The Great Gatsby Soundtrack

I’ve had the soundtrack from The Great Gatsby for a while now and love so many of the songs. I’m the type to hop around CDs listening to whatever attracts my attention, until I get over it enough to move on to my next must hear a lot song.

At the monument I’m still hung on the Emeli Sande song. A close second is Bryan Ferry’s. Both are backed by his orchestra. I’ve been a huge fan of his music for a long time. He’s been consistently awesome from the moment I discovered These Foolish Things on the Sleepless in Seattle soundtrack. Several of these Gatsby gems have an eracentric jazzy sound, overlaid with modern songs. I really enjoy the musical juxtaposition of then and now.

Other favorites from this soundtrack are by Lana Del Rey, Florence Welch (with and without her Machine), Sia, Will.i.am, Fergie, and I’m just getting started. These are artists I already count among my favorites, so they’re getting the heavy listens first, but there’s plenty more to discover on the 21 track deluxe edition that also includes bits of dialogue from this movie I haven’t seen yet. The soundtrack is capped by a beautiful cello and violin graced instrumental piece. It’s been quite some time since I’ve found a soundtrack to get into as much as this one for The Great Gatsby.

Crazy In Love by Emeli Sande from The Great Gatsby Soundtrack

Random Images–New Orchid

This Mother’s Day I outdid myself picking out an orchid plant for my mom. I stood there for ages, trying to decide from a dizzying selection of exotic natural art. I’ve never seen an ugly orchid, but some are undeniably more beautiful than others.

This is the one I eventually decided on. I couldn’t quite resist the way it looked as if it had been splashed with grape juice.

I nearly got one that was pure white, but of course it’s almost impossible for me to walk away from anything purple.

My mom is very tolerant of gifts in shades of purple. She likes it fine…just not to the point of obsession.

Related Post:

A Touch of the Tropics in the Temperate Zone

Flash Fiction–Coffee with Virginia Woolf

Coffee with Virginia Woolf
by
Muri McCage

Kerri was having coffee with Virginia Woolf.  Of course, Virginia wasn’t drinking any because she was in printed form, and Kerri was engrossed in the deceptively simple life of Mrs. Ramsay.  She sat hunched over the open pages, the noisy ambiance of the city street all but disappearing into the greater mental clamour created by the beauty of Woolf’s prose.  Lingering over a particularly lovely description of Mr. Ramsay’s features, Kerri sighed wistfully.

Just as she was reading of Mrs. Ramsay’s visit to the colorful and enticing harbor, Kerri caught a glimpse of a man’s face as he passed by.  Something made her look up fully, and try to locate the momentary attraction.  She saw a casually dressed older man striding purposefully down the sidewalk.

She shrugged and almost went back to the well worn first edition–found treasure from one of the antique book shops she loved to prowl.  Instead, a sudden flash of his features threw itself into her brain, as if a movie were being projected there.  With a gasp Kerri leapt from her seat, and hurried down the sidewalk after him, abandoning Mrs. Ramsay and her houseguests.

Realizing she still clutched her sloshing coffee cup, she tossed it into a nearby trash can, and quickly covered the distance between them.
“Excuse me. Sir?”

“Yes?”  He turned, with a polite smile.

“I’m sorry to bother you, but have we met?  You look awfully familiar.”  Lame, Kerri.  Lame.

He studied her for a moment, a fragment of the smile lingering to turn to slight puzzlement.  “Why no, I don’t think so.”

“Oh.”  She didn’t know what to do next.  He was about to leave and she’d never have the chance again.

The pleasantly weathered features cleared.  “Ah.  I teach law at the university.  Perhaps you’ve seen me there.”

“Perhaps.”  Inspiration struck.  “Actually, I’m thinking of going to law school.  I must have seen you when I toured the campus.”

“Of course.”  Still friendly, slightly dismissive, he glanced at his watch.

“I’m sorry, but I must go.  Young minds await, and all that.”

“Sure.  Well, maybe I’ll see you around.  If I end up there.”

An absent nod, as he took out a worn wallet and offered her a crisp, white card with businesslike lettering.  “Here, have this.  If you decide to attend here, and need advice about classes please look me up.  I try to help the students any way I can.”

Kerri took the card, barely even breathing.  “Thanks.”

They stood there for another awkward moment, and she waited for him to walk out of her life again.  Impulsively, she stuck out a hand.  When he automatically shook it, she grasped the warm, strong fingers for a second too long.  She couldn’t help it, and he didn’t seem to notice.

She watched as he hurried across the street, then looked down at her fingers.  They seemed to radiate warmth, and imagined love.  She could hardly believe she’d been so close to the father she had only seen in the one photograph her mother owned. 

Once he was lost in the crowd, Kerri went back to her table, but she closed the soft, leather cover on Mrs. Ramsay with her embroidery hoop, the tangy sea air, and the lighthouse across the water.  There was too much on her mind to read anymore.  She was too busy trying to figure out how she was going to afford law school.

Related Post–Flash Fiction–To Smell the Roses Again

Watch “500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art” on YouTube

This video showing a stunning array of female portraits from 500 years of Western art, with a gorgeous cello solo by Yo Yo Ma for background music, is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever watched. If you love art, or think you do not, it’s very much worth the brief amount of time it takes to experience it.

