TORONTO BLOGGING

I just returned from the Toronto International Film Festival. I saw 13 films over 5 days. While there, I made a few posts to the Chlotrudis blog:

Days 1 and 2: HOLLYWOOD CHINESE, MY WINNEPEG, THE BANISHMENT, USELESS and PLOY.

Day 3: THE VISITOR and PING PONG PLAYA'.

Day 4: SILENT LIGHT, 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS, JUNO and JUST LIKE HOME.

Day 5: WITH YOUR PERMISSION, JELLYFISH and a rundown of ratings.

The festival did not disappoint, and I had time to explore a few new neighborhoods (I stayed here). But I'm glad to be back in Boston--I admit I felt a little homesick by day 4.

A DECADE OUT EAST

I moved from Milwaukee to Boston ten years ago today. To celebrate, here's a decade in snapshots I've taken:



1997: Winchester Path, Brookline Hills
Accustomed to the Midwest's homogeneous street grids, Boston's spaghetti-tangled layout both challenged and captivated me. I was awestruck the first time I came across this pedestrian hillside walkway. This was taken on a brisk Thanksgiving Day hike when I really had nothing better to do (except maybe renting movies). Thanks to the sun's position, it's the only self-portrait here.



1998: Revere Beach
Only I would take the Blue Line outbound to its terminus on a not particularly warm November Saturday afternoon to go to the beach and explore. Luckily for me, the sky was a magnificent blend of hues and textures--plus, I had the place practically all to myself.



1999: Aldie Street, Lower Allston
Another gorgeous, otherworldly sky. I remember a few instances over the years where I just had to run home to my apartment, grab my camera, and rush back out again to capture the remnants of a sunset in all of its glory before it would irrevocably fade away.



2000: Bussey Hill, Arnold Arboretum
Now I live within spitting distance of this place, but for many years, it involved much more effort to get there. Consequently, I take this vista (looking out towards the Blue Hills) for granted until those increasingly rare occasions when I see it in person.



2001: Deluxe Town Diner, Watertown
How I ended up living in the suburbs for two years isn't terribly complicated, but not compelling enough to get into here. However, this refurbished vintage diner in my then neighborhood was a godsend; it remains one of my favorite haunts in the whole area and the only place I know where one can get real maple syrup at no extra charge.



2002: EarthFest, The Esplanade
Spring always feels more vibrant here than it did where I grew up. As with Autumn (curiously not as dynamic as back home), every year I try to capture the world in flux. This was taken at a free radio station-sponsored concert headlined by Bonnie Raitt; I love how the people strewn all over the grass almost seem like a natural part of the landscape at this distance.



2003: Belmont Street, Cambridge
Over two feet of snow fell the day before my birthday that year. I strolled through my nearly deserted neighborhood, taking pictures of sidewalks and snowbanks, crouched down in an effort to get an accurate sense of just how much precipitation the storm left in its wake.



2004: The Public Gardens
I view this now and immediately feel warm and serene. Cities can be tough, irritating places to live in and just deal with, but once in awhile you can sense their beauty and poetry.



2005: Jamaica Pond
I moved to Jamaica Plain over two years prior to this photo, and the place it was taken at contributes greatly to why I feel so home in that part of town. I'll visit The Pond any time of year and usually see something in a way I haven't previously. This shot is from late Autumn; I think it proves that trees don't necessarily need fauna to appear interesting.



2006: The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge
Having just missed a commuter rail train at North Station, I had two hours to kill. So, I ambled through Charlestown and the North End and got a few shots of something that wasn't there ten years ago. It's no Golden Gate, but it's mightier than the Hoan. I like how it gives Boston some much-needed drama (aesthetically, of course--it has more than it needs in the attitudinal sense).



2007: Winchester Path, Brookline Hills
I couldn't resist going back to where I started. Of course it's not an exact replica, this being August. But it's comforting to know it's still within my grasp (I currently work about a ten-minute walk away from it). Like Boston itself, it also still hasn't lost its charm.

SUMMERCAMP!

It's easy for most of us to forget what it feels like to be a child, especially if you don't work with children or aren't a parent. Bradley Beesley and Sarah Price's straightforward but affecting documentary unerringly captures the nostalgic warmth and pure sense of discovery of those pre-teen (and early teenaged) years. It also honestly depicts how naturally vulnerable and bewildered children occasionally are whether they're struggling to make friends or simply feeling homesick.

