With such a great cast, I had high hopes for Vantage Point. Forest Whitaker and Sigourney Weaver are each worth the price of admission.
Vantage Point tells the story of an extremely complicated plot to kidnap the President of the United States. Dennis Quaid is a veteran member of the President’s Secret Service security detail, recently returned to active duty after taking a bullet for the President a year ago.
The most interesting aspect of this movie is the action is shown, over and over, from different angles and perspectives. As the movie develops the action, we see the details of the conspiracy.
Forest Whitaker is an American tourist with a video camera. The contents of his camera help sort out the story. Sigourney Waver role is quite small, but she is effective.
Vantage Point has lots of action, lots of stars, but it was not really as thrilling as it should have been-even with a good car chase.
Vantage Point
This was another Saturday afternoon live opera broadcast from The Metropolitan Opera. As anyone with any knowledge of opera can tell you, Tristan and Isolde is long, and quintessentially Wagnerian. It is, of course, a story of tragic love. And I don’t need to actually review Tristan und Isolde, since many consider it the greatest opera ever written.
This production was presented very differently from Macbeth. The director of the broadcast was interviewed during one of the intermissions. She felt that since the opera was static, in terms of action, that she would give the viewers a choice of focus, much as you would have in a live performance. The device she used was boxes. On the large screen, there might be two, three, or four boxes. For instance, one would show the overall action, and two would have close-ups on the singers. I often found this distracting and disappointing. One of the reasons for watching something in a movie theater is the large screen, and this detracts from that.
I do have to say that, of course, the production itself was well done. The singers were outstanding, and James Levine and the orchestra superb. I do applaud the Met for this series of live HD broadcasts, and I hope it continues to be successful.
Wagner - Tristan und Isolde
In this powerful novel Katharine Weber brings history and fiction together to give us a glimpse of one of the most stunning workplace disasters in U.S. history. In 1911, near the end of a workday, a fire started at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in Manhattan. While the initial cause of the fire remains unknown, the flammable cotton of which the shirtwaists were made caused the fire to spread quickly. Crowded conditions, locked exit doors, a faulty fire escape, and insufficient fire-fighting equipment led to the deaths of over 140 workers, most of them young immigrant women.
Weber uses the recollections of the last survivor of the fire, Esther Gottesfeld, as the basis for the novel. The story goes back and forth between present day events and characters, and Esther’s numerous retelling of events on the day of the fire. Characters include Esther’s granddaughter, Rebecca, a geneticist; Rebecca’s boyfriend George, a successful composer; and a feminist historian with her own agenda.
Weber successfully interweaves music, genetics, history, and the immigrant experience in America to create a fascinating and moving story.
In USA:
Published in hardcover-Farrar, Straus and Giroux-2006
Softcover edition-Picador-2006
Triangle: A Novel
The big question I have about this book concerns the cover (which apparently will be the same when the paperback in issued in a few months). I get the landscape; although it doesn’t look like an Alaskan landscape I get the idea. But why the still life?
I suppose that if I’m so distracted by the cover art, I’m not really into the book, right? Well, I did read it all in one day, but that’s because I borrowed it and I want to return it ASAP.
Amy Bloom is a popular writer and well-regarded, but I haven’t read anything of hers before. Away is not my favorite book. The descriptions of the places, clothing, and culture of the time (mid-1920’s) are well done. The characters are unbelievable.
After a pogrom in her native Russia destroys her family and her town, the protagonist, Lillian, emigrates to America and winds up on the lower East Side of New York City. After hearing from a newly-arrived cousin that her young daughter is still alive, Lillian treks across the continental United States and through Alaska towards Siberia. The trip is difficult and dangerous; the fact that she even survives is miraculous.
The premise is quite interesting, but the book does not follow through. Most of the characters are shallowly drawn, more like caricatures. They need to be more interesting to make this book work
In USA:
Published in hard cover-Random House-2007
Softcover edition-Random House-2008
Away: A Novel
Attention foodies: This is the book for you!
Some of us like to think that the American obsession with fine is recent-and that we are pioneers. Not so. In the 1920’s James Beard was eating his way through Parisian bistros. In 1931, Irma Rombauer first published Joy of Cooking. In 1939, Henri Soule came to the United States to run the restaurant at the French Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair. This spawned the great French restaurant Le Pavillon. In 1951, Julia Child received her Cordon Bleu diploma in Paris. And on and on.
These original foodies were the ones who taught America that there is more to food than convenience; and that perhaps anyone can learn to cook, to eat, to discern good food from great food.
David Kamp had written numerous articles for Vanity Fair and GQ. If you enjoy the writing style of those magazines, you’ll probably enjoy the detailed-filled, but slightly breezy style of this book. But don’t blame me if you, after reading it, you blow your next paycheck at Williams-Sonoma (by the way-Chuck Williams opened his first store in 1956!)
In the USA:
Published in hardcover- Broadway Books-2006
Softcover edition-Broadway Books-2007
The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution
The author of this memoir, Carl Bernstein, is best known as the Washington Post reporter and partner of Bob Woodward in detailing the Watergate scandal in that newspaper and, later, in All the President’s Men. This book, however, is very different.
Bernstein’s parents, Sylvia and Alfred Bernstein, were the subjects of a decades long investigation by the FBI into their supposed “subversive” activities. Neither of them was ever charged of a crime. These activities consisted mainly of active involvement in labor unions during a time of deep suspicion in the United States. The American government was particularly on guard against Communist infiltration in labor unions and other organizations that advocated civil rights and workers’ rights. The FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover, was aided in their endeavors by the enactment during the administration of President Harry S. Truman Executive Order 9835:
“Prescribing Procedures for the Administration of an Employees Loyalty Program in the Executive Branch of the Government”.
This Executive Order enabled the era of Joseph McCarthy, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and witch hunts for supposed Communists in many industries.
Although a young child, Bernstein was greatly affected by the suspicion under which his family lived. FBI informers spied on Bernstein and his family. The FBI even noted the license plate numbers of the people attending Bernstein’s Bar Mitzvah. His family was taunted and ostracized by some neighbors. His father, a Columbia University trained attorney was forced to open a laundry to support the family. Sylvia Bernstein was called to testify before the HUAC in 1954.
Given Bernstein’s experience as a reporter, it is no surprise that Loyalties is thoroughly researched and well-written. It tells of a sad chapter in American history. When the story becomes more personal, it becomes even more affecting. And it’s very scary to think what our government is truly capable of!
In USA:
Published in hardcover-Simon and Schuster-1989
Softcover edition-Touchstone Books-1990
Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir
