Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

What I'm Working on in this Ski Chalet

I am in the vacation home of dear friends in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, writing. I'm working on two books. The first is a small collection of short stories about seniors/elders and their sexual and/or emotional lives. I plan to try to figure out how to self-publish by making my first stab with this short collection. But first I have to feel that the manuscript is all polished and shined.

I'm also working on memoir stories from the early days of the lesbian movement that were to be published by Sheba Feminist Press back in 1991. The manuscript was being edited when the wonderful publishing house went under. That was a pre-Internet period of consolidation in which all the big publishers were either buying up or burying the small houses. This collection has been sitting on my hard drive ever since and when I was in Oregon writing this September, I took a peek at it, got excited about it anew, and decided to revive it.

I always need readers to look at the stories when they are more or less ready. These readers should be able to say when there is an inconsistent storyline, an unconvincing character, or if something is just not all that riviting. Or, alternatively, that they quite enjoyed the piece. Or both. Let me know if you want to see something.

Whenever I have a semester break from teaching fitness to elders and dance to everyone, I try to find somewhere to hide and write. Luckily I have very generous friends with places in NH, the Cape, Vermont, Rockport, LA, Oregon, Tuscany and more. Without such dear friends, I would be in trouble.

I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Film Review: Anna Karenina

I long to see a flick that I will love, but Anna Karenina wasn’t it. The film was gorgeous, but thin. Despite having Tolstoy’s remarkable novel to work with, Tom Stoppard’s condensed screenplay and Joe Wright’s emphasis on place and space at the expense of character development didn’t work. Some reviewers objected to the film’s voluptuous semi-magical staging, but I actually thought that aspect of the movie was wonderful. The blurring of the boundary between stage and screen surged seamlessly.  I even enjoyed the grace of the made-up fantastical dancing at the ball.

The biggest problems were the wooden, unsympathetic characters – one and all. And in particular, Keira Knightley as Anna Karenina. Knightley is too much of a lightweight, too superficial in her performances, too skin deep, to be cast in the role of Anna. We need Liz Taylor. Penelope Cruz. Or Tatiana Samoilova (see photo), who starred in the 1967 Russian version. We need someone in whom the awakening of sexual desire is so ardent that it forces a 19th century woman of her class to risk everything for lust. Instead we have an actress whose most overused skill is the welling of the eyes and whose additional facial expressions range from a twisted upper lip to, ah, I’ll get back to you on that.

Her husband, played by Jude Law with all the pompous morality due Karenin, has a rather cramped arc of emotion in comparison with Trotsky’s Karenin, and her lover Vronksy, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson as a pretty boy, speaks very little and says next to nothing when he does. No one seethes. No one sizzles.

I am a 19th century lit girl and have read this novel many times. It clutches your crotch and clutches your heart and drags you up and down a bumpy emotional terrain. This film version has a most intricate, exquisite terrain, indeed, but little substantial or convincing emotion. The characters are like stick figures stuck onto an otherworldly canvas, ruining its potential and taking an awful long time – more than two dragging hours – to do so.

Very disappointing.

Here’s the trailer:
 

Somewhat Insufferable 12-12-12-Benefit Concert for Sandy

Here’s what I learned from the Benefit Concert for Sandy last night.

1. Ageing white male rockstars stick together.

2. Ageing white male rockstars and their producers (I’m talking to you Harvey Weinstein) don’t realize that there are musicians of color, women performers, and young people in the business with a strong connection to NJ and NY.

3. Ageing white male rockstars make a lot of noise but generally have crap politics.

4. Ageing white male rockstars and their producers like to show women victims of color: they just don’t want to share the stage with such types.

5. Bruce Springsteen is pretty damned cool. By opening the show with a heartfelt salute to the artists and gay people who gave new life to his adopted hometown Asbury Park, N.J, and to the inclusiveness which makes it a great place to live, he set a tone that was not to be seen again in the many excruciating hours to follow.

I didn’t watch the whole show (and missed dear Michael Stipes), so I need to ask: Was Alisha Keyes really the only woman to perform? Were she and Kanye West the only headliners of color (not counting Chris Rock introducing someone and Whoopi Goldberg working the phone bank, etc)? Where were the young stars? Did the show tip its hat to the Occupy Sandy activists who were the first to organize help on the ground? A friend has an additional question: Why call it a concert when it is a telethon?

And let me admit that I watched Mick Jagger’s whole performance (short compared to the others) and that is the most Jagger I’ve ever sat through, having never liked his lyrics or music. As his song progressed, I found myself laughing harder and harder at what seemed pretty crazed behavior. He is frenetic and twitchy, as skinny as a speed freak or cokehead, with a jerky strut and an eroded voice. His deeply lined face – as if a giant hand has squeezed it painfully – hasn’t changed much since the start of his career. He did have one of the best lines of the night: "This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden."

And I’ll give the concert credit for raising dosh for the Robin Hood Foundation – and not the tired Red Cross or the homophobic Salvation Army. At least the Robin Hood Foundation passes out the money to a range of community groups, giving the dollars a better chance of actually helping the locals.

Finally, there was a bizarre style of censorship in play. Instead of just bleeping Adam Sandler and others who employed everyday swearing, the producers used a kind of blurring of the sound and image that had half of America fiddling with their remotes and checking out the holiday sale prices of new TVs. My questions to them: Why are you censoring this stuff in the first place? And if you’re going to screw with the sound/view, could you let us know that you’re doing it?

Sigh.

Film Review: Lincoln

And the most boring film of the century? Lincoln! No, not of the century, as that’s much too short. Let’s just say, the most boring film since the day I was born. Let’s add some adjectives: would “excruciatingly ponderous” be too much of an understatement?

Frankly, I didn’t know there were so many look-alike white men in the world of cinema. All droning on and on in an historical drama that was bereft of drama and, I suspect, lacking in a bit of historical accuracy as well.

Black people were “allowed” to sandwich this dreary film – as if they had played just the smallest bit part in achieving the 13th amendment. At the start, two African-American soldiers chat with Lincoln, establishing Lincoln as a sweetie; at the end, his black valet stares at his back as Lincoln sets out for an evening of getting killed. In between it is white men screaming at each other, hating on each other, manipulating each other in the legislature. I could have saved myself a few bob by staying home and turning on C-Span (live coverage of the Congress).

The music was dirge-like from start to finish, making the tedious experience feel even more sodden. Somehow it seemed like Lincoln was playing Daniel Day Lewis, not the other way around. In any case, Daniel Day Lewis appeared to be sporting a hump prosthesis. The press has already lauded him for being able to speak in Lincoln’s high squeaky voice: I was sorry he kept it up so well as the grating noise interrupted my nap. The only woman in the film who featured for more than a second or two was Lincoln’s wife. The role was given to Sally Field for her experience in crying for the camera and in looking bummed out.

What with all the big guns involved, you’d think we’d get at least a bit of entertainment instead of these ugly men fighting over the end of the civil war vs. the end of slavery. Steven Spielberg directed, but perhaps he was on Quaaludes or something; Tony Kushner based his monotonous screenplay on a book by Doris Kearns Goodwin; and the 5-Oscar winning composer John Williams honed “dreary” to perfection.

And now to defend myself. I had gone to the movie house with the intention of seeing Anna Karenina but the heat wasn’t working in that viewing room and Lincoln was starting in another room right at the same time. I saw it by accident – the kind of accident there isn’t insurance for. I am 65 years old and Spielberg wasted about four hours (counting travel) of my ever-shortening life. I’m not angry: I’m furious.