When we were last with Mr. Mulliner, he had been recounting the story of a synonymizing nephew. <1> But George was not the only Mulliner to have had a keen interest in words. In "Came The Dawn", Mr. Mulliner tells us of Lancelot, his versifying nephew.
II.
Jeremiah Briggs, Lancelot's uncle on his mother's side, and the owner of a successful pickle business, had sent young Lance to university, in the hopes that he would join the business once his studies were completed at Oxford.
Lancelot developed other vocational plans, however. "'The fact is, uncle,' he said, 'I have mapped out a career for myself on far different lines. I am a poet.' 'A poet? When did you feel this coming on?'" <2> Still, Briggs perseveres. He reads aloud a commercial piece as example.
Soon, soon all human joys must end:
Grim Death approaches with his sickle:
Courage! There is still time, my friend
To eat a Briggs's Breakfast Pickle.
With his poet's sensibility, perhaps Lancelot could compose something similar for Briggs's?
As it happens, Lance has come prepared. "He began to read in a low, musical voice. 'Darkling (A Threnody). By L. Bassington Mulliner.'" The threnody then commences,
[with]
Black branches
Like a corpse's withered hands
[to]
Doom
Dyspepsia
And Despair
[concluding with]
I am a despairing toad
I have got dyspepsia.
III.
Lancelot is unprepared for Mr. Briggs's reaction to the threnody. His uncle has the butler immediately throw Lance's person from his house. In the course of "Came The Dawn", Lancelot will again have occasion to experience physical eviction from homes. The discomfort and indignation occasioned will be his. The experience of sweet hilarity, as often in Wodehouse, is ours.
__________
<1>"Wodehouse the Shorter, the Compact, the Concise". BMT, February 2014.
<2>Wodehouse, P.G. "Came The Dawn". Meet Mr. Mulliner. 2008 Edition: Arrow Books, London.
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Brooklyn Bound
Brooklyn (John Crowley, 2015) often plays as if it's from another time. Being set in the Fifties of the twentieth century, you might think the impression derives from close attention to period detail. But not only so. A romantic melodrama that is lovely to look at, Brooklyn brings both Ford and Sirk to mind.
II.
Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) lives with her mother (Jane Brennan) and sister Rose (Fiona Glascott), in County Wexford, Ireland. The year is 1951, and young Eilis is unable to find suitable employment. It's arranged that Eilis travel by sea to the United States, and take a job in a Brooklyn department store.
Living in a women's boarding house in America, Eilis learns to cope with homesickness. Soon, she meets Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen), who becomes Eilis's boyfriend.
Then, suddenly, Eilis receives the terrible news that her sister Rose has died from an illness. She makes the necessary plans to be with her family in Ireland. Eilis assures Tony the trip is only a visit. He doesn't let her leave without their being married in civil court, however.
Back in Ireland, circumstances build that have Eilis debating whether she should return to the United States. A local employment opportunity better than her Brooklyn job opens up for Eilis. And charming bachelor Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson) takes her notice.
Will the appeals and ties of belonging that Ireland is asserting on Eilis, as her birthplace, sway her from returning to America? Or will she keep to her marital vows with Tony, and sail back to Brooklyn?
III.
With a fine cast led by Saoirse Ronan, John Crowley's
Brooklyn makes its way to the present, with the past.
II.
Eilis Lacey (Saoirse Ronan) lives with her mother (Jane Brennan) and sister Rose (Fiona Glascott), in County Wexford, Ireland. The year is 1951, and young Eilis is unable to find suitable employment. It's arranged that Eilis travel by sea to the United States, and take a job in a Brooklyn department store.
Living in a women's boarding house in America, Eilis learns to cope with homesickness. Soon, she meets Tony Fiorello (Emory Cohen), who becomes Eilis's boyfriend.
Then, suddenly, Eilis receives the terrible news that her sister Rose has died from an illness. She makes the necessary plans to be with her family in Ireland. Eilis assures Tony the trip is only a visit. He doesn't let her leave without their being married in civil court, however.
Back in Ireland, circumstances build that have Eilis debating whether she should return to the United States. A local employment opportunity better than her Brooklyn job opens up for Eilis. And charming bachelor Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleeson) takes her notice.
