Monthly Archives: July 2024

Art, Movies, summer

In Which I Write about August As Well As the Classic Film Alexander Nevsky

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For the first part of July, the heat was terrible in Maine—at least for Mainers. The heatwave coincided with the Maine International Film Festival, and Clif, Dee, and I were more than happy to sit in air-conditioned cinemas as we watched movies.

Then, around July 18, it was as though the weather gods flipped a switch, and suddenly we were in August. Black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace, not normally July flowers, were in full bloom. Crickets, another August treat, were singing at night, and during the day, grasshoppers buzzed.

And the weather? Delicious as only a traditional Maine August can be: hot and dry during the day and wonderfully cool at night. The windows are open all the time, and the air inside the house smells so fresh.

What will true August bring us, I wonder? More of the same would be nice, but in this time of climate change, who knows? Whatever the case, Clif, Dee, and I are enjoying this weather. We are spending as much time as possible in our screen house on the patio.

As we chat about this and that—often movies—we sip our drinks, and listen to the noises from the woods and yard. Gold finches twitter at each other as they vie for spaces on the feeders. A fledgling blue jay calls to its parents. Nearby, crickets sing their sweet song of summer, and in the far distance, in the woods, we  catch the ethereal song of a hermit thrush.

Magical might be a word that is overused, but magical is what this time is.

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Watching: World Cinema
Alexander Nevsky directed by Sergei Eisenstein

In my previous post, I wrote about how much I like foreign movies, and that our daughter Dee has a huge DVD collection of them. To be more specific, the major part of her collection is Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films released by the Criterion Collection. Janus Films is a film distribution company founded in 1956 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and they helped bring world cinema to the United States with such classics as The Seventh Seal, one of my absolute favorites.

There are 50 movies in the set, and this should keep us busy for a while. (Don’t worry. I don’t plan to write about all of them. Only the ones that catch my attention.) The DVDS are in alphabetical order by title, and this is how we will work our way through the collection, starting with the first one, Alexander Nevsky, a 1938 Russian film directed by Sergei Eisenstein.

Alexander Nevsky is billed as a historical film, and strictly speaking, this is true. The movie is set in the thirteenth century, centering on the real-life conflict between Teutonic Knights and Prince Alexander. But really it’s a Russian propaganda film, featuring Russia against Germany, a reflection of the situation between the two countries in 1938.

As a result, the characters are stiff and one dimensional, with Prince Alexander being all virtue and valor and the Teutonic knights being a rotten bunch. Indeed, one of the bad guys even looked like an evil sorcerer, as though he had just slithered in from a fantasy movie. As someone who prefers character-driven movies, whatever the genre, this should have been a deal killer.

But it wasn’t. Alexander Nevsky has such a crazy energy that it carried me along. The battle scenes between the Teutonic Knights and Prince Alexander’s forces are nothing short of jaw-dropping, with hundreds and hundreds of extras and horses rushing toward each other. I don’t suppose there were many retakes of these battle scenes, and this was well before the time of CGI and special effects.

In addition, the movie is in black and white, and the cinematography captures everything in crisp detail.

So, in the end, who wins? Prince Alexander or the Teutonic Knights?  No spoilers here. Watch for yourself and see how a propaganda film can still be a marvel of early cinema.

July 31, 2024
Addendum: Yikes! I forgot to mention the rousing score and the composer, Sergei Prokofiev.  The music certainly added energy to an already energetic movie.

Thankful Thursday

Thankful Thursday: A New Driveway and New Steps

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A couple of the blogs I read—notably Cimple: A Curious Introvert’s Musing & Photos about Life and Enjoyment—have Thankful Thursday posts, where each week they list a few things they are thankful for. I really enjoy these posts and have decided to follow suit.

It hardly needs to be said—but I will say it anyways—that life is not all sweetness and light. There is much that is wrong with the world, both globally and locally.  From the climate crisis to my creaky knees, I can dwell on the negative with the best of pessimists. To some extent, focusing on what is wrong seems to come naturally to most people, who tend to complain, complain, complain when they get together with family and friends. (I’m no exception, that’s for sure.)

So focusing on things to feel thankful for seems like good spiritual practice, a way to counterbalance the tendency toward negative thinking.

I’m not advocating toxic positivity, pretending everything is hunky-dory when it isn’t. Far from it, and in other posts I will feel free to crab about things large and small. (Hot weather, I’m looking at you.) But on Thursdays, I’ll step away from that to give my thanks for the good things in my life. Like everyone else, I have my struggles, but I also have so much to be grateful for.

And this week, I have two humdingers, thanks to the generosity of our daughter Dee, who lives with us, and our neighbor Bob Smart, who lives next door.

First, our driveway. Truly, we had one of the worst driveways in our town. Long ago, it been paved, but over time it had heaved because of  underground rocks and roots. Then this year, a big truck for pumping our septic system crushed one side of our driveway into a valley.

After the truck fiasco, Dee took one look at the driveway and said, “I’ll pay for a new one.”

Clif and I, who have a budget as big as a minute, were oh so grateful.

