What I Did on My Summer Vacation...

The air in Halifax feels very autumnal lately, particularly the last couple of days.  Days are quite warm, but it's clear that summer is drawing to a close, which makes me kind of sad.  Most of my summer has been taken up with Israel, which was entirely marvellous... I don't think there was really anything I didn't like there, and I'm finding it kind of hard to be back here.

I went to Israel at the beginning of July and first spent a couple of days in Haifa with my friends Mirjam and Avraham... they are utterly lovely people who treat me like family and take very good care of me when I'm with them.  I'd taken all kinds of pictures while I was there, including a LOT of Megiddo, but I'm afraid that I've deleted them permanently.  DUH.  I blame it on the new card reader that I bought when I went to Jerusalem... while I was trying to upload pics from the camera, I'm pretty sure that I deleted the Megiddo pics instead of saving them... unless, of course, I saved them somewhere ELSE and simply have not found them.  I'll continue to be hopeful until I've exhausted all possibilities.

I had almost a week on my own in Jerusalem before classes began at the Conservative Yeshiva, and spent lots of time sightseeing and exploring.  Hardly took a bus the whole time I was in Jerusalem (once, I think), and walked so much that I'm sure I must be 5 cm shorter now than I was when I arrived!

I davened Rosh Chodesh with Nashot HaKotel (Women of the Wall), at the Kotel in the Old City.  That was such an interesting experience that it deserves a spot of its own here, which I will do later.  And I marched in the Pride Parade on 29 July, which is also deserving of its own separate recounting.  And I studied Hebrew (faaaaaaaar from fluent...), and Torah.  I had some truly superior teachers and count myself blessed to have been able to spend this time there.

This time was different from other visits, because this time, I lived in an apartment, with one of the loveliest roomies ever.  Sam is a lawyer from Syracuse, NY, and we didn't know each other at all before we got there.  I hope we're going to be friends for a long, long time, because he's terrific.  It was fun after classes were over, often wandering Jerusalem with him, and discovering things together.  Did plenty of tourist stuff... the tunnel tour under the Western Wall, the Tower of David Light Show... Jerusalem International Film Festival... a concert by the Diwan Project... it was all just brilliant.

I didn't update the blog the whole time I was away, and probably should have ... now it will be a retrospective!  But when I get it done, it will have photos as well...

Vicissitudes of Age

I’ve joked often with my friends that they just don’t make high school boys the way they did when I was in high school. Back then, high school boys looked like boys – they were mostly kind of thin, gangly, occasionally spotty, and there’s no way that they could’ve walked into a bar without being tossed right back out. Today, though, if you walk past any high school football team at practice, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a team that was at least semi-pro. These boys are big! And where the heck do all those chiselled jaws come from? I mean, are they ordered before conception?!

Even my friends’ sons don’t look the way I expected them to look – sure, for the most part, they are in their late teens or early 20s, but they don’t look anything like the boys I remember from high school or university. So we remark on it, blame it (only half-jokingly) on hormones in chicken, and move on.

But the other day (by which I could well mean a couple of weeks ago – my grasp of time is sometimes quite fluid), I was on a bus heading downtown. The bus was crowded, and so I was standing near the rear exit door, contentedly listening to my iPod. Near Dalhousie University, 4 young men got on the bus and moved towards the rear, where they wound up standing near me.

Here’s what I noticed – they were all very attractive. No spotty skin here, but lovely complexions. Nice haircuts. Clear, bright eyes. They were all close to 6 feet tall, if not taller. They were all very nicely built (although it’s winter, it wasn’t a very cold day, and they weren’t seriously bundled up – I don’t have x-ray vision!) – one might have been a football player, another a soccer player, but they were all fit. And they smelled marvellous – how to explain this without having my friends lock up their sons?? They smelled clean, of nice soap… and someone was wearing one of my favourite men’s colognes. I felt myself smiling inside as I listened to their conversation – nothing important, just talking about what they were going to do that day, and generally having fun. I remembered being that age, and having those conversations. My whole life was ahead of me, and there were a million decisions that were finally mine alone to make – and not all of them were big decisions.

