Destination:  Anchorage, Barrow, and Fort Richardson, Alaska

Movie: Big Miracle (NEW 2012), Directed by Ken Kwapis

Review by Jane Boursaw

Reel Rating*: 4 out of 5 Reels

There’s something really compelling about whales. Is it their size and power? The fact that they swim in the ocean underneath our tiny boats? Or the fact that even though they could wipe out a small town with one swipe of a flipper, maybe they’re not so different from us after all.

Whatever the reason, any time a whale pops up in a movie, I’m so there. In Big Miracle, we get not one, but three whales, along with the incredibly adorable Drew Barrymore and John Krasinski. It’s almost too much cuteness for one movie, but there you have it.

John Krasinki and Drew Barrymore

Based on the book by Thomas Rose, Big Miracle tells the real-life story that happened back in 1988. John Krasinski plays Adam Carlson, a news reporter covering stories in the tiny town of Barrow, Alaska. When he inadvertently discovers a family of three gray whales trapped in the icy waters off shore, he realizes this could be the big story that gets him out of the sticks and into a cushy job in the Lower 48.

Adam’s story gets picked up by the national press, attracting the attention of everyone from Tom Brokaw to a White House staffer in Pres. Reagan’s administration to ex-girlfriend Rachel Kramer, a Greenpeace activist who immediately flies to Barrow to help organize efforts to get the whales back to open sea.

Rescuing the whales in Big Miracle

It also attracts the attention of oil baron J.W. McGraw (Ted Danson), who sees the situation as a way to bring environmentalists onboard with his Arctic oil-drilling efforts, and Jill Jerard (Kristen Bell), an ambitious Los Angeles reporter looking for a scoop.

There’s no doubt this movie has a lot going on; stories focused on saving the whales; oil-drilling in the Arctic; a culture clash with the whale-harvesting Inuit tribes; push-pull between a National Guard officer (Dermot Mulroney) and Pres. Reagan; and the fact that the U.S. government asks the Soviet Union for help in freeing the whales. By the way, did Pres. Reagan actually call Mikhail Gorbachev “Gorby”? No idea, but I guess the scene where he calls him on the phone is played for laughs.

Somehow, though, it all works, probably because this story really happened back in 1988, and we see evidence of that when archival footage plays as the end credits roll. Plus, if you were around in the 1980s, you’ll get a kick out of the shout-outs to Walkmans, Def Leppard, big hair and shoulder pads. It was also filmed on location in Anchorage, Barrow, and Fort Richardson, Alaska.

Most of all, though, Big Miracle is an entertaining, educational family movie that both kids and adults will like – especially if you have a thing for whales and movies shot in snowy locations.

*JANE’S REEL RATING SYSTEM:

One Reel – Even the Force can’t save it.

Two Reels – Coulda been a contender

Three Reels – Something to talk about.

Four Reels – You want the truth? Great flick!

Five Reels – Wow! The stuff dreams are made of.

Jane Boursaw is a family entertainment writer specializing in movies and TV. She contributes monthly articles about movies at Wednesday Matinee at A Traveler’s Library. Visit her at ReelLifeWithJane; follow her on Twitter; become a friend on Facebook; email jboursaw@charter.net.

Disclaimers: There is a link to Amazon in this post to the book the movie is based on. Reel Life With Jane is an affiliate, and therefore if you use that convenient link and buy anything at all while you are there, Reel Life will earn a few cents. Thanks for supporting our work! Photos are provided by Universal Pictures.

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The Governor's Palace, Palermo, Sicily

Movie: The Leopard (1963), Starring Bert Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale and Alain Delon

John Keahey,the author of Seeking Sicily, calls the book, The Leopard, (not to be confused with Jo Nesbo’s latest mystery by the same name) a blockbuster and essential reading to understand Sicily. Although I’d like to read the book (1956) some day, I cheated and watched the movie, made in 1963.

You see, I’ll watch just about any movie with Burt Lancaster  (1913-1994). I love the way he moves. I love his sense of power and the feeling you get that he has a secret. From his sexy days on the beach with Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity, to his  dramatic role in Come Back Little Sheba , to his old man role on the boardwalk of Atlantic City , he was a gem of a movie star. This article lists the incredible Lancaster films, in case you’ve missed them. And, getting back to the subject at hand–Lancaster plays the Prince who represents the sinking aristocrat based on the book author’s own grandfather.

I also ordered up The Leopard  from Netflix because of Keahey’s recommendation of The Leopard and because I love movies that convey the history of a place I want to visit. I love movies with beautiful scenery and an authentic portrayal of a culture. And from what I read, it appears that the movie is fairly true to the book. The book relates the story of the mid-1800′s in Sicily, a time of upheaval for the aristocracy, who had been loyal to the Bourbon royalty. However, the movement for a united Italy headed by Garibaldi appealed to them until they decided they would be better off under an Italian King than a democratic Italy, and went with the first King of a United Italy.

The settings are grand–palaces on ancestral estates in Southwest Sicily. And the narrow hilly streets of the towns are appealing, but I could not help feeling that movie was almost too true to the original New York Times travel article, I realized just how good a guide to Sicily the movie actually is.

