Kristen Spexarth, from Void

Robert Ebert (1942-2013), the first winner of a Pulitzer Prize for film criticism

The tip of the Empire State Building, just below the crain

Before:  Thirty years ago I thought, This is too good to be true the first time I laid eyes on the view from my living room window.  The overcast day could not disguise the miles and miles of sky that unfurled.  That, combined with the space of 5 rooms sold me.

My spouse at the time hadn’t joined me for the search.  He was in a perpetual snit then; we’d reached the 5-year mark of living together in a 2½ room apartment on Riverside Drive and the strain was beginning to show.  Though our rent would double (to $434 and change per month)he’d be hard pressed to reject the opportunity; More space, I convinced myself, would fix our issues.  For a time I was right.  I’ll never forget the day after we moved in and stepped out on the fire escape to wash the windows.  When we looked south we gasped—I’m not kidding.  There they were: Rockefeller Center, the Citicorp Building, the Chrysler Building and the old twin towers of the World Trade Center stabbing the sky, beckoning like an Emerald City to us, 2 Ohioans who, despite having already lived in Manhattan for 5 years, still tended to be over-impressed with such things.

For a while we were healed, but even bandaids fall off.  When things turned between us, the view served up solace on sleepless nights; I’d go out and sit with my cup of tea and try to pinpoint the moment we went off, or any number of fruitless gambits to put us all right.  Eventually he moved out leaving me the apartment and the view.  My fifth floor aerie took on a new significance.  I weathered more sleeplessness, but also re-built myself.  All the talking-tos, all the problem solving happened as I stared at a New York recast through the filter of someone suddenly flying solo.  The fire escape became my second office, a place to read, write letters, tend to plants, and with the aid of a long phone cord, bathe in the voices of friends who held me up through those tricky years.

By the time someone new came to set up shop in my heart—and the closet next to mine—I’d taken that Southern view for granted.  After he moved in new routines manifested while we gazed South: summer drinks; the planting of marigolds and roses in big terra cotta pots; gawking at fireworks exploding over Central Park and the East River, and the passing parade of the landed gentrifiers.

After: Stability can blur realities.  When it was announced that a combined residence/arts center would go up on the corner of 155^th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue I didn’t pay much attention to the artist rendering, though there was a moment when I felt bad for the folks who used the parking garage that occupied the site (people from North of the city parked, then jumped on the conveniently located C train just across the street).  The construction noise was blessedly faint, making it easy to ignore the rising floors and the building’s sprawl.

And then one afternoon I stepped out on the fire escape.  I could only see the tip of the Empire Building—the bones of what can only be described as a dull horizontal slab blacked all else out.  In a day or so the “view” had disappeared.  Gone were the landmarks; gone, the treetops of Central Park and a big swatch of sky.  Later I found out this section was actually only the building’s bottom half.  By the end of 2013 something more than twice that height would constitute my Southern exposure.

Ouch.  Sondheim said that pretty is what changes; too bad my inner child can’t always embrace such beauty, or accept that ties to the past break with every passing moment.

Gone baby, gone...

Jennifer Lawrence explains it all in Silver Linings Playbook

Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, director).  Two zanies meet cute, overcome a boatload of wacky complications to find love.  The setup sounds like a plot spun from the delicious mind of a Preston Sturges or Howard Hawks.  Russell, returning to the brand of comedy he minted in such films as Spanking the Monkey and Flirting with Disaster, supplies enough lunacy in Playbook to fuel another golden age of film hijinks.  That the comedy is tempered a genuine core of pain is the film’s genius; rivulets of disappointment, fear, anger and suspicion ooze from its characters, eliciting a discomfort that throws the audience off-balance.  Sometimes you want to look away, but do so at your peril.  The film taps into the insecurity in all of us: that sense that behind our facades we’re all teetering on the edge, struggling to get life right.  Playbook has a killer ensemble of actors headed by Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence and a newly minted DeNiro in a performance that banishes the memory of his recent Saturday Night Live appearance.  Nominations: 8.

