Yikes, yet another contender for best movie on Sunday! Some years I see none of the movies and this year I have seen seven out of the nine nominated. The ones I have missed are "Darkest Hour" and "The Post" which are both based on fact, of course. None of the others are, well, unless you include the horror movie "Get Out" (totally based on recent factual brain transplants..... oh, no! Spoiler???) and of course, the much lauded and yet misinterpreted "Shape of Water" which is as true as real life, given the shape of real life right now. What's truer than true love, no matter the size, shape and molecular composition of the love interest? And what's a bigger fantasy, loving a creature from the Blue Lagoon or accepting the political climate in which we currently find ourselves? (OK, enough of front page headline news. Sorry.)
I digress. Today I saw the very lovely Daniel Day Lewis in "Phantom Thread" which was a true Paul Thomas Anderson film. If you don't know his work, don't worry. His movies are, well, odd at times. His first movie that garnered critical acclaim was the unforgettable "Boogie Nights" followed by the totally bizarre "Magnolia" and then it went on from there.
"Phantom Thread" was quite different than I had anticipated but of course I had forgotten that it was a Paul Anderson movie. Once I remembered that, it all made sense. It is really lovely to watch; who knew that Daniel Day Lewis could mesmerize us simply by sewing something by hand! The costumes are lush and the settings are as well. There are really only three characters in the movie, everyone else is just a feather stitch on a bodice. But those three characters change in ways you do not expect, and your like/dislike of them changes as well.
DD Lewis is superb, but we all know he is. He cannot be anything but superb. The surprise is his equal in the film, Vicky Krieps, who plays his much younger lover. She is, at first glance, simple and very pretty and a foil for his talents. Ah, but as the movie progresses, she is much more than that. No spoilers here, but be prepared to have your complacency about her character challenged.
This is a very good movie, although it could have been a bit tighter. However, that's Anderson's milieu, he is a master at slow scenes and quiet plot moves that eventually pay off for us. Whether it wins any awards at this Sunday's Oscar extravaganza remains to be seen, but as an intelligent, intense and intriguing film, it's one of the best I have seen this year. It has a scope of the meaning of love that is difficult to explain. The movie was a surprise to me, and that always wins points in my book.
Check it out when you have a chance.
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After reading dozens of books that were mediocre, I have finally come across several that have been very good. The best has been "A Gentleman in Moscow" but a couple others have crossed over the line from "meh" to "alrighty then!"
"The Heirs" is basically a sweeping story of a family and their hidden secrets, not a new spin on any kind of genre but so well put together and edgy that you can't stop reading it. It's like having a bag of See's Candy Bridge Mix in the cupboard..... you want one more bite, one more piece just to see what you get this time. A chocolate covered raisin or a caramel? Each bite is delicious and different.
A family in New York, successful but with so many secrets that are not even hinted at until one of the family dies. Even then the secrets stay hidden because why rock the boat? Why throw mud into the perfect living room just because someone says it should be done? The secrets aren't the point. The point is how the family deals with shame and lies and the troubling honesty it takes to keep together, to keep the family united.
It's a very well done story and even if you don't like all the characters you will like the tale. You will come to understand the love and respect that each family member has for the other, even if they don't always agree. And isn't that the way families all roll? You love your family, even when it drives you close to the brink.
Check out "The Heirs" if you get a chance. It's an easy read and a handful of crazy family.
Steve and I went to see English Beat last night at the Raven in Healdsburg. Very small venue, less than 500 seats, nothing fancy but because of its size, you are close to the stage and there's not a bad seat in the place. Of course, with a Ska band like English Beat, many seat were never occupied, people gathered up front and just danced the 90 minutes while they played.
And "play" is the operative word here. If you ever have the chance to see this group, do it. They are so happy to be on stage and making their brand of music and funneling it out to the crowd, there is no way to not come away grinning. They love what they do and the crowd loves it as well. It was a blast.
Standing in line, waiting for the doors to open, I struck up a conversation with a very cute woman about ..... many things. One was about the English Beat song "Mirror in the Bathroom" which, of course, leads one to cocaine on a mirror in a bathroom. This woman, let's call her Mildred, or Milly for short, was lamenting the fact that at her age, a ripe old 50 years old, she needs reading glasses to see the lines of cocaine on the mirror in the bathroom! And how old does that make a person feel, you can't even do blow without your readers! It was at that point she realized it was time to stick to things that didn't need magnification, in other words alcohol or small pills, but even then she commented ".... and I had to touch the friggin pills in the palm of my hand to see if there were two or three of them, I couldn't see them without putting on my glasses which I was not going to do at a nightclub!"
