She Never Thought She’d Fall In Love

Over at 100 Albums, I attempt to describe the enigmatic beauty of Saint Etienne’s Tiger Bay, and why you should avoid the American edition of it.

Will We Catch Your Eye?

Pet Shop Boys get Very theatrical on their masterpiece, now up over at 100 Albums.

Pumpkin Season

Upon returning to Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, we found it overrun with pumpkins.

Piles and mounds of pumpkins all over the grounds, suffusing clear blue October skies with more than just a hint of orange.

There was also a row of pumpkins.

An endless procession of pumpkins, in fact.

However, the gardens also had room for a variety of gourds, those less-loved pumpkin cousins.

Some miniature gourds adorned window boxes…

…while others hung from the rose arbor on strings.

Swaying happily in the sunshine… or HANGING FROM THEIR DEATHS?

Not a pumpkin, although wouldn’t it be great if they came in this exact color?

Also not a pumpkin, but after seeing so many I couldn’t help but notice all the other pumpkin-shaped plants at the gardens.

Also also not a pumpkin, but… (you get the idea).

Again, not a pumpkin (though you can spot some in the background), but one of a few new steel sculptures currently on display.

Those pumpkins do often seem to be lurking in the background.

In addition to naturally orange pumpkins, there were a few painted pumpkins scattered throughout: some in bright colors…

…others cloaked in silver or gold.

Still, nothing beats the autumnal glow of an orange pumpkin patch.

Last Ten Films: What Happened, Movies?

What Happened, Miss Simone?

My last ten films seen (in chronological order, between August 24 and October 23, 2015):

My Winnipeg* (Maddin, 2007) 10/10
Phoenix (Petzold, 2014) 7/10
Harold and Maude* (Ashby, 1971) 10/10
Sicario (Villenueve, 2015) 8/10
Freeheld (Sollett, 2015) 5/10
The Master* (Anderson, 2012) 9/10
What Happened, Miss Simone? (Garbus, 2015) 8/10
Portrait of Jason (Clarke, 1967) 6/10
Back to the Future* (Zemeckis, 1985) 9/10
Steve Jobs (Boyle, 2015) 7/10

(*At least my second viewing)

I do not normally take sixty days to watch ten films; I could blame this drop in moviegoing on a deficit of interesting new titles (also, I already saw Grandma at PIFF and 99 Homes at TIFF), family commitments, and, of course, television. Can any recent indieplex title match Mr. Robot for style, originality and occasional batshit insanity? If David Simon’s six-hour HBO miniseries Show Me A Hero was released theatricality, it would place in my top ten films of the year. So, in all of September, I only saw Harold and Maude—one of my all-time favorites. This was my first viewing on a big screen with a large audience, whose reactions only further enhanced my appreciation of this singular cult romantic comedy.

Fortunately, as the weather worsens and Oscar season kicks in, I have more reasons to spend a few hours indoors in front of a movie screen. While Sicario is probably too violent and relentlessly bleak to gain much awards traction, it’s a near-great film featuring two very good performances that end up in a yin/yang symbiosis before the credits roll, with supposed lead Emily Blunt simply becoming less and less integral to the story which Benicio del Toro increasingly, effectively dominates. Still too bleak for me to want to sit through again, it’s the rare issue film that excels at establishing and sticking to its thesis until a logical, if harrowing conclusion.

Steve Jobs is the most guilelessly entertaining new film on this list; chalk up its rating to a trio of good, sure-to-be-feted performances: Michael Fassbender, steely and charismatic as Jobs; Seth Rogen, his near-tragic, Fozzie-bear-like Steve Wozniak a role he was born to play, and Kate Winslet, mesmerizing (although submerged in wigs and accents) as Jobs’ longtime marketing executive Joanna Hoffman. As someone repeatedly disappointed by Boyle’s post-Trainspotting oeurve, this is one of his better efforts; the tension between his cinematic flourishes and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin’s talky interludes is even sublime at times. Still, it loses points for being an emphatic crowd pleaser (read: more than a little corny and calculated).

