The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers

This is a darling picture book by Oliver Jeffers. 

It's the story of some forest animals who gradually notice that some of their tree limbs are missing.

And then, later, one whole tree.

The forest animals are pretty upset. They're definitely in the "What is Happening!!?" mode.

They accuse each other.

But everyone has a watertight alibi.

One day, one of them sees a bear shooting paper airplanes. He tells the others. They all go down to the phone booth to phone the police.

The bear is arrested. When he testifies from the stand, he breaks down and confesses that he did it, and all because he comes from a long line of paper airplane champions and another big competition was coming up, he wasn't doing well in his preparation, and he'd run out of paper.

He promised he'd plant new trees to make up for what he'd done, and he did. The other animals helped him.

Perhaps the tragedy of losing a big paper airplane competition is not immediately apparent, but what makes it is the illustrations. They're amusing, whimsical and complicated. 

 My favorite illustration is of the face-down plant the owl makes when he comes in for a landing and "Oops!" his branch isn't there.

I can imagine children wanting to discuss and ask questions about the illustrations, especially the illustration of everyone's "airtight" alibi (they're all alone: one is sleeping, one is watching TV, one is doing the laundry).

 

Geek out: Maigret and Montalbano

 

Starting in the 1930s, Georges Simenon wrote 75 novels and 28 short stories about the fictional French detective Jules Maigret. Simenon may not be so well known in America today, but in his lifetime he sold about 550 million books worldwide.

Simenon was himself an interesting character. He wrote more than 400 novels, usually in 8 to 10 days. He claimed to have slept with 10,000 women, including the famous dancer Josephine Baker. 

Early in his life, he enjoyed spending time with bargemen and other working class and even criminal types. I think this is what makes his stories so colorful. These mysteries are less about whodunnit, or even why, but about revealing these colorful characters and their hidden world.

Simenon’s Maigret books have often been adapted for films and TV. In the early 1990s, Francophone TV got together to produce a series of shows starring Bruno Cremer as the famous detective. Bruno Cremer played Maigret as a very low-key, patient, and slow to come to conclusions detective. When the famous Maigret is asked about his method, he says, “I like to listen.” Maigret observes the scene with a twinkle in his eye; a furtive smile often dances around the corners of his lips. One fan commented that this detective was never vulgar, despite the fact that the stories are pretty lurid. 

When Andrea Camilleri, a retired director and filmmaker, began writing his Inspector Montalbano novels in 1994, the Maigret novels were his model. Camilleri’s Montalbano novels were also adapted for television. 

Alberto Sironi, director of the Montalbano TV shows, said, “What’s different (from other cop shows) is the ability Camilleri has to tell a story, to present Sicily, a marvel that I myself saw when I was 20. This Sicily is in my memory, a little like the memory of Camilleri in his youth. ...These two things are the most important. First, the idea of story, where the plot’s not so important, but the atmosphere is. . and characters, especially the minor characters.”

Sironi pointed out that Camilleri, who had himself directed a TV series based on the Simenon novels, was deeply influenced by Simenon. Like Simenon, Camilleri’s Montalbano novels feature many colorful Sicilian characters; director Sironi spent months visiting Sicilian theatres, scouting for Sicilian actors to portray these roles. One of my favorite examples of these “real Sicilians,” is the mistrustful housekeeperMontalbano is trying to interview. She mentions that she is a monarchist, and has never supported any of the republican governments. Montalbano slaps his chest. “You’re a monarchist! I’m one, too!” 

The Montalbano stories, although set in northwestern Sicily, came to be filmed in southwestern Sicily. The fictional Vigata, where Camilleri’s stories are set, was based on Camilleri’s memories of his hometown, Porto Empedocle. Porto Empedocle has changed so much over the last few decades that it wasn’t suitable for filming these stories set in the world of Camilleri’s memory. The production needed a beach with sand, rare in Sicily, and a Baroque plaza. 

Luciano Ricceri, the Montalbano production designer, found these things in the Ragusa -Scicli-Modica area. 

