If one examines the photograph closely, one may see that it bears Reagan’s autograph, along with a personal message from the young actor.
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
1938: Ronald Reagan And Donald Crisp In Monterey
If one examines the photograph closely, one may see that it bears Reagan’s autograph, along with a personal message from the young actor.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
An Outtake From “How Green Was My Valley”
“How Green Was My Valley” strikes me as the finest of Ford films, although any director would be proud to claim “The Informer” and “The Quiet Man” as his own. (I find “The Grapes Of Wrath” too full of fakery, and I remain clueless regarding the exalted reputation of “The Searchers”.)
While the film was in pre-production, “How Green Was My Valley” was intended to be filmed in color, in Wales, with William Wyler directing.
German bombers over Britain caused Twentieth Century-Fox to reassess the situation; the studio decided to keep production in the U.S. and to construct a Welsh mining village from scratch in Southern California (which necessitated shooting the film in black-and-white, Southern California lacking the green vegetation of Wales; the move caused Wyler to leave the project).
Despite an occasional over-supply of sentiment, “How Green Was My Valley” is an emotionally-tough film, with most surviving characters destined to lead lives of hardship and suffering. That the American public responded so positively to the film is testament to Ford’s narrative skills.
The picture belongs to Donald Crisp, who gives a great performance at the center of the film. (Although Crisp has the most important role, Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O’Hara, both in subsidiary roles, received top billing.)
Crisp began his career as an opera singer. His first important film role was Ulysses S. Grant in D.W. Griffith’s “The Birth Of A Nation”. During World War I, Crisp served in British intelligence. During World War II, Crisp served in the U.S. Army Reserve. For decades while working in Hollywood, Crisp was a key advisor at Bank Of America, a leading lender to the movie studios; many important films were financed only with Crisp’s imprimatur. When he died, Crisp, a savvy investor, was rich as Midas.
Roddy McDowall, who plays Crisp’s youngest son, is both convincing and cloying. He offers one of those performances it is possible to admire one moment and loathe the next. The worst scene in the film is the one in which McDowall takes his first step after recovering from a life-threatening illness; the scene—played in a field of daffodils—is laughable.
The best scene in the film involves O’Hara emerging from the church on her wedding day, her long wedding veil twisting in the wind. For reasons of circumstance, O’Hara has married a man with money, not the man she loves. The pain in O’Hara’s eyes is heartbreaking.
I am diffident on the issue whether Ford was a great director. If forced to offer an opinion, I would say “No”—Wyler would receive from me an unqualified “Yes”—and my reluctance to endorse Ford is based upon his work’s lack of an individual style. Ford was a skilled technician, a master of the film medium—but he was more craftsman than artist. Ford films, unlike Wyler films, are not crammed with special, unique moments that could have come from no other director.
Further, Ford films do not reward repeat viewings. “How Green Was My Valley”, quite good in its own right, is worth seeing only once or twice. The viewer does not find a thousand new subtleties with each repeat viewing, a thousand new fine points of style; everything is pretty much on the surface.
Below is a photograph taken during the film’s principal photography, with a farm near Santa Monica standing in as Wales.
Following “The Grapes Of Wrath”, Ford went to work on “How Green Was My Valley” (with cinematographer Arthur C. Miller) while Toland went to work on “Citizen Kane”, giving first-time film director Orson Welles his only unqualified success. The film industry, in awarding its prizes for 1941, gave everything to “How Green Was My Valley” instead of “Citizen Kane”, a choice based upon personalities as much as merit.
Five years after his epic work on “Citizen Kane”, Toland was to shoot Wyler’s “The Best Years Of Our Lives”, giving Wyler his most visually-arresting film.
Toland was soon thereafter to die of heart failure, at the age of 44. Toland’s early death was an incalculable loss to the film medium: he may have been the most innovative cinematographer that ever lived.
Saturday, November 2, 2013
“Islands In The Stream”
“Islands In The Stream” is a heartbreaking yet emotionally-tough tale of loss. Schaffner caught the tone of Hemingway’s posthumously-published book to perfection—which cannot have been easy to do.
It is Schaffner’s finest film, and captures radiant performances from George C. Scott, David Hemmings (at left), Hart Bochner (at right) and Claire Bloom.
Upon its initial release, “Islands In The Stream” did not fare well at the box office. It was a difficult film to market and its producers surely intended to rely upon glowing notices, which the film did not receive (but should have).
The film has since acquired an admiring audience and a high reputation.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Barbra Streisand In “Funny Girl”
Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl” from 1968.
Even though “Funny Girl” marked Streisand’s screen debut, the film captures Streisand’s finest screen performance, probably because William Wyler—a GREAT director of film actors—was at the helm of the picture.
Enormous care was devoted to dressing Streisand—the gowns are in muted colors flattering to Streisand, with patterns and shapes designed to conceal her figure—and enormous care was devoted to lighting Streisand. Similar efforts were involved in creating a special makeup plan intended to glamorize the new star.
All the work paid off. From Streisand’s first screen entrance—a long take from behind, with Streisand wearing a leopard fur coat and hat, exiting from a limousine and proceeding through a stage door into a darkened theater, after which the camera captures its first glimpse of Streisand’s face in a mirror, at which point Streisand says, “Hello, gorgeous!”—Streisand is given the full star treatment. MGM in the 1930s and 1940s was no better at providing deluxe glamour.
The rose was soon to lose its bloom. None of Streisand’s future performances lived up to the promise of “Funny Girl”, although Vincente Minnelli’s “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” from 1970 captures a few magical moments from Streisand.
Things took a sharp turn southward in 1975, when Pauline Kael proclaimed to the world that she had “fallen out of like” with Streisand after seeing “Funny Lady”, a sequel to “Funny Girl”. Streisand, argued Kael, had already become a caricature.
Streisand was never again to get a good screen role—and I shall tweak the nose of anyone who says “Nuts”—and Streisand took to directing herself, always producing wince-inducing performances.
I have excised Omar Sharif from the “Funny Girl” outtake—I did not want to have to share his bloodshot eyes. In “Funny Girl”, Sharif was the fly in the ointment: he looked hung-over for the duration of the film.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
An Outtake From “Metropolis”
It is not often one has the chance to see silent films under optimum conditions.
About a month ago, the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts showed a pristine print of “Wings” on a Saturday afternoon.
Andrew and I talked about going, but we decided to do something else that day.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
Another Outtake From “A Slave Of Love”
“A Slave Of Love” is not a masterpiece, but it is well worth watching.
