Title: The Kid with a Bike
Genre: Film
Grade: A
Notable People: The Dardenne Bothers- Directors
Review: An absolutely beautiful French movie about a young boy left in residential treatment centers and foster care and his quest to connect with his bum of a father; well acted, well shot and moving. Sub- titles.
Title: The Artist
Genre: Film
Grade: A-
Notable People: Director: Michel Hazanavicius. . Actors: Jean Dujardin · Bérénice Bejo· John Goodman · James Cromwell
Review: You’ve heard a lot about this film and all valid. I loved it- but I think you really have to be a fan of old films to really get juiced by it. The acting s magnificent and it is a veritable love song to the cinema. The credits-which look like they came from Casablanca- are worth it alone.
Title: The Sense of an Ending
Genre: Novel
Grade: B+
Notable People: Julian Barnes
Review: my good find Phil- who many of you know- recommended this to me. I’m not sure I liked it as much as he did- found it a bit slow and found the main character to be wearing- but I’m including his review for your consideration “Small beautifully crafted fiction that follows a life in friendships, relationships, marriage, divorce and an untimely death that haunts throughout. A treatise on memory, loss and mystery. Great with lots of pithy notes on life. Read it in a day.”
Title: The Great Flood
Genre: Film/Music
Grade: A
Notable People: Bill Morrison- filmmaker Bill Frizell- score and live performance
Review: this is a traveling show, seen at the Wexner Center, of their collaboration on presenting the extraordinary Mississippi flood of 1927. Morrison uses restored archival footage to paint an incredible picture of the physical, social and cultural devastation and Frizell and is three piece band are nothing short of spectacular. This has limited run around the country. Don’t miss it if you get a chance. Incredibly moving.
Title: The Cat’s Table
Genre: Novel
Grade: A-
Notable People: Michael Ondaatje
Review: I really liked this gentle tale of a young Indian boys’ (dots- not feathers)coming of age tale, crossing the ocean from India to England in the 1950s. Beautifully written with an interesting flash forward element with characters jumping to life off the pages. This is the man who wrote “the English Patient”. What an adventure for a young boy..
Title: For the Good Times
Genre: Album
Grade: A-
Notable People: The Little Willies- with Norah Jones and Richard Julian
Review: wild…Hank Williams meet Ravi Shankar- with Ravi’s little girl, Norah, fronting this pretty unusual collection of musicians making VERY classic country music. Would never have guessed these sounds would come from these people- but it’s pretty damn good.
Title: A Different Method
Genre: Film
Grade: B/B+
Notable People: Michael Fassbinder, Vito Mortensen, Kiera Knightly
Review: wow- a tale filled with analysis, fixation, hysteria, and dueling founders of psycho-babble…what’s not to like. The story of Freud and Jung’s early relationship at turn of 20th century Vienna. Knightly is their famous mega-hysterical, early abused and hyper sexual patient to become the first recipient of Jung’s psychoanalysis. Fassbinder and Mortensen do an admirable job on the competing giants and Knightly is wonderfully exotic and erotic as the object of their fixations. You’d have to see this movie five times to keep up with the dialog and analysis. Mandatory viewing for those of us who have dabbled in the science of the mind.
Title: Old Ideas
Genre: Album
Grade: A
Notable People: Leonard Cohen
Review: Haunting, beautiful, profound…the man is a true mystic. First new material album in over a decade. Classic Leonard- run out and get it.
Title: The Bellini Card
Genre: Novel
Grade: B+
Notable People: Jason Goodwin
Review: OK- so this is a real under the radar series about an Ottoman empire Istanbul detective in the mid 18th century who travels to Venice to acquire a famous and mysterious Bellini painting for the new child Sultan. The detective (Yashir) also happens to be a Eunuch. Loaded with intrigue, history, romance and characters that are a cross between film noir and Dickens. What’s not to like??? This is the third in a series and I ran out to the library to get the first two. Written by an academic form Cambridge… this is way out there. A Eunuch detective????
Title: Barton Hollow
Genre: Album
Grade: B+
Notable People: The Civil Wars
Review: Hauntingly beautiful harmonies from this duo with ace session folk on the side. Very sweet and gentle; lots of melancholia. The songs sound a little bit too much alike for a whole album but worth a listen. The opener is called “20 years” and eerily evokes the late great Gene Clark; if you’re a fan, then at least find this one cut and give a listen. Not may sound like him.
