All about me: One of those Facebook things I never do

These exercises show up on Facebook in various forms, covering different topics. I saw this one today and I thought it would be interesting (to me) because it's all about me! It's not a polite conversation of give-and-take, back-and-forth. It's like being interviewed.

And it's easy. I'm working on some pieces that are a little more difficult and require some research so I liked this one.

1. Who are you named after?

I think I remember asking my mother if I'd been named after anyone she knew and the answer was no. Neither my sister nor I were named after anyone. They were just names my mother liked. (I'm pretty sure my father would have been happy with Mum's choices.)

2. Last time you cried?

I saw a film called Lion a few days ago. It's the story of a tiny boy of five — played by Sunny Pawar, maybe the cutest little guy ever — who gets lost in the teeming streets of Calcutta. I won't tell you the story although Sunny grows up to be played by Dev Patel and along the way, there are some touching and some quite wrenching moments. Anyone might shed a few tears.

Sunny and Dev at the Golden Globes

3. Do you like your handwriting?

Sure. What's not to like? I do remember that I was a terrible writer in early elementary school but by about grade five, I became aware that I was surrounded by fellow students who had such pretty writing that I made it a project to improve mine. I don't think I ever made it "pretty" and I didn't dot my "i's" with little hearts or anything like that. But I think my writing is pretty nice.

4. What is your favourite lunch meat?

Such an odd question and so out of place. I remember as a little kid really liking sandwiches made with one of Mum's freshly baked rolls, a slice of Kam and French's yellow mustard. I told Mum it was what I was going to serve at my wedding. (I didn't.) There were also Spam and Klik and Prem. Probably others too but it was always Kam for me. I don't eat Kam any more. I do like a good ham. We had an excellent one over Christmas.

5. Do you have kids?

I do.

Here he is. His name is William and he's a university student studying political science. He's just started an NDP students' association. (Photo by Keisha Toner.)

6. Do you use sarcasm?

Who, me? Why I'd never even consider it.

7. Do you still have your tonsils?

I do not. I had my tonsils removed when I was 21. It's considered major surgery when you're an adult and it was quite an ordeal. I was in my final year as a nursing student at the Montreal General Hospital and I was admitted to the 20th floor — a private floor and the height of hospital luxury. Even still, I wouldn't recommend it as a casual experience.

8. Would you bungee jump?

No.

9. What is your favorite kind of cereal?

I'm not a big eater of cereal although I grew up eating porridge and shredded wheat — remember those big dry clumps that you'd crumble into your bowl and soak in milk?

I like corn flakes and rice krispies. I don't like any cereal that's "frosted" or is so obviously sugared-up.

10. Married?

I am. I've written about meeting my husband right here and about our wedding over here. They're both awfully good stories and I recommend them.

11. Do you think you are strong?

Tough question. Do you think I'm strong? I haven't really been tested the way so many people have; in general, I've led quite a fortunate and privileged life. I did, however, go through a robbery where I was held at knife-point and left bound and gagged in my bathroom and there were people who thought I handled that with some fortitude. I wrote about that too and you can read it here.

12. What is your favourite ice cream?

Oh, it changes. Right now, I like a small bowl, every so often, of Breyer's Gelato, vanilla and caramel. It's decadently lovely and you must not eat too much of it because you don't want it to become commonplace or familiar. You want it to remain an aloof luxurious enigma.

13. What is the first thing you notice about somebody?

Hmmm. It depends, of course. Are they walking toward me? Am I being introduced to them? Are they alone? Is there something terribly unusual or eccentric about them? Are they behind me? I find this question almost impossible to answer. When I get an answer to all my questions, I'll try again.

14. Football or baseball?

Baseball.

15. What is one thing you like about yourself?

Golly. What can I say? I guess I like the fact that I'm quite self-disciplined and quite organized. I think I'm considerate of others and I try to make the world a better place. I like my hair.

16. What colour pants are you wearing?

Black.

17. Last thing you ate?

Beef stew with dumplings.

18. What are you listening to right now?

SiriusXM Streaming. Margaret Whiting singing The Way You Look Tonight.

19. If you were a crayon, what colour would you be?

Probably forest green.

20. Favourite smell?

As so many others do, I love the smell of bread right out of the oven.

And on a more romantic note, I love the fragrance Summer Hill by Crabtree & Evelyn.

Don't worry, I mostly wear it at home or to my hair salon where I assume it will fit right in and won't cause any allergic reactions. I'm respectful of allergies and there are plenty of perfumes and colognes that I really hate. But Summer Hill is light and floral and irresistible — in its place.

21. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?

