Unresolved Endings (not necessarily a bad thing)
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) when they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Oscar nominations for films released in 2020 or (due to the pandemic) held back until recently for theatrical presence in early 2021 or were intended for theatrical release but shifted to streaming (and, maybe also, anything always just intended for streaming during this time period—not sure about that) were announced on Monday, March 15, 2021, full list found at this site, repeated as well in the Related Links section (way, way below) of every Two Guys posting until at least a bit after those awards are given (Sunday, April 25, 2021). In addition, this week’s section of Other Cinema-Related Stuff (almost as far down as … Links) has a few Oscar-related-articles too, including how Netflix releases took 35 of the 118 total competitive finalists' slots and Mank (David Fincher, 2020) got the most (10) for any individual film. As usual, my personal choices for how those lists should be filled out only meet the Oscar nods about 50% of the time (with the caveat I haven’t seen The Father [Florian Zeller] yet, won’t be able to for about another week, so that could—probably will—shake up a few of my lists), yet I can’t blame these Hollywood amateurs for not having the fantastic insights I have about this grand-artform/entertainment-industry because all they do is make these pictures while I have the lofty position of watching/evaluating them, but I do try to be humble about it. Closer to awards-night I’ll post a detailed account of all 23 category Oscar-noms with my predictions of winners/preferred choices as the various cases may be.
Opening Chatter (no spoilers): For now, though, let’s just continue with reviews of the week, including one of the top awards contenders, Sound of Metal (Oscar options for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Film Editing; also up for Best Original Screenplay from the Writers Guild of America [ceremony this coming Sunday, March 21, 2021], Best Actor from the Screen Actors Guild [ceremony on Sunday, April 4, 2021], and was nominated for Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama by the Golden Globes voters [lost posthumously to Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom {George C. Wolfe, 2020; review in our December 31, 2020 posting} back on February 28, 2021]). The premise here is a heavy metal duo (also lovers off-stage) face a crisis when the frantic drummer starts having massive hearing loss, putting their career and his self-understanding in terrible jeopardy. Well worth seeing (if you’re not a metal fan, no worries, there’s not that much of that music in the film), but you do have to be a subscriber to Amazon Prime (free, though). Another freebee for those of us on Prime is a unique opportunity for Two Guys in the Dark to review as it was submitted to us by the director-screenwriter, Bishrel Mashbat, In the Land of Lost Angels, seemingly the first Mongolian-American film, about a couple of young male immigrants who need to raise a large pot of cash quickly so they concoct the kidnapping of the son of a wealthy L.A. guy (I love the poetic sense of this title, given the story’s location). Two Guys try to respond to such requests, if possible, whenever they come along, with this one done really well as a both a tense crime-thriller and a penetrating character study of the 2 leads, so if you’re on Prime, please give it a look after reading the review in Short Takes below. Also in that section I’ll offer suggestions for some choices on the Turner Classic Movies channel (but too much extra text for line-justified-layout like you see here [Related Links stuff at each posting’s end is similarly-ragged], at least to be done by this burned-out-BlogSpot-drone—oh, tedious software!) along with that standard dose of industry-related-trivial-info.
Here’s the trailer for Sound of Metal:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate
that same button or use the “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $. To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid those important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters like this:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
What Happens: A heavy-metal-duo (never caught a stage name), Lou Berger (Olivia Cooke) on guitar/vocals and Ruben Stone (Riz Ahmed) on aggressive drums—lovers off-stage—getting by with driving their RV around the country playing one-off-gigs in small clubs when he suddenly realizes he’s having noticeable trouble with his hearing. Medical analysis shows he’s only discerning about 24%-27% of what he encounters, with the remainder rapidly declining. His best hope is cochlear implants, an expensive procedure ($40-80 thousand), so he wants to keep performing to raise cash for such, she objects knowing that continued exposure to their loudness increases his chances for total deafness. She’s also concerned this trauma will flip Ruben, a recovering heroin addict (clean for 4 years), back into drug-dependency so she gets his sponsor to find Ruben a church-sponsored-deaf-addicts-shelter to help him learn to deal with this oppressive difficulty as music (and Lou) is all he knows. She goes back to her home in Belgium; he finally learns to trust the shelter leader, Joe (Paul Raci), a recovering alcoholic who lost hearing in Vietnam, later lost wife and kids. Ruben gets comfortable with the other adults—as well as children (not former addicts, just part of the enclave), taught by Diane (Lauren Ridloff)—learns sign language, teaches drumming to the kids; Joe offers him an opportunity to stay on for good, but ultimately Ruben sells his drums, mixing board, RV to afford the surgery which leads Joe to ask him to leave this community. After the implanting Ruben finds he can hear somewhat better but often encounters frustrating distortion; he then goes overseas to visit Lou, finds her content in a renewed life with her formerly-estranged-father, Richard (Mathieu Amalric), experimenting with her own music but now a bit distant from Ruben (her long red hair’s cut short as well) even as he talks about recording an album. ⇒Richard offers for him to stay but, realizing he should leave, Ruben slips away one early morning, still fights the distortion so he sits in a park, removes the implant processors from the sides of his head (don’t know if that’s a permanent choice or if he can plug them in again), with the story ending in silence.⇐
So What? Sound of Metal offers the most-aggressive-yet-fully-compelling-drumming I’ve seen in a film since Miles Teller tortured the skins in the magnificent Whiplash (Damien Chazelle, 2014; review in our October 16, 2014 posting)—and because we’re referencing Oscars this week, I’ll note that earlier-high-energy-experience (with much more actual drumming footage than …Metal) won Oscars for Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing (back when the Academy offered a prize for both [often with the same, or nearly so, nominees in each category] before combining them to just Best Sound this year), and Supporting Actor (J.K. Simmons). Further, just as Teller had to do his own furious drum work in Whiplash (no hiding behind a piano as with some non-musician-actors), Oscar/SAG/Golden Globes-nominated Ahmed has to do his own on-screen-drumming (bolstered by a daily prep of 2-hour-percussion-lessons along with also having to learn American Sign Language) so I commend him both for his on-screen-excellence and his dedication to mastering his role (as evidenced by his 34 wins, 71 nominations from numerous awards-groups to this point in various roles, including being the first Asian male [British-Pakistani background] and first Muslim to win a primetime Emmy [mini-series: The Night Of, HB0, 2016]—also Oscar’s first nominated Muslim actor).
Hard to say how this film will do in its various Oscar categories (although Ahmed, Raci respectively won Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor from the National Board of Review; Ahmed’s going to have a tough time topping Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey’s …, though, given Boseman’s combination of skilled performance and RIP-respect for a great talent taken from us far too soon), but if … Metal doesn’t get the Oscar for Best Sound I’ll be shocked.* Given the careful attention (as best I understand it as an outsider) this film gives to the realities of the deaf community (the likes of which we’ve rarely seen on-screen since Children of a Lesser God [Randa Haines, 1986], which won Marlee Matlin a Best Actress Oscar), including hiring many supporting cast members with various non-hearing-abilities, it also serves as a rarely-depicted-insight into the lives of people who see themselves as differently-oriented, not as handicapped, which Ruben begins to know/accept as well.
*This video (11:10) goes into extensive detail about the exquisite construction of ... Metal’s sound design, informative about crucial filmic elements we don't always consciously perceive (an ad breaks in at about 5:00, though, while roughly the final minute’s a pitch for the sponsor of this YouTube site).
I’d be remiss if I didn’t note this is the only film I’ve seen about hearing loss since I had to confront a bit of that reality myself a little over a year ago, after noting increasing difficulty with catching all the nuances of dialogue I'd hear in movie theaters, preferring to turn the TV sound up to levels possibly bothersome to my condo neighbors in the later night hours (my wonderful wife, Nina, has had to deal with much worse than that, her right ear suddenly going completely deaf when she was in her 20s—although her one good ear often yields better results than both of mine). A hearing test confirmed I have significant drop-off as I get into the higher frequencies so I finally got hearing aids in Feb. 2020, just before the pandemic hit, so the irony of taking action to improve vocal comprehension in movie theaters just before they closed hasn’t been lost on me. I usually get by well enough without the aids on a daily basis (don’t wear them at all when out and about using a mask due to almost losing one early on because of a strap conflict) but do use them with nighttime TV (even add captions also for movies based on what I find to be often-inadequate-sound-mixing—especially when music inevitably comes in noticeably louder than previous/following dialogue). My problems aren’t nearly as severe as Ruben’s nor do I deal with the distortions he gets from those implants, but my altered reality—minor as it is—certainly helps me appreciate his dilemma more empathetically, sensing such trauma.
