It's the end of the week so it's time to celebrate the small things!

So what am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

But.... Not for me.  I',m traveling this weekend for three concerts, plus some education events, so no rest for me.  Which is a shame because this week hs been crazy.  I'm pre-scheduling a nervous breakdown for late September once all the madness is over.

And on top of all the busyness at work, I've managed to make all but one of the films I planned to see in the Festival.  I skipped Monday's and gave my ticket to a colleague because I was feeling really sick and I'm glad I did.  I felt much better on Tuesday.  Especially since I got someone to covr my class at the gym too, so I got a little extra rest.

So what have I seen?

Wolfram which is a new film from Australian filmmaker Warwick Thornton.  It was set in the outback amongst people mining for tungsten.  Aboriginal kids were sent down holes to did out the stuff and treated terribly by their white bosses.  When some new prospectors arrive in town with a vicious cruel streak, the kids end up on the run and collect up an odd group of strays as they flee across the countryside in search of a safe place and maybe the mother who left them behind.  This one was a truly visceral experience.  The intense heat of the landscape was palpable, even on a cold night.  And the constant buzzing of the persisent flies was brlliantly rendered.  It was a truly uncomfortable viewing experience, not just because of the subject matter.

Dead Man's Wire is definitely a highlight of the Festival for me.  Gus Van Sant's based-on-a-true-story thriller has the look and feel of a seventies classic like Dog Day Afternoon and even features Al Pacino in a brilliantly nasty cameo role.  It follows three days in which a man whose life has been ruined by a mortgage company, takes an employee hostage using a rifle and a dead man's wire and does his best to negotiate with police.  This film. is funny and frightening and very relatable on so many levels.

Barbara Forever is a documentary about pioneering lesbian filmaker Barbara Hammer.  A prolific filmmaker of primarily experimental material, the doco explores her life and her influences and how she has shaped and influenced the next gerneation of queer filmmakers.  I'd hoped this one might be a lttle more interesting, but I didn't feel like I learned uch about Barbara that I didn't already know (other than the fact she's died recently).

Will They Miss Me if I Go is a dreamy, slightly surreal film about a father, recently out of jail, and the son he struggles to connect with.  Set in the projects in South LA, it doesn't shy away from showing the hardship people in these communities live in.  Little Ant is an artist, a kid with an eye for beauty and storytelling whose environment has little in the way of either.  He does have a mother who is strong enough and tough enough to hold everythig together, but what he really wants is to be seen and apprecaited by his father, Big Ant.  But, being a different kind of man, Big Ant can't see that the things her percieves as weaknesses in his son are in fact his biggest strengths.  There were some odd bits to this film , especially the way bioth fatehr and son seemed to hallucinate people in white becomin aeroplanes in odd places.  I think this was supposed to be representing the way both dreamed fo flying out of there on the planes tat were constantly flying overhead.

Remake is a new film from documentary filmmaker Ross McElwee.  Way back in my student days, we studied a film he made called Sherman's March, a doco ostensibly about retracng Sherman's Civil War route, but much more a journey of self discovery for young Ross McElwee.  This film is ostensibly about a Hollywood production company making a fictional remake of that film, but is actually an exploration of guilt and grief as McElwee deals with the death of his son to a drug overdose.  It's a beautiful and devastating film, using footage McElwee shot of his family over the 27 years of his son's life and some film his son shot himself as he tried to become a filmmaker in his own right.  A definite highlight of the festival for me.

And that's it for films until next week.  Although Im not entirely sure I'll make it to the two I have booked for next week because the new ticketing system is going in and work is going to be busier than ever.

What are you celebrating thiis week?

Books I've Read: I Cheerfully Refuse

When I first got the Libby app on my phone, this was one of the first books I found that I wanted to read.  Unfortunately, I needed up being 400th on a waiting list for it.  So, it was a surprise the other day to walk along the shelves at the library and find it just sitting there.  Of course I took it.  Lief Enger has been a favorite author of mine since I read Peace Like a River many years back and while I did enjoy aspects of this book, I didn't love it.

Set in an undefined near future, the book follows Rainey, a bass player, as he embarks on a dangerous journey on Lake Superior following the loss of his wife.  Lake, his wife, was clearly the driving force in his life, a force of nature whose intelligence and curiosity was enough to drive them both.  In this particular dystopian future, she ran a bookstore, selling something that is no longer valued by most people.

Unable to face staying in the house they shared after she is killed, Rainey takes off in the ramshackle boat he and a friend have been restoring.  He has a vague idea of going to islands where he and Lake once spent the happiest days of their courtship.  If she remains on Earth, he's sure what remains will be there.

But the lake is capricious and dangerous as are the people who live on and around it.  Rainey's journey has him facing storms, beaurocrats, dangerous thugs and more.  Yet, he also encounters human kindness and compassion.

The future world Enger paints here is one deeply divided.  The wealthy, ruling class (known as astronauts) is happy to keep the rest of society illiterate and increasingly dependent on a mysterious supstance known as "willow".  Those who work for the "astronauts" are virtual slaves, while those who refuse are forced to scrabble around for enough scraps to subsist on.