Les Miserables (Tom Hooper, director).  One of the 80s biggest mega-musicals finally makes it to the big screen, in the year’s biggest disappointment.  The pleasure of seeing it live lay not in its book, or hyper-bombastic score, but in Trevor Nunn’s original staging (I can still see those circles of faux-French citizens marching in step as the Act I curtain rang down).  A cinematic equivalent of Nunn’s ingenuity eludes Hooper, a foursquare director if there ever was one.  The motiveless malignity of Javert’s pursuit of Jean Valjean remains as unconvincing as it was on Broadway; ditto the comic appeal of Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the jokily evil Thenardiers (see previous blog on rustics).  Not enough grit, too much Hallmark, despite some valiant trouping by Hugh Jackman, Samantha Barks, Eddie Redmayne, and especially, Anne Hathaway, who’ll no doubt win an Oscar for sustaining the film’s sole moving moment.  Nominations: 8, including, improbably, Best Picture.

Lincoln (Steven Spielberg, director).  If 90% of a project’s success lies in its casting, then you could surmise it was enough for Spielberg to place his camera, yell “action,” and turn his actors loose.  It’s hard to imagine a better 16^th President than Daniel Day-Lewis, brimming with equal measures of warmth, gravitas and humor; he’s matched by Sally Field—stern, vulnerable, a mournful wraith in black crinoline who teeters between common sense and impending insanity.  This is a film painted with faces, a Who’s Who of American character actors deployed with stunning effect in roles large and small; the great playwright Tony Kushner has given them a feast of words to rival Shakespeare’s for argument and eloquence.  Just when you think you’re tired of Spielberg (my own excitement waned a touch after Minority Report) he up and delivers a masterpiece.  Nominations: 12

Argo (Ben Affleck, director).  Not nominating him as Best Director has already proved a historic mistake, especially after his work on Gone, Baby, Gone and The Town.  It’s hard to think of someone except, perhaps, Steven Soderbergh, who could coalesce Argo’s disparate elements.  This true story (a U.S. government agent must extract six Americans taking refuge in the Canadian embassy in Tehran during the 1979 hostage crisis) is about three movies packed into one: an espionage thriller brimming with CIA intrigue; a classic innocents-in-jeopardy melodrama, and last, a farcical depiction of Hollywood capriciousness.  In look and tone, Argo bears not a whit of resemble to Affleck’s previous work, but he doesn’t so much as break a sweat.  But you will: hang on for all the twists and turns, and a will-they-or-won’t-they climax that will have you clawing your armrest.  Nominations: 7

1)   Woke up from a dream involving my ex.  I and some friends and strangers found him sprawled on a divan in what seemed an abandoned office building.  Like a pieta he was sprawled, and looked the way he had at the end of his life—thin, riddled with Karposi’s sarcoma, listless.

2)   No surprise, but lots of guilt.  Last Sunday marked the 20^th anniversary of his death, and I forgot to think about him.  A few days before, I’d spotted the date on my iCal and made a note to take a moment to visualize him back in the days before AIDS claimed him at the age of 38.  Missed it: instead, went down to troll the Lower East Side with spouse, hitting the galleries.  I realize that my ex would’ve been honored I’d done that on his death day—he loved to walk this great big city.  But still.

3)   Ed Koch said goodbye this week.  Earlier, when the news reported on his various hospital stays I said to the spouse, “he’s gonna die soon.”  I didn’t believe it would be so soon—maybe in a month, or even a year, but not so soon.  But then, all death takes me by surprise.  My ex’s did, even at the end when it was clear he was never going to check out of the hospital.  But that’s me—I tend to want to believe in the best outcomes.  Or it could be that I never want to let go.

4)   Koch was the mayor when the ex and I moved here from Ohio.  The city was crazy then, and Koch was king, a local celebrity right up there with Crazy Eddie and Robin Byrd.  When AIDS broke I wasn’t really tracking his reaction to it, or the anger of activists taking him to task.  I was in a relationship; as a gay man I felt untouchable, shielded.  The disease was peripheral, a blip on the margins of my perceptions.  Youth.

