Meredith the Hawk-Rescuer

Posted on July 29, 2024 by sheila

When Meredith and I sat next together in 8th grade Math, not knowing one another at all, but bonding through our constant clowning of what we considered to be our extremely ridiculous teacher, I had no idea we would become lifelong friends – we were 13, what did we know (although we knew a friend when we saw one! We were Phys. Wrecks together: my proudest high school moment) – and also I had no idea that one day she would be such a badass she could help an osprey out of its accidental containment in her chicken coop. I watched in amazement as she approached the freaked-out predator and gently – but firmly – dealt with the situation, even holding him as he was upside down in order to guide him upwards towards the small hole in the netting, which she cut in order to aid his escape.

We were hanging out inside and I glanced out at the chicken area (I get my eggs from Meredith, just so you know), and saw a movement that seemed extremely un-chicken-like. There was something in there that was leaping up – up – up – and then coming back down. “There’s something out there,” I said. So we walked across the yard to investigate. We saw him. (Her?) There is a net placed over the chicken yard, in order to keep out the hawks, but there clearly was some kind of rip in the net, which this hungry predator found. But now he couldn’t get out. He kept shooting himself up into the air, knocking against the net and falling back down. The chickens were huddled over in their structure, showing unusual intelligence for such (semi-dumb) birds, but at one point, when Mere had the hawk cornered they all came wobbling out, one by one, to see what was going on. You could almost hear them saying to each other, “Hey, let’s go check it out!” “Yeah, something’s going on over there!” We shooed them back into the coop, hoping to avoid a bloodbath. (Unfortunately, just a week later something – some carnivore – got into the coop and went on a murder spree. RIP chickens.)

We saw the freaked-out bird huddled against the fence. Meredith went back to the house to get her gardening gloves and shears. She attempted to move the hawk out of its corner. I made eye contact with him at one point. His eyeballs were WILD. Literally. We couldn’t get him out of there, and Meredith backed off, to avoid the bird flying up into her face. Then we watched for a while, as he stood there, cock of the walk, in the cleared-out yard, considering his options. I loved his furry pants. He flew up, and then, catastrophically, got tangled up in the net, and found himself hanging upside down against the fence.

Meredith got to work. She went over to him, and clipped open the net above, clearing it away. She then started untangling the poor bird. He was totally helpless, his ferocious talons clinging to one of the wooden beams of the fence.

It was amazing to watch how he went totally still as she worked to get him loose. It was like he knew. It was like he felt that this human creature was helping him, not out to harm him. He cooperated with her by freezing and even allowing her to touch him. She got him free but then she had to show him the escape route, that he was free to go should he so choose. She had to push him by the back in to an upright position and basically guide him to the hole above.

He flapped his impressive wings and then … miraculous … stood on the top of the fence, totally free, and turned to look at us. He didn’t just fly away. He stood there. He looked at me. He looked at her. It was a good 10-15 seconds of inter-species contact. Did he want to take a look at the one who freed him? Just to make sure? It was incredible. Then he twisted around his powerful body, launched himself into the air, and flapped away into the forest.

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R.I.P. Edna O’Brien

Posted on July 28, 2024 by sheila

We knew this day was coming but still … it’s a sad one. A connecting thread is lost, with the 20th century, with my father, who introduced me to O’Brien’s work (and not just her work but what she meant, what her career WAS). We used to talk about her a lot. My “way in” was through what is known as the “Country Girls trilogy” (and I would suggest anyone curious to start there as well). These three books, based loosely on her own experience as a young girl and then young women, were so controversial they were banned in Ireland. It created an absolute shitstorm. That outlaw-rebel glow remained with her, even as she became a kind of Elder Stateswoman to younger Irish writers, who saw her as “establishment”, when this woman was the most anti-establishment person who ever anti-establishmented. She wrote novels about young women and their early dating/relationship years and she was basically run out of Ireland for it. She was in the storied tradition of Irish writers rejected by their home country. Most of these Irish writers, though, were male. She was an outlaw-times-100 because she was a woman. Women in Irish literature were usually muses/poetic figures/mystical creatures/nuns … they weren’t modern women bumming cigarettes and sneaking out to see guys. Ireland in the 1950s, people. It was a theocracy. (I read John McGahern’s memoir last year and it was a little bit shocking, even to me, and I know all this stuff already.) We’re talking Magdalen Laundries, etc. (which O’Brien has also written about). O’Brien’s writing is very straightforward, almost UN-“literary”, and not fancy at all. It’s real. It’s deep. She was interviewed in 2007 about the Country Girls trilogy and I loved her response:

