I have been following and reading Sasha Stone for over a decade. I do not always agree with her, but I do believe she has been integral to legitimizing online film criticism. She recently posted the following article: Schooling Shailene Woodley on the Word Feminist, and it is a must read. Though I do feel that Ms. Stone should have probably taken a breath before she started typing, the article encapsulates why Woodley came off so embarrassingly ignorant in her interview with Time and in further interviews she has given on the subject.
I wanted to like Ms. Woodley, that is no longer possible, but it is not too late to correct the perpetuation of the ideas she is espousing. It is too important not to. There is too much at stake.
“Whatever each individual woman is facing; only she knows her biggest challenge. However, if we add up the problems that affect the biggest numbers of women, then issues having to do with physical safety and reproduction are still the biggest. Female bodies are still the battleground, whether that means restricting freedom, birth control and safe abortion in order to turn them into factories, or abandoning female infants because females are less valuable for everything other than reproduction. If you add up all the forms of gynocide, from female infanticide and genital mutilation to so-called honor crimes, sex trafficking, and domestic abuse, everything, we lose about 6 million humans every year just because they were born female. That’s a holocaust every year. It makes sense that reproductive freedom is still the biggest issue – because the reason females got in this jam in the first place was because the patriarchal state or religion or family wanted to control reproduction — to decide how many workers, how many children the nation needs, and who owned them in systems of legitimacy — or even outright slavery. The International Labor Organization says there are about 12 million people living in literal slavery around the world, and 80 percent of them are women and girls.”
Mockingjay By Suzanne Collins – I decided to start the summer off light. I had been trying to only read the books in this series once a year, but Catching Fire proved to be far too addictive and I was looking for spoilers the minute I read its last pages. Mockingjay brings a close to Katniss’ revolution. She thinks she is out of the games, but in fact she is submerged in the most dangerous Hunger Game yet. The book is rife with political commentary and does it much less subtly than the previous two novels. Politics is what keeps Mockingjay’s pulse beating strong. From Katniss’ decision to become the Mockingjay all the way to the climax, the idea that power corrupts absolutely fuels her distrust and pushes her forward. The series comes to a satisfying close, at least in my opinion. It’s gritty, far more violent than the movie version (a mistake which I hope is corrected), and for a more mature audience than the marketing for the books ever lets on.
6 Years By Harlan Coben – This was entertaining. The premise: A man loves a woman. He is completely devoted to her but she marries another man. At the wedding, she asks him to promise that he will never look for her. That he will let her be. He does, for six years. Then, while browsing the internet, he comes across an obituary for the man the woman married six years prior. He investigates and finds out that the man was murdered. He also finds out that the man was in fact married, but not to the woman the hero loved. It sets the novel into action and takes the hero deep into a dizzying web of lies and secrets. This is very cleverly crafted and will keep you turning pages until you lose your sense of time. Perfect vacation reading.
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts – I had not read a play in years, so it took some getting used to. Once I did, I found this to be totally engrossing. It’s about a family who gathers during a time of crisis. But the play goes far beyond portraying the typical dysfunctions. It reads like a moment in time where a family comes to realize that they have always been in crisis, for as long as any of the characters can remember. There is a dinner scene that is so shockingly honest you will not be able to stop reading. Letts’ gets to the truth of these characters, very quickly and modestly. It’s been my favorite read so far this summer.
I think a script this week and then on to something else…
I absolute love Garrison Keillor. There are few American storytellers that can be so consistently compelling. He talks about nothing and everything simultaneously and manages to make me laugh in the process. His transitions are flawless. He begins on a subject, takes you through this fictitious town in a disjointed pattern then ends right where he started. He does this effortlessly; his voice smooth, unforced, casually guiding the audience.
I listen to the News From Lake Wobegon (Podcast, no time for the whole show) every week, but the episode from April 20 was particularly memorable. A Prairie Home Companion isn’t known for getting political, but Keillor did. At around minute 91 Keillor summarizes the comedy and tragedy of what happened in Congress this past month and our response to it.
“We will forget about this, just like we forget about winter.”
The movie that I was the most excited for last year was a documentary by David France called How To Survive a Plague. The film follows ACT UP during the early days of the AIDS crisis. Maybe someday I’ll write my thoughts on the film. For now however I just wanted to celebrate its Oscar nomination in the Best Documentary category. There are very few films that I would deem ‘important’ this is one of those. Go see it if you haven’t.
