Full Moon Celebration

This full moon is known as The Coconut Cream Pie Moon. We always bake a moon cake/pie on the full moon, and this time around a lovely vegan cream pie is chilling in the fridge, along with a can of coconut milk whipped cream.  Later, there will be a wood fire, and throughout the day we will be listening to the opera of the month.  This time it is a late work by the Czech composer Janacek, called Katya Kabanova.  It's based on a Russian play called The Thunderstorm, by Ostrovsky (1823-1886).  The opera premiered in 1921, and is considered one of Janacek's finest works.  We shall see.

In weather news, it only took two days for most of our snow to leave us.  From midnight Tuesday until Thursday morning, about 90% of the snow had melted, leaving us with only the piles where we had shovelled it.  Tuesday and Wednesday saw sunshine and temps near 50 F, and that is all it took.  We can see our snowdrop buds, and they are ready to bloom.  Huzzah!

 

In health news, Deb's mom is back home from her 3-week hospital stay, and seems happy to be there.  If we are ever able to travel again, family obligations will be our first project, including trips to Sudbury and Lindsay.  We are still getting new Co-vid cases daily, and people are still dying in hospital from it.  Where are the vaccinations, you may ask?  Well, beginning Monday, the over 80s finally get their chance.  Our turn?  Possibly July.

 

In movie news, my regular weekly pick was Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, from 1974 and directed by Fassbinder.  It is his version of Douglas Sirk's 1955 All That Heaven Allows, in which an older rich woman falls in love with a young gardener, shocking the community to its foundations.  In the unforgettable German version, an older widow drops in to a bar one day, curious by the kind of music she hears when passing.  Inside she meets Ali, a worker from Morocco, and the two hit it off.  Their realistic trials and tribulations are beautifully and sensitively handled, and the movie does end on a somewhat positive note.  I really admire the way Fassbinder handles the couple's eventual acceptance by the community.  The racist grocer wants her business back, so becomes nice to her again.  Her son needs her to babysit, so he becomes nice to her again.  Her racist and nosy neighbour needs to borrow some of her locker storage space, and becomes nice to her again.  And so on.  A highly recommended film.

 

                        A beautifully composed scene from the wedding night dinner. 

 

My choice for leaving Feb. 28th was a film from 1930 called Holiday,  about a man about to marry a very rich woman.  Her father runs her life and everything around him, and intends to do the same for his new son-in-law. But the son-in-law wants nothing to do with it, and is more attracted to the older sister.  The sister is wonderfully played by Ann Harding, whose performance reminds me a bit of Bette Davis in Petrified Forest.  There are some amazingly good scenes, including the party within a party, held upstairs in the old playroom.  Well worth a look.

 

                                                                Ann Harding in 1930.  

 

For her final film choice of February (my film festival is also this weekend), Deb picked My Brilliant Career, directed by Gillian Armstrong and starring Judy Davis and Sam Neil.  A fun look at growing up female, intelligent, plain, but with the highest of aspirations, in the Australian outback.  The lead performances are outstanding, and the story, simple as it is, is well told.  My question is this: is publishing a book a better result than a happy life with someone you love?  And is it not possible, somehow, to do both?

                                        Now playing on the Criterion Channel, from 1979.

I have chosen the next 3 Zatoichi films for the festival.  More on those later.

 

And from the DIA (which has remained open for much of the pandemic, but, alas, not the border to the USA) comes a painting by George Morland, one of two which the museum owns.  It shows the encampment of a Gypsy family in the wilderness, blending Dutch, Flemish, French, and British traditions in an eye-catching way.  I use to walk by these paintings on a regular basis, but it is now coming up to one year since I have visited the museum and Detroit.  And speaking of camping in the wilderness, when will that happen again?

Gypsy Encampment, George Morland (English, 1763-1804).  Oil on canvas. 19" x 24" unframed.

 

Detail of main group.

 

Detail of right side, lower.  Love those red flowers.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Enjoy the full moon!  Spring astronomy begins March 2nd around here.  Hopefully I will be busy.

 

Mapman Mike

 

Tarkovsky Weekend; August Reading

The famous Russian film director is not a great teller of stories, but he is a supreme poet of cinematic imagery.  We watched Nostalghia, The Sacrifice, and Directed by Andrei Tarkovski, a documentary on the filming of The Sacrifice.  All three films were leaving the Criterion Channel at midnight Monday, so we were on a deadline.  We have seen the two films a long time ago.  Nostalghia was filmed in Italy, and in Italian, while The Sacrifice was filmed in Sweden in Swedish.  Of the two films I much prefer Nostalghia, which has always been my favourite film by the director.

 From 1983.  Possibly his best film.

 From 1986.

 A documentary from 1988.

Though any Tarkovsky film is worth watching, usually many times, Nostalghia is one that really stands out.  The theme of water is prevalent throughout, though the climax switches to fire (as it does in The Sacrifice).  The entire film is mesmerizing from a composition standpoint, and includes the most wonderful images ever put on film.  Both it and The Sacrifice deal with mental illness, though in very different ways.  The final image in Nostalghia is the most brilliant thing I've seen since discovering the paintings by Caspar David Friedrich.  I don't like talking about Tarkovsky's films; they are too visual.  But I love seeing them.  We saw The Mirror awhile back, and will soon review the rest of them, including Stalker, Solaris, and Andre Rublev and Ivan's Childhood.  Thank the gods for the Criterion Channel, and modern restoration of great films!

