My Doctor's Appointment Yields Expected Non News and So I Write About it and Life

Yours truly...not recently.

"Actually we're going to use this room." The very short stout nurse directed me to one of the examining rooms in the urologist's office. I "actually" entered the room and sat down. Upon greeting me she'd asked "how are you today?" Now that she'd successfully  directed me to a room and seen that I "had a seat" she posed the question a second time "how are you today?" I gave the same response both times: "Fine." I wanted to be consistent lest she thinks that perhaps I was trying to deceive her. One supposes it's a clever way to trip a spy.

The very short stout nurse then took my blood pressure. No matter what you see a doctor for even if its just to settle a bill a nurse will take your blood pressure. I was then informed that the doctor would be in to see me in a moment. I settled in for the long wait that is customary when sitting in an examination room. The doctor (a urologist) broke with custom and entered within a minute.

The urologist greeted me warmly commenting on how nice it was to see me again after so long a time. I'd only been in his office once before and that four or five year ago so I had my doubts that he really remembered me. I didn't remember him.

I'd been referred because during my annual physical something seemed a little off during my prostrate exam. It was better safe than sorry and I shouldn't worry but let's have an expert check it out. I was 98% sure that my prostate was just fine. The urologist quickly informed me that the blood work taken after the physical had shown no signs of anything. Now I was 99% sure. We also went over the symptoms list and found that I had none. I knew that going in. This was all waste of a copay.

Despite the total lack of concern on anyone's part -- least of all mine -- I was to be probed. Down went my trousers and in went the doctor's finger. Into my own personal rectum. Let me say this with absolute certainty -- I received a thorough exam. That finger was twisting and turning and digging and poking. I think it made it half way up my stomach. If there was anything to find he'd have found it.

He found nothing. 100%. But wait let's check the urine too. Pee in the cup time. I remember the first time I peed in a cup for a doctor was when I was a young lad. Unclear on the concept and needing to wizz anyway I filled said cup to the brim. I forget the nurse's subsequent comment but do recall she commented. This time I gave them just a wee bit -- pun not originally intended but having been observed approved of.

Nothing in my urine. I was already at 100%. Doc wanted me to come back in six months for another probing. I said sure thing though may just give it a miss. I'm the first to call a doctor when something is amiss and never miss my annual but I don't go in for doctor appointments because well maybe even though now there's nothing better be sure who knows what can happen.

I have enjoyed remarkable health all my life (physical that is my mental and emotional states have been rather a mess as anyone who reads this blog is no doubt aware). This is a matter of good genes good habits and most importantly extraordinary luck. My poor brother  -- who was twice the man I'll ever be -- had absolutely rotten luck and suffered mightily for years before dying too young.

My 27 odd years as a teacher (some have been very odd indeed) have caused me to suffer innumerable colds and occasional bouts of the flu but that's been about the size of it. Teaching has in the past caused some stress but that has manifested not in physical ailments but in long periods of stark raving lunacy. Okay I exaggerate....A little.

So anyway I'm a lucky bastard but one learns in life that luck can turn against you rather quickly. So far so good. I really got a sense of how lucky I am on Christmas Eve as I held at various times two baby boys each a grand nephew courtesy of my nieces. I also got to chase and be chased by my four year old grand niece. I was surrounded by my two daughters the wife the two aforementioned nieces and two nephews my sister-in-law and three significant others one of whom is a full fledged husband. And a really cool dog. We had a visit from a jolly fat man from northern Finland too. There was much good food laughter song story telling and general joviality. Gifts were exchanged the best of which was the company. This is how it should be.

I hear people complain constantly about their families and their dread of family gatherings. I honestly do not know what this is like. That is not to suggest that the family experience has been entirely smooth. To the contrary. As I've mentioned here before my dear old mom went off her rocker and abused alcohol in the bargain. It took decades of therapy but I'm over it. Not really but I'm about as square with the whole deal as a person can expect to be. I've actually forgiven the old dame and can think fondly of her.

So I've had some knocks and at this stage in my life I'm grateful for each one. I have a friend who claims to have had no crisis no major health problems no bad times. He is highly successful man with a wonderful family and I've little doubt that he has lived an idyllic life. How boring. He is a fine fellow but I can't but wonder how a person grows and comes to understand life without experiencing some powerful adversity. It's like a high school sports team that never loses. Kind of nice but at some point you need to experience the sting of defeat as part of your learning process. Dealing with defeat is essential to developing character (god I hope that didn't sound too hokey). After all it is not what life does to you but how you handle it -- good bad or ambiguous -- that is important.