Here’s the other thing I noticed. In the couple of moments it took me to notice all this about this small group of young men, I also noticed that they did not notice me – I don’t mean that I think they should’ve been checking me out (erk!), but rather, that I wasn’t even on their radar. I was invisible! When the heck did I become invisible? I think it must’ve been around the time I turned 40. For the most part, young men do not notice women of my age (and what the heck is this – ‘women of my age?!’ Sheesh.) – and lately, those who have noticed have been full-on hitting on me (I think they want their Mrs. Robinson moment, although many of them wouldn’t get the cultural reference).

And the last thing I noticed as they exited the bus is that if they had noticed me, it would’ve been along the lines of … being reminded of an aunt… or their mother. Oh, dear. I won’t really be cute again to adorable young men for another 30 years or so, when I have become a truly old lady!

Someone once said that getting old is not for sissies, and indeed it is not! I’ve long since accepted much of this whole aging process, sometimes with great bemusement. I can live with the wrinkles around my eyes (crows’ feet, my ass!) – but perhaps that’s because they’re generally obscured by the temples of my glasses!

I’ve accepted that my pores aren’t what they used to be, and like everything else, are not as tight and smooth as they once were.

My grey hair has never bothered me – in fact, I think it’s kind of a pretty, shiny grey, and if I knew that my whole head of hair would go that colour, I think I’d be ok with it. As it is now, though, I get a bit of grey at the temples, and it’s sometimes noticeable where my hair is parted. Just enough grey, in fact, for people to wonder why I don’t do something to touch it up! (A sidebar: I have been dyeing my hair for a very long time, since my daughter was 2, in fact. It has been many shades of red, a couple of shades of blonde, and it’s now brunette, which I quite like. I have never dyed my hair to cover grey, but only because I’m easily bored, and it’s cheaper than a vacation!) But what’s with the thinning hair?? It’s not enough that it’s gonna go grey whether I like it or not (thank goodness I don’t care!), but thinning hair? Really? I noticed this in a picture that a friend took of me, and as I first glanced at it, I thought, what’s that white in my hair?? And it was my scalp!! I could see my head through my hair! (OK, this is probably a shrug-inducer for men, many of whom deal with the whole thinning hair thing long before most women, but still. My hair was thin enough before, thanks very much!) And I thought that perhaps it’s because I’ve put waaaaaay too much hair colour in my hair, but when I mentioned in a whisper to a friend, she said, “I know just what you mean!!” Oh, thank God. I am not alone. This happens to other women as well. It doesn’t make it OK, or anything like that, but at least I’m not alone!

I look at my hands sometimes, and I see the hands of an older woman, particularly when I look at my hand next to my daughter’s 21-year-old hands The skin on her hands is tight and smooth, while mine is… not. That surprised me, and I don’t much like it, but I can live with it.

But then there’s my chin. I know, I know, this is vanity unfettered, but this is my blog, and I can wax poetic (or rant) about whatever the heck I want. And the subject today is my chin. What’s with this … loose skin I’m seeing there?? That is an old lady chin! I’m not ready for that! I used to think I wasn’t vain enough for plastic surgery – don’t have perky breasts? So what?! They have served me well, done what I needed them to do, fed babies, been objects of desire for lovers, so if they don’t stand up like an 18-year-old’s, I am ok with that. (I’ve watched enough of Nip/Tuck to know that plastic surgery doesn’t always go the way one expects, after all…) I’ve never had any desire to shoot botulism into my forehead, nor to sand away the wrinkles around my eyes, nor even the lines I’ve noticed on she sides of my mouth – they are brackets to my smile, and I’m ok with that.

But I’m not ok with this whole chin thing. I could see having plastic surgery for this, honestly! And how vain is that?? I’ve already established that I’m getting older, and I’m ok with it, truly! It’s inevitable anyhow, even for a goddess such as myself. And I am still the youngest of all my siblings. But I’m having issues with the chin thing.

I can’t imagine ever being one of those people ‘of a certain age’ who dresses in a manner more appropriate for someone 30 years her junior (30 years… sob!), but insofar as I wish to look in the mirror and still recognise myself, I’m gonna invest in more moisturiser! I wonder if women get hair implants…

Megillah Esther... Happy Purim

So, the feast of Purim is very nearly upon us. My kitchen is redolent with the scents of hamentaschen... chocolate, with a chocolate ganache; and a saffron pastry with apricot/walnut/honey filling. Nothing too traditional about either one of them, except perhaps for their shape... hamentaschen... Haman's ears, it's said, or more politely, Haman's pockets.

