Sorry for a post-free yesterday, readers. I couldn't get the damn laptop to start up and needed by handy wife to do it for me.
I hope my aunt Pat is doing better today. My uncle Dennis informed me yesterday that she needs to have a gallbladder removed; I hope it goes smoothly.
Boy, it has been a rainy last three or four weeks down this way. Going off the premise that it's sunny and fine 240-250 days a year, I know that the year has already gone through at least half of its overcast, murky days.
A Soul Track for today? You got it.
Randy Crawford (fronting the R&B journeymen The Crusaders) and her 1979 hit "Street Life",
a top 20 U.S. pop number. I first heard this lost classic - sort of disco-y and funky - on the soundtrack to Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown; it has aged very nicely. Crawford, a Macon, Georgia native, has maintained a solid career for thirty-plus years singing R&B and jazz, often on other artist's albums, as a guest vocalist, and as a solo artist. She has flown under the radar, her biggest (and only top 10 hit) coming on a late-80s cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" with Eric Clapton and David Sanborn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnNyxy7XPfs
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Diego Velazquez, arguably the greatest Spanish painter of all time, was born today, in 1599. He was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV and the most remembered (and acclaimed) artist of the Baroque period along with Rembrandt. The online art magazine Artwolf.com composed a highly subjective, up-for-furious-debate list of the 101 Best Painters of All-Time; Velazquez was ranked #6.
(Here's the list, in case you're interested: http://www.theartwolf.com/articles/most-important-painters.htm)
In my time/life with Julia, I've gotten more into art history and have studied and read from some of her books about periods and artists that I like and appreciate. I've read a fair share about Velazquez and rather than regurgitate it back to you the little I know (there are thousands and thousands of books, articles, web references devoted to him if you want to learn a wee bit more), I'll just present you with his greatest painting, Las Meninas (The Maids of Honor), on permanent display in Madrid's Prado Museum.
Its mysteries continue to confound us, as much so as the Mona Lisa's. A seemingly straightforward portrait of a royal family, it's actually shrouded in mysteries.
Noted art scholar and art theft specialist (and novelist) Noah Charney wrote an intriguing article on the painting:
http://blogs.artinfo.com/secrethistoryofart/2010/12/01/velazquez-las-meninas/
Among the mysteries Charney (and historians throughout the ages) addresses:
- Who exactly is the couple in the mirror at the back? If it's a royal couple, where are they in relation to the other characters? If they're part of the painting the portraitist (Velazquez himself?) is in the process of painting, why can they be seen and not him?
- Why is the portraitist looking at us?
Charney makes an interesting argument that this one of the first works to break down the "fourth wall" - in other words, the characters know they are figures within a painting and that they know we, the viewers, are looking at them.
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I'm glad TNT's Rizzoli and Isles is back for its third season. Have you seen this show before? It's an appealing, always-involving show about Jane Rizzoli (Angie Harmon), a detective, and Dr. Martha Isles (Sasha Alexander), a medical examiner. Based on novels and characters created by bestselling novelist and retired physician Tess Gerritsen (whose books are a lot of gruesome fun), the Boston-set series differentiates itself from the myriad other cop shows out there with its humor and willingness to spend almost as much time away from the cases as it does on the investigations itself.
The appealing, well-cast characters (which include Lorraine Bracco as Rizzoli's mother, Jordan Bridges - Beau's son - as Rizzoli's brother and fellow cop, and longtime character actor Bruce McGill and Lee Thompson Young as Rizzoli's tech-savvy, street-suave partner) have a good give-and-take, their conversations peppered with colorful reveals of personality; Jane and Martha each are well-defined, peppery, specific, individualistic, marvelous chemistry. There is an ongoing, series-long mystery (not that interesting, in my opinion) usually addressed at the end of each season. Each week, there is a clever mystery with a twist, and these have included, in the first two seasons, murders during the Boston Marathon, of a minor league ballplayer, during Fleet Week, etc. The show has the gift of being breezy in spite of the murders and scenes involving Isles picking and prodding dead bodies. Most other cop shows - with the exception of Castle - are so cut-and-dry, so investigate-him-and-then-him-and-then-her, with so little personality, that I get tired of them after half an hour or so. Not this one. (It's not actually filmed in Boston, however, but, rather, a studio backlot.)
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R.I.P. Ray Bradbury
*
Mel Gibson is arguably the most controversial, ill-liked figure in Hollywood; I would say he was misunderstood if if wasn't for the fact that we, the public, in fact seem (based on what we've read and heard) to understand him fairly well: he's a jackass.
That said, he is often a bracing actor, and never more so than in the 2011 bomb The Beaver, the strange, easy-to-ridicule drama marking Jodie Foster's third film as a director. Gibson exhibits his uniquely charismatic intensity as Walter, a depressed man who fails to commit suicide. As a way to cure his illness, he begins to talk to the people in his life through a stuffed beaver puppet that he wraps around his right hand. His wife (Foster) is mystified but open to it. His oldest son (Anton Yelchin) thinks the whole act is too just... too much.
It's a slight film, always threatening to tie the spill-over, confounding mysteries of mental illness into a tightly-wrapped, easy-to-handle package, but it's saved by Gibson and the fine cast (which includes Hunger Games star Jennifer Lawrence as Yelchin's love interest and Cherry Jones as Walter's colleague). For such an unusual, silly gimmick (especially since Gibson when talking as the beaver sounds suspiciously like Bob Hoskins), the film is never funny, but it is often moving. The film manages to ground Walter's illness and make it real, something we kind of realize and can size up. The final scene seems to imply an easy resolution, which is a mistake, but the movie until then is worth a look.
(**1/2)
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