Justified 4.4

Apologies, dear blog readers, but self needed time to “process.”  She loves this season of Justified, it is absolutely great.

Raylan is quite significantly thinner than in previous seasons.  Timothy, is it overwork?  Never mind.  You are still gorgeous.  Gorgeous with a capital “G.”

When self watched “Parker” last weekend, there was a scene where Jason Statham impersonates a rich Texan and shows up in Palm Springs wearing —  gadzooks! —  an enormous white Stetson.  But, in keeping with the over-the-top nature of the whole cheesy enterprise (which is not to say that self did not find the movie hugely enjoyable —  she did, and particularly for the chemistry between J Lo, Parker, J Lo’s real estate colleagues, and her Mum’s yippy pet dog), the Stetson was about 10 sizes too large.  Self kids you not, dear blog readers, it looked about three feet wide.

Anyhoo, back to last night’s episode of “Justified.”  The preacher’s sister shows up in the local sheriff’s office, looking truly woebegone.  Until then, self was kinda hoping that her preacher brother survived the rattlesnake bite on his arm from the last episode, but alas!  He was apparently dead, dead, deader than a doornail, and that was the reason for the sister’s wan appearance.

In this episode, Ava —  who is, as we all know, hot, but whose figure has been hidden, for many episodes now, under dull-colored clothes that look like they were rescued from the dumpster behind the Salvation Army store — finally returns to sultry glory.  That is, she exhibits cleavage.  Her top was a lacy thing, like something from Victoria’s Secret.  Slutty and very fine.  Way to go, Ava!  The actress who plays her seems to be hardening her jaw, which is entirely in keeping with Ava’s long but relentless descent into Lady Macbeth territory.

Meanwhile, the waif/whore Ella May returns to the fold —  er, to the bar.  There are aspersions cast on her trustworthiness.  Ava hands her $2000 and tells her to make a fresh start somewhere far, far away.  And, just to prove how sincere Ava is, she sends Ella May off with the most malevolent member of the bar crew, a dirty blonde with a sort of Grade B Gerard Depardieu look, who rises to the occasion by having a moment of crisis in a gas station restroom, where it is revealed that he is having qualms about shooting Ella May, who is pumping gas —  a whore pumping gas!  Quelle fabulous use of subtext!  Anyhoo, the reason we know henchman is having qualms is that he pauses to sniff a line of coke before preparing his pistol for the death blow.  He then walks out of the restroom, and —  well, self cannot tell dear blog readers what happened next for she had her eyes shut.  All she knows is that lunk kept calling, almost beseechingly, “Ella May!  Ella May!”  As if he were playing a game of hide-and-seek with her.  Self listened anxiously for the report of a gun, but there was none.  Perhaps Ella May had the smarts to secret herself beneath the car?  Hanging on to the undercarriage, or something James Bond-y like that?  Way to go, Ella May!

Raylan was given a very nice gun by his increasingly comely deputy, Rachel (now divorced, though self can’t say she misses the ex, whose face she can’t ever remember seeing, in three previous seasons).  It was silver and long.  He uses it to get back at his ex-lover’s husband, the boxer.  He shoots and shoots and gets shot himself, and the lady escapes with her life, her loot, and her vixen reputation, and Raylan discovers that the $10,000 she stole from him went into buying chickens.  Or were those fighting cocks?

No Deputy Gutterson in this episode.  Self has noticed that the producers never have Rachel and Tim in the same episode.  She figures they function as alter-egos for Raylan.  When Raylan is feeling hip and manly, they have Tim to exchange sardonic verbiage with.  When he is feeling woebegone, they have Rachel to bring out his sensitive side.  Gadzooks if that doesn’t work —  in spades!

In this episode, there were more of those Holy-Cow-Mother-of-All-Lines, the ones that display the fantastic American capacity for breath control, rivaling that of even Royal Shakesperean actors like Ian Holm and Derek Jacobi.  Only, the fun quotient is to the nth power, because these characters are doing the Shakesperean thang in rural Kentucky.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

A Most Unlikely Hero

Self is saving some movie reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle of yesterday, Friday, Dec. 28.

There’s one in particular, a review of Promised Land, a movie which hasn’t gotten much buzz at all, buried under movies like Django Unchained and Les Miserables (She told The Man to go ahead and watch it without her today.  For some reason, she’s never been that enthused over Anne Hathaway, or about movie musicals in general.  Perhaps with the exception of The Muppets movie).  It opens, unexpectedly, with an accolade to Matt Damon:

Promised Land is a fine place to start appreciating Matt Damon, who always makes it seem as if everybody else is acting and he’s just going through the movie being natural.  Damon is the actor who leaves no fingerprints, who never calls attention to himself and never, ever screws up, not once in 20 years.  Whether playing Jason Bourne or Mr. Ripley, Damon creates an illusion of the familiar, and that familiarity is put to good use in Promised Land, in which he plays a salesman for a fracking company, trying to talk rural people into leasing their land for natural-gas drilling.

