Movie Review—Kidnap

Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O'Connell                                                                                                                                            

Kidnap. Released: Aug. 2017. Runtime: 82 mins. MPAA Rating: R for violence and peril.

In the popular Taken series of films (2008-2115), a fiftyish white male protagonist, played by Liam Neeson, seeks to save family members abducted or in danger. Now in Kidnap a thirtyish African-American female protagonist (Halle Berry) seeks to rescue her abducted six-year-old son. 

Director Luis Prieto, screenwriter Knate Lee, and co-producer Berry have been very economical in the structuring of their film. It is only 82 minutes long, instead of the more standard 120 minutes. There is only one star (Berry) in the cast. The movie has only five sequences—three brief ones at the beginning; a car chase sequence, one of the longest on record, taking up more than half the running time; and a sequence that uses the traditional suspense/action film trope of a woman menaced in an isolated old house. 

The beginning sequences are, first, an appealing series of photos and videos of Frankie (Sage Correa), only child of Karla Dyson (Berry), in his infancy and toddler years; then. Karla, now divorced and in a custody fight with her ex, doing tiring work as a waitress in a diner; then, an excursion of Karla and Frankie to an amusement park, where Frankie is “taken”  by, as we learn, a classic redneck couple, Terry (Lew Temple) and Margo (Chris McGinn), who force him into their car and roar away. After some initial panicky confusion, Karla realizes what has happened and sets off in pursuit of the kidnappers, first on foot, running frantically and losing her phone, and then in her minivan.

The wild and wooly car chase that follows is the central sequence of the film and takes us hither and yon on the spaghetti of superhighways surrounding New Orleans and then onto rural roads in bayou country. Berry as Karla convincingly transforms from soccer mom to “Mama Bear” as the chase proceeds, grimacing fiercely, babbling to herself or to God, crying for help to others along the way, and shrieking imprecations at the kidnappers.

She has several direct and bloody clashes with Terry and Margo, letting them know that she will pursue them relentlessly. “Let me tell you something, as long as my son is in that car, I will not stop. Wherever you go I will be right behind you.” (The fact that Karla in her pursuit causes accidents to a number of innocent motorists might make an interesting topic for discussion by audience members as they drive home after the movie.) The cinematography of the chase is itself, effectively, wild and wooly, a startling array of constantly changing camera angles and shot types. 

By the time she gets to the swamps, the gentle Karla that we saw in the beginning sequences has become a woman of wondrous intensity, willing to use any means necessary, no matter how brutal, to save her beloved child, and not just her child. Kidnap may be only 82 minutes long, but it is one—wait for it—Halle of a thrill ride!

Old Savin Rock topic of talk in West Haven

Folks who recall the old Savin Rock amusement park will enjoy a three-person panel discussion: “Memories of Savin Rock Amusement Park” Sept. 28 at 6 p.m. at the West Haven Public Library, 300 Elm St.

Mayor Ed O’Brien will host the free event, which will be presented by the Columbus Day Committee of Greater New Haven and Sons and Daughters of Italy Lodge 37. 

The discussion will include a presentation and a reception with refreshments.

Savin Rock was an amusement park in West Haven that operated in various forms and delighted locals and other beachgoers from the 1870s until 1966. 

Savin Rock was established between 1873 and 1904 — originally just as a hotel. The amusement park was created by George Kelsey, a local entrepreneur who extended the trolley lines to the area of the park and built a 1,500-foot pier at the end of Beach Street to accommodate a ferry service.

But as time went on, Savin Rock grew with the 20th Century into a regional fun district that was said at one point to have more rides, hot dog stands, frozen custard stands and bars than Coney Island.

To learn more about Savin Rock and to wander through a lovingly-assembled collection of its memorabilia, visit the Savin Rock Museum, located in the basement of the Savin Rock Conference Center at 6 Rock St. It is reachable by phone at 203-937-3666 or online at http://savinrockmuseum.com/

Roasted Shishito Peppers

By Sarah Walker Caron
Bangor Daily News

f you’d heard the crinkle of deli wrap coming from my direction in recent months, it’s because I’d fallen into a rut — the kind that involves too much takeout being consumed. It’s also the kind of rut that means several corrugated cardboard pizza boxes were sticking out of my recycling bin on the last recycling day.

It’s funny — or I think so, at least — because I cook often. Every day, in fact. Sometimes breakfast, sometimes lunch, sometimes dinner, sometimes all three. But for all I cook, I manage to still find too many occasions to buy takeout.

