Not that I haven't been out and about or anything, but my last post was 3/3, and this was supposed to be a biweekly blog at least. On 3/14 I was busy working on a review of the Met Opera's production of Die Meistersinger, which you shall have, by and by, though I realize it's tacky to retro-blog. (Hey, I started a piece on the world championship chess match before I even started this blog, and I'm still looking for an excuse to post that one!) Maybe I'll get you some notes on the Edward Scissorhands production at BAM, which stands for Brooklyn Academy of Music (not a kick in the gut from Batman).
Anyway, the interruption was mainly courtesy of the IRS, which treated me to an audit right before I had to do my 2006 taxes. FYI, if you happen by mistake not to report the sale of thousands of dollars of mutual funds which netted you roughly $7.00 in profits, the IRS will bill you for taxes on the entire amount of the sale - on the reasonable assumption that you paid less than a penny for the entire lot. Well, I sent them some documentation; let's see if they're any smarter than the NYC Department of FInance, which has so far taken a year and a half to consider the documentation I sent them showing that they are billing me for a ticket on a rental car which I had already returned. Am I just a magnet for this stuff, or does it happen to everyone?
The rest of my time was eaten by my divorce case, about which the less said the better. Then again, I'll say this at least. You may have heard about Judge Garson, the Brooklyn divorce court judge who was just convicted of taking bribes to fix cases. You might wonder, how could he get away with that for so long, wouldn't someone recognize that his decisions are totally biased and prejudicial? The answer is that none of his decisions stand out as being especially bizarre in the context of the arbitrary, demeaning and irrational nature of the entire divorce system in this country (and New York State, which has a particularly medieval set of laws, rulings and assumptions). One of my former co-workers was a victim of Judge Garson; it took him 15 years to get a divorce from a woman who (according to him) was committed to mental institutions, destroyed his software business (took a magnet to all the disks) and scratched up his new car, among other things. No matter - I've spoken to people who took six, ten, twelve years to get a divorce, and didn't have Judge Garson. He fit right in: arbitrary, unfair decisions based on fallacious reasoning. Shouldn't he get a promotion to the Court of Appeals instead of a jail sentence?
Well, I'd better segue quickly into my topic, before I write a book on how the courts deal with family relations. Luckily, segueing (ha!) ain't hard to do, as you know if you've ever seen Puccini's ever popular Madame Butterfly, as I did Friday night at the NYC Opera. The opera is based on the story of Mr. Pinkerton, an American sailor in Japan who obtains a 15-year-old Japanese bride, Cio-Cio-San, from a marriage broker, and then leaves her for three years to go to back to America, where he marries an American woman. The subtle but crucial premise of the dramatic action is that abandonment in Japan is divorce; which does the work of making it legal for the opera's antihero, Mr. Pinkerton, to marry another woman, and also puts in perspective the faithfulness of Cio-Cio-San, who refuses to take another husband or believe that her American lover has left her. Owl, who shall henceforth be referred to as Fragrance of Verbena (one of Pinkerton's pet names for his Japanese wife) had more than a little sympathy with the betrayed lover; Parrot had to convince Owl that not all Americans are Pinkertons. (Fragrance of Verbena's Mom had already warned her not to get involved with an American Monk parrot, or she would be deceived; little did I know that my potential future Chinese owl-in-law was an Italian opera buff!) Well, there are plenty of dramas which explore the theme of substituting pretense or imagination for reality; it usually doesn't work out too well, though it tends to be in the nature of who we are.
Another theme here is the fundamental lack of understanding between cultures; Pinkerton clearly thinks it is just in the nature of Japanese society that he can break a contract without consequences; and though he finds this odd, he is happy to utilize it to further his own life goals, which clearly include from the outset marrying an American woman when he gets back to the U.S. He is just thrilled that he can, for instance, break his lease on the house he rents for himself and Cio-Cio-San, as well as walk out on her when he is ready. But as it turns out, Japanese culture depends on trust, something he does not understand much about, and when he returns and finds out the damage he has done, he is mortified and suggests that his own life is ruined too. Nevertheless, one thing he tries to do is make good on his obligation to the 3-year-old son he now finds out he has. Unfortunately, his way of doing this is to take the son away from the mother who can't really support him; a gut-wrenching transition that goes quite badly here - as it does, for example, in Citizen Kane, but not in the ludicrously underplayed scene in The Pursuit of Happiness - and results in the suicide of Cio-Cio-San. For while the father acts responsibly in the limited way he can, the mother makes the much more difficult decision to assist the son's departure by removing herself from the scene, so he will not regret having to leave her. And this, it seems, is the ultimate thing that Pinkerton does not understand about Japanese culture - that it is better to die with honorable intentions than to live in dishonor, having been abandoned by a husband and failed to provide for one's son. Thus the opacity of the norms and morals of another culture leads to demise on both sides.
It is not without some irony that the cultural disparity is played out in part by Cio-Cio-San's rejection by her uncle, a Buddhist priest, who condemns and essentially excommunicates her for rejecting her own religion and culture. What a depressing lesson for our own situation today, where the sense of an irreconcilable clash between Western and Eastern (in this case Islamic) culture is upon us all. Utlimately, methinks this is overblown a bit. Fragrance of Verbena grew up in a city of moderate size some 10,000 miles away from here, in a nation that practically defines the idea of "difference" when it comes to culture and history. But Fragrance of Verbena's main difference from American women, as far as I can tell, is in the way she pronounces "Louis Vuitton", "Cartier", and "BMW" (did someone say "Maclaren"? Sshhhhhh.....) and the place where she would prefer to have her house with the two-car garage (Bay Ridge vs. Park Slope, maybe). Or to put it another (perhaps more palatable) way - fundamentally, everyone wants a life that is satisfying and social relations that involve mutual repsect. Pinkerton did not fail to understand that he was violating someone's trust by marrying under false pretenses; he was even informed of this by his friend Sharpless, the American consul. It is an idea built into Western marriage contracts and practically every other contract; the difference is only in having a legal superstructure to enforce it. For her part, Cio-Cio-San had every right by Japanese custom to take another husband, but refused to recognize the reality of her situation. Ultimately, it was not culture clash that was to blame, but the failure of the parties to make choices based on inferences that were easily available to them. Well, easily? Perhaps not. Negotiating the waters of cultural difference can be challenging, but what I am suggesting is that there is no real opacity, except the opacity of one's own stubbornness. Ideological difference is real, but for the most part it is rooted in things we all know about one another. Anyone with an inkling of the history of the Middle East should understand, for example, that the forcible overthrow of one religious power center, and its replacement by a competing one, is going to solve no problems whatsoever, but will certainly create more grist for the fundamentalist mill. From Ireland to Israel to India to Iraq, it is not some opaque and incomprehensible difference of culture that underlies the trouble we see; it is a more basic lack of respect and equality of opportunity that one side fears from the other, usually not without some justification. Madame Butterfly suggests that cultural identity is important, but it also suggests that the real problem is a lack of will to follow the system one's own culture provides for recognizing the difference between right and wrong, reality and fantasy. "Islam is a religion of peace", someone was recently quoted as saying in the Times. So be it; and I assume this applies to both the Sunni and Shi'ite interpretations. For more than four centuries, Western systems of international law have recognized the difference between just war and war of aggression, between legitimate intervention and violations of national sovereignty. So there is the basis for international peace, and cultural opacity is a flimsy excuse for not being able to achieve it.
The role of Cio-Cio-San was sung by the impressive Shu-Ying Li, who not only provided a convincing account of the vocal challenges but offered a compelling character portrait of the innocent but dignified Japanese bride. Christopher Jackson's Benjamin Pinkerton was strong enough as a carrier of melodies, but it is hard to imagine a less moving dramatic performance. One could hardly believe that this is a man in the grip of love (at the beginning) or despair (in the final act). I admit that from the front of the fourth ring, without opera glasses, it was a little difficult to make out facial expressions. But this is not a film with close-ups after all; stage acting should not depend on that. There was little difficulty in recognizing the nuanced movements of Matthew Surapine as the marriage broker Goro, or Mme Butterfly's delicate movements (even if they perhaps drew more on the Beijing Opera tradition than Japanese culture, not to mention Puccini, Giacosa or Belasco). Jackson's awkwardness with the dramatic aspects stood out to me and detracted from the overall production. Neverthteless, from a musical point of view it was superb, with some of the arias being carried off with piercing intensity. One quartet (I guess - I believe there were at least four vocal lines going on) in Act III was particularly beautiful. The orchestra received a well-deserved burst of applause when they stood at the command of the capable conductor, Atsushi Yamada.
But the real discovery, to me, in the production, was the voice of Keri Alkema, who played the devoted maid Suzuki. Though the part is relatively small, from her first note to her last I had the impression of being in the presence of a truly exceptional mezzo, with a tone rich and strong enough to practically dominate any scene in which she appeared. I hear Wagner or Strauss... almost too much for Puccinin. As far as I can tell from the program notes, she has mostly performed with the Chautauqua Opera. Any chance of a move to the Big Apple, Ms. Alkema? I mean, nothing against upstate, I know they have the oldest continuously operating opera company in the U.S. (or something like that) but I would really like to hear that voice in a lead role some time.
Well, Parrot just spied a bright red bird darting from a Brooklyn tree and is off in hot pursuit. Just a friend, Fragrance of Verbena... oh, you don't believe me? Betrayed as Mom predicted by a cynical American! Well, you can change her name but she's still as wise as an Owl. Anyway, what's a scarlet tanager doing in Brooklyn? Must have been my imagination... which I should not mistake for reality. At least while I'm awake.
