David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

About an hour ago I finished this classic Dickens novel. I have now worked my way through three of the Dickens classics and I can honestly say that these books are timeless.

There is a reason that outside of Shakespeare the works of Charles Dickens are redone, reinvented, and reinterpreted, more than any other author. They hold up.

This book was just a side read for me over the last couple of months so I took the opportunity to savor it, sips at a time as it were.

Just this morning when the narrator Copperfield talks about what a fine jail has been built in London in his absence and comments of the protests that would come about had the money for that fortification been diverted for a fine school and you can see that, sadly, the more things change the more they stay the same.

The characters in this book, from Mr. Micawber, Agnes, Peggotty, Ham, Traddles to the wicked Uriah Heep make this book soar. Some say this is Dicken's most autobiographical novel, if so he certainly new some interesting and unique people.

Being provincial Americans we often point to Mark Twain as the great writer of the nineteenth century. Twain was talented, but for me though it is no contest. Dickens was and remains the true giant.

I must say I am sorry to Mrs. Bagley. My Junior High English teacher exhorted us to read these books, and in high school Mr. Peaco said the same. I,like many of you with your teachers, ignored their directives. They now rest in peace but I hope they hear me tell them they were correct, we all should read these books.

Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, and now David Copperfield. Dickens was a genius.

Outsourced

This movie takes on the subject of American jobs being outsourced to India. And it is a comedy. The challenge is not an easy one.

Still the movie has us meet Todd, a Call Center Manager in America who is told that his company is closing his office. Todd however is told that he can go to India and train his replacements. Todd, does not really want to do this but is convinced to do so as his stocks in the company have not yet vested.

Arriving in India he finds the challenge before him to be extreme. The employees do not perform as the American employees do and have to deal with the persistent anger from American consumers.

Soon enough Todd has the employees performing well. He soon also finds himself not considering his assignment a sentence but instead actually immerses himself in the Indian culture. He begins to enjoy his time and appreciate his employees. He tells them that they can personalize their desks and they respond in much the way Americans would. He finds that they are interested and place value in the products that they are answering inquiries on. Basically the products are cheesy gifts and assorted crap but still they find anything that they picture as Americanized to be having value.

Over time Todd develops a relationship with both is subordinate who he is training to run the shop, a man who looks forward to the supervisory position to allow for him to take the wife of his dreams, as well as with a young, strong minded Indian woman who works and strives hard to better herself.

Eventually one of those relationships becomes romantic, with the girl of course, and after an awkward consumation at a Hotel called Kama Sutra, Todd discovers that the young lady is engaged in an arranged marriage.

The movie is not entirely predictable. Comedy or not it puts a face to the folks we find it too hard to hate on the other end of our phone calls. We all know on some level that any anger we feel about Outsourcing should not be at employees but the Americans who send the jobs away.

If this movie helps that message be delivered if even on a subliminal level that too is a service.

A cute movie available on streaming from Netflix.

I'm Not There

I watched this " inspired by the many lives of Bob Dylan " movie last week. The movie is ambitious in the extreme as written and directed by Todd Haynes. It is not a movie that tells a linear story. It does not actually even mention Dylan, what it does instead is create six different characters that reflect different times in Dylan's life.

The cast is strong and the movie is actually very very strong. Again if you are looking for a biography of Bob Dylan this is not it. If you are knowledgeable about some of the history of Bob Dylan and would like to see an artistic viewpoint of some of the noted times in his life you might well enjoy this movie.

In the movie we see Bob as the young boy infatuated with Woody Guthrie, we see an experience with members of the media that seems to mirror his song " The Ballad of A Thin Man." The major roles in the movie are of a character called Jack Rollins and later Pastor Jack both played by Christian Bale. These characters portray Dylan's early sixties acouistic phase as well as his late seventies, early eighties Jesus phase.

The most talked about performance in the film however is easily that of Cate Blanchett as the 1965 Bob Dylan. This is the Dylan that rejected folk singing, questioned how much any one person could change the world and was called a traitor by a great many of his fans. The movie depicts a character named Quinn, played by Blanchett as a snarly, in your face, what did you want from me flair that jumps off the screen. We see depictions of the famous Newport News festival as well as the Judas incident at The Royal Albert Hall.

The movie is more than its vignettes and in fact not all work. The section of the movie that relates to Billy the Kid and stars Richard Gere does not work and seems tired before it even starts. The movie could do much better without it.

