Scrap bag of ticket stubs

I save my ticket stubs from the different concerts, plays, ballets and films I attend during each year. I started doing that when my husband and I moved to San Francisco in 1993; there were so many interesting things to see and do and it became a way for me to remember all of the places we in fact visited during our year there. I would venture to say that I have a ‘scrapbook’ of ticket stubs. They are however not organized in a book, but rather are stored in a plastic baggie. Let’s call it a scrap bag. Believe it or not, I do dig into it from time to time. I recently got a question from two friends who could not remember if we had been to the cinema together during 2010 (in fact none of us could remember doing so, but we did remember talking about doing so, and then we got confused and wondered if we did in fact end up at the cinema). I consulted my scrap-bag to find out. I quickly found out that I have seen a number of films during the past year (but none of them with these two friends): Black Swan; Hereafter; Another Year; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows—part 1; Red; You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger; The Ghost Writer; Alice in Wonderland; Shutter Island; It’s Complicated; Fantastic Mr. Fox; Where the Wild Things Are; Sherlock Holmes. This does not include the films I have seen on our cable TV channels—more recent films that I never got a chance to see when they were playing in the theaters.

I started keeping track of all the films I have seen when I was a teenager. I think the first film I ever saw (sneaked in to see) was Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy from 1972. I was hooked after that experience, and started to write down all the films I had seen. By the time I was twenty I think I had seen close to four hundred movies. I stopped writing them down after that, and I didn’t save ticket stubs either at that time. Going to the movies was just what you did when we were young—out with friends, on a date, and so on. There was no cable TV, no Netflix, or video/DVD rental stores to supply us with films on demand. So you went to the movies when they came out because that was your chance to see those films. I read Vincent Canby’s movie reviews in The New York Times religiously; he was a terrific and provocative movie reviewer. You just knew he loved the movie world. According to Wikipedia, he ‘became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there’. What a wonderful job that must have been, and what a job in and of itself. Think about it, at the time he started reviewing movies there was no Internet, no Google--no information at your fingertips. If he needed to check on any facts, he had to spend a lot of time searching for them or tracking them down. If I want to find information on an actor or a film or a TV show, I go to my favorite movie website—Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com. It is a mecca for movie lovers. I can surf there for hours. But the point is that I find what I’m looking for within a few minutes.

Charles Bronson was one of my favorite actors from that time in my life—the actor of Death Wish fame, but also of The Mechanic and Mr. Majestyk. And does anyone remember Jan Michael Vincent (The Mechanic, Buster and Billie, White Line Fever)? He was popular with us too. Richard Thomas of the Waltons fame has a horror film to his credit (e.g. You’ll Like My Mother). The actress Sian Barbara Allen was also popular (with me at least)—she starred with Richard Thomas in You’ll Like My Mother and ended up as his love interest on The Waltons; they apparently were romantically involved at that time. It was somehow thrilling to even come across that little tidbit of information in a teen fan magazine of one sort or another—some gossip from the movie world. Now it seems as though the world revels in every nano-particle of information they can get about celebrities. We’ve gone from a scarcity of information to information overload. But I’ll take the latter as long as I can sort through what is useful. I love the fact that any and all movie information is available at my fingertips these days. But I still need my ticket stubs to remind me that I was actually there in the theater watching the films. 

