Recently, we have seen a series of engaging movies portraying handicapped people without pity. These three deal with body image in the nearly unexplored territory of the disabled: “The Sessions”, “NoBody’s Perfect” and “The Intouchables”. All three are surprisingly gentle yet fearless journeys into...
“The Following” Redux–Not Going There Again
In February I reviewed and recommended “The Following”, a Fox television drama series starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy. There have been a total of nine episodes so far, but this past week’s episode has made me recant my earlier review. How disappointed I am in this series!
The story is focused on two main characters: ...
“Silver Linings Playbook”–Behind Every Cloud
The best comedies go for truths, not laughs. And, although “Silver Linings Playbook” is billed as a comedy, it is more a romance between two young adults with bipolar disorder whose families and friends have to deal with the turmoil that mental illness creates.
David O. Russell, the director of this blockbuster multiple Academy Award...
“Parade’s End”–An Historian’s Downton Abbey?”
The five-part BBC/HBO miniseries “Parade’s End” premiered on HBO last week (February 26) and is also available on video-on-demand. The playwright Tom Stoppard has adapted Ford Madox Ford’s monumental 900 page, four-novel series “Parade’s End” for television: the intellectual’s Edwardian-era...
“Water Marks”–What Lies Beneath the Surface
“Water Marks”, the current exhibition at Pacific Grove Art Center (PGAC), features approximately 50 Monterey Bay area printmakers who have created etchings, woodcuts, screenprints, monotypes and mixed media prints focusing on the theme of water surrounding our beautiful Monterey peninsula. The Monterey Peninsula College (MPC)...
“Amour”– A Somber Sonnet to Love
This year’s Cannes Film Festival winner is a film like no other on the dissolution and disintegration of life and the toll it throws at love. As a five-time Academy Award nominee, “Amour“, directed by the Austrian Michael Haneke, is a spellbinding masterpiece. The superb Jean-Louis Trintignant of “A Man and a...