Bottom Line Final Comments: I’ve noted how well-regarded this film is by awards-groups, 65 wins and 155 nominations so far, with the CCAL also enthusiastic—Rotten Tomatoes evaluators offering 96% positive reviews, the normally-more-miserly-folks at Metacritic also highly supportive (for them), with an 82% average score (one of the best of 2021 for anything both they and I have explored). I’m highly supportive also—especially for the manner in which it uses sound distortion to give us fully (well, approaching such in my case)-hearing-folks an idea how miserable, confusing, and ultimately unpredictable Ruben’s aural experiences have become—with … Metal surely being within my Top 20 of the year (once I settle that in coming weeks) but not quite in the Top 10 (hard choices, lots of relevant contenders to consider), even though I avoided it for months after its streaming release back in Dec. 2020 (supposedly in some theaters too, although I have little info on that except it made about $15,000, seemingly in Australia and the United Kingdom) because I mistakenly thought it was going to be too much about heavy-metal-music, which I’m no fan of—don’t worry about that, my chosen Musical Metaphor just below steers completely into a different direction.
It’s a very touching story, well acted (both Ahmed and Raci are among my probable Top 5 in their respective categories, although I have others as favorites), no enabling-use of subtitles to help us of the hearing-world understand what Ruben’s missing at times* (sign language does come into play in some scenes if you can follow it; there’s also a computer screen turning speech into text, allowing Ruben to understand what Joe’s saying at times—despite his full deafness Joe still speaks well, reads lips), just a welcome sense overall of adults in challenging situations learning to adjust to new ways of living, understanding, self-acceptance, so if you’re a subscriber to Amazon Prime it’s free for the taking. As for that review-capping Musical Metaphor, I’m going with Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” (1975 album of the same name) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjpF8ukSrvk for a couple of reasons: (1) The opening business in the song where we seem to be listening to a radio at low volume before the actual music kicks in reminds me a bit of how Ruben struggles to hear what’s going on around him, trying to make sense out of all; (2) Lyrics such as “[…] Did you exchange A walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? How I wish you were here We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl year after year Running over the same old ground, what have we found? The same old fears, wish you were here” make me think of how Ruben and Lou might see themselves, their situations, their on/off-relationship as events beyond their control shape their lives for us to see.
*In the interview in Related Links for Sound ... there’s consistent mention of subtitles used except in the sign-language-scenes, confusing to me as I’ve skimmed back through it, found no subtitles at all except when I purposely added closed-captions but that’s not a part of the film as normally screened.
SHORT TAKES (spoilers also appear here)
A couple of Mongolian immigrants to Los Angeles plot a kidnapping to raise a lot of cash needed for a medical procedure for a brother back home in Asia; however, although the capture of the young adult son of a rich man goes smoothly enough, as the days pass without closure on the ransom tensions grow between the 2 men (along with their hostage) as it’s unclear what they should do next.
Here’s the trailer:
Before reading further, please refer to the plot spoilers warning detailed far above.
Two young male immigrants from Mongolia, Ankhaa (Erdenemunkh Tumursukh) and Orgil (Iveel Mashbat), are friends who live in L.A.’s Koreatown, but as we meet them (after a grand series of B&W urban-and-apartment-still life-type-shots [cinematographer Mike Maliwanag won an award for this film at the 2020 Queens World Film Festival]), Ankhaa’s on the phone to his father in Asia assuring him he doesn’t have to sell the family home because his now-Western-son’s just gotten a high-paying-job allowing him to pay for a medical procedure needed by his brother back home; problem is that “job” is a carefully-planned-kidnapping of the young adult son of a rich guy in another part of the city that Orgil knows about from delivering furniture some time ago, with the original intention of asking for up to a $1 million ransom after all the preparations are in place including buying a gun from Dion (Saint Ranson), Orgil making most of the plans as Ankhaa’s consistently nervous about the whole venture. So, one night they fake a stalled car in Scott Sanders’ (Mike Cali) driveway, knock him out with chloroform, tie him up, stash him in the bathroom of their rented motel room with pressure on Mr. Sanders (phone voice, brief appearance [great shot in a car mirror] of Robert Corsini), but with problems along the way as Ankhaa clumsily allows their captive to realize they’re Mongolian, even catches a brief glimpse of them when his blindfold slips, leading to dishonor between thieves as Orgil wants to kill Scott after they get the cash, Ankhaa vehemently opposed, tensions even leading to a brief fight at one point. ⇒Orgil, convinced Mr. Sanders hasn’t contacted the police yet but may if this caper drags on much longer (we’re now up to Day 7), gets an OK from Ankhaa to settle for $200,000, successfully retrieves the cash, but as they prepare to take Scott home, they quarrel again over killing him, scuffle, accidentally shoot/kill the kid (great shot of a blood-stained TV screen of a lion finishing off the carcass of his prey). After that, Ankhaa pays off a young woman (Uyanga Mashbat) to deliver a suitcase for him when she flies to Asia (presumably with the cash for Dad), then drives to Las Vegas where another friend will sell him the passport of a recently-drowned-guy who resembles Ankhaa. In the final shot we’re back at what I'll assume is Ankhaa’s apartment when a mysterious figure is shown outside his window; the film abruptly ends.⇐
