Tag Archives: New York

Learning to Drive

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Ben Kingsley, Patricia Clarkson, Learning to DriveDirector Isabel Coixet has put together an altogether pleasant comedy (trailer) set in Manhattan, although much of the action takes place on the inside—inside Wendy Shields (played by Patricia Clarkson) whose husband has left her for younger woman, forcing her to rethink her life. This leads to the startling decision to learn to drive. It takes place on the inside of her Sikh driving instructor, Darwan (Ben Kingsley), whose life is upended by the arrival of an Indian woman he’s never met who’s expecting to become his wife. And, it takes place on the inside of Jasleen (Sarita Choudhury), who speaks little English and who has entered a much more foreign territory than a stamp on a passport would suggest.

The superb cast conveys all the internal yearning, turmoil, disappointment, and joy experienced by these characters without the burden of a heavy-handed script. Writer Sarah Kernochan based the screenplay on a New Yorker essay and built in plenty of funny and sweet moments, too. Especially appreciated is the opportunity to see the colorful and intriguing interior of a Sikh temple.

The cramped confines of a car make for filming challenges worthy of a team of contortionists, but it’s an intimate setting, too (as the excellent 2008 British movie Happy Go Lucky proved), in which quotidian experiences are spiced with the ever-present possibility of catastrophe (bicyclists! trucks! jaywalkers!). “You can’t always trust people to behave properly,” Darwan advises, and this truism resonates with his pupil. Though she would add the caveat that he actually does.

Rotten Tomatoes critics rating 67%; audiences 68%. Hard to understand why the critics dinged this movie for “predictability” and didn’t notice that exact problem in the awful Grandma which they liked! If you’ve had a hard week or are allergic to people screaming their problems at you for two hours, this is the better choice.

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****Blue Labyrinth

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apothecary bottles, poison

(photo: Michael Flick, Creative Commons license)

By Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child, narrated by René Auberjonois – This fast-paced thriller—book 14 in the wild escapades of FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast—follows the agent on the trail of the killer of his son, and, when he is knocked out of commission by an arcane poison, the action shifts to two women desperately seeking the ingredients for a possible antidote.

Pendergast is an eccentric, so wealthy he accepts an annual $1 salary from the FBI only for form’s sake. He has residences on Manhattan’s Riverside Drive, an apartment in The Dakota, and a large Louisiana plantation called Penumbra. His wit and New Orleans courtliness pervades his interactions with everyone, even when he’s aiming his Les Baer .45 at them. His avocations have made him a connoisseur of food, wine, and art, an adept at of various combat disciplines, and the practitioner of a rare form of Eastern mysticism, Chongg Ran, that provides deep insight and, in this novel, allows him to see into the past.

The story opens with an unexpected knock on the door of Pendergast’s Riverside Drive mansion, answered by his ward Constance. A man—a dead man—falls to the ground. Pendergast’s son Alban. Whoever killed Alban is sending a powerful message and appears to have left not a single clue. Is it the perfect crime? Or clever bait to lure the agent into a trap?

Meanwhile, NYPD Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta is investigating a different murder, that of a low-ranking employee at Preston and Childs’s favorite crime scene, the American Museum of Natural History. D’Agosta learns the man had been working with a visiting professor who was interested in only one particular human skeleton. D’Agosta enlists the aid of scientist Margo Green to help him figure out what was so special about this particular set of bones.

There’s skeletons in Pendergast’s family closet, too. For some time, Constance has trolled the underground archives of the Riverside Drive house, becoming well acquainted with Pendergast’s shady ancestors and the basement laboratory filled with arcane materials and dangerous chemicals. When Pendergast falls ill, she and Margo team up to concoct an antidote, but if they are to obtain all the ingredients they need, they must go outside the law to do so. And time is running out.

Preston and Child never let up the tension throughout their complex, information-packed narrative, and they have created unique and well-rounded characters. Pendergast and the novel’s action may occasionally become too “shamelessly, gloriously over the top” (Washington Post review) for some readers, including me, but he and it are always interesting.

This was the first book in the series I’ve read, and I had no difficulty following the story or the subtext of the interactions, even though much had taken place prior to the current story.

Noted American actor René Auberjonois has narrated 13 other volumes by Preston and Child, and conveys Pendergast’s Southern gentleman charm quite convincingly.

