A little something new from a longer work in progress, now at Fictionaut:
Backs in the grass, legs straight, bare feet resting at angles, Rachel and I, both of us seven, looked up through the oak limbs that made black lightning cracks across a blinding blue sky. Three hula hoops sat trapped in the trees’ sprawled grasp. I crossed my hands over my chest, feeling my voice buzz there when I said, “That one’s important.” I jutted a chin toward the pink hula hoop, bright pink with stripes, the one suspended furthest out on the limbs. One pink, one metallic green, one the color of a penny with silver glints.
“Why’s that one important?” Rachel asked, a dismissive chortling in her throat at the end of it. Her head shifted in the grass, her pale gaze angling for me. She made a longer line in the grass than I did. Her arms could spread out wider. Her fingernails scratched at the dried ground along the roots. “Why’s that one so important?”
“Because. That’s the last one you go through before you’re on another planet.” We thought if we stared hard enough, we could launch ourselves through the hoops and end up somewhere else. But it had to be through one and then the next. I’d explained this already, but Rachel was digging at the ground and staring me down instead of the hoops. Read more here.
I sat near the back with a program folded in my joined hands as composer Jerry Goldsmith took his position before the symphony to a polite flutter of applause. I wore the same dress I’d wear months later to my high school graduation. Ruffles on the cap sleeves, tiny cloth-covered buttons, narrow all the way down. An idea of adulthood I’d squeezed into too soon. Most likely I hadn’t told my friends I was here, but I would be clearing a special place amongst all the rock-concert ticket stubs in my scrapbook to add this one.
I’ve always had a thing for instrumental scores. My little sister and I used to sit in front of the television as our cassette player recorded opening themes straining through the little grate of speakers. As soon as the “stop” button clacked under my fingertip, we’d plan our accompanying dance routine. At our cousins’ house, we’d act out impromptu plays to Hatari’s “Baby Elephant Walk” or “Moon River” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. I knew the Somewhere in Time pieces so well my fingers could tap them out on a tabletop. In my mind, I was a virtuoso on piano. In reality, I plunked through selections from The Sting like someone struggling against a current.
But it wasn’t until Goldsmith’s white hair bounced in and out of his shirt collar in sync with the rhythm of his hands in a blur as Patton played that I considered the composer of a score instead of merely its respective film. It wasn’t until then that I made a point of learning who was who. Now when the names of the likes of Rachel Portman, James Newton Howard, or Michael Giachhino are read on Oscar night I pay attention with a restrained fervor befitting a narrow, button-up dress.
And the nominees are ….
Read more, including reviews of this years’ nominations for best original score, right here.
In celebration of its recent Oscar nominations, The Nervous Breakdown Associate Arts and Culture Editor Richard Cox and I take a closer look at Black Swan and ask the question: Can dark, artistic movies regularly overcome box-office staples like Little Fockers in Black Swan’s wake?
This one starts with a review of True Grit and ends with a short list of the best recent Westerns.
Although I like the way Joel and Ethan Coen try to circumvent the scandal of standing toe to toe with John Wayne’s ghost (might as well be Jesus) by emphasizing that their True Grit isn’t a remake but a literary adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, I’d like to take a crack at measuring the Coens’ 2010 effort against the 1969 True Grit anyway.
Ahem.
Here’s the big difference. The most riveting character in the 1969 version is John Wayne while the most riveting character in the 2010 version is Rooster Cogburn (played by Jeff Bridges). The Dude is a better actor than The Duke. There. I said it.
A few newish items to announce before they become oldish. First up, at the Our Stories blog I read the short story that was a runner up in their 2009 Emerging Writers contest and currently available in the Best of Our Stories anthology. Then at The Nervous Breakdown I discuss the recent smattering of sequels to ’80s action films with Simon Smithson, followed by a piece on Tron: Legacy with fellow sci-fi girl geek Gloria Harrison (surprise! we liked it).
So, while just about everyone else has moved on from “Lost,” I have been watching it all over again after getting the complete blu-ray set as a birthday present. Fortunately, a viewing in hindsight means I can watch without obsessing over the meaning of such things as the strange warble in the musical score or the placement of the Dharma canned apricots besides the vat of mayonnaise. But there was a time when the following imagined auction items could very well have been mine (inspired by the actual “Lost” auction held recently): “Lost” Fan’s Own “Lost” Auction Items, at The Big Jewel.
Two-dozen little shoe soles squeaked and squelched across the linoleum of the hallway. The teacher at our church school, leading the way, walked backwards for a few steps, winding the cord of her whistle around her finger. The whistle clacked against her rings. She pivoted to lead us into the library, and the squeaks turned to shuffling on the carpet in the dark. We could see the shapes of things we moved between – tables and shelves. We could see the projector and the screen, and with a click of sound the screen held a square of light and the square of light held our moving shadows. When we lowered to sit on a cleared space on the floor, there was a tingle at my fingertips that traveled all the way up my arm, across my chest, buzzing in my rib cage. A movie.
Last time, we’d watched a teeny tiny animated submarine chugging through the currents of somebody’s animated blood stream. The time before that, Ben Hur (anything featuring Charlton Heston in man-sandals was a winner here). And before that, a cartoon tooth demonstrating how to brush himself. It didn’t really matter to me what it was. I could be in class braiding the strips torn off the edges of spiral notebook pages or I could be sitting here watching the film threading through the projector and producing dark blips on the screen. I loved the blips and I loved the pop of sound coming on and I loved the rapid clacking of the reels as the film, whatever it was, began in earnest.
Today, it was something quite different, as the teacher with her hand overlapping the other in the projector stream had told us ….
