Dear Basketball (2017)

Let me straight out say that I am not a fan of Kobe Bryant.  I was at one time a Laker fan, going back to the Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, and Happy Harrison days of the Lakers.  I thought he was a wonder to watch on the court, but off the court he gave off an unpleasant vibe, and then there is the whole issue of how many #MeToo can be laid at his door step. 
That said, this is a fluid and believable love letter to the game and what it meant to him, and the animation is both playful and masterful.

Dear Basketball,

From the moment
I started rolling my dad’s tube socks
And shooting imaginary
Game-winning shots
In the Great Western Forum
I knew one thing was real:

I fell in love with you.
A love so deep I gave you my all —
From my mind & body
To my spirit & soul.

As a six-year-old boy
Deeply in love with you
I never saw the end of the tunnel.
I only saw myself
Running out of one.
And so I ran.
I ran up and down every court
After every loose ball for you.
You asked for my hustle
I gave you my heart
Because it came with so much more.

I played through the sweat and hurt
Not because challenge called me
But because YOU called me.
I did everything for YOU
Because that’s what you do
When someone makes you feel as
Alive as you’ve made me feel.
You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream
And I’ll always love you for it.
But I can’t love you obsessively for much longer.
This season is all I have left to give.
My heart can take the pounding
My mind can handle the grind
But my body knows it’s time to say goodbye.
And that’s OK.
I’m ready to let you go.
I want you to know now
So we both can savor every moment we have left together.
The good and the bad.
We have given each other
All that we have. 
And we both know, no matter what I do next
I’ll always be that kid
With the rolled up socks
Garbage can in the corner
:05 seconds on the clock
Ball in my hands.
5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1
Love you always,
Kobe

A Toast

As years go, this was an incredible one for both food and travel with my spouse.  Here we are in a two Michelin star restaurant in Chicago recently doing exactly what we love best.  A bit of travel, great friendships, wonderful imaginative food, a bit of wine to add to what the food, interspersed with a bit of walking, and a charming museum.  We did not plan it to celebrate our anniversary, but it was better than anything we would have purposely put together, I can assure you.
It's been a year of running scared, for me at least.  I finished chemotherapy almost a year ago, and since then, I have felt a little bit like a sitting duck, waiting for the other foot to fall.  I do very much hope for the best, but it is really tough to ignore the odds, and so I have been doing a bit of hoping for the best and preparing for the worst.  That can be a very hard kind of partner to live with, I fear.  So hoping to calm down a bit in the next year, and to continue to zealously pursue the things that are fun in life, and am thankful to have such a wonderful spouse to share it all with.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 (2017)

I am watching all the nominated films for the Oscars, and this is one of them (nominated in the category with other CGI single category nominees, largely).  I am nothing if not thorough.  A less kind person would call it an obsession.  This is pretty much what you would expect from a misfit super hero movie.  Lots of dysfunctional family stuff superimposed on a little bit of wrong doing that leads to a full scale revenge plan.  Groot is still the cutest amongst them.  Drax is still relatively clueless.  The two sisters have a death feud going on, and Peter meets his father.  As you might predict, that is a bit touch and go, and in the end it is all go.  The special effects are really spectacular, and that is the only reason to watch this too long, over two hours, movie.

Phantom Thread (2017)

This is reportedly Daniel Day Lewis' last movie and he is nominated for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, the film for Best Movie, and the director as well.  It got some unexpected traction, in that it is about a fussy creative artist and the women who make it happen for him.  The premise I suppose is that creativity requires a level of obsession in order to achieve greatness, and that those who have it need to be supported by others who give up their own autonomy in a way in order for the magic to happen.
The one actress who is not nominated is in fact at the center of it all.   Reynolds Woodcock, oddly aptly named on a number of levels, seduces Alma (Vicky Krieps) early on, and the movie centers on their very unconventional relationship.  Reynolds is used to having his sister facilitate his life, arranging for what he likes and discarding what he grows tired of.  Alma speaks with a slight accent, maybe the actress' native Luxembourg accent, but her origins and her motivations and attractions are vague, beyond the obvious allure of being transformed into a beauty by the clothing her lover creates for her.
But this is not a film that has a conventional story line nor does the ending follow a clear and easy line; the war of wills between the two characters does not have a tidy resolution. We don’t even know just what it is that Alma wants, let alone what she gets.
The film itself is beautifully made, or maybe constructed is a better word. Director Paul Anderson’s visual style is remarkable. Shooting much of the picture himself, he frames in a Kubrick-inflected style but cuts with an air of suspense. This gives the movie a sense of momentum that’s supported by the score and the other music (mostly classical) alternating with it. This is very much a movie with a score; very little of it is without music, and there are very deliberate shifts in instrumentation and orchestration throughout that are subtle but create the mood.  Well crafted, uptight and ultimately a little mysterious.

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

 This film is nominated in the category of Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Actor.  It is the story of on an affair between Elio Perlman (Timothée Chalamet), a coltish 17-year-old boy on the verge of manhood and Oliver (Armie Hammer), an American in his 20s (it is possible that in the book the age range is a bit closer, but here Chalamet looks every inch a teenager, whereas Oliver is very much a mature and experienced man). Elio lives with his father (a tremendous Michael Stuhlbarg) and mother (Amira Casar) in a villa in northern Italy. Each summer the father, a professor of Greco-Roman culture, invites a student to work with him and stay with his family; this year it’s Oliver who moves in.  Nobody seems to work except for the hired help.  There are long languid summer days, with lots of lying about and swimming and taking your time, intermixed with sensuous food, all of which lends a seductive air to both the characters and the overall movie.  Elio initiates the affair, the parents consent to it, and while Elio is experimenting with a man, he is also having an age appropriate affair with a local woman.  It is beautifully told, redolent of Italy, and sweetly portrayed.  Probably not the winner takes all film, but if that happened, I would be absolutely happy about it.