Don’t get me wrong, takeout can be nice sometimes. It’s easy, fast and without requiring much work on my end. And on busy days, it can help take a little stress off. But when you find yourself in the rut of too much takeout, your wallet and your belly start to feel it.

So, I am calling enough on this not-so-good habit. I don’t need to buy lunch every day (in fact, I am happier just running home to quietly eat at my kitchen table). And on those difficult days where takeout seems so much easier, I am choosing truly easy dinners over takeout.

Of course, with those easy dinners, easy side dishes are key. Salad is always a go-to for us. It’s so easy to toss together lettuce, chopped veggies and fun toppings like sunflower seeds or candied nuts. Snow peas, served raw, can be a fun change-up from the usual cooked veggies too.

This recipe for Roasted Shishito Peppers is also a great quick and easy side dish. And it’s a step away from what you might usually do with peppers.

Shishito peppers are a small, sweet variety of peppers (well, usually … once in awhile you’ll get a spicy one) that are fantastic served browned and blistered. This can be achieved by frying them in hot oil but for a better-for-you take, roasting can do the job too. Click here to continue reading.

Movie Review—Lady Macbeth

by Peter J. O’Connell    

Lady Macbeth. Released: July 2017. Runtime: 89 mins. MPAA Rating: R for some disturbing violence, strong sexuality/nudity, and language.

The pushback by women in Victorian times against the restrictions imposed on them has been featured in four films in recent months. In A Quiet Passion, Emily Dickinson responded gently by withdrawal and creativity; in My Cousin Rachel, Cousin Rachel definitely responded, though we’re not sure whether it was gently or violently; in The Beguiled, genteel women eventually dealt with male intrusion in a definitely non-genteel way; in Lady Macbeth, the protagonist responds by hot-blooded passion and cold-blooded violence. 

Lady Macbeth, directed by William Oldroyd from a script by Alice Birch, is not an overt version of Shakespeare’s “Scottish play.” The film is a version of the first half of Russian author Nikolai Leskov’s novella Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, first published in 1865 in a magazine edited by Dostoevsky. Leskov’s work is itself not an overt version of Shakespeare, but the influence of the Bard’s dark story is inevitable.

Oldroyd’s film begins in 1865 at a somewhat remote estate in northern England. Boris (Christopher Fairbank), the estate’s owner, has bought some land and along with it, Katherine (Florence Pugh), a lovely 17-year-old. Boris marries off Katherine to his middle-aged son, Alexander (Paul Hilton), a widower. Boris very much wants a grandchild, but Alexander and his late wife did not produce one. Boris makes it very clear to Katherine that she is expected to do so. That is a difficult assignment inasmuch as the cold and demanding Alexander shows little interest in, and less ability at, consummating a sexual relationship with his wife, despite her youth and beauty.

Katherine loves to walk outside in the woods, meadows, and moors surrounding the estate, feeling at one with nature and the animals. Boris and Alexander, however, forbid her to do so. They want her to remain in the big house, which is drably furnished and lacks books, except for the Bible, and other accouterments of cultured living. Katherine finds herself spending her days mostly sitting in a big, beautiful, blue dress on a brownish “love seat.” Her only close associate is Anna (Naomi Ackie), her sympathetic but mostly mute maid.

Katherine appears to be part of that 19^th-century literary sisterhood of women trapped in loveless marriages that includes Hester Prynne, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Isabel Archer, and Nora Heimer. Like some of them, she encounters a magnetic male who brings life to her life, so to speak. For Katherine that male is James (Cosmo Jarvis), a virile, assertive worker on the estate. When Boris and Alexander are called away for a time to deal with a crisis, Katherine and James have high times together, both in and out of bed. And they don’t much care who knows. so long as it’s not Boris or Alexander. But Boris does catch wind of what’s up and returns angrily to restore decorum.

At this point, Lady Macbeth shifts from feminist period piece to film noir in a Victorian setting, with Katherine committing deeds as dark as those of such femme fatales as the Barbara Stanwyck character in Double Indemnity or the Gene Tierney character in Leave Her to Heaven. Unlike in My Cousin Rachel, there is no ambiguity here concerning Katherine’s response to Boris and, later, Alexander’s efforts to “tame” her.

Complications come with the arrival of a woman named Mary (Golda Rosheuvel) and her grandson, little Teddy (Anton Palmer), whom Katherine dotes on—for a while—and the decline in confidence and commitment of James. But the complications only make Katherine more confident herself as she takes action to resolve the situation. When at the film’s end, Katherine—now somewhat plump around the middle--sits in her big, beautiful, blue, dress—now somewhat soiled—in that love seat, it is as if a queen, though not a Scottish one, has taken the throne, a throne of blood.