I could not help feeling that the movie stuck too close to the book. Most of the film moves along at a stately pace, but the last 40 minutes takes place at a ball where all is character development, and nothing moves the plot forward. My feeling is not shared by a lot of eminent critics and you can read what Roger Ebert had to say about The Leopard in 2003.

The political tugs and pulls on the Prince and the buffoonish Mayor (although not made clear in the movie, he’s a Mafia member, and a fairly typical one according to the author we discuss on Friday) definitely are fascinating. You will come away from this book, or the movie understanding a good deal more about the historic politics of Sicily than you knew before.

In the conversation most representative of the Sicilian character, the Prince is asked to run for the Senate in the newly unified Italy. He refuses, explaining that

“Too many things have been done without Sicilians being consulted for you to be able now–to ask a member of the old governing class to help develop things and carry them through...” Sicilians, he says, only want to sleep.  “…they will always hate anyone who tries to wake them, even in order to bring the most wonderful gifts; and I must say, between ourselves, I have  strong doubts whether the new Kingdom will have many gifts for us in its luggage.”

Yes, despite the fact that it may seem a bit slow for the modern audience, the film is still gorgeous and enticing to the traveler to Sicily. I’d say add it to your traveler’s library, unless you’d rather read the book.

Have you been to Sicily?  Did you get a feeling of the complexity of their history?

The Giveaway prize today goes to one person who comments, subscribes, tweets or mentions us on Google+. It is a copy of Lights, Camera, Travel, a Lonely Planet collection of essays by people in the movie industry about places where they filmed. It is an interesting and varied collection. The “varied” is why I have not reviewed it. I prefer books all about one destination. (You can comment on this post or on an earlier post. Just do it before Thursday Jan.26, 3:00 a.m. MST. If you already subscribe by e-mail and want an extra entry as a subscriber, be sure to tell me that in the comments. See complete rules here.)

Disclaimer: The photo at the top comes from Flickr and is used under Creative Commons license. Please click on the photo to learn more about the photographer. The movie trailer comes from You Tube.

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Wednesday Matinee

Destinations: France, England, Hawaii

Movies: The Descendants, Hugo, and War Horses

Reviews by Jane Boursaw

If there’s one thing we can count on around the holidays, it’s lots of great movies with fabulous locations. Let’s take a look at a few movies that had me going, “Wow, I have to include this in my Wednesday Matinee column at A Traveler’s Library!”

Hugo, the Movie

Hugo (Directed by Martin Scorsese; 126 min.; rated PG for mild thematic material, some action/peril and smoking; 5 out of 5 Reels). Only the master of film himself, Martin Scorsese, could make a family movie that involves the history of filmmaking. The reason it works as a family movie is because Scorsese slyly blends the history of filmmaking with a very human story about loss, hope and new beginnings.

And yes, the best movies start with a great story, so it helps that this one is based on Brian Selznick’s Caldecott-winning novel, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It tells the story of Hugo (Asa Butterfield), a 12-year-old orphan living within the walls of a Paris train station in the 1930s. He’s a good boy who’s trying to make the best of things after losing his dad (Jude Law) in a tragic fire and being sent to live with his drunken Uncle Claude (Ray Winstone) who keeps the clocks running at the station.

After his uncle abandons him, Hugo continues caring for the clocks and survives by swiping scones from vendor carts and dodging the stern Station Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) who stomps around with his leg brace and scary Doberman. But Hugo’s real passion is his beloved automaton, and he steals parts to fix the mechanical man his dad rescued from museum archives before his death.

Hugo is not only a beautiful story about a time in France’s post-war history when movies were melted down to make shoe heels, but the attention to 1930s-era detail is magnificent. There’s the fairy tale train station that bustles with activity. The complex inner workings of the massive clocks. Bakery carts filled with warm scones and buns. Wooden armoires with ornate carvings. Wise librarians who love books. And women in knitted berets selling flowers. The whole movie has a Dickensian feel to it.

Where You’ll Want to Travel:

• La Sorbonne, Paris 5, Paris, France
• Peterborough Train Station, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England
• Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington, London, England

2. War Horse (Directed by Steven Spielberg; 146 min.; rated PG-13 for intense sequences of war violence; 4 out of 5 Reels). If you’ve seen enough Steven Spielberg movies, you can almost spot one at a glance. Lush production with authentic locations, attention to the smallest detail, gorgeous cinematography by longtime collaborator Janusz Kaminski, epic score by John Williams, well-cast actors and believable dialogue. War Horse has all that and more, set against the backdrop of World War I in rural England.

Based on a 1982 children’s novel by Michael Morpurgo and a 2007 stage adaptation, the story begins with English teenager Albert Narracott (Jeremy Irvine) watching the birth of a beautiful colt near his rural farm. Despite his best efforts to get the colt to warm up to him, it doesn’t happen, and the young horse is sent off to auction.

Cut to the auction site, and Albert’s father Ted (Peter Mullan) gets caught up in a bidding war against his curmudgeonly landlord Mr. Lyons (David Thewlis). Even though what Ted really needs is a sturdy plow horse, he ends up using the family’s rent money to outbid Lyons on the young Thoroughbred, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering wife Rose (Emily Watson).