5)   Reminders remind you.  Death is one.  The end of last year, the beginning of this, so many folks have passed:  Ada Louise Huxtable, Conrad Bain, Abigail Van Buren, the list rolls like a wave.  Such passings are pieces of all our hearts, all our lives lived, all our pasts.   One death reminds you of all the others, reminds you to be grateful, reminds you of the richness that was.  Armistad Maupin says: “Missing people and wanting them back—that’s the price you pay for being alive.”  Amen.

In Hollywood no one can hear you scream: that thought went through my head as I watched Rebecca Miller on the red carpet parade preceding last Sunday’s Golden Globes.  Miller is Mrs. Daniel Day-Lewis; she’s also a fine film director, so it was a touch dispiriting to see her introduced as merely “the wife” (okay, Day-Lewis is poised to win his third Oscar, something of a record—it’s his night), then ignored, as the NBC commentators fawned on the star.  Miller, wearing her best date face, was gracious and stoic.  She could have taken a tip from Taylor Hackford (another notable director), who let his wife Helen Mirren get grilled on her Oscar bait, Hitchcock, all by her lonesome as he floated in the back-background.

Tis the season for awards shows, the reality show of champions.  The road to this moment was bloody with some good, aspirational films; now, the also-rans are jockeying for their places in DVD heaven, leaving nominated hopefuls to duke it out until the Academy Awards air on February 24.  Some short takes on movies that made it to the finish line, and those that didn’t:

The Hobbit (Peter Jackson, director).  I’m not a fan of rustics, unless they appear in Shakespeare or on an Amish reality show.  So until Hobbit’s mid-point it’s heavy sledding—lots of mock-cute Dopeys and Grumpys acting like refugees from a Farrelley Brothers musical (yep, there are songs!) until Bilbo Baggins screws his courage to the sticking point.  This film comes alive only in battle—Jackson remains a master stager of action sequences—and with the return appearance of Andy Serkis’ Smigel, who gives a master class (CGI, notwithstanding) in passive-aggressive aggression.  (Nominations-3, all in technical categories)

Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, screenwriter and director).   Another historical mashup/homage, this time set in the antebellum South.  The held shots, quick cuts and slo-mo visions make this story of revenge and rescue more phantasmagorical (and slightly more ridiculous—cue inappropriate laughter) than Inglorious Basterds.  But as with Basterds, the cast is the thing: Jamie Foxx, Samuel Jackson, Leo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington and a terrific complement of supporting performers play with just the right amount of snarling satire.  None is better than Christoph “Ace-in-the-hole” Waltz, as a gentlemen swindler with a vicious streak, who makes this film matter more than it has any right to. (Nods: 5, including Waltz as best supporting actor)

Skyfall (Sam Mendes, director).  You had me at Bond, but thankfully this latest installation of the 007 franchise doesn’t take that for granted.  This time it’s London’s MI6 that’s caught in the crosshairs of diabolical intrigue, targeted by Javier Bardem’s Silva, a deliciously pansexual former operative.  He’s out for blood, specifically that of Judi Dench’s M, in a twist that finally solidifies this character as something weightier than a bitch with balls: alongside Daniel Craig’s Bond, she forms the apex of a triangle that’s almost too Greek for Oedipus, and the film is all the better for it.  Screw those folks who thought Quantum of Solace was too “dark.”  Mendes gives us the dazzling car chases (and a dazzling opening atop a spending train that takes the cake) but he’s too smart not to take advantage of the psychological possibilities the Bond stories scream to have unearthed, and a class-act leading man who, arguably, conjures more fascination than Bond himself.  A miracle.  (Nods: 5 –alas, none for Javier)

Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, director).  Don’t buy the hogwash set forth by David Edelstein and a host of others who tout the idea that Bigelow glorifies terrorism.  All this hoopla signals that the director and her screenwriter Mark Boal have accomplished something films rarely do: they’ve prodded a nerve.  This depiction of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, if anything, feels reserved, scrupulously telegraphing torture’s distaste through the eyes of Jessica Chastain’s Maya (compare this film to Gavin Hood’s 2007 Rendition).  But Bigelow gets the race-against-the-clock suspense right, and as operatives creep through clues and bureaucratic obstructions toward the climax, Zero steadfastly refuses to let us off the moral hook, or imply a tidy sense of comfort.  This unsettling truth—that world we were living in pre-9/11 no longer exists—is the key to the film’s power, and its critic’s agita.  (Nods: 5, but not for Bigelow, which makes such awards suspect)

