National Brad Pitt Day

Last Sunday may have been a National Brad Pitt Day. Two reviews in the New York Times Book Review included references to the actor. 

https://www.cinemamoderne.com/en/films/details/thelma-louise/

Reviewer Dwight Garner included short summaries of some of the stories in his review of the story collection It Will Come Back to You by Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead). "There's a piece about a jostling mother and daughter, and one about a Brad Pitt impersonator. 'Brad' is hired by the adult children of a woman in hospice who is in thrall to the actor. The kids worry that the impersonator will be a sleazeball, a rheumy Elvis type. The story takes a turn when he turns out to be young and achingly beautiful. Nunez is picking at the seams of life."

Garner closes his review with his typically intriguing and illustrative language. "In the lesser stories (none is a flameout), Nunez's descriptive register slips. But 'It Will Come Back to You' is a reminder that she's among the best we have. I'd rather read one of her books than almost anyone else's. Her headlights are on, even in midday."

Ginia Bellafante's review of The Face: A Cultural History by Fay Bound-Alberti (Grand Central) notes that Brad Pitt is one in the two percent of the population that are affected by prosopagnosia, or face blindness. The review is accompanied by the clickbait of a photo of the achingly beautiful Brad Pitt. That's all she said about Brad Pitt: just the "so does Brad Pitt" in parenthesis and the caption of the photo.

separated at ... birth?: Lanaudière

Shane's parents' cottage in Heated Rivalry in located in Lanaudière, Québec. We are informed of this by a caption while Shane is on the phone with Rose, outside the cottage. 

Fictionally, we know that that cottage is ten minutes from Shane's cottage. From videos about the series, we learn that the filming location for Shane's cottage is actually in Muskoka, a popular vacation and second home region in central Ontario, a couple hours north of Toronto.

Heated Rivalry is one of my current obsessions. Another obsession, quite the opposite, is the increasing acceptance and legalization of assisted dying. I was looking at the Times to see if the war in Iran was over or not and noted an article entitled "How Quebec, in a decade, came to lead the world in assisted dying," by Norimitsu Onishi. (article link) A few months ago I had never heard of Lanaudière, now I learn that it is the home of a new palliative care center and has the highest incidence in Quebec of assisted dying.

from the collection of Jacob Tierney

Heated Rivalry, episode 3

(created by Jacob Tierney)

Kip and Scott go to a gallery

to see a show by an artist that Kip likes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heated_Rivalry

"Jacob Tierney Honored with the Showrunner Award"

Critics Choice Celebration of LGBTQ+ Cinema & Television

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHthSyVploM

Same painting in an episode of Heated Rivalry (probably filmed mid 2025) and in a video about creator/writer/director Jacob Tierney winning an award in mid 2026. I guess it could be a prop in both situations but I prefer to think of it as a work in Tierney's art collection.

"not even a little"

Kip is working for the caterer at a fundraiser for St Thomas. He literally runs into Scott with a tray of some canapés. Kip and Scott have undoubtedly (Maria says for sure) been flirting with each other at the smoothie shop where Kip works as he plans his graduate studies in art history. Scott invites Kip out for Mexican after the reception and Kip asks if he minds waiting until he's done with the gig. Scott replies "not even a little."

This happens in episode 3 of Heated Rivalry. Like many, I have been rather obsessed with the series from Crave, a Canadian streaming service, and it's carried in the U.S. by HBO Max.

I took a bit of a break from that rom com to read The Guncle by Steven Rowley. Imagine my surprise and delight when Grant asks his Gay Uncle Patrick, or GUP, if they are "famouth" (he lisps). Patrick responds "not even a little bit" which I definitely heard in the voice of François Arnaud who plays Scott in Heated Rivalry.

There are oodles of websters who are making parallels in something like Heated Rivalry so I'm just joining the crowd and going from one medium to another.

tumblin' tumbleweeds

In the Accent Duel promo for Connor Storrie as host for Saturday Night Live this past Saturday night, he has a duel of accents with James Austin Johnson. As Johnson walks into the frame and challenges Storrie to the duel, a tumbleweed blows by. When you get to hell, tell them Rozanov sent you. Pow, bang!

When we lived at the edge of the Sand Hills in central Nebraska in the early 1960s, my dad fetched a tumbleweed for us for our Christmas tree one year. I can't picture it any more but I think we spray-painted it with silver.

