"Madres paralelas" by Pedro Almodóvar (2021)

I am so glad that yesterday I had pulled myself out of the funk (it was cloudy day with a strong air pressure) and willed myself into a walk to a local little art cinema Lab 111 - the place for a real film lovers - where they were screening latest Almodóvar. It was something I wanted to see for the longest time, but had to find out the place where they will use English subtitles + for some reason it did not appeal to any of my friends so I went to see it by myself. And loved every second of it.

"Madres paralelas" might be one of the best Almodóvar movies so far, but than he created so many that I would have to go back and re-watch the whole list in order to pick up the favourite. Trough the years I might have forgotten some, but I do truly remember "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown " and "Kika" as perfect examples of his particular genius - colourful, witty, madcap, feminist - and in fact I came in the cinema expecting another comedy, where this turned into very satisfactory drama. It reminded me a little bit of those old Hollywood women movies with usually strong actresses, where the story was focused on women's lives and men were kind of supporting parts. Here we have excellent Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit as two heavily pregnant mothers who bond while sharing same hospital room and later kept in touch, discovering that their lives intertwine in the most unexpected ways. This is Almodóvar movie so naturally he finds a spotlight for his favourite Rossy de Palma who plays a strong, independent and supportive best friend - actually most of the women here are strong and independent, as witnessed by Cruz when she decides to raise a child as a single mother and says that every woman in her family was a single mother. There are some very interesting meditations on motherhood and connection with children - not only the two main characters are single mothers, but there is also excellent Aitana Sánchez-Gijón as example of different type of mother, the one who does not sacrifice her whole life for a baby (in her case, she actually puts herself in the first place) - since we are conditioned to expect mothers must be self-sacrificial, it comes as a surprise that we actually understand her. Israel Elejalde is forensic archaeologist who must be here, because he is somebody who makes Penelope's baby but otherwise he is mostly out of picture - almost like a mirror image of those old movies where pretty women were mostly decorations while men did the real job. I cannot elaborate anything more about the story because its important that viewer experiences it himself but I must say it was one of the best movies I have seen recently. It made me realise how little I know about recent European cinema - all these actors are celebrated in their homeland and I had no clue about their work. Just like with the music, there is a huge world outside of English language market. Funny how I never paid much attention to Penélope Cruz and she was excellent here, in fact everybody - to a statist - was. 

"The Sandman" television series (2022)

Just like with everything else, I am slowly accepting that its not possible to read all the books, hear all the music and watch all the interesting programs in the world. Yes, it fuels my imagination but there are some human limits after all - mostly my own attention span - so basically the next best thing is to organise my little piles of things to read, music to hear, movies to watch eventually. I am on a vacation now and my main motto is not to oppress myself with any plan or programme, there is absolutely nothing that I must do (except when bladder calls for alarm) so I am pleasantly relaxing, doing absolutely nothing and keeping one eye on potential TV shows.

Out of curiosity I have checked out long awaited and much hyped "House of the Dragon" but I'm afraid its impossible to experience the same thrill as with original "Game of Thrones" - its like expecting to fall in love for the first time again - we have invested eight seasons (and years) in the first one and its not realistic to be swept away again. To be honest, creators of this new show had ungrateful task of creating something that must be faithful to the original but still fresh and new. In other words, to me it felt very much as déjà vu - dragons, long haired men, backstabbing court intrigues and slices of nudity/blood/gory. I even left it for another day and watched the ending later. Right now I don't have sufficient interest to continue watching it, no matter what the rest of the planet might say or do. 

