The Descendants

This 2011 movie received widespread critical acclaim. Nominated for several Oscars including one for best actor for George Clooney the film did win the Oscar for best adapted screenplay.

The movie was a modest success until the Oscar nominations and then on a longer and more widespread run at the theaters it did a bit better.

In the movie Matt King is a lawyer living in Hawaii. His family, long on the island, had endowed a trust with 25,000 pristine acres of which he is the sole executor of the trust. Based on laws against perpetuity the trust must dissolve in seven years so Matt, urged by his many cousins and relatives that stand to profit from the sale stands ready to sell the plot of land to a local developer.

However just as this is about to happen, Matt's wife is injured seriously in a boating accident and as the movie opens is in a coma in the hospital. Matt soon learns from the Doctor that she will not wake, and that based on a living will, she will have to be removed from the machines.

Matt gathers his daughters, the youngest Scottie, who is suffering from her own attempts to deal with this such as getting in trouble at school and texting mean messages to other girls, and Alex who is currently at a private girls school on another island. When Matt arrives to get her in the middle of the night, she is found out of her room and eventually drinking with some girl friends.

Matt is not close with his girls. He tells his oldest, Alex, about the true condition of her mother, but she is not outwardly phased. We learn that the Mother and Daughter had a major argument on the girl's last time home before the accident. The daughter blurts out to Matt that her Mom, his wife, was having an affair, that she had caught them, and that this was what had caused the argument.

Clooney is very good in this role. He portrays very well a man terribly conflicted. Assuming that his wife was having a sincere relationship he finds out who the man was and resolves to tell him that she will die. His reasoning is that the man might want to see her. He finds out upon meeting him however that even as his wife was contemplating leaving him, the other man had no such feelings for her.

Running parallel to the story of his wife is the story of the selling of the land and Matt's increasingly conflicted feelings about the pending sale. His family is very much on board with the sale, Beau Bridges has a small but strong role as a cousin looking forward to cashing in, but memories of his wife and the feelings of his youngest Scottie are starting to take a toll.

The relationship between Matt and his wife's parents is conflicted. His mother in law has late stage Alzheimer's, and his wife's father lashes out at him. It would be easy for Matt to let them know the truth about his daughter and what she had been doing, but he does not, he allows the lashing out at him and lets them depart with their memories of their daughter.

The movie is good. It shows relationships that have meaning and texture without resorting to being sticky sweet or one hour television drama simple. As solid as it was at times I found myself waiting for more, that might be reflection on the hype about the movie rather than a problem with the movie itself. The movie is very, very, good at what it does. I enjoyed it. It is not, however, a great movie and in that sense might disappoint those responding to the hype.

Clooney has grown into a very good actor. A role like this, seems perfect for him. Character parts fit him well, the softer the sell the better job he does.

Farther Away by Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen has been one of, if not the most, popular fiction writers of the the past decade. Franzen has had two best sellers, first The Corrections and the more recent Freedom. I have read both books recently and found them both entertaining and well written but also bothersome.

Bothersome because I am not sure that any of the characters in Franzen's books are likable and it is tough to invest five or six hundred pages in a book with no characters one can identify with.

Franzen's most recent book is a small collection of essays. Some of them are very good but the book also contains a significant amount of literary criticism. First and foremost I must admit that I do not have a great predilection for criticism and I might well and in fact most likely do not know the ethics of the practice. Franzen for the most part writes essays on works he has enjoyed and wants to bring the public light to again such as The Man Who Loved Children. This cannot be criticized. For me I wonder though if a writer of two popular fiction books becomes immediately one who is best suited to offer advice and criticism on the work of other authors, notably classic authors. I simply am not sure. The problem I have with this is that Franzen writes very strong modern books but he does not, in my opinion, measure up with a classic author known for criticism such as John Updike. Presumptuous? I do not know the rules but from this layperson's opinion it would seem likely.

Yet when you get away from the essays and read a piece in the book which talks about his friend David Foster Wallace, actually the speech he gave at Wallace's funeral you see what an incredible writer and essayist he is. Another essay, the title essay, tells the story of Franzen's visiting the island thought to be the setting for Robinson Crusoe. Interestingly Franzen is here to spend time alone, to see a rare bird that he wishes to see, but his mind continues to visit his confusion and conflicted feelings over Wallace's suicide. Both are very moving and affecting.

An essay on the killing of songbird's in the Mediterranean is well written, with some surprising details and offers a thorough look at the passion with which Franzen has discovered and embraced bird watching.

A small story from his childhood called Our Little Planet is very well done, something I would be incredibly proud to write. The story delves into a return trip home after a vacation with family in Minnesota.

The highlight might well be a story called I Just Called to Say I Love You in which Franzen bemoans how often he goes into what is called Grampa mode , one in which he complains about modernism's. In his major complaint however he talks about cell phones, specifically the invasive nature of people's conversations with their loved ones that end in I love you. This allows him to visit his relationship with his parents and the non expressive nature of their relationship. It made me think of how expressive I am with my kids and wonder if indeed the overuse of the phrase I love you lessens it's impact. I am sure it does. It is a different world. My father might have never told me he loved me, yet I never doubt that he did, as much as he knew how.

All in all an interesting book, a very good author, if indeed one a little over full of himself.

Analog Man by Joe Walsh

When I was in high school for some reason Joe Walsh was considered one of the cooler people in the Entertainment World. I had a friend named Bob who had a shirt that said Bob for Pope, Joe Walsh for President.

It has been a long trip for Joe Walsh. He has stayed on the periphery of pop culture but not been a major influence for the last twenty years or more. Occasionally a solo album. he would reappear and make a ton of money as part of any Eagles reunion but all in all Joe Walsh has been quiet.