In addition to Bale, Gere, and Blanchett the movie also stars Heath Ledger, Bruce Greenwood, and an actress we are hearing more about recently Charlotte Gainsbourg. She is lovely in the role and as a composite character based on perhaps mostly Suzy Rufalo from the early sixties she is effervescent.

The movie is very ambitious. If you do not know some of the Dylan legend it might not make sense. It should not be taken as history but as interpretation. In that vein it succeeds very well.

Dolphin Tale

Seeking to find one of the rare movies that we can watch with our kids without somebody feeling embarrassed we requested this movie from Netflix recently.

The movie had been reviewed quite well and after watching it I give it a thumbs up as well. For those of who grew up with Flipper any movie with a dolphin it has a fair chance of earning our interest and this movie does a good job.

The movie begins with the story of Sawyer, a quiet boy who lives with his Mom. Attending summer school is nothing he is too charged up about, on the way to school he comes across a jogger who has come across an injured dolphin on the seashore. He comforts the dolphin as best he can until the marine veterinarians arrive and transport him away.

The next day Sawyer stops in at the marine hospital. Dr Clay Haskett, played by Harry Connick Jr has taken the dolphin under his care. His daughter Hazel sneaks Sawyer into see the dolphin but rushes him out when her Dad arrives. Evidently he does not like folks near the injured animals. Sawyer returns though and as he sneaks in to check on the dolphin he stumbles and is discovered. As Dr Haskett is about to send him away he notices that the dolphin perks up at the boys voice.

From there the movie proceeds on expected tracks. The boy misses school, Mom finds out. Naomi Judd does a good job as his Mom. Eventually the dolphin learns to maneuver without his tail but in doing so he is damaging his spine.

How this is corrected is the basic thrust of the movie. The cast is strong. Morgan Freeman and Kris Kristofferson offer some experience to the movie. Certainly having such a strong cast helps this movie sell itself to grown ups. The little girl who plays Hazel is cute in a Tom Sawyer movie kind of way and the movie works on many levels. Certainly worth seeing.

Sun by Cat Power

Chan Marshall, otherwise known as Cat Power has been making records for quite awhile. Her music has had a cult following and is usually sparse and fairly haunting. One could say it is the opposite of the aforementioned Ophelia.

So with her newest album Sun, her first in six years, coming out those of us educated in her music marked the release date on our calenders.

This week the good folks at NPR announced that they would be streaming the full album for those who wanted to preview it before the release date.

After having done so I can emphatically tell you that this album is a huge .....disappointment. I am not an artist, I have very little art like ability, music, drawing, creativity, I am not blessed. So it might well be that an artist wants to try something new. We all have heard the laments of fans of a musical performer who complain that they went commercial or tried to be something they are not, i.e something they have not been before.

Change is hard. So not wanting to be the lamenter mentioned above allow me to just say that Cat Power, in this album, is now nothing special. She sounds like countless singers, singing songs that have no definition and not one iota of specialness. Clearly she wanted to try something different. She has done so but while different for her, regrettably it is certainly not different. It is one of the most non descript, as Simon Cowell would say " forgettable " records I have heard this year.

What a sad waste of expectation.

Ophelia by The Band ( Missing Levon Helm)

Driving early this morning listening to Outlaw Country on the satalite radio and on comes Ophelia by The Band. I think that it might be physically impossible not to tap your foot and sing along to this song.

The physical love of life, of the joy of singing Helm presents in this song might be the purest demonstration of his talent that exists in the overabundant catalog of great music he left us.

Feeling down. Feeling blue. Visit the memory of Levon Helm and Ophelia. It will get better.

George Jones Talkin' Cell Phone Blues by The Drive By Truckers

My appreciation for The Drive By Truckers is well documented. Still this song deserves special attention. Appearing on a rareties disc it might not be a song even fans of the band are familiar with but it should be.

Modeled after the talking blues songs of the folk era from the likes of Guthrie and Dylan the song laments the car crash of Country legend George Jones, who was, as the song says, talking on his cell phone at the time of the crash.

With wry, yet heartfelt lyrics, Patterson Hood tells Jones " if you don't change your ways my friend, you'll be singing with Tammy ( Wynette) again." Brilliant lyrics. How many of us have been told to change our ways before it's too late. Let us hope George listens to the message, we need his voice around as long as we can.

Find this on Spotify. It is a great song.

The Violinist's Thumb by Sam Kean

Subtitled and other lost tales of Love, War, and Genius, as written by our genetic code Kean in his most recent book has done the same for DNA and Biology that he did earlier for the Periodic Table in The Disappearing Spoon.

As a former struggling Biology, Chemistry, well any Science really, student, I now have developed an interest to understand all of the things that I missed the first time through.

