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Jan 17. THE GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING. The story of the great 17th century painting by Vermeer. It's dark, life is hard
in Delft, you starve if you don't work, especially if you are a young girl in an impoverished family. How a simple servant
girl, despised amd mistreated by the painter's family, inspired one of the great portraits of all time. The dark interiors,
the sense of menace keep you on the edge of your seat for two hours. Feb 11. THE QUEEN OF SPADES by Tchaikovsky at the
Met. Placido Domingo as Ghermann and Katerina Dalayman as Lisa in Tchaikovsky's pychological thriller set within a giant picture
framework. Ghermann, an engineer with access to the Russian nobility, mopes about, haunting the gambling shops, until he meets
Lisa, whom he seems to love with an all-consuming passion. Unfortunately, he loves money and power, too. Told that the countess,
Lisa's grandmother, knows three cards which will allow him to become a rich man from gambling, he invades her house, scaring
her (litterally) to death. From her grave, she informs him that he should play a three, a seven and an ace to win in faro.
Lisa thinks he has gone mad (probably correctly and throws herself into the Neva when he informs her he is interested only
in the countess' secret. Ghermann wins with the first two cards, but on the third choice he loses everything to Tomsky, Lisa's
jilted fiancee.Feb 14. THE RETURN, a Russian film by the young director Zvyagintsev. (How to pronounce that?) A father
returns to his family after an unexplained absence of twelve years. He says little, but takes his two sons on a hellish camping
trip to an island where he digs up a buried box hidden under the floor of an old cabin. The boys dislike him; he dies from
a fall while pursuing the younger boy, Ivan. The boys drag his body to the boat, but it sinks in deep water while they tuck
their stuff in the car. Many unanswered questions: What was the father--a criminal, a returned prisoner? What was in the box?
Keep tuned for the next movie.Mar 20. MY ARCHITECT, directed by Nathaniel Kahn, the son of the famous architect (the capitol
of Bangla Desh, the Salk Laboratory in La Jolla, etc). Nat was an unacknowledged son of Louis, who ran 3 families at the same
time. In the movie Louis is a driven, obsessed architect who works around the clock and occasionally drops in for a cup of
tea. Interviews with the people in his life, including famous architects like IM Pei and Frank Gehry, give a well-rounded
account of his life and passions.Nathaniel even interviewed his mother, who lives alone in a lonely island off the coast of
Maine, and the mother of his half sister. The wife of Kahn always refused to recognize or talk with the other members of his
hareem.
| The Salk Institute in La Jolla |
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| One of the great buildings by Louis Kahn |
| JAZZ CONCERT WITH BOB |
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| ON FRONT PAGE OF TOWN TOPICS |
His unorthodox domestic arrangements reminded me of the fifties English comedy called The Captain's Paradise, where Alex
Guinness for a time had two happy households in two different cities. As I recall, this led to turmoil in due course and the
paradise turned into pure hell. That never happened with Louis.
- Mar 27. SALOME at the Met. With Valery Gergiev at the podium and Karita Mattila exposing herself completely, at least
for one or two seconds, poor old John the Baptist was taken out of his hole in the ground and lost his head. Modernist sand
dunes populated with dark angels, an elegant plastic cocktail lounge for Herod and his friends to cavort about, a mine with
a crank hoist, black fissures running through the area, and the soaring music of Richard Strauss. Quite breathtaking staging
for a scandalous performance.
- Oct 15. Off to 185 Nassau St for a performance by John Burkhalter and Eugene Roan, Music in Georgian Dublin. with Eugene
at the harpsichord and John with the flute. Also a 45 minute illustrated lecture by John on the great buildings of Georgian
Dublin (late 18th century). Part of the Irish studies program at Princeton U.
- Nov 9. MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, a movie about a motorcycle trip taken by Che Guevarra and a friend (both were medical students)
from Arentina to Caracas, Venezuela in 1952. Wonderful shots of the Andes and the people of Chile and Peru. Visits to a leparsarium
and a mining town. The injustices seen by Che induced him to become a revolutionary instead of a physician.
- Nov 11. SIDEWAYS. Two men have a batchelor's binge in the wine countryside of California. One is a nerdy, self-doubting,
divorced teacher and would-be writer, who puts up with the gauche comments of his old school chum, an actor. The actor
is about to be married, but he is slavering after poon tang. He finds it in a vivacious Eurasian woman. When she finds out
he is about to be married, she beats him up on the sidewalk. The nerd finds his match, a wine lover who knows as much about
wine as he. A wine-lovers film.
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