But Albert is thrilled and agrees to train “Joey” to pull a farm plow so the family can plant turnips and pay the rent after the fall harvest. But when a rainstorm damages the crop, Ted is forced to do the unthinkable – go behind Albert’s back and sell Joey to a cavalry officer, Captain Nicholls (Tom Hiddleston), who promises to look after the horse and, if possible, return him to Albert’s care after the war.

But Joey’s journey takes some unexpected turns, as we follow him through a misguided battle, on the run with two young German soldiers, in the care of a French farm girl, pulling heavy artillery up a hill for the German army, and smack in the middle of a battlefield in 1918, where a small moment in the midst of war gives hope that perhaps two opposing armies can work together.

Spielberg doesn’t gloss over the horrors of war. We see muddy battlefields strewn with dead humans and horses, a German gas attack that takes soldiers by surprise, and horses that are shot after they collapse from exhaustion. It’s hard to watch, and I don’t recommend it for kids younger than 14 or anyone who gets squeamish about war scenes and brutality against animals.

I love how the story follows Joey’s journey through several people, but circles back around to Albert, who enlists in the army as soon as he’s old enough, with the hope that he’ll find his beloved horse again. Both Joey and Albert are noble, brave and don’t shirk from their duties and responsibilities.

Where You’ll Want to Travel:

• Bourne Woods, Farnham, Surrey, England
• Castle Combe, Wiltshire, England
• Dartmoor, Devon, England
• Devon, England
• Luton Hoo Estate, Luton, Bedfordshire, England
• Meavy, Devon, England
• Wisley Airfield, Wisley, Surrey, England

3. The Descendants(Directed by Alexander Payne; 115 min.; rated R for language, including some sexual references; 5 out of 5 Reels). On screen or off, George Clooney always has that trademark suave air about him. He’s a debonair ringleader who organizes big casino heists (Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen),  a smooth talker who flies around the country firing people (Up in the Air), an escaped convict searching for hidden treasure (O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Never a hair out of place, especially in that last movie. Remember his penchant for Dapper Dan hair cream?

Scene from The Descendants

But The Descendants offers a different view of Mr. Clooney — a vulnerable father of two who’s piecing life back together while his wife lies comatose in a hospital bed following a boating accident. Clooney’s character, Matt King, has always been “the back-up parent,” the one who’s never around long enough to know what kind of ice cream his youngest daughter Scottie (Amara Miller) likes, or what his teenager Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) does while away at boarding school.

And it’s just the sort of role that will turn Clooney into a true movie star, not just another pretty face among the Brad Pitts and Matt Damons of Hollywood, not just the guy who always takes the big, high-profile roles. Or maybe The Descendants IS Clooney’s high-profile role in its regular-guy simplicity.

You can tell he’s sort of been heading that way in the past few years, reaching out for different types of roles. In The American, he played a cold-hearted killer (did anyone like him in that role? I didn’t). And in The Ides of March, Governor Mike Morris may have been eloquent on the surface, but he was swimming an ocean of dirty politics.

But I’m not sure how much of an argument I can make here, considering that Clooney’s movie career started out with gigs on The Facts of Life, Baby Talk and Roseanne. I guess he’s been a renaissance man from the start, willing to try anything to further his craft.

The Descendants is a superb movie. As a bonus, we get to see the lush Hawaiian islands of O’ahu and Kaua’i, where it was filmed (there’s a subplot about Clooney’s family selling off a huge piece of prime real estate). And if you’re worried about bawling your eyes out, I can tell you that I usually find something to cry about in every movie, but this one didn’t strike me that way. Part of it’s because we never really get to know Matt’s wife, played by Patricia Hastie, who spends most of the movie in a coma.

The Descendants also has enough humor to keep it from getting too maudlin. Shailene Woodley is wonderful as Matt’s older daughter. Finally, she gets a chance to shine beyond her one-note character on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. Amara Miller is just as wonderful as Matt’s younger daughter. They seem like a real family you’d know from the neighborhood.

And special mention must be made of Nick Krause, who plays Alexandra’s friend Sid. He turned what could have been a clichéd teenage-slacker role into something much more meaningful. There are no stereotypes in The Descendants. Everyone seems like a real person, doing the best they can with the circumstances they’re given.

Where You’ll Want to Travel:

• Honolulu, O’ahu, Hawaii
• Kaua’i, Hawaii

Jane Boursaw is a family entertainment writer specializing in movies and TV. Visit her at ReelLifeWithJane or email jboursaw@charter.net.

Today’s prize to one person who comments, subscribes, tweets or mentions us on Google+ is a copy of Casablanca, 85th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition. Tons of bonus features, including Exclusive Passport Holder and Luggage Tag; 48-Page Photo Book; 10 One-Sheet Reproduction Cards; and Archival Correspondence.  Is that an incredible prize, or what?? (You can comment on this post or on an earlier post. Just do it before Thursday, January 12, 3:00 a.m. MST. If you already subscribe by e-mail and want an extra entry as a subscriber, be sure to tell me that in the comments. See complete rules here.) 