Phoenix is an equally accomplished film with a different problem. Painstakingly constructed and beautifully written, this novel adaptation and post-World War II German gloss on Vertigo is Petzold’s solid follow-up to Barbara, with the song standard “Speak Low” cannily providing running commentary. However, it all hinges upon what you make of a rather implausible plot point. I enjoyed the film despite it, even if I couldn’t believe it. Still, it’s not implausible as to why Phoenix was made; I can’t say the same for Freeheld, a dramatization of an 2007 Academy Award-winning documentary short. Detailing the fight of a dying police detective to leave her pension to her female romantic partner, the short was timely and sobering; this film, on the other hand, seems little more than an excuse to give a few talented actors juicy parts. Julianne Moore, Ellen Page and Michael Shannon (as Moore’s professional partner) are all terrific, but you’d expect them to be, and what surrounds them is superfluous if not stale, regrettably never fully coming to life.

The Netflix-only What Happened, Miss Simone? surely would’ve received some theatrical distribution in another time. Opening with footage from a scintillating 1976 concert (later released as Nina Simone, Love Sorceress), it then proceeds like your standard (if impassioned) film biography, but what a story (and what archival footage)! Garbus gives meaning to all of Simone’s contradictions and quirks and also emphasizes how underappreciated a talent she was in her lifetime. I wonder what Simone would’ve made of Jason Holliday, the gay, black prostitute/aspiring nightclub performer who is sole subject of Shirley Clarke’s long-hard-to-find avant garde classic. Simply placing the camera on him for a few hours and plying him with endless cocktails, Clarke certainly anticipated the “look-at-me-and-I’ll-(hopefully)-show-you-what-you-don’t-expect” notion that drives a lot of today’s reality TV; however, while intermittently fascinating, I found Portrait of Jason overall to be a slog—perhaps seeing it within a theater’s confines (as opposed to home DVR) would’ve made for a more effective setting.

As for the three rewatches here (not counting Harold and Maude), Maddin’s “docu-fantasia” holds up the best and is perhaps his most successful effort to gradually, beguilingly draw the viewer into his strange world (seeing it also stoked my anticipation for The Forbidden Room). Maybe The Master is not the game-changer I remember it being (certainly not on the level of There Will Be Blood), but I can imagine returning to it every few years without boredom. Back To The Future was seen in a theater on October 21, of course; influence of childhood nostalgia aside, it’s still the best blockbuster of its era, and now looks like one of the more audacious ones, too—would the oedipal stuff between Marty and his mother even be thinkable in a studio film today?

All The Bridges Blown Away Keep Floating Up

I explain how Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville is not all dirty talk over at 100 Albums.

 

Woods Hole

Right next to Falmouth, the village of Woods Hole is at the very Southwestern tip of Cape Cod. As a ferry port to Martha’s Vineyard, it gets a lot of heavy traffic, but its remoteness helps it to stand apart from many of the Cape’s other likeminded enclaves.

Eel Pond sits in the center of town, providing a marina for local boat craft.

I’d like to know how this one got its name. Cute logo, but I can’t help but want to read it as “Cot’s Pow”.

Some significantly larger boat craft docked in the Great Harbor leading out towards the Atlantic.

The Water Street bridge in mid-ascent, allowing passage from Great Harbor to Eel Pond.

I love bright red maritime lamps, although their placement is important–they probably wouldn’t work as fixtures in my current landlocked home.

Bits and pieces of Woods Hole remain stuck in another time, like this sign…

…and this one (though I can’t place whether it’s old or just made to look that way.)

Representing modern Woods Hole, an honest-to-god film festival that’s actually been around for almost a quarter century.

Even more mod.

Ah, but who doesn’t love a classic ship, even one rendered as a sign?

Stroll around town and you’ll find quirky public structures like this upright sundial.

Across Eel Pond on Millfield Street sits the Angelus Bell Tower.

The Angelus has a door devoted to Saint Joseph…

…and wouldn’t you know it, Saint Joseph’s church is right across the street.

