Category: movies

Coffee Snob

Yes, I confess: I’m a coffee snob.

I can’t abide most American mass produced ground coffee, like Folger’s, Maxwell House, and Hill Bros. Worse of the worse is Sanka instant.

No, worse of the worse could be the Folger’s Instant Coffee Crystals. Instant coffees taste off to me, as though the coffee has been recycled.

I have friends who swear by Dunkin’ Donut’s coffee. Not me. Dunkin’ Donut cofffee provides a taste that I imagine comes from a dirty tee shirt being soaked in coffee and then wrung out in a cup. Just below it are the foul offerings provided at McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast food establishments. I haven’t had coffee from any of those places in decades. Haven’t eaten at them since around 1992, when I returned to America from Germany.

I became such a snob, as with many things, when I was exposed to offerings in other places. Being stationed in Germany was the changing point for my appreciation of not just beer, but coffee, pastries, asparagus and French fries. German coffee seemed so very strong and clear that I was instantly drawn to it. I started buying different Italian coffees available in Germany, examining flavors the way others do with wines.

The same process was followed with wines, and then beers, along with cigars, ports, whiskeys, fruits, chocolate, cheese, fish, oils, vegetables and meats. I learned that an experienced palate will be drawn toward fresher, clearer flavors. Becoming more mindful among the differences in flavors, I became more mindful as I consumed food and beverages. Fresher and more refined foods offered unique flavors on my tongue.

Of course, it ruined me. Returning from Germany and settling into the Bay area, I drove by a KFC. KFC chicken! I remembered eating it as a child. A sudden nostalgic flame consumed me. I ordered a chicken dinner. The eating experience ruined my memories of KFC and made a skeptic of me about all my American favorites.

So, I’m a coffee snob, but I’m also a beer, wine, chocolate, pie, cheese, fruit, vegetable, meat and pastry snob. I’ll eat things because they’re sustenance, and it’s my nature to accept that food is fuel. But I now know that some foods don’t work nearly as well as fuel.

Something about the eating and drinking experience also affected my reading,  news reporting and movie watching. Overall, I became a snob, more watchful, more critical, more mindful. Part of me often wishes that I wasn’t a snob, that I can just turn on the television and be titillated by the latest number one show like so many others, or that I don’t need to research and vet news headlines and reports for the truth and accuracy, or that I can just trot on down to a fast food place for a meal.

With that, time for breakfast, locally sourced and organic, featuring berries and fruit we picked and froze ourselves, and a cup of coffee. It’ll be Major Dickinson today, from Peet’s.

8

Thoughts of Spring

Theoretically, spring kicked in once again in America. As a blogger, it’s required that I post something about it. It’s in the Internet’s Rules for Blogging that you must do at least one blog post per year regarding a season change. I thought I’d get mine out for 2017 before too much of the year elapsed.

Being an American baby-boomer with liberal tendencies, movies came to mind. I thought this one pretty much summed up the situation in America, Spring, 2017.

 

Bad taste? Probably. I’m in an acerbic mood. It was either this or ‘Dr. Strangelove’.

0

Today’s Theme Music

Yesterday’s theme music ‘Me and Mrs. Jones’ was dedicated to Tucker and his paramour from next door, Pepper. Today’s music centers around Meep.

Meep is the young ginger Tom we began feeding and sheltering. He started living more and more with us. His ‘owners’ moved away, leaving him to live with us. “He’s an outdoor cat,” we heard they told another neighbor. “We worry about him.”

No, he isn’t an outdoor cat. He loves curling up on a bed or chair and snoozing the hours away. No, they didn’t worry about him, or they would have known that about him.

img_0127

A cat who likes gallivanting about doing good, Meep always does a grand entrance. They crack me up. Whether he’s been knocking on a window or door for entrance or we open the door to call him in, he gallops in. After executing a rub and twirl around my legs, he gallops across the room to the other side of the house. If he’s going from back to front, his dash ends with a majestic slide across the hardwood floor.

As a spectator, theme music for these entrances have come to me and I’ve started singing it to him when he performs. The song is ‘Flash’  by Queen, from the movie, ‘Flash Gordon’, 1980. Of course, I sing, “Meep,” instead of Flash. It pleases him. He knows he a Flash and that he’s saved every one of us. And when Freddie sings about Flash being a man, the words must be changed to cat.

 

2

Today’s Theme Music

I know I’ve posted this song before. I’m being indulgent. It’s a song I enjoy, a product of talented people who I admire. A couple of them have passed away so the song returns with a patina of bittersweet nostalgia.