Thank you Jane for introducing these three movies and for offering the DVD set of Casablanca for one VERY lucky reader of A Traveler’s Library.

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Destination: Spain

Movie: The Way (NEW) Starring Martin Sheen,directed by Sheen’s son Emilio Estevez

By Jane Boursaw

Clearly, I live a sheltered life. I’d never even heard of the Camino de Santiago until watching The Way, a lovely film about a man whose life takes an interesting turn when he goes to Europe to collect the remains of his son.

The Trail

But first, a little background. The Camino de Santiago,  known in English as The Way of St. James, is a journey that begins on one’s own doorstep and continues 800 kilometers along the border of France and Spain, ending in the city of Santiago de Compostela, where St. James is buried. The city is now a World Heritage site.

You can read more about the Camino de Santiago here at the movie site, including the personal reasons why Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez wanted to make this movie. But to summarize, the journey has been in existence for a thousand years, and thousands of travelers, a.k.a. pilgrims, make the trip each year across Europe to Santiago de Compostela. Most travel by foot, some by bicycle, and some by horseback or donkey, just as their medieval counterparts did. Some do it for religious reasons or spiritual enlightenment, while others do it for health, travel or historical pursuits. Whatever the reason, it sounds like a great way to escape the rat race we all seem to be on.

Written, directed and produced by Emilio Estevez (whom I’ll always think of as the quirky kid in 1984′s Repo Man), The Way is based on a book by Jack Hitt titled  Off The Road: A Modern-Day Walk Down the Pilgrim’s Route into Spain.

The story begins with Tom (Martin Sheen), an American eye doctor with a successful practice in California, receiving a phone call from Europe. His wayfaring son, Daniel (played by Estevez), has died during a Pyrenees storm while walking the Camino de Santiago. Tom has the grim task of going to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to collect the remains of his son, with whom his relationship has been strained.

But once Tom gets there, he decides to embark on the pilgrimage himself to honor his son’s desire to finish the journey. What Tom doesn’t realize is that he’s on a journey of his own. The journey opens him up to a whole new world outside his California bubble, both physically and metaphorically.

And Tom isn’t a young man, so the trip ends up taking several months and poses all sorts of physical challenges. Still, he chugs along like the Energizer Bunny, leaving much younger folks to marvel in his wake.

Friends along The Way

Despite the fact that he’s initially annoyed with having to interact with his fellow travelers, Tom manages to form meaningful bonds with them. Jack (James Nesbitt) is an Irish writer with a serious case of writer’s block. Sara (Deborah Kara Unger) is a Canadian who’s coming to terms with an abusive relationship. And Joost (Yorick van Wageningen) is a Dutchman who’s trying to lose weight and gain confidence. The interactions between this band of misfits offers some comic relief to an otherwise heavy film.

The Way is funny, profound, and beautiful. It must have been difficult for Sheen to play a man who loses a son that’s played by his real-life son. I would think that’d hit a little close to home, and you can see that emotion on Sheen’s face throughout the movie. He doesn’t just go to Europe to collect his son’s remains; he takes the ashes along on the pilgrimage, leaving bits of ash here and there on monuments, open spaces, and historical structures along the way.

Martin Sheen Leaving Son's ashes on The Way

The Way is a wonderful story of hope and renewal, filmed in European locations with a deep sense of history and meaning. It also helps us to realize there’s a big difference between “the life we live and the life we choose.”

Jane Boursaw is a family entertainment writer specializing in movies and TV. Visit her at ReelLifeWithJane or email jboursaw@charter.net. Note: Because Jane Boursaw is an Amazon affiliate, when you click on the link to the book title in this post, although it does not cost you anything extra, Reel Life With Jane will earn a few cents to keep it going.  Photos are used with permission of the film production company.

Vera asks: Have you ever gone on a pilgrimage? Have you visited the northwestern part of Spain? The scenery certainly look gorgeous in this film trailer from YouTube, doesn’t it?

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Lots of pictures from my recent press trip to Mansfield and some info on how the arrival of a Hollywood production crew affects life in a central-Ohio town.

Then read below at A Traveler’s Library to see my review of the movie.

Have you ever lived in a town where a movie was made? What was it like?

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Destination: Mansfield, Ohio

Movie: The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

When I hear the term “movie magic,” rather than think of the technology– shadows move around so that we think they are real–I think of the magic as an unknowable X factor that appears for the fortunate few movies. Casablanca had it.  Recently  The King’s Speech had it. And  Shawshank Redemption definitely captured some movie-magic-fairy-dust that made it rise above the mundane possibilities of a Prison Movie, or a Buddy Movie to become a movie that inspires lasting adoration in its viewers.

Stephen King wrote Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. He set it in an imagined prison called Shawshank in the state of Maine. The two main characters were an intelligent banker falsely accused of killing his wife (Andy Dufresne) and a street-smart Irishman (Red) who is the long-time prison wheeler-dealer.

