Archive for Deborah Lipp

Monday Movie Reviews: The Kids Are All Right and Laurel Canyon

I saw High Art a couple of years ago, and I was blown away by it. So after I saw The Kids Are All Right I decided to look up Lisa Cholodenko and see what else she’d done; I was surprised to realize she was responsible for High Art as well. Since I liked two out of two Cholodenko movies I’d seen, I added Laurel Canyon to my Netflix.

The Kids Are All Right (2010) 10/10
Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Benning) are a long-standing couple with two teenagers. When the kids decide to seek out the sperm donor who “fathered” them (Mark Ruffalo) the family structure is shaken.

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I have found God

By “God,” I mean the old-fashioned God of the Torah and the Christian Bible, the God of my childhood. And by “found” I mean, I know who he is. Which, even if I don’t believe in Him, is still pretty cool.

If you think about the God of your childhood, most of you will agree that he is unquestionably male, but in a non-threatening way. Masculine but not…butch. Probably celibate, even.

In appearance, I think dignified gray hair is a must, and He is certainly tall, with excellent posture. His voice is deep and mellifluous, authoritative and yet comforting.

The attitude, though, is all-important. God is smart, of course, but more importantly, God is kind. He sure and commanding. He loves all of those in his care equally, loving us when we succeed and when we fail. Even when we squabble among one another, even when we are disrespectful to Him, He loves us.

Like a good parent, God doesn’t take sides, is proud of and respectful towards His children, gives us the room to make our own mistakes, but attempts to correct us before we go too far.

In short, God is » Read more..

Monday Movie Theater Review: Love, Loss, and What I Wore

Love, Loss, and What I Wore
An intimate collection of stories by Nora & Delia Ephron
10/10

Love, Loss, and What I Wore is presented as a theatrical reading: Five chairs in a line on the stage, with lecterns in front of them. Oh, geez, I thought, I’m seeing this? I’m not even seeing a play? I needn’t have worried. The show is presented with a rotating cast of 28, and every cast, as far as I can see, is stellar. We saw Carol Kane, Jayne Houdyshell, Fran Drescher, Didi Conn, and Natasha Lyonne.

Stories, anecdotes, and characters are presented through the context of clothing and accessories. We open with Gingy (Carol Kane), who decided during (an illness? insomnia?) to sketch outfits she remembered. As she showed each outfit, she reminisced. From Brownie uniforms to bridal dresses, Gingy told her life through clothing. None of the other characters stay on-stage past individual tales, so that all five are voicing many women, but every woman’s memories are intertwined with what she wore.

We left feeling like we had shared in a full range of woman’s lives. Houdyshell even presented a character who has just never related to or remembered clothing. Only one item of clothing ever stuck in her mind, and yet that item moved us to tears.

I don’t do the “sisterhood” thing very well. I don’t find myself on board with a lot of what passes for sharing women’s experience or women’s empowerment. As often as not, I feel marginalized by it. But here, honestly, I felt so connected to other women, to being a woman, to sharing womanhood through the vehicle of this text and these performers.

Mostly we laughed. We laughed a lot, and loudly, and sometimes we spontaneously applauded, but yes, there were tears. These were stories about loving black, and hating your purse, and wrangling with your mother over what you’re going to wear, and buying a bra in anticipation of breast reconstruction, and maternity dresses, and prom dresses, and these are women who love and hate their mothers, their bodies, their men, and their lives. Unsurprisingly, these women skew heavily towards Jewish New Yorkers like the Ephrons, but characters portrayed also include a lesbian and a Latina, and in the joys and laughter are also stories of rape, the loss of a child, the loss of a parent, and really bad therapy.

Much more laughter than tears, though. I have a bad laugh. I have a series of bad laughs: Snorts and barks and squeaks and guffaws that burst forth from me at inappropriate moments, and the theater audience got to share every one of them. And I shared theirs.

