It was Alan Alda, one of my country's most beloved and respected actors, whom many of us remember as Hawkeye Pierce in the long-running American TV series "M*A*S*H," who once gave a bit of wise advice that's resonated with me. As we awake to the final week of 2017, no matter where we may be or reside in the world, it's worth a moment of our time to think about what he said.
"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself," said Alda.
Now that my wife and I live on the East coast, we enjoy escaping to New York City. It's only 3 1/2 hours by train – and Amtrak has several Northeast Regional trains that travel between Washington D.C.'s Union Station and New York City's Penn Station daily.
Since moving to the Beltway, we've traveled to New York City by train twice, most recently last weekend. Each time, there are new discoveries that await us and it provides us with a chance to rediscover old things from a different perspective.
The Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular.
Whereas, our previous trip over Labor Day weekend was very much an Upper West Side experience, last weekend we found ourselves in the thick of the Christmas holiday revelry as we lodged a block off Times Square at the Hotel Muse on West 46th Street, between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. We were a short walk from Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall, where we caught a glimpse – along with thousands of other tourists – of the tall and majestic Rockefeller Center Christmas tree and ice skating rink. Also, we saw the nearby festive holiday windows of Saks Fifth Avenue, the Neo-Gothic magnificence St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Cathedral, and took in a late Friday evening performance of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular at Radio City Music Hall. The headlining Rockettes are truly a one-of-a-kind New York experience and Radio City Music Hall is an art deco masterpiece that has been truly well-preserved and taken care of over the years.
Grand Central Terminal in New York City.
On Saturday, we rode the subway to Herald Square – to the land of "Believe" – and shopped at Macy's flagship New York City store.
Then, we ventured to Grand Central Terminal to shop at a lovely boutique holiday fair and to also enjoy warm soup on what turned out to be a wet and cold wintry day.
Later, our evening included dining and listening to seasonal holiday music at Jazz at Lincoln Center – and it was most welcome and enjoyable.
We'll be back in 2018 to see Hamilton.
New York City is a place that never sleeps and I could never see myself getting bored. There's always plenty to see and do and admire and be curious about. I know we'll be back next year as we have tickets to see Hamilton.
I look forward to 2018 and the New Year that awaits. Hopefully, it will be a year full of new discoveries and travel adventures. I hope yours will be filled with new discoveries, too.
Annette Benning (L) and Jamie Bell star in Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool.
On Sunday morning, I attended a sneak preview of Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, a 2017 British-American romantic drama from director Paul McGuigan that stars four-time Academy Award nominee Annette Bening and Jamie Bell, co-stars Julie Walters, and includes a lovely cameo appearance by Vanessa Redgrave.
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, which enjoyed its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in September, arrives in theaters later this month at a very busy time of the year. Hopefully, it won't get lost in the shuffle of year-end blockbusters and Oscar contenders because it's worth our time and attention.
Based on a memoir of the same name by Peter Turner, the film follows a playful but passionate relationship between Turner (played by Jamie Bell of Billy Elliott fame) and the vibrant but eccentric Academy Award-winning actress Gloria Grahame (portrayed by 59-year-old Annette Bening, who I learned had been waiting 20 years to be age-appropriate to play the legendary Hollywood femme fatale). The film is set in late 1970s Liverpool, England. The glamorous Grahame had been a big name in 1940s film noir, but was not so famous in color. As we see during the 106-minute Sony Pictures Classics film, what starts as a vibrant affair between the actress Grahame and her young lover Turner quickly grows into a deeper, complicated – and at times salacious – relationship that is tested to the limits by events beyond their control.
"When Gloria was a young actress, there were many more 'good girls' and 'bad girls' and 'good mothers' and 'bad mothers,' and those stereotypes that were rampant in all storytelling about women," Bening said in a recent interview with Women's Wear Daily. "And I think now there's a lot of change going on and the reality of women's lives is getting voiced. And the reality of the complexity of things: somethings you've got it together, and sometimes you don't."
