My List of Good (To Date) 21st Century Films

Since many of the films I enjoy are from the UK, I decided to illustrate this posting with this so-English scene of a garden behind York Minster.

After making a listing many postings ago of my all-time favorite movies (up to 1999), I decided to list those I've particularly enjoyed from this century.  I admit to rarely going to a theater any more but receive them through the mail instead.  (So I've not seen some of the later 2012 films.)  Here are the ones I've found memorable.

Foreign:

• Vatel (France/UK/Belgium) '00
• The Color of Paradise (Iran) '00
• The Girl from Paris (Une Hirondelle A Fait le Printemps) (France) '01
• Late Marriage (Israel/France) '01
• Mostly Martha (Bella Martha) (Germany) '01
• Satin Rouge (Tunisia) '02
• Rabbit-Proof Fence (Australia) '02
• Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (China/France) '02
• Travellers and Magicians (Bhutan) '03
• The Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) (France) '03
• Yesterday (South Africa) '04
• Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noël) (France) '05
• Sabah:  A Love Story (Canada) '05
• The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant (Australia) '05
• The Girl in the Cafe (UK) '05
• The World's Fastest Indian (New Zealand) '05
• Pride and Prejudice (UK) '05
• The Painted Veil (China/US) '06
• The Queen (UK) '06
• Amazing Grace (UK/US) '06
• Under the Same Moon (La Misma Luna) (Mexico/US) '07
• Vitus (Switzerland) '07
• Ballet Shoes (UK) '07
• The Grocer's Son (Le Fils de l'epicier) (France) '07
• The Song of Sparrows (Iran) '08
• The Dutchess (UK) '08
• Miss Austen Regrets (UK) '08
• The Last Station (Germany/Russia/UK) '09
• Invictus (South Africa/US) '09
• Queen to Play (Joueuse) (France) '09
• The Young Victoria (UK/US) '09
• I Am Love (Io Sono Amore) (Italy) '09
• Creation (UK) '09
• The King's Speech (UK) '10
• A Separation (Iran) '11
• Mozart's Sister (Nannerl, la Soeur de Mozart) (France) '11
• Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (UK) '11
• The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (UK) '12

U.S.:

• Songcatcher '00
• Something the Lord Made '04
• Duma '05
• Outsourced '06
• Akeelah and the Bee '06
• Marie Antoinette '06
• Julie and Julia '09
• The Way '10
• The Company Men '10
• Fair Game '10
• Hugo '11

TV Series/Mini-Series (almost all UK):

• Love in a Cold Climate '01
• The Cazalets '01
• Victoria and Albert '01
• Random Passage (Canada) '01
• Foyle's War '02
• The Last King '03
• Cambridge Spies '03
• Island at War '04
• North and South (BBC about 19th c. England, not the U.S. Civil War) '04
• Jane Eyre '06
• The Impressionists '06
• Sense and Sensibility '08
• Emma '09
• South Riding '11
• Downton Abbey '10 - ongoing

Documentary (art, finances, elections, food, Zen, the times, etc.):

• The Amish:  A People of Preservation '00
• Rivers and Tides '03
• Howard Zinn:  You Can't be Neutral '04
• March of the Penguins '04
• The Gates '05
• Maxed Out '06
• Hacking Democracy '06
• The One Percent '06
• Cezanne in Provence '06
• Helvetica '07
• Zeitgeist:  The Movie '07
• How to Cook Your Life '07
• Earth '07
• Religulous '08
• Food, Inc. '08
• Between the Folds '08
• Kings of Pastry '09
• Ingredients '09
• Bird by Bird with Annie '09
• Inside Job '10
• Casino Jack and the U.S. of Money '10 (check title)
• Buck '11
• Woody Allen:  A Documentary '11

Meeting the King of England

No, I never met the King, but here's Hampton Court, once the home of kings.

