Coasting

Hello to my visitors from the US and Germany, nice to see you!

After the work of assembling and presenting an art show, there is always the few days afterwards of coasting, relaxing, not-lifting or moving anything! Hence, no blog for a few days...
Besides the preparation of framing and labelling artwork, there is a full day of setting up, all of which has to be removed the night after the show to vacate the space. Like moving house, it all happens and gets done, and then you sit on the couch ~ and don't want to get up again... There are also many enthusiastic people who want to visit and talk about the artwork, which is the real bonus of putting on a show. However, it's nice to have a day afterwards of quiet, reflect on the event, and watch a movie..

One I can highly recommend is "Irina Palm", a British movie starring Marianne Faithfull.
This is a great character study with terrific acting, well developed characters, and I must stress, an 'adult' nature. There isn't any violence, and just a few passing shots of topless ladies, but the subject is not for the whole family. Marianne plays a grandmother whose grandson needs an operation. The family has no funds, and cannot raise them, so she decides to get a job. With no skills, she has no luck, until she happens upon a Hostess Wanted sign in SoHo ~ a "hostess" in a strip club. That's all i'll say, as the plot twists and turns, and the mousy housewife finds her voice. One of those movies filled with subtle acting and intrigiung characters. I wanted more and was so sorry to see it end. It was great to think back on how she was when we first meet her, and how her character developed into the last shot of the film. Recommended.

The next day was veg on the couch day, so I thought I'd revisit a movie I saw when I was 11. You know those movies you thought were thrilling as a kid, and you hope they are as good now? I remember seeing "Rollercoaster" and being so glued to my seat I didn't want to leave to go to the loo. This was in 1977, back when George Segal was a star, and his teeneage daughter was played by Helen Hunt. Timothy Bottoms is the clean cut, blank-faced sociopath who takes to bombing rollercoasters and amusment parks. It was actually really well made, and held up today as suspenseful with just the right amount of cheese. It was originally shown in "Sensurround" which means they just cranked up the speakers like you were rockin' the rollercoaster. This was a then-doomed system, as the multi-plex theater next door heard the rollercoasters over their own movie. Nowadays, ALL the theaters crank it up ~ it's not 'Sensurround" anymore, it's just the Telus commercial. Of course, there are countless "front car of the rollercoaster roaring down the track" shots, which look great on a big screen. 

Timothy Bottoms was seen as a romatic lead by some after The Last Picture Show, but I have only seen him in movies like Love, Pain, and The Whole Damn Thing, where he was a social misfit falling in love with an older misfit, Maggie Smith. I thought that was his thing, social misfits. I loves me a misfit.
The cover or poster might make it look like a disaster movie in the vein of Airport 77' or The Towering Inferno, but it's not ~ more a game of cat and mouse, like Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train", another great sociopath role. And like Strangers, there seems to be no motive for the bomber, other than he is your average all-American, who is misguided in his quest for the standard prize of the times, one million dollars. It was interesting to see Segal working with the FBI , he does all he can without breaking protocal. A few years later and we will have the "cop" hero breaking all the rules, being as wild and causing as much destruction as the villian in movies like "Die Hard". For film buffs, there is Helen Hunt as a teenage daughter in a few scenes, a one-line walk on by a young Steve Guttenberg with a minor 70's fro - don't blink, and Craig Wasson in a bit part as "Hippie Guy", who doesn't know he's riding a bomb.

Craig Wasson is a terrific actor, who was terrific in 1981's "Four Friends", a favourite movie of mine he starred in with Jodi Thelan. Four friends growing up in an industrial town through the 60's and 70's, changing through the years. Jodi plays a loveable misfit who the three other friends all love, sort of a Kook ~ like Pookie in The Sterile Cuckoo, another favourite movie. I recently saw it again, and although I have a sentimental place in my heart for it, and Jodi Thelan, it seemed like it suffered from last minute tampering in the edit. There were some choppy transitions I'm sure director Arthur Penn (Bonnie & Clyde) didn't plan, however, I might feel like that because I am left wanting more. It's full of honest sentiment, true characters and lyrical music. Four Friends was written by Steve Tesich, who wrote the screenplay for Breaking Away and The World According To Garp. It's a very heartfelt and tender movie that's well worth a watch...

Reading ~ I've started the second book from Yrsa Sigurdardottir, an Icelandic mystery writer called "My Soul To Take".

Only about 60 pages into it, but it's far better than her first "Last Rituals". I enjoyed the first, but the subject was off-putting,  students into devil worship sort of thing ~ you know how kids are these days. This begins with a murder, and cuts to many years later where a spiritual spa is built over the grave. They say the resort is haunted, or is there a killer stalking the beach? This is more fast paced and fluid than the last book, and I'm enjoying being in Iceland again. It's a little chilly on the beach, and people are generally grumpy and unhappy, but that would be my next pin on the map.

There is a series of terrific books by Icelandic writer Arnaldur Indridason ~ Highly Recommended. If you were starting out, I'd say start at the beginning with Jar City and Silence of the Grave, as the characters revolve and reappear in the later novels. Again, a grumpy detective, drinks too much, estranged wife, daughter on and off drugs, cold, dark, gloomy, but he gets under your skin and you come to know him and his colleagues. Like Girl Who Played With Fire, you can tell what they will and won't do, you know them so well. There is a continuing mystery surrounding his brother who disappeared, which he is obsessed with and works on through the series, and I feel like I am working on it with him. They made an Icelandic film out of his best known earlier novel published in english as Jar City, however, I feel I know what he looks like more than the casting agent. I have avoided it for fear of being disappointed. His books contain many inside mysteries for faithful readers. He tends to answer questions raised for the characters in one novel in the next, so there is a continuity and personal payoff for observant readers. If you like Steig Larsson - Check out Indridason!

Have a great day