Will the appeals and ties of belonging that Ireland is asserting on Eilis, as her birthplace, sway her from returning to America? Or will she keep to her marital vows with Tony, and sail back to Brooklyn?
III.
With a fine cast led by Saoirse Ronan, John Crowley's
Brooklyn makes its way to the present, with the past.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
An Afternoon Case Of Wagner
"A Wagner Matinee" is near the conclusion of Willa Cather's The Troll Garden. It directly precedes "Paul's Case", the last story in the collection.
II.
Georgiana Carpenter has travelled from Nebraska to visit her nephew Clark, in Boston. Her purpose is to resolve an estate matter.
Some thirty years earlier, Georgiana had taught music at the Boston Conservatory. Along had come Howard Carpenter, igniting "one of those extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of thirty." <1>
Very much against her family's wishes, Georgiana eloped with the penniless Carpenter, to the Nebraska frontier. She bore the hardships of raising a family in the frontier with stoic faith. "She was a pious woman; she had the consolations of religion and, to her at least, her martyrdom was not wholly sordid."
Now, while she's in the city, Clark has arranged to take his aunt to a matinee Wagner programme by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Clark observes his aunt closely as the selections are played. "The first number was the Tannhauser overture... my aunt Georgiana clutched my coat sleeve [and] I first realized that for her this broke a silence of thirty years; the inconceivable silence of the plains." Through passages from Tristan and Isolde, The Flying Dutchman, the Ring, and Siegfried's funeral march, Georgiana looks on, and finally breaks down in quiet tears.
The concert ends. "I spoke to my aunt. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly. 'I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!' I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs...the crook-backed ash seedlings where the dish-clothes hung to dry; the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door."
III.
Georgiana is drawn to romantic excess. Such an attraction suggests a soul that might also be responsive to the irrational. In the event, Georgiana has been driven from her cultured world as music teacher, to the monotone isolation of the frontier. It has become an existence, she tells her nephew, that she cannot bear to return to. But sadly, there's really nowhere else to go.
IV.
"A Wagner Matinee" holds its own in The Troll Garden. It will be of special interest as prelude, to admirers of "Paul's Case".
__________
<1>Cather, Willa. "A Wagner Matinee". The Troll Garden (1905), in Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction 1892-1912. University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
II.
Georgiana Carpenter has travelled from Nebraska to visit her nephew Clark, in Boston. Her purpose is to resolve an estate matter.
Some thirty years earlier, Georgiana had taught music at the Boston Conservatory. Along had come Howard Carpenter, igniting "one of those extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in an angular, spectacled woman of thirty." <1>
Very much against her family's wishes, Georgiana eloped with the penniless Carpenter, to the Nebraska frontier. She bore the hardships of raising a family in the frontier with stoic faith. "She was a pious woman; she had the consolations of religion and, to her at least, her martyrdom was not wholly sordid."
Now, while she's in the city, Clark has arranged to take his aunt to a matinee Wagner programme by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Clark observes his aunt closely as the selections are played. "The first number was the Tannhauser overture... my aunt Georgiana clutched my coat sleeve [and] I first realized that for her this broke a silence of thirty years; the inconceivable silence of the plains." Through passages from Tristan and Isolde, The Flying Dutchman, the Ring, and Siegfried's funeral march, Georgiana looks on, and finally breaks down in quiet tears.
The concert ends. "I spoke to my aunt. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly. 'I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!' I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs...the crook-backed ash seedlings where the dish-clothes hung to dry; the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door."
III.
Georgiana is drawn to romantic excess. Such an attraction suggests a soul that might also be responsive to the irrational. In the event, Georgiana has been driven from her cultured world as music teacher, to the monotone isolation of the frontier. It has become an existence, she tells her nephew, that she cannot bear to return to. But sadly, there's really nowhere else to go.
IV.
"A Wagner Matinee" holds its own in The Troll Garden. It will be of special interest as prelude, to admirers of "Paul's Case".
__________
<1>Cather, Willa. "A Wagner Matinee". The Troll Garden (1905), in Willa Cather's Collected Short Fiction 1892-1912. University of Nebraska Press, 1970.
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Haunted House Party
October, Halloween month. Thinking of setting the mood with a little horror cinema?
II.
Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) has come with his wife Alma (Liv Ullmann) to the Frisian island Baltrum. Johan is an artist, a painter, and he looks in the need of rest. Borg's insomnia keeps Alma awake beside him, long into the night. There are also his (possible) hallucinations of persons, which Borg relates with names, such as the Bird Man and the Insects. As for Veronica Vogler (Ingrid Thulin), Borg doesn't share with Alma that he is obsessed too with thoughts of Vogler, a lover from his past.
Alma and Johan are invited to parties, at an island castle that proves to be a bit of a haunted house. The first party serves as appetizer for a second. Hosted by the Von Merkens (Erland Josephson and Gertrud Fridh), the guests sneer at Johan's identity as artist. Irony bristles and takes on a cutting edge.
The second party leads to the conclusion of Ingmar Bergman's Hour Of The Wolf (1968). Bergman's nightmare images are now more direct in their horror. Johan is presented for example a naked corpse of Veronica Vogler, beneath a sheet on a table. Those same guests from the first party hover meanwhile, laughing at Borg's expense.
III.
Sound like a screening for your Halloween party? Unlike some horror films, Hour Of The Wolf won't have you worrying about unwelcome guests, in the basement.
II.
Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) has come with his wife Alma (Liv Ullmann) to the Frisian island Baltrum. Johan is an artist, a painter, and he looks in the need of rest. Borg's insomnia keeps Alma awake beside him, long into the night. There are also his (possible) hallucinations of persons, which Borg relates with names, such as the Bird Man and the Insects. As for Veronica Vogler (Ingrid Thulin), Borg doesn't share with Alma that he is obsessed too with thoughts of Vogler, a lover from his past.
Alma and Johan are invited to parties, at an island castle that proves to be a bit of a haunted house. The first party serves as appetizer for a second. Hosted by the Von Merkens (Erland Josephson and Gertrud Fridh), the guests sneer at Johan's identity as artist. Irony bristles and takes on a cutting edge.
The second party leads to the conclusion of Ingmar Bergman's Hour Of The Wolf (1968). Bergman's nightmare images are now more direct in their horror. Johan is presented for example a naked corpse of Veronica Vogler, beneath a sheet on a table. Those same guests from the first party hover meanwhile, laughing at Borg's expense.
III.
Sound like a screening for your Halloween party? Unlike some horror films, Hour Of The Wolf won't have you worrying about unwelcome guests, in the basement.
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Nights and Days In the Miramichi
Faulkner, Hardy and Richards are three very different novelists. But reminders to William Faulkner and Thomas Hardy do come easily with David Adams Richards. The naturalism, looming and inexorable, suggests Hardy in the English novel. And where Faulkner had his Yoknapatawpha County, so too there is Richards's Miramichi Valley.
Unlike the fictional Yoknapatawpha, the Miramichi is real. It spreads out along the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, Canada. Similar to Faulkner, Richards has made a region, the Miramichi, a specific focus for his work. Three short novels by Richards have indeed come to be known as the Miramichi trilogy. <1>
II.
Nights Below Station Street <2> begins the trilogy. The setting is a milltown in the Miramichi, and winter is on. Joe Walsh has had to abstain from drinking in the holiday season, to manage his alcoholism. Joe has a massive physique, but this attribute at his various labour jobs has been undermined by his drinking problem. So Christmas 1972, Joe unemployed, and having to work hard to keep sober.
With her husband unemployed, Rita Walsh has turned her care of the neighbourhood children into a modest job. Rita and Joe have two children of their own, daughters Milly and Adele. Adele is actually Joe's stepdaughter, Rita's child from an earlier relationship. Adele is the older daughter, a moody teen with a sharp tongue.
III.
Beyond the Walsh family, Richards moves across the working-class neighbourhoods, to explore the routines and lives of the other town inhabitants. Richards's prose is of a measured simplicity, and the narrative builds momentum through its contiguous structure. There are the Richards passages too about Maritime nature, awesome in its indifference. Nights Below Station Street is a compelling introduction to David Adams Richards's Miramichi trilogy.
__________
<1>Nights Below Station Street (1988), Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990), and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (1993).
<2>Richards, David Adams. Nights Below Station Street. 1997 Emblem Editions: McClelland&Stewart Ltd.
Unlike the fictional Yoknapatawpha, the Miramichi is real. It spreads out along the Miramichi River in New Brunswick, Canada. Similar to Faulkner, Richards has made a region, the Miramichi, a specific focus for his work. Three short novels by Richards have indeed come to be known as the Miramichi trilogy. <1>
II.
Nights Below Station Street <2> begins the trilogy. The setting is a milltown in the Miramichi, and winter is on. Joe Walsh has had to abstain from drinking in the holiday season, to manage his alcoholism. Joe has a massive physique, but this attribute at his various labour jobs has been undermined by his drinking problem. So Christmas 1972, Joe unemployed, and having to work hard to keep sober.
With her husband unemployed, Rita Walsh has turned her care of the neighbourhood children into a modest job. Rita and Joe have two children of their own, daughters Milly and Adele. Adele is actually Joe's stepdaughter, Rita's child from an earlier relationship. Adele is the older daughter, a moody teen with a sharp tongue.
III.
Beyond the Walsh family, Richards moves across the working-class neighbourhoods, to explore the routines and lives of the other town inhabitants. Richards's prose is of a measured simplicity, and the narrative builds momentum through its contiguous structure. There are the Richards passages too about Maritime nature, awesome in its indifference. Nights Below Station Street is a compelling introduction to David Adams Richards's Miramichi trilogy.
__________
<1>Nights Below Station Street (1988), Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace (1990), and For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down (1993).
<2>Richards, David Adams. Nights Below Station Street. 1997 Emblem Editions: McClelland&Stewart Ltd.
Monday, August 1, 2016
Mans Among Men
James Corden is currently the host of CBS's The Late Late Show. Before those duties came along, however, Corden co-wrote and starred in the UK television series The Wrong Mans (BBC/Hulu, 2013).
II.
Sam Pinkett (Mathew Baynton) is with hangover, walking to work, when a car careens out of control, and crashes on the road beside him. This is a wonderfully staged sequence, as the car seems to blow out of nowhere and becomes a wreck in spectacular fashion, just past Pinkett. After the authorities have gone, Pinkett finds a cell phone at the scene. A caller mistakes Pinkett for the actual owner of the phone. Things turn noir as the caller delivers a sinister message, about a kidnapped woman to be killed that very day, if a meeting isn't made at a specified time.
Pinkett's intention is to go to the police with the phone message he's received. Enter James Corden as the irrepressible Phil Bourne, who Pinkett tolerates as a friend at his job at the Berkshire County Council. Bourne soon extracts from Pinkett the full details of his morning adventures. A bit of a passive fellow, Pinkett is then persuaded by Bourne to save the imperilled lady on their own, becoming admired heroes in the process. Mayhem, twisty and amusing, unfolds.
III.
Wrong juggles action, thriller and noir to enliven a narrative that's essentially comic. And Baynton&Corden do have engaging chemistry as a comic team. Director Jim Field Smith gives a stylish look to the proceedings, maintaining a brisk pace. The Wrong Mans ends by hinting at a second series. Hints to consider following, based on a viewing of this quite entertaining first series.
II.
Sam Pinkett (Mathew Baynton) is with hangover, walking to work, when a car careens out of control, and crashes on the road beside him. This is a wonderfully staged sequence, as the car seems to blow out of nowhere and becomes a wreck in spectacular fashion, just past Pinkett. After the authorities have gone, Pinkett finds a cell phone at the scene. A caller mistakes Pinkett for the actual owner of the phone. Things turn noir as the caller delivers a sinister message, about a kidnapped woman to be killed that very day, if a meeting isn't made at a specified time.
Pinkett's intention is to go to the police with the phone message he's received. Enter James Corden as the irrepressible Phil Bourne, who Pinkett tolerates as a friend at his job at the Berkshire County Council. Bourne soon extracts from Pinkett the full details of his morning adventures. A bit of a passive fellow, Pinkett is then persuaded by Bourne to save the imperilled lady on their own, becoming admired heroes in the process. Mayhem, twisty and amusing, unfolds.
III.
Wrong juggles action, thriller and noir to enliven a narrative that's essentially comic. And Baynton&Corden do have engaging chemistry as a comic team. Director Jim Field Smith gives a stylish look to the proceedings, maintaining a brisk pace. The Wrong Mans ends by hinting at a second series. Hints to consider following, based on a viewing of this quite entertaining first series.
