Front Cover - a film review

For years now, I've been tuning in to made-for-gays movies, far more times than not gagging at how bad the acting is in a so many of them, how trite the plot, how full of stereotypes. Trash. So much trash.

The upside of having to plough through all these really bad movies is that when you come across a decent film you get twice the pleasure. The bar is pretty low. It doesn't have to be a gem, you say to yourself. It just has to have something going for it.

That's the case with Front Cover. There are two lead characters, Ryan and Ning.  Ryan is an ABC - American-born Chinese gay man - who works for a fashion magazine called Mаis Oui. His boss assigns him the job of introducing Ning, a well-known actor in China, and booster of all things Chinese, to the American public.

They start out with a series of culture clashes. Ning has a serious case of internalized homophobia; Ryan has an equally serious case of internalized self-loathing about being Chinese.

So far, so bad. We are primed for the plot line about how the two bigots whittle away at each other's prejudices. In incompetent hands, this would be just another stinker waiting to happen.

But it's not a stinker. And it's not a spoiler, I hope, to tell you that they do both become friends and move closer to a happy medium, since that's what you expect will happen. What is surprising, though, is how well writer/director Raymond Yeung Yaw-kae plays out the resolution of the conflicts. Yeung is chief of the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. He has an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. He knows his stuff and what could so easily have been one long cliché from start to finish turns out to be a very engrossing watch.

photo credit

in English (mostly), Putonghua (that's Mandarin, to you), and Cantonese

Torrington from the air

Didn't spend the morning, as I usually do, watching child prodigies at the piano keyboard, or Russian folk dancers performing Olympic level athletic moves with their superhuman young bodies. This morning I relaxed into some serious nostalgia.

A friend sent me a link to a Facebook site with a three-and-a-half-minute video of the town where I was born.  Somebody apparently got a drone to fly over Torrington, Connecticut, film it, and post the film on Facebook. In the wintertime, when industrial revolution-era New England towns are at their drab-most.  It really is ugly, when filmed from this perspective. An overgrown village, of about 36,000 people, 2010 census, criss-crossed by great swaths of long straight city streets, which remove any last trace of charm the village might once have had. Boulevards made for drag-racing, with names like Main Street, East Main Street, and South Main Street.

Thanks to the durability of my baby-sister-the-great-grandmother's marriage, my spousal unit and I had cause to revisit Northwestern Connecticut last month. My closest biologicals, as I call them (to distinguish them from my chosen family) were celebrating their 60th anniversary. In our free time we drove all over the place marveling at the changes a bit and marveling even more over how much had not changed in the sixty plus years since I lived there.

Torrington is the town where I was born. Where my mother, who came to America in 1923 with her aunt and uncle at the age of 8, grew up and lived until she married my father and they moved nine miles up the road to Winsted, where I grew up. Another town with one long Main Street, much wider than it needs to be, the main difference being Winsted's Main Street runs east and west, Torrington's runs north and south.

Sometimes these towns expanded their streets to include tree names. They and so many other New England towns all have a Maple Street, an Oak Street, an Elm Street or a Walnut Street.  As do American towns all over the country which took their cue from what I take to be the country's original Puritan appreciation of trees. Torrington doesn't have a Maple Street, actually, but it does have a Maplewood Street and a Maplewood Drive. And a Willow Street. Other names include things like Water Street, Prospect Street, Park Avenue, Park Drive and Church Street - pretty dull next to names like Sepulveda Boulevard in Los Angeles or Madison Avenue in New York City. But that comparison is unfair. In small town New England there's no reason to get too big for your boots.

My father and his brothers grew up here as well, went to Torrington High School, because their father from Scotland and their mother from Nova Scotia settled there when they could no longer handle the hustle and bustle of Boston and my grandfather got a job teaching carpentry at the local trade school. Many of these folks died in the same hospital where I was born.

