Author: diana

The Book Thief–Not to be Shelved

Written by diana on September 16, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments on The Book Thief–Not to be Shelved

A pre-teen girl, Liesel Menninger (the extraordinary Sophie Nelisse) is handed off by her mother, who no longer can care for her , to a middle-aged couple. The time is pre-Kristallnacht Germany, 1938. Her foster home is simple and impoverished. Her foreboding foster mother, Rosa Hubermann (the extraordinary Emily Watson) shows little affection, at first, for the frightened girl. But the irascible father Hans (the endearing Geoffrey Rush) comforts the shy twelve-year old with magical and fanciful allusions to literature and music, playing his accordion and composing songs just for her. Liesel...

“Happy Valley”-No One’s Idea of Happiness

Written by diana on September 10, 2014. Posted in Television reviews. 4 Comments on “Happy Valley”-No One’s Idea of Happiness

This compelling and addictive police drama stars Sarah Lancashire as the middle-aged Yorkshire police sergeant Catherine Cawood, who struggles daily between remembering the suicide of her teenage daughter and developing love for the young boy her daughter left behind. Divorced and estranged from her son partly because of that tragic death, Catherine is determined to capture her daughter’s lover/killer/rapist, but the search almost spirals out of control when the perpetrator, Tommy Lee Royce (played by James Norton) is released from prison. Her pursuit of Tommy Lee Royce becomes...

“Boyhood”–Childhood is Never Easy

Written by diana on August 30, 2014. Posted in movie reviews. 3 Comments on “Boyhood”–Childhood is Never Easy

Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, “Boyhood” is like no other movie made in Hollywood. This groundbreaking story feels like a documentary, not a scripted narrative written and directed by Richard Linklater (of “Slacker” fame), who films intermittently for five days each year over an eleven-year period (from 2002 to 2013). The decade-long time-span for shooting the story is in itself pioneering, but “Boyhood” is so much more. This coming-of-age story is about all families, families we know and families we grew up in. It is not exclusively...

“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...