So I don't have prostate cancer and never seriously thought I did. Maybe some day. Maybe something worse like the pancreatic cancer that felled a good friend. Maybe an accident. By definition they can happen to anyone. Maybe not. Maybe I'll grow really really old. I think I'll stick around and find out.

Say Hey Have a Merry Christmas

Not only is Santa black, he's Willie Mays.

Portrait of an Artist as An Angry Man - Inside Llewyn Davis

I grew up with an image of folk singers as kind hearted people wise and noble singing of peace this land being made for you and me and the eternal hope of love. Folk singers were Pete Seeger Peter Paul and Mary and Joan Baez. They were sweetie pies who strummed guitars and slept under huge comforters with wild flowers on them. They weren't rich but they weren't poor and performed for charity and stood for equal rights and an end to war (where have all the flowers gone?). None of em were a wit like the titular character of the Coen Brothers' latest film Inside Lleywn Davis. So thank you Joel and Ethan Coen for shattering another one dimensional stereotype.

Oscar Isaac with a Jewish sounding name plays the half Italian half Welsh Davis and so of course Isaac is half Cuban and half Guatemalan. Welcome to the United Nations of Coen. Isaac had a few roles of little or no note until channeling the fictional 1961 folk singer struggling to....To what? Be famous? Rich? Pay the bills? Practice his art? Make it from one day to the next? What does he want anyway and what exactly will he do with it when he gets it? Anyone's guess. He  doesn't really think of the future -- a point made to him in no uncertain terms by a "friend" Jean (Carey Mulligan). This is a friend he may or may not have impregnated but certainly boinked. It's odd to think that they were intimate because the foul-mouthed Jean does little else then tear him up one side and down another. Maybe he deserves it. Jean lives and sings with Jim (Justin Timberlake) who plays it perfectly bland. Hats off and waving to Mulligan for taking such an unglamorous role and doing so well with it; she may be a star but she's an actress first.

So this Davis fellow is --  as they say -- down on his luck. Way down. He's got no home no winter coat no money and no partner. His former partner having taken a swan dive off a bridge. Demise met. Oh yeah and he's stuck with a cat. Or cats. There is an issue with one and its scrotum or the lack thereof (hey no spoilers here). The cat(s) is no superfluous character(s). We have a scene on a moving subway train from the subjective point of view of the feline (thanks to Germano for reminding me) that few others besides the Coens would attempt let alone pull off.

This is the Coen brothers and there are no throw away characters including those that are fur bearing creatures. Minor characters are fully realized individuals vivid and interesting or grotesque or amusing or wonderful but never just attached to the furniture. Certainly not Roland Turner (John Goodman) a rotund...what the hell is he anyway? The beauty of a lot of Coen brothers films is that there are so many characters that defy easy description. You can't just stick a word to them. Like Turner and his driver and oh by the way their drive to Chicago with Llewyn -- whatta trip man! Not to mention Llewyn's trip right the hell back to New York and what a short strange trip it was. But the point started out being characters that have well characters and that my friends is part of the richness of this film.

But when it comes to characters Llewyn Davis is in every scene. He carries his despondency and bitterness and anger and hopefulness with him. He's always moving forward maybe from crashing in this pad or the other but he's not idle. He is the quintessential struggling young artist. One without a day job. They are all over the world and have been for decades. Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of them. They have dreams of success and for many success is requisite because it will allow them to practice their art. The true artist wants room and space and time to create. To sing to write to direct to paint to act to joke to play. Making a living at it is not an end to itself but the vehicle to allow that creativity to bloom over and over again. Alas it's a cruel world the competition fierce and that fire that keeps you going can burn out so easily. Perseverance baby it's the key ingredient in talent. So watch Llewyn struggle with life and art simultaneously. (Maybe they're the same thing. I dunno.)

Of course he's dealing with anger. Why shouldn't he? Why not heckle and berate and be surly and cuss like a sailor? How do people deal with rejection and subterfuge and disappointment without getting unholy pissed off? Plus in a narrative structure it makes him more interesting than the scrubbed public images of folk singers.

