list

holiday family & friends time:

georgia buchert made this beautiful crown for me.  i was so touched.  this pic doesn't do it justice.  i'll try to get a better one.

1) omg.  food.  out of control food.

2) prime rib & brussels sprout, nativity, very sketchy pick-up rendition (omg.  out of control melismas) of "for unto us a child is born,"  buche de noel, and christmas crackers on christmas eve.

3) matching swiss nightgowns for me and all the girls.

4) thoughtful "experience" gift certificates (dim sum, play lists, shopping expeditions, pedicures, thrifting and vintage store shopping), cool, creative gift-wrapping jobs & hand embroidered cards.

5) turkey dinner at bam's on christmas day.

6) christmas day migraine.

7) pitch perfect with my sis at the dollars.  yes!  see it.

8) boxing day locust salon featuring:  candy cane cake by ingrid, baked brie with fig and cranberry by kathryn, carrot-jicama salad AND hand made crown by georgia, cheese ball and last minute table arranging by bonnie, olives, cheese and nuts from the belnap-jensens, lots of baking and cleaning by amelia, magical drum solo by greg, stylophone virtuosity by steve, and prepared piano by christian.

el gallo giro is one of my favorite provo restaurants.  check out their molcajete.

9) over-the-top take out from el gallo giro for lunch today--handmade guacamole, molcajete, pollo with pickled pink onions, 29 handmade corn tortillas, nopales, mole rojo, sangria, and, yeah.

10) the hobbit--loved having moses' running commentary, as he sat on my lap for most of the movie, and obviously it was his favorite movie he'd ever seen since it looked exactly like a video game, but, dude, i hate cgi.  it seriously looks like a piece of crap.  sorry fans.

skyfall: it's personal

the suit fits good.

i've seen a run of unsatisfying movies of late.

skyfall was not one of them.

on the fiftieth anniversary of the james bond movie franchise, sam mendes' decision to mine bond's past as well as  his emotional connection to m paid off in a movie that has everything one could want from a bond film, plus a little extra.  the film nodded to all of the james bond tropes but also forged some new territory, proving the hero's relevance in world whose technology might render the famous bond skills and gadgetry outmoded.  here's a list of things i loved about the film:

1)  its central theme.  when q presents bond with his gadgets, its a shockingly simple kit he receives.  this scene shows, in a nutshell,  what the film is about, and exposes the essence of bond at the same time.  one of the central questions of the film is whether or not bond's skills are antiquated enough as to render him irrelevant (spoiler alert:  of course not, silly!)  at one point in the film, m is asked, "what do you think, this is still the golden age of espionage?" that question is asked, implicitly, in almost every scene.

so skyfall reminds us what is really cool about bond. we love the gadgets, but really, the gadgets always fall into the shark cage or off the edge of a high rise anyway, and then what are we left with?  bond and his villain, mano a mano.  this is when we know why we need 007 more than, say, a semi-automatic.  it's bond's wits and his ability to bricolage his own gadgets in the midst of a surely fatal tight place (as when he re-couples a de-coupled train with a backhoe in skyfall's opening sequence) that gives him lasting appeal as an action hero.  i also thought it was incredibly clever for the film to anticipate and then refute it's own obsolescence.  at the same time, the movie is making a smart cultural observation about human vs. technological powers.

2) javier bardem.  tsking like a mexican grandmother, swaying around like he's on a cat walk, or just looking really creepy, he is one of my favorite bond villains ever.  the script gives him a really excellent motive and backstory that makes him more dimensional than your average villain.

3) ralph fiennes.

the end.

4) the beautiful ladies, bespoke suits, the valentino-esque gowns, the swaroski crystals.  daniel craig in about a million moodily hot silhouettes.

i mean,

i'm only human.