My sister, Marilyn. She had a birthday last week and I called a day or two post-birthday for an extended chat.

That's Marilyn in front with her beloved granddaughter Aleesha. Standing behind her are her husband Tom, her daughter Lisa, son-in-law Mike, and son Matthew (Aleesha's dad.) The picture was taken at their cottage on the upper Miramichi.

22. Favorite sport to watch on TV?

Baseball. Or basketball. It depends on what's on. I know and love the game of baseball and I always wonder how anyone could find it dull. There's so much to watch for in a baseball game: a perfect double play, or a bunt laid down the third-base line and a dramatic slide into second, or the tension as the pitcher shakes off the catcher's signals, looking for the perfect pitch and rattling the batter a little while he's at it. So exciting and suspenseful and dramatic. Basketball is, of course, not very subtle. It's just exciting because it is.

23. Hair colour?

I often say it's platinum but it is, admittedly, snowy white.

24. Eye colour?

Blue.

25. Favourite food to eat?

Whatever is placed in front of me when I'm really hungry. One of my most-read posts on this blog is called The best thing I ever ate. . .

26. Scary movies or happy?

There are more than two categories of movies. I don't particularly like scary movies but I like lots of movies that wouldn't be described as "happy." One of my favourite movies, going back quite far, is Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean. It's a Robert Altman movie and it stars Cher, Sandy Dennis, Karen Black, Kathy Bates. One of the reviewers called it "soft and sad" — which it was, so neither scary nor happy.

27. Last movie you watched on TV?

The Railway Man: "A former British Army officer, who was tormented as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II, discovers that the man responsible for much of his treatment is still alive and sets out to confront him." It was good although I usually don't watch movies if I sense there's going to be torture. There was torture but I averted my eyes.

28. Last movie you watched at a theatre?

Lion, as noted above. Far far above. However, the second-last movie I saw was La La Land. I won't go into any detail because I don't want to provide spoilers so if you want to know what I thought of it, send me a stamped, self-addressed envelope and I'll definitely be in touch.

29. What colour shirt are you wearing?

White with a red and black geometric pattern. (?)

There's the shirt on a London sight-seeing bus. If I'd been thinking ahead, I could have used this photo to illustrate number 5 and number 23.

30. Favourite holiday?

Christmas, I suppose, although that seems very conventional and predictable. I really like Easter too. Both are religious and traditional and steeped in family lore but Easter seems a little more flexible. It's a beautiful time of year also, alive with hope and lengthening days. The feast is fresh and bright and there's lemon in every course.

Thanks for joining me.

Simon's big bang performance as Cosmé McMoon

We saw the movie Florence Foster Jenkins today.

In the 1940s, New York socialite Florence Foster Jenkins (Meryl Streep) dreams of becoming a great opera singer. Unfortunately, her ambition far exceeds her talent. The voice Florence hears in her head is beautiful, but to everyone else it is quite lousy. Her husband St. Clair Bayfield (Hugh Grant) goes to extreme lengths to make sure his wife never finds out how awful she truly is. When Florence announces her plans for a concert at Carnegie Hall, St. Clair soon realizes that he's facing his greatest challenge yet.

I don't know what more can be said about Meryl Streep. She's surely acknowledged to be the greatest actress of our time — and if there were an Olympics of acting, she'd win the gold medal every time out. (She's been nominated for 19 Oscars, more than any other person in history. Why she hasn't won 19 Oscars will always be a mystery to me.)

She plays the lovable, eccentric, generous Florence with just an edge of foolish but never enough that you lose respect or affection for her. Florence is a woman who loves music with such passion that it rules her life and her relationships and her very self-image. Meryl walks a careful line and gives us a beautiful character.

And Hugh Grant? I've always liked Hugh Grant. His reputation has taken a few hits but I've always enjoyed his acting. I always found him quite romantic. He plays Florence's loyal loving spouse while living in a very familiar way with a pretty young woman a taxi-ride away.

But the real joy in this movie is the actor who plays Cosmé McMoon, Florence's accompanist as she pursues her dream of singing opera.

Do you recognize him? This is Simon Helberg, best known as Howard Wolowitz on TV's The Big Bang Theory. Simon plays Cosmé with an innocent, intelligent, funny personality — and a different voice and different face from Howard's. Not only that, he plays the piano. He had studied piano to the level of concert pianist and that secured the acting job for him. He's an amazing choice and I can't say enough about his wonderful performance.

He was paralyzed with nerves when they went to Carnegie Hall but he came through in a professional and loving way for Florence. By then he had become a co-conspirator with St. Clair to keep from Florence the awful truth of what a terrible singer she was.

