Michael Haneke recieving Palme D'Or 2012

REVIEW: ‘Amour,’ a Winter Sonata in Love Major

I finally got to see Amour, the Austrian film by Michael Haneke that’s actually in French and set in Paris.  It’s not for lack of trying; I simply couldn’t find a theater in L.A. showing it.  You would have thought that a film nominated for five major Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actress and Foreign Film, would be playing at the Arclight, the best darned cinema in the world.  But no.  Fandango didn’t list it as playing near me, either.  Finally, I tweeted Sony Picture Classics in frustration and reprimanded them for not showing such a prestigious film in L.A. of all places. 

French legend Annie Girardot

Remembering Annie—Part Three

Please read Part One and Part Two first.

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Recently, I’ve come to view a person’s path in life as being guided by something akin to a GPS navigation system.  I’ve even taken to calling the chick who lives inside that system, placidly and emotionlessly issuing directions, as Felicity Common-Sense.  The mistakes we make, major or minor, silly or fatal, are those turns in the road Ms. Common-Sense told us to make that we ignored.  Never mind: she usually resets and finds an alternate route to get us where we are meant to be.

As a modern Don Quixote, I have often switched Ms. Common-Sense off completely, no doubt annoyed by her monotonous robotic drone pointing at obvious directions that haven’t excited me, preferring instead to go off on my own tortuous, seemingly nonsensical path.