This 3-DVD set is probably best for those who think they aren’t fans of classical art and haven’t spent much time in the art museums. Presented by art historial Simon Schama, the series contains episodes for Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko. …
Elegy (2008) might be considered a disturbing view of men, written from a woman’s perspective. If so, it is a fairly kind, if frank, perspective. The movie has a remarkably un-judgmental stance. This movie made me look up and reserve other films by director Isabel Coixet. Unfortunately they are few in number. …
It’s a mistake to say that Bobby (2006 and 111 mins) is a movie about the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Obviously it includes that, but it is really about America in the 1960’s. It’s about race and Vietnam and violence and drugs, but it also is about people trying to get along in life in ways that have nothing to do with any decade. It features a surprisingly effective blending of archival news footage and switching back and forth–as in Forest Gump only better done. …
If I could, I would slide out of bed and into the pool. Every morning at six. Then the laps. Thirty six to the mile, half an hour in the cooling flow of water, counting down the distance.
My left hand is getting better all the time. It used to start the pull too soon. The timing now is smooth and the stoke constant. It has taken years of daily swimming to accomplish this. …
I learn about life from naked men in the swimming pool locker room in the morning before work. One pool I go to has a lot of older guys, mostly retired. They talk about things the doctor told them, reasons their children are getting divorced, what their wives want them to do when they get home, or what somebody ought to do about the country. I was half listening as one guy told about taking the family to a restaurant for dinner. Until he quoted what the little girl said out loud at the table: …