It's a sweet movie. It's well-written, well-acted, funny and it's a tear-jerker. I enjoyed it a lot and if you haven't seen it, maybe you would too.

Theatre, travel, art and history on the big screen

Nowadays, "going to the movie theatre to see a show" doesn't necessarily mean you're going to see a Hollywood blockbuster. The big screen is changing and I'm pretty sure it will continue to change. In five years, who knows what we'll be going to see at the movies?

We've recently seen The Shakespeare Show, The Winter's Tale, and Hamlet-the-character: regularly re-defined — all of which were live shows on film and all of which I've reported on in the designated links.

I've loved seeing them all: next best thing to being there.

The most recent show we've seen is called St Peter’s and the Papal Basilicas of Rome. It comes in a 3D version but we didn't go to that one and I'm glad. There was a lot of dipsy-doodling around Rome in a helicopter (and I thought maybe a drone but I didn’t find any info to that effect). I think 3-D might have made me a little nauseous. As it was, it was very gorgeous and very informative.

The film dealt first, as expected, with St. Peter's.

St. Peter's Basilica (Italian: San Pietro in Vaticano) is a major basilica in Vatican City, an enclave of Rome. St. Peter's was until recently the largest church ever built and it remains one of the holiest sites in Christendom. Contrary to what one might reasonably assume, St. Peter's is not a cathedral - that honor in Rome goes to St. John Lateran.

St. Peter's Basilica stands on the traditional site where Peter - the apostle who is considered the first pope - was crucified and buried. St. Peter's tomb is under the main altar and many other popes are buried in the basilica as well. Originally founded by Constantine in 324, St. Peter's Basilica was rebuilt in the 16th century by Renaissance masters including Bramante, Michelangelo and Bernini.

If you've been there, you don't need me to tell you — and besides that, you've read it everywhere — it's vast and yet, it's all done to such perfect proportionate scale, that it's only by considering yourself and looking at other humans that you comprehend its immensity.

The cameras and narration covered art and sculpture, most notably Michelangelo's Pieta and the statue of St. Peter himself:

Pieta

St. Peter

There's so much in St. Peter's Basilica, the film did its best but it knew it could have spent its whole duration in that one location. You can spend days there really.

**********************************************************************************************************************

Santa Maria Maggiore — St. Mary Major — is the church you often see on the news when Pope Francis is travelling. He stops to say a prayer to ask for safe travel on his way to the airport and when his trip is over, he drops in there to say thanks for getting him back safely before he heads home to the Vatican.

Santa Maria Maggiore: One of Rome's four patriarchal basilicas, this monumental 5th-century church stands on the summit of the Esquiline Hill, on the spot where snow is said to have miraculously fallen in the summer of AD 358.

It was August 5 when the snow fell. The liturgical feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of Saint Mary Major is celebrated each year on the 5th of August. It is now a custom to remember the miraculous snowfall. At the conclusion of the Solemn Mass of that day a shower of white rose petals falls from the dome of the Chapel of Our Lady.

St. Mary Major was not very far from our hotel when we visited Rome and we went to Sunday Mass here. The interior is spectacular and, as with so many of the ancient churches, worth spending many hours just taking in the art and the history.

The other two Papal Basilicas are St. John Lateran and St. Paul Outside the Walls. The film did them justice also and so will I when I visit them in person. Next time.

If you're interested in some of the live shows on the big screen — for example, Helen Mirren as Queen Elizabeth in The Audience will be playing in theatres in July — I recommend a visit to National Theatre Live where you will find schedules, dates, titles etc.

Doris, you knew that couldn't end well: a film observation

When we came out of the movie Hello My Name Is Doris I told Dan I was a little disappointed in it. What I didn't tell him is that I had spent the first 40-50 minutes feeling — I don't know, embarrassed, I guess — and hoping there was going to be some kind of interesting and amazing twist to get me out of there.

Well, there wasn't so I had to think my way through it and finally come to a conclusion that explains the problem I have with it.

To start with, the problem is not Sally Field. I love Sally Field and she's a great actress.

She plays Doris.

It wasn't the way Doris dressed.

Sally Field as Doris

I've had too many conversations over too many years with people who talk about "dressing your age." Dress however you please! Dress in whatever makes you feel comfortable — or if you're not comfortable and you just like the way you look, dress like that! Don't listen to anyone who wants to tell you how to dress!

Doris' style is very individual and I can't even imagine her in stuffy little suits or housedresses.

