MARCH MEANDERS ON

I've been busy... taking a few yoga classes, repeatedly trying to recapture my sanity only to lose grasp of it in occasional fits of insecurity, distraction, stress, etc;

I've been reading a collection of funny, scathing, subtly drawn, interrelated short fiction about the music industry and this musical icon's first book, which isn't as pretentious as I feared, at least when it reads like an autobiography (although I haven't yet reached the inevitable passage on faeries). I've also been meaning to review her lengthy, ambitious, intermittently great new album; perhaps in another week.

I've seen SUNSET STORY, a documentary about a Los Angeles nursing home for "radicals and free thinkers" that focuses on a friendship between two of its female residents. At first glance, I thought it might be this decade's GREY GARDENS, but only superficially... it's pretty straightforward without any shattering insights revealed, but it presents a fair, non-condescending and really touching look at old age. Try to catch it when it plays the Brattle or when it airs on PBS.

I've also seen KOI... MIL GAYA, a crazy Bollywood spectacle that borrows from ET, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, CHARLY, and REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE sans any irony or self-referential acknowledgement that anything in it is second-hand. As usual with the genre, the musical numbers are sublime, the characters and performances questionable.

*****

This Sunday is the 11th annual Chlotrudis Awards, sort of a smaller East coast equivalent to the Independent Spirit Awards. The nominations represent an eclectic assortment of films (as they should), and here's what I voted for:

Movie: THE RETURN
Director: Andrei Zvyagintsev, THE RETURN
Actress: Isabella Rossellini, THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
Actor: Kevin Bacon, THE WOODSMAN
Supporting Actress: Virginia Madsen, SIDEWAYS
Supporting Actor: Peter Sarsgaard, KINSEY
Original Screenplay: Lars von Trier, DOGVILLE
Adapted Screenplay: Guy Maddin and George Toles, THE SADDEST MUSIC IN THE WORLD
Cinematography: Mikhail Krichman, THE RETURN
Cast: DOGVILLE
Documentary: TARNATION
Buried Treasure: NOSEY PARKER

I suspect only two or three of these has a spectacular chance of winning, but then again, I didn't vote strategically.