Self would just like to say, she loved Jeremy Renner until she saw him take over the Bourne movies this year.  Then, watching Renner, she realized that Matt Damon’s portrayal of Bourne was absolutely brilliant.  And she never wants to see another Bourne movie without Damon.  Seriously.

Stay tuned.

Currently Reading: Second Sunday of December (2012)

It is a beautiful, sunny day.  Jennie and son have decided to sleep in.  Just as well, for they have a long drive ahead of them:  they are heading back to Claremont today, boo.

But, first there will be brunch!

Self keeps herself occupied by reading.  Her current book is Ruth Rendell’s The Monster in the Box.

Self’s first Ruth Rendell mystery was Thirteen Steps Down, and it was absolutely fascinating, a novel told from the point of view of a murderer.  The main character (the murderer) did not have as spectacular a psyche as, say, Hannibal Lecter or others of his ilk, but was rather a run-of-the-mill sad sack who had no idea that he was capable of murder —  that is, until he finally went and did it (more out of pique than, even, of anger).  Self would never have thought she would be quite so engaged.  Anyhoo, after that book, self added Rendell to her list of favorite crime writers, a list that includes Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, Morag Joss, and Arnaldur Indridason (She also recently added a new name to the list:  Colin Harrison, whose thriller The Finder self read in Paris, during the few days she spent in a friend’s apartment, in July)

The Monster in the Box is again about a twisted soul, but this time we are in the point of view of a decent man, a recurring character in Rendell’s books, an Inspector Wexford.  Self has not yet been able to pinpoint his age, as —  despite her best efforts —  she is still only on p. 76 (and she began the book about a week ago).

But that’s OK!  Because self finished the novel she is reviewing, and she worked hard on her novel-in-progress, and son came two days ago with Jennie, and various other exciting things happened, which will keep on happening, self is sure, until the end of the holidays.

Casting a glance at the blurbs on the back of the book, self finds this by P. D. James:  “She has transcended her genre by her remarkable imaginative power to explore and illuminate the dark corners of the human psyche.”

Hear, hear!

And here’s something from Marilyn Stasio, the crime columnist for the New York Times Book Review:

“Ruth Rendell is my dream writer.  Her prose style, so intricate in design and supple in execution, has the disquieting intimacy of an alien touch in the dark.”

Again, hear, hear.  Turning, now, to one of self’s recent posts, she finds that a lot of people are viewing the post about  Naguib Mahfouz, the one in which she quoted from an issue of The Economist (September 2, 2006).  It is quite clear, after re-reading that obituary, that Mahfouz was a writer of place.  Quoting from The Economist:

. . . he was born, in 1911, in Gamaliya, a 1,000-year-old quarter whose densely packed and labyrinthine lanes were overhung by balconies that blotted out the daylight.  By the time he was six his father, a local merchant, had done well enough for himself to join the flight of Cairo’s burgeoning middle class to the airier, more modern parts of town.  But Mr. Mahfouz never lost his love of the Old City.  Many of his most pungent novels were set there and drew their titles from it:  Zuqaq al Midaq (Midaq Alley), Al Sukariya (Sugar Street).

Truly, your earliest memories never fail you.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Last Day in Edinburgh

Grayfriars Bobby, the Faithful Skye Terrier who guarded the grave of his master for 14 years!

Dear Edinburgh, how self will miss you —  all the sights and sounds of your colorful denizens, your overcast skies, your creepy underground tours, your paving-stone streets, your crooked corners, your fascinating bookshops, your little pubs, your eccentric monuments (Scott’s monument looks like an alien spaceship about to take off into the cloudy Scottish skies!)

Today, self went to the Elephant House.  She took pictures of a bulletin board festooned with drawings of elephants:

Children mail drawings of elephants to The Elephant House, billed as “The Birthplace of Harry Potter”

On another bulletin board were many pictures of a (very young) J. K. Rowling.

In the comfort room was scrawled, on one wall:

If you would like to bang (or make love to) Hermione, put a check mark here.

There were 10 check marks.

Funny, self thought there would be more.

Just to the right of the above scrawled message (Self is amazed that she actually had the wherewithal to take notes on what was written on the bathroom walls — but, anything for “ze blog”!!!) was another:

If you are sane (or cool enough) to realize that Hermione would have nothing to do with you, put a check mark here.

Beneath this message were eight check marks.