From reception room to cells, Ohio Reformatory as Shawshank Prison (with leftover Halloween decor)

Movie makers made a few changes, of course.  They found the setting they were looking for at the Ohio State Reformatory in central Ohio.  A brilliant choice that combines a Gothic exterior and church-like reception area with 6 tiers of claustrophobic cells. They settled on boyish-looking Tim Robbins as the thoughtful Andy and very un-Irish Morgan Freeman as “Red.”  And inside joke in the film has Andy asking Red how he got the name. Long pause. “Maybe because I’m Irish,” says a grinning Freeman.

Ohio Reformatory cell block

To the movie-makers’ credit, they helped the magic along by giving adequate attention to the complexities of each of the characters–smarmy prisoners, cruel captain of the guard and the self-righteous warden.  While there is never any doubt about whose side we are on–who is good and who is evil–there is not a cardboard cutout in the bunch.

It is particularly satisfying to watch Andy outsmart the system with clever and bold plays, like becoming a tax advisor to the guards, making up a horrendous result of brain damage that persuades the “sisters” to back off on rape, and persistently bugging the state until he gets library improvements. Of course his final trick is after serving 20 years, he demonstrates that he was not the trusted model prisoner everyone thought.

Prisoners in the wood shop listening to Mozart (re-enactment)

But Andy’s mind games only demonstrate he is someone to pay attention to and therefore his somewhat platitudinous advice to Red and others sticks with us. He inspires the prisoners by purloining the loud speaker system and playing a Mozart aria for all to hear. In solitary he says, “I had Mr. Mozart with me,” tapping his chest, “In here.”  He demonstrates the choice “to get busy living” is better than the passive “get busy dying.”  Ultimately, he gives us hope to overcome our fears, despite the fact that Red warns Andy that “inside” hope is a dangerous thing. Red gets the last word of the movie, and that word is “Hope.”

People pour into the city of Mansfield and the surrounding Ohio countryside looking to touch some of that movie magic.  The city has caught on and offers a brochure for a self-guided tour, and you can also book a complete tour with a step-on guide from the Shawshank Trail web site. (And see my companion post to this one about how Hollywood affected Mansfield in my guest post at Reel Life With Jane.)

Visitors tell the tour guides how the movie changed their lives.  Howe it affected them as they faced difficult times.  They want to see the courtroom where Andy was tried, the prison, the rooming house and park bench where James Whitmore’s character Brooks went when he was released. But most of all, they want to see the Oak Tree.

The Shawshank Oak Tree, after wind damage

At the end of the movie, Andy instructs Red that if he gets out, he should go to that oak tree and dig up something Andy has hidden.  He does, and sets off on a hope-filled trip to find his old friend.

Even Jodie Puster of the Mansfield Convention and Visitors Bureau was amazed at the international news coverage when that oak was damaged in a wind storm last summer.  Although the tree grows on private property and you can’t walk right up and touch it, you can park across the Pleasant Valley Road and gaze at the half that remains. Like Red and Andy, the tree is busy living–despite a personal catastrophe.  Perhaps it has even more meaning now than it did when it was untouched and majestic.

I was able to follow the Shawshank Trail a part of a press tour arranged by the Mansfield Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. All photos here belong to me. Please ask permission before making copies or using on the Internet.

Believe it or not, I had not seen Shawshank Redemption before I went on this tour.  Since it is arguably the most popular movie (based on DVD and video tape sales) how is that possible?  And how about you?  Have you seen it? How did it affect you? Have you visited the locations where it was filmed? (For more specifics about the tour, please take a look at my post on Reel Life With Jane.)

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Destination: Corsica

Movie: Queen to Play

by Jane Boursaw

I knew right away I’d like Queen to Play, a French film set on the gorgeous island of Corsica. You geography buffs will know immediately where that is, but I had to look it up. Corsica is a mountainous piece of land in the Mediterranean Sea, located west of Italy, southeast of the French mainland, and north of the island of Sardinia. There’s a natural park on Corsica which includes the Scandola Nature Reserve, home to two endangered species, the mouflon and the Corsican red deer.

But you won’t see those animals in Queen to Play, because the film’s focal point is a chess board. Adapted from the novel The Chess Player by Bertina Henrichs and written and directed by Caroline Bottaro, the story revolves around working-class chambermaid Helene (Sandrine Bonnaire, whose union with William Hurt produced a daughter, born in 1994). Helene spends her days cleaning rooms at an upscale resort frequented by tourists.

One day while cleaning a room at the resort, Helene glimpses an American couple (Jennifer Beals and Dominic Gould) playing chess on their balcony. Something is clearly missing in Helene’s marriage to construction worker Ange (Francis Renaud), because she finds herself drawn to the couple’s romantic interplay as they play the game. You wouldn’t think of chess as a sexy game, but this couple makes it seem that way. What’s more, they’re having fun, which I’m guessing is sorely lacking in Helene’s life

Curmudgeonly Kevin Kline as chess teacher

So she not only sets about learning how to play chess, but she becomes completely obsessed with it. When she sees a chess game collecting dust at a home she cleans for extra cash, she begs the owner, Dr. Kroger (played by curmudgeonly Kevin Kline) to teach her how to play. She’s so desperate to learn that she even offers to clean his home for free in exchange for chess lessons. That struck me as monumental, because it’s clear that Helene and her husband are just barely hanging on financially.