‘Under Pressure’, created by David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Queen, came out in 1981. I was stationed on Okinawa, Japan, when it did. Armed Forces Radio and Television Services provided us with our television and radio entertainment while providing time for the Armed Forces Network Okinawa to provide us with news and weather. Air time was divided among multiple needs and demands as the outlet strove to provide everything to everyone.

I didn’t hear much of ‘Under Pressure’ on the radio because of all this, but I liked it. Most of my friends had no idea what song I was talking about whenever I mentioned it. Years later, it was included in the movie, ‘Grosse Pointe Blank’. GPB, starring Minnie Driver, John Cusack and his sister, Joan, Alan Arkin and Dan Ackroyd, only receives 79% on Rotten Tomatoes. But it’s one of those movies that I stay to watch when I encounter it, one of my secret vices.

‘Under Pressure’ has been used in other movies, sports events, commercials and trailers. Others have covered it, so most people know it, even if this isn’t their style of music or if they were born decades after 1981.

I believe the last time I posted this, I may have used the Annie Lennox and David Bowie cover. I’m going with the originals recorded performing live this time.

0

A Random Stream

‘Hey Ya’ is playing in my head but otherwise, thoughts are normalized streams of randomness.

  • Eva Lesko Natiello posted a blog about not quitting. I was happy to read it and read it again today because her words summarizes my writing process. Here’s one paragraph.
    • “Yesterday my manuscript was torturing me. I couldn’t move forward. Stuck in my puzzle. I was having trouble with the order of disclosure and who’s POV it should be. Should the dialogue contradict what the character was really thinking? Maybe she wasn’t thinking that at all. What was she thinking? Maybe it wasn’t her place to reveal it. Perhaps we should find out some other way.”
    • I like how she captured this process. Later, she mentions that she becomes frustrated and pushes herself to sit it in her chair and squirm it out. I don’t squirm; I close my eyes and bow my head. But’s it’s the same thing.
  • Earlier in February, Barbara Froman published an interview she conducted with Dr. Harrison Solow in 2013. I read it again this week. I recommend it. I like what Harrison said in this paragraph:
    • “And someone has had the great good sense to leave this book alone. Or if altered, respectfully tuned to perfect pitch by an invisible hand, so that each word has the unmistakable ring of authenticity. The reader perceives nothing enharmonic. A true book and a beautiful one. But although there is no false note, neither is the entire composition a universal symphony. There is vision here — intensely personal, internally arranged.”
    • There is the difficulty, finding the notes so no false notes are played in the novel.
  • Gray, cold air cups the buildings and trees this morning. Walking past a row of apartments, I smell…laundry detergents and fabric softeners being vented out. Nostalgia strikes a chime. This is a day like my Pittsburgh childhood. Smells often transport me.
  • Striding past the cemetery, I acknowledge, again, I like cemeteries but I don’ t like them. The history they represent touches me and prompts questions about the lives beneath the headstones. But I think the land where cemeteries reside could be better used for other things. I’ve never had the interest in visiting them to talk to people who passed on; I just speak to them in my head. But it matters much to others. I guess I’m an unsentimental jerk.
  • Watched  ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ on Friday night. Wasn’t impressed. It seems like, as my wife called it, a movie war, dated and hackneyed. Others obviously think differently, as they nominated it for the Best Picture. Again, it must be me. I do admire Desmond Doss, the conscientious objector (cooperator, he calls himself) at the story’s center. I thought Garfield did a good job, but overall, Mel Gibson as a director seemed heavy handed. I found Hollywood vs History’s details about the differences between the movie and the facts very interesting.
  • Many smart houses, with their smart thermostats, are actually connected to apps that allow you to call it from your phone and change the temperature or turn the lights on or off. That’s not a smart house, but a remote control. A smart house, to me, is one that I don’t have to program and set reminders other than to provide it with some basic operating instructions. For instance, my system is programmed for fifty-eight degrees at night. But if the temperature is dropping into the mid twenties Fahrenheit, like this week, I turn it up to sixty-four at night. Part of this is because the house design; the furnace is mounted on its side in the attic space. It’s not insulated, and the drip line runs through it and down inside a garage wall that also isn’t insulated. That sometimes allows the drip line to freeze. It’s a shortcoming that I’m working on to fix, but meanwhile, a smarter house would be helpful.
  • ‘Nocturnal Animals’ was last night’s household viewing feature. Well done and everything, but not my style of movie.
    • During the movie, my wife turned to me and asked, “Have you ever killed me in a novel?” No, I haven’t.
    • Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Tony Hastings, is a writer. During a conversation, he states, “All writers write about themselves.” I kind of agree; I am the baseline from which I begin, but then it changes according to the character and story’s needs and expectations. Often, though, I model a character on another person and use how I would expect them to behave as my guide.
    • My wife also wondered what I thought of Tony’s revenge. While it’s not something that I would have done, I can see how a writer can end up going there.
    • If you don’t know what I’m writing about, sorry. I don’t mean to be obtuse but didn’t want to reveal too much of the plot.
  • Now time to dip myself back in the imaginary world of an imaginary future, technology and people. In other words, I’m going to write like crazy, at least one more time. I’ll probably do a little squirming, too.
2

