Haiku Reviews: Storybook Edition

Dir: Jennifer Kent (2014)

Aussie mom sleeps no
More. Pop-up book monster as
Dysfunctional grief.

Dir: Rob Marshall (2014)

Fairy tales mash-up,

Lost some wit in translation,

Well acted and sung.

"Agony" shines, for wit it retains:

Spring on Broadway

From the Great White Way, 2014-2015 Season

Coming of age gay,
Closeted dad. Memory
Musical that soars.

("I could relate. A
Burt Reynolds poster for me,
Not a ring of keys.")

Old fashioned Bernstein:
"Lonely Town" slayed. Zany tone
Glued with solid score.

Henry, Anne, Cromwell
Plot to live in Tudor times.
Swift, broad sweep of book.

Lieber and Stoller

Lieber and Stoller,
Soundtrack to recent week's news
And television.

Singer/Actress B.J. Crosby Dies at 63 - Playbill.com

From the "Mad Men" premiere.

Part of the final Letterman season. By far, the best rendition of "Stand By Me."

Haiku Reviews: B Movie Edition

Dir: Robert Montgomery (1947)

Sterling B movie.

Exotic noir, post war angst.

Credit Metty's lens.

The single take above serves as Russell Metty's warm up for "Touch of Evil."

Dir: Chad Stahelski (2014)

Grieving hit man on

Revenge spree, lives by code like

Melville's cons. Poor dog.

NY High City

Witnessed from last week,
Three different occasions,
The following scenes:

Amusing commute:
High school girls high on "gummies."
Loud curses and smacks.

Sidewalk. Homeless man,
Flying high, unbelts, looks for
Bedbugs in his crotch.

Bridge and tunnel teens
Out to score Oxycontins.
Pre-party ritual.

Haiku Reviews: "The Boxtrolls" and "Pompeii"

Still catching up on last year's Contenders:

Dir: Graham Annable and Anthony Stacchi (2014)

Underground critters

Are not monsters. Light Laika.

The lesson: embrace change.

Dir: Paul W.S. Anderson (2014)

Sword and sandal weds
Disaster flick. Stiff acting

Best buried in ash.

Gaze

Dir: Bennett Miller (2014)

Trophy collecting,

American male study.

Shift in movie gaze.

The gaze alluded to above is Laura Mulvey's "the male gaze." Channing Tatum carries the flag for this current wave. In Magic Mike, Steven Soderbergh (of sex, lies and videotape no less) knowingly objectifies the male body ... I mean, bodies. And there's Magic Mike XXL, for a more protracted gaze. Can't vouch for Fifty Shades of Grey because it's not on cable yet, but it's made half a billion dollars and whose active gaze is responsible for that?

Dir: Jean-Luc Godard (1980)

"Godard" hates women,

More essay than feature film,

Control by slow mo.

Found it hard to like this Godard, mainly because it's like reading a "composed" thesis. I don't see a Godard to get "lost" in it. It's a discussion and he does not make one forget that one's watching a movie. Took me a while to figure out why he employs slow motion in certain frames and not others. Is this what a lingering gaze is to him? Used Amy Taubin as Cliff's Notes to get to an answer that it's how he demonstrates man's control over woman. It's telling that the film has three different titles when it was released. The object's meaning is subject to the gazer.

Dir: Dan Gilroy (2014)

Dark media satire
That would make Chayefsky proud.

Jake's hungry eyes haunt.










In a different kind of gazing, the viewer becomes complicit to Lou Bloom's crimes in Nightcrawler. I rooted for him to shoot the footage he wants because I am the type of viewer who wants to see those types of images. The viewer sees through different lenses: the camera view, then Bloom's view, and then the footage. By the time the viewer sees the last, s/he ought to question the voyeur in him/her.

Dir: John Maloof and Charlie Siskel (2014)

Pack rat nanny shoots

Photos found posthumously.

Life lived on one's terms.











All the photographs and negatives Vivian Maier mostly shot in her Rolleiflex cannot solve the mystery of who she was. She was by all accounts a loner and eccentric. Do the works inform us about the artist or the person?  A few times the movie felt like an infomercial in its attempt to lobby for her place as a major artist. The movie lacks dissent, which would have made it stronger. This I know: from the headlines she hoarded, she's the type of viewer Lou Bloom from Nightcrawler aims to please.