Meat pie with mashed potatoes and gravy: Self’s lunch today at The Elephant House. Self noticed that most of the patrons who ordered this accompanied their meal with a large glass of milk!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Things Self Learns From Reading THE NEW YORKER of 28 November 2011

• “For new adulterers, reduced circumstances are just another part of the romance.  Each attempt to avoid detection —  the cheap hotel rooms, the seedy restaurants, the run-down vacation spots —  is a novelty, even a return to youth.” —   From the “Briefly Noted” review of Anne Enright’s fifth novel, The Forgotten Waltz.
• Helen Dunmore, author of The Siege, about the long siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, has written a sequel called The Betrayal, a novel in which “the effects of repression replace those of deprivation . . .  “
• The issue’s short story is by Alice Munro (maybe her 50th appearance in this magazine —  BWAH HA HA!)
• John Lahr, The New Yorker’s theater critic, begins his review of a new play with:  “Alan Rickman is the go-to actor for supercilious.”
• There is a teensy ad on p. 83  for Austen Riggs Center:  “A distinctive psychiatric hospital:  Intensive psychotherapy in an open community.”  On the same page, an ad for Gunderson Residence of McLean Hospital:  “Highly specialized residential treatment for women with BPD” (Of course everyone knows what BPD stands for!  Everyone who reads The New Yorker, that is)
• Jane Birkin is appearing LIVE IN CONCERT.  There was a time when self knew this woman as an actress.  That time was long long ago.
• The show “2 Broke Girls” is “a genuine ratings hit,”  according to New Yorker writer Emily Nussbaum.  Self watched a few episodes on the plane to New Delhi.  Oh, yeah.  Yeah!  You go, Kat Dennings!  Self loved all your scenes in “Thor,” you stole them from Acknowledged Beauty Natalie Portman.  Now Dennings gets to be called (by Nussbaum) “a baby Roseanne.”  This is because Dennings plays “a waitress who insults her customers, a poor girl who walls herself off with defeatist sarcasm.”
• Self encounters the term “sardonic brunette” for the first time.  According to Emily Nussbaum (again), the “sensibility” of the sardonic brunette “echoes back to Rosalind Russell.”  Modern incarnations of the type are:  Roseanne, Janeane Garofalo, Sarah Silverman, Sandra Bernhard, and Tina Fey.  In the era of Lucille Ball, “it was exciting simply to see a woman clown, even if she always lost, even if she was literally spanked for her rebellion.”  A little further in the same piece, self learns what a “dead joke” is:  “I’ll say I’m ugly before you can.”  She also learns that this kind of joke is “from an older style of female comedy.”  And boyfriends can be considered guilty of such a thing as “a thought crime”: glancing at another girl.  Also  the hit show Glee “likes to insult fat people and then sing songs about how wrong it is to bully them.”  Another show, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, is “hilariously filthy.” The guy who was being sexually harassed by Jennifer Aniston in “Horrible Bosses” is here:  self really likes the way he whines.  His voice reminds self a little of Joe Pantoliano.
• Self also learns (again via Nussbaum —  Nussbaum is an absolutely brilliant writer!) that there are contexts in which a sense of “entitlement” can function as “a kind of superpower” because it makes a person believe that she deserves “a better life.”  Okay, self can definitely buy that.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.

Oscars 2011: Self Very Anticipatory Already

“Inception” vs “The Social Network”

Most Middle-of-the-Road, Appealing Across All Demographics (Generally) and Therefore Might Win:  “Secretariat”

Hopefully, Best Actress Nominations will include all or some of these:  Annete Bening (for “The Kids Are All Right”), Catherine Keener (“Please Give”), Patricia Clarkson (“Cairo Time”), Diane Lane (“Secretariat”), Jennifer Lawrence (“Winter’s Bone”), Naomi Watts (“Mother and Child”)

And Best Supporting Actress Nominations will include both or at least one of these:  Sissy Spacek (“Get Low”), Carey Mulligan (“Wall Street 2”),

And hopefully Best Supporting Actor Nominations will include one or more of these:  John Malkovich (“Secretariat”), Bill Murray (“Get Low”).  Zach Galifianakis for something.  And Joseph Gordon-Levitt (“Inception”).  And Andrew Garfield (“The Social Network”).  And Jeremy Renner (“The Town”).  And Sam Rockwell (“Conviction”)

Best Harry Potter Ever:  “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1”

Best Picture, Indie version:  “Get Low” vs. “Winter’s Bone”

Most Romantic Movie of the Year:  “Cairo Time”

Most Bitterly Caustic Movie of the Year:  “Due Date”

Most Angry Man Posing as a Funny Man:  Zach Galifianakis

Best Comic Actor of His Generation:  Steve Carell (See “Dinner for Schmucks”!)

Best Naomi Watts movie of the Year:  “Mother and Child”

Most Heartfelt Acting Job:  Hilary Swank in “Conviction”

Best Movie that Self Unfortunatevely Missed Seeing:  the documentary about Joan Rivers, “A Piece of Work”

Movie Self Saw That She Wished She Had Never Seen:  “Skyline”

Self’s Three Most Anticipated Movies:  “Cowboys vs. Aliens”; “True Grit”; and, self cannot tell a lie:  “Narnia:  Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”  “Tron 2” trailers make her yawn, yawn, yawn.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers.  Stay tuned.