5) it's a pretty talky film, and the dialogue is interesting, complex and surprising.  and m quotes tennyson.  like a whole stanza of tennyson.  and there's not one single moment of shaky, hand-held camera work, which is what i was dreading about seeing the film.  the chase scenes are elegant, and there are many beautiful visual tableaux.

so i like the eye candy.

sue me.

if it was only eye candy, i'd give the film a 'meh'.  but it's got depth and soul, too, and kind of touchingly old fashioned in it's attention to thematic unity and elegance.

maybe i'm just old.

maybe i just want to know that human beings are not quite obsolete yet.

sonosophy

i still look & feel a tad sick.

we had a super long date night, beginning at 2 pm this afternoon.

1) reading at the utah humanities council book festival.  i heard this sort of hot poet-dude read.  i rather  like his poetry, but his reading was atrocious, and actually kind of pissed me off.  i might have to use some strong language in this section because, eight hours later, i'm still mad, and i have to say a few things to poets right now:  if you don't read well, please, for the love of all that's holy, practice!  hire a coach.  take an acting class, improve your voice and your stage presence.  if you think you write poetry "for the page" rather than for performance, get an actor to read for you.  if you get nervous, take a xanax and PRACTICE.  or hire an actor.  but please don't inflict your bad reading on us.  it's insulting.  if you want to do public speaking and reading, then respect your audience and treat it seriously.  also, we don't need a ten-minute, rambling introduction to an 8 second poem.  in which you brag-plain about how long it took you to write your book, how much grant funding you got, which shoe gazing rock band you were on "tour" with, or how random and cool you are.  hopefully we'll get all that from your 8-second poem.

am i right, people who go to poetry readings?  is there anything worse than an awkward, rushed, poet with annoying head notes at the top of each poem?  poets!  get your shit together.

life-sized dudes at ken sanders.  someone at ken sanders is super into r. crumb.

2) arbitrage at the broadway (4.30 show.  we were the only non-seniors in the audience).  i enjoyed this movie a lot. gere, sarandon, and marling were great, though sarandon had to deal with some weak lines and not enough screen time.  arbitrage, the story of a wealthy business man desperately trying to hide the fraud he had committed, as well as another major crime, was a film that almost transcended it's genre.  it almost had lady characters who were dimensional, it almost had interesting insights about race and class, it almost showed how complex structures of power, patriarchy, and society are.  & tim roth almost convinced us he was a new york city cop.

almost.

just slightly off.  sarandon's character had a few tricks up her sleeve, but, in my opinion, we never, ever have to hear the wife of a wealthy man say, "do you think i don't know about your little secretaries and assistants, and, and your little whores?" also, filmmakers, old dudes don't need to see any more footage of themselves in the sack with hot french gallerists.  maybe make her chubby?  in her thirties?  a lawyer?  i don't know.  mix it up a little!  you're artists--you can do something different this time!

but really, i did have fun watching the movie and thought it was quite well made, if not ground-breaking.

alex caldiero:  the sonosopher.

3) alex caldiero reading and dvd release party for the documentary the sonosopher: a life in sound about caldiero's life and work.  (at ken sanders' rare books, julie turley.  reminded me of you!)

k.  caldiero's a super interesting dude and a fantastic performer.  a sicilian/new yorker who came up in the cage/rauchenberg years, and knew both artists, then moved to orem, utah after converting to mormonism in 1980. and proceeded to continue doing his really riveting, gutsy, between the cracks performances.

(poets:  check out caldiero.  emulate his vocal presence!  listen to how much silence he gives us between words.  take note of how well-prepared his readings are.  we can't all be as rad as alex, but we can learn from him.)  i bought a copy of the dvd and look forward to watching it.

i'm pretty sure you've been here before, JT.  

4) burgers at the drive-up--hire's--rootbeer in a frosty mug.  i love hires. they make their own buns, grind their own meat, and bring trays to your car so you can eat and listen to john lee hooker and check out all the little dramas going on in the cars around you.  tonight there was a cop hanging out with an old lady and her older mother.  had they been robbed?  bumped into by another car in the lot?  witnessed a crime?  we never figured it out.

so, yeah, i love hires, but unfortunately, tonight our fries were not fresh and our mugs not super cold and frosty.  a little disappointing. the buns, as always, were great.