Recorded over one summer at the Swift Nature Camp in northern Wisconsin, the film dutifully illustrates all the familiar rituals of a prototypical spell at camp, from arts and crafts and nature hikes to talent shows and roasting marshmallows to a burnt crisp over an open fire. We meet many campers, but the film focuses on a select few, like roly-poly Cameron, whose anti-social behavior gradually spirals out of control, or loner Holly, whose cute, curious obsession with chickadees is far more significant than it first appears. Throughout a season of canoeing trips, bedtime stories, first crushes and plastic bowls of lime jell-o, some of the kids make friends and grow in character and have the times of their lives; others don't.

While not exactly revelatory filmmaking, after years of slasher pics, sex comedies and agenda-centric docs, this is as close to an authentic look at the culture of summer camps that we're ever likely to get. Refreshingly, there is a minimum (if not complete lack) of mugging for the camera from these kids, and this makes a huge difference. Beesley and Price's real accomplishment is in how genuine and unaffected their subjects appear—it's what endears them and the film to us.

FOGGY WATERFRONT

I had some time to kill the other night before meeting up with a friend in Fort Point Channel (for an outdoor screening of this), so I explored the Boston waterfront, which I haven't walked through much lately.


Quincy Marketplace swarmed by tourists, though you'd never know it at this angle.


In nearly ten years, I can't remember walking across the old Northern Ave. bridge before.


I think I prefer the Boston Harbor Hotel from a comfortable distance.


Last time I was this close to the new ICA, it was way too frigid out to take any pix.

Lobotomized giddiness over the prospect of eclectic cuisine, or PODS?

Same town, different bridge.

DESERT ISLAND REVISITED

In celebration of the publication of Marooned (a generational sequel to the rock-crit classic Stranded), here are ten albums I'd love to take with me to a desert island (in the order they came to mind):

Ivy - APARTMENT LIFE
Saint Etienne - TALES FROM TURNPIKE HOUSE
Kate Bush - THE DREAMING
The Avalanches - SINCE I LEFT YOU
Belle and Sebastian - IF YOU'RE FEELING SINISTER
Brian Eno - BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE
XTC - SKYLARKING
Sam Phillips - A BOOT AND A SHOE
The Go-Betweens -OCEANS APART
Calexico - FEAST OF WIRE

If you take a glance at my 100 favorite albums from three years ago, you'll notice that the top ten is radically different from this one. Has my taste in music fluctuated that much? Well, the earlier list is full of records I've listened to so obsessively that I feel I rarely need to hear them. Taking the desert island concept literally, I'm already somewhat sick of 'em, so I can't imagine what hell on earth would emerge if I was permanently stuck with 'em.

So, why these ten?

Well, the Saint Etienne, Go-Betweens and Sam Phillips albums, all released in the past three years, are there because they flawlessly encapsulate the great qualities of each artist’s oeuvre while also pushing them further than they previously dared to.

Though much older, the Brian Eno (and, to a lesser extent) Kate Bush albums are also recent discoveries; the intricate, adventurous worlds they contain ensure hours and hours of detecting all the unforeseen nuances within.

Ivy, Belle and Sebastian and The Avalanches were on the original top ten (and XTC in the top 20); perhaps they remain because I haven’t gotten to know them as well as this one or that one.

As for the Calexico album, I needed a tenth disc and could’ve easily put one by Tori Amos, Stew or Sufjan Stevens in its place. It wins out because of its sonic diversity, its flow, and the fact that it would make an apt soundtrack for a harsh, endless, isolated landscape.

And, if I bent the rules and snuck in five additional greatest hits albums, they would be Pet Shop Boys’ DISCOGRAPHY, The Smiths BEST… I, Kirsty MacColl’s GALORE, ABBA GOLD, and Saint Etienne’s SMASH THE SYSTEM: SINGLES AND MORE. Because what are the chances of being stuck on a desert island, anyway?

YOU'RE A PIECE OF WORK, CHARLIE BRANASKI

Oh my, this is wrong, wrong, wrong, but incredibly funny and dead-on: Charles Schulz's Peanuts, if it were written by Charles Bukowski. As a lifelong fan of the former, I can appreciate a parody as long as it's this sharp.

"TO BE CONTINUED..."

