FILM: My Old Ass

Our first Saturday movie night in a while. We weren’t sure what to expect from My Old Ass, a film about a free-spirited young girl, Elliott, who tries magic mushrooms on her 18th birthday, and ends up meeting her 39-year old future self. What would you want to tell your younger self? And what would a young you want to ask your older self? Elliott lives in a small Ontario town on a beautiful lake, but is determined not to be a third generation cranberry farmer, and is looking forward to going to college in Toronto. She’s in that poignant week at the end of her last childhood summer, about to leave her family and friends, with a heady mix of excitement looking forward and wistfulness about what she’s about to leave behind. There are some wonderfully funny moments and some wonderfully tender moments, and it is ultimately heartwarming and heartrending, and will leave you with a lot to think about. Maisy Stella is compellingly charming as Elliott, and Aubrey Plaza is funny but also wordlessly profound in moments. Very highly recommended.

Letter To Candy

When I was first getting to know George, I soon learned how close he was to his family, and how much he looked up to his older sisters. I heard earfuls about Candy and Linda’s homes and gardens, their cooking and crafts, all of the effort that makes a house into a home, taken to an art form with care and attention to detail. We used to laugh about which of you was more Martha Stewart than the other. When I first learned how Linda made hand-crafted caramel corn every Christmas, I thought she was the most Martha. But I think you forever took the lead the first time I had Thanksgiving at your house in Paradise, where the table was beautifully set and the decoration included acorns, collected from your yard, subtly dusted with gold sparkle. As I learned, in the process of collecting and gold-dusting those acorns, the caps got separated from the “corns”, and had to be put together again like a puzzle, having to find the right cap to go with each acorn, all to add a subtle touch of beauty beside the napkin rings and candlesticks.

You all (George very much included) inherited your passion for aesthetics from your mother. (Are any of us surprised that some of Katie’s last words in her increasingly aphasic twilight months were “Candy, that’s a cute outfit.”) But you took it to a whole new level. Just the way you would wrap each Christmas gift was a wonder, not only thoughtfully chosen paper and beautiful ribbon or string, but adorned with small lovely things from your home or garden, with old Christmas cards cut up and refashioned as tags. I came to appreciate that your devotion to such aesthetics went far deeper than a mere concern for appearances. It was an expression of utmost care for those of us lucky enough to enjoy your home and your hospitality. From my own experience cooking, I know how preparing a thoughtful meal is a way of expressing love. Your love language is much broader: delicious family meals (carefully catered to so many different allergies and preferences!), beautifully set tables, jars of jam from your fig or plum tree, exquisitely wrapped and thoughtfully chosen gifts, artfully arranged flowers – these were all your expressive way of making the world more beautiful and delicious for all of us.

You were also thoroughly down to earth. Much as you loved a cute pair of shoes, you were perfectly happy with no shoes at all, bare feet in the sand at Balboa Island, or just in your garden. You were proud to be a farmer’s daughter. I only knew your father after his stroke, and wished I’d known him before, because everyone always spoke so highly of him. I remember on one of our many weekends packing up the house in Lodi, you were telling me about your father — his service on so many community boards, how they valued his even temper and down-to-earth advice. In those stories you were telling, the resemblance struck me, and I said “you really are your father’s daughter.”  You just lit up, and said “oh, you don’t know how happy that makes me!” 

When your father passed, and I reflected on what I’d learned about his life, I observed that he was not just a farmer of grapes, but a farmer of community institutions — he helped grow a school, a hospital, and a church. In reflecting on your life, I think you’ve been not only a great gardener of fruits and flowers, but a gardener of family and friendships. You carefully tended the valued relationships with your extended family (as we can see by so many cousins here today). And when you planted a new home in Paradise, you set down deep roots there, nurturing new friendships and connections through the school, the hospital, and the church. I was always amazed at the exuberant abundance of Christmas cards you received, and you could tell me all about all of those people because you’d taken the time and care to keep up with them all. In raising your children, you instilled in them the value and practice of maintaining relationships, and they flourished, developing their own deep-rooted friendships, some going back to their school days. You watered your friendships with regular phone calls, cards, and visits, and you fertilized your family with rituals like Thanksgiving and Christmas, annual Balboa Island weeks, and Lodi visits. You showered your grandchildren with care, and it’s wonderful to see the joy it brings you to spend time with them. George and I are profoundly grateful that you rooted us so deeply in your family garden. 

There are so many things that will always make us think of you — a beautifully set table, a well-wrapped gift, homemade jam from backyard fruit. But for me, the epitome of you will be those gold-dusted acorns, humble and down-to-earth yet extraordinary and thoughtful. Like those gold-dusted acorns, you were ultimately ephemeral and gone too soon. Like those acorns, you are imprinted indelibly on our memories and in our hearts. 

