensfies as danger lurks in seemingly every corner of banged-up Baghdad.
Going back to "Up in the Air" makes me note that once again, the Oscars have pitted two nice supporting performances in the same picture against each other--Vera Famiglia and Anna Kendrick. Famiglia gets my nod if only because she manages to hold her own as a romantic interest with Clooney. Kendrick plays the ingenue--here a recent graduate out to show her stuff in the business world. I'd love to find out who on the picture made her a young Cornell grad who imports a new degree of impersonality to firing people. If that's what they're teaching them at my alma mater--not sure if she's an ILR School product too--they ought to torch the place.
These are two terrific pictures. Should either win the Oscar? Or should it be one of the other two more heart-warming ones? My guess is that one of the two dramas I saw in flight will win something big--be it Best Pic or Best Actor or Actress. I'm not taking anything away from Clooney or Bullock, who both give the performances of their careers.
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