Anticipating Anthony Hopkins In RED 2

Here we go again with the split personality of that sometimes evil monster, sometimes pussy cat known as opinion. And again with my favorite example, Anthony Hopkins. Probably not my best litmus test, since I enjoy everything he does.

Apparently not all movie critics agree. Radically. I came across a RED 2 review that started out with some opinions saying how awesome he is in it. Duh. He’d be awesome reading a phone book (those endangered relics of technologies past) on a bare stage by himself, with acoustics only the pigeons in the rafters could love.

Then the naysaying contingent piped up. I think this was all a dissection of this new RED 2 trailer. I wasn’t sure when the critiquing digressed into finding fault with some of his other work. Seems there’s an element that does not approve of what they call scenery chewing, and I call endearing goofiness.

You know that rare and pesky gift… individuality

Oh, sure, he could sleepwalk through his lines. I can’t imagine that he would, based on the scores of his movies I’ve seen. He could blend into the pile up of like aged actors whose names I get mixed up until I see their faces. There is no mistaking Sir Anthony Hopkins, whether he’s being Shakespeare’s Titus, Thor’s thundering father, or the best Hannibal ever.

That’s. A. Good. Thing.

I have no clue which of the mannerisms and quirky moments are his own invention, which ones lie at the feet of a director, or what can be traced all the way back to a screenwriter. Well, except for when he quacked like a duck in August, since he directed that one. All I know is that they’re all part of what makes me love to watch this wondrously talented actor. And when I see RED 2, I’ll eagerly watch for the bits where his mad scientist puts up his dukes to offer fisticuffs with Bruce Willis and funny walks on the tarmac.

Unpredictability, people.

It’s what makes the difference between mere talent and glorious talent. And it’s one of the many reasons I love to watch movies, and my favorite actor in them.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

I finally got a chance to watch The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I had been really looking forward to it, and I was not disappointed. It’s the story of a disparate group of elderly Brits, attempting to begin a better (read less expensive) retirement in India.

The beautiful old hotel in the brochure turns out to be a dilapidated relic that saw its better days most likely when they were born instead of in their golden
years. The story of its manager and the few inhabitants is lovely, poignant, and uplifting, with a hearty dose of humor. The dialogue is outstanding. The acting sublime.

Maggie Smith plays against the type we’ve become accustomed to. Quiet, unhappy for quite some time, and sporting an accent that reminded me of Angela Lansbury’s teapot in Beauty and the Beast, she charms her way into the viewer’s heart.

Judi Dench’s Evelyn is a new widow finding her way, with grit and an infectious sense of adventure. As the narrator through journal entries, she goes on a journey more personal than simply moving herself to an exotic, far off land.  Dench, as always, lights up the screen.

Tom Wilkinson gives a touching performance as Graham, a man both exhilarated and petrified by the prospect of finding a long lost love. He stirs great empathy as he searches, yearns, and finds more than he dared hope for.

Many more character pass across the screen over the course of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, including the hotel itself. There are laughter and tears, comraderie and conflict, beauty and squalor all side by side in a land that beckons to the adventurous and a movie that dares acceptance and love and dreams.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel Trailer Official

NYT: In New York, the Death of a Countess

I skim headlines in several online publications, and sometimes what I find hidden away among celebrity mongering and the latest diet fad simply astounds me. This New York Times article tells of a woman who lived a quiet life as a Wall Street stock analyst. One of the millions of people in huge cities all over the world going about mundane lives in utter anonymity. Some fall into it by happenstance, some choose it, and others carry out a hybrid existance. One where the simple and the extraordinary collide in a secret world of perhaps drab present colored by vivid past.

This unobtrusive stock analyst had once been a Transylvanian countess with a rich and dramatic background that brings to mind the fictitious events novelist Thomas Harris wove into the early history of his famous character Hannibal Lecter, mixed with real life Nazi intrigue, and enough tragedy to fuel a 21st century Shakespeare’s thirst for life shaking drama. A hidden past lurking just beneath a veneer of average with an overlay of who would have thought….

I’ve always loved the anonymity of great cities, where every single day anyone but the most popular public figure can be entirely themselves without worrying about perceptions of others. Those others will be entirely others the next day. Strangers in the even stranger wider world they walk through. Yet, any one of those strangers might literally be anyone. Every footstep carrying a different story in living form.

Yet I must admit it never occurred to me that one of those strangers I walked past on a Manhattan street once upon a time could have lived another life so long ago it was but a fading memory. A memory where a little girl who once lived in a castle was later so exiled that she lacked proper shoes and curtains became dresses like Scarlet O’Hara’s in her own tragic, but mercifully make believe Civil War torn world.

The thing about the anonymity of the masses is that we all become a single passing set of features in a sea of faces. It’s almost all surface. We see the coats and hairstyles in the same way we take in a group of fish in an aquarium–Look! That one has stripes! This one looks like Dory! Can we get ice cream now?

The moment is gone. The pretty purple coat and the wild multicolored Mohawk are down the block, across the street, completely out of our moving plane of existance, before we ever pause to wonder who they are and where they’re going. More crucially it never occurs to us to wonder where they’ve been. Who they’ve been.

After reading this article I know I’ll pay more attention. It’s humbling to be reminded that for all the excitement I might feel if I spotted the Duchess of Cambridge on a London street, the little old lady in a tweed skirt and wellies walking a grizzled poodle might once have lived in castle. And so might a nondescript woman in a business suit, striding briskly away from a glorious life of could have been that was her destiny.

Almost.