"Tumbling Tumbleweeds" with the Sons of the Pioneers (1977)

the country house life moderne

This is the new home of Margot Beste-Chetwynde in the 2017 production of "Decline and Fall" based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh. We never get much closer than this but the interiors are extraordinary moderne. I naturally do not know if the interiors were actually filmed in the house shown here. Googling has not yet revealed the buildings used in the three-episode series from Acorn TV and BBC, streaming on Amazon Prime.

But who cares about the real house? There's plenty of good scenery and architecture jokes. If you are wondering how to say "Beste-Chetwynde," the actors say it something like "beastie cheating." The role is delightfully played by Eva Longorio.

the shape of the plaza and the distant view

So I was watching episode two of One Day and enjoying the sights of Rome. When Dexter is talking to his mother outside her hotel, the space in front of the hotel was so familiar. Not just the narrow space there, opening into the wider plaza beyond. The decorated façade of the shopfront across from the hotel. It just had to be the Rome hotel that Carol and I stayed in before we went to Florence for the IFLA art periodicals conference in 1986. Dexter's father comes to the door to meet them. The sliding door has the name "Campo de' Fiori" painted on it. That's it, our hotel.

That was my first time in Rome. I was excited beyond words. Carol had gotten there a while before I did. I had been warned not to take anything but a legitimate taxi from the central train station. My cab was somewhere near the taxi stand but he drove me a very indirect route to the Campo area. I had a map and was able to follow where we were. He was having trouble finding the Campo and stopped at a business on a very narrow street to ask directions. We got close, to the nearby Piazza Farnese which is in front of the French Embassy. I told him this was close enough, paid him, and got out of the car to get my suitcase from the back. He took off. I ran after him and he went out into the clogged traffic on the Lungotevere, along the Tiber River. As I ran, I was shouting something and a guard at the embassy joined the chase. (Was this a movie?) Anyway, the guard stood on the corner and I pointed to the supposed taxi. With a uniformed security man standing there, the driver got out and opened the back of the car so I could get my suitcase. I walked sheepishly the block and a half to the Hotel Campo de' Fiori. By the time we left Rome a few days later, I knew how to take the city bus from near the Campo to the central station.

 

separated at birth: simple tasks like dealing with your shoes

They've argued. He's all banged up. She's going to her own room for the night. He sits on the bed to get undressed but his injuries prevent his reaching his feet. She helps him take off his shoes. (The Diplomat, Season 2, on Netflix)

He's a troubled kid, always carrying a gun. Mom gets exasperated and kicks him out of the house. He ends up staying with a couple ne'er-do-wells. They treat him badly and make him do criminal things. He finally can't take it anymore after they pee in his shoes. "They're expensive. We went on a special trip to London to get them." He drags himself home. She asks him about the smell. He just says "My shoes" and she sits him down and takes the shoes off and gives him a hug. (The Durrells in Corfu, Season 1, Episode 4, on PBS Passport)

Unconditional love ... though maybe intermittent and contextual.

The Diplomat

I have been bingeing The Diplomat and it is kind of scary. But then you check out the day's headlines in the New York Times and discover that the real world is just a whole lot too similar. Explosive events in the Middle East. Potential for nuclear options. Personal relationships getting tangled up. Ambition and revenge. Power hunger. Maybe I should go watch Barbie.
 

Jane Lapotaire

Every once in a while, there's a scene in some film or other program where an actor just shines. Jane Lapotaire is the actress that just knocked me off my chair. She plays Princess Alice (Battenberg), the mother of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in The Crown. She has been staying at Buckingham Palace after a coup made the situation in Greece precarious. Her brother, Lord Mountbatten, has just gotten a dressing down from Queen Elizabeth for conspiring (QE II's word) with others against Harold Wilson's government.

Lord Mountbatten goes to see Princess Alice in her room and their conversation resonated for me as I think about what to do about more Trump presidency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT6yUlDzkfs 

As I was watching that scene in The Crown, I realized that Jane Lapotaire also played Princess Kuragin in Downton Abbey.

I was wearing my t-shirt yesterday with a quote from Moira Rose of Schitt's Creek. "When one of us shines, all of us shine."

teardowns

I have been watching the 1981 version of Brideshead Revisited. Lady Marchmain has died and the London house has been sold by Lord Marchmain. Bridey has asked Charles to paint some views of the house before it is torn down, to be replaced by flats. But don't worry. The house will be saved and the flats will not be built. Charles will find his painting career with the success of the paintings. I know the house will be saved because it is also Grantham House, the London residence of the Crawleys from Downton Abbey.