The role of a lifetime

Yesterday I wrote a post about the definition of success, and then last night I went to see a movie that deals with the topic of success in a rather bizarre way--Black Swan, a film about what it takes to reach the top in the dance world. You might say that it is a film about what it takes to be the winner at all costs, but it is just as much about what happens to the losers in the competitive world of ballet. Mostly it is about the psychological disintegration of a talented but passionless young ballet dancer, Nina (played by Natalie Portman), who desperately wants the role of a lifetime—the coveted role of the White Swan/Black Swan in the new production of Swan Lake. She is a technically-perfect dancer who cannot seem to let go and give her role the passion it requires, whereas the woman whom she perceives as her rival, Lily (played by Mila Kunis), while not a technically-perfect dancer, is a passionate and free-spirited one. Lily is everything Nina is not; she is the ‘fantasy’ girl of teenage years, especially for the wall-flower types--cool, a party-girl, a flirt, and a seductress. She is unafraid of authority and of her peers. Nina is attracted to her and fantasizes about being with her. Nina on the other hand is virginal, repressed, afraid of her feelings, introverted, cowed, and immature, and of course she admires Lily’s free-spiritedness at the same time that she realizes that Lily is after ‘her’ role. The overwhelming pressure to succeed, as well as the perceived extreme competition coupled with Erica’s (Nina’s mother, played by Barbara Hershey) overbearing and controlling behavior toward her daughter, is too much for her and she ‘cracks’. The film’s portrayal of her mental disintegration borders on the grotesque—the obsession with her body, her scratching that leads to bloody wounds on her back, fingernails that need to be cut so that she doesn’t scratch herself, toenails that are cracked and bloody, and so on. When the former White Swan, Beth (played by Winona Ryder) is pushed out of her role due to her age, she deliberately walks out into the street and gets hit by a car. She ends up in the hospital with injured legs. Nina visits her, and while Beth is sleeping, Nina takes a look at the damage to her legs and recoils in horror. The film does a good job at showing just how dependent ballet dancers are on a functioning body—legs, arms, feet, hands, toes, etc. Without any one of them, a dancer cannot perform well. So the obsession with the body is understandable. But the film also has Nina pursued by a kind of evil ‘double’, which is a jolting experience at times when she appears (shades of The Grudge—also in the scene where Nina’s bones start to crack and she ends up deformed-looking). Again, I won’t spoil the film for you by giving away the different events or the ending. I will say that it is a good film, albeit a demanding one to watch. But I did not think it was a great film, and I am surprised that so many critics thought it was. It could have been a great film, but it was too disjointed in parts and it could not make up its mind whether it wanted to be a horror/thriller film or a dramatic film. It opted to be a bit of both and for me it didn’t quite do both well. I would have liked more focus on the relationship between ‘stage’ mother Erica (who was a former dancer who gave up dancing when she had her daughter) and Nina, because that to me was one of the most interesting relationships in the film. It was clear from the way Erica behaved that she was unsure about whether she wanted Nina to achieve success. It seemed as though she would have preferred that her daughter ‘failed’ like she had done. I would have liked a bit more insight into Beth’s life. How was it possible that a top dancer in a top dance company was so unaware that her years at the top were limited? How could she not have prepared for that eventuality? That seemed unrealistic to me. Both Erica and Beth were portrayed as the losers, and I would have liked to have known more about them. I also did not think that the lesbian scene between Nina and Lily added much to the film. I didn’t find it offensive; I just thought it was unnecessary. The scene of the two of them kissing in the taxi would have been enough to give us the general idea that this is what Nina wanted, what woke her passion. I would have preferred a more realistic and dramatic exploration of this aspect of Nina’s personality. Overall, I would perhaps have liked the film better if it had been a more realistic story of a ballet dancer’s life instead of a horror film about a repressed ballet dancer’s life. I was reminded of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion because it also dealt with a sexually-repressed young woman who goes insane. I think Repulsion is a better film than Black Swan. Watching the completely-repressed and frigid Catherine Deneuve’s breakdown was disturbing, but at least we understood that her actions were real—she really did kill the men who came into the apartment, and her condition led her to imagine all sorts of bizarre things, like the sequence where she walks down the apartment hallway and sees hands coming out of the walls to touch and grab her. Repulsion was a genuinely scary film in the same way that Psycho was—they were horror films. I would have liked to have understood the ending of Black Swan—in order to have some kind of closure. It would also have defined the film better for me. But there are some beautiful moments in the film—when Nina and Lily dance or just listening to the incredible music of Tchaikovsky. These make the film worth seeing. And Natalie Portman will probably win a well-deserved Oscar. But I don’t know if the film itself will win for Best Film. 

Favorite Scandinavian films and TV shows

After writing yesterday’s post about my favorite films and TV shows (mostly American), I thought about the Scandinavian films and TV shows that I have seen and liked in the twenty years I have lived here in Oslo. Here are some of my favorites……..

