Films and Concerts to Catch Up On...
I have a few concerts to catch up on, that's for sure, since this post goes back to my February vacation. During that vacation I went to see Kacey Musgraves (love her) in Boston. She put on a great country show. Invited someone up on stage who had made her a jacket. All around great concert.
Then, the following Monday I went down to Boston again, this time to see Coheed and Cambria with Glassjaw. Coheed never disappoints. And it was awesome seeing Glassjaw performing again. The last time I saw them was about four or five years ago when they opened for Brand New in Boston.
Glassjaw:
And Coheed & Cambria's setlist:
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"The Station Agent"
starring: Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Paula Garces, Josh Pais, Richard Kind, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Williams
written and directed by: Tom McCarthy
This is an older film, from 2003, with a few stars that have since really made a name for themselves, particularly- Peter Dinklage, now one of the stars of "Game of Thrones." It also stars Patricia Clarkson, who has always sort of let her rising star never really reach its full peak/potential; and then, there's Bobby Cannavale, who seems to always be the guy providing the comic relief in his films.
At it's core, this is a film about three lonely people who cross paths with each other when their lives need them in it, as they are all trying to navigate these lives and find what they love to do and how they can do it.
Dinklage's character is Finbar McBride, a man whose sole interest in life seems to be trains. He is a dwarf whom people are never really interested in getting to know more about, because they cannot seem to get past his height. So, he lives a life of solitude, until his one friend passes away and he inherits an abandoned train station in a nearby town. So, Finbar moves into the train station and quickly incites the interest of another man, Joe Oramas (Cannavale), who runs a roadside coffee truck on a road that is basically abandoned and rarely ever gets cars or visitors. This leaves him with a lot of time on his hands and curiosity. He forces himself into Finbar's life and the two become friends, much to Finbar's chagrin and his many attempts at slamming doors in Joe's face are thwarted when the man simply doesn't allow Finbar to be his friend. The third lonely soul in Newfoundland, NJ is the only woman, Olivia Harris (Clarkson) who is going through a divorce and coping withe the death of her child.
Yes, this is a comedy, but it's also sad, and finally it's simply a story about trying to figure out what you love to do and then trying to figure out how to do it. Joe has that part mastered, since the coffee wagon represents a lifestyle so perfect that the only way to improve it would be if, say, a dwarf moved into the train station. Finbar thinks he has life mastered -- he thinks all he wants to do is sit in his train station and think about trains -- but perhaps there are possibilities of friendship and sex that he has not considered.
Finbar is a handsome man, which does not escape the attention of a local librarian named Emily (Michelle Williams). But she wants him not for his mind, or his trains, but for his body, and he is not interested in satisfying that kind of curiosity. Olivia is a more complex case, since perhaps she sees in the little man her lost child, or perhaps that is only the avenue into what she really sees. It is a great relief in any event that "The Station Agent" is not one of those movies in which the problem is that the characters have not slept with each other and the solution is that they do. It's more about the enormous unrealized fears and angers that throb beneath the surfaces of their lives; Finbar and Olivia could explode in one way or another at any moment, and the hyperactive Joe is capable of anything.
This is a great film that explores and studies three characters separately, but equally, as their lives intersect with each other and they find themselves as changed by it as they can be.
...................................................................................................
"Ain't Them Bodies Saints"
starring: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Ben Foster, Keith Carradine, Nate Parker, Robert Longstreet
written and directed by: David Lowery
This is a beautiful film that sort of reminds me of films that Terrence Malick makes, with such ease.
Set in rural Texas sometime, presumably, in the Seventies – Affleck and Mara are Bob and Ruth, a pair of young lovers star-crossed by a robbery gone wrong. Surrounded by the law in a clapboard house, the pair, along with a cohort, try to shoot their way out. Ruth wings a sheriff, but Bob takes both her gun and the blame, and ends up with a 25-year prison sentence. The kicker? Ruth is pregnant, and their mutual yearning for each other leads Bob to attempt a jailbreak, which succeeds, up to a point. While Bob’s stuck in prison, Patrick (Foster) – the lawman winged by Ruth, who is unaware it was she who fired the pistol – swings by from time to time to check on Ruth and her young daughter, with an eye toward filling the romantic vacuum left by Bob’s incarceration. Lowery’s script plays down Foster’s own yearnings and the whole film strikes a tone somewhere between Hank Williams’ plaintive, sorrowful, hound-dog croon and a Dorothea Lange photo of hard-bitten doom.
It's not necessarily the story or the characters/actors that make this film what it is. For me, it was the cinematography that really sold the film. It's all lush and beautiful. The film almost plays out like a poem. It's a heartbreaking love-and-death story that you get the sense will end tragically almost immediately, but you still watch it all unfold because Afflect and Mara swoon better than any young couple in love/lust with each other have ever done before.
....................................................................................................
