Went to the press screening of Maryam Touzani's THE BLUE CAFTAN; it was the official selection from Morocco for consideration in the Best Foreign Film category at the Academy Awards. I was surprised at how subtle and quiet the film was. I really found the film quite enthralling, but i'm so distracted right now i can't concentrate. It's because i'm so lonely. I'm not used to it. And somehow the film added to my sense of estrangement.

 Spent the week trying to get in touch with people. This is for the memorial we're holding for Larry. It's quite a chore, because a lot of the e.mail addresses i had for people are no longer valid. So it has been quite a scramble to try to figure out how to get the message through. In some cases, have used FB, if those people are still FB "friends"; in other cases, tried to look the people up and find out if there is a way to contact them.

The two major groups that i've tried to contact are: the people who used to perform for us when we were doing theater; the artists who went to galleries with Larry. The former would be people whom we knew from the period of 1980 through 1985; the latter would be people we knew from 1985 onwards. My mind is a little befogged, trying to remember all the people. 

One thing: can't think of many people from our days at Columbia University. And i have to call Columbia, to inform the alumni association of Larry's death. 

 Two press screenings. One for Mia Hansen-Love's UN BEAU MATIN (ONE FINE MORNING), the other for Dino Risi's UNA VITA DIFFICILE (from 1961). I enjoyed both movies. I also posted little notes on both movies on Facebook. And when i posted on FB, immediately there were comments on UN BEAU MATIN from people disagreeing, i.e., they didn't like the movie. Which is fine. But it reminded me of how Laurie Stone sometimes deals with FB comments. If people want to hijack her FB thread, she immediately disengages: she'll block further comments, etc. She said something like she's here to write what she thinks, she doesn't care what you think. Her feelings (as it were) are not open to debate. I kind of, sort of feel the same. 

So yesterday i had my first real fit of anger in a long time. It was ridiculous, but maybe i'll get into it at a later date. But just as Laurie Stone doesn't want to engage when people are trying to hijack her thread, so i don't need any idiotic suggestions in terms of the memorial i'm trying to organize for Larry. I mean: i want suggestions, but not if they're useless.

An aside: SISTER BONIFACE is getting much better, it's such a quirky show. It had started out as rather lackluster in terms of the mysteries, but now the storylines are better. And it's still so funny to see the nuns acting as the police force of the village. And the "new" season of SILENT WITNESS has been very creepy: the cases are real brain-twisters! Wish that Larry were here to share these with me.

 Ok, started watching screeners for the Spirit Awards. Quite a year for movies! Last week, finally watched Todd Fields' TAR, and have to say it is an impressive (i was almost tempted to say imposing) movie, it had a "grand" feeling to it (the result of shooting the film in those monumental concert halls, which are used almost to dwarf the people) with a razor-sharp, focused performance by Cate Blanchett. It's certainly a virtuoso performance. But i want to say that Michelle Yeoh's performance in EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is just as virtuosic, and is (in fact) far more varied and multifarious, because she has to do so much! It's beyond layered what she has to do, because at any given moment, her performance has to switch, not just in register, but in actuality. Physical comedy, martial arts, intense family drama, movie star glamour, bawdy slapstick, you name it, she does it, and sometimes within a split second. Just my opinion, but i hope other people take note. (This is one of the occasions where, if there were a rare tie at the Oscars, it would be entirely justified, but i fear that Michelle Yeoh's virtuosity might lose out because her performance is essentially "comic" as opposed to the "dramatic" turn by Cate Blanchett.)

Yesterday, watched Charlotte Wells' AFTERSUN and Alice Diop's SAINT OMER. Very different experiences, but both eminently worthwhile. Was particularly taken by AFTERSUN. The "plot" is simple: a divorced father taking his preteen daughter on vacation. But the way that Wells keeps the story very elliptical, providing hints and asides (often by having the "action" of the father and daughter not central in the frame), and using a lot of different formats (video, 16mm, etc.) to create a very complex visual texture to the movie, is remarkable. It's one of the most tactile movies i've seen in a long time, reminding me of the work of people like James Herbert and Larry Gottheim, so there is an experimental feel to AFTERSUN which i found enchanting.