This year his exposure increased in the spring when he made a few appearances playing guitar for Paul McCartney. Walsh has married into the extended Beatles family recently by marrying his good friend Ringo Starr's sister. Walsh had played on several of Ringo's All Star Tours. Rock and Roll is a primarily incestuous family much of the time.

Now this month Walsh has released a solo album and at least to my ears it is a very strong album. One should not confuse very good with will be a big seller as I do not know what the market for any album is any more, at least one that does not have hip hop or teenage girls singing but Walsh has released an album anyone of a rock and roll youth should enjoy.

The album begins with the title cut Analog Man in which Walsh plays everyman, stating that he is not comfortable with technology and does not everything need, that vinyl is just fine Joe is and will remain an analog man. I find this to be a quandary for many of our age group. I detest all the technology but I love my Iphone, Spotify, and of course here I am blogging. Let's just say I am conflicted.

Many of Walsh's albums in the last decades have had a cute song or too but the albums as a whole cannot carry the load. This album is much deeper. For those wishing to hear a little Eagles inflected Joe Walsh the song Spanish Dancer will be a hit. Close your eyes and the first thirty seconds will place you in the late seventies Joe Walsh Eagles sound.

The album ends with Funk 50 and update of the old James Gang Funk 49, followed by an instrumental India. These are both interesting but the instrumental especially is not virtuoso material, that is, warranting a spot on the album is questionable.

This is corrected however by a couple standout songs on the album. In Band Played On Joe takes us through some of the modern day problems that we appear not to be able or willing to fix. Much better is the song Family, in which the now happily married Walsh sings about the happiness and contentment he has found with wonder. " I finally found a wife and a home, and a family that matters means more to me than anything I'll ever believe," Walsh sings from the heart, he has been through a busy life, a crazy up and down life and now he ....it seems ...he feels blessed for not only his wife but his circle. Good for you Joe.

One Day at a Time is a standout. When Walsh says " I was always the first to arrive at the party and the last to leave the scene of the crime, it started with a couple of beers and went I don't know how many years." he tells us of the excesses in his life. He learned to live his life One Day at a Time. Maybe not the party anthem of the summer but for many his age the song will be very resonant.


These songs in itself make a strong album, but Just Lucky That Way makes it clear that this album will connect. An auto biographical song Walsh admits how lucky he has been, how far above his original wishes he has come. When Joe says he is Just Lucky That Way he is thanking the stars for the last forty years of success and perhaps also thanking for coming out on the other end of that success and feeling a level of contentment all the party days never provided.

Not an album that will change rock and roll. Still an album many aging rockers and rock and roll fans can appreciate and connect with. As Joe would sing " That's not so bad after all. "

Seeking a Friend For the End of the World

Friday evening my wife and I, as well as her sister went to see the new Steve Carell movie. Carell is surely one of the more likable comedic actors these days and I thought the premise of the movie looked good.

The movie begins with Carell's character Dodge driving with his wife when a news bulletin comes on the radio advising that efforts by a space shuttle mission to divert the asteroid known as Matilda has failed. This intones the announcer was the last chance to prevent the asteroids collision with Earth.

As they sit there, stunned, Dodge's wife gets out of the car, evidently deciding that spending the last 21 days of her life with him is not what she wants.

One might expect the world would go crazy, and they would be right but for Dodge he just continues. He goes to work, selling insurance. Eventually even the silliness of this is apparent to him. He goes to a party at a friend's house. His friend's wife played by Connie Britton wants to fix him up. The woman is very willing but Dodge cannot make himself spend the last three weeks of his life getting to know someone. This scene is actually quite funny. With the world coming to an end there are no limits. The party progresses, the children are taught to drink alcohol, we hear someone say, " Hey everyone we are going to do heroin." In short a dark but funny view of the end of the world.

After Dodge arrives at home he sees a young lady out on his fire escape. As he opens the window the young lady embraces him in tears. He invites her in, she introduces herself as Penny who has just broke up with her boyfriend, they lived upstairs in the building.

Penny would like to get home to see her family in England, Dodge decides he would like to revisit his first love. Over time they develop a friendship. The truth is for a movie about the end of the world not as much happens as you would expect.

With all that however the movie is very sweet. I thought it was one of the movies that was just understated enough to be more than the sum of its parts. Penny, played by Kiera Knightly , accompanies Dodge as he travels back to find his lost love. Kiera Knightly has been in many movies, I cannot think of any of them, but I must say that I found her in this role to be very attractive and likable. Perhaps Carell's likability rubs off on her. In any case Penny is a joy.

Another fine part of the movie is when Dodge goes to see his father. His father, played by Martin Sheen, had left the family when he was a boy and he had not seen him since as he wanted no part of a reconciliation. After some talk it is agreed that sorry is sorry and they reconcile. The scene of them having dinner is more heartwarming than would be expected.

Eventually as they approach the current home of Olivia, the first love, Dodge realizes that his true love is right there with him. This is why he took her to his father, who has a plane and can fly her home to her family. After placing her asleep in the plane he goes home to his apartment. Soon thereafter however Penny appears, knowing that she only wants to be with him in this time.

By this time the end is near. They lay on the bed and as they speak of their love they hear the sound of the asteroid coming in and then the screen goes white.

My wife liked the movie, my sister in law could not get over the difference in the ages of Dodge and Penny. Seems kind of silly to me, with the end of the world weeks away I do not think an age difference really matters.

I liked this movie very much.

The Seven Year Itch

This 1955 movie is often thought of as Marilyn Monroe's best. Adapted from a popular play the movie was written and produced by Billy Wilder.