This area boasts a fantastic collection of Baroque architecture, through a series of accidents. In 1693, a massive earthquake destroyed many buildings and monuments which were then rebuilt in the Baroque style. In the nineteenth century, various social factors contributed to poverty and unrest in Sicily, which had once been the breadbasket of Europe. Ongoing economic depression preserved the architecture and environment of southwest Sicily. 

The TV shows take full advantage of Sicily’s white sunlight, and its striking shadows; the cinematography has a ghostly, painterly quality of a Sicily unchanged by time. 

The Montalbano TV show became a huge hit in Italy, and its architecture and spectacular scenery sparked a tourist boom. Over the years, I’ve talked to people working in economic development, and the fact that the Inspector Montalbano TV show sparked a 40% rise in tourism in the southwest of Sicily, is an incredible achievement, even if entirely unintended. 

It’s the “atmosphere,” the entree to a mysterious unknown world, that attracts me to both TV shows.

A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman

I love this film, but I didn't realize that I loved it until I'd watched it for the fourth time. 

I just read a review (by Katie Erbland) which complained that (Kate) Winslet and (Matthias) Schoenaerts didn't have persuasive chemistry together, while the scenes between Winslet and Rickman "crackled". I hadn't noticed the lack of chemistry between the leads. I can't help thinking it's easier to play with people you've played with before, and Rickman and Winslet both appeared in "Sense and Sensibility." Erbland also believes the plot's got a little too much furniture in it and is quite crowded. It might be a little crowded. 

The UK miniseries Versailles explained the complicated private lives of the folks here; it may not have been necessary for the Princess Palatine to make that speech about her marriage. I think I like concrete backstories and having everything make sense. The emphasis on the class difference between Winslet's character and everybody else is one of those obstacles it's pleasant to surmount in a romance (but unnecessary). Love stories have to have obstacles of some kind because without them there's no dramatic tension. The things Erbland objected to were to me necessary to create a movie plot, which has its own rules and is as artificial as any opera. Otherwise it's just good music, beautiful costumes, beautiful sets, and beautiful photography (which this film has in abundance and is definitely part of its appeal to me). 

Really, as classic are obstacles in love stories ..faithfully reiterating the formula is not pleasing in itself.

What strongly appealed to me was the slight emphasis on aesthetics. French Baroque garden design was austere and certainly grand. Le Notre, played by Matthias Schoenaerts, was a historical character and Madame La Barra, played by Winslet, was not. But the idea of a playful hidden garden ballroom, in the midst of severely elegant garden design is quite appealing. That is the meaning of the title, "A Little Chaos." 

Helen McCrory also appears as Le Notre's wife. She was wonderful and I love watching McCrory's face. Jennifer Ehle's cameo is at least as artificial as any other part of the film, but it's lovely and perfect. Phyllida Law also appears in a tiny part in a fascinating scene when Madame La Barra meets the ladies of the court in a private meeting behind closed doors with no men present. It's almost like a seraglio. 

Fran Lebowitz has a new series on Netflix, "Pretend it's a City," which I enjoyed very much. She and Toni Morrison were friends, and I found a video on YouTube of the two of them talking at an event. Fran said that today's reader really wants reading to "speak to them," and to offer some reflection of their own lives. I think until I ran across this I did not realize that that explained my fondness for certain books and films. I think it's at the heart of my fondness for Normal People, and it's at the heart of my fondness for A Little Chaos. I'm not a landscape architect, but I was forced to write a paper on Pope's Windsor Forest, and later, I had to read Kevin Lynch, and yes, as a result I have an ongoing interest in landscape architecture. So while A Little Chaos may be quite flawed, or whether liking it is a question of experience and taste, I do like it.

 .

 

The 5 Ingredient College Cookbook by Pamela Ellgen

Recommended to me by a friend, this is not a only cookbook that offers recipes with a limited number of ingredients, but  offers recipes suitable for both weekday dinners and informal entertaining. I think it would be useful for a new cook.