I enjoyed Raineys journey and the colorful cast of characters he met along the way.  I also ejoyed the way Rainey became almost a hero by the end, inadevertently leading a quiet revolution against the powers that be.

What I struggled with was how unemotional he was about everything.  I never felt that Raney was struggling despite him saying he was.  None of the emotions felt like they were being experienced in real time and it made it difficult to connect to the characters.

Which is a shame, because the story is gripping and beuatifully written.  I just never had the kind of emotiional immersion I need to truly love a story.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Set in a not-too-distant America, I Cheerfully Refuse is the tale of Rainy, an aspiring musician setting sail on Lake Superior in search of his departed, deeply beloved, bookselling wife. An endearing bear of an Orphean narrator, he seeks refuge in the harbors, fogs, and remote islands of the inland sea. After encountering lunatic storms and rising corpses from the warming depths, he eventually lands to find an increasingly desperate and illiterate people, a malignant billionaire ruling class, a crumbled infrastructure, and a lawless society. As his guileless nature begins to make an inadvertent rebel of him, Rainy’s private quest for the love of his life grows into something wider and wilder, sweeping up friends and foes alike in his wake.

Weekly Goals 17-8-26

 It's probably the busiest two to three weeks of the year, so of course I've picked up a bug.  It's not terrible and hasn't stopped me from doing anything yet, but I don't feel that great.  It seems to be settling in my chest too which is not wonderful.  In the middle of the night I was certain I'd need to take the day off work today and was trying to figure out how to shuffle everything around to make that work,  but now that I'm up, I think I'll probably be okay to go in.  So long as no one minds me coughing like a dog barking...

So again, this week is going to be about getting through it.  I have a lot to do to get ready for the new ticketing system to go live next week, plus I'm going on tour one the weekend.  Not to mention, I have tickets for six films between now and Thursday!

Which leads me to the films I saw over the weekend.

The Best Summer is a doco by Tamra Davis that she made from some old video tapes she found when packing up stuff to escape the fires in LA a couple of years back.  In 1995 she went with her then husband, one of the Beastie Boys, on a tour of Australia and Asia, filming behind the scenes and concert footage as she went.  With the line-up including Sonic Youth, Bikini Kill, Foo Fighters, Rancid and more, this film captures the camaraderie, the youthful exuberance and excitement of these young bands on tour.

Kim Novak's Vertigo is a fascinating doc about the blonde star of Hitchcock's most enigmatic film.  Having left Hollywood while still relatively young, Novak has spent years living with a range of animals and painting which was, apparently, her first love.  The director has access to her attic where she's stored all the memorabilia and trinkets associated with her long-gone film career and manages to get her to open up about her acting (or, as she describes it, re-acting) and the two characters she portrays in Vertigo.

Goodbye, Cruel World is a French film about a young boy, bullied relentlessly at school, who decides he's had enough.  He writes a letter, makes enough copies to post to everyone in his class, firmly laying the blame at their feet, and goes to kill himself by leaping off a bridge into a fast-moving river.  But he doesn't die.  Frustrated, he hides out in an abandoned nunnery, knowing he can't go home.  When he's discovered by a classmate walking her dog, she hides him in an unused room at her mother's hotel and they quickly become friends, then more, making plans to leave together and build a new life.   I enjoyed this one, but felt like it stayed very much on the safe side.  There was a lot more the writer could have done with the premise and it annoyed me a little that the story didn't push outside its comfort zone a little more.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 14-8-26

 

It's the end of the week so it's time to celebrate the small things!

So what am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

Although, not much of a weekend for because we have concerts tonight and tomorrow night.  But in between I plan to do a lot of resting and relaxing because this week has been mayhem.

And seeing some films since the film festival has started.  I've only seen two so far, but I liked them both.

Father, Mother, Sister, Brother is the latest film from Jim Jarmusch who I've been a massive fan of since the early '90s.  This is an episodic film, three distinct, yet linked stories about familiar relationships.  In the first, siblings (played by Adam Driver and Mayim Biaylik who look eerily like they could be related) go to visit their father  (Tom Waits) in his ramshackle house in the middle of nowhere.  He's a shambling guy, always underemployed and his kids have had to help him out frequently with groceries and household repairs.  Yet everything isn't quite what it seems on the surface.  In the second vignette, a mother (Charlotte Rampling) is having her daughters over for afternoon tea.  Apparently this is the only day of the year they see each other, despite all living in Dublin, so it's a big deal.  Again, not everything is as it seems on the surface.  And the final piece is about a brother and sister, twins, dealing with the sudden death of their bohemian parents and clearing out their belongings from their Paris flat.   I really enjoyed this film.  It's quiet, but has the same subtly delicious humor Jarmusch always manages to capture, yet was also quite heartbreaking in all the different ways family relationships can be broken.

