To thine own self be true

Works as a ‘show’ which is what most live theatre has become. Freewill is in their 30th season and still includes a number of original stalwarts: O’Donnell and Copithorne.
I went to the productions in the early years, but haven’t been for a decade or so. The miking/sound is much better from the early days. The costumes are way more colorful and the casting choices are politically correct+++. Don’t expect male characters to play male parts and vice-versa.

This non-traditional production features many old popular songs like “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” and there is synth background music throughout. Expect many pop culture references including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

The company has grown to about 50 people, the production values are better, there are two shows running concurrently (compared to the first years of just one; one is a comedy, the other a tragedy–Hamlet plays on even date nights; the comedy on odd nights) and the productions draw sizable crowds and dedicated fans. For outdoor summer theatre, you still can’t beat the Freewill’s all-out efforts and enthusiasms.

(recommended: the beautiful B & W print with several mini-documentaries on the film)

John Ford’s last great film is an allegorical study and appreciation of the old West as it transitions into the new West.

Lee Marvin plays Liberty Valance (in one of his best movie roles) personifying the ‘wild West’: primitive, nasty, lawless, savage, intimidating, and uncontrollably violent. John Wayne personifies the rough, but decent and pro-law man of integrity symbolizing the old West. James Stewart personifies the educated, smarter, nonviolent, lawful new West. The conflicts between each of these three characters and ways is the core of the film.

The secondary storyline has to do with Vera Miles, a pretty, hard-working, relatively innocent pioneer woman whom Wayne and Stewart are in conflict for. She wants a better life, but loves the old West as borne out later, symbolically, in the film.

There is a third specific storyline that involves the town drunk newspaper editor (humorously played by Edmond O’Brien) who dares to tell the truth about Liberty Valance and supports Stewart’s state representative election. This storyline intertwines truth, justice, and the major sea-change in the West’s history.

As well, there is a strong supporting cast featuring Woody Strode (as Wayne’s able assistant), Andy Devine (as the selfish, cowardly, freeloading sheriff), and Strother Martin (as the crazy, sadistic gang member of Liberty).

The film was purposely shot in black and white to keep the movie’s appearance uncheesy-looking and this fits the timelessness of the film’s statements in any case.

Spoiiers; The man who shot Liberty Valance, ironically, turns out to be different from first impressions, and there are subsequent undercurrents from that revelation extending to Vera Miles’ character and her true feelings revealed at the end of the film. And so it is ‘the other man’ who turns out to have his views changed by these late revelations.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is one of the great old westerns which has volumes to speak of in truly engaging, entertaining ways. And it is also among the great films of James Stewart, John Wayne, John Ford, and Lee Marvin, which makes it even more worthwhile checking out. Two big thumbs up.

Definitely a ‘dreamy’, romantic, idealized, lofty view and approach that has supported, nourished, and motivated me most of my 68 years.

A vision and preference for what used to be called ‘finer things’. No doubt much of this lifelong quest had much to do with context, timing, and opportunity. I was relatively free in my childhood, youth, and university years. I was an only child with few constraints on my imagination, fun, and choices. But I was lucky enough, along the way, to become a reader, a thinker, a writer, a lover of music, a musician, a teacher, and a poet.

The latter was a long self-actualization of my personal, moral, and aesthetic values. It crystallized and confirmed that I was mostly about ideas, creativity, and performing, thanks to reading, writing, teaching, higher education (olde styled university education). A lot of my days would be spent in the company of Truth, Beauty, and, yes, Love. There are volumes I could say and write about those three companions and ruling passions.

Nature was often another companion, appealing to soul and spirit. I have returned to it of late, even in my immediate surroundings, solo walks, and trips to places like the Rockies, Radium, Butchart Gardens in the spring, New England in the fall, the Arizona desert in January and, strangely enough, the U of A on weekend mornings. Like my late mother, I have become a flower gardener, and I remain interested in birds, animals, weather, and the wild.

Family has also helped ground this free-spirited individual and given me more empathy and insight into all of our essential Inner Childness. We are marked for life in childhood as I have indicated above and we must needs give our Inner Child periodic (and for me maximal) play throughout adulthood and later years. This process is basic to remaining free and happy. “All work and no play makes Dick a dull man.”