The tournament

You can see where this is headed. There’s bound to be a BIG IMPORTANT TOURNAMENT at the end of the movie, and sure enough, there is. Along the way, though, Helene has to try to bring her family – including her surly teenage daughter — onboard her new obsession. She somehow manages to do just that and find a new zest for life in the process.

Helene rides her bicycle across Corsica

Queen to Play is a soulful, quiet and beautiful film, shot on location in Corsica, France. Helene rides her bicycle everywhere, so we get some nice scenes of her peddling across stunning landscapes with mountains and the Mediterranean Sea in the background, as well as streets and buildings that have clearly been around for generations.

Queen to Play is available on Amazon.com. It’s not rated, though I think it’s ok for ages 13 and older. Note that most of the dialogue is in French with English subtitles. If you don’t ordinarily like subtitled films, give this one a try. You might find that it opens you up to a whole new world of foreign films, which are often more thoughtful and sophisticated than the commercial films made in the U.S.

Jane Boursaw is a family entertainment writer specializing in movies and TV. Visit her at Reel Life With Jane or email jboursaw@charter.net. Jane is an Amazon affiliate so if you use the links in this post to go to Amazon to buy something, Jane will earn a few cents to keep Reel Life With Jane in business. Thanks! 

Photos are by Patrick Glaize, published with permission from Zeitgeist Films.

Note from VMB: Just in case Jane’s description and photos from the movie do not inspire you, take a look at Camels and Chocolate‘s photo essay on Corsica and Sophie’s World on the same.

I don’t mind captioned films at all,(really dislike dubbed language where the lips and words don’t match!) but Ken is a reluctant viewer.  Do you shy away from seeing a film with English subtitles? 

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Guarding a Venice Flower Shop

Destination: Venice

Movie: Summertime (1955), Director David Lean

Kate Hepburn chewed the scenery. Rossano Brazzi looked soulful. The Kid stole the show. Venice is the star.

Summertime  is one of those movies that makes you want to travel–but definitely turn off your brain.  The saving grace of the movie  is Venice, the real star of the picture–not Katherine Hepburn or Rossano Brazzi–although they are both scenic, also. Venice (and some wonderful cinematography) saves the day in  all its color and light.  Light reflects on the water, gleams off murals, brings bridges into full relief. You may remember Three Coins in a Fountain, filmed around the same time. I raved about the Italian scenery in that movie, but the filming does not hold a candle to Summertime. As in Three Coins, a woman takes a chance on a love affair that breaks the mid-fifties norm.

Not only is the plot lame, but this is the first movie I ever saw with Katherine Hepburn where I disliked her acting. (The Academy disagreed. She was nominated. But did not win.) Such emoting, such moping around telegraphing her feelings. Such a high-class New England accent for a supposed secretary from Akron Ohio, Jane Hudson. “Oh dear”–or should that be “Oh, deah”–suffice it to say that Venice played her role SO much better than Kate played hers.

The script is based on a romantic comedy–a bit of fluff that played on Broadway, Time of the Cuckoo. Trivia: In Britain the title of the movie was Summer Madness, which is certainly a more appropriate title.  I’m still thinking of the comparison to another scenically beautiful movie set in a place you want to travel to, the similarly named, Summer Lovers, probably the worst movie I ever saw in the most beautiful place, Santorini.

Briefly,Jane Hudson has saved up money as a secretary to take the trip of a lifetime, and she carries her home movie camera with her to record it. She is, in the parlance of the day, a spinster. She is longing for love–because this was before Gloria Steinham told women that “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” So poor Kate mopes around the piazza of her pensione, sighs over couples holding hands, and sinks into gloom over a cappuchino at Florian’s on Piazza St. Mark. She changes clothes before going to St. Marks. She changes clothes every five minutes, and my feet simply ached at the thought of all those high heels.

People today dress more casually than the white-gloved heroine of Summertime, at Cafe Florian, St. Mark's Square, Venice

There she meets Rossano Brazzi after previous encounters with the cliché gauche American couple and the sophisticated Italian woman who runs the pensione. Ah, yes, she also meets the cutest cast member, the street urchin on the make who saves her bacon several times. At first she flees from Brazzi and her feelings. When she finally succumbs to his “You’re in Italy, live a little” seduction, they cross a bridge (get it?) to his apartment and fireworks explode over Venice. (get it?) I’m not making this up.

Meanwhile, the sophisticated landlady beds the married artist, played by Darren McGavin. The other American couple go sightseeing and he returns to report that the museum had art “all done by hand.” (Not a bad line!)

Spoiler Alert:   After the fireworks, Hepburn’s character sobers  up and decides to leave, despite Rossano Brazzi, the married cad, begging her to stay.  The girl from Akron, Ohio, demonstrated real gumption in embarking on this affair, but even more in saying goodbye to the delicious leading man.

I loved following the characters as they strolled around Venice.  I’m almost sure this well was in a scene with the young boy.

Venetian Plaza, with kids sitting around a well.