Friday, July 1, 2016
Double Trouble
There he is again. A twin: a mirror you. His smile is not welcome. Your mood darkens; you are beside yourself. How dare he be him and be you?
II.
William Wilson first meets his double in the English country, as a schoolboy. Wilson's tyrannical nature has already found expression, being "left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions." <1> At Reverend Dr. Bransby's Academy, the "ardency, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness" of Wilson's personality allows him to dominate others; with one exception. Wilson sees the exception as a double, and rival. "In his rivalry...he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner." How dare he? Wilson plots revenge, to the "whole extent of the malice of which I was imbued". But at the crucial moment, his nerve fails him. Wilson leaves the school, immediately.
A few months pass, and now Wilson is set to continue his education at Eton. This turns out to be "three years of folly, passed without profit", with Wilson developing a taste for wild drunkenness. Then, one night, Wilson is visited by the double he'd thought to have left at the Academy. "Seizing me by the arm...[he] whispered the words 'William Wilson!' in my ear." Unsettling as the event is, Wilson is soon diverted by his plans to attend Oxford.
Oxford, and Wilson confides to transgressing "even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels." When his double next appears, it's to reveal Wilson a ruthless cheater at cards. There is crisp disdain in the host's words as he turns Wilson out. "'You will see the necessity, I hope, of quitting Oxford - at all events, of quitting, instantly, my chambers'". Quiet comedy attends the passage, as Wilson departs Oxford (immediately). "I commenced a hurried journey from Oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame."
III.
Horror and shame, Wilson tells us. He doesn't allow them to check his dissolute ways on the continent, however. At a carnival masquerade in Rome, a final meeting between Wilson&Wilson concludes the narrative. "William Wilson" is charged with suggestion, presenting some of Edgar Allan Poe's best work in the short story.
__________
<1>Poe, Edgar Allan. "William Wilson. A Tale". The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Second Edition, 1986).
II.
William Wilson first meets his double in the English country, as a schoolboy. Wilson's tyrannical nature has already found expression, being "left to the guidance of my own will, and became, in all but name, the master of my own actions." <1> At Reverend Dr. Bransby's Academy, the "ardency, the enthusiasm, and the imperiousness" of Wilson's personality allows him to dominate others; with one exception. Wilson sees the exception as a double, and rival. "In his rivalry...he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner." How dare he? Wilson plots revenge, to the "whole extent of the malice of which I was imbued". But at the crucial moment, his nerve fails him. Wilson leaves the school, immediately.
A few months pass, and now Wilson is set to continue his education at Eton. This turns out to be "three years of folly, passed without profit", with Wilson developing a taste for wild drunkenness. Then, one night, Wilson is visited by the double he'd thought to have left at the Academy. "Seizing me by the arm...[he] whispered the words 'William Wilson!' in my ear." Unsettling as the event is, Wilson is soon diverted by his plans to attend Oxford.
Oxford, and Wilson confides to transgressing "even the common restraints of decency in the mad infatuation of my revels." When his double next appears, it's to reveal Wilson a ruthless cheater at cards. There is crisp disdain in the host's words as he turns Wilson out. "'You will see the necessity, I hope, of quitting Oxford - at all events, of quitting, instantly, my chambers'". Quiet comedy attends the passage, as Wilson departs Oxford (immediately). "I commenced a hurried journey from Oxford to the continent, in a perfect agony of horror and of shame."
III.
Horror and shame, Wilson tells us. He doesn't allow them to check his dissolute ways on the continent, however. At a carnival masquerade in Rome, a final meeting between Wilson&Wilson concludes the narrative. "William Wilson" is charged with suggestion, presenting some of Edgar Allan Poe's best work in the short story.
__________
<1>Poe, Edgar Allan. "William Wilson. A Tale". The Norton Anthology of American Literature (Second Edition, 1986).
Wednesday, June 1, 2016
Voicing
In A World... (2013) is its author's film more than some. Written, starring, and directed by Lake Bell, World is a spirited and subtle comedy.
II.
Carol Solomon (Bell) is finding it hard to get by as a vocal coach. She's been pressed to live with her father Sam Sotto (Fred Melamed), a successful Hollywood voice-over actor. But now Sotto <1> wants his daughter out, so his much-younger girlfriend can move in.