Hitchcock (Sacha Gervasi, director).  The plot is supposedly about the making of the watershed thriller “Psycho.”  But the story that emerges centers on Helen Mirren’s Alma, Hitchcock’s wife and sounding board, the power behind the master’s throne since the beginning of his career.  This movie would have you believe she’s a figure of neglect, cowed by Hitchcock’s (played by Anthony Hopkins, doing the best he can) obsession with his blond leading ladies.  But the premise is a bust, since Mirren is the most vital thing in the movie.  Skip this, and see HBO’s The Girl, which does a better job of convincing us that Hitch was more than a little daft—the word psycho fit, both in his abuse of Alma (aptly played by Imelda Staunton) and his Hitchcock blondes.  (Nods: 1, for hair and makeup)

To be continued…

“One Today”

One sun rose on us today, kindled over our shores,
peeking over the Smokies, greeting the faces
of the Great Lakes, spreading a simple truth
across the Great Plains, then charging across the Rockies.
One light, waking up rooftops, under each one, a story
told by our silent gestures moving behind windows.

My face, your face, millions of faces in morning’s mirrors,
each one yawning to life, crescendoing into our day:
pencil-yellow school buses, the rhythm of traffic lights,
fruit stands: apples, limes, and oranges arrayed like rainbows
begging our praise. Silver trucks heavy with oil or paper—
bricks or milk, teeming over highways alongside us,
on our way to clean tables, read ledgers, or save lives—
to teach geometry, or ring-up groceries as my mother did
for twenty years, so I could write this poem.

All of us as vital as the one light we move through,
the same light on blackboards with lessons for the day:
equations to solve, history to question, or atoms imagined,
the “I have a dream” we keep dreaming,
or the impossible vocabulary of sorrow that won’t explain
the empty desks of twenty children marked absent
today, and forever. Many prayers, but one light
breathing color into stained glass windows,
life into the faces of bronze statues, warmth
onto the steps of our museums and park benches
as mothers watch children slide into the day.

of corn, every head of wheat sown by sweat
and hands, hands gleaning coal or planting windmills
in deserts and hilltops that keep us warm, hands
digging trenches, routing pipes and cables, hands
as worn as my father’s cutting sugarcane
so my brother and I could have books and shoes.

The dust of farms and deserts, cities and plains
mingled by one wind—our breath. Breathe. Hear it
through the day’s gorgeous din of honking cabs,
buses launching down avenues, the symphony
of footsteps, guitars, and screeching subways,
the unexpected song bird on your clothes line.

Hear: squeaky playground swings, trains whistling,
or whispers across café tables, Hear: the doors we open
for each other all day, saying: hello, shalom,
buon giorno, howdy, namaste, or buenos días
in the language my mother taught me—in every language
spoken into one wind carrying our lives
without prejudice, as these words break from my lips.

One sky: since the Appalachians and Sierras claimed
their majesty, and the Mississippi and Colorado worked
their way to the sea. Thank the work of our hands:
weaving steel into bridges, finishing one more report
for the boss on time, stitching another wound
or uniform, the first brush stroke on a portrait,
or the last floor on the Freedom Tower
jutting into a sky that yields to our resilience.

One sky, toward which we sometimes lift our eyes
tired from work: some days guessing at the weather
of our lives, some days giving thanks for a love
that loves you back, sometimes praising a mother
who knew how to give, or forgiving a father
who couldn’t give what you wanted.

We head home: through the gloss of rain or weight
of snow, or the plum blush of dusk, but always—home,
always under one sky, our sky. And always one moon
like a silent drum tapping on every rooftop
and every window, of one country—all of us—
facing the stars
hope—a new constellation
waiting for us to map it,
waiting for us to name it—together.