In the movie we meet Richard Sherman married to Helen. Richard is a publishing executive specializing in twenty five cent books. As the movie begins Mr. Sherman is sending his wife and son to Maine for the summer.

Telling himself that he will heed his Doctor and his Wife and not drink or smoke this summer he settles down for the evening. Soon his life is turned topsy turvy by the doorbell to his duplex. He lets a young blonde woman, played by Marilyn Monroe, into the building and learns that she is subletting the upstairs apartment for the summer.

A later introduction by way of a falling flowerpot and soon the two of them are sharing his air conditioning and drinks and Sherman is having daydreams about his relationship with the girl. A large part of the movie is made up of these fantasies.

Tom Ewell as the everyman Sherman does a good job but the star is clearly Marilyn. My wife had recently watched the NBC show Smash and as that focused on a musical about Marilyn she told me she found the voice of the real Marilyn distracting.

The movie features one of the twentieth centuries most iconic images, that of Marilyn with her dress blowing up from a passing subway.

With all that the movie while entertaining is not that good. The imagination scenes while frequent are more farcical than funny. Monroe is attractive, girlish and all the things that made her famous. The movie is one worth seeing but it is a stretch to call it that good, it is a classic in the sense that it displays all that made Marilyn Marilyn, it is not however a great movie.

Melancholia

Just a few months ago the movie Melancholia was released simultaneously in the theaters and on Demand. The movie received some rave reviews. One stated that the movie was so stunning visually that despite being available on demand that one had to see it in the theaters to do it justice.

With a cast led my Kirsten Dunst and Kiefer Sutherland there was enough star power to merit interest but clearly the star of the movie was the premise, as well as the cinematography.

So last evening an hour after rejoining Netflix, for the summer only, we decided to stream a movie and seeing this, remembered the reviews.

The movie does not live up to the billing. The characters are just too out there. The major characters in the movie are two sisters Claire and Justine. The movie opens with Justine, played by Dunst getting married. On that day she notices a star that seems odd in the sky. The wedding, banquet, and more take an untenable amount of time. Justine is just odd and that is putting it nicely. While the party goes on downstairs she takes a bath. Her Mother is nasty, does not believe in marriage, her father looks like the most interesting man in the world from the Dos Equis commercials. Then she takes a walk out on the grounds of a golf course near the reception and ends up having sex with a man she has just met. None of it makes sense.

The next section centers on Claire, her sister, and it is now only a couple of days before the planet is supposed to be witness to a miracle. A new planet, named Melancholia, which had been hiding behind the sun is to go by Earth in stunning closeness. By this time Justine's husband is nowhere to be found, we are never told where he is, but we do see that she is all but incapacitated. Her sister tries to get her to take a bath but cannot get her to, and can only to get her to try to eat by making her favorite which happens to be meatloaf? All too weird. Claire's husband is a scientist who assures her that Earth will be witness to a great event but that the event is not cataclysmic. Others however disagree, and as one would imagine the internet is full of people claiming that the Earth will be struck with obvious devastation.

The star is clearly the visuals. In the end the planet does come by the Earth and then does recede. All is well, until it is not. And then it is really not.

Kristen Dunst is good I guess in her role. She plays her role well, but the character is so unlikable it is hard to judge how well she does. She does appear fully nude laying by the river, her character seems to be entranced by the the oncoming planet and as my son said watching the movie he seemed to get stronger, more sane as the planet gets closer.

I do not get the hidden significance, if there was one. I think the movie could have been special. I think the idea of showing how a calamity such as this affects one family as opposed to society going to hell at the end of the world has merit. The characters are just to weird and unlikable. In the end all the pictures in the world of another planet in the sky, close enough to look Earth like, cannot save a picture as bad as this.

That's Why God Made the Radio by The Beach Boys

The Beach Boys landed in Bangor, Maine last night. We did not get tickets to the show, the tickets were fairly expensive, and I decided that having seen them back in the eighties that I did not need to see them again.

Over the last couple of weeks having read articles about the band and it's tour, their fiftieth anniversary tour in fact, in Time, Newsweek and Rolling Stone I was more interested in seeing them. Overall the tour has gotten good reviews, my concerns about how good they would sound, and of course about if Brian Wilson is capable of touring and performing turned out, according to most sources, to be unfounded. In short the Boys were playing a 150 minute set of forty or more songs that fans of all ages were enjoying.

One could not really have had any sense of expectation over the album of new material that The Beach Boys recorded and released recently. Truthfully I certainly did not. I was wrong.

Unexpectedly this is a refreshing, beautifully recorded album of layered vocals and harmonies that certainly would have felt at home on a Beach Boys album in the mid sixties. I have listened to the album three times and each time I listen to the last six songs, a connected Abbey Road type sonnet, that ends with the wonderful Summer's Gone I am more impressed. Brian Wilson has always been known as a musical genius even as he struggled with mental health issues. What becomes apparent quickly is this is his album, he orchestrates all the arrangements, the layering of vocals and instruments. If possible this album is not getting enough positive buzz even though all the reviews I have heard are positive.

This album makes me wish I had the big speaker ed stereo I had in high school and college with lights all over it, so that as I lay in the dark on a hot summer night I could feel the breeze and listen to the Beach Boys cope with growing older while still being true to their sound.

The single on the radio, the title cut, is a very catchy enjoyable song. It is however pale in comparison with the sheer beauty of the last six songs. Starting with Daybreak Over the Ocean the feelings of retrospection and the incredible arrangements are really beyond compare.

Is it possible that with their surfing music in it's seeming simplicity dominating our perception of The Beach Boys that we sold them short. Of course this was always the battle between Wilson and Mike Love, the latter wanting to make the music that he perceived as safe and sure to be popular and Wilson wanting to stretch and challenge both himself and his listeners. Wilson's genius is known far and wide. It was after all Paul McCartney who said that God Only Knows was the most perfect song ever written.

