addressing
It's a sleek open space where the light fixtures look like upside-down salad bowls. Three speakers eventually settle on stools facing the rows of seats. As the sky darkens, they discuss ways to make AI more ethical. From protecting data to detecting biases in programming, there's much to discuss, and there aren't simple answers.
Chasmosaurus
In 15 minutes, I learn more about horned dinosaurs than I ever learned in my life.
heaps
In the lower level of the supermarket, smoke is pouring out of a freezer. A little later, as I wait on line, we're asked to evacuate. Everyone leaves their cart or basket behind, and it makes an eerie picture: piles of abandoned food, much of it perishable, trailing along an empty store.
intermittent
During the storm, it looks as if a lightbulb is flickering between the clouds.
menu
We don't order the oxtail soup. We just marvel at its price.
select
The gift she receives is a doll that says, "I love you," and chuckles like a trapped squirrel. Keeping at a distance, she motions for it to be placed back in its bag and out of sight. Later, we play with the silent pink bear she likes; I help her and the bear down the slide.
virtuosity
On the radio, Vivaldi's Four Seasons comes on played by Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Shlomo Mintz, and Itzhak Perlman. It's a violin extravaganza.
Showing posts with label dinosaurs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dinosaurs. Show all posts
Sunday, November 4, 2018
Friday, June 17, 2011
Worth Watching: Bringing Up Baby (1938)
Title: Bringing Up Baby
Director: Howard Hawks
Language: English
Rating: Unrated
Synopsis
David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a stodgy professor who's assembling a brontosaurus skeleton and hoping to secure a million dollar donation for his museum. Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) is a happy-go-lucky heiress who is convinced from the day they meet that she and David are meant to be. Through a series of plots and tricks that spiral out of her control, she contrives to keep him at her side for a while, away from his cold fiancée and his dinosaur bones.
Characters
David is anxious, earnest, stuffy and adorable. Buried deep inside him is a store of latent joy and fun that only Susan will be able to bring out, if she doesn't drive him insane first. David never sheds his stodginess over the course of the movie, but just the fact that he accepts Susan into his life (as if he has a choice) means that there will be a lot more love and playfulness (and chaos) in it. I love the way Cary Grant delivers his lines and throws his whole body into the comedy of David's frustrations.
Susan is the kind of woman who spends her time at a swanky hotel chatting with the bartender and having him teach her how to flip olives from the back of her hand to her mouth. She can hunt for leopards in the dark Connecticut wilds using only a rope and a butterfly net. Her screams are shrill, her laughter silly. She doesn't understand dignity very well; it's much more fun to giggle. She has a woman's longing for a man, and a child's love of mischief and play. Hepburn plays her with a kind of devilish sweetness and innocence, an underlying intelligence to her flightiness. She's a high-society imp.
The best supporting characters are Susan's aunt, Elizabeth Random (May Robson), a formidable, outspoken lady who for most of the movie believes that David is a big-game hunter who has lost his marbles; she advises Susan not to marry him: "I don't want another lunatic in the family, I've got lunatics enough already." There's also her dinner guest, Major Horace Applegate (Charlie Ruggles), an actual big game hunter who confuses the roar of a leopard with the cry of a loon.
Speaking of animals, the movie introduces you to Baby, a tame leopard, along with George, a yappy little terrier. They both bring a lot of grief to David.
Relationships
Baby and George become inseparable.
Then there's David and Susan's relationship, which is a joy and a catastrophe, as David puts it: "In moments of quiet I'm strangely drawn towards you... but, well, there haven't been any quiet moments."
But what choice does he have? He's the leading man, he has to wind up with someone by the end of the film, and from the very beginning we know that if he stays with his fiancée, Alice (Virginia Walker), he'll end up a desiccated husk of a man, imprisoned in a cold and dusty life.
Memorable sights and sounds
I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby is sung several times in the movie - in the middle of the woods, in front of a psychiatrist's house, etc. There's a logical reason for this.
There's also a logical reason for why David needs to stalk George. David tracks the dog on all fours sometimes, or keeps an eye on him at the dinner table, getting up with a spoon still in his hand and following George out of the room whenever necessary.
The look on David's face and the high terrified pitch to his voice are nearly identical when he first spots the leopard in Susan's bathroom and when, much later in the film, Susan professes her love for him.
Susan has some moments when she's frightened or upset too, but by and large she can handle difficult situations well and find the humor in them. Katharine Hepburn, unsurprisingly, was the only actor on the set who touched the leopard, if only in a couple of scenes; it's amazing to see it rub up against her legs as she's blithely chatting into the phone. ("Oh, David, don't be irrelevant... the point is I've got a leopard, the question is what am I going to do with it?")
Stand-out scenes
For me the film really takes off during the scene at the Ritz, with the olive tricks, a mix-up of purses, and David and Susan tearing each other's clothes off, in a manner of speaking. Their exit from the hotel is a gem of physical comedy. And in this scene their banter and David's sniping first reach a level of comic greatness. Throughout the film in general the actors' timing and rhythm is impeccable, with the rapid back-and-forth speech, interruptions and overlapping lines, wit and double entendres.