A slightly longer version of this review appeared on the Crime Fiction Lover website.

A Most Violent Year

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Oscar Isaac, A Most Violent YearMissed this December 2014 crime drama (trailer) in theaters, but finally had a chance to watch it on the small screen. Oscar Isaac, who was quite likable in Inside Llewyn Davis and even stronger here, does a fine job as Abel Morales, head of a New York City heating oil company; Jessica Chastain, always good, plays his wife. Morales’s trucks are being hijacked and his drivers beaten up by—who?—shady competitors, ambitious freelancers, organized crime? With his drivers and sales people at risk, the default of everyone around him is to arm themselves (which makes for some pretty scary scenarios in city traffic), but Morales resists.

He wants to remain an upstanding businessman, to keep taking the high road despite the growing chaos around him. This includes a lengthy and apparently stalled investigation by the city prosecutor (David Oyelowo) of financial sins in the heating oil industry and Morales’s company in particular. Morales is aided in his endeavors by the somewhat ambiguous character of his lawyer (Albert Brooks) who has the patience for long negotiations. As one protracted land acquisition looks about to successfully conclude, the other difficulties piling up put it out of reach again.

What was solid about this movie was that the business dealings seemed plausible and important, not just made up in the usual Hollywood way. The film was written and directed by J. C. Chandor, and in our cynical epoch of anti-heroes, he’s made Morales someone you want to see succeed. “There’s less violence that you would expect, given the film’s title, but the scenes of moral suspense prove just as breathtaking as the episodes of physical jeopardy,” said Jason Best in Movie Talk.

The plot took unexpected turns until the final resolution, and, whatever, viewers have many chances to see the most beautiful (and magically dirt-shedding) camel-hair coat ever!

Nice Rotten Tomatoes critics’ rating of 90%; audiences 70%. The film garnered numerous awards and award nominations, as did the acting and directing.

Two Days of Theater Bliss!

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library, Morgan Library

Morgan Library (photo: Jim Forest, Creative Commons license)

Spent two days in Manhattan this week and highly recommend these highlights. First up was a walk from the train to the Morgan Library (225 Madison Avenue), a treasure-trove of art and the written word, in which lots is always going on. This visit was to see the special exhibit “Lincoln Speaks: Words that Transformed a Nation,” which includes many original documents Lincoln wrote, with helpful context. Take the docent tour.

This exhibit is on view only through June 7, but afterward the library will be putting on “Alice: 150 years of Wonderland” (June 26-October 11). For the first time in 30 years, the British Library will send the original Alice in Wonderland manuscript to New York, and its display will be augmented by original drawings, letters, and other material. Another good reason to visit the Morgan—a terrific café! Order the duck confit salad. I had a Gilded Age Manhattan, which had flakes of gold floating on its surface—irresistible in that fabulous mansion—and needed an afternoon nap.

Helen Mirren

Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth II

In the evening, thrilled beyond words, we saw Helen Mirren in The Audience, where she reprises her role as Queen Elizabeth II. Each week, the monarch has a half-hour private audience with the current Prime Minister, to learn what the government has been up to for the past week and what’s ahead. Mirren’s portrayal of the Queen over the years—from the time of her accession at age 25 to age 89 today—is completely believable. The Queen always backs the government, but that has not always been easy or comfortable. And the government hasn’t always served her well, in terms of candor or protecting her principal leadership interest, the health of the Commonwealth.

If you know or remember anything at all about the dozen political leaders who have served her—from Winston Churchill up through a prickly Margaret Thatcher to today’s David Cameron—you will enjoy these different portrayals. Sets and costumes were perfect. We may think of the Queen is being a bit bland of affect and possibly not as full of terrific one-liners that playwright Peter Morgan gives her (in the first scene, PM John Major confesses, “I only ever wanted to be ordinary,” and the Queen sympathizes: “And in which way do you consider you’ve failed in that ambition?”). But Mirren brings her to well-rounded life, and Morgan even gives her a rationalization for this persona, writing that a monarch’s very ordinariness is what makes for success. Mirren’s line is something like “if we were tremendously creative or brilliant, we’d be tempted to meddle, and that would cause no end of trouble.”