Who was Haman? He was an advisor to King Achashvairosh, and one in a very long line of people who wanted Jews out of his way, preferably permanently, which meant preferably dead. His plan was to destroy all the Jews in the empire, ostensibly because one Jew, Mordecai, had refused to pay homage to him.

The way the story goes - very briefly - is that Mordecai knew what Haman was up to and schemed to get his niece, Esther, our heroine, into a position of power (as Queen to King Achashvairosh), and to have her whisper into Achashvairosh's ear of Haman's wickedness. It all worked out pretty well, actually, at least insofar as this time, it wasn't the Jews who wound up on the chopping block, so to speak.

So Jews celebrate that on yet another occasion when someone wanted us dead, we wound up ok. Hamentaschen are just to remind us of Haman - it's as if even with the sweetness of the treat, we must still remember the bitterness of the events that brought us to this celebration. Paradoxical, really.

But that's not why we're here!

At Purim, many Jews dress up in costume (think, "Hallowe'en, but Jewishly!"). We make a LOT of noise (every time Haman's name is said when Megillah Esther is read, the congregation makes enough noise to drown out the name). We eat excellent treats (hamentaschen, which are usually sweet, may also be made savoury, and are quite tasty either way). In fact, we're even commanded to drink on this occasion! So much that we would not be able to tell Haman (boo, hiss!) from Mordecai (hurray!), or Esther (HURRAY!). Many children dress as Mordecai, many dress as Esther. Not too many dress as Haman.

And that's not why we're here, either! But I'm getting to it.

So - we talk about how Esther used her position as Queen to whisper secrets into the King's ear that led to Haman's downfall (which was a good thing, really), but we don't talk often about how she got the job. The King was already married when Esther came along, you see, to Queen Vashti. It was Achashvairosh's idea that he should show off his Queen in all her beauty... ALL her beauty. Wearing nothing at all but her royal crown. The Queen, as befitting any woman with a shred of dignity, took exception to this, and she refused to do as the King wished. Oh, the horror! The Queen had been disobedient to her King... in front of all his advisors, she had shown him up. And what might THAT lead to? Well, of course, other willful and headstrong women who thought that they, too, could do as they wished!

King Achashvairosh did what any king in his position would do - he dispossessed Queen Vashti of her crown and declared that she could nevermore come to him, that she was in fact, no longer Queen. We don't know exactly what happened to Vashti after her dispossession - did she die? Was she just pensioned off to a minor palace elsewhere in Persia? Was she beheaded? Who knows?! What we do know is that when she refused to allow her husband to treat her like a whore and parade her naked in front of his advisors as a demonstration of his kingly power, she was gone. Just like that... poof!

And THIS is why we're here. I can understand that Esther gets heroine status, because without Esther's lips whispering at the King's ear, there might not be too many Jews left on the planet today. And I can understand that Mordecai's a good guy, because it was his foreknowledge of Haman's plan that Esther brought to the King.

But why is it that we don't teach our daughters (and sons!) about Vashti? Why don't we teach them how brave she was, how principled, to stand up AGAINST her husband's demand that she present herself naked before him and his ... work colleagues?! Why are our daughters not dressing up as Vashti, strong and proud, unwilling to let even her husband treat her shabbily, unwilling to be chattel?

Here's to Vashti! Now I've got to do some research.... what might a Persian Queen have worn in the palace? There are just a few days before the reading of Megillah Esther, and I have an idea of a costume I might like to wear this year...

Lights... Camera... Action!!

Sometimes I’m too busy (or too idle) to write down movie thoughts, but that’s rarely because the film I’ve seen hasn’t moved me in some way… And here are a few that have provoked some kind of reaction recently.

Crazy Heart is Jeff Bridges’ latest film, for which he’s been nominated for an Oscar. The pundits suggest that this time (his fourth nomination), he might win it. I wondered if we might be looking at a 21st-century version of A Star is Born, Kris Kristofferson’s epic film with Barbara Streisand, which I saw when it was released in 1976 and I was much more clueless… Still, what I remember is that when Kristofferson’s character fell in that film, he kept right on falling.