Favorite films

·         Deilig er fjorden (The fjord is wonderful)--Norwegian

·         Hodet over vannet (Head above water)—Norwegian

·         Insomnia--Norwegian

·         Mannen som ikke kunne le (The Man who could not laugh)—Norwegian

·         Max Manus—Norwegian

·         Misery Harbor—Norwegian

·         Veiviseren (Pathfinder)—Norwegian

·         Flammen & Citronen (Flame & Citron)--Danish

·         Pelle erobreren (Pelle the Conqueror)—Danish

·         Smilla’s Sense of Snow—Danish

·         Den Gode Viljen (The Best Intentions)—Swedish

·         Fanny och Alexander—Swedish

·         Pensjonat Oskar—Swedish

·         Scener ur ett äktenskap (Scenes from a Marriage)--Swedish

·         Brúðguminn (White Night Wedding)--Icelandic

Favorite horror/fantasy/thriller

·         De dødes tjern (Lake of the Dead)--Norwegian

·         Fritt Vilt (Cold Prey)-- Norwegian

·         Skjult (Hidden)—Norwegian

·         Villmark (Wilderness)—Norwegian

·         Besökarna (The Visitors)--Swedish

·         Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In)—Swedish

·         Nattevagten (Nightwatch)--Danish

·         Sauna--Finnish

Favorite TV shows/series

·         Beck--Swedish

·         Wallander--Swedish

·         Forbrydelsen (The Crime)--Danish

·         Strisser på Samsø (A Cop on Samsø)--Danish

·         Ørnen (The Eagle)—Danish

Talking about the hereafter

It is not often that society talks about what happens after death in any meaningful way. That topic is mostly left over to different religions to tackle, and is frowned upon in more pragmatic westernized cultures, like the one I live in at present. There is very little discussion at all concerning personal faith and beliefs about life or death. They are mostly ignored. Of course, the fascination with death as a process exists. There is no dearth of films or TV shows showing the deaths of one or many persons, the different modes of death, the fear of death and so on. Witness the popularity of TV series like CSI that dwell on the realistic aspects of deaths and autopsies and the science surrounding them. The goal of series like these is to get people to understand that science can help in crime-solving, and that is a good thing. But any real discussion (or attempt at one) of what happens to a person after death is almost taboo. So that the recent Hollywood film Hereafter is a welcome exception. It surprises me that it was made at all, and I’m guessing the only reason it was made was because Clint Eastwood directed it (he did not write it). I really enjoyed the film. It’s not a great film but it’s a very good film about very difficult subject matter. A few minutes into the movie, we are witness to a horrific tsunami that sweeps in over a vacation paradise, crushing much of what is in its path and taking many people with it. One of those people is a young French woman (Marie, beautifully played by Cecile de France) who apparently drowns and then is brought back to life by two men who rescue her. While she drowns she experiences visions of the hereafter, where she sees a world of shadow people (silhouettes) all walking toward her bathed in a kind of white light. She cannot let go of that vision and decides to find out more about it. Most of the people in her life—her boyfriend/boss, her colleagues—are cautiously supportive but ultimately move away from her, except for one man who puts her in touch with two potential publishers for the book she wants to write about after-death experiences. Her story is one of three in the film. The other one is about a real psychic (George, played by Matt Damon) who can contact the dead, who has retreated from that world in favor of a factory job that helps keep his mind off death. His story is poignant because you are witness to how his life can never be normal once people find out what he can do. They want to talk to their departed family members and friends, but when they find out what the dead are saying to them, they are disturbed enough by it so that it is not hard to understand why the psychic ends up mostly alone, with no friends and no girlfriend. The film does a good job of showing how many people view this kind of contact with the dead as a game. It is not hard to understand that either since most of what pass for psychics are probably fakers. The third story is about a young boy whose twin brother is killed by a car and how he wants to find a way to contact him. All three of these characters end up at a book fair in London—a kind of synchronicity of events that allows them to meet each other. The film is slow-moving, so that by the time you get to this point it is possible that some people have lost their attention span. But the film has to be slow-moving in order to build up credibility. We have to see that the psychic‘s gift is a real gift, that he suffers because he has that gift, that it results in his living a lonely life, and that his attempts to change his life are mostly half-hearted. He mostly always gives in to people who want him to help them, even though he has stopped contacting the dead as a job. I don’t know if I would call Hereafter a dark film as much as a searching one. All three characters are in search of clarity and hope. The psychic knows that the hereafter exists (he doesn’t question its existence) because he can talk for the dead, but he wants to live his life and not focus on death, the young woman is searching for answers to what happens after death because she had previously only focused on her successful earthly life and she has understood how fragile it is, and the little boy wants to talk to his brother who was his companion in life because his brother supported and protected him. The film doesn’t really provide any answers—how could it—since no one has come back from the hereafter to tell us what it is like. But it opens doors to thinking and talking about it and that is a good thing, even though there are no real answers. Perhaps there is some comfort in just talking about it at times. Talking about it doesn’t have to mean focusing on it obsessively. The message ultimately is that it is this life we are given and that we should live it and have hope, and that is what Marie and George find out at the end of the film. He changes his life by taking a definitive stance to not do any more readings, and he leaves California for a European vacation that starts in London. His path in London leads him to Marie, and by the end of the film you know that these two will somehow get together. Is it a Hollywood ending? Perhaps. In any case, it was an acceptable ending for this film (at least for me) because the characters had decided to focus on life and not on death. Perhaps because they no longer feared death, they could focus on life. But the film in no way diminishes their journeys, and that is one of the things I liked about it. It didn’t scoff or poke fun at their questionings and beliefs. I know that the film’s theme will either attract or push people away, and I’m guessing that is the reason that the reviewers are as divided as they are about the film. Nevertheless, I give Clint Eastwood credit for taking on the film, since the topic is not a simple one and opens the door to skepticism and rejection purely because of the theme alone.    

'Quiet desperation'

I wanted to really really like the movie Another Year, directed by Mike Leigh. After seeing it last night, I ended up somewhat liking it. Loving it? No. In fact, I ended up a bit irritated—I’m not sure at what. Myself for sitting through it? The theme? The passivity in the film? The depressing aspects in the film? The real-life aspects? The ending? There are so many things I could find fault with. I wonder if I expected something different. The acting was superb. But I guess I wanted something more than I got. I felt a bit cheated at the end, because we’re asked to care about characters about whom we’ve learned very little.