Very little on this green Earth excites me as much as a new Wes Anderson film. It opens the New York Film Festival on September 29 and is scheduled to hit theaters a week later.

Here's the trailer. It looks like textbook Wes Anderson goes to India. Haters won't find anything new to love; I can't wait to see it.

OUT WITH THE OLD...

I've just had way too much caffeine and decided it was time for a name change.

BEATLES SMILE TIME VARIETY HOUR

Check out Nathan Rabin's hilarious essay on SGT. PEPPERS LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND (the 1978 movie, not the 40-year-old album) in The Onion's AV Club blog. This sentence alone is (as they say) worth the price of admission:

The closing number is a maraschino cherry of awfulness atop a ten-scoop Sundae of pure crap.

Although I've made ample time to watch such notorious flops as XANADU and CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, I haven't seen this film and I'm a little afraid to. Even I have a threshold that can't fully support the idea of Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees slaughtering and trivializing Beatles songs with the bloated excesses of an era not immune to laboriously bad taste... I'd probably have to get liquored up first.

And yet, I can watch this over and over again. At least with SGT. PEPPER'S, I have a feeling you could discern what kind of audience it tried to court (no matter how misguidedly), but THE APPLE is just flabbergasting with its futuristic world of "1994", over-the-top musical extravaganzas (including one full of synchronized sex and a Donna Summer sound-a-like) and many, many sequins. It's worse than its two brethren (mentioned above) in the 1980 post-disco, pre-new wave, all-camp terrible trio, but it's fascinatingly bad, and that's the difference.

FOUR RECENT FILMS

Two of these could likely end up on my year-end Top Ten list, and they couldn't be more different from each other.




THE BRAND UPON THE BRAIN!
This initially seems a tad less accessible than Guy Maddin's previous best work, THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD. The story is as deranged as ever, involving a marooned orphanage, a gender-bending teenage detective/harpist, and a sinisterly-derived fountain of youth nectar, among many other quirks. With intertitles and voice-over narration (by the incomparable Isabella Rossellini) in place of any spoken dialogue, it proceeds at a hallucinatory pace: the images often bleed into one another, the intertitles fly by rapidly and occasionally repeat as if we were watching remnants of long-buried film reels (at times resembling a cubist painting come to life), and the lurid action reaches multiple crescendos.

It's no coincidence Maddin recently wrote about underground auteur Kenneth Anger in Film Comment—here he repeatedly injects his own sensibility into Anger's style, but the effect is neither tribute nor copy but its own excitable, idiosyncratic creation. Simultaneously pushing and pleasing his audience, Maddin reaches a great apex here: BRAND is far more involving and relatively easier to follow than his earlier films but thankfully, it doesn't compromise or dilute what made them so delightfully eccentric. (5/5)

BROKEN ENGLISH
Here's a tale we've heard before: Nora (Parker Posey), a woman in her mid-30's, is in pre-midlife crisis mode. Her administrative hotel job neither challenges nor fulfills her and she has yet to truly fall in love. Substitute a few words and you have the plot of a dozen other art-house chick flicks. So, how does BROKEN ENGLISH stand out from them? First, Posey is well-cast and well-tempered, fully expressing Nora's complexities and neuroses without overplaying them. Second, the situations director/writer Zoe R. Cassavetes places her in seem real and relatable without feeling clichéd, from an impulsive, disastrous affair with a narcissistic actor (a perfectly fatuous Justin Theroux) to an impromptu trip to Paris with her best friend (a nicely curt Drea De Matteo). When Nora finally meets a potential romantic partner in Julien (Melvil Poupaud), we watch all the little details accumulate in the subsequent affair and get a vivid sense of character, place, chemistry and conflict. Cassavetes doesn't even come close to attaining the weight and originality of her father John's maverick work, but she doesn't talk down to her audience, either. She's the third Cassavetes sibling to make a film, and by far the most promising one. (4/5)




RATATOUILLE
Brad Bird’s first two animated features (THE IRON GIANT and THE INCREDIBLES) heightened my anticipation for his third, which has an unlikely premise: a rat with an enhanced sense of smell longs to be a great chef in a Parisian restaurant and realizes his goal with the help of a klutzy human friend. Fortunately, RATATOUILLE is a fine, rich dish. The gorgeous, detailed computer animation makes earlier Pixar films seem like embryonic sketches, the cast of voices is pitch perfect without being too celebrity fueled and thus distracting (most recognizable is Peter O’Toole as a deliciously snooty food critic), and a few sequences approach Rube Goldbergian levels of intricacy.