Sometimes during our childhood in the '40s, my mother would (very nicely, I might add) remind my brother and me not to hold bread in one hand while buttering it with the other but to place it on our plates and then butter it.  She also told us to sit up straight when eating, hold our utensils properly, keep our elbows off the table, and glide our spoon away from us, not toward, when eating soup.  As well, we were never to talk about being "full."  Then, when "finished" (not "done"), we were to ask to be excused from the table.

Once, when she was queried about all this, she replied, "If they ever meet the King of England, they should know these things."

I never forgot my mother's comment which seemed perfectly logical to me, not that I expected to meet the King of England, then George VI.  But I appreciated knowing good manners no matter whom I met.  Like writing thank you notes for gifts.  Or listening properly while someone spoke.  I wanted to be ready for adult life ... and these niceties were just part of that education.

I speak of this now because of the popularity of Downton Abbey where the people sit up straight, leave their elbows off the table, dress impeccably, and certainly give the impression of knowing how to meet the King if that occasion were to arise.  I think part of the popularity of this series--besides watching Hugh Bonneville, Maggie Smith, Jim Carter, and all the others do what they do so well--is seeing the innate dignity and courtesy that seemed an integral part of that era.

Somehow, we've turned sloppy.  In fact, all too often movies and TV portray sloppiness in dress and manners as being desirable.  Otherwise we're being elitist or pompous.  Horrors.  Ever since Grace Kelly's day, no American can portray royalty--or someone with proper manners--as well as the Europeans.  So, in The Princess Diaries, it's British Julie Andrews who takes over the regal role, tutoring Anne Hathaway, the klutzy young American who needs weeks of schooling before she can hold a teacup, sit without slouching, or walk properly.  (Though we like to think we speak for one's internal beauty, movies emphasize the external and our princess also needs some external tweaking:  eyebrows, hair, shoes.  And then there are those glasses!)  We are told, however, that though she (read "we") may be sloppy, she's fun.  The fun supposedly makes up for the sloppy and even supersedes it so that all those tight Brits want to copy us.  Europe is shown to come around to our way of thinking--to our junk food, our casual lifestyle so that we're teaching them something ... ha!  Just as it's Shirley MacLaine in Downton Abbey who has people sitting on the floor at her impromptu indoor picnic, supposedly enjoying themselves.  Okay, I get it.  We don't want to be stuffy.  Of course, good manners needn't be stuffy.  But I do feel it's all a slippery slope.

Getting back to the '40s--in fact, to 1940 itself--I recently came across a couple of photos from my brother's 6th birthday party.  We children were in freshly-ironed clothes.  The mothers wore stockings, heels, dresses, their hair pleasantly coiffed.  The table was adorned with an ironed heirloom table cloth, flowers in a vase, candies in a cut-glass dish, and a home-made birthday cake with fancy frosting.  All in a California patio.  And we thought life then was casual!

Pitching Woo

Or how one's life partner was chosen in one community.

Some time ago while browsing through one of The Champlain Society's books, I came upon a piece that struck me ... prompting me to copy it out.  It came from Travels in the Interior Inhabited Parts of North America in the Years 1791 and 1792 by Patrick Campbell, a Scotsman who traveled with his dog and servant across what is now Ontario, Canada, and Upstate New York.

After meeting the Moravian settlers there, he wrote this about their practice in choosing a life's mate:

"There is a large house or hall for the young women, apart, in which they work, and another for the young men in which they do the same.  The sexes are never allowed to see one another.  When a young man signifies a desire to marry, he and the first girl on the list are put into a private room together, and continue in it for an hour.  If he agrees to marry her after this meeting, good and well; if not, he will not get another, and she is put the last on the list; so that all before her must go off before she gets any other offer.  And though the parties had never seen one another before this meeting, which is rarely otherwise, they have no alternative, and must make up their minds and acquaintances in that short intercourse.  If the parties are satisfied, and they marry, a house is built for them in the village where they live, and carry on business for the good of the community at large."

(With thanks to The Champlain Society, Toronto, for giving me permission to quote the above, edited by H. H. Langton, 1937, p. 153.)

