Hillbilly Elegy

Last night I decided to see Hillbilly Elegy on the big screen ahead of its release on Netflix next week.  I have heard many conflicting views on this movie so I was eager to see what all of the fuss is about for myself.  It is based on the memoir of the same name by J.D. Vance, which I have not read, and I gather that the book is much more political than the movie.  The Vances are a multi-generational family from the Appalachian region of Kentucky.  They are caught in an endless cycle of extreme poverty, drug and alcohol use, and physical abuse.  Mamaw (Glenn Close) and Papaw (Bo Hopkins) make it out and hope for a better life in the steel town of Middletown, Ohio but their relationship becomes abusive as the area becomes economically depressed and they end up perpetuating the cycle of violence.  Their daughter Bev (Amy Adams) also hopes for a better life, becoming the salutatorian of her high school class, but she, too, gives up her ambitions when she becomes a single mother to Lindsay (Haley Bennett) and J.D (Gabriel Basso as an adult and Owen Asztalos as a teenager).  She flits from man to man and job to job, abusing drugs to cope with the reality of her life.  Young J.D. starts hanging out with the wrong crowd and getting into mischief but Mamaw, hoping to break the cycle, takes him in and uses tough love to get him on the right path.  Through hard work and determination he makes it to Yale Law School but, as he is interviewing for a prestigious summer internship, he is called home to deal with his mother's latest heroin overdose.  Will he put his family or his future first?  The narrative is sometimes very haphazard, jumping multiple times between 1997 and 2011 (there are flashbacks within flashbacks without much thematic cohesion), and is quite superficial.  It masquerades as social commentary without delving into the underlying causes of generational poverty or engaging in any meaningful discussion of what it takes to overcome it.  The characters, while they give Adams and Close a chance to give very showy transformative performances that are already garnering a lot of Oscar buzz, are strangely one-dimensional and never really rise above stereotypes.  Honestly, I sometimes found this movie really boring because the characters don't do much more than scream each other after they make the same mistakes over and over again.  Ron Howard gives us the requisite feel-good ending but it seems very abrupt and, therefore, not earned.  I had so many questions about how Bev is suddenly able to rise above the circumstances that have plagued her for decades.  I didn't especially like this movie and I would definitely recommend waiting for it to stream on Netflix if you want to see it for yourself.

Murder on the Orient Express at HCT

I am a huge fan of Agatha Christie (I made a goal to read all of her books when I was a teenager) and one of my favorites is Murder on the Orient Express. I've seen several screen adaptations but never the stage play so I was really excited about HCT's production! I was able to see it last night (closing night) and I thoroughly enjoyed it!  After finishing a case in Syria, the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot (Mark Knowles) is called back to London on urgent business. Despite the fact that it is fully booked, a compartment is found on the Orient Express for Poirot by Monsieur Bouc (Benjamin "BJ" Whimpey), the director of the railway. Poirot is immediately approached by Samuel Ratchett (Kelton Davis), an odious American businessman on board, who asks him to investigate some threatening letters he has been receiving but Poirot declines. The train becomes snowbound on the first night of the journey and in the morning Ratchett is discovered dead, having been stabbed multiple times, in his locked compartment. Knowing that the murderer must still be on board the train, Monsieur Bouc asks Poirot to investigate. There are numerous clues which Poirot finds puzzling but, as he interviews his fellow passengers including a Hungarian Countess (Natalie Peterson), an aging Russian Princess (Heidi Scott), her Swedish companion (Wendy Oltmanns), Ratchett's secretary (Zachariah Combs), a Minnesota housewife (Tamari Dunbar), a Scottish colonel (Kelton Davis), an English governess (Lisa Zimmerman), and a French conductor (James Bounous), he discovers that they all have an alibi for the time of the murder and that they all have a connection to the infamous kidnapping and murder of Daisy Armstrong by Bruno Cassetti (who is believed to be Ratchett). Poirot eventually discovers evidence of a mysterious second conductor with a grudge against Ratchett but is he the real murderer? The big plot twist is a lot of fun and the resolution is a thought-provoking examination of retribution vs. revenge. The ensemble cast does a really great job, especially Whimpey, but the stand-out in this production is the rotating set featuring both the interior and exterior of a full-size railway car. The interior space includes an opulent club car and several first-class compartments which rotate to give periodic glimpses of action taking place in a narrow corridor between the two areas. The attention to detail is absolutely amazing, with Art Deco light sconces, peacock blue velvet upholstery on the chairs and sofas, cut glass lamps, mahogany paneling, and, my personal favorite, giant murals featuring dancing swans. The turntable allows for very quick transitions and seeing characters move from the club car to their compartments is a brilliant bit of staging. The sound design also creates the illusion of a real train and the costumes do much to add to the characterization (I loved Mrs. Hubbard's fox stole). This was such a nice evening out but, unfortunately, the run for this show is now over and many of the upcoming shows are sold out because of stricter Covid-19 guidelines.