On the other hand, I am really thrilled with "The Sandman" - for the same reasons I disliked rehashed "House of the Dragon" - this is something completely new, fresh and as yet undiscovered. I am aware that series is based on a famous comic book written by Neil Gaiman but I have never read them (however, I am familiar with Gaiman and some of his work, namely "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" (twice!), "Good Omens" and "American Gods")  so this is all completely new to me and I even resisted my curiosity and have not read anything online about the plot: good decision, because TV series turned out very exciting, kind of dark Harry Potter fantasy with its own rules and myths. I could definitely tell this was based on comic book because it has a comic book feel to it, there are many interesting characters and in fact, where it took me two days to finish one episode of "House of the Dragon", I swallowed 5 episodes of "The Sandman" at once. Tonight I will watch the last two episodes and I genuinely love this. 

Alphonse Mucha in The Hague

Vacation time and the very first thing I wanted to do was to visit exhibition in The Hague about Czech maestro Alphonse Mucha and his celebrated Art Deco work - even though the man himself was reserved about belonging to any group or clan, but we lump him together with Art Deco for the sake of chronology. I have loved and admired Mucha's work for the longest time but probably saw his work for the first time in real life last year in The Allard Pierson Museum on “Goddesses of Art Nouveau“ exhibition, that made a point of explaining how the artists of the time successfully adapted to new commercial trends, namely advertisements and posters for various products. 

This is in fact how Mucha became famous, since as a painter he was starving artist who depended on goodwill of local financier (Count Belasi) and a struck of good luck around New Year 1894. when he got commission for creating theatrical poster for latest Sarah Bernhardt play. I was always fascinated with stories how people actually become famous and in this case it was a lucky break - nobody else was available during Christmas holidays, Bernhardt insisted poster must be ready by 1. January and Mucha was available. The highly stylized poster was something completely new for Parisians who were so impressed that many posters were in fact stolen from the walls - Bernhardt herself was pleased with the reaction and gave Mucha a six year contract. 

The exhibition in Hague's Kunstmuseum was very beautiful and various aspects of Mucha's creative work were all nicely covered - there was a very good introduction to his beginning, breakthrough with Bernhardt and all sorts of work later, including posters for bicycles, boxes for cookies, etc. To my biggest surprise the place was actually genuinely crowded, even though this was almost the end of exhibition and the public interest was still great. There was a lot of effort made to illustrate the times when Mucha worked, particularly his time in late 19th  century Paris. It was joy to see his famous work so well represented and displayed handsomely in a beautiful building - I have even seen his famous "Four seasons"  and many others. The rest of the building was nowhere near as interesting, since lot of space was unfortunately given to modern art that was in a sharp contrast with Mucha, to me it mainly appeared annoying. Somehow it just made it even more clear how much are we removed from somebody of his stature. 

"The Possessions of Doctor Forrest" by Richard T. Kelly (2011)

 

It was long since I have read a book with actual genuine pleasure. It seems that Internet has affected out attention span and for a while I do reading more like a task, trying to get in touch with my old self but its more or less always conscious decision "I must go back to reading like before" and not real satisfaction. And voilà, it did happen completely unexpectedly - not by any of the books I have bought, not from my overcrowded e-library (that looks impressive but its just too loaded) but one of those random books that I collect from free giveaway public libraries that people here so nicely put on display in cabinets so you can just take them for free. It was such a joy to dive into this book that I decided right now that I will only follow my impulse and go for random books I find like this, because somehow I have a feeling books find me and not the other way around. 

Also, it was the circumstances: I have spent the weekend in the nature, completely offline, enjoying the solitude and quiet of a little weekend cottage escape. hidden in the greenery, surrounded with quiet buzz of bees and chirping of the birds, somehow I relaxed enough to actually enjoy the book and get really into it, without glancing online all the time. 

"The Possessions of Doctor Forrest" is a modern day gothic novel, kind of combination of several famous literary predecessors like "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and what impressed me most was the writing style which was luminous. In fact, I am not sure was I enjoying more the story or simply the style - every now and than, the author would come up with some really beautiful turn of the phrase and I loved it so much that I returned to the pages again and again. Apparently its not very successful nor big hit and that is fine by me, I gulped it in two days with greatest pleasure and felt thrilled about my newest discovery. Loved it, loved it, loved it!