St. Patrick's, cathedral, New York, stained glass

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

Wednesday morning, out for a stroll, we found St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the throes of a monumental restoration effort. The exterior where the work has been completed must appear as it did when it was first constructed, with all the grime cleared away from stones and stained glass, and, more important, but invisibly, many structural repairs made. Absolutely beautiful.

Inside, the work continues as well, and the altar is obscured by a mare’s nest of scaffolding. A bit cacophanous, but the completed parts are truly spectacular.

Lunch at my favorite NYC spot, where I’ve eaten so many times, Osteria al Doge at 142 W. 44th Street, a half-block from Times Square. Lovely food and service.

Wolf Hall , playAs if we hadn’t had enough excitement already, off to the Winter Garden Theatre for Part Two of Wolf Hall (Part One reviewed here). I suppose it isn’t too great a spoiler to say that Anne and Cardinal Wolsey’s antagonists get their comeuppance. Though Mark Ryland’s portrayal of Thomas Cromwell in the tv version seems perfect, Ben Miles is mighty fine in the play, too (a comparison). I enjoyed Hilary Mantel’s books, on which these dramatizations are based, and like both versions. Again, I was struck by the efficiency of the stage play, with its stark set and minimal props, which has a powerful focusing effect.

See The Audience and both parts of Wolf Hall, if you have the chance! But soon. Limited engagements.

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****The Whites

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crime scene tape

(photo: wikimedia)

By Richard Price writing as Harry Brandt, narrated by Ari Fliakos. This crime thriller received a splashy reception, in part because of the puzzlement over Price’s transparent attempt to write it pseudonymously (which even he gave up on), but more because—whatever name he adopts—the publication of one of his gritty novels is an event crime fiction aficionados celebrate. Price is the author of Clockers, Bloodbrothers, The Wanderers and numerous screenplays, as well as award-winning episodes of The Wire.

What has made Price so successful, as Michael Connelly points out in a New York Times review, is his belief that “when you circle around a murder long enough you get to know a city.” Says Connelly, Price is an author who “considered the crime novel something more than a puzzle and an entertainment; he saw it as societal reflection, documentation and investigation.”

The book’s title refers to the unsolved but unforgotten cases a tight group of young police officers confronted during their careers. Think the elusive target Moby Dick, not a racial reference.

They had all met their personal Whites, those who had committed criminal obscenities on their watch and then walked away untouched by justice . . . .
No one asked for these crimes to set up house in their lives, no one asked for these murderers to constantly and arbitrarily lay siege to their psyches like bouts of malaria.

At the time of the novel, most members of this formerly closeknit group are out of the NYPD because of injury, other opportunities, or sheer burnout, but Sgt. Billy Graves is still on the force. Billy knows his friends’ “Whites” like he knows his own badge number, and when they start dying in violent circumstances, he has to ask himself . . . Meanwhile, his family is the target of an unnerving and escalating series of threats, which he urgently needs to figure out.

The book, told from the point of view of both Billy and his antagonist, is full of characters from diverse backgrounds and ethnicities, yet all are believable as individuals. The writing never falters and contains, as Connelly says, “a fierce momentum.” A favorite line of mine, about a witness smoking dope in his apartment, had him “blowing out enough smoke to announce a Pope.”

With recent events in Ferguson, North Charleston, Baltimore, and elsewhere, it isn’t good timing for a cop-as-hero book, and this novel’s moral dilemmas force Billy and the reader to consider the role of policing in our society and the differences between policing and justice.

Fliakos’s narration is excellent. Despite the large number of characters, I was never confused about whose voice I was hearing.

The Glass Top-Hat

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NYPD, cops

(photo: Nick Gulotta, Creative Commons license)

Loved this Alexandra Alter article about crime novelist Richard Price and his adoption of a pseudonym, in the hope of producing a quickie novel (and not suffer years over it!). Why not use his skills to dash off a plot-heavy, (shudder) “commercial” novel and reap the proceeds? In fact, he found out he is who he is, and the new book took just as much time and care as ever.

