-
Flashback to the Golden Globes. Annette Benning took the Best Actress award over the much-more-deserving Julianne Moore, both nominated for the film The Kids Are All Right. I protested loudly to Jay, who said, "Jump on up there, honey. Go all Kanye on them."

Hee.

-

-
From Just Jared:



Kristen Stewart: 'Snow White' with Viggo Mortensen?


Kristen Stewart is in talks to play the title role in Rupert Sanders' Snow White and the Huntsman, according to Deadline.

Word is also circulating that Viggo Mortensen is up for the role of the Huntsman in the flick!

Kristen’s former The Runaways co-star Riley Keough was placed on the shortlist of ladies up for the role last month.

Charlize Theron is already confirmed to play the Evil Queen in the film!

-

You can't see the flakes in this pic, but they're coming down hard:

=

Best Picture:

Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Best Actress:
Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence,Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Best Actor:
Javier Bardem, Biutiful
Jeff Bridges, True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network
Colin Firth, The King's Speech
James Franco, 127 Hours

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams, The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech
Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit
Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

Best Supporting Actor:
Christian Bale, The Fighter
John Hawkes, Winter's Bone
Jeremy Renner, The Town
Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Best Director:
Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan
David O. Russell, The Fighter
Tom Hooper, The King's Speech
David Fincher, The Social Network
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, True Grit

Best Animated Feature:
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3

Best Screenplay:
Another Year
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech

Best Adapted Screenplay:
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

Best Foreign Film:
Biutiful
Dogtooth
In a Better World
Incendies
Outside the Law

Achievement in Cinematography:
Black Swan, Matthew Libatique
Inception, Wally Pfister
The King's Speech, Danny Cohen
The Social Network, Jeff Cronenweth
True Grit, Roger Deakins

Best Documentary Feature:
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Gasland
Inside Job
Restrepo
Waste Land

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Picture (Original Score):
How to Train Your Dragon, John Powell
Inception, Hans Zimmer
The King's Speech, Alexandre Desplat
127 Hours, A. R. Rahman
The Social Network, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

Achievement in Music Written for Motion Picture (Original Song):
Coming Home, from Country Strong
I See the Light, from Tangled
If I Rise, from 127 Hours
We Belong Together, from Toy Story 3

-

-
Well, let's be honest, it might be the day I went jetskiing in Ocean City, laughing my head off with my sister clutching my waist, or my wedding night, or that day in Venice. But it could conceivably be today too: fresh brewed coffee, easy chairs turned toward the fireplace, an absolutely roaring fire regularly stoked by my favorite person in the world, my handsome, fun, curious, loving husband, reading and stroking the dog on my lap, who every hour or so rotated between my chair, Jay's chair, and the little dog bed we nestled between our chairs.

-

-
Is there a better song title in all the world than this?

I bought a collection of B-sides and rarities by Sarah McLachlan because a friend had posted a video of her "Prayer of St. Francis" on Facebook. It's a kooky little collection, but the last few songs blew me away. There's an 11-minute techno song called Silence that I love, but it's her cover of Unchained Melody that really blew me away. It's dreamy, like you would expect from Sarah McLachlan, but also kind of atonal with the kind of sudden low jarring guitar plucks that I associate with 20th-century classical music.

-

-
I should add that the character I most identify with in I'd Know You Anywhere is the crazy prison lady, not because of her passion for convicts but for her propensity for driving around Baltimore silently screaming "What are you thinking? Can't you see how wrong you are??" to other drivers (and the world in general).
-

-
This is Laura Lippman's latest mystery/thriller, and it seems like it was a breakthrough novel for her. Although she's written maybe 10 novels previously, I heard people talking about this one a lot more, and I even saw her on the Craig Ferguson show. She was very smart and charming! Since it has been years since I read her first novel, Baltimore Blues, I thought I'd try this one. (Some slight spoilers are ahead, but nothing major.)

First of all, it's a treat to read a really good novel set in my own region. A lot of the action takes place within a ten-mile radius of my house in Columbia---Patapsco State Park, Route 40, the Fair Lanes bowling alley, Wilde Like High School, Ellicott City. When I started reading it, though, I almost gave up about a fourth of the way through. It was okay, but not great. And I probably would have stopped reading except that I'd just done the same thing with three other books and I decided I had to finish a book.

I'm really glad I kept reading.