Doris lived with her mother all her life in an over-stuffed/cluttered Staten Island House. She takes the ferry and two subways to her job in Manhattan where she works in a cubicle in an office with a collection of good-looking young people. Early in the movie, her mother passes away and Doris has to deal with her brother and a hostile sister-in-law about estate matters and with a therapist who specializes in "hoarders."

The main plot-line though involves Doris and John, a new co-worker.

When I was telling Dan how I felt the movie had gone wrong, I believed it to be the age difference between Doris and John that made me uncomfortable. Doris is pushing 70; they never say how old John is although I read in a couple of reviews that he's 35. He looks more like 27 to me.

Doris and John

Doris is very attracted to John. She misreads a couple of his signals and believes he feels the same way about her. She actively and blatantly pursues him with the help of the 13-year-old granddaughter of her best friend who helps her set up a fake Facebook account to stalk him and helps her understand certain millennial lingo. (I'm describing the movie accurately but somehow, it sounds worse than it really was.)

I don't know, I said to Dan later. Maybe if he were a little older — say in his 40s — I wouldn't feel that it's all a little inappropriate.

But after thinking about it some more, I realized I was wrong. I wasn't wrong about how the movie handled it; I was wrong about what the problem was.

There was nothing wrong with the way Doris was feeling. Of course she was attracted to John. Look at him!

Max Greenfield as John

He's kind and sweet and funny. He's handsome — on my Jon-Hamm-handsome-o-metre, he's right up there, in the eight or nine bracket.

Doris being attracted to John — physically, sexually — was perfectly natural. I enjoyed thinking about that; I was glad the movie acknowledged her feelings so frankly.

I did not, however, enjoy the boy-crazy, manipulative way she pursued him. You knew that couldn't end well. I think it would have been a better movie if it had dealt honestly — and bawdily — with the sexy way she was feeling, with her fantasies, with exchanging confidences with her best friend. But clearly, the source of my discomfort was that she was setting herself up to be humiliated and I really didn't want to be a witness to that.

Having said all that, there were a lot of good moments in the film. I'm glad to see a really good role for Sally Field — as I was for Lily Tomlin in Grandma. All the supporting actors were great. Tyne Daly, for example, can do no wrong.

Tyne Daly as Roz with Doris

An interesting fact: This movie was made in three weeks for $1 million. There should be an award for that.

The art and soul of a writer: Nora Ephron, me, our mothers, and controlling the story

I've started writing this two or three times. I keep getting stuck and then bogged down.

I think my problem is that I'm confused about whether this is about Nora Ephron or me.

I watched the recent Nora Ephron documentary Everything is Copy. Nora was an essayist, columnist, novelist, movie director and screenwriter (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Julie & Julia, Heartburn, Silkwood. . .).

When Harry Met Sally

Her writing took her into the glamourous worlds of Esquire, The New Yorker and Hollywood — not to mention the worlds of "Tom Hanks, Rita Wilson, Steven Spielberg, Gay Talese, Rosie O’Donnell, Meg Ryan, Mike Nichols, and on and on. . .", all of whom show up in the documentary which was made by her son, Jacob Bernstein. Jacob is Nora's son with journalist Carl Bernstein.

Nora died in 2012 at the age of 71.

Both Nora's parents were screenwriters and they both drank too much. It was her mother – who died of cirrhosis – whose lifelong slogan was "everything is copy!" When you slip on a banana peel, her mother said, people laugh at you. But when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it becomes your joke. "You tell the story," Nora's Mom said, "so it doesn't tell you."

Nora took her mother's advice and used her own life — and the lives of everyone around her — to fuel her formidable writing machine, often to the detriment of relationships with close family members and friends. Her first novel, Heartburn, was the thinly disguised bitter and angry story of her divorce from Carl Bernstein. Nora was seven months pregnant with her second child when she discovered Carl was cheating on her.

I could tell you the whole story of Nora's life but I don't want to ruin the documentary for you. It's running on HBO Canada and if you can't see it there, I'm pretty sure it's available somewhere. Things always are.

Nora was a couple of years older than I am. I can't help thinking that while her alcoholic mother was telling her "everything is copy!", my teetotalling mother was telling me, "Don't ever put anything in writing that you don't want to see on the front page of the newspaper." (Years later, after I became editor of my hometown newspaper, it became a bit of a joke when I would tease her if she said something a little controversial and I'd threaten to put it on the front page of the paper.)

I've always known I'd never be a great writer — first of all, I suppose, because I'm not a great writer. But mostly, I think, because there's too much I simply can't write about. I have lived — and I continue to live — a very interesting life. I've known — and I know — fascinating people. I have stories galore circulating around in my brain and I know I'll never write them down.

