Poetry Monday

Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

by Wallace Stevens

The houses are haunted
By white nightgowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and perwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

Film Frames Friday

The Book of Evidence (1989)

I almost gave up on this book. Midway through it just started to lose me, mainly because the narrative voice is so oppressive, so unreliable, so twisted, that I began to lose the thread of the story. I stuck it out though and I'm glad I did. The final third, after the narrator has described the horrific pointless murder he's enacted, really starts to gain steam, both narratively but also lyrically. The writing in this book is condensed and metaphorically brilliant. I know that Banville has said that he is attempting to write prose that mirrors poetry and this book, the only one of his I've read, does juts that.

Next up I plan on reading something by Banville's dark half, Benjamin Black, his pseudonym, who writes more straight-up thrillers set in the Dublin of the 1950s.

Cedar Rapids

An unambitious but funny comedy in which Ed Helms plays Tim Lippe, a small-town insurance salesman from Wisconsin who is sent to his first conference, in the big city of Cedar Rapids. What happens next is only partly predictable, as he becomes embroiled with a trio of misfits and embarks on a dark night of the soul. The characters are nicely drawn; what I really loved was that the writers left unresolved many of the apparent conflicts in the minor characters, notably Anne Heche, excellent as a philandering wife, John C. Reilly, doing his John C. Reilly part, and the surprising presence of Isiah Whitlock Jr. (best known from The Wire) as a mild-mannered hanger-on.

Peter Pan (2003)

I'd been meaning to see this version of Peter Pan since it came out. I'd always heard good things and I finally got the chance last night: on the big screen no less. Thank you Brattle Theatre. It didn't disappoint: a faithful, entertaining, dark, imaginative version. It was a little too frenetic at times, and the ending was a little over-the-top sentimental but those are relatively small complaints. My favorite performances: Jason Isaacs was superb in the dual role of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, Ludivine Sagnier was almost too strange but also strangely perfect as Tinkerbell, and Olivia Williams was a beautiful (natch) Mrs. Darling. Jeremy Sumpter and Rachel Hurd-Wood were good enough as Peter and Wendy.

The rumors on this film, directed by P. J. Hogan, were that it went wildly over budget. At least it shows with some stunning, and creative, special effects work. I loved that the film didn't go whole-hog on CGI--that there are all sorts of other special effects techniques, including a pretty charming animatronic parrot.

Poetry Monday

Why Brownlee Left


by Paul Muldoon


Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
Is a mystery even now.
For if a man should have been content
It was him; two acres of barley,
One of potatoes, four bullocks,
A milker, a slated farmhouse.
He was last seen going out to plough
On a March morning, bright and early.

By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future.

The Ides of March

A low-key political thriller that's good without being particularly great. One of its problems is that its thesis seems to be that politics is dirty business, which you may or may not have figured out already. But I did enjoy a lot about this film; Gosling was great as the lead, an up-and-coming campaign manager a little too impressed with himself, and Evan Rachel Wood was excellent as an intern who turns out to be one part of a triangle.

George Clooney directed this and he plays the presidential hopeful, a man who is both idealized and Machiavellian. Clooney has a lot of restraint as a director, avoiding big speechy moments, and simple answers. Even the running time is short. In some way it reminded me of a studio film from the 1930s or 1940s, a tight little thriller without huge ambitions.