Friday, April 20, 2007
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Playgiarism, or Pulling a Rabbit Out of a Hatto
Remember Ervin Nyiregyhazi? Of course you do, even if you can't pronounce his name. He's the child prodigy pianist of the early 20th c. who suddenly disappeared from the scene in the 1920's, and re-emerged 50 years later to be recorded and acclaimed as one of the greatest pianists of all time. Here's a typical accolade: "Nyiregyhazi possessed a bigger tone than either Hoffman or Horowitz", says Gregor Benko in his notes to Nyiregyhazi's 1977 release of Liszt performances. Big tone or not, if you listen to these recordings with more than half an ear it's hard not to notice that a five decade sabbatical takes its toll on one's technique, or at least one's memory. There are enough wrong notes to make Artur Rubinstein look like a perfectionist, and plenty of tempos, dynamics and other features that have at best a rather insecure relationship to the score. Nor is the quality of the recordings quite up to showing off the alleged tone. (I haven't heard the CD transfers; possibly they were able to recapture some of what was lost on vinyl.) But the heck with all that; the emotional power of these performances does, in the end, emerge, and one is left with the impression of having been dragged through the dirt for one's own good. For all their flaws, we are happy to have these unexpurgated recordings of the septagenarian Nyiregyhazi - even if we are thereby occasionally forced to try pronouncing his name.
"Joyce Hatto" is name that even the phonetically challenged should not have much difficulty pronouncing, and a name that will always live in quotes - scare quotes, that is. Hatto was a concert pianist who became ill with ovarian cancer in 1976, at the age of 47. The good news is that she lived another 30 years, and passed away only last year. The bad news is that she was in pain much of the time, a fact that apparently marred all her later recording efforts with grunts and groans. Marred? I can't say that Toscanini's recording of the Verdi Requiem is exactly enhanced by his shouting instructions to the orchestra at various points, but this is not going to keep it from being one of the greatest recordings of all time. Were a few grunts and groans so bad? We'll never know. For it seems that her husband and recording engineer, William Barrington-Coupe, took it upon himself to deliver to us the expurgated Hatto, and replaced first the moans and groans, then the less perfect takes, and finally entire pieces with digitized, highly edited passages from other recordings. In the no-holds-barred (or is it no-bars-held-back?) world of disco and hip-hop this is called "sampling"; in classical music it is referred to by the classical name, plagiarism.
The deception, as is so often the case with plagiarism, was originally not without some twisted justification. Mr. B-C was concerned that his wife's virtues as a pianist had not received their due, and his desire to record her in her best light was frustrated by her unfortunate health issues. His determination to slog on in the face of reality caused him to slide down the slippery slope from applying musical bandaids to lifting entire recordings without credit. Thus is the road to moral turpitude spliced with Bach inventions.
It is one of the great mysteries of nature and music that so many wonderful musicians, and particularly pianists, live on and continue to make great music well into their 70's, sometimes 80's, occasionally 90's; and then there is Mieczyslaw Horszowski, who played his last recital at 99. So when B-C offered the world a series of technically brilliant recordings of a vast portion of the piano repertoire supposedly made by Hatto in her 70's, it was not exactly like the world turned upside down. I heard Guiomar Novaes perform in her 70's, and if memory serves me correctly she played, in addition to the usual helping of Chopin and such, some incredibly difficult set of variations on the Brazilian national anthem by Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The putative Hatto recordings were stunning, but B-C must have known that the classical world would not find their authenticity suspect on that basis alone.
No, what happened was that a Gramophone reviewer stuck one of the recordings on his PC, and was surprised to find that it automatically downloaded playback info for another recording of the same piece. Apparently Mr. B-C had the technical chops to edit the timing and tonality of some of the lifted material to match Hatto's original tracks, but insufficient acumen to deal with the world of Media Player or iTunes! Just as students who plagiarize papers by downloading text from the Internet are often easily caught by teachers who have learned to use the same search engines they used, this technologically knowledgeable plagiarist was caught up short by the latest media technology. Technical tests by recording engineer Andrew Rose confirmed the aural impression that the recordings were indeed plagiarized.
There have been previous instances where classical recordings were long attributed to the wrong person, the most famous being a recording of Chopin's first Piano Concerto by Halina Czerny-Stefanska, another perhaps under-recognized female pianist that was mis-attributed to Dinu Lipatti. This was apparently an error, though. At this point, the entire set of Hatto recordings is suspect, and may constitute the most extensive case of plagiarism and consumer deception in the history of classical recording.
Although B-C states that he has "closed the operation down", "had the stock completely destroyed" and that he is "not producing more" (NY Times 2/27/07 p.E3) his claims for Hatto's recorded legacy can at this moment still be found on the web site of his tiny record label Concert Artist/Fidelio Recordings. This should remind us that he stood to profit from his misadventures, and could still do so if curiosity and speculative collecting are enough to generate a few sales. To my mind this casts some doubt on the bit about helping his wife win a well-deserved place in piano history; at the very least, one would normally recognize an additional motivation in generating profits. Who knows how much stock he really had, or has; only a few days earlier he had publicly denied the plagiarism allegation, and then he has suddenly obliterated every remnant of his work of many years? We have a right to be skeptical. And while he may deserve some sympathy for his predicament, and claims he is "tired" and "not very well", my feeling is that it is a bit too soon to let this go. "Now I just want a little bit of peace", says Mr. Barrington-Coupe. "Now..."? Having endured a whole week of criticism after years of plagiarism and piracy (he was actually engaging in both at once, a relatively rare situation) he just wants a little peace?
It is not a question of legal action, which one affected party (Robert von Bahr of BIS Records) has already declined to take. There is perhaps so little in the way of profit from these recordings (or should we call them "reissues"?) that suing for compensation may be a moot point. But this just emphasizes the difference between plagiarism and piracy. The issue with piracy, as with copyright violation, is denial of just compensation to artists, publishers, and others. No one objects to the fact that digital pirates distribute works more widely than would have been the case without them; they object to not making a profit from the distribution. The issue with plagiarism, which is not in itself a punishable crime, is strictly moral: credit was taken where it was no due, credit failed to be given where it was due, some number of public or private individuals were decieved, and the deception was carried out consciously and intentionally. If we let people like this off the hook so lightly, what do we do with the undergraduate who merely downloads a few passages off the Internet and submits them unattributed in an assignment? Smile and wag a finger, tut-tut-tut? Congratulate him on a heroic effort to hide his sources? Praise his integration of texts from three different web sites? No, we can't let the sob story about Joyce Hatto and her health issues cloud our judgment about long-term, systematic, commercial plagiarism. It is just not fair to the next student who gets an F for plagiarism in a college course if we let this infinitely worse case go with a shrug and a wince about Joyce Hatto's difficulties.
The Concert Artists web site sports bios of several other little-known artists, and we should now seriously consider whether there might be plagiarism issues in any other recordings presented by Concert Artist. The site is incredibly vague about exactly which artists it claims to have original recordings by, and which it merely distributes; I could not find a page with a catalogue other than works by "Hatto". But consider the Ozan Marsh page. This is a pianist who recorded, performed and taught widely, though he has little name recognition. According the web site, "Concert Artist was indeed delighted that this considerable pianist agreed to make several recordings for the label. His unexpected death [at age 71 - H.A.M.] robbed us all of a fulfillment of these fascinating plans. However, Ozan Marsh did complete some sessions and we are preparing these for eventual release on Compact Disc." I'm sure the classical world is all ears, waiting for the release of these "sessions" by a student of Rachnmaninoff, Horowitz and Emil Sauer who was considered a notable exponent of Liszt. What treasures might lie within? (Pyrite? Squawck!)) Hey, here's a thought. I have a 1975 release on ABC Westminster Gold by a pianist named David Bean. I know of nothing else by him and can barely even find a Google reference to him. But the recording, which includes Liszt's Mephisto Waltz and Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H, is in what I consider the unbelievable class; technically, at least, it blows away most other performances I've heard of these extremely difficult pieces. (And let me tell you, he has a Big Tone.) Now, it is highly unlikely that B-C has a copy of this disk. But for a small fee and a percentage of future "royalties", I just might be moved to part with it. It could be easily digitized using one of those new turntables that automatically commits your records to digital format. I'd just like to meet the person who is going to listen to these "sessions" and say, "Hey, that's not Ozan Marsh, it's David Bean!" Right... A pair of parrots will play the Liszt B Minor Sonata by hopping up and down on a Steinway before that happens. Damn, if I just knew a recording engineer with a proper British name (has to have a dash in it) maybe I could actually get some money for my vinyl collection (hopefully before I have to move again).
But seriously folks, what is there to learn from an aging recording engineer who lost his sense of propriety and passed off other people's work as his wife's? I return to Nyiregihazi and Toscanini. And Rubinstein, and anyone else who has proudly issued a classical recording that falls short of sonic perfection but offers a memorable performance. Had B-C really believed in Hatto, had he trusted her musical gift and spirit and believed she had to offer what he claimed she did, he would not have felt compelled to take that first step and patch over imperfections and groans. You can EQ groans to the level of a minor nuisance, and the listener cannot always distinguish between a background groan and a moment of musical ecstasy anyway. The music, if it belongs in the annals of piano history, would have found its way there. It is now impossible to know what Hatto's virtues really were, at least without going to the original masters (if they exist). And that is a disservice to an artist who was probably at least worth listening to.
This suggests another point about our values: we have come to have so much faith in the technology behind modern recordings, as well as films and other media, that it is not at all shocking to find an example of someone who thought the road to great music was using technical means to perfect the end product. Art is about the intermediate product, the human performance, and technology never was or will be more than a way to make it shine.
This applies to other musical forms, including rock, folk and country music. No one with any taste would prefer to hear the latest technically perfect junk from Nashville to a scratchy old Hank Williams or Buck Owens recording. Rock guitarists and engineers can now control every harmonic and timbre emerging from a guitar, and singers are expected to be almost mechanically perfect in intonation and ensemble. But this kind of stuff will never mean as much as an old Stones record where the voices are neither in perfect tune nor perfect time, and the guitar distortion is controlled mainly by the idiosyncrasies of the pickups and the amps. Get back to the core values of creativity, expression and meaning, and we will not be tempted to head down the path of Hattoizing recordings.