Kean does a thoroughly fantastic job in this book bringing his subjects to life. The Violinist's Thumb focuses on DNA and Genetics and as per usual for me and Kean books I found myself cornering my wife and family members with bits of information that I had gleaned from the book.

Of course the material, even lightened in Kean's special way, is still muddy. My brain does not attach to the material as well as it does, say, batting averages, but I am happy to say that it does with effort compute.

The first section of the book focuses on the passing of DNA and traits, both the processes, and the history of their discoveries. As a person with a genetic condition, a recessive one at that, which proves my unluckiness in the genetic lottery, I found the process of how these traits are passed down interesting and informative. It is not all dry material either. No one really wants to know this but we still learn how our in our ancient microbial past we ingested a bug, yes a bug, and that bug ingestion led to a division of labor inside of us that mirrors photosynthesis in plants.

We learn about human evolutionary bottlenecks, these indicate times when humans nearly went extinct. These bottlenecks are what leads to DNA similarities in races and groups of people. If the population shrinks or is isolated in some way future populations will all have common ancestors.

Clearly Kean's books have a market. They are reviewed and reviewed well by the major publications, and do well in the nonfiction lists. I must not be the only person who finds this subject matter interesting. It should be quite sometime before he runs out of subject matter too. With the physics explosion, and things like the Higgs Bosun news perhaps physics will be next.

One thing is for certain my family will know what to expect when the next book comes out. As my wife told my daughter " just not your head, act interested and say Wow at the appropriate times." Clearly by these comments yes these books have a market but no not everyone is interested. It is just that now, unlike high school, I am on the science nerd's team.

Tree of Life

This 2011 Terrence Malick film was very polarizing. When the movie debuted at the Cannes Film Festival it received loud cheers and loud boos at the same time. That in a sentence sums up a Terrence Malick movie.

This movie starred Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain as a young couple in Texas in the early nineteen sixties. As their family grows we meet Jack and RL their first two sons and the movie centers mostly on Jack, his adolescence, and his growing anger at his father.

The movie begins with a long sequence which most have taken as Malick's history of the universe. We see the Big Bang, we see life on earth develop and then from space we see some kind of asteroid hitting the Earth.

Soon enough we meet the O'Brien's, first names never mentioned. Their young family is growing and they like any young couple are captivated their small children. Mr O Brien, played effectively by Brad Pitt is an engineer. As the boys grow he does his best to be a good father, he is frustrated with his choices, never having pursued his love of music, and feeling beaten down by his job. To soothe his ego he files patents for inventions.

As the boys grow up Jack, his oldest, begins to have anger and frustration with his father, feeling him to be a bully, a man who dominates him in a way he does not appreciate. This seems to be beyond the normal frustration of the normal father-son relationship.

The movie is told in more of a vignette than a time lined story. Much of what we see is as if we were looking in the window and the scenes change rapidly. Jessica Chastain as Mrs O' Bren is wonderful. She is one of those actresses that in watching her you feel like you know her, or have seen her in many movies prior, she is very much able to present in a way you connect with. In this family Mrs O' Brien is a spiritual person, she is the nurturer to the boys and tries to be the balance of her husband. At one point in the movie, Mr. O'Brien goes on a long business trip and the family dynamic changes. What begins as lightheartedness and fun becomes a time of rebellion. Young Jack starts to get in trouble and does some things for which he feels terribly guilty.

At times in the movie we see an adult Jack working in an office building. Sean Penn plays the older Jack as he has a phone conversation with his father which centers on an argument about the death of his little brother, the middle son, RL, who died in Vietnam.

Eventually the family leaves Texas as Mr O' Brien gets a transfer. He and Jack have a talk which is semi re-conciliatory. Mr O' Brien wants Jack to make better decisions, to pursue his passion, and he also worries about if he is a good enough person. Doubting yourself seems to be present even in this man who is a pretty solid version of what the mid 20th century Father was supposed to be.

As the movie ends older Jack has a vision where he meets his Dead brother on a beach, and feels his Mother, at the age she was when he was young, reconciling the loss of her son to her God.

The movie was visually strong, with interesting scenes. The alienation between father and son is pretty typical and the story shows scenes from a suburban childhood many can identify with.

The dream scenes and life creation scenes are interesting but do not really do much to advance the story. For me this film seems to lack a chromosome that binds it all together. It is like watching a sequence of short films, some work together to bring a conclusion and some do not.

Still it is a brave film, ambitious if nothing else.