There are recipes for some of my favorites: Pasta Puttanesca, Shrimp Scampi, and Gazpacho. I'm delighted to see that there are recipes for the superfoods avocado and sweet patato; Sweet Potato Fries with Chipotle Mayo and Creamy Avocado Toast. And there's lots of recipes I think I'd like to try: Southwestern Skillet, Watermelon, Feta and Tomato Salad, Ramen Noodle Soup (with chicken or vegetable stock, soy sauce and green onions), Tortilla Soup, Pizza Margherita, Lemon Chicken, Shredded Chicken Street Tacos, Italian Sausage and Pepper Skillet, Steak Fajitas and Creamy Cheese Casserole, lots of vegetable recipes, recipes for black and red chili, and a recipe for ratatouille with chicken.

There are dessert recipes too, including a recipe for chocolate cake and another for blueberry crumble.

What's helpful and interesting is that this shortish book (221 pages) offers advice throughout: information on the tools and pans you ought to have, staples you ought to have in your cabinet, how to make eggs (as well as wonderfully simple directions for making an omelette), recipes for salsa, hummus, trail mix, caesar salad dressing and other popular dressings made frequently.

There's a helpful glossary that defines braise, blanch, poach, saute and sear. , 

The small dimensions of the book, and the brief and breezy nature of the information it provides, suggests to me that this will be welcoming and accessible book for someone just starting to cook.

I

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Christmas in Connecticut, directed by Peter Godfrey (starring Barbara Stanwyck)

In Christmas in Connecticut, Stanwyck isn't a show girl on the run or a con artist, she's a writer. She's the Martha Stewart of the newspaper for which she works, headed by Sydney Greenstreet. Only .. it's all a fantasy: she can't cook, she doesn't have a farm in Connecticut, and for sure she doesn't have a baby - she's not even married!

This is a well-made film: entertaining, polished, and well-paced. Interestingly to me, the movie opens with the bombing of a Navy ship and two sailors attempting to survive in a life raft. There are two narrative threads that don't unite until the middle of the film: Stanwyck's scrappy reporter and the sailor who survived the torpedoing of his ship and spent his time in a lifeboat dreaming of good food. Dennis Morgan is the sailor.

I truly enjoyed this film but it's not a patch on Lady Eve or Great Ball of Fire.

Twentieth Century, directed by Howard Hawks

There's a lot to say about this film: Carole Lombard is wonderful, and in more muted performance than in My Man Godfrey or Mr. and Mrs. Smith. 

The plot is a cliche: the troubled Broadway play in rehearsal is hampered by an inexperienced actress. The eccentric director/producer manipulates her in a number of ways (ahem!) to coax a fine performance from her and they become an item. It's a classic Svengali story: a star is born!

He controls her, she resents his control and egotism, and they split up.

Three years later, the director is on the skids and finds himself on the very same train as his former protegee. She's become a big star in Hollywood and has a new romantic interest. He is determined to sign her to a new contract, and his efforts create a great deal of slapstick on the lurching train.

Here, in essence, Barrymore has the Lombard part: emotional, even hysterical, loud and frantic.

In a way, it's so timely. Both Barrymore and Lombard are brilliant; the end of the film seems to drag but when the director is down and out and decides to hitch his falling wagon to the fortunes of two Jewish Oberammergau actors I suffered whiplash. 

 An essay I found described this as the first screwball comedy (https://www.loc.gov/static/programs/national-film-preservation-board/documents/20th_century.pdf).

Mr. and Mrs. Smith, directed by Alfred Hitchcock

I was so surprised to discover that this screwball comedy starring Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery, with a script by Norman Krasna (he wrote The Devil and Miss Jones), had been directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Carole Lombard and Robert Montgomery are a bickering couple - in the extreme. When they argue, they have a rule that neither one of them can leave the bedroom until they've made up. As the film opens, they are resolving their latest blow-up: this one lasted three days. (The gossip about this in the kitchen is priceless.)

An official from a faraway town arrives at Montgomery's office to inform him that due to a boundary dispute, his marriage to Lombard three years earlier is not legal or binding. Of course, it seems like a minor matter: easy enough to just get married again.

The official then drops by the couple's apartment, where Lombard is being visited by her mother, just to visit. It comes out that the reason that he's in town is to inform the couple that their marriage was not legal and is not binding.

Lombard's mother is upset and tells Lombard that this is going to be a big problem. Lombard's unconcerned and tells her mother that her husband will tell her what happened and propose to her before the evening's out. In fact, when Montgomery invites her to go for dinner that evening, Lombard is convinced that he's arranged for them to get married that very evening.