McCartney might well be right, but listening to the last two songs on this album, Pacific Coast Highway leading to Summer's Gone and one has to wonder, as great as this as, as great as they were, how much more could they have accomplished if we had not lost Brian for twenty years or more.

This is a good album. It has some great moments however. This is not rock and roll per say it is in the latter song perhaps a song on a par with our greatest, Sinatra, Rodgers and Hammerstein and yes McCartney and Lennon.

Brian Wilson is out of bed, finally. We are all lucky for it.

The Poseidon Adventure

I remember watching this movie at some time in my youth and enjoying it. The 1972 feature appeared near the beginning of the run of all star cast disaster flicks that included The Towering Inferno, Airport and Earthquake. This might well have been the best of the lot.

The SS Poseidon is making it's last voyage. As we have come to expect in these types of movies there is always someone urging the Captain to cut corners, to fail to take precautions. These failures inevitably lead to disaster. Clearly these characters never watch the movies.

In this case the ship has been sold to a company in Greece and the when the Captain, played by Leslie Nielsen in serious mode, after hearing of an undersea earthquake wishes to take evasive action from a feared killer wave the " management type" representing the owners of the ship insists that they take a straight line route, time is money etc.

This leads to the ship being hit by a ball of water that turns the ship upside down. As this is happening the ship's passengers are celebrating New Years Eve. Over the first half hour of the movie we are introduced to the cast. We have a teenage girl and her little brother, a minister, too modern for his church being sent to save souls in Greece, an older Jewish couple on their way to see grandchildren in Israel, as well as a retired police detective and his new wife, who just happens to be an ex prostitute that he has married.

When the ship is hit the passengers in the ballroom are tossed and turned, some injured, a few killed but for the most part they are alive. A disagreement occurs over what to do. The ship's purser insists that they should stay put. Minister Scott played by Gene Hackman insists that they need to go up to reach the bottom of the ship as that is where any rescue efforts will necessarily come from. Eventually few of the passengers agree to move, fortunately for us most of those who do agree to go with the Minister are those characters that we have met in the movie's beginnings.

As much as I joke about the convenient set up I should stress this is a very very good movie. It was a very popular movie at the time, becoming the box office leader in 1973 and at one point being among the six highest grossing movies of all time. The level of adventure in the movie is high, as our characters progress higher and higher, or conversely lower and lower in the upside down ship each level offers a new challenge. In that way perhaps this movie fits well with the video game culture now in place.

In any case this is a movie still well worth watching. The cast was superb. Gene Hackman was very strong in his role. This was not an understated role, Hackman can act in anything. He actually was very underrated, a review of some of the movies he starred in makes that very clear.

Red Buttons, Roddy McDowell, Carol Lynley, Jack Albertson, Shelley Winters, Stella Stevens and the unforgettable Ernest Borgnine make up the very strong cast of survivors we follow through the movie. Borgnine is another underrated actor. Still alive today in his nineties Borgnine was an everyman. Not handsome in the traditional way. In this movie he plays the gruff opposite of Hackman's preacher and inevitably is underrated as the anti hero. Someday, if you are a film buff look through Mr. Borgnine's career. It was a strong and fruitful one.

This is a very good movie.

Rock of Ages

First of all it should be noted that I am not a blind go to the movies kind of guy. What this means is that I usually check out a few reviews for a movie before I decide to go. With that in mind what occurred Tuesday night should never have happened.

We went to see Rock of Ages. It was in a word, awful. Actually that is not even a strong enough wording, it was incredibly awful. The blame however, has to go to me. I had briefly read a review in Rolling Stone of the movie. What I saw was that Tom Cruise nailed his part as the aging rock God Stacee Jaxxs. What I missed was that this was a musical, what I also missed was Peter Travers saying that the movie was bland, the cast was bad BUT that Tom Cruise nailed his part as the aging rock God Stacee Jaxx.

Actually in retrospect it is kind of funny. My wife on Tuesday night as we found ourselves childless said let's go to a movie. Victims of the East Coast heatwave it seemed a good place to go, I said Rolling Stone says Tom Cruise is pretty good in Rock of Ages. I further thought that RS loves to poop all over Tom Cruise so if they said he was good he must be. So we go to the movie, get our popcorn, take our seat, answer the trivia questions, sit through the previews and BAM in the first scene Julianna Hough breaks into song as Sherrie the Midwestern girl on her own heading in a greyhound bus to the West Coast. Thinking to myself that's ok she is just singing a little to set the tone and then everyone on the bus with her starts singing.

Houston we have a problem. Before long it became evident that this was a true blue musical. I wanted to crawl in my seat, while my wife, she who loves musicals said " I am so glad you picked out this movie for us."

The problem is that it was not even a good musical. The music was not bad but the plot was just too cheesy. Julianna Hough, she of Dancing With the Stars fame, is cute but not a great actress. Diego Bonata who plays the male lead, her romantic counterpart and an aspiring rock star is awful. It could well be the role he plays but, to me, this was one of the worst performances I have seen in a movie. Just awful.

The supporting cast, which was actually made of larger stars such as Alec Baldwin, Russell Brand and of course Tom Cruise were all quite good. Cruise sings his own songs, perfects the groupie abusing, single monolithic stare gazing in a fixated way at an object or interviewer to a science. In short it might be one of his best performances but it comes in an awful movie. Baldwin and Brand play their roles for laughs and for the most part succeed. When their characters realize that they are in love and break into song and sing to each other the audience in the theatre teetered on laughter and then broke out into full throat-ed howls. It had to be what the scene was intended to be.

