The Bleak Midwinter

It's cold enough for winter, but at least it's sunny and virtually snowless out there, beyond the coziness of Lone Mountain Homestead.  We have very few plans for the holidays, other than the usual: reading, practicing piano (one of us; the other one is making an animated film), watching films, hoping for clear nights with usable temperatures, and doing some gaming.  The exception is this Friday, when we will visit Detroit.  There is a fun film event at the DIA that day that we would like to attend.

 

In local news we enjoyed, as usual, our Winter Solstice party for two.  This is our longest event of the year, and it runs from about 7:30 am until around 10 pm.  This year we not only saw the sunrise (it is reborn!) but also the sunset.  That is a rare happening here at this cloudy time of year. 

Solstice sunrise, looking southeast from our rear picture window.  The sun rises here at 7:58, but we didn't see it until almost 15 minutes later.    

 

At sunrise we first noticed it on the top of our tallest tree, a white pine we planted many years ago.  The pine cones sparkled with a golden hue as if they were lights on the tree.  We had put up our indoor decorations the night before.  Besides an all-day wood fire in our living room fireplace there was good food and drink aplenty.  And there was Wagner.  This year we chose the next opera on our to-do list.  Wagner only wrote one comic opera, the same one that is his only opera with no supernatural elements to the story.  Die Mastersinger von Nurnberg also happens to be his longest opera, and the only one of which we have no recording on the premises.  Spotify to the rescue!  We were able to listen to all 4 CDS by playing it on the computer, with blue tooth relaying the sound to our stereo speaker system.  It took us most of the day to get through its 4 1/2 hours.  It is a very funny opera, and great fun to listen to.  Deb had downloaded a pdf English translation and we were able to follow along.  The opera has much to say about music and, of course, a united Germany and its old traditions.

This is the version we listened to, courtesy of Spotify.  We have a free account. 

 

I mentioned gaming a ways back.  We began our 11 days of gaming with two games of Carcassonne.  First game just a regular game, which Deb won handily.  Then we played adding the Robbers to the scenario.  I won, just.  We will need to play the playoff game soon.  Today (Sunday) we will play Middle Earth: The Wizards collectible card game, also part of a series.  We also made some progress on Tengami, our current PC game.  And I am nearly finished with Road To India, a mystery adventure game.  A problem arose where the game crashed just at the end of a movie, as the next section tried to load.  I finally had to download a saved game file so that I could restart my play once the game had loaded properly.  But they worked fine, and I should, hopefully, be able to complete the game.

 

Late on Solstice morning, with its long shadows.  Note the tiny bit of snow!

My Solstice beverage of choice, collected on our autumn road trip. 

 

The Detroit River was busy with ships today. 

 

Our wood fire, kept going today from 8:30 am until about 5:30 pm.  

We sat here and listened to opera.

 

Solstice susnet, 2024.

Solstice sunset with passing ship, one of five ships that I watch year round.

The Federal Bering had been in Detroit.  This is a salty, and during the year it travels to Europe, the Mediterranean, and South America.  Good by Bering until next year.
  

On the subject of opera for a few moments longer, we got to see Maria, a 2024 film starring Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas, the Greek opera singing sensation.  Somehow Mubi got hold of it, even before it is being released worldwide.  We get to see the final week of Callas's life, her downward trend accelerated by drug addiction and depression.  She was also addicted to being admired, and needed to be noticed wherever she went.  Through flashbacks we get to see other key moments in her life.  She began singing in childhood, and was traumatized by the abuse of soldiers who not only used her for sex, but made her sing first.  While her older sister was able to "close the door" on this sad episode of their lives, Maria was never able to.  Her affair with Onassis is given a lot of coverage, as well as her attempt to return to the stage.  Having lost a lot of weight quickly in later life, it likely affected her ability to sing.  Jolie does some of the singing herself, though the greatest moments are lip synced with Callas performing.  She is capable in the role, though she is unable to garner much sympathy from viewers for her character.  Callas was not really a very nice person.  At least today we can still enjoy her many recordings, including some done in her prime.  Recommended for music fans, but not for Tomb Raider fans, unless they love opera.

Now showing on Mubi.

