My Love Affair With Joni Mitchell

  I'm proud to say I finally own every one of Joni's CDs. That must make her my favorite female singer. KD Lang comes close as well as Babs. So why this almost obsession with Joni? Usually when I like a certain author or filmmaker or musician, I will get or see everything that they have out there. So this explains my form of obsession/compulsive disorder. She strikes a sympathetic cord in me that I can't really explain at this time, maybe later. I admire her as an evolving artist who fearlessly ventures in new directions without concern of sales or popularity.  She may have lost fans along the way but picked up new ones and kept the faithful who continue to explore her music. 

     I was a fan in the 60's when she arrived on the music scene offering her 'hippy-type' folk songs of love and yearning. I thought she was above the rest with her haunting lyrics that stuck in your head and that high trilling, thrilling voice at times. For some unknown reason I lost interest in her during the 70's. I wasn't   aware she changed her style, making her lose radio air time as her later, mature work was considered 'uncommercial.'   Then as we moved away from vinyl to cassettes and to CDs, she became more distant.

      About six months ago I was browsing through the CD racks at Borders and noticed this large section of her music. I saw all these titles of her later work unfamiliar to me as well as new compilations featuring them. Since I don't own any of her CDs, I started with Dreamland, a nicely packaged collection spanning her career and featuring her paintings, another of her talents unknown to me. I've given this CD as gifts.  Then I followed this with two more collections of later songs, The Beginning of Survival and Songs Of A Prairie Girl. If you purchase all three, you have the 'Best' of Joni. Or so I thought.....

     Listening to these last two compilations reveals the growth of an artist from folk music to different genres:  jazz, rock, oldies. others.  This led me to acquire the rest of her CDs on shopping trips and as requested gifts. She's never afraid to try new forms as a composer, musician, and singer.  Listening to all of her CDs in chronological order is an aural journey into countless pleasures. . She never disappoints, she only amazes you in her daring. 2002's Travelogue is a symphonic reworking of her songs featuring her deeper but still poignant voice weathered from years of cigarettes. She's won many awards over the years and you can learn all about her on her website: http://jonimitchell.com/    She's profiled in a new book, Girls Like Us: Carol King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon - And The Journey of A Generation, an upcoming acquisition for my obsession.

      if you only want another or one single collection, try Hits featuring her well known songs. It's a good starting point and will tempt you to follow it with the facetiously- titled Misses, a collection of lesser known but adventurous works. For a DVD concert, Painting With Words & Music is a must.

     Composer, musician, singer, painter...  She does it all and so well for over 40 years. She admired by her peers. Here's her being interviewed by Elvis Costello, a long time fan: http://www.elvis-costello.com/news/2004/10/elvis_costello_interviews_joni.html   Joni has been an inspiration to many including Herbie Hancock whose tribute to her, River: The Joni Letters, won the Grammy for Best Album of the Year.  She also won a Grammy for an instrumental on 2007's Shine.

      For my 59th birthday, I received, upon request, a four CD boxed set called The Geffen Years. Here's four albums from 1982 -1991 that were not well received at the time but after hearing them, I don't know why. It's an expensive collection my wife found for half price and worth every penny to me. Again each song demonstrates her marvelous artistry and her notes offer background to each one. It's time for a serious reappraisal of her later music.

  If you want to know more about Joni, ask away!

'The Counterfeiters' Movie

Karl Markovics plays a Jewish prisoner asked to assist a Nazi scheme in The Counterfeiters.  Watch the trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/the-counterfeiters/30930/main

 I forgot that this German movie won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. I've forgotten what were the other choices but I recall that France's La Vie En Rose wasn't nominated and should have been and won over this one. Rose deserved its two Oscars for Best Actress and Makeup in recreating the tragic life of Edith Piaf so there was more than consolation for me in those awards. However my preference for the French film is not to detract from my admiration for The Counterfeiters.