"The Girl in the Book"
starring: Emily VanCamp, Michael Nyqvist, Ana Mulvoy-Ten, Talia, Balsam, Ali Ahn, Mason Yam, Courtney Daniels, Jordan Lage, Michael Cristoff, David Call
written and directed by: Marya Cohn
Here's a film about a woman named Alice (played by Emily VanCamp) fast approaching 30 and she feels stuck in her current situation: she's not getting the most out of her job, stuck as a junior editor for a stereotypically obnoxious boss who treats her with little to no respect because she's a woman or because he's just an ass.
The film focuses most of its energy on the taken-for granted aspect of Alice's character, because it seems to be what she's allowed herself to be defined as and it is what she is most familiar with.
Her father, Ben (Michael Cristofer), is a famed, semi-retired literary agent and pompous tastemaker whose idea of good parenting often turns out to be poaching his own daughter’s ideas. Her mother (Talia Balsam) got left behind long ago in Dad’s womanizing career. In her own hapless, lower-case way, Alice replicates that track record via drunken one-night stands that ensure she won’t meet her own yearnings for emotional stability. The only person providing that is best friend Sadie (Ali Ahn), but she’s too busy with a husband and child to keep providing a shoulder for Alice to cry on. She does provide something potentially better, however, by introducing Alice to the attractive Emmett (David Call), a political activist who just might be the ticket to overcoming her perpetual romantic self-sabotage.
We get more of her background through some interesting and uncomfortable flashbacks when an author comes into her life through the publishing company.
At 15 (played by Ana Mulvoy-Ten in flashbacks), the needy, insecure heroine was befriended by her father’s latest protege, Milan (Michael Nyqvist), an expat scribe probably three times her age. He encouraged her creativity, but also wheedled his way into her trust for questionable motives, ending in betrayal. That humiliation has never left her, and now it’s come back full force: The publishing house Alice works for is reissuing the very tome that exploited (albeit in fictive form) her real-life seduction and abandonment, becoming a cult classic whose success Milan has never equaled since. Being thrown back into his ever-creepily-insinuating orbit is the last thing she needs, though that experience does help trigger to a slightly pat yet satisfying catharsis here in Cohn’s generally astute screenplay.
Emily VanCamp's portrayal of Alice is heartfelt and causes you to feel for her. Her character is relatable (perhaps more so if you're a woman, and even more so if you're a woman who's been taken advantage of- even in the simplest of ways, with your heart). The film works in this way and does not allow it to just become another Lifetime movie of the week where the general purpose of the story is to prove that men or creepy and will hurt you.
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(Julie Andrews cover)
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(Miranda Lambert cover)
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- Encore:
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(Lee Hazlewood cover)
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(Roy Rogers cover)
Then, the following Monday I went down to Boston again, this time to see Coheed and Cambria with Glassjaw. Coheed never disappoints. And it was awesome seeing Glassjaw performing again. The last time I saw them was about four or five years ago when they opened for Brand New in Boston.
Glassjaw:
And Coheed & Cambria's setlist:
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(Live Debut)
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(Live Debut)
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(Live Debut)
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(Live Debut)
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- Encore:
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"The Station Agent"
starring: Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson, Paula Garces, Josh Pais, Richard Kind, Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Williams
written and directed by: Tom McCarthy
This is an older film, from 2003, with a few stars that have since really made a name for themselves, particularly- Peter Dinklage, now one of the stars of "Game of Thrones." It also stars Patricia Clarkson, who has always sort of let her rising star never really reach its full peak/potential; and then, there's Bobby Cannavale, who seems to always be the guy providing the comic relief in his films.
At it's core, this is a film about three lonely people who cross paths with each other when their lives need them in it, as they are all trying to navigate these lives and find what they love to do and how they can do it.
Dinklage's character is Finbar McBride, a man whose sole interest in life seems to be trains. He is a dwarf whom people are never really interested in getting to know more about, because they cannot seem to get past his height. So, he lives a life of solitude, until his one friend passes away and he inherits an abandoned train station in a nearby town. So, Finbar moves into the train station and quickly incites the interest of another man, Joe Oramas (Cannavale), who runs a roadside coffee truck on a road that is basically abandoned and rarely ever gets cars or visitors. This leaves him with a lot of time on his hands and curiosity. He forces himself into Finbar's life and the two become friends, much to Finbar's chagrin and his many attempts at slamming doors in Joe's face are thwarted when the man simply doesn't allow Finbar to be his friend. The third lonely soul in Newfoundland, NJ is the only woman, Olivia Harris (Clarkson) who is going through a divorce and coping withe the death of her child.
Yes, this is a comedy, but it's also sad, and finally it's simply a story about trying to figure out what you love to do and then trying to figure out how to do it. Joe has that part mastered, since the coffee wagon represents a lifestyle so perfect that the only way to improve it would be if, say, a dwarf moved into the train station. Finbar thinks he has life mastered -- he thinks all he wants to do is sit in his train station and think about trains -- but perhaps there are possibilities of friendship and sex that he has not considered.