To paraphrase Pink Floyd, “Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way” from their song Time may actually be the clue to my feelings of irritation. The film is decidedly British from start to finish, and that is usually fine with me, as I am a real anglophile when it comes to most British film and TV dramas—such as the Jane Austen, Charlotte (and Emily) Bronte, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy tales made into films and series. It’s just that in this particular case, I felt like screaming a few times during the film and at the end—“do something”. I wanted some life to be injected into an otherwise rather dreary daily existence (non-life) for many of the characters. They mostly did nothing—lived life in the same way as they had done for years, passively waiting for life to change instead of trying to change it actively. This may be how some British people (and other people in other lands) live, but I am not sure it is how all of them live. I have read so many reviews of the film that talk about how blissfully-married Gerri and Tom are, and to be sure, their relationship is nice. They respect each other and are kind to each other after many years of marriage, but I found their relationship to be somewhat superficial. Perhaps that is what happens after so many years of marriage, but I never got the feeling that they were passionate about anything. They did what they needed to do but there was no real excess of feeling, either toward each other or toward their friends. There were a couple of instances when Gerri offers silent comfort to one or two friends, but otherwise I felt that Gerri and Tom kept their emotional distance. Emotional distance, or a kind of remoteness from the world around them, or efficient emotionality (just enough but no more) seemed to be the secret to their happiness. If this is true, it’s rather interesting, but nothing was made of this or of much else. As it was, so much in the film was understated, and that may be the British way. The presentation of the lives of their single friends was an exercise in slow torture. Mary and Ken (who was interested in Mary who rebuffed him) are single middle-agers who seem to have found no meaning in life whatsoever. Mary has a crush on Joe, Gerri and Tom’s son, who ends up with a girlfriend (Katie) by the time autumn comes and this sends Mary into a downward spiral. While the actors did an excellent job at portraying such lives on film, it was the most depressing depiction of single life I have seen up to now. Nothing in Mary or Ken’s lives seemed to work. They were unhappy, miserable, emotional vampires (especially Mary) who sucked the life out of most of the people with whom they came into contact. Perhaps there was some hope for Ken, I thought, since he seemed to be more jovial, but no, he was apparently close to being suicidal. If I was a single person and saw these types of portrayals, I’d be pissed as hell. I’d wonder, my God, is this how the world sees single middle-aged people—as a sorry lot of folk who are just desperate for happiness and meaning? Is that the only thing that gives their lives meaning—desperation for love and acceptance? What about their jobs? What about participating in charity work? There was nothing. While I know that some single people suffer from loneliness after many years of living alone, I know others who have made a lot of their lives. It is so unfair to peg singles in this way. I would have liked to have seen a middle-aged single person in this film that was happy, or if not happy, at least content with life. They do exist. It would have balanced out the misery. Tom’s brother Ronnie, newly-bereaved, was another silent stone-like personality. He didn’t seem to like his deceased wife very much, and he had no relationship whatsoever with his son Carl. Yet this is presented as though there is something very much wrong with Carl (who is a quite angry individual), when in fact this is the first time in the movie that there is any real life at all. I was interested to know why Carl was angry. How had he grown up? Did he have a good relationship with his mother? Why was his relationship with his father so awful? But none of these questions gets answered, and they are the interesting questions. It’s as though Mike Leigh is saying that in order to survive in this life and be happy, you have to dampen your feelings and your passion and live totally on an even keel. That would be impossible for most people I know. And if you do all this, you achieve balance and harmony, yes, but do you really know the people around you, the people with whom you are living? No wonder Carl was angry. There didn’t seem to be much honesty. And perhaps that is what I was looking for. Why couldn’t Gerri have said to Mary that she was hurt by her behavior toward Katie and Joe? Why did she save it all up for months at a time? Real friends would have talked it over. As it was, they were not real friends. So these are the things that stick in my mind. I guess you could say the film made an impression on me, but I think I would have been fine not having seen it. It did not really add any new insights to my life. And that is what I am looking for when I go to films like these. 

My favorite Christmas films

Getting ready for Christmas…..I just thought I’d make a list of my favorite Christmas films. They are the films I try to watch each year because they remind me of some nice times together with my family when I was a child, and because they really do get me into the Christmas spirit. Some of them are poignant reminders of a simpler time, some are funny takes on tried-and-true Christmas themes, but all of them are gentle reminders in their own way of what Christmas really is about—love from above and here on earth, and gratitude for the many blessings in our lives.

1.       It’s A Wonderful Life (from 1946, a wonderful story about the true meaning of life and how our lives impact on others, with the wonderful pairing of James Stewart and Donna Reed) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038650/

2.       Miracle on 34^th Street (the original from 1947—a warm and wonderful classic movie about Santa Claus and if he exists, with a great performance by Natalie Wood, a child at the time) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039628/

3.       White Christmas (from 1954, one of my mother’s favorite Christmas movies, and one of mine too)  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047673/

4.       Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (from 1964 with the beautiful song ‘Silver and Gold’ sung by Burl Ives. Rudolph saves Christmas) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058536/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMlqn_Hjyi8

5.       A Charlie Brown Christmas (from 1965 with the great jazz music by the late Vince Guaraldi—so many wonderful songs. Charlie Brown’s attempt to de-commercialize Christmas) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059026/

6.       How the Grinch Stole Christmas (the original from 1966; the Grinch tries to prevent Christmas from coming, and he fails. His little dog steals the film) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060345/

7.       Scrooge (from 1970, a musical with Albert Finney, based on the book ‘A Christmas Carol’, with the song ‘Happiness’ that will make you cry) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066344/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k5wsEHVy-4

