My Super Self

We are reading WATCHMEN by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons and after reading about how the characters constructed their masked persona, I asked the class to create their own Super Self.  We allowed them to give themselves a super power (unlike MOST of the characters in Watchmen), and we created our super selves.  Here is mine. Heck, I’ve always wanted to be a redhead.

I used an on-line Super Hero Builder (there are a few),  and brought the image into ComicLife.

Meme Mash Up: 7 things and Music

Seven things You Might Not Know About My (Musical) Taste

Clay Burell, was tagged for the  Seven Things You Might Not Know About Me meme – but felt he had “been there/done that” with an Eight Things meme not too long back.  So, he “fiddl[ed] with this one for the sake of self-pleasuring” (he really did say that) and gave “it a musical bent.”

He threatened to tag me, so I prepared, and frankly, I’m tired of waiting for Part II of his post. So, here is a big nudge from shores of Lake Michigan, Clay.  You said something about jazz?

And just as a warning: this is a long post.

1.  I love power pop.  Because of this I want to invite Elvis Costello and Nick Lowe over for dinner.  I have this dream of making food in my kitchen with these two men (and their wives/girlfriends if that was the only way to get them to visit).  I envision some wine consumed in the process.  Literate and clever, Costello can write cynically about mercenaries, lost loves, death, and “the mystery dance.”  Costello’s song (Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes is a favorite of mine, mixing longing, lust, holding on, letting go, and a bit of magic realism (perhaps – and then perhaps the angels are metaphoria) with those great guitars:

Oh I used to be disgusted
And now I try to be amused.
But since their wings have got rusted,
You know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes.
But when they told me ’bout their side of the bargain,
That’s when I knew that I could not refuse.
And I won’t get any older now the angels wanna wear my red shoes.

"It's so cute"

I have yet to see Elvis Costello perform.  I thought I might once or twice in my life, but it never was in the cards.  Right after college graduation my on again/off again boyfriend told me he had two tickets to Costello’s show at the Metro (I think – it was the tour with the wheel that Costello spun to determine set order.) For a moment I thought he might ask me to go with him, but what he really wanted to know is if I could see if *now famous actress* who I waited tables with might go with him.  Just call me Helena.†

Lowe at Ramshead in Annapolis, MD 2008

And then there is Mr. Lowe whose Cruel to be Kind was the big US hit, though my favorite is So It Goes from the album Jesus of Cool (the US title was Pure Pop for Now People).

Remember one night the kid cut off his right arm
In a bid to save a bit of power
He got fifty thousand watts
In a big acoustic tower
Security’s so tight tonight
Oh they’re ready for a tussle
Gotta keep your backstage passes
‘Cause your promoter had the muscle

And so it goes…

Lowe worked with Dave Edmunds (and Rockpile, a band I saw at the Riviera theater in Chicago in 1981 – In the Heart of the City) and between the three of these guys they pop/rocked my final years of college out to my first crummy jobs and failed romances.  Costello again:

But it’s easier to say “I love you,”
than “Yours sincerely” I suppose
All little sisters like to try on big sister’s clothes
- from Big Sister’s Clothes on Clubland

So, along with the rest of the college music gang – The late great Warren Zevon (crazy man musician whose music I adore – “And if California slides into the ocean/like the mystics and statistics say it will/I predict this motel will be standing/until I pay my bill” – he probably deserves his own annotation) Talking Heads, the Clash, the Police, the Ramones, and in my early Boston (town, not band) years – The Bangles, The Go-Gos – my faves still remain Costello, Lowe, Edmunds, Zevon, Squeeze, the Buzzcocks, and Marshall Crenshaw.

What is the state of the world today?

2.  If I could perform one role and one role only on a stage somewhere sometime it would be Jenny in the Brecht/Weil Dreigroschenoper – The Three Penny Opera. The English translation by Ralph Manheim and John Willett with those biting and excoriating lyrics.  Solomon’s Song and the Pirate Jenny Revenge Song.  When I was in college I worked on the production side of a student performance of this play.  I didn’t audition because my boyfriend (yeah, same guy) told me that it was pointless as *now famous actress* was auditioning (same woman – it’s good that I’ve grown a backbone).  So I worked with the producers and we performed the translation that we didn’t have the rights to perform.  I just remember the finale of act I:

The world is poor and man’s a shit
and that is all there is to it.

And I still want to sing Jenny.