As with Saint Joseph’s, the neighborhood is dotted with charming old architecture.

Given its location, Woods Hole is a natural home for an aquarium, an oceanographic institution and the Marine Biological Laboratory (whose Lillie Laboratory is pictured above.)

This MBL building is at least a few decades younger than nearly any other in town. To say it sticks out is an understatement, but I can almost appreciate its modern vulgarity in the middle of all this traditional New England style.

She’s Got The River Down Which I Sold Her

The ex-lead singer of ‘Til Tuesday makes the first of multiple appearances on 100 Albums with her solo bow, Whatever.

Summer Assortment

Since I took my summer vacation in late spring, I’m left with a true assortment of photos taken over the season that don’t really lend themselves to thematic photo essays; thus, I present the best of the rest, like this perfect pink rose spotted on Marlborough Street in Boston’s Back Bay.

One expects a statue of George Washington at the Boston Public Gardens, but not necessarily palm trees.

The BU-West T stop on the B line: note the slender vertical gleam along the John Hancock Tower.

Another view of the Hancock Tower, looking down Blagden Street in back of the Boston Public Library – a good representation of the city’s architecture from numerous eras.

The new Liberty Mutual building, as viewed through structural latticework of the Back Bay commuter rail station.

On a balmy mid-July Tuesday evening, an outdoor screening of Hitchcock’s The Birds at The Coolidge at the Greenway.

Tippi watches the Greenway, who in turn watches her.

This truck with the distinct, cute logo is a Haymarket mainstay.

The monolithic “luxury condos” at Commercial Wharf along the Waterfront.

Striking signage on Parmenter Street in the North End.

Crossing the Charles River into Cambridge, Sew Low Discount Fabrics in its last days; I remember shopping there for curtain-making material way back in ’98.

For those longing for Sew Low, fear not: there’s another business further up Cambridge Street with a punny name (though not as good of one).

Closer to my side of town, the Casey Overpass at Forest Hills, mid-dismantle. It’s entirely gone now (save a support column or two); I still can’t get over how much brighter the area now appears.

And, just down the road from my place, the lovely Mother Brook as seen from Dedham Blvd.

Millennium Park, slightly later in the season.

An unseasonably chilly mid-July Saturday at Two Lights State Park in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.

On the same day: calm, curving Nonesuch River in nearby Scarborough.

Luckily, the sun soon shone on the Nonesuch.

Cape Neddick, Maine. Home of the Nubble Lighthouse, but I already have far too many pictures of that.

A bright afternoon at the Plymouth Breakwater near season’s end.

Signs of Newburyport

The second-last town on Massachusetts’ North Shore before you hit New Hampshire, Newburyport has a charming historic center full of vintage, well-kept brick buildings and plenty of interesting signage.

Even some vintage signage remains, like this one for Fowle’s newstand/soda fountain, recently converted into 17 State Street Cafe. I wonder if they plan on doing anything to that faded storefront.

Seemingly every other New England coastal town has a similarly-named establishment, a la The Drunken Clam.

Still, not all of Newburyport is stuck in the past, as you can see via the modern signage above.

The trend continues along Pleasant Street.

Artisan shops, wine and cheese boutiques–this is clearly not your father’s Newburyport.

Tucked away from Pleasant down Hales Court, a little bit of whimsy from Fun Way Tutoring.

Back on Pleasant, some simple, effective, pragmatic signage.

Practically around the corner, other “dogs”, though I question just exactly what’s in them for such a low price.

You can get yer two-bit frankfurters at Richdale’s, which somehow continues to cultivate business in the age of Shaw’s and Stop N Shop.

Poking through a Pleasant Street window, I spotted this over-the-top font, safely confined from most passersby.

Down Green Street, the quieter, classier side of Newburyport signage…

…but not one without any groaning puns.

Back to Pleasant Street and Pretty Poppy at twilight.

Come to Newburyport for the signage, stay for the gorgeous, late-Summer Saturday evening.

Don’t Forget To Catch Me

Saint Etienne’s So Tough proves a game changer over on 100 Albums.