The Coens are nothing if not meticulous. They created the early '60s here just as they create the '80s in No Country For Old Men (2007) the '70s in A Serious Man (2009) the '50s in The Man Who Wasn't There (2001) the Old West in True Grit (2010) and so yeah they're versatile too no two films alike. But by god they're good. Inside Llewyn Davis is a case in point. You remember that tired ole review cliche: "I laughed I cried it became a part of me." Yeah I do too....

I won't spoil the ending of Llewyn Davis because then I'd be spoiling the beginning and I don't know what that means but it all comes out to something and if you ever figure it out let me know.

Anyway I enjoyed the hell out of the movie.

Way Way Back with Dallas Buyer's Big Parade in Nebraska -- Another Four Films I've Seen Recently One of Which is Quite Old

The Way Way Back. Caught this one via my friends at Netflix who keep sending me DVDs to watch. This film centers around a young teen and we are all familiar with how badly these types of movies can go. They are often riddled with cliches one dimensional stereotypes and toilet humor. TWWB manages to almost completely avoid all of these pitfalls. Duncan (Liam James) is a fairly typical 14 year old who is absent easy charm athletic ability or dashing good looks. His parents are divorced and he's off for a Summer with mom (Toni Collette) her obnoxious boyfriend (Steve Carrell) and boyfriend's older teen daughter (Zoe Levin). He's not thrilled about the excursion doesn't like the boyfriend and is disliked by the daughter. Duncan -- one could say --  is not a happy camper. There is a comely girl next door (AnnaSophia Robb) who doesn't run with the usual crowd and is intrigued by the sullen Duncan. Eventually Duncan befriends a waterpark employee (Sam Rockwell) and gets a job at the park and matures and exposes the philandering boyfriend and befriends the girl and parities and wins mom's attention. There are a couple of plot contrivances and a few empty characters but there is much to admire in a film that neither over reaches nor settles for easy laughs. Rockwell makes every movie he's in better for his appearance and is a main selling point to a film that I can warmly recommend.

Dallas Buyers Club. We are now relieved of any doubts -- Matthew McConaughey is a terrific actor. He gives a transcendent performance as Ron Woodruff a hard partying good ole boy who contracts AIDS in 1985 when the disease is just becoming part of the public consciousness. He is like all his cronies a raging homophobe and faces immediate "accusations" from his "friends" about how he contracted the virus. Woodruff angrily fights back both against the questioning of his "manhood" and against the disease that a doctor tells him well end his life in 30 days. DBC is the true story of courage about one man's transformation and also about the evils of big pharmaceutical companies and their long time partner the US FDA. Jared Leto is also magnificent playing the cross dressing gay man who is in league with Woodruff's efforts to not just supply himself but other AIDS victims with the proper -- though non FDA approved -- meds. DBC is a powerful reminder of the early days of the AIDS crisis and the fear and homophobia it inspired along with the inept response of the government.

The Big Parade (1925).  Unlike the other films mentioned in my recent posts this one is not a recent release. I suppose in geological time it is being a mere 88 years old. It finally finally finally finally came out in DVD a few months ago and I finally got around to watching my copy yesterday. Masterpiece. King Vidor is one of the best directors many of you have never heard of and The Big Parade alone is proof. The Big Parade is an epic World War I love story which is like saying The Godfather is a gangster film. If I were to write a post listing my favorite all time film scenes the parting lovers scene from The Big Parade would certainly make the cut. The American soldier Jim (John Gilbert) along with the rest of the battalion has been called to the front. His French country girl lover Melisande (Renee Adoree) desperately searches for her Jim as the trucks roll down the road. They meet and their extended parting kisses bespeak all the longing fear and desperation that war brings crashing into romance. And there is always about them movement the forward march of the men and machinery of war. We see the long line of vehicles and troops making its way to battle and the lone figure of Melisande left behind so vulnerable and alone in the middle of the frame. Dropping at last to her knees. This is the central magic of a magnificent film.

