“The Music Never Stopped” tonight On Demand, movie based on a book written by neurologist Oliver Sacks tells the moving, true story of how a father and son lose and find each other through the music of the 60’s. Ever feel that certain songs preserve personal history and stop time? That’s what this film is all about in the most extreme sense.

Mad Men Season 5: Finale

"This is what happens when you have the artistic temperament but you are not an artist."


Beautiful nuance.  Devastating sentence.  More beautiful and more devastating when delivered, as it was, with a French accent.

Attended an engaging, intimate discussion with Jim O’Hara of Major League Baseball Productions as part of a semi-weekly series hosted by the NY Chapter of National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences  (the people behind the Emmy Awards).  Among other projects, Jim is the one primarily responsible for the Yankeeography programs we see on YES.

                    

He got his start on This Week in Baseball in the 1970’s.  He gave an interested audience the inside baseball on just about every bit of footage having to with major league baseball.  He was poetic on how clips, interviews, stills, music, and narration dissolve into a final product, and expansive on the vast reach of the MLB video archive.  He is clearly a man who enjoys his job.

Never Let Me Go

Maybe it was the hour or the mood I happened to be in, but I stumbled upon “Never Let Me Go” late last night and I could not let go.  Narrative voice can be such a strong element.  When the voice is Carey Mulligan’s, how can you help but fall in love?  The eerie beauty of this story about a future in which some live different lives than others in the name of progress had me from the first few words.

The scene that reveals the innocence of the young man who believes that by creating a body of exceptional art that reveals our souls we can stave off the inevitable is touching, tragic and archetypal on so many levels.  I won’t forget it soon.

Still shots like these three – red barns on the hillside, trees seen from below moving in the wind, and a solitary tree at the end – complement the storyline.  

This is a strange, effective coming of age story.  It succeeds in opening our eyes at the same pace it does those of the characters.   Like any successful story it gives us the specifics of specific lives vividly, but something happens to us while we watch that makes us feel, despite the differences, that some part of our own story is being told, and this keeps our attention.

Usually when I learn from the credits that a film is based on a book, I rush to get it, but this time I’m going to wait awhile.  I can’t have my heart broken again so soon.