"Joyce Hatto" is name that even the phonetically challenged should not have much difficulty pronouncing, and a name that will always live in quotes - scare quotes, that is. Hatto was a concert pianist who became ill with ovarian cancer in 1976, at the age of 47. The good news is that she lived another 30 years, and passed away only last year. The bad news is that she was in pain much of the time, a fact that apparently marred all her later recording efforts with grunts and groans. Marred? I can't say that Toscanini's recording of the Verdi Requiem is exactly enhanced by his shouting instructions to the orchestra at various points, but this is not going to keep it from being one of the greatest recordings of all time. Were a few grunts and groans so bad? We'll never know. For it seems that her husband and recording engineer, William Barrington-Coupe, took it upon himself to deliver to us the expurgated Hatto, and replaced first the moans and groans, then the less perfect takes, and finally entire pieces with digitized, highly edited passages from other recordings. In the no-holds-barred (or is it no-bars-held-back?) world of disco and hip-hop this is called "sampling"; in classical music it is referred to by the classical name, plagiarism.
The deception, as is so often the case with plagiarism, was originally not without some twisted justification. Mr. B-C was concerned that his wife's virtues as a pianist had not received their due, and his desire to record her in her best light was frustrated by her unfortunate health issues. His determination to slog on in the face of reality caused him to slide down the slippery slope from applying musical bandaids to lifting entire recordings without credit. Thus is the road to moral turpitude spliced with Bach inventions.
It is one of the great mysteries of nature and music that so many wonderful musicians, and particularly pianists, live on and continue to make great music well into their 70's, sometimes 80's, occasionally 90's; and then there is Mieczyslaw Horszowski, who played his last recital at 99. So when B-C offered the world a series of technically brilliant recordings of a vast portion of the piano repertoire supposedly made by Hatto in her 70's, it was not exactly like the world turned upside down. I heard Guiomar Novaes perform in her 70's, and if memory serves me correctly she played, in addition to the usual helping of Chopin and such, some incredibly difficult set of variations on the Brazilian national anthem by Louis Moreau Gottschalk. The putative Hatto recordings were stunning, but B-C must have known that the classical world would not find their authenticity suspect on that basis alone.
No, what happened was that a Gramophone reviewer stuck one of the recordings on his PC, and was surprised to find that it automatically downloaded playback info for another recording of the same piece. Apparently Mr. B-C had the technical chops to edit the timing and tonality of some of the lifted material to match Hatto's original tracks, but insufficient acumen to deal with the world of Media Player or iTunes! Just as students who plagiarize papers by downloading text from the Internet are often easily caught by teachers who have learned to use the same search engines they used, this technologically knowledgeable plagiarist was caught up short by the latest media technology. Technical tests by recording engineer Andrew Rose confirmed the aural impression that the recordings were indeed plagiarized.
There have been previous instances where classical recordings were long attributed to the wrong person, the most famous being a recording of Chopin's first Piano Concerto by Halina Czerny-Stefanska, another perhaps under-recognized female pianist that was mis-attributed to Dinu Lipatti. This was apparently an error, though. At this point, the entire set of Hatto recordings is suspect, and may constitute the most extensive case of plagiarism and consumer deception in the history of classical recording.
Although B-C states that he has "closed the operation down", "had the stock completely destroyed" and that he is "not producing more" (NY Times 2/27/07 p.E3) his claims for Hatto's recorded legacy can at this moment still be found on the web site of his tiny record label Concert Artist/Fidelio Recordings. This should remind us that he stood to profit from his misadventures, and could still do so if curiosity and speculative collecting are enough to generate a few sales. To my mind this casts some doubt on the bit about helping his wife win a well-deserved place in piano history; at the very least, one would normally recognize an additional motivation in generating profits. Who knows how much stock he really had, or has; only a few days earlier he had publicly denied the plagiarism allegation, and then he has suddenly obliterated every remnant of his work of many years? We have a right to be skeptical. And while he may deserve some sympathy for his predicament, and claims he is "tired" and "not very well", my feeling is that it is a bit too soon to let this go. "Now I just want a little bit of peace", says Mr. Barrington-Coupe. "Now..."? Having endured a whole week of criticism after years of plagiarism and piracy (he was actually engaging in both at once, a relatively rare situation) he just wants a little peace?
It is not a question of legal action, which one affected party (Robert von Bahr of BIS Records) has already declined to take. There is perhaps so little in the way of profit from these recordings (or should we call them "reissues"?) that suing for compensation may be a moot point. But this just emphasizes the difference between plagiarism and piracy. The issue with piracy, as with copyright violation, is denial of just compensation to artists, publishers, and others. No one objects to the fact that digital pirates distribute works more widely than would have been the case without them; they object to not making a profit from the distribution. The issue with plagiarism, which is not in itself a punishable crime, is strictly moral: credit was taken where it was no due, credit failed to be given where it was due, some number of public or private individuals were decieved, and the deception was carried out consciously and intentionally. If we let people like this off the hook so lightly, what do we do with the undergraduate who merely downloads a few passages off the Internet and submits them unattributed in an assignment? Smile and wag a finger, tut-tut-tut? Congratulate him on a heroic effort to hide his sources? Praise his integration of texts from three different web sites? No, we can't let the sob story about Joyce Hatto and her health issues cloud our judgment about long-term, systematic, commercial plagiarism. It is just not fair to the next student who gets an F for plagiarism in a college course if we let this infinitely worse case go with a shrug and a wince about Joyce Hatto's difficulties.
The Concert Artists web site sports bios of several other little-known artists, and we should now seriously consider whether there might be plagiarism issues in any other recordings presented by Concert Artist. The site is incredibly vague about exactly which artists it claims to have original recordings by, and which it merely distributes; I could not find a page with a catalogue other than works by "Hatto". But consider the Ozan Marsh page. This is a pianist who recorded, performed and taught widely, though he has little name recognition. According the web site, "Concert Artist was indeed delighted that this considerable pianist agreed to make several recordings for the label. His unexpected death [at age 71 - H.A.M.] robbed us all of a fulfillment of these fascinating plans. However, Ozan Marsh did complete some sessions and we are preparing these for eventual release on Compact Disc." I'm sure the classical world is all ears, waiting for the release of these "sessions" by a student of Rachnmaninoff, Horowitz and Emil Sauer who was considered a notable exponent of Liszt. What treasures might lie within? (Pyrite? Squawck!)) Hey, here's a thought. I have a 1975 release on ABC Westminster Gold by a pianist named David Bean. I know of nothing else by him and can barely even find a Google reference to him. But the recording, which includes Liszt's Mephisto Waltz and Fantasy and Fugue on the Theme B-A-C-H, is in what I consider the unbelievable class; technically, at least, it blows away most other performances I've heard of these extremely difficult pieces. (And let me tell you, he has a Big Tone.) Now, it is highly unlikely that B-C has a copy of this disk. But for a small fee and a percentage of future "royalties", I just might be moved to part with it. It could be easily digitized using one of those new turntables that automatically commits your records to digital format. I'd just like to meet the person who is going to listen to these "sessions" and say, "Hey, that's not Ozan Marsh, it's David Bean!" Right... A pair of parrots will play the Liszt B Minor Sonata by hopping up and down on a Steinway before that happens. Damn, if I just knew a recording engineer with a proper British name (has to have a dash in it) maybe I could actually get some money for my vinyl collection (hopefully before I have to move again).
But seriously folks, what is there to learn from an aging recording engineer who lost his sense of propriety and passed off other people's work as his wife's? I return to Nyiregihazi and Toscanini. And Rubinstein, and anyone else who has proudly issued a classical recording that falls short of sonic perfection but offers a memorable performance. Had B-C really believed in Hatto, had he trusted her musical gift and spirit and believed she had to offer what he claimed she did, he would not have felt compelled to take that first step and patch over imperfections and groans. You can EQ groans to the level of a minor nuisance, and the listener cannot always distinguish between a background groan and a moment of musical ecstasy anyway. The music, if it belongs in the annals of piano history, would have found its way there. It is now impossible to know what Hatto's virtues really were, at least without going to the original masters (if they exist). And that is a disservice to an artist who was probably at least worth listening to.
This suggests another point about our values: we have come to have so much faith in the technology behind modern recordings, as well as films and other media, that it is not at all shocking to find an example of someone who thought the road to great music was using technical means to perfect the end product. Art is about the intermediate product, the human performance, and technology never was or will be more than a way to make it shine.
This applies to other musical forms, including rock, folk and country music. No one with any taste would prefer to hear the latest technically perfect junk from Nashville to a scratchy old Hank Williams or Buck Owens recording. Rock guitarists and engineers can now control every harmonic and timbre emerging from a guitar, and singers are expected to be almost mechanically perfect in intonation and ensemble. But this kind of stuff will never mean as much as an old Stones record where the voices are neither in perfect tune nor perfect time, and the guitar distortion is controlled mainly by the idiosyncrasies of the pickups and the amps. Get back to the core values of creativity, expression and meaning, and we will not be tempted to head down the path of Hattoizing recordings.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Grammy Schmammy
Such is the power of the Hollywood spectacle that even an opinionated parrot was moved to doing mea culpas and post hocs and caveat emptors... and parrots don't even speak Latin! Didn't I underestimate The Departed? Isn't it great that Marty final won one? Wasn't I just a bit unfair to Helen Mirren? Did I fail to recognize the strength of Jennifer Hudson's debut performance? Oh, I am so embarrassed, and I put this out on a blog for all the world to see...
There's just one word I can think of for these sentiments... resist! Let's start with the strongest case, Helen Mirren's performance in The Queen. First of all, my main point was that films with nothing special to offer are being raised to the level of great cinema because of one great performance, and that remains a serious problem with the tone of this year's Grammies. But let's talk about performances, anyway. If you saw The Queen, you know what Helen Mirren did: she subtly altered her facial expression to express a range of emotions from stern and rigid to, what shall we call it, softening up (?), and in one notable scene she shed a tear or two. Now that scene was perhaps a great one, but not particularly because she cried; every professional actress can cry on demand, regardless of how rigid a personality she is playing. What was great about it is that, as I said before, the stag is identified with Diana, through the medium of her children, and the Queen's awe at the stag's unexpected and imposing presence represents her final, hard-won identification and dignification of what her grandchildren had lost. If anything makes this a memorable film, it is the unfolding of that theme towards this moving climax.