I don’t have any pictures of the old horror of a driveway, or at least not ones I could readily find. But here is our new one, beautiful and flat and made from pea stone and gravel, one that will drain and can easily be repaired.

For days after the driveway was installed, Clif and I would stare out the window and gaze lovingly at it.

Our neighbor, Bob Smart, who owns his own construction company, Building Smart, oversaw the project, which involved moving our front steps. Unfortunately, the steps were rotten and were smashed during the process. Without charging extra, Bob rebuilt and installed the steps, and now we have brand new steps to go with our brand new driveway.

Woo-hoo! make that double woo-hoo.

 

 

 

Movies

A Return to Blogging with the Maine International Film Festival

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After a horrible two-week heat wave and the Maine International Film Festival (MIFF), I have returned to blogging. I’ve certainly missed you all, and I’m happy to be back.

First, the heatwave. Hot and humid, then hotter and even more humid, complete with heat advisories. Heat advisories? In Maine? With the heat index, some days the temp was close to 100°. The best that can be said is that the heatwave is over for now, and today it’s rainy and cool, with the temperature being 67°. I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and I’m as happy as only a Mainer can be in cool summer weather.

Now on to the Maine International Film Festival. Dee, Clif, and I have not been to MIFF since before the pandemic, and we were so happy to be back. The Film Festival features over 100 movies. Naturally, we couldn’t see them all, but we made a good effort, seeing 31 films in 9  days.

This might sound kind of silly, but it really is exhausting seeing that many films in such a short time. But it’s also fun and stimulating. We reconnected with old friends and met a few new ones. We talked about the movies we liked and the movies that left us cold. When you see that many movies, there are bound to be a few duds.

As the name suggests, the Maine International Film Festival features lots of movies from around the world, and part way through the festival, I realized how much I love foreign films. Thanks to MIFF, I went all around the globe—to Spain, France, Uganda, Mexico,  South Korea, Hungary, and Russia. I heard many languages, visited different cultures, and saw people who didn’t look like me. Yet, the concerns—the fears and hopes and feelings—were really not that different from mine. We are all human with similar needs and wants.

As it turns out, my daughter Dee has a huge DVD collection of foreign films, and MIFF has motivated me to start watching them, one a week. Even though MIFF is over, I can still go around the world.

Here are three movies that really caught my attention at the Maine International Film Festival:

  1. Close Your Eyes (Cerrar los ojos): A Spanish film about an actor who disappears during the filming of a movie. His disappearance haunts family and friends, and while the story revolves around the central mystery of what happened to the actor, Close Your Eyes is also a poignant look at aging and memory. This is a leisurely film that takes its time unfolding.  If action films are you thing, this is not the movie for you.
  2. The Midwives (Sage-femmes): This French movie follows two young midwives, Louise and Sofia, as they begin their first job in a hospital that is understaffed. The Midwives is by turns touching and harrowing as Louise and Sofia struggle in different ways to adapt to the stress of delivering babies under circumstances that are less than ideal. This movie is a lot more graphic than the BBC series Call the Midwife, but it never seemed inappropriate. Let’s face it: childbirth is a bloody, messy business.
  3. The Echo (El eco): A slice-of-life documentary about a farming family in a remote village in Mexico. The director, Tatiana Huezo, captures the rhythm and the beauty as well as the limitations and the hardships of living a life close to the land. Warning: There is a brutal scene of a goat being slaughtered, and I averted my eyes. Fortunately, this is the only scene of an animal being killed, and despite this violence, The Echo is very much worth watching.

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Readers might be wondering about the picture at the beginning of this post. It is a close up of an enchanting installation in the park next to the Maine Film Center and the Opera House, which hosted MIFF.

Here are some other photos of the Installation, a magical addition to terrific film festival.

 

 

News

And the Break Continues

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How time does fly. I had planned to return to blogging in June, but then the days slipped by until it was July. Now comes the Maine International Film Festival (July 12-21), and let’s just say that when you plan to see 32 movies in 10 days, there won’t be much energy left for blogging.

So now I’m shooting for the end of July or the beginning of August. I’ve missed the blogging community, and I’m looking forward to returning.  As time has allowed, I’ve checked in on blogging friends, and I will be much more diligent when I return full time.

So what’s been happening? I’ve been working on my novel Darcy Dansereau, but have yet to finish it. We had a wonderful Fourth of July holiday with our daughter Shannon and her husband Mike.

It’s been horribly hot—for Maine—in the 90s with high, high humidity. If I wanted heat like this, I’d move south. As it is, I’m looking longingly at northern Maine, where the temps are 10 to 7 degrees cooler.

But the biggest news is that our daughter Dee will soon be getting an electric car, a Tesla, and our electrician Steve Wight, has installed the charger. A very exciting time for us. Before long, we will be tooting here and there in an electric car.

Unlike the humans, the flowers have liked this heat and humidity. It has rained enough to keep them and this gardener happy. The astilbes were especially lovely, and I’ll end this post with photo of these pink beauties.

Until the end of July or the beginning of August.