Throwback Thursday: Yellowstone with Sean and Tashena

Over Labor Day weekend in 2010, my family went on a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park.  It is one of my very favorite trips because I got to spend so much time with Sean and Tashena.  Marilyn and I stayed at a cabin at the KOA near the park while Kristine, Trent, and the kids had their camper at a site near us.  The kids spent a lot of time hanging out at the cabin with us and we loved it!

The weather was perfect and it was so much fun seeing all of the different geysers and pools.  We would get up really early to be out and about when the animals were most active.  Here are some of the pictures from around the park.

To Kill a Mockingbird at HCT

Last night I spent a lovely evening watching one of my all-time favorite novels, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, come to life on the Hale Centre Theatre stage. Jem (Matthew Rees) and Scout (Alyssa Buckner) learn that their father Atticus (Mitch Hall) is a hero when he defends an innocent black man named Tom Robinson (Alec Powell) against a charge of rape, even though he knows he will lose, simply because it is the right thing to do. They also learn not to judge people until they have seen things from their perspective through their interactions with Boo Radley (Justin Bruse) and Mrs. Dubose (Gayle Hayes). These themes have always had a powerful impact on me and they impacted me again as I watched this marvelous production. In fact, I left the theatre in tears. I was so impressed with the young actors in the cast, the aforementioned Rees and Buckner as well as Cooper Johnson as Dill, because they brought such innocence to their roles which was very refreshing to see. Powell just about broke my heart in his portrayal of Tom Robinson (every time I read the novel, I always hope that the verdict will be different) while Josh Richardson made my skin crawl as Bob Ewell. But it was Hall who really anchored this production with a quiet dignity as the iconic Atticus Finch. I was holding my breath during his summation speech during the trial and at the end of it the audience broke out into spontaneous applause because it was absolutely brilliant! As usual the set design is amazing. The juxtaposition of the flower-laden porches with the stark courthouse and jail does much to convey the racism just under the surface in the small town of Maycomb, Alabama. This adaptation, by Christopher Sergel, is quite faithful to the novel and I particularly liked having Miss Maudie (Betsy West) as the narrator. This story is not just a classic to be read in high school. It has a message that is timeless and this production is not to be missed! To Kill a Mockingbird runs at HCT until May 20 (go here for tickets and more information) but act quickly because most shows are sold out (with good reason).

Colossal

When Colossal was screened at the Sundance Film Festival this year I honestly didn't have any desire to see it.  A couple of things changed my mind.  First, I saw a preview last week which was very intriguing and, then, a few friends who saw at Sundance raved about it in advance of its wide release so I decided to take in a matinee yesterday.  Gloria (Anne Hathaway) is a young woman living in New York and, frankly, she is a complete mess.  She has been unemployed for over a year and, after staggering home from a night of drinking, her boyfriend (Dan Stevens) kicks her out of their apartment.  She is forced to move back into her childhood home, where she literally sleeps on an air mattress on the floor, and she reconnects with Oscar (Jason Sudeikis), a childhood friend.  She continues her destructive behavior by drinking every night with Oscar and his friends.  Clearly, she has a few inner demons but her demons manifest themselves as a giant lizard-like monster who terrorizes the people of Seoul, South Korea.  She is horrified when she realizes that she is responsible for the death of many innocent people and tries to discover a way to stop the monster.  As the story continues, Oscar's demons, which manifest themselves as a giant robot, are revealed and the two of them must resolve a conflict from childhood in an epic showdown.  I found this story to be highly original and entertaining, if a bit strange, and the ending was incredibly satisfying.  I usually like Anne Hathaway and I found her portrayal of Gloria to be sympathetic.  Conversely, I found Jason Sudeikis' Oscar to be quite disturbing; in fact, there were moments when I truly despised him.  Amid the bad behavior and the B-movie monsters, there is a really powerful message about bullying and I'm glad that I decided to see it.