Mouse was a pleasant surprise.  I couldn't remember what it was about when I went in, and it ended up being a beautifully captured portrait of grief and grieving.  Just before going into their senior year, besties Minnie and Callie are dreaming about the future.  Callie, the outgoing, exuberant one, has huge plans for her life, while Minnie has smaller ambitions.  But when Callie is killed in a car crash, it sends Minnie spinning.  Callie's presence gave her life meaning.  Who is she now Callie is gone?  Alongside Minnie's story is that of Callie's mother, a once-promising concert pianist who gave it all up to be a mother.  As she and Minnie deal with their individual grieving, their lives become increasing tangled which may or may not be complicating things as they try to reset their own lives.  I liked this one very much and it was a lovely continuation of the themes from the previous night's film, with its focus on mother-daughter relationships.

I have another three to see over the weekend... I'm tired and a little sick, but hopefully I'll make it through them all.

What are you celebrating this week?

Books I've Read: Lycanthropy and other Chronic Illnesses

I picked this one up at the library because of the title.  I mean, who wouldn't?  And it was a super fun read that I whipped through in just a few days.

Priya is at home again after getting sick while studying pre-med at Stanford.  The fallout from her Lyme disease leaves her weak and in constant pain and she feels like a failure for not being able to live out the dreams she worked so hard to achieve.  Yet every day is such a struggle to get through, she can't imagine going back to that life.

The only bright spots in her life are her online pen-pal Brigid and the support group they form with other chronic illness sufferers.  Here she can be honest about how she's feeling, how hard it is to get through each day and know the others will relate.

When Brigid suddenly vanishes from the group and won't respond to Priya's messages, she decides she needs to take matters into her own hands, steals the family car and drives to Brigid's house in the next state.

Where she finds something that might be a werewolf?  And the werewolf might be Brigid?

As their friendship deepens and Brigid's condition worsens, both young women have to face up to the fact this might just be their new normal.

I really enjoyed this book.  The idea that lycanthropy is a chronic illness kind of tickled me in the best possible way.  All the characters felt very real in this book and even at their most preposterous, the challenges they faced were handled with conviction and flare.

But the best thing about it is the depiction of friendship and the lengths people will go to for their friends.  Even if it does cause friction within your own family.  And then, to boot, it's also great fun.  Especially when photographers catch sight of Brigid in her werewolf form and internet rumors start to spiral...

So I'd recommend this one.  It's fun and silly, but has a lot to say about chronic illnesses and the way people suffering from them can be treated.  Especially when it's not something easily visible to others.

But don't just listen to me.  Here's the blurb:

Teen Wolf meets Emergency Contact in this sharply observed, hilarious, and heartwarming debut young adult novel about friendship, chronic illness, and . . . werewolves.

Priya worked hard to pursue her premed dreams at Stanford, but the fallout from undiagnosed Lyme disease sends her back to her childhood home in New Jersey during her sophomore year—and leaves her wondering if she’ll ever be able to return to the way things were.

Thankfully she has her online pen pal, Brigid, and the rest of the members of “oof ouch my bones,” a virtual support group that meets on Discord to crack jokes and vent about their own chronic illnesses.

When Brigid suddenly goes offline, Priya does something out of character: she steals the family car and drives to Pennsylvania to check on Brigid. Priya isn’t sure what to expect, but it isn’t the horrifying creature that's shut in the basement.

With Brigid nowhere to be found, Priya begins to puzzle together an impossible but obvious truth: the creature might be a werewolf—and the werewolf might be Brigid. As Brigid's unique condition worsens, their friendship will be deepened and challenged in unexpected ways, forcing them to reckon with their own ideas of what it means to be normal.

Weekly Goals 10-8-26

 The next three or four weeks are going to be the busiest weeks of the year, I think,  in terms of my day jobs, so I'm not setting any goals outside of that.  We have until around the 24th of August to get the new systems up and running so the season launch on 4 September goes smoothly.

I'm teaching five classes at the gym this week on top of that, plus the film festival starts and I have tickets to several films.

I also have concerts Friday and Saturday night and my son's band are playing their last ever gig on Wednesday.

To say I'm overcommitted would be something of an understatement.

So, this week I'm not setting any goals for myself in terms of writing.  I've told my critique group I'm out for three or four weeks and I'm going to use whatever spare time I might be able to find to rest and read and do things that don't require much brain power so I can try and make it through this crazy period.

What are your goals this week?

Celebrate the Small Things 7-8-26

 

It's the end of the week so it's time to celebrate the small things!

So what am I celebrating this week?

It's the weekend!

It has been a crazy week and next weeks is going to get even crazier, so I'm going to try and do as much nothing as possible this weekend.  I do have some gym work to do on Sunday, and that involves learning a new class, but other than that, I'm not planning to do much work this weekend. 

My big project at work is going well, but time is very quickly ticking away and we're getting very close to the wire with finishing it.  We have less than a month until the new season launches and less than three weeks to get all the new systems to support it up and running.

Ack!

So, I haven't had any time to write or to really think about writing.

And the film festival starts this week.  I suspect I may have been a little ambitious in buying tickets to thirteen films when we have five concerts in that time too, plus all these new systems to get up and running.

But we'll see.  I'll do my best to do it all.  I can sleep in October.

What are you celebrating this week?