In the end, we must all learn to let go, accept ourselves and others, and that the world is in other hands. In that necessary process, there is peace, more freedom, and what Keats called “Negative capability” — an acceptance of whatever unresolved contraries without the olde lifelong restlessness, frustrations, struggles, and discontentments.

“We’ll climb that hill no matter how steep when we get up to it.”

–Bob Dylan, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere”

Crows, magpies, gulls, weeds, mosquitoes, and road closures.

C u down at e-coli beach for Canada Day, eh?

(the beautiful Criterion version with Peter Cowie’s fantastic labyrinthine commentary)

A deep, unflinching, painful 1978 chamber drama by Ingmar Bergman starring Ingrid Bergman as the concert pianist-mother and Liv Ullmann as the frustrated daughter. Lena Nyman of I Am Curious Yellow fame also gives an astounding performance as Helena, the crippled daughter cared for by Ullmann’s character. Viktor, Ullmann’s character’s husband, is played with warm understatement by Halvar Bjork.

I’ve often said “We do it to ourselves and we do it to others” which is played out numerous times in this conflicted attempt to resolve three women’s relationships during the mother’s first visit in seven years to see her daughter in the country. The mother did not love her girls and shunted them to the side as her successful musical career developed. Naturally there is guilt, bitterness, and accusations to be voiced in this talky melodrama which has many biographical references to the lives of the two Bergmans and Ullman.

This was Ingrid Bergman’s last big role before she succumbed to cancer and she wanted to work with her namesake, though his style and the script led to many conflicts between the two. Viewers have never seen Ingrid Bergman this vulnerable and honestly exposed, something which she initially resisted, but eventually gave in to.

Autumn Sonata is not only classically ‘heavy’ (like olde classic stage dramas), but it is wonderfully deep, complex, intense, and extremely thought-provoking. Viewers cannot remain on the sidelines; director Bergman pulls viewers in and up close, especially in the film sonata’s middle which cuts to the core of these characters’ cores. The two versions of Chopin’s Prelude no. 2 in A Minor are the musical objective correlative and climax for this section.

There is, indeed, much to say about this film, but if you are really interested in exploring further, a second viewing with esteemed critic Peter Cowie’s fascinating audio commentary peels off a zillion layers which went on during this production which almost did not get done.

Top marks for a soulful and intelligent, sensitive drama which speaks more volumes than myriad weak, inferior modern tv and films about women’s relationships and issues. Autumn Sonata is a veritable classic from a great film master.

(Linen chest from 1952 which I hid in from my mother when I was about 3; she couldn’t find me and was surprised when I popped out of it. This probably signifies my earliest memory of my relationship with my mother. About a month ago, the chest joined several other items which got picked up by Got Junk. The chest itself was older, I suspect, and from the ’40s more likely.)

She represented Trump at the camps. He doesn’t care. so she doesn’t care. Simple. But the real target was Trump’s base of whom he rhetorically asks: I don’t care, do you guys? No, they don’t care. All the NRA types too. These people are tough and mean and don’t have feelings of kindness and compassion by and large. In other words, they don’t care, even about humanitarian crises in their own country caused by their divine rep on Earth. “I don’t care” refers to Trump and his racist gang.

The message was just another big slight toward ‘foreigners’–they’re not worth caring about. They’re animals, in Trump’s and his base’s opinions. So let the support base, the immigrants, and everybody else know what he thinks, using his wife (again) what his position remains despite the fake visit.

(waking up in Radium at Bighorn Meadows resort)

(the placid balcony view, golf course on right)

(the mountains nearby)

(the pure mountain air and blue serene)

(the eagle over the balcony–see closeup of his eyes)

(the eagle my daughter bought me at the resort meets a raven)

(a noisy Richardson ground squirrel at the main intersection in town)

(a young Bighorn high up over red rock entrance to Radium)

(the ubiquitous Bighorns sunning beside our unit)

(deer crossing near resort

)

(an evening dip at the non-sulphurous hot springs)

(closeup of the best cake in the world–from Jeanne’s Bakery, Winnipeg–via Calgary; the chocolate curls and shortbread base are to die for)

(celebrating a perfect Father’s Day in the evening)

Best Father’s Day ever.