But all this has little to do with altering one's facial muscles. It is a well known and perhaps remarkable fact that in cinema, as opposed to theater, it is the subtle gesture before the camera, rather than the grand movement, that dominates. Nevertheless, I am not particularly inclined to think of facial expressions as enough to constitute a great performance. And in this performance there was little else. (It's not a criticism of Helen Mirren, BTW; she did what she was called on to do, and maybe more. I said that the whole point and tenor of the film left me cold, and that's a problem for the producer and the writer, not the actress.) I did not see The Last King of Scotland, but from the clips I've seen, I'm quite sure that Forest Whitaker's performance there consisted of a lot more than twitching his upper lip. There is, perhaps, a difference between male and female film stars as far as the range of motion they are expected to have; but it's not as dramatic as "you guys move around, ladies just stand there and alter your facial expression". This role did not give enough scope of action to permit an all-round great performance, much less a great film.
The Departed was an enjoyable movie, albeit a remake of the Hong Kong (not Japanese!) film Infernal Affairs. I have no issue with remakes, though it is difficult to think of very many that are as good as the originals. I have some issue with mob films but not enough to fail to appreciate truly great ones like The Godfather, Donnie Brasco and Scorcese's own Goodfellas. The Academy was doing the thing that the Nobel and the Pulitzer and a million other Committees do, recognizing that a major artist has been slighted for his greatest work and playing catch-up because the failure has come to reflect more on the Committee than on the artist. (Think of Saul Bellow getting the Pulitzer for the cardboard novel Humboldt's Gift after being passed up for Herzog.) Thus he lost the Best Director award for Raging Bull to Robert Redford (Ordinary People), which is a bit ridiculous; and Goodfellas lost to Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves). He was not even nominated for Taxi Driver (though that year sported an illustrious bunch of nominees, including Ingmar Bergman, Lina Wertmuller and Sidney Lumet, and the film had to compete with Rocky, for which John Avildsen won Best Director). Maybe it was just circumstance rather than disrespect, but it definitely looked like time to do right by one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time. But honoring him for a remake, with one dubious premise (Matt Damon's bred-for-moledom character) and one been-there-done-that idea (mob infiltrator becomes a bit too believable as mobster) must be slim recompense for failing to win the title for his best efforts. (Raging Bull was picked as the best film of the 1980's by Sight and Sound, acording to Wikipedia.)
What else? Babel! At least it won Best Original Score, losing six other nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director, and two for Best Supporting Actress), all of which it richly deserved. Actually, it was not the score, but the soundtrack that was so amazing. For example, never was a few seconds of absolute silence used to more dramatic effect. And you thought someone goofed at the end of the disco scene? So did I, briefly. Talk about point-of-view shots; how about point-of-hearing sounds? What was so shocking about it is that we never notice until that moment how different it all would be to a deaf person. Anyway, big-time dis for this film, and my opinion remains that it stands head and shoulders over the rest of the bunch in almost every way.
Dreamgirls - okay, Jennifer Hudson, not bad, though frankly I thought there were plenty of better supporting actress roles around this year (Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza both deserved it more). But what about the best song award? After all that Dreamgirls bruhaha, not one of those songs won the award! That's a dis if ever I saw one! The music may have been better than the film, but I'm glad in a way that it did not get the award. Why? Partly because of something that has nothing to do with this or any particular film. Look at Broadway lately: we're treated to one after another spectacle based on this pop star or that one, and everyone from Dylan and the Beatles to Billy Joel gets their chance at being the Next Big Show; virtually all of them falling off the stage quickly, and not a minute too soon. If someone wants to make a serious popular music film, be it The Last Waltz or Walk the Line or even La Bamba, I'm all for it, but this formulaic crap is made with the prayer of waltzing into a bit of cash by way of audience identification with someone's music. And this has got to go.
Okay, I'm done. The Parrot repenteth not. Hollywood recognizes itself in the Academy Awards, not as the built-on-sand spectacle that it is but as the Holy Woods of cinema, and the rest of us have to live with that, respect it to some extent, and resist it when necessary. Speaking of which, what do you think 2005 will be remembered for, Brokeback Mountain, or the Best Picture of the Year winner, um, what's it called? Oh, Crash, the film about the stock market in 1929, I mean, a car wreck in Los Angeles. Well, that's two years in a row that a really notable film was passed over so that the big H could take care of its own. Like I said, the artists and the artworks will outlive this spectacle. Orson Welles won nothing except Best Screenplay for Citizen Kane, often considered the greatest and among the most innovative films of all time. (John Ford won Best Picture and Best Director for How Green Was My Valley that year.) And so it goes.
There's just one word I can think of for these sentiments... resist! Let's start with the strongest case, Helen Mirren's performance in The Queen. First of all, my main point was that films with nothing special to offer are being raised to the level of great cinema because of one great performance, and that remains a serious problem with the tone of this year's Grammies. But let's talk about performances, anyway. If you saw The Queen, you know what Helen Mirren did: she subtly altered her facial expression to express a range of emotions from stern and rigid to, what shall we call it, softening up (?), and in one notable scene she shed a tear or two. Now that scene was perhaps a great one, but not particularly because she cried; every professional actress can cry on demand, regardless of how rigid a personality she is playing. What was great about it is that, as I said before, the stag is identified with Diana, through the medium of her children, and the Queen's awe at the stag's unexpected and imposing presence represents her final, hard-won identification and dignification of what her grandchildren had lost. If anything makes this a memorable film, it is the unfolding of that theme towards this moving climax.
But all this has little to do with altering one's facial muscles. It is a well known and perhaps remarkable fact that in cinema, as opposed to theater, it is the subtle gesture before the camera, rather than the grand movement, that dominates. Nevertheless, I am not particularly inclined to think of facial expressions as enough to constitute a great performance. And in this performance there was little else. (It's not a criticism of Helen Mirren, BTW; she did what she was called on to do, and maybe more. I said that the whole point and tenor of the film left me cold, and that's a problem for the producer and the writer, not the actress.) I did not see The Last King of Scotland, but from the clips I've seen, I'm quite sure that Forest Whitaker's performance there consisted of a lot more than twitching his upper lip. There is, perhaps, a difference between male and female film stars as far as the range of motion they are expected to have; but it's not as dramatic as "you guys move around, ladies just stand there and alter your facial expression". This role did not give enough scope of action to permit an all-round great performance, much less a great film.
The Departed was an enjoyable movie, albeit a remake of the Hong Kong (not Japanese!) film Infernal Affairs. I have no issue with remakes, though it is difficult to think of very many that are as good as the originals. I have some issue with mob films but not enough to fail to appreciate truly great ones like The Godfather, Donnie Brasco and Scorcese's own Goodfellas. The Academy was doing the thing that the Nobel and the Pulitzer and a million other Committees do, recognizing that a major artist has been slighted for his greatest work and playing catch-up because the failure has come to reflect more on the Committee than on the artist. (Think of Saul Bellow getting the Pulitzer for the cardboard novel Humboldt's Gift after being passed up for Herzog.) Thus he lost the Best Director award for Raging Bull to Robert Redford (Ordinary People), which is a bit ridiculous; and Goodfellas lost to Kevin Costner (Dances With Wolves). He was not even nominated for Taxi Driver (though that year sported an illustrious bunch of nominees, including Ingmar Bergman, Lina Wertmuller and Sidney Lumet, and the film had to compete with Rocky, for which John Avildsen won Best Director). Maybe it was just circumstance rather than disrespect, but it definitely looked like time to do right by one of the greatest American filmmakers of all time. But honoring him for a remake, with one dubious premise (Matt Damon's bred-for-moledom character) and one been-there-done-that idea (mob infiltrator becomes a bit too believable as mobster) must be slim recompense for failing to win the title for his best efforts. (Raging Bull was picked as the best film of the 1980's by Sight and Sound, acording to Wikipedia.)
What else? Babel! At least it won Best Original Score, losing six other nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director, and two for Best Supporting Actress), all of which it richly deserved. Actually, it was not the score, but the soundtrack that was so amazing. For example, never was a few seconds of absolute silence used to more dramatic effect. And you thought someone goofed at the end of the disco scene? So did I, briefly. Talk about point-of-view shots; how about point-of-hearing sounds? What was so shocking about it is that we never notice until that moment how different it all would be to a deaf person. Anyway, big-time dis for this film, and my opinion remains that it stands head and shoulders over the rest of the bunch in almost every way.
Dreamgirls - okay, Jennifer Hudson, not bad, though frankly I thought there were plenty of better supporting actress roles around this year (Rinko Kikuchi and Adriana Barraza both deserved it more). But what about the best song award? After all that Dreamgirls bruhaha, not one of those songs won the award! That's a dis if ever I saw one! The music may have been better than the film, but I'm glad in a way that it did not get the award. Why? Partly because of something that has nothing to do with this or any particular film. Look at Broadway lately: we're treated to one after another spectacle based on this pop star or that one, and everyone from Dylan and the Beatles to Billy Joel gets their chance at being the Next Big Show; virtually all of them falling off the stage quickly, and not a minute too soon. If someone wants to make a serious popular music film, be it The Last Waltz or Walk the Line or even La Bamba, I'm all for it, but this formulaic crap is made with the prayer of waltzing into a bit of cash by way of audience identification with someone's music. And this has got to go.