There was a time I thought that after my mother was gone, I'd be free to write whatever I wanted but for me, it doesn't work that way. I know I'm not going to tell certain stories because if I did, there would always be someone who felt betrayed or who would be embarrassed/hurt/ashamed/angry. I don't want people to feel disappointed with me or let down or even surprised at something I've written.

So this is really all about me but it's also about everyone else. I realized at some point that the only way I could ever write openly and honestly and without a care is if everyone I've ever known is dead. That's probably not going to happen.

As for fiction — which people often ask me about — the answer is no, I could never write fiction. I mean that literally. I honestly could not write fiction. I don't have that fiction-writing gene. That makes it easy because the same personal restrictions would apply: there are things I simply couldn't write, even if it looked as if I'd made them up.

Besides, fiction writers are always telling me that their characters run the story anyway. They have to follow where their characters take them.

This is like a nightmare to me. I have enough trouble dealing with control issues in real life; I don't need a bunch of fictional characters doing their own thing and dragging me along with them.

Which brings me back to Nora. One of the things that Jacob tries to deal with in the doc and one of the things that different people speak of in connection with her death is that she kept her illness secret. Only a very few people knew and when she went into the hospital for the last time, her husband and sister and sons were the only ones with her at the end. For someone who had lived her life according to her Mom's dictum — everything is copy! — this was not only out of character but was, in the view of many people who felt close to her, insulting. Many of her friends were angry that she shut them out of her death.

When I watched the documentary, I wasn't looking to compare myself with Nora on any level. I'm way too humble for that.

But I understood this final act. In the doc, it was the veteran gossip columnist Liz Smith who said, on being asked why she thought Nora had kept her illness a secret, "She's a control freak!" When you look at Nora's life, her work, her relationships, that seems pretty obvious but maybe no one dared say it while she was still alive.

It looks like the other side of the same coin though: she used everything that happened to her and everyone around her throughout her life to control how her story unfolded. At the end, she shut everyone out for the same reason — to control her story and make sure it was told her way.

I can see that.

Michael Moore: Picking the flowers, not the weeds

I enjoyed Michael Moore's newest film Where To Invade Next as I always enjoy his films. He's funny and he's very political; he's frank and open and wears his politics on his sleeve and that's one of the things that makes him likable — even, I'm told, by people who don't agree with his politics. I do agree with his politics so that makes it doubly enjoyable for me.

The movie shows Michael being summoned to Washington, DC by the Joint Chiefs of Staff so they can ask his advice. They tell him that all their wars since World War II have been disastrous and they don't know what move to make next.

Michael responds by offering himself up as a one-man army who will “invade countries populated by Caucasians whose names I can mostly pronounce, take the things we need from them, and bring them back home to the United States of America."

So off he goes.

He visited a number of countries to look at how they manage certain social programs which are dismal failures in the US.

He goes to Italy where a very attractive fit couple talk to him about their paid vacations (eight weeks a year), maternity leave, good salary with benefits and pensions — they're unionized, or course, as are most of the workers in Italy. He talks to the bosses also.

He visits prisons in Norway to discuss their humane and rehabilitative justice system, a university in Slovenia to talk about free tuition, a police force in Portugal to learn about their drug policies, schools in Finland to learn about their well-known superior education system, and Germany where he learns about health care but also about public policy that decrees remembering and understanding the Holocaust.

He went to an elementary school in France and enjoyed a nutritious, chef-prepared lunch with the children — while receiving photos on his phone showing some of the lunches that American kids had been served the same day: French fries and an unidentifiable meat product.

He also went to Tunisia and Iceland:

In Tunisia (the only non-European and only Muslim country visited), he hears how, after the country’s 2011 revolution, the new Islamist government tried to keep a guarantee of equal rights for women out of the constitution, but bowed to include it after a massive popular uprising. And in Iceland, Moore learns that the only financial company that escaped the country’s massive financial meltdown was one founded and run by women, which leads into a discussion of the transformative benefits that have come with women gaining positions of power in government and business.

Michael acknowledges that all of these countries have some problems but he visited them to pick the flowers, not the weeds. He demonstrated very clearly that it's possible to do things differently and that Americans shouldn't be afraid of this kind of social policy.

He does, at the end, say that all these ideas originated in America and that by implementing them, the US would simply be taking back what was theirs in the beginning. I thought that was a bit of a stretch but I could see why he was doing it so I let him get away with it. He is, after all, trying to make a strong political case for all these programs.

When we were talking about the movie later, we noted that he didn't look very well. He had been hospitalized a month or two ago with congestive heart failure and he may have been over-tired and strained during the making of the film. I also said — and I felt a little guilty for saying it — that he looked particularly sloppy, even for Michael Moore. I wondered if he ever thought he should "fix himself up a bit" before he made an appearance in his movies.