Nebraska. The great middle of America. The flat lonesome plains. Small bars with sad men in tractor caps chugging long necked buds. Families in cheap old furniture staring numbly at TV screens trying to recall what sort of car Uncle Ray drives. Economic monotony trucks bad restaurants long highways and simple values. (Fittingly Nebraska was shot in black and white.) Not fertile ground for cinema unless a prehistoric monster emerges from a prairie dog's hole or a spaceship lands in Topeka. But director Alexander Payne combines dashes of the sensibilities of the Coen brothers Ingmar Bergman and Aki Kuarismaki to create one of the best films of the year. Bruce Dern plays Woody Grant a most senior citizen determined to go from his home in Billings Montana to Lincoln Nebraska to claim a million dollar prize that everyone else can see he has not really won. Will Forte was the inspired choice to play Woody's son David who gets sucked into his dad's quixotic journey. Best known for his tenure at Saturday Night Live Forte is just the right amount of dead pan and just the right amount of exasperated. But June Squibb as the long suffering wife is an absolute scene stealer. Nebraska is about aging its about family it's about father-son relationships it's about the heartland it's about how we love or fail to. 

The Great Frances 12 Years the Warmest Color -- Four New Films I've Seen Recently

La grande bellezza (The Great Beauty).  Garish blaring and color and richness and middle aged sensuality and decadence not so divine. Oh yes and Rome Rome Rome. The madness the sadness and the heavy duty gladness of good living. Paolo Sorrentino's film is full of stunning audacious visuals. It is full of ideas. It is full of nods to Fellini -- especially to La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963).  It is full. A rich parade of delights. Wild party nights. Watching this film is like bathing in chocolate while reading Camus. The protagonist is Jep (Toni Servillo) a 60 plus year old journalist who knows and is known by everyone. He is forever hosting parties or going to them. Great meals great dances great discussions and women always women. This is Fellini for the 21st century and the good news is that while it is an homage The Great Beauty is clearly its own film with its own vision -- whatta vision! -- and its own ideas. There's not much more one could ask for from a film. Also it is important to note that you should definitely make a point of staying for the closing credits which are accompanied by a beautiful boat ride. I suppose that's fitting because this is as much as journey as it is anything else. A journey it should be noted through Rome which is as much a star of the film as is Servillo.

12 Years a Slave. Slavery in North America is a difficult subject to wrap one's mind around. I know this from having taught it for many years and studied it for many more than that. It was a brutal utterly heartless savaging of human rights and amazingly it was carried out for the first eight decades of that grand experiment in democracy called the United States. 12 Years does an admirable job of shining a lot on this horror particularly in light of how Hollywood has steered clear of the subject. This film serves as an antidote to the odious sanitization of chattel slavery done by the likes of Gone With the Wind. Whippings rapes horrendous working conditions the selling of children from parents are all part of this story as they are to the story of slavery itself. Chiwetel Ejiofor stars as Solomon Northrup a free and successful family man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 1840s. The movie is truth. It is a true story that tells some great truths about the peculiar institution and some peculiarities of the human condition. There is a horrible sadness pervasive throughout the film but the storytelling is so rich and powerful and the characters so fully realized that it is never depressing. Especially as one remembers that Northrup's servitude lasted the 12 years the title suggests.

Frances Ha. I loved this movie despite an overwhelming desire to call it quirky (films that rely solely on their quirkiness end up looking cheap or silly or both). Perhaps more than anything else it can be lauded  for its realism. Frances is 27 years old struggling with friendship romance career and paying the rent in modern day New York city. She is bright and at least moderately talented but makes questionable choices (don't we all?) as she bounces from one situation and one address to another. If Hollywood had had its way this would have been turned into a romantic comedy. It didn't  and it isn't. Noah Baumbach directed. According to IMDb he "shot the movie in black and white to 'boil it down to its barest bones' and create an immediate 'history' and 'a kind of instant nostalgia.'" Good choice well done. Greta Gerwig is Frances and she is in every scene. Suffice to say that Ms. Gerwig is fully capable of carrying a movie on her back if need be. There is an endearing quality to her that stems largely from her being so natural and interesting a person. Easy to root for and identify with. Frances Ha nimbly steers from the choppy waters of quirky and settles into a combination of charming and authentic.