In the same interview, producer Barbara Broccoli added: "What's important to (Bening) in this role is that there is no veneer. She is completely real: she wanted to play a real woman, a complex woman, a woman of her age in this time of life, where she is reflecting on her life and her career and her relationships, and she's with a younger man and has this disease – it's very, very complex. And I think Annette's performance is so extraordinary because she has no vanity – she's just wanting to play it with as much truthfulness as possible."
Meanwhile, the English musician/songwriter Elvis Costello, a big fan of Gloria Grahame, contributed an original song, "You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way," composed specifically for the film. "'You Shouldn't Look At Me That Way' is a song dealing with two people who have a lot of secrets," says Costello. "They were in a relationship and perhaps had difficulty seeing each other as they really were. All lovers have secrets. One lover has some vanity but also a lot of vulnerability. The title really came from that. It could refer to a seductive gaze but also a plea not to be judged."
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool will be released in the U.S. on December 29. It is rated R for brief nudity.
Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists is the newest Library of Congress exhibition (it opened November 18), and it brings to light many remarkable but little-known contributions by North American women which have been made in the popular art forms of illustration and cartooning.
The exhibition of nearly 70 works by 43 artists on display in the Thomas Jefferson Building's Graphic Arts Galleries at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (through October 20, 2018) includes selected original works from the late 1800s to the present, and it shows the "gradual broadening in both the private and public spheres of women's roles and interests addressing such themes as evolving ideals of feminine beauty, new opportunities emerging for women in society, changes in gender relations, and issues of human welfare."
Drawn to Purpose features works from the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, and selections in the exhibition are grouped by type, including: Golden Age illustration, early comics, new voices in comics, editorial illustration, magazine covers and cartoons, and political cartoons.
During a recent visit to Drawn to Purpose, I learned that in the fields of illustration and cartooning – fields it should be noted that have been traditionally dominated by men – many women have earned their livelihoods creating wonderful and expressive art that has found wide dissemination in not only newspapers but also in books and periodicals, too.
Some of the artists and their works will be familiar to visitors who come see the exhibition, such as Grace Drayton, whose wide-eyed, red-cheeked "Campbell Kids" debuted in 1909. Also, there's the longtime comic strip favorite "For Better or For Worse," created by Lynn Johnston; Persian Gulf War editorial illustrations drawn by Sue Coe and Frances Jetter; and "Mixed Marriage" by New Yorker cartoonist Roz Chast. A personal favorite of mine is Giséle by Elizabeth Shippen Green.
Although there was incremental progress made by women in illustration and cartooning from the 19th century into the early decades of the 20th century, it wasn't until the later 20th and early 21st century – as educational and professional opportunities grew – that we've finally witnessed women receive major acclaim from their peers.
Here's my takeaway: Drawn to Purpose demonstrates to us that although women were once constrained by gender bias, today, they have gained an immense number of new opportunities to self-express and discover. We are so fortunate.
With the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics just two months away, the release of Craig Gillespie's film "I, Tonya," a very dark, comedic tale of American figure skater Tonya Harding, which is based on the unbelievable but true events of what became one of the most sensational scandals in sporting history, is a very timely one.
I remember the sordid circumstances that played themselves out like an American prime-time soap opera nearly 24 years ago, and in watching a sneak preview of "I, Tonya," Sunday morning in Washington, DC., it all came crashing back to me.
Although Harding was the first American woman figure skater to complete a triple axel in competition, her athletic fete quickly took a backseat. Instead, her legacy became forever defined by her association with "an infamous, ill-conceived, and even more poorly executed attack" on her fellow Olympic competitor Nancy Kerrigan just weeks before the 1994 Winter Olympics.
With an original screenplay written by Steven Rogers and featuring an early '80s soundtrack that will bring back memories, the film features a sympathetic portrayal of the fiery Harding by Margot Robbie, and also stars Sebastian Stan as Harding's conniving and often-abusive ex-husband Jeff Gillooly, and Allison Janney as Harding's acid-tongued, monstrous and outrageous mother LaVona Golden.
"I, Tonya," is at times absurd, other times irreverent. But, it's definitely worth two hours of your entertainment time this holiday season.
