Fences (a movie review post)

I think I want to start by saying something that could be a bit controversial: This is not a "black" movie. Yes, there are some things in the movie that deal specifically with race issues but, mostly, it's a movie about a man, a very likable but horrible man, trying to deal with his life and his relationships and the disparity between those things and how he sees himself. Basically, he is so caught up in his view of how he has been unjustly kept down that he can't see how unjust he is being to those around him, especially his son.

I felt like Troy Maxson could have been my own father. [Which is why I'm saying it's not a "black" movie, because I think that gives the impression that you can only relate to the movie if you're African American, but I think Fences very facilely rises above that. Anyone not in the 1% should be able to relate to this movie.]

Although I don't think this is a Best Picture quality movie -- I had some issues with the ending -- though it will probably (and should) get nominated, the performances were amazing. Seriously amazing. This is possibly the best performance of Denzel Washington's career, which is saying a lot, I can't think of a better performance by any other actor in any movie I've seen this year. He was tremendous: likable and horrible. He was a guy you'd want to hang out with, stick with, as his friend Bono said, because he would take you places. And, also, give you an example of what things not to do, how not to be.

Viola Davis is great and certainly deserves best actress for this. She perfectly portrayed the wife trying to keep her wayward-leaning husband doing the right thing... even though he consistently managed to thwart her efforts without any seeming effort of his own. Her body language conveyed every frustration she felt while also communicating her failure to resist his charms whenever she would stand up to him. She was perfect.

Stephen Henderson, Jovan Adepo, and Russell Hornsby were all great. Hornsby has a lot of charisma so was really able to lean into the character of Lyons, the son trying to get by on his good looks and charm and the fact that he's a musician. But it's Adepo who really pulls off the dynamic of being the son of a father like Troy, the struggle of abandoning the search for approval from someone who never thinks of anyone other than himself.

Possibly the best performance of the movie, though -- and possibly the best performance of anyone this year -- was Mykelti Williamson as Gabriel, Troy's brain damaged brother. Williamson has been around for a long time, so you've probably seen him in stuff. I know him best from Justified. He was phenomenal. If he doesn't get best supporting actor for this role, it's definitive proof that there is something wrong with the world, not that we don't already have that, but, if he does get it, it might show that there's still hope. Seriously, he was great.

Fences is a good movie, a really good movie, but you shouldn't see it for the movie; you should see it for the acting.

Les Miserables (a local color post)

As I mentioned in passing, recently, my oldest son has been a part of a local production of Les Miserables. He's actually getting paid for this gig, which is pretty cool, especially since he didn't even audition for the part. He was requested by the director (whom he worked with several years ago in a production of The Pirates of Penzance). Not that he had a big part in that he was one of the main characters or anything; he wasn't, but he did have several solo bits and was a named character, Combeferre, along with the ensemble stuff he did. Basically, he was on stage through the greater part of the performance. He's even the first one onto the stage, as he gets pushed out as part of the prisoner gang.

As you can guess, I'm going to say my son was great. And he was. But, look, it's chorus work, mostly, and the chorus folk did a fine job, on the whole (with the exception of one kid who didn't know what to do with himself when he wasn't actively doing anything). His singing was right on, so it's hard not to be great when you don't have so much room to screw up. Okay, look, if my kid has one issue, it's that he might smile too much, but that's also one of the things that makes him good. He's got charisma, and he draws eyes to him just by being on the stage. [Recently, he was in Pride & Prejudice in the role of Bingley, largely due to his ability to smile. Well, he got that role as opposed to some other role, because no one can smile the way he can.]

Overall, the production was quite well done, but there were a few issues. Primarily, it was difficult at times to hear the singing over the orchestra. Maybe, this was an issue for use because we were sitting right up front, just one row removed from said orchestra, so the music was right in our faces. Or, maybe, they just didn't have the sound system set up to overcome the orchestra; I don't know. What I do know is that I was glad, as I watched, that I have seen the movie, because there were a few places I wouldn't have know what was going on if I hadn't seen it, because I couldn't hear the vocals. The worst of that happened during the scene where Javert shows up with the revolutionaries, where I still had a moment of "huh? What's he doing there?" until I remembered what was going on.