As soon as I said it though, I had a hard time even picturing him "fixed up." He is who he is and it doesn't seem to affect his message.

In a completely different context, I was reading today about Michelle Obama giving a talk wearing her hair so it fell over one eye. This opened a bit of a discussion about whether she could be as effective when her hair covered her eye and whether she would be taken seriously if she was always shaking her hair back or pushing it back with one hand. In the course of this discussion, I saw an expression I'd never seen before: "gender respectability politics." The person who used this expression said this is another way of policing how women look rather than what they're saying.

"We would listen, if only she presented/sounded/looked differently — specifically, in a way that affirmed my norms rather than challenging them!" "It's her fault the way she looks won't allow me to listen to her!"

I don't think the world needs any more jargon but it happens that every day, I read another analytical piece about how Hillary Clinton talks too loud, gestures too much, doesn't smile enough. No one doubts that everything about her presentation of speeches is ripped apart and stomped on on a daily basis.

Michael Moore — except for my rather lukewarm judgment on his appearance — doesn't seem to lose any of his authority and gravitas, no matter how untidy he looks!

Art: reminding us of Life

I've seen a lot of movies in the last several months. I assumed by the time the Oscars came around, I'd have seen most of the ones that matter.

Not so though. The Oscars will be handed out this coming weekend and even though they nominate more films than they used to, I still fall short.

Of the eight films nominated for best picture, I've seen three.

The eight are:

The Big Short

Bridge of Spies

Brooklyn

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

The three are:

Brooklyn

Spotlight

And The Big Short

I'm not sure any of it matters any more as The Revenent is, apparently, going to clean up.

I didn't see The Revenent by choice. I had read and heard too much about it. It's grisly; it's brutal, unflinching, raw. It didn't sound as if it were made for me.

One of the most powerful pieces I read about it was written by an Indigenous woman, Sasha LaPointe, Coast Salish/Nooksack, and was titled ‘Bring Me The Girl’: Why ‘The Revenant’ was Hard for My Friends and Me.

Powaqa’s face is empty as she is violated, as the French captain stands behind her, as she is shoved against the tree. Her face is wiped of any emotion. I have goosebumps and feel lightheaded when I think of it, the absence of fantasy. There is no Hollywood, choreographed rape scene. No big fight, no shrieking, no scratching, no scrambling to get free. There is only the reality of that expression. Those dead and empty eyes. The face of a woman taken over, defeated, if only for a moment.

I hope The Revenent is worthy as it seems likely it will win best picture, best actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), best director (Alejandro G. Iñárritu), best cinematography, costumes, hair-styling and makeup, production design. . . (I'm just going through the list of everything it's nominated for.)

And if it does win everything in sight, I hope everyone who goes to see it will begin to see the world in a different way. That's one of the purposes of Art.

Her face reminds us that there is a highway in Canada known as the Highway of Tears, named after the many disappearances of women (mostly indigenous) reported along its vast expanse. It reminds us of the large numbers, the cases of assault against Native women. It is facing generations of surviving, of historical trauma, of memory distilled into a short scene and watching it release from within our bodies and float out into the world.

Michael Caine: Still at the top of his game

I have never walked away from a Michael Caine film and not said, "My, he's a splendid actor." He's been in a lot of movies and I've seen many of them — too many to remember and to name. He's been in good, mediocre and bad movies and people make jokes about his choices and how he's never turned down a role.

It may be that he plays on that. I read a good little story about him recently. He said someone asked him how he chooses his parts and he said, "When they give me a script, I look at the first page and the last page. If my character is on both pages, I accept the part."

I loved Educating Rita. It's one of the movies I go back and watch every so often. I looked it up recently and was surprised to see that it came out in 1983. 1983! It's aged well.

Julie Walters and Michael Caine in Educating Rita. (I saw Julie Walters just a couple of weeks ago in Brooklyn.)

Today, I saw Michael Caine in Youth. Also Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano with a cameo by Jane Fonda. I don't want to tell you too much about it about it because maybe you'll go see it. I will say that, on leaving the theatre, I said my usual thing about Michael Caine's acting and I also said, "This film should win all the awards."

I'll tell you this much:

Septuagenarian best friends Fred Ballinger and Mick Boyle are on vacation in the Swiss Alps, staying at a luxury resort. Fred is a retired composer of classical music; at the hotel, he is approached by an emissary for Queen Elizabeth II to perform his popular piece "Simple Songs" at Prince Philip's birthday concert. Fred turns down the offer, claiming he is not interested in performing anymore – although he still composes pieces in his head when alone.