Revolting Rhymes

This is a BBC production which is nominated in the Best Short Animated film category and it is really pretty terrific.  It is based on six retelling of traditional fairy tales that Roald Dahl wrote that I somehow missed, despite having four children, an affection for the story teller, and reading quite a lot to the kids.
Revolting Rhymes is obviously aimed at those who know the original tales and likely wouldn't have as much impact upon children who haven't been introduced to Snow White or The Three Little Pigs, otherwise why put them together?
The start is absolutely perfect, telling the leading events to Snow White's attempted murder by the Queen's Huntsman, and in a wonderful Roald Dahl restatement of a passage included in the Brothers' Grimm original but often forgotten by more sanitized versions, includes the Queen eating the heart which she believes to be Snow White’s with the line:
"and now here's the disgusting part, the queen sat down and ate the heart. I only hope she cooked it well, boiled heart can be as tough as hell".
Instead of meeting the traditional dwarves, Snow White runs into 7 ex-racing jockeys who lose all their money betting on horses, which she goes about finding a solution for.  There are a number of twists and turns, Snow White and Red Riding Hood becoming and remaining fast friends, and a cliff hanger of an ending. 

Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

I realize that there is a lot of controversy around this film, most of which I cannot discuss without giving an awful lot of it away, so I will not, but suffice it to say that I don't agree.
The acting in this is exceptional.  All three main characters are nominated for Academy Awards, so that tell you something.  The story is that a woman's daughter was found raped and murdered in the small town of Ebbing, Missouri.  There was DNA evidence, but it matched no one and the police essentially stopped looking and are waiting to catch a break down the road.  The most likely suspect is someone passing through and the nature of the crime is such that this is likely not his first time.  The mother can't accept that.  She of course had a fight with her teenage daughter,  both because she is not mother of the year and the daughter was what you would expect from someone her age, and then of course, that is the last time they spoke.  So she is looking for redemption, and she finds it in buying space on three billboards on a road with spotty traffic asking why, what are the police doing?  Which stirs up quite a fuss.  Well worth watching, and for sure it will win something I suspect.

I, Tonya (2017)

This is a tough one, and it certainly has raised some eyebrows in its admittedly one sided telling of the Tonya Harding story.  The one persuasive moment in it all is at the end where there are out takes of interviews with the actual players, and darned if they don't sound spot on for the portrayals in the movie.
Allison Janney is flat out amazing as Tonya's mother.  Her non-stop spewing of verbal abuse interspersed with chain smoking and the occasional throwing of an object or two that are easily dodged but malevolent none-the-less is awe-inspiring in its sheer awfulness.  That is a mother that would make you more sympathetic to a mass murderer.  It doesn't excuse the crime, but you can see how damaging it would be to grow up with that.
Margot Robbie has a lot of the real Tonya's mannerisms down, and the depiction of the figure skating community as classist and emphasizing beauty and grace over athleticism is dead on.  Does that excuse the crime?  Absolutely not, but it does go a ways to seeing why it might have happened.  There are Academy Award nominations in here, and we will see how that plays out.

The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson

I have enjoyed this author's books in the past, and when I was waiting for my plane to take me home from my walking tour in the Cotswolds last summer, a fellow lounge mate recommended this.  I live in the age of almost universal Internet access (which may end soon thanks to the spinelessness of our elected officials and the very low price that their votes can be bought for), so I bought it on the spot.  Despite the glow of a wondering trip rambling through private lands on public paths in one of the most bucolic places on earth that also hosts a startlingly large number of cozy inns and purveyors of delicious food, I just couldn't get into it.
Now, almost a full year after starting it, I am done with it.  In so many ways.  The author has become bitter and cruel in his assessment of almost everything except himself, and the beauty of the land.  Not the people who inhabit it, for whom he has almost nothing good to say.  He is so scathing and seemingly unjust in his depiction of the most minor of infractions that it is painful to turn the pages, wondering what he will next find so unpleasant as to try to ruin it for the rest of us.  If that sort of thing is your cup of tea, this is a book that represents an extra strong brew.

Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405 (2017)

This  is a short documentary on the artist Mindy Alpers, who has a significant history of mental illness and childhood trauma.  Her story unfolds through interviews with herself and her mother, but is largely told in the drawings that she did while a child and then as an inpatient on a mental health unit. 
Her father was both abusive and ashamed of her.  He most likely sexually abused her, and then took out his rage about that on her.  When she was sixteen, her mother asked her to leave because she could no longer tolerate the chaos of the family home.  Her mother chose her husband over her child.  So plenty of trauma, interspersed with some obsessive compulsive traits at the very least.  So it is not a happy story at baseline, but Mindy found an expression of her intense feelings through art, both with drawing and with paper mache.  I am a mental health professional and it is an excellent movie for the depiction of intense emotions in a graphic form.  The sculpture that she does, which is larger than life, has real spirit and life, and on the whole the film is very moving.