Two Rode Together

Jimmy Stewart made some incredible movies in the fifties, his run of movies in which he teamed with Alfred Hitchcock became some of the most important movies ever made. Still by the early sixties Stewart was back making Westerns, he made a ton in his career, and one would have had high hopes for a 1961 Western directed by the remarkable John Ford.

One would think this combination would make something special but Two Rode Together is far from it. Watchable, anything with Jimmy Stewart is watchable, the movie is the story of a lazy sheriff Guthrie McCabe who is coerced into leading a mission to ransom some white settlers stolen over the years by Cherokee Indians. Certainly this story has been told before in Western's, The Searchers, might be the best example of the premise, or of the Western itself.

Stewart's McCabe would rather not go but convinced by an Army Captain he can take bribes and ransom from the families he proceeds. Richard Widmark appears as his friend and Army LT Jim Gary, and off they go. In arriving at the settlement of family members they are greeted as conquering heroes.

Shirley Jones plays a young woman whose brother was kidnapped years ago. Young in this movie it is remarkable for those of us who grew up with her as Mother Partridge how attractive she really was, in a fresh faced Noxzema commercial kind of way. Not that you would have trouble knowing what was coming with this plot line but in case you do watch the movie box she owns very carefully.

In the end the negotiations are held, Stewart brings back a couple of captives, Sheriff McCabe is not really such a mercenary as he appears and along the way we learn a lesson about prejudice.

I love Jimmy Stewart ao it's not a terrible movie, still one might have expected more from a Ford/Stewart combination.

Patrik Age 1.5

Searching for a streaming movie the other night this movie flitted through the suggestion box for my wife. A Swedish movie about a gay couple that seeks to adopt a baby it had received good reviews, and I consented as I often do when she has charge of the netflix, " Sure, whatever you want." To be honest it is well known that outside of Netflix between sports and politics I usually control the remote so this is certainly the least I can do.

The movie is a Swedish film which is much as I described. We have two men, married in Sweden who wish to adopt. We have Goran, a young physician who is gentle and tries to see the good in everything, and we have Swen a man a bit older, a man previously married to a woman with a teenage daughter. At the adoption agency they are told international adoptions will not work as most countries will not allow their children to live be placed with a gay couple. Wishing to adopt a Swedish child, or any child, although funnily they resolve not a child from Denmark, they depart with high hopes.

Their home is ready, the nursery is prepared, with baby monitors and all when a call on a Friday afternoon comes stating that a child will be brought to them that afternoon, an emergency placement, and that they can meet the following week to move forward with the formal paperwork. Coincidentally a sullen teenager appears on the doorstep soon after and after some confusion as to who he is and why he is their it is soon discovered that the Patrick Aged 1.5 they are expecting is actually Patrik, a troublesome orphan age 15. To make matters worse Patrik on finding his potential guardians are gay starts spitting out homophobic rants.

From there one can pretty much assume the plot of the movie and what transpires. It is actually quite well done. If the characters were a black couple and a white racist teenager it would be interesting and with this diversity of the teenager and the gay parents it works well as well. The movie works. Some of the male kissing is a little squirmy for me but that is my issue not the movie's.

In the end the movie shows that family is about connection and caring. The rest is all negotiable. My wife loved the movie and I must admit I looked over the top of my book quite a bit as well.

Boardwalk Empire Season One

A few years ago, before I got sick, some friends of mine at work and I would have lunch each day. One of the subjects that would often come up, especially on Mondays, would be rehash of whatever show we might be watching. Sunday nights being the night for Mad Men, and earlier The Sopranos, there was often much to talk about.

In the interim since becoming sick, I have missed those daily conversations. Recently my wife and I finished Season One of Boardwalk Empire and it is safe to say that were we all still working and having lunch together this show would top our Monday lunchtime conversations.

It is quite frequent that when watching a great new show we think it might be the best thing we have seen. Certainly for those of us that watch a few of the Cable Series that have become such an omnipresent part of television our first love will always be The Sopranos. I myself have become a little more discerning, recently rebuffing The Wire, never embracing True Blood, ditching HBO for the summer to the chagrin of The Newsroom but we have embraced Game of Thrones, and now might be ready to call Boardwalk Empire the best of the lot.

As a history buff there is a lot to love in this show. Historical figures met in season one include Al Capone, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and at least on the outskirts of the plot, Presidential candidate Warren G Harding. His young mistress and baby's mother has a much more prominent role. The show belongs however to Steve Buscemi. Buscemi has had some memorable rolls, from being shot by his Cousin Tony on the porch of the hideout in The Sopranos, to the classic movie Fargo but in Boardwalk Empire he has landed his role.