Louis (Demetri Martin) is an engineer at an area sound studio. When the man assigned to do the voice-over for a big movie trailer fails to show up, Louis asks Carol to step in. Louis also happens to have a crush on Carol.
Carol's ability shines through her work on the trailer. She starts receiving multiple job offers, but keeps her success mostly to herself. Her father and others in the established voice-over community have a petty and threatened reaction to this new (female) talent on the scene.
III.
World could easily be weighted with gender politics. But Bell favours the light touch, and the polemics implicate from within the artful storytelling. <2> Lake Bell's In A World... is a distinguished first film, indeed.
__________
<1>Sotto voce ("under voice").
<2>Lake Bell, winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, for In A World... (Sundance Film Festival, 2013).
II.
Carol Solomon (Bell) is finding it hard to get by as a vocal coach. She's been pressed to live with her father Sam Sotto (Fred Melamed), a successful Hollywood voice-over actor. But now Sotto <1> wants his daughter out, so his much-younger girlfriend can move in.
Louis (Demetri Martin) is an engineer at an area sound studio. When the man assigned to do the voice-over for a big movie trailer fails to show up, Louis asks Carol to step in. Louis also happens to have a crush on Carol.
Carol's ability shines through her work on the trailer. She starts receiving multiple job offers, but keeps her success mostly to herself. Her father and others in the established voice-over community have a petty and threatened reaction to this new (female) talent on the scene.
III.
World could easily be weighted with gender politics. But Bell favours the light touch, and the polemics implicate from within the artful storytelling. <2> Lake Bell's In A World... is a distinguished first film, indeed.
__________
<1>Sotto voce ("under voice").
<2>Lake Bell, winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award, for In A World... (Sundance Film Festival, 2013).
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Hieronymus Bosch
Michael Connelly introduced us to Hieronymus Bosch with The Black Echo (1992). There has followed a whole series of Bosch crime novels, and most recently, the TV show Bosch (2015). A Darkness More Than Night <1> is from the book series, and it's an intriguing, page-turning thriller. Part of the novel's interest derives from the Bosch name. The association to the 15th century Dutch painter Bosch raises criminal suspicions against Detective Bosch in Darkness.
II.
Edward Gunn was known to the Los Angeles police department prior to his killing, with his string of offences involving public intoxication, drunk driving, soliciting for prostitution, and the murder of a prostitute. Gunn has been the victim of a strangulation, staged to send a message. Retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb is brought in for his expertise on the case.
Looking over the evidence and the crime scene, McCaleb is first led to the artist Bosch. Whoever murdered Gunn has deliberately connoted Bosch paintings - obsessive depictions of sin, and the infernal punishments awaiting the sinful - with their crime.
Meanwhile, Det. Harry Bosch is in court as a prosecution witness, in the murder trial of narcissistic film director, David Storey. Jody Krementz, an aspiring young actor, was found strangled in her home one morning. She had spent the night before at Storey's home on Mulholland Drive, in the Hollywood Hills. As the investigating officer, Bosch believes Storey to be guilty of murder.
But is Bosch himself guilty in some way? Terry McCaleb's analysis forces him to consider Harry Bosch a possible suspect in the strangulation killings.
III.
The dazzling glamour that might conceal a secret darkness in Hollywood is a theme that's been explored by many different writers, many different ways. Michael Connelly's A Darkness More Than Night makes a case with Bosch, the painter of hellfire, and the detective named after him.
__________
<1>Connelly, Michael. A Darkness More Than Night. Little, Brown & Company, 2001.
II.
Edward Gunn was known to the Los Angeles police department prior to his killing, with his string of offences involving public intoxication, drunk driving, soliciting for prostitution, and the murder of a prostitute. Gunn has been the victim of a strangulation, staged to send a message. Retired FBI profiler Terry McCaleb is brought in for his expertise on the case.
Looking over the evidence and the crime scene, McCaleb is first led to the artist Bosch. Whoever murdered Gunn has deliberately connoted Bosch paintings - obsessive depictions of sin, and the infernal punishments awaiting the sinful - with their crime.
Meanwhile, Det. Harry Bosch is in court as a prosecution witness, in the murder trial of narcissistic film director, David Storey. Jody Krementz, an aspiring young actor, was found strangled in her home one morning. She had spent the night before at Storey's home on Mulholland Drive, in the Hollywood Hills. As the investigating officer, Bosch believes Storey to be guilty of murder.
