Falling in Love with “Brooklyn”

It’s been a long time since I fell in love with a movie, 34 years to be exact, and the movie was the Oscar Award-winning Chariots of Fire. Based on real events and people, it was a film that told a story, yes, but a story that swept you up in its characters, a group of young men who reached for something beyond themselves.

And now I’ve fallen in love with 2015’s Brooklyn.

I didn’t think film producers made movies like this anymore. Brooklyn is a love story, a coming-of-age story, an immigrant’s story, and the story of a young woman who’s making her world in the world. If it included a subtle or not-so-subtle political or social message, a feature of many movies today that tends to make them something less than what they could be, then I missed it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Emory Cohen and Saorise Ronan in a scene from Brooklyn.

Travis Thrasher’s “The Remaining”

Last September, a movie about the Rapture – the “taking up” of believing Christians prior to the end times described in the Biblical book of Revelation – was released in theaters. Reception of the movie was so-so, and it seems to have disappeared rather quickly. After all of the “Left Behind” books by Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins (with Nicholas Cage in the movie), perhaps there’s nothing left to the imagination about the Rapture and its aftermath.

The movie script for “The Remaining” was “novelized,” and Travis Thrasher was the author who wrote the book, published under the same title. I normally don’t read novelizations, but I’ve read one of Thrasher’s before, “Home Run,” and he writes good stuff, even if he has to work from rather weak scripts.

The book is profoundly disturbing. Perhaps it’s meant to be. But my response to it has lingered for days after finishing it.

The story filters the Rapture through that most commonplace of events – a wedding. Six friends have come together for the wedding of two them in Wilmington, North Carolina. They’re all from the area; they’ve all gone to school together. A year before the wedding, one of them, Lauren, had a series of horrific visions and dreams about her friends dying. But the visions had faded, and this is a joyful event for the couple getting married, Dan and Skylar.

The entire book is set in roughly a 24-hour time period.

It’s during the wedding reception that the Rapture happens, except the believing Christians aren’t “taken up” bodily. They simply drop dead, and it is their souls that are taken up. Lauren is the only one of the six who dies on the spot.

Travis Thrasher

Chaos ensues. Explosions, plane crashes, trumpets sounding, fires, a ferocious hailstorm. Then comes the attacks by something – reptiles? Demons? It’s hard to see them clearly at night, but they’re attacking anything connected to faith, like church buildings, and anyone who is gaining faith as a result of the unfolding events. As events progress, the five remaining friends learn that this isn’t just happening in Wilmington but all around the world. Civilization as they’ve known it for all of their young lives had suddenly and horrifically come to an end.

Thrasher uses short chapters, and tight (and tense) writing to build the suspense and, yes, the horror. At times it’s difficult to keep reading, because it seems that all hope has been removed, and judgment is at hand. Telling the story through a wedding (taken from the movie script) somehow makes the narrative both terrible and compelling.

The effects of The Remaining still linger in the mind, though. And the heart. Thrasher has once again told a good, if horrible, story.

Top photograph: A scene from the movie by Affirm Pictures, a unit of Sony Pictures.

Travis Thrasher’s “Home Run”

I usually resist reading novelizations of movies. Often hurriedly written, based completely on a movie script, novelizations are often marked by poor writing and a story less than satisfying than the movie itself. I particularly resist novelizations of movies I haven’t heard of, or that I’ve heard of but haven’t seen.

Home Run by Travis Thrasher is a bad example of the point I’m trying to make. I hadn’t seen or heard of the movie. And it’s ostensibly about baseball; I’m not a fan of sports novels. But I read this book. And I read simply because of the author who wrote it.

Chicago-based Thrasher is a fine writer. I’ve read nearly all of his books. Sky Blue (2007) is one of my favorite novels (I’ve read it twice, and it gets better the second time.) He’s written across a number of fiction genres, and does all of them very well indeed.

So I trusted the author and read Home Run, based on the script for the movie of the same name. And I met a hero who’s one of the most despicable human beings you’re likely to come across.