An Outtake From “A Slave Of Love”
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
“Two Dunces Sitting On A Volcano”
An outtake from the 1971 film, “Nicholas And Alexandra”.
The film is not very good, but Pauline Kael was unnecessarily unkind to the film in her notorious New Yorker review.
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Catherine Deneuve In “Indochine”
Catherine Deneuve reigns in "Indochine". That is, she presides over its second-rate fiction with the manner of an empress who knows her powers are constitutionally limited but who continues to take her duties seriously. She can't change the course of the film, but her lofty presence keeps it from flying apart.
Vincent Canby
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Barry Lyndon
An outtake from Stanley Kubrick's ravishing, and deceptively complex, "Barry Lyndon", a film I have been fortunate enough to have seen on the wide screen.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Meryl Streep As Margaret Thatcher
Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher, currently before the cameras in London.
Monday, January 4, 2010
A Melancholy Final Two Days
Our last two days at home were sort of melancholy.
With the holidays over, our time at home was winding down—and we were not eager to leave.
The dog could sense our melancholy, because he was slightly unsettled on Saturday and Sunday. Andrew’s mother said that the dog understood that we would be departing soon, leaving him without his best pals—and she insisted that he was as sad to see us depart as everyone else because she could hear it in his “voice” (by which she meant the noises the dog makes).
The dog was particularly keen for affection from Andrew on Saturday and Sunday. He did not want to leave Andrew’s side.
We took him to the park early Saturday morning. We made the gesture for him, not for us, because it was frightfully cold. We did not remain at the park for long.
On Saturday morning, we had a major breakfast. We ate grapefruit, hot oatmeal, scrambled eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, toast, orange juice, cranberry juice and apple-cinnamon muffins warm from the oven.
After breakfast, Andrew and I went out to do some serious food shopping for Andrew’s mother. Alex accompanied us, because he needed to restock his own kitchen after spending ten days at his parents’ house. We took the dog with us, and he enjoyed his morning outing.
We visited two food stores. On our way home, we stopped at Alex’s apartment and deposited his purchases.
Once we returned home, we had a quick lunch—vegetable lasagna—and afterward all of us (except the dog) headed to Southdale to catch the first showing of the afternoon of “Nine”.
Everyone but me was already familiar with the source material: the Fellini film, “8 ½”, and Maury Yeston’s Broadway score.
“Nine” was not boring, but it was not good.
The project obviously had the wrong director. A French or an Italian director should have been assigned the project, and a different cast engaged (except for the actress portraying Mrs. Contini, who was convincing—and marvelous).
The film had the wrong “look”, the wrong “tone”, and the wrong tinctura.
Much of the film was laughable, largely because of fatal miscasting. Most gruesome was Judi Dench, a fat old cow, who was assigned a Folies Bergere number that, in the right hands, would have been a surefire success.
After the movie, we went straight home, because Alec and Lizbeth and the kids were to join us for our last night home.
We had Swiss steak for dinner, accompanied by mashed potatoes, white corn, lima beans, butternut squash and a pear-strawberry-nut salad. We had angel food cake for dessert, which Helena loves.
We spent the evening playing with the kids.
Early yesterday morning, Andrew and I took the dog to the park again, even though it was colder than ever. It was the dog’s last early-morning romp in the park for a while—he will now have to make do with an early-morning romp by himself in the backyard.
We had buttermilk pancakes and sausage for breakfast.
After church, we all returned home for a lunch of Quiche Lorraine.
Andrew and I spent a melancholy afternoon getting our things together.
In the middle of the afternoon, Andrew’s parents took us to the airport. It was painful to have to say “Goodbye” to everyone.
Andrew and I will see next Alex over the first weekend in February, because Alex will join us in Boston for a weekend of college basketball games: three games in two days.
Andrew and I will next see his parents early on the morning of Saturday, March 13, when we will meet up with them (and Alex) at Athens airport.
I do not know when we will next see Alec and Lizbeth and the kids.
It is possible we will not see them again until summer.
With the holidays over, our time at home was winding down—and we were not eager to leave.
The dog could sense our melancholy, because he was slightly unsettled on Saturday and Sunday. Andrew’s mother said that the dog understood that we would be departing soon, leaving him without his best pals—and she insisted that he was as sad to see us depart as everyone else because she could hear it in his “voice” (by which she meant the noises the dog makes).
The dog was particularly keen for affection from Andrew on Saturday and Sunday. He did not want to leave Andrew’s side.
We took him to the park early Saturday morning. We made the gesture for him, not for us, because it was frightfully cold. We did not remain at the park for long.
On Saturday morning, we had a major breakfast. We ate grapefruit, hot oatmeal, scrambled eggs, bacon, fried potatoes, toast, orange juice, cranberry juice and apple-cinnamon muffins warm from the oven.
After breakfast, Andrew and I went out to do some serious food shopping for Andrew’s mother. Alex accompanied us, because he needed to restock his own kitchen after spending ten days at his parents’ house. We took the dog with us, and he enjoyed his morning outing.
We visited two food stores. On our way home, we stopped at Alex’s apartment and deposited his purchases.
Once we returned home, we had a quick lunch—vegetable lasagna—and afterward all of us (except the dog) headed to Southdale to catch the first showing of the afternoon of “Nine”.
Everyone but me was already familiar with the source material: the Fellini film, “8 ½”, and Maury Yeston’s Broadway score.
“Nine” was not boring, but it was not good.
The project obviously had the wrong director. A French or an Italian director should have been assigned the project, and a different cast engaged (except for the actress portraying Mrs. Contini, who was convincing—and marvelous).
The film had the wrong “look”, the wrong “tone”, and the wrong tinctura.
Much of the film was laughable, largely because of fatal miscasting. Most gruesome was Judi Dench, a fat old cow, who was assigned a Folies Bergere number that, in the right hands, would have been a surefire success.
After the movie, we went straight home, because Alec and Lizbeth and the kids were to join us for our last night home.
We had Swiss steak for dinner, accompanied by mashed potatoes, white corn, lima beans, butternut squash and a pear-strawberry-nut salad. We had angel food cake for dessert, which Helena loves.
We spent the evening playing with the kids.
Early yesterday morning, Andrew and I took the dog to the park again, even though it was colder than ever. It was the dog’s last early-morning romp in the park for a while—he will now have to make do with an early-morning romp by himself in the backyard.
We had buttermilk pancakes and sausage for breakfast.
After church, we all returned home for a lunch of Quiche Lorraine.
Andrew and I spent a melancholy afternoon getting our things together.
