Tag Archives: Gone Girl

NYMysteries June 24 -June 30

Pride Sunday. In the late seventies, when it was called the Gay Day Parade, my boyfriend and I would arrive at a gay friend’s apartment on Hudson, drink champagne at ten a.m. and smoke perfectly rolled cigarettes. I was titillated by the largely homosexual crowd expressing surprise that I was gay. Then we strolled up Fifth Avenue, slightly stoned. It was a leisurely walk, hardly a march.

 

 

For this Pride Sunday, The Judson Memorial Church’s staff created  evocative and heart breaking posters of the past LGBT community.

 

 

 

Saint James Baldwin
Saint Christine Jorgensen
Saint Alan Turing
St. Harry Hay

A friend and I go to the movies in hopes we’ll break the spell of choosing long, boring movies. The three most recent stinkers: The King, Phantom Thread, Gone Girl. 

The King, at IFC, ropes you in because it’s supposedly about Elvis Presley. Actually it’s a self serving vehicle about the director, Eugene Jarecki, who informs us that he’s anti-Trump and supports Black Lives Matter. What does this have to do with E. P.? Jarecki criticizes Presley for not participating in civil rights marches. Presley was a musical genius. That’s it. He might have been a dope but who cares? Speaking of vehicles, Jarecki has the usual tired celebrities such as Alec Baldwin ride around in Presley’s Rolls Royce.  Avoid. 

Paul Taylor Anderson’s Phantom Thread is so boring. Daniel Day-Lewis walks on water for some. In this long affected movie he treads on cloth. If you suffer from insomnia, this is the flick for you.

We saw David Fincher’s Gone Girl in a glorious Amsterdam art nouveau movie theater, Pathé Tuschinski. I’m a fan of Gillian Flynn’s flinty, non-flinching descriptions of everyday life and of her sense of humor. None of which is present in the film adaptation. And to put the nail in the coffin Ben Affleck wanders through the plot in his usual sleepwalker’s stance. 

I had to meet a friend for drinks at Bemelmans Bar after seeing Always at the Carlyle. Sitting in the twilight of Bemelman’s wall paintings, listening to someone slinging Cole Porter and sipping champagne is certainly the way to spend the cocktail hour. 

 

Graphic Lessons: NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek is assigned a murder case at the  prestigious Windsor School. What’s bugging him? His partner being stabbed while Kulchek was buying cigarettes? Escaping an attempted car bombing?  His hated boss, Captain Dick Holbrook, being a trustee of the Windsor School?  Losing his girlfriend to Holbrook? 

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie. 

Mary Jo Robertiello

http://www.nymysteries.com

New York City Blog Annex: Oct. 5 – Oct. 12

We returned to NYC yesterday. On the Delta flight I watched two movies and one documentary. There are movies and then there are the ones you watch when you’re in the air. Blue Jasmine is a flight flick. Cate Blanchett looks like a tired swan who sweeps through her scenes talking in her Katherine Hepburn accent. At times I thought I was watching A Streetcar Named Desire. Veronica Mars is an awful, homemade movie. It’s not even a flight flick. Then, the documentary, Nixon on Nixon. Usually, I can’t wait to get off a plane. Many people tense when landing approaches. Not me except yesterday when I was so enthralled by the late and ex President Nixon’s comments that I wanted the flight to continue. I can understand in a Machiavellian way why a paranoid and powerful person would have people secretly recorded. What I cannot understand is why Nixon, knowing he too was being recorded, would not have been more circumspect in his comments.

I’m in a movie frame of mind. In Amsterdam we went to the Tuschinski theatre. It’s a massive 1921 movie palace. If you sit in one of the private booths, drinking champagne, you can imagine the days when Marlene Dietrich appeared there in variety acts. Otherwise, you can sit in the comfortable seats and stare at the beautiful balconies and ceiling. We saw Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn’s wonderful novel. It’s an engrossing adaptation,  but the ending was rushed, as if the director had another project in the wings. Rosamund Pike was perfect. Ben Affleck was a big mistake. He’s a movie star, not an actor.  But what a theatre. Oh, yes, the movie is subtitled in English.

Tushinski Balcony
Tushinski Balconies
Entrance to the Tushinski
Entrance to the Tushinski