Sunday, December 31, 2017

at the end of the storm there's a golden sky

Life is fragile, life is brief, our stay is unpredictable....
 
You see, I met Jerry nineteen years ago tonight... New Year's Eve 1998.  Little did I know then that he would become my life partner, that we would have 18 beautiful years together, or that one day -- 9/9/17, to be precise – I would be holding his hands as his sweet, loving heart would beat for the final time.
 
Until that last day of 1998, I had always found New Year's Eve to be a sad holiday, not a reason to celebrate.  It was like, here we go, another year shot to hell.  But after that it became an anniversary – the beginning of our life together – and something worth celebrating.
 
Now here I am at New Year's Eve 2017 and feel some awkward relief that this dreadful year of 2017, a year of illness and death and heartbreak, will be nevermore.  The saga of the year 2018 isn't written yet, but I feel compelled to have hope in my heart that not all future years will be as dark, for me at least, as this one has been.
 
Life is fragile, life is brief, our stay is unpredictable.... As the New Year begins, hug everyone you love.  Hug everyone you even like.  None of this is forever, but pieces of the temporary can be so beautiful.
 
Happy New Year.
 
*****
On a lighter note:  One of my old blog posts, remembering what happened on the first "anniversary" that Jerry and I had, 12/31/99, Y2K Eve -- a story that only could have happened to Jerry --
 
 
and a follow-up --
 
 
And a postscript:  Several years later, Jerry and I flew to Cologne, Germany for Jana's wedding, where we were known to the other guests as "the note in the bottle guys".  These wonderful folks will be friends forever.  Life sometimes redeems itself unexpectedly.  Watch for it.

 

Friday, February 24, 2017

Howard ranks the Oscar nominees


Here it is, Oscar season, and the program airs this Sunday night.  It may be all kind of silly and pointless, but when did that ever stop me from giving my opinion?   Every year, I always make it a point to see all nine Best Picture Oscar nominees and then rank them according to how I liked them.  Meanwhile, you may be saying, “I haven’t been in a movie theater in years”, but you might want to know what to see when it comes out on DVD or Netflix, right?  I should lecture you on getting out of the house once in a while, pay the ten bucks, and see a movie while it is still a thing

… but of course I won’t do that.

I may be dumb as a post when it comes to filmmaking, but I know what I like:  an interesting story, told imaginatively.

Overall, I didn’t think most of these nominees were much above ordinary, except for one of them

and that is my #1.

Here we go, from my “most deserving of an Oscar” to the “less deserving of an Oscar” to “Huh??..”:

1)       La La Land.  It’s exceptional, a creative, colorful sometimes-musical.  Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone totally nail their roles.  I went back and saw it a second time and liked it even more.

2)      Manchester by the Sea.  A beautiful heartbreaker.  Casey Affleck is perfect.  Michelle Williams is memorable in one scene in particular.  This movie feels like real life.

3)      Hidden Figures.  Three of the nominated films are based on true events.  This one, about three African-American women crucial to the space program of the early ‘60s, might surprise some of you not alive during that era.  This movie is entertaining and feels good.

4)      Moonlight.  Excellent acting, especially Naomie Harris as the crackhead mom.  Intense and challenging, I just wasn’t sure what I was supposed to feel when it was all said and done.

5)      Lion.  Another tear-jerker, this little-boy-lost-in-Calcutta story.  The little kid is great, as is Dev Patel as the grown-up version of him.  It drags a little during the sitting-at-the-computer scenes, but overall it is a winner.

6)      Fences.  Fences is probably August Wilson’s best play and I like it, but this film adaptation always feels like a filmed stage play.  Denzel Washington is amazing, though, as is Viola Davis.

7)      Hell or High Water.  I had really low expectations for this one, and I ended up sort of liking it.  There were times when I would have appreciated subtitles for some of the conversations, mumbled in West Texas-accents by the two brothers, the main characters.  Jeff Bridges (a/k/a “The Dude”) is fun as the sheriff.

8)      Hacksaw Ridge.  Agreed, this is quite the story.  But the battle scenes, with heads being blown up and such, just went on and on, as if the filmmakers were enjoying the blood and gore way too much.  It doesn’t help my opinion that this film was directed by notorious bigot Mel Gibson.

9)      Arrival.  How can a story about aliens from outer space be so mind-numbingly dull?  Amy Adams is cool, though.

My choices for the other major categories:

Best Actor:  Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea.  Denzel might beat him out, though.

Best Actress:   There is a good chance that Isabelle Huppert might win this Oscar for the French movie, Elle, but I didn’t see that, so I gotta go with Emma Stone for La La Land, and who doesn’t love Emma Stone?  Meryl Streep has very little chance of winning for Florence Foster Jenkins, but it would be fun to watch her, in her speech, verbally shred our over-rated so-called President again.

Best Supporting Actor:  I’m not sure why Dev Patel is in this category instead of Best Actor, but I’ll go with him for Lion.

Best Supporting Actress:   Same with Viola Davis – why not on the Best Actress list instead?  She certainly deserves an Oscar for Fences.

Best Director:   Damien Chazelle for La La Land.  Of course.


That’s it for this year.  My endorsement is usually the Kiss of Death for nominees, but, hey, I am due for some validation!

If you watch the Oscars, enjoy.  Let me know what you think.  Cheers!

Wednesday, February 22, 2017

OK, Jeff, here ya go

My blog has languished since its heyday of 2010 through 2013, but in a couple days (Friday, that is) I'll be posting my annual ranking of this year's Oscar Best Picture nominees (I know you are waiting with bated breath), so here I am, waking up my brain to remember how to post!

Had drinks with my friend Jeff two weeks ago, and he mentioned that he often checks back here to see if I've gotten my blog act together once again. Perhaps there are others who also have not forgotten me-- for instance, the Russian hackers!

So maybe I'll try once again to add my two-cents worth on a regular basis to the already-overloaded internet world.  It's been a rough few months for me and Jerry, health-wise and otherwise, and I don't want to dwell on negatives, even on those days when it is hard to find positives.  And it would be easy to bitch about donald trump, but others are much more qualified for that kind of bitching than I am, and they are doing it well.

So sometimes it's just better to Escape -- for instance, into the Film World.  Seeing the nominees over the past two months has been good for me.

Hey, can you remember the nominees from last year?  Of course you can't!  If you're really bored, you can go to my list last year --

http://hrdfax.blogspot.com/2016/02/howard-ranks-oscar-nominees.html

(Note that I never pick the actual winner!)..

And, if you are SUPER bored (for instance, you're in a hospital bed, not quite in a coma), here is my list from two years ago....

http://hrdfax.blogspot.com/2015/02/howard-ranks-oscar-nominees.html

So, here I am.... and, if you happen to be one of those people who, like Jeff, wants to see if I'm back to blogging, the easy way to click on this site is

needahand.com
 
which is a domain that I own, which will forward you here to my blog site.
 
Cheers!  Life is good, and it's short.  Enjoy every moment of it.