Speaking of Javert, I'm still waiting to see a version of Les Mis where I think the Javert performance is worthwhile. If the other performances in the recent movie adaptation hadn't been so strong, Russel Crowe could have ruined it, because he was pretty horrible. The guy in this production was better but only just. Mostly, he just stood in place on stage and sang, which is where he did a better job than Crowe, because he did have a good voice and sang the numbers well, but he just stood there and sang for most of them. Unemotionally. In fact, just about his only acting was to tilt his head back and look down his nose at Jean Valjean. My wife says that Javert is the kind of role where you can get away with playing it with a stick up your butt, because Javert has a stick up his butt, and I agree, but I am still dissatisfied.

The actor playing Jean Valjean, Pedro Rodelas, had a very Hugh Jackman look to him and played the role with the same kind of heart, which made him hard not to like, even if some of the music stretched his vocal range beyond his ability. I think the same can be said of Jackman, though (actually, I think I did say that somewhere after I saw the movie), but the emotion both actors poured into the role made up for any gaps in their singing ability.

The most difficult part of this production was the actor they chose to play Marius, David Strock. The man can sing, but he was just too old for the part, and I couldn't buy into him as the student revolutionary standing next to the young woman playing Cosette. He just looked out of place, which made it difficult to buy into that whole young love-at-first-sight thing that's supposed to be going on.

However, the kid they had playing Gavroche, Ari Vozaitis, was amazing and could have completely stolen the show if he'd more "screen" time. I'm guessing he's not older than 12.

The only other issue is a practical one: The show is quite pricey. But I suppose that's the price you pay ["Claim the pun!" as Briane Pagel would say.] for local theater. Still, $30 is a lot to pay for a ticket but, if you can afford it, I would strongly recommend the show. I'll put it like this: It's long. Three hours long. But I didn't once have that feeling of wondering how much longer it was, and that's saying a lot. Also, my wife cried and, as previously stated, if my wife cries, you know it's good.

Cat Angst

I've taken ownership of  the cat.

As you can see, I've got him all packed up and ready to go. Actually, no, that's just the cat taking ownership of my daughter's accordion case. Anything that looks like something he shouldn't be in is something he decides he wants to be in.

But back to my original statement: I've taken ownership of the cat. Not that I know what I would do if the technical owner showed up at my door tomorrow and said he wanted the cat back. I suppose I could say, "Let's leave it up to the cat" (because I'm sure the cat would pick me, since,  in effect, he already has), but I don't know if that's a thing with pets like it is with kids.

See, although the cat clearly wants to live with us and has been living with us for quite some time, it still fills me with angst knowing that there's some guy in the neighborhood that is the technical owner of the cat. The fact that he could, theoretically, knock on my door and break my daughter's heart fills me with all sorts of angst over the whole cat issue and what we should do about  the cat. But no more.

As of today, I'm declaring the cat ours. Sort of like planting a flag. See, now, I've had to spend money on the cat, real money, and if I'm going to have to take the cat to the vet for medical attention, the cat is mine. That's just all there is to it.

Let me explain:

A few weeks ago as we were walking out the door to go somewhere, the cat came limping up with a swollen left shoulder. It looked rather like someone had stuffed an orange in  there, but that wasn't the first time the cat had hurt himself, and we had somewhere we had to be, so we let him in and left. The swelling had gone down by the time we got home, so that was good. We did see, at that point, that he had some kind of wound in his shoulder.