Okay, I'm done. The Parrot repenteth not. Hollywood recognizes itself in the Academy Awards, not as the built-on-sand spectacle that it is but as the Holy Woods of cinema, and the rest of us have to live with that, respect it to some extent, and resist it when necessary. Speaking of which, what do you think 2005 will be remembered for, Brokeback Mountain, or the Best Picture of the Year winner, um, what's it called? Oh, Crash, the film about the stock market in 1929, I mean, a car wreck in Los Angeles. Well, that's two years in a row that a really notable film was passed over so that the big H could take care of its own. Like I said, the artists and the artworks will outlive this spectacle. Orson Welles won nothing except Best Screenplay for Citizen Kane, often considered the greatest and among the most innovative films of all time. (John Ford won Best Picture and Best Director for How Green Was My Valley that year.) And so it goes.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Oscar Schmosker
I once heard the Academy Awards referred to as "Hollywood's opportunity to congratulate itself..." Since this is literally true, the apparently intended sarcasm cannot really be achieved without adding something like "... for spending $100 millions on idiotic flops, depicting ever more brutal, graphic and gratuitous violence, sensationalizing natural and manmade disasters, and trivializing the effects of poverty, genocide, crime, illness, insanity, racism and domestic strife by singling out isolated personal victories from the mass of ruined lives". (And if a Parrot can say that all in one breath you know it must be true.)
Oh. You thought Hollywood had suddenly turned socially conscious? Well, yes - you could say, it turned socially conscious Hollywood-style, by taking up social issues and giving us superficial solutions to them; the kinds of solutions that make good movies, of course. So and so rises from poverty through force of will and becomes a financial success sort of solutions. So and so saves hundreds from death and destruction through personal strength and cunning sort of solutions. Is that all? I suppose not; we have also a spate of the Highly Sensitive to Racial Disparities films and the Post-Colonial Post-Mortem films and the Gay People Are Basically Just People films, and I suppose plenty of others. And this socially conscious cinema comes not only in the explicit variety, but dressed up as parables about mutants and mice and zebras and superheroes and whatnot. (Though if there was a gay superhero film released recently I must have missed it.)
Okay, maybe this does not all fall on Hollywood. Maybe there are plenty of independent and international films that dance to these same tunes. Fine, I don't really care if the point can be circumscribed within a few square miles in Los Angeles or if it is a much wider phenomenon. (In fact, I have had an extremely difficult time finding lists of films made in Hollywood; Wikipedia has lists by studio, but they do not distinguish between films made, produced and directed there, versus those merely distributed by the studio.) Actually most of what comes out of Hollywood is still pure pap, forgettable junk that is the cinematic equivalent of fast food. Films aimed at children, superhero/sci-fi stuff, idiotic, formulaic comedies and romances. This mostly dross that I'm not interested in here, and neither is Oscar. What I'm really talking about is the complex of production and distribution companies, theaters, DVD manufacturers and advertisers (which could be read, "Sony, Sony, Sony, and Sony...", or "Disney, Disney... etc" but nevermind) which serves up to the Masses a handful of this total output , plus the occasional foreign or independent film, nationally and pushes it into the popular mind and ultimately that of the Academy, culminating in Sunday night's follow-up to Superbowl Sunday, the Academy Awards.
In fact, I don't have any objection to socially conscious cinema. The problem is that there seems to be a conception - and if I'm not mistaken it is more central in Hollywood than among other film cultures - that in order to make an important, relevant, meaningful film you have to take up one of these themes and work it out in this more or less formulaic way. In any case, this seems to be the message of the Academy, which probably represents Hollywood in the popular mind more than the studios themselves. And this means that any number of far better films will never win a "Best Motion Picture" award or much of anything else. Which hardly affects the history of film very much, it just makes the Academy more of a dog-and-pony show and less of a historical reference for critical judgment.
All that just by way of preface to my disgruntled review of some of the top Academy Award nominees this year:
The Queen: Why exactly did someone decide to make this movie? Because they thought it was really interesting how this long faded pseudo-monarchy responded to death of one of their ex-members? What a lapse in judgment. Nobody outside of England gives a crap about what these landed aristocrats think or how they react emotionally to anything. The subject matter seems about as distant from the popular consciousness as that of John Adams' opera Nixon in China; I mean, how can anyone stand watching a detailed study of emotional nuances in the meeting of a corrupt President and the engineer of the disastrous Cultural Revolution? Much less see any significance in it (other than the purchasing Chinese non-interference in the war in Vietnam in return for trade agreements)? I really wonder what moves people to think that they can make hay out of this; probably they read some Shakespeare and figured, hey, why can't we make some great tragedy out of royal melodramas? These folks should be prohibited from reading anything earlier than Chekhov. So why all the fuss about The Queen then? Oh, yes, Mr. Frears, I do get the subtle take on the traditional aristocrats-floating-above-reality-while-the-empire-crumbles-beneath-their-feet theme, thank you, we really needed another one of those. Yes, it does put you in contention for the socially-conscious-movie-of-the-year award (aka "Best Motion Picture") because Di did a lot of charitable stuff that gained her a lot of public sympathy. (Not to mention the Clintonesque benefit of having your husband cheat on you with a woman less attractive than yourself.) La-dee-da, thanks, got all that. So what? The premise is stupid, the film is boring, the attempted heightening of tension through pictures of flowers and crowds at the palace gates doesn't really work, at least outside of the UQ (that's United Queendom for those of you who think the King has any importance at all). Okay, Helen Mirren. Again, so what? I can't get worked up about a performance in which the range of emotional attitudes is from uptight to upset. And everybody outside the UQ - in fact, outside England, period - thinks that the whole bit about British emotional restraint is just so hokey. You can't appreciate a movie like this unless you think there is some real conflict between virtues: stalwart emotional self-discipline on the one hand and true sympathy and compassion on the other. But you've got to be British and probably upper class to really see any virtue in the former. The whole emotional premise of the film is lost on anyone who doesn't really have an issue with shedding a tear or expressing solidarity with the pain of the multitude. In fact most people think emotional restraint beyond the maintenance of reasonable composure in the face of ordinary difficulties is a vice, not a virtue. Oscar Schmosker rates this film a B- at best; and that's only because the metaphor of the stag as Di (or something like that) gives it some aesthetic interest.
The Last King of Scotland: Well, I didn't see it. But I have to mention it here because it is so outstanding that TWO of the "Best Motion Picture" nominees have essentially nothing to do with the "motion picture" but with the performances of their leads. To which all I can say is, I love a good performance, but it does not make a great film or great art. I love to watch Jennifer Aniston on Friends reruns, she gives a lot of great performances, but no one is going to call these sitcom episodes great art. It seems the Academy has really lost its way if it is mistaking great performances for great films. Oscar Schmosker doesn't rate films he hasn't seen, but suspects that this one has more to say about Forest Whitaker than power, brutality, insanity, or other Important Themes.
The Departed: Saw it a while ago. Fine film, who can argue? But unfortunately, the theme of mob infiltrator becoming a bit too much like the people he is trying to send to jail was done brilliantly and definitively, IMHO, in Donnie Brasco. So I had the deja vu feeling already. Then, Goodfellas is certainly a better Scorcese gangster film, and there, let it be said, the brilliant performance by Joe Pesci does definitely lift this vehicle so far above most others in its class that this follow-up feels like a rerun, or also-ran, or... deja vu all over again. The other thing is that the idea of this cleancut kid being bred from childhood for a role as a police department mole, and remaining loyal to his harsh, ungrateful and unseemly mobster master through all of it, seemed so utterly fabricated that even if it were "based on a true story" I'd have a hard time believing it. (Some true stories are just not true in the way that can be utilized by a work of art.) So I had issues with both sides of this film. Was it erastz-socially-conscious formulaic fare? No, not really. Not terribly conscious of anything except the power of cellphones, an increasingly common plot device in contemporary film, which I hope we will get beyond fairly quickly. Certainly entertaining. Oscar Schmosker gives it a B.
Babel: Who accidentally nominated this for "Best Motion Picture"? It towers above anything else I've seen in the past few years on practically every level. Let's put it this way: the use of music in this film is better than the entire package in many other films. Dramatically it dances rings around most of the other contenders. If it occasionally tests our sense of plot integrity, the hunch that all the pieces fit together is ultimately confirmed. I still have a little difficulty understanding the focus on the daughter of the Japanese hunter who gave the gun to the guy who gave it to his son who shot... but anyway, there was brilliant parallelism in the growing sense of isolation of each set of characters. The ultimate redemption of some of them was in no case complete, and in some cases there was nothing that looked much like redemption; rather, what seemed like minor indiscretions spiraled into outright disasters; and the worst victims were of course the poor, the powerless, the people who live so close to the boundary of existence that a slight mistake means disaster, while comfortable middle class families can even flirt with death and yet ultimately recover. The ingenious use of music is not the only technical device that makes the film stand out even beyond its social and emotional depth; in fact, every cinematic element I can think of, from lighting and camera positioning to costume and staging, are employed in each of the film's distinct settings to give a real feeling for the cultural and physical environment as well as to remind one of the connections between characters and situations. Volumes could be written about this film; Inarritu is a genius. I'll stop here. Oscar Schmosker says A, maybe A+ if someone can explain to me a little better how the Japanese sequences integrate with the overall architecture of the story.
The Pursuit of Happiness: Touching, great acting, but nobody in their right mind is going to believe that this kid is so happy and accepting of the sudden and complete departure of his mother from his life. Sensitive father films are welcome, in fact, could someone please make one about sensitive parrot Dads? But I'm not buying the premise that this five (?) year old kid just says goodbye to his Mom and everything's fine hanging out in homeless shelters and railroad bathrooms with his Dad. Now as for the rest of the film, this is a great example of the American Dream story, up-from-poverty through force of Will (Smith), with a few gratuitous digs at hippies along the way (haven't seen one quite so biased against hippie counterculture since Joe). Every time things get to the point where total collapse seems likely, one of his lost scanners shows up and he manages to sell it and get back on his feet. (The evil hippies are big scanner thieves, you see.) In the end, good old cronyism and chitchat over beer turns out o be more important to business success than book learning or intelligence. Thus our Hero gets the stockborker job because he "played the game", not because he excelled at anything in particular. Call it realism if you want. I thought it was a good movie and a Fine Performance, but if there is a message here worth remembering or teaching your kids, I missed it. Oscar Schmosker says B, mostly for effort.