3.  I have season tickets to the Lyric Opera of Chicago but I only really like about half of what I hear. I love the opera when the singers sing together.  Trios and duets and quartets.  Even the big choral singing makes me a happy opera goer.  I love a good aria.  When my sister and I heard tenor Matthew Polenzani and soprano Dina Kuznetsova sing Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet, we were brought to tears by his singing at the end of Act I.  Sell my shoes, ’cause I’m already in heaven.

But when the sopranos sing AT each other (Die Frau ohne Schatten) or when there is no chemistry between the leads (Pinkerton and Cio-Cio-San in Madame Butterfly this season) it’s naptime up in the nosebleed seats for sure.  My sister and I sit in the penultimate row of the last balcony.  No pretensions at 300 feet.  We laugh at Handel and the de capo aria style – heck we could trim those operas by hours – just stop with the reprise.  We think that it’s like the singers say to themselves, “I had SO much fun singing that, I think I’ll do it again.”

When you get to the bottom you go back to the top of the slide… (Helter Skelter)

I just wish the audience has as much fun as the singers are having, but with Handel you at least know what you are getting.

4. I have a playlist on my iPod called Songs that Make Kate Cry.

This list is anchored by the late great Steve Goodman’s version of the Dutchman by Michael Smith.  It’s a song about loving someone and doing the really hard things for the people that you love just because you love them:

The Late Great Steve Goodman

The Dutchman still wears wooden shoes
His cap and coat are patched with love
That Margaret sewed in
Sometimes he thinks he’s still in Rotterdam
He watches tugboats down canals
And calls out to them when he thinks he knows the Captain
(and here is where I start to get a little misty)
‘Til Margaret comes to take him home again
Through unforgiving streets that trip him
Though she holds his arm
Sometimes he thinks that he’s alone and calls her name (okay, it’s usually all over by this time)

Let us go to the banks of the ocean
Where the walls rise above the Zuiderzee
Long ago, I used to be a young man
And dear Margaret remembers that for me

The windmills whirl the winter in
She winds his muffler tighter,
They sit in the kitchen
Some tea with whiskey keeps away the dew
He sees her for a moment, calls her name
She makes the bed up humming some old love song
She learned it when the tune was very new
He hums a line or two
They hum together in the night
The Dutchman falls asleep and Margaret blows the candle out. (This is a song about all those couples I knew when I was growing up – 60 years and longer together)

The list includes James Taylor (Fire and Rain -  for absent friends gone from this earth)
Rascal Flatts (Skin – for my niece who at 22 has had too many cancers removed from her own skin and who shared the song with me)
Nancy Griffths (two of hers – Trouble in the Fields for growing up in one of the great square states and It’s a Hard Life Wherever You Go – about the things that Belfast, Northern Ireland and Chicago have in common – featuring this killer bridge:

I was a child in the sixties
Dreams could be held through TV
With Disney and Cronkite and Martin Luther
I believed, I believed, I believed
Now, I am a backstreet driver from America
I am not at the wheel of control
I am guilty, I am war, I am the root of all evil
Lord, and I can’t drive on the left side of the road

Wynona Judd (She is His Only Need – another song about loving someone so much you just can’t help yourself).
My daughters can always tell when I’ve been listening to that playlist; my face is all blotchy and it’s clear I’ve been crying.  It’s important to have a cathartic cry now and then, and these songs will guarantee one for me.  There is a song on there sung by our friend Jennifer Armstrong (of Belfast, Maine this time) about two sisters, Alice and Jesse.

Alice was married in Baltimore
in a long dress of satin and pearls,
Jesse she ran with a dark gypsy man
and he carried her over the world.

Songs about sisters will get me every time.

Well, he doesn’t make the “make me cry” list, but…
5.  John Hiatt writes songs that are short stories and I love them (almost) all.

I first saw John Hiatt at the Park West in Chicago in 1986 or 87.  Webb Wilder (Work hard, rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard, grow big, wear glasses if you need ‘em – the Webb Wilder Credo) was opening for him, and I was there on a date with a guy that I liked (Jeff), but not in THAT way.  And John Hiatt destroyed me.  He sang:

There’s a lipstick sunset
Smeared across the August sky
There’s a bitter sweet perfume
Hanging in the fields
The creek is running high

And I left my lover waiting
In the dawn somewhere to wonder why
By the end of the day
All her sweet dreams would fade
To a lipstick sunset

(Okay, so now he had my attention:  Who is this guy?)

