Arts Guild of Old Forge , Inc. | State & Local Partnership | $40,000
Old Forge Library Association | State & Local Partnership | $40,000
Total: $80,000
Movies Watched -- The Honeymoon Killers (1970)
115 minutes … interesting backstory to this movie… Warren Steibel (Jewish, of Firing Line fame) always wanted to make a movie and got his buddy Leon Levy (Jewish, of Oppenheimer funds fame) to put up $150,000. Leon Kastle, a Jewish composer, wrote the script and ended up directing the movie after the first director they hired, someone named Marty Scorsese, was unable to work with a small budget … anyway, the movie, originally titled “Dear Martha,” was about a con man and his obese lover who, in the late 1940s, ended up not just defrauding various lonely women, but also killing several of them, as well as a child. They were executed at Sing Sing.
It is a dark and depressing movie, clearly low budget, but well made. Kastle said that he was so disgusted by Bonnie and Clyde, which romanticized and glamorized that story, that he was driven to make a truer depiction on killers. I guess the movie is now considered a “cult classic.” You should see it if you’re not easily disturbed.
Movies Watched -- The Power of the Dog (2021)
127 minute running time, so 30 minutes too long … I was too dense to understand what this movie was about and forgot all about the kid’s prologue blurb … I only got it after reading this. I understood the gay cowboy thing, but not young lurch as killer to protect his ma. Campion likes to film stringy muscular cowboys cavorting in the nude … she even included a token black cowboy! No wonder John Farr recommended it (“underneath Phil’s swagger we sense emotional turbulence and a painful vulnerability,” oh spare me). I wasn’t thrilled, obviously. How many cruel gay cowboy movies do we need?
So subtle, Jane!
Movies Watched -- All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
148 minute running time … another in the War is Hell genre… looks like Netflix spent big money making this one … it was slick, but too long and sort of pat (contrived) in some ways: think of the German general tossing his wine on the floor and throwing scraps to his massive Hund, or the cheerfully oblivious schoolboys marching to their doom … Come and See remains the best War is Hell movie (though about WWII not WWI) … this was a John Farr reco and my sister also said she loved it, but not a green-go from me (given its length). Oscar, schmoscar … try cramming WWI into a 100 minute movie next time.
Ten Essentials
Movies Watched -- Dogfight (1991)
89 minute running time so the right length, but the story wasn’t very good … I like Lili Taylor (born in 1967, GenX), she’s spunky and has an interesting face (not an “ugly duckling”) … River Bottom is exactly my age (born in 1970), but he dropped dead at the ripe old age of 23 after going on a coke and heroin binge … the soundtrack was the best thing about this movie, which tells you something. No idea how this ended up in my queue… Oh, it’s inexplicably a John Farr recommendation.
Movies Watched -- The Quiet Girl (2022)
In Irish Gaelic. 95 minute running time so an excellent length. Irish Gaelic is an awful language to listen to, sort of like Hebrew or Arabic or some Middle Earth elven tongue, just hard on the ear … this is a tearjerker with well-timed heartstring music to match, so you’re going to be balling like a baby at the end … I have seen so many Tár-ible movies of late that this sensitive, though heavy-handed, movie was surprisingly good … it’s a simple story, too simple of course, the power of love (and silence), “no secrets in this house,” etc., but it was well told.
The little girl is beautiful. The Irish countryside is beautiful (never rains once, but everything is green). The summertime “mother” is beautiful … she looks like she stepped out of the pages of a Ralph Lifshitz WASP fantasy catalog … tall, thin, stylish, so kind, so patient, so understanding … meanwhile the little girl’s bastard Da is screwing all the local women behind his old lady’s back and gambling away the family’s seed corn. Yeah, it was that heavy-handed. But I liked it. Sad that I have to give this a green-go, but that’s what it has come to. John Farr liked it too.
Movies Watched -- Tár (2022)
158 minute running time, lol… that’s TWO HOURS AND THIRTY-EIGHT MINUTES, can you imagine sitting through this? I made it 10 minutes in and quit. Cate Blanchett and her cheekbones still look good for her age (my age). Tár baby. Awful. God, who watches this stuff? Who bankrolls it? John Farr screwed me again, but I saved YOU from watching this…
Movies Watched -- Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)
139 minute running time … I made it 10 minutes in before quitting … and I speak Mandarin and have a deep understanding of Chinese culture, even messy Chinese laundromat culture and screwed-up parent-children relationship culture, but I couldn’t bear this… who could sit through TWO HOURS AND NINETEEN MINUTES of this?!? Another terrible recommendation from John Farr, he is really letting me down lately. “The viewer should just surrender to it and enjoy all the breathless fun.” Wrong, not breathless fun, but torture.
Fiscal Year 2024 New York State Council on the Arts Grants for Otsego County
Catskill Symphony Orchestra, Inc. | Music | $40,000
Community Arts Network of Oneonta | Arts Education | $49,500
Cooperstown Chamber Music Festival Inc. | Presenting | $40,000
Cooperstown Concert Series Inc. | Music | $15,000
Fenimore Art Museum | Museum | $49,500
FENIMORE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA INC | Music | $40,000
Foothills Performing Arts Center, Inc. | Multidisciplinary | $20,000
Glimmerglass Opera Theatre, Inc. | Music | $49,500
Greater Oneonta Historical Society | Museum | $49,500
Oneonta Concert Association | Presenting | $25,000
Otsego 2000, Inc. (Glimmerglass Film Days) | Electronic Media and Film | $49,500
The Farmers' Museum | Museum | $49,500
Total:$ 457,000