In the middle of the afternoon, Andrew’s parents took us to the airport. It was painful to have to say “Goodbye” to everyone.
Andrew and I will see next Alex over the first weekend in February, because Alex will join us in Boston for a weekend of college basketball games: three games in two days.
Andrew and I will next see his parents early on the morning of Saturday, March 13, when we will meet up with them (and Alex) at Athens airport.
I do not know when we will next see Alec and Lizbeth and the kids.
It is possible we will not see them again until summer.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Doing Not Much Of Anything
On Monday morning, Andrew and I rose early—we have been waking no later than 5:30 a.m. Central Time since we arrived home—but we did not take the dog to the park. It was very cold, and we decided that he would be as happy in the back yard as in the park—and we did not want Andrew’s father to have to make another early-morning excursion to the park to make sure we were safe.
At 6:00 a.m., by pre-design, Andrew and I wakened Alex. We three got cleaned up and left the house at 6:40 a.m., taking the dog with us.
Our intended mission: to remove the snow at Alec and Lizbeth’s house.
We arrived at 7:00 a.m., just as it became light enough for us to work.
We had to park on the street, just as Alec and Lizbeth had had to park on the street the previous evening. The snow on the drive was too deep for anyone to attempt to drive through it.
We had our shovels with us, and we got right to work.
Within five minutes, Alec popped his head out the front door and said, “I can’t believe you guys. Don’t you have anything better to do at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday morning?”
“Nope” was our answer.
“I was going to do this myself later this morning” were his next words. “Why don’t you come inside and we can deal with the snow later.”
“Nope” was our answer.
“Then I am going to come out and join you.”
“Nope.” That was our party line, and we were sticking to it. “Stay inside with the kids. We’ve got this covered.”
And we continued to shovel snow until we were done with the sidewalks and the drive. It took us only an hour to do the job.
We stepped inside for two minutes after we were done, simply to say “Good Morning” to everyone, but we had no plans to stay. We declined all offers of coffee and food, and said we had to get home.
When we arrived home, Andrew’s mother and father were up. They knew where we had gone, and they were waiting for us to return in order to have breakfast.
We had a very simple breakfast: grapefruit, granola, scrambled eggs and toast. That was all we wanted.
Our task for Monday was threefold: (1) to decide whether we were to go to Greece in March; (2) to select a particular guided tour; and (3) to make all necessary bookings.
Alex wants to visit Greece, Andrew’s parents want to visit Greece, and Andrew and I want to visit Greece. We are not experts on Greece, however, and none of us has the time necessary to attempt to become experts on Greece. We decided, consequently, that a guided tour may make the most sense for us, especially since we want to see the country’s most prominent highlights without undertaking a massive research project.
We have ten days at our disposal, no more. Our ten-day limitation is imposed by the length of my Spring Break.
Numerous tour companies offer seven-to-ten-day tours of Greece in March, and we plowed through the many options.
Andrew’s parents have always been pleased with Collette Vacations—their escorted trip to Portugal this past Spring had been a Collette Vacations tour—but the guided tour of Greece we settled upon was offered by Globus Tours, not Collette Vacations. Our selection was based upon the fact that the particular Globus tour included visits to most of the key historic sites from Greece’s ancient history, including visits to ruins, excavations, temples, monasteries and museums.
In addition to traveling through a broad swath of the Greek countryside, the tour is scheduled to visit Corinth, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Olympia, Delphi, Meteora, Thermopylae and Athens. We thought this particular tour was the one that most-closely matched our interests.
We will depart on Friday, March 12, and we will return on Sunday, March 21. We very much look forward to our trip to Greece—and we very much appreciate the fact that we will have no additional planning to do.
Another benefit of the trip is that the weather in Greece in mid-March should be better than the weather in Minneapolis or Boston!
Once our trip selection was complete, we went out for a late lunch: hamburgers at Ruby Tuesday.
On our way home, we stopped at the care facility to visit Andrew’s grandmother. She recognized no one.
When we returned home, Andrew’s parents called their travel agent and asked the agent to book our trip, giving the agent all necessary information, including our departure cities. The agent informed Andrew’s parents that tour confirmations and flight confirmations, owing to the holiday period, might take two business days, perhaps three business days.
We did very little the rest of the afternoon except read travel books about Greece and take the dog outside to play.
The house was eerily quiet on Monday, what with the kids gone. It was difficult for us to adjust to their absence.
Dinner was grilled salmon and seasoned wild rice, served with fried zucchini, grilled red and yellow peppers, and tomato-cucumber salad. We had orange sherbet and lemon sherbet for dessert.
After dinner, we went downstairs and watched on DVD Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film, “The Day Of The Jackal”, a classic all of us had seen before. A near-perfect film, “The Day Of The Jackal” is a meticulous piece of craftsmanship, the work of a master of the medium. Zinnemann, one of the most elegant of filmmakers, possessed a remarkable eye for detail and atmosphere. Zinnemann’s late work, especially, is notable for its economy and subtlety. I doubt there is a filmmaker alive today with his gifts.
Yesterday we had a couple of excursions on our agenda.
For breakfast, we ate walnut waffles, which are a pain to make but worth the effort. An hour later, we were headed downtown to view the exhibition, “The Louvre And The Masterpiece”, at The Minneapolis Institute Of Arts.
“The Louvre And The Masterpiece” was a small exhibition. Only a few dozen artworks from the Louvre had been loaned for the exhibition. Most notable were Vermeer’s famed “The Astronomer”, the star of the exhibition, and a da Vinci study drawing of folds of drapery.
Once we had visited the Louvre exhibition, we visited the period rooms, decked out for the holidays in period Christmas decorations (apparently a longstanding tradition at The Minneapolis Institute Of Arts).
After our museum visit, we ate lunch at a nearby German restaurant. We ordered lentil soup with sausage, Alsatian casserole and hazelnut torte. It was an excellent lunch.
We spent the afternoon at home, doing not much of anything.
Andrew’s mother made chile, entirely appropriate for the cold weather, and she also baked brownies. We had the chile for dinner, along with avocado salad.
After dinner, we went to Williams Arena to see Minnesota open its Big Ten season against Penn State. Andrew’s mother even accompanied us to the game (it will be the only game of the season for her). The Golden Gophers defeated the Nittany Lions, 75-70.
When we got home from the game, we ate the brownies.
Today we will go spend the day with Alec and Lizbeth and the kids.
At 6:00 a.m., by pre-design, Andrew and I wakened Alex. We three got cleaned up and left the house at 6:40 a.m., taking the dog with us.