Best Saturday ever: first, Ann Hamilton’s installation at the Park Avenue Armory, then the George Bellows retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Ann’s from Lima, OH; Bellows hails from Columbus.  As a Cincinnatian, nice to know that our state’s renown extends beyond it being a swing state, and a conservative bastion.  If either work travels to your area, go!

It’s every commuter’s nightmare.  Though actually there are several: the train stops just outside the station and sits for what seems like hours.  Someone pulls the emergency cord.  You discover that you’re trapped in a car from 125^th to Columbus Circle with a religious zealot spewing a bottomless pit of bigotry laced with profound stupidity.

In Manhattan there’s been a rash of people being pushed onto train tracks.  Today I found myself stuck on an A train whose doors refused to open even though we were in the station.  My fury at the delay (seeing my local across the platform, I am ashamed to say that I banged on the door and uttered something impolite) was leavened when the conductor announced, “Sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but someone’s been hit by this train.  Please be patient.”

Eventually the doors opened; the local hadn’t left, so I boarded and I took a seat.  Chaos tempered my relief.  People crowded in, carrying on like I just had.  A year seemed to pass before the doors closed.  Just as they did, I heard a man across from me say to a woman, “well, she jumped.”

Ouch.

Poor woman:  I wished she’d taken a moment, taken a deep breath, taken stock.  My mother, a God-fearing Baptist is fond of saying, “the Lord won’t give you any more than you can handle.”  Lately that feels like a lot.  Lately there’s enough going on to make even the cynics sob: those subways murders, and the murders of children in Connecticut; the state of the economy, and its effect on unemployment, not to mention the looming “fiscal cliff,” an expression vague enough to summon a year’s worth of nightmares; Hurricane Sandy, etc., etc.

Hearing the news made me think of my bête noire (well, one of them, I have many).  I suffer from a fear of missing, which is why I fear death.  People are primary on the list:  my friends and family, as well as the people I’ve yet to meet: both new friends, and enemies I’d hold in esteem, if only for the gossip they’d generate.  I would miss my procrastination, my habit of putting off everything from writing to cleaning my email inbox.  I live to wait for the next Ian McEwen, the next Julia Glass, the next Andrew Holleran, Claire Messud, or Joan Didion.  When’s the next Sondheim, the next Francois Ozon or James Bond film, the next episode of Covert Affairs-Glee-The Hour?

When’s my next peanut butter and raisin sandwich, or whole-wheat fig bar?  That hunk of dark chocolate, though I’d settle for a handful of coffee beans covered with same.   A bath; champagne with a twist of orange, or a gin martini with olives; my trip to MOMA-the Whitney-the Met or Guggenheim; a blessed week on Shelter Island; a walk across the GW Bridge; the Sunday Times; the issue of Dwell; a bigot’s comeuppance, a hypocritical conservative’s fall from grace.  Towleroad.com, the Highline or Chelsea?  My tax return?  When’s my next sidelong glance?  It hurts to think of them all; I could go on, and would if I didn’t have to make hot chocolate and clean the bathroom (so I could take a bath).

As the train pulled out, I saw firemen and EMTs heading to the front of the A I’d just left.  It hadn’t pulled all the way in; if it’s true, she jumped about halfway down the platform.  I saw the front of the train, the void in front where I presume she laid, second thoughts swirling in her head—or no thoughts at all.  In my head I’d moved on to dinner preparations, a quiet New Year’s Eve, and continued recuperation from a nasty cold.  But not before I added her to my list.

BAM!

Looks like we survived the week.  What an advantage we have living on top of a hill; still, it’s tree-heavy here.  A stroll through our neighborhood revealed the carnage of both broken limbs and major uprootings.  Meanwhile New York rises from the ashes.  The trick for them: drain the tunnels, get the subway and buses back to normal and restore power to the folks below 34th Street.  For me?  Crawl out of the malaise that results when you’ve been cooped up for a week with only booze, magazines and a lot of sad TV news.  Could be worse–picture me grateful.