Frantz

Last night I saw the absolutely beautiful film Frantz at the Broadway.  It is one of the best films about the aftermath of war that I've ever seen.  After World War I, a young German woman named Anna (Paula Beer) is mourning the loss of her fiancee Frantz (played by Anton Von Lucke in flashbacks).  She frequently visits his grave and one day she notices that flowers have been left by a stranger who turns out to be Adrien (Pierre Niney), a Frenchman who claims to have known Frantz before the war.  He and Anna form a close bond as he tells her about their friendship and, while his presence is initially met with resistance by Frantz's family, he eventually brings them comfort.  When Adrien leaves Germany, after a startling revelation, Anna cannot get him out of her mind and travels to France in the hopes of reestablishing their connection (where she faces the same hostility that Adrien experienced in Germany).  After another revelation, Anna must learn to let go of the past and live a different life from the one she had imagined.  Based on the 1932 Ernst Lubitsch film Broken Lullaby, it explores the lingering pain and loss after a war, the antagonism remaining in peacetime between two countries who were once enemies, and the need for forgiveness for deeds committed in wartime.  It is quite atmospheric and very moving.  Most of the film is in black and white, with brief interludes of color during scenes before the war and during moments of happiness, which is highly effective in conveying a mood, and both Beer and Niney give absolutely haunting performances.  I loved this film and I highly recommend it.

Note:  Frantz was the second independent foreign film with subtitles that I saw this week (third if you count this film because I saw again with English subtitles, which I much preferred to the dubbed version).  I am nothing if not pretentious!

Land of Mine

Last night I went to see the film Land of Mine at the Broadway, my favorite art house theater.  Doesn't everyone spend their Friday nights watching independent foreign films with subtitles?  In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Sergeant Carl Leopold Rasmussen (Roland Moller) is given command of a group of German POWs who are tasked with removing hundreds of thousands of land mines on the western coast of Denmark.  We are not given Rasmussen's backstory but he has clearly been shattered by the events of the war and torments the POWs, most of whom are young boys conscripted at the end of the war, as a way of exacting revenge against Germany.  Their living conditions are deplorable and their job of locating and then defusing the bombs is dangerous, to say the least.  As we get to know and care about these boys, we are never allowed to forget the ever-present possibility that they could be killed by an explosion at any moment.  As a result, many of the scenes of them on the beach are fraught with tension, and occasionally horror.  At the crux of the story is Rasmussen's journey from hatred to compassion as he gets to know them as individuals rather than as the enemy and this is incredibly powerful.  There is a touching scene where one of the boys clears a path to rescue a Danish girl who has wandered on to the beach and I also loved the scene where Rasmussen plays soccer with the boys on part of the beach that has been cleared.  The cinematography is exceptional with widescreen shots of the endless beach which serve to show how daunting the task of removing all of the mines truly is.  I found this film to be both beautiful and terrible (the explosions are unbelievably difficult to watch) and I thought it was an interesting deviation from the standard war movie where heroes and villains are clearly defined.  I highly recommend it.

Note:  After watching this film, I spontaneously decided to see Personal Shopper again.  I simply cannot stop thinking about it.

Tashena Likes to Throw Things

I finally got to go to one of my niece's track meets yesterday!  I think watching Tashena throwing (and occasionally jumping) is a much better way to spend an afternoon than grading papers!  Wouldn't you agree?  However, I didn't actually get to see her do any throwing or jumping because she competed in all of her events (discus, shot put, javelin, and long jump) before the meet started because it was held at Bountiful (her home school) and she had to help run the discus.  Hey, at least I had an excuse to leave school at a decent hour!  Her best throw in discus was 115' for first place, her best throw in shot put was 31'6" for second place, her best throw in javelin was 89'2" for first place, and her best distance in long jump was 15'1" for first place.  That's not too shabby!  She told me that this meet didn't matter because it wasn't a qualifying meet and told me to come to the meet next week!  I'll be there!

