Category Archives: Music-Dance-Film

Best of 2015

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It’s that time again: this is the ninth January in a row (got a streak going here) in which I post a discussion of the books I read and the movies I saw in the past year and also attempt some kind of evaluation of these works.

In 2015, I read 50 books and saw 15 movies; those numbers are very close to the year before.  Again, I read almost twice as much fiction as non-fiction, 32 to 18. Fiction genres ranged from the standard novel to sci-fi/fantasy to mystery/thriller.  The non-fiction books included history, linguistics, biography/memoir, social and environmental science.  This year I won’t attempt a finer breakdown than this.

As happened last year, the number of movies I watched was way below my previous seven-year average of 49, but that was again because I spent a lot of time watching downloaded TV shows.  The movies I watched included the genres of biopic, comedy, adventure, animated, and domestic drama.

As in the past few years, I could not pick a top five or six titles as Best of, even though that’s what these posts are supposed to be about, so this year I’m again doing something a bit different for both books and movies.

For movies, because there were so few, I picked my all-around favorite, which was Boyhood.  I agree that Director Richard Linklater achieved something remarkable in filming with the same actors over the course of 12 years.  Although in one respect, his movie is just another domestic drama, I believe it nudges viewers to ponder larger questions, such as the one posed by critic Matt Zoller Seitz:

Is the traditional domestic arrangement–a wife, a husband and kids living in the same house–really desirable for every person, and genuinely good for society, or does it inflict distress on those whose personalities and desires cannot function within it?

As runners-up in the film category, I chose City of God and Mad Max Fury Road. The Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles was hailed as a major new talent with the release of Cidade de Deus in 2002, a depiction of life in a Rio favela, as seen through the eyes of one of its residents; it reminded me in some ways of the Italian neorealist film experiments of the 1940s. Thirty years ago, I watched the first three Mad Max films, but only really cared for Mad Max II. But Mad Max IV did not disappoint, with its deeply feminist heroine and director George Miller’s frenzied vision of a post-apocalyptic world.

For books, I decided I would simply highlight the books I was surprised that I enjoyed or was moved by.  Insofar as I read a number of well-known or even classic works, one would expect them to be good or even outstanding, so these didn’t necessarily make my highly idiosyncratic list.  So even if this post is supposed to be “Best of,” the books list, alphabetically by title below, is not that.  I’m not sure there’s a common theme, though I did notice that six of the eight books are by women writers.

  • At Play in the Fields of the Lord by Peter Matthiessen – swashbuckling adventure set in the South American jungle with hallucinatory prose portraying missionaries and mercenaries at their destructive worst
  • The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt – probably my most conventional choice (Pulitzer Prize for the author, sales in the millions), though I became a fierce partisan not of the ostensible hero Theo but of Boris, the precocious outcast
  • Graceling by Kristin Cashore – fantasy novel with a girl assassin (yes!) who is a genuine heroine
  • Invisible Mountain by Carolina DeRobertis – three generations of women in turbulent Uruguay, of all places
  • The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri – fraught mother-daughter relationship in a Bengali-American family
  • Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox – another look at the struggle to decode Minoan Linear B, with a focus on Alice Kober instead of Arthur Evans and Michael Ventris
  • TransAlantic by Colum McCann – four generations of Irish-American women, Lily, Emily, Lottie, and Hannah
  • Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson – also a conventional choice I suppose (the author is a prize-winning journalist), but Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, George Starling, and Robert Foster tell compelling stories of their migrations out of the Jim Crow South into Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles

Click here for the complete lists.  Enjoy, and I welcome your comments.

Welsh Celebration of the Winter Solstice

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I was thrilled to attend a matinee performance of The Christmas Revels at Harvard’s Sanders Theatre today.  Although I lived in Boston for eight years during the 80s and worked at Harvard University for three of those years, this was my first Revels.  I sat in the orchestra section, next to the lighting control board and fairly near the stage, on those classic wooden seats, though I might have been able to see more if I had chosen a seat on the mezzanine level.  No matter — the space feels intimate and the acoustics are excellent.

As this is the 45th year that Revels has been in existence, it has its own history, which you can read about on their website.  The organization is best known for producing the Christmas Revels:

As in the very first year, all productions include traditional and ritual dances, processionals, carols and drama. Certain touchstone elements remain the same from year to year, but the settings, place and time change annually encompassing an ever-broadening range of cultures.

This year the theme was Christmas in Wales, which everyone agrees was an inspired choice, as Wales is an ancient nation, with a long tradition of poetry and dance.  The Welsh people love their traditional hymns and carols, their folk songs, their dances, their games and theatricals.  In the program, Artistic Director Paddy Swanson praises Musical Director George Emlen and Co-Author Susan Cooper for weaving these elements into an amazing tapestry of songs and stories.  The cast this afternoon included Master of Ceremonies David Coffin, professional players Cristi Catt, Emma Crane Jaster, Noni Lewis, and Billy Meleady, in addition to the Cardigan Chorus, the Caerphilly Children, the Towyn Teens, the Castell Emlyn Band, the Pinewoods Morris Men, and the Cambridge Symphonic Brass Ensemble.

Part 1 of the program included traditional Welsh melodies, hymns, poetry, dances, a children’s nonsense song, carols, and of course audience participation in three “All Sing” numbers.  After a short intermission, Part 2 included more carols, dances, folk songs, riddles, a play, more poetry, and we in the audience, together with the cast, again sang three numbers: a hymn, a round, and the Sussex Mummers’ Carol.

I must say that I would be hard-pressed to pick any favorites.  I did enjoy the dancing, especially the sword dance and the Morris dance which used the Shaker melody “Simple Gifts”; the Welsh red dragon battling the English white dragon was quite entertaining; and the dramatization of the myth of Taliesin was particularly fascinating (I found this synopsis from the BBC).  I suppose my favorite songs were the ones I knew best: Dona Nobis Pacem (“God Grant Us Peace”) and Llwyn Onn, which I learned in childhood as “The Ash Grove.”

My older niece sang in the chorus, so after the performance, the two of us made our way through the rainy but mild afternoon to the trendy Harvard Square Clover restaurant for a late lunch.  The food was delicious, and it was good to sit and relax and talk with her about the show.