Susie Bright's Journal

My Oscar Predictions: Comatose and Coatless

Years ago, I sewed myself a Jazz Age Oscar-Night coat, black and gold velvet, swooping to the floor. With my hair in marcelle waves, you'd swear I was Zelda Fitzgerald. I don it for every Academy Awards telecast, with all my best jewels.

But my costume has not even come out of the closet this year; I don't know if I'll make the effort. This year's Awards are a total fucking drag.

Is there a gag rule in force? Does anyone else think this year's Oscar lineup is one of the worst?

I woke up this morning thinking I would catch up on a few weekend matinees, Oscar films in contention that I've missed so far.

But I didn't, I went to see Soderbergh's "Shrinks Gone Bad!" instead, aka Side Effects. —It's very good; I screamed and gasped and licked my lips.

Of course, I didn't want to sit through Lincoln— all my friends who have, tell me they had to dutifully swallow it like Robitussum PM. 

I didn't want to see Zero Dark Thirty either— I haven't quite mustered up the mood to be nauseated cinematically by US torture and imperialism for two hours.

Argo's racist hysterics were already quite enough, and though I imagine I'll enjoy the grindhouse theatrics of Tarantino's Django, I don't want to sit and listen to all the rednecks in my local theater while they crack wise about slavery's "good ole' days."  

The experts say Argo is going to win Best Picture. I don't get it. Even if you take away the "crazy-Arabs-will-slit-your-throat-on-slightest-whim" meme, it's not deep filmmaking. We're not talking Costa Gravas here. It's a B-espionage thriller; that's it. I had to go directly home and watch Battle of Algiers to remember what life (and film) are all about.

I do like a couple of the nominees. The operative word is: "LIKE."

Silver Linings Playbook is a laff-fest, especially if you're an English Lit teacher or a Philadelphia Eagles fan. Cooper and Lawrence are adorable; De Niro wakes up and acts his ass off for the first time in years. His supporting actor nomination is something for which I might put my coat on.

But! Think about David O. Russell, the director.

This film is a fragment of his powers. If Playbook is Oscar-worthy, then Flirting with Disaster should get the Nobel Prize. It's transcendent by comparison. Even Three Kings, where Russell apparently was nearly murdered by his cast, packed a more memorable wallop.

Playbook is an enjoyable, thank-you-very-much, feel-good comedy, but it is not anywhere near David's best.

You might say the same about Ang Lee. Life of Pi is a beautiful accomplishment. But this is the man who made Brokeback Mountain, Lust, Caution, and The Ice Storm! Crouching Tiger, Where is Your Oscar? I worship Ang Lee, but this isn't his Academy moment.

The other end of the spectrum is Beasts of the Southern Wild. Like everyone else, I am enchanted by Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry's family trials in the apocalyptic Mississippi River watershed. "Who's the Man?" — "I'M THE MAN!"

This movie is the awesome garage punk band that snuck onto the red carpet. But the film is not about mastery of anything, it's about new beginnings and flying by the seat of your pants. To have this picture here, surrounded by all the wretched cynical Hollywood blockbusters, seems the worst of tokenism.

I'm not going to even get into Amour— a little Franco-Austrian death pill we're supposed to grimly swallow and whisper adieu... Why wear an Oscar coat when I might as well crawl into a pine box?

2013's entire Oscar slate can be summed up by the title: Les Miserables— I am miserable, my movie palette has been wasted.Ladle on the death squads and castor oil, it's going to be bumpy night.

 

 

 

Most memorable 2012 features I saw last year: 

The Sessions 

Magic Mike (and all the youtube videos of women WATCHING Magic Mike)

Looper 

The Master

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Next movie I'm dying to see: Cosmopolis

 

Cozy Cornbread Chicken Pot Pie

This exquisitely comforting recipe is upon Aretha's request, who looked at me with her big brown eyes and said, "Mommy, please!"

This casserole reminds me of my mom's cooking, too. She was keen on stetching a small piece of meat.

This is a gravy-rich chicken casserole with vegetables that even fussbudgets will gloat over. For the locavore, the possibilities are seasonally endless.

The topping, the cornbread, is like birthday cake. I wouldn't hesitate to put candles on top.

The basic idea, for advanced chefs, is this:

Sauté onions and make a Bechamel sauce, in a Dutch oven. Add whatever tasty meat and lightly cooked veggies you like. Pour cornbread batter on top and bake. Good Golly Miss Molly!

Ingredients

1 large chicken breast, chopped into bitesize pieces

Salt 

Pepper

Sprinkle of flour

Bechamel Sauce:

2-3 T. butter

1 tsp. olive oil, just so the butter doesn't burn

1 medium onion

1 tsp. thyme

2-3 T. white vermouth

Flour

Buttermilk or Milk (the buttermilk really knocks it out of the park)

1 c. peas, fresh or frozen

1 can corn kernels, or kernels right off 3 cobs of corn

(Handful of chopped lightly cooked carrots, or any other colorful vegetable)

1 recipe of cornbread muffin batter, from the box— or homemade

(2 chopped fresh tomatoes or handful of cherry tomatoes) 

 

Cook the Chicken

Cut up a chicken breast into mouthful-size pieces, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and a sprinkle of flour, and fry up quickly in a frying pan with a little oil.

Set aside.

[Lazy Sod: buy a roast chicken and cut up your favorite parts into chunks).

Set up your Dutch oven on the stovetop— you have one, right? It's a must. The rest of the dish gets put together in it.

 

Make the Sauce— and Cornbread Batter on the Side

Chop your onion fine, and sauté it in the butter with a dab of oil on medium-low heat, with the thyme, until soft and golden.