We also watched My Blueberry Nights, a romantic comedy from 2007.  Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai made his first English film about two people who meet, then separate for a year, and then get back together.  He runs a small cafe in New York, while she has just learned that her boyfriend has dumped her for another girl.  She goes often to the cafe (pie and ice cream) and they talk.  She feels that she has to leave, and heads to Memphis, then out west and on to Nevada, before finally returning to the cafe in the final scene.  She writes him letters, but never leaves an address, so he is unable to find her.  Her adventures on the road as a waitress in different locations make up the bulk of the movie.  Highly recommended, with good writing and acting.

Leaving Mubi soon. 

 

Mapman Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

L'Aventura

 Often seen as a seminal film of the 1960s, it isn't.  But L'Aventura is a seminal film of the 1950s, and very far ahead of its time.  The story centers around the disappearance of a young woman who is on a day excursion to a volcanic island in the Aeolian chain north of Sicily.  Her companions remain behind to search for her, while the main party goes to summon aid from the coast guard.  A major search of the island turns up nothing.  What happened to the woman?  Several hints are dropped, and it seems as if she left the island on a fishing boat, or perhaps with a group of smugglers.  Her description is given out and a few sightings are reported.  But she never turns up again.  The missing woman, Anna, is with her fiancee Sandro, and her best friend Claudia (played by the incomparable Monica Vitti).  Why would she choose to disappear?

 

Well, a few moments spent with her miserable fiancee will reveal enough reason.  He is a louse, first class.  Anna no longer wants to marry him (failure to communicate), and I think has chosen to escape him completely.  But there is reason to think that after leaving the island with whomever, misadventure soon followed her.  The first half of the movie is completely engrossing, especially once Anna goes missing.  The second half kind of fades away to nothing, gradually, until it ends in a relationship trap for Claudia.  No more than two days after his fiancee goes missing, he is putting moves on Claudia, her best friend.  One of the lowest points of the film is when she takes a train and tries to leave him behind, but at the last second he runs and catches the back car.  He is literally the character who spills black ink all over this picture (from a later scene where he deliberately destroys an art student's meticulous drawing).

 

It's kind of difficult for viewers to swallow that Claudia does not already have a boyfriend or lover as the picture opens, and even harder to swallow that she would fall in love with creepy Sandro.  Or that she would stay with him at the end, after he cheated on her already.  It seems Anna had much more sense by leaving him.  The story becomes distracting, even as they continue to search for Anna throughout Italy.  There are a few very disturbing scenes that show the Italian male to be no better than a wolf in heat, and Sandro certainly lives up to that reputation.  Is he the best that Claudia can attain?  Hardly.   But as Antonioni obviously knew, good men are hard to come by.  Claudia, weakened by the loss of her best friend, is vulnerable.  And so she loses, big time, like several of the wives we have already encountered in the film.

 

This film came out the same year as Fellini's La Dolce Vita, and three years before Goddard's Contempt.  The photography and sound in the present film are unparalleled for its time.  The sound of wind, thunder, rain, the sea, and leaves blowing in trees are matched beautifully by the very sparse music, often just a solo clarinet.   Even the 2nd half, which brings us down and more down in spirit as it goes on, has many moments of sheer poetry.  But the best reason to watch is Monica Vitti.  She has a face that was made for motion picture cameras, with a range of expression that can change slowly from one emotion to another, or instantaneously, as need be.  Watching her face is the best possible reason to watch this film.  It comes in tied for 72nd place in the latest Sight and Sound poll.

 

Showing on Criterion. 

 

Sunday was Full Moon celebration.  We hadn't chosen an opera for a few months now, so it was time.  Out came Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, running four hours on ten record sides.  We made it through, though!  It was a humid and rainy day, and we needed a break from our flooring project in the music room.  A blueberry cake-like thing was baked, we substituted Wagner for Bach during our pancake breakfast, and we spent much of the day listening.  We have the Berlin Philharmonic version with Karajan conducting, and Jon Vickers as Tristan.  A great performance overall, but the orchestra often overpowers the singers.  Probably the most famous ending of any opera ever written.

Warm and very humid lately, with a fair amount of rain landing in our yard.  Grass cutting tomorrow.  Hopefully Detroit on Thursday, for a visit to John King Books, and perhaps a walk downtown.  Ciao, baby.

Mapman Mike