The Last Four Movies

We’ve seen four movies in five days to cap off our annual Oscar whirl. I already posted about the terrific animated film, ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’. Following it was an absurdist black comedy, ‘The Lobster’. 

Colin Ferrell, Rachel Weitz and Jenna Coleman star. These are all actors I enjoy. Their portrayals in this were all low energy, as if people were straining to comprehend what was happening. Emotional responses were muted, like too much emotion had already been expended in their lives.

We follow Colin Ferrell’s character from his arrival at the hotel and orientation. One hand is cuffed so he could appreciate, “Two is better.” The premise, that if you don’t have a mate, you will be turned into an animal, and that this is now the accepted social norm, is never explained. Nor is the hotel’s limitations on clothing so that everyone is dressed in the same manner, or having the women hunt in dresses. It’s absurd, right? None of the concepts underlying the plot are explained. You just go along with it. Strange, but engaging.

Behind ‘The Lobster’ came something one hundred and eight degrees different: an animated film about animals as people, ‘Zootopia’. The movie takes it name from the animal nation’s major urban area, Zootopia. Central to the is Judy Hopper’s dream of being a police officer, and her life as the first bunny copper in Zootopia. A crime spree has sprung up in which animals are disappearing. It’s a good movie for young people to watch. One of the baristas, a twenty year old, has watched it four times while baby-sitting children. Her take is that its message is not to stereotype people, which is demonstrated by individual’s roles as wolves, foxes, weasels, sheep and bunnies. It is more, she acknowledged. The movie takes on bullying, determination and persistence, and pursuing your goals despite obstacles. All of this is done through a clever, humorous lens that’s more slanted toward adults, such as the lemmings, all dressed the same, leaving the Lemmings Brothers building.

My wife asked, which movie, ‘Zootopia’ or ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ would receive my Oscar vote? I loved Kubo’s beautiful, amazing artwork, and the film’s ethereal aura. I also enjoyed and admired the plucky young main character’s good nature and determination. Yet, ‘Zootopia’ edged it out to receive my vote. Kubo is better at art; I thought ‘Zootopia’ was better at entertainment. A fun movie, ‘Zootopia’ kept my interest. I would have given the Oscar to ‘Zootopia’, but the edge was the thickness of a sheet of paper.

Last, last night, we watched the documentary, ‘13th‘.  This film meticulously states facts connecting the end of the civil war and the transition from black people being slaves as owned property to slaves as criminals. The documentary attacks the issues from multiple points of view, laying out a convincing narrative that letting slaves go wasn’t financially acceptable, and all the manners in which blacks, especially men, were portrayed in popular media and entertainment as criminals, thugs and murders.

Blacks naturally reacted. As blacks reacted, whites reacted. We follow the political arc, beginning with the Thirteenth Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. There was the out, the loophole. Blacks were locked up in greater and greater numbers as drug use was criminalized by the legal system. ALEC – American Legislative Exchange Council – established its agenda of feeding states the legislative measures and acts that furthered a reactionary social agenda but also helped its members realize increasing profits through state laws. From that, CCA – the Corrections Corporation of America, an ironic name if ever heard – is born, as is the monetized incarceration system that establishes prisons as profit centers. Now America has fallen from leading the world in many areas, but has managed to imprison more people than any other nation. And disproportionately imprisoned are blacks, and more specifically, black men.

It’s demonstrated in the documentary how the system is gained so that many blacks who are arrested, even when they’ve not committed a crime, are never convicted of a crime but end up spending time in jails and prisons through plea bargains, and how the fear of the maximum sentence is leveraged to encourage plea bargaining.

Senator Cory Booker points out that most race riots begin with incidents of police brutality. The hype over the threat from the Black Panthers is portrayed as the greatest danger to America. Footage Angela Davis’ gripping, powerful testimony in her trail is presented.

Politically, Lee Atwater’s notorious recordings are heard about how to manipulate voters. Willie Horton is brought up again, and how it turned the election for Bush. Bill Clinton’s role and his erroneous policies are shown, and their tangible impact, along with the insane, ‘Three Strikes Law’.

