I did my graduate work in Forest Ecology within a 2.5-million-acre wilderness straddling northern Minnesota and adjacent Ontario. No structures, roads, or motorized vehicles within the wilderness proper, although mostly I operated out of a youth camp on the edge of the wilderness. In any case, I spent half the year for five years with a canoe as my primary mode of transportation. One of the fundamentals of a paddling partnership is that the person in the stern (back seat)…
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The Meetings of Anna 1978
In preparation to rewatch Jeanne Dielman in the theater, I wanted to revisit my favorite of Akerman's films and one of my favorite films of all time, Les Rendez-vous d'Anna, which I've watched three times before and frequently sample in order to study a shot or the nuances of dialogue or the flow of a scene. This review may reiterate points I've made in past reviews but adds many fresh insights.
This film could have just as easily been entitled,…
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Scandal 1989
This is the story of the infamous Profumo Affair that rocked England in the early 1960s. Osteopath Stephen Ward (John Hurt) is a social climber, but lacks the attributes that typically fuel such ascendancy, like looks and money. However, he is charming in his wheedling way, able to ingratiate himself socially and to make himself useful by facilitating connections. He is a connoisseur of feminine beauty and his specialty is enabling comely young women to flourish from the attentions of…
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Rough Magic 1995
Rough Magic doesn't know what era it's from or what genre it's representing. Is is noir? Is it magical realism? Is it just a bland romantic comedy putting on airs of more sophisticated genres? Russell Crowe would be a classic noir hero, except he's a soft-boiled pacifist who lacks the cynicism gene. Bridget Fonda is a post-modern femme fatale, a woman indelibly of her era even when dropped into a plot set forty years earlier. But the film dwells in…
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Carol 2015
Tár Heel. On the heels of my TÁR rewatch, I wanted to appreciate Blanchett's delicate and layered performance in the 2015 Todd Haynes masterpiece.
It was bittersweet (sweetbitter?) to recall my first time watching this film. It was with a guy I was dating at the time, we were seated on his bed watching on a laptop. It may even have been Valentine's Day. And as the film drew to its close, where Therese and Carol are reunited, my heaving…
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Barbie 2023
Like many people, I have a complicated relationship with Barbie. I was one of those little gay boys who liked playing with dolls, but back in the 1960s this was not done. So I got around this restriction by making my own dolls—paper dolls, mainly of Ballerinas and Sea Monsters, which would have to be the title of my autobiography. I also had beauty contests for my extensive collection of marbles, creating castles and thrones from Legos for the winner.…
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