Stellllaaa!!!!

Today in history, Joseph Conrad was born and Streetcar Named Desire Marlon Brando premiered on Broadway. Let's face it, Tennessee Williams is a lyrical genius, but that play is melodramatic beyond belief. It's Brando's broken, fierce performance that made the play and the 1951 film. We had never seen an actor like him onstage before, raw and painfully real. As for Conrad, his life reads like an adventure story - makes one ponder the question: Does one have to travel, to experience, to explore in order to write about the human condition? You could offer Emily Dickinson as a counter to that - a woman who lived a sheltered existence and never really traveled anywhere of note. Speaking of Brando, I'm dying to see Last Tango in Paris. It was featured on the IFC network the other night - brilliant series about sex on film. The episode was called Indie Sex:Censored, and it's available on Netflix and on Amazon.com. It was extremely educational (and why do I feel naughty just writing that - seriously, I don't mean it that way... really).

I had a steroid shot (yay! I mean, ouch!), and am recovering speedily. I keep thinking of that line from Dune: "Fear is the mind-killer" and if that is so, then stress is surely the body killer! I need to stress less and live better. God, I'm sounding like a self-help book.




Next year, a movie premieres about the strange relationship between Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí called Little Ashes (with he of the mighty cheekbones as Dalí). This got me thinking about other literary or artistic figures I would love to see portrayed onscreen, so I started searching for something with a focus on Wordsworth and Coleridge. The film is Pandaemonium and it centers on the stormy relationship between the two men and on Coleridge's opium addiction. I've added it to my netflix queue, and I'm hoping it will be good. I'm also hoping Little Ashes will be poignant rather than laughable, but we'll see.

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I finally saw Everyone Says I Love You (I'd previously only seen snippets), and I'm glad I did. It was so incredibly charming; I adored it. The cinematography is brilliant, those colors just pop out at you; it's so vivid and delightful. The actors (Ed Norton, Tim Roth, Goldie Hawn, Alan Alda, Natalie Portman, and that's only a fraction of the cast) give beautiful performances, specifically the hilarious Roth as convict Charles Ferry. Oh, and the songs... I think my favorite aspect of all Woody Allen movies is the music. The Dandridge's reminded me so much of my own large family, talking over each other with affable frustration, discussing everything from love to art to politics. I just wish Woody Allen would bring back Diane Keaton as a love interest (zero chemistry between his Joe Berlin and Julia Roberts' character Von). I forgive him, because before the dreaded entrance of Von, he ruefully sings "I'm Through With Love," which is another one of my all time favorite standards.

I love movies :)

My favorite thing about Christmas: All the lobbies in the world begin to play Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Oh, and la flor and I make scary-looking cookies.