Buscemi's Nucky Thompson runs Atlantic City in 1920 just as prohibition becomes law. There are too many great performances in this show to mention. For me perhaps one of the most unique characters is a relatively small role played Jack Huston as Richard Harrow. Harrow is a badly disfigured World War One Veteran, half his face and an eye are gone, this is covered up by a set of glasses that feature a fake eye as well as a piece of skin that sets over the hole. He was a marksman and soon finds a home on the payroll.

As the season progresses Nucky finds himself squeezed by New York and then by the rising chance of " his mayor" and his sheriff ( his brother) might be ousted by reform minded Democrats.

The plots are multi faceted as well. The show is shot beautifully, feels authentic, and the cast is superb.

As Season One ends we see that the betrayals to Nucky and the threats to his power base are just beginning. Season Two is set to be available on Netflix on August 28 and we are anxiously awaiting it's arrival in hopes of finishing Season Two before we shut of Netflix during the school year.

If you have not seen this show you are missing the best show on television. It is time to catch up.

The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Master of the Senate by Robert A Caro

Exactly 27 score pages ago I began this book. It is a long one. It is not a Stephen King page turning long one either, more of a historical page turner. As I have read several different books along with this one I have been at it a couple of months. It is, however, well worth the effort.

The third in what will eventually be Robert A Caro's five volume on the life and times of Lyndon Baines Johnson this book examines the years of Johnson's time in the Senate, specifically 1948 to 1960.

Because Robert Caro does not just tell you about what happens, but also about why it happened and the history of events leading up to what happened the book begins with a full seventy pages of history of the United States Senate. Specifically it centers on how the specific nature of the Senate had allowed it to have a unique history. A history that in the first half of the nineteenth century meant that some of the greatest legislators in our history called the Senate home, including but not limited to Henry Clay, John Calhoun, and Daniel Webster. We see then in the twentieth century the Senate become the graveyard of all action. Why? Because of the filibuster and it's use by the Southern Senators that due to the Seniority System have all the power in the Senate.

Armed with this information we see how Johnson took the formerly, punch-less and powerless position of Majority Leader and transformed it into a position of ultimate power in Washington. Johnson possessed the art of legislation and deal-making few could ever match. Cajoling, convincing, threatening, whatever it took to get his opinion to be the way you voted was what LBJ would do.

At 1040 pages the book is certainly to long to talk about it in full. A couple of episodes briefly mentioned here might show in short what the great length of the book exhibits in detail. That is the warring nature of good and bad in Lyndon Johnson. It is said and shown that Johnson, from the time he helped the people in his home Hill Country of Texas gain access to electricity in the thirties, to his feelings on Civil Rights always vowed that if he was ever in a position to help the downtrodden that he would do so. It is also demonstrated that if that passion however ran up against his ambition that ambition always won.

Johnson would tell you that he had to put passion aside until he had enough power to make a difference and perhaps that is the case. Trying to walk that tightrope however often led to people on both sides of an issue not being totally happy with Johnson.

In this book we see Johnson use his ruthlessness, the bad Lyndon, to destroy a man named Leland Olds. The reason for this was that Olds in running a natural resources committee would not allow natural gas companies and refiners to make unlimited profits. Johnson highly indebted to Texas oil and gas manufacturers needed to do something for them. Their request was of course to remove Olds so a chairman more compliant to their wishes could be found. Reading this episode in Johnson's life, it took a couple of chapters, forced me to set the book down for a few days. One becomes so disgusted at his actions, his hypocrisy, and twisting of the facts to destroy this honest, credible, public servant that the need for a shower after reading it becomes manifest.

In the mid fifties Johnson had a heart attack, his family history of men having weak hearts was long and well noted, he did not expect to live, live he did however but the episode did change him a bit. His relationship with Ladybird, while still not conventionally loving, and certainly not monogamous, was one in which he respected and appreciated her more from that time on.

We see Johnson's ill fated run for the Democratic nomination in 1956, a time when the ultimate vote counter failed to count the votes correctly, or perhaps it should be said a time when he refused to count the votes that he could see.

The last quarter of the book tells the story of the 1957 Civil Rights Bill. It could, by itself, be a short book on the political genius of Lyndon Johnson. After 1956 Johnson knew that he could not seek or gain if he did seek national office without coming to some terms with the liberals in his own party. Those liberals after having seen him stand repeatedly with the Southern bloc of Senators as year after year Civil Rights Bills failed to get past the dreaded filibuster.