 In today's e.mail from The New York Times, Melissa Kirsch has a note about cramming for "award season". Feel the same, but some days, you just get tired and want to veg out, and it's hard to concentrate on some of the award-worthy candidates. So instead, you turn on the TV and wind up watching something like BARB AND STAR GO TO VISTA DEL MAR, which had some amusement but it wore thin very fast. 

Over the last few weeks, have watched some lesser B noirs, films like SHADOWED (1946, one of the first films directed by John Sturges) and VIOLENCE (1947), both on Movies. On Friday, TCM had a day filled with B thrillers, including THE PENGUIN POOL MURDER (the first of the Hildegarde Withers series, initially starring Edna Mae Oliver), THE GARDEN MURDER CASE (a 1936 entry in the Philo Vance series, this time starring Edmund Lowe as Vance), and GRAND CENTRAL MURDER (an inventive low-budget MGM mystery from 1942, starring Van Heflin and Virginia Grey as a private detective and his wife... the ending is rather startling, and it looks like it could have been the first in a potential series). Then TCM had a whole evening of Warners' Torchy Blaine series, which (mostly) starred Glenda Farrell. It's such a tonic to see these fast-moving mysteries, with witty (or trying-to-be witty) dialogue and amusing plots. I wish BARB AND STAR had learned the lesson of brevity.

But i'm not the only one who feels that there's a lot to catch up with this award season. 

 Yesterday, finally had to collapse. A very slow day, did my laundry (including the sheets) and was going to watch some screeners, but got tired and decided to watch PBS Create: Lidia Bastianich and America's Test Kitchen. (The America's Test Kitchen recipe for the one-pot macaroni-and-cheese remains a favorite.) But by ten-thirty, was just so tired that i went to bed. I think i needed that. Woke up around eight-thirty. It's a soggy day, but the storm systems which have decimated the rest of the country seem to be going over gently in the NYC area. So far, we've had rain, but nothing catastrophic. Is it too much to hope this will continue?

 TCM's Star of the Month for February 2023 is Marion Davies, quite an unusual choice (they've rarely had silent stars as Star of the Month) and yesterday started off with two of her best, the pair of comedies she did with King Vidor as director: THE PATSY and SHOW PEOPLE. Both films showcase her talents magnificently, and THE PATSY also puts her gift for mimicry on full display, when she pretends to be Lillian Gish, Mae Murray, and Pola Negri. Her impersonations of those three movie queens were amazing, because she's not relying on vocal tricks, but has to embody those women with her body and face. And Marion Davies does it, she gets the delicate little moues Lillian Gish used to establish her characters' vulnerability, the full-bodied lurching that Pola Negri employed when her characters were stomping into a scene, and the self-enraptured bee-stung pout that was Mae Murray's stock in trade. One oddity (at least for me): i thought this would be a perfect occasion for Ben Mankiewicz to introduce the whole Star of the Month series, since his family (his grandfather, in fact) had so much to do with the reputation (or its tarnishing) of Marion Davies, by writing details of her life (such as her love of jigsaw puzzles) into the script of CITIZEN KANE. But if TCM is doing Marion Davies, could other silent stars (such as Gloria Swanson) be far behind?

 Still a little shell-shocked. On Sunday, just felt like taking it easy. On TCM, the 1937 A STAR IS BORN was on, and instead of going to the gym, sat and watched it. And it was followed by I REMEMBER MAMA, an old favorite. Then i just went to the grocery store (Key Food) and got things for dinner, and waited for the evening line-up on PBS: MISS SCARLET AND THE DUKE, ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL, and VIENNA BLOOD, all series now in their third seasons, and all series which Larry and i watched together.