Blue is the Warmest Color. Anyone with a passing interest in current cinema is no doubt aware that this provocative French film from Abdellatif Kechiche includes several graphic sex scenes between co stars Lea Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos. I am unambiguous about my appreciation for the comely nude female form. And yes of course I mean when presented tastefully. There is a risk that such scenes can be a distraction. Here they are not gratuitous. After all the two women are lovers for much of the film and showing them acting our their love is only fitting. I found myself admitting that the scenes were erotic and enjoyed them for themselves as well as how they helped the narration. Blue focuses on Adele who at the start of the film is but 16. She is struggling with sexual identity which is part of the mad brew of the late teen years. She meets the older more experienced Emma and it is virtually love -- not to mention passion -- at first sight. We follow Adele for several years through the ups and downs of this and other relationships. It is a rewarding journey with or without frolicking naked women.

The Ice Storm a Brilliant Look at the the 1970s Suburbia and When the Twain Did Meet

Joyless. Numbly going through the motions of suburban life in the 1970s. Barely understanding or caring about events shaping the country or the world. Not thinking not feeling and in fact avoiding the chore of exploring the self the act of being.

Plastic existence with the numbing drone of the television or of the softening effect of cocktails. Huge houses with too many rooms and too few ideas. Surrounded by nature outside and things -- so many things -- inside.

But it was comfortable. There was money and creature comforts so one could survive it all. There were also other people and the empty interactions that were supposed to bring community but only highlighted the isolation.

No film has ever captured the Seventies or suburban living and certainly not the meeting of the two as well as Ang Lee's brilliant The Ice Storm (1997). You will see the best minds of your generation destroyed by ennui.

The Ice Storm is set over a Thanksgiving in 1973 in a Connecticut suburb of New York. Kevin Kline and Joan Allen portray the principle mom and dad. With Tobey Maguire and Christina Ricci playing their children. Other young actors in the film include Elijah Wood and Katie Holmes in her film debut.

Richard Nixon is a sort of featured player appearing in archival footage as Watergate is starting to sink his presidency. Only the 14 year old Wendy (Ricci) seems interested in his web of lies. Her older brother Paul (Maguire) is in prep school and is more interested in a beautiful classmate (Holmes) and getting high and reading comic books.

Part of the brilliance of The Ice Storm is how utterly nonjudgmental it is. Lee's camera captures the stark beauty of the homes and landscapes and of the ice storm itself but it is otherwise objective in following the characters. We thus have neither sympathy nor antipathy for anyone. We merely observe. Having been around in the Seventies and having spent some time (thankfully not very much) in the suburbia of that time I can attest to the accuracy of what we see. Not just the physical look -- which is spot on right down to the tacky clothes -- but the feel of the time and place. Looking back it seems a sort of faux modernism. It was a prosperous time in which one working parent could support a family with a house and two cars. There was a comfortable sort of intellectualism that was more focused on the superficiality of reforming government and weeding out corruption than with challenging conventions or producing great art. The conformity of the 1950s was dead but so too was the spirit of rebellion of the 1960s. Shlock was in whether it was trashy disco music garish clothes bushy sideburns obnoxious game shows or prefab sports stadiums.

Kline and Allen play Ben and Elena Hood. Whatever passion that their marriage once had is long gone so Ben is having an affair with the wife (Sigourney Weaver) of a good friend and neighbor. Elena feels purposeless which perhaps explains why she shoplifts at the local drugstore. Their precious daughter stares numbly at the TV and willingly allows the neighbor boys to see her vagina. Their forever bemused son comes home for Thanksgiving though he leaves the following night for an unsuccessful  date with the girl of his dreams.

That night there is a terrible ice storm a huge cocktail party that morphs into the saddest key party you'll ever see and a tragic death. Even in death there is no great wave of emotion. There is more an emptiness of a person lost which is odd given the emptiness of the lives we see. There is also a lack of desperation almost an acceptance of going through the motions. Taking the next step doing the next thing. A death of conscience and consciousness. The children at once detect the meaninglessness of it all and participate in it. The easy affluence has sucked everyone into its vortex.

Yet this is a remarkably watchable film. The characters are still engaging and the settings striking. Lee created a world that is familiar accessible and in its own way entertaining.

In The Ice Storm no one gets what she or he wants. Whether everyone gets what they deserve is entirely the viewer's call. I don't know exactly how "rated" The Ice Storm is but it can't be rated high enough.

Another Saturday Night of Musing and Mentions of Dustin in Straight Time and Mitchum as Eddie Coyle

Listening to Bill Evans Time Remembered. Sweetest piano music. Keys caressed and from this soft beautiful sounds that go well on a Saturday.

It’s cold out but Bay Area cold. Not Finland or Canada cold. Warm inside. Heater on. Comfortable.

