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MARGUERITE

4/26/2016

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1966 was the year Simon & Garfunkel released Sounds of Silence, The Mothers of Invention startled the music world with Help I’m a Rock, Brian Wilson began putting together “Good Vibrations”, and the Beatles were becoming more popular than Jesus. That same year Elva Connes Miller, a/k/a Mrs. Miller, hit the airwaves with her Greatest Hits: a collection of pop tunes ranging from “A Hard Day’s Night” and “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” to “Chim Chim Cher-ee” delivered in a warbling faux classical style, rarely in tune. Her album sold 250,000 copies in 3 weeks. She appeared on The Tonight Show, Ed Sullivan, Art Linkletter’s House Party, Laugh-In, and in the film The Cool Ones with Roddy MacDowell. Nearly 40 years later, the ultra nerdy William Hung achieved the same sort of unlikely popularity on American Idol with an enthusiastic and dreadfully out of tune rendition of Ricky Martin’s “She Bangs.” 
We all have a nagging little voice that tells us we might faking it, that we’re not really as competent as we pretend to be at doing what we are passionate about. The “fake police,” as singer Amanda Palmer calls them, are always waiting at our door . . .  READ MORE
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EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

4/26/2016

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Embrace of the Serpent, Colombia’s 2016 Academy Award entry for Best Foreign film is a fascinating hallucination, compellingly real and deeply mystical. Crosscutting stories set decades apart, the narrative revolves around two scientists exploring the Amazon River in search of rare and exotic plants. Their guide, Karamakate is played by Nilbio Torres (as the younger) and Antonio Bolivar (as the older). Clad only in wrapped loincloths, Torres and Bolivar exude an unshakable iconic presence, concrete projections of the forest primeval. Karamakate is a shaman, a healer, a philosopher and, he believes, the last survivor of his tribe. 
This is world where nature and dreams provide the most satisfying answers; logic and science are besides the elemental point. The scientists (fictional versions of Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evans Schultes) carry sketchbooks, cameras, navigational tools, and other supplies. They collect and archive; their prize catch is the rare and psychedelic Yakruna plant. This concern with material things and obsessive record keeping is time-wasting nonsense to Karamakate, who finds the truth in dreams, visions, and abandoning oneself to the ancient rhythms of nature and the sky. “Why do you whites like your stuff so much?” asks their mystified guide.  READ MORE
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KNIGHT OF CUPS

4/26/2016

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What do you give the man who has everything? Filmmaker Terrence Malick would give the guy a soul. Malick’s new film, Knight of Cups, features a haunted Christian Bale as Rick, a man who ponders his mid-life place in the universe as he drifts through L.A. streets, movie studios, elegant architectural spaces, wanders across deserts, and frolics on the beaches of Malibu. He is a successful screenwriter, but lacks inspiration and purpose. Rick’s ex-wife (Cate Blanchett) is a nurse who helps hard cases at a local clinic. A woman of cool beauty and modest integrity, she sees through Rick’s shallow surface. Meanwhile, he has had an affair with an alluring married woman (Natalie Portman) and has gotten her pregnant. In an attempt to do the right thing, he declares his love for her, but she’ll have none of it. He continues to party with prostitutes, cavort with nude dancers in  READ MORE
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Whisky Tango Foxtrot  - An Interview with author Kim Barker

4/26/2016

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Chances are that your first reaction to the new Tina Fey vehicle, Whisky Tango Foxtrot, will be confusion: laughs are scrambled in matters of life and death. But that is the proper mix. The book on which the film is based, The Taliban Shuffle is equally poised between comedy and tragedy. When the volume was first reviewed in 2011, the New York Times wrote that author Kim Barker “portrays herself as a kind of Tina Fey character.” That combination of intelligence and sex appeal is what makes Barker’s account of her experience as a journalist and single woman in Afghanistan so brave and distinctive. The NYTimes review caught the eyes of Fey, who optioned the rights to the book. The film opens tomorrow.
I spoke with Barker and asked her to compare her book with the film, which I had just seen. “It was surreal to find out that my story was going to be played by Tina Fey. I’d ask my friends. ‘Guess who is playing me in the movie: she’s smart and sexy. Immediately they’d say – ‘Tina Fey?’”  READ MORE
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A War

4/26/2016

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War may be hell or heroism, but it’s also duty, service, trauma, and confusion. Days that pass in uncertainly and tedium can suddenly explode into chaos and combat. In A War (nominated for a 2016 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film), director Tobias Lindholm uses Danish troops stationed in Afghanistan to tell a story of the existential despair of warfare where a soldier’s split second action can have far reaching moral consequences.
A battalion led by Commanding Officer Claus Michael Pedersen finds itself under under siege. Pederson makes a desperate effort to save the life of a severely wounded soldier by calling in air support. The elemental question is — did he have his eyes on the enemy before calling for support? The call has tragic consequences: ‘collateral damage.’ Pedersen is brought back from the field to be tried for unwarranted targeting of civilians. The story is told in two parts: there’s the day-by-day procedure and inevitable tedium of scouting for the Taliban and scenes of bone-rattling warfare; and the disturbing calm and professionalism of the Danish tribunal. A third plot touches on Pedersen’s wife and three children, who have patiently waited for him to fulfill his tour of duty. When he is sent home early because of the charges, what should have been a celebration becomes a legal and ethical tangle. “Did you kill children, daddy?” asks his daughter. Pedersen is a responsible officer, — his world is turned upside down.  READ MORE
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