When that doesn't happen, there are some very hurt feelings -- Lombard throws Montgomery out -- and hijinks ensue. Lombard is wonderful here, but the pace of film drags after a little while. To me, the back and forth between the battling spouses goes on just a little too long, and after its escalating intensity, the resolution seems abrupt and insufficiently motivated. It suprised me a little bit, because this screenplay is by Norman Krasna, who also wrote the screenplay for the Devil and Miss Jones, a screenplay that seemed perfectly paced.

The Devil and Miss Jones, directed by Sam Wood

I really enjoyed this film; having watched a handful of classic films it seems to me one of the best. It stars Jean Arthur, who is new to me but was obviously a wonderful actress. She's so charming in this film.

It's not quite a "Depression Era" film, having been made in 1941, but its concerns seem to be those of the Depression.

Charles Coburn plays a domineering businessman who is determined to foil an attempt by retail clerks at one of his stores to unionize. Dissatisfied with the private detectives who have been tasked with infiltrating and destroying the nascent union, he declares he'll do this job himself.

Hired as a shoe department salesman, he's quite lousy at it and he's quite uncomfortable. Edmund Gwenn, utterly unrecognizable as Santa from Miracle on 34th Street, plays his supercilious and unforgiving boss, Mr. Hooper. This is part of what's so wonderful about this film: great acting and lots of charm. 

Coburn's stony path is eased by the compassion of two female clerks in his department, Jean Arthur and Spring Byington. Unfortunately, Jean Arthur is also in love with the union's organizer.

Jean Arthur and Spring Byington soften the hard-heartedness of Coburn, and by the time he gets his hands on the list of employees willing to join the union, he's ready to negotiate to improve conditions at the store. The movie ends with Coburn's marriage and Byington and a celebratory cruise to Hawaii for the staff of the entire store. Just thinking about it makes me laugh.

Unfaithfully Yours by Preston Sturges

I've just been watching the Criterion Collection edition of Unfaithfully Yours and it's all just so delightful. I watched the introduction with Terry Jones, and am so glad I did. I think it helped me to enjoy the film. And, the fact that Jones' cat walks in front of him just as he is finishing up the interview, as if to say, "I want my part of this conversation!" sets just the right tone. Jones enthusiastically points out that there's lot of language, beautifully delivered, and that in general, the pace is snappy. There's also an interview with Sturges' widow, Sandy Sturges, who has lots to say about the story of how the picture got made and the inspiration for the screenplay. It's all very lovely.

 As Jones points out, some of the two slapstick sequences in the film don't necessarily fully work. I hardly noticed the first one; I had a "respectful" attitude about the second. In Jones' comments, he mentions that "slapstick" was not a speciality of Harrison's; when I watched it the second time, I found myself admiring because now I saw it as something hard. 

What makes this film engrossing is the idea: a jealous man who cannot accept that his beautiful wife loves him faithfully, and all the complications that come with it - and incongruities. The tailor he meets who's a bit of a philosopher; the private detective he meets who essentially says, "I am your biggest fan" and means it; the broken English and brilliant metaphor of Lionel Stander's character, who I think refers to the members of the orchestra as "meatheads." I loved Rex Harrison in Major Barbara and I love him here. There's something masterful in the way that he delivers dialogue; something wicked in that glint in his eye. 

About the orchestra: I read that Sturges was not a fan of classical music. This surprised me a little bit because I so loved the way he filmed the orchestra. I don't quite know how to express it. I guess I'd say he makes the orchestra seem like a football team or an assembly line. They're stripped of their glamour, wearing street dress, but their synchronization seems very impressive, their intensity workmanlike rather than exalted. Of course, it reminded me of Peter Schikele's Beethoven's Fifth (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzXoVo16pTg). There's a little bit of comic business about the cymbals that I love: it's simple, it's modest but it seems to work.

I knew nothing about Linda Darnell before seeing this film and still know very little but here she was wonderful, really inspired.

