A little Bit of Heaven

If you don't have anything better to do with a quiet Thursday afternoon and you want a little mindless movie to pass the time, you could watch this one called A Little Bit of Heaven. Kate Hudson and Gael Gabriel Bernal star in the story of a young woman with terminal cancer. Right off the bat, that might deter you, but I found that I needed a little tear-jerker type of a movie today.

Kate is entirely irreverent and charming as Marley. She gets a chance to chat with God (Whoopi Goldberg) and is given 3 wishes when she finds out that she is dying. Marley quickly wishes to be able to fly and for a million dollars, but falls short of making her third wish. A women who is damaged by her parents' bad marriage, she avoids wishing for love.

The movie is sweet and touching but entirely predictable. She is a bit mean to her friends at times as she processes her feelings about dying, but they love and support her anyway. In the end she does fall in love and even resolves her old issues with her parents. The last scene shows Marley sitting at a distance sipping champagne with God while her friends and family celebrate her life at a party/funeral. Wouldn't it be nice if things all resolved so perfectly?

I am not urging you to see this movie - for me it fit the bill on a quiet Thursday afternoon. It was just ok, but if you don't have anything better to do...why not?

back to school

 

19 years ago, this beautiful little girl went to her first day of kindergarten in a cute little dress and ruffled socks. She was nervous and excited, but she let me hold her hand as we introduced her to her teacher. She was brave and didn't cry as her dad and I waved good-bye and left her sitting at her desk. I was not as brave, but I did wait until I got out of her line of view before I began to cry.

Today this beautiful young woman is beginning graduate school. She is brave and strong and doesn't need to hold my hand or help meeting her professors. She is doing it on her own and on her own terms. I  am not crying today, just beaming with pride! Her dad and I will be here if she needs us, but I think she's got it all figured out.

Good luck today, Mandi! The next 3 years of your life are going to be challenging, exciting and ultimately incredibly fulfilling for you because at the end of it all you will be a physical therapist. Yes, Dad and I are VERY PROUD!

"It Chooses You" by Miranda July

This is Miranda...

and here is her book

One of the few benefits of having no choice but to lie around in bed all day, is that it limits your choices of things you CAN do. My choices right now include watching TV/movies, surfing the internet, blogging  or reading from the comfort of my pillow top mattress. I have decided to do more reading.

The first book on my nightstand this week was It Chooses You by Miranda July. Beckie gave me this book last Christmas and although I loved the title and the idea of reading it, it has been sitting on my nightstand gathering dust ever since. Until a couple days ago.

Before I tell you about this book I should tell you a little about Beckie and what she reads and why she thought that I would like this book. I've told you before that she is the writer in the family, but she is also a voracious reader. She reads EVERYTHING. It's not unusual for her to have 2 or 3 books going at a time - maybe more - it's hard to keep up with her! I'd like to think that we gave her this love of reading with all the time we spent at Borders picking out the perfect book and just reading to her. The truth is, she was probably just born to love reading. When she started choosing her own books in middle school and high school, we would share books with each other - "I really think you'll love this one, Mom" - "Try this one, Bec." Some of our favorites were novels - These Dreams by Barbara Chepaitis, and We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates. When she went off to college and I didn't have her urging me to finish a book so that we could talk about it, I kinda let the books accumulate on my nightstand. We tried to do a virtual book club, but it's not the same. A couple of the books she chose for the book club were a little too sophisticated and beyond me. Besides, I had fallen out of the habit of reading on a regular basis - getting caught up in work stuff or going to the movies or keeping a young Wild Thing entertained on the weekend. Poor excuses, I know.

But back to this book. I think Bec picked it for me because she liked it, it's a quick read written in an interesting format, it's autobiographical and the author is a quirky mess. Bec and I share a love of stories in which the main character is indeed damaged, quirky and misunderstood. Miranda July seems a bit of all of these. She's all over the place. Her bio says that she is "a filmmaker, artist and writer." I think some of her issues have to do with the fact that she tries to do and be all these things at once. I can relate to that. She also has a problem with procrastination - something I have had issues with myself - so, more relatability.

This book is about what happened while Miranda procrastinated completing a screenplay. She had the beginning and ending of the screenplay sketched out but was having trouble with the middle...so she procrastinated. One of the things she did to procrastinate was to read through the PennySaver and imagine why people were trying to sell the things listed. On a whim, she began calling the sellers and asking to interview them. When she found a willing participant, she would show up with a photographer and an assistant, ask to see the item(s) being sold, then ask the person about his/her life. Although I believe she started the project as a way to avoid facing her writer's block with the screenplay, it seemed to become a real quest to answer questions in her own life. Her own mortality is something on her mind quite a bit. Here is a short passage about a few thoughts on time, marriage, children and death...