Price, interviewed this week on the PBS New Hour, is the author of the well-crafted and popular novels Freedomland, Lush Life, and Clockers. This pseudonymous endeavor has now emerged as his ninth novel, The Whites, which The New Yorker review by Joyce Carol Oates describes as “a maze of a novel” about a case that haunts NYPD detective Billy Graves. (The ghosts of unsolved cases are a universal occupational hazard for cops, as Price described it for PBS.) The book’s awkward parentage is displayed on the cover as “Richard Price Writing as Harry Brandt.” Even though The Whites came out only about two weeks ago, it’s already a hardcover fiction best-sellers (#5 on the NYT list in it first week).

“You realize you only know one way to write,” Price said during his New York Times interview. In keeping with his stripped-down approach, he did no new research, but instead called upon his extensive experience in ride-alongs with police and their lengthy conversations for his previous novels, as well as in his writing for HBO’s The Wire.

The whole pseudonym exercise was a failure, Price now says. “It seemed like a good idea in the beginning, and now I wish I hadn’t done it.” And, in a line for the ages: “This pen name is like pulling a rabbit out of a glass hat.”

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*** Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran FoerExtremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

Thomas Horn as Oskar Schell

By Jonathan Safran Foer, read by Jeff Woodman, Barbara Caruso, and Richard Ferrone – Many people are already familiar with this 2005 book, because of its popularity (despite mixed reviews) and the Tom Hanks movie made from it, and  know the basic plot: nine-year-old Oskar Schell, bereft after the death of his father in the World Trade Center, finds a mysterious key among his father’s possessions and embarks on a one-boy quest to find what the key will unlock. His only clue is the word “Black” on the envelope the key was inside.

Oskar is precocious—an inventor, a scientist, a tambourine-player, a Francophile—and knows so much about so much that the holes in his knowledge gape unfathomably. He’s also full of tics and fears and will pinch himself to make a bruise when something upsets him. Overall, he is an engaging and often funny narrator, getting a bit tiresome only from time to time (this review is of the audio version, so I cannot comment on the circled words, photos, fingerprints, and other marginalia featured in the print version).

Any book about a quest is about what the seeker learns along the way, and Oskar’s brief encounters with the multitudinous New Yorkers surnamed “Black” are well-imagined (especially 103-year-old Mr. A. Black who accompanies him on some of his searches). From them, eventually, he comes to terms with his guilt and grief. Yet the most important understanding he acquires, he finds at home, when he comes to understand there are many ways to respond to the loss of someone you love and not one “right” way.

Parts of the book are told from the point of view of Oskar’s grandmother and his grandfather, his father’s parents. For me, these lengthy flashbacks, told in the form of letters about their past, World War II Dresden, and their difficult relationship with each other, were not as interesting as the present-day story.

Foer has obvious affection for this character, his voice, and his quest to find out how his father really died after the “extremely loud and incredibly close”—and just how loud and how close we don’t find out until near the book’s end—tragedy of 9/11. I cannot help but wonder whether this affinity is related to his own experience, which Foer did not write about until 2010. When he was eight, a summer camp sparkler-making project went awry, and the explosion injured him badly and nearly killed his best friend. Part of that traumatized boy may have become Oskar.

****Dead I Well May Be

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Mexico, alley

(photo: Eneas De Troya, Creative Commons license)

By Adrian McKinty, read by Gerard Doyle. You’ll recognize the title of this 2003 crime novel as a line in that quintessential Irish song, “Danny Boy,” but nothing about this book is cliché. Last year I read and enjoyed my first McKinty, In the Cold, Cold Ground, and this one is equally engaging. Both books were the first in a series, and I’ll hope to read the full sets.

Protagonist Michael Forsythe is very much a bad boy who reluctantly leaves Ireland to settle in New York City during the violent, drug-ridden 1980s. There he joins a gang of Irish thugs and makes the unpardonable error of bedding the gang-leader’s girlfriend. But he’s not merely a violent man, he’s an intelligent and erudite charmer, too, with hilarious and spot-on observations about American life and his fellow criminals. To say that things don’t go well for him here in the U.S. of A. is an understatement, but Michael can think rings around his confederates and he skillfully manipulates and dodges the politics of violence between Irish and Dominican gangs. Only once does he let his guard down and travels to a chancy Mexican rendezvous with his pals, and . . .

McKinty establishes a lively pace and an engaging narrator, who kept my sympathies, even when he does one of those things I really wish he hadn’t. Narrator Gerard Doyle is a genius.