But is Bosch himself guilty in some way? Terry McCaleb's analysis forces him to consider Harry Bosch a possible suspect in the strangulation killings.
III.
The dazzling glamour that might conceal a secret darkness in Hollywood is a theme that's been explored by many different writers, many different ways. Michael Connelly's A Darkness More Than Night makes a case with Bosch, the painter of hellfire, and the detective named after him.
__________
<1>Connelly, Michael. A Darkness More Than Night. Little, Brown & Company, 2001.
Friday, April 1, 2016
Short Term 12
On her very first nomination, Brie Larson won an Oscar this year. The lead actress award was for her performance in Room (Lenny Abrahamson). Short Term 12 (Destin Daniel Cretton) is from 2013.
II.
In Term, Larson plays Grace, a supervisor at a group home for teens. Marcus (Keith Stanfield) is a resident grappling with having to leave the facility soon, as he's about to turn 18. Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever) is a new resident. She has raging episodes that can lead to her cutting up her limbs. These and the other residents of the home are under the direct care of Grace's counselling unit.
Grace has been keeping her pregnancy a secret from her boyfriend and fellow counsellor Mason (John Gallagher, Jr.). Grace's secrecy may be traced to her deep-rooted issues about having a child. Jayden shares a story she has written, a piercing narrative about an octopus and a shark. As Jayden relates the account she must, and Grace listens closely, writer-director Destin Cretton captures a most probing scene.
Jayden and Grace have both been the victims of abusive parents. In their early twenties, Grace and the other counsellors are not far-removed from the age of their teen residents. Yet, they are being called upon to deal with the results of very adult personal and societal dysfunction.
III.
Along with Brie Larson, Term's performances are quite strong, and the acting is not bound to serious drama only. There is also genial, sometimes raw, good humour. It all makes Short Term 12 a film of persuasive hope and affirmation.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Leaving Home
Mrs. Drover has left her home in London, and not by choice.
II.
Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover" is set during the period of the second World War. The bombing has displaced the Drovers to the English country, from their home in a "quiet, arboreal part of Kensington". <1> When Mrs. Drover returns alone to visit her house, in the "once familiar street...an unfamiliar queerness had silted up". She finds a letter.
The letter concerns a promise she had made a generation earlier, to a soldier fiance who then went missing in the first World War. Reminded now in writing of that long-ago "sinister troth", Mrs. Drover's shock has its effects: "her lips, beneath the remains of the lipstick, beginning to go white".
After losing her fiance, Kathleen had drifted into her early thirties before being courted by William Drover. Marriage and children followed, making a home of "years on years of voices, habits and steps". The letter threatens undoing memory "with one white burning blank" of that fiance: "under no conditions could she remember his face." The implication is not lost on Mrs. Drover. "So, wherever he may be waiting, I shall not know him. You have no time to run from a face you do not expect."
III.
We become invested in our homes. Kathleen Drover also has much at stake by keeping her past at a benign distance. The experience of living through a second World War has forced her from home, and with it, her investment of emotional safety and equilibrium.
IV.
Through allusion and evocative detail, Elizabeth Bowen builds an atmosphere of uncanny dread, of increasing anxiety in "The Demon Lover". The story's high note, of fear and horror, strikes in a taxi. "Mrs. Drover's mouth hung open for some seconds before she could issue her first scream. After that she continued to scream freely...as the taxi, accelerating without mercy, made off with her into the hinterland of deserted streets." Home nowhere in sight.
__________
<1>Bowen, Elizabeth. "The Demon Lover". Elements Of Fiction (3rd Canadian Edition, 1994). Edited by Robert Scholes and Rosemary Sullivan.
II.
Elizabeth Bowen's "The Demon Lover" is set during the period of the second World War. The bombing has displaced the Drovers to the English country, from their home in a "quiet, arboreal part of Kensington". <1> When Mrs. Drover returns alone to visit her house, in the "once familiar street...an unfamiliar queerness had silted up". She finds a letter.
The letter concerns a promise she had made a generation earlier, to a soldier fiance who then went missing in the first World War. Reminded now in writing of that long-ago "sinister troth", Mrs. Drover's shock has its effects: "her lips, beneath the remains of the lipstick, beginning to go white".
