pining for pine

How handsome is Chris Pine?

I loved his blue tux at the Met Gala.

But he usually looks hot casual or not.

costume drama 2010

Not as fun as last year. But here are my favorites from the 2010 MET Costume Institute Gala. Thoughts?

Thandie Newton, in Vivienne Westwood. Gorgeous!

Mila Kunis, in Vera Wang

Chanel Iman, in Michael Kors

Zoe Kravitz, in Alexander Wang for Gap

Gwen Stefani, in L.A.M.B.

Elisa Sednaoui, in Chanel Haute Couture

Viola Davis, in Vera Wang

Nicole Richie, in Marc Jacobs

Carey Mulligan, in Miu Miu

Jennifer Lopez, in Zuhair Murad

Kristen Stewart, in Chanel Haute Couture

Rachel Zoe, in stunning yellow Marc Jacobs

michelle & prabal

Michelle in Prabal Gurung. Heavenly match: love her and him!

colordry

Happy first of May everyone. Here is a lovely, untitled poem from Jerome Murphy.



You dilute as a dropped dye unfolds its tree,
Imbue, in fading reach, this environment

Of fibers outrunning each other for you,
Too colordry to wonder what white meant.

You offer now the same to me.
I take the surest hue I see.


-Jerome Murphy


above painting: Pearl by Kanishka Raja.

three poems by dan rosenberg

So happy to have these poems from Dan Rosenberg.



The Golem


has come to your
neighborhood.
The golem
scratches the letters
on his head. He has
the fist of nails.
He scrapes
accidental trenches
in himself.
His gloves
have blood
of their own.
His foot
snaps your azaleas;
a freezing sound.
Pie smells
turn to burnt
smells. There is
trembling.
The golem
will not kill anyone
for you, will not
tie a rope
between man
and child’s body.
Where are your dead?
Where did you get
these bodies?
The golem
will let them rot.
His head tilts back.
There is no
Adam’s apple,
his face does not
crack in the sun.
You want to give
him a book. You
want to touch
his cheek. Don’t.
The golem is
clay baked
and coughed into.


--



Eat the Bones of the World


Eat the bones of the world
like an unnatural mouth
in the tricky posture of opening.

The air stains your breathing
with cow manure smell
on a western wind. So stop.

Be no cattle nor cattle hand.
So eat the radiant bones,
the girding of the world.

In the growth of tailored pines.
In the corner cemetery. The road
cut into the bones of the world

so low you drive level
with the dead. You live
downhill from the dead

but they don’t sing to you.
You live downhill from someone
else’s dead and you must

eat the bones of the world
with your last tooth some day.
Some day with both fists

in a pantomime of giddy fire.
Some day you’ll wake up
in the revenant springtime

and eat the unforgiving bones,
morning to marrow, a dog
who licks the whipping hand.

--

First Date as Foucault


The pendulum puddles under
her earlobe, the violent swing
saying something. No, it’s
saying no in horizontal thrust,
but the pendulum shaves light
off its curves like a stream of flint.
I can’t look away. As a child
bowling I’d stare at the sheen
on the lanes, the reason for gliding,
halogen light peeled into strips.
And my friends, half-choked
on French fries, slicking finger-
grease into the balls’ three holes,
hurling them for the bang
and bruise, battered wood, the pin
explosion. I understand reaction
now, but still I am still. Afraid
this date will not end well.

-Dan Rosenberg

another dysfunctional family

Jonathan Demme is still primarily known for his harrowing The Silence of the Lambs. An unlikely but deserving winner of five Academy Awards, the film remains one of our best and unique thrillers. Demme's direction often studies behavior. He came into his own two years ago with the poignant and ambiguous character study of Rachel Getting Married. It was critically praised but the Dogme 95 style and tragic story (its original advertisements and title seem to promise a romantic comedy) left audiences chilled. The film is one of Demme's best in a rich career of many different flavors and risks including documentaries, the offbeat Something Wild, the breakthrough mainstream AIDS drama Philadelphia, and the adaptation of Toni Morrison's Beloved.

Demme returns to much of the same material of Rachel Getting Married with his new off Broadway production of Beth Henley's (Crimes of the Heart) Family Week. The story centers on a suicidal woman Claire (Rosemarie DeWitt, also of Rachel in which she played the title character so brilliantly) who after the death of her son, admits herself to a recovery center in the desert. The title refers to the visiting of her kin, her mother (Kathleen Chalfant), her young daughter (Sami Gayle) and sister Rickey (Quincy Tyler Bernstine). Through the tumultuous therapeutic sessions, some of which seem bogus, others which seem to have some validity, the clan reveal many painful secrets to one another.

I wonder if Henley's writing, at times acidic and funny, despite the tragedy in the material, often gives too much away. Even though they are in different mediums, I can't help but compare Rachel Getting Married to Family Week and their similar pilings on of domestic traumas. The experience of Rachel Getting Married and its unraveling of family drama worked so well in the cinematic format: the closeups, the claustrophobic and dizzying feel of a busy house in preparations. On a sprawling stage, with some interludes of song (mostly appropriately dusty western tunes from the likes of Emmylou Harris) under moody lighting and complete with a vivid desert background, Family Week sometimes feels a bit repetitious. It was particularly difficult to connect with Claire's character, perhaps because she was so forgone (she holds a teddy throughout most of the production). Because of this, the play lacks a center to hold on to. In Rachel, damaged Kym (Anne Hathaway) bitterly drew us into her world. Whereas the family in Rachel (and too in Ordinary People, another extraordinary portrait of a family coping with tragedy) have been dealing with their wounds for a long time, the tragedy in Family Week is very fresh. Because of this the play works best when in its quirks: we learn that Claire eerily sent Rickey flowers from her dead son; in a closing monologue, Claire stunningly opens up in an odd and brilliant meditation of the body.

Even though the material is sometimes difficult to connect with, it's definitely not the fault of the four actors. The best, and most refreshing of all is Quincy Tyler Bernstine, who injects most of the play's humor and pathos. Her Rickey is very real, spontaneous, and layered (a child prodigy grown up and now broke). One hopes to see more roles for such a talented actress, her speaking voice is just incredible. I felt sympathy for DeWitt who is saddled with many heavy and emotional monologues. She carries it all so deftly without going overboard. Her tearful glares are unforgettable. Her daughter (Sami Gayle) is appropriately whiny, insecure, and precocious. And her WASPish mother is well played by Chalfant who is desperate for "hydrating soap" throughout the play, as if wanting to wash away the past.

Ticket information for Family Week.

nathan

So happy Aaron shared this poem with me. I love it.


Nathan


Sixteen and you
meant bad, cousin. Took me
with you, part of a summer

watching you filch tokens
from the till at the arcade,
skinny bottles of Mad Dog

in the pockets of all your friends,
that black Camaro,
the nights still and warm.

I didn't understand
why we had to slip
through the narrow window

in whispers and dew
to rage against the empty streets,
ghost-drag through town

with heads full of metal, smoke
in our eyes. Clatter of milk
crates behind the Safeway

where you hollered sweet
nothings at the sodium light.

-Aaron Jorgensen Briggs