The documentary really gave a close up view of how the director worked.  Basically he had his hand in every single frame of the film, and must have been hard to work with.  He sees himself as a collaborator with his team, but his dictatorship is on display for all to see.  How else could these films have been made?  This is one man's vision, not from a team.  There are quotes from his diary, and interviews with his wife. 

Last week, Deb's choice was a 1982 Australian film directed by Gillian Armstrong called Star Struck.  It is an amusing but very light weight tale of a brother sister team entering the entertainment business, and in the process trying to save the family pub from bankruptcy.  Pop music and lots of dancing all through it.  Not my cup of tea, but it is watchable, thanks to the energy of the lead teenage actress.

 From Australia, 1982.  Now showing on Criterion.

August Reading

I read ten books related to Avon/Equinox authors, and one unrelated.  The unrelated one was by Angela Carter, called Heroes and Villains.  A post-apocalyptic tale in the tradition of Davy, by Edgar Pangborn (a much superior volume), it describes the life of a young girl who abandons the safety of her tower and village of scholars after the death of her father.  She is thrust into a cruel world.  Whereas Pangborn tells his tale of woe with some humour and much warmth and affection, Carter's story is all hardship and cruelty, and a bit hard to take.  I think it is an allegory of when a girl leaves home to follow the guy of her dreams, and what usually happens to those dreams once reality bites.  Very depressing reading.  Next month I hope to get around to reading The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells, as my non Avon/Equinox book.


I began the month by reading Harry Harrison's 4th instalment of his wonderfully quirky and very funny series, The Stainless Steel Rat Needs You.  The Rat is a reformed master criminal, now used by the galactic police to catch crooks just like he used to be.  Aided by his equally clever and resourceful wife, also a formal mastermind criminal, they make an unbeatable pair, in the tradition of Myrna Loy and William Powell.  In this latest story, they are also assisted by their twin teenage sons, two chips off the old blocks.  The opening scene, where Pappa must get the boys out of school a few days before graduation is classic Harrison at his funniest.


Next came The Diamond Contessa, the concluding book in Kenneth Bulmer's Keys To The Dimensions series.  It is a fitting conclusion, though in the end the series was all just a bit too hectic for me, with too many worlds in too short a time, and too many heroes and villains.  The first book remains the best of the bunch, but Contessa makes a worthy ending to it all.


Pawn of the Omphalos, by Tubb, is a rousing sword and sorcery tale wrapped up in a SF package.  I really liked this little masterpiece, though I would have taken the opening idea and gone somewhere totally different with it.  Definitely worth checking out.  And Jack Williamson came through with a great work entitled Trial of Terra, four interlinked stories pitting the survival of Earth against a superior race that wants to use Sol as a space flight beacon, thus wiping out the planets.  When Jack is in the groove, there is no one better in the genre.


I had one novelette left to read by Hal Clement.  Hot Planet, an early work, is classic Clement and worth a read.  This one takes place on Mercury, and is a rousing tale from the early 1960s.  It's Earthmen against an alien environment once again, and |Mercury can really dish it out.  I am finished reading all of Clement's available works, and will sadly miss him in my roster.  I am now down to 10 remaining authors.  Moorcock's The Champion of Garathorm is the 2nd book in his Castle Brass series, or 6th in the Hawkmoon series.  It is a first class story, and really gets us involved in the whole multi-verse thing for which Moorcock became famous.  So far this is an excellent series of SF/Fantasy.   One book left to go.


Rushing To Paradise is J. G. Ballard's take on the summer beach novel, a murder/mystery that takes place on the Costa del Sol in Spain, in a community of English expats.  Despite knowing it was inevitable, I hated the ending but loved the book.  This is by no means a summer beach novel; merely Ballard's take on such a thing.  It is a masterpiece of literature, a supreme bit of craftsmanship, and a tour-de-force retelling of the modern crime novel.  Not to be missed.


Malzberg's second novel, Screen (1968), has long been unavailable.  It was just re-released in July of 2020.  It was first published by a porno book company who tried out a more upper class style of x-rated book.  Needless to say, Screen met with scathing reviews and much hatred and lots of censorship.  It's really a great story, about a young man who goes to the movies and gets completely enveloped; not in the actual movie, but in imaginary relationships with the stars.  He becomes Marcello, married to Sophia, and their relationship is a total hoot to watch.  He has affairs with Elizabeth Taylor, Brigitte Bardot, and many others, in his fantasy world.  His real life girlfriend is trying to save him and his job, but he turns out to be a hopeless case.  Available on Kindle, and a real gem.


From 1962 comes The Night Shapes, James Blish's take on Tarzan and the works of H. Rider Haggard.  Sadly, nothing new is added to the genre, and I felt quite disappointed in the story.  That completed my newest cycle of books, and it was then I read the book by Angela Carter mentioned at the beginning.  It was time to begin a new cycle.


The Time Hoppers, by Robert Silverberg, is a complete novelization for 1967 of a story he wrote in the 1950s called Hopper.  While I did not like the short story at the time, this novel is quite good, and though the basic story is intact, there are now enough details and character development to turn it into a very readable story.  Someone in the 2400s is sending men back to the 1970s and beyond, due to overcrowding and high unemployment in the current time frame.  The government wants control of the device, and agent Quellen is given the mission.  This is a very original and dark view of the future, and an extremely clever dip into the whole time travel can of worms.  Very well done and worth a read.


Mapman Mike