8.       The Snowman (from 1982, a very nice British classic about a little boy and a snowman that comes to life) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084701/ with the lovely song 'Walking in the Air' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubeVUnGQOIk

9.       National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (from 1989 with Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo; some priceless funny scenes) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097958/

10.   Home Alone (from 1990, another modern little classic that gets to you. Could never understand how the family could leave their little boy behind—but that’s the fun!) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099785/

11.   The Nightmare Before Christmas (a modern little classic from 1993 with some poignant songs; Jack Skellington in Halloween Town decides to ‘do’ Christmas because he is bored with Halloween, with some highly unusual results to say the least) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/

A 'great new life'

I went to see the new Woody Allen film—‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger’—last week with some friends. We enjoyed it and I think it is one of his best films even though it really doesn’t cover so much new ground. He is always focused on personal relationships in one form or another and this film was no exception. The actors and actresses did excellent jobs, especially Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Watson as an older married couple who divorce when he finds her boring and resistant to the changes he wants to make to keep himself young; he falls in love with and marries a prostitute much younger than himself. His ex-wife flounders about trying to figure out her life, visiting a fortune teller who keeps telling her that it will all work out as well as getting her to believe that she has lived before. As might be expected, it goes to hell for Anthony Hopkins and his new wife when he discovers that she is still sleeping around, preferably with hunky younger men. She ends up pregnant but he knows deep down that it’s not his baby. He realizes he’s made a huge mistake at the end of the film. At some point during the film, before he finds out that he is going to be a father again, he asks his ex-wife for another chance, and she refuses. She has also met someone, an older widower who is a spiritualist. Their daughter’s marriage has also fallen apart; she is in love with her boss at the art gallery where she works, and her husband is in love with the neighbor woman that he watches from his window. There is more to the plot, but it is worth watching the film to find this out. I recommend it.

Strangely enough, my friends and I actually felt a bit sorry for Anthony Hopkins’ character. Yes he was stupid, yes he was vain, but his desire to stay young and to think young was not so strange and actually made him seem quite human. He made the typical mistakes that men his age make when they think they are going to have a wonderful new life without their old wives dragging them down. The problem is that they do enjoy that new life for a while; then reality hits—the younger women they’re with want children, a house, money, material goods, a good life, and they want these wealthy older men to provide it for them. And these men step up to the plate. I am always surprised by the eagerness with which older men leave their older wives for younger women; they start new families with these women when they are in their sixties and seventies. I cannot see the appeal in this. I couldn’t imagine wanting to take care of a screaming baby or babies again after I had done it once when I was younger and had more patience. These men don’t look ahead and see what they’re getting themselves into. They don’t really get their new and improved life after all—freedom, lots of sex, no responsibilities. They may get a new and eager sex partner for a while, and then they end up sharing her with her young children or not having much sex at all after the eager young thing discovers how exhausting it is to be a mother. So how is this new life so much different from the ‘boring old married life’ they left? Go figure.

But even if one understands this, still, growing old doesn’t seem to be an attractive thing, especially in today’s world where the emphasis is on being young and staying young forever. There doesn’t seem to be a point to growing old anymore. Years ago, the elderly were revered for their life experience and wisdom. Now they are considered bothersome in a social and in a work context—you are old at 53 and it’s difficult to find a new job if you are over that age. That has been researched in Norway and found to be true. So why would anyone think that turning 70 would be something to look forward to? It’s got to explain the craze for plastic surgery that turns women’s faces into feline-looking catastrophes or the mini-skirts on women who are over sixty, or the overuse of makeup and perfume. Or men’s obsessions with the gym and looking toned, with comb-overs to hide the bald spots and with hair implants, and all the rest. We want to look our best and that’s a good thing. But it’s not a good thing when we try to look thirty years younger than we are.

It’s a tough world we live in these days. Some women experience a double whammy of rejection. They have to deal with not being wanted in their workplaces because they are ‘too old’ or outdated as well as with husbands who are eyeing every young thing they see. Some younger women (married or not) have no respect for marriage whatsoever—they think nothing of going after older married men to have some fun. Texting, sexting, flirtatious comments, risqué photos, emails—they use all means at their disposal to get what they want. They may also provide these men with a shoulder to cry on (‘my wife doesn’t understand me’) or they provide them with a sense of virility if they cry on these men’s shoulders (‘my boss is mean to me or my boss is harassing me’) that leads to these men trying to help them. Either way, it is so clichéd and banal to witness, and I’ve seen it happen several times now. Some of them even inform the wives of these men that their husbands are interested in them in a desperate ploy to sow doubt and trouble in the marriage. I wonder if these women ever look ahead (at least the ones who are married) and realize that they will be facing the exact same threat from younger women when they themselves have reached middle and old age. I guess they don’t, because if they did, they would behave more respectfully. These types of situations help to reinforce my personal views about women and financial independence, especially if I am asked for advice. Love is love, and finances are finances. My advice to women is to make sure you can take care of yourself and to make sure you have plenty of money by the time you reach old age. That way, no matter what happens--your life will not go to ruin if your husband leaves you for some sweet young thing. If that’s feminism, so be it. I call it being smart and taking care of oneself as a woman. So many women seem to have forgotten this, and so few women seem to look ahead, and that seems strange to me given the fact that nearly one in two marriages still ends in divorce these days. Men always seem to land on their feet financially. Most of the women I know who have been ‘left’ for younger women do not. And without that financial cushion, there is no great new life for them.