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

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Michael Keaton, Birdman

Michael Keaton in “Birdman”

Given this movie’s underlying premise, I should say up-front that I have a love-not-love relationship with it. Yes, the acting is terrific. Given a script with substance, Michael Keaton, Ed Norton (truly amazing), and Emma Stone all received Oscar nods. I’m also big fan of Amy Ryan, who plays Keaton’s wife in one of her trademark low-key performances, of the kind she perfected in The Wire. The story itself, however, of a middle-aged man’s struggle to find himself amidst the debris of his messy family affairs and dwindling career is, for me, less interesting. (Trailer here)

In telling it, Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu pays homage to magical realism of the South American kind (an armful of calla lilies appears on a monument somewhere to Gabriel García Márquez at every showing of this movie). What appears to be happening on the screen—Michael Keaton levitating in the lotus position or, yes, flying—can be accepted on either a literal or a metaphorical basis, or both, depending on the viewer’s taste and tolerance.

In the story, Keaton is a Hollywood has-been (a former superhero called Birdman) tackling Broadway for the first time, directing and starring in a production of the Raymond Carver short story, “What we talk about when we talk about love.” The play is in rehearsal, and whether it will be successful is a toss-up. It looks unlikely. Meanwhile, Birdman himself keeps appearing like a nudgy pal, alternately flattering and browbeating Keaton and trying to lure him back into the gloriously popular action movies of his youth.

The Carver story recounts an alcohol-soaked evening when two couples try to sort out what love is, a question that has baffled sober people from time immemorial. Because of his own extreme vision of love, the ex-husband of one of the characters shot himself but “bungled it,” says the play. Later, he died. This might be a clue to the movie’s unwinding or not, because the extent to which the play-in-production is supposed to illuminate the movie is deliberately ambiguous. (I didn’t understand the subtitle, either, as it seemed to me that the characters were all too knowing.)

Numerous possible explanations (waking dreams, fevered thoughts, daydreams) could explain some of the action—especially the Michael Keaton character’s flying—which if you’re not overly hung up on trying to explain it rationally is thrilling. This is a movie that you have to decide to “just go with it” or face frustration. But the acting—and the bird costume!—is worth the price of admission. Liked the drumming. Rotten tomatoes critics rating 92%; audiences 84%.

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Looking for Something Good to Read?

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reading

(photo: Nico Cavallotto, Creative Commons)

The stack of books I’m excited to read in 2015 is already pretty high, and to make room, sorted the books of 2014—keep, donate, donate, keep, keep. Handling them again and in writing last week’s post on the 11 very best, I couldn’t help thinking how many more really good ones there were! All 22 **** books of the past year.

Mysteries & Thrillers

  • Sandrine’s Case by Thomas H. Cook – originally I gave this 3 stars, but when I couldn’t stop thinking about it, slapped on a fourth
  • The Golden Hour by Todd Moss—believable political thriller, awesome first novel
  • Standing in Another Man’s Grave by Ian Rankin—an always-satisfying outing with Edinburgh’s Inspector John Rebus
  • Mystery Girl by David Gordon—a wacky Hollywood tale with oddball characters and LOL dialog
  • The Cottoncrest Curse by Michael H. Rubin—I met Rubin, so bought his book about late-1800s murders on a Louisiana plantation. So glad I did!
  • Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger—won all the big mystery world prizes in 2013
  • Spycraft by Robert Wallace, H. Keith Melton, and Henry Robert Schlesinger—non-fiction, describing the technologies of espionage (and avoiding recent scandals entirely)
  • The Reversal by Michael Connelly—Harry Bosch AND Mickey Haller
  • The Cold, Cold Ground by Adrian McKinty—really makes his Belfast-during-the-Troubles setting work for him

Other Fiction

 Biography, History, Politics

Great Places

  • The White Rock by Hugh Thomson—adventurers still discovering lost Inca outposts
  • The Danube by Nick Thorpe—from the Black Sea to the river’s origins in Germany
  • The New York Nobody Knows by William B. Helmreich—this sociologist walked more than 6000 miles of NYC streets and talked to everybody

 Stephen King

book, imagination

(Cinzia A. Rizzo, flickr.com, CC license)