Political hype feeds fears; fears led to election victories; election victories lead to increased demonizing of blacks; increased demonizing leads to greater criminalizing, which develops into greater profits. A direct result is Donald Trump’ s election as ‘the law and order president’. His boogeyman are the brown people, refugees and immigrants. Guess which pretty little group of white dominated men is profiting from increased worries about immigrants and refugees?

Yes, ALEC.

As a final straw, prisons are being used as source for cheap labor for American companies to build their products. Meanwhile, poor, unemployed and underemployed people are distracted into believing the problems lie with immigrants, refugees and terrorists. And as each political party tries to regain office, they must outdo the previous administration’s stance as being tough on law and order. President Obama was finally one to begin to point out what was happening; Hillary changed her stance from hard on crime to intelligent on crime.

I recommend you see the film.

So here we have these movies, which teach our children to be strong and unafraid, to be honest and hopeful, along with one mocking our position on marriage as an institution, and finally one demonstrating the truth about how politicians and corporations manipulate and guide people to fear and hate, and vote and profits.

This, by the way, is why I march against Trump’s Agenda.

0

Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is from a movie. I saw the movie back in the mid-1960s when I was a child. For some reason, it popped into my head last night and stayed awhile.

So, here it is, from the 1965 production of ‘Cinderella’, Leslie Ann Warren singing ‘In My Own Little Corner’. 

1

Kubo and the Two Strings

We watched ‘Kubo and the Two Strings’ last night. Great tale. Great mythology. Sensational imagination on display. Wonderful artwork. Neat, different ideas – at least for me. Some, of course, predictable. That’s to happen if you’re a thinking reader or movie watching.

Themes develop. Characters are established and arcs developed. The story unfolds. It’s rarely totally new or fresh. The beauty and pleasure often arrive with the nuances of execution and the story’s internal truths. This reflects humanity, art and history. We build on what’s gone before, even when we can’t remember what’s gone before, even when it’s been distorted to portray another existence.

The song at the end was an unexpected pleasure. George Harrison could have been thinking about Kubo’s tale when he wrote ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. Regina Spektor’s presentation chilled and moved me. ‘Rolling Stone’ called it haunting. I agree with that. I have a new regard for the shamisen.

3

Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is one that used to start up whenever I’d hit the road during my military and civilian career, or during holidays. For a while, it was a lot of traveling. It looks glamorous on paper between all those countries, states and cities, but it wasn’t.

It’s simple beat and lyrics make it a terrific song for singing while walking around, to. From 1980 and the movie, ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, here’s Willie Nelson with, ‘On the Road Again’.

0

Hell Or High Water

This contains spoilers about the movie, ‘Hell Or High Water’. If you’re planning to see the movie, don’t read further, unless you’re okay knowing some important matters.

My wife and I watched the Academy Award nominated movie, ‘Hell Or High Water’. It stares Ben Foster, Chris Pine, Gil Birmingham and Jeff Bridges. There are women in this movie but this is about men, men and their relationships to one another, life, and women.

It’s a harsh movie, mournful and painful. Watching it, you think, “Jesus, people in Texas are really angry and (or) mean.” And you know, almost from the beginning, what will happen. If, after watching five minutes, you asked me to write down what events will take place, I would have written this down.

Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) will be alive. His partner, Alberto Parker (Birmingham) will be dead.

Tanner (Ben Foster) will be dead. Marcus will kill him. Tanner will nobly sacrifice himself for his brother, Toby (Chris Pine). Pine will be shot but he’ll live. Pine will get away with the robberies.

Toby will not reconcile with his wife. He’ll remain estranged with his boys. Hamilton will visit Toby after ‘it’s all over’ to try to confirm Toby was part of the robberies.

All this happened. Yet, expecting them to happen didn’t detract from the movie. This film was about relationships and the nuances their existences create, and how relationships continue to live and drive behavior even after some of those involved in the relationships are dead.

The movie, while about Texans Rangers and bank robbers, law and society, men and their women, and brothers and their family, is ultimately about love and betrayal. The largest betrayal is their belief in the land and the country, and how their expectations of what to believe betrayed them.

When the movie ended, after Toby and Hamilton have their conversation, and Toby invites Hamilton to come by and finish it, my wife commented, “That was an odd ending.”

“No, it wasn’t.” It was exactly about the title to me. Although the line, “Hell or High Water,” is used in reference to getting some money to a bank on Friday regardless of hell or high water, it’s clearer to me that the title is about relationships and life.

They are the hell or high water that’s endured.

 

0

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