Worth Watching: The Station Agent (2003)

Title: The Station Agent
Director: Thomas McCarthy
Language: English
Rating: R (not sure why - probably because of some of the language)

At the heart of it, this movie is about people's hunger for companionship and their adjustment to loss and the passage of time.

Three people form an unlikely friendship in The Station Agent. Finn McBride (Peter Dinklage) is a man with dwarfism who immerses himself in the world of trains: their make, their speed and movement, their history and the routes they've taken. Joe Oramas (Bobby Cannavale) is an outgoing, talkative food vendor, filling in at his family's food truck because his father is ill. And Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson) is an artist who could be genuinely calm and joyful if she weren't struggling with a horrible tragedy in her life.


One weakness in this movie is the way the characters keep getting thrown together in coincidental meetings that can feel forced; the filmmakers really want them to be friends. But I didn't mind so much, because I want them to be friends too. The kind of friendship that grows between them, three people who live in different worlds and ordinarily wouldn't connect in life, is beautiful.


And then, even with the movie repeatedly throwing them together, their friendship remains in some ways fragile. It doesn't take much to shut people out of our lives. Sometimes when we need people the most, we push them away. If we're lucky they won't go away forever.

*All images link back to their source (Flixster Community).

Interview with Barbie Angell

I'm happy to have discovered Barbie Angell's poetry through her regular posts on Robert Frost's Banjo, and now she's here to share this wonderful interview with us. Before we start, here's a bit of background on Barbie:

Bio
Barbie Angell is a writer, poet & artist whose life is constantly under renovation. She graduated Lincoln College with high honors and went on to study Creative Writing, Children's Literature and Poetry at Illinois State University and Heartland Community College. Her dream, since the early 90s, has been to acquire literary world domination. In her spare time she plays full-contact tiddlywinks, studies mime architecture & says humorously inappropriate things on Twitter. You can typically find her, dressed like a confused, fairy princess, in Asheville, NC....unless she's at home hiding under her desk.

Now onto the interview...

Week in Seven Words #153 and #154

Week in Seven Words #153

conveyor
The cineplex is shot through with escalators that go nowhere, dumping you into narrow corridors with dirty red carpets that smell of popcorn and detergent.

eavesdroppers
An alley at night - giggles and dinner party voices and quiet windows where people sit alone and listen to their neighbors making merry.

nova
Wine and the illusion of lasting friendship.

previewing
The thirty minutes of previews I sit through show me that two kinds of things will happen in movies this coming year: 1) people will have gun battles on space ships and crash on unfamiliar planets where they'll have gun battles with beasts while possibly being targeted by sinister conspirators in tight body suits 2) people will fight criminals and go on road trips while cracking jokes and suffering repeated bodily injury.

prey
She's stunned that the one good vegetarian restaurant left in the area has been converted to a meat place. She even goes so far as to ask the people who work there if it was worth it - if they're really making more money now.

unsparing
The lake in the park is like the mirror, cold and silver, in the Sylvia Plath poem.

viewpoint
He talks about how a famous rabbi didn't want to refer to hospitals by the usual Hebrew term of "be'it cholim" (which translates to "house of the sick"). He preferred instead to call it "be'it refuah," or "house of healing," because that would be more hopeful and encouraging to people.

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Week in Seven Words #154

competitive
They're experts at getting to the buffet table first and parking themselves there even after they've filled their plates, to ensure that they'll be the first to get seconds too.

concealed
To her, ignorance is a source of deepest shame. She bluffs, doesn't ask questions, and retreats behind nonsensical answers so she can keep hiding what she doesn't know.

impelled
I love how coincidence can seem like finely tuned machinery (maybe it is?), life steered along with delicate pulleys and conveyor belts. I hear the right words on a day I really needed to hear them. I show up unannounced, and arrive right on time.

phalanges
His finger, almost definitely broken, is puffed up with the skin tight like sausage casing. It's hard to look at it, even harder to hear the pained noises he makes when it gets touched.

reserves
Most of the time when I go to this synagogue's services on Saturdays I feel like my batteries are getting recharged. I want to work on carrying that feeling of connection and quiet contemplation into the rest of the week.

rewarded
No matter what comes of it, I'm happy the experience has made us closer than we have been in years.

vexatious
It has everything a customer service phone line should have: long wait times, an annoying automated voice, convoluted instructions, and operators who greet you brightly before hanging up.

Worth Watching: Midnight (1939)

Title: Midnight
Director: Mitchell Leisen
Language: English
Rating: Not rated

Eve Peabody (Claudette Colbert) is a quick-thinking American gold-digger who arrives in Paris on a rainy night, penniless but wearing an evening gown. She's picked up at the train station by a gruff taxi driver, Tibor Czerny (Don Ameche), and the two drive around the city and stop to have some food.