While the overall combination of script, acting, and cinematography (really captures in achromatic-fashion the sense of expansive L.A. nights contrasted with confinement in the motel rooms) works really well in The Land of Lost Angels, you might well find the final roughly 10 minutes to be either fascinating or frustrating because it all seems a bit elliptical regarding what’s now to come of what’s gone on before, no answers offered. Obviously, this is limited-budget-fare (but even if the choice of B&W is for financial reasons it still works effectively with the tone and pace of this story, evoking the L.A. of many film noirs of our previous century), yet those limits serve to enhance the final result rather than undercut it, so if you’ve got access to Amazon Prime I encourage you to seek this out. While I could go into more detail about … Lost Angels, I’d pledged to myself to get back better to my New Year’s Resolution of shorter blogs (just barely getting there this week [?]) so I’ll arbitrarily close out with suggesting you get more details from this extensive article while considering the aural-implications of my Musical Metaphor, “Refugee” from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (on the 1979 album Damn the Torpedoes), found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3Ha_g8aUys, a song originally about a struggling romantic pair but here it literally alludes to Scott ([…] maybe you were kidnapped”) while implying the difficulties our protagonists face (“Somewhere, somehow, somebody Must have kicked you around some”), imposed on them as well as self-inflicted. One last thing for all of us monolingual-mutts: much of the dialogue here is just between our 2 main guys, spoken in Mongolian with subtitles, but I hope that won’t be any sort of hindrance because what’s happening on-screen should easily keep your attention as you’re reading. Keep an eye open for this filmmaker.
Suggestions for TCM cablecasts
At least until the pandemic subsides Two Guys also want to encourage you to consider movies you might be interested in that don’t require subscriptions to Netflix, Amazon Prime, similar Internet platforms (we may well be stuck inside for longer than those 30-day-free-initial-offers), or premium-tier-cable-TV-fees. While there are a good number of video networks offering movies of various sorts (mostly broken up by commercials), one dependable source of fine cinematic programming is Turner Classic Movies (available in lots of basic-cable-packages) so I’ll be offering suggestions of possible choices for you running from Thursday afternoon of the current week (I usually get this blog posted by early Thursday mornings) on through Thursday morning of the following week. All times are for U.S. Pacific zone so if you see something of interest please verify actual show time in your area for the day listed. These recommendations are my particular favorites (no matter when they’re on, although some of those early-day-ones might need to be recorded, watched later), but there’s considerably more to pick from you might like even better; feel free to explore their entire schedule here. You can also click the down arrow at the right of each listing for additional, useful info.
I’ll bet if you checked that entire schedule link just above you’d find other options of interest, but these are the only ones grabbing my attention at present. Please dig in further for other possibilities.
Thursday March 18, 2021
5:00 PM The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) Widely-regarded as one of the best westerns ever as well as part of the long deconstruction of the genre, this focuses on a Civil War Rebel vet (John Wayne) with a hatred for Indians especially because they kidnapped his niece as a child, killed some other relatives; he’s on a quest to bring her home but adolescent Debbie (Natalie Wood) wants to stay with Chief Scar causing further trouble, intolerance, and deaths as neither side can tolerate each other.
11:30 PM Stagecoach (John Ford, 1939) Brought the genre up to a more adult level with themes of East vs. West values, letter vs. spirit of the law, a story elevating John Wayne to the realm of major star (but Claire Trevor, as Dallas the prostitute, got top billing). Wayne’s an escaped (framed) jailbird out to avenge dishonor to his family (Indians aren’t treated well here either). Also stars Andy Devine, John Carradine, Thomas Mitchell (Oscar, Best Supporting Actor); Oscar for Best Music Scoring.
Friday March 19, 2021
9:00 PM Blood Simple (Joel & Ethan Cohen, 1984) A great debut, for the Coens as directors-screenwriters and Frances McDormand. A detective (E. Emmet Walsh) gathers evidence of a woman (McDormand) having an affair with her husband’s (Dan Hedaya) bartender (John Getz).
