Director Kelly Reichardt won me over with “Wendy and Lucy.” In “Meek’s Cutoff” she pairs up with the writer of “Wendy and Lucy”, Jonathan Raymond to create a script that’s based on letters and journal entries of women traveling down the Oregon trail in the mid-1800′s. A kind of Western from a woman’s perspective. It tells the story from the point of view of the women whose impact on any major decisions was usually confined to the private hours of the night.

The film opens with a group of travelers who are led astray by a man who claims he knows the fastest way to get them to California. They suspect that they may be lost and are forced to trust in another questionable alternative or lose by going without water. In one of the interviews Reichardt said that the pacing of short stories is more conducive to film adaptation– that she cannot imagine making a film out of a book. Like in “Wendy and Lucy,” she’s interested in embellishing an emotional state and she’s not afraid to take her time on a moment to create suspense and drag our her scenes during long takes that recreate “real time”. What Reichardt focuses on in this film and what’s really engrossing is seeing the emotional shifts and the delicate dynamic of trust that keeps or breaks up the group of travelers who are forced to make a life choice decision.

I’m not big on following Kdramas. I watch an episode, get bored and forget about it. Since most Kdramas are written for teens it’s too easy to figure out what will happen without even watching. So for a long time, before I saw Coffee Prince, I was completely baffled by the show’s popularity.

It has all the elements of a typical candied Kdrama. There’s a controlling mother figure, a rich stubborn boy, and a poor hard-working Cinderella who steals the boy’s heart in a quirky PG rated love story that ends in marriage. Except in this drama, the girl pretends to be a boy and the boy as a result, is learning to deal with his homosexuality.

Yoon Eun-hye plays a lovable tomboy, but the plot wouldn’t be nearly as appealing if the entire show centered on gender spoofing. So just as she comes clean and reveals her sexuality, another couple comes into the picture. A couple that just reunited after an affair and subsequent break-up. They’re sour  and sometimes it seems like it would be easier to just take a break with someone else, someone as dishonest but well meaning as Yoon Eun-hye.

The show was a hit in Korea. Women cut their hair like Yoon Eun-hye’s character, the coffee shop where the drama was filmed became a common tourist attraction and Yoon Eun-hye is filming another drama with a crucial spoof at the center, called, “Lie to Me.” Maybe this is as close to “gay” as you can get in a traditional S. Korean society, or maybe, they’re approaching this from a different angle. By integrating “gay” into a very straight Kdrama it doesn’t seem to matter as much that the boy is a girl (or the other way around) as long as it’s a good love story in the end.

Thank god, it’s only 17 episodes long!

There are times in my life when I overuse the phrase “it all sounds pretty complicated.” I wonder how the obese make love. Sometimes I realize that what I’m in the middle of saying is boring, so I just stop talking.

. . .I believe the people who make the world are the ones who do not believe in reality, for example, for centuries, the Christians. I am an egoist despite myself, I cannot even conceive of being altruistic. Until the age of twelve I thought I was gifted with the power to shape the future…

I connect easily with women, it takes longer with men. My best male friends have something feminine about them. I ride a motorcycle but I don’t have the “biker spirit.”

Not wanting to change things does not mean I am conservative, I like for things to change, just not having to do it.

Knowing that sugar coated weddings and white fuzzy bonnets are the stuff of fairy tales, Rudnitskaya focuses on the fallibility and regular haphazardness of major decisions. Like all things in nature, life decisions and status changes are fluid. They are mostly ruled by accidents, capricious outbreaks and coincidences– and the only thing you can do is wonder how long each phase will last. One of the best scenes in the film is a quiet intimate moment with a woman trying to persuade her husband that she didn’t cheat on him with the doctor. There is also a scene with a weeping older woman who arrives at the office only hours after her husband died so she can buy a cheaper coffin. Everything happens in the unassuming space of the civil registry office in front of witnesses who double as administrators, counselors and masters of ceremony.

The basic food groups.

It’s always raining in Louisville

An umbrella in TN on its way to the woods. It kept skipping away every time I took a picture.

Three meals a day. Cracker barrel.

The Winds of Change in Indiana. Miles and miles of windmills on the Meadow Lake Wind Farm.

I’ve long been a fan of the German publishing houses like Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Schöffling and even Kiwi …. who translate everything under the sun, in a timely manner, even if it sells only 2000 copies. Omnivorousness is a virtue of the German readers. Now I learn there is a movie made about a translator of Dostoyevsky’s fiction. And to my surprise it’s playing in the European Film Festival at the Gene Siskel next week. Nerdy…really and not on the cinematic side but worthy for its other virtue.  Normally,  I can’t stand lectures on the” art” of translation or  art of writing alike, a discussion about the poetics of the struggle of each turns me off like nothing else, except maybe a comparison to the Greeks or some other literary monolith. Perhaps this documentary is more genuine and direct or just a noteworthy mention on a blog like this one. Either way, I am in awe of the German publishers and the curiosity for good world literature that prevails in that country of theirs.

Classically trained singer Katie Stelmanis is just a better vocalist than a lot of people out there right now. Her recent collaboration on F—ed Up’s Polaris-winning ‘Chemistry of Common Life’ album has raised her profile, as has a helping hand from the band’s guitarist Mike “10,000 Marbles” Haliechuk, whose continual praise has netted Stelmanis a single on Vice/Loog and an ongoing North American tour opening for CocoRosie. Her new band, Austra’s  album “Feel It Break” will be out in May– The video for the single was inspired by Vanessa Beecroft’s installations. But it’s that combo of classical tuning, retro dance riffs and art school playfulness that make her so compelling.

Just like this older one:

and one more:

1. A sound editor never has a three-months’ full supply in his cupboard…(or his bank account). This keeps them sharp and alert.

2. Quick decisions — except in poetry.

And speaking of editing poetry. Why Robert Frost has been on the all-time poetry bestseller  list I don’t know –but still remember a certain poet telling me this with a level of disdain and dismay, as if he had realized that we (the non-poets) really don’t want much more from poems than a tasty morsel to sweeten our coffee. But back to editing poetry, –poets, and Frost. I’m not sure which alternative rings more true, that Frost was a deranged speller or that some editor struggling to decipher his handwriting turned him into one. my condolences to both parties and a heartfelt “sorry,”  to the poor editor who left a ‘mess’ on the pages of our most renown poet.