Roger O Green

Movie review: Moonlight, from Barry Jenkins

The adult THINKS he’s figured out his path.

I didn’t notice until after The Wife and I saw the movie Moonlight at the Spectrum. The poster for the film is a triptych, as was the movie itself. Moonlight is billed as a “coming-of-age story,” with three distinct, but related, tales.

In the first portion, Little, the black youth (Alex Hibbert) is living in a down-and-out section of Miami. He’s constantly running from the bullies, who pick on him, though he really doesn’t understand why. Little is living with his single mom, Paula (Naomie Harris), a drug addict. He has but one friend, Kevin (Jaden Piner), and falls under the influence of a neighborhood drug dealer named Juan (Mahershala Ali) and Juan’s girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe).

The second segment is Chiron, where the 16-year-old (Ashton Sanders) continues to deal with his difficult life. The third part is Black, the adult (Trevante Rhodes) who thinks he’s figured out his path. The movie also stars Duan Sanderson, Jharrel Jerome, and André Holland in these segments. Despite the three lead actors over time, the narrative does NOT feel episodic.

The movie is adapted from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by screenwriter and director Barry Jenkins. It was filmed in the Liberty City section of Miami, where Jenkins grew up.

As Steven Rea of the Philadelphia Inquirer writes, “‘Moonlight’ is and isn’t a story of Jenkins’ life. Like Chiron’s mother in the film, Jenkins’ mother was an addict. Like Chiron’s father in the film, Jenkins’ father was nowhere to be seen. But it is McCraney, the Miami-born and -raised playwright, whose sexuality is reflected in Chiron.”

Moonlight is a well-regarded film. Brian Tallerico writes in rogerebert.com, “‘Moonlight’ is a film that is both lyrical and deeply grounded in its character work, a balancing act that’s breathtaking to behold.” While you may have seen elements of this story in other films, in its totality, it’s unlike any movie I’ve seen.

ABC Wednesday Round 20: the last roundup?

ABC Wednesday will likely end with Round 20; certainly it won’t be run by me, or Denise, or assistant administrator Leslie.

One of the best things that happened for me, is figuring out what to post each week. I knew, at least, that one of the topics would be starting with whatever letter we were up to in ABC Wednesday.

About four (or five?) years ago, I became the administrator of the meme where one participates with others, literally from around the world, in sharing a picture, a poem, an essay, SOMETHING with the various letters of the alphabet. #20 may be the last round, starting the week of January 9. You are invited to participate, every week, or as you can. I do think it’s advantageous to do so weekly, as it generates a lot of comments for me. Note that we’re VERY flexible with the letter X, with Xmas or eXcellent.

As usual, our friend Troy has done the badge for the round.

ABC Wednesday was started nine and a half years ago by Denise Nesbitt. I’ve been participating since the letter K in Round 5, and became administrator some point later, though I really don’t remember when anymore. I assign who reads which posts, making sure somebody is writing the introductions (and writing them myself, when necessary) and inserting the link that allows everyone to participate.

Oh, speaking of that link thing, from InLinkz: I only use it once a week. So if someone I know, who has a Blogger/Blogspot blog wanted to get other people to link to THEIR blogs, for some reason, I could be talked into it. Or it can a WordPress blog. Like this one. I am inviting you, if you have a blog, to link it below. Because I can.

As noted, ABC Wednesday will likely end with Round 20; certainly, it won’t be run by me, or Denise, or assistant administrator Leslie, because we all are burnt out. Personally, I visit practically everyone who posts. But if someone wants to take over ABC Wednesday, email me at rogerogreen AT gmail DOT com. I’ll tell you what it entails. Heck, I might even participate if I don’t have to be in charge. And whether or not there’s an ABC Wednesday, I may continue my alphabetic journey twice a year.

Y is for the Year 2017 (ABC W)

August 21 – A total solar eclipse will take place.

No one really knows what will happen next year, though Bloomberg’s The Pessimist’s Guide to 2017 paints some scenarios.

We do know a couple of things about the year 2017, though, mostly anniversaries of past events. I was looking at Wikipedia and ITN source and note:

JANUARY 2017
15th anniversary – Launch of the Euro

FEBRUARY 2017
20th anniversary – Dolly the sheep was cloned

APRIL 2017
100th anniversary – USA declares war on Germany
30th anniversary – the Falklands invasion

JUNE 17
50th anniversary – The Six-Day War
20th anniversary – The Hong Kong handover

JULY 2017
80th anniversary – Amelia Earhart disappeared

AUGUST 2017
55th anniversary – Marilyn Monroe’s death
40th anniversary – Elvis Presley’s death
20th anniversary – Princess Diana’s death
August 21 – A total solar eclipse will take place. This will be the first total solar eclipse of the 21st century for the United States, and the first visible in the continental U.S. since February 26, 1979. Totality will occur along a path curving from Oregon to South Carolina and will last at most for 2 minutes and 40.2 seconds. The location and time of “greatest eclipse” will be on the western edge of Christian County, Kentucky, at 36.9715 degrees north and 87.6559 degrees west, occurring at 18:25 UTC.