Beauty and the Beast Sing-Along

Since we had so much fun at the Moana Sing-Along, Marilyn and I decided to take our Mom to see the Beauty and the Beast version (because she loves this movie so much).  While Moana definitely had better songs (Lin-Manuel Miranda!), this was just as much fun.  In fact, I think I liked the movie even more!  I definitely liked the new songs a lot more than I did the first time around.  The sing-along version is the original full-length feature but the lyrics of the songs appear at the bottom of the screen with a bouncing icon to tell you when to sing each word.  I loved that each song had a different icon.  "Gaston" featured a beer stein, "Beauty and the Beast" had a rose, and "Kill the Beast" had a flame to name just a few.  It was a lot of fun!   I really enjoyed singing along with "Belle," "Gaston," and "Be Our Guest" because those were the songs I knew the best.  My Mom was belting out the words to every single song and she even included dramatic gestures in "Evermore."  It was worth the price of admission just to see my Mom's reaction to every scene!  She giggled out loud every time LeFou was on the screen and she sighed when Belle was revealed in her yellow dress (she has seen it three times and she is still so enchanted).  As we walked out of the theater she wished that she could see it every day.  I'm so glad that I was able to see this with her and my sister.  I moved closer to my family to be able to participate in spontaneous activities with them but lately I have been so busy at school.  No more!  Last night was just too much fun!  This movie is not without flaws but I recommend it for its sheer entertainment value, especially the sing-along version which can be found in select theaters.

Your Name

I know next to nothing about Japanese anime so I didn't really know what to expect when I went to see Your Name yesterday.  What happened is that I absolutely loved it!  In fact, it is one of the best films I have ever seen!  Mitsuha is a young girl living in a rural and traditional village in the mountains.  She is very dissatisfied with her life and longs for the day when she can graduate and move to the big city.  One day she wakes up in the body of Taki, a high school boy in Tokyo and he wakes up in her body (it is very amusing for them to discover that they are a different sex).  This keeps happening intermittently and it takes them a while to assimilate into each other's world.  When they both realize what is happening they begin leaving each other notes for when they return to their own bodies.  They also begin affecting each other's lives in positive ways, especially when Mitsuha makes a date for Taki with the girl he likes.  Eventually, they stop switching with each other and Taki starts to miss Mitsuha.  He tries to contact her and when that fails he decides to look for her.  Then there is an incredible twist to the story which I didn't expect but found to be very emotionally satisfying.  I cared about these characters so much and it is such a beautiful story about fate and the connections we have with people including people that we haven't even met yet.  I laughed out loud many times and I cried during several scenes.  The animation is beautiful, especially scenes that take place during the golden hour.  It is a lovely film and I can't say enough about it.  I definitely recommend it, particularly to people who have never seen an anime film before.

Note:  I saw this film dubbed in English but I already have plans to see it in Japanese with English subtitles.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Last night's Utah Symphony concert featured one of my very favorite pieces, Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky.  It seems like the Utah Symphony programmed the 2016-2017 season with me in mind as they have featured so many of my favorites (Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, Mozart's Requiem, and now Pictures at an Exhibition).  The concert began with Military March No. 1 from Pomp and Circumstance by Edward Elgar which is instantly familiar to anyone who has ever been through a commencement ceremony.  I enjoyed hearing it and I am looking forward to hearing it again in seven weeks (but who's counting?) when my seniors are unleashed on the world!  The concert continued with Elgar's Violin Concerto with soloist Fumiaki Miura.  I loved this piece so much, especially the second movement which is almost unbearably beautiful and incredibly emotional.  Miura played brilliantly and received a rousing standing ovation!  After the intermission, the orchestra played Mussorgsky's masterpiece which, as the name implies, was written to commemorate the exhibition of ten paintings by Victor Hartmann after his death.  There are ten pieces which correspond to each of the paintings and these are connected by a Promenade (in several iterations played by different sections of the orchestra) which represents walking through the gallery from picture to picture.  I had goosebumps when I heard the opening fanfare in the first Promenade played by the brass!  It is amazing to me how you can almost visualize each painting as the orchestra plays.  I love each piece but I think my favorite is for the painting Byldo which experts believe is a group of oxen pulling a cart (many of Hartmann's paintings haven't survived).  I loved the theme played by the tenor tuba and the timpani because it is so atmospheric.  I always try to hear this piece whenever it is performed and I certainly enjoyed it last night.  You can hear it when this program is performed again tonight (go here for tickets) and I definitely recommend that you do so!