Fran Drescher kind of stole the show. Everyone was great, but the revelations were Drescher and Lyonne, both of whom had more raw performance power than I could ever have anticipated. Drescher owned. Drescher cracked the other women up so they momentarily lost their places. What a pleasure!

So, on I go to Amazon to buy the original book upon which this show is based, and if I find a text of the play I’ll buy that too, because I want to experience these stories over and over. While wearing black.

Monday Post-Oscar Thoughts

Was this the dullest Oscars ever? Quite possibly. The only real drama was whether Cablevision and ABC would come to terms in time; they did, but we Cablevision subscribers missed the opening schtick. What I saw of Baldwin & Martin left me profoundly unimpressed; Martin was much funnier when he had the gig solo. Plus, most of the presenter humor was worse than in the past, and that’s going a ways.

There were no surprises among the winners. Of the four acting awards, 3 were a sure thing and one almost as sure, and none surprised. Congratulations to Kathryn Bigelow for being the first woman to win Best Director. Not that the glass ceiling is all shattered or anything.

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Monday Movie Review: (500) Days of Summer

(500) Days of Summer (2009) 4/10
Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meets Summer (Zooey Deschanel) and begins a romance that we know from the outset will end. Title cards show us which of the 500 days we are looking at in each of the scrambled-time-sequence scenes.

About half the reviews I’ve seen of (500) Days of Summer were delighted and laudatory. Most of the others suggested that the movie was too cutesy and self-satisfied with its own happy cuteness. In response to those, I thought, Wow, sounds like the movie for me! I love cute. Finally, some reviews suggested that the movie was sexist, and while I don’t love that, I love movies, and a lot of them are sexist. I survive.

Boy, was I not prepared for the hellfest that was (500) Days of Summer.

First of all, cute just doesn’t cover it. Cloyingly cute. Smugly cute. Derivatively cute. Me shouting at my TV “STFU with your cuteness you stupid cute thing!” cute. Dude, you are not Ferris Bueller, stop trying to trick me into thinking so. Your cute checklist is so obvious! Wise-beyond-her-years preteen, adorable musical moment, cute jobs (at a greeting card company, of all things), cute drunkeness, and Zooey Cute-chanel.

Now, all of this is not to say that the movie isn’t often witty. It is sometimes well-written, and its stars are six kinds of awesome. My love of Joseph Gordon-Levitt is well-established at this point. And yes, there were several times I laughed out loud. Even during greeting card scenes.

But in order to fully examine what’s wrong with this movie, we have to move on to the sexism. By which I mean, the deep-seated misogyny. The movie opens with three screens of white text on a plain black background: (1) The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. (2) Especially you Jenny Beckman. (3) Bitch.

When I saw that, my stomach knotted up. Anything that followed, no matter how cute, was now tainted by this angry, gendered outburst. Later, during one of the late-relationship days (circa 280), Tom writes a greeting card that says: Roses are red, violets are blue, Fuck you, whore. Fuck you, whore. For the record, Summer has not cheated on Tom; the only thing she’s done to warrant being called a whore is to be female and hurt Tom’s feelings. There’s just this deep undercurrent of misogyny throughout the film, and again, no matter how sweetly it’s painted, how do you forget that? Even the final scene, which is obviously going to be about closure and moving on, seems pointedly designed to erase Summer as if she no longer deserves to exist.

So I dunno. Some people liked it. But if you’re reading my reviews and going by my opinion, I have to tell you, Do Not See This Movie.