Corey Brand plays baseball for the Denver Grizzlies. If there’s one thing Corey knows how to do, it’s hit home runs. It may be the only admirable thing about him. Arrogant, unfeeling, uncaring, disconnected from his brother and his family. Drives fast cars, and drives them fast. Endless streams of women.

And alcohol. Corey Brand has a serious substance abuse problem. He’s in a hitting slump, and it’s contract renewal time.

Travis Thrasher

His agent packs him off to Okmulgee, Oklahoma, his home town. He has to spend eight weeks in a rehab program. Even before he arrives in town, he totals his rental car and injures his brother in the process.

And in his hometown, Corey has to face and confront his past, including the dead father who’s verbal abuse drove Corey away and shaped him into what he’s become, good and bad. And he has to face and confront the girlfriend he left behind, the girlfriend who was pregnant.

Like I said, a pretty despicable human being.

But Thrasher tells a good story. He’s not content simply to pull from a movie script. He ads depth to the characters. He adds depth to the story. And what could have been just another thin novelization becomes a story worth telling and a story worth reading, about how a man learns forgiveness and finds redemption.

I was right to trust my gut about a Travis Thrasher story.

Here’s the official trailer for the movie (which I still haven’t seen, and I may not since I don’t want it to run the chance of it ruining the novelization).

 

Mr. Turner: The Movie That’s a Painting

When we visited London in 2012, one of our “sights” was the Tate Britain, and one of our “sights” at the Tate Britain was the collection of paintings by J.M.W. Turner (1775 to 1851), the British artist who changed landscape painting forever. You see his paintings and you think Impressionism, you think contemporary art. You don’t think the first half of the 19^th century.

Last fall, when we returned to London, we saw a special exhibition at the Tate Britain – Late Turner: Painting Set Free, which focused on his work from the latter part of his life. It’s a wonderful exhibition, and it’s still on through Jan. 25. Of all the paintings in the show, the one that appealed to me most was the watercolor pictured above – The Blue Rigi, Sunrise.

Last night we went to see Mr. Turner, the movie by Mike Leigh (he also wrote the screenplay). The movie, starring Timothy Spall in the title role, is almost “ekphrastic” – a film (or work of art) about another work of art. In many respects, watching the movie is like watching Turner’s paintings. From what I’ve read of Turner’s life and art, Spall captures the man almost exactly. Turner was not without controversy, some of it well deserved, and Spall plays the artist very well indeed. If you’re interested in Turner, his art, or early Victorian Britain, it’s a movie to see.

Here’s the movie’s trailer:

If you’re interested in reading about Turner, four books I’d recommend are:

Turner by Michael Bockemuhl (1991, republished in 2007)

J.M.W. Turner: The Man Who Set Painting on Fire by Olivier Meslay (2005; reprinted in 2011).

Turner by Peter Ackroyd (2006) (Ackroyd has written about virtually everything else in British history, and he does well with Turner and his art.)

J.M.W.Turner: Painting Set Free (2014) – the book that accompanies the exhibition at the Tate Britain.

Painting: The Blue Rigi, Sunrise, watercolor on paper by J.M.W. Turner (1842), Tate Britain, London.

Sunshine on Leith

A friend sent the link to the YouTube video. The song – “500 Miles,” originally recorded by The Proclaimers  – was sung in the 2013 movie Sunshine on Leith. It’s the story of two Scottish soldiers who return home after a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Leith is a part of Edinburgh.

Yes, it’s sentimental. It’s part music, part dancing, part lyrics, and part flash mob. I love to watch it.

Saturday Good Reads: The Book Thief

This week, we saw The Book Thief, a movie set in Nazi Germany shortly before and during World War II. It’s the story of a young girl whose parents are communists; she’s sent to live with a couple in Stuttgart (played by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson). At one point, the family takes in and hides a young Jewish man.

It’s a wonderful movie, based on the novel of the same name by Markus Zusak and first published in 2007. It’s about friendship, love, growing up, books, reading and writing, all framed within the context of Nazi Germany at war. Sophie Nelisse as the young Liesl is a wonder. Through her eyes, you see that beauty can flower anywhere.

Photo (top) credit: kernelscorner