.SOMETIMES RAW.

Hello and Happy Tuesday!

My husband is back and besides writing and talking and so many other things we love to watch great movies. When we lived in New York we used to go to two movies theaters quite often – the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. [Sometimes I loved to take myself out to Paris! This little movie place next to the Plaza Hotel is really fantastic!] Both movie theaters have a plethora of great independent movies that we love. The weekend is approaching slowly but surely so I want to share some movie recommendations that I think are certainly worth watching. Maybe you find one or two you like. Click on the movie title to see the latest trailer! Enjoy! 

1. Where to Invade next

Synopsis:

This is an expansive, rib-tickling, and subversive comedy in which Moore, playing the role of “invader,” visits a host of nations to learn how the U.S. could improve its own prospects. The creator of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine is back with this hilarious and eye-opening call to arms. Turns out the solutions to America’s most entrenched problems already existed in the world – they’re just waiting to be co-opted.

Director: Michael Moore

2. Embrace of the Serpent 

Synopsis:
At once blistering and poetic, the ravages of colonialism cast a dark shadow over the South American landscape in EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT, the third feature by Ciro Guerra. Filmed in stunning black-and-white, SERPENT centers on Karamakate, an Amazonian shaman and the last survivor of his people, and the two scientists who, over the course of 40 years, build a friendship with him. The film was inspired by the real-life journals of two explorers (Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Richard Evan Schultes) who traveled through the Colombian Amazon during the last century in search of the sacred and difficult-to-find psychedelic Yakruna plant.
Director: Ciro Guerra

3. Standing Tall

Synopsis:
Abandoned by his mother (Sara Forestier) at the age of 6, Malony (Rod Paradot) is constantly in and out of juvenile court. An adoptive family grows around this young delinquent: Florence (Catherine Deneuve), a children’s magistrate nearing retirement, and Yann (Benoît Magimel), a caseworker and himself the survivor of a very difficult childhood. Together they follow the boy’s journey and try unfailingly to save him. Then Malony is sent to a stricter educational center, where he meets Tess (Diane Rouxel), a very special young girl who will show him that there are reasons for hope.
Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot

4. An Eye for Beauty

Synopsis:
Luc is a brilliant young architect with a budding reputation. Opinionated, charming, and confident, he lives with his beautiful wife in the stunning countryside of Quebec. Luc’s seemingly perfect life begins to fall apart, however, when he meets and falls for a mysterious woman during a business trip. Caught in a triangle of emotions, Luc puts everything in jeopardy to pursue his affair, threatening to destroy the life he has built and the woman he loves.

Written and Directed by: Denys Arcand

5.  The Meddler

Synopsis:

THE MEDDLER follows Marnie Minervini (Susan Sarandon), recent widow and eternal optimist, as she moves from New Jersey to Los Angeles to be closer to her daughter (Rose Byrne). Armed with an iPhone and a full bank account, Marnie sets out to make friends, find her purpose, and possibly open up to someone new.

Written and Directed by: Lorene Scafaria

Starring: Susan Sarandon, Rose Byrne, J.K. Simmons, Cecily Strong, Jerrod Carmichael, and Michael McKean

6. Vaxxed – From Cover-up to Catastrophe

Synopsis: 

An investigation into how the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the government agency charged with protecting the health of American citizens, destroyed data on their 2004 study that showed a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, VAXXED: FROM COVER-UP TO CATASTROPHE explores an alarming deception that may have contributed to the skyrocketing increase of autism, potentially the most catastrophic epidemic of our lifetime.
Directed and Written by Andrew Wakefield

I would love to hear from you. Have you seen a great movie lately that you would like to recommend? Please do share! 

“I don’t ask writers about their work habits. I really don’t care. Joyce Carol Oates says somewhere that when writers ask each other what time they start working and when they finish and how much time they take for lunch, they’re actually trying to find out, “Is he as crazy as I am?” I don’t need that question answered.”  ― Philip Roth

Hello and Happy Thursday! 

The other day I looked through all my posts I have written in just one year to see what else might be interesting to add. I have to say it is a lot for one year and I am proud of myself to be this committed. Even more surprised I was that I have not written anything about my favorite author Philip Roth. He wrote 31 books so far and I read all of them. Seriously, I am that crazy about this author. Some I like more and some less but I remember the time when his latest book [Nemesis] came out and I stood in front of the bookstore at 8am to purchase a copy. If you have never read anything by Roth I would recommend to start with  The Dying Animal. This book is simply amazing and perfection from the first sentence to the last. 

“No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you’re not superior to sex. With these words our most unflaggingly energetic and morally serious novelist launches perhaps his fiercest book. The speaker is David Kepesh, white-haired and over sixty, an eminent cultural critic and star lecturer at a New York college–as well as an articulate propagandist of the sexual revolution. For years he has made a practice of sleeping with adventurous female students while maintaining an aesthete’s critical distance. But now that distance has been annihilated.

The agency of Kepesh’s undoing is Consuela Castillo, the decorous and humblingly beautiful 24-year-old daughter of Cuban exiles. When he becomes involved with her, Kepesh finds himself dragged–helplessly, bitterly, furiously–into the quagmire of sexual jealousy and loss. In chronicling this descent, Philip Roth performs a breathtaking set of variations on the themes of eros and mortality, license and repression, selfishness and sacrifice. The Dying Animal is a burning coal of a book, filled with intellectual heat and not a little danger.”

This book has been made into a movie. Check out the trailer for Elegy here.  I just love this friction, every time I read Roth. Here are some things I like you to know about this great author:

Philip Milton Roth (born 1933-in Newark New Jersey) is an American novelist and short-story writer. He is considered one of the leading authors of the 20th century.  He writes provocatively about American as well as Jewish identity. Roth is also well known to focus on familial love, mortality and sexuality in his novels. He wrote his best-seller Portnoy’s Complaint in 1969 and has earned many major awards for all his other novels throughout the years. Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral and National Book Awards for Sabbath’s Theater are just some I would like to mention. Philip Roth is a controversial writer and got many Jewish readers upset when the story Defender of the Faith was published in 1975. 

 “I was suddenly being assailed as an anti-Semite, this thing that I had detested all my life, and a self-hating Jew,” Roth later explained to The New York Times.

Roth recently announced that he retired from writing but I believe this is difficult for him. He almost wrote a novel every year. And I don’t want him to retire – matter of fact. He is known as being a bit of recluse while living at his Connecticut home [Warren – and yes, stalker-me has been there to see if he is at the local coffee shop!] home.

Roth has been married twice. He married Margaret Martison in 1959. They separated but were not divorced when she had a car accident and died in 1968. He married Claire Bloom later on but they separated in 1993 and divorced two years later. Actually, Claire Bloom wrote the memoir Leaving a Doll’s House and of course I read it. It is awesome to see the other side of the coin sometimes. I read Roth’s autobiography The Facts  when he spoke about her a bit but more in I Married to A Communist.  It always takes two to tango, right!?

One of my favorite documentary is Philip Roth’s Unleashed BBC. It makes me feel good to just listen to him talking. Enjoy if you would like. 

Have you read anything by Philip Roth? Do you like his writing? I would love to hear from you. 

You are a great friend and the best sister I could ask for. Today you are 31 years old! Wow. Time just flew by! Do you remember when we played outside in the snow and were so tiny? [Almost as tiny as my eyes? :)] I am proud of you, my dear. Proud of you, that you still keep your marbles with TWO kids while I am losing mine with one. How you always try something new and keep your eyes and ears open to everything and anything. You are very loving, GOOD LOOKING, sexy, smart and just awesome! 

Happy Birthday again! I love you! And you know what I mean with this song. <3