About halfway through the movie I was looking at baseball scores. Our star crossed lovers had broken up, he was in a cheesy boy band, and she was " dancing" at a mens club. By the time we get around to the happy ending the film seems to have some redeeming value. My wife loves musicals, she said she wanted to poke her eyes out about halfway through, but she too acknowledged that it ended well.

I cannot decide if it was an attempt to be played as funny, campy, serious or somewhere in between. For me it did not work. Next time I guess I will take the time to read the whole review.

Justin Bieber Runs the World

Justin Bieber was discovered off the internet a couple of years ago and since that time has become the hottest thing in the music world. Bieber has been and continues to carve a major part of his fan base out of the teeny bopper population and that is to expected. Sometimes it seems kind of odd that a skinny little mop topped white boy can become the most popular entertainer around but if nothing else he does appear safe.

Like most teeny bopper favorites Bieber has been ridiculed by a large segment of adults and of course young boys and men that are too cool for someone like him.

Most of these teen idols fade, but it seems like Bieber may have more staying power. His new album has been another monster success and in listening with our daughter to his single Boyfriend it is not a big stretch to see a similarity between he and Justin Timberlake, another teen idol that has moved into an all encompassing career.

Bieber appears to be very career savvy. He has shown interest in movies, video, producing and all other facets of the business. Last fall a simple tweet from his home in Canada over Thanksgiving mentioning how much he liked a single from a then unknown singer named Carly Rae Jepsen launched what has become the biggest single of the year.

" Call Me Maybe " might well be the first example of many of the eye for talent that Bieber produces.

Watching Bieber on interview shows such as Ellen, and on entertainment shows like Idol and The Voice he appears to be every Mother's dream. Well mannered, respectful, certainly flashing none of the look that makes him appear dangerous Bieber has it all. How he transitions into an adult career will be interesting. It is a tough bridge to cross. My guess is he will navigate it quite well.

Hemingway and Gellhorn

This HBO biopoc centers on the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn. Gellhorn was a magazine writer for Collier's in the late thirties and early forties, this being the time when magazine writers for these magazines were well known.

Meeting in Spain during the Spanish Civil War when she was writing for Colliers and Hemingway was gaining inspiration for what became his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway at the time was married but that did not prevent them from falling together. Over the next few years there relationship was one of fire. They covered the war in Spain, then the war in China. Later after they were married and with their relationship fracturing Hemingway got himself hired with Collier's, essentially taking his wife, Gellhorn's, job. Eventually Gellhorn stowed away on a medical ship and beat Hemingway to the front.

The relationship between the two is interesting, and I clearly love the writing of Hemingway but for me the stronger appeal of the movie was the scenes with the characters in Spain, China, the beaches of France and later in Germany.

Spain, always an interesting story for me. The communists were the freedom fighters, the fascists were helped by Franco and yet clearly the Americans were ambivalent at best about the outcome of the war. When Hemingway and Gellhorn met with Eleanor and later Franklin Roosevelt to extoll the cause of the freedom fighters they were believed to be fellow travelers.

The downside of this movie for me were the sex scenes. Clive Owen did a fine job as Hemingway. Nicole Kidman is attractive but some of these scenes were over the top. We are made to understand that the relationship is fiery and passionate, that they fight as hard as they love. I do not know that seeing Owen thrusting and Kidman naked is necessary. I am not a prude I just thought it was a little gratuitous.

The cast is stellar. Robert Duvall gives a magnificent performance as a Russian General, and Parker Posey plays Hemingway's soon to be divorced wife.

Watching the movie, one of Hemingway's cronies, Joris reminded me of the drummer from Metallica. That is what I said to myself, the dog, whoever was in the room. After the movie I looked it up and saw that it was Lars Ulrich. I had no idea that he acted.

Other notables in the movie Tony Shalhoub, Joan Chen As Madame Chiang ( a small but stunning performance) and Peter Coyote.

Worth ones time, wonderfully filmed. The problem is not with the movie, it was what it purported to be, I wanted it to be less about the relationship and more about the life and history they touched. Still a good movie

Jack Hanna on David Letterman

I have written on this subject before but have to again. I have had a hard couple of days. Not feeling well and frustrated with the constant issues with my health.

Last night however I woke my wife up laughing between 1130 and 1230. Why? Jack Hanna was on David Letterman. This never fails to make me smile. My wife does not really get it, she thinks that Mr. Hanna might be a little loopy.

For me the interplay between the two is like watching a vaudeville team. Letterman needles Hanna, asking him dumb questions while Hanna attempts to handle wild cats or birds. For me it is one of the funniest things on television.

Hanna, either in character or actuality really is funny. Befuddled is a word that constantly comes to mind in describing him. Last night he said in an exasperated voice to Dave " I can't know everything about every kind of animal out here when I bring out ten animals. " In itself that is funny, he is after all Jungle Jack Hanna, shouldn't he know.

Then when it seems Hanna is ready to snap in frustration Dave says something comparing the use of the camel in cultures where it is prevalent with the many uses the American Indians had for the buffalo and Hanna's jaw drops and says "Dave that is a very powerful statement."

Some things as my Mom used to say " just tickle your funny-bone." For me Jack Hanna and David Letterman together are can't miss television.

The President's Club by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy

This recently published book explores the relationships between the current and former Presidents in the modern age. Since Harry Truman was elected relationships between Presidents have become an integral part of the success of those in office. With modern medicine and many younger men being elected President we have scene at various times the President's Club grow to as many as six when Bill Clinton was President.