First the bad:  The story is about a woman, Eliza, who was abducted as a teenager by a young man who murdered all his other victims. This abductor, Walter, is now on Death Row  and wants to correspond with Eliza. He's aided by a disturbed woman named Barbara who has become involved in the anti-death penalty movement and has gotten involved with several men in prison. Barbara confronts Eliza at her child's school and in her neighborhood, trying to secure her cooperation with Walter.

Eliza desperately wants to avoid the spotlight. She doesn't want her friends and acquaintances to know about her past, and she doesn't want her children to know until they are older.  And Eliza decides that the best way to avoid entanglement is to . . . engage him. She writes him a letter, and a correspondence begins. I can accept a plot that is based on one unbelievable turn, but the plot here required that she keep making the same iffy decision over and over again. After she writes, he wants to call her . . . so she has a phone installed with a dedicated number so that he can call without using the main family line. And then he wants to see her in person, and she complies. Lippman does provide reasons for her willingness to engage him: She thinks she might be able to get him to reveal the names and whereabouts of his other victims, and she also wants to know why she was the only one he let go. But these motivations are offset by her extreme desire for privacy and for not becoming part of his story again. This contradiction was a stumbling block for me, especially after reading The Gift of Fear by Gavin DeBecker and knowing what truly bad decisions these were.

Despite this issue, the characters were really well drawn. Lippman includes characters with every possible relationship to the crime:  the sister who resents the attention and accommodations the family makes for Eliza; the mother of Holly, Walter's last victim, who is a simmering pot of hatred for the world and Eliza alike; Peter, Eliza's husband, who is a good man and remains a good man throughout. It's rewarding to see a strong marriage portrayed as such. Usually in fiction and film, if a strong marriage is portrayed at all, it's shown as enduring despite some awful  defects (I'm talking to you, The Kids Are All Right). And Eliza is a quiet and accommodating character, something that others routinely interpret as spinelessness. But she knows the difference.

Most memorable were Walter and the mother of Holly. Walter for his chaotic mind. Holly's mother for her burning anger, the fallout from believing that she was right where she was supposed to be, at the top of the heap of luck and happiness, only to be gut-punched by fate. She's a spitfire of fury, but it's for the loss of a deeply beloved daughter. So it feels right and admirable in some way, though I wouldn't recommend it for the real world.
-

-

-
First, let me apologize for the sure-to-be-chaotic layout of this entry. I still don't know how to get photos to look right. But here goes.

Great fashion last night! With very few misses (January Jones, Christina Aguilera), IMO.

First, we have trends, both good

Green dresses:

and evil

Too-long bangs:

There were jewel tones:

And one-shouldered beauties:

Beautiful pinks, both sleek

and princessy:

Another trend: women being brave after a public breakup:

Eva Longoria looked sadder than I've ever seen her, and Scarlett Johanssen looked subdued as well. But that's okay; why not be real instead of trying to fake your way through the night. I respect them.

A special mention as well to Justin Bieber, who has cut his hair! Just a little, just enough to be more grownup. And his black-and-white tennis shoes actually worked with his nice tuxedo (memo to Depp and Co.: watch and learn from the Bieb; classic tux, great grooming, one quirky detail).

In fact, I liked the young style of this guy as well. I don't know who he is (except for his name, Kevin McHale), but he's pulling off a nice geek chic look.

Now my absolute favorites of the night:

Although the site I took this picture from obviously gave this Marc Jacobs dress a "miss," I love it because it's unusual without being wacky. Very few stars attempt bohemian chic and I wish more would (love you, Cameron Diaz!).

Jennifer Lawrence, edgy but still beautiful:

Jane Krakowski, love the color, love the sheen, love the shape:

Melissa Leo. Do you guys remember her from Homicide years ago? Can you believe this is the same person? Yowza.

Michelle Williams. Bear with me. I don't like her makeup, and I don't like her posture. But I love white and taupe, and again, it's unusual. She just needs more color in her makeup and accessories and maybe some self-tanner.

SWINTON!

Dapper hotties Rob Pattinson and Joseph Gordon-Levitt:

And now my two favorites of all.

Olivia Wilde may have single-handedly redeemed Marchesa for me. I love brown dresses, though you rarely see them. Her hair color is perfect, the proportions are perfect, and her accessory here (Our Robert) is perfect as well.