FILM: Robot Dreams

The animated feature Robot Dreams is an unexpectedly beautiful story about companionship, relationships, and life’s unexpected turns. The story is told without any dialogue, just expressively drawn anthropomorphic animal (and robot) characters set in a gorgeously drawn New York City. The artistry of the drawing is just a parade of delight, and the story is completely engaging for the whole 1:40 run. The uncliché ending left me pondering what layers of metaphor and worthy life lessons lay beneath the charming and earnest story I enjoyed so much.

STAGE: A Strange Loop

A Strange Loop is, well, a strange loop indeed. This meta-musical is a play about a fat gay black writer trying to write a play about a fat gay black writer trying to write a play about … well, you get the idea. Before A Strange Loop, one could scarcely imagine how many internalized phobias, how much baggage a fat gay black theatre-geek wannabe writer might be carrying around. But now you don’t have to, because this play shows you all the baggage in explicit (sometimes painfully explicit) vivid detail, leavened by energetic music and clever funny lyrics. The protagonist, called Usher, lives in Queens and works as an usher for The Lion King on Broadway. The six other actors on stage are all shape-shifting meta-characters, acting out various scenarios from Usher’s colorful imagination. Some of these meta-characters are completely abstract (“Good morning, internalized self-loathing”). Other scenes illustrate imagined conversations with his family (in which his meta-father is called Mufasa and his meta-mother Sarabi, the names of Simba’s lion parents from The Lion King), showing us the disappointment of his father, his parents’ fears of HIV, and the prayers of his mother that Usher’s play will be some mix of gospel and a Tyler Perry show. (It’s quite a scene when that comes to life in his head.) This poor guy is certainly dealing with a lot of shit when even his fantasies end up disappointing and demeaning him. It’s a strange combination of heaviness with music and comedy that could only work in theatre. It is a loop in that Usher ends where he begins, wondering how his play will end, none of his issues really resolved, except that we’ve all watched him explore all his issues in his head, a communal theatrical therapy session. It was strange being made to laugh as this guy is baring his inner demons. In the end, it was provocatively entertaining, there were very talented performers on stage, and I was glad I saw it.

FILM: Ghostlight

 The beauty of Shakespeare’s works is that they are so much a part of our culture that they can be adapted and translated in all manner of creative ways. The film Ghostlight gives us a unique new spin on Romeo & Juliet, not so much as an adaptation of the play, but a story in which a community theatre production of the play helps a family work through deep emotional issues in unexpected ways. Shakespeare as therapy. The film unfolds the story deftly, at first just introducing us to Dan, a generally mild-mannered construction worker who shows a bolt of anger that seems to come out of nowhere. And then we meet his daughter Daisy, who has even more serious anger management issues and is about to get thrown out of high school. Wife and mother Sharon is just trying to hold the family together. Through a random encounter, Dan gets pulled into a local community theatre group who needs someone for a reading they’re doing. That encounter turns out to be just what he needed at that moment, and through his improbable continuing involvement with this bunch of theatre geeks, the story of what this family is really going through, and how they might get through it, unfolds. The main actors are not big names, but they are a real-life father, mother, and daughter, and their chemistry in the film is great. If you with patient ears (and eyes) attend, you will be moved.

FILM: Hit Man

Hit Man, while it doesn’t require quite the same level of seat belt as The Fall Guy, is also great summer fun. This is Richard Linklater (the “Before” trilogy, “School of Rock”, “Dazed and Confused”) taking on film noir romance-murder-mystery in New Orleans. Glen Powell stars as Gary Johnson, based on a real-life story of a mild-mannered college professor who moonlights for the police department as a fake hit man. Johnson turns out to be a master of disguise and acting, as he wears a wire to catch people attempting murder-by-hire. It’s fun to see this side-career evolve, but then things get really interesting when he ends up romantically involved with a woman who seeks out a hit man to take out her abusive husband. Lots of good classic noir twists (think Double Indemnity) with a good dose of steamy romance (think Body Heat), and add a pinch of philosophical reflection on whether people really can change.