Well, a radio was playing
And that ol’ summer heat was on the rise
I just had to get away
Before some sad old song
Brought tears to my eyes

And lord I couldn’t tell her
That her love was only killing me (Geez, have I been in that relationship… )
By the end of the day
All her sweet dreams would fade
To a lipstick sunset

Hiatt is second from the left

That’s a story and a half – and when he played Have a Little Faith in Me I just about wept:

Well, I’ve been loving you for such a long time girl
Expecting nothing in return
Just for you to have a little faith in me
You see time, time is our friend
cause for us there is no end
And all you gotta do is have a little faith in me
I said I will hold you up, I will hold you up
Your love gives me strength enough
So have a little faith in me

And then I discover that the bass player on the album that I just had to run out and buy (Bring the Family) is Nick Lowe (see item 1); I was in love (with Hiatt – not Jeff, sorry).  He’s another man I’d love to have join me in the kitchen to make food, drink adult beverages, and talk…and sing Icy Blue Heart together – I promise I’ll take the high harmonies:

These days we all play cool calm and collected
Our lips could turn blue just shooting the breeze,
But under the frost, he thought he detected
A warm blush of red, and the touch of her knee.
He said you’re a beauty like I’ve never witnessed,
And I’ve seen the northern lights dance in the air
I’ve felt the cold that can follow the first kiss
And there’s not enough heat in the fires burning there
To melt your icy blue heart
Should I start
To turn what’s been frozen for years
Into a river of tears

So, not all his songs are melancholy; some are straight out of a Flannery O’Connor short story.  I keep waiting to see Tom T. Shiftlet appear.  There is the story about Trudy and Dave (they shot up an automatic teller machine/got the money for the laundry/ and they drove away clean), a couple shaking off Nashville and going to Memphis in the Meantime (put the cow horns back on the Cadillac and change the message on the Codaphone) the birth of a baby girl Georgia Rae (lucky for you child/you look like your mama), and the man wondering what has happened to an old love (I’m sitting on the toilet/With my sunglasses on/ Wondering what you are up to/This hotel’s got bathroom telephones/But I don’t want to interrupt you.)

John Hiatt is actually the reason that I am teaching.  We’ve seen him a number of times since that first concert, and once when he was playing at the Park West again, I realized that he was having the kind of fun I wanted to have when I was at work.  So, here I am…

Abida Parveen - Queen of Sufi Music 2007

6.  I have a thing for Sufi mystics – Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and others- Hypnotic, sensual, spiritual, visceral. Considered the best qawwali singer of his generation, this man’s music captivates me.  I don’t understand a word that he is singing.  I don’t have to.  I just let it wash over me, surround me, embrace me.  This is music for meditation, action, motion, stillness, seduction, connection, transcendence.

(See my blog title to confirm my fascination with Sufis- Rumi also speaks to me of love and perception.)

7.  My country roots show more often than my grey ones.

The soundtrack of my youth

I grew up in Brookings, SD and the music that was played on KBRK was not exactly top 40.  But the singers and songwriters that we heard everyday stick with me; I can’t turn my back on them.  I don’t listen to them actively, but I can’t write them off:

George Jones (There Goes My Everything)
Tammy Wynette (D.I.V.O.R.C.E.; Stand By Your Man)
Roger Miller (King of the Road; Chug-a-lug; Dang Me)
Eddie Arnold (Tumbling Tumbleweeds)
Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner (The Last Thing on My Mind)
Buck Owens (Act Naturally)
Glen Campbell (By the Time I Get to Phoenix; Dreams of the Every Day Housewife)
Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty (Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man)
Jim Reeves (Scarlet Ribbons)
Patsy Cline (I Fall to Pieces; Crazy; Back in Baby’s Arms)
Dusty Springfield (Son of a Preacherman)

Maybe it is because this music is so singable.  I’ve mentioned that there are at least three men on this list that I would like to have join me in the kitchen, and perhaps that is because the kitchen is the place to sing as well as make food.  Strong memories for me are improvising in the kitchen with my sister and cousins – improvising food preparation and close harmonies.

