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What is Survival? What is Failure? Those are the questions this film makes me ask myself. I had seen a film called “The Grey Zone” several years ago – which is also about the Sonderkkommando. So the concept and the basic story were familiar to me, in that respect. That movie had been disturbing and haunting enough. However, this film, while upsetting on most of the same levels, seemed somehow more jarring. In trying to figure out why I felt even more affected by “Son of Saul” I came to think it’s mainly due to the cinematography. I feel like the cinematography actually forms its own language in the gaps lefts by the lack of dialog and emotional display by the actors. In watching “Son of Saul” the thing that hit me immediately was the point of view of the camera. So much of the time the camera is held closely on the one character, and mostly from behind him. It gave me this feeling of standing beside him rather than watching a person performing for me. The choice of camera angle and ...

Ok, since I've been kind of neglecting my blog lately (Bad blogger!), I've decided to try something new here. Last semester I included book reviews and commentary for what I was reading in some of my classes. Since I'm taking a film class this semester, I've decided to share the commentary I'm writing for that class on here as well. Why not? They're all stories I'm experiencing in some fashion. They're all reactions and thoughts I'm having as a result. Who says I can review or comment on a book, but not a film? Not me ;-)

So this summer has gone to hell in a handbasket. I  had planned to get my "novella" (in quotes because of its awkward length), Fall On Landing out in June, but tomorrow starts Aug and it's not up yet. Part of the reason is because I tried to hire someone off Fiverr to do the cover, and it didn't work out. I had an idea, expressed in both writing and a sketch, but didn't trust my skills to do it myself. After that fail, I decided, despite not having done much painting since I was a teenager, to give it a go. What I created isn't quite the Old Masters epically nuanced version I had in my head, but I like it enough to use it. So, a couple weeks ago I finished it and ran it through the Canva site to make a cover. Now, I'm just trying to decide between two covers I made.  Anyone up for a poll? I feel one coming on 😉 I've decided to start two different series, and I had planned to get book one in each series at least written this summer. Now, I'm hoping...

In this final piece of Pineda’s puzzle she gives us the entire theatrical production, "Like Snow Melting in Water," which came from her previously described emptying and gathering processes. It was sparked by an article she ran across in the New York Times about a dying village in Japan. Apparently, she worked on it for 2 years and originally conceived of it as a novel, but she explained that it decided itself to be a work of the theatre instead. On the surface, someone outside this process might wonder how Pineda, with no particular tangible connection to Japan, could write something set there. But she does it, and she does it beautifully. And having followed her through her process as I have during this sometimes convoluted though always interesting journey, I can see clearly how her explanation makes sense. She says that she learned what it was to be a refugee first from her husband, and perhaps it was her contact with Katrina victims which reminded her of it, and that lif...

Pineda’s ‘gathering’ chapters are all about the epic destruction of Katrina. I come away from this reading feeling some sense of relief that many people are decent human beings who will help others in times of need, including Pineda herself. Pineda talks a lot about the strong sense of community in New Orleans before the hurricane and that during the hurricane the effected people were repeatedly “helping one another, sharing what they had.”  But the sense of relief at the humanity between individual people, gave way very quickly to disgust at the negligence of the organizations meant to help. Starting with the callous government officials who actually seem to have viewed Katrina as an opportunity to ‘clean up’ the “public housing” of New Orleans in favor of “urban renewal.” Rep. Richard Baker actually said as much, adding, “We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Apparently, they blew up the levees intentionally to sacrifice the poorer parts of town, in order to save the richer areas and ...

In the remainder of the “Emptying” segment of Three Tides, Chapter 2: Hip, Hip, But Not Hurrah, Chapter 3: Love and War, and Chapter 4: Summing Up; Pineda covers her battle with her HMO to receive treatment for her mystery ailment, the course of a new relationship against the backdrop of the upcoming war in Iraq, and a brief summation of her general feelings about the state of the world. Every time I read Pineda I am always struck by the poetic beauty of her word choices. She can write these amazingly constructed, evocative, insightful, impactful sentences which seem to want to stick with me forever, and I hope they do.   When she describes a glacial melt during an Alaskan cruise she says, “they yield up the air they may have held for hundreds of millennia.” And when she speaks of the return of romance in her life she describes love as, “momentary consolation for the enduring pain of living.” And even in describing people milling about while talking on their cellphones her sen...

In my creative writing class we read a selection from House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family and a Lost Middle East by Anthony Shadid. In Chapter 9 “ Mr. Chaya Appears”, we are treated to a vivid rendering of a time and place that doesn’t exist the same way anymore. Shadid says of it, “in the time of the Levant there was freedom to savor the worlds of others” and that it was “a realm where imagination, artistry, and craftsmanship were not only appreciated but given free reign.” The story told in the selection is a quest to locate antique floor tiles which are routinely being stripped from houses that are being demolished. The author goes through a long process of hunting down and haggling over the original tiles, including some more ‘back alley’ routes. Eventually though he must resort to buying some handmade reproductions to stretch his supply. I found the mixing of the original richly patterned antiques with the plainer reproductions to be a very smart and practical decision, b...