I can't help it: i miss him so much! After 50 years, it's hard to be by myself, watching TV without him in the same room, and talking to him about it. Have to say, was pleasantly surprised with MISS SCARLET AND THE DUKE, it seems to be developing nicely and the mix between the mystery and the personal interactions is striking a good balance. ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL was (as always) charming, but it seemed a little forced and underpopulated. There were a little too many small mishaps to potentially throw the wedding off. And the wedding itself seemed curiously underpopulated. In a rural farming community, you'd think that most of the town would show up for the wedding of one of the local vets, since he is so crucial to the well-being of the village. But aside from the "family", there was no one else at the wedding. Larry would have remarked on the oddity of that (was it due to Covid restrictions?). And this season's VIENNA BLOOD seems to be a little more focused in terms of the case being investigated. But there i was, watching these shows without him.

 Two days (January 4th and January 5th) of press screenings for the New York Jewish Film Festival (always a joint venture of Film at Lincoln Center and The Jewish Museum). On Wednesday, January 4th, the two films were AMERICA (directed by Ofir Raul Graizer) and WHERE LIFE BEGINS (directed by Stephane Freiss). On Thursday, the two films were THIS IS NATIONAL WAKE (a documentary directed by Mirissa Neff) and JUNE ZERO (directed by Jake Paltrow). Intriguing group of films. I'm reminded of the discussions i had with the late Wanda Bershen, who was curator at The Jewish Museum when she was in charge of programming the initial New York Jewish Film Festivals (32 years ago!), and the issue for her was to continue to show movies which did not narrowcast the definition of what should or should not be in a Jewish film festival. She once said that it would be too easy to simply show a bunch of documentaries dealing with the Holocaust. During Wanda's time as curator at The Jewish Museum, one of the triumphant exhibitions she showed was the installation version of Chantal Akerman's D'EST, which remains one of the most moving installations mounted in a New York City museum. But there was a notice by the press representative given that the films of this year's festivals were not to be given long reviews, only capsule reviews until the festival gets underway. But i'll say that AMERICA was confounding, because there seemed to be crosscurrents in the story which remained unexplored, and when i got home, i looked up Ofir Raul Graizer, and found that he had made THE CAKEMAKER, a film with a decidedly gay storyline, and some of the same dynamics seemed to be working out in AMERICA, but on a far less emphatic scale.

But the experience of going to the screenings was disconcerting. Ran into a number of people i knew, and we were talking about the fact that one of the last major screenings that any of us remember was going to the press screenings for New Directors/New Films... and that those screenings had started, and then midway through, been cancelled because of the first lock-down. Are screenings to be back-to-normal? 

Today, J. Hoberman's review of the revival run of Patrice Chereau's L'HOMME BLESSE appeared in The New York Times, and he remarked on the controversy that attended the movie on its initial release in this country. (I love the fact that he quoted Janet Maslin's original review in the Times, to show the bewilderment of most of the original reviewers.) I had mentioned that there had been a controversy about the movie on its original release, and i'm glad that Hoberman backed me up! But it's still quite a provocative movie, and a definite movie which did not try to present a "positive" gay image.

Spent New Year's Day working on my Ten Best list to send off to Senses of Cinema. Actually, a very vivid and good year of movies, but the critical discourse was hijacked by considerations of box office and whether the theatrical experience was still viable in terms of the movies. Which meant considerations of movie popularity, rather than considerations of movie quality. Of course, the prime example included TOP GUN: MAVERICK. Since i had no interest in seeing it, in a theater or otherwise, the whole discussion was moot to me. What i found interesting this year were the number of films which might be termed elegies for older filmmakers. There were also films from young filmmakers which seemed to have vital historical, sociological, and cultural import. So this year was a mix. Plus there were two "extra-filmic" works which i thought were profound.

