On the Eve of the Oscars, My Favorite Quote #3 From “The Starveling”: about watching movies (Don Delillo, in The Angel Esmeralda: Nine stories): Always the sense of anticipation. To look forward to, invariably, whatever the title, the story, the director, and to be able to elude the specter of disappointment. There were no disappointments, ever, for him, not for her. They were here to be enveloped, to be transcended. Something would fly past them, reaching back to take them with it. That was the innocent surface, on loan from childhood. There was more but what was it? It was something he’d never tried to penetrate until now, the crux of being who he was and understanding why he needed this. He sensed it in her, knew it was there, this same half life. They had no other self. They had no fake self, no veneer. They could only be the one embedded thing they were, stripped of the faces that come naturally to others. They were bare-faced, bare-souled, and maybe this is why they were here, to be safe. The world was up there, framed, on the screen, edited and corrected and bound tight, and they were here, where they belonged, in the isolated dark, being what they were, being safe. Movies take place in the dark. This seemed an obscure truth, just now stumbled upon. What DeLillo sees, what strikes me here, is the “bare-faced, bare-souled.” We enter a theater willing to be taken over. It may be the one time we’re entirely willing to listen, to see, not through the filter of our own crazy-racing minds. Too bad it takes this kind of visual slap in the face. But that’s what art is, I think, framing, putting our lives, all arranged, in front of us to witness. I’m pretty much voting for Midnight in Paris. I think Woody Allen finally, here, pulled together the best of his talents—telling a story, thinking hard about what we’re longing for in this life, and why, and, oh, I don’t know, making a movie. This year I’ve seen more of the nominees than ever before, thanks to the State Theater and Michael Moore’s personal hand on what gets shown. I have come to realize that the experience of movie-going can (and ought to be) as rich as the viewing of the movie itself. What would the Met be without its glorious hall? Our beautiful State Theater has been completely renovated—and now run almost completely by volunteer workers. It is the beating heart of Front Street in our little Traverse City. Here’s what it looks like now, above (click for larger view) . The miles of velvet curtain actually rise from the bottom, for each showing.