She had a very salient point. Wear the glasses all the time, get contacts or just stick with something you can see. At least with a glass of wine or whiskey or vodka, you can tell when the glass is empty and then it's time to stop.
Great night, great band, lovely venue and what a tank of fun! Dance your way into happiness, nothing wrong with that!
"Mirror in the bathroom
Recompense
For all my crimes
Of self defense
Cures you wiser
Make no sense
Drift gently into
Mental illness...."
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Disclaimer: I am a huge fan of Frances McDormand and thus anything I say about her or a movie she is in will necessarily be colored by my admiration of her from the get go.
Having said that, I did not like this movie. Overall, I found it mean, sad and spiteful. The world is a mean, sad and spiteful place but there are moments of grace and hope in the real world. I did not find any of that in this movie.
But the characters, each individual person, I liked them. The Sheriff, Bill Willoughby, was sad but he was trying to do his job and he admitted he failed at it often. Mildred Hayes was a mother who wanted justice and would go to any lengths to find that justice but she didn't understand that sometime you simply cannot find it. Sometimes justice is unattainable. Jason Dixon was simply a bad, prejudiced, mean cop. His miraculous transformation was a joke.
Simply put, I walked out of this movie wondering why I wasted the time. I am not one who wants a happy ending, who wants glowing sentiment, who needs justification for actions in a movie. Violence doesn't bother me when it is part of the construct. Darkness, fine, bring it on. But for all the great acting in this movie, there was not one glimmer of rationalization for the plain meanness that was shown. Yes, I get the mother's need for justice and her need for vengeance. But to take it as far as she does, that needed to be stopped. Maybe it's just a reaction on my part for the recent shooting deaths at a high school in Florida ...... sometimes evil happens and we cannot always fix that. Mildred cannot fix what happened. She needs to back off.
This movie will win some Academy Awards, there's no doubt about that. I wager Frances will will best actress and Woody Harrelson for best supporting actor and perhaps best original screenplay for the writer. I can't deny any of those. But I wish the movie had been less mean and more meaningful.
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Fantasy movies are not my preference but getting out of the house was my goal and therefore Steve and I saw "The Shape of Water" this afternoon.
It is a lovely movie, very well done, saturated themes, dialogue, scenes. Taking place in the early 1960's, there is that Cold War sterility that pervades some of the movie but it is offset by the playfulness of a fantasy film. Things that would never happen in real life happen in the life of this movie and it is easy to accept them because, from the first scene, it is a fantasy.
My preference in movies is more realistic than this one but I liked this film and appreciated all the thought and artistic direction that made it so wonderful to watch. I knew very little about it but that made no difference. It is basically a love story and a kind of Romeo and Juliet story, two people from different backgrounds falling in love, and what viewer would not fall for that? There is also the Evil Guy, the one we need to fear, played so well by Michael Shannon with all the campy Cold War drama we know so well. Plus, any movie with Richard Jenkins.... well, count me in. I have never seen him be anything but perfect in whatever character he plays.
I am glad I saw this movie, and it is easy to recommend for its quirky qualities and its kindness of character and its innate beauty.
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How this novel was released more than 18 months ago and I just now read it is a mystery to me. Written by Amor Towles, this is a wonderful and remarkable book, one of the best I have read in many years.
The Gentleman of the title is a count who is, in two pages, sentenced to death and then that is commuted and he is then sentenced to house arrest at a Grand Hotel in Moscow, the Metropol. It is a real hotel, still exists today, but when Count Alexander Rostov begins his life sentence at the hotel the year is 1922. Just after the first World War and before the collapse of almost everything in Europe and in the Soviet Union.
But the date, the time and the place are simply characters in this novel, much as the Count is as well. He is a young man when he enters the hotel. His experiences span everything from life, death, boredom, excitement, danger, love, larceny, sex, friendship, betrayal and so much more. Interspersed with all of the above are historical moments, specifically those of the Soviet Union and the second World War. And the writing is not just engaging, it is lyrical and amusing and shot through with paragraphs you just read again and again.