The culmination of the film takes place in the jail. Hepburn impersonating a gangster's moll and sweet-talking her way out of her cell is a highlight, as is the way in which she returns after her escape, endangering everyone.
Further thoughts
There's a lot of funniness and clever screwball silliness in this film, with one deranged scenario building on another and then another, and by the end I was both glad I watched it and tired out from watching it; I imagine that this is how David must feel about Susan.
*All images link back to their source (UCLA cinema; Flixster community).
Director: Howard Hawks
Language: English
Rating: Unrated
Synopsis
David Huxley (Cary Grant) is a stodgy professor who's assembling a brontosaurus skeleton and hoping to secure a million dollar donation for his museum. Susan Vance (Katharine Hepburn) is a happy-go-lucky heiress who is convinced from the day they meet that she and David are meant to be. Through a series of plots and tricks that spiral out of her control, she contrives to keep him at her side for a while, away from his cold fiancée and his dinosaur bones.
Characters
David is anxious, earnest, stuffy and adorable. Buried deep inside him is a store of latent joy and fun that only Susan will be able to bring out, if she doesn't drive him insane first. David never sheds his stodginess over the course of the movie, but just the fact that he accepts Susan into his life (as if he has a choice) means that there will be a lot more love and playfulness (and chaos) in it. I love the way Cary Grant delivers his lines and throws his whole body into the comedy of David's frustrations.
Susan is the kind of woman who spends her time at a swanky hotel chatting with the bartender and having him teach her how to flip olives from the back of her hand to her mouth. She can hunt for leopards in the dark Connecticut wilds using only a rope and a butterfly net. Her screams are shrill, her laughter silly. She doesn't understand dignity very well; it's much more fun to giggle. She has a woman's longing for a man, and a child's love of mischief and play. Hepburn plays her with a kind of devilish sweetness and innocence, an underlying intelligence to her flightiness. She's a high-society imp.
The best supporting characters are Susan's aunt, Elizabeth Random (May Robson), a formidable, outspoken lady who for most of the movie believes that David is a big-game hunter who has lost his marbles; she advises Susan not to marry him: "I don't want another lunatic in the family, I've got lunatics enough already." There's also her dinner guest, Major Horace Applegate (Charlie Ruggles), an actual big game hunter who confuses the roar of a leopard with the cry of a loon.
Speaking of animals, the movie introduces you to Baby, a tame leopard, along with George, a yappy little terrier. They both bring a lot of grief to David.
Relationships
Baby and George become inseparable.
Then there's David and Susan's relationship, which is a joy and a catastrophe, as David puts it: "In moments of quiet I'm strangely drawn towards you... but, well, there haven't been any quiet moments."
But what choice does he have? He's the leading man, he has to wind up with someone by the end of the film, and from the very beginning we know that if he stays with his fiancée, Alice (Virginia Walker), he'll end up a desiccated husk of a man, imprisoned in a cold and dusty life.
Memorable sights and sounds
I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby is sung several times in the movie - in the middle of the woods, in front of a psychiatrist's house, etc. There's a logical reason for this.
There's also a logical reason for why David needs to stalk George. David tracks the dog on all fours sometimes, or keeps an eye on him at the dinner table, getting up with a spoon still in his hand and following George out of the room whenever necessary.
The look on David's face and the high terrified pitch to his voice are nearly identical when he first spots the leopard in Susan's bathroom and when, much later in the film, Susan professes her love for him.
Susan has some moments when she's frightened or upset too, but by and large she can handle difficult situations well and find the humor in them. Katharine Hepburn, unsurprisingly, was the only actor on the set who touched the leopard, if only in a couple of scenes; it's amazing to see it rub up against her legs as she's blithely chatting into the phone. ("Oh, David, don't be irrelevant... the point is I've got a leopard, the question is what am I going to do with it?")
Stand-out scenes
For me the film really takes off during the scene at the Ritz, with the olive tricks, a mix-up of purses, and David and Susan tearing each other's clothes off, in a manner of speaking. Their exit from the hotel is a gem of physical comedy. And in this scene their banter and David's sniping first reach a level of comic greatness. Throughout the film in general the actors' timing and rhythm is impeccable, with the rapid back-and-forth speech, interruptions and overlapping lines, wit and double entendres.
The culmination of the film takes place in the jail. Hepburn impersonating a gangster's moll and sweet-talking her way out of her cell is a highlight, as is the way in which she returns after her escape, endangering everyone.
Further thoughts
There's a lot of funniness and clever screwball silliness in this film, with one deranged scenario building on another and then another, and by the end I was both glad I watched it and tired out from watching it; I imagine that this is how David must feel about Susan.
*All images link back to their source (UCLA cinema; Flixster community).
