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2016 in review

The progenitor of much of it, Agent Orange

This is that thing that Jaquandor does on December 31, but I do on January 1.

Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

Not only did I not keep them – to do less -I did more until a point in the last quarter, when I lost most any desire to do anything but to cocoon. Circumstances didn’t really allow for that, though.

Did anyone close to you give birth?

Anna, the daughter of friends of mine, who is partially named for me, had a baby on November 13.

Did you attend any weddings?

Don’t think so. But I was pleased that my online friend Melanie got hitched.

Did anyone close to you die?

Well, yes. My cousin Donald Yates, whose brother Robert was on the list LAST year. Margaret Hannay, a woman from church who I was mighty fond of. And my good friend Norm Nissen, who I think to call now and then before I realize, yet again, that I cannot.

What countries did you visit?

None, but my passport is in order, just in case.

What would you like to have in 2017 that you lacked in 2016?

I guess, at this point, I’d settle for civility in the world.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Helping the Daughter survive the transition to middle school.

What was your biggest failure?

Not going to a shrink.

What was the best thing you bought?

House of Blues: Essential Women in Blues. But it was the circumstances. A friend of mine had to go into physical rehab, and her clumsy caretaker knocked over her portable CD player, smashing the CD therein. I found it used, burned me a copy, then gave it to my friend.

Whose behavior merited celebration?

Anyone who faced bigotry with grace. Anyone who stood up to bigotry directed against others.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, Eric Trump, Paul Ryan. The bigots who threaten people because their side “won.” And, of course, the progenitor of much of it, Agent Orange.

Where did most of your money go?

The house, though we had no big projects.

What did you get really excited about?

I think I could get excited about contributing to Quora, if I had TIME to actually do it.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?

Sadder by a very large degree.

Thinner or fatter?

Yo-yo much of the year, heavier of late.

Richer or poorer?

Richer, marginally.

What do you wish you’d done more of?

Reading books; I’ve started several. Donate blood. Maybe drinking (Nah…although…)

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Reading Facebook.

How did you spend Christmas?

Christmas Eve means singing at church, so that. Eventually, we go to the in-laws.

Did you fall in love in 2016?

Absolutely.

How many one-night stands?

Jaquandor: “Now, that’s not the kind of question a gentleman answers! (Another stock answer!)”

What was your favorite TV program?

CBS Sunday Morning with Jane Pauley, JEOPARDY!

Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I’m on the precipice…

What was the best book you read?

That I FINISHED? Apocrypha Now.

What was your greatest musical discovery?

See below. Also, I do like the rediscovery of some of the items Jaquandor has posted.

What did you want and get?

A different place to sit in my office.

What did you want and not get?

Sanity.

What were your favorite films of this year?

Spotlight; La La Land; Zootopia; Sully; Hail, Caesar!; Cafe Society

What did you do on your birthday?

I took off the day from work and…oh, who knows?

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2016?

“We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town, Beep-beep”

What kept you sane?

May I argue the premise of the question? That said, my dads’ group in church, especially with Norm gone. My best male friend is out of town; I should call him more often.

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

Bernie Sanders, George Takei.

What political issue stirred you the most?

The sheer terror a lot of Americans already feel in the age of Trump.

Who did you miss?

Norm. My old friend Tom Hoffman, who died in 2004 – I wonder what he would have made of this political year?

Who was the best new person you met?

Some new choir members.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2016:

The trouble with normal is it always gets worse.

Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:

I looked at the Billboard singles charts in the middle of the year, and the only song I could identify by both song and artist, AND knew audibly for sure, was The Sound of Silence by Disturbed, which you can listen to HERE

And in the naked light, I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening

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.

Movie review: Manchester by the Sea

Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan had the same roles in one of my favorite films of the past 20 years, You Can Count On Me.

Manchester by the Sea is a very good movie, but the story is sad, though not unrelentingly so. Occasionally, it’s even mildly funny.

Lee Chandler (the excellent Casey Affleck) is a maintenance man in the Boston area, working on four apartment buildings with difficult tenants. He gets word that his brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) is having trouble with his heart, again, and Lee rushes up to the hospital to see him. Too late.

Much to his surprise, Lee finds out that his older brother has made him the sole guardian of Joe’s son Patrick (Lucas Hedges). He’s required to return to the title locale to care for his 16-year-old nephew. In doing so, ghosts of his past while growing up in the community, especially his ex-wife Randi (Michelle Williams), come to the fore. Lee and Patrick negotiate their relationship without Joe, the common thread.

The saddest part of the film takes place while one of the two most heart-wrenching pieces of music in the entire classical canon is playing.

Grief is a peculiar thing. Often, others want you to “get over it” sooner than you are able to do so, and that is, for me, the underlying theme of the film. When the movie ended, a pair of women who were sitting behind us at the Spectrum expressed disappointment that the end wasn’t more tidily happy. I thought it was much like life IS.