SEPTEMBER 2017

45th anniversary – Israeli Olympic team killed
40th anniversary – Steve Biko’s death
September 15 – The spacecraft Cassini-Huygens, after having studied Saturn for 13 years, will be disposed of by plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere

OCTOBER 2017

October 26 – The collection of records established by the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 must be completely disclosed to the public.

DECEMBER 2017

50th anniversary – First human heart transplant

But for me, the biggie comes on Halloween. On 31 October 1517, the (Protestant) Reformation began with Martin Luther’s composition of his 95 Theses, which Luther started by criticizing the selling of indulgences. The Reformation was aided in no small part by the invention of the printing press.

2017 is a prime number. The last year that was prime was 2011, and the next one will be 2027.

Easter will be on April 16. There will be two times Friday is on the 13th, in January and October.

What do YOU anticipate for the year 2017?

ABC Wednesday – Round 19

The Lydster: very grave situation

The family went to this fair at a church in Claverack, NY, SSE of Albany. The Wife sees a friend who connects with that one time a year. The Daughter played on the swing, but I headed for the adjacent cemetery.

My maternal grandmother Gert and her sister Adenia have no gravestones. Gram died on Super Bowl Sunday 1982, and my aunt Deana a decade and a half earlier. So I decided to check out the condition of the memorials.

I noticed right off that many of them have a covering of green substance I believe to be lichen. Some are more prone than others.

The Daughter, finished on the swing, joined me in the cemetery. I started cleaning off the lichen with the back of a plastic fork I happened to have, and she used an old pen to clean out the letters. I wish I had taken a “before” picture, but one could barely see HICKEY, and the names below were not visible. As you can probably tell, there is still plenty of lichen there, but at least it’s readable.

Ah, Mildred Rowe was a couple of years OLDER than her husband, but outlived him by a couple of decades.

Pleased with our work, we went onto another grave. Headstones tell interesting stories. The Duntz couple had two kids. Emily died before she was 40, and Azano didn’t make it to his 18th birthday. The parents buried both of their children.

Interestingly, there are separate little headstones at ground level for AZANO, EMILY, and MOTHER (Edna Alger), but not for the father, Ellis, because others evidently made that determination.

Later, with friends, I’ve had several conversations about making plans for that time after death so that family members don’t have fights about it. I speak from experience in this matter.

We had almost run out of time – the Wife was calling us to have lunch at the event – but we thought this one headstone needed our help, not so much from the lichen, but from some other growth. Even together, we could not pull out the weed obscuring the view, and I didn’t have a knife on me to cut it away. Instead of removing the obstruction, the Daughter took a weed and tied them down, then found a rock, an adventure in itself, to keep the mess down.

We did relatively little lichen removal on this one, but it needed less work. This headstone was next to another stone I suspect marked the sister of the woman noted here.

The Daughter thought that she might like doing this kind of work for a living, or maybe do it as a hobby to get away from her busy lawyer career. We found it very relaxing on a perfect, sunny November day (67 F, 19.4C), a day before it snowed!

Christmas was on a Sunday

I had no sense that 1978 would be MUCH better.

It’s rather peculiar, I suppose, that I almost never go to church on Christmas Day, whereas I almost ALWAYS sing at church on Christmas Eve.

I did go at least once in the past ten years – I know the time frame because our current pastors were there. It is the one service you can go to in your pajamas, if one were to have a mind to.

Christmas is on a Sunday this year.

1960: Christmas was on a Sunday. I don’t recall what time my sister Leslie, who was 6, and I, who was 7, were allowed to wake up our parents. Baby sister Marcia was only two and we wouldn’t wake her up until she got up on her own.

I DO know that as we got older, the time got later and later before we could open the presents. (That’s Leslie and me in the pic, probably a couple of years earlier.)

1966: Christmas was on a Sunday. I delivered the paper six evenings a week, back in the olden days when there WERE afternoon papers, and then on Sunday morning, back in Binghamton, NY.

My father, who NEVER helped me with my route, because it was MY job, not his – not that I ever asked him – got up (or maybe stayed up) to help me deliver that thick newspaper to my customers on Clinton Street, Front Street and McDonald Avenue. That meant a lot to me, but I doubt that I ever said so.

1977: Christmas was a Sunday. I was probably crashing on the sofa of friends of mine in Schenectady, near Albany. That whole year was difficult, and I lived in New Paltz, NY; Charlotte, NC; Binghamton; Jamaica, Queens, NYC; back to New Paltz; and finally in the Electric City (GE was huge there at the time). It was undoubtedly the worst year of my life, even though I made some friends that year I still have. I had no sense that 1978 would be MUCH better.

1988: Christmas was a Sunday. I had left FantaCo, the comic book store less than two months earlier, burned out. Probably in a relationship crisis.

1994: Christmas was a Sunday. I had started my current job on October 19 of that year. But I was very DEFINITELY in a relationship crisis.

2005: Christmas was a Sunday. The Daughter was born the year before, the Wife and I were in our current house, in our current church. Life is pretty good.
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Berlioz: the shepherds farewell from the oratorio L` enfance du Christ”

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