Monday, May 16, 2011
Week in Seven Words #67
anecdotal
We have the table near the fish tank, and over sushi and beef dumplings we tell funny stories and clink our glasses in a toast.
bedrock
On a blue breezy day we scramble among the rocks that overlook the lake.
greeting
A moment after I step out of the elevator, they emerge from another one. It's a wonderful surprise; they were on their way to meet me, and now I get to see them even sooner than I expected.
irenic
Candles at one end of the table, and in the window a rose pink sunset.
oasis
It's a gift-wrapped day, an oasis in a week that's mostly desert. I spend the day with people I love - walking, exploring, reading, talking.
pachycephalosaurs
Also called bone-headed dinosaurs, something that makes us giggle as we read through the dinosaur book.
suckle
In my arms he fidgets, grumbles, sucks on the lapel of my jacket and cries when it fails to nourish him.
We have the table near the fish tank, and over sushi and beef dumplings we tell funny stories and clink our glasses in a toast.
bedrock
On a blue breezy day we scramble among the rocks that overlook the lake.
greeting
A moment after I step out of the elevator, they emerge from another one. It's a wonderful surprise; they were on their way to meet me, and now I get to see them even sooner than I expected.
irenic
Candles at one end of the table, and in the window a rose pink sunset.
oasis
It's a gift-wrapped day, an oasis in a week that's mostly desert. I spend the day with people I love - walking, exploring, reading, talking.
pachycephalosaurs
Also called bone-headed dinosaurs, something that makes us giggle as we read through the dinosaur book.
suckle
In my arms he fidgets, grumbles, sucks on the lapel of my jacket and cries when it fails to nourish him.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Week in Seven Words #4
brontosaurus
He's a scientist and scholar, well-known in certain circles. One of the moments that stands out most in his lecture is when he displays his dinosaur tie. It's a necktie with a brontosaurus on it; he fondly refers to it as a "hideous gift" from his wife and adds that the only reason he takes it along with him on trips is to preserve marital harmony.
jewels
I like making fruit platters, not only because they're tasty, but because I like to lay the fruits out as if they're jewels on display - deep green and lush red, sparkling purple and plump orange.
raconteurs
I spend time in the company of two story-tellers. One talks about things that he actually did and experienced - an exquisite multi-course dinner in Spain, an encounter with brazen pickpockets in eastern Europe. The other makes stories up and relates them with an expression that never succeeds at being 100% serious (it's his eyes, they twinkle too much); with this second story-teller I have fun guessing how much is fiction and how much fact, and at the end it hardly seems to matter anyway, because I'm laughing too hard.
ramble
Great conversation full of both depth and digression, in a warm, crowded, noisy room. It spills out of doors afterwards, in a walk through slushy streets, where everything is mostly cold and still except for our voices and laughter.
refresh
Being able to rest my head on her shoulder, even for several seconds only, makes all the difference in an evening marked with weariness and aches.
saturation
Rain doesn't just saturate earth and sky with water but with sound as well. The sounds - of rain against roof, puddle, window, coat, and concrete - accompany me everywhere.
sketch
I don't know yet if anything will come of these tentative considerations, which center on a quiet town, a rocky coast, lighthouses, boats, shops selling fudge and ice cream, hiking trails, leafy parks and old houses, an inn with a large downy bed.
He's a scientist and scholar, well-known in certain circles. One of the moments that stands out most in his lecture is when he displays his dinosaur tie. It's a necktie with a brontosaurus on it; he fondly refers to it as a "hideous gift" from his wife and adds that the only reason he takes it along with him on trips is to preserve marital harmony.
jewels
I like making fruit platters, not only because they're tasty, but because I like to lay the fruits out as if they're jewels on display - deep green and lush red, sparkling purple and plump orange.
raconteurs
I spend time in the company of two story-tellers. One talks about things that he actually did and experienced - an exquisite multi-course dinner in Spain, an encounter with brazen pickpockets in eastern Europe. The other makes stories up and relates them with an expression that never succeeds at being 100% serious (it's his eyes, they twinkle too much); with this second story-teller I have fun guessing how much is fiction and how much fact, and at the end it hardly seems to matter anyway, because I'm laughing too hard.
ramble
Great conversation full of both depth and digression, in a warm, crowded, noisy room. It spills out of doors afterwards, in a walk through slushy streets, where everything is mostly cold and still except for our voices and laughter.
refresh
Being able to rest my head on her shoulder, even for several seconds only, makes all the difference in an evening marked with weariness and aches.
saturation
Rain doesn't just saturate earth and sky with water but with sound as well. The sounds - of rain against roof, puddle, window, coat, and concrete - accompany me everywhere.
sketch
I don't know yet if anything will come of these tentative considerations, which center on a quiet town, a rocky coast, lighthouses, boats, shops selling fudge and ice cream, hiking trails, leafy parks and old houses, an inn with a large downy bed.
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