Jeff Bridges hasn’t just revisited Kristofferson’s earlier film, though. Neither did the filmmakers stay with the ending that author Thomas Cobb gave his 20-something-year-old book, but that’s ok, too. What worked in this film? Well, Bridges did. He’s a fine actor, and believable in the part of country music performer Bad Blake, a man who used to be on top of the world, we’re told, but is now skidding unstoppably downhill. He’s likeable, even when you wonder if he’s going to fall flat on his face (figuratively speaking, primarily, though the literal sense would also apply).

The way the character is drawn, we know that he must be lonely – he’s on the road a lot, and not with a tour bus and an accompanying band, but on his own. When he gets to a venue, he meets the pick-up band who will be playing with him. While on the one hand, we know that this is his job, and he just goes on the way we all do some times, plodding forward because even when you don’t feel like it, there are still jobs to be done, on the other hand, it’s clear that he still loves the music. It’s not the adulation of fans (although that does give him the ‘benefit’ of the occasional one-night stand), but rather, the baring of his soul that’s important. It seems that through much of his life, through his 4 marriages, and his non-existent relationship with his now-adult son, he hasn’t been able to say what he needed to say. Through his music, he can.

Maggie Gyllenhall plays the much-younger reporter who, of course, becomes the love interest in the story. I went into this with a bit of eye-rolling, wondering why on earth it is that we keep seeing films in which the much older lead male attracts the eye of the much younger lead female. “Give me a break,” I thought. This isn’t like that, though. Yes, Gyllenhall’s Jean is much younger; yes, she’s a little damaged in her own right; yes, she’s vulnerable and a bit fragile. But don’t kid yourself. She’s also mighty strong.

Is it her crazy heart, or Bad Blake’s, that gives us the title? Who knows? They both have hearts in which their capacity for love is great and yet somehow unrealized. Gyllenhall turns in a performance in which she truly is luminous - I generally hate that description of an actress, because it’s generally undeserved. Here, though, it’s a fact. We watch her falling in love with the Bridges character, all the while understanding that we’re sharing a wry joke with her – “Can you believe I’m letting this happen?” She says exponentially more with her eyes than many actresses can say with everything they’ve got.

Colin Farrell also does a turn here, as country music superstar Tommy Sweet, and while he’s not bad, his performance is minor. He doesn’t have much screen time, and he downplays his presence. But this film belongs, by turns, to Bridges and Gyllenhall. Everyone else is window dressing. It’s an excellent film, and well worth the admission and the time. Go see it.

Next up, A Single Man, Colin Firth’s latest, and it’s a stunner. Firth plays George Falconer, a university professor in the United States of the 1960s, a man that society used to call a “confirmed bachelor,” when people really meant that the person of whom they spoke was gay.

It’s not a spoiler to say that Firth’s long-time partner, Jim, dies – quite early in the film, in fact. Jim's death isn't what the story is about, but rather George's life. The death is unquestionably a tragedy of unspoken proportions – Falconer receives a telephone from Jim’s cousin who explained apologetically that ‘the family didn’t want me to call, but I thought it was right.’ So – wait… what? The couple had been together for 17 years, and the family didn’t want him notified of Jim’s death?! Well, yes, because that’s the way it was.

Falconer thanks the cousin and says that he should get off the phone to arrange a plane ticket for the funeral. More apologies from the cousin – a ticket won’t be necessary, because the funeral is ‘just for family.’ Just for family. What casual cruelty to someone who’s just experienced the most profound loss of his life.

Julianne Moore, who may well have been called luminous in this role (I’d disagree – she seems miscast to me as another British expatriate living in the US), plays Falconer’s friend Charley. The pair had what we might call a hookup a number of years earlier, and it’s possible that she still carries a torch for him. I haven’t much to say about her role, or even her character, because honestly, her performance grated here. And I really do like Julianne Moore! Just not in this film.

Back to the film – the filmmakers decided to move back and forth, to show us how George met Jim, how they came to stay together. They build for us the image of this peaceful, uncomplicated, mutually fulfilling life that somehow blossomed in a world which was hostile to it and afraid of it. (Hm… it strikes me that not much has changed for same-sex couples in the last 40 years.)

I won’t spill the ending here; suffice it to say that it was most unexpected. This movie brought me to tears, a couple of times, and I recommend it very highly to anybody. A Single Man is, as my daughter would say, a keeper. As soon as it’s available on DVD, I’ll purchase it and watch it again (tissues at hand).

And if I were the Oscar jury, I’d give the award to Colin Firth, with thanks.