Our intended mission: to remove the snow at Alec and Lizbeth’s house.
We arrived at 7:00 a.m., just as it became light enough for us to work.
We had to park on the street, just as Alec and Lizbeth had had to park on the street the previous evening. The snow on the drive was too deep for anyone to attempt to drive through it.
We had our shovels with us, and we got right to work.
Within five minutes, Alec popped his head out the front door and said, “I can’t believe you guys. Don’t you have anything better to do at 7:00 a.m. on a Monday morning?”
“Nope” was our answer.
“I was going to do this myself later this morning” were his next words. “Why don’t you come inside and we can deal with the snow later.”
“Nope” was our answer.
“Then I am going to come out and join you.”
“Nope.” That was our party line, and we were sticking to it. “Stay inside with the kids. We’ve got this covered.”
And we continued to shovel snow until we were done with the sidewalks and the drive. It took us only an hour to do the job.
We stepped inside for two minutes after we were done, simply to say “Good Morning” to everyone, but we had no plans to stay. We declined all offers of coffee and food, and said we had to get home.
When we arrived home, Andrew’s mother and father were up. They knew where we had gone, and they were waiting for us to return in order to have breakfast.
We had a very simple breakfast: grapefruit, granola, scrambled eggs and toast. That was all we wanted.
Our task for Monday was threefold: (1) to decide whether we were to go to Greece in March; (2) to select a particular guided tour; and (3) to make all necessary bookings.
Alex wants to visit Greece, Andrew’s parents want to visit Greece, and Andrew and I want to visit Greece. We are not experts on Greece, however, and none of us has the time necessary to attempt to become experts on Greece. We decided, consequently, that a guided tour may make the most sense for us, especially since we want to see the country’s most prominent highlights without undertaking a massive research project.
We have ten days at our disposal, no more. Our ten-day limitation is imposed by the length of my Spring Break.
Numerous tour companies offer seven-to-ten-day tours of Greece in March, and we plowed through the many options.
Andrew’s parents have always been pleased with Collette Vacations—their escorted trip to Portugal this past Spring had been a Collette Vacations tour—but the guided tour of Greece we settled upon was offered by Globus Tours, not Collette Vacations. Our selection was based upon the fact that the particular Globus tour included visits to most of the key historic sites from Greece’s ancient history, including visits to ruins, excavations, temples, monasteries and museums.
In addition to traveling through a broad swath of the Greek countryside, the tour is scheduled to visit Corinth, Mycenae, Epidaurus, Olympia, Delphi, Meteora, Thermopylae and Athens. We thought this particular tour was the one that most-closely matched our interests.
We will depart on Friday, March 12, and we will return on Sunday, March 21. We very much look forward to our trip to Greece—and we very much appreciate the fact that we will have no additional planning to do.
Another benefit of the trip is that the weather in Greece in mid-March should be better than the weather in Minneapolis or Boston!
Once our trip selection was complete, we went out for a late lunch: hamburgers at Ruby Tuesday.
On our way home, we stopped at the care facility to visit Andrew’s grandmother. She recognized no one.
When we returned home, Andrew’s parents called their travel agent and asked the agent to book our trip, giving the agent all necessary information, including our departure cities. The agent informed Andrew’s parents that tour confirmations and flight confirmations, owing to the holiday period, might take two business days, perhaps three business days.
We did very little the rest of the afternoon except read travel books about Greece and take the dog outside to play.
The house was eerily quiet on Monday, what with the kids gone. It was difficult for us to adjust to their absence.
Dinner was grilled salmon and seasoned wild rice, served with fried zucchini, grilled red and yellow peppers, and tomato-cucumber salad. We had orange sherbet and lemon sherbet for dessert.
After dinner, we went downstairs and watched on DVD Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film, “The Day Of The Jackal”, a classic all of us had seen before. A near-perfect film, “The Day Of The Jackal” is a meticulous piece of craftsmanship, the work of a master of the medium. Zinnemann, one of the most elegant of filmmakers, possessed a remarkable eye for detail and atmosphere. Zinnemann’s late work, especially, is notable for its economy and subtlety. I doubt there is a filmmaker alive today with his gifts.
Yesterday we had a couple of excursions on our agenda.
For breakfast, we ate walnut waffles, which are a pain to make but worth the effort. An hour later, we were headed downtown to view the exhibition, “The Louvre And The Masterpiece”, at The Minneapolis Institute Of Arts.
“The Louvre And The Masterpiece” was a small exhibition. Only a few dozen artworks from the Louvre had been loaned for the exhibition. Most notable were Vermeer’s famed “The Astronomer”, the star of the exhibition, and a da Vinci study drawing of folds of drapery.
Once we had visited the Louvre exhibition, we visited the period rooms, decked out for the holidays in period Christmas decorations (apparently a longstanding tradition at The Minneapolis Institute Of Arts).
After our museum visit, we ate lunch at a nearby German restaurant. We ordered lentil soup with sausage, Alsatian casserole and hazelnut torte. It was an excellent lunch.
We spent the afternoon at home, doing not much of anything.
Andrew’s mother made chile, entirely appropriate for the cold weather, and she also baked brownies. We had the chile for dinner, along with avocado salad.
After dinner, we went to Williams Arena to see Minnesota open its Big Ten season against Penn State. Andrew’s mother even accompanied us to the game (it will be the only game of the season for her). The Golden Gophers defeated the Nittany Lions, 75-70.
When we got home from the game, we ate the brownies.
Today we will go spend the day with Alec and Lizbeth and the kids.
Monday, May 5, 2008
A Good Weekend
Andrew’s brother from Denver joined us this weekend, and it was good to have him around for a few days.
He flew in Thursday evening, and Andrew and I and his mother all went to the airport to pick him up.
We had a late dinner Thursday night when we got back to the house: pepper pot roast (slow-cooked with a variety of special black and white ground pepper as well as peppercorns, AFTER having been soaked for a day in a special peppercorn brine), mashed potatoes, homemade butter noodles, steamed peas, corn and carrots, and a fresh pear-strawberry-walnut salad. For dessert, we had homemade ice cream and peanut butter cookies that Andrew’s mother had baked Thursday afternoon.
Andrew’s mother always makes homemade butter noodles for his brother on his first night home. Homemade butter noodles are his favorite food.
Andrew’s mother’s pepper pot roast is stunning, but it is very peppery. Because it has a very strong flavor, it goes best with creamy, buttery foods like mashed potatoes and homemade butter noodles, as well as plain steamed unseasoned vegetables like peas, corn and carrots. It would overwhelm and conflict with any other highly-seasoned foods. Only when the ice cream came along was I at last able to flush the taste of the pot roast from my senses.
