ON THE EDGE

MORE THAN RANDOM MISSES

    An eerie thought occurred as I watched the meteor shower splashing the sky. While it's not for everyone, I'm lucky to live where it is dark, very dark with a minimum of light and light pollution. I joke with my friend Frank, back in beautiful Falls Church Va, that I moved west to watch rockets being launched (Vandenberg AFB) a particularly spectacular sight because of the dark sky. Actually the sky is not dark, it's deep and rich and so full of stars it has dimension and space has a shape and texture. So on a recent evening I'm on the deck watching the zips and streaks and the next night I'm soaking in the spa when it dawns on me how extraordinary it is that we escape being hit by all of these flying icebergs and chunks of rock.

    It's not the kind of thought you want to sneak into your brain before bed time, especially if you tend to be anxious I suppose. There is a ton of stuff flying out there and of course science tells us this blue planet has been nailed before, probably several times. So from this land where you watch rockets, real cowboys, surfers, enjoy the beauty of vineyards and breathe Pacific air it might not be surprising that one begins to contemplate space ship earth and it's delicate fragility in a cosmos that goes beyond the bounds of rational and finite thought. Beyond finite, that presents a problem so we come up with infinite. Where precisely does infinite begin to be infinite, and what does it mean that it never ends?  Actually, don't give either of those much thought or you may find yourself drooling in your shoes. Still we can ponder how lucky we are that our course has, for the last few thousand years at least, kept us from a head on collision with a space brick or mountain.

     I wonder if we spent more time looking up, or wondering about cosmic eventualities, if we wouldn't be a little nicer to each other and to our planet and its limited resources. Greed, malice, hate, anger, war, zealotry and all of that kind of behavior would look pretty barbaric and primitive to someone looking in from way up high. In however long we humans have been jogging around this globe we never get far from acting like lower animals hanging around a swamp. Despite what our better minds and loving souls have done, a lot of homo sapiens act like thugs or brain washed lab animals. I saw a great cartoon that had God sitting and looking through a scope at planet earth.  He says to Jesus or an attending angel-"If it weren't for the dogs, I'd have blown up that place  long ago."

      Well, it seems we got lucky in this last Geminid meteor shower, spared again.  Wonder if we could evolve a bit more or make some personality improvement this Christmas season?

SPEAKING OF WHICH

    Once the kids are no longer in the house a little of the Christmas magic goes with them. Still we pull down the boxes  from the attic and Lana transforms normal to the festive spirit of the season. She's talked about getting a smaller tree and we may do that, someday. The tree is a direct cerebral link to family Christmas' past and especially one on South Ebright Street in Muncie. 
     I must have been six. It was the first year the big time magic of the season etched into my little brain. The scenes are still indelible. Our little two bedroom VA financed home looked out at a street light that during this season seemed always to be wrapped in swirling snow. A real life snow globe! The tree was strung in those big old fashioned colored lights. Mom, no real artist created a Bon ami snow scape scene on the living room mirror and the window in the front door. I thought they were shear beauty. We had a record player, not a high fi, but a little player with speakers attached and I played needle drop over and over and over on Silent Night and Gene Autry's Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Life could never be more perfect, so full of pure joy and wonder.

     So, I still like Christmas trees. When we were first married we could spend hours, canvassing several lots for the "right tree."  Now we go the garden center, look for one in our height range and bingo bango pick a tree with almost no hesitation.

A little crooked? No trouble. A little uneven? No problem.  

  No matter, the noble green is worthy of holding the ornaments and memories and taking its place in the long line of trees in our Christmas dreams. There was a time we  planted live trees. It's rewarding to think of how tall they've become and how many seasons of light and hope they've shared. 

LIVE WATER

  Rainy season has begun and with promise we'll make a dent in the drought.  Here Santa Rosa Creek makes entry into the Pacific on Moonstone Beach in Cambria.

GOOD FLICKS
TRUMBO

       Bryan Cranston as Dalton Trumbo is enough reason to see this film. He's extraordinary, again. But so is the film about the tyranny of the "black list," right wing thought police, cowards and hate mongers and the courage to speak your mind. 

       The bad guys, as they truly were in the dark era, are John Wayne, Ronnie Reagan, Hedda Hopper and weasel politicians on the House Un American Activities Committee.

      Unexpected heroes are Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas and Otto Preminger. This film, based on fact, is full of great performances including, Helen Mirren, Louis CK, Diane Lane, John Goodman and Elle Fanning. Director Jay Roach and screenwriter John McNamara attack the difficult question of how free can and should we be to think and speak. This is an intelligent script and is probably too much for some to think about it. But has history reveals, it should be thought about. As some current politicians demonstrate, maybe it could happen again.
       Trumbo is American history and civics, warts and all.