Stay tuned for Part II…

A note on beauty...

I've been having a conversation with a friend - a male friend, in case it's relevant - about the nature of beauty. He feels that women have been sold a bill of goods about the whole beauty myth - that we have accepted that it's ok to have feminine beauty defined by the cosmetics and fashion industries. On the surface, I understand why he would think that, because it's certainly true that if we look at newsstands, the image of beauty, even on fitness magazines, seems to insist that beautiful women are also those who wear makeup. It also demands that we wear stylishly-designed clothes, artfully created to mask the figure flaws that we might not know we had if we didn't read those very same magazines.

Now, I'd never suggest that no women buy into this, because I know better. I have known women all my life who allow themselves to be measured by someone else's standards of what is beautiful, what is feminine, what is, in fact, acceptable - to men and to the world at large. The challenge - and I've had a tough time articulating this to my friend - is that not all women who wear makeup, not all women who walk in high heels, or who wear clothes one might define as 'fashionable' are, in fact, slaves to the fashion and beauty industry.

There are women who have cosmetics in a drawer, hair products in a bathroom cabinet, high heels waiting ready by the front door (or under our desks at the office!), and clothes for each season (or each mood...) hanging in a closet. Sometimes, these women - and in the interest of full disclosure, I count myself as one of them - look at the so-called beauty industry and nod and wink. We know what the industry is up to - it's not about trying to help us be better in some way that we cannot define for ourselves, but rather, about making money.

Why do I wear makeup? Well, in the shortest possible explanation of all, I suppose it's because I'm vain! I wear eyeglasses, and because I believe my mother's assertion that I have beautiful blue eyes, like to see those eyes, which I feel are lost behind the glasses. So I wear makeup to draw attention to my eyes. Very simple. And I wear bright red lipstick almost all the time, because I like the shape of my mouth, and I like it even more when it's got lipstick on it. I don't wear makeup for men, or because I think I'm not good enough without it. I wear makeup because I like it, it's as simple as that! I wear makeup because it pleases me.

That's the explanation for clothes and shoes as well. I wear what pleases me. I choose colours and styles that look well on me. And yes, I love wearing high heels. I suspect that as I grow older, my heels will get smaller, and that's ok - but for now, I wear them and love them. Does that mean that I don't wear jeans and tshirts? Certainly not - but I wear jeans and tshirts that please me, not somebody else. Sometimes, I even wear red high heels with blue jeans.

Does this mark me as a shallow and insecure woman? I doubt that anybody who knows me would find that assertion supportible. I'm confident, happy, secure in my ability to provide for myself and live an authentic life, even with the artifice afforded me by makeup.

I'm a feminist and have raised my daughter with feminist ideals. I contribute to my community in as many ways as I can - I do volunteer work, I lend expertise where I have it, I am politically engaged, I'm well-read and articulate, and I contribute as generously as I can to charitable causes that are important to me.

To my knowledge, my female friends are, without exception, feminists. And most of them wear makeup and heels as well! (Granted, it's entirely possible that I wear both more often than many of my friends do, but that's as much a statement of my current place in existence - I'm not raising a small child anymore, so I have more time to play with stuff that's socially valueless but that amuses me. And I'm ok with that!)

I invite comments on the subject from friends, both male and female... you who know me, tell me what you think... have I bought into a feminine beauty myth? Or am I, as I insist, merely exprssing myself in a way that pleases me, Cosmo and Elizabeth Arden be damned?

Taking Woodstock has the feel of a rather sweet little independent film, peopled as it is with lead actors who are largely unknown, and well-known actors playing much less prominent roles. However, this film, based on the true story of Elliot Taber (about whom more later), is a surprising departure for director Ang Lee, the mind behind Sense & Sensibility; The Ice Storm; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hulk (yes, the broccoli-green comic book hero!); and Brokeback Mountain. Lee has won well-deserved awards for his work, but paradoxically, the one thing that these films have in common is that they have almost nothing in common! These are not films of the Merchant-Ivory ilk, recognisable by their lush cinematography or period sets – and yet, what is clear again with Taking Woodstock is that when Ang Lee and producer James Schamus collaborate, wonderful things are likely to happen. Schamus worked with Lee on all these films (and others), and no matter how disparate the subject matter, they seem to have a shared vision of what makes a film not only good, but also engaging for its audience.