None of that would matter, of course, if it all wasn’t in service of an excellent, unexpectedly affecting narrative. The story not only speaks volumes about how talent and drive go hand in hand to create great art, but also dissects what an audience’s role is in consuming and comprehending it. While entertaining and populist, Bird’s films have always operated at a level of sophistication higher than most of his peers, and this may be his most lithe, ingenuous creation yet: it bursts with creativity and passion and is refreshingly devoid of cloyingness and cynicism. My compliments to the chef. (5/5)

SICKO
To paraphrase an expression one of my colleagues loves to use, I am so over Michael Moore. His earlier movies and TV shows were amusing and unsettling in equal amounts, but he jumped the shark with FAHRENHEIT 911, a film that I liked at the time but now remember as a well-intentioned but clumsy diatribe that's more propaganda than anything resembling artistic merit. Fortunately, SICKO has more of the latter. Pushing for universal health care, Moore makes his most convincing, provocative argument since ROGER AND ME. It helps that he's picked a cause most people can champion and it's to his advantage that he spends less time on camera. Still, I'm having trouble with little things I could overlook before: his condescending voiceovers, his one-sided examples and reasoning, the stunts that don't seem ingenuous as they once did. I appreciate what Moore's trying to do, and the film simmers to a fine boil of outrage and enlightenment; it also hints, more than ever, that the guy is a one-trick pony. He needs to make a different type of film next time out—perhaps one that shows more than it tells. (3/5)

MID-YEAR FILM REPORT

Here's my Top Ten Films of 2007, mid-year:


01. AWAY FROM HER
02. THE HOST
03. DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT
04. PAN'S LABYRINTH
05. MONKEY WARFARE
06. THE LIVES OF OTHERS
07. AUDIENCE OF ONE
08. LINDA LINDA LINDA
09. PAPRIKA
10. CLIMATES

Two of these are festival films still without American distribution, two are from Japan, one is from Korea, one is from Turkey, two have already won Academy Awards. That leaves two other films, both of them directed by women. I'd elaborate further, but I really must go to bed.

PIFF '07

Reviews from this year's Provincetown International Film Festival...

AN AMERICAN CRIME
Tommy O'Haver's film raises a question I rarely ask of cinema (unless I'm screening shorts, of course): "Did this really need to be made?" It's based on a true story: in 1965, single mother Gertrude Baniszewski (Catherine Keener) not only kept a teenage girl, Sylvia Likens (Ellen Page), locked in her Indianapolis basement and tortured her, but also encouraged her own children to do the same. Framed by a recreation of the subsequent trial against the Baniszewskis, the film recounts how Sylvia first came to live with the family, and brutally details how a combination of jealousy, drug abuse, and maybe even some mental illness resulted in a shocking, landmark child abuse case.

Keener gives a magnificent, understated performance that intriguingly teeters on the brink of nearly making Gertrude a sympathetic figure. Page also continues to show she's a young actress to watch. In fact, the entire film is competent and seems artful, but it's also exceptionally difficult to sit through, at times coming this close to being a snuff film. Some will argue that it has worth as a cautionary tale to the horrors of torture and abuse, but I don't completely buy that—what we get out of AN AMERICAN CRIME is a great performance, a haunting story and an exhaustive litany of atrocious behavior that proves…some people are capable of horrendous things? See the film once for Keener, but only true masochists will want to sit through it a second time. (2.5/5)

THE GREAT WORLD OF SOUND
The title is actually the name of a small record label in the film that bills itself as a "talent search company". Salesmen are hired as "record producers" and trained to audition aspiring musicians whom they encourage to sign up, make a CD and become a star. It also sounds too good to be true, especially when the musicians themselves must put up 30% of the production and distribution costs.

We follow two freshly minted producers: Martin (Pat Healy), who's nebbish, agreeable, young and white (sort of resembling a Gen-X Bob Newhart), and Clarence (Kene Holiday), who's black, older, and far more gregarious. The label sends them to second-tier cities like Birmingham, Alabama to audition hopeful amateurs; naturally, they have to do this in their own hotel room and often without any financial support from the label. The film's hook is that the people auditioning are, with at least two exceptions, the genuine articles—they're actual musicians who responded to a facetious ad placed by the filmmakers. It's a novel idea that plays out beautifully: the actors get to flex their very capable improvisational skills, while we get to explore the parallels between the scams perpetrated within the film and those by the filmmakers.