Excursions Outside Montpellier, France

Flamingos in a lagoon near Montpellier. 

Continuing my last post in which I wrote of studying French in Montpellier, I wanted to include some photos of that Languedoc Roussillon region which lies on the Mediterranean bordering Spain.  Winter turned this otherwise green area a tad bleak.  Nonetheless, I was happy to get out into the countryside as my French hostess drove me around on occasional Saturdays--a day I did not have classes.  Since we spoke only French, I offered questions after first figuring the vocabulary and construction ... but though my comprehension wasn't bad, I know there was a lot she explained about the region that I missed.

Palavas-les-Flots is a seaside resort just a few miles from Montpellier

Marina at Palavas-les-Flots

Walls surrounding the medieval city of Aigues-Mortes only 16 miles from Montpellier.  It was once considered to be a safe haven for Protestants.

Inside the Aigues-Mortes city walls.

The Aigues-Mortes town square.

A candy shop.

Carcassonne.  (See my July posting for more on this amazing place.)

Narbonne, once a port, now some 9 miles from the sea.

The Narbonne cathedral.  Established in the 1st century B.C., the town lay on the Via Domitia, the first Roman road in Gaul.

The cathedral's cloister.

The cathedral in the ancient town of Béziers.

A view of the wintry landscape from the Béziers cathedral.

The Pont du Diable on the Hérault River on the way to Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert.  The inhospitality of this landscape made it a good region for the Cathars to hide out from religious persecution.

Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, noted as one of France's most beautiful villages.  It lay on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostella.

The Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert abbey and what's left of its cloister.  The rest now resides in The Cloisters Museum in Manhattan.  Up behind, you can see one of the Cathar castles which were built in highly inaccessible places to avoid religious persecution in the 12th century.

The 12th century Abbaye de Valmagne.  The interior of its cathedral was later converted to a wine cave.

The seaside resort of Sète, known for its oysters, very near Montpellier.

After those six weeks in Montpellier, I decided against spending winters in France.  Besides the cold and a weak dollar, I did not feel as adventurous as of old.  As for studying French, I thoroughly enjoyed the language but despaired over learning gender.  With no basic rules as to whether something was masculine or feminine, each word had to be remembered separately along with its appropriate adjectives and prepositions.  Toward the end--my brain seemingly maxed out--I sometimes found that the simplest word, the simplest phrase would throw me completely. 

When I got home, I stuck my class notes in a box.  They're still there.  Regardless, this venture was a marvelous experience--one I'd long wanted to try.

When I Studied French in France

A view of  Montpellier from its Arc de Triomphe

It was just this time of year a few years ago that I found myself in Montpellier, France (right on the Mediterranean), where I'd gone to study French for six weeks in a total immersion situation.  Though I'd been through by train one July, it was my first visit to that city.  A non-English-speaking woman gave me a room in her apartment (she cooked, bless her) ... and I went off by tram to the town center to attend a language school three hours a day, five days a week with two hours of nightly homework.

A tram

Where I got off ... and then got back on the tram each day.

I'd been studying French at home, my thought being to leave New England winters and settle myself into some south-of-France situation.  You know--rent a room for a few weeks, try out the cheeses, the tartines, do some sketching, maybe (I hoped) meet some people to pal around with.  And finally learn the language!

I figured:  the-South-of-France.  Sunshine.  More warmth, for sure, than the rest of France.  But I found the climate disappointingly froid which translates, Cold!  That plus occasional bitter winds and too-frequent gloomy skies made me realize that my previous visits had been summer ones.  Well, not to be discouraged, I told myself ... though, in fact, I was a little.

I also figured:  language school, fellow students to chat with, go for an apertif after class with, maybe even join on some weekend expedition.  It didn't occur to me that being a winter student, I'd also be the only student (except for the Asian wife of a Frenchman who rushed home to relieve her baby sitter each day).  Nonetheless, I gamely ate my croque monsieur in a little bistro, checked out the historical sites, museums, shops, then got the tram back to the part of town where I was staying.