I really loved this book. I could copy paragraphs from it to show you how beautiful the writing is, how evocative it is of place, time and philosophy, how you don't want this book to end. But then you would be reading and reading and not heading out to find this novel. Get it out of the library first. If you don't like it, fine. But if you love it, like I do, you will be searching used book stores for a copy to keep and read again in a few years. Not since Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See" have I been as taken with a book. I hope you find it and enjoy it.
The Metropol Hotel, on Red Square in Moscow.
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Huntington, West Virginia has the highest death rate from drug overdoses in the country. This short documentary, less than 40 minutes, follows three women in three totally different walks of life as they deal with and try to help those addicted in this small town.
One woman is a judge in a drug court. One is a firefighter who is usually first on the scene in any overdose. The third is a "street preacher" who reaches out to prostitutes and users, trying to get them into a program to stop using.
There is no judgement in this film, no blame placed, no disrespect or dishonor. It is simply about the opioid epidemic in this small town and how regular people are trying to come to terms with what is happening. And how they are trying to help.
It is worth watching. Check it out.
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When surgeons cut open parts of your body and then sew those parts up again, pain ensues. Therefore, pain medications are ordered and the patient gets to take those meds home and use them in a safe manner to alleviate said pain.
Patients also get to take those pain meds home and use them in whatever manner they deem appropriate, safe or not, because there is no one monitoring one's usage in one's own home.
When you google oxycodone, you get a lot of information and most of it seems straightforward, logical and serious. The risks are obvious, of course, especially addiction. In reading about oxy, the thing that struck me was the variation in dosage. The dosage suggested to me is one or two pills every 4 - 6 hours as needed. My pills are 5 mg. However, I just read that the usual starting dose is 5 - 30 mg every 4 - 6 hours. WHAT??? That is up to six times what I was prescribed!
Maybe in cases of really, really bad pain a dosage of 30 mg (instead of 5-10) would be warranted. I get that. But it seems like such a huge dose that it would not be surprising to hear that people were getting addicted to the drug if they were taking 30 mg every 4 hours.
The effect on me was not one I would seek out. It made me lightheaded, dizzy and sleepy. It did mitigate the pain, or at least it made me less aware of the pain. The most I took was 10 mg every 4 hours and that was for a 18 hour stretch the day after surgery when the pain was at its worse. After that, one 5 mg pill every 4 - 6 hours was enough and after a couple of days I didn't need any.
Don't get me wrong; if I or someone I loved was in incredible pain, I would suggest the maximum dose, even with the risk of addiction. It just seems that the guidelines are so random and so vague that over medicating could be an easy mistake.
That's all, just my report on my experience with current narcotics. Seriously, I liked it when I needed it, was happy to stop taking it when I didn't need it. The side effects, especially relative to constipation (need I say more?) are another reason to not overuse the drug. If I want to feel spacey and lightheaded, I would much rather have a couple of fingers of a good bourbon. Doesn't dull the pain that much but it tastes a lot better.
Good night.
"Rear Window", classic Hitchcock, one of my faves. Jimmy Stewart, living in a second floor flat, looking out the rear window to the back of the apartments across the garden, has a camera, a housekeeper/nurse and Grace Kelly as his mind-blowing beautiful girl friend. He has a broken leg, spends his time gazing out the window and sees creepy things going on.
Me: not a broken leg, just a knifed knee, no second floor for me, looking out the front window at street level at the disjointed complex across the street. No camera, no nurse or housekeeper, no girlfriend. (I do have a physical therapist that stops by twice a week, perhaps I can get him involved in my life, other than making me do very painful maneuvers with my sad, pathetic, injured knee.)
I am sure you can see the similarities between me and "Rear Window".
In the living area of my front room, in front of the front window, there is an oak table that is normally used to collect mail and stuff that goes nowhere else, like the dog's leash (when he is here, which he is not, which makes me lonely for him) and library books. But that table now has a jigsaw puzzle happening on it, (please do not ask me why) and it affords the perfect place to sit and watch the goings on across the street at the once "Sober Living Housing" unit. (Now I am afraid, not so sober.)
I watched, three days ago, a really good operator of a backhoe loader picking up slabs of cement and loading them into a large dump truck. This guy made it look like he was picking up pieces of cardboard. He edged the loader under the corner of the cement and lifted a 50 square piece like it was nothing! It took him about 20 minutes to get about 200 square feet of concrete into that truck. It was fascinating to watch. Yes, I was bored, so it was great diversion.
