- Later I will see Wenders’s film, Paris, Texas, written by Sam Shepard. Watching … in a dark movie theatre, I will experience in advance what I will later come to see on a desert trail — that we are all the myth of America. The playwright’s American dream of abundance is a fragile thing lined with longing, alienation, and rage, things that … we in the country know, and foreigners who adopt our country come to know.
Sunday Reading: The Haunting of the Mexican Border, p. 22
January 5, 2020 at 9:50 pm (Artists and Writers, Memoirs, Movies, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Sundays, Women Writers)
Tags: nonfiction, reading lists, travel books
Black Christmas: A List of Things
December 15, 2019 at 1:21 am (Conversations, Holidays, Lists, Movies, Recommended)
Tags: comedy, horror, satire, Saturday
- There is one grand entrance that will have you on your feet and cheering. So unexpected, maybe cheesy, but self loved it. If you didn’t love it, you should not watch any horror movies set on campuses.
- Props to any student attending Hawthorne College despite the creepy founder.
- Never join a frat. Frats are bad.
- Cary Elwes! Lookin’ good. Please be in more movies, Cary Elwes.
- This is a gag movie. Therefore, as required by the genre, the heroine must be very, very, very dense.
- There is this line: “We’ll split up.” Yes! It is always wise to split up when there is a murderer in the house.
Solid B.
#currentlyreading: Screenplay, MASTER AND COMMANDER
September 20, 2019 at 5:57 am (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Movies)
Tags: adaptations, favorites
Captain Jack Aubrey’s lines in italics:
On deck there! Sail ho!
Looks like a frigate!
How did it get there?
We must turn and fight.
But he has the weather gauge again.
He must have been watching us
from some inlet.
My God. What can we do?
He has us by the hip.
Run like smoke and oakum.
We’ll have to bend every sail.
We’ll put up our handkerchiefs, if we have to!
We must survive this day.
Let’s get about it, Mr. Allen, gentlemen.
All hands, make sail!
This is the second time he’s done this to me.
There will not be a third.
Lens-Artists Challenge # 57: TAKING A BREAK
August 3, 2019 at 10:31 pm (Books, destinations, Flowers, Links, Movies, Places, plans, Recommended, Weather)
Tags: California, Garden, inspiration, psychology, Redwood City, Saturday, summer, summer movies
Self’s current book, Mihaly Czsikszentmihalyi’s FLOW: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPTIMAL EXPERIENCE is a very, very interesting book.
Her son and daughter-in-law were Psychology majors at Claremont, the school where the author taught. In fact, she read about him in the Claremont Graduate University alumni magazine, The Flame.
She is trying to practice Flow thinking (see graph below). She is trying to achieve “complexity” in her consciousness. This will be her project for the rest of the summer.
She thinks this goal is very much tied in with the Lens-Artists Photo Challenge: TAKING A BREAK.
Today, she walked downtown, which she hadn’t done in two weeks. Courthouse Square was empty. Nevertheless, the trip was not in vain, for she saw a movie: Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Is this a ‘Flow’ experience? Self thinks it is. Watching movies is one of self’s most enjoyable activities.
Mid-Afternoon, Courthouse Square, Redwood City, CA
And, she spends A LOT of time in her garden, where her efforts are repaid with gorgeous blooms like this one, on her Sheila’s Perfume rose:
Sheila’s Perfume, last week of July 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
2019 Hugo Awards Finalists, Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
April 6, 2019 at 6:19 pm (Lists, Movies, Recommended)
Tags: action movies, adaptations, blockbusters, horror, Saturday, science fiction
- Annihilation, based on the novel by Jeff VanderMeer
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Black Panther
- A Quiet Place
- Sorry To Bother You
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Selma Blair, Beautiful
February 26, 2019 at 7:46 pm (Artists and Writers, Conversations, Movies, Surprises)
Tags: fashion, illness, inspiration, Oscars, Vanity Fair
Went to the Vanity Fair Oscar Party! YES! Look at that gown — beautiful and ethereal. Who was the designer?
This actress is so beautiful and so fierce.
She told Vanity Fair that she realized, finally, that what she really wanted to do was to act. “But I don’t know if it’s too late.”
SELMA, YOU CAN ACT.
Stay tuned.
Alita, Robert Rodriguez, November Road
February 20, 2019 at 10:06 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, destinations, Links, Movies, Places, Recommended)
Tags: crime, mysteries, New Mexico, novel, reading lists, thrillers
At one point, close to the end of Alita: Battle Angel, self started to see if she could correctly predict the outcome. There was the cute guy (who looks A LOT like one of self’s nephews), the charming father figure (Christoph Waltz) and the Evil Henchman (Ed Skrein). At a certain point, self found herself hoping for a certain outcome, which meant that she was vested. And then she realized she was watching Robert Rodriguez, not Guillermo del Toro. And she suddenly knew the outcome. Which gave her a very satisfying feeling of closure.
Alita: Battle Angel — Five Stars
Now, she is at a point in her current read, November Road, where all characters and all plot lines begin to intersect. And they intersect in what is surely one of America’s most beautiful and most mysterious states: New Mexico. There’s a tiny hamlet called Goodnight that has one sheriff, one deputy, and one jail cell.
Here’s a Wikipedia page about the Goodnight Trail, if anyone’s interested.
The book’s veering into No Country For Old Men territory, with this one crucial difference: the MC, Frank Guidry, is good-looking. AND smart.
Since she’s never read Lou Berney before, she has no idea what authorial quirks are coming into play. She has a feeling, though, that Berney is going to be true to the genre. And that genre is noir.
The writing is of the hard-boiled crime genre category (which is to say, self loves it).
p. 136: Seraphine was fond of Guidry, he knew, but that and a nickel would get him one song on the jukebox.
See what self means?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Missing Cora Seaborne . . .
February 16, 2019 at 8:41 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Movies, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: adaptations, English writers, favorites, novel, Saturday, Victorian
If self had known a Cora Seaborne in her life, she’d undoubtedly be her best friend. She and Cora would read books, argue about them, and get mud on their shoes and under their nails. They’d collect useless stuff on their walks.
Actresses self thinks could play her:
Rebecca Hall
Romola Garai
Emma Thompson
Olivia Colman
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, 27 January 2019
January 28, 2019 at 1:05 am (Explorers, Lists, Movies, Philippine History, Sundays)
Tags: history, memories, news, politics, San Francisco Chronicle, South-East Asia, The Philippines, Vietnam War
Loving the cover story:
In 1969:
Nixon became President, the Beatles released Abbey Road, Sly and the Family Stone released Want To Take You Higher, The Who released Tommy.
Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid premiered. TV’s Star Trek got cancelled.
Woodstock happened, Chappaquiddick happened, the moon landing happened, Berkeley’s People Park happened, Charles Manson happened, The Gap opened its 1st store, the Vietnam draft lottery was televised, William Calley was convicted of six counts of murder for My Lai.
Self was in summer camp in England. That’s where she heard about the moon landing.
Ferdinand Marcos won re-election as President of the Philippines.
Wonder what groundbreaking books were published that year? No mention in the Chronicle. There must have been some.
Where was Gloria Steinem?
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Visualizing Anna Karenina
January 16, 2019 at 6:43 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Movies)
Tags: adaptations, classic movies, novel, performances, reading lists, Russian literature
Self saw the Joe Wright movie and felt it was ludicrous, especially the scene with the dueling tongues. None of which is Keira Knightley’s fault.
Here’s a photo of actress Vivien Leigh, who more closely resembles the image of Anna that self has in her mind:
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
