Year: 2014

“The Priest of Love” — D.H. Lawrence’s Travel Diary (Unfortunately)

Written by diana on August 24, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on “The Priest of Love” — D.H. Lawrence’s Travel Diary (Unfortunately)

[Guest post from author Shelly King, who has written the novel, THE MOMENT OF EVERYTHING, about a young woman who finds love notes written in the margins of a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in a used bookstore. The quest to learn the truth behind these notes turns her life, and the lives of those around her, completely upside down. THE MOMENT OF EVERYTHING will be in bookstores from Grand Central Publishing (Hachette) on September 2, 2014. For more about Shelly and her debut novel, visit: www.shellyking.com.] It’s hard to make an interesting movie about a writer....

GORGEOUS: Confronting Beauty in Some Extreme Forms

Written by diana on August 18, 2014. Posted in Art, Local travel. 2 Comments on GORGEOUS: Confronting Beauty in Some Extreme Forms

[Guest post from artist Tracey Adams who currently has her own show at the Bryant Street Gallery, Palo Alto, and K. Imperial Fine Arts, San Francisco. In addition, The Huffington Post interviewed Tracey in “Everything in My Life Is Interconnected” on art, music and math.] Last week I had the pleasure of seeing GORGEOUS, an exhibition of works from both the SFMOMA and the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco. The curators mentioned, this exhibition is not about the context or meanings of the objects. Rather, the focus is on what the objects look like and how we react to them. What...

“Chef”–A Recipe for Fun

Written by diana on August 10, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. 4 Comments on “Chef”–A Recipe for Fun

With an all-star cast, “Chef” centers on the once-celebrated chef Carl Casper(Jon Favreau, director of the Iron Man series), who is ordered by the owner (Dustin Hoffman) to preserve the status quo: a predictable menu the customers want. “No one goes to a Rolling Stone’s concert not expecting to hear ‘Satisfaction’.” The boss commands Carl to play to his strengths, because business is business. When a famous food critic (the ever-appealing Oliver Platt) dismisses the menu as tired and yesteryear, the conflict boils over into a confrontational...

“Snowpiercer”–Don’t Get on This Train

Written by diana on August 4, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. 1 Comment on “Snowpiercer”–Don’t Get on This Train

“Snowpiercer“(2013), directed by the Korean master Bong Joon-ho (of “Mother” fame) is a sci-fi dystopia in the year 2031, after a failed climate-change experiment seventeen years before has frozen all of Earth and wiped out all life, except for the survivors on a bullet train–Snowpiercer– traveling across the globe in a self-contained ecosystem. The train is class-structured with the poorest in the back suffering like slaves under grotesque conditions and the 1 % in the front with every luxury imaginable, epitomized by spa pools, floor-to-ceiling aquariums,...

“The End of Poverty?”– The Problem Persists

Written by diana on July 27, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. No Comments on “The End of Poverty?”– The Problem Persists

Global poverty did not just happen. Yet the overwhelming magnitude of poverty seems unsolvable. Can we really end poverty within our current economic system? In this award-winning documentary, narrated by Martin Sheen, we see the historical foundation that, for over five centuries, laid the groundwork for today’s financial crisis. It began with military conquest, slavery and colonization (often in the spirit of missionary zeal) that resulted in the seizure of land and minerals and in forced labor. Today, the problem persists because of the structuring of debt, trade and tax policies. ...

“The Fall” (mini-series) — “Prime Suspect” Revisited

Written by diana on July 20, 2014. Posted in Television reviews. 1 Comment on “The Fall” (mini-series) — “Prime Suspect” Revisited

In this Netflix Original production distributed by BBC Ireland, (not to be confused with the 2006 movie of the same name–see August 16, 2011 review), the story unfolds, not as a mystery to be solved, but as a contrast between two obsessive personality types. One is Detective Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson of “X-Files” and “Bleak House” fame), called in to solve a murder. The other is the psychopath leading a double life, not unlike “Dexter”. Interestingly, it is the seeming normalcy of the psychopath, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan, soon to be known...