Mick is a filmmaker, and is working with a group of writers to develop the screenplay for his latest film, which he calls his "testament". Also with them is actor Jimmy Tree, who is researching for an upcoming role and frustrated that he is only remembered for his role as a robot. The hotel is inhabited by other quirky individuals, including a young masseuse, an overweight Maradona, and Miss Universe.

Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel

I was interested to read that a theatre-full of critics saw it in Cannes last May and when it was over, half the theatre boo-ed and the other half bravo-ed. I suppose there's no accounting for taste. I would have been in the cheering section. I can't even imagine what people found to boo about.

The scenery was beyond spectacular and I say that even though I don't like mountains. And Jane Fonda, known most recently for her vocation in non-aging, showed her age — and then some — playing a part that gained her some award nominations and lots of critical acclaim.

Michael Caine has won two Oscars, both in the supporting actor category. I hope he lives many more years and plays many more parts and I hope he'll win an Academy Award for Best Actor. I'll be cheering him on.

And the Oscar goes to. . .

I have a love-hate relationship with award shows. It's in that context that I'm writing this.

Last year, 2015, the list of films that were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar were: Birdman, Selma, Whiplash, American Sniper, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood.

I had seen four out of the eight. I would never have gone to see Whiplash or American Sniper. I was iffy about Birdman. And I felt guilty about passing up Selma because it's the kind of movie I find so painful.

I thought I was pretty well covered, however, for the major categories. Boyhood was considered to be the film to beat, the front-runner, and I was feeling confident.

I thought Boyhood was brilliant. I had spent weeks in advance of the Oscars defending it from certain naysayers. There were people who sneered that the 12-years of filming the same actors to tell the story in "real time" was a gimmick.

I even had to defend the movie from one viewer who said she didn't like it at all because she'd rather have seen the story of Mason's sister. I said maybe she'd have to wait for a movie called "Girlhood" — a movie I'd be happy to see but it wasn't this one.

There's a feeling around awards and there's a point where you begin to sense where things are going. Once Alejandro González Iñárritu won the best director's award, I was starting to feel uneasy. I think people there, in the theatre, sensed something happening also.

Sure enough, Iñárritu's movie Birdman won the best film award and I felt very disappointed. I usually don't mind that much; I usually go along quite docilely with whatever the Academy decides but last year, I was still feeling let down the following morning. Boyhood was such a singular accomplishment, a film that can never be duplicated, a one-of-a-kind achievement. It seemed so wrong that it had been passed over.

This year's nominated films are The Big Short, Brooklyn, Bridge of Spies, The Revenant, Spotlight, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Martian and Room. I've seen three of them.

(The stars of The Big Short.)

When I read a review of The Revenant, I ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction. You couldn't pay me to see that movie. But it's Alejandro González Iñárritu again and this year, he's getting all the buzz. He's not the underdog and I predict he'll win best picture, best director, best actor — Leonardo DiCaprio — and probably plenty of others. You can tell when things are moving in a certain way.

Before The Revenant came along, I had chosen a few strong contenders for Oscars.

(Bryan Cranston as Trumbo.)

After we saw Trumbo, I felt sure that Bryan Cranston would win for best actor for his portrayal of the black-listed writer, Dalton Trumbo, during the McCarthy era. We didn't feel the screenplay was strong enough to carry a best picture nomination but the acting truly was phenomenal. I'm pretty sure now that he doesn't have a chance against Leo.

Likewise Spotlight. As we were leaving the theatre after seeing it, I predicted it had a chance for a few awards. Since The Revenant, Spotlight too has slipped a few rungs down the awards ladder.

Finally, my biggest disappointment this year is something I can't blame on The Revenant. Lily Tomlin was passed over for a nomination for her role in Grandma.

It's a tough old business. Sometimes, it's just not your year.

The double standard strikes again

Just before the film Suffragette came out, I read a piece by Ijeoma Oluo, an American reviewer, who had decided not to review the movie.

Her reason was simple:

I didn’t want to write this review because I’m tired of writing about white people. I’m tired of fantasy worlds where people of color don’t exist. Where even the made up—excuse me—composite characters are white. It gets really disheartening to see yourself written out of popular culture, written out of history time and time again.

She spoke to the director who tried to explain why her movie was made the way it was but Oluo wasn't satisfied.

As a person of color, I’ve heard time and time again similar excuses for why people of color have not been represented, especially in history. But the truth is, we are not a recent invention. . .There’s photographic evidence that there were. . . women of color in the suffrage movement. But the written record is primarily white.

