Summer Reading: The Broken Girls

The next selection on my summer reading list was The Broken Girls by Simone St. James and, like the previous books on this list, I couldn't put it down! Journalist Fiona Sheridan's entire life has been overshadowed by the murder of her older sister twenty years ago. The murderer was caught and is serving a life sentence but she has always felt that there was something wrong with his conviction. She compulsively visits Idlewild Hall, the old abandoned boarding school where her sister's body was found, over and over again. When she discovers that the school is going to be restored, she thinks it would make a good article for the magazine she writes for and arranges a tour with the new owners. When the body of a former student is discovered during the excavation, Fiona is drawn into the history of the school. In the 1950s, four young girls were abandoned and forgotten by their families at Idlewild for one reason or another. They are united against the repressive atmosphere of the school and they bond over the ghost they believe haunts the grounds wearing a black dress and veil. After one of the girls goes missing, everyone assumes that she ran away but the other girls believe something far more sinister happened. Solving the mystery of the past might give Fiona the answers she seeks about her sister's murder. The narrative alternates between the events of the past and Fiona's investigation in the present and I found both timelines to be extremely compelling. I was impressed by the way in which St. James was able to weave the two seemingly disparate stories together in such a cohesive manner using the theme of injustice against powerless women. The characters are very well-developed and, because I wanted to discover all of their secrets, I kept reading well into the night. The school is as haunting and atmospheric as any of the settings in my favorite Gothic novels by the Bronte sisters and the supernatural aspect of the story is extremely well done. In fact, there were a few scenes that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end! The mystery kept me guessing until the last chapter and the resolution is quite satisfying. I highly recommend this suspenseful thriller!

Note:  Have you read The Broken Girls?  What did you think?

The Dead Don't Die

When I first saw the trailer for The Dead Don't Die I couldn't wait to see it because a movie featuring Adam Driver chasing zombies sounded completely awesome (I find Adam Driver to be strangely appealing).  I finally had the chance to see it yesterday.  It is pretty out there but (and I don't know what this says about me) I kind of dug it!  The Earth has been knocked off its axis because of polar fracking and, while representatives of the polar fracking industry are heard repeatedly on the radio and TV asserting that it is not harmful to the environment, things are definitely amiss in the sleepy town of Centerville.  Daylight lasts longer than normal, cell phone reception is lost, animals hide, and corpses reanimate and gravitate to the things they did while alive.  These zombies begin to kill the weirdly idiosyncratic citizens leaving Police Chief Cliff Robertson (Bill Murray), Officer Ronnie Peterson (Driver), and Officer Minerva "Mindy" Morrison (Chloe Sevigny) to protect the town with a little help from Zelda Winston (Tilda Swinton), a Scottish undertaker with the skills of a ninja.  As Ronnie repeatedly warns us, this is not going to end well!  The cast is worthy of any Wes Anderson movie and includes Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Carol Kane, and Danny Fassenden as townspeople;  Iggy Pop and Sara Driver as zombies;  Selena Gomez, Austin Butler, and Luka Sabbat as the hipsters from Cleveland;  and Tom Waits as a hermit watching and providing commentary from the edge of the woods.  The humor is incredibly dry and subtle but the message that we are all zombies heading towards our own destruction is anything but.  I laughed out loud many, many times (I have a strange sense of humor) but I did feel that the ending was a bit heavy handed.  I loved the chemistry between Murray and Driver and the movie is at its best when the two of them are bantering back and forth with the deadpan delivery that is a hallmark of a Jim Jarmusch movie.  Murray can deliver any line and make me laugh and Driver is fully committed to the absurdity.  I also loved the meta awareness where the characters periodically act as if they know they are in a movie.  A joke involving the theme song by Sturgill Simpson is particularly amusing and the Star Wars reference just about killed me!  This is definitely not going to appeal to everyone but, if you are a fan of Jarmusch's other movies (I love Broken Flowers), you might enjoy it as much as I did.