Dreamgirls: I walked out after about an hour, can I still review it? This is about as formulaic as the pop star genre gets. Nothing going on here except a fast-paced rise to stardom through native talent and unlikely breaks. Compared to Walk the Line, much less to older, better pop star rise-to-fame movies (The Doors, etc.) this is candy-coated popcorn with no prize at the bottom. Why this should have won the awards it did from some other film societies is beyond me. A feather in the Academy's cap that this was not nominated for "Best Motion Picture"; though they probably should be compelled to develop some new categories, like "Worst Pop Star Picture". Oscar Schmosker gives this a C out of charity.
The Illusionist: Well-made art film, sure fooled me (the plot twist, I mean; can't say much more in case you didn't see it yet). Naturally it is hardly nominated for anything. Easily a B+ in the Schmosker catalogue. See it before it makes itself disappear.
The Painted Veil: Extremely well-made art film, in the classic mould, and of course it's nominated for nothing at all. (Did more than a handful of Academy members even bother to see it?) One critic (can't recall who) quipped, "Even real Merchant Ivory films don't get Oscars". And your point is...? Sorry, but this is what filmmaking used to be about, and still can be; stories wih real emotional depth, great cinematography, top-notch acting, little or no artificial enhancement with the latest, greatest special effects technology, some real social lessons without phony morality plays, an almost total lack of gratuitous violence or grisly carnage, disasters of a slow and deadly sort without cheap-shot catastrophe sequences, a "lost era" feel without millions of bucks in artificial sets and costumes and Model-T's... need I go on? Okay, this one is a twice or thrice or five-times told story, the Somerset Maugham story having been cinematized several times before. I didn't see any of those. I saw this one. It is a fine film. Oscar Schmosker says A-, and see it before it gets old enough that people start to think it's "one of those Merchant Ivory films".
An Inconvenient Truth: Lots of charts and lots of arguments for the reality and threat of global warming. One can hardly avoid being moved to agree, even though many of the arguments are really pretty dubious. I especially doubt his claims about our ability to reverse the trend before a fairly catastrophic rise in sea levels. But the overall impact is what counts. As film, this is nothing, a lecture with a big projection tv and a lot of staging. Much more could have been done outside the lecture, other than promotional shots of Gore and his family. Everybody should learn from the message, but whether it is really necessary to see the film is another question. I wouldn't call this a great or even a good documentary; rather, an opportunity to build consciousness about an important threat that we might be able to mitigate somewhat if enough people in the right places were persuaded of it. Oscar Schmosker doesn't quite know what to do with this one; maybe a B- as film, and PG-13 as social service.
Night at the Museum: Look at the review sites and you'll see that this one gets a much higher rating from audiences than from critics. Many films do, but with this one I could see why. It is actually not as stupid as it sounds; in fact, it is a bit of an intellectual fantasy, having all these historical figures come to life and interacting with them to explore their psychology. The real-people portraits were not exactly the ultimate in emotional probing, but the whole thing hung together fairly well. Here special effects were used in a way that might be called "charming", in the good sense that might be employed in reference to the Star Wars films. The film is directed at kids but I would not hesitate to send an adult there for a bit of fun. When order is inally restored in the museum there is an uncanny sense of moral and intellectual satisfaction that for all its hokeyness is more solid than some of the bang-us-over-the-head denouements of more serious historical films. Oscar Schmosker says B+, not half bad.
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, Flushed Away, X-Men III: Hey, do you think I have time to review every children's movie I've seen this year? No way. Mutants, rats, frogs, "the heart of Davey Jones"... the gross-out factor certainly has risen in PG films, helping kids acustom themselves to any future real horrors that might unfold (say tv coverage of a foreign war) and thus deaden themselves to the disgust this should generate. X-Men III has some definite virtues, e.g., interactive realignment of the Golden Gate Bridge... Also suggests some interesting social questions. If they invented a drug to "cure" something like e.g., homosexuality, would/should gay people take it? The recent experience with deaf-mutes at Gallaudet University suggests that members of a subculture often prefer to identify with it than integrate into the culture at large. XMen III suggests the same. But mostly, these movies are stocked with lots of unbelievable escapes from unbelievable dangers, and dubious underdog victories over the forces of evil. Compare Babel. It stands as this year's monument to film that avoids the pitfalls of ersatz-social-consciousness and cheap solutions to deep problems. Let's hope Oscar-not-Schmosker honors it appropriately.
Oh. You thought Hollywood had suddenly turned socially conscious? Well, yes - you could say, it turned socially conscious Hollywood-style, by taking up social issues and giving us superficial solutions to them; the kinds of solutions that make good movies, of course. So and so rises from poverty through force of will and becomes a financial success sort of solutions. So and so saves hundreds from death and destruction through personal strength and cunning sort of solutions. Is that all? I suppose not; we have also a spate of the Highly Sensitive to Racial Disparities films and the Post-Colonial Post-Mortem films and the Gay People Are Basically Just People films, and I suppose plenty of others. And this socially conscious cinema comes not only in the explicit variety, but dressed up as parables about mutants and mice and zebras and superheroes and whatnot. (Though if there was a gay superhero film released recently I must have missed it.)
Okay, maybe this does not all fall on Hollywood. Maybe there are plenty of independent and international films that dance to these same tunes. Fine, I don't really care if the point can be circumscribed within a few square miles in Los Angeles or if it is a much wider phenomenon. (In fact, I have had an extremely difficult time finding lists of films made in Hollywood; Wikipedia has lists by studio, but they do not distinguish between films made, produced and directed there, versus those merely distributed by the studio.) Actually most of what comes out of Hollywood is still pure pap, forgettable junk that is the cinematic equivalent of fast food. Films aimed at children, superhero/sci-fi stuff, idiotic, formulaic comedies and romances. This mostly dross that I'm not interested in here, and neither is Oscar. What I'm really talking about is the complex of production and distribution companies, theaters, DVD manufacturers and advertisers (which could be read, "Sony, Sony, Sony, and Sony...", or "Disney, Disney... etc" but nevermind) which serves up to the Masses a handful of this total output , plus the occasional foreign or independent film, nationally and pushes it into the popular mind and ultimately that of the Academy, culminating in Sunday night's follow-up to Superbowl Sunday, the Academy Awards.
In fact, I don't have any objection to socially conscious cinema. The problem is that there seems to be a conception - and if I'm not mistaken it is more central in Hollywood than among other film cultures - that in order to make an important, relevant, meaningful film you have to take up one of these themes and work it out in this more or less formulaic way. In any case, this seems to be the message of the Academy, which probably represents Hollywood in the popular mind more than the studios themselves. And this means that any number of far better films will never win a "Best Motion Picture" award or much of anything else. Which hardly affects the history of film very much, it just makes the Academy more of a dog-and-pony show and less of a historical reference for critical judgment.
All that just by way of preface to my disgruntled review of some of the top Academy Award nominees this year:
The Queen: Why exactly did someone decide to make this movie? Because they thought it was really interesting how this long faded pseudo-monarchy responded to death of one of their ex-members? What a lapse in judgment. Nobody outside of England gives a crap about what these landed aristocrats think or how they react emotionally to anything. The subject matter seems about as distant from the popular consciousness as that of John Adams' opera Nixon in China; I mean, how can anyone stand watching a detailed study of emotional nuances in the meeting of a corrupt President and the engineer of the disastrous Cultural Revolution? Much less see any significance in it (other than the purchasing Chinese non-interference in the war in Vietnam in return for trade agreements)? I really wonder what moves people to think that they can make hay out of this; probably they read some Shakespeare and figured, hey, why can't we make some great tragedy out of royal melodramas? These folks should be prohibited from reading anything earlier than Chekhov. So why all the fuss about The Queen then? Oh, yes, Mr. Frears, I do get the subtle take on the traditional aristocrats-floating-above-reality-while-the-empire-crumbles-beneath-their-feet theme, thank you, we really needed another one of those. Yes, it does put you in contention for the socially-conscious-movie-of-the-year award (aka "Best Motion Picture") because Di did a lot of charitable stuff that gained her a lot of public sympathy. (Not to mention the Clintonesque benefit of having your husband cheat on you with a woman less attractive than yourself.) La-dee-da, thanks, got all that. So what? The premise is stupid, the film is boring, the attempted heightening of tension through pictures of flowers and crowds at the palace gates doesn't really work, at least outside of the UQ (that's United Queendom for those of you who think the King has any importance at all). Okay, Helen Mirren. Again, so what? I can't get worked up about a performance in which the range of emotional attitudes is from uptight to upset. And everybody outside the UQ - in fact, outside England, period - thinks that the whole bit about British emotional restraint is just so hokey. You can't appreciate a movie like this unless you think there is some real conflict between virtues: stalwart emotional self-discipline on the one hand and true sympathy and compassion on the other. But you've got to be British and probably upper class to really see any virtue in the former. The whole emotional premise of the film is lost on anyone who doesn't really have an issue with shedding a tear or expressing solidarity with the pain of the multitude. In fact most people think emotional restraint beyond the maintenance of reasonable composure in the face of ordinary difficulties is a vice, not a virtue. Oscar Schmosker rates this film a B- at best; and that's only because the metaphor of the stag as Di (or something like that) gives it some aesthetic interest.
The Last King of Scotland: Well, I didn't see it. But I have to mention it here because it is so outstanding that TWO of the "Best Motion Picture" nominees have essentially nothing to do with the "motion picture" but with the performances of their leads. To which all I can say is, I love a good performance, but it does not make a great film or great art. I love to watch Jennifer Aniston on Friends reruns, she gives a lot of great performances, but no one is going to call these sitcom episodes great art. It seems the Academy has really lost its way if it is mistaking great performances for great films. Oscar Schmosker doesn't rate films he hasn't seen, but suspects that this one has more to say about Forest Whitaker than power, brutality, insanity, or other Important Themes.