The dog cannot be given pepper pot roast, as it is too strong for him, so Andrew’s mother gave him tiny pieces of cut-up beef, very slightly grilled, along with some mashed potatoes and a few butter noodles. The dog loves mashed potatoes with his meat at dinner, and he was perfectly content with his meal.
He was also happy to eat ice cream and peanut butter cookies for dessert. Peanut butter cookies are his favorite cookies (and Andrew’s brother’s favorite, too). He eats his ice cream from a bowl, but he is given small pieces of cookie by hand. When eating ice cream and cookies, he walks back and forth between his bowl and whomever is feeding him cookie pieces, having a few bites of first one and then the other. It is amusing to watch him enjoy his dessert.
Despite his size, the dog is a very delicate eater. He licks his food from his bowl in tiny, delicate tonguefuls, walking around and around his bowl as he takes one tongueful and then another. He constantly wags his tail while he eats, and he licks his bowl clean and inspects it very carefully when he is finished eating to make sure that he has not missed anything. I was absolutely riveted the first evening I was in Andrew’s family home, observing the dog eat his dinner.
His food is always cut up into very tiny pieces so that it takes him a while to eat it. Otherwise, he might gulp everything down in one bite and then feel cheated and beg at table.
The dog was happy to see Andrew’s brother, jumping all over him and licking him as if there were no tomorrow. For the previous couple of days, we had told him that Andrew’s brother was coming, and I think he understood this. When we left for the airport Thursday evening, we told him that we were going to the airport and that Alex would be with us when we returned, and I genuinely believe that he fully understood all that we were telling him.
We did not get to bed until very late Thursday night, because we stayed up talking until just past 12:30 a.m.
Andrew and I had to work on Friday, so Andrew’s mother and brother went to the care facility on Friday to visit Andrew’s grandmother and to have lunch with her. However, Andrew and I did manage to leave work early on Friday afternoon, and all of us (even Andrew’s mother accompanied us) spent late Friday afternoon with the dog in the park, running him around and playing games with him.
We spent most of Friday evening helping Andrew’s mother prepare dinner. She only prepared three dishes, but all three were sort of complicated, involving only fresh ingredients and taking some serious time and attention to prepare. We did not sit down to eat until after 9:00 p.m.
We had a dinner from Provence: Salade Nicoise, Bouillabaisse and apricot tarts with honey and almonds. The dinner was exceptional, probably superior to anything available in the finest French restaurant.
The dog was given a tart for dessert, but for his main course he was given grilled chicken, cut up for him, because he does not eat salads or seafood. He didn’t seem to mind.
After dinner, we watched a movie on DVD: “Islands In The Stream”, an adaptation of the Hemingway novel published after Hemingway’s death.
I had never seen the film, and I was astonished how fine it was. It is certainly the best film adapted from Hemingway I have ever seen.
Apparently the movie was not well-received on its initial release in 1977, either by critics or movie-goers. It died a quick death at the box office. This is regrettable, because it is an exceptionally fine piece of work.
The director was Franklin J. Shaffner, the cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp, and the editor Robert Swink, all major talents working at the top of their games. Jerry Goldsmith wrote the musical score. The primary actors are George C. Scott, Claire Bloom and David Hemmings. Scott is called upon to carry the film, and he does so magnificently. Surely this is his finest screen performance. Scott is totally believable and perhaps even inspired in the role of a solitary sculptor working on an island in out-of-the-way Bahamas in 1940, as war clouds gather and as family crises involving children from two failed marriages command his attention.
“Islands In The Stream” is a very subtle and very moving film. The slow pace of the film is what must have prevented it from becoming a major critical and commercial success at the time of its release, although I understand that “Islands In The Stream” is slowly but surely acquiring a high reputation among film scholars and film historians.
It’s a wonderful film.
On Saturday, we had a big, big breakfast—first we ate cereal and fruit, after which Andrew made us scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and bacon, after which Andrew also made us waffles and sausage—and then we spent most of the day outside doing yard work. It was sort of fun because we had three guys to do the work, which was more than enough to keep pace with the dog, who generally tries to undo the work as quickly as it is completed. We had a lot of fun.
We stopped for a light lunch—tuna salad sandwiches, made from the same tuna cooked for Friday night’s Salade Nicoise—and then we worked until late in the afternoon, when we all got cleaned up and went out for the evening.
We went over to Bloomington and first we had an early dinner at Ruby Tuesday. Alex, Andrew and I all ordered the steak-and-crab-cake entrée. Andrew’s mother ordered Parmesan shrimp pasta.
After dinner, we went to see the musical, “The Pajama Game”, performed by the resident company at Bloomington Civic Theater.
I loved the performance—I thought it was top-notch—although the show itself is not good in the least. The score, the lyrics, the book: all are pedestrian.
The staging, however, was clever and imaginative, and the performers were quite good, despite the fact that Bloomington Civic Theater is not a professional company. The company’s performances, however, are fully up to professional standard, and everything about the production was excellent, from the stage design to the choreography to the orchestra in the pit.
I think the fact that Bloomington Civic Theater performs in a state-of-the-art auditorium seating only 366 persons and employs a full theater orchestra for its shows helps make its productions enjoyable and immediate. No amplification is used for the singers, and Broadway-type synthesizers in the pit are verboten. Consequently, Bloomington Civic Theater performances are not “canned”, unlike performances of Broadway musicals in New York, which are pretty deadly.
We all enjoyed the performance very much, and we were pleased that we had made the decision to go see this unremarkable musical, a decision we made more or less at the last minute.
After we arrived back in Edina, we stopped to have dessert before we went home. We stopped at The Cheesecake Factory and had cheesecake. We ordered four different kinds of cheesecake and shared, so everyone got a taste of each: vanilla bean, white chocolate raspberry truffle, lemon raspberry cream, and key lime.
On Sunday morning, Andrew made us omelets with ham, three different cheeses and cream, and he followed that up by making us one of his specialties, apple-cinnamon pancakes, which Alex especially likes.
After church, we did not eat lunch. Instead, we drove straight downtown in order to see two very small temporary exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts: “Visions Of Piety: Devotional Prints In The Counter-Reformation” and “Paris 1900: Graphic Design In Revolt”. It did not even take us an hour to complete both exhibitions, so we spent another hour at the museum in the Ancient Art section, examining antiquities from Egypt, Greece and Rome.
