Happy At Last --- Days 9/352 & 353

Walk: 1. No (cat nail trim 😱 and catching up with streams)  2. Presidio

Distance: 1. small yoga  2. 3.5 miles

So Ciwt has been using her back healing time to catch up with all the art and author talks, and streaming movies she signed up (and sometimes paid) for.  Well, the ones she remembered to watch before they expired anyway 😕.

With our local SF Film Festival and theater, the upcoming Oscars, various PBS docs, and the burdgeoning number of museum on line events, this has not been easy.  Or particularly uplifting.  Lots of dark history, biography, and general subject matter and stories punctuated by a three truly stellar, must-watch performances.  All of these three have already been recognized by multiple pre-Oscars awards ceremonies but are worth mentioning in case you missed them.  

1. Above all, the late Chadwick Boseman as Levee in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.  One director called Levee "a monster role," and Boseman takes it to a level no future actor may ever reach.  If you admire superior acting, go to Netflix and watch this tour de force.

2. If you do go there, you will also see the formidable performance by Viola Davis as Ma Rainey.  Davis is always memorable in her roles, and she's particularly impressive standing toe-to-toe with Boseman. Any other actor might have been overshadowed by the ferocious, mercurial, soulful Levee, but not Davis's Ma Rainey.

3. Daniel Kaluuya is a thoroughly British actor, but you'd never guess it as he plays the thoroughly American 60's activist, Fred Hampton in Judas and the Black Messiah. 

After those and other trips through challenging history with Hemingway, Picasso, an Australian Outback community during a drought (The Dry), an unraveling New York City prosecutor (Naked Singularity), Ciwt was finally uplifted by Cuban Dancer, a documentary that follows Alexis Valdes, an aspiring teen dancer, through five years that include star status with his friends and large family in Cuba, and staggeringly difficult, character building adjustments necesitated by the family's move to America. The pure dedication, hard work (to put it mildly), steadfastness, love and mutual support by Valdez and his family are even more heartwarming and exhilarating than Valdez's dancing.