Hailee Steinfeld, from True Grit. This is young but not too young. The styling is perfect. And the dress is the kind I like best: clean lines but with an interesting texture.

-

-

Yowza. It doesn't get any better than this.

-

-
This was my dinner last night, a little short on protein but delicious nonetheless.

Pea Spread:

I boiled some peas, drained them, added butter, salt, pepper, and cumin.
Whipped it with my immersion blender, and then ate with pita chips.

Sauted Carrots:
Cut some carrots into the nicest, thinnest little matchsticks.
Sauted slowly in butter, then sprinkled in raisins, salt, pepper, and Chinese Five Spice Powder.
YUM.

-

-
I watched Two Lovers the other night, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix as troubled New York young people hitting the bars and trying to find happiness. I'm always struck by how great Joaquin Phoenix is; he has a quality of realism and particularity, the ability to create really specific characters, that is rare. And yet, this is the weird thing, he ultimately botched the role because he played the character so troubled and in a fog that he came across as slightly mentally deficient or mentally ill. It's odd that he can be so good in specific moments and yet the entire performance be off key. I didn't believe that either of the beautiful women in his life would be attracted to him, as hot and intense as individual scenes may have been.

I pulled out Chris Cornell's album Carry On this morning.  Several years ago I listened to this album every day for months and remember it with much affection. But when I put it on this morning and the strains of the first song began, I realized I had forgotten how GREAT it is.

I've dipped back into the romance genre again. I just recommended two books by Jo Goodman to my friend D: If His Kiss Is Wicked, and One Forbidden Evening. I want her to tell me if I'm crazy for thinking they're good.
-

-
Just saw this great Chilean movie on Netflix. The entire movie is two people having sex in a motel room and talking in between. It's an indie-type movie with lots of sex but lots of talking too and very good. The poster below makes it look cheesy but it's not.

-





-
One of the many wonderful things about the Internet is the flowering of smart girl culture in websites like Jezebel and The Hairpin.

That is all.
-

-
The heavens above bless you, AudBall, for delivering the news that Our Robert has been cast in the lead of David Cronenberg's next movie, an adaptation of a Don DeLillo novel. Cronenberg only works with the best; previous leads include Ralph Fiennes, Jeremy Irons, and Viggo Mortensen.

-

-
Here's another way to look at the dilemmas posed by The Edge of Never.

Extreme skiers talk candidly about the need to make decisions about risk with eyes open and with complete self-responsibility. But what if that's not possible for humans? Humans tend to believe that something bad will not happen unless it's happening NOW.

Example: I'm 40 lbs. overweight, which will likely lead to a heart attack or diabetes at some point. And yet, as I lift the brownie to my mouth, I am certain that no harm will come to me directly following its consumption. Same thing with smoking: you can smoke and smoke and smoke, and since you're not coughing up blood at the moment, the risks (of which you are aware and which are fairly certain) count for almost nothing.

"Yes," says the overweight, 70-year-old man mowing the lawn in 90-degree weather, "I do have some risk factors; but I'm not collapsing of heat stroke right NOW."

"Yes," says the college student having his 6th beer, "I could become an alcoholic and I could fail the class whose test is tomorrow. But I'm not failing NOW. NOW I'm just enjoying a beer."

So the equation for risk avoidance has at least two variables: imminence and certainty. I think about the skier who spoke to Kye Petersen before his run of his friendship with his father, the good times they had. This skier was killed on the slopes just a few months after shooting on the film had finished. If someone could have assured him that morning, "If you ski today, you WILL die," would he have stayed home that day? Yes, almost certainly. If earlier that month someone had said, "If you ski this month, you WILL die," would he have stopped for that month? Again, probably. If they had said, "If you continue to ski, you will die sometime in the next twenty years," would he have stopped skiing altogether?  Less certain.

I recently read a book called A Slip of the Knife, by Denise Mina, a mystery which starts off with a journalist being taken captive and thrown naked in the trunk of a car. As he's being driven away, his mind is turning over his options. He realizes that as soon as he's taken out of the trunk, he will have a moment, a second or two, where his captor will turn to shut the trunk, and that may be his only moment to act. So although he is blindfolded and naked, at that moment he will lunge in the direction of that body, as near as he can tell where it will be. It's human nature to wait and see, to hope that a better chance will come along, to see what happens. But, he says to himself, hope is the enemy of survival.