After we had had our fill of the museum, we returned home. It was only the middle of the afternoon when we arrived, and we played with dog and talked and helped Andrew’s mother prepare dinner.
She stuffed and roasted a chicken for dinner. We ate the chicken and stuffing with mashed potatoes, homemade butter noodles, green beans, fried red tomatoes, baked okra and homemade applesauce. We had cranberry-orange bread for dessert.
We spent all of Sunday night talking, and making tentative—very tentative—plans.
Andrew’s brother will be moving back to Minneapolis at the beginning of July. He will be staying with Andrew’s parents until late August. When Andrew and I abscond to Boston, he will move into our apartment.
He does not start his new job until early September, so he wants to do as much traveling as possible during the months of July and August.
Andrew and I have not decided precisely when we will leave our current jobs. We have etched August 1 into our minds, but that is only a tentative date.
We will all spend the first week of July up at the lake—that much is already settled—but Andrew and I are not prepared to spend the remainder of the month of July and most of the month of August traveling, even assuming we would leave our current jobs around July 1, an assumption we are not yet prepared to make.
Alex has lots of travel ideas. In addition to a two-week trip to Great Britain he mapped out several months ago, he wants to make a two-week trip to Toronto, combining Toronto with a lengthy visit to the Shaw Festival in nearby Niagara-On-The-Lake. He wants to make a nine-day trip to Philadelphia-the Brandywine Valley-Wilmington-Princeton-Allentown. He wants to make a two-week trek through Michigan and a corner of Ohio, visiting Detroit-Kalamazoo-Holland-Grand Rapids-Muskegon-East Lansing-Flint-Saginaw-Ann Arbor-Toledo. He is also busy mapping out a plan to see as much as possible of Scotland over a two-week period.
Clearly, he is keen to go somewhere!
Andrew and I are no position to make firm plans at the moment, and we have decided to put him off until Memorial Day weekend, when we will visit him in Denver and when we can begin to make decisions whether and where and when to go.
Andrew’s mother would like to go somewhere, too, because she has not been out of the country since last September, when we visited London. She has Paris and Venice on her mind at the moment, but Paris and Venice are not ideal destinations for the months of July and August, and she is perfectly well-aware of this fact.
At the moment, everything is swings and roundabouts.
All we know for certain, at the moment, is that Alex returned to Denver early this morning and that Andrew’s father will return from Taipei on Wednesday.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!
He flew in Thursday evening, and Andrew and I and his mother all went to the airport to pick him up.
We had a late dinner Thursday night when we got back to the house: pepper pot roast (slow-cooked with a variety of special black and white ground pepper as well as peppercorns, AFTER having been soaked for a day in a special peppercorn brine), mashed potatoes, homemade butter noodles, steamed peas, corn and carrots, and a fresh pear-strawberry-walnut salad. For dessert, we had homemade ice cream and peanut butter cookies that Andrew’s mother had baked Thursday afternoon.
Andrew’s mother always makes homemade butter noodles for his brother on his first night home. Homemade butter noodles are his favorite food.
Andrew’s mother’s pepper pot roast is stunning, but it is very peppery. Because it has a very strong flavor, it goes best with creamy, buttery foods like mashed potatoes and homemade butter noodles, as well as plain steamed unseasoned vegetables like peas, corn and carrots. It would overwhelm and conflict with any other highly-seasoned foods. Only when the ice cream came along was I at last able to flush the taste of the pot roast from my senses.
The dog cannot be given pepper pot roast, as it is too strong for him, so Andrew’s mother gave him tiny pieces of cut-up beef, very slightly grilled, along with some mashed potatoes and a few butter noodles. The dog loves mashed potatoes with his meat at dinner, and he was perfectly content with his meal.
He was also happy to eat ice cream and peanut butter cookies for dessert. Peanut butter cookies are his favorite cookies (and Andrew’s brother’s favorite, too). He eats his ice cream from a bowl, but he is given small pieces of cookie by hand. When eating ice cream and cookies, he walks back and forth between his bowl and whomever is feeding him cookie pieces, having a few bites of first one and then the other. It is amusing to watch him enjoy his dessert.
Despite his size, the dog is a very delicate eater. He licks his food from his bowl in tiny, delicate tonguefuls, walking around and around his bowl as he takes one tongueful and then another. He constantly wags his tail while he eats, and he licks his bowl clean and inspects it very carefully when he is finished eating to make sure that he has not missed anything. I was absolutely riveted the first evening I was in Andrew’s family home, observing the dog eat his dinner.
His food is always cut up into very tiny pieces so that it takes him a while to eat it. Otherwise, he might gulp everything down in one bite and then feel cheated and beg at table.
The dog was happy to see Andrew’s brother, jumping all over him and licking him as if there were no tomorrow. For the previous couple of days, we had told him that Andrew’s brother was coming, and I think he understood this. When we left for the airport Thursday evening, we told him that we were going to the airport and that Alex would be with us when we returned, and I genuinely believe that he fully understood all that we were telling him.
We did not get to bed until very late Thursday night, because we stayed up talking until just past 12:30 a.m.
Andrew and I had to work on Friday, so Andrew’s mother and brother went to the care facility on Friday to visit Andrew’s grandmother and to have lunch with her. However, Andrew and I did manage to leave work early on Friday afternoon, and all of us (even Andrew’s mother accompanied us) spent late Friday afternoon with the dog in the park, running him around and playing games with him.
We spent most of Friday evening helping Andrew’s mother prepare dinner. She only prepared three dishes, but all three were sort of complicated, involving only fresh ingredients and taking some serious time and attention to prepare. We did not sit down to eat until after 9:00 p.m.
We had a dinner from Provence: Salade Nicoise, Bouillabaisse and apricot tarts with honey and almonds. The dinner was exceptional, probably superior to anything available in the finest French restaurant.
The dog was given a tart for dessert, but for his main course he was given grilled chicken, cut up for him, because he does not eat salads or seafood. He didn’t seem to mind.
After dinner, we watched a movie on DVD: “Islands In The Stream”, an adaptation of the Hemingway novel published after Hemingway’s death.
I had never seen the film, and I was astonished how fine it was. It is certainly the best film adapted from Hemingway I have ever seen.
Apparently the movie was not well-received on its initial release in 1977, either by critics or movie-goers. It died a quick death at the box office. This is regrettable, because it is an exceptionally fine piece of work.