BROOKLYN

       As Lana told our daughters, "This is the kind of love story I like."

       It is also a great telling of the kind of transitions many of our relatives made, though this time the back drop is 1950's Brooklyn. 

       A splendid cast makes every moment a delight. Saoirse Ronan as the Irish lass is magnificent and those blue eyes are hypnotic. Jim Broadbent is a quiet master as his Father Flood is proof. Julie Walters as boardinghouse manager Mrs. Kehoe and Emory Cohen as the boy friend Tony both fill the screen-Walters with those darting dark eyed looks and Cohen with a smile that shines.

       Sweet, tender and uplifting-Brooklyn is a perfect "date night" film.

      See you down the trail.

      

THE WEEKENDER-GETS MY VOTE & WHAT A CLOUD

ADAPTABILITY & GRACE

      As we endure the final weekend of this campaign year we offer a video of a truly courageous man with real grace. 

ARCHIVE SNAPS

      

 REEL THOUGHTS

 CLOUD ATLAS

    Wachowski sibling films; Matrix-trilogy, V-for Vendetta and now Cloud Atlas have something more than an exotic locus, dynamic story arc, rich characters, tense drama and large action.  Their cinema realities, full of fantasy, have a coiling truth quest that make the films seem to be springboards for discussions of theology, spirituality, meaning and purpose.

    Cloud Atlas is many things, including a venue for extraordinary acting. Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugh Grant, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Susan Sarandon, Bae Doo-na, Keith David, Ben Winshaw and Zhao Xun all play multiple roles and do so extraordinarily well augmented by mind-boggling make-up, wardrobe and special effects departments. 

     The film is a kind of cross between a Rorschack test and a Terrence Malick epic.  You can see many things in a directorial weave that requires you to pay attention. Fascinating, dazzling, intriguing, inspiring and just plain entertaining even if some leave confused while others believe they have been given one more clue to the purpose of life and the meaning of the universe. I leave wanting to talk with my philosophy major buddy and friends who are PhD's in theology. It would be great to have beer with 

Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer. What were they trying to say?

     It is a stimulatingly great 164 minutes that seem to fly by. There are precious few film makers who can hold you there for almost 3 hours, without an awareness of the hours going by. 

A TRIBUTE NOW TO THE 

EFFECT OF THOSE POLITICAL ADS

See you down the trail.

THE WEEKENDER :) WHAT KIND OF IRON?

REEL THOUGHTS

THE IRON LADY

     First, Meryl Streep is absolutely superb, in all of the 

incarnations she portrays of Margret Thatcher.  

        In many ways the film is also superb, but it has a center of gravity that is disturbing and disrespectful.  

      Thatcher was one of the towering characters of the late

20th Century. Obviously she was a barrier breaker and an historic figure.  Regardless of her politics, and people are still divided about that, she deserves a more appropriate lens by which to view her life and influence.

      Screen writer Abi Morgan, whose credits are the movie Shame and TV movies, is inauthentic, disingenuous

and probably a wholesale fabricator in using an increasingly

incapacitated Lady Thatcher as the touchstone from which she launches into memories.  Speaking with her husband's ghost as a point of departure, for example. It is distasteful, contrived and demeaning to a true historic character.

     The director Phyllida Lloyd, a well regarded director in

British Theater, presides over a film that could have been

brilliant had it not been for her and Morgan's penchant to  make it a bit of a cheap English tattler.

     Despite those serious weaknesses in structure, Streep, Jim Broadbent as Dennis Thatcher and Alexandra Roach as a young Iron Lady were all brilliant. The film is well made

except for its orientation of focus.

      Thatcher's life was towering enough to find another through-line or means of story connection.  Seeing her in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease is cheap and in many ways a bit of a shot at her. There is enough known about her, that Morgan and Lloyd didn't have to resort to contriving scenes of

the once elegant lady rummaging around her apartment, disheveled and demented. 

      A personal note-the thing I remember about Margret 

Thatcher, made indelible in my meeting her after she had 

left office, was her supreme command and eloquent use of 

English. She spoke as well as anyone I've known or have seen.

She could be tough, yes, but so well spoken.

      There is a lot about the film that is commendable,

but the horrible contrivance of seeing her as a failing old 

woman is an artistic license that should earn scorn for Lloyd and Morgan. Streep on the other hand becomes more legendary by her uncanny and brilliant work though I wish she had not been called on to play some scenes.

GREAT THATCHER MOMENTS

A Young Iron Lady  1975

Later as PM in the House of Parliament

(Turn up the volume on this)

THE FILM VERSION

Have a good weekend. 

Enjoy the Super Bowl-at least there is a

Manning in it.

See you down the trail.