Movie Nights

When we were teenagers, Friday and Saturday nights were often our movie nights. We would make our way to the Music Hall on Main Street in Tarrytown or to the Strand Theater on Beekman Avenue in North Tarrytown (now Sleepy Hollow). Both theaters catered to the horror movie crowd, and there was no dearth of horror films available for our viewing pleasure when we were growing up. The interesting thing was that the Music Hall showed a lot of foreign horror films, something that I have reflected on in later years because it was quite unusual. The films that come to mind are the Italian horror films directed by Dario Argento, with titles like ‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’ (from 1970) and ‘Four Flies on Grey Velvet’ (from 1971). They made quite an impression on an impressionable teenager. I was reminded of them recently because I happened to watch another of Argento’s films, ‘Tenebre (Unsane)’ on TV the other night, which was quite violent, and it struck me how violent the murders in the earlier films were, already at that time (the early 1970s), albeit done in typical Argento style. We also watched a lot of the Christopher Lee vampire horror films from the 1970s as well as a number of psychological horror films like ‘A Child’s Play’ (1972) and ‘You’ll Like My Mother’ (1972) with Richard Thomas of later Waltons fame. My sister might say that I dragged her rather unwillingly to some of them, which I probably did. And even though ‘Death Wish’ (from 1974) with Charles Bronson was not a horror film, it should actually be classified as such considering the subject matter. We had to sneak into the Music Hall to see the R-rated Alfred Hitchcock film ‘Frenzy’ (from 1972) since we were still underage. No one stopped us or caught us. There were many other types of films that we went to see besides horror. I remember keeping a list of the movies I had seen starting around the time I was thirteen and since it was not unusual for us to see about four movies a month, by the time I was nineteen I think I had seen several hundred movies. Going to the movies was part of our social life—we met friends and went to the movies, dated and went to the movies, and even now, I still meet friends for an occasional movie night. But I will often go to see a movie alone—I enjoy sitting in the theater with other people and experiencing the movie together.

The Music Hall and Strand theaters eventually closed for business as cinemas and were replaced by more modern multiplex cinemas in Yonkers and Ossining that we made good use of as we moved into our twenties and thirties. The new cinemas sold huge boxes of popcorn and giant-size candy packages, the theaters were huge and the sound systems were loud. We continued to see all kinds of films, from horror to romantic comedies to war films to costume dramas. We liked them all and still do, although our movie nights now are more geared toward romantic comedies rather than horror—we like to laugh and keep it light. Reality is tough enough sometimes and the violence around us is real enough without having to see it brutally re-enacted on screen in living HD color. But every now and then, I still enjoy being scared, even if I have to cover my eyes with my hands during the scary or violent parts. This was definitely the case a few years ago when I went to see ‘The Grudge’ (the American version from 2004) with a friend. Both of us had problems sleeping for a few days afterwards. Other people have seen the film and it did not have the same effect on them—who knows why it bothered us the way it did—but it definitely had something to do with the facial distortions and the sudden appearances of the female ghost and her creepy son who would silently rise up from the floor along the side of the bed.

When I first moved to Oslo, it was still possible to see many films at the older and grander theaters like Gimle and Soria Moria in addition to the cinemas that showed multiple films. Soria Moria is closed now, but Gimle is still in business. Modernized multiplex theaters dominate now. The theaters here have always shown the most popular American films so it has never been a problem to keep up with the new films. They do not dub films here as they do in other European countries except for the young children’s films, and even those are offered in two versions, the dubbed version and the original version.

Scandinavian films tend to be dark, melancholy, and a bit depressing, at least the ones I saw when I first moved to Norway, influenced no doubt by the dark winters, the coldness, grayness and long summer nights. My opinion of Finnish films (at least the ones I saw in the early 1990s) was that they were just plain crazy, with binge drinking, nudity, sex and sometimes violent behavior, and they often lacked a coherent storyline. Danish and Norwegian films from the 1980s and 1990s often dealt with drugs, addiction, prostitution and other depressing themes. Some of them were good, most of them were forgettable. Danish films that I enjoyed were ‘Pelle the Conqueror’ from 1987 and ‘Smilla’s Sense of Snow’ from 1997—both were directed by Bille August. Sweden had the internationally famous film-maker Ingmar Bergman who made such classic films as ‘Fanny and Alexander’, ‘Cries and Whispers’, and ‘Hour of the Wolf’. The late 1990s saw the re-emergence of Norwegian romantic comedies, some of them quite touching and funny; some of the comedies from the 1950s and 1960s were very funny as well. One of the best Norwegian comedy films I have seen is a film called ‘Mannen som ikke kunne le’ (The Man Who Could Not Laugh with Rolf Wesenlund from 1968)—you cannot watch it without thinking of Monty Python—it has that absurd humor that makes it stand out. Many of the recent Norwegian horror films are quite scary—‘Fritt Vilt’ (Cold Prey—a psycho slasher film from 2006) and ‘Død Snø’ (Dead Snow—a film about Nazi zombies from 2009) come to mind. But one of the best Norwegian psychological horror/thriller films is from 1958, called ‘De dødes tjern’ (Lake of the Dead or Lake of the Damned). I saw it on TV when I first moved to Norway and it was a ‘skummel’ (creepy) film about a group of people that spend their holiday at a cabin in the forest that holds many dark secrets, and how they deal with the disappearance of one of them.