for the love of dolly

girl got herself out of a tight place

last week we watched tai uhlman's documentary for the love of dolly. this slight but intriguing documentary features footage five dolly super-fans doing their quirky, sad, over-the-top fan stuff, like creating porcelain dolly dolls, getting plastic surgery to look more like dolly, and planning elaborate costumes for the annual opening parade at dollywood.  one of the fans is a developmentally disabled man whose dolly obsession is his portal to the larger world. two troubled young women structure their lives around pilgrimages to dollywood and recreating dolly's "tennessee mountain home" in their back yard, and a gay couple builds a life around creating and collecting dolly memorabilia and singing along with their favorite dolly song hello god.

by virtue of it's subject, the documentary keeps your attention, but you feel a bit voyeuristic, and wonder if this was a little bit of an easy target, somewhat akin to criticisms leveled at waiting for guffman, you hope that you're laughing with, not at, the subjects of the film.

the filmmaking is somewhat artless, especially compared to the other documentary we saw last week, ai wei wei: never sorry.  but there are interesting moments when the footage delves into the fans' backstories, and the reasons for their obsessions begin to emerge:  one young woman has suffered abuse at the hands of her family, and talks about the prayer she would offer every night even as a pre-schooler:  that dolly would be her mother and sing her a lullaby every night.  the man who makes the porcelain dollys discusses the guilt he felt when his wife died in a car accident even as he was in the process of leaving her for his current partner.

as one who verges on dolly superfandom, i wish we would have gotten a little more of a sense of the things that make dolly so compelling, such a rich personality and talent.  a singer who can make you sob even while singing most inane lyrics in the world, lyrics like:

Hello God, are you out there?
Can you hear us, are you listenin' any more?
Hello God, if we're still on speakin' terms
Can you help us like before?

i enjoyed this film well enough, but didn't think it really did dolly or it's fascinating subjects full justice.  what causes a person to want to negate her own life in the worship of another, and why is the worship directed at dolly?  i wished for a fuller exploration of these questions.

never sorry

ai wei wei at his recent show at the tate modern, right before being detained for 81 days by the chinese government

"i have more fear than most people, so i have to act more brave," says chinese artist and dissident ai wei wei in the new documentary ai wei wei: never sorry by allison klayman.

ai's acts of bravery, and his commitment to acting, and acting, and acting some more in the face of almost certain failure, form the core of this inspiring documentary.  his ability to turn tight places into opportunities seems to be one of his great gifts.  when his blog is shut down, he starts tweeting, sometimes for eight hours a day.  when the government orders the demolition of his studio in shanghai, he turns the demolition into a giant party.  in one of the funniest scenes in the film, one of ai's assistants and a police official who is openly documenting ai in an attempt to intimidate him, film each other at close range, pointing their cameras in each other's faces like a dare, like fingers jabbing at the beginning of a bar fight.

in one of the most moving scenes in the film, we hear names of children who died in the 2008 earthquake, names that the government tried to keep secret, read by chinese citizens who participated in ai wei wei's earth quake memorial--a different voice for each child.

klayman's filmmaking is as clear as wei wei's purpose and vision--we see this artist's work in the context of the political and social ends it reaches for, but klayman also brilliantly, almost without notice, points out the aesthetic nuances of the pieces through her editing and imagery.  the field of 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds painted by artisian porcelain makers in china and ultimately showcased in ai's tate show "the unilever series" near the end of the film,  is first introduced to us in dribs and drabs:  jars of the seeds on the kitchen counter (you might think they were real seeds) an envelope of seeds being opened and poured into a bowl, an earlier small piece of art he created covered in sunflower seeds.  you might think:  what's with all the sunflower seeds?  by the end of the film, when you see museum patrons crunching in their heels over the vast field of hand-painted seeds, when you see the various sizes and shapes of shoes traipsing over the nearly, but not quite, uniform objects, when you hear the slightly varied footsteps, depending on the size of the walker, the type of sole of the shoe being worn, etc.  you begin, just begin, to understand what the piece is about.  or, if you don't understand, you just enjoy the imagery, the scale, the accomplishment of such a vast work.  even more so because, in small glimpses, we were shown the seeds being accumulated, painted, shipped, and installed in the museum.

