139 minute running time … I made it 10 minutes in before quitting … and I speak Mandarin and have a deep understanding of Chinese culture, even messy Chinese laundromat culture and screwed-up parent-children relationship culture, but I couldn’t bear this… who could sit through TWO HOURS AND NINETEEN MINUTES of this?!? Another terrible recommendation from John Farr, he is really letting me down lately. “The viewer should just surrender to it and enjoy all the breathless fun.” Wrong, not breathless fun, but torture.
Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Council on the Arts Grants for Otsego County
Catskill Symphony Orchestra, Inc. | Music | $40,000
Community Arts Network of Oneonta | Arts Education | $49,500
Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival Inc. | Presenting | $40,000
Cooperstown Concert Series Inc. | Music | $15,000
Fenimore Art Museum | Museum | $49,500
FENIMORE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA INC | Music | $40,000
Foothills Performing Arts Center, Inc. | Multidisciplinary | $20,000
Glimmerglass Opera Theatre, Inc. | Music | $49,500
Greater Oneonta Historical Society | Museum | $49,500
Oneonta Concert Association | Presenting | $25,000
Otsego 2000, Inc. (Glimmerglass Film Days) | Electronic Media and Film | $49,500
The Farmers' Museum | Museum | $49,500
Total:$ 457,000
Movies Watched -- Anatomy of a Fall (2023)
In French … 141 minute running time so WAY WAY too long and I struggled to make it even one hour in then wisely abandoned this just as it started the interminable and boring courtroom scenes … this was a terrible French movie … who cares about the story! This was a Letterbox top 10 movie; they did me dirty by recommending this and I paid $6! to stream it, giving me no good way to fast forward. This won the Palme d’Or?!? Awful.
God bless Dick Brody for being the only critic brave enough to pan it : “the cinematic equivalent of an airport read … Triet displays no sense of time, no sense of development, no sense of context, no sense of detail.”
I imagine the rising teen-age cinephile, just beginning to take an interest in world cinema and confidently seeking out such a film, bearing as it does the imprimatur of the art-house cinema’s high and venerable authorities as well as wide critical acclaim. I imagine the bewilderment that would follow the viewing—imagine it developing into a skepticism, or even wrath, that would risk engulfing far better films, ones also endorsed at the same festivals and hailed by the same notables. If this is the art of the movies, I imagine hearing, then movie art is bullshit. In the art-house consensus, the danger facing contemporary cinema is its artistic diminution brought about by the market dominance of commercially ravenous franchise films. The showcasing and enshrining of mediocre movies as masterworks poses as great a danger.
Amen!
Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Council on the Arts Grants for Tioga County
Tioga County Council of the Arts | State and Local Partnership | $40,000
Total: $40,000
Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Council on the Arts Grants for Chemung County
Arnot Art Museum, Inc. | Museum | $40,000
Chemung County Historical Society | Museum | $40,000
Chemung County Performing Arts, Inc. (Clemens Center) | Presenting | $25,000
Community Arts Of Elmira, Inc. | Arts Education | $40,000
THE CANTATA SINGERS | Music | $20,000
Total: $165,000
Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Council on the Arts Grants for Cayuga County
Cayuga Museum of History and Art | Individual Artists | $10,000
Cayuga Museum of History and Art | Museum | $49,500
Kaleidoscope Dance Theatre Inc. | Multidisciplinary | $25,000
Merry-Go-Round Playhouse Inc. | Theatre | $25,000
Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center | State & Local Partnership | $30,000
Seward House Museum | Museum | $40,000
Wells College | Multidisciplinary (Visiting Writers Series) | $20,000
Total: $199,500
Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Council on the Arts Grants for Cortland County
Center for the Arts of Homer, Inc. | Arts Education | $40,000
Cortland Repertory Theatre, Inc. | Theatre | $40,000
Cultural Council of Cortland County | State & Local Partnership | $15,000
Total: $95,000
Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Council on the Arts Grants for Tompkins County
Cayuga Chamber Orchestra Inc. | Music | $30,000
Center for the Arts at Ithaca, Inc. (D/B/A Hangar Theatre) | Theatre | $40,000
Center for Transformative Action | Arts Education | $40,000
Civic Ensemble, Inc. | Theatre | $40,000
Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County | State & Local Partnership | $40,000
Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County | S.& L. Partnership (Regrants) | $260,000
Community School of Music and Arts | S.& L. Partnership | $25,000
Community School of Music and Arts | S.& L. Partnership (Rehearsal and Studio Space) | $29,834
Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Inc. | Multidisciplinary | $40,000
Cornell University | Museum | $40,000
Cornell University | Electronic Media & Film (Cornell Cinema) | $25,000
DOROTHY COTTON JUBILEE SINGERS INC | Music | $20,000
Historic Ithaca Inc. | Architecture + Design | $40,000
Ithaca Shakespeare Company, Inc. | Theatre | $15,000
Kitchen Theatre Company, Inc. | Theatre | $30,000
New York State Early Music Association | Music | $14,000
Opera Ithaca | Music | $40,000
OPUS ITHACA SCHOOL OF MUSIC, INC. | Arts Education | $30,000
RUNNING TO PLACES THEATRE COMPANY LTD. | Theatre | $40,000
Sciencenter Discovery Museum | Individual Artists | $10,000
SEVENTH ART CORPORATION OF ITHACA (D/B/A CINEMAPOLIS) | Electronic Media & Film | $49,500
Sparks & Wiry Cries | Presenting | $20,000
State Theatre of Ithaca, Inc. | Presenting | $25,000
THE CHERRY ARTS, INC. | Multidisciplinary (Rehearsal and Studio Space) | $20,000
THE CHERRY ARTS, INC. | Theatre | $49,500
The History Center in Tompkins County | Museum | $49,500
TRUMANSBURG CONSERVATORY OF FINE ARTS, INC. | S.& L. Partnership | $25,000
Total: $1,087,334
Movies Watched -- True Things (2021)
102 minute running time … stars weird-mouth Ruth Wilson and Tom Hare-lip Burke … I saw Wilson in The Affair, she’s a good actress, probably inspired by the Breaking the Waves actress, forgot her name … Hare-lip Burke and his Dad-bod are getting a lot of work of late, dunno why… this is a depressing story, and not very interesting in the end, ultimately “Kate” is a middle-class British woman with all the attendant support structure, which she can fall back on, if she chooses to … no idea why John Farr recommended this, I sure don’t. I see now that director / writer “Harry” Wootliff is a woman… maybe a nepo-baby or trust fund kid? Boooorrriiinnngggg.
Movies Watched -- Dick Johnson Is Dead (2020)
Documentary … 89 minute running time … Dick Johnson’s daughter is a documentary filmmaker and she regretted not filming much of her mother before she (her mother) got Alzheimer’s and died, so she made this movie about her father as he starts to lose it … Dick Johnson’s Deformed Feet and His Eames Chair.
Spoilers: I hated what she did at the end of the film where she faked his death and funeral, abusing the audience’s trust … other than that it was sort of sweet … she’s a tough broad, Dick Johnson’s daughter, Kirsten … Seventh-Day Adventists … Seattle, a west coast vibe at first, then the move to New York and a more pushy feeling. The ending really spoiled the movie for me. A tearjerker, but not in the right way.