Of course St. Marks and bridges over small canals show up numerous times.

St. Mark's Square

Venice Shopping Street

You may want to make Venice travel plans immediately, but, alas, you cannot stay in the Pensione Fiorini, where our heroine and the American couples stayed. According to the web site A Lover of Venice, the pensione is a Hollywood creation.  The writer has tracked down many scenes in the movie, which makes for a fascinating read.  He/she says that the front door of the pensione in the movie opens to Rio dei Bareteri in San Maro in the heart of Merceria. However, “the balcony of Miss Hudson’s room is way up on Rio de la Salute in Dorsoduro, overlooking the churches of La Salute and San Georgio Maggiore and the captivating terrace on the Grand Canal was in fact a set built in Campo San Vio, also in the siestre of Dorsoduro.

Oh, well, there are still plenty of charming pensiones in Venice, even if they don’t have terraces on the Grand Canal. Take a look at Pensione Accademia, for instance. I tried to get in there but they were fully booked a couple of months in advance. One booking agent on line claims it is the locale of the movie’s pensione. Ha!

I have linked movie titles to Amazon DVDs in case you’d like to acquire one.  When you buy anything at all after following that link (Gift shopping yet?) I get a few cents to help pay the Library bills.  All photos here are my property. Please do not use without permission.  Thank you.

I hope that you have enjoyed our visit to Venice this week. We have now looked at Venice in the shadows and Venice in the light.  Which seems most real to you?

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Window in Venice

Destination: Venice

Movie: Don’t Look Now (1973)

I think it is appropriate to segue from two weeks of scary things to a week of Venice  by talking about a scary Venice movie. Don’t you?

My friend Ruth Pennebaker, the marvelous writer of The Fabulous Geezer Sisters suggested I watch this movie. When Don’t Look Now arrived from Netflix, I realized I had seen it once before, but still enjoyed it and it still surprised me.

It seemed dated only because it starred Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland, and they are such icons of 70′s movies. Am I right, Jane Boursaw?

The film starts in a book-filled country home with the intellectual couple sitting by the fire reading. Suddenly a spilled glass causes a streak of red to run across a slide that Sutherland is viewing, and he intuitively knows his daughter is in trouble. Running for the outdoor pond, he discovers the little girl, dressed in a red mackintosh face down in the pond.  We skip a few years and his job consulting on restorations takes them to Venice, where events become curioser and curioser.

They meet a very strange pair of sisters–one blind, with second sight. We spend most of the movie puzzled by these two–innocents or devils?  And is Sutherland mad or also blessed with some kind of extra sensory perception? Is that his daughter he is seeing? Her ghost?

Evening on the Grand Canal, Venice

Having wandered a bit in the walkways of Venice after dark, I can believe how easy it is to imagine that you are being followed, or that someone just disappeared around the corner in front of you. There is something about being in a city that seems to float on water that makes you begin to drift away from solid reality and tend to believe in apparitions. So many corners to make strange shadows. Broken reflections from water all around. To add to the confusion, as you will see in a book I review this week, Venetians do not say what they mean–it is a Mad Hatter world.

The film presents quite a contrast to another Venice movie I’m going to talk about later this week. That one is all light and romance. This one is all shadows and gloom. I particularly liked the way that color played a major role in Don’t Look Now.

Venice Window

Night scenes prevail, so the effect is almost of a black and white movie.  Costumes are predominantly black and brown, with symbolic touches of red.  The person? ghost? doppleganger? that appears to Sutherland is always in red against the gray and black of nighttime Venice.

As in the movie The Third Man which is set in Vienna, Don’t Look Now does not provide a translation of the native language for English-speakers. Italians speak Italian.  So like the non-Italian-speaking Americans and English women characters in the movie, the audience is on edge not knowing what has been said. This non-understanding adds to the overall feeling of frustration and puzzlement. The mother and father (Christie and Sutherland) get lost in the streets of Venice in more than one sense.

The movie trailer below is longer than most, at 3 minutes and 18 sec. But it really demonstrates the darkness of this movie. I would say the movie is a must see for travelers to Venice. Despite it’s gloom and spookiness, it’s lush portrayal makes you think the movie could not possibly have happened anywhere else.

If you have visited Venice, did you find it rather eerie and other worldly at times? If you have seen this movie, did you foresee the ending? If so, you are far more prescient than I. The movie’s preview–longer than most–comes from You Tube. The other pictures here are my property. Please do not re-use without permission.

Movies that John Berendt mentions in The City of Falling Angels (which is next up in Venice week) as all being about people just “passing through” include:

Death in Venice
The Wings of the Dove
Aspern Papers
Don’t Look Now (reviewed here)
Summertime (stay tuned–review coming)
Across the River and Into the Trees
The Comfort of Strangers

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Destination: Russia

Book: Wolves Eat Dogs, an Arkady Renko Novel by Martin Cruz Smith (2004)

Here is a fitting horror story for Halloween in the 21st century. Death by radiation poisoning. Life in a dead zone.