Since there is work happening in the complex, the Sober Living people now sit on the curb and vape their ....tobacco, I guess, since it would stand to reason that if you are sober you don't smoke dope. But these peeps smoke All The Time. Seriously, they would be better off having a shot of bourbon and a beer, it would do a lot less damage to their lungs and heart and blood. If you smoke the equivalent of two packs a day, how is that Sober Living? How is that making you better?
But, I digress. Unlike Jimmy Stewart, I have not witnessed nefarious action across the street. But like Jimmy Stewart, sitting at the window now and then does spark one's imagination: what are they doing over there? Why is the sofa now on the front porch? Who is that woman wearing pajamas 24 hours a day? (Well, that could be me.) What is in that oversized coffee cup, is it really just coffee? Why does everyone look very, very pissed off? (I would attribute that to the lack of a shot and a beer.)
Sadly, I don't think there will be a murder to solve unless I end up killing someone, which is not what Jimmy Stewart would have done. But I am telling you, the boredom of being at home all the time has set in. Yesterday I walked, with my cane (!), down my block to the stop sign THREE TIMES! It was the first time I wore shoes since my knee surgery on January 29. It was amazing! Today Steve picked me up and drove me to the library and it was the first time I got to see my 'hood in two weeks! Trees and plants are blooming! I had shoes on and was in a car! What a life!
(Sorry for all the exclamation points but that's how it felt!)
OK. thanks for reading. I am a bit depressed at this moment simply because I am so tired of not being able to do anything. I have been out of work now for more than three months, it is boring. I have read so many books and so few good ones and watched really crappy TV and very little good TV. (However, last night I rented "How to Steal a Million" with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O'Toole because I needed something funny and old. It takes place in Paris and was totally charming.)
Sigh. Time to make dinner, time to have another glass of wine, time to stop feeling sorry for myself. My kids are coming over tomorrow and I will get to see my small dog Cooper for a couple of hours and all will be well. Stitches in my knee come out on Monday. YAY for that. More painful exercises ahead, lots of PT in my future, but at least no one is being buried under the plants across the street. Well, at least not that I have noticed.
Be happy.
xo.
Yes, it's been a while since I appeared here on this page. But here I am, back again, better than ever! HA! New bionic knee and all.....
I had a partial knee replacement last Monday, January 29. It all went fine, it was really the first surgery I have experienced and as experiences with knives and drugs go, it was quite fine. Nice people in the pre-OP area, nice people with knives and drugs in the OR and very cool people in the post-OP area as well. Maybe my impression was colored by drugs, but everyone seemed charming and kind.
The surgeon said we were wise to opt for the partial knee instead of the Full Monty Knee because the other half of the knee was "pristine" (in his words) and needed nothing.
I was in the hospital at 6:00 a.m. and back in my house before 2:00 p.m. Less than an 8 hour visit, a good thing, who really wants to spend the night in a hospital ward? Not me. My brother Steve came over on Monday night with pizza, my sister Kate was here for the week, everything was easy on that first night.
And then the hospital drugs wore off, sometime mid-day on Tuesday. That's when we are grateful for opioids. They sent me home with Oxycodone, tiny little 5 milligram pills that look as innocent as a white daisy. I went from taking one every six hours to 2 every 4 hours and I set my alarm for those 4 hours. The pain was rather unpleasant but the Oxy kept it in the back room for 24 hours. After that I cut back to 2 every 6 hours and then, late Wednesday, I was down to one every 6 hours and that worked fine. But man, it was nice to know those tiny white pills were at my bedside if I needed them. I am now taking no pain pills but I still have them smiling at me in their little pill bottle, just in case.
Things are now fine. Very little pain, just a bit of hurting. The Physical Therapist comes twice a week and makes me move my leg in painful ways but that's to be expected. I can move it in ways I couldn't two days ago, so progress is being made. Now it's just the "do the exercises and wait" part of the process. Waiting is not my strong suit. I am reading and watching TV and reading some more. The only time the knee is annoying is when I try to sleep, it is impossible to get comfortable, but that's a small problem that will eventually disappear.
That's it for now..... time to heat up soup and try to get it from point A to point B using the two handed walker and not sloshing it all on the floor. It's a great lesson in humility and MacGyver's unconventional problem solving. Lessons I am certainly learning.
later.....