I wrote The Country Girls in three weeks having blown the 50 quid advance. I was young, married with two small children, and whenever I met people, I was spouting poetry. I had this thing that writing was real–I mean other people’s writing — literature, great literature, not rubbish. There’s so much rubbish written now, so much garbage, and it’s extolled. But writing was to me animate; it was real; it was as real as the people I knew.

I only thought of one thing — the country, the landscape, my mother, the people I had left. Now I was dying to leave, this is not nostalgia, and I feel permanently, in life, quite isolated. I both belong very intensely to that place where I come from and I’m running from it still. So when I sat down to write, I was extremely emotional and yet the language is not emotional; it just came out. I didn’t have to call on memory. To use the cliche — it wrote itself. And that is sometimes true for a first book.

I knew there’d be a storm. I was accused of betraying my country, my locality, my sex. The nuns in my convent went bonkers with rage. But the books survived. I suppose that’s what counts.

When O’Brien turned 90, writers paid tribute to her in the Irish Times.

From The Country Girls (1960):

“Look, Caithleen, will you give up the nonsense? We’re eighteen and we’re bored to death.” She lit a cigarette and puffed vigorously. She went on: “We want to live. Drink gin. Squeeze into the front of big cars and drive up outside hotels. We want to go places. Not to sit in this damp dump.” She pointed to the damp patch in the wallpaper, over the chimneypiece, and I was just going to interrupt her, but she got in before me. “We’re here at night, killing moths for Joanna, jumping up like maniacs every time a moth flies out from behind the wardrobe, puffing DDT into crevices, listening to that lunatic next door playing the fiddle.” She sawed off her left wrist with her right hand. She sat on the bed exhausted. It was the longest speech Baba had ever made.

“Hear! Hear!” I said, and I clapped. She blew smoke straight into my face.

“But we want young men. Romance. Love and things,” I said despondently. I thought of standing under a streetlight in the rain with my hair falling crazily about, my lips poised for the miracle of a kiss. A kiss. Nothing more. My imagination did not go beyond that. It was afraid to. Mama had protested too agonizingly all through the windy years. But kisses were beautiful. His kisses. On the mouth, and on the eyelids, and on the neck when he lifted up the mane of hair.

“Young men have no bloody money. At least the gawks we meet. Smell o’ hair oil. Up the Dublin mountains for air, a cup of damp tea in a damp hotel. Then out in the woods after tea and a damp hand fumbling up your shirt. No, sir. We’ve had all the bloody air we’ll ever need. We want life.” She threw her arms out in the air. It was a wild and reckless gesture. She began to get ready.

We washed and sprinkled talcum powder all over ourselves.

“Have some of mine,” Baba said, but I insisted, “No, Baba, you have some of mine.” When we were happy we shared things, but when life was quiet and we weren’t going anywhere, we hid our things like misers, and she’d say to me, “Don’t you dare touch my powder,” and I’d say, “There must be a ghost in this room, my perfume was interfered with,” and she’d pretend not to hear me. We never loaned each other clothes then, and one worried if the other got anything new.

Yes. “The books survived”.

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Review: Oddity (2024)

Posted on July 20, 2024 by sheila

Oddity is Damian McCarthy’s follow-up to his super-impressive directorial debut, Caveat, which I reviewed. Oddity proves that Caveat wasn’t a fluke. I reviewed for Ebert.