Although the cast includes a few people well-known to movie-goers (Liev Schreiber as a cross-dressing former marine turned security guard, and Into the Wild’s Emile Hirsch), they were not the draw for me. Even 40 years later, a movie about Woodstock doesn’t seem to need big-marquee names. This is not to say that the rest of the cast is entirely unknown – only that the strength of their work may like somewhere other than feature films. Take Jonathan Groff, for instance, who plays the fuzzy (literally and personality!) Michael Lang, one of Woodstock’s promoters. Viewers of TV soap One Life to Live may remember his multi-episode spin as a young man whose life truly did spin out of control as he died of a drug-induced heart attack at the wheel of a speeding car. Groff has also played Broadway and was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor for Spring Awakening in 2007. We’re never altogether certain that his Michael Lang is not under the influence (the drugs of choice here seem to be marijuana and LSD) – he seems pretty blissed-out most of the time and maintains a preternatural serenity in the face of glitches that would likely have the rest of us pulling our hair (ours or someone else’s!). His beatific smile is almost transcendent.

Then there’s Michael’s girlfriend (or is she?), the lovely Tischa, who with her long, straight hair and floppy red hat is the epitome of a Woodstock hippie. She doesn’t say a lot, and it’s not altogether clear what her function is here, but she has a presence even in this peripheral role that adds something to the film. Could we expect any less from Meryl Streep’s daughter (with sculptor Don Gummer)? I wasn’t certain until I read the credits at the end of the film, but even looking at her eyes and nose under the brim of that floppy hat, I thought “Streep!” – and indeed, Mamie Gummer demonstrates that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. Gummer is at the beginning of her career and hasn’t done a lot just yet, though you may be familiar with her from the film Stop-Loss, about the redeployment of American veterans to Iraq when they expected to be going home; or as Sally Smith Adams, her character in a three-episode arc of the TV mini-series John Adams.

These characters are all graceful foils to Demetri Martin’s Elliot Tiber. From a casting perspective, Martin is probably the greatest surprise of all – this New Jersey born and bred son of a Greek Orthodox priest and a nutritionist attended Yale University and NYU School of Law on a full scholarship. He has not previously been recognised for his acting ability – in fact, he has been a stand-up comedian of some repute, and other than TV roles in which he plays himself doing comedy, his resume consists overwhelmingly of writing gigs, both for himself and others. According to interviews, director Ang Lee felt that Martin had the right ‘look’ to play Tiber, and he’s believable enough in the role, playing it with the kind of innocence that we’ve come to expect of movies about this era. Still, as sweet as he is, Martin’s role doesn’t require a great dramatic stretch – he’s pretty calm, just a nice guy trying to make the best of life, who stumbles into something that turns out to be the defining moment for an entire generation.

If it’s acting you want, you owe it to yourself to see this movie if only to check out the incomparable Imelda Staunton (Vera Drake), one of the finest character actors of her (or any other) generation. She plays Elliot’s mother, Sonia Tiber, and initially, I worried that the performance would be a bit over-the-top, a caricature of the Jewish mother stereotype. The Tibers are Russian Jews who immigrated to the United States by ‘walking through snowdrifts 20 feet high through Siberia,’ according to Mrs. Tiber. She is irascible, prejudiced, and astonishingly stingy: there’s a scene in which she sniffs bedsheets that Elliot has taken off a bed at their motel and plans to replace with clean ones. “They’re fine!” his mother shouts. “They didn’t even do anything on them! The water! The soap! The electricity! Put them back!” The sheets don’t get changed. But I digress. Staunton’s role really isn’t all about her meanness, and an evident inability to demonstrate love to either her husband or her son – or even the daughter from whom she is estranged who makes one brief appearance in the film. Sonia Tiber has lived a kind of a half-life, too frightened (though we’re never sure of what) to live with joy. There’s a mad moment near the end of the movie – and I won’t describe it here, because it has to be seen to be believed – that will adjust the focus of her character, so to speak, and allow you to see her as much more than the caricature she seemed at first.