Lady Macbeth provides that ever-growing firmament of beautiful and talented young British actresses with a new and very bright star—a Florence to add to the assorted Emmas, Emilys, Emilias, and others who have graced movie screens in recent years. Pugh’s performance is charismatic. She has a striking ability to rivet an audience’s attention on her face by its being somehow both impassive and expressive at the same time.

The rest of Oldroyd’s cast is also well chosen. The roles of Anna, James, Mary, and Teddy are played by actors who are black or of mixed race. In Lady Macbeth this anachronistic situation is not simply a fulfillment of a diversity imperative in casting but provides a link between the class crosscurrents of the 19^th century and the race/ethnicity ones of today. The excellence of the actors makes the situation work well as a complement to the sex/gender concerns of the main story line.  

  

       

Why Baking Is So Relaxing

Baking is, in many ways, a pastime as American as baseball. It has become a quintessential part of celebration, a staple of holidays and get-togethers with friends and family. In recent years, baking has become even more popular thanks to a British reality show on PBS that has become a household favorite in the U.S. — The Great British Baking Show,  a program that showcases baking as a form of art, with distinctive takes on pies, bread, cakes and other assortments.

Once again, we venture to a tent in the English countryside and find 12 amateur bakers that will deliver their takes on classic recipes to impress Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood — all with the help and humor of hosts Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc, and without the dreaded soggy bottom.

Despite it being a competition, the show has been able to showcase an aesthetic value to baking, as well as baking as a form of creativity and expression. As a result, its popularity with public television viewers increased.

“For me, it’s been the best discovery,” said Morgan Manning, who watches the show on KQED in San Francisco, in an interview conducted through Twitter. “I love the camaraderie amongst the competition, they’re all so genuine!”

Manning adds that its humor is a highlight, but also has motivated her to do some more baking.

I Am in Control

Yet, the show has been more than serving as motivation to do more baking. It’s also had a positive impact on health and well-being, especially in Britain — by reducing stress levels.

In 2015, ahead of a special edition of the program in the U.K. (where its known as The Great British Bake Off) for charity, a study for the company Cake Angels found that 80 percent of people surveyed had been baking in order to decrease their stress levels, according to a report from the Business Insider website.

It was particularly helpful for John Whaite, who won the show’s 2012 edition. Whaite was diagnosed with manic depression in 2005 and said that baking had helped him manage his condition.

Whaite, an ambassador for Cake Angels and an author of cookbooks, wrote about how baking can impact stress in the cookbook released after his win.

“When I’m in the kitchen, measuring the amount of sugar, flour or butter I need for a recipe or cracking the exact number of eggs, I am in control,” Whaite said in a 2013 interview with the BBC. “That’s really important as a key element of my condition is a feeling of no control.”

According to recent research published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, which measured young adults over the course of 13 days through entries in a diary, baking was listed as one of the activities where if you did it, you felt happier, calmer and more energetic the following day. Other activities included painting, designing, cooking, writing and performing music.

“There is growing recognition in psychology research that creativity is associated with emotional functioning,” said Tamlin Connor, a professor of psychology at the University of Otago in New Zealand, who was the lead author of the study, in an interview with the UK’s Daily Telegraph newspaper. “Engaging in creative behavior leads to increases in well-being the next day, and this increased well-being is likely to facilitate creative activity on the same day.” Click here to continue reading.

Movie Review—Dunkirk

by Peter J. O'Connell

Dunkirk. Released: July 2017. Runtime: 106 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense war experience and some language.

Writer/director Christopher Nolan is noted for his mind-bending/time-bending explorations of the human psyche—as in Memento (2000) and Inception (2010)--and of outer space, as in Interstellar (2014). He also, of course, helmed the enormously popular Batman trilogy of recent years, which probed the psyche of a superhero. Now Nolan has given us Dunkirk, which explores history and the heroism of “ordinary” people. 

In the film it's May 1940. Hitler's blitzkrieg has bypassed the Maginot Line, rolled across the Low Countries, and trapped hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, mostly British, on the beach at the English Channel town of Dunkerque (Dunkirk) in far northwestern France. The troops will have to surrender if they cannot be evacuated to England soon. The British Navy—scattered, under air and submarine attack, and lacking ships that can get close enough to the beach—finds it difficult to reach the troops. If they surrender, Britain may become a slave state of Nazi Germany. To avoid this disaster, British craft of all kinds—fishing boats, pleasure craft, yachts, etc.--have been called on to cross the Channel and rescue the troops, while the Royal Air Force battles German planes in the skies to protect the evacuation. 