This photo of the actual Bridgewater House, on the site of Cleveland House, is on Flickr, taken by jupiter1953.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/b1953/7616519714

I first watched the 1981 Brideshead at Judith Holliday's apartment in the Dewitt Mall Apartments in Ithaca. My then boyfriend Randy and I went over every Sunday night while it was on Great Performances on PBS. I had not had a television and bought a modest black-and-white television so we could watch the series. Randy also did not have a television. Judith had a color TV and it beat out my B&W model. I took along my copy of the book and it was amazing (and surprising) how much of the dialogue in the book made it into the telescript.

meta credits

So you may know that I watch film credits pretty voraciously. I love the loopy rhyme of Loop Group as well as the name of such a post-production sound group that I have seen credited a number of times: Sync or Swim. Sometimes, the folks responsible are called Crowd ADR or just ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement). I just watched Going Down in LA-LA Land and was amused by the credit for Expendables. Those responsible for expendables were Studio Depot, The Expendables Recycler, Bulbtronics, and Expendable. I glanced over the YouTube comments and someone noted that they really enjoyed watching the credits because "The ADR then is hilarious." Here's the two leads getting to know each other:

P.S. Emma Kantor also reads the end credits: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/magazine/closing-credits-movies.html

the things you learn in the credits

As you may know, I'm a bit obsessed with film credits, especially Loop Groups aka Crowd ADR. And filming locations, both cities and buildings.

Prince Charles is played by Dominic West in Season 5 of The Crown. As I was watching the credits of an episode today, I noticed that the actor playing Prince William was Senan West and wondered if he was related to Dominic West. A little googling indicates Senan is Dominic's eldest son. Television imitating life.

Prince William and Prince Charles, The Crown, Season 5

(Senan West and Dominic West)

(photo: Keith Bernstein/Netflix)

(from the Netflix Tudum site)

Dominic West also played a role in Downton Abbey: A New Era, the second movie based on the television series. He played Guy Dexter, a silent film star, part of a film being made at Downton Abbey. Fictionally, he will rescue Thomas Barrow from his closet.

teary meltdowns in Cefalù

We stayed in Cefalù as we neared the end of our month's circumnavigation of Sicily in 2013. Our hotel was away from the center, near the sea. This view was from the deck outside our room. I was feeling quite teary about the impending return to the U.S.

The days before Cefalù had taken us from Taormina and the landscape around Mount Etna, through the mountains, along the northern coast, visiting several sites of the Fiumara d'Arte.

I am often taken back to Sicily in my thoughts, sometimes just flashback memories, sometimes by reading or films. I just finished watching From Scratch on Netflix. It's a love story of a Black American woman and a Sicilian man. She's an artist, he's a chef. He grew up in a small town not far from Cefalù. We didn't go through Pollina where his native town scenes were filmed but we were close. There was plenty of Florence and Sicily as setting, along with Los Angeles. They also thanked the town of Termini Imerese in the credits; we drove through Termini Imerese and discovered this wonderful 18th-century bridge.

At one point in the film, after Lino and Amy have moved to Los Angeles and before Lino has found his place in the sprawl, he notes that he is flummoxed by Los Angeles because there is no center. In Italian towns, even the small ones, the Centro is important. Amy, naturally and beautifully, says that she will be his center as he is hers.

Plenty to get sentimental about, as well as being tear-jerked by the story of Lino and Amy. I checked the IMDb page for Zoe Saldaña, the female lead and producer for From Scratch. She is also a June 19th-born person.

the jewel on the screen

I've been (re)watching The Jewel in the Crown (1984). It is one of the screen depictions of India that has put the country so high on my list of places I'd like to visit. Other movies include City of Joy (1992) and Gandhi (1982). The acting in all three of these films is extraordinary. Peggy Ashcroft and Art Malik were probably the two that I remembered best from my watching of The Jewel when it was first shown on PBS. At least, by name.

Now, it is Geraldine James that I am finding most thrilling. Just her presence on screen, as Sarah Layton, fills me with emotion. It is partly because I had watched Benediction (2021) not long before I started watching The Jewel on Netflix discs. She is not someone that I particularly knew before this recent infatuation but there are other recent roles that I enjoyed without attaching her name (and career). She played Queen Mary in the first Downton Abbey movie. She is in 45 Years which has been on my Netflix queue for some time (I've just moved it up the queue). In that, she plays the friend of Charlotte Rampling who was nominated for an Oscar for her role.