Columbia University. Watched a bit of their football team’s loss to Cornell on the telly this morning. The Lions are winless. I care because mom went there. So did Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. Ginsberg’s mom suffered from insanity just as mine did though presumably my mother’s mental illness didn’t strike until after her time at Columbia. I don’t know I wasn’t there. I came along later. Kerouac’s mother was not insane but he himself was an alcoholic. Like my mom. Poor ma. Made much of my childhood and teen years hell and I hated her for it for decades. Took a long time to realize that she meant no harm. Not her fault. Hard to assign blame in such situations. Best not to.

We wish for things that never could be. Like a sane and sober mother. So that happens and there it is. Tugging at us and all the wishing doesn’t change anything. I can wish many things had been different (and often do). Many of those wishes are about mistakes I made. There were some lulus. But here I am today in a warm house with nice music playing a wife I adore in the other room. I love my job and my children and as I type these words I enjoy good health. Not bad.

Happiness is an indulgence many people feel they can’t afford. I myself sometimes shoo contentment away thinking it unearned and liable to set me up for a big fall. Stupid I know. One must embrace happiness. Wrap your arms around it and hold tight lest it flit away. Oh it will escape for a bit eventually but....

Peppy. A faster tempo to this song. My head bobs.

Last Saturday I watched a film called Straight Time (1978) starring Dustin Hoffman as a man just released prison after doing seven years. He tries to go straight. But circumstances conspire as they are want to do and he’s quickly off the straight and narrow. It’s another gem from one of the most productive periods of film ever. The ‘70s. It’s damn near like they didn’t make any bad ones back then.

Straight Time also features M. Emmet Walsh Harry Dean Stanton Gary Busey Kathy Bates and Theresa Russell then a gorgeous 20 year old. The shame of the film is that we see Walsh’s naked ass and not Russell’s. Let me be clear that I do not watch films for purposes of seeing naked people. But if there is to be someone in the nude I much prefer it....Anyway you get the idea and I’ve been sidetracked.

What Straight Time does so well is explore how events beyond our control can send our lives hurtling in other directions. We like to think we are in charge of our lives and certainly we often are. But we often aren't.

Hoffman’s character is easy to root for. No we don’t want him robbing banks or shooting people but we sympathize with him and his earnest efforts. Besides it's goddamned Dustin Hoffman who almost always has played likable sorts. The movie is gritty and real as is often the case from Seventies American cinema. Straight Time was written by a con who was an ex con by the time the film was made. His understanding of the life shows. Its an effective film on numerous levels one of which being that it doesn't make judgments and leaves us room to think particularly with the manner it ends.

Tonight I had my second viewing of The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) another crime film from the Seventies. This one starring Robert Mitchum as the titular character in a most effective performance. He’s done time. He’s had his knuckles busted in a drawer for letting some people down. He’s in the know. And he’s facing another stretch in the can which doesn’t sit well with him given that he has a wife and kids. His friends are what I will call working class crooks. They are connected to the bosses who rake in the big bucks but we never see them. Instead we meet a cast of characters who work long tense pressure packed hours breaking various laws. They have to fear cops and one another. A slip up can result in broken knuckles a trip to prison or a bullet in the head. With friends like that....

Coyle is a low level crook respected but not admired. A stand up guy but pretty old for criminal middle management. TFOEC is meticulous and realistic and endlessly interesting and eschews gratuitous violence and artificial action scenes. I admire the hell out of it.

Wouldn’t you know it I’m getting too tired to write anymore which is to say I’m too tired to do much of anything other than hitting the sack. So I reckon I will.

Kill Your Darlings But Gently as You Howl You Holy Holy Reader You Treasured and Precious Film Goer

Rhyme and meter in poetry. The taming of the mind the boxing in -- the repetition of form. The death of

How important is it to make an effort. To try. To persist. To fight through gas pain and constipation and physical exhaustion and that ornery ole cuss called laziness. And for what? To write to express to say something anything because without the writing without the effort I am left in the void killing time so carelessly as sure as it is killing me. The head aches. The pulsating pain in the belly rages. The body cries out to lay down lie down be down to drown helplessly in sleep. If it comes. What a wicked bastard sleep can be. Begging to be employed then staying at arm’s length. Teasing taunting. For that is what awaits. That and more gastrointestinal discomfort. Doubts too. Damned doubts crowding into a brain desperate for reassurance for comfort for the soothing balm of righteous certainty. Accursed pride and flimsy wisdom. Where art thou? Surety? But do doubts want to be assured? I think not because then they will cease to be. Doubts want to live to be so they fend off hope and optimism. Bastards.