Usually movies about concentration camps are emotionally draining in their portrayal of brutality and this one comes close.  What's different here and optimistic (for a lack of a better term) is how a talented group of criminals uses their skills to survive and the Nazi officer who treats them with special care because they are needed to fulfill his plan. The Nazis want to use these criminals to forge British pound notes and American dollars to finance their war effort and ruin their enemies' economies. The plot is based on a true story you can read about on the film's website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/thecounterfeiters/

What's interesting here is the use of Tango music in this kind of movie. Since I'm a fan of Tango, I can see how it's used to make a point. There's so much give & take in playing and dancing Tango, it's used here to echo the symbiotic relationship between the prisoners and their captives. Each desires something of the other and how long they can continue this dance is what drives the story. The Nazis want their fake money and the prisoners want to stay alive and know they will live longer if they stall making it, either by poor work or sabotage. Pride, courage, deception, and teamwork must dance in unison for survival. Whose toes get stepped on is what holds your interest in this absorbing and well made film. If you're familiar with the horrors of the Nazi years, this movie will ring true as well as being a first rate drama about people making choices to survive under the worst of conditions.

 

The Counterfeiters will remind you of Schinder's List in a few ways and that's not a bad thing.  For a thoughtful review, read: http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/02/22/movies/22coun.html

 

I stand corrected by a co-worker about this movie. It's actually an Austrian film and Austria's first win for a Foreign Film Oscar.

'The Bank Job' movie

Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows in “The Bank Job,” a fast-paced, larcenous romp inspired by a 1971 burglary in London.  Watch the trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/the-bank-job/32256/main

Watching the trailer gives you the impression that this movie is a British comic caper about an inept gang of bank thieves but it's more than that. In fact the film turns nasty near the end as the gang realizes they are in over their heads.  Will they get away and with their ill-begotten goods is the question. I thoroughly enjoyed this small but well-crafted film and so will you if you're not adverse to hearing English accents and slang.

 

Jason Statham of The Transporter movies leads the gang. Here he's not dependent on fight scenes but still has his sardonic sense of humor.  His character is more rounded than usual and a pleasure to watch. The rest of the cast fills their roles nicely including David Suchet of TV's Hercules Poirot fame. I didn't recognize him at first because he looked completely different than Agatha Christie's detective or as the villain in Airforce One.  His voice kept nagging at me until the cast was listed only during the end credits. This time he plays a porn king who has his own agenda in retrieving the contents from his pilfered safe deposit box. Let's not forget the lovely Saffron Burrows who is blackmailed into hiring Statham and his friends but has her own plans.

 

Everyone is out for something in this highly entertaining movie. Who will be the winners and losers is what keeps you caring about their future as events collide at the conclusion of The Bank Job.

'Vantage Point' Movie

From left, Forest Whitaker, Dennis Quaid and Matthew Fox in the thriller Vantage Point.   Watch the Trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/vantage-point/26378/main

This movie is doing well at the box office. It's filling a void for fast-paced action/mysteries and also wants to play tricks with the viewer. The gimmick here is that the plot unfolds through multiple retellings of the same events. Dennis Quaid plays a Secret Service agent who fails to protect the president during an assassination attempt and races to find those behind it. Everyone is a suspect but who are the real perpetrators hiding in the ensuing confusion following the attempt. Nothing is as it seems as he learns while unraveling events with the help of video cameras and eye witnesses.

 

Here's where the gimmick overpowers the plot. Each retelling begins further in time than the last one and also propels it further, almost like leap frogs. but we learn more about the previous one. At first the repetition of  these flash backs became tiresome as the audience groaned a bit, including me. I read about this happening in theaters so it wasn't only us. But eventually the filmmakers wisely dropped them for real time as the story raced to the frantic conclusion.  All the previous events tie together, perhaps a bit too neatly, for a suspenseful chase scene that made you forgive the earlier editing hocus-pocus.

 

Performances were competent for this kind of movie and the plot was intriguing if you stuck with it. This movie demands your full attention as a lot of plot twists are crammed into this no frills story. Perhaps the only fault with the movies is that you're not allowed to think about what happens; the filmmakers do it all for you. But this shouldn't stop you from enjoying Vantage Point.

'Perfect Crime' Play

 

We support local theater and lately we've seen a few plays at the New Britain Rep:  http://nbrep.org/    Last night we saw a production of a murder mystery called Perfect Crime that's still running Off Broadway in NYC. I checked the play's website to learn about its history: http://www.perfect-crime.com/   This show has been running since 1987 and my first question is why??