One end of the Place de la Comédie ... with the Opéra Comédie there on the left.

A café in the Place de la Comédie ... with outdoor heaters positioned here and there.

I also found my brain becoming saturated with French.  Of course, that was the whole point.  But sometimes I found there wasn't any space left for all the French I was getting and it started overflowing and not being absorbed.  I needed some English relief now and again.  French had become a palimpsest underlying everything in my mind.  The monkey-chatter that Zen talks about was now in French.  The hot mud fumaroles that burst in my mind--ploop, ploop--were now a French word or sound (like the guttural "r" which was giving me trouble).

So how did it all turn out?  I'll talk about that in my next posting and also include some photos of that Languedoc Roussillon region of which Montpellier is the main city.  For now, here are shots of Montpellier itself.

This side of the building is all a cleverly executed trompe l'oeil ...

... as is this, including the enormous window.  Only the vehicles are real.

Montpellier's Arc de Triomphe

Along the Esplanade

A veggie market at the end of the Esplanade

The other end of the Place de la Comédie

(An aside:  the capital of Vermont, Montpelier, is spelled with one "l" but the French city has two.)

Santa Fe Cachet

A Canyon Road art gallery

An eatery on Marcy Street

I've just returned from an extended visit in Santa Fe.  As I wrote in some past posting, I lived there for a few years in the early '90s.  Knowing the town as I do, I like to return periodically and hit my favorite spots.  I also revel in the bright blue skies and sunshine and take joy in looking across the expansive landscape--off to the three mountain ranges that encircle the town.  Sunset brings wide swaths of vivid colors.  In summer, thunderstorms roil across the land bringing diamond-sparkling drops as soon as the sun pops out again.  In short, I find it the sort of place where I can take a deep breath (despite the reduced oxygen at its 7,500-foot elevation), put aside the East's grey days, and perk up in the light that has brought photographers and painters galore to this part of the world.  Though dotted with cottonwoods, piñon pines, and junipers, its landscape--at least compared to the East--is sparse.  One's eye can take in the entire horizon.  Then, too, there is a highly agreeable incense-like aroma to the air.  That plus the adobe-style architecture, the pinks and terra-cottas no matter where you look, and you have the ingredients for a powerful appeal.

Santa Fe, of course, has a wealth of excellent museums, all of which I enjoy revisiting.  And summertime offers the Santa Fe Opera with seats (mostly) protected from possible rain but with an open-air view to the mountains and any happenstance lightning.  I won't even begin to comment on the art galleries, there are so many, though my favorites are the Gerald Peters Gallery on Paseo de Peralta and its neighbor, the Nedra Matteucci, with beautiful gardens in back.  Simply, galleries abound for the discovering.  (The State Capitol, too, has a fine art collection.)

Outside another Canyon Road gallery

Nor will I comment on the numerous top-notch restaurants except to say that my favorites include Geronimo, Harry's Road House, and Cafe Pasqual's.  Of course, there's also Zia Diner on Guadalupe Street plus The Pink Adobe and 315 Restaurant and Wine Bar, both on Old Santa Fe Trail.  As for excellent margaritas, I like the La Posada and the La Fonda Hotel bars.

Geronimo for fabulous food and service

Gerald Peters Gallery

My margarita as my companion and I sat near the fire in the La Posada Hotel bar

As well, I take pleasure in returning to favorite shops and scouting out new ones.

• Project Tibet on Canyon Road is run by the Tibetan community and offers clothing, carpets, and Himalayan jewelry.