The director was Franklin J. Shaffner, the cinematographer Fred J. Koenekamp, and the editor Robert Swink, all major talents working at the top of their games. Jerry Goldsmith wrote the musical score. The primary actors are George C. Scott, Claire Bloom and David Hemmings. Scott is called upon to carry the film, and he does so magnificently. Surely this is his finest screen performance. Scott is totally believable and perhaps even inspired in the role of a solitary sculptor working on an island in out-of-the-way Bahamas in 1940, as war clouds gather and as family crises involving children from two failed marriages command his attention.
“Islands In The Stream” is a very subtle and very moving film. The slow pace of the film is what must have prevented it from becoming a major critical and commercial success at the time of its release, although I understand that “Islands In The Stream” is slowly but surely acquiring a high reputation among film scholars and film historians.
It’s a wonderful film.
On Saturday, we had a big, big breakfast—first we ate cereal and fruit, after which Andrew made us scrambled eggs, fried potatoes and bacon, after which Andrew also made us waffles and sausage—and then we spent most of the day outside doing yard work. It was sort of fun because we had three guys to do the work, which was more than enough to keep pace with the dog, who generally tries to undo the work as quickly as it is completed. We had a lot of fun.
We stopped for a light lunch—tuna salad sandwiches, made from the same tuna cooked for Friday night’s Salade Nicoise—and then we worked until late in the afternoon, when we all got cleaned up and went out for the evening.
We went over to Bloomington and first we had an early dinner at Ruby Tuesday. Alex, Andrew and I all ordered the steak-and-crab-cake entrée. Andrew’s mother ordered Parmesan shrimp pasta.
After dinner, we went to see the musical, “The Pajama Game”, performed by the resident company at Bloomington Civic Theater.
I loved the performance—I thought it was top-notch—although the show itself is not good in the least. The score, the lyrics, the book: all are pedestrian.
The staging, however, was clever and imaginative, and the performers were quite good, despite the fact that Bloomington Civic Theater is not a professional company. The company’s performances, however, are fully up to professional standard, and everything about the production was excellent, from the stage design to the choreography to the orchestra in the pit.
I think the fact that Bloomington Civic Theater performs in a state-of-the-art auditorium seating only 366 persons and employs a full theater orchestra for its shows helps make its productions enjoyable and immediate. No amplification is used for the singers, and Broadway-type synthesizers in the pit are verboten. Consequently, Bloomington Civic Theater performances are not “canned”, unlike performances of Broadway musicals in New York, which are pretty deadly.
We all enjoyed the performance very much, and we were pleased that we had made the decision to go see this unremarkable musical, a decision we made more or less at the last minute.
After we arrived back in Edina, we stopped to have dessert before we went home. We stopped at The Cheesecake Factory and had cheesecake. We ordered four different kinds of cheesecake and shared, so everyone got a taste of each: vanilla bean, white chocolate raspberry truffle, lemon raspberry cream, and key lime.
On Sunday morning, Andrew made us omelets with ham, three different cheeses and cream, and he followed that up by making us one of his specialties, apple-cinnamon pancakes, which Alex especially likes.
After church, we did not eat lunch. Instead, we drove straight downtown in order to see two very small temporary exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute Of Arts: “Visions Of Piety: Devotional Prints In The Counter-Reformation” and “Paris 1900: Graphic Design In Revolt”. It did not even take us an hour to complete both exhibitions, so we spent another hour at the museum in the Ancient Art section, examining antiquities from Egypt, Greece and Rome.
After we had had our fill of the museum, we returned home. It was only the middle of the afternoon when we arrived, and we played with dog and talked and helped Andrew’s mother prepare dinner.
She stuffed and roasted a chicken for dinner. We ate the chicken and stuffing with mashed potatoes, homemade butter noodles, green beans, fried red tomatoes, baked okra and homemade applesauce. We had cranberry-orange bread for dessert.
We spent all of Sunday night talking, and making tentative—very tentative—plans.
Andrew’s brother will be moving back to Minneapolis at the beginning of July. He will be staying with Andrew’s parents until late August. When Andrew and I abscond to Boston, he will move into our apartment.
He does not start his new job until early September, so he wants to do as much traveling as possible during the months of July and August.
Andrew and I have not decided precisely when we will leave our current jobs. We have etched August 1 into our minds, but that is only a tentative date.
We will all spend the first week of July up at the lake—that much is already settled—but Andrew and I are not prepared to spend the remainder of the month of July and most of the month of August traveling, even assuming we would leave our current jobs around July 1, an assumption we are not yet prepared to make.
Alex has lots of travel ideas. In addition to a two-week trip to Great Britain he mapped out several months ago, he wants to make a two-week trip to Toronto, combining Toronto with a lengthy visit to the Shaw Festival in nearby Niagara-On-The-Lake. He wants to make a nine-day trip to Philadelphia-the Brandywine Valley-Wilmington-Princeton-Allentown. He wants to make a two-week trek through Michigan and a corner of Ohio, visiting Detroit-Kalamazoo-Holland-Grand Rapids-Muskegon-East Lansing-Flint-Saginaw-Ann Arbor-Toledo. He is also busy mapping out a plan to see as much as possible of Scotland over a two-week period.
Clearly, he is keen to go somewhere!
Andrew and I are no position to make firm plans at the moment, and we have decided to put him off until Memorial Day weekend, when we will visit him in Denver and when we can begin to make decisions whether and where and when to go.
Andrew’s mother would like to go somewhere, too, because she has not been out of the country since last September, when we visited London. She has Paris and Venice on her mind at the moment, but Paris and Venice are not ideal destinations for the months of July and August, and she is perfectly well-aware of this fact.
At the moment, everything is swings and roundabouts.
All we know for certain, at the moment, is that Alex returned to Denver early this morning and that Andrew’s father will return from Taipei on Wednesday.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Weekend
Andrew and I are staying with his mother until his father returns from Taipei.
Andrew’s mother gave us an early dinner last night before we all headed to the airport to drop Andrew’s father, and she had prepared several of Andrew’s father’s favorite foods in honor of his departure: Amish pot roast with cream, mushrooms and green onions (the smell of which drives the dog nuts while it is roasting), mashed potatoes with cheddar cheese, homemade stewed tomatoes, fresh green beans, white corn and Amish pepper salad (a sweet-and-sour salad made primarily with cabbage). For dessert, she had baked a Dutch apple pie.
When we returned from the airport, the evening was still young, so we dismantled brass fixtures, indoors and out, and polished them while we listened to music. Andrew’s mother especially likes French music, so Andrew picked out six discs of French repertory for us to listen to for the next several days: a disc of Rameau, a disc of Berlioz, a disc of Gounod, a disc of Debussy, a disc of Vierne, and a disc of Poulenc-Milhaud-Honegger.