The most impressive element of the filmmaking is that the story goes back and forth in time, and I’m almost always aware of when we are in the narrative, no small feat. Kudos to writer/director Kenneth Lonergan, who had the same roles in one of my favorite films of the past 20 years, You Can Count On Me (2000). The acting was excellent throughout, although Matthew Broderick, in a small role as Patrick’s mom’s finance, always looks like Matthew Broderick to me.

I should note that, according to IMBD, Manchester by the Sea contains at least 125 profanities, with the f-bomb quite popular. The film is a bit more popular with the critics (97% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) than with fans (85% positive). At 135 minutes, it IS a long movie, but the guy in my row who checked his device at least thrice had me wanting to seize it from his hand and smash it to the floor, but I didn’t.

Movie review: Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols

“On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pled guilty to ‘cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.'”

Part of the general complaints from the 11% of the critics who did not like the new movie Loving was that it wasn’t exciting enough. The Wife and I saw it at the Spectrum in Albany, and we thought it was wonderfully understated.

This is based on a true story of a couple, a white man named Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) and a black woman named Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga) who had the audacity to fall in love in late 1950s Virginia. Mildred gets pregnant, so Richard does the honorable thing and proposes marriage.

But that wasn’t an option in the Dominion State in 1958, which had passed the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, making marriage between whites and non-whites a crime, so they go to Washington, DC to get hitched. They settle back in the small town of Central Point, VA. Based on an anonymous tip, the local police break into their domicile – a terrifying moment in the film – and find the Lovings sleeping in their bed. Mildred pointed out the framed marriage certificate on the bedroom wall, but they were told the certificate was not valid in the Commonwealth.

“On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pled guilty to ‘cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.’ They were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on condition that the couple leaves Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years,” an apparently generous offer worked out by a local attorney. “After their conviction, the couple moved to the District of Columbia.”

Frustrated by being away from their extended families, and not happy with urban life, Mildred Loving wrote a letter to US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. RFK referred her letter to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and young, inexperienced attorney Bernard S. Cohen, who, eventually, with fellow lawyer Philip J. Hirschkop, filed a motion on behalf of the Lovings in the Virginia trial court to “vacate the criminal judgments and set aside the Lovings’ sentences on the grounds that the Virginia miscegenation statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.”

This is a slow legal process, and the taciturn Richard is uncomfortable with the need to get publicity for the case, while Mildred appreciated its strategic importance. The tension might have split up a lesser couple. When the case was to be argued before the Supreme Court, the lawyers asked Richard what he’d want to say to the justices. Richard: “Tell them I love my wife.”

I had written about this case here, specifically Loving Day, on June 12, 1967, the date Loving v. Virginia overturned the laws not only in their case but in 14 other states.

Unfortunately, “Richard Loving died aged 41 in 1975 when a drunk driver struck his car in Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred Loving lost her right eye in the same accident. She died of pneumonia on May 2, 2008, in Milford, Virginia, aged 68. The couple had three children: Donald, Peggy, and Sidney.” Peggy was involved in the making of the movie.

As I suggested, there is tension in this film, but it’s subtle, such a brick around the LIFE magazine article they appear in. This was a mostly quiet, but extremely effective film for which Edgerton and Negga rightly received Golden Globe nominations.

Movie Review: Arrival

When the movie was over, I got into some banter with two total strangers about its meaning and message.

I went to see the movie Arrival at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany alone; I’ve discovered that there are lots of people who won’t do that. A few days later, the Wife did the same thing.

Going in, I knew it was some sort of science fiction drama. Odd-looking spacecraft show up at 12 different locations around the globe, including in, or more correctly, over Montana. The military guy (Forest Whitaker) calls on an expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to try to figure out what they want. Louise works with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and their teams to try to communicate with these alien beings.

But this takes time. People around the world are nervous. In a nod to the know-nothing media, we see some yahoo on the TV bashing the “do-nothing” government for failing to act promptly against this potential threat, yammering, though he has no idea what he’s talking about.

I liked this film enough to try to be relatively vague about it, lest I spoil it. Interesting that on Rotten Tomatoes, the critics like it a bit more (93%) than the fans (83%). It is generally a cerebral film. And when the movie was over, I got into some banter with two total strangers about its meaning and message, and whether the Louise character should have taken a certain actions, a conversation that I really enjoyed.

As a teacher of English as a New Language, the Wife really enjoyed the struggle to try to understand the language – if it IS a language – of the visitors. I was disappointed in not hearing why Portuguese is so different from other Romance languages.

The director of the film is Denis Villeneuve, who has a well-regarded body of work, but this the first film of his I have seen. I suspect Amy Adams will be nominated for an Oscar this season, if not for Arrival, then for the gritty-looking Nocturnal Animals.