Liev Schreiber, another Hollywood heavyweight (well, at least middleweight!), shows up as a cross-dressing US Marine. Semper Fi that, you macho men! In his first appearance, he’s wearing a lovely pink dress – and frankly, the lack of breasts aside, it looks pretty darned good on him! What tiny hips the man has! His character’s name is Vilma, and he plays her straight (no pun intended) – what I mean is that he’s not, by any stretch, a drag queen here. Except for the fact that you know he’s a man, he plays it with the tenderness you might expect from a woman. It’s a curious role for an actor who has appeared in both X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Defiance, but he carries it beautifully.

What is missing from this film? The music. There’s just not much music. How can someone make a film about Woodstock without the music, for cryin’ out loud? Oh, sure, we hear little bits and pieces – Country Joe McDonald’s Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die, but none of the seminal music we associate with Woodstock. There are no impersonators visible even from a distance who are meant to be Janis Joplin, or Jimi Hendrix. But although I went to the film expecting to hear the Woodstock music, it wasn’t until the film ended that I realised there had been such a paucity of these tunes that embraced a generation. Really, I missed them more afterwards, because during, I was too busy enjoying the film to notice!

Back to the movies...

Goodness, I didn't realise it had been quite this long since I'd posted anything... oops... My paltry excuse is that spring was a mess for me, I was in Israel for almost a month in earlier summer, and.... I guess I'm fairly lazy. Or perhaps I just needed to be excited enough about something to want to post! And here it is. This is what I am excited about - and I do not use that word in the positive sense in which, for instance, I might be excited about birthday presents!

Here it is - my review of Inglourious Basterds - may contain spoilers!

So I went to see Tarantino’s new film last night – Inglourious Basterds. Besides the fact that the grammar and spelling queen in me has a problem with the affectation of the title (He says that the words are misspelled so as not to confuse it with another film, Inglorious Bastards, a 1978 effort that saw more wide release in Italy, and whose actors remain in history.), I confess right up front to two biases, which truly, I managed to put aside (or I wouldn’t have gone in the first place!). The biases: I am not a great fan of films rife with gratuitous violence – but we all know that if we’re going to a Tarantino film, there will be violence. Additionally, I’m not a great fan of Brad Pitt – I’ve never thought he was a great actor, frankly, and there are plenty of men of his generation who are much, much better. I have long believed that he gained a career through shirtless, ‘aw, shucks’ scenes in Thelma & Louise.This said, I went off to see the film.

Its opening was an excellent study in knowing – without giving anything away, we get into the story with a German SS Colonel, Hans Landa (played by Christoph Waltz, about whom more later) and a French dairy farmer, Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet, who I think was wasted in this film). The ‘knowing’ to which I refer is that each of these two men knows something about the other, without its having to be said. And what they each know of the other is very dangerous. To call this a scene of cat and mouse would be to very much understate what unfolds. It is definitely predator and prey, and like a cat with a mouse, Waltz’s Landa is enjoying his little game. Equally, Menochet’s LaPadite bravely stays with the game, though he must surely know how it will wind up.

As I watched this opening, I thought that I might have been hasty in thinking I’d dislike the film because of what I already knew about its violence (has anybody not read about the scalping scenes?!). Here, at least, we were not treated to the visual spectacle of the machine gun murders of a farmhouse full of French citizens (including the requisite hidden Jews), though the one who did escape, running for her life, was shown covered in blood as she ran. No doubting what had happened in that farmhouse, even if we tried to pretend that the gunshots we heard weren’t making contact with flesh and blood.

Tarantino moves us fairly quickly along. We meet the stereotypical bunch of ragtag American heroes – at least, by appearance they are stereotypical. In fact, what we have here is one American lieutenant (Aldo Raines, played by Brad Pitt), and a tiny handful of Jewish enlisted men. We are to presume that they were selected for this mission by some means of which we are not informed, because there were certainly more than this little clutch of Jewish soldiers in WW II. Raines gathers the men together and tells them, “I want me some Nattzy scalps!” Yes, I know that’s not how we spell Nazi. But that is how Pitt pronounces it throughout the film.

