The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The district attorney and the defence lawyer are on the same side, the side of justice. Each is motivated by the adversarial system, but neither values his private victory above truth. Both sentence the guilty by ascertaining that he is such and by making sure that he knows that they know it.

Hume Cronyn's eccentric character, the defence lawyer, is the most substantial one. The others are victims of selfishness (narrowly construed), which blinds them to the consequences of their blunders. The circumstances do not force the protagonists to display the qualities that are not apparent from the outset. With the characters doomed, the narrative lacking suspense, and the direction lacking poetry, the story is didactic.

Julie and Julia (2009)

This picture's graphic cooking and devouring compete for the audience who normally gorge on gratuitous violence and bathroom humour, the staples of the purple screen. Meryl Streep's mannerisms are overdone; her character is hollow---even though based on a true story. One of the film's theses---that it does not matter who people are, it only matters who one thinks they are---accentuates the positive, but exposes one to the risk of drawing fallacious lessons from others' behaviour.

South Pacific

(Lincoln Center Theater, 4 August 2009)

The South Pacific island is the America of the past, a country of competing prejudices and of detachment by force (of irreversible immigration), which morphs into the America of the future, a country of competing ideas and of detachment by choice. Laura Osnes (as Nellie Forbush) is beautiful and understatedly sincere. Loretta Ables Sayre's character (Bloody Mary) says that she will master English in no time, and one believes, convinced by her skilful singing, a hobby practised when not selling straw skirts and dried human heads. The actors' shared skill is in endowing their characters with more traits than are necessitated by their lines and with lives extending beyond the play.

Vince Giordano and Nighthawks

(3 August 2009, Club Cache)

Neither an imitation nor a tribute, but a snapshot of one of the many epochs that develop in parallel in the city. The band and the patrons live their parts with flair.

Take Dance

(Dance Theatre Workshop, 2 August 2009)

The first sequence resembled a warm-up. The players' movements were loose without being spontaneous; the movements lacked purpose. Subsequent sequences improved. Still, a dance often exhibited physique, instead of conveying a thought. The dancers moved the way they had been instructed to, not the way they thought they looked best or felt they communicated most. In solo dances, Amy Young had the vitality that others lacked.

The dancers were at their best---the movements were pointed and pauses were held---when conversing in couples. The conversations of Nana Tsuda and Kile Hotchkiss shone in their fallen elegance, the sometimes formulaic narrative notwithstanding. And it is hard to surpass the eloquence of the red dress against the background of the black-and-white suit.

Kunstmuseum Bonn

(25 July 2009)

Before photography, committing an image to canvas was the only way to guard it against the erosive effects of repeated recall. The invention of photography has raised the bar for the painter by requiring that the painting be not only well-executed, but also false in a manner appreciated by many. Modern failures are exhibited at the Kunstmuseum because they encourage art today for the sake of breakthroughs tomorrow at the price of rewarding mediocrity today, and because they contain a lesson.

The paintings' ugliness calls one's attention to the fortuitous nature of the man-made beauty, displayed and often taken for granted elsewhere. By regressing several steps in their artistic development, the artists question the path that the beauty has taken towards its contemporary form. Even when the finishing touches are grazed just a little, the works incite creativity in the viewer.

The displayed works aim to baffle, not please or enlighten. The bafflement shifts the burden of creativity on the viewer, thereby betraying an artist who has nothing to say.

Agatha Christie: Poirot (1989-2008)

With his fastidious habits, he would not have fit in his native Belgium. In London, a city accommodating (but not indifferent to) eccentrics, he is accepted, with his peculiarities dismissed as foreign quirks. Rearing his thoughts in discipline, he expects exacting discipline from the world that he inhabits. When such discipline is found lacking, it is introduced by interference (e.g., adjusting items on a mantelpiece) or inference (e.g., discovering the necessary in what initially seemed to be arbitrary). His unique ability to bring order---the ability that is the defining characteristic of being alive---is what makes others consider Poirot a hero.

In the "Sad Cypress," Poirot says that to wish a murder is not the same as to commit a murder. The difference is qualitative, not quantitative. To wish for something is to evaluate the prospect of attaining it. Someone who wishes for something may eventually conclude its undesirability, whereas someone who refrains from wishing may do so only because he anticipates his inability to resist the temptation of committing whatever he wishes for.