So as I look down on the Yankee Pedlar Inn and the Nutmeg this and the Nutmeg that (Connecticut is known as "the Nutmeg State") I am aware of how different the place where I have made my home is, with names like San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Monica, San Rafael, and Sacramento, and how very English my American birthplace is. Torrington was named after a small down in Devonshire, in Southwest England, next to Cornwall. (There is a Cornwall, in Connecticut, by the way, a few miles west of Torrington. Their main street, if I can call it that, is Pine Street. It's a village of fewer than 1500 souls, has a lovely covered bridge, and was the birthplace of Ethan Allen, of the Green Mountain Boys, according to the town's website. A bit of a stretch, since the town didn't actually exist when young Ethan was born, but his family did settle there while he was growing up. Whereupon he went off to do his thing in the Revolutionary War. And established the state of Vermont. But I digress...)

Torrington, speaking of English colonial towns that birthed famous people, is the birthplace of John Brown, whose body lies a-mouldering in the grave.  It prides itself as being a center of the abolition movement from early days.  A lesser claim to fame is the fact that Gail Borden made the original condensed milk there, which fact you might have overlooked last time you opened a can to make Vietnamese coffee.

But boring as the names are and dull as the town looks, especially mid-winter, and happy as I am to have left the snow and ice behind, this drone's-eye view of the place fills me with nostalgia. I spent much of my childhood with my grandmothers, one of whom lived on Water Street, the other on South Main Street. I joined St. Paul's Lutheran Church - also on South Main Street - back when I wanted to be associated with my German roots and with Martin Luther. 

The road leading out of town to the north was called (and still is) the Winsted Road. We in Winsted called the same road the Torrington Road. Call it lack of imagination, if you will. New Englanders will call it simple practicality. Or common sense. The road to Litchfield carries the name Litchfield Road.  The road to Goshen carries the name Goshen Road.

You won't find a Winsted in England, incidentally. That's because it's a contrived name for the commercial village that grew up between the towns of Winchester and Barkhamsted. Win- of Winchester, -stead of Barkhamsted, in case you missed it. Winchester, England, despite its small population - barely 10,000 more souls than Torrington, Connecticut, is obviously a more substantial city than Torrington, England, and has a magnificent cathedral and the honor of being England's first capital city. Barkhamsted is named after Berkhamsted, in England, home to John Cleese of Monty Python fame.  Also Graham Greene, by the way, if your tastes go more literary. I assume the vowel "e" got switched to the vowel "a" in America because the Americans decided if you're going to pronounce it to match the way a dog barks, then maybe you ought to spell it that way.

Same goes for Berkeley, of course, except in reverse.

In any case, if you've been dying to fly over and look down upon a small town in New England, now's your chance.

Quaint, it ain't.

But it means the world to me, being the place I first got to express my feelings when the doctor spanked my bare bottom to make sure I was born alive.

photo credit - photo is of Charlotte Hungerford Hospital where I was born, 82 years ago.  5th floor, if I am not mistaken. Postcard and I were created at about the same time.

Królowa - The Queen - a film review

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is suggesting, now that he and his man-buddies on the court have dragged the United States back to the dark ages of back-alley abortions, that he's just getting started. Also on his to-do list, as if forcing girls impregnated by their fathers or brothers to carry the baby to term, and criminalizing doctors who choose the life of the mother over the life of the fetus were not enough, is removing the right to birth control and taking back the right of gay people to marry each other.

I know, I know. That's the "worst case scenario" you will tell me. Not necessarily going to happen. Maybe not, if we can get Americans to throw the zealots out of office who are responsible for this horror show, but they've definitely opened the door to the possibility. Homophobia, welcome to America. Step right in and have a seat. You're welcome here.

Meanwhile, over in a more progressive nation - Poland - they're making movies now (well, a movie) about a drag queen who saves the day in his old home town. Remember those Mickey Rooney, Judy Garland days when things got rough for the working class parents and the kids (why were the boys all wearing suits and ties?) put on a show and bailed everybody out?

That's the plot of the new Netflix film just released two days ago. It's called Królowa (Queen), and it's about a queer kid from Katowice, a mining town in Silesia, who runs off to Paris as gay kids are wont to do when the going gets rough. If you're American, you go to New York or Hollywood, but if you're Polish, like Chopin, bright lights/big city means Paris.