Nolan brilliantly brings his penchant for mind-bending and time-bending to this situation as a way of structuring the film's narrative. That narrative has three major intercutting threads covering different periods of time. One begins on land and covers one week. It focuses on the grim adventures of three low-ranking soldiers: Tommy (Fionn Whitehead), whose name is slang for a common British soldier; Alex (Harry Styles); and Gibson (Aneurin Barnard), who may not be what others at first assume him to be. A second thread involves a daring day in the life of Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance), a middleaged, middle-class owner of a small craft; his son Peter (Tom Glynn-Carney); and George (Barry Keoghan), a young deckhand. The three sail across the Channel in their vessel, rescuing one soldier from the sea and an amazingly large number from Dunkirk. The third narrative thread involves one hour in the service of three RAF fighter pilots: Farrier (Tom Hardy), Collins (Jack Lowden), and their squadron commander (Michael Caine, voice only). 

The film is intensely focused on the varying kinds of action in the three story threads. Dialogue is minimal; backstory nonexistent; politicians and high commanders in war rooms nowhere to be seen. The three different time frames create a sense of disorientation in the audience that gives at least some idea of what the actual men involved in the Dunkirk episode might have felt. The magnificent cinematography shows that no matter how vast the military operations are, they still are small compared to the immensity of the sky and the sea. The superb score by Hans Zimmer relentlessly ratchets up the tension, with grinding metal noises, throbbing violins, and a ticking clock (reportedly director Nolan's watch). 

Near the film's conclusion, we hear a portion of a famous speech by Winston Churchill: “ . . . We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air . . . .We shall fight on the beaches . . . we shall never surrender . . . .” But we do not hear this speech in the stentorian tones of the great orator. We hear it as haltingly read from a newspaper by Tommy. The incident sums up this terrific film about the extraordinary feats of ordinary men—men who fought in France, on the seas and oceans, in the air, and on the beaches. Men who never surrendered. Dunkirk marked the beginning of that period of several months that Churchill would call Britain's “finest hour.” In Dunkirk Christopher Nolan and his cast and crew provide a fine 106 minutes in the theatre recreating that time.         

Seniors get a free lifetime pass to state parks

Passes providing lifetime free admission to all state parks and forests (excluding camping) are available free of charge to Connecticut veterans with a service-related disability and residents 65 and older.

The passes can be used to waive parking fees at any state park. Access will be permitted for the vehicle and all passengers. The pass holder does not have to be the driver of the vehicle.

Veterans and seniors may apply in person at certain Department of Energy and Environmental Protection  locations, including DEEP State Park Headquarters in Hartford or at Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill.

Veterans may also apply by sending a photocopy of their current Connecticut driver’s license or other legal proof of residency, and Veterans Administration (VA) Card or VA benefits letter indicating the service connected disability to: DEEP Disabled Veteran Pass, State Parks Division, 79 Elm Street, Hartford, CT 06106-5127.

Seniors may obtain a pass by sending a photocopy of their current Connecticut driver’s license or other legal proof of age and residency to DEEP Charter Oak Pass, State Parks Division, 79 Elm Street, Hartford, CT 06106-5127.

Glen Campbell’s Farewell Tour, With Alzheimer’s

(Editor’s note: Glen Campbell died on Aug. 8, 2017 in Nashville “following his long and courageous battle with Alzheimer’s disease,” according to his family. He was 81. In his memory, we are republishing this article about him from 2016.)

Glen Campbell isn’t singing anymore. The musician born on April, 22, 1936, who turns 80 today, has been silenced by Alzheimer’s. In March, Rolling Stone reported that Campbell is in the final stages of the disease and no longer communicating. The 2014 movie about his diagnosis and farewell tour, however, is still telling his story.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me was selected as one of 60 finalists for the 2015 Peabody Awards. And today, in honor of Campbell’s birthday, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is hosting a screening of the documentary and we’re republishing below our earlier article about it.

At one point in the movie, the country music legend pauses on stage, forgetting the chorus to one of his hit songs, Galveston. As he struggles for the words, hundreds of voices in the audience respond, singing together, “I can still hear your sea winds crashing.”

With that prompt, Campbell picks up the next line in the song — just one of his 21 hits that made the Top 40.

Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease at age 74, Campbell may forget some of his most beloved lyrics, but most boomers will never forget his songs from the ’60s and ’70s, including Gentle on My Mind and Rhinestone Cowboy. Click here to continue reading.