Today, after church, we went to the care facility and had lunch with Andrew’s grandmother in the elegant dining room at the facility. Lots of families have Sunday lunch with family members at the care facility, but Andrew’s family very, very rarely goes there for Sunday lunch. Instead, two or three times a week, always on weekdays, Andrew’s mother will have lunch at the facility with her mother, and every other week or so Andrew will join his mother for a weekday lunch with his grandmother at the facility.
I had been to the facility only on two previous occasions, both times on a Sunday, but never for lunch. Today was the first time I actually had a meal at the facility. The food and the service were exceptional—it was like dining at a fine restaurant (and the prices are comparable, I am informed, although guest tariffs are nowhere posted).
We remained at the facility for a couple of hours after lunch, sitting with Andrew’s grandmother in the conservatory, before we left.
For the rest of the afternoon, Andrew and I exercised the dog and helped Andrew’s mother with a few things around the kitchen.
We did not eat dinner tonight. No one was hungry except the dog. He got his Sunday night baked and de-boned chicken—there’s no depriving him, and he knows the weekly routine far too well to try to fool him and pretend that a Sunday is really a Thursday—but the rest of us decided to skip dinner and have a light snack before bedtime.
Instead of eating dinner, we went downstairs and watched on DVD “A Slave Of Love”, a charming, even exquisite, movie from a surprising source, Brezhnev-era U.S.S.R.
Filmed and released in Russia in 1976, it is the story of a silent-movie crew caught up in the events of 1917 while filming a frivolous melodrama in the Crimea. Very Chekhovian in subject and tone, the movie touches on themes of love, loss, and misunderstanding, all set against a background of rapidly-shifting political events. The cast is superb, especially Elena Solovei, who plays an apolitical silent-movie star thrown into events she does not understand, always carrying the dramatic flourishes of her screen acting over into her private life. The cinematography is magnificent, very French in look and feel, with a pastel color palette drawn from Claude Monet. The movie is a small masterwork, the work of a very young Nikita Mikhalkov, who was clearly familiar with French New Wave cinema.
I had never seen “A Slave Of Love”—I had never even heard of it—and neither had Andrew, but Andrew’s mother had seen the movie when it was released in the U.S. in 1978. I was pleased to make the film’s acquaintance.
We spent the rest of the evening up in the kitchen, mostly doing nothing: a little talking, a little talking on the phone, a little emailing, a little playing with the dog. Andrew’s mother baked a small loaf of homemade bread, which she very seldom does, and we ate that with French onion soup.
I don’t think this coming week will be too brutal at work, either for Andrew or for me. Neither of us should have to work late this week, so we should be able to enjoy our time with Andrew’s mother.
There are no concerts we want to attend this week, and no plays in town we want to catch, so we probably will just stay in.
Andrew’s mother gave us an early dinner last night before we all headed to the airport to drop Andrew’s father, and she had prepared several of Andrew’s father’s favorite foods in honor of his departure: Amish pot roast with cream, mushrooms and green onions (the smell of which drives the dog nuts while it is roasting), mashed potatoes with cheddar cheese, homemade stewed tomatoes, fresh green beans, white corn and Amish pepper salad (a sweet-and-sour salad made primarily with cabbage). For dessert, she had baked a Dutch apple pie.
When we returned from the airport, the evening was still young, so we dismantled brass fixtures, indoors and out, and polished them while we listened to music. Andrew’s mother especially likes French music, so Andrew picked out six discs of French repertory for us to listen to for the next several days: a disc of Rameau, a disc of Berlioz, a disc of Gounod, a disc of Debussy, a disc of Vierne, and a disc of Poulenc-Milhaud-Honegger.
Today, after church, we went to the care facility and had lunch with Andrew’s grandmother in the elegant dining room at the facility. Lots of families have Sunday lunch with family members at the care facility, but Andrew’s family very, very rarely goes there for Sunday lunch. Instead, two or three times a week, always on weekdays, Andrew’s mother will have lunch at the facility with her mother, and every other week or so Andrew will join his mother for a weekday lunch with his grandmother at the facility.
I had been to the facility only on two previous occasions, both times on a Sunday, but never for lunch. Today was the first time I actually had a meal at the facility. The food and the service were exceptional—it was like dining at a fine restaurant (and the prices are comparable, I am informed, although guest tariffs are nowhere posted).
We remained at the facility for a couple of hours after lunch, sitting with Andrew’s grandmother in the conservatory, before we left.
For the rest of the afternoon, Andrew and I exercised the dog and helped Andrew’s mother with a few things around the kitchen.
We did not eat dinner tonight. No one was hungry except the dog. He got his Sunday night baked and de-boned chicken—there’s no depriving him, and he knows the weekly routine far too well to try to fool him and pretend that a Sunday is really a Thursday—but the rest of us decided to skip dinner and have a light snack before bedtime.
Instead of eating dinner, we went downstairs and watched on DVD “A Slave Of Love”, a charming, even exquisite, movie from a surprising source, Brezhnev-era U.S.S.R.
Filmed and released in Russia in 1976, it is the story of a silent-movie crew caught up in the events of 1917 while filming a frivolous melodrama in the Crimea. Very Chekhovian in subject and tone, the movie touches on themes of love, loss, and misunderstanding, all set against a background of rapidly-shifting political events. The cast is superb, especially Elena Solovei, who plays an apolitical silent-movie star thrown into events she does not understand, always carrying the dramatic flourishes of her screen acting over into her private life. The cinematography is magnificent, very French in look and feel, with a pastel color palette drawn from Claude Monet. The movie is a small masterwork, the work of a very young Nikita Mikhalkov, who was clearly familiar with French New Wave cinema.
I had never seen “A Slave Of Love”—I had never even heard of it—and neither had Andrew, but Andrew’s mother had seen the movie when it was released in the U.S. in 1978. I was pleased to make the film’s acquaintance.
We spent the rest of the evening up in the kitchen, mostly doing nothing: a little talking, a little talking on the phone, a little emailing, a little playing with the dog. Andrew’s mother baked a small loaf of homemade bread, which she very seldom does, and we ate that with French onion soup.
I don’t think this coming week will be too brutal at work, either for Andrew or for me. Neither of us should have to work late this week, so we should be able to enjoy our time with Andrew’s mother.
There are no concerts we want to attend this week, and no plays in town we want to catch, so we probably will just stay in.