So to Liz, Molly, Katy, Susan, Trish and occasionally my brother Matt, I send a huzzah.  Imagine if you will, six women, up to their elbows in cooking food for fifty family members (it’s a reunion) singing Carter family songs.  I can hear it in my head.  Keep on the Sunny Side and Down to the River to Pray are there, followed by other river songs (Shall We Gather at the River, By The Waters of Babylon).  It’s religious, but not in a churchy way – religious in the way that the Kami appear, that the spirit/s of the space and connection makes the tears in our eyes the fault of more than a strong onion, although it’s nice to have an onion around to blame them on.

So because I can’t seem to get away from my roots in music, you can find on my iPod Dusty Springfield, Sugarland (Something More), Little Big Town (Boondocks), Patsy Cline, and some folks like Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and the Allman Brothers.   There is no escape.

I could go on and on and on.  From here the melody leads to these places:
8. Warren Zevon,
9. Ella Fitzgerald and Cole Porter
10. Miles Davis – Kinda Blue
11. Weather Report
12. Donald Fagan and Walter Becker
13. Leonard Cohen

Well, Clay – thanks for the threat of a tag. This is sort of an epic post and I should probably break it into parts. Perhaps I will. I tag:
Paige Sweet
Liz Robinson
Matt Tabor – if he only had a blog – (strong hint)

†Gratuitous Literary Reference:  Helena to Demetrius is A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worser place can I beg in your love, —
And yet a place of high respect with me, —
Than to be used as you use your dog? (II i 203-10)

Photo Credits

Elvis Costello photo by flickr member sick of goodbyes
Three Penny Opera photo by flickr member  Xena Paradox aka Margaret Hart
Steve Goodman in 1983 photo by flickr member dgans
Nick Lowe and Ron Sexsmith by fickr member kubacheck
Photo of John Hiatt, with (from right) Guy Clark, Joe Ely, JH, & Lyle Lovett at the Paramount, Austin TX, 2008 by flickr member dremiel
Photo of Abida Parveen taken in Oslo in 2007 by flick member tore_urnes

Neverwhere

Below

I’m teaching a class on the Science Fiction/Fantasy novel.  I’m really just acting as placeholder teacher this year.  Even though this is a genre I love, I won’t ever teach it again because it is not a class I created and because I am returning to the middle school next year to teach 7th grade.

Fantasy

The teacher who designed this class two years ago wanted to keep teaching it, but an elective mishap made everyone’s schedules messy and left him with two American Lit, two World Lit classes but no senior electives.  I am the teacher of record, but Mike is also there everyday for class, and we created the reading list together.  I got to add Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere and he got to keep Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife, a sort of quid pro quo.

The Set Up

I thought we had a great set up for the start of the novel.  We had started by looking at doors in fantasy, how they can lead us to the unexpected and the unexplained.  Short video excepts from a handful of films got us started:  The Seeker based on Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising novels; The Wizard of Oz; Narnia: the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Alice in Wonderland; and Monsters, Inc.  All of these are based on books (except the last.)

Not Off to a Great Start

I’ve never taught Neverwhere before and Mike hadn’t finished reading it, so it was not an auspicious beginning when one of our students, on Day 1 of discussion, said this would be a book that a twelve year old would read.  Okay.  So, where do I go with that?  This is a great story, and I didn’t want them to give up without giving it time.  I brought the discussion around to Jung and archetype theory and the tropes that are part of the classic fantasy novel: the hapless Everyguy who blunders unwillingly into the adventure, the (generally) three tasks that await him, the Big Bad, the double cross, the parallel worlds (London Above and London Below), the  zany band of supernatural folk, metaphor all around.

My weird dream of showing Buffy the Vampire Slayer in class

Yes, I’ve always wanted to find a reason to show parts of BtVS, and Buffy helped me get our students thinking about fear and allegory.  We watched sections of the much lauded episode from season 4 – “Hush” where the set up is all about talking and the scary monsters in the episode steal everyone’s voices.  Okay, so the things that we are afraid of make good reading, and the students were getting pulled into the text.

But it was Gaiman

And they read it.  Second semester seniors read the book.  The same student that said this was a book for his little sister looked at me across the top of the computer in the lab one day when we were both working on other things and said, “Mrs. Tabor? I finished the book.”  I asked him what he thought of how it ended, and he replied, “I got totally sucked into it.”   We talked about lots of different aspects of the end – decisions the hero makes, whether or not he gets the girl, what it means for us, other Gaiman to read…  I don’t know that I had anything to do with the student liking or disliking the book, but I’m glad that he did enjoy it.

