Adult movies

Not that kind of adult movie. No — I mean the adult movies where the plot isn’t a stream of car crashes and sex scenes, where the actors and actresses actually act like what were once called “grown-ups.” Recently at a library sale I purchased “Casablanca,” and watching Bogie, Bergman, Claude Rains and Peter Lorrie perform in what remains the best-written of all Hollywood films remains one of the great cinematic pleasures. In this movie there’s not a gesture, not a scene that doesn’t bring deeper meaning to the film. “Master and Commander” is another movie in which an adult point of view holds sway, teaching such lessons as the occasional necessity of putting a group over an individual or the value of just authority. In one scene, the ship’s captain (Russell Crowe), pointing to two weevils on a biscuit, makes a joke about “the lesser of two weevils.” Yet this is one point the movie makes: we live in an imperfect world, and our choices often involve selecting the lesser of two evils in that world.

The Opera Band

In their album titled Amici Forever, the Opera Band — two female singers, three male — give us selections from opera and from popular songs. Here is the perfect album for the car, for cooking (especially Italian food) and for inspiration. Even people like me who have rarely or never set foot in an opera house will find this glorious music tugging at their heartstrings. Put on the first selection, “Prayer in the Night,” and you’ll find yourself hooked by this group of young classicists.

The Classic Hundred Poems: All Time Favorites

Though this poetry collection comes in book form, I picked up the audio-tape at the library and listened to it last week driving back and forth from Asheville. Probably it helped that I was familiar with many of the poems, but I was nonetheless struck by how easy it was to listen to this tape when compared to other similar tapes. There were several readers, most of them poets, and though their readings were uneven and probably flawed in a vocal sense, they knew the poetry so intimately and recited it with such love that it made the lines and verses clearer. Here are all the old favorites for poetry lovers — ”Kubla Khan,” “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” “Ozymandias” — with a short commentary on each poet and the time in which they lived.

— Jeff Minick