The Departed: Saw it a while ago. Fine film, who can argue? But unfortunately, the theme of mob infiltrator becoming a bit too much like the people he is trying to send to jail was done brilliantly and definitively, IMHO, in Donnie Brasco. So I had the deja vu feeling already. Then, Goodfellas is certainly a better Scorcese gangster film, and there, let it be said, the brilliant performance by Joe Pesci does definitely lift this vehicle so far above most others in its class that this follow-up feels like a rerun, or also-ran, or... deja vu all over again. The other thing is that the idea of this cleancut kid being bred from childhood for a role as a police department mole, and remaining loyal to his harsh, ungrateful and unseemly mobster master through all of it, seemed so utterly fabricated that even if it were "based on a true story" I'd have a hard time believing it. (Some true stories are just not true in the way that can be utilized by a work of art.) So I had issues with both sides of this film. Was it erastz-socially-conscious formulaic fare? No, not really. Not terribly conscious of anything except the power of cellphones, an increasingly common plot device in contemporary film, which I hope we will get beyond fairly quickly. Certainly entertaining. Oscar Schmosker gives it a B.
Babel: Who accidentally nominated this for "Best Motion Picture"? It towers above anything else I've seen in the past few years on practically every level. Let's put it this way: the use of music in this film is better than the entire package in many other films. Dramatically it dances rings around most of the other contenders. If it occasionally tests our sense of plot integrity, the hunch that all the pieces fit together is ultimately confirmed. I still have a little difficulty understanding the focus on the daughter of the Japanese hunter who gave the gun to the guy who gave it to his son who shot... but anyway, there was brilliant parallelism in the growing sense of isolation of each set of characters. The ultimate redemption of some of them was in no case complete, and in some cases there was nothing that looked much like redemption; rather, what seemed like minor indiscretions spiraled into outright disasters; and the worst victims were of course the poor, the powerless, the people who live so close to the boundary of existence that a slight mistake means disaster, while comfortable middle class families can even flirt with death and yet ultimately recover. The ingenious use of music is not the only technical device that makes the film stand out even beyond its social and emotional depth; in fact, every cinematic element I can think of, from lighting and camera positioning to costume and staging, are employed in each of the film's distinct settings to give a real feeling for the cultural and physical environment as well as to remind one of the connections between characters and situations. Volumes could be written about this film; Inarritu is a genius. I'll stop here. Oscar Schmosker says A, maybe A+ if someone can explain to me a little better how the Japanese sequences integrate with the overall architecture of the story.
The Pursuit of Happiness: Touching, great acting, but nobody in their right mind is going to believe that this kid is so happy and accepting of the sudden and complete departure of his mother from his life. Sensitive father films are welcome, in fact, could someone please make one about sensitive parrot Dads? But I'm not buying the premise that this five (?) year old kid just says goodbye to his Mom and everything's fine hanging out in homeless shelters and railroad bathrooms with his Dad. Now as for the rest of the film, this is a great example of the American Dream story, up-from-poverty through force of Will (Smith), with a few gratuitous digs at hippies along the way (haven't seen one quite so biased against hippie counterculture since Joe). Every time things get to the point where total collapse seems likely, one of his lost scanners shows up and he manages to sell it and get back on his feet. (The evil hippies are big scanner thieves, you see.) In the end, good old cronyism and chitchat over beer turns out o be more important to business success than book learning or intelligence. Thus our Hero gets the stockborker job because he "played the game", not because he excelled at anything in particular. Call it realism if you want. I thought it was a good movie and a Fine Performance, but if there is a message here worth remembering or teaching your kids, I missed it. Oscar Schmosker says B, mostly for effort.
Dreamgirls: I walked out after about an hour, can I still review it? This is about as formulaic as the pop star genre gets. Nothing going on here except a fast-paced rise to stardom through native talent and unlikely breaks. Compared to Walk the Line, much less to older, better pop star rise-to-fame movies (The Doors, etc.) this is candy-coated popcorn with no prize at the bottom. Why this should have won the awards it did from some other film societies is beyond me. A feather in the Academy's cap that this was not nominated for "Best Motion Picture"; though they probably should be compelled to develop some new categories, like "Worst Pop Star Picture". Oscar Schmosker gives this a C out of charity.
The Illusionist: Well-made art film, sure fooled me (the plot twist, I mean; can't say much more in case you didn't see it yet). Naturally it is hardly nominated for anything. Easily a B+ in the Schmosker catalogue. See it before it makes itself disappear.
The Painted Veil: Extremely well-made art film, in the classic mould, and of course it's nominated for nothing at all. (Did more than a handful of Academy members even bother to see it?) One critic (can't recall who) quipped, "Even real Merchant Ivory films don't get Oscars". And your point is...? Sorry, but this is what filmmaking used to be about, and still can be; stories wih real emotional depth, great cinematography, top-notch acting, little or no artificial enhancement with the latest, greatest special effects technology, some real social lessons without phony morality plays, an almost total lack of gratuitous violence or grisly carnage, disasters of a slow and deadly sort without cheap-shot catastrophe sequences, a "lost era" feel without millions of bucks in artificial sets and costumes and Model-T's... need I go on? Okay, this one is a twice or thrice or five-times told story, the Somerset Maugham story having been cinematized several times before. I didn't see any of those. I saw this one. It is a fine film. Oscar Schmosker says A-, and see it before it gets old enough that people start to think it's "one of those Merchant Ivory films".
An Inconvenient Truth: Lots of charts and lots of arguments for the reality and threat of global warming. One can hardly avoid being moved to agree, even though many of the arguments are really pretty dubious. I especially doubt his claims about our ability to reverse the trend before a fairly catastrophic rise in sea levels. But the overall impact is what counts. As film, this is nothing, a lecture with a big projection tv and a lot of staging. Much more could have been done outside the lecture, other than promotional shots of Gore and his family. Everybody should learn from the message, but whether it is really necessary to see the film is another question. I wouldn't call this a great or even a good documentary; rather, an opportunity to build consciousness about an important threat that we might be able to mitigate somewhat if enough people in the right places were persuaded of it. Oscar Schmosker doesn't quite know what to do with this one; maybe a B- as film, and PG-13 as social service.
Night at the Museum: Look at the review sites and you'll see that this one gets a much higher rating from audiences than from critics. Many films do, but with this one I could see why. It is actually not as stupid as it sounds; in fact, it is a bit of an intellectual fantasy, having all these historical figures come to life and interacting with them to explore their psychology. The real-people portraits were not exactly the ultimate in emotional probing, but the whole thing hung together fairly well. Here special effects were used in a way that might be called "charming", in the good sense that might be employed in reference to the Star Wars films. The film is directed at kids but I would not hesitate to send an adult there for a bit of fun. When order is inally restored in the museum there is an uncanny sense of moral and intellectual satisfaction that for all its hokeyness is more solid than some of the bang-us-over-the-head denouements of more serious historical films. Oscar Schmosker says B+, not half bad.
Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest, Flushed Away, X-Men III: Hey, do you think I have time to review every children's movie I've seen this year? No way. Mutants, rats, frogs, "the heart of Davey Jones"... the gross-out factor certainly has risen in PG films, helping kids acustom themselves to any future real horrors that might unfold (say tv coverage of a foreign war) and thus deaden themselves to the disgust this should generate. X-Men III has some definite virtues, e.g., interactive realignment of the Golden Gate Bridge... Also suggests some interesting social questions. If they invented a drug to "cure" something like e.g., homosexuality, would/should gay people take it? The recent experience with deaf-mutes at Gallaudet University suggests that members of a subculture often prefer to identify with it than integrate into the culture at large. XMen III suggests the same. But mostly, these movies are stocked with lots of unbelievable escapes from unbelievable dangers, and dubious underdog victories over the forces of evil. Compare Babel. It stands as this year's monument to film that avoids the pitfalls of ersatz-social-consciousness and cheap solutions to deep problems. Let's hope Oscar-not-Schmosker honors it appropriately.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Parrot Eyes Lost (and Found)
So, where has El Parrotto been these many days? Reading Milton? Not quite. Let's see... He flew the coop? No, parrots don't live in coops, they live on lamposts, silly. Or at least designer cages (Frank Gehry, have I got a project for you!) Maybe the plumed blogger just cur-tailed his efforts? Maybe not. Parrot got into nuclear physics and was eaten by Schroedinger's Cat? No, actually, parrot took wing with Minerva's Owl and did some serious philosophy for awhile. Nothing wrong with that, you know; besides, it's not contagious. (Thank god, if he exists when no one's there to see him.) A couple of conference papers with deadlines, to be specific, one of which I actually met. (Possibly a first.) The other is a work in progress, only now I need a conference to fit the paper instead of the other way around. Oh well, won't be the first time.
We (the ubiquitous editorial We) did a little research on promoting the blog - it's called "reading the Blogger Help screens" - and found that we have seriously ignored much of the advice therein. First is to "publish regular updates". The last H.A. Monk post is dated 3 weeks ago. Baaaaaaadddd...... The next is to post short items that people can actually read and "spare them the 1000 word diatribes". Mr. Monk ('tis I) recently posted a piece on Brice Marden and pasted it into MS Word. After removing all the extraneous bits, he did a word count. It seems that a Parrot rattled off a 3,529-word post - a new world's record! This would be too long even for our philosophy conferences! Veeeeeeerrrryyyy bad!