Lots of double-crossing, murder, suspense, & the most fantastic roadside burial scene you’ll ever see, plus Walsh’s great line: “What I know about is Texas, and down here, you’re on your own.”
Saturday March 20, 2021
9:00 PM The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) Best pairing of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton outside of Citizen Kane (Reed’s film as one of my very few 5 stars-ratings, after seeing it once again on re-release). Cotton’s a pulp writer come to Vienna looking for old friend Harry Lime (Welles) but hears he’s dead from an auto accident; Cotton suspects otherwise, given Harry’s underworld activities. As fabulous as are all the other elements of this film (won an Oscar for Black & White Cinematography) is Anton Karas’ great score, played memorably on the zither. Also Sunday, March 21, 2021, 7:00 AM.
Thursday March 25, 2021 (these next 2 were just on last week but too good to miss noting again)
3:30 AM The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941) Some claim this started the troubled-crime-tradition of film noir: Humphrey Bogart as Dashiell Hammett’s streetwise-private-eye, Sam Spade, whose life gets complicated when the takes on Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) as a client searching for the priceless “black bird.” A fabulous cast includes Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook Jr. Masterful “Hardboiled-detective” story with a sense of morality amongst greed.
5:30 AM Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942) Do you really need my description to know what this one’s about? If so, Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre are “looking at you, kid,” to watch it! (A movie truly defining what I consider to be a 5 stars-“classic,” celebrated for decades as a story of hope, patriotism, and making the right decision when romance conflicts with greater needs in the early years of WW II.)
If you’d like your own PDF of ratings/summaries of this week's reviews, suggestions for TCM cablecasts, links to Two Guys info click this link to access then save, print, or whatever you need.
Other Cinema-Related Stuff: (1) 30 best screen acting performances of the 21st century so far (I’ve seen only 12 of them, would have many substitutions on this list from significant others I've seen); (2) Initial responses to the 2021 Oscar nominations (scroll down wthin this link for several related/extended aspects of this first listing); (3) Netflix and other streaming services garner loads of those nominations; (4) Oddity of LaKeith Stanfield getting a Supporting rather than a Lead Actor nom for Judas and the Black Messiah (5) Avatar is once again the highest-grossing-movie of All-Time (thanks to a current re-release in China). As usual for now I’ll close out this section with Joni Mitchell’s "Big Yellow Taxi" (from her 1970 Ladies of the Canyon album)—because “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone”—and a reminder you might search through a wealth of interesting streaming/rental/purchase movie options at JustWatch.
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
We encourage you to visit the Summary of Two Guys Reviews for our past posts.* Overall notations for this blog—including Internet formatting craziness beyond our control—may be found at our Two Guys in the Dark homepage. If you’d like to Like us on Facebook please visit our Facebook page. We appreciate your support whenever and however you can offer it!
*Please ignore previous warnings about a “dead link” to our Summary page because the problems’ been manually fixed so that all postings since July 11, 2013 now have the proper functioning link.
AND … at least until the Oscars for 2020’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, April 25, 2021 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which films have been nominated for and/or received various awards and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists. You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when they’re compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here as well as here due to many 2020 releases being tracked on the 2021 list, although the income situation for 2020’s skewed due to so many award-contenders getting limited or no theatrical releases)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes—damn it!—for films they’ve never seen).
To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the current Golden Globes nominees and winners for films and TV from 2020-early 2021
along with the Oscar nominees for 2020-early 2021 films.
Here’s more information about Sound of Metal:
http://protagonistpictures.com/film/sound-of-metal/ and https://www.amazon.com/Sound-Metal-Riz-Ahmed/dp/B08KZCFW1C
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQSpwJ-emXU (18:12 interview with actors Olivia Cooke, Riz Ahmed, Paul Raci and director-screenwriter Darius Marder [ads interrupt at about 3:00, 7:00])
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sound_of_metal
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/sound-of-metal
Here’s more information about In the Land of Lost Angels:
https://bishrelmashbat.com/itlola/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8974570/reference
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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com—type it directly if the link doesn’t work. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews-academic-articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)
If we did talk, though, you’d easily see how my early-70s-age informs my references, Musical Metaphors, etc. in these reviews because I’m clearly a guy of the later 20th century, not so much the contemporary world. I’ve come to accept my ongoing situation, though, realizing we all (if fate allows) keep getting older, we just have to embrace it, as Joni Mitchell did so well in "The Circle Game" offering sage advice even when she was quite young herself.
By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check-out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile (quite an eternal while, in fact). Ken
P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker. But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"
—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come.
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