When I first moved here not so many moons ago I taught English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) in Homestead Florida. I had many young students, too old for high school but at the right age to work towards some sort of collegiate training. I had this one kid name Chan, maybe 18 or 19 years old, from Indonesia. He didn’t know a lick of English, I mean 0, but he was bright and hard working. His parents would drive 40 minutes each way, every day so that he could sit in my classroom for three hours and then we would work for another hour privately. I dove in determined to teach him and did it for free because frankly I I had nothing else to do. I left Homestead about three years ago when I got the teaching post I now fill and had not seen Chan since.
Yesterday, as I was walking up the stairs towards my classroom, Chan was there chatting with a friend. He wasn’t waiting for me, just one of those coincidences. I got so excited I almost jumped out of my skin. He’s finishing up EAP and is probably less than a year away from starting college. It feels good to know that this time in my life was well spent.
You didn’t see my valentine I sent it via pantomime While you were watchin someone else I stared at you and cut myself It’s all I’ll do ’cause I’m not free A fugitive too dull too flee I’m amorous but out of reach A still life drawing of a peach
I’m a tulip in a cup
I stand no chance of growing up
I’ve made my peace, i’m dead i’m done
I watched you live to have my fun
I root for you, I love you
You You You You I root for you, I love you
I made it to a dinner date
My teardrops seasoned every plate
I tried to dance but lost my nerve
I cramped up in the learning curve
I’m a tulip in a cup I stand no chance of growing up I’m resigned to sail on through In the wake of tales of you
I root for you, I love you
I root for you, I love you
I root for you, I love you
I root for you, I love you
A lifetime ago I lived in NY and worked for Susan Batson at the Black Nexxus Studios. It was an incredibly dynamic place. I remember that on a cork board somewhere in the office there was a little piece of paper tacked on that said “Do Something For Your Art Every Day.” I don’t know if Susan came up with it or if she got it from somebody else, but seeing that little message daily made it stay with me.
I think about it now because in talking with my students during the last day of class I found myself repeating those words to them. I have a student who has incredible work ethic; he’s producing a web series, putting out an episode a week. It’s an astonishing amount of work, but procrastination limits the quality of the work. So I told him about Susan, about the little refrain on the cork board, and that finding, perhaps 1 hour of the day that he dedicates to just working on honing his craft would make a world of difference in his work and in his life. As soon as I said it I thought about this blog and how I hadn’t posted in almost a week. I thought about how easy it is to become busy and how brilliant it was for that little refrain to be tacked on to a cork board where everyone could see it multiple times a day. You couldn’t forget to do something for your art because there it was to remind you. The brilliance of which I’m sure was not accidental considering its source.
So I’ve typed it up, cut it up, and taped it right onto my computer so I never forget that doing something for my art every day is exactly why I started Sometimes a Good Notion.
As a Cinema professor one of the first questions that I often get asked by my students is ‘what’s your favorite film?’ As a film lover I find the question frustratingly difficult to answer. How does one begin to narrow down the choices when they include every film ever made? Granted my students only ask me after I’ve put them through the same torture, so I guess it’s only fair. My stock answers are Casablanca and Dancer in the Dark, those typically throw them off. But the real answer is far more complicated and can’t be answered with one or two titles. My favorite films are many and they can’t be ordered based on any criteria. I hold them in high regard for many different reasons. The first of these films is Breaking The Waves, directed by Lars Von Trier and released in 1996.
The first thing I remember about Breaking the Waves was the experience of seeing it. A friend of mine dragged me to this rinky-dink art-house theater in Georgetown, D.C. It was the type of place that you had to go down dark steps and alleyways to get to and the thrill of surviving the excursion without getting mugged was part of the fun. I remember having two different reactions to the film once it was over. The first was that I felt nauseous. I had never seen anything shot entirely with a hand-held camera and the movement made me dizzy. The second was anger. I was angry at the movie, at Von Trier, at my friend for taking me to see it, at Emily Watson who plays the main character of Bess. I was angry.
