radiopeter

Luxurious.

That’s my one word review of the latest offering from Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar. Los Abrazos Rotos, better known by its American title Broken Embraces, is a symphony of healing and injury, truths and lies, and the latest Grand Cru of THE master of filmmaking in my book.

The story is told, as many Almodóvar narratives are, in a series of flashes backward and forward in time. At the open we meet the blind script writer Harry Caine (Lluis Homar) who is told of the death of the successful businessman Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gomez). The unfolding of their pasts tumble across the screen in front of us, zig-zagging through time. Judit (a shifty and mysterious Blanca Portillo), Caine’s agent, is hiding something. Something major.

And then, upon the silver screen, appears the most luminous of Almodóvar’s inventions to date. Penélope Cruz as Lena, Martel’s secretary, fills the screen with the kind of beauty that dreams are made of. She IS the Audrey Hepburn of the present. And the Marilyn. And perhaps the most beautiful woman in the world. Lena appears completely in flashback as the movie progresses, and like all the other characters, she has a dark secret.

The plot is so thick with twists and turns that if I start to spill any more I’d simply ruin the unveiling of it all. However, there is one scene I can’t resist describing. Throughout the film, the camera switches from playing the role of spy to the role of informant for us. Those may sound like the same things, but under the hand of Almodóvar they are two different beasts entirely.

At one point, Lena catches the camera as a spy. She confesses the truth about an affair to the camera. A quick cut to the person who has demanded the spying, and we’re watching as he is reviewing what camera has seen. He gazes intently at the spy footage, his professional lip-reader at his side (mere seconds of Lola Dueñas) trying to make out the words. During the reverse shot as he watches the film, Lena steps into the frame behind him to voice her own silent film, thus voicing her own confession directly to him.

It was a quintessential Almodóvar moment, a reveal within a reveal within a reveal, and perhaps his finest to date. It’s the best few seconds of film I’ve seen in a long time.

The starkness of Almodóvar’s films, his shapes on screen, the costumes, the sheer boldness of color and his obsession with red make this work such a feast for the eyes that it’s easy to miss the undercurrents. But they’re there in plain sight. He has the ability to alter the evergreen axiom; In Almodóvar’s world, seeing is not only believing, seeing is feeling.

Nearly a year of anticipation was completely fulfilled. This is one of his best works and if Spanish isn’t your first language, it’s most definitely not mine, you’ll need a viewing or two to completely appreciate the nuances of the story.

Run, don’t walk folks. This is one you won’t want to miss. And if this will be your initiation to the cult of Almodóvar, welcome to the addiction.

My two Sphynx decided to wish the world Happy Holidays. Problem is, one speaks English and the other speaks LOL. Who knew?

Jumping back into the podcasting thing. It’s been a LONG while so I’m all um’s and pauses, but have a listen if you like. My goal is to get back into talking into the mic more often.

In a VERY particular order, here are the top five television moments of 2009 that I found particularly spectacular.

5. Max (John Corbett) and Tara Gregson (Toni Collette) watching their children bowl as each of Tara’s alters (she has DID) arrange themselves in the scene to watch the kids bowl. It was an epic portrait and the ending of an engaging series which she would win the Emmy for later in the year. Season two of The United States of Tara begins Mar. 22, 2010.

4. Mma Precious Ramotswe (Jill Scott) tailing a suspicious dentist, cross cut with Mma Grace Makutsi (Anika Noni Rose) befriending little Wellington (Mosako Mogara) from The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. The music in the background was a track called Mahlalela from Hugh Masekala Presents the CHISA years featuring Letta Mbulu. It opened my eyes fully to the gorgeous show, the literary works of Alexander McCall Smith, and to a world of Afropop I barely knew. I hope more episodes are created.

3. Watching Nicki Grant (Chloë Sevigny) comforting Sarah Henrickson (Amanda Seyfried) as she is miscarrying in a motel bathroom during a family road trip. There was a heaviness to the moment, an emotional gut punch, and the remainder of the season three of Big Love grew better and better as time passed. HBO explored massive changes in the Henricksons and Grants this year. Season four begins January 10th 2010.