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Review: National Anthem (2024)

Posted on July 12, 2024 by sheila

I really liked Luke Gilford’s feature film directorial debut, National Anthem, about queer rodeo riders, a sub-culture he already documented in his photography book of the same name. It’s beautiful. I reviewed for Ebert.

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R.I.P. Shelley Duvall

Posted on July 12, 2024 by sheila

I wrote about Shelley Duvall on my Substack.

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June 2024 Viewing Diary

Posted on July 4, 2024 by sheila

Sunset Boulevard (1950; d. Billy Wilder)
I had so much fun discussing Sunset Boulevard with the audience after the screening at Jacob Burns Film Center. I’ll be doing another one in August, after Billy Wilder’s The Apartment. The audience was terrific and engaged, and I met a lot of nice people. My dear old friend – and roommate for 9 years – Jen came, and so did my sister. Out for drinks afterwards in the dive bar down the block. It’s become a tradition.

Anyone But You (2023; d. Will Gluck)
Get ready for the Glen Powell Film/Television festival, which I put myself through (NOT a chore), because I knew I wanted to write this piece. This rom-com warms my heart, and it’s the best “entry” in this long-neglected genre I’ve seen in a long LONG time. Loosely “based” on Much Ado About Nothing it’s got it all: two gorgeous leads with legitimate authentic chemistry, a cast of wacky eccentrics – everyone gets to be weird and interesting, it’s a real ENSEMBLE, a stunning location – no green screens, they’re all actually THERE, pure silliness, a complete commitment to the Shakespearean nature of it all: all the eavesdropping, the people hovering on the sidelines, and then the final scene – where the whole cast enters the stage to wrap things up with a giant sing-along. So Shakespeare. I love how FREE it is, and how unembarrassed it is about its own genre. So many rom coms seem embarrassed at what they’re doing, and so try to be “modern” by making the woman a shrill “empowered” woman who doesn’t NEED a man (then … why are we here?) … and they ignore their predecessors, something like His Girl Friday. Hildy does not “need” a man, and she’s the most “empowered” person onscreen … so you have an example of how to do it. And yet … rom coms don’t. Here, they do. They don’t worry about using all the tropes. They use them without shame. The meet-cute within literally 10 seconds of the film opening. And it truly is a meet CUTE. The hostility over NOTHING. The “acting” of being in a couple. Both Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney just go for it. I love the diversity of the cast, and I love that the big event everyone gathers for is a lesbian wedding, and there’s not even the smallest hint of disapproval in anyone onscreen, or even if it’s not disapproval, there’s no moment like, “Oh! Wow! Two women marrying! Cool!” A lot of movies still give space for that kind of attitude. Not here. This might not be the world YOU live in but it’s the world I live in, the people in my world don’t provide space at all for that kind of attitude, so it’s nice to see in film. Mitchell (who is staying with me for the month) and I watched together and we both thought it was so fun. ALSO. It’s rated R. Refreshing! This is adult shit. There’s nudity. There’s sex. There’s casual references to drug use. People smoke weed. Again, this might not be the world YOU live in but it’s the one I live in. Not everything is supposed to family-friendly. It’s nice to see an R-rated rom com. They’re adults. They have sex. People have bodies and desire. etc. Loved it.

Set It Up (2018; d. Claire Scanlon)
I missed this one on its first release. It is adorable. Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell, adorable together. This, in my opinion, shows Glen Powell off to perfection and it’s the first time he had to grow and change as a character onscreen. Anyone But You highlights his insane body. He’s shirtless half the time. This one, he plays a more normal guy, in suits, T-shirts … maybe he really got that crazy body for Top Gun. I don’t know his workout routine. It also was filmed mostly on location in New York City and it’s sad that this feels new and fresh. But it FEELS like New York. And like with Anyone But You, Powell and Deutch have real chemistry. Not as sexually hot as what he and Sweeney have, but it’s chemistry of play and thought and interaction. They’re great together.

Hit Man (2024; d. Richard Linklater)
Seen this a couple of times now. It’s a lot of fun.