Pairing up Healy and Holiday seems like an obvious ploy for yin-yang interaction, but both actors successfully enliven their characters. Holiday, in particular, evolves from a sitcom-rote figure to a thunderous, near-tragic entity: his climactic speech to Healy is highly affecting, far-reaching and unsentimental in how it pauses to consider the world beyond the film, not to mention the necessity of some scams. The film drags when the focus shifts to Healy's relationship with his artist girlfriend, but THE GREAT WORLD OF SOUND is mostly enjoyable and more than merely clever: an abiding sense of melancholy favored over cynicism gives it its soul. (4/5)

BORN AGAIN
Markie Hancock's middle-class childhood in Altoona, PA was typical in every way except for one: she was raised as a Fundamentalist Christian. Later, as an adult, she came out as a lesbian and renounced her faith. This documentary is an autobiography of sorts and for the first half, it's your standard low-budget, self-indulgent video essay, combining voiceover narration with ancient home movies, diary entries read aloud to the visual accompaniment of stock footage and the like. Hancock's story takes an interesting turn, though, as she begins to incorporate interviews her family. Her older sibling has also renounced his faith, while her parents and her younger sibling are still devout. What emerges is a portrait of a family ideologically divided, yet one that struggles to uphold a semblance of unity despite that rift. Lucky for Hancock, her family is mostly willing to be candid about how they feel. While making this film is clearly therapeutic and validating for her, for us it's nearly as insightful to watch this dynamic play out and feel its repercussions, both positive and negative. (3/5)

FOUR SHEETS TO THE WIND
Sterlin Harjo's first feature arrives nearly a decade after SMOKE SIGNALS promised a wave of Native American cinema that never really amounted to much. It's another coming-of-age, leaving-the-Reservation tale, this time set and filmed in Oklahoma. The main character, Cufe (Cody Lightning) has just buried his father who had committed suicide. After the funeral, Cufe visits Miri (Tamara Podemski), his estranged older sister, who moved away to Tulsa a few years back. Predictably, he discovers a whole new world in the big city, although he also learns more about the difficulty his sister has had distancing herself from her past.

Workshopped at the Sundance labs, this strikes me as a prototypical Sundance film, particularly one from the days before the festival overflowed with big business and hype. It's sweet, earnest, a little dull but honest. Lightning is an adequate if not all too charismatic lead. However, Podemski deservedly won an acting award at Sundance this year and Jeri Arredondo, who plays Cufe and Miri's mother, is just as good. (3/5)

DEATH AT A FUNERAL
This dyspeptic British comedy regarding a family funeral for a deceased patriarch shouldn't work at all. It has too many characters to respectfully consider, an abundance of outlandish plot twists, and a steady current of lowbrow humor. And yet, it averts disaster (and occasionally soars) simply because it's funny, and consistently so at that. Frank Oz can be hit-and-miss as a director (for every gem in his discography like the underrated WHAT ABOUT BOB, there's a STEPFORD WIVES), but here he's completely suited to the zany pace, nimble construction and delightfully dark tone of Dean Craig's screenplay. The large ensemble cast features a bevy of Brits young and old, but the most inspired work comes from American actors Alan Tudyk (FIREFLY) and Peter Dinklage (THE STATION AGENT): to reveal anything more about their characters would spoil the fun. DEATH AT A FUNERAL is certainly a crowd-pleaser, and I could ramble off a long list of smarter and more nuanced comedies I've seen—but I couldn't tell you the last time I've laughed so hard watching one of them. (3.5/5)

DAY NIGHT DAY NIGHT

It's ideal to go into Julia Loktev's remarkable debut feature not knowing anything, but it's also damn near impossible to write about it without disclosing key information. (However, basic knowledge of the plot did not seriously lessen the film's impact for me, so SPOILERS AHEAD).

We follow a 19-year-old girl (Luisa Williams), her character only referred to as "She" in the credits. She seems to be on an important mission, training to do something. We watch her receive instructions to carry out, first via phone, then from mysterious figures whose faces are sheathed in black masks. Dropped off in a hotel, She obsessively bathes every crevice of her body and recites cryptic mantras to herself.