Freaky Friday at HCT

Last night I had the chance to see the new Disney musical Freaky Friday at Hale Centre Theatre and I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would. I'm not a big fan of turning a popular movie into a stage musical but this production has a lot going for it. Those who have seen the 1976 movie with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris or the 2003 version with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis know the basic story about a mother and daughter who don't understand each other and accidentally switch bodies for a day. In this iteration Katherine Blake (Korianne Orton Johnson) is a single mother who owns her own catering business. She is incredibly stressed out because she is catering her own wedding to Mike (Neal C. Johnson), which she hopes will be featured in a popular bridal magazine, and she wants everything to be perfect. Her moody and argumentative daughter Ellie (Bailee Johnson) doesn't want her to marry Mike and definitely doesn't want to attend the rehearsal dinner. She would rather participate in the school scavenger hunt organized by her crush, Adam (Zack Elzey). Both Katherine and Ellie wish that the other could see the situation from her perspective and this wish (and a magic hourglass) causes them to switch bodies. Chaos ensues as Katherine tries to navigate high school while Ellie deals with wedding preparations and a photo shoot. They must learn to appreciate each other before things can return to normal. As with many musical adaptations from movies, I found most of the songs to be contrived and largely forgettable (with the exception of "Just One Day," "Somebody Has To Take The Blame," and "I'm Not Myself Today"). However, what elevated this show for me was the talented cast, the choreography, and the set design.  Korianne Orton Johnson and Bailee Johnson have wonderful voices and great comedic timing, especially when imitating each other. They both give very heartfelt performances. I also really enjoyed the ensemble because they bring a lot of energy to the big song and dance numbers. I absolutely loved Cory Stephens' fun and innovative choreography, especially in "Watch Your Back" which involves a high school gym class (the climbing rope sequence is amazing) and "Oh, Biology" which features moving lab tables. The fabulous set by Jean Stapely Taylor consists of bright and colorful multi-level towers which are easily transformed into various settings, from kitchen appliances to high school lockers. This show is definitely a lot of fun and teens are sure to enjoy it (the girls sitting behind me loved it).  It runs on the Jewel Box Stage in the Mountain America Performing Arts Center until Aug. 24 (go here for tickets).

Note:  Some of the wigs worn by supporting characters look really fake. It is a petty criticism but I kept noticing it and it distracted me from the action.

Late Night

The movie Late Night was a big hit at Sundance this year but, by the time it was on my radar, I couldn't get a ticket.  Luckily it is now out in wide release and I had a chance to see it last night.  It is fabulous!  Katherine Newbury (Emma Thompson) has been the host of a late night talk show for the past thirty years.  She has dozens of Emmy awards and she has a high standard of excellence which she refuses to compromise for the sake of social relevance.  However, her ratings have been going down and the new head of the network (Amy Ryan) wants to replace her with a crass comedian (Ike Barinholtz) to shake things up.  Refusing to go without a fight, Katherine insists that her producer (Denis O'Hare) hire a woman comedy writer.  Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling), a woman of color who has absolutely no experience in television, just happens to be interviewing with him when he gets this directive and is hired.  The all-male all-white writing team thinks of Molly as a "diversity hire" and look down on her until some of her ideas actually improve the ratings.  This movie is incredibly funny with very witty dialogue but it also addresses some important issues such as racism, sexism, ageism, and an interesting take on the #metoo movement.  Thompson is absolutely brilliant in the role of a diva forced to acknowledge her fallibility and I especially loved the scene where Katherine realizes how much her show means to her in a mea culpa monologue after a scandal breaks.  Kaling is very hit or miss with me (I sometimes find her to be annoying) but she is endearing as an outsider who speaks her mind because she doesn't know any better.  Because Kaling wrote the script based on her own experiences as a comedy writer on The Office, it feels very authentic and I enjoyed the behind the scenes look at what makes a joke funny.  While Molly does have a romance with one of the other comedy writers, I really appreciated the fact the focus was more on her relationship with Katherine and how they both cope with being women in a man's world.  I love comedies with biting social commentary so I can't recommend this movie enough!

Field of Dreams

I was able to see Field of Dreams on the big screen last fall but it was so much fun to see it again as part of the TCM Big Screen Classic series yesterday.  Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner) is a struggling Iowa farmer who hears a voice telling him to build a baseball diamond in the middle of his corn field.  At first his wife Annie (Amy Madigan) is skeptical but gives her consent when she sees how passionate he is about doing something spontaneous.  When building it causes financial hardship, Ray wonders why the voice asked him to do it.  At first he thinks it is so "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (Ray Liotta) and the other Chicago White Sox players who were banned from baseball for intentionally losing the 1919 World Series can play again.  Then he thinks it could be so Archibald "Moonlight" Graham (Burt Lancaster) can have the chance at bat that he missed out on during his one and only game in the Major League.  Then he sees that this experience has given a reclusive writer named Terrence Mann (James Earl Jones), who was once popular in the 1960s but has now become disillusioned, something to believe in again.  But eventually he realizes that baseball is a way for him to make peace with his father (Dwier Brown) who loved the game.  To be sure this feel-good movie is a nostalgic ode to baseball but it is ultimately about the power of a dream, the importance of family, and the need for redemption and reconciliation with baseball as the unifying theme.  As evidenced by the troubled relationship between the radical Ray and his conservative father, there are so many things that can divide people but there are also many things, like baseball, that can unite us and that is a great message for the world today.  This movie is so charming because Costner is incredibly endearing as Ray, the cinematography is stunning, and the score by James Horner is beautifully atmospheric.  I highly recommend it!  You have one more chance to see it on the big screen on Wednesday (go here for tickets and information).

Note:  I think this move resonates so deeply with me because my Dad and I have very different world views but the thing that unites us in an unbreakable bond is our love for a game!  In our case the game is hockey, not baseball (we're Canadian), but the sentiment is exactly the same.