Hope---it's why Aron Ralston failed the first time he tried to cut off his own arm when he was trapped alone in the desert. He wasn't quite dying yet, and as long as he wasn't quite there, he couldn't do it, couldn't do what it would take to cut off his own arm. It was only several days later when death was not just a risk but what was happening NOW, as his systems started to shut down, that he could crack his bone apart and then saw through. It's also why the first three planes that went down on 9/11 went down without resistance. It was only the passengers on the fourth plane, the one that was delayed, who realized that there was no hope; there would be no negotiation, no ransom, no payoff for cooperation.

But the story of another skier gives me pause again: Stephane, the experienced guide, maybe in his fifties, who cracked his neck and several other bones accompanying Kye Petersen down the glacier. He was given a choice between imminent outcomes: no surgery would mean walking but not skiing; surgery would mean either skiing or paralysis. And for him, the difference between walking and paralysis was trivial. It was only the difference between skiing and not skiing that was statistically significant, so to speak. So he chose surgery. But maybe that's an older man's game.

-



This amazing documentary follows 15-year-old Kye Petersen to Chamonix, France, where he's prepared to ski down the glacier where his father, a superstar in the world of extreme skiing, died when Kye was only six years old. The director, a fellow pro skier, came up with the idea and approached Kye's mom about it. Kye's mom had kept him and his sister active in skiing and the ski community, and Kye was already a talented trick skier.

The filmmaker set Kye up with several experienced skiers---all of whom were close to his dad---to mentor him carefully before the run was attempted, about a week's worth of intense training all told. It was extraordinary to watch this kid interact with all these adults, with no friends or parents around him. He was the center of attention among the skiers of Chamonix, but Kye seemed humble and focused. When these titans of the field taught him, or even just talked to him, he listened carefully and responded with modesty and intelligence. At one point, one of the founders of extreme skiing, a man named Anselme, told Kye that his own son, just 24 years old, had recently been killed on the slopes. They were on the mountain themselves during this conversation, and Kye listened quietly and then said, "I'm sorry to hear that." A simple statement, but delivered with a maturity beyond his years.

It's hair-raising to watch Kye and his mentors go down the this mountain glacier in Chamonix. Some sports look easier than they really are (my nephew recently told my friend that he knew how to snowboard already---because he had played it on Wii!). But watching the footage of these guys on the mountain . . . it looks not just hard but impossible. Kye makes it down just fine, as do all his mentors, save one, the ultimate mountain guide Stephane, who breaks several bones and may never ski again. The doctors give Stephane two choices: skip surgery, and you will walk but never ski again; or try surgery, and you will either be completely healed or completely paralyzed. The closing shots of the movie show Stephane after surgery, flying down the mountains at Chamonix.

This is the kind of story that makes some people livid at the chances people take with their lives and, in this case, their children's lives. The skiing life is obviously incredibly rewarding. There's the beauty and the thrill of the activity itself, but also the culture and community around skiing. Even at 15 years old, you can tell that Kye is the beneficiary of a culture with incredible values: hard work, conscientiousness, love of nature, maturity, humaneness. He can carry on a conversation with adults, and those adults speak to him with respect and intelligence. They are not condescending, but they have a great sense of responsibility and protectiveness toward him. He in turn is able to be mentored, to accept instruction with attention. And in this amazing dynamic that flows back and forth between them, his mentors observe him with objectivity and generosity. They see when he's ready to go further, and show him the respect of honoring his growth, honoring his readiness.

Everyone told Kye that his father would be proud of him and would be so happy for his choices. But let's face it, Kye's dad is dead. Gone from the world before he was 35 years old. Anselme's handsome 24-year-old son is dead. And another friend of Kye's father, another handsome, dark-haired bundle of charisma who is seen talking to Kye before his run, is killed just a few months after filming. It's weird, really, to see people participating in this lifestyle that is almost certain to bring an early death. It's the closest thing to real-life Russian roulette that I've ever seen.

On the other hand, they are living extraordinary lives---that's the reward. It's wrong to reduce it to thrill-seeking or adrenaline rushes. The beauty and exhilaration that they live in, a kind of oxygen that is the atmosphere they exist in, and the camaraderie and goodness of the community they form . . . those things can't be dismissed. When you see them in this documentary, they seem almost irresistible.