The Vibrator (2012; d. Daniel Zagayer)
A short film Powell did. Just 12 years ago. He plays a boyfriend threatened by his girlfriend’s vibrator. Because this is … wait, when does this take place? In 2012 this is still a thing? It wasn’t a thing back in the 90s, at least not in my experience, which, granted, may not be representative. But whatever. Guys being threatened by women’s vibrators don’t have a place in my world, lol. It’s filmed like a horror movie, with the vibrator as the monster. Powell looks like a generic frat boy. He hadn’t come into himself yet, but he’s about to.

Scream Queens, Season 1, episode 1 (2015; d. Ryan Murphy)
I didn’t watch this when it was on, so it was fun to dig in a little bit to the campiness of this series, its meta quality, and how much fun everyone seems to be having. It’s great-looking, too. Glen Powell plays a douchey frat boy (what a shock), but you can feel him using his comedy smarts, really for the first time. He knows what he’s doing.

Fast Food Nation (2006; d. Richard Linklater)
I had never seen this before. I have been thinking a lot about films that highlight SYSTEMS of oppression / exploitation: not by focusing on an individual, but on the system itself. It’s rare. This is a great example. So is the TV series Dopesick. I don’t think I’ll watch Fast Food Nation again though. It’s brutal.

Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult (2024; d. Derek Doneen)
I thought going in: “How bad can this be?” It’s BAD.

Just the Two of Us (2024; d. Valérie Donzelli)
It’s excellent and Virginie Efira is the real deal. I reviewed for Ebert.

NCIS, Season 10, episodes 6 and 7, “Shell Shock”, parts 1 and 2 (2012; d. Leslie Libman, Thomas J. Wright)
Hey, Thomas Wright from Supernatural!

CSI Miami, Season 7, episode 12, “Head Case” (2009; d. Sam Hill)
Powell has one scene and he’s very emotional.

Without a Trace, Season 7, episode 4, “True/False” (2008; d. Martha Mitchell)
I think Glen Powell is in the opening scene and is killed instantly. I don’t think he even has a line.

The Lying Game, Season 1, episode 17 “No Country for Young Love” (2012; d. Michael Grossman)
Glen Powell, again, in one scene as a fraternity brother. Hang in there. Your ship will come in 12 years from now.

Top Gun Maverick (2022; d. Joseph Kosinski)
I saw this in the theatre, the way it should be seen. It did not disappoint. Watched again for the Glen Powell factor. We (as in the New York Film Critics Circle) gave the film (and its cinematographer Claudio Miranda) Best Cinematography.

Bad Behaviour (2024; d. Alice Englert)
Not good in a lot of ways, but see it for Jennifer Connelly. One of her best performances. I reviewed for Ebert.

Devotion (2022; d. J.D. Dillard)
Glen Powell picking up speed now, producing this film (and developing it: it was his project, at least in terms of him reading the book and helping to secure the rights). I’m not sure why this movie isn’t more talked about, or didn’t get any chatter at the time. It got good reviews. Things get lost in the shuffle now, just 10 years ago Devotion would have run in theatres for a month. I found it very moving. This was the third time Powell played an aviator (Hidden Figures and Top Gun).

Holler (2020; d. Nicole Riegel)
This was on my Top 10 of 2020, and was the first movie I saw in a theatre after the months of lockdown. I went to the IFC Center in New York, fully masked, and bought a ticket for whatever show was playing. It was Holler. What a pleasure. Nicole Riegel is from Appalachia, she joined the Army to get the hell out of there, and here she is, some years later, making films – about her childhood and young adulthood and what it all was like. Her second film is coming soon and I can’t wait.

The Post (2017; d. Steven Spielberg)
Comfort food in troubled times.

The Feeling That the Time For Doing Something Has Passed (2024; d. Joanna Arnow)
I had heard a lot about this so finally sat down to watch. The deadpan tone is, at times, tiresome, but the portrayal of a formalized BDSM relationship is realistic, ahem, and counteracts the 50 Shades version – which is filled with red flags and no-nos – of the same thing. It’s a very organized subculture with a lot of rules. I dug this. Arnow is brave. She wrote/directed/starred.