When I was internet traversing for this post, I drifted across pictures of Geraldine James with Ben Kingsley as Gandhi. I was surprised to see that she had done another film set in India and then even more surprised to see that it predated, but only just, The Jewel. I guess I'll have to go watch Gandhi again now. One thing is leading to another ... like always.

(The picture is from the Apple TV page for The Jewel in the Crown. The actor in the driver's seat is Charles Dance, here playing Guy Perron, and also playing Lord Mountbatten in The Crown.)

speculative cataloging

According to the Summary of Decisions, Editorial Meeting 5, May 13, 2022, the Library of Congress vocabulary editors decided not to approve the LCGFT proposal for Speculative fiction.

The reasoning: Sources describing this genre convey a lack of consensus on the meaning of the term. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature provides several definitions for speculative fiction ranging from a specific subgenre of science fiction to a super category encompassing all fiction that departs from "reality". Because the usage is still in flux for this term and consensus has not been reached on its meaning, the term was not approved, but may be resubmitted at a future time when the boundaries of the genre are more concrete.

I very much enjoy that the reasoning matches the term. And while I'm speaking of science fiction (or, rather, they're speaking of science fiction), we went to the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once last night and it's quite amusing and strangely optimistic. It is very nice to be in Cambridge with the Kendall Square Cinema just down the street. It was, however, one of my first visits there where I wasn't ready to rush to each of the previewed movies.

separated at birth: flaws and scars

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpGMUuXJbGU

Andrew Garfield on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

October 12, 2017

talking about why we don't need movie stars:

they're a projection of perfection, we are all a lot of things,

dark and light, a collection of bad habits,

focus on perfection, need to accept ourselves in entirety,

beingness, not enoughness,

pretending to be real

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH_uvSxdoQU

Bridgerton, season 2, last episode

Daphne's confession in the rain to Simon

just because something is not perfect 

does not make it unworthy of love, 

you felt you needed to be without fault to be loved,

"I cannot pretend that I do not love you,

I love all of you, even the parts that are too dark

and too shameful, every scar, every flaw, every imperfection"

obsessions

In case you were wondering, Downton Abbey: A New Era has a credit for both Loop Group and Crowd ADR. The Loop Group again was Sync or Swim. But that's all I'll say here. No plot spoilers.

catering by Hantsport Baptist Church Auxiliary

As you may know, I'm a fan of watching the credits until the very end of a movie. I just watched "Cloudburst," a 2011 Canadian-American film starring Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker. The catering was done by several groups including the Hantsport Baptist Church Auxiliary. Here's the Hantsport Baptist Church in Hantsport, Nova Scotia.

(screen grab on 4 May 2022 from Google Street View, image capture 2018)

Hantsport is in the West Hants Regional Municipality. "Hants" is an abbreviation for Hampshire in England. The Wikipedia entry for Hantsport does not mention a connection with Hampshire but you wonder (or, rather, I wonder). The article does say that the native Mi'kmaq people called the area Kakagwek which meant "the place where meat is sliced and dried" and the town is still home to a small Mi'kmaq community.

sink or swim: words, words, words

Some years ago, I wrote a blogpost entitled "rhymes and homonyms" about watching film credits and the marvelous things you can find there. I specifically noted the credit in the movie "Being Julia" for Loop Group to Sync or Swim. The rhyme in the credit caption and the homophone in the company name were just delightful. I now watch for loop group credits and don't see them very often. Just a handful in the ten years since that cited blogpost. The loop group, by the way, creates the crowd sounds in post-production on a film.

I was rewatching the "Downton Abbey" movie last night. Fade out. Cue the credits. Imagine my surprise to see there, there, was the Crowd ADR credit for Sync or Swim. It will not surprise you to learn that I had to look up what ADR meant: automated dialogue replacement.

This little revisit to Sync or Swim led me to study the distinction between homonym, homophone, and homograph. "Sync" is a homophone but not a homonym. And, besides, "homophony" is apparently only used in music. I was going to use "homophony" in the third sentence of the first paragraph.

P.S. Of course, the next day, I saw a Loop Group credit for The Loop Squad, in season 1, episode 1 of "The Chair" on Netflix. And 38 drivers!

P.P.S. Two months later, I decided to watch the final episode of "Downton Abbey" again (season 6, episode 9) and guess what. The Crowd Artists were Sync or Swim.