2008-04-20

Happy Sabbath! Jim cleaned house after wheeling me to church. We had a lovely service and Mick picked me up afterwards to take me to a wonderfully clean home. It was chilly and blustery outside, although the weather promises to sweeten again tomorrow.

Our first film, Reservation Road, failed to play. We could see the previews, but no movie! So we dropped back and punted with Mick’s second choice this week, Sleuth. This could loosely be called a remake of the Christopher Reeve – Laurence Olivier film of the same name in that there were only two main characters, both sleeping with the same woman. In the remake, Michael Caine is the husband and Jude Law is the lover. As in the former movie of that title, the film is a conversation, back and forth, both men playing games for all they are worth. It put me to sleep within fifteen minutes.

What I saw during those minutes, aside from skillful acting by the stars, was that the cinematography was all about the house in which the husband resides and in which the play takes place. The house is imposing, large and ostentatious, dwarfing the humans within it. Its appointments are very high-tech. Walls keep rising to reveal hidden rooms. Spare, pretentious arrangements of furniture and art objects fill the screen, with perhaps a minor portion of the protagonists’ anatomy showing as a small detail, while the disembodied voices echo in the large space. I cannot judge the whole, but it would be my guess that the Reeve/Olivier play was more interesting, although not less surprising in the end.

We decided to take a break before seeing our third film, and I wrote an Avalon Journal entry and reworked some recipes while Mick got all ready for his mowing week and puttered around on the computer. Growler’s Word software is again working well, thank the heavens! Mick is very easily discouraged from working on his computer because at heart he is anti-computer, and he was ready never to use it again last week, it was so endlessly frustrating to work with the Word program. All is well now. Thank you, Romi!

Our third film was Juno, a sweet, vastly entertaining, deft, sure treatment of the difficult subject of teen pregnancy. The production values of this project were very good. The Oscar-winning screenplay by Diablo Cody is realized beautifully by a terrific ensemble of players. Ellen Page is fresh and quirky as the heroine, offering a performance of vulnerability and strength. Jennifer Garner is wonderful as the hopeful adopter. Michael Cera, Jason Bateman, Allison Janney and especially J. K. Simmons as Juno’s dad are all excellent as well. And the sound track is fine!

Mick offered the closing prayer at the Gaia Meditation tonight.