Daddio (2024; d. Christy Hall)
As someone with a lifetime of experience having in-depth conversations with cab drivers, this struck a nerve. It’s the best Sean Penn has been in years, mostly because he gets to be warm – poignant even – and funny. But also tough. Perfect casting. I was super impressed. I reviewed for Ebert.

Righteous Gemstones Season 1, episodes 1, 2 (2019; d. Danny McBride)
I was in New York for a lot of June, and Allison and I watched a couple episodes. I love Danny McBride, as I mentioned in my Glen Powell piece.

The Bear, Season 3
I have a LOT of thoughts about this. I inhaled it in a day. I love what they’re doing. It’s very bold. People who think this show is about a restaurant kind of don’t get it. It’s about unmanaged grief and lifelong anxiety. It’s about the characters. I might write something more about this, but I am fully “in” to what they’re doing here. Episode 1 was CRAZY bold. A whole tone-poem, with minimal dialogue. I’ve seen people get frustrated with it. People are so plot-driven. This show is not at all about its “plot”. The plot is just an EXCUSE to dig into grief and emotions and who these people are. Carmy’s entire subtext for the entire season is “I want to call Claire but I’m afraid to.” Like, that’s what’s going on. People get frustrated, they want him to focus on the restaurant. Have you never been madly in love and fucked it up? THAT’S what we’re supposed to be caring about and I am so glad the show is digging in its heels in that regard. It’s kind of like the audience members who got bored with the therapy sessions in The Sopranos, wanting more of the gangster stuff, somehow missing the point that the therapy sessions were the whole point. Listen, you watch stuff how you want to watch it, I’ll watch shit the way I want to watch it.

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Elvis Descending

Posted on July 1, 2024 by sheila

I am psyched to have a piece in the Spring/Summer issue of the long-running Arty zine, run by Cathy Lomax. This particular issue is devoted to all things Tennessee Williams. It’s filled with beautiful art – some made by Lomax, some existant, and essays about Tennessee Williams (his life, his work, there’s a piece on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, there’s a piece on his collab with Anna Magnani, there’s a piece on Barbara Loden). I wrote about the Elvis-Tennessee-Williams-Orpheus-Descending connection – which very few people clocked – but Baz Luhrmann sure did because he ended his Elvis film with it. He literally closed with the connection I (and only a few others, that I am aware of) made. Jeremy Richey and I both caught the nod to Williams in the final moments in Baz’s film. It’s a deep DEEP cut. Would have been nice if a mainstream outlet wanted me to write about the Elvis movie. You’d think it’d be a no-brainer, right? Apparently not. So I finally got to write about it in this beautiful zine! And honestly I prefer it that way. Fuck the mainstream. Look how beautiful my article looks! I gasped at the artwork, a 1913 gouache by Giocama Bolla (my piece is about the bird motif in Williams’ work):

Some other pages:

UK people can purchase online, and there’s a way to contact them for issues (or a subscription) on the main page there. You can read Cathy’s intro – “Seductive, Thrilling & Morally Deplorable… Why We Love Tennessee Williams” – at the first link above. When I pitched my idea to them, I had no idea Cathy’s love of Elvis. This was a good fit!

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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Review: Daddio (2024)

Posted on June 28, 2024 by sheila

I am so into Daddio, a new film starring Dakota Johnson and Sean Penn that takes place entirely in a New York City yellow cab. I reviewed for Ebert.

This scenario is close to my heart as old-timers will recognize.

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Glen Powell is here and people are being weird

Posted on June 25, 2024 by sheila

I wrote about Glen Powell on my Substack. This one – obviously – was a long time in the making.

 
 
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.

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Review: Bad Behaviour (2024)

Posted on June 14, 2024 by sheila

Jennifer Connelly’s performance is WILD and really REALLY out there. It’s very much my jam. I wish the movie was better but … the performance!! I reviewed for Ebert.

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