Johnson, with Richard Russell's blessing knew that he had to get " cleaned up" on Civil Rights in order to have a chance for the nomination, he had to lose the distrust he had built up over the years from the liberals. Still even with Russell's acquiescence to a Civil Rights Bill to help Johnson's cause the bill itself had so many roadblocks that it took a legislative miracle to pull it through. How Johnson did accomplish this is as good a lesson in the legislative process as you will ever see.

Along with the Johnson stories Caro continues his practice of offering illuminating profiles of some of the figures in history. The aforementioned Leland Olds, the gregarious, needing to please Hubert Humphrey, the Dean of the Senate, refined, cultured, but still racist Richard Russell and a young Frank Church newly elected to the Senate from Idaho in 1956. All of these profiles are wonderful.

As book four sits on my shelf waiting I have promised myself to finish the three or four other books I have going before I start another LBJ book but as anyone who follows literary notices knows there are not enough trees to provide paper for the magnitude of positive reviews given over and over for this series from Caro. What may prove to be the greatest biography series in modern times is still being produced.

Carve out six months of time before Book Five comes out in a couple of years and catch up this series of books. It is as good as it gets.

Moonrise Kingdom

I had heard a great deal of buzz about this movie through the early parts of the summer but it was not until August that it arrived at our theater. With Wes Anderson as the director and with a stellar cast one was instantly curious about what this simple movie could have to bring such a group together.

The movie set in the mid sixties is about a young boy, 12 or 13, who goes to summer camp, is unpopular, runs away with a local girl he has met, and all that happens as a result of this.

Jared Gilman plays Sam Shakusky an orphan boy who returns for a second year to Camp Khaki s summer camp in New England. The camp's Scoutmaster is Randy Ward, played by Edward Norton. Scoutmaster Ward's real job is as a math teacher but he considers scouting his real calling and takes it very seriously. It is a hoot to see, as he makes his inspections of the camp and scouts, the scout-leader smoking. Different times indeed.

Kara Hayward plays Suzy Bishop. Hayward makes her first movie appearance, she won an open casting call for the role in Massachusetts. Hayward is a member of Mensa and has said that her IQ rates in the highly exceptional range. One guesses she had no trouble remembering her lines.

She is unsettling in her role, with heavy eye shadow like a girl trying to be a woman, and yet bringing her cat when they run away, complete with cans of cat food, and her favorite books. As they seek to get to their idyllic runaway spot, which they name Moonrise Kingdom, she is seen carrying her heavy clunky suitcase.

The cast is exceptional. Truly. Bruce Willis plays the local police captain. Harvey Keitel plays the Commodore of all the khaki scouts on the island. Frances McDormand of Fargo fame plays Suzy's Mom and Bill Murray plays her Dad.

This is a top notch cast and this is a sweet movie. Cute, innocent, heartfelt, escapism is as good a description as one can give. This movie is worth all the buzz.

A final note. It might be time to accept what a treasure we have in Bill Murray. Hard to believe that this man who played on Saturday Night Live in all it's over the top, raucous glory, could be the same actor who can play an understated role such as this in a way that makes it hard to remember how over the top he can be. He is however. Murray with his late night visits, usually in preposterous costume or character, to David Letterman are must see television has reached the point where he does exactly what he wants and only what he wants. I remember hearing a story about he came to take a certain role and the screenwriter described that Murray never answers his phone and one must follow this process of leaving and relaying messages and hoping for the best. Still, once in a role, Murray might be the most underrated actor we have.

Before this movie I saw a preview for the upcoming movie Hyde Park on the Hudson in which Murray will play a Presidential Franklin Roosevelt. Based on the previews he appears to nail it in a way that might be award winning. It is shaping up to be a great year for one who is fast becoming a treasure for his eclectic choices of where to use his enormous talent.

We Walk the Line : A Celebration of the Music of Johnny Cash

Last spring a concert was held celebrating the 80th birthday of Johnny Cash. The list of performers who lined up to perform was a veritable who's who of the list of alternative and outlaw country performers. As has been well established I am a huge fan of cover versions, obscure or faithful to the original, of songs.

Therefore as a huge Johnny Cash fan, a fan of Outlaw country, and a lover of cover songs this was the triple threat. I was not disappointed. This is a fantastic album. My wife is tired of it already most likely as Spotify has been playing it for me for the last week.

Every song on this album is a great interpretation. Opening with Brandi Carlisle ( who we saw opening for Ray Lamontagne a year ago) doing Ring of Fire, then proceeding to Ronnie Dunn's version of Ring of Fire and Buddy Miller doing Hey Porter we then land on the first standout song of the album.

