Saturday Snippets

Now that I'm no longer on Facebook (how long? who can tell?), I'm going to use this blog on Saturdays to post a few things I might otherwise have put up on FB. We'll see how long I can keep this up.

1. Last night Joyce and I watched (via Netflix) the 2005 film Thumbsucker, based on the early novel (same title) by Walter Kirn, whose new memoir--Blood Will Out--I'd recently reviewed for the Cleveland Plain Dealer (link to my review). (I'd read the novel while preparing for the review.) We both enjoyed the film a lot more than we'd expected to. For one, there was an excellent cast, with some small (but solid) appearances by Keanu Reeves (as a weird dentist), Vince Vaughn (as a high school debate coach--about the most understated of all his performances), Tilda Swinton (the protagonist's mother--what a wonder of an actress), Vincent D'Onofrio (the father). It's a coming-of-age story--a messed up high school kid (Lou Taylor Pucci) who's learning lessons about the opposite sex, honesty, "life"; he's trying to discover what his gifts are--and what he feels about them. He has a lingering habit from infancy (guess what it is?) that annoys his father considerably (and animates his dentist). At the end, he heads off to NYU to begin college, and we see him romping happily through Times Square, and you can almost hear him singing "Free at Last!"  Of course, here's what we Older Folks know: When he goes back to his dorm room and unpacks his bag, he's going to find a little wrapped package. And when he unwraps it, opens it, he will find ... himself--the one thing you can never really run away from.

Here's a link to the YouTube trailer for the film.

Roth--NYT photo

2. Philip Roth was back in the news this week. For a guy who says he's "done," he's apparently not quite done. The New York Times had a little story about his showing up to receive a Yaddo Artist Medal.  Link to the Times story.

3. There was also a small story this week, too, about a new Broadway production of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance that will start Glenn Close and John Lithgow--not a bad duo!  Link to story about the production.

I've been thinking ... maybe I'll move this "feature" next week to Sunday--and call it "Sunday Sundries" ... a title that straddles the border between Clever and Annoying.