Quick Recap

Hit the ground running this week; highlights included a conversation with Ben Kingsley (as an audience member, not the interviewer) and a preview of The Muppets at the Museum of the Moving Image. I also went to a poetry reading at the Morgan Library & Museum's exhibt on Islamic manuscript paintng (a friend of a friend was reading poetry by Rami in the original Persian).

Kingsley was a good storyteller, answering just about every question with a story.  His theme for the evening seemed to be a childhood in which he was allegedly "not seen and not heard," for which he has more than compensated professionally.  I like the MMI's interview format; they showed short clips from a variety of Kingsley's films and used that to get the conversation flowing.  The clips ranged from Gandhi to Hugo, which is not very far alphabetically, but spans nearly three decades of his career (1982 to 2011).  In the Gandhi scene, Kingsley pointed out the seemingly minor bits of dialogue from other characters (soldiers on a hilltop) which actually provide an important frame for the audience in giving a sense of the drama and significance of the unassuming fellow who alights from the train.  In person, Kingsley comes across as slight and trim; probably the right word is compact.

MMI was essentially shut down for renovations for the past few years, so I became a member over their grand re-opening weekend back in January, to see if I could encourage them to remain open.  However, I've only been to a few of their events so far (sneak preview of 50/50 and a conversation with Frank Oz).

I was also going to go to a sneak preview of The Way there with the director live and in person, but gave away my ticket so I could see a non-celebrity preview of the same movie the same night with friends instead.  That preview would be more social, and much closer to home; and I needed to get up early the next day.

One mini digression (as if this entire post were not a digression) - the guy behind me in line to see the sneak preview mentioned that he himself had actually walked the Camino.  That was really cool.  But after our respective friends arrived, my gang was making unkind remarks about a media-friendly camping-out event, and my spider sense picked up non-sympathetic vibes from his gang.  

Still need to see MMI's muppet exhibit.
At the Morgan, I spent a lot of time looking at what looked like a Persian version of St George & the dragon (A Qizilbash and His Horse Entangled by a Dragon) and amazingly intricate drawings of composite beasts. Overall, the exhibit reminded me of The King's Book of Kings, which I loved as a kid.