The small amount of oil keeps your butter from burning.

[Lazy Sod: Open up a can or two of Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup and heat it slowly in the pot with a couple tablespoons of butter].

While your onions are melting, mix up a batch of cornbread batter! Place to the side.

[Lazy Sod: I like Trader Joe's box brand, and Jiffy works fine too. TJ's is almost sweet as cake]

 

Finish your white sauce, aka "Bechamel Sauce"— this is the only step that takes some cooking technique:

After onion is soft, turn the heat high, and pour in a couple tablespoons of vermouth (or white wine, or anything a little acidic) and stir.

You'll cook off the excess liquid in a minute or so. Turn heat down to medium.

Wooden spoon in hand, add a 2 tablespoons of white flour.

Vigorously STIR in small circles, making a roux with the buttery soft onions.

You're making a buttery, floury paste; it may even start to come together like a ball. Never stop stirring! 

Start slowly pouring in your buttermilk/milk/cream. You can switch to a whisk or keep at it with your wooden spoon. Stir, stir, stir; never leave it alone.

You can substitute your liquid with a combo of dairy and white wine, or dairy and chicken broth. It all tastes good. 

As you add the liquid, stirring madly away, the sauce forms, a nice thick creamy sauce.

Watch the video, and you'll say, "Oh yeah, I get it!" Once you know how to make a white sauce, the world is your oyster.

[If you're a Lazy Sod, you can skip all that sauce-making. But boy, it is good. Try it sometime].

 

Put Together the Casserole

Once your white sauce is finished, add the cooked chicken, the peas, the corn kernels, and any other vegetables you like. Mix it all up.

Take your wet cornbread batter, and drop it by heaping tablespoon-fulls, plop, plop, plop, on top of your chicken/veggie/bechamel mélange.

You don't have to cover every spot, as the batter will spread in the oven— but make sure you evenly cover the casserole with your batter.

 

Bake...

Put in 400-degree oven for 30 minutes.

As soon as the cornbread is golden brown on top and cooked through (use a toothpick, just like testing a cake) it's done!  

Garnish with chopped tomatos.

 

For those of you who want the low-down trash originals, see below. —But mine blows them all away.

Campbell's version.

Oprah's.

Betty Crocker, girl.

43 Paints

I want to talk about two paintings, “Artist in the Shower” and “Artist in the Bath,” by the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush. They were revealed when the former POTUS's e-mail was hacked. 

by Jon Bailiff

The public commentary has thus far veered from breezy put-downs to earnest attempts to fit The Artist Bush into “Painting,” per se. These observations, though interesting and fun, mean or edifying, don’t offer the viewing I think his efforts deserve. 

I’m a painter and an art teacher. I propose that our encounter with the former President represents a teachable moment beyond media splash.

Creativity, the effort to make something of one’s own sensations from raw reality, is a singular human impulse. It is creative self-expression.

Pop cultural icons with their professional poses keep our attention on the meta-level where creativity is concerned. The act of personal creation appears daunting. Most adults today no longer even try.

Yet I’ve encouraged children, teens, and adults, both apparently able and profoundly disabled, to face the void, the blank canvas. —To make a mark that is their own. It is a transformative experience every time.

Each of us is laid bare in the act of creative self-expression. Ex-presidents included. I respect W’s efforts at creation. I understand his motivation. I draw a great deal of information from his marks. 

W. has just begun to paint. I see something surprising. I see a conceptual reach well beyond his ability. I see his wellspring of desire.

His self-portraits of his own naked body, photographed on the easel in intimate studio light, in the shower, in the bath, depict deep motivation. Motivation enough to take real risks for a chance at fulfillment. —That the public is sharing his pictures now shows just how high the risks were. 

Bush takes on anatomy, likeness, spatial representation, foreshortened perspective, light effects, water— with the limited skills at his disposal. That speak volumes to me. He's compelled to grasp for something beyond his means as a beginner. 

This is the first step in becoming, committing, and acknowledging the need to make art. Not for the sake of hobby. Not for the thin gruel of other’s opinions. But for one’s own self. 

The intimacy of one’s toilette, the unvarnished truth of the mirror, and the nakedness of the bath, are sources for many accomplished painters. Pierre Bonnard’s late-life images in the mirror of his toilette spring to mind (Portrait de l’artiste dans la glace du cabinet de toilette-1945). 

I doubt that George W. Bush has awareness of art history. I take it that his inspiration comes directly form his own self-conscious experience.

Yet he links himself instantly with the likes of Bonnard, Alice Neel, Edward Hopper, Lucian Freud, and many others— not by ability, but by desire. A desire that, if fed, if followed, could lead him— could lead any of us— to real substance.

And here we have the teachable moment. The man who hid behind the glib signature “43”  on his far less ambitious “Portrait of Barney” (his dog) might decide to come forward and embrace the honesty of his sophomore painting efforts. Then he could offer his countrymen something he never did as President —an embrace of the human worth in all of us, not just in himself.

That glance held within the shaving mirror, furtively contemplating the contours of his own flesh with imperfect memory, could be a clear-eyed gaze that celebrates the transformative power of artistic impulse— and offers the freedom of contemplation to all. 

Not many Americans, not many people, have the opportunity to experience making art. Such a level of societal and personal freedom is so rare it is perceived as audacious, eccentric. That understanding is false. Self-expression and freedom-- these aren't commodities to be only traded by the rich, performed by the chosen, and parceled out to the few-- they are our birthright.   

We have met George W. Bush the Artist. We are free to say what we will of his creative efforts. But I would argue we are seeing a spark, a moment of creative self-expression. One worthy of emulation. For if this audacious act is within his grasp, it most assuredly is within ours.