After losing her fiance, Kathleen had drifted into her early thirties before being courted by William Drover. Marriage and children followed, making a home of "years on years of voices, habits and steps". The letter threatens undoing memory "with one white burning blank" of that fiance: "under no conditions could she remember his face." The implication is not lost on Mrs. Drover. "So, wherever he may be waiting, I shall not know him. You have no time to run from a face you do not expect."
III.
We become invested in our homes. Kathleen Drover also has much at stake by keeping her past at a benign distance. The experience of living through a second World War has forced her from home, and with it, her investment of emotional safety and equilibrium.
IV.
Through allusion and evocative detail, Elizabeth Bowen builds an atmosphere of uncanny dread, of increasing anxiety in "The Demon Lover". The story's high note, of fear and horror, strikes in a taxi. "Mrs. Drover's mouth hung open for some seconds before she could issue her first scream. After that she continued to scream freely...as the taxi, accelerating without mercy, made off with her into the hinterland of deserted streets." Home nowhere in sight.
__________
<1>Bowen, Elizabeth. "The Demon Lover". Elements Of Fiction (3rd Canadian Edition, 1994). Edited by Robert Scholes and Rosemary Sullivan.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
The Equalizer
Denzel Washington first worked with director Antoine Fuqua in Training Day (2001). In a nasty thriller, Washington exuded an unsettling charisma as the corrupt narcotics officer, Alonzo Harris. The greater his character's psychopathy, the harder the actor made it for us to become alienated by Harris. By playing a villain so well, Washington won an Oscar.
The Equalizer was originally a television series in the 1980s. Fuqua's The Equalizer (2014) reunites director and star, in a crime film that's also fluent in nasty violence.
II.
Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is doing his best to lead a quiet life. During the day, he works at a Boston hardware store. After work, he is solitary, and frequents a late-night diner. There, he gets to know a teenage prostitute, Alina (Chloe Grace Moretz).
Walking Alina home one night, McCall has a run-in with her pimp, Slavi (David Meunier). The sequence concludes with a pointed clue to the kind of skills <1> that McCall might possess. Fuqua tracks Washington as he turns half-circle on the sidewalk, following Slavi's car with his eyes, as the pimp speeds away with Alina. Those eyes project a cold ferocity. It is especially striking as just moments before with Alina, Washington had been playing McCall so relaxed and genial.
III.
McCall's mysterious past has given him the abilities of a fearsome assassin. His late wife had made him promise, however, to live peacefully, without resorting to violence and killing. <2> In a gritty and compelling performance, Denzel Washington shows us why and how Robert McCall breaks that promise.
__________
<1>Compare Bryan Mills's (Liam Neeson) "particular set of skills" in Taken (2008).
<2>Compare William Munny's (Clint Eastwood) attempt to lead a peaceful life as a pig farmer in Unforgiven (1992).
The Equalizer was originally a television series in the 1980s. Fuqua's The Equalizer (2014) reunites director and star, in a crime film that's also fluent in nasty violence.
II.
Robert McCall (Denzel Washington) is doing his best to lead a quiet life. During the day, he works at a Boston hardware store. After work, he is solitary, and frequents a late-night diner. There, he gets to know a teenage prostitute, Alina (Chloe Grace Moretz).
Walking Alina home one night, McCall has a run-in with her pimp, Slavi (David Meunier). The sequence concludes with a pointed clue to the kind of skills <1> that McCall might possess. Fuqua tracks Washington as he turns half-circle on the sidewalk, following Slavi's car with his eyes, as the pimp speeds away with Alina. Those eyes project a cold ferocity. It is especially striking as just moments before with Alina, Washington had been playing McCall so relaxed and genial.
III.
McCall's mysterious past has given him the abilities of a fearsome assassin. His late wife had made him promise, however, to live peacefully, without resorting to violence and killing. <2> In a gritty and compelling performance, Denzel Washington shows us why and how Robert McCall breaks that promise.
__________
<1>Compare Bryan Mills's (Liam Neeson) "particular set of skills" in Taken (2008).
<2>Compare William Munny's (Clint Eastwood) attempt to lead a peaceful life as a pig farmer in Unforgiven (1992).
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