So how about if we keep this one short? A good idea, since my desk is about four inches deep in articles and reminders about stuff I want to write about; and this post isn't about anything except flying off with an owl and getting lost for three weeks. Which brings me to... Valentine's Day! (And I haven't done a holiday post since Christmas, so I guess I'm due.) Parrot and Owl (by which I will lovingly refer to Parrot's wise Girlfriend) ran off to Duvet for a romantic drink. Other patrons were indulging in the dubious honor of paying $95 per person to lounge around an oversized mattress and eat sushi, or something that looked roughly like it - we never got close enough to the culinary cuddlers to see what they were actually stuffing down... errr, their throats. (Well, there's a correction that didn't fix anything.) Parrot and Owl wisely saved their money and sat at the bar. We each had some variation on a mimosa, consisting of champagne and peach schnappes; I guess it has a name but I don't know it. The thrifty birds (okay, this thrifty bird) ponied up $33.60 for their eight or so ounces of liquour; I mean, for the opportunity to watch their spendthrifty peers get horny over dinner, temporarily thankful for being preserved from the frigid, slushy mess awaiting them beyond. Duvet also sports a large jellyfish tank (SpongeBob, go away!) and plays new agey music to enhance the feeling that this experience is so totally pre-21st century. No surprise that there were tables (yes they have some) available on Valentine's Day.
Duvet's bathroom consists of a large dimly lit room with stalls arranged in a U shape. A napkin valet person sits by a handwash basin in the middle. The stall doors are two way glass, so you can see the valet but (presumably) he can't see you. In this situation I would imagine that most of Duvet's clientele would prefer a woman, but no such forethought on the part of Duvet. Or perhaps that's just why they have a guy there... Owl was wondering, does closing the lock turn on the two-way thing, otherwise you can see inside? Owl was happy she locked the door. Parrot didn't care; he pees with his back to guys all the time. And when Parrot is perched on his lamppost, caution is strongly advised.
Next, the lovebirds waltzed over to Francisco's Centro Vasco, a restaurant where the cuisine can hardly be called gourmet, but the seafood can definitely be called gourmand. Specifically, Francisco's serves lobsters of up to 20 lbs; some of the shells they have hanging up are larger than a 6 year old child. On this occasion the staff approached a nearby table with two options for the pot (vat? cauldron?) - a 9 pound monster, and an even more daunting 12 pound behemoth. Natural the big guy was the unlucky one (both were alive). The lovebirds dined on less conspicuous fare - a seafood paella (girlfriend ate the bivalves, I ate the other stuff) and a little 1 1/4 pound crustacean. (Parrot is a Scorpio - crustaceans are his friends. But they taste good too.)
The first time I was at Centro Vasco I noticed the place had one virtue other than lobsters with pituitary cases - an unusually high proportion of women whose only common virtue with a boiled lobster is that they were drop-dead gorgeous. (Hey, this blog is about aesthetics, ain't it?) My second visit was consistent with that experience. Yes, I'm talking about you, Owl, of course... but also birds of some other feathers. I'm not sure if there is a conceptual relationship going on here - lobsters, beautiful women... you figure it out. (And no cheap shots, like "they can be pretty crabby"... even if it's true, IYHO.)
Well, according to MS Word I'm at 878 words, and I haven't gotten to one of the main points yet. Damn. (Maybe Google could put a Word Count feature in the Blogger editor?) Anyway, here it is. Owl got a big bunch of flowers for VD (maybe we should change the initials of this holiday?) to help attract whatever little creatures Owls like to eat. (Do bivalves like flowers, I wonder?) And a box of chocolates from Jacques Torres (Google them; best chocolates in New York, an objective fact). And a wallet from Ferragamo, designed to show the purchaser just how thin your own wallet can become. And Parrot got... no, don't go there. Well, let's put it this way. Owl's 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera was getting a bit, how do you say, out of fashion, due to the release of a new 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. So Owl bought herself the latest greatest 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera, and Parrot is now the proud owner (or is it borrower? I'm still not quite sure...) of a, you guessed it, 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. You may have noticed the paucity of original images in The Parrot's Lamppost. That's because Parrot's only digital camera until now has been his pitiful little Verizon cellphone. This will all be corrected now. Parrot is armed and dangerous. Maybe he will even learn how to download the images. Parrot is very excited. Squawck!
Well, I've tried my best in the last paragraph to be as wordy as possible. Wouldn't want to shock anyone by starting off with an under-1000-word post after such a long absence. Not fair to my audience. Such as it is. Next up: a hit counter! Look for it soon, so I can count how many humans are failing to listen to me. Whatever the hit counter says, just subtract that from 6,000,000,000, and you get a good idea of how widely you are ignored. Amazing what we can do with technology these days. Well, I'm off to take some shots with my new out-of-fashion 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. First stop? Maybe Francisco's Centro Vasco? Thanks, Owl! ;-)
We (the ubiquitous editorial We) did a little research on promoting the blog - it's called "reading the Blogger Help screens" - and found that we have seriously ignored much of the advice therein. First is to "publish regular updates". The last H.A. Monk post is dated 3 weeks ago. Baaaaaaadddd...... The next is to post short items that people can actually read and "spare them the 1000 word diatribes". Mr. Monk ('tis I) recently posted a piece on Brice Marden and pasted it into MS Word. After removing all the extraneous bits, he did a word count. It seems that a Parrot rattled off a 3,529-word post - a new world's record! This would be too long even for our philosophy conferences! Veeeeeeerrrryyyy bad!
So how about if we keep this one short? A good idea, since my desk is about four inches deep in articles and reminders about stuff I want to write about; and this post isn't about anything except flying off with an owl and getting lost for three weeks. Which brings me to... Valentine's Day! (And I haven't done a holiday post since Christmas, so I guess I'm due.) Parrot and Owl (by which I will lovingly refer to Parrot's wise Girlfriend) ran off to Duvet for a romantic drink. Other patrons were indulging in the dubious honor of paying $95 per person to lounge around an oversized mattress and eat sushi, or something that looked roughly like it - we never got close enough to the culinary cuddlers to see what they were actually stuffing down... errr, their throats. (Well, there's a correction that didn't fix anything.) Parrot and Owl wisely saved their money and sat at the bar. We each had some variation on a mimosa, consisting of champagne and peach schnappes; I guess it has a name but I don't know it. The thrifty birds (okay, this thrifty bird) ponied up $33.60 for their eight or so ounces of liquour; I mean, for the opportunity to watch their spendthrifty peers get horny over dinner, temporarily thankful for being preserved from the frigid, slushy mess awaiting them beyond. Duvet also sports a large jellyfish tank (SpongeBob, go away!) and plays new agey music to enhance the feeling that this experience is so totally pre-21st century. No surprise that there were tables (yes they have some) available on Valentine's Day.
Duvet's bathroom consists of a large dimly lit room with stalls arranged in a U shape. A napkin valet person sits by a handwash basin in the middle. The stall doors are two way glass, so you can see the valet but (presumably) he can't see you. In this situation I would imagine that most of Duvet's clientele would prefer a woman, but no such forethought on the part of Duvet. Or perhaps that's just why they have a guy there... Owl was wondering, does closing the lock turn on the two-way thing, otherwise you can see inside? Owl was happy she locked the door. Parrot didn't care; he pees with his back to guys all the time. And when Parrot is perched on his lamppost, caution is strongly advised.
Next, the lovebirds waltzed over to Francisco's Centro Vasco, a restaurant where the cuisine can hardly be called gourmet, but the seafood can definitely be called gourmand. Specifically, Francisco's serves lobsters of up to 20 lbs; some of the shells they have hanging up are larger than a 6 year old child. On this occasion the staff approached a nearby table with two options for the pot (vat? cauldron?) - a 9 pound monster, and an even more daunting 12 pound behemoth. Natural the big guy was the unlucky one (both were alive). The lovebirds dined on less conspicuous fare - a seafood paella (girlfriend ate the bivalves, I ate the other stuff) and a little 1 1/4 pound crustacean. (Parrot is a Scorpio - crustaceans are his friends. But they taste good too.)
The first time I was at Centro Vasco I noticed the place had one virtue other than lobsters with pituitary cases - an unusually high proportion of women whose only common virtue with a boiled lobster is that they were drop-dead gorgeous. (Hey, this blog is about aesthetics, ain't it?) My second visit was consistent with that experience. Yes, I'm talking about you, Owl, of course... but also birds of some other feathers. I'm not sure if there is a conceptual relationship going on here - lobsters, beautiful women... you figure it out. (And no cheap shots, like "they can be pretty crabby"... even if it's true, IYHO.)
Well, according to MS Word I'm at 878 words, and I haven't gotten to one of the main points yet. Damn. (Maybe Google could put a Word Count feature in the Blogger editor?) Anyway, here it is. Owl got a big bunch of flowers for VD (maybe we should change the initials of this holiday?) to help attract whatever little creatures Owls like to eat. (Do bivalves like flowers, I wonder?) And a box of chocolates from Jacques Torres (Google them; best chocolates in New York, an objective fact). And a wallet from Ferragamo, designed to show the purchaser just how thin your own wallet can become. And Parrot got... no, don't go there. Well, let's put it this way. Owl's 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera was getting a bit, how do you say, out of fashion, due to the release of a new 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. So Owl bought herself the latest greatest 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera, and Parrot is now the proud owner (or is it borrower? I'm still not quite sure...) of a, you guessed it, 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. You may have noticed the paucity of original images in The Parrot's Lamppost. That's because Parrot's only digital camera until now has been his pitiful little Verizon cellphone. This will all be corrected now. Parrot is armed and dangerous. Maybe he will even learn how to download the images. Parrot is very excited. Squawck!
Well, I've tried my best in the last paragraph to be as wordy as possible. Wouldn't want to shock anyone by starting off with an under-1000-word post after such a long absence. Not fair to my audience. Such as it is. Next up: a hit counter! Look for it soon, so I can count how many humans are failing to listen to me. Whatever the hit counter says, just subtract that from 6,000,000,000, and you get a good idea of how widely you are ignored. Amazing what we can do with technology these days. Well, I'm off to take some shots with my new out-of-fashion 7.1 megapixel Cannon Powershot camera. First stop? Maybe Francisco's Centro Vasco? Thanks, Owl! ;-)
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