Monday Movie Reviews: Quick Hits

Escape From Alcatraz: Clint Eastwood stars in a real-life escape story set in 1960. Directed by Don Siegel.
Everything you’d expect from a Siegel movie of the 1970s. Hard-boiled, intelligently spare, ultra-masculine, pacing that grips you like a vise. Clint Eastwood & Don Siegel were such a great collaboration. 8/10

Lady Sings the Blues: Biopic of Billie Holiday, replete with gritty drug addiction, starring Diana Ross.
I’d heard, long ago, that this was a bad movie. Recently, some folks in some film discussions praised it highly, so I decided to see for myself. Dear Gods, this is bad. 4/10

Quigley Down Under:
Tom Selleck is the sharpshooter, Alan Rickman is the bad guy, in the Wild Wild Australian West.
You know I love Westerns. You know that. But this one is just so-so. San Giacomo’s crazy lady thing is way too over the top, and everything else is serviceable and by-the-numbers, except in Australia instead of the American West. Alan Rickman is always a great bad guy, and Selleck is pleasingly macho without being a jerk; he actually has a lot of soul. 7/10.

Revolutionary Road: Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio really goddamn hate suburban life.
I got about 20-25 minutes into this horror before I gave up. Histrionic, obvious, and obnoxious, full of tell-instead-of-show, and just relentlessly loud. Unbearable. 3/10

FSG suggestions so far

New Moon — not an expert on moon lore, but I’ll consider.
How about working with groups – tips and things to avoid? — Very good thought.
spellcasting master class — I’ve done that at FSG before, I wouldn’t wish to appear to be a one trick pony.
DIETIES OF ALL TYPES — I have a couple of deity classes, definitely a possibility.
shielding from the negative energy of others, history of modern paganism (the good, the bad, and the ugly), comparative mythology — shielding is a good one, history is a maybe because I don’t really focus on the scholarly, mythology can tie in with deities…all good thoughts
Gardnerian Wicca 101 for the Unititiated–I did my Who Are the Gardnerians once at FSG and it was under-attended. Not sure there’s real interest.
Elementals as Helpmates–Oh, I do NOT recommend elementals as helpmates. BUT I could put together a multi-session course on the elements.
Sleeping Late as an Act of Worship–HA! Schedule that one for 9 am, bitchez!
Empowering the Elections in 2010–Not really interested in going political. This would do better as a choice people make based on my teaching magical techniques.

Keep ’em coming!

Free Spirit Gathering

I will be attending Free Spirit Gathering in Maryland June 15-20 as a “featured speaker” (whoo-hoo!). This is one of my favorite events. I’ve been asked to present four (many!) workshops.

So what should I do? I have a list of workshops that I offer, although it hasn’t been updated in about a year. I could choose from that list, come up with new stuff, or a combination.

What would you like to see me do? What Deborah Lipp worskshops/classes/facilitated discussions/guided experiences would excite you? I am wide open here.

I dreamed of handfasting

In my dream, I was marrying Isaac (whom, in real life, I married in 1988 and divorced in 1998). I think Emily & Tim were the officiating High Priestess and High Priest.

There were two large picnic-style blankets laid out in the center, and I was behind one and Isaac behind the other, standing at the long end facing each other. On a signal, the HPS & HP ran around the blankets to the space between them, and then on the next signal, Isaac and I went to the short end and flopped onto our backs, so we were laying on blankets, side by side with the HPS & HP between us. Then they began the ceremony looking down at us.

That was very strange.

Friday Random Ten

1. My Father—Judy Collins (The Best of Judy Collins)
2. Which Way Does That Old Pony Run—Lyle Lovett (Lyle Lovett & His Large Band)
3. Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood—Yusef (An Other Cup)
4. Innocent Not Guilty—Garland Jeffreys (Times Square: Soundtrack)
5. Know Now Then—Ani DiFranco (Up Up Up Up Up Up)
6. Sweet Toxic Love-Deliverance—Culture Club (At Worse…The Best of Boy George & Culture Club)
7. Sweet Baby James—James Taylor (Sweet Baby James)
8. Turn Turn Turn—Judy Collins (The Best of Judy Collins)
9. Sunny Skies—James Taylor (Sweet Baby James)
10. Under the Milky Way—The Church (Living in Oblivion: The 80s Greatest Hits, Volume 1)

Bonus: Manhattan—Ella Fitzgerald (Kissing Jessica Stein: Soundtrack)

Bizarrely repetitive day.