Sylwester, played by Andrzej Seweryn, becomes a fashion designer by day and a drag queen entertainer by night, and succeeds big time in both endeavors.  Forty years go by and he gets a letter from his granddaughter. She has googled him and asked him to return to Poland and donate a kidney to her mother, who will die if she doesn't get a transplant from somebody compatible. Turns out granddaughter is pregnant and can't do the job herself.

Sylwester, whose stage name is Loretta, stews over the decision for a while but gives in to his better instincts.

What happens after that is for viewers to discover. Much of it is predictable, and since it's French and it's about drag queens, in addition to being soap opera, there's farce. In the wrong hands this Netflix streamer of four hour-long episodes could easily go off the tracks. But the sentimentality works. The film has great heart, and the lead, Andrzej Seweryn, turns out, has some serious acting chops. He is a seventy-six-year-old veteran who has starred in over fifty films in Poland, France and Germany and is currently director general of the Polski Theater in Warsaw.

Supporting actors do a pretty good job, as well.

There is an accident in the mines that leaves the locals financially strapped, so the "let's put on a show" bit in which Loretta is drafted to save the day can be seen coming a mile away. Also predictable is that it will be not just a little, but way way over the top.

No matter.

Anybody putting on happy-ending feel-good movies these days deserves a vote of gratitude.

in French and Polish, with subtitles

photo credit

Chomsky still going strong at 93

For those of you who think, as I do, that Noam Chomsky is one of our greatest living intellectuals, let me recommend an interview I just came across on YouTube. It was published over a year ago, but its content is totally fresh.

It's about an hour long.

I've been down on Chomsky of late because of his stand on the war in Ukraine. He is one of many who believe Russia is simply too powerful for Ukraine to resist, and nothing can come of resistance but more death and destruction. It's the "better red than dead" argument in a new context.

I don't want to engage in that argument here, except to say in passing that I think Chomsky is underestimating how much damage to the Ukrainian psyche would come from surrender to Putin's egomaniacal plan to absorb Ukraine and wipe out its entire recent history as a nation. What I do want to do here is celebrate Chomsky as a brilliant thinker, all the while reminding myself that nobody gets it right all the time, and only fools throw out the good because it's not the perfect. Chomsky is not perfect, but he is very very good.

Here he is interviewed by an Iranian immigrant named Patrick Bet-David, whom I'm just learning about, an entrepreneur who blogs (vlogs) on the topic of capitalism. He's worth about 150 million dollars. I hate to think that Chomsky agreed to be interviewed by this guy for money, but I can't imagine why else he would agree to give him the time of day.* I haven't seen any of his other interviews, so I don't know if he always comes across as an intellectual lightweight. He sure did in this interview.

No matter.  When Chomsky speaks, what he has to say about his life history and political philosophy is very much worth listening to. I've listened to him for many years; this is one of the best summations of his political thought I've ever come across. It doesn't matter that the silly man he is sitting next to is making an ass of himself; he's giving Chomsky the opportunity to get some very important ideas out to the viewing public.

What you see displayed in this interview is what Chomsky is routinely criticized for. He tends to focus on institutions and not individuals. Bet-David made his fortune building a company and, as Marx pointed out, what we see depends on where we sit. Bet-David defines success in material terms, as the result of individual effort. Chomsky is more inclined to see progress as the work of many working collectively. It's a gentle clash of perspectives for the most part, although Chomsky ends up putting his opponent down as somebody who concentrates on the footnotes and misses the main point of the story.

Wonderful bits pop out here and there. Like Chomsky's explanation for why he dwells on the negative. Why waste your time with things that don't need fixing?  And Antonio Gramsci's quote: "I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will." 

At first I found myself getting really annoyed that Bet-David tried to debate Chomsky, when so much of what Chomsky had to say seemed to fly right over his head, instead of simply interviewing him and letting him talk. But I came to see that his lack of information gave Chomsky the opportunity to demonstrate that he is, in the end, a teacher.

A great way to spend a spare hour. Not as great as listening to Yunchan Lim, the eighteen-year-old winner of this year's Van Cliburn competition in Fort Worth, play Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto and Liszt's Transcendental Etudes.

But worth the time.

