Movies

Feb 6. NOBODY KNOWS by the Japanese director Hirokazu. Four kids are abandoned in Tokyo by their mother, who runs off with a boy friend. They live for a few months on the money she left, but eventually the power and water are cut off and the apartment degenerates into a mess. How one young boy, Akira, copes with no income and no parents. Sad, indeed.
Feb 13. SARABAND by Ingmar Bergman. Basically, a sit-com etched in acid by the master, Ingmar Bergman. His last film at age of 86; shot on digital video. Liv Ullmann visits her ex husband for the first time in 30 years. The two of them become involved in a power struggle between her husband's son and his talented teenage daughter. Brace yourself!
Feb 20. HUSTLE AND FLOW.
Feb 27. Winter Solstice.
Mar 6. MY SUMMER OF LOVE
Mar 13. THE WOODSMAN
Mar 20. THE BEAT MY HEART SKIPPED. A French remake of the American film Fingers. Tom, a violent criminal in the Paris underground, wants to become a concert pianist. He hasn't played in 10 years; he listens to rock music all day on his headphones; he studies under a Vietnamese pianist who doesn't speak French. A hopeless and ridiculous dream.
Mar 27. GRIZZLY MAN. Marian "saw" it a few months back, mostly with her eyes closed. Bears don't necessarily react mildly to human proximity.
Apr 3. MYSTERIOUS SKIN
Apr 10. 2046
Apr 17. TARNATION
Apr. 24. LOOK AT ME. A French film about an unattractive, overweight singer, who is starved of love by her successful father. She falls for one man who is not interested in her and rejects the advances of a true lover. In French, with sharp, crackling dialog. The theme in the background is how women are judged (often solely) by their looks.
May 1. JUNEBUG
May 8. HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE. A cartoon movie by Miyazaki with the most imaginative graphics. The fairy tale, in which a young woman hat maker, transformed into a 90-year old crone by the Wicked Witch of the Waste, is whisked off to a moving castle by a sorcerer named Howl, requires an adamant rejection of common sense and complete disbelief in cause and effect. Not my cup of tea.
May 15. POINT OF ORDER

Jan 5. MATCH POINT, directed and written by Woody Allen. Remake of An American Tragedy by Dreiser. Small town America is transformed into London, and the killer, an underclass male, gets away with the murder (two blasts from a shotgun, unnoticed by anyone in crowded London!). The Dreiser character is charged and executed. Morals have changed in 80 years.
Jan 15. MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN by Eugene O'Neill at McCarter. Seen again after half a century! First two acts have crackling dialog as Josie, a Conn. farm girl and her father Phil go after each other with barbed Irish wit. A brother encouraged to leave home early in the first act. The final act is a sob story of Josie and James, their drunken landlord, as they reveal their love for each other and the impossibility of their union. Fine acting at the Berlind, especially by Kathleen McNenny as Josie. The only quib--she's much too beautiful to be called a big cow.
Jan 27. MRS HENDERSON PRESENTS, starring Judi Dench as the bored rich aristocratic widow who buys an abandoned theatre in London called the Windmill. She hires a Dutch promoter to run it. There are constant arguments and fights over all aspects of the production. The theatre is the only one to remain open for the duration of the war, mainly on the basis of showing naked girls (they were in tabulature, not allowed to move). Very popular with the troops.
Jan 29. Marcel Proust's TIME REGAINED (DVD), directed by Raul Ruiz. Longish summary of Proust's famous Remembrance of Time Lost. For an unProustian viewer, the film leaves much to be desired. A small army of Proust's friends speaks to him, often not introduced. The dialog is witty and ascerbic. The time precedes and parallels the First World War and the ambivalent attitude of Frenchmen to the conflict is brought out clearly, ranging from draft dodging to the heroic. The most moving scene in the film: John Malkovich as the Comte de Charlus uttering the names of his friends who died, apparently in the war.
Feb 4. CYRANO at the Met. Placido was indisposed, but his replacement, Barasorda, performed well in the role of Cyrano, the swashbuckling officer in the guards, who loves Roxane, who in turn loves the young, handsome cadet Christian. Christian, tongue-tied, hires Cyrano to help him woo Roxane. There is an hilarious, somewhat ridiculous scene, in which she hurries through the Spanish lines to visit her lover before he dies in battle. The Spanish, perfect gentlemen, wave her carriage on when she tells them she wants to visit her lover in the enemy lines. The opera is romantic to the point of madness.
Feb 10. THE TESTAMENT OF DR MABUSE (DVD) by Fritz Lang. Filmed in 1933, Lang produced this masterpiece that was banned by the Nazis. Mabuse is the prototype of the modern terrorist. Lang had Hitler as his model; some of the mad ravings of Mabuse, who spends 10 years of his life in a lunatic asylum, were taken from Nazi propaganda. His idea was to terrify people by killings and sabotage, funding these operations by stealing jewelry and drugs. In the end, he claimed, he would build an empire of crime. Modern day Islamic fanatics also come to mind.
Feb 16. THE USUAL SUSPECTS (DVD), directed by Bryan Singer, a Princeton man. We know his parents, who treat his development as a director very casually. A suspenseful and well planned crime thriller. Dead bodies galore. One aspect bothered me. How do you knock off dozens of people on the waterfront with automatic weapons and bombs without police interference?
Feb22. LOST HORIZON, a famed movie of the thirties, watched with the aid of my new projector. Can handle about 3'X4' image now. A real pull-down screen costs over $100. That idiot, Ronald Colman, having found his Shangri-la and his true love, leaves it to placate his disgruntled brother. Then he spends the rest of his life trying to get back. A metaphor for human life.
Mar 9. Watched LAMERICA, a tale set in the aftermath of Communism in Albania. Encredible scenes of rioting among young men who destroy the old order, thinking that they will be welcomed into Italy and given houses and money. The extent and the depths of poverty are overwhelming. Watched the move with my projector, now linked up with a new 5'X5' pulldown screen. Fabulous. Am indeed in danger of becoming a couch potato, as my wife puts it.
Mar 9. The Princeton U student orchestra does the first act of Die Walkure at Richardson. A delightful performance except for the horns and the base trumpet, which gave forth ugly noises now and then, ruining some of the leitmotiefs.
May 7. "Ridiculous Fraud" a play by Beth Henley. Now on a pre-Broadway tryout at the Berlind in Princeton. Set in New Orleans, the play is a complicated tangle of relationships. The principal character, a budding politician, claiming to be an honest man, is bedeviled by his two brothers; one is interested only in hunting ducks, the other is a layabout who leaves his fiancee at the altar. The play cannot be outlined in a few phrases: suffice it to say that this 'honest' man is financed by a shady, violent businessman, makes love to the man's wife, while his own wife falles in love with his duck-hunting brother. An hilarous last act at a New Orleans cemetary. Should be a hit on Broadway.
May 31. QUITE HONESTLY by John Mortimer. An amusing turnabout satire by Mortimer about a woman who joins a group called SCRAP devoted to rehabilitating criminals. She falls in love with her first client, who convinces her that burglary is exciting and fun. Soon she, as the convicted thief of a valuable painting, is in prison and he, now going straight, must visit her. Masterfully laid out.
Jun 1. LORDS OF THE RING. A 3-hour fantasy with a nutty story, taken from Tolkien, but the most gripping photography--vicious battles, majestic mountains, fantastic castles--I've ever seen in a film. Unbelievable!