Suk's Serenade for Strings

Last night I had the opportunity to attend an incredibly interesting and innovative concert with the Utah Symphony!  What set this concert apart from the others I've attended is that there was not a conductor.  Rather, Concertmaster Madeline Adkins led the strings through two pieces during the first half.  I absolutely love the fact that the concertmaster is a woman!  I've actually met Adkins very briefly at a Utah Symphony after-party (yes, I sometimes attend Utah Symphony after-parties) and she is so cool!  It was really fun to see how she kept the musicians together with very subtle gestures.  A small chamber group began the evening with Battalia by Henrich von Biber.  I really enjoyed this piece because it mimics the sound of muskets and cannons firing during a battle without the use of percussion.  The musicians stomped their feet several times and the basses plucked their strings very dramatically among other unorthodox techniques.  Then the entire string section performed Serenade for Strings by Josef Suk.  I loved this piece because, while it is very beautiful and lighthearted, I think there is a tinge of melancholy in it, especially in the third movement.  The second half of the concert (after the stage was completely reconfigured in a matter of minutes) featured different groups within the orchestra.  A quartet of percussionists, including Keith Carrick, Eric Hopkins (sigh), Michael Pape, and Gavin Ryan, performed Ku-Ka-Ilimoku by Christopher Rouse which features more than fifty different percussion instruments (some of which are quite unusual).  Ku is the god of war in Hawaiian mythology and this piece brings to mind a savage war dance and it is extremely exhilarating.  I loved it and it was definitely my favorite of the evening.  The concert continued with the final movement of Masque: Incidental II by Toru Takemitsu which features a duet of flutes.  This performance was very dramatic with two musicians, Mercedes Smith and Caitlyn Valovick-Moore, slowly walking onto the darkened stage from either side and circling each other as they played.  I found it to be very mysterious.  The final piece of the evening was Serenade No. 12 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart featuring an octet of two clarinets, two oboes, two horns, and two bassoons.  This piece is both somber and tempestuous which is why I love Mozart so much!  Other than Mozart, I was totally unfamiliar with the composers featured on the program but I enjoyed this introduction to their work.  I really appreciate this opportunity to hear some lesser-known selections from the classical repertoire during these re-imagined concerts!  This program will be performed again Friday and Saturday (go here for tickets) and I highly recommend it.

Another Tree!

I have really enjoyed having my Christmas tree in the living room the past few days.  At first I felt weird about putting it up so early but I think we can use all of the Christmas cheer we can get this year!  I always turn on the lights whenever I am watching TV (I have recently discovered Britbox and I am currently obsessed with British crime shows) and it makes me so happy.  However, I realized that I actually spend more of my time reading upstairs in the loft than I do watching TV and that it might be nice to have a Christmas tree up there, too.  I immediately dismissed the idea as ridiculous but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do it!  I bought a little tree and put it up last night!  I love it!

I am looking forward to spending lots of time reading up here with my cute little Christmas tree!

Note:  How do you feel about Christmas decorations before Thanksgiving?  Do or don't?  Apparently people have very strong opinions about this!

Let Him Go

I have been looking forward to Let Him Go since I saw the trailer several weeks ago (I've not read the book by Larry Watson upon which it is based).  I had the chance to see it Saturday night and it was even better than I was expecting.  George Blackledge (Kevin Costner), a Montana rancher and retired lawman, lives with his wife Margaret (Diane Lane), his son James (Ryan Bruce), his daughter-in-law Lorna (Kayli Carter), and his grandson Jimmy (Bram and Otto Hornung).  The relationship between Margaret and Lorna is tense and it becomes more so when James dies in a horse riding accident.  It is implied that Lorna gets remarried to Donnie Weboy (Will Brittain), in part, as a means to escape Margaret's constant criticism of her as a mother.  When Margaret witnesses Donnie physically abusing Lorna and Jimmy on the street, he suddenly takes them to live with his family in North Dakota and she convinces a reluctant George to go after them to rescue their grandson.  In their search, George and Margaret encounter a young Native American loner named Peter Dragswood (Booboo Stewart) who eventually leads them to Bill Weboy (Jeffrey Donovan) and his sister Blanche (Lesley Manville).  Blanche has no intention of letting her son Donnie and his family leave the Weboy compound ever again but Margaret is just as determined to take Jimmy back to Montana.  I was expecting a Western action thriller but, while there is the requisite shoot-out at the end, it is a powerful character study of two people consumed by grief and regret.  Their characters are developed slowly and deliberately with quiet moments and subtle gestures rather than obvious dialogue.  George buys a bottle of whiskey as Margaret looks on with disapproval to establish that he drinks to mask his sorrow.  Margaret silently packs up the car for the trip to North Dakota without George's knowledge to show that she will stop at nothing once she makes up her mind.  Costner and Lane have great chemistry together and give strong performances but Manville is completely over-the-top and steals every scene she is in.  The interactions between Blanche and Margaret are a lot of fun to watch, even when they become menacing and then violent.  Stewart also gives a powerful performance as a young man traumatized by his experiences at an Indian Residential School and as the personification of Margaret's fears for Jimmy.  I loved the cinematography featuring wide shots of the vast landscape to emphasize the isolation, especially in the scene where Bill drives the Blackledges to the Weboy compound.  This is an old-fashioned Western that is painstakingly crafted, gorgeously shot, and well acted.  I highly recommend it!