Neither Oluo nor the director, Sarah Gavron, used the words "historical accuracy" but that's what I heard and that's why this article resonated with me so strongly. I can't count the number of times that I've fought with men about women being "written out of history" in what was explained away as "historical accuracy" — in science, in music, in war and other distasteful activities. Australian author/feminist Dale Spender wrote a whole book called Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them to show what has happened to women in literature.

Based on all my own experiences, I thought Oluo made an excellent point that if, in fact, your main character is fictional, you don't have much of a leg to stand on if you cite historical accuracy as the reason for omitting women of colour from your movie.

Oluo got a lot of support for her position — rightly so — and in some markets, there were protests, calls for boycotts and negative press.

Suffragette was getting mixed reviews and I was having mixed feelings about whether to see it or not. When I finally decided I would go see it, I looked it up for time and place of showing. I discovered it was no longer playing here. I'll have to wait for it in some other medium.

Meanwhile, I had gone to see Trumbo and Spotlight which I wrote about here. They're both good movies, getting good reviews, sure to be up for some big awards.

And guess what? In these big American movies, made by and starring high-profile actors, there are no people of colour and not a whisper of criticism about this omission. All the criticism on this subject has been reserved for a woman-centred movie, made by women, starring women, about a series of events that changed women's lives.

Suffragette was set in 1911. I'm not sure what the multi-cultural demographics in England looked like in 1911 but I'll tell you this: there were plenty of black Americans around in the 1950s when Trumbo was set and there were also plenty in the 2000s when Spotlight was set. None of them however (with the exception of a black police officer in a short scene in Spotlight) made an appearance in these two films.

It's even more disappointing when you consider that Trumbo was centred around people who were in trouble for being Communists — and the American Communist Movement was always seen to be a supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. And although Boston had many problems around integration, it seems likely that in the early 2000s there must have been people of colour at the Boston Globe and at other places around town.

Once again, the standards for a film made by women and about women have been set much higher than contemporary films by their male counterparts. It's an old story.

On the road to the Oscars

I've been to two movies in four days. Sometimes, that's how it happens.

Bryan Cranston in Trumbo

Spotlight

Spotlight: Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Brian d'Arcy James

The movies have certain similarities. They both deal with big events of recent history, events that affected many people, caused untold pain and ruined lives. As movies, they did it differently but the stories they told had the same profound effect.

Trumbo tells the story of Dalton Trumbo, an acclaimed Hollywood screenwriter who was one of the Hollywood 10 blacklisted for his Communist affiliations. The House Un-American Activities Committee conducted hearings beginning in the late 1940s and continuing through the '50s into the '60s.

The House Un-American Activities Committee was charged with investigating allegations of communist influence and subversion in the U.S. during the early years of the Cold War. Committee members quickly settled their gaze on the Hollywood film industry, which was seen as a hotbed of communist activity. This reputation originated in the 1930s, when the economic difficulties of the Great Depression increased the appeal of leftist organizations for many struggling actors and studio workers.

There is a much larger story than is told in this movie but this is the story of Dalton Trumbo and its strength is in its narrower focus. Bryan Cranston deserves all his recent acclaim as an actor (I remember him as a guest — Dr. Tim Whatley, the dentist, on Seinfeld in the mid-'90s) and he will, without doubt, be on the list for best actor at the Oscars next year. If you look at the work he's done over the years, you will acknowledge that he's an actor who's paid his dues.

He's surrounded by an excellent cast — most notably Helen Mirren (as Hedda Hopper), John Goodman and Louis C.K. — but it's not really an ensemble in the same way the Spotlight cast is. Bryan Cranston is, I think, the star of this picture.

Spotlight is the story of the Boston Globe's investigation into the abuse of children by priests in the Boston Archdiocese and the subsequent cover-up which went through the ranks, all the way up to the Cardinal. I was just describing it to William — how well done it was, how well-acted, well-conceived, especially well-written — and we agreed that it was remarkable that a movie about a bunch of people just doing their work could be so compelling and hold your interest so completely.

In this case, it is an ensemble cast. It's not possible to pick one of them and say, "This one is the star." Mark Ruffalo had the top billing but I guess someone had to have it. Maybe he has the best agent.

Boston is a very Catholic town and these terrible things that happened were intertwined throughout much of the establishment. So many people behaved so badly and caused so much suffering.

Some people on the viewer discussion boards feel there was not enough emphasis on the victims and their suffering. But that's not what this movie was about just as Trumbo was not about the thousands of lives ruined by the HUAC hearings.

No one movie can do it all but I predict that these two have done enough to be in competition for best film of the year.