Tea with McNair

• what oscar got right

Can't see them all, here is a big recommendation from me, via this year's dreary Oscar-cast. As I watched this year's Academy Awards I realized how few of the contenders I had seen.

So few of them appealed to me when first released. I might grab their DVDs, someday. One I do have and will be loaning around to numerous friends is La Vie en Rose, the French bio-pic of singer Edith Piaf. Snatching the Oscar from the presumptive winner, Julie Christie, was French actress, now star, who became Piaf, Marion Cotillard.

Not since George C. Scott was Patton has an actor some completely inhabited the role of a real person has an actor presented us with as complete and stunning a performance. The life of Ms. Piaf ("the little sparrow") is, in parts, thrilling, grueling, and a soaring achievement. From homelessness, poverty and childhood sickness she bounced from street urchin, to street corner singer,  cabaret artist, music hall headliner, and then star of the grand stages of the world. Just as her rough life jumped from fame to failed relationships, sickness and addiction to celebrity and admiration, so too this Olivier Dahan directed film jumps back and forth in time. The non-linear storytelling style suits the story. They are not pulling any punches with Piaf's battles with arthritis, morphine addiction, and long affair with Algerian-born boxing champion, Marcel Cerdan. Piaf died of cancer at age 47, but her many addictions and maladies made her look 70 at the end of her life, and in the film as well. (See the side-by-side photos, below, of the real actress, Cotillard, and the actress as Piaf at the height of her career, before her dramatic slide toward death.)

The heart, soul, and core of this film is the performance of its star, Marion Cotillard- who was just thirty when she filmed La Mome (the French title of La Vie en Rose, meaning, the little lady.) She is Piaf and Piaf is this film. Having scooped up the French  César Award, British Academy Award, and the Golden Globe, she now adds Oscar to her mantle.

Not surprisingly, La Vie en Rose also garnered the Oscar for best achievement in Make-up. The DVD edition includes interviews with Marion Cotillard and director, Olivier Dahan, as well as clips of Motillard getting into make-up. In the film she portrays Piaf from teenage to death (when she looked seventy, but actual died at age 47.)

This is a truly astounding performance. A stunning film. Do not miss this one. (See, "P.S." below.)

One Oscar was also awarded to to Sweeney Todd for production design. It deserved that and more. Regular visitors to "TEA blog" know it was one of my favorite films of recent years. Great message, amazing music,  and Tim Burton and Johnny Depp at their best. Read my post on "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" HERE.  (Also linked to my full review.)

McNair

P.S. Viewing tip: I chose to watch La Vie en Rose on the sharp, wide screen of my MacBook so I could read the too small English subtitles easily. That, and I wanted a front row seat for Piaf. If you don't like to "read" your movies, this film is much more about action, acting, and that VOICE. (All the singing is actually the real Piaf.) If you own decent headphones (or good speakers for your computer), go with the more intimate computer viewing. And, if you have a giant, wall-filling plasma-vision behemoth--go for it. But invite me over!

Marion Cotillard is Edith Piaf

• lessons from the moose

                No. 1 : Alternative tools

Break a pencil and we dig through the stuff drawer searching for that little plastic pencil sharpener like we used to have–in seventh grade. 

These last few days (a full week as of Thursday, 2/21) I have been laptop-less. No email (a gush of cool air blows in from the East. Ahhhhhh!) How did we live most of the way through the 20th Century without email? As my always-clever brother, Todd, reminded me, "Remember libraries?" He asked. "And books, card catalog's, and the Reader's Guide to Periodicals?"

"Vaguely." I said. "I think I was sick that day."

So, I have gone a full seven days without email or laptop on which I typically spend a third to a half of my work day writing, job hunting, researching the net, working on two of my four new book projects, and (did I mention) job hunting. Fortunately I thought to print out a hard copy (actually a flimsy copy, it's on paper) before sending my MacBook off to Apple Memorial Hospital (Memphis, TN). So, for the past seven days I've been scribbling my edits into the current draft and writing new "chapters" where the draft just has a title and a few lines of ideas. (All with fountain pen, of course.)

One can only imaging where this will end up...or up end. 

For now, we will all find out together.

I have always done most of the early editing of my books on paper. But actual writing, composing, creating for several pages in my favorite Rhodia, Quadrille (graph) has been great fun. Change forces other creative juices to flow.

My first two books and much of my third were written first in "long hand", fountain pen, some roller ball (never ballpoint) on lined or graph paper pads. I like the organic, intimate scratch-out-a-line, draw an arrow (primitive "cut and paste") to relocate a paragraph.

But this week, necessity being the Mother of Invention, I am enjoying the all scribbling, all-the-time days I am having.

Over the years, I have learned a lot about life and business from my old friend, Bullwinkle J. Moose*:

"Hey, Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit our of my hat." Dear Bullwinkle, never did find that rabbit. Never-the-less, he kept trying and in so doing he made some wonderful and amazing discoveries in that hat of his. And he never stopped trying. 

What's the last discovery you made, in your hat–or anywhere–just because you kept trying?  Do you keep trying, go around the other way, plow through? Or do you enl;ist the classic:  try-fail-give-up method?

Funnily enough, while my Mac is on sick leave, I also needed to created, scan, and email some illustrations (see cartoon, right) to a magazine editor friend who is publishing an article I wrote for his April  issue. It's a preview by way of excerpts from my forthcoming Brainstorming book.

I pulled out my pencil, little plastic sharpener (see photo above), a few favorite India ink felt pens, and got to work.

TRY THIS: Grab an old "tool" you haven't enlisted in your creating in a while and play around for a few days. Throw a few crayons, a lead pencil, glue stick, into your bag. Or, open that draw and grab something you haven't used in  a while and make something that wasn't in the world an hour ago.

I'm going to get a refill on my coffee while there's still some latte foam left in my glass mug. And, there are a couple eight year olds breathing down my neck here in the Crosstown Cafe who wan to play Global Annihilation: Giant Elf's Revenge II on the free-to-all computers.

By the way,  after drawing eight cartoons for  my friend's magazine (he won't need them all) I kept drawing and finished a few I will be sending off to other mags I've contributed to over the years.

Keep drawing, doodling, scribbling, and rummaging through the "Stuff" drawer or tool box for old friends you haven't played with in a while.

Let me know (in the comments section), send my a snap, a scan, a jpeg of what you create.

McNair

*My favorite, all time cartoon character, bar none.