View from the Couch

5-22-08 KC McAuley For my lover - Every morning, Before I open my eyes, I feel your arms about me and I draw you closer. Such safety there Such love Such joy. Until I remember that you are not there. I only dreamed of you. Every day As I go about my business, I hear your voice nearby and I drink you in. Such understanding there Such love Such joy Until I realize that it couldn’t be you. I only dreamed of you. Every evening As the day dissolves I see your smiling eyes and I melt down to you Such laughter there Such love Such joy Until I blink and you have vanished. I only dreamed of you. Every night Before sleep has pulled me down I long for you and call your name. I close my eyes and open my heart. I hear your voice I see your eyes. I feel your arms. Such love Such joy. I only dreamed of you.

Most of my life, I have felt like I didn't quite belong. My brothers must have picked up on this and would always tell me that I wasn't really their sister. That my real family was the crazy family who lived next door and Mom and Dad felt sorry for me and adopted me. Somehow this made sense to me. I was so much younger than my siblings. I was always on the outside of whatever they were doing...watching and waiting until I was old enough to play too. Of course, by the time I was old enough for that game, they had moved on to a new one. I was never quite part of the team. My parents were much older and I went to cocktail parties and meetings where I sat in the dens and family rooms of other families, watching television or reading while the world went on on the other side of the door. There, but just on the edge. Waiting and watching. For a time, I thought I had found my place. The theatre seemed to be a gathering place for the odd, the strange, the eccentric, the ones ...

THERE WILL BE BLOOD - (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson) Paul Thomas Anderson has become a mature filmmaker. And THERE WILL BE BLOOD is his master American story. A tragic tale of a petty man who uses everyone and everything around him to assure his standing in the world. Daniel Day-Lewis' Oscar winning performance is the soul of this film. The heart, if you will, of a heartless man. We are never given the full story of Daniel Plainview, but only glimpses into the soul, cracks and fissures, like the ones where Plainview finds his oil. His life blood. It is suitably black and dangerous. Visually, I now wish I'd seen this on the big screen. The vast American landscape of the 1900's is one that I am attracted to. My father was born in Oklahoma in 1913. His father and uncles worked on oil rigs. I kept looking for glimpses of my ancestors in the blackened faces of these men. Plainview's son H.W. (Dillon Freasier), is an angelic wonder. A gentle face and soul juxtaposed ...

THE COUNTERFEITERS (Die Falscher, 2007, Stefan Ruzowitzky) The true story of the largest counterfeiting operation in history, this film is my kind of Nazi movie. When trying to present a story based on WWII and Nazi actions, I find that films tend to treat all Nazis as evil and all victims as saints. THE COUNTERFEITERS neatly avoids this by giving us a hero who is a known criminal. A man who is not even trusted in the confines of a concentration camp. Salomon Sorowitsch, was the King of Counterfeiters, a master criminal, who on the very eve of his departure from Germany in the late 1930's, is seduced into fashioning a false passport for a lovely Jewish lady. The following morning, they are discovered in bed by the police and Sol is sent to prison. Five years later, he is sent to a concentration camp where he uses his gift as an artist to secure better food and privileges painting portraits of the officers and their families. Suddenly he is taken from Mauthausen to Sachsenha...