2. Anna (Morena Baccarin), leader of the Visitors, stripping down to nothing but her human flesh in some sort of Hype Williams R&B video chamber with Sigur Ros’s “Svefn G Englar” thrumming in the background while she comforts her fellow visitors during a telepathic “gift” called “bliss.” I finally found my way to Sigur Ros because of that scene, the song formerly burned in my brain a few years ago somewhere else. Baccarin is amazing as Anna, and I can’t wait for more episodes of V.

1. Jackie Peyton (Edit Falco) lying on the floor in a stark white American Beauty style tableaux, with pellets of painkiller replacing the rose petals, while the theme from Valley of the Dolls plays. Fucking sublime, from my favorite show of the year, Nurse Jackie. The first words Jackie speaks are priceless and set the tone flawlessly for the series:

Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table

T.S. Elliott 10th Grade English Sister Jane Dechantal. What a champ. She’s the one who told me that the people with the greatest capacity for good are the ones with the greatest capacity for evil. Smart fuckin’ nun.

Last night I saw a new show that is just leaving the nest. A show with lush music, amazingly endearing performances, and an iconic template that’s been around for sixty some-odd years. That show was The Addams Family and if you don’t have tickets now, trust me, you won’t be able to get them.

First, let me say this: Lippa, Lippa, Lippa, Andrew Lippa I love you and your work. I’ll come back to him, but to be frank, his work is the most amazing part of the show.

I actually sat and wrote out the entire show story as best as I could remember, but I decided to distill it down to this: drop what you think you know about the family because it’s all been turned upside down. The genius of the story lies in how people will go into the show expecting one thing, but end up delighted when they find another. The story is as old as the hills, but with a twist. A very un-typical family dealing with very typical family issues.

I’m a lifer here in Chicago, having never lived anywhere else. Part of the reason I used to travel to Broadway to see productions being born in NYC was because I knew I’d see some techno-wizardry on stage, usually a cut above what we see in Chicago. Times, they are a-changin’ folks, and The Addams Family is proof of that. The stagecraft is amazingly complex, perhaps the most complicated I’ve personally seen in town.

There are a couple I-can’t-believe-I’m-seeing-that-on-stage tricks (think Wicked when Elphie flies) that aren’t done just for the sake of the trick. They really do unfold the story even further. Seeing Wednesday torture Pugsley by drawing during a song called “Pulled” is one of the early clues that any stage trickery you see has a point. Watching Uncle Fester dance with the moon (who he has fallen in love with) was hilariously funny and endearing. And the squid. Well, I’ll leave the squid to both your curiosity and imagination.

Take that NYC! We got yo’ fancy tricks covered!

And we got yo’ actors too. Bebe Neuwirth and Nathan Lane are headlining the cast. They’re stellar, duh, but it wasn’t until their main tango/flamenco number that you really see both of them shine. I’d honestly watch Bebe Neuwirth kick a tin can down an alley because really, she’d be so über graceful and slinky while she did it, how could you not want to see her move? They received two rounds of applause at the end of the scene during which she was in a deep bend forward, toes pointed (there must be some dance term for such things, but I don’t know it), thigh-high boots screaming with sex appeal, pale white skin peeking out from her neckline that plunged “down to Venezuela” and holding headless rose stem in her mouth.

I nearly had wood folks.

The remainder of the cast is equally as stellar, with an Uncle Fester singing about things you’d never expect Fester to sing about (remember what I said earlier?) and two dinner guests who find themselves (and more) in the Addams Manor. Carolee Carmello, who plays Alice Beineke, has the biggest transformation of the show and let me tell you, when she growls it out during the song called “Waiting” near the end of the first act, my jaw was on the floor. Her husband, Mal Beineke (Terrence Mann) also gets the chance to let it all out after an encounter with the squid. Damn, I wasn’t going to bring up the squid again. Oh well, sue me.