FILM: The Fall Guy

The Fall Guy is an unabashed petition to the Academy to finally create an Oscar for stunt work. Director David Leitch is not only familiar with action thrillers, having helmed films in the John Wick, Fast & Furious, and Deadpool franchises, but he’s also a stuntman himself, having been a stunt double for Brad Pitt and Matt Damon. This film does double-duty as a rom-com with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt (who wouldn’t cheer for them?) as well as an action thriller, all while highlighting the craft of stunt workers. This fun story follows Colt Seavers (Gosling), a veteran stunt man who flamed out years ago when a stunt went bad, and Jody Moreno (Blunt), a rising director working on an action-thriller-sci-fi-romance. The big name star of her new picture has suddenly gone AWOL in the middle of the shoot, and the producer recruits Seavers to find the star, while possibly rekindling their romance that also flamed out years ago. When Seavers’ quest to find the missing star suddenly turns into its own real-life action-thriller, with blockbuster stunts and some nice plot twists, the movie gets really good. As a romance, it’s a bit cheesy, but as an action thriller with a meta layer, it’s really good fun and you’ll be cheering in the suspenseful end of the film and the end of the film-within-the-film. And you’ll join the chorus clamoring for that new Oscar category for stunts.

STAGE: The Rhythm of Mourning

Last Thursday, we saw The Rhythm of Mourning by the Bethesda Rep company. On a bare stage with minimal props, a strong cast, with some subtle but effective lighting, costume, and choreography, tells a powerful story about loss and grief. At first we see a woman wordlessly express mixed feelings about the space she has just entered. She is soon followed by a handful of other characters who are talking about her like a kind of Greek chorus, except that Greek choruses spoke with a unified voice, and these characters are arguing with each other. Before long, it becomes clear (if you hadn’t already noticed from the cast of character names in the program – Anxiety, Shame, Hope, Innocence, Anger, Denial, etc) that what we are witnessing is the grieving woman’s internal struggle, her mental wrestling made manifest as a whole cast of emotions and stages of grief. It’s a powerful device deployed to great effect in this production, as the audience slowly learns who she lost, and how, what that person meant to her, and why this place she has entered is so fraught, all while we watch her movingly move her way toward an uncertain closure. We caught it at the Bethesda Rep’s home stage, but there will be a half-dozen more performances through June as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Check it out!

OPERA: Turandot

On Saturday night, we had the pleasure of seeing the sumptuous production of Turandot at LA Opera. The magnificent cast is lead by house-shaking soprano Angela Meade, the honey-rich tenor Russell Thomas as Karaf, and vibrant soprano Guanqun Yu who moved us to tears as Liu. (We had enjoyed seeing both Russell Thomas and Guanqun Yu a few years ago here in Mozart's The Clemency of Titus.) And expanded chorus voiced the hopes and fears of the people of Peking sensationally (of course we're partial since we know so many choristers). The sets, designed by David Hockney, are fantastic. Opera is an extravagant art form, and this is one of the most extravagant of operas, filled with passion and passionately beautiful music. If you have a chance to see it, go!

FILM: Challengers

Challengers, directed by Luca Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name, among others), makes tennis look sexier than ever. Zendaya plays a fierce up-and-coming tennis star, Tashi Duncan, who ends up in a complicated relationship with two other young tennis stars Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist). The two guys have come from prep schools and backgrounds of privilege, while she has definitely not, and has had to work hard for everything she has. “Tennis is a relationship,” Tashi says early in the film, and the game at its highest level of competition is inextricably intertwined in the relationships of these three, with the two guys, closest of friends, also competing for Tashi. It all takes some interesting twists and turns, with a riveting final match with so much riding on it. The strong performances are underscored by great sound engineering, where the effort of every swing and the impact of every contact of racket with ball are visceral with layers of emotion.

FILM: We Grown Now

We Grown Now is the most heartwrenchingly beautiful film. Early on, one of the characters says that there’s a poetry in everything if you look for it, and this film proves that out. The film follows two young boys growing up in a sprawling public housing project in Chicago in 1992. It has the tender bittersweetness and nostalgic wonder of Stand By Me, the honest examination of Black American experience like A Raisin in the Sun, and some love for Chicago with a couple of winks at Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but none of those comparisons captures it. Everything you might think of when you hear “public housing project” – struggling single-parent families, poorly maintained buildings, drug gangs, random shootings – is all there, not glossed over, but not the focus either, just the background for showing how someone can still see the stars through the cracks in the ceiling. During the credits of the film, there is a series of beautiful archival photos of people living in the Cabrini-Green housing project (since demolished) where this film was set, and I wonder if those were the starting point for writer-director Minhal Baig to imagine what life was like for those people in that place and time. I know it’s only April, but I’m ready to nominate this film for next year’s Oscars in nearly every category. The script is so fresh, original, authentic, and full of heart. The direction is absolute master class in what film should be about, tethered to cinemaphotography that is the most gorgeous visual poetry. The ensemble of actors are brilliant, making a compelling story of action and expression from this character-driven, slice-of-life script. I can’t remember the last time (if ever?) I thought that sound added so much to a film, but here sounds as simple as the drip of a leaky pipe add a rich dimension. And all enhanced by a subtle but powerful orchestral score. This is truly film-making at its best.