As long as movies keep being made, I’ll always find my way to the cinema for my movie nights—American, Italian, Scandinavian, French, British, Spanish and many other international films. I will always prefer the cinema experience to the DVD/TV experience, but I must admit that it is good to have the opportunity to watch films I missed for some reason when they were first released.

From 'Sicko' to Socialized Medicine

I watched Michael Moore’s movie ‘Sicko’ recently on TV. I had not seen it when it was in the theaters. It was an interesting movie to watch—a typical Moore movie with him shuffling about everywhere in pursuit of his targets. In this case he was interested in specific health insurance cases in the USA that had turned into fiascos for the patients involved. Some of the patients were 9/11 volunteers and firemen, and of course that gets to you right away. Here they served their country willingly in a time of need, and the greedy insurance companies deny their claims for treatment. He made a lot of good points in the movie, and showed (as best he could) how healthcare functions in other countries, for example Canada, France, England and Cuba. He did not visit Scandinavia or other countries in southern Europe. It is one of those movies that should be watched and discussed by students in high school and college. I learned quite a bit that I never knew before, for example, that it was Nixon and his cabinet that were interested initially in setting up what eventually became HMOs like Kaiser Permanente in California, medical care for profit. I also was surprised to find out that France had unbelievably good healthcare (and other social) benefits, probably the best in Europe.

I know a number of people in the USA at present who are struggling to make ends meet. Most of them are self-employed and health insurance is not a top priority, even though some of them have health issues like high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems. Some of them have children. One of them claims to have gotten his high blood pressure under control by changing his diet and eating more healthily, and I hope that is the case, because he is not going to the doctor to have his cholesterol levels measured or blood pressure levels checked because visits to the doctor and lab tests cost money. It is possible now to check your own blood pressure at home with a little monitor that is sold (at least here in Norway) in the pharmacies. It costs around 100 dollars and is well-worth the investment; I purchased one several years ago. If it is possible one day to measure my own cholesterol levels by pricking my finger to draw a little blood for a test kit, I’ll do that too. I’ll do anything to keep me out of doctors’ offices. I have finally realized the value of preventive medicine—taking care of oneself, eating a good diet, exercising, and not overdoing stress. The problems arise when genetics kick in—when your family history of cardiovascular disease or glaucoma or diabetes rears its ugly head and demands attention. What do you do then? You cannot ignore the problem, and diet by itself may control but not cure the problem. Then treatment with drugs or surgery may be required at some point. At that point, it might be nice to know that your eventual operation will be covered by your health insurance so that your illness does not bankrupt you. Such considerations are not problematic in Norway generally. For example, if I need an operation, the cost is covered due to socialized medicine. That is a relief. If I visit my doctor for a regular checkup, buy prescription drugs or have some lab testing done, I may have to pay out of my own pocket until I reach the deductible which is set by the government (about 300 to 400 US dollars for 2010). Once I reach the deductible, I get what is called a ‘frikort’ (free card) where the government then pays any future costs for that calendar year. But the prices I have to pay before I reach my deductible are not outrageous, at least not in my opinion. The last time I visited my ‘fastlege’ (primary care physician or regular GP) I paid her about 30 dollars for a 15-20 minute consultation. I don’t know what it costs these days in the USA to visit your regular GP. Dental visits and visits to the optometrist or eye doctor are not covered by socialized medicine generally except in some specific cases. Dental care costs about half of what it costs in the USA but prices are slowly increasing. Eyeglasses and contact lenses cost about the same as what one would pay in the States. A visit to the optometrist who does a routine eye exam costs about 50 dollars. Eyeglasses of course can cost a fortune depending upon whether or not you need special lenses or if you want the latest designer eyeglass frames from Versace.

I have not had much need of the healthcare system in Norway in the twenty years I’ve lived here. The most serious problem I have had was a major slipped disc that almost led to surgery some years ago. Luckily I escaped the operation. But then I saw another side of the public healthcare system, and that was a bit more disconcerting. I had to wait quite a long time to get an appointment to see my regular GP, so that had I waited the time they wanted me to wait, I would have recovered by that time (I had in fact recovered by that time). I was not considered sick enough to be admitted to the emergency room at the local hospital, so I ended up paying a physician who worked in a private healthcare facility (yes, there is private healthcare here too) to see me immediately so that he could schedule the necessary tests to confirm that I had a lower back prolapse and to give me the prescription for pain medication that I needed. The private facilities cost much more money than the public healthcare facilities. The advantage with them is that you can make an appointment to see a specialist without a referral from the primary care physician. That is terrific in my book. It is just irritating to be in pain and to have to see your regular GP first whose only role is to give you permission to see a specialist. My thoughts on this are—if I know I have back pain, then I can call the specialist myself and make an appointment. I don’t need a middle-man or middle-woman. So that is one advantage of private healthcare. The other is that you don’t have to wait very long to see the doctor as you might have to do in the public healthcare system. If you pay an annual membership fee of about 225 dollars, you can get treatment at a private healthcare facility at discounted prices (compared to non-members) and in some cases this is well-worth the money because it saves time and aggravation. But of course critics of the private facilities have a point when they say that these facilities are undermining the public healthcare system. Many of the doctors choose to work in the private rather than the public facilities because they can earn more money. But generally I would say that public healthcare and socialized medicine function fairly well in Norway, despite that it can take a while to see your doctor and/or to get a referral to see a specialist. The major problem at present is that healthcare costs are soaring here just like they are in the USA, and we already pay high enough taxes (25% sales tax; taxes on gasoline and alcohol) to cover the costs of socialized medicine. It will not be possible to offer each patient individualized care without it decimating the public healthcare system. This is the same discussion that is going on in the USA at present, except that it is the health insurance companies who are trying to deny claims and cut costs. Their motive may be profit, whereas here the motive is to prevent costs from spiraling out of control. It is not a problem that has many obvious solutions, because the population is living longer and illnesses such as cancer (with costly treatments and testing) will therefore be more prevalent.

When I worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, I had very good medical coverage as I recall. I needed an operation while I worked there and ended up (luckily) paying only a fraction of the total cost. Doctor’s visits were cheap, and prescriptions cost me 5 dollars a month. When my husband and I worked at UCSF in California in 1993, we were part of the Kaiser Permanente system of medical coverage. We have only good things to say about their coverage and we never had a problem with them denying our claims. They also offered very good dental and eye care coverage. But we were not their most frequent users and I have no idea what it would have been like had either of us needed treatment for a chronic illness or the like. That is the key point—that healthcare coverage becomes tricky when the health problems become more complex and difficult. Therefore it does not seem fair to me that if you lucked out by working for a company that gives you great coverage at minimal cost to you, that this will guarantee you treatment while if you are self-employed, you are not guaranteed the same treatment unless you pay through the nose for it. Both parties work hard, work long hours, strive to meet deadlines and goals, and stress is a part of the workdays of both. The health problems that arise for both parties may be exactly the same but the end result in terms of treatment and coverage (or lack of treatment and coverage) may be quite disparate. This is the best argument for general healthcare coverage for all, in my opinion. But general healthcare coverage will not preclude the eventual and necessary discussions that are coming/have arrived for most westernized countries—how to tackle the soaring medical costs in all segments of the population—a major problem for the coming years.

Channeling Harry Potter

Universal Studios in Orlando Florida just opened a new attraction for all of us who are Harry Potter fans—The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The author of the Harry Potter books, JK Rowling, has toured the attraction, as have some of the major actors in the Harry Potter movies, and they were suitably impressed. One of my Facebook friends from high school just got back from visiting Hogwarts with her daughter. They posted a lot of photos and I must say that it looks impressive and just made me want to get on a plane to get there to experience it. I have read all the books and seen the movies and I know how I want it all to look. And it sounds and looks that way from the news and photos http://media.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/news.php and http://www.universalorlando.com/harrypotter/.

Reading the Harry Potter books was a magical experience—I cannot recall being so immersed in a fantasy world as I have been in the world of Hogwarts. I have read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy and they fascinated me, but the world of Harry Potter was far more appealing to me. I shared the experience of each book with several friends here in Norway and with my sister in New York. I remember plowing through either the sixth or the seventh book on a flight to NY one summer—the hours just flew by. My sister has excellent recall for most of what happened in the books; I do not. I remember the general storylines and the characters but am not good with all the story details or the chronology of the stories. But that doesn’t seem to matter somehow, because it is the atmosphere in the books that you remember best and the relationships between the main characters.

My sister and I have met in London England several times during the past ten years. On one of those occasions, she brought with her Harry Potter jellybeans. I think they actually had a different name but I don’t recall it now. What I do remember is sitting in our hotel room tasting the different jellybeans—several of them quite nauseating—perhaps not so surprising since one of them was supposed to taste like vomit. We were like kids daring each other to taste something disgusting. We also took a trip to Cambridge on a train that left from King’s Cross Station in London. It was at King’s Cross Station that we saw the 9 ¾ platform, which is apparently the platform that the train to Hogwarts used. It was cool to see it.

I don’t think we ever really grow so old that we cannot remember what it was like to be a child and how amazing it was to discover a book or books that captured our imagination and heart. I think that experience as a child marks us for life. You remember those books for always. For me, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island, among many others, stand out as books that set the stage for a lifelong interest in reading and fantasy literature.