I probably dismissed it as pornography or trash or something easy without giving it much thought when I discussed it with my friend. But as I was going to bed that night (at 19 years old and meandering through my first year of college), I remember thinking to myself that I had never seen a movie that I felt so strongly about or that evoked such a strong reaction from me. I didn’t know about Dogma, or The Good Woman Trilogy, or anything about Von Trier. All I knew was that Breaking The Waves was different and that made it seem important. It made me want to learn about it and how the film provoked me. I had gone to college to be a journalist for no particular reason, it just seemed like a good choice. That night however, there was a seismic shift somewhere in my brain and my direction changed. The next semester I registered for my first film class and my story goes on from there.
I revisited Breaking The Waves last night. It’s the third time I’ve seen it including that night in 1996. It no longer makes me nauseous, I now take hand-held for granted, but it still makes me angry.
Breaking The Waves takes place in a small coastal town in Scotland. It involves Bess (masterfully played by Emily Watson), a simple-minded woman who marries a much more experienced oilrig worker named Jan. When Jan is paralyzed in a rig accident he coaxes Bess to sleep with other men and then tell him about it. He convinces her that if he forgets what love is like he would die. She does what he asks.
The story uses religion and faith as motivators for Bess’ actions. Bess not only believes in God and talks to him, but he talks back. Literally. Bess closes her eyes and speaks the words of god, to this day I’m surprised that this contrivance passes muster. God tells her to be good and demands that she prove to him how much she loves Jan. Her faith runs so deep that she convinces herself that if she sleeps with these men Jan might be saved. The story quickly sinks into tragedy and despair as Bess’ misguided faith leads her to take more desperate and dangerous action to “save” Jan.
Von Trier would have us believe that this is the story of a saint. That she’s a woman so good that she would sacrifice everything for love. But he confuses things by making Bess dim-witted with a history of mental and emotional illness. Von Trier is constantly begging the question is she a martyr or a victim? Can one be both? If Bess had a normal capacity to reason, would she make the same choices? Perhaps it’s me. I might be too bound by reason to blur the lines between choice and abuse so easily and believe it to be god’s work.
Breaking the Waves remains for me as frustrating to watch as it was the first time. Now I just understand that Von Trier is not interested in providing answers, he just wants to provoke you with questions and situations so vile that they make you want to look away, but you can’t. Not even his mystical conclusion can appease the way you feel about Bess. His resolution doesn’t undo that throughout his narrative, words like woman, fool, martyr, and victim all become synonymous. It’s quite a challenging pill to swallow but that’s also what makes it riveting to watch and it’s certainly what made it so damn unforgettable for me.
One of my favorite places in Miami is a tiny French Bistro called Le Boudoir which has an terrific brunch menu. The Miracle Mile location which is on the corner of Ponce de Leon and Coral Way is perfectly located in the heart of a fairly quaint shopping district. It has an outdoor, covered seating area which is refreshing during the Fall and Spring and it’s perfect for people watching in a city where you’re mainly stuck in a car and in air conditioning. The interior is tackily decorated in pink cushioned seats and booths which attracts my kind of patron among others including families coming from church, tourists (The Biltmore is nearby), and UM students. It’s eclectic to say the least and modern, but it has never struck me as pretentious.
They don’t serve anything you wouldn’t expect from a French Bistro at Brunch time. Petit Dejuner includes croissants and croques of all genders and specialties range from quiches to eggs benny (the best I’ve had so far in Miami, though I’m open to suggestions.) People rave about the Macaroons, but I’ve never had the appetite for them. One of these days I’ll drop by. The pricing seems fair and although the menu clearly says the gratuity is not included, it has always been included (maybe it’s me!), and they are generous to themselves even when the service is mediocre.
I can overlook whatever flaws Le Boudoir has because of its location. Miracle Mile is a terrific little strip of Coral Way, perfect for window shopping and ‘caféing’ (yes, it’s a verb now). It’s one of the few locations in Miami that can still have two Starbucks across the street from each other and have those both survive. As an added plus, it’s a few blocks away from Books & Books which will kick B&N a** any day of the week.
I have been following and reading Sasha Stone for over a decade. I do not always agree with her, but I do believe she has been integral to legitimizing online film criticism. She recently posted the following article: Schooling Shailene Woodley on the Word Feminist, and it is a must read. Though I do feel that Ms. Stone should have probably taken a breath before she started typing, the article encapsulates why Woodley came off so embarrassingly ignorant in her interview with Time and in further interviews she has given on the subject.
Sometimes a Good Notion 