Woh Kaun Thi?

In haiku:

"Is my wife a ghost?

Or am I losing my mind?"

Indian Vertigo.

Dir. Raj Khosla (1964)

In the words of Julie Andrews, this movie has been "egregiously overlooked" by Rachel Dwyer in her 100 Bollywood Films. 50 years on, it stands the test of time. I first came to know it through it's timeless and haunting song, "Lag Jaa Gale."

How timeless is it? In Bombay Talkies, the omnibus to celebrate the centennial of Indian cinema, Karan Johar uses the song in his segment as a crucial connection between the two men in the story:

This brings to mind the camp potential of the film. This may explain why I gravitate to its Gothic storytelling - a trait I also share with Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey. It feels like something Charles Ludlam or Charles Busch would repurpose.

(Spoilers ahead.)

I would argue for its inclusion in BAMcinematek's program, "The Vertigo Effect." Woh Kaun Thi explores the same "potent themes":

- Erotic obsession: A haunting in Woh Kaun Thi? is obsession. Dr. Anand could not save the ailing woman / ghost. Those in the business of saving are haunted by those they cannot save. Just ask any doctor, nurse, firefighter, or James Stewart's cop in Vertigo. Dr. Anand also fails to save his girlfriend Seema from a cyanide injection. Those are two worthy damsels to obsess about.

- Identity: It's evident in the title, which translates "Who was she?" There's also the question of sanity that Dr. Anand faces throughout the bulk of the movie.

- Doubles: Sandhya has a twin. One's bad, the other good.  Who's who? And then we get to the part of erotic twin fantasy ...

- The link between sex and death: Are Dr. Anand and Sandhya lovers in a past life? Are they doomed to live the same fate? And then we get to the part of necrophilia ...

But the sequence that brings to mind Vertigo is the following scene, reminiscent of Stewart's Scottie dragging Kim Novak's Judy Barton dressed as Madeleine to the bell tower:

My favorite part? It's the most shocking part of the movie: Helen speaks! But of course she is best appreciated in an item number:

Kindle Elegy

I bid you - before

The battery overheats -

"Adieu!" and "Thank you."

Kindle eulogy:

Your ink may have faded, your

Words still live in me.

The Year that Was

Pausing to reflect on the year that was before looking ahead.

Some of the highlights of the past year:

Homemade bhelpuri: The first winter in 5 years not spent in India. The polar vortex visited and after the 15th snowfall, I regretted not going there. This consoled me. 2015 will remedy this homesick feeling. 

Fire Island Pines: This is why our book club is better than yours. Can't ask for a better way to spend an afternoon with a group of friends and more often catch up on our lives, and then talk about the book. My favorite book club pick this year: Tim O'Brien's "The Things They Carried." The first chapter can stand alone as a masterful short story. The woman in the wine store talked to me about it when I was picking up my contribution to bring to the gathering. 

Closure: My fellow nurses / co-workers ate our feelings. It was the first time I attended a patient's memorial service. It seemed fitting to be one of the first persons to provide him care and see him at the end. I reflected on how much his death affected me. To see his family and friends recognize me after months of not being in the oncology unit anymore felt so gratifying. If I have doubts about how much difference I make in the patients I see, I just think of this day.

Difficult to top this one. All productions I see at the Metropolitan Opera House will be measured against this. 

Waded my feet for the first time at the Jersey Shore. A brief summer jaunt, serenaded by Johnny Mathis. 

My combat gear. This is how I start my day before I leave my desk. 2014 saw me complete my first year as a full fledged nurse practitioner. Lots of ups and downs. Different kinds of stress than before. These are my essentials. When I have them all on me, I'm ready to go.

Just when I thought my day was going bad, a former patient's family member sees me and gifts me a bottle of champagne on the spot as a thank you for his father's care. I live for surprises like these. Hoping for more of these in 2015.

The penultimate ride from Disneyland before heading home to New York. (The last one was from Big Thunder Mountain, of course.) May all my days be full of adventure and joy like this.