Though they're attracted to each other, Eve can't imagine getting involved with a taxi driver, so she flees his cab and crashes a late night recital attended by upper class notables including George Flammarion (John Barrymore), his wife, Helene (Mary Astor), and his wife's lover, Jacques Picot (Francis Lederer). Eve passes herself off as a noblewoman, and the only one who sees through her guise is George, who offers her money to break up his wife's affair by luring Jacques away. So Eve finds herself in a dilemma - should she marry Jacques, the wealthy playboy, or tenacious Tibor, who's been searching for her ever since she disappeared from his cab?


Colbert is charming and funny, and gives her character a hard edge too, as Eve tries to focus on the intrigue she's involved in and not get sentimental about anyone. The filmmakers seem determined that she and Tibor get together, but there are moments of troubled reflection on her part. Eve tells Tibor that her parents' marriage soured over money issues. And she can't imagine keeping house all day long as Tibor drives around in his taxi. Their conflicting outlooks on life are a real issue, but because this is a light-hearted comedy any concerns are swept away. They'll have their happily ever after even if it kills them.

The ending wasn't as funny as I'd hoped it would be (some parts of it made me cringe). You know how I wish the movie would have ended? With Eve and George teaming up as con artists and infiltrating royal palaces and embassies across Europe. I really liked the dynamic between Colbert and John Barrymore as co-conspirators.


Barrymore's performance in Midnight is deranged. The gears in his head are whirring a few seconds out of sync with everyone else's. He comes across as bored, rich, and off his rocker. In short, he's delightful.


He and Colbert are the highlights of this movie (along with Rex O'Malley playing Marcel, Helene's witty and effete confidant). The dialogue is funny, the characters play off of each other well, and even though Tibor and Eve's romance was problematic and didn't move me much, at least the comedy side in this comedy-romance was entertaining.

*All images link back to their source (Flixster Community).

Interview with John Hayes

For a few years now I've been following Robert Frost's Banjo, a blog run by John Hayes, and it's my great pleasure to bring you this interview with him. His blog has introduced me to a lot of beautiful poetry and music (including his own), and I've bookmarked many of the posts for repeated reading and listening. I also have copies of two of his poetry collections, the excellent Spring Ghazals (which I reviewed here back in 2010) and The Days of Wine and Roses.

Bio:
John Hayes is a musician & poet who lives in Portland, Oregon in the company of several guitars, banjo & ukuleles. As a musician, he has performed with various bands in Idaho & Oregon, including the Alice in Wonder Band, the Bijou Orchestrette, Five & Dime Jazz, Bonnie Glenshee & others. As a solo performer, Hayes plays old-time blues, focusing particularly on music from the Mississippi Delta region from the 1920s & 30s. As a poet, Hayes obtained an MFA from the University of Virginia, where he studied with Charles Wright & Greg Orr. He has self-published four collections of poetry.

On to the interview...

Human After All

I've published a short story at Front Porch Review called "Human After All." It opens like this:

After the fire ruined her face and body, Aisling didn’t want to live among people.

You can read the story here.

Interview with Naida

Today you're going to be treated to this wonderful interview with Naida, who runs The Bookworm blog and crochets. She's one of my oldest blog friends, and among the reasons I enjoy visiting her blog are the large variety of reading recommendations, author interviews and guest posts, fun memes, and regular doses of Pablo Neruda and other great poets.

Before we start with the interview, here's a bio of Naida:

Bio
Naida is a daydreamer who works a full time job to support her book and yarn obsession. She married her high school sweetheart nearly seventeen years ago and is a proud mom of two. She loves it that people mistake her for being her children's older sister; it's a special treat, and she soaks it up. After attaining an Associates in Business Admin, she's been working in the banking industry for about a decade but hopes to make her way back to school one day for her Bachelors Degree.

Naida's favorite past times include reading books with her daughter, listening to her son play original melodies on his acoustic guitar and cuddling up to watch tv with her hubby. She likes to go hiking with her family in the summertime and she likes to go running, when she finds the time.

She enjoys good music, the kind that makes her stop and think about life and love. Books and poetry that break her heart are always her favorites.

Naida has a chihuahua named Diego who thinks he's her third child; come to think of it, he kind of is. She's a Jersey girl who curses in Spanish when she's really angry but she doesn't like to get angry often because life is too short and precious to waste on being mad. Her hero is her mother, her favorite foods are lasagna and her mother-in-law's homemade spinach pie, she's a chocoholic and her favorite band is Mumford & Sons. She hugs and kisses her kids every night before bed and she counts her blessings every day.

Now, on to the interview!