Recent Movie watching

Fargo (1996)
This is a delightfully strange movie from the Coen brothers. It's basically a police/crime drama, but looked at sideways. There's plotting and scheming, violent murders (the most gruesome of which is even based on a crime that took place not so far from my hometown), and clever detective work. But it all takes place in Minnesota and North Dakota in the middle of winter, the criminals are not so smart, and the detective is a heavily pregnant small town police chief. The humor is darkly off kilter and the scenery is flat, white, barren, and bleak. It's kind of the quintessential Coen brothers film, and I loved it.

Rare Exports (2010)
This Finnish film is an oddly fun mashup of horror and Christmas tales that draws on older legends about Santa and his helpers. I In the north of Finland, where the Sami people live, a mysterious company excavates a mountain they believe to be the resting place of Santa Claus. Two local boys have been spying on the operation, and it is the younger, Onni, who figures out that the Santa Claus the company has found is not the jolly guy with a red suit and white beard, but something more akin to Krampus. Onni eventually convinces the adults about what is going on and hatches a clever plan to not only save them from Santa Claus but also bring a lot of money to the town. It's surprisingly fun and just a bit twisted.


Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
This is the most recent Coen brothers movie, and it is one of their best. The film follows the title character, a struggling folk singer in 1961 Greenwich Village, through a week of his life. Mostly homeless, Llewyn gets by through crashing on friends' and acquaintances' couches, and singing and playing guitar at clubs and occasionally as a session player. There's not much of a real plot - it's really more of a close examination of the lives and characters of Llewyn, his friends and associates, and the early New York folk scene. There's also a look into the purposes of art and what art and the world demand of artists. Plus, there are lots of really great performances of beautiful songs.
Llewyn, portrayed wonderfully by Oscar Isaac, is not necessarily the most likable guy, but he is very interesting. And truly talented, even if he can't quite overcome the hurdles in his path, even if he placed some of those hurdles there himself. And the cast of characters who surround him are equally interesting, even if they are only on the screen for a few moments. I especially liked John Goodman's appearance as an odd jerk of a jazz musician - the Coen brothers really know how to write for him.
It's kind of hard to describe precisely what is so amazing about this film, but it all just works so well. It's surprisingly quiet, and very deliberately paced so that you can really pay attention to everything and so that everything means something. It left me with a lot to think about, and I find myself thinking about it a lot. I know I'll want to see it over and over again.

Book Review

Music and the Skillful Listener: American Women Compose the Natural World
by Denise Von Glahn

This book looks at 9 American composers active in the 20th century, all of whom are women and all of whom have written works based on or inspired by nature. von Glahn starts with Amy Beach and ends with Emily Doolittle, including composers both well known (Pauline Oliveros, Joan Tower) and less well known (Marion Bauer, Victoria Bond). Each chapter covers a single composer and focuses on a few selected works, mixing musical analysis, biography, and musicology to examine each composer's relationship with nature, how her works express this, and her place in the larger thread of women writing about nature.
von Glahn does a terrific job of weaving all her threads together, and making a very coherent picture that incorporates both the smallest individual details of a piece and larger themes about how women's access to nature, education, and the larger artistic world and the changes in these things have affected each composer and her work. It's a very carefully crafted book, and I found von Glahn's perspective and insights very interesting and illuminating. I especially liked the way she treated these women composers not as a minority but as just another subset of composers just as valid and worthy of study as any other, like "russian expatriate composers" or "German pianist-composers". Most importantly, this book introduced me to new music and gave me a different view of music and composing.