There's an orange tabby cat in the neighborhood that is the neighborhood cat bully. He likes to stand over other cats making this horrible meowing, pinning them down. He does this without actually touching them, but I've had to rescue Jack (my cat) from him several times, and I've seen him keeping other cats hiding under cars or against walls or whatever. We don't like this cat, and I think it and Jack may have gotten into a scrape that resulted in Jack's wound. That or the dead gopher Jack left as an offering for us (and, yes, they are actually offerings) managed to bite Jack before he partially skinned it.

But Jack didn't "belong" to us, so I decided to just keep an eye on the wound in the hopes that the actual owner might show that he was still keeping an eye out on the cat and do something about it. But that didn't happen.

Still, the wound seemed to be healing up just fine. Jack quit licking it all the time, and it had closed up and everything. Until a couple of days ago.

This may be coincidence, but Jack and The Orange (my name for the bully cat) had another go at it. The Orange was making his horrible noise, and I went out to see what was going on, and The Orange had Jack trapped up against the gate to our backyard. I got in between them, and Jack took off toward the car (where he often hides from The Orange), but The Orange went for him, and Jack turned around and took a swipe at him. Good for him, right?

So, maybe, the cats went at it, and Jack's wound got reopened. Or, maybe, it was just itching because it was healing. We don't really know what started it, but Jack started licking at it again and licked all the hair off of it and the surrounding area. It was pretty gross, but the wound was smaller than the nail on my pinky finger, so, again, I thought we should just keep an eye on it.

Today, though, something changed in all of that. The wound broke open, doubling in size, and was actively oozing. I don't know if he scratched or licked it open or if he got into another fight or what. It was fine when he left the house this morning, but, when he came back in around 2:00, it was a mess.

That was the end of the angst. I took ownership of the cat and took him to the vet. He got all kinds of shots (both immunizations and an antibiotic) and a couple of staples in his shoulder.

I figure for $300, the cat is mine. Especially since he has to go back in two weeks and again in four weeks. The good news is that the vet said he's a strong, healthy cat. In fact, everyone was admiring him. The cat has got some charisma is all I can say; after all, he got me to like him. I mean actively like him, not just kind of like him in that way I like most animals.

And here's the allegory:
A lot of things in life are like Jack. There are these things out there, situations or whatever, that someone else should have responsibility for. However, for whatever reason, those people won't take responsibility for whatever it is. Maybe, they just don't care. Or care enough. Or, maybe, there are some sort of extenuating circumstances. Who knows. In the end, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that, if it's something you care about, you take responsibility for it. Just do it. Don't wait for someone else to step up to the plate and do the job. Most of the time, if you're waiting for that happen, you're just going to be disappointed.

Let's look back at the situation with Jack:
Initially, it was apparent that the cat was just out on his own nearly all of the time. He wasn't really being cared for. That included being fed on a regular basis. Whether this was the fault of the cat not going home to eat or the fault of the "owner" not providing food, doesn't really matter. Now, we didn't know if the cat had an owner at the time, so we started slipping him so food, but, even after we found out who the owner was, it was clear the cat was still going unfed. Eventually, it was also clear that the cat only ever stayed at or around our house. We took on the feeding responsibility because the cat was (is) important to my daughter. It was something that needed to be done, and no one else was doing it or doing it adequately. All of that lead to us taking care of the cat's wound. Because someone had to do it. The person that should have been responsible didn't do the job. Because we care about the cat and don't want him to die from something that is completely preventable, we took care of it.

And that's kind of how life needs to be. People need to pick up the responsibility for the things they care about and quit waiting for other people to do it. Even if those other people are the people that ought to be doing it. Sometimes, those things are even our things. Things that we ought to be responsible for, things we say we care about, but we're too busy waiting around to see if someone else will come along and do them for us. Those things can cause all sorts of angst.

It felt good to actually say, "You know what, I'm taking responsibility for this cat. This cat is now mine." No more angst. So, if you have a Jack in your life, pick him up and take responsibility for him. Scratch him under the chin and listen to him purr.

The cat also plays the piano.