“Consider the Lobster”

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by Richard in Articles & Books of Interest, Escapes and Pleasures, Family and Friends

Tags

"Consider the Lobster", "Consider the Oyster", Broome's Island, Calvin Trillin, Crab Cakes, David Foster Wallace, Gourmet Magazine, John McPhee, lobster, Maryland Blue Crabs, MFK Fischer, Patuxent River, Stoney's Restaurant

In a recent review of several movies (Five Movies to Recommend), I mentioned the name of a writer, David Foster Wallace, whom I somehow didn’t know. Or at least I didn’t know I ‘knew’ him. Thanks to an alert MillersTime reader (KC), I was reminded of an article he wrote in the now defunct Gourmet magazine in 2004 entitled Consider the Lobster. So I reread the article — I think I had never paid much attention to who authored it — and was again amused and delighted.

Wallace had taken on an assignment for Gourmet to write about the annual Maine Lobster Festival, held in July in the state’s mid-coast region. No doubt taking a page from MFK Fischer’s wonderful small book, Consider the Oyster, (written in 1941), Wallace’s essay took the opportunity provided by the festival to explore an issue many of us who love lobsters and prepare them at home occasionally ‘consider’.

Trust me on this one. If you’ve ever ‘considered the lobster’ and if you like the writings of Calvin Trillin and John McPhee (a high bar I know), I suspect you’ll enjoy Wallace’s Consider the Lobster. And be sure to read the 20 footnotes which are really just an extension of this amusing and delightful essay and likely the only footnotes you’ll ever read with pleasure.

Rereading Consider the Lobster also reminded me about how much Ellen and I have enjoyed an annual weekend that has been centered around lobsters and friendship.

IMG_3472(1)

Five Movies to Recommend

06 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

"Althogh Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself", "Infinite Jest", "Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation", "Phoenix", "Rolling Stone", "Rosenwald", Avalon Theatre, Aviva Kempner, Christian Petzoid, Conrad Anker, David Foster Wallace, David Lipsky, DC Shorts Film Festival, Documentarties, Films, Jason Siegel, Jesse Eisenberg, Jimmy Chin, Julius Rosenwald, Mount Meru, Movies, Nina Hoss, Renan Oztruk, Ronald Zehrfeld, Rosenwald Fund, Rosenwald Schools, Sears. Roebuck & Co., Shark's Fin, The Ciesla Foundation, Tom Cruise

Five more films to consider, including at least one that is available everywhere.

Phoenix ****

Phoenix poster.11191735_ori

Good filmmaking and very good acting make this suspense filled drama engrossing.

Writer and director Christian Petzold creates and tells a story about a woman who returns from a concentration camp badly disfigured and who undergoes facial reconstructive surgery. She then sets out to find her husband, who may or may not have been responsible for her arrest and imprisonment.

While the story has some implausible aspects, it nevertheless grabbed me and held me throughout. Both the women, Nelly (Nina Hoss) and her ‘perhaps’ husband, Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), are intriguing characters, strikingly portrayed, and well acted, particularly Nelly.

Phoenix is not a thriller tho it is filled with suspense. Post-war Berlin is the setting, and there is something about the filmmaking that makes it compelling and enthralling.

Rosenwald****