But Andrew Lippa. Oh Andrew Lippa. Do you ever write a bad turn of phrase? Do you ever misplace a note on the page? I think not. I have to admit, I fell for Andrew Lippa’s style hook, line, and sinker when I saw a mounting of Asphalt Beach as part of the American Music Theatre Project at Northwestern. Much to my extreme sadness, the show never made it past that venue (that I know of) and I’m still Desperately Seeking the Soundtrack or ANY recordings of it.

His book and music are genius. Above the stage design, above the voices, and above the headliners, the book and music in The Addams Family are the real stars. I described the music as lush earlier, and I honestly can’t think of a better adjective. Hats off to the musicians who performed the work, a mini-orchestra who delivered the kind of sound you’d expect in the old MGM masterpieces. AND the show started with an overture of the delights to come. So few shows do that these days. I think it gets lost on the audience.

I’ll say it again, if you don’t have tickets, you’re gonna miss it, and that’d be bad. Will I travel to NYC to see it? Natch. But I love that I could support yet another great opening here in Chitown. If you’re a local yokel, I hope you see it too. And lemme know what you think.

Super Baozi vs Sushi man from sun haipeng on Vimeo.

Don’t miss the end. Seriously funny stuff and amazing animation!

Dragon Fist from sun haipeng on Vimeo.

A lot has changed in cellular biology since the early/mid 90’s when I began studying the subject. Not only has imaging technology advanced significantly, the amount of research on the actual biochemistry of cellular respiration has expanded logarithmically.

There’s a helluva lotta new stuff. The nerd in me l o v e s it all.

My bio prof is actually from the University of Chicago. Don’t ask me how he took a gig to teach a bio course at Truman, but he did. And I have to say, he’s kind of amazing. He’s animated, funny, and despite how he reads PowerPoint slides to us (the inevitable death-by-PPT), I’ve actually been learning a ton as he brings the science home with real-world examples.

He did his PhD in membrane structure as it relates to the basic cytoskeletal elements. The fascinating thing about his work is how different it is from what I originally learned. If there’s one thing I love about being back in school, it’s watching science in action.

I loved my science classes as a little kid, even though there wasn’t much to them until high school. Wait, I take that back. In 8th grade at Sayre, our classroom was essentially the science lab of the school. Mrs. Wegloski, an eccentric in poor health during my 8th grade year, taught me good stuff. She even begged the school board for funds to purchase software that let me dissect a frog ON A COMPUTER. That was 1989/1990 folks. The software was in its infancy, but it was cool nonetheless.

Raised on a healthy dose of PBS, programs like Nova and Nature took me around the world through the eyes of science. In 1993, when Scientific American Frontiers made it’s debut, I was a genXer in flannel and denim, yet each week I made time to tune into Alan Alda strolling into science laboratories around the world and watching science happen. I recorded the episodes on the VCR as well, just so I could watch them a couple times to make sure I learned everything. *nerdalert*

Even today, my #1 source for pleasure reading is Science Daily, a remarkably comprehensive aggregation of scientific articles and journal synopses. It is teh crak, and I can spend hours devouring the articles. Of course, I need google/wikipedia up most of the time to look up unfamiliar terminology, but it’s a learning process that gets easier every day.

As I was sitting in class yesterday, it hit me like a truck: I’m going to, one day, actually DO science for a living as a nurse.

Profound doesn’t even come close to describing that realization. Somehow my bio-geekery of all these years decided, right there and then, to reach out and slap me into realizing the industry I’m currently in (investment banking, the computer side) is meaningless to me.

I could lament why I didn’t realize this years ago, but spilled milk and all that be damned. Accepting how my bio-nerdiness is way cooler than a million other things has been on my mind for the last day. And in the random Ally McBeal way my head works, after watching Lea Michele and Kristen Chenoweth battle it out two weeks back on Glee (musical-nerd here too), I think a little Sally Bowles is in order.

Everybody loves a winner
So nobody loved meeeeeeee
‘Lady Peaceful,’ ‘Lady Happy,’
That’s what I long to beeeeeeee
All the odds are in my favor
Something’s bound to begiiiiiiiin
It’s got to happen
Happen sometime
Maybe this time
Maybe this time I’ll wiiiiiiiin

The last couple weeks have been pretty blurred. Adjusting to life in school, watching the health of my father decline and bounce back, and helping out with my sister’s baby shower/housewarming have all made the days race by.