 

 

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Alfonso Gomez-Rejon

I thought it would be fun to see this movie, based on the novel of the same name, because I really loved the novel. It was fun. I really loved this movie. It was very faithful to the novel (the screenplay was written by the novel's author, Jesse Andrews). Not perfectly faithful .. but details don't matter. But it was different, and for me, richer, to see the story with someone else's images. 

One of the things I loved about the movie was that it captured the humor of the book.  The film parodies that Greg makes with his friend Earl are just hilarious. I laughed out loud several times .. and that's unusual. 

One of the things that I loved about the book was that it was anti-dramatic. There's another, better word for what I mean but I can't think of it now. Greg does not fall in love with Rachel, who has leukemia. Greg does not want to be Rachel's friend, and certainly not just because she has a life-threatening illness. Greg flat-out refuses to befriend Rachel until he is coerced by his mother. (Greg's personal approach to surviving high school is just not getting involved with it, or its cliques, or its individuals.) At one point, Greg lashes out at Rachel in blind fury, completely reactive and completely insensitive to Rachel's pain. In other words, it's so much more like real life than books like these often are. And Greg doesn't have a brilliant career as a filmmaker, either.

 

 

New TBR

Sort of a very tentative TBR list 

(have long meant to read)

 

A fine Brush on Ivory by Richard Jenkyns

A Gentleman of Moscow

(YA)

 

The Hate U Give

To All the Boys

 

All That I Can Fix

Simon vs. The Homosapiens Agenda

 

If I Stay

 

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

 

One of Us is Lying

 

Dear Life, You Suck

 

Walkable City Jeff Speck

 

Right of Way Angie Schmitt

 

Belinda - Maria Edgeworth

 

 

Columbus by Kogonada

I loved this film. It has all the things I love: libraries, architecture, the Midwest. It captures the wonderful incongruity of modernist architecture set in a small Indiana town with its weed trees,  chain link fences and abandoned farmers' stalls. I loved it. The plot was minimal, but life affirming. The amount of silence in this film was daring. 

The film is set in Columbus, Indiana, a city of 40,000 people that is a living museum of modernist architecture.

https://columbus.in.us/columbus-the-movie/

 

Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

I had never heard of this book, or the film it was made into ("Love, Simon"). I asked a bookstore clerk for some recommendations and this was one of them. The blurb on the front that read, "The love child of John Green and Rainbow Rowell" sold me. In many ways, I think that's pretty accurate description. This book is a fast, easy read and quite suspenseful as the plot develops.

Simon's a teen in an Atlanta suburb. He's a junior, and he's funny, and talented at entertaining his family with his sense of humor. He's gay, and no one knows he's gay.

And he's having an email correspondence/flirtation with one of his classmates. They're feeling each other out and getting to know each other. Neither of them knows who the other one is: they only know that they both attend the same high school as they met on a high school chatboard.  

Early in the story, a guy named Martin sidles up to Simon and lets him know that he'd left his email open in the library, and now Martin knows that Simon is gay and is having some kind of online relationship with another gay teen whose name is "Blue." And it's not just that Martin knows; Martin knows that Simon is not out and he wants to control Simon and force Simon to include Martin in his social circle, so that Martin can get close to Abby, one of Simon's friends.

Simon's shocked, disgusted and terrified. He's not ready to come out, and he's not ready to betray his friend Blue. He knows Blue's not ready to come out and disclosure could be really devastating for him.

Meanwhile, there's lots of stuff going on around him: his older sister has gone away to college and now she seems to have a secret boyfriend; his younger sister, always quite but always a comforting presence, seems to be gone all the time now. His two oldest friends, Nick and Leah, are his safe haven. He knows that whenever he spends time with them, he can just be. But something has changed: Leah has a major crush on Nick that is not requited; Nick is interested in Abby. Leah is often just .. miserable.

Then rehearsals for the winter musical, Oliver!, begin and everyone's thrown together is awkward ways. Simon thinks he's falling in love with Blue, but he has no idea who Blue is.

This book got so much love from so many places. It got a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, which also named it a "Best Book." Jennifer Niven, whose All the Bright Places I loved, gave it a blurb. Amazon named it the YA Book of the Year. And it was on the longlist for a bunch of prizes: the National Book Award, YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) Best Book for Teens Award, and the UK Literary Association Book Award.