Lucinda Williams is another of those polarizing singers, I land firmly in the Love Lucinda camp, and her version of the Cash classic from the nineties Hurt is wonderful. Williams rasp is well suited to this song.

Two songs by bands I have heard of, but had no real exposure to, have made it a certainty that I will soon be exploring these artists full catlog's The Carolina Chocolate Drops ( what a name ) do a blistering take on Jackson that has been played about twenty times in our house since discovered. That is followed by a band called Iron and Wine which is from what I understand predominantly one man, singing a version of Long Black Veil that is nothing short of wonderful.

Kris Kristofferson croaks through Big River and Shelby Lynne then does Kristofferson's own, Cash interpreted Why Me Lord.

Surprising, at least to me, is how effective Train lead singer Pat Monahan was on a version of Help Me Make it Through the Night and then with help from Shelby Lynne on It Ain't Me Babe. Very good. It should be noted that the concert was not just songs Johnny wrote but songs he interpreted himself as he and June did a version of the Dylan classic. Lynne and Monahan did them proud.

Near the end of the album we get Sheryl Crow doing Cry Cry Cry and then she joins Willie Nelson on If I Were a Carpenter. Nelson himself sings I Still Miss Someone, surprisingly though these two artists contributions are far from the highlight.

Shooter Jennings and Jamey Johnson fill out the Highwaymen, Jennings particularly effective in his father's role, joining Willie and Kristofferson on their famous title track from which the group got their name.

The highlights of the album, as strong as these songs earlier mentioned were, are so far and above the other entries that I have saved them for last.

Kris Kristofferson, still croaking, joins Jamey Johnson for a version of Sunday Morning Coming Down which might be a more faithful rendition than any you will ever hear to the true spirit of the song. Johnson, himself, might well have the strongest, most traditional voice in country music. At times he seems like he has come along a generation too late but we are lucky for it. This is a fantastic song.

Shooter Jennings covers Cocaine Blues and proves that he, as well as Johnson, are proof that country music still has artists that remember their heritage.

Surprisingly perhaps the most unique song on the album is from the former lead singer of Evanescence Amy Lee who destroys I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry. Listening to her voice on this track begs the question where has she been?

And of course that version of Jackson, earlier mentioned rocks too.


This is one of the best albums of the year.

Don't Ever Get Old by Daniel Friedman

I had recently read a few positive reviews of this book and so upon seeing it at the library picked it up. It has been quite some time since I have read a murder mystery, at this time in my reading path it is not really what I am interested in but this book had a very intriguing angle.

Buck Schatz is 87 years old. He is a retired Memphis police detective,a thirty year veteran of the force, but at 87 years old he is dealing with the same problems of old age as everyone else his age. Buck was a Jewish American solider in World War II and held in a POW camp run by a sadistic Nazi he has no fond memories of the war.

As the book begins Buck is called and asked to see a former comrade from the war who is dieing, who has confession to make that will change Buck's life.

Armed with this new information Buck decides to play detective one last time, at 87 he needs a little help and finds it from his grandson as they travel from Memphis to St Louis and back again, tangling with good guys, bad guys and guys in between along the way.

Perhaps it is a sign of my being well on my way to being a crusty old curmudgeon as my good friends call me that I find Buck's character so appealing. As you read the story you enjoy the whodunit but you also keep waiting to see " What will Buck say next?" The answer is that Buck will say about anything, usually in the most impolitic way possible and you will find yourself laughing as he does so.

A short book, less than 300 pages, this is a page turner. I finished it last night at 330 AM and as I completed it my LBJ book, I am on page 843, insisted that I get back to the business of reading it. And I will.

Still this was a welcome diversion and for what it is this is a great book. With one of the most interesting and unique protagonists I have read in a long time this is one of the best murder mysteries I have read.

Morning Glory

Last night we watched this Rachel McAdams movie. McAdams who I first remembered from The Wedding Crashers plays a much different role in this movie. As Becky Fuller a young woman who has dreamed of working in television news since being a little girl McAdams does not have to stretch far to play the plucky " cute" girl.

Mary Tyler Moore thirty years later would not be a bad set up and in this movie it is quite effective.

After being fired from her job at Good Morning New Jersey she is hired at the network IBS, which is struggling in it's morning show. On her first day she fires the moronic male co host, played by Modern Family's Ty Burrell and is left with just Collen Peck, the long suffering female host. Diane Keaton is very good as Collen.