Harry Truman began the modern day President's club when he brought Herbert Hoover back into the service of the country. Hoover, an outcast in the FDR years, had been a hero long before his Presidency, his efforts in food relief and distribution in World War I made him an easy choice for Truman to use in saving Europe after the second war.

Not all relationships have been as smooth. Eisenhower and Truman had a terrible hand off and did not really make piece until Ike left office, and especially at the funeral of JFK.

JFK being young needed Eisenhower and Ike complied, offering advice and political cover after the Bay of Pigs.

LBJ embraced Truman and Eisenhower, Ike in fact at times was the bellicose voice in his ear over Vietnam.

For readers whose sense of history begins in the seventies Richard Nixon, as in all things, is as complex a character as one will find. While in office his thoughts to blackmail LBJ to keep him on the sidelines and out of public comment might have been the precursor to Watergate. The talk of breaking into The Brookings Institute is shown to have been to get some letters of Johnson's detailing his letters on the political nature of his bombing halt before the 1968 election. Of course we also see how Nixon's actions might well have met the level of treason as he interfered in the Paris peace talks during the 68 campaign.

Bill Clinton's relationships are perhaps the most affecting to one's spirit of what could be if politicians still worked together. Clinton took advice from the noted foreign policy expert Nixon and compared his death to the loss of his mother. Gerald Ford tried to help Clinton in his impeachment scandal, and while he could not keep the Republicans at bay Clinton never forgot his efforts. Of course the most interesting is Clinton's relationships with the Bush's. George Bush who has become his surrogate father and W who Clinton says one cannot help but like.

Clinton the consummate politician warned Gore and his fellow Democrats that underestimating Bush the second would be a mistake. Many have heard the joke W told about Clinton waking from one of his surgeries and being surrounded by his loved ones" Hillary, Chelsea, and my dad." He was not kidding. The relationship developed so far that when Bush the elder was honored at 87 at The Kennedy Center that Bill Clinton professed his belief that the elder " could do virtually no wrong in his eyes" and that he loved him. It is interesting to note that as the multitudes and generations of Bush's lined up for a family photo that Neil Bush shouted for Clinton " the brother from another mother" to join the picture. And he did. As Clinton said, "every family needs a black sheep."

This is just a small sampling of the book. It is an easy read and it is very interesting. For me the takeaway is simple. If Presidents when they leave the office hold the office above party and the country above party why can that not happen when they are in office and more importantly in Congress.

I have observed that politicians of both stripes start to seem more sensible after the campaign is over, after they no longer have to raise money and rouse the base. The question we have to ask ourselves is how do we get these sensible people to be the ones that are running. They " are " the ones running by the way in most cases, they just cannot be sensible and get elected.

We need to ask ourselves why.

Born and Raised by John Mayer

John Mayer is an interesting character. His first album from 2001 blasted him into the consciousness with his song No Such Thing. Perceptions of him as a pop singer quickly faded as he toured and released albums that proved his merit as a guitarist and writer of great songs.

Mayer of course has become known as a serial dater, perhaps white rock stardom's version of Derek Jeter as he has dated many of the most popular actresses and singers. Jennifer Anniston, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Taylor Swift to name just three. Swift even wrote her song " Dear John" about him an event that Mayer has called embarrassing.

Born and Raised, his most recent album proves once and for all that for all the fluff surrounding his public persona and dating life Mayer is a true artist. This album is a master work.

Quiet, reserved, lyrically and musically strong Mayer answers any question one might have about his talent and depth on this album. Well crafted pop songs, sing along if you like, but most of all songs that match.

The opening song Queen of California opens the album and shows a great deal of the influences Mayer has heard. Sounding like it comes from the early seventies and even referencing Neil Young's After the Goldrush in 1971 Mayer knows his history and open the album brilliantly.

Another song Shadow Days has the same feeling and groove. Singing of being able to finally let it go, and knowing that he is a good man with a good heart and that his Shadow Days are over. A self revealing song that is another song many of us can relate to. Of special interest to me was the Beatles sound in the instruments after the second chorus, Mayer shows all his history lessons.

For all the girls named Olivia in the world you finally have a song with your name in it. Mayer sings that Olivia is taken but that he needs something like Olivia. One assumes he could probably get her if he just sang her this song.

Born and Raised, the title song, is an instant classic. With it's harmonica again bringing Neil Young to mind, and a confessional air Mayer talks about " one of these days, I'll be Born and Raised and it's such as waste to grow up lonely." " Still has dreams, just not the same, they don't fly as high as they used to" Mayer sounds older than he is. Certainly much life has been lived by him in the last decade. This song might be the result of those years.

Walt Grace's Submarine Test, January 1967 starts with a Miles Davis like mini solo and then launches into a whimsical story song about just what it says, Walt Grace's submarine test. Still with the lyric " When your done with this world. you know the next is up to you" Mayer is talking about more than Walt Grace, he is talking about all of us making decisions about not just the next life but the rest of this one.


Whiskey, Whiskey, Whiskey again starts with the harmonica and tells of " trying to find the man I never got to be" and becomes another confessional of disappointment in the deal he made, not with the devil, but with himself. A great song.

John Mayer is not a pop star. He should be taken seriously after this album. This is a thoughtful, graceful, album that is certainly the high point of his career.

Canada by Richard Ford

Richard Ford is one of those writers that does not have a middle ground for his readers. There are many folks who find him to be one of the best writers of his generation and others who feel a consistent desire as I read one reviewer say " to slap his main character for 300 pages"

Those reviews of course are usually for the Bascombe stories that started with The Sportswriter.

I have enjoyed the Bascombe stories. Some times in reading those stories I feel very connected to the author and his character. Ford's characters think much of the time and we learn to like that about them....or put the books away.