Finbar is a handsome man, which does not escape the attention of a local librarian named Emily (Michelle Williams). But she wants him not for his mind, or his trains, but for his body, and he is not interested in satisfying that kind of curiosity. Olivia is a more complex case, since perhaps she sees in the little man her lost child, or perhaps that is only the avenue into what she really sees. It is a great relief in any event that "The Station Agent" is not one of those movies in which the problem is that the characters have not slept with each other and the solution is that they do. It's more about the enormous unrealized fears and angers that throb beneath the surfaces of their lives; Finbar and Olivia could explode in one way or another at any moment, and the hyperactive Joe is capable of anything.
This is a great film that explores and studies three characters separately, but equally, as their lives intersect with each other and they find themselves as changed by it as they can be.
...................................................................................................
"Ain't Them Bodies Saints"
starring: Casey Affleck, Rooney Mara, Ben Foster, Keith Carradine, Nate Parker, Robert Longstreet
written and directed by: David Lowery
This is a beautiful film that sort of reminds me of films that Terrence Malick makes, with such ease.
Set in rural Texas sometime, presumably, in the Seventies – Affleck and Mara are Bob and Ruth, a pair of young lovers star-crossed by a robbery gone wrong. Surrounded by the law in a clapboard house, the pair, along with a cohort, try to shoot their way out. Ruth wings a sheriff, but Bob takes both her gun and the blame, and ends up with a 25-year prison sentence. The kicker? Ruth is pregnant, and their mutual yearning for each other leads Bob to attempt a jailbreak, which succeeds, up to a point. While Bob’s stuck in prison, Patrick (Foster) – the lawman winged by Ruth, who is unaware it was she who fired the pistol – swings by from time to time to check on Ruth and her young daughter, with an eye toward filling the romantic vacuum left by Bob’s incarceration. Lowery’s script plays down Foster’s own yearnings and the whole film strikes a tone somewhere between Hank Williams’ plaintive, sorrowful, hound-dog croon and a Dorothea Lange photo of hard-bitten doom.
It's not necessarily the story or the characters/actors that make this film what it is. For me, it was the cinematography that really sold the film. It's all lush and beautiful. The film almost plays out like a poem. It's a heartbreaking love-and-death story that you get the sense will end tragically almost immediately, but you still watch it all unfold because Afflect and Mara swoon better than any young couple in love/lust with each other have ever done before.
....................................................................................................
"The Girl in the Book"
starring: Emily VanCamp, Michael Nyqvist, Ana Mulvoy-Ten, Talia, Balsam, Ali Ahn, Mason Yam, Courtney Daniels, Jordan Lage, Michael Cristoff, David Call
written and directed by: Marya Cohn
Here's a film about a woman named Alice (played by Emily VanCamp) fast approaching 30 and she feels stuck in her current situation: she's not getting the most out of her job, stuck as a junior editor for a stereotypically obnoxious boss who treats her with little to no respect because she's a woman or because he's just an ass.
The film focuses most of its energy on the taken-for granted aspect of Alice's character, because it seems to be what she's allowed herself to be defined as and it is what she is most familiar with.
Her father, Ben (Michael Cristofer), is a famed, semi-retired literary agent and pompous tastemaker whose idea of good parenting often turns out to be poaching his own daughter’s ideas. Her mother (Talia Balsam) got left behind long ago in Dad’s womanizing career. In her own hapless, lower-case way, Alice replicates that track record via drunken one-night stands that ensure she won’t meet her own yearnings for emotional stability. The only person providing that is best friend Sadie (Ali Ahn), but she’s too busy with a husband and child to keep providing a shoulder for Alice to cry on. She does provide something potentially better, however, by introducing Alice to the attractive Emmett (David Call), a political activist who just might be the ticket to overcoming her perpetual romantic self-sabotage.
We get more of her background through some interesting and uncomfortable flashbacks when an author comes into her life through the publishing company.
At 15 (played by Ana Mulvoy-Ten in flashbacks), the needy, insecure heroine was befriended by her father’s latest protege, Milan (Michael Nyqvist), an expat scribe probably three times her age. He encouraged her creativity, but also wheedled his way into her trust for questionable motives, ending in betrayal. That humiliation has never left her, and now it’s come back full force: The publishing house Alice works for is reissuing the very tome that exploited (albeit in fictive form) her real-life seduction and abandonment, becoming a cult classic whose success Milan has never equaled since. Being thrown back into his ever-creepily-insinuating orbit is the last thing she needs, though that experience does help trigger to a slightly pat yet satisfying catharsis here in Cohn’s generally astute screenplay.
Emily VanCamp's portrayal of Alice is heartfelt and causes you to feel for her. Her character is relatable (perhaps more so if you're a woman, and even more so if you're a woman who's been taken advantage of- even in the simplest of ways, with your heart). The film works in this way and does not allow it to just become another Lifetime movie of the week where the general purpose of the story is to prove that men or creepy and will hurt you.
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