*Another explanation for why Chomsky is taking the time to talk to this guy is that Chomsky simply likes to talk, doesn't worry about the knowledge level of his interlocutors, and practices what he preaches: he believes that free speech is its own justification - enough talk and good ideas come through. It's up to all of us to separate the wheat from the chaff. Here's another "interview," similar to the one with Bet-David, with Owen Jones, reporter for the Guardian. Much better informed than Bet-David, but also fell over his own leftist ideology when he came out in support of Hugo Chavez. But he gives Chomsky the chance to defend his position on Ukraine.

A reasonable critique of Chomsky and his position on Ukraine is available here. (You've got to work your way around the arrogance. The insight is there.)

credit:

photo of Noam Chomsky, still going strong at 93.

Rachmaninoff for days

I spent the morning watching the opening ceremonies and first performances of the 2022 Rachmaninoff competition now taking place in Moscow. I can't think of a better way to start the day. I'd like to share my thoughts. 

Path I - If you want to bypass all talk about the music and the composer and the unavoidable discussion of the political implications of holding an international event in Moscow these days, click here and go to the YouTube presentation. Jump ahead to minute 37:00, the Symphonic Dances, and then jump ahead again to minute 1:45:50 where Denis Matsuev is introduced and plays Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Symphony.

Path II -  For a little background information on Rachmaninoff, and my view of the political context in which this competition is taking place:

Some composers have both loads of fans and people who can take them or leave them, but ain't nobody don't like Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff, in my experience. His unabashed romanticism is unmatched, leading many to complain his compositions are best suited for romantic Hollywood movies - a cheap shot if ever there was one. (If you're inclined to think in that direction, let me suggest you first listen to his Third Piano Concerto.)  One of my music tutors over the years clucked that I would one day give up my passion for Grieg and come to appreciate Richard Strauss (he was partially right - I came to appreciate Strauss, but I didn't give up on Grieg.) And I've encountered no end of opera snobs who insist that bel canto or verismo style operas are for plebeians and prefer either Wagnerian bombast on the one hand or Alban Berg or Hindemith and the like, on the other, music which I think is written for the head and not the heart. I'll take old fashioned melody and harmony any day.

Not that music has to enter only through the heart. Just as the Japanese understand that food should be enjoyed by the eyes as well as the tongue and palate, I think melody and harmony are greatly complemented by demonstrations of genius in competition and virtuosity in performance. I love music competitions where, to win, artists have to practice for months to stand a chance of being selected by a jury not of their peers but of the most accomplished of their lot, including former competition winners.  I spent the better part of October last year holed up and listening to the competitors in the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, and I continue to follow the winners to this day.  One of the highlights of the entire year 2021.

This Rachmaninoff competition, which is set to run from the 14th to the 27th of this month,  was originally promoted by Russia's best-known classical and jazz pianist, Denis Matsuev, but it's a three-part production. Officially, the title is the Rachmaninoff International Competition for Pianists, Composers and Conductors. Matsuev heads the pianists' group, Yuri Simonov the conductors', and Alexander Tchaikovsky (no relation to you-know-who) the composers' group.

It is striking - at least it was to me - that the two people chosen to introduce the opening event, did so in English as well as Russian. I know that English functions now as the primary international language, but somehow I assumed that considering the war in Ukraine, some hostility to English might have wormed its way into the events. Both Denis Matsuev, and Valery Gergiev, Russia's best-known pianist and orchestra conductor respectively, are known to be outspoken Putin supporters, and both have run into hostility in Europe. Gergiev was asked to leave his job as chief conductor of the Munich Philharmonic and as honorary conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic. He has also been dropped by the Met in New York and performances under his baton have been cancelled in Switzerland, Scotland, and in Hamburg, and apparently Milan has him on its drop list, as well. So much for the career of "one of the world's leading conductors."  Matsuev has run into similar difficulties after going on record in support of Putin's invasion of the Donbas and the annexation of the Crimea.

