A friend recommended In Treatment to me about a year ago and so I started watching season one. I became addicted to the show pretty quickly, gobbling it up in large amounts at a time, and luckily season two was there right after to keep me engaged in the story for another month.
This wait for season three, however, was pretty dismal. For a while, In Treatment fans on message boards (which, yes, I went to in desperation) were speculating that there might not be another season. After all, it’s no Entourage or Sopranos. It didn’t get ideal ratings for HBO, though it received a good amount of critical acclaim.
Then on October 23, 2009 Variety released a story with HBO’s announcement to renew for season three. As for the not-so-high ratings:
“‘The viewership isn’t as big as we’d like but creatively the show works so well for us, if we’re true to who we say we are, we had to pick it up,’ Michael Lombardo, president of the programming group and West Coast operations for HBO, told Daily Variety. ‘We’re not just into ratings and the awards game. We’re here to deliver shows with distinct voices.’”
Continue Reading The Dirty Irresistibility of HBO’s In Treatment »
When I start thinking I’ve wasted my life on art, I know I’m lying to myself. The lie is hurtful for many reasons, but this past weekend—five days after my mother-in-law passed away—I was reminded again of why art matters.
On Saturday, we gathered near Washington, D.C., for a small memorial. My mother-in-law’s death wasn’t unexpected, but it happened with shocking abruptness. She was ninety, but a hardy ninety, until her heart turned on her.
It was the kind of sunny-sky, temperate fall weekend that defies death. On Sunday, we spent the day in the District: first a church service in Georgetown, then touristing on the Mall. While my husband and his younger sister took the boy cousins to the Air and Space Museum, my other sister-in-law and I headed for the quieter halls of the Sackler Gallery.
The Sackler, one of the Smithsonian’s Asian art museums, now features a show by Amsterdam video artist Fiona Tan. Her title piece, Rise and Fall, is 22 minutes long and shown on two vertical screens.
Continue Reading Why Art Matters »
“You don’t have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.”
–C.S. Lewis 1898-1963
An old, but recently found friend posted this quote on her Facebook page. It resonated.
Something that might be useful to know about me is that I am very fond of drawing bones and other remnants of the physical body. Any old bones will do, but dinosaur bones are really my favorite. That’s meandering a bit, but the point I was going for is that bones and shells and dried up starfish are all that is left, you know, after…
The first self portrait I ever remember making was in Miss Burkhardt’s first grade class at Corl Street Elementary School. I drew myself wearing my then favorite shirt, something I’d wear even now: a white peasant blouse with multi-colored thread shirring along the neck. The other thing I recall is that I took those Crayolas and blended until my Caucasian skin was orange. I was the only kid in my very un-diverse classroom to color my skin and I am pretty sure I took some flack for it. I knew that my skin was not white like paper and it didn’t make sense to me to not color it.
Continue Reading You Don’t Have a Soul »
I went to the movies the other night and saw a preview for the movie based on the mega blockbuster hit of a memoir “Eat Pray Love” starring, of course, Julia Roberts [releasing August 13th, 2010].
For those of you few who are not familiar with this book, let me just say it was like a Harlequin romance gone yuppie/feminist/spiritual/narcissistic with the usual predictable ending. The author took a year of her life to “find herself” spending four months eating in Italy, four months praying in India, and four months making love in Indonesia (despite her vow of celibacy before she made the trip).
To be honest, women are suckers for this kind of book (hence the mega-hit status). And don’t get me wrong. I read the book and loved it. Who wouldn’t love the idea of escaping REAL LIFE and running away for a year?
The book begins with Elizabeth Gilbert, the author, lying prostrate on her bathroom floor in complete ruins about the demise of her marriage.
Continue Reading Eat Pray Love…Barf »
Anthony Doerr’s gifts as an author are anchored by his thrifty nature as a discerning purveyor of language. Never losing site of the subtle tones that come to warm the people and places that inhabit his stories, Doerr treats each word as though it were valuable; in essence almost viewing them the same way that someone might view spending a hard-earned paycheck. While never overburdening his narratives with effusive passing words or beautiful alliteration for the sake of the work itself, each paragraph sits farther down the line of his characters’ respective appearances and disappearances into the tales, so delicately chosen that one gets the impression the Boise-based writer must indubitably anguish over the editing process.
This must surely be the case with Doerr’s latest book, “Memory Wall.” The collection of six short stories spans 242 pages of expressly intent character development and evaporation; the central theme of the book revolving around the notions of remembrance and what happens when the mind’s delicate circuitry is held accountable in stacking the interactions that comprise a lifetime.
Continue Reading Anthony Doerr | In Conversation »
A Most Ravishing Riddle.
A devoted scholar of femininity, Candy’s life was a tribute to that sorceress womanhood that had cast a spell on her—the very same one she would later wield against others. Candy Darling had a way of eclipsing everything else around her, on stage, screen, and in the theater of life. Maybe it was that hair–golden blonde and billowy, and, like the woman beneath it, almost incandescent; or maybe it was the unanswered question of her eyes, some inner spark shone outward, at once brassy and delicate, feral and fragile.
Able to embody a stunning spectrum of selves, Candy was an encyclopedia of female archetypes. As a result, her every word and gesture were a tribute to the ladies in whose image she had built herself. There was in Candy the femme fatale, the southern belle, the damsel in distress, the man-in-a-dress, the soubrette, the coquette, the vamp, the lady, and the tramp.
Continue Reading Andy Warhol’s Candy Darling »
I took up the idea of writing this piece nearly a week ago, and at the time wondered about the lag between thought and fruition. Would the Gibson story seem passe by the time my words went to print? It appears I had no reason to fret. Our friend Mel remains as relevant, in the very loosest sense of the term, as he did a fortnight ago, when the story broke of his ugly, and allegedly violent breakup with 40 year – old Russian pianist and singer-songwriter, Oksana Grigorieva.
Still, aren’t we all, Whoopi Goldberg notwithstanding, just a little bored of “Meltdown” Gibson (so nicknamed by celebrity blogger, Perez Hilton)? For 25 years, the man was a bankable, and beloved Hollywood film star – before he spent the last four years self-destructing. In a rare and career suicidal display of cross cultural bigotry, Gibson’s latest brush with TMZ notoriety includes rage-filled epithets hurled at every group from women, to Hispanics to African Americans. There may yet be a remote village in the farthest corner of the Earth upon which the actor did not drop a hate bomb. Oh and I almost forgot to mention, each one of these displays of human acceptance was directed, if only tangentially, at the real target of his unhinged explosions – the mother of his eight month-old daughter, Lucia.
Continue Reading Semantics 101 with Mel Gibson »