So I was of course interested in the new book. This book tells the story of Dell and Berner fraternal twins growing up in Grand Falls, Idaho. Their father is an optimist always believing things will work out. Dad, a Captain in the Air Force, somehow gets in trouble in some kind of embezzling scheme involving stolen cows and the local Indian tribes and gets demoted. He soon retires and finds that his skills do not transfer that well to the civilian world. The children's Mom Neeva is a small, ethnic looking, city girl who is ill suited for life on the prairie.

As their Father drifts from job to job we learn about the twins. Dell, the narrator of the story is a 15 year old who is small for his age, with no real friends, who nonetheless looks forward to starting high school in the fall. He plans to join the chess club and yearns to become part of a group of friends. Dell taller, physically stronger than her brother has a darker, more impatient soul.

Life comes crashing down when his father still drifting from job to job gets himself in a pinch with the local Indian tribe on another low grade criminal enterprise he is working. Threats are made and inexplicably their father decides the way out of this is to cross the border into North Dakota and rob a bank.

Ever the optimist Dad thinks he will blend into the scenery. Of course, he cannot, eventually police come and arrest the kids parents. What happens next is the larger part of the story.

The truth is, not much does. Dell goes to Canada, becomes involved peripherally with a small town criminal who himself is on the run from America.

To be clear this is not a good book. About 200 pages in I had a strong sense nothing of import was going to happen. While the characters occasionally have good lines that make you remember what Ford's special skill is for the most part this book still has the annoying self centered characters but lacks much of the thinking material found in his earlier work.

The plot of the book, the whole story of the young man's first summer and fall in Canada, is weak and frankly no better than a B grade pulp plot.

This book if written by a no name author would have gotten no positive spin and would soon be in the bargain bin. The book's jacket says that this book will be a classic, that is not the case unless it becomes a classic of how an author can disappoint. Ford's characters are often pretentious and annoying, this book does not even have the redeemable qualities that bring them into the level of interest and compassion.

Poor. Poor. A waste of time.

Cool Hand Luke

This Paul Newman movie in 1967 is one of his most iconic. Playing a man put in jail, on a hard labor chain gang, for vandalizing parking meters Newman's Lucas Jackson is a born loser.

As he arrives at the prison it is revealed that he was a decorated war hero from the Korean War but that he was a private when discharged. Clearly Luke has a problem with authority.

Arriving at the prison Luke soon runs afoul of the de facto prison leader known as Dragline. He is played by George Kennedy who actually won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. An award very well deserved. Kennedy as the big, burly, sweaty, illiterate, leader who eventually comes to see Luke as the best of everything. Actually Dragline's being illiterate is never spelled out, one observes it by whenever any mail comes he asks someone to tell him what them words say. This is an excellent choice to let us learn his illiteracy by observation much as his fellow prisoners might.

A boxing match to settle their differences is arranged and Luke is destroyed by the much larger Dragline. He earns Dragline's respect, however, by refusing to stay dowm, in fact he keeps getting up so long that eventually Dragline walks away and will hit him no more.

A pivotal scene in the movie occurs when Luke's Mother comes to visit him. Dieing, laid out on a bed in the back of a truck, yet still smoking she talks to Luke about how he was always her favorite and wonders what will become of him.

When she dies the Prison Warden worries Luke will try to escape so puts him in the box, which is a dark, small, one person wooden shack for isolation.

Emerging from the cell Luke is changed. Escape is his only motivation and he becomes bigger than life for some of his fellow prisoners when he does so.

There are many legendary scenes in this movie. The egg scene, the Warden's diatribe about Luke upon his return from his first escape " What we've got here is failure to communicate " is perhaps more famous than the movie. As the intro to the song " Civil War" by Guns and Roses it is famous for a whole generation of people who might not have seen the movie.

Perhaps however most affecting is when Dragline returned from his escape attempt with Luke talks about how Luke was flashing that Luke smile the last time he saw him. This is as a collage of pictures of Luke smiling throughout the movie.

A prison gang movie is a rare place to find a character you like, one could argue how anyone with an honorable war record could be placed on a chain gang for a drunken night of mischief, but of course it is a movie after all.

Newman, if possible, is an underrated actor. This is one of the movie's that make that true.

Mad Men : Season Finale Next Week

Mad Men has a way of lulling you to sleep and then bang doing something to shock you. Last night's episode was that. Lane's death is just one more piece of very heavy baggage for Don to carry. With his loss and Peggy's leaving the firm due to the way he treated her it seems clear that in Don's path is a lot of human wreckage.

Too bad Don, what we all really wonder is if this French girl can hurt him the way he hurts everyone else.

I cannot help it, I love Roger. His tone and wry sense of humor such as when he told Don, after a fierce sales presentation last night, to " wipe the blood off his mouth."

Roger's LSD trip, needling of Pete, his divorce and his dating of the hat check girl for the disappointing sex as he calls it makes him the indispensable character in this show.

We all look forward to next week's finale.

The Wire

The Wire is one of the most acclaimed television shows ever aired. The awards are numerous. Sitting in the backyard the other day I decided to see what all the hype was about. Using the fantastic streaming service HBO Go I watched the first episode.

As the police detective asks the young man why they let him keep shooting craps with them if week after week he stole the money and ran, ( the young man, the stealer, has just been killed) the man says " You got to, this is America." That in itself is one of only many clever bits of dialogue in the first episode. The show is filmed with a gritty realism that is like the old NBC show Homicide on steroids.

However as good as the episode was, as great as the plot-lines inevitably are, as wonderful and addicting as the show will become over five seasons I reached an easy conclusion. I have no interest in it. Five seasons of real life on the means streets of Baltimore, Maryland, I just do not think I have the need for that.