one comes to appreciate through these subtle glimpses, the meeting of old and new that makes ai's work so exciting:  the painstaking slowness of  artisan porcelain makers creating millions of faux sunflower seeds vs. the instantaneous event created on twitter, the power of the camera and social media vs. the power of a blow to the head by a single police officer acting on behalf of the chinese government.

the film is also just plain beautiful:  klayman intersperses tiny glimpses of wei wei's cat stretching and arching in his zen-like courtyard with the more chaotic scenes of violence, protest and horror that have taken place over the course of ai's history.  we catch, for just a moment, the grungy white camera observing wei wei's home, the dented tin mirror reflecting his comings and goings, reminiscent of the mirror catching van eyck's little self-portrat in the arnolfini wedding; klayman reminds us, mostly through these images of documentation, the recordings of recordings being made, the filmings of filming and picture taking, that the recording and documenting of events is the most central activity of wei wei's life now.  and the film includes allusions to the documenting of a documentary happening as the film is being made.  as ai wei wei is recorded, so he records, and he invites us all into this brave new world of recursivity along with him.  actually, he makes us want nothing more than to speak out and on the record, to be a little braver, to do work that is a little more significant.

ai spent twelve years in new york city, beginning in 1983, and you can see how the punk, d.i.y., no-holds-barred bad assery of early '80's new york informed & honed his skill at taking weaknesses and turning them into strengths.

like ghandi or dr. king, he knows that opening himself up to acts of injustice publicly is his best chance to create change.

ai wei wei fills the screen with his corporeality.  he has a reassuring but ebullient presence that makes you feel alternately that everything will be okay as long as some one is willing to act, to speak out, and also that you know, you know something bad is going to happen to him.  and he knows it, too.  even as he clowns and flips the bird at his oppressors.his puffy face and circumflex eyebrows are both comical and appealing, and he projects the kind of serenity only a person who has resigned himself to death in the name of truth & righteousness can emanate.

at the end of the film, ai wei wei disappears for 81 days.  when he reappears, his big, comforting belly significantly shrunken, his smile almost gone, his color dampened and greyed, and his voice temporarily silenced, a major art magazine names him the world's most powerful artist.

"but i don't feel powerful," he tells an interviewer.  "i feel fragile.  maybe my fragility makes me powerful."

yes.

we still know.  something bad will happen to him.  and it's okay.  power lies, always, in our willingness to make fragile own personal safety for the sake of another person, or for a lot of other people, and to always speak, always act, when we see oppression.

the price of pleasure

the queen & her beloved

what strikes me most about  benoit jacquot's farewell, my queen is the delicate play between the impending massive people's revolt and the tiny but emotionally charged detail of every day life in the court:  a beautifully embroidered dahlia, a precious clock, the rustle of brocade and hollow footfalls of a french heel against marble, cobblestone and wood.

the court is focused on attending to the indulgence of every physical and emotional whim of la reine, so focused that one sees how they could possibly not have realized what was imminently arriving at the gates of versailles.   the film catches you up so completely in the minutia of the baubles and minor intrigues of the sex lives of the courtly entourage that one sees how the queen and her attendants became confused about what the most important concerns were on july 14th, 1789:  the fact that the duchess de polignac was not as in love with the queen as the queen was with her, or the fact that both of their names appeared in the top three on the list of those who should be beheaded in the name of liberty.

on a sensory level, the movie is pure pleasure:  great music, gorgeous shadow and light, the skin of beautiful women caressed lovingly and a little creepily by the hand-held camera. as the neo-realists put their cameras at eye-level, jacquot holds his at décolletage level.  the ladies' oft heaving bosoms almost become characters in and of themselves

enjoy.

enjoy the girl on girl flirtations, the whispered french gossip, the tableaux layered against the giant poplars filmed on the grounds of versailles, the nightgowns and wigs, silk stockings and pewter dining ware.  watch the queen enjoy them.  watch the court enjoy her enjoyment of all things beautiful, sensuous, and decadent.

& maybe wonder, for just a second, if losing your head is a price worth paying for so much fun & drama.