In fact, the Raines character is such a tremendous caricature of gung-ho Americanism that it astonished me that he should even be there – this character belonged in a comedy. If John Wayne and George W. Bush could’ve had a child together, Aldo Raines would have been that child. He was all squint, the Pitt version of a Tennessee drawl, and not bloody much else. I’m all for suspending disbelief in movies – generally speaking, we go to be entertained, after all. I don’t really expect Tarantino to make much effort at historical accuracy (listen to the music of this film – David Bowie’s stuff makes an appearance!). But seriously, folks – how much are we expected to fall for here?! What is the likelihood in 1941, when our movie begins, that a single American lieutenant would have been given the go-ahead to create his own little band of (ahem) brothers to go off “Natzzy” hunting, separate from the rest of the military forces in Europe?! (And by the way, where WERE those forces? Other than a cameo by Mike Myers as a British Army officer, and yes, occasionally Austin Powers crept out, the only people apparently involved in this war were the Germans and a couple of Americans! There were no French soldiers or collaborators; there were no British, Canadian, or Italian soldiers. Perhaps Tarantino belongs to the school which feels that the Americans won the war single-handedly, despite the fact that they didn’t enter it until after Pearl Harbour was bombed by the Japanese in December 1941.)

Tarantino not only directed this film – he also wrote it. That should explain a lot. Besides being incredibly far-fetched, the writing is pedestrian at best. Most of the dialogue is altogether laughable (I wonder if he meant for the audience to laugh so heartily in this film? Was that a clever ploy to jolly us along into thinking that Jewish soldiers would cheerfully cut the scalps from the heads of German soldiers?).

And why he wrote the Aldo Raines character as he did completely escapes me. I have no idea who Pitt’s dialogue coach was (For a change, I didn’t hang around to read the credits – I couldn’t wait to get out of there. In fact, this is a film I would’ve left in the first 45 minutes, had I not gone with a friend.), and I haven’t heard a great many Tennessean accents, it’s true – but those I have heard sounded nothing like Pitt! If I was from Tennessee, I think I’d be offended at the stereotype.

Was there anything good about this film? Surprisingly, the answer is “yes!” I don’t think this fact redeems the film, though, nor does it justify shelling out even the cost of a cheap-night or matinee ticket. But I digress. Much like, say, the Bible, some of the best bits are about women, and are downplayed. I suppose we’re lucky that they made it to film at all.

Diane Kruger plays Bridget von Hammersmark, a German actress (who is, of course, spying for the good guys), and she’s brilliant. Kruger has been in a number of films, including Wicker Park, Troy, and National Treasure: The Book of Secrets. Kruger is from Germany, so no worries about the accent there, and she’s great.

Mélanie Laurent plays Shosanna Dreyfus, the one survivor from the farmhouse scene at the beginning of the film. She is French, and the vast majority of her work is French, so honestly, I’ve seen none of it. No preconceived notions here. But, wow – fantastic! She plays such a broken person, and the viewer just knows that she would like nothing better than to kill the people who left her like this, took her family, and were trying to take her country. She concocts a rather clever plan of revenge (which coincidentally will also take down Waltz’s Hans Landa character, though she does not know that initially), and though it’s quite dramatic – and deadly – we quickly realise that it doesn’t matter so much to Shosanna. She was dead the minute she ran from that farmhouse covered in the blood of her family.

Kudos, too, to Christoph Waltz. His performance as the über-creepy Hans Landa is fabulous. His résumé in a career spanning at least 32 years is impressive, though like Laurent seems to be limited to his home country. Shame, really – it’s going to make it more of a challenge to see more of his work. And an unsettling aside – for those of you who may have watched the British TV series, All Creatures Great and Small, about real-life Yorkshire veterinarian James Herriott, Waltz bears a most uncanny resemblance to Christopher Timothy, who played Herriott. Why so unsettling? Well, because Timothy’s character was a kind and gentle man who took care of animals. Waltz’s character is an amoral monster who thought nothing of killing Jews – he didn’t seem to have so much against them, really. It was just another job.

Altogether, my feeling about this film doesn’t seem to mirror that of the theatre full of people with whom I saw it. There were laugh-out-loud scenes, apparently (I heard the laughter – I just didn’t share the sensation that it was amusing. Do we sometimes laugh at something unspeakably horrific, because it comes too close to dark places inside ourselves where we really don’t want to visit?); and as the film faded to black, there were cheers and applause.

I was left with the same feeling that I had as I considered Roger Ebert’s review. Like many in the audience last night, Ebert loved this film. As for me, I thought immediately of the children’s fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes and wondered whether so many reviewers have rated this film highly because they did not want to be the ones who said, “Man, this SUCKED!” Because it did. I give it a resounding “two thumbs down.” Waaaaay down, in fact. If I had more thumbs, they’d be down, too.