Another painting in the Portrait Series: After my last portrait, I said that I was thinking of doing one of someone I didn’t know and that is what I did. I found a photo I took of a gent with a bowler hat. (I was leaving the Trooping the Colors ceremony and managed to snap a candid shot.) So I was painting without feeling the pressure of capturing the essence of someone I know well. It is an OK effort I think. Painting faces is not easy at all. I find them much harder than landscapes. But I think it is worth persevering. I do think each of these portraits has shown some level of improvement, so maybe I’m just starting to get the hang of things. I’m beginning to think that I should take photos of people when I’m visiting the States in the coming weeks, so that I can get some material for future efforts. Anyway, “Bowler Man” is below. I’m not sure I’ll even start another portrait before our Thanksgiving trip, which begins next Saturday. I still have a landscape in progress.

Rainy Saturday: As the Saturday after Trumpageddon approached, we were considering just getting out London. Maybe a road trip to Cambridge or Windsor or even a quick trip to Paris for lunch. But then we watched the weather and found it would be pouring down rain in all those places. The main event in London that day was the Lord Mayor’s parade, but we had gone to it last year and watched in the rain. (We were told that it always rains on the Lord Mayor’s Parade.) So we decided to go the two movies that afternoon and picked some real escapist ones:

“Doctor Strange”: This was my favorite Marvel character in my sometimes psychedelic youth. I actually have a collection of Doctor Strange comic books from the mid-1970s, which may be valuable for all I know. They certainly have tremendous nostalgic value to me. So I was excited to hear that they were making a Marvel movie based on those comics and that Benedict Cumberbatch was going to play the master of the mystic arts. It struck me (and probably everyone) as inspired casting. The movie was fun. We saw it at an IMAX 3-D theatre in Leicester Square, which made all of the special effects in the film even more awesome. I must say that the film took an awful long time getting to the good part–when Doc Strange meets the Ancient One and the real fun begins. Did I really need all those scenes of brain surgery, etc.? I guess it is background that allows us to “understand” the character, per the Marvel movie playbook. Anyway, once that was behind us, the special effects were spectacular and the plot became increasingly and appropriately spacey. Doctor Strange doesn’t fight mere humans or superheroes. He battles cosmic forces and supernatural villains. And that part was great. Cumberbatch was a wonderful Steven Strange and I could see him developing the character in the inevitable sequels to come. It was a bit weird seeing Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One, but she was fine. This is not a classic movie in any way, but I enjoyed myself thoroughly.

“Arrival”: After lunch at The Cork and Bottle in Leicester Square, we walked over to Piccadilly Circus to see “Arrival”, a science fiction movie starring Amy Adams. It was enjoyable, as long as one didn’t think too much about the details of the plot. Amy Adams is a linguist who is recruited by the U.S. Army to try to communicate with the aliens in one of twelve mysterious large alien vehicles that have parked themselves at various places around the Earth. They look like gigantic, walking octopi (only with seven legs). And it develops that they communicate by squirting black goo to form symbols. Amy Adams has to interpret them and to teach the aliens English in a sort of Anne Sullivan/Helen Keller way. Her performance is convincing as it possibly could be. There are lots of flashbacks about her daughter, who has died form some sort of rare disease. It appears that this history somehow makes the aliens more receptive to her (or something), but this is one of many points when the plot becomes a bit hard to follow. Judie and I left the movie saying “What was going on there in the last ten minutes?” and I’m still not certain. But it doesn’t really matter, since one should suspend belief in such movies anyway. It was cleverly done, without the usual overbearing military/government villains. (Forest Whitaker was nicely normal as the Army guy in charge of things.) After the crazy special effects and loopy plot of “Doctor Strange”, this movie seemed almost intimate, although it really wasn’t at all. But it was satisfying to watch.

A Couple of Books I’ve Read: I went through a longish stretch reading several British history books, including one about the life of Samuel Pepys. interesting, but sort of dry and a bit of a slog. I was ready for something lighter. So I read Michael Chabon’s “Gentlemen of the Road”, a swashbuckling adventure novel set in the Caucasus mountains around 950. In Chabon’s notes at the end, he reveals that the working title was apparently “Jews with Swords” and that gives you just an inkling of the many clever twists and turns that occur in a fairly short book. Great stuff. On Saturday, I finished “A Man Called Ove”, by Fredrik Backman, a book recommended by Judie’s sister, Robbie. It is a Swedish book about an old curmudgeon, whose wife has recently died and who just wants to die himself when we first meet him. He seems like a one-dimensional grumpy jerk at first, but he grows on you and the book is really very sweet. It was nice to read something so gentle after the election. I understand that it has been made into a movie in Sweden and it looks like a TV miniseries to me.