Starting off with the two "extra-filmic" works: the first was EXPEDITION CONTENT, Ernst Karel and Veronica Kusumaryati's film which used the found audio taken during the filming of Robert Gardner's ethnographic classic DEAD BIRDS, somehow this turned out to be revelatory; the other was TERRA FEMME, Courtney Stephens's "illustrated lecture" which probed amateur travelogue footage taken by American women during the 1920s and 1930s while on "exotic" excursions to places in Africa and Asia, an extraordinary display of privileged voyeurism. Highly recommended (both given week-long runs at Anthology Film Archives). Then Number 10) EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (Dan Kwan and Daniel Schienert); Number 9) EO (Jerzy Skolimowski); Number 8) ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (Laura Poitras); Number 7) TILL (Chinonye Chukwu); Number 6) HAPPENING (Audrey Diwan); Number 5) NO BEARS (Jafar Panahi); Number 4) MY IMAGINARY COUNTRY (Patricio Guzman); Number 3) A NEW OLD PLAY (Qiu Jiongjiong); Number 2) BENEDICTION (Terence Davies); Number 1) MARX CAN WAIT (Marco Bellocchio). 

So that wound up being my list. What surprised me was that so many of these films received quite strong reviews upon release, but seemed to get lost in the year-end shuffle (i'm thinking particularly of A NEW OLD PLAY and MARX CAN WAIT). But i'll have more to say about this year's films.

 A new year, and a new start. Today is Sunday, January 1st, 2023. It has been a long time since i've posted on this blog, but am going to try to start again. 

Some momentous things have happened in my life. Most specifically, the death of Larry Benton Qualls, my partner of over 50 years. We met in February of 1972, about a week before Valentine's Day. We were together ever since. And Larry died on Saturday, December 3rd, 2022.

In the last year, Larry was having many health problems. But the doctors could not figure it out. 2021 ended with Larry having two major operations: the first was for cataracts, the other was for his hernia. Supposedly, those operations went smoothly, and he should have started feeling better. But he didn't: the trouble he had walking was getting worse, and he was having problems in terms of standing up, he was getting all stooped over. So he started getting appointments with specialists: cardiologist, gastrointerelogist, et al. Tests and more tests, and nothing coming up. In terms of his functions (heart, cholesterol, etc), he was fine. Better than fine: he was supposedly very healthy. But there was no explanation of why he was having such problems with motor responses, and with his hands. Was it osteoarthritis? Finally, in October, Larry got an appointment with the neurologist, Dr. Kwon of NYU Langone. He looked at the charts, and immediately came up with a diagnosis: Larry had ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) or better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. Unfortunately, there is no known cure, but there were experimental treatments/therapies. Dr. Kwon was hopeful that we would find one of those treatments/therapies which might provide Larry with some relief, and extend his life. He felt, because Larry was otherwise in such good health, aside from the muscular degeneration and the severe loss of weight, Larry might have a chance of having his life extended for maybe two or three years.

So we had that hope. But in the month of December, Larry's decline was severe. On the last day, he could barely get out of bed, in fact, he would try to sit up, and he just couldn't. It was very painful. Finally, around 5:30, he tried to sit up, but just couldn't, so i asked him if he'd like to lie down, and he said yes. So i had to help him lie back down on the bed. And i know i hugged him as i put his head on the pillow, the last thing i said to him was "I love you so much!" And then i went to do some errands, like feeding the goldfish (the fish tank is in the basement). When i got back, Larry wasn't breathing: it was less than 10 minutes. I called to Gary, who had CPR training, and he felt for a pulse. No pulse. We immediately called 911, and the emergency crew were here in about 10 minutes. They tried to revive Larry, but Larry was finally pronounced dead about an hour later. (As soon as the paramedics arrived, Gary and i called Barry, Larry's brother, who lives in New Jersey, and he drove over: he arrived as the paramedics were still trying everything to revive Larry.) 

There is an obituary in the New York Times, one of those paid legacy obits, which Barry and i worked on; it's in the Sunday (January 1st) edition of the Times. I wanted to make sure that some official announcement was made about Larry's death. 

Last night was New Year's Eve, and this is my first without Larry. With the announcement in the New York Times, it's really true: Larry is gone. I still can't believe it.