So the words are forced from the source. Wherever whatever that may be. The combative man struggles to tame his own impulses and loses nothing but his mind. And still the awful pain wrenches. The eyelids grow heavier and the fingers tire. Tire. My ire. Cue the choir. Hallelujah I will stop now.

But for what?

We shall see,;.:

Kill Your Darlings brings to life the epic meetings of fabled legendary and wondrous writers Allen Ginsberg Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs with Lucien Carr mixed in for very good measure. To some of us their time together in New York is the stuff of great history stories which alert the muse. There was of course a murder thrown into the mix committed by Carr against his constant stalker David Kammerer. The film concerns itself with these men and that tragedy (for which Carr received a figurative slap on the wrist having successfully claimed that Kammerer was making unwanted homosexual advances).

It’s risky business depicting characters and events well known and beloved. Others have failed as in the recent screen rendition of Kerouac’s On the Road. But first time director John Krokidas hits his marks and then soars beyond. While KYD is not an unqualified stand on your seat and applaud success its a bloody good movie that I am still pondering 24 hours after seeing it. Huzzah!

First we start with our central character a personal hero of mine Allen Ginsberg. Here he is portrayed by -- what’s this? Harry Potter you say? -- Daniel Radcliffe. Young master Radcliffe does not disappoint. He resembles the young Ginsberg enough and beyond that does nothing to suggest he is not him incarnate. However Ben Foster as William Burroughs does convince us that he is in fact the man come back to life. Foster doesn’t just have the look of Burroughs but the voice and his every action is suggestive of what I know of the writer. I’ve seen Foster knock a role out of the park before and am of the strong opinion that he is a helluva an actor.

Jack Huston is among three actors to portray Kerouac in the past year and does an admirable job. Huston only vaguely resembles my favorite all time novelist -- something he cannot be blamed for -- but sounds and acts enough like him that the story is not interrupted by his presence.

Finally we have the relative neophyte Dane DeHaan as Carr. Carr is less familiar to us then the others so this actor has more leeway. But I have to say they got a ringer for Carr with piercing blue eyes that one imagines would drive the girls and some of the guys wild. DeHaan is excellent as the troubled but exciting and excitable Carr. (While we’re on the subject of actors and characters a special nod to David Cross as Ginsberg father, Louis.)

The opening sequence of Kill Your Darlings will be considered perplexing to some messy to others and inspired to still another group. I agree with all three which is to say I liked it. A story like this of these sort of people birthing the Beat Generation demands innovation. Krokidas frequently lets out most if not all the stops as in a benzedrine fueled scene in which the principals are all in a bar where everything and everyone else freezes and they cavort about them.

Krokidas never lets the story lag the pacing is crisp the camera work and surrealism muted enough not to detract from the story but prevalent enough to do proper justice to the goings-on. Which by god did go on.

Ginsberg is a freshman at Columbia University (at the same time my mother was a grad student there -- did they meet? -- doubt it). First he meets Carr who is the type of bloke some of us are lucky enough to meet at the right times of our lives. The charismatic exciting inspirational ultra cool bohemian who can shake the dust of our lives and getting us up about and thrilled about it all. All of it. Here is adventure here is excitement here is grabbing life and making it your own.

For young men this means parties booze drugs opening your mind to other possibilities to all possibilities and it also means meeting people. Lots of different people with different ideas. Ginsberg was so damn lucky he met no less than William Burroughs. Then tops that off with Jack fucking Kerouac. None of three had yet published anything and were far from famous. But there they were about to kick literature in the ass.

For Ginsberg school and poetry and life did not mix. School would have to give way. Meter and rhyme were eschewed by Walt Whitman so they had no chance with him. In Carr and co. he had inspirations aiders and abetters. Kill Your Darlings captures all this as it does the strange case of Kammerer the professor who gave up all to be with his beloved Carr who in turn grew increasingly annoyed with this obsessed and almost certainly mentally ill man. Killing him is of course far too harsh but it is a crime of passion and did happen and that is as they say that.