Entrance to Project Tibet

• Keshi on Don Gaspar offers a remarkable variety of tiny hand-made Zuni fetishes (bears, mountain lions, frogs, eagles, etc.) plus silver jewelry.
• Garcia Street Books and Downtown Subscription are next door to each other on Garcia Street.  The one is a small, independent bookseller with a beguiling selection.  The other has coffee, pastry, a wealth of newspapers and magazines, plus sunny spots out in the patio where you can sit and read.
• The Ark on Romero Street is the New Age queen of book stores with CDs, tarot cards, window crystals, pendulums, incense, and, of course, books on whatever spirituality suits you.
• Travel Bug on Paseo de Peralta is filled with maps of seemingly every country, travel gizmos, plus tables where you can drink coffee, check out the maps, and plan your next trip.
• Tutto is newly located on Galisteo--a small inviting shop with a plethora of fabulous buttons and fine yarns.
• Kakawa on Paseo de Peralta offers Meso-American organic chocolate.  You can stay for a cup of hot chocolate or come away with an amazingly delicious brownie or individual chocolate candies.
•  The Tea House on Canyon Road, at the end of gallery row, offers a good place to sit and enjoy a cuppa after exploring the galleries.  When I checked, the green tea of the month was Pomegranate Dragonfruit and the black tea was Margaret's Hope Darjeeling.  There's a nice fire for cold days and a patio for warm.
• Tesuque Glassworks and Shidoni Bronze Foundry out of town, on Bishop's Lodge Road, offer a glass-works where you can watch the glass-blowers and peruse their gift shop ... then roam through a wide variety of sculptures on display in the adjacent grassy field, once an apple orchard.
• Guadalupe's Fun Rubber Stamps, recently moved to Don Gaspar Street, has the biggest selection of rubber stamps I've come across--all great fun.
• The Chile Shop on Water Street features anything from chile-design pot holders to chile lights to string around your kitchen window at holiday time.
•  Todos Santos, in Sena Plaza Courtyard on East Palace Avenue, is a tiny shop filled with confections including quite unique milagro (lucky charm) chocolates covered in edible gold- and silver-leaf.

Just some of the buttons at Tutto

Kakawa Chocolate House

Other than every other person in Santa Fe being an artist, every other person is said to be in the healing arts.  The range is titillating.  Santa Fe Soul, out Rodeo Road, offers the ancient technique of ear candling, the old Taoist practice of toe reading (to determine chakra strength), and acupuncture.  You can have a doctor of Oriental Medicine draw and radiate your blood with ultraviolet light in a process called Photoluminiscence, said to promote the healing of a number of ailments.  You can have a private consultation with a shaman .... your tarot cards explained .... the iris of your eyes read ... or your Akashic Records opened.  Elsewhere, you can get a colonic or a lymph-drainage massage.

And, of course, 10,000 Waves on up in the hills is a first-class spa with everything from hot tubs to herbal wraps (mine was ginger, hibiscus flowers, and motherwort), exfoliations, and Japanese-style bodywork.  Other in-town spas offer chocolate-chile rubs with steam-towel wraps, blue corn scrubs, and chocolate mole detoxes.

At Tomasita's on Guadalupe Street you can eat enchiladas with green or red chile ... or you can ask for the Christmas selection which means a little of both.  If you're in town awhile, you can take community seminars on Plutarch or the sonnet at St. John's College--a branch of the Annapolis institution concentrating in the Great Books.  Or you can park in the St. John's lot and hike up the mountain behind the college instead.

Supper at Tomasita's.  Here are warm sopapillas, complete with honey butter

Posole, enchilada, and refried beans ... yum!

And I'll tell you what else you can do.  You can go hear the Santa Fe Pro Musica give a Baroque Christmas concert at the Loretto Chapel on selected December evenings.  There, the pure tones of Vivaldi, Purcell, and Corelli soar to the ceiling.  God, it's fabulous.

Santa Fe is a beguiling spot.  It's too deserty to be called nurturing.  But it offers pizzazz and it seems to clear out the grumblies so that when you leave, you feel somehow cleaner. 

Best Reads of 2012

Please note that I will be taking two weeks off.  My next posting will be on January 19th.



Having listed my Best Reads of 2011, I want to carry on the tradition and list 2012's.  Of the 39 fiction and 23 non-fiction books I read this past year, here is my list of favorites in alphabetical order by author.