I’m happy to report that Dad is well and out of the hospital, pacemaker and all. I think he wants to jump right back into life but that can’t happen immediately. For a man who is on the go all the time (gee, where do I get that from?) this has to be a crushing blow to his ego. In some ways I hope it helps him relax and stop to smell the flowers here and there. We all need more of that.

School is actually going well. I’m in my groove with my coursework and this concept of regularly studying during the week is getting easier to manage. There’s a pretty detailed path ahead of me with the courses I’ll need to take and my application process for Nursing school, but all in good time. Slowly little bits and pieces of the future are coming into focus, and I couldn’t ask for more.

The party was a success, with immense quantities of food and lots of smiling faces eating well. Food is love in my world, and we provided a lotta lovin’ all around. It wasn’t until the party was well underway that I looked around and actually saw all the new pieces to my family.

See, my family consisted of basically five people for the beginning of my life. Mom & Dad, my sisters, and me. My eldest sister sort of left the family when she first married, so we were down to four. When the middle sis married, I was kinda scared it would just be three. But instead, the family is growing. I have in-laws I didn’t have before. There are teenagers and little ones. And the newest addition to the family is yet to come. My sister is going to give birth to a punkin’ (due Oct 24th I think) so there will be actually one more added to the family.

Pretty nifty, this big family thing.

—

A while back I decided I wanted to hit the gym harder. Of course, deciding to do something like that and actually doing it are two completely different beasts. My usual routine is strictly cardio, but I’ve been slacking off lately. On more nights that I care to admit I’ve fallen asleep on my school books in bed. Let me tell you, drool on a softcover book ain’t pretty. And if I’m falling asleep studying, that means I best sleep a bit more in the mornings. At least that theorem works for me. Before you tell me I shouldn’t be reading in bed, I’ll tell you that I did extraordinarily well in my sciences during high school and my previous college life by studying horizontally. Oooh, that sounds dirty.

Anyway, I’m seriously considering hiring a trainer. I’d seriously consider just hiring a plastic surgeon if I REALLY had the coin and the time to visit Facelift Island, but alas, I don’t have either. So the gears are turning in my head. But before I really start to hit it hard, I’m takin’ this car in for a tune up.

I have a physical coming up in two weeks and I need to checkpoint everything going on with my insides just to be sure. No problems except the occasional chest-twinge, but I think that’s because I have no pectoral muscles save for my nipples (which aren’t really muscles, but in my case, that’s all I got) and am experiencing something very similar to Precordial Catch Syndrome. A visit to El Doctor is in order to check my bits and pieces are all in the right places and doing the right things. I just hope that Godforsaken peehole swab test isn’t in the cards. My pipes are fine and there are some places a q-tip should never visit. *shudder*

So Q42009 will be focused on health. Good God, did I just report my health plan in terms of a business quarter? Dammit, I need a new job…

Not me. My parents.

The last week or so has found me not pattering around the world, soaking up life as is my usual M.O. Instead I’ve been in an SICU waiting room, on route many times to a hospital, and touring the halls of our local cardiac unit while my father has been having major heart problems.

He now has a pacemaker but even that hasn’t fixed him completely. The jury is still out on what exactly is wrong and it’s bugging me that we still don’t know. The worst part is not having an answer. Good or bad, I almost don’t care at this point. I just want an answer. So far there is none to be had.

Aging fcuking sucks.

A while back my mom had a scare with her heart. Lots of medications later she is on the right track and doing well. Now the universe thinks it’s my dads turn, despite his flawless checkup this past June.

I’m not complaining mind you. My family has been blessed with relatively few health complications overall. It’s just awfully humanizing, humbling, and downright terrifying to face the mortality of my parents.

One day they won’t be around. I know that in my head. I just hope, in good health, we don’t have to see that day anytime soon.