Kill Your Darlings portrays Carr as the catalyst he was having played the crucial role of getting Ginsberg out and about and introduced to Burroughs and Kerouac. It does not let him off easily. This is not his story and we are not left feeling great sympathy for him. We are left excited about Ginsberg and the amazing poetry he was to create and the transcendent life he was to lead.

For those of us familiar with the characters and the story KYD will not disappoint in fact it will send us back to books and novels and poems and videos and photos that we have seen before and now need to see again in a new light. Others? Can’t really say. I’m not an other I’m me. But me liked. Maybe others will too.

I Am No George Clooney But I Do Write About Finally Seeing and Loving Terrance Malick's Badlands

I want to be smart and interesting and a good storyteller like George Clooney. Was just watching him in some You Tube clips. Him and other actors in a roundtable discussion slash interview. I do not look like George Clooney. Never have. Never will. I am and always have been a reasonably attractive male in good physical condition -- excellent as a matter of fact. I am short but not so you could step on me short. More the absence of great or medium height. I'm pretty sure that George Clooney is not short. Anyway he's got lots of money and talent and fame and women think he's really handsome and even men admit to the fact. He's also charming. I can be charming but rarely choose to be. Sometimes I'm downright grumpy. I have talents of my own and many have been appreciated over the years. So maybe I shouldn't complain. I guess what's really bugging me is that I can't sit around with a bunch of famous actors and swap acting stories with them. I surely could sit around with them and listen. I'd be really good at that. But it would hardly be the same. Oh well.

I got on to You Tube after watching Terrance Malick's Badlands (1973) a film I'd somehow never seen before even though it's been around for 40 years now. I really really really enjoyed it. I want to see it again. Maybe own the Criterion Collection edition of it. Screw the maybe part from that last sentence. I definitely want to.

This was Malick before he fell into those long trance like states while directing in which he had tracking shots of molecules or whatever the fuck he was doing. In The New World (2005) he told the Pocahontas story as if she were leaf swaying in the breeze. You could fall asleep during the film and not miss a thing. Seriously. Before that was The Thin Red Line (1998) which a lot of people absolutely love. None of these people are me. I found it annoying irritating and confounding. The more recent The Tree of Life (2011) I greatly admired as it had a cohesion to it yet was not afraid to wonder all around the history of the universe and the meaning of life in telling its story. After Badlands was Days of Heaven (1978) which I thought was a terrific film and just to prove it to you I'm going to watch it again in the next week or so. Promise.

So Badlands tells the story of a young couple who go on a killing spree. Actually the guy (Martin Sheen) does all the killing. The bemused girl (Sissy Spacek) is just along for the ride. And what a ride. Movies can take a somber or ugly subject and make it palatable or interesting or beautiful. Malick did the latter in this case. The beauty of the film is such that we do not forgive the heinous crimes. They're more like a narrative tool. The deaths are not sad or shocking. Except when the girl's father (Warren Oates) kills her dog as a punishment. Somehow that's the cruel one. The five people we see getting killed are more like abstractions whose deaths in this case serve the function of driving the story forward. We can't contemplate them. We must just know that they happened. The killer certainly doesn't waste any tears on the dearly deceased.

Sheen is wonderfully understated as the James Dean lookalike who is forever saying "I don't care." And he doesn't. He takes what comes and does what he must or at least what he thinks he must. Consequences are for another time. Spacek excepts his actions because she is young and in love and unformed and curious. It's really a great screen pairing.

Malick's visual style is not bloated here as it later came to be. There are clouds and trees and animals and roads and dust but they are not lengthy diversions from the plot. They are part of it. Would that he'd stuck to that notion longer.  He also employs music to excellent effect. Instead of scenes that stretch like the Great Plains (my subtle reference to where the film takes place) there is a tightness to scenes. A length that respects the characters the story and the audience.

If you've never seen Badlands you must. It's like a mash up of Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Moonrise Kingdom (2102). Those are two really good movies from a couple of very different directors (Arthur Penn and Wes Anderson). I'll go further and say that the Badlands reminds one of the great Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. Actors read lines hit their marks and move along. They do not pontificate they do not emote they function as part of the film. Yet there is a definite sizzle to the whole 90 minutes a drive a verve and a spirit. There is a lot to see and admire.  I give it many many stars.