Life is good if you let the light in. I do not need five seasons of dark. I know this is my decision, and should be taken in no way as a reflection on the quality of the show. Many will say that their are uplifting moments inside the darkness of the show that are more meaningful for the bleakness they rise though. I do not doubt it.

Not for me. Not worth my time. Life is too short to visit that much misery on purpose.

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

The Crossing is the second of the three volume Border Trilogy from Cormac McCarthy. As I read many books at once I must confess that this one took awhile. The book centers on a young man named Billy Parham. Billy, his younger brother Boyd and his parents live on a small farm in New Mexico.

This is a difficult book. There is much meandering thought and much wisdom being imparted from the various characters.

As the book begins Billy and his Father are attempting to trap a wolf that has come up across the border from Mexico and is killing local livestock. McCarthy has been compared frequently to Hemingway and in the writing of Billy's attempts to trap the wolf one sees it. The detail given to each step is exquisite. I must confess many of the terms fall on deaf ears to me but i was able to follow what he was doing.

Billy cannot catch the wolf despite his best efforts. Finally one evening he sets a trap, under the remains of a fire that has been cookfire for some travelers the night before. As he tells his father this his father warns him to return at first light and hope that no one else attempts to use the fire-sight. And he goes to bed and the authors states " that he never saw him again." A very jarring line as one has no idea what is to come.

That morning when Billy arrives he has caught the wolf. He is transfixed, the wolf is caught by the foot but Billy watches her and cannot bring himself to shoot her. For the next fifty pages of the book we see Billy taking the wolf to Mexico. Muzzled, leashed, and taught to follow along on a rope behind the horse Billy travels until his story takes a turn he did not wish. He wanted to return the wolf to the wild, suffice to say for Billy Parham things often do not happen as planned.

Along the way in this section of the book and others Billy meets many different people, most of them Mexican. He meets good people and bad but the good outweigh the bad by far. One of the most compelling and noticeable parts of the book is that, for all the hard luck and sadness that comes to Billy , most of the people of the Mexico he travels through are overwhelmingly generous and kind. Travelers are fed and housed as a matter of fact to be taken as normal.

When the wolf part of the story comes to it's conclusion Billy returns home, slowly and with no great plan, and finds his home abandoned. Billy learns that his father and mother were murdered by horse thieves. Billy, in his stoic way gets his brother Boyd from family friends that have been taking care of him and they head out on the trail. They never come to a spoken decision about their plans but yet they know where they are going.

They cross the border in Arizona and then their story beings. In Mexico again. The same frustration occurs in this book as the previous, many of the characters speak in untranslated Spanish. In cases where necessary I had to use my Spanish to English translator. Still the payoff is worth it.

If you are looking for the typical Western with quick pace and easily resolved problems this is not the book for you. McCarthy's characters do not speak much but they think much and we as readers are given a glimpse of those thoughts on life and death and all the other thoughts we all have late at night.

Along the way Billy and Boyd meet some characters easily remembered. To advance the themes of the story these characters often have much to say, and much that they say is shaded in gray, with duplicate meanings and understandings.

This man is an exquisite writer. It is not easy. It is work. McCarthy however writes characters as deep and thoughtful and affecting as any you will find.

Be ready to take time. Take breaks if you need. I finished two books between the wolf section and Billy's return home, I even contemplated giving up. I did not and I was greatly rewarded. This is a fantastic book. A book that will stick with your memory for a long, long time.

I have a couple of biographies to read but I am looking forward to finishing the series soon. It is something to be on a shelf with Hemingway.

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the more polarizing of the " great" twentieth century authors. To be honest I have never been a fan of his work. I have attempted to read a story here or there and have often found him too out there for my taste.

Recently I did read a couple of short story collections that were free on Ibooks, included in those were Harrison Bergeron. This story, which I reviewed earlier, was one that I originally read in college. After reading these stories recently I was more receptive to trying Vonnegut again and where better to begin than with his most popular and certainly his most controversial work Slaughterhouse Five. Our friends at Amazon made this easy by making this book the Kindle Daily Deal a couple of weeks back.

The story centers on Billy Pilgrim. An optometrist from Illium, Illinois Billy is a former prisoner of war who survived the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany at the end of World War II. Billy has come unstuck in time. The story is told in a non linear fashion because Billy's life is anything but linear.

Throughout the story we see Billy as a young boy, we see him in the war, we see his capture, his time in a POW camp with British soldiers, and of course his fateful time in Dresden. This experience in Dresden changes his life and haunts him. Billy returns home and marries a successful optometrist daughter, he goes to college and unexpectedly becomes a very successful optometrist. Billy is the only survivor of a plane crash and perhaps strangest of all Billy is captured by aliens. The aliens treat him well but put him in the zoo on their planet and mate him with an Earth female.

Throughout the book Billy visits these scenes in his life as well as others. It takes some getting used to. I had tried the book before but at the time needed it to be more literal and less of a satire. However taken now the book is actually quite good.

Vonnegut himself was a prisoner of war in Europe and he was greatly affected by the firebombing of Dresden, perhaps the most controversial part of the European War on the Allied side. The book uses some interesting techniques including Vonnegut addressing the reader in both the first and last chapters.

The most striking and recognizable part of the book is the authors use of the phrase " So it goes." This is used any time the subject is death or dieing. Over 100 times do we see this.

This book takes a little work but it is not a hard read. Nothing like the Cormac McCarthy book I am currently reading and hope to finish very soon. This book just requires you to let the story come to you as it comes to you.

Once you do this you surely see the appeal of a book that by attempts to show that there is no way to write a coherent book about a massacre which is what he considered Dresden to be.

I am glad I attempted it again.