     So all my time was spent measuring time. While I listened to strangers and tried to patiently have faith in the unknown, I was also wondering how long this would take, and if any of it really mattered compared to having a baby. Word on the street was that it did not. Nothing mattered compared to having a baby.
     And now that I had vowed to hang out with this man until I died, I also thought a lot about dying. It seemed I had not only married him, I had also married my eventual death. Before the vows, I might have lived alone, but forever; now I would definitely not be alone and I would definitely die. I had agreed to die, in front of all my family and friends.

A quirky mess. But I understand her. Some of the interviews she did were sad, some touching and some uncomfortable. One of the men she interviewed ended up being in the movie of the screenplay that she did eventually finish.  The movie was released in 2011 and is titled The Future. She also stars in the movie so I do hope to be able to find this little Indie film.

It took me a long time to get to my bottom line on this book, didn't it? Well, of course, I liked it. It's unlike anything I've read in a while - funny at times yet sad in others. I told Beckie that I would love to meet Miranda as if she were an acquaintance of hers. This book is available at Amazon.com but I would be happy loan it to you if you want to read it. I do want it back, though. It was a gift, after all. And besides, I want to read it again after I see The Future.

 Good choice, Bec! Thanks for my Christmas present! I'm really sorry that it took me so long to enjoy it.

Documentary #1: Last Dance

Yesterday, I saw that Beckie put out this request to her facebook friends - "I need a mind-blowing documentary recommendation from anyone, please! (War Stories are out, not that they are not fantastic, this just isn't the mood I am in).." Within 2 - 3 hours 14 people responded with suggestions for 32 documentaries! Wow - great friends!

I made a list of the recommended movies for myself and decided to check if Last Dance was offered on Netflix for instant streaming. Indeed, it was! Here is the description given at Netflix to describe the film-

"Documentarian Mirra Bank goes behind the scenes to capture a contentious collaboration between the directors of avant-garde dance company Pilobolus and children's author Maurice Sendak, who supplies the building blocks for a dance piece lionizing a holocaust legacy. As the two camps face off over aesthetics, what emerges is a fascinating, revelatory look at the creative process, culminating in a poignant rendering of Sendak's vision."


So I watched it last night and found it intriguing. As you know, Maurice Sendak is one of my FINM. He is featured very prominently in the documentary since it is his vision of the holocaust that is translated into a dance piece for the stage. It gives a very telling insight into his mind. I had no idea that this was part of his personal history and now see why there is darkness in his stories. It's more than understandable that this would effect everything he did. Maurice designed the costumes for the dancers going so far as to sketch directly onto the leotards as the dancers wore them. He also provided an illustration that was enlarged and used as the backdrop for the stage.

The dancers in the company are amazing. They were creative, athletic, skilled, beautiful and brave. Two of the dancers ended up completely nude at the end of the piece and I found it startling and compelling to see how willingly they opened themselves up to be that vulnerable on stage  even though the director of the company felt it was the wrong creative choice for the piece. Ultimately, Maurice won this creative battle. Watching the dancers' creative process as they tested their bodies with inventive, physically challenging choreography was fascinating. I will be scouring the internet to see if there are other films about this dance company.

I love that there is at least this one film featuring Maurice Sendak talking and explaining an aspect of his life that I had never known before. I thought my relationship with him was limited to the children's stories that he left for us. Now I will have to see if there is more of him on film somewhere. It's a bit sorrowful to be getting to know him better only now after he is gone.

Thank you for the great suggestion, Lisa - I really enjoyed this film!

Book One: Nicholas St. North

So while I am doing everything I can to get well, (taking all my meds, resting, sleeping, drinking lots of water) I have decided that too much internet and/or TV is counterproductive and helping to make my brain soupy. So, I have decided to read books.

Today I read Nicholas St. North and the Battle of the Nightmare King. It is co-authored by one of my Friends I've Never Met ~ William Joyce and another writer named Laura Geringer. William also did the illuminations aka illustrations. This is a  book for young readers which is a continuation of the series The Rise of the Guardians of Childhood that was begun in the beautifully illustrated children's book I love called The Man in the Moon. I also enjoyed Nicholas St. North.

Pitch - The Nightmare King

This book tells the story of origin of Santa Claus whom we first meet as a rascal and thief named Nicholas St. North. He learns his magic from a wise old wizard named Ombric who lives in a magic tree in a village named Santoff Claussen. Ombric is able to convince Nicholas to use his talents for good. There are other heroic characters like a young girl named Katherine, an evil villain named Pitch and lots of magic. Sometime around Thanksgiving, a movie called The Rise of the Guardians is coming out! I certainly hope that my friend William Joyce is in on the illustrating.