The show continues to falter, desperate Becky asks about Mike Pomeroy, a veteran of 40 years of hard news, who under contract to the network but living a hermit's existence at home is available. After perusing his contract she visits him and tells him to come to the show or he will have to forfeit the millions left on his contract.

As one would expect he comes begrudgingly. He is a pain in the ass. Confronted with her newsman hero acting like a jackass Becky is perplexed and hurt. Finally told the show is to be cancelled she begs for time, and makes radical changes.

Mike eventually has a softening and the show starts to show signs of life. Due to her success Becky is offered a promotion, she is not going to take it feeling that her new show is a family, Mike disappoints again, setting us up for the aplogoy and reconciliation.

One thing in watching these four movies I ahe reviewed here today is that scriptwriting on many films is just following a formula.

Not a terrible movie, McAdams is perky and cute, Ford is grumpy and old, and Keaton is kind of nondescript. I think it should have been better however with all that star power.

No Strings Attached

Last year it seems movies about young beautiful people having uncomplicated sex were all the rage. I saw at the theater some Timberlake/Kunis movie that was just awful, I still chide my sister in law for picking that one out.

This movie starring Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher. The movie starts with them at summer camp and Adam finding out that his Dad is leaving his Mom. Even at a young age Emma is not good with " feelings" but consoles him in an awkward way.

They run into each other at college at a fraternity party and eventually find themselves both living in New York where she is a medical resident and he works on a kids television show.

As the movie takes off Adam has been dumped by his girlfriend and after hitting what he calls rock bottom calls Emma in a drunken state and ends up waking up at her house. Not knowing where he is or who he was with all the roommates in the house pretend to have had sex with him and then Emma appears. He learns he called her, did a strip tease and passed out. Soon, however, something does, but Adam learns after that she does not want a relationship.

The movie is predictable. Sex buddies becomes their relationship. They start to develop feelings. Hurt feelings ensue. Make up and reconciliation and then the movie ends with them facing starting a real dating relationship.

The acting is better in this, not so much focus on the sex scenes, and the movie works. Not Shakespeare by any means but the movie works. Portman is very attractive and as moronic as he may be in real life Kutcher is hard not to like in this role as well.

Rebound

A 2009 movie starring Catherine Zeta Jones that eventually went straight to video the movie was cute.

Jones actually is very likable as Sandy a woman in her late thirties, spending her life as a Mom, and being very happy. After a birthday party for one of her young daughters she is watching a video taken at the party, and realizes that someone set the camera down and left it on. As she is about to shut it off she sees her husband and a woman in the kitchen doing things no husband should be doing at his daughter's birthday party.

Flash forward Sandy has now moved to the the city. Quicker than might be expected she lands a job at an ESPN like network, finds an apartment for her kids, and at the coffee shop next door meets a young man who works there and soon becomes her nanny.

Romance ensues, their age difference becomes a factor. They break up. Later they meet again. It is a cute movie. Jones shines with a sparkle I have not seen in some of her bigger movies.

Not a great movie, far from it, certainly better than some of the trash at the theater however. Art Garfunkel is interesting in his role as father of the boyfriend and John Schneider has a bit part that becomes a funny, if kind of gross, scene on a date with Sandy.

I laughed more than I thought I would.

Jeff Who Lives at Home

This film is not what I expected. Jason Segal being the star made me think it would be a movie with broader humor but it really was more of a funny movie with a spiritual or holistic flag.

Jeff is a 30 year who lives at home in his Mon's basement. Susan Sarandon is his frustrated Mom.

Ed Helms is his brother who thinks his wife is cheating on him.

Jeff gets a wrong number phone call from someone looking for Kevin and thinks that he now has been shown his future, his purpose, and it has something to do with Kevin.

His brother tells him to grow up, get a real job, but Jeff will not be deterred.

A traffic jam brings the story to a conclusion that one should have felt coming but for me was a surprise.

Not a great movie. Still it is almost impossible to not find Jason Segal likable in whatever he does.

Netflix Notes

We have had Netflix this summer as my wife, as a teacher, has more time to watch a movie now and again. Because I watch a great deal of movies from TCM and such I let her control the watch list on these movies for the most part.

As most of you know I have some health disabilities which is making typing harder and harder but I have fallen behind on my writing so coming up are four quick reviews of some movies we have watched on streaming.

I should not that the Netflix business model, which seemed so strong just 18 months ago, might be doomed, as the streaming model while very convenient does not offer many good choices and most folks are just too impatient now to even wait for the movie in the mail. I see a fragmentation of this market soon and whoever finds a way to stream the best movies will win.