It (very) gradually comes into focus that She is a suicide bomber and her instructions are to self-detonate herself in a random crowd of people in congested Times Square. We never fully learn what organization She's doing this for, or even whether its affiliation is religious, political, or other. She also seems to deliberately be a blank slate, devoid of determinable ethnicity or accent. As She reaches her final destination, the film gains intensity and insight as both She and the audience come to terms with the complexity and consequences of what She has set out to do.

The film's methodical pace, muted expressiveness, abundance of close-ups and concern with one's own fate earn the Dreyer and Bresson comparisons it has received; the influence of Iranian cinema is also felt throughout, especially in the oblique and not entirely conclusive narrative. All of these ambiguities may frustrate many viewers, but Loktev has created an original, assured, involving, uncompromising film. It may have a bare-bones style, but there's so much going on here.

MIX: MYSTERIES

October 2006: CD-R

01. Paul Giovanni, “Lullaby”
02. Belle and Sebastian, “Dress Up In You”
03. The Zombies, “A Rose for Emily”
04. Calexico, “Crumble”
05. Sun Ra, “Space Loneliness”
06. TV On The Radio, “A Method”
07. Luscious Jackson, “Take a Ride”
08. Brian Eno, “The Big Ship”
09. Kings of Convenience, “Summer on the Westhill”
10. Nancy Sinatra, “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”
11. The Velvet Underground, “Jesus”
12. Stereolab, “Metronomic Underground”
13. PJ Harvey, “The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth”
14. Space Needle, “Never Lonely Alone”
15. Laura Nyro, “Billy’s Blues”
16. John and Beverly Martyn, “Auntie Aviator”
17. Animal Collective, “Loch Raven”
18. Beth Gibbons and Rustin’ Man, “Mysteries”
19. CAN, “Spoon”

Some mixes are tossed off in a week or two (or one particularly obsessive evening); others take much longer to finish. I started this one on a Greyhound bus bound for Manhattan in late April of last year and completed it nearly six months later for a friend’s birthday. Since then, I've played it often, mostly on road trips.

I wanted to craft something that would be ideal for listening to after dark, preferably in the wee, deep hours of the night. I thought back to the 11:00 PM to 3:00 AM shift I worked as a residence hall desk receptionist in the summer of ’95; I also remembered when I used to drive all over Milwaukee at night just to listen to music in the car. My working title for this mix was “Subterranean”, which I thought aptly described the groove I was going for: moody, subdued, hypnotic, chill.

“Lullaby” is a suitably mystifying minute-long snippet from THE WICKER MAN soundtrack (the original, not the negligible Neil LaBute remake); here it’s a prelude, an opening theme song. “Dress Up In You” gently fades in from some seemingly secret, special place, and so it goes, its indie pop bleeding into The Zombies' chamber psychedelia, Luscious Jackson’s stretched-out jam barely separate from Brian Eno’s momentous crawl, the quietly dramatic, a capella finale of VU's “Jesus” giving way to Stereolab’s blips and bleeps. While some mixes are aptly just that—a true blend, all over the map—here I aimed for something coherent, a simmering whole with more flow.

I was in no rush to finish it, knowing I had the time. I'm glad I let it gestate; otherwise, I never would've included the title song, which I owned but barely noticed until it appeared, quite strikingly, in the film RUSSIAN DOLLS; nor would I have ever heard the Space Needle song, which popped up at the last minute in an episode of VERONICA MARS. The final track, "Spoon" also re-entered my consciousness via a movie soundtrack. It carries a little jolt that's somewhat out-of-character for the mix, but I get excited every time it comes on—it's a respite, a diversion, a space to suddenly awaken after nearly dozing off.

SIGNS OF LIFE

I began working on a review of AWAY FROM HER last week for this blog, but I'm not sure I'll ever finish it. After many false starts--about why Sarah Polley is such a good actress (turned director), why what she's touched upon in the film is so rare and messy and graceful and significant, stumbling to articulate what makes Julie Christie's performance astonishing--I've put it aside. However, I can say that the final shot of two sets of skis, dutifully sloshing through the snow, followed by k.d. lang's version of the old Neil Young song "Helpless" over the closing credits, moved me more than any ending of a film I've seen in ages.

Until the pen starts flowing again, here are some pix I took on a day trip to Gloucester and Rockport over Memorial Day weekend.