This book is recommended for young readers ages 7 - 11. I haven't read it to Viliamu yet, but I do think he will like it. I liked it and I'm a little older than he is. Just a little... The next book in the series is called E. Aster Bunnymund and the Battle of the Warrior Eggs. Clever, huh? I look forward to reading it but won't be able to until I am able to get to the bookstore and buy the actual book. This series is too good to download to a Kindle.

"I Remember Nothing and Other Reflections"

I love Nora Ephron movies...When Harry Met Sally...Sleepless in Seattle...You've Got Mail....Julie & Julia. In fact, 3 of these are on my list for my all time favorite movies. So, it's no big surprise that I would love her essays as well. Her books are collections of essays which ends up being a great way to write a book. If I were ever to write a book - that's the way I would do it. It is also great for the reader because you can read an essay or two, put the book down for a day or a week, pick it back up and start reading again without feeling that you have to start reading from the beginning again. Perfect for me.

I think Nora is the kind of person that would be a fun friend to have. In fact, I may have to include her in my list of Friends I've Never Met (FINM). FINM are people that I have absolutely no chance of ever meeting either because they have passed on OR they are artists or celebrities BUT they have meant a great deal to me at some point in my life. Here are a few examples: Theodor Geisel, Maurice Sendak, Jim Henson, Karen Carpenter, Dan Fogelberg, Tom Hanks and Oprah. The whole concept of FINM is definitely worthy of it's own blog entry - I will make a note of it and work on that sometime in the future. Anyway, part of what it takes to be one of Laura's FINM is that if I ever were to bump into one of these people, I would not be starstruck. I would just sit down on the sofa with them and have a nice chat. Nora Ephron seems like that kind of person to me.

This is the second collection of essays I've read by Nora. The first one is called I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman. My cousin Kevin gave me this book for my 45th birthday. I remember that I enjoyed it when I read it, but I don't really remember what was in it.  I think I should read it again. I borrowed this book from a co-worker, but I enjoyed it so much I think I might buy a copy. I Remember Nothing is funny, but also has some extremely personal essays in it. I learned a lot about Nora from this book. For instance, Nora was married to Carl Bernstein during the time of All the President's Men. Also, she had a bad divorce from Carl, then wrote about it in a book which was later made into a movie (Heartburn). I also learned that she was good friends with Lillian Hellman.

Funny, interesting stories, witty writing and a quick read. It's well worth your time - it was well worth mine!

Distractions during Down Time

What do I do with my "down time"? Why, I watch movies, of course! Lately, there has been a lot of down time so the TV has been my best friend. I will try to catch you up on what I have seen lately...Thank goodness for Direct TV Pay Per View and Netflix!

This movie was based on the Tuskegee Airmen in WWII. It's a great history lesson for people who don't know these stories. Unfortunately, the acting wasn't all that great and the way the story was told was less than memorable. Cuba Gooding, Jr. is in the film for a couple minutes but it wasn't enough. This movie is out on DVD and I saw it on PPV. You should see it for the sake of history and if you like WWII films.

This movie could have been called "Harry Potter does a Spooky Movie." I love Daniel Radcliffe. He is a very talented young man. He can act, sing and dance. I was looking forward to seeing this movie but to be  honest, I enjoyed all 8 of the Harry Potter films and his Broadway musical more than The Woman in Black. There were some suspenseful scenes and I did jump out of my skin a couple times, but all in all it was not quite a real scary movie...definitely not a classic. It is good for a couple of spine tingles on a night when there really isn't anything else to watch. Sorry, Harry, I mean Daniel. I suppose he is doing things that will distance himself from Harry Potter, but he will never escape that boyish face. I actually found myself looking for the lightning bolt scar (or where it should have been) on his forehead. I even thought to myself that it's no wonder that he wasn't afraid of the woman in black because he had faced Voldemart.

I heard about this movie a few years ago called The Yellow Handkerchief. It's a small Indie film and I had heard good things about it. I LOVE small Indie films and the idea of them, but Ron is less enthusiastic. So more often than not we miss them when they are in the theater - besides that, we usually have to make a trip to San Francisco to catch one of these little gems. It's just not convenient to go to the city at times. Anyway, I was hunting through my queue on Netflix yesterday and found this movie that I hadn't watched yet. It's a little film with quirky, sad characters. William Hurt gave a wonderfully quiet, understated performance as Brett Hanson - he's so good. I always forget what a good actor he is. Maria Bello is May, the woman he is trying to get back to on this journey. The young characters are incidental and just a means to tell the story and to get him from here to there. Much of the story is told in flashbacks as Brett slowly reveals the story of his life to Gordy and Martine (Eddie Redmayne and Kristen Stewart). Anyway, I liked it and I'm glad that I saw it by myself in the comfort of my own bed. This way I didn't have to feel guilty about it if Ron didn't like it.

So, other distractions for my down time include terrible TV, books and Words With Friends...but that's a story for another day.