Stuck between Stations

I picked up this movie with no previous knowledge of it.

The DVD Cover was very limited in its description or synopsis of the 2011 movie.

"A young soldier on leave for 24 hours has a chance meeting with his childhood crush. Growing closer they have a night they will never forget, knowing they will part ways at dawn".

Sounds cheesy, time-tested and well formulaic, I have visited similar themed, thin versions of commercial cinema often enough. But this movie was so smooth, it left me intoxicated and pensive.

This film was the official selection for the Tribeca and Austin film festivals of 2011.

Zoe Lister Jones, is amazing as Becky Fine, a student of comparative literature. The movie opens with a scene between the two main characters Becky and Casper (well adapted by actor Sam Rosen) and their whispered talk of departures and lapses.

It picks up  a warm, comfortable pace with of all things a bar fight. Casper mistakenly stops two men he thinks are picking on Becky. He ends up with a bloody nose, and we watch, as Becky and Casper verbally spar with each other. She realises to her embarrassment that he is an old classmate she never knew and he comes to the realisation that the men in the bar were her friends. She ditches her (dip shit friends) as annointed by Casper. And then the magical part begins with a party, a bike ride captured as it winds through the city of Minneapolis,, a chance meeting with some anti-war, anti-establishment acquaintances of Casper (a nicely acted cameo by Josh Hartnett), a suburban circus performance in a run down warehouse, and a fiery confrontation with Becky's professor lover. His wife has just found out about his affair with his student (Becky). The professor's wife is  the head of Becky's comparative literature department and unfortunately responsible for reviewing Becky's dissertation mentored by said Professor. 

The movie evolves slowly, in wisps, gathering steam, yet runs like a pleasant train journey where you can view the surroundings, breathe them into your memory. and still love the ride. There is an underlying background of death, violence, loss and war. All these disturbing themes are subtly conveyed, strung together with the taut fog of romanticism, so soft it almost creeps up on you, lets you know that there might be something real in there, within the confines of the movie,something they and you can't quite get your hands around, something you might think might be worth holding tight, yet it leaves you watching and searching, giving space, hoping it-this friendship, this romance ends as beautifully as the movie builds it up to.

It builds this beautiful house of gathered match sticks, each powering a brilliant spark of moments and movements that play out into a wonderful night.

Watch the trailer and read further if you wish

http://www.stuck-between-stations.com/#f7a/custom_plain
Must add-nice soundtrack smooth and simple.

The confluence of words.

Yesterday in the bus, I saw this wonderful confluence of movements, hand gestures between two people. I believe they could not speak. They expressed in their delicate signs more comfort, hope and happiness than I could within the realm, breadth, and trianglulation offered by the single language that I claim to have such control over. They dispelled such energy to the world that my writing would expose itself as nothing more than a flatulent lie.

The world around is marked by the distance words travel to their end, where a period and a long silence hold the same pause of eternity. Where the words congeal together to bring tears, rage and happiness in their scabbed distortion, where the echo of their sounding, silences rooms or brings forth applause, where they mold together to form a life, break one, embrace a significant opinion or end a sentence.

All the signs I could see searched the air in remembrance and character, hope and love.

Yet when I searched for the words to express that moment I found them so difficult to piece together, one into the other. They do not form, they will not mark that jigsaw puzzle time as whole.

I hope we all have better words to say sometime or choose none at all.

Damascus by Joshua Mohr

At 206 pages Damascus is a light book, a light book that deals with a host of  heavy, complex issues, it touches briefly on lesbianism, cancer, alcoholism, art, soldiers, and war. The book sets the tone for the discourse of these topics, within the black walled, broken mirror decorated confines of the Damascus bar on Mission Street., The range of characters includes the depression induced, alcohol suffused Owen, owner of Damascus, said bar owner is currently in Santa Claus costume attempting to camouflage a physical birthmark that has robbed him of his self esteem.
His niece Daphne, is a creative, lively and caring person. There exists a very strong bond between uncle and niece.
The other characters in the book includes No-Eyebrows and Shambles who float around the edges of the bar.They add a third dimension to the book, the world outside. No-Eyebrows has stage four cancer and is looking to provide peace to his family, by ensuring their absence from his death.
Shambles turns tricks in the Damascus bar bathroom, tries to keep her trade professional but she succumbs to No-Eyebrows and his need for intimacy in his final days and he cannot bear to share this passage with his family.
This relationship is beset with the confusion of young romance, teenage angst and pain revived in the winter of their lives.
The book races into its fiery climax when Syl- Daphne's best friend, asks Owen if she could use the bar as a gallery for show-casing her anti-war art. She does this with all sincerity hoping her art will propel her forward as an artist.   
Syl is not the Force majeure, Bryan is an alcoholic Owen invites to his bar, Bryan is an ex-soldier discharged honourably from the army, he is unable to integrate himself with civilian life . His repulsion on seeing the art project spills over into the chaos that ensues.
Byran introduces us to Sam, Sam is caustic and scary. Malevolence and power soak his conversations. Joshua portrays the unhinged Sam as in control, defining the chaos that he has set to ensue.
A good book with a lot of depth it's insight is hidden well in plain sight between it's covers.

http://www.joshuamohr.net/

The Bishop's Man by Linden Macintyre

The Bishops Man written by Linden Macintyre is a very gentle book, even though the subject is dark and insidious, the novel meanders through episodes and seasons gently. The Bishop's man as the title very precisely states is largely a novel about a Priest who is charged to follow the Bishops instructions. These instructions involve the need to temporarily rectify or set straight the misdirected, misplaced, misled bastions of the Church namely Clergy who have erred, succumbed to the more human fallacy-temptation. It follows the priest Duncan MacAskill as he is led away from the rhythms of his University position to the small town of Creignish where he is sent to lay low for a while. The reason for the forced departure to the small village of Creignish are clouded as is much of the information that the Bishop disperses to MacAskill .


The characters that MacAskill encounters in the village, the priest Mullins, Danny Ban, Stella, Danny Mackay, are well rounded. Without delving into character details directly, they are unveiled slowly like wispy secrets that all our lives are, expelled as brief wispy breaths between characters.


The sub-set of characters include Effie, Sextus, John, Jacinta and Alfonso all of whom are skeletons from a deep, darker past illuminated only through the musings of Duncan. There is romantic confusion, a past that is revealed only into the final pages of the book, an apparent suicide, an insinuation of family secrets, a romance that flutters in Latin America, where players are revealed in journalistic rhapsody.
It is not a play by play novel.
It is a heavy mix of lies, deception, of half truths un-shelled with dexterity not by the clergy but surprisingly by it's flock. Yet the stories of each are revealed with a gentle catharsis until there were no more stories left to be told, just raw emotion unfiltered. Duncan MacAskill is the invisible cause and effect, the righter of wrongs, the redeemer. Eventually he is laid bare as just a man with a past to decipher, a present that he drinks to stay relevant in, and a future that is undeniably so interspersed with the present and past that he cannot get there from here. Not easily. Not without confronting his own demons and the ones that he has unknowingly set forth, for better or for worse..


I know that I have not been descriptive about the book, it is a hard topic to address and the novel has made a far more valiant effort.