Personal Shopper

I really enjoyed The Clouds of Sils Maria so I have been looking forward to Personal Shopper, the latest collaboration between Olivier Assayas and Kristen Stewart.  I saw it last night and my mind was blown.  Maureen (Stewart) has moved to Paris to visit the house where her twin brother died of the same congenital heart condition that she has.  The two of them made a vow that whoever died first would return to give the other a sign that there is an afterlife.  As she waits for this sign, she works as a personal shopper for a celebrity, borrowing couture clothing and designer jewelry for her client to be photographed in.  Maureen is haunted by a spirit in her brother's house (in some of the scariest scenes I've ever seen) and is harassed by an unknown stalker who sends her menacing texts.  The film begins as a typical ghost story, then becomes a murder mystery, and ends as a psychological study of a young woman in an existential crisis.  It is a brilliant juxtaposition of the spiritual and the material.  It is incredibly suspenseful and part of that is due to the fact that I never knew what would happen from one moment to the next.  The atmospheric score only added to my unease.  Stewart gives the best performance of her career, in my opinion, and she is simply riveting.  It is definitely the best performance I've seen this year.  The scenes on the Eurostar where she receives a string of texts are intense, to say the least, and the final scene raised the hairs on the back of my neck.  I know that this film won't appeal to many moviegoers, especially those who don't like ambiguous endings, but I found it to be fascinating and I'm sure that I will be thinking about for many days to come.

T2 Trainspotting

Twenty years ago, in the cult classic movie Trainspotting (which I absolutely loved), Mark Renton (Ewan McGregor) betrayed his three best friends and took the £16,000 that the four of them had stolen all for himself to start a new life.  In the voice-over he told the audience that he was a bad person but that was going to change.  Have you ever wondered if things really did change for him?  I liked Mark Renton as a character but I hoped, rather than believed, that he would overcome his heroin addiction and make something of himself.  I felt the same way when I went to see the sequel, T2 Trainspotting, last night.  I hoped, rather than believed, that it would be a good movie.  Although Renton is going through a divorce and the company he works for is downsizing, he has been clean for the past twenty years so he is doing much better than I expected.  He returns to Edinburgh after the death of his mother and is reunited with Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller), who is now running his aunt's pub while engaging in a blackmail scheme with his Bulgarian girlfriend (Anjela Nedyalkova), Spud (Ewen Bremner), who is still addicted to heroin and estranged from Gail (Shirley Henderson) and his son Fergus, and Begbie (Robert Carlyle), who has recently escaped from prison.  The three of them are still bitter about Renton's betrayal and their interactions are highly amusing.  Like the first movie, there is an opportunity and a betrayal but there is also a twist so the story feels fresh but there are many nostalgic nods to the original for hard-core fans, including a new "Choose Life" speech, this time railing against social media rather than consumerism, a scene with a toilet (thankfully not as gross as the first movie), and a cameo by Kelly Macdonald, Renton's underage girlfriend who is now a lawyer.  The first movie explored the existential angst of young men who didn't see a future for themselves while this one centers on the cynicism of middle-aged men who now long for the past.  Once again Danny Boyle employs fast cuts, freeze frames, text on the screen, and pulse pounding music underneath the action and, while this seemed groundbreaking and mind-blowing in the first film, it seems a little tired in this one.  However, this movie, much like the fate of Renton, is a lot better than I expected!