Mysteries Abysmal

The O.B.

A few days ago I saw a crappy commercial for Blockbuster.  A woman walks to her mailbox to retrieve her movies when a snoopy neighbor peers over her shoulder. "Oh, I saw that one and they all die in the end," he says, supposedly ruining it for her.  She turns red hot and marches to the brick-and-mortar Blockbuster to exchange it gratis for another film. This little episode reminded me of a passage in Owen Barfield's 1928 literary manifesto Poetic Diction: A Study in Meaning, a favorite of mine which my grad school was too postmodern to teach. Apart from his slightly condescending tone, I do guard these words:

"The pure prosaic can apprehend nothing but results. It knows nought of the thing coming into being, only of the thing become. It cannot realize shapes. It sees nature--and would like to see art--as a series of mechanical rearrangement of facts. And facts are facta--things done and past." (Chapter 11, "Strangeness")

Dickens satirizes this through Mr.Gradgrind in Hard Times, but Barfield extends the message and is more matter-of-fact. As for Blockbuster marketing execs who assume the worst of their customers, they could use a little straight talk from Owen.    

Overheard in Lansing

Group of college kids behind me at Biggby, commenting briefly on the piped-in music. 

Girl: I do like classical and I have a Vivaldi CD I listen to. 

A dude: It's cool, but I'm more into jazz and especially older blues--like early Eric Clapton. 

$1.2 billion

It's hard to imagine the Bronx bombers not taking the field next year at Yankee Stadium, but they won't, since they're moving across the street to the New Yankee Stadium. I'm happy to see they're bringing some of the older, familiar features with it:

The new right field view doesn't keep up with all the newer ballpark's dazzling skylines, but it is very South Bronxian.   

Here's an artist's rendering of the completed structure:

It'd be a blast to see Ruth's house one last time, but tickets are thin and auctioning sites are taking advantage.  Everything else you could possibly want to know about the new stadium you can read here. (I borrowed their photos and I thank them.)

Take a whiff: A small list

Woody Allen's been a favorite in my household since my family's student ghetto years in Blacksburg,VA.  I've seen most of his films and some (Play it Again Sam, Take the Money and Run, Love and Death, Radio Days, Annie Hall, Bananas) upwards of 10 times each. Yet I'll never understand to this day how a Coke-spittingly awful line--and so unlike Woody--will survive revisions and creep into one of his scripts. (Which effectively ruins the movie for me.) His wacky Sleeper alter-ego is one who feels a need to portray white, upwardly mobile socialites with acrimonious emotional burdens and gravely serious sensibilities about art. Here's a quick list of Woody's pratfalls, which I think have entertainment value in their own right. What you are about to read was not intended for laughs. 

4. Music teacher: l can see a person's soul by their intonation on an instrument -- keyboard, horn or strings. l can. lt's a gift.

Student: You saw my soul? Melinda and Melinda (2004)

3. "l saw you listening to the Mahler and crying. You should have seen her. She was listening to Mahler with tears streaming down her face. She looked so beautiful. l wanted to hug her." Melinda and Melinda (2004)

2. Holly: We saw, um, Pavarotti at Ernani at the Met, and I cried...

David: I cry at the opera. I bring my little bottle of wine, I sit there and I watch and I cry.  Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

1. Diane Wiest's character: My husband was a radiologist but I never did let him x-ray me.  I didn't want him to look at what my heart said. (September 1987)

Kwiecien, et al.

Getting my ducks in a row last week, I forgot to post some recent articles.  Several debuts in the movie department: a glibby take of the Mixed Martial Arts popcorn schmooze Never Back Down, which made the print edition of the Sun-Times but not the website.  The Detroit News syndicated it, although there's some egregious tampering on their half and some errant placing of commas. They took out my favorite lines. The other film was an IMAX nature doc called Wild Ocean 3D, which for the life of me I can't find on the web anywhere.  For Time Out, Bruno Monsaingeon's Red Baton, a two-part series featuring talks with Gennadi Rozhdestvesnky and others about music in Soviet Russia.  In music, a CD review of CSO and Silk Road from the CSO in-house label Resound. And lastly, just out today, a chat with baritone Mariusz Kwiecien for Time Out. He recently took over the lead role in Eugene Onegin, a production I'll be seeing for the second time this Friday.  Tonight Evgeny Kissin kicks off a pretty slow Easter weekend of classical action in this town, but NC2A madness should bide the time. We love the Drake.

Joshua

I didn't know anything about last year's suspense movie Joshua, so was pleasantly surprised to see Nico Muhly's name roll across the screen as the film's composer. (His soundtrack was the high point in a pretty turgid movie.)  The young title character's the "bad seed" type, capable of some really sinister thoughts and actions.  He hates soccer and baseball, but excessively plays minor-key vignettes on the piano; understandably his dad starts to worry. Of course his family is generally pretty forgiving to his foreboding eccentricities until he gives a school piano recital. Instead of properly playing his rehearsed "classical" piece, he shocks everyone with some stray atonal chords. Then it hits them that their kid is really wicked.  It's one of the corniest and campiest plot-turns in recent memory. 

Patty's weekend

I confess a mild attraction to Patricia Racette. I saw her today in Peter Grimes on the Met Simulcast. Warm eyes, beautiful skin, and she has an honest midwestern kinduva radiance about her (even though she's from New Hampshire).  But oh to get home and discover that I wouldn't be her type. Moving along, I'm not sure how I feel about seeing opera in a movie theater.  Hmm, 'underwhelmed' might be the word.  I went to one of those google-plexes with all the modern technological advantages, but the sound was limp and lifeless. The picture wasn't as clear as HD should be, but that could also be because of Doyle's stark production. The extra interviews and awkward Natalie Dessay interstitials were amusing, but $22 worth?  It's great exposure but a pretty second-rate experience.  Still, I'd go again and so should you.  Tristan's playing next weekend.      

Lift-off

Remember when the show Wings used bits of a Schubert piano sonata for its theme-song?  You don't? That's because they axed it after a few seasons and gave the opening credits a smarmy smooth jazz makeover (IIRC).  But when that sympathetic Schubertian sound got rolling, Wings was king. 

Mamet crosses over

"These cherished (liberal) precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."  -- David Mamet, "Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal" (Village Voice)

E! Siskel True Hollywood story

I was a kid when Gene Siskel was alive, so I remember him from TV as the supreme authority on movies.  And when I came to Chicago and would walk by this handsome film center renamed after him, that only added to his legend.  So this little passage was a tad deflating:

Chicago film critics who often attended the same screenings as Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were aware that the former is a hardcore film buff and the latter, who died in early 1999, was someone whose interest in film, at least to all appearances, was almost exclusively professional. (When Siskel first started writing for the Chicago Tribune, his main beat was real estate.) For instance, Ebert attends several film festivals every year and Siskel generally made it to few or none. After attending Cannes only once, as a TV reviewer in 1990, Siskel showed no interest in returning.  Ebert reviews a good many film books, and to my knowledge Siskel never did; if he ever read any books about film on his own, it would have surprised me. - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit what Films We Can See.