Our students are going to write their own fantasy fiction now.  Chicago has a rich underground landscape and is a fertile spot for narrative.  I’ll be anxious to see what they come up with and what archetypes they use.  Thanks for a delicious book to teach, Mr. G.

“Now: onward. Things to do. People to damage.”
— Mr. Croup in Neverwhere

Image by Flickr member Jenny Downing

Texts for Today

Today we are all looking at the words of Abraham Lincoln, born 200 years ago today.  We also celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, another man whose works continue to shake society.   That must have been an amazing planetary alignment the day these men were born.

Col. Parker - taken in the 1890's

At school today we were reminded of the words of Col. Francis Parker, Civil War veteran and educator of educators – from his Talks on Pedagogics, published in 1894 -

Fighting for four years in the Civil War, as best I could, for the preservation of the democratic ideal, a teacher of little children for nearly forty years, I believe four things, as I believe in God – that
democracy is the one hope of the world; that democracy without efficient common schools is impossible; that every school in the land should be made a home and a heaven for children; fourth, that when the ideal of the public school is realized, “the blood shed by the blessed martyrs for freedom will not have been shed in vain.”

I guess I believe these four things as well.

Photo of Parker from the school archives.

The Land of Arrested Development

My room has become the haven for boys so intensely geeky, so not self aware of their own stereotypicalness that they make me laugh every day.

Right now this is what is happening:

Someone’s iPod is plugged into my speakers playing a mix of Yngwie Malmstein, Matchbox  Twenty, and the Mai ai Hee guy (O-zone) – loud.

Three young men are discussing how many rings your character can wear if they have more  than two arms.  As a part of this discussion they are talking game levels, strengths, damage points, and guild association.  Who knew you couldn’t just get your own armor?

Someone is reading.

This goes on for hours every day.  There are six of them that routinely use my room as their base of operations.  One young man keeps all his books, gym clothes, papers and stuff in a box in the corner.

Thursday is Dungeons and Dragons day.  They have brought in their game board, their boxes of figures, and their books about damage and strength and powers and they keep them tucked away so that no one else knows that they are there.

They usually take good care of the space.  I let them eat lunch in there as long as they clean up and recycle everything they can.  One young man is going to have to be reminded about manners and boundaries tomorrow, but he is the exception certainly to this group of polite young men who just need a place to hang out.  I let them use the LCD projector to watch films though I did insist that they go outside to enjoy the fabulous day that we were having earlier this week.

I know I’m not their mother.  I like their mothers.  I guess I’m their school mom.  They remind me of my little brother who played endless games of Monopoly in our basement when we were growing up.   I don’t feel like I’m enabling some anti-social group – on the contrary – this is the Robotics team and they really don’t have a place in school that is their own. I can share.

But as my cousin Al reminded me: Friends don’t let friends play dwarfs.

World of Warcraft miniatures photo by Jay Adan

Facebook (breathe)

Breathe

My niece is a wonderful woman.  She lives in Florida with her husband and children, and her best friend from high school is her brother-in-law.  My niece has stared down a lot of demons in her life, but lately they have come thick and fast.  In the past two weeks she lost a childhood friend to a staph infection (age 28 – gone just days after diagnosis) and her best friend has recently acquired a new set of lungs.  What does this have to do with facebook?  She has kept us all up to date on her B-I-L’s progress via her status updates.  I just want to capture some before they get away.  Don’t let anyone tell you that facebook is frivolous.

These are the words of my niece, MLRS, and I will ask for her permission before I print her name.

Feb 4 – 7:35 AM  S- is hanging in there with God’s help and all your prayers. He is still very critical and still under heavy sedation. Thank you for all the support & prayers.

Feb 5 – 6:08 PM Today has been good S- has stayed stable, with being sedated and the ventilator doing his breathing he is resting. Thank you so much for your prayers.
Feb 6 -7:30 PM S- is staying strong and stable. Please just keep praying for the healing of those who need it. Love you all. Thanks.

Feb 7 10:04 AM  S- may have a Donor we will know late tonight to early morning if it’s a go. Please Keep praying.

3:21 PM We got a time frame of when we will know if surgery is a go. It will be between 8 and 9 this evening. Everything is going well. Thank you so much

6:21 PM Just got word that we won’t know if Surgery is a go until around midnight. Nothings wrong with S- he’s doing very well holding on. Thank you so much.

