Thanks to Marshall Fine, critic-in-residence at The Picture House in Pelham, I had the opportunity recently to preview “The Imitation Game,” which has “Oscar nods” written all over it, deservedly so. It’s a superbly crafted film about a story that resonates in our own time, acted with the kind of understated emotion that is the hallmark of British performance by a cast that includes Benedict Cumberbatch (“Sherlock”) and Keira Knightley.
The film, which opens Nov. 28, tells the story of Alan Turing, the mathematician who cracked Germany’s Enigma Code during World War II by creating a machine that was the forerunner of the computer, saving millions of lives in the process (although that, we shall see, was complicated).
Turing was a man ahead of his time in many ways. Today he’d be a gay Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Instead he was a closeted social misfit – taunted mercilessly at prep school in the savage way that belongs exclusively to children and later prosecuted when his homosexuality was uncovered after the war. Forced to choose chemical castration in lieu of a prison sentence, he committed suicide in 1954 at age 41 – one of 49,000 men prosecuted for homosexual acts in England between 1885 and 1967. In 2013, Turing was pardoned by Queen Elizabeth II – which still implies he did something wrong to begin with. ...
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Read MoreWe’re all patterns in the universe, swimmer Daniel Reiner-Kahn reasons in my new novel “Water Music.” But sometimes it’s only when we’re at the end of a journey – maybe even life’s journey – that we understand how the strands came together. At other times, we recognize how the strands fit as they’re being woven.
Last week, I had an onstage conversation with film critic Marshall Fine at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck, N.Y. about the relationship between language and images after a screening of “Words and Pictures,” which opens this Friday, May 23. It’s the story of a tempestuous rivalry between a prickly artist (Juliette Binoche) and a showoff writer (Clive Owen). Four days later, the writer (me) and the artist (David Hutchinson) came together more happily at a reading from “Water Music” at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge. After, I opened up the floor for a discussion about David’s paintings and drawings there, which are based on the perverse writings of Jean Genet.
First, a few words about “Words and Pictures,” a rather contrived but nonetheless absorbing movie about a love-hate relationship that sparks a contest between the artist’s students and the writer’s. It occurred to me after that the only arena in which men and women compete is the intellectual one.
Read MoreWhew, what a couple of weeks it’s been. I feel like I should be crashing, but instead I’ve come up for air to take stock and marvel at all that’s happened.
It began when I appeared in my guises as WAG editor and author of the new novel “Water Music” at the pre-Mother’s Day “Indulge” event in The Westchester, White Plains. Less than a week later, I sat down with Pat Casey, editor in chief of The White Plains Examiner and host of “Examiner Talk News” on Pleasantville Community TV to discuss WAG and “Water Music.”
That night, I was film critic Marshall Fine’s guest for a discussion of the relationship of words and images at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck after a screening of the new Juliette Binoche-Clive Owen movie, “Words and Pictures.” That discussion would continue a few days later at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge where I read from “Water Music” and then opened up the floor to consider the way text is used in David Hutchinson’s paintings and drawings, which are on display there. (More on this in the next post.)
In-between the movie and the art gallery appearances, I was at Crunch Fitness’ one-year anniversary party in White Plains. OK, you say, it’s not the Cannes Film Festival. Maybe not, but the same principle applies: You’re putting yourself and your work out there. And along the way, you learn some valuable lessons.
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