There is little doubt that the competition has been profoundly affected by Putin's war on Ukraine.  It has been sponsored by the Russian Ministry of Culture - a branch of it known by a name only a Russian bureaucrat could come up with: the Federal State Budgetary Institution of Culture, or "ROSCONCERT" for short.  Putin spoke at the dedication and made all the usual claims of its being a vehicle for international understanding. Which it is, of course, even though in the piano sector (the others did better) one contestant was from Brazil, two were from China, and the other ten were all Russians.

Forgive the quibbling. I should not be detracting from the brilliant performances and the evidence that life goes on, despite tyranny and the war.

It's just that looking at the devastation in Ukraine, the fact that it has taken over a hundred days for the Germans to get off their buns and deliver the weapons they promised while 200 Ukrainian soldiers are dying daily, and the fact that Russians - such extraordinarily wonderful people in the grip of oligarchs and a would-be modern-day czar,  are getting a real bad rap. That breaks my heart, and I couldn't pretend it's not the elephant in the room when an international music competition takes place in Moscow.

I won't list the links to the concerts. You can find them by typing in rachmaninoff competition 2022 to YouTube.

If you do, hours of glorious music - not just Rachmaninoff, but especially Rachmaninoff - await you.

Appeasement or justice?

This is a great moment in the history of The New York Times.

And a great moment in the history of congressional hearings. The U.S. House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has concluded that what happened was a Trump-led attempted coup.

Now comes the next question.

Will the cancerous body that the United States has become, now that the cancer has been identified, be able to get itself to the operating room and remove the cancer?

All that has actually happened is that the cancer has been identified.

What needs to happen next is that it has to be legally excised. And the person in place to do that is the United States Attorney General, Merrick Garland, who is in place to hit Trump with criminal charges.

And Garland is the guy Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell kept Obama from placing on the Supreme Court.

And this gives the Republican Party every reason to frame this as a political revenge move by the Democrats to cast a shadow on Trump and his administration.

It's clear to anyone still committed to demonstrable truth that the Select Committee's conclusions are based on testimony under oath, including from many who worked within the Trump Administration.  It's an overwhelmingly solid case proving this was an attempted coup.

But there is a distinct possibility someone will make an argument that the best course of action from here on in is to form a reconciliation committee.

And let bygones be bygones.

Because a critical mass of the American public have been taken in by Trump's lies, reinforced by a well-organized cabal, which includes the Trumpist propaganda organ known as Fox News.

Stay tuned.

We could get justice.

Or we could get merely the latest attempt by well-meaning Democrats who believe one can "work across the aisle."

How do you want to go down in history?

As a fighter? Or an appeaser?

There is a parallel to what's happening in Ukraine. There is no doubt that the Putin administration in Russia invaded what the world recognizes as a sovereign nation. And Putin has made no secret of his belief Ukraine has no right to exist as such.

Some people want to help Ukraine fight this invasion. And some people want to appease the invader for two very reasonable arguments: Russia is a nuclear power and it is too big to make an enemy of.

The success of the Peace and Reconciliation Committee in South Africa makes a strong case for reconciliation over justice as a means of getting on with things when large numbers of people line up on two sides and slug it out.

Framing is all in these circumstances. If you are committed to distinguishing between fact and fiction, you will argue Trump is a proven liar and deserves to be brought to justice for this attempted coup. But if you are a big-picture political analyst, you may want to argue instead that this is a conflict between big government advocates like many people on the left, and small government advocates like many people on the right.

I come down on the side of those who argue to rush to reconciliation in the United States would be to throw in the towel prematurely. The clear majority of Americans recognize that the way our government is structured means we have the tail wagging the dog. We are ruled by a powerful minority motivated by greed and tinged with white supremacy, and to surrender to the otherwise noble inclination to forgive and forget at this point would be to betray a dedication to the image of America as a land endlessly striving for ever greater equality.

Appeasement - tell the Ukrainians to lay down their arms. Better become Russian than become dead. And let the Republican Party, despite having caved in to its most retrograde self-serving members, continue with its efforts to maintain control by any means necessary, including the disenfranchisement of black people who are overwhelmingly opposed to its goals. Better to continue to attribute the best of intentions to its ruling clique than to remain a divided nation.

The country has to decide whether this is a time for appeasement.

Or a time for justice.

Stay tuned to see which way it will go.