8:02 PM They just took S- down to pre-op and we should know very soon if it’s a all go for the new transplant.

10:01 PM We should know in about 15 mins if it’s a go. I heard the organs are about to land and the doctors have to look at them, and clear them for an all go. Will be posting in a few. Thank you so much for your prayers and support.

10:22 PM Lungs have arrived and doctors are looking at them only a few more minutes before we know if they approve.

10:40 PM They’re taking forever to let us know so hopefully any minute now, I don’t remember it being this long 4 years ago when he had his first transplant

10:49 PM It’s a Go The lungs are being put in:-).

10:57 PM We will know more in 8 to 9 hours. keep praying please.

11:48 PM S-’s New Lungs are in and he is doing well, they have to suture him up and take him to recovery.

Feb 8 5:58 AM S-  is doing really good, it’s minute by minute but he is taking to the new lungs well. They won’t wake him for another 2 days. Thank you for all your prayers.
6:08 PM S- is doing great, just got a update. All his vitals seem to be right where they should be. He is still in critical stage but seems to be recovering nicely.

Feb 9 6:02 AM S- is amazing even the doctors with how good he is, he did great through the night and we are planning on a great day with him. Thanks for the prayers.
Feb 10 – 11:56 AM S-  is striving on, taking to his new lungs great.  They just put the feeding tube in his stomach, Still have sedated but he’s doing well. Thank you to everyone.
—————-
The power of the crowd.  None of us could be there with her, but we were all there, linked by this crazy piece of software.

Photo by flickr member Nöe

UPDATE Feb 16:   First I have to say Thank You to everyone for all the prayers and support that have been going around for our family, God heard all the prayers and we are so happy that he answered them. Today was a huge day for us S- is completely awake and with the Morphine being so low, he has come so aware of what is going on to him and what has happened to him. He sat in a chair for the first time yesterday, he is still on the ventilator at night and during the day they take the ventilator off and put a pass through valve in his trach and that allows him to talk and breath on his own, they also have a oxygen trach collar over the trach to just give him some oxygen because he was so weak before transplant and because he was put to sleep and on the ventilator prior to transplant he lost alot of strength so this just allows him time to heal and for his new lungs to strengthen more. He has told me to tell everyone Thank you. He is still in ICU and hopefully he wont be in here for much longer. –

Cinema Hat Trick

Three films that I try to find a way to use every year.

I was a film student at Northwestern back in the days of the feminist film aesthetic of the late 70s.  What I discovered then (along with the fact that I can fall asleep watching a film in a minute) is that are there a few films that I can watch over and over and over again and find something wonderful in them every time I see them.  Citizen Kane is not one of those, although I  think I watched it six times for classes before I graduated.  These three are, and I try to find a way to watch them every year in class.

Modern Times

Directed by Charles Chaplin, Starring Chaplin and Paulette Goddard.

Most of my students have never seen Charlie Chaplin, but they certainly understand feeling like someone is watching them all the time, like they are part of a machine.  They love watching Chaplin react to the world around him.  This year we watched it at the same time we were reading Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Disobedience.  Thoreau claims that we are all cogs in the machine.

The Iron Giant

Brad Bird – director

This is Brad Bird’s first feature film, and after years of working on the Simpsons, he begins to develop the themes that he brings to full expression in The Incredibles and Ratatouille.

What is Art?
How can we be true to ourselves?
I can be who I believe I am, not who you say I am.
We must think for ourselves.

This is cell animation, not the Pixar style work of the last two films, but the art looks to the comic books of the 50s for inspiration.  There is cartoon violence (lots of explosions and rockets) and some potty humor, but even my most jaded second semester senior girls hold their breath at the end of the film.  I cry every time I see it. Hogarth and the Giant. Don’t miss them.

Smoke Signals

Chris Eyre directed based on the book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven by Sherman Alexie

“Hey, Victor!”

This film is like poetry. Not quite linear, it tells the story of Thomas and Victor, two young men locked into each others lives. It begins and ends on the Coeur d’Alene reservation in Idaho and is a buddy film, a road movie, bildungsroman, hero’s quest. The Dick Lourie poem at the end that is recited in voice over breaks my heart every time I hear it. This is a film about how storytelling and embracing the past can save your life.

“Some days it is a good day to die.  Some days it is a good day to have breakfast.”

I also like to show Trevor Nunn’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night to my upper school kids (especially seniors – it makes them so itchy). What films are on your list?