Fiction:

1.  Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending  (Looking at feelings and events forty years later and finding different interpretations and memories by different people.)

2.  Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader  (Charming, funny, witty novella about Queen Elizabeth discovering books and gradually putting aside her royal duties--and her corgis--for a good read.  A gem.)

3.  Anne Bronte, Agnes Grey  (How did I miss reading this before now!  The trials of being a governess in Yorkshire as reflected by the author's own experience from 1839-1845.  Beautifully written.)

4.  Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (A bit reminiscent of Dickens and Robert Louis Stevenson, this is a "rendering" of deTocqueville's visit to the U.S.  It contrasts a French nobleman and an English servant, both meeting democracy.  It's raw, rough and ready with wonderfully descriptive language.)

5.  Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White  (Written in 1860, this is a 627-page page-turner.  A first detective novel with a great cast of villains.  So gripping, it kept England's P.M. from going to the theater one night so he could stay home and read.)

6.  Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger's Child  (This work centers on what one remembers from the past and how that becomes its own tale, possibly fabricated, possibly not.  This speaks of the confusion that results when seeking to remember the life of an early 20th century gay poet.  Set in England over the course of a century.)

7.  Penelope Lively, How It All Began  (The ripple effect--how something that happens to one person can greatly alter the lives of others.)

8.  Wright Morris, Plains Song, For Female Voices  (This is both spare and lyrical about three generations of women in a Cather-like Nebraska.)

9.  Helen Simonson, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand  (Set in Sussex, a widowed pair, an English major and a Pakistani shop-keeper, fall in love.  Light, intelligent, charming.)


Non-Fiction:

1.  Fiona Carnarvon, Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey:  The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle  (The story of the 5th Countess of Carnarvon who went to live at Highclere when she married in 1895 and who then pursued an active and expensive social life paid for with her Rothschild money.  Of particular interest was the account of her husband's discovery of the Tut tomb.  As told by the current Countess.)

2.  Edmund de Waal, The Hare With Amber Eyes:  A Hidden Inheritance  (The inherited netsuke collection of the Ephrussi family as it went from Paris to Vienna--where a family servant saved it from the Nazis--and on to Tokyo and England.)

3.  Karen Le Billon, French Kids Eat Everything:  How Our Family Moved to France, Cured Picky Eating, Banned Snacking, and Discovered 10 Simple Rules for Raising Happy, Healthy Eaters  (The French have us beat on this one.  Regular sit-down meals, delicious fresh food, no snacks, and the continued introduction of different tastes as a child gets older.  Bravo.)

4.  Oscar Lewis, Sutter's Fort:  Gateway to the Gold Fields.  The Story of Captain John A. Sutter's California Empire  (Fabulous telling of Sutter's life and pre-/post-Gold Rush California.  Written in 1966.)

5.  Mary S. Lovell, The Sisters:  The Saga of the Mitford Family  (The story of the English peer, his wife, six daughters, one son, and their Fascist and Communist leanings.)

6.  Alan Moorehead, The Blue Nile  (The history of exploration and battles that encompassed the region from the river's source in Ethiopia to Sudan to Egypt.  Bruce's visit at its source in 1770, Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, and Napier's rescue of prisoners at Magdala in 1868.  Written in 1962.)

7.  Alan Moorehead, The White Nile  (A splendid history of the explorers who sought the source of the Nile--from 1856 when Burton and Speke set out until 1900 when all the land from the Nile delta to its source at Lake Victoria came under British "protection."   Written in 1960.)

8.  Bob Spitz, Dearie:  The Remarkable Life of Julia Child  (Here are 530 pages recounting it all!  He calls her a "supernova.")

9.  Irving Stone, Men to Match My Mountains:  The Opening of the Far West 1840 - 1900  (Another fabulous history of the West:  California, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.  The overlanders.  The mines.  The Mormons.  The railway.  Written in 1956.)