 Kye at 19, a professional extreme skier:

-

-
As I was reviewing my 2010 reading over the weekend, I came across this novel by Richard Powers that I read a few years ago. I had completely forgotten about it, but the little excerpts I had copied made me want to read it again. Here's my description:


Galatea 2.2, by Richard Powers (1995)


Good novel about a novelist (named Rick Powers; there’s a lot of autobiography here—he mentions writing the real Powers’s Gold Bug Variations) who breaks up with his longtime girlfriend and is set adrift with a fellowship at the vaguely named Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences at his old alma mater. There he becomes entangled with a difficult AI (artificial intelligence) expert named Philip Lentz, who sets him to work on a Turing Test project—to help prepare a computer to take the English lit doctoral comps against a real human.

Powers is a good writer with interesting language, and his novel is a lot about communication: how reading the core English texts to the various versions of the computer (the last one called Helen; none are called Galatea 2.2, so I’m sure I’m missing some literary reference there) replaces how he used to read aloud to his girlfriend C., how the ultimate point of the experiment ends up being that Lentz has needed him for company and human companionship (Lentz’s wife Audrey has Alzheimer’s), etc.

Some nice writing: He speaks of listening to a piece of music: “We reached that ineffable clarinet, assembling, atop the reconciled chamber orchestra, the peace that the world cannot give.” About an Indian coworker: “He greeted me always, the epitome of cheer, with some gnomic well-wish that half the time I could not make out. When I could, I often doubted what I came up with. ‘Your luck, God willing, continues to be what you imagine it?’ Or, ‘I don’t even have you to ask about how the day isn’t going!’ By his own testimony, he was a native speaker. Either English had gone as plural as advertised, or, along with many other fellow Centerites, Dr. Gupta had replaced the standard version with a professional upgrade.” (This passage shows in particular how Powers enriches his literary language with computer language—which you wouldn’t think would be generally enriching but is with him.) The protagonist sends an unbelievably long novel to his publisher, expecting them to reject it for its length: “At best, they’d issue a desperate request that I change trajectories, free the skinny book hiding inside this sumo.” At the end he tells Helen “that after all this evolutionary time, we still woke up confused, knowing everything about our presence here except why.” And he mentions how humans “do the deity thing.”

It’s nice to see him tackle these subjects and also to see his generous attitude toward women; you feel through his writing his sympathy and fellow-feeling, rather than treating them like Others, an engima to be dealt with or a fantasy to be indulged. He wants to protect C., but their relationship falls apart because his desire to protect reveals a deep-set lack of confidence in her—that she needs protecting and bolstering. And that is damaging to her, although he means the best.
-

-

This novel of an older man living a quiet life in an English village is precisely what you would expect. The gently evolving plot, the village characters that range from an admirable stuffiness to a comic bossiness, the simple, lyric language, the way the relationships progress through quotidian yet pivotal crises, all are predictable with an exactitude that should have made the novel boring and unrewarding.

But the fine line between cookie cutter and classic is drawn with conscientiousness and talent. The author is working within a well-defined tradition---the cozy---but she executes it beautifully.  There is cleverness in the way she builds up the reader's admiration for the old-fashioned values and manners of the protagonist and then lets you (and him) glimpse a slightly ungenerous side to him that he has spent a lifetime trying to deny. Characters come on stage as one-dimensional and are slowly revealed to be more. Symbols and themes are artfully employed: a set of hunting guns passed down from a father, the importance of nature, the joy of spending one's day with a kindred soul, the blessing of company.

I'm not sure how much longer the cozy will serve authors. Even here, it strains belief that the Major thinks a "stern letter to the planning officer" will result in "the entire matter being resolved in an amicable manner between reasonable men"---when the matter at hand is a multimillion-dollar development deal. The type of reserve and adherence to tradition that's required to make the cozy work literarily will soon be anachronistic to even the oldest generations. But it's nice to see that, for now, it can still yield a novel as rewarding as this one.
-

-
to be this talented:

and this good looking:

(Photo by Sarah Shatz)

Curse you, Alexis Rockman.

The rest of you, catch his work at the National Museum of American Art as quickly as your utterly ordinary and non-spectacular selves can get you there.

-

Let's Start Out the New Year with Something Beautiful

-
Like two people who love each other and decide to build a life together:

Keith proposing to Janelle in Central Park last week.