Pristine Angie’s Good Homemaker Adventures at www.d332.com

I do long to return to the idealized 50s. Sure, the dresses were wonderful and I love Christian Dior as much as I do Yves Saint Laurent. Audrey Hepburn is still my favorite actress and she had her best movies near the end of the 50s. Doris Day and Barbara Billingsley is equally music to my ears. And if that isn’t enough, one could always turn on the radio to hear Glenn Gould reintroducing to the general public the music of Bach.

Sure, these were what the arts had to offer, but what about the other side? Well there’s the man, of course.

The happy old days when front doors can be left unlocked, everyone knew each other, and the man was head of the household. Sole breadwinner, leader, decision-maker, and husband all in one. All us girls needed to do was to be pretty as a peach when we admiringly say “yes sir” to the king of our hill, and male protection will be available, orders will be placed for us at restaurants, mason jars brawned open, and of course, let’s not forget the high point of every woman’s day: meeting the man at the door upon his return from a day’s work.

If this 1950’s model of the family unit has not been appropriated and infused with the snarky sarcasm of the 90s or fetishized into garish boudoir erotica, then it has become the prime selling point for that hideous lot of bargain basement salesmen who peddle mail-order brides.

To those who believe that mail order brides are the answer to good homemaking, I say why settle for conditional domestic bliss when deep down, everyone knows the entire act is for a green card or promise of citizenship? That’s not a true union which has been brought together and held together by freewill. Go for the real thing.

I know of and have come across many Stateside girls who still cherish the idealized fifties without the irony.

But how do you tell when you have come across us genuinely old fashioned girls?

We’ll be gushing with admiration and willing when you lead us by our weak, helpless arms!

Click here for the program of Envision Russia

This week marks the final week of Envisioning Russia, a film festival of Russian films sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center at the Walter Reade theatre in New York City.

One of the most difficult things I’ve been trying to do is to get friends, family, co-workers, plumber or take-out-pizza-person to sit down and watch Russian movies with. I have stubbornly refused to give in and lead a life of mediocrity consuming Jerry Bruckheimer movies. Of course, not all Russian movies are good; however, when asked what it is that makes me admire my favorite Russian films (Tarkovski’s Zerkalo and Sacrifice, Sukorov’s Russian Ark), I think about all the wonderful music of J.S. Bach in Tarkovski’s films. Zerkalo, or Mirror, interweaves time slices from different generations to create a visual fugue of contrapuntal images taking the us through the filmmaker’s universe, like a multi-dimensional family album being flipped before our eyes.

I first learned about Tarkovski’s work when I was watching the pantheon of Ingmar Bergman’s filmography. Bergman himself quotes Bach in his works (Wild Strawberries). One day, I was watching a documentary about Bergman’s cinematographer Sven Nykvist (Light Keeps Me Company) when Tarkovski’s Sacrifice surfaced. Nykvist did the cinematography for this Tarkovski piece. I was instantly hooked.

Most mainstream viewers will know Tarkovski’s work from the George Clooney remake of his original 1972 Solaris. What also piqued my interest and love for Tarkovski’s work is the subject matter he choses to talk about: Memory, the survival of art, spirituality, the future of humankind.

When I was in Paris in the Marais arrondissement, I once watched a homeless man from my hotel window. He spent all day cutting out pieces of paper to create a white horse. I’ve always wondered: How does one stay concerned about creating art when there’s barely food or shelter? Both Tarkovski and Sukorov muses about this very lifeforce in their works.

Finally, there’s the beatific experience of the senses. Arseny Tarkovski (Andrei’s poet father) reciting his poems over sequences in Zerkalo. The great peace that arrives at the end of Sukorov’s 90+, single-take minute Russian Ark with a lonely piano playing in the distant. There’s Tarkovski’s interweaving of personal memories with Pieter Brueghel’s paintings. And of course, there’s the hypnotic long takes that has come to be coined as “Sculpting with Time.”

These are all things that should be experienced on a large scale screen, I believe. No need to wait for Blu-Ray or HD-DVD versions to enjoy in your own home. These were movies made from technology that is already 30 years old. The film quality varies to such an extent that websites have been set up to compare transfer versions and different regions of Tarkovski’s works. A comparison of different dvd versions of Mirror can be found here.

For those of you who don’t live near New York City, there’s still a chance to catch a good sampling of Russian films. I checked the Film Society’s roster with Netflix, and if you go to Foreign>Russian, you will find quite a few titles there for rent.

Suffice it to say, on a day like this, nothing is more refreshing than an opinion from a disinterested party. I can’t imagine anyone can know less about football than I. Rutgers being my alma mater, I would never have guessed we even had a football team until my boyfriend at the time drugged, shanghai’ed then dragged me over to the stadium stands one Sunday afternoon. I guess he really wanted me to watch the football game with him.

When you live in the New York City Giants territory and you are innundated with gossip about Tom Brady, that’s a feat. I’ve heard the ceaseless sound of girls wooting at the first mention of his name. So I googled him to see if he was really all that. Here was what I found.

Alright, so he looks fairly good, but Tom Brady’s forehead is also one perilous haircut away from looking like Frankenstein. Still, as someone who dabbles in photography, I know there are good shots and bad shots. So I decided to continue browsing for Tom Brady pictures. And then this:

Since I am an adult , I realize that picking on someone based on their looks is completely immature. I mean, that would be as inconceivable as someone who roots for a team just because they like the way its quarterback looks. Or selecting presidential candidates because they think he or she looks like presidential material. Therefore, like many mature adults in this modern day and age, I utilize the most reliable indicator of a man’s integrity and formidable stature in our society (which by the way, has become the accepted international currency for measuring every man’s success to other men around the world): The blonde he has by his side.

Dutifully then, I innocently googled “successful men who have blondes at their sides” to have a control against which I could gauge the hottie index of Tom Brady. And lo and behold, what do I come up with?

Sports will remain a mystery to me.