 

Following the plot was a challenge since the events are more confusing than mysterious. If you ask me or my wife to offer a plot summary, you're out of luck. This story about a celebrity psychologist/author who is accused of murdering her husband who appears to be still alive is so convoluted and improbable to the point of tiresome that we didn't care what happened when the play was over except to be glad it was over. Her character kept shifting back & forth from dictatorial predator to frightened victim to where you didn't know why. The police inspector sent to investigate the husband's death is unbelievable and more so as he falls for her. If he's supposed to be acting dumb like Peter Falk's Columbo to smoke out the guilty, he comes across as just plain dumb. All the pieces of this yawn fest come together at the end but accomplished in an unrealistic and unconvincing manner. I've seen better and mercifully shorter episode's of  TV's Murder She Wrote and for free.

 

How this play received good reviews is the real mystery here. Years ago we've seen playwright Warren Manzi act in Sam Shepard's Curse of the Starving Class at the Yale Rep in New Haven and possibly on Broadway as the lead in Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy, that role will be confirmed when we locate the original theater program in the basement.  As for this production, the cast & crew did their best and were given a round of perfunctory applause by the audience who appeared to be as befuddled and eager as us to leave. Let's just say this was a good production of a bad play. The only crime perpetrated here was on the paying audience.

 

 

'Definitely, Maybe' or passing The Mom Test

Abigail Breslin & Ryan Reynolds in  Definitely, Maybe.

Watch the trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/definitely-maybe/26919/main

 As a rule, I usually wait for romantic comedies and romances to come to DVD.  I'm not knocking these so-called Chick Flicks but I prefer to see other types of movies like action and sci-fi/fantasies on the big screen where you can better appreciate the visuals. These smaller films play fine on my 32" TV where screen size is not important.

What is a Mom Movie? Since we take my 89-year-old mother to a movie on Saturdays, we find one that will please her as well as us. She also likes action comedies and strong dramas but nothing too bloody or with graphic sex scenes. We took her to see Definitely, Maybe and we enjoyed it as much as her.

 

Ryan Reynolds, who was pretty funny in Blade 3 and Waiting, has his self-deprecating sense of humor toned down here as a divorcing dad rehashing his past romances to his persistent, inquisitive daughter played by Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin. She wants to hear about all of his former women but he makes her guess which one turned out to be her mother. And we wait too until the end as most of the film is played out in flashbacks during the Clinton years.

 

And it's a nice wait too as the drama and humor unfolds with even balance. Seeing Reynolds in a more sympathetic role seems out of place but proves rewarding. Whether this will lead to more similar roles shall be seen. All the actresses playing his three loves offer fine support as they blend into the story as well as Kevin Kline who almost steals the movie playing a garrulous, soused college Professor and lover of Rachel Weisz who's torn between the two men. Isla Fisher, who was so good in The Wedding Crashers, is even better here as another woman providing the voice of common sense in Reynolds' life. And Breslin is appealing in a precocious but not cloying way as his daughter whose questions set the plot in motion.  She almost melts your heart with her wide-eyed innocence.

 

Definitely, Maybe passed the Mom Test and I have to admit I was a little weepy at the conclusion. No cheap sentiment here. Just sweetness without saccharine and a good time for all. For a thoughtful review, go to: http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/movies/14maybe.html?ref=movies

 

 

'There Will Be Blood' Movie

Watch the trailer:  http://movies.aol.com/movie/there-will-be-blood/25014/main

I don't know where to start in my praise for this extraordinary film. I read reviews and articles in anticipation of seeing it.  There Will Be Blood is winning many awards and will be a heavy hitter for the Oscars. Everything goes together here in this absorbing masterpiece: Acting, photography, sets, costumes, and an eerie music score that will sometimes remind you of Bernard Herrmann, especially the scratchy strings from Psycho.  Did I say masterpiece?  Yes indeed!  I don't use that term lightly and I will swear to it.

 

Every good thing you've read or heard about TWBB is on the money. If Daniel Day Lewis doesn't get another Oscar, I'll be shocked. He commands every scene as he's onscreen most of the time.  He's very choosy in his roles and goes for long periods without work. This part was worth his wait and ours' too. The other actors including Paul Dano are very good and all fit into the director's mosaic. I don't know how Paul Thomas Anderson accomplished this amazing feat but he surely deserves an Oscar too. The film slowly builds with exquisite details still reverberating in my head. I'm still in awe of this overpowering film and I don't think I can say it any better than in the following review:  http://movies.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/movies/26bloo.html?em&ex=1201842000&en=6976edbdec852973&ei=5087%0A