Hope Springs, an ode to love with Meryl Streep

The movie Hope Springs, starring Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones & Steve Carell is a movie skewed to an older, mainly female audience.  If you are the film maker's target audience, this is the movie to embrace.  Does Ms. Streep ever misstep? NO! And in this movie we empathize with her every step.  Streep is in a 30+ year marriage to Tommy Lee Jones whose 2 children have long since flown the nest.  The nest is no longer warm as we see the couple have been sleeping in separate rooms and leading disconnected lives under one roof for way too many years.  Streep is determined to give this marriage her best efforts to rekindle what was once a loving relationship.  She books them both for a week in Hope Springs for a week of marