Month: June 2021

Movie Review: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, One and a Half StarsLeave a comment

It’s 1927 in Chicago. The legendary “Mother of the Blues,” Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) is recording two songs at a music studio. While everyone waits for Ma to arrive (as she is usually late), the director and the producer are nervous. The band is trying to rehearse, but arguments arise quickly. One after the other, the band members get to tell the stories of their lives.

I didn’t know what to expect from this movie, but I felt like I was watching a play. Sure enough, it was based on a play as I read later. The dialog, the structure, all were taken from the play.

The racial tensions of the 1920s come out loud and clear, and Ma Rainey knows that she has power over “white folks” only because she is a star and “they need her.”

This movie won two Oscars, one for Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling, and the other in Best Achievement in Costume Design. It was nominated for three others, including Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role and Best Achievement in Production Design. Needless to say, it is highly acclaimed.

While I appreciated the illustration of racial discrimination and the subject matter in general, I found it was a hard movie to watch and I had to work at staying engaged and interested. It didn’t do too much for me as a movie.

The Joy of Growing Vegetables

On By Norbert HauptIn Nature1 Comment

We put a zucchini plant into our little garden, and it’s producing like crazy. Here is the first one we broke off.

Zucchini – banana for scale

It’s huge. We don’t know if it’s ripe yet, but we’ll cut it open and find out. There are several more growing in the plant.

Then we wanted to know whether you could grow a pumpkin from a seed. So I put a single seed into a planter pot and within six days of watering it several times a day, it produced a little plant.

Pumpkin plant – banana for scale

It’s a tiny shoot with two leaves. When gets a bit bigger in another week or so, I’ll put it into the ground.

The pot on the left has onion seeds (green onions), and the one on the right is another pumpkin.

 

The Artists in my Life

On By Norbert HauptIn Art, FeelingsLeave a comment

Bob Dylan turned 80 on May 24, 2021. I clearly remember Bob Dylan’s 40th birthday. I have been around almost as long as Dylan, I guess.

I am reading Life Magazine’s special edition for this 80th birthday. It’s a mini biography, of course with lots of photos as you expect from Life Magazine, and as I am reading about the old songs that had such an influence on my in the 1970ies, I remember Dylan and some of the other artists in my life.

One a musician, one a composer, one a writer and one a philosopher. I painted their portraits. Here they are in chronological order:

Ludwig van Beethoven – painted in 1979, 36 x 36 inches

08/79 Oil 36×36

 

Henry Miller – painted in 1979, 36 x 36 inches

06/79 Oil 36×36

 

Friedrich Nietzsche – painted in 1980, 24 x 18 inches

 5/80 Oil 24×18

Bob Dylan – painted in 2001, 28 x 22 inches

01/01 Oil 28×22

I lost track of the first three paintings early on. I have no idea if they even still exist somewhere in somebody’s attic. But the Dylan one is still with me, albeit in a stack in the garage with all the other paintings that never got framed or rated sufficiently to be taking up wall space in our house.

I painted Dylan the year he turned 60. It seems like yesterday.

Those are the four artists in my life that rated a painting.