Martin Cruz Smith

When we were fortunate enough to meet Martin Cruz Smith last March, and accompany him around Tucson during the Tucson Festival of Books, I asked him many questions, and he entertained me with honest and illuminating and some very very funny anecdotes and opinions.

Naturally, one of the things I wanted to know, was which of his books I should I should buy for Ken, who loves thrillers, but had never read any of Cruz Smith’s books. Cruz Smith unhesitatingly recommended Wolves Eat Dogs. He thinks it is his best book.

If you play word association with the writer’s name, most people will identify him with Gorky Park .  That demonstrates both the lasting appeal of that book, and the power of the motion picture.  William Hurt played the lead and the 1983 film was a big hit.

Martin Cruz Smith started the Arkady Renko series when he visited Russia and found it endlessly fascinating.  ”Nobody was getting it right,” he says. He first traveled to Russia during the Cold War when the information that Americans received was filtered through government sources and through our own fear, as well as being thoroughly distorted by a Soviet government trying hard to put on a powerful face while the society was disintegrating. (Cruz Smith did NOT say any of those things. It is my own conclusion.)

Doll Abandoned outside a kindergarten in the Zone. Arkady notices abandoned dolls in several scenes.

Arkady Renko is in some ways typical of police procedural detectives.  He is the smart but self-effacing police detective who is independent and therefore annoying to his superiors–always on the edge of being pushed out the door.  He has serious character flaws and his personal life is a mess, but his innate honesty and devotion to justice keeps us on his side.  On the other hand, the Arkady novels differ from most anything else you have read because they are drenched in Soviet culture and politics. That is what makes them a particularly good addition to the traveler’s library.  By the way, these novels are not stuck in the cold war period. One of the most fascinating things about them to me is that Arkady reflects the massive adjustments that Russians had to make as the Soviet government disintegrated.
Chernobyl crystallizes that disintegration, and provides Arkady’s boss an opportunity to get him way out of Moscow.  Siberia is not bad enough for Renko–he gets sent to the countryside of the Ukraine where radiation is so high from the nuclear plant explosions that he begins to turn off the dosimeter he carries with him because it makes too much noise. The plot is complex and loaded with creepy, well-developed, characters in a setting of desolation that Cruz Smith describes like an artist. Which, although he denies it, he is.

The Kremlin, Moscow

The author as tourist in communist Russia learned that an American on the streets with a camera or a notepad could attract suspicion.  But sketching seemed harmless, so sketching became his principle notetaking method. (You can see some of his sketches along with photos of Russia from his visits at the Gallery of his website.)

Do you recall the 2006 case of the Russian who was poisoned by a radioactive pellet slipped into something he ate or drank? That case must have carried the germ of the idea for Wolves Eat Dogs. Although the police would prefer that a millionaire’s plunge off his high-rise balcony in Moscow be written off as suicide, Renko suspects murder when he discovers piles of salt and traces of radioactivity. And then the body of a friend of the first victim shows up at a graveyard near Chernobyl, and we’re off to the breath-taking races.

Right from the beginning, the author lets us know that things are out of kilter. He describes a Moscow that is nothing at all like the picture postcard onion domes in our mind. At the same time, we meet the first victim, Pasha Ivanov:

“Moscow swam in color. Hazy floodlights of Red Square mixed with the neon of casinos in Revolution Square…Gilded domes still floated around the Garden Ring, but all night earthmovers tore at the old city and dug widening pools of light to raise a modern, vertical Moscow more like Houston or Dubai.  It was a Moscow that Pasha Ivanov had helped to create, a shifting landscaped o tectonic plates and lava flows and fatal missteps.”

Once the action moves to Chernobyl, we are in a land that seems more mythical than real, a feeling that Cruz Smith underscores by having Arkady make up stories about the Russian fairy tale character Baba Yaga for a child back in Moscow he has befriended. Baba Yaga’s odd fantasy life comes closer and closer to the reality that Renko sees around him, as he stays in the Zone of Exclusion for weeks. Like everything and everyone in the novel, the child is not normal. He does not speak. He is a chess genius. He refuses to take off a heavy winter jacket even in hot weather. Nothing quite makes sense in this book. Least of all the lives of the squatters that insist on living in Chernobyl and the village of Pripyat that is even nearer the devastation and therefore even more irradiated.

Pripyat (or Prypiat)

To answer the question in the title of this post: ‘Is Chernobyl in your travel plans?’…Well, I certainly would never have thought it belonged there. And it’s clear I would not go there for the lush scenery, but on the other hand….Martin Cruz Smith has made it sound so intriguing, that I might just consider packing my dosimeter and heading off to the Zone of Exclusion. And here’s a tour that will take me to Chernobyl and Pripyat. And here is another Chernobyl tour, that warns, “You will NOT see zombies, three-head horses, and other monsters.”

Well, darn!

The Photo of Martin Cruz Smith is my property, all rights reserved. The other wonderful photos are from Flickr, used by Creative Commons license. It is worthwhile to click on them to see more about and by those photographers.  If you click on a link on this blog that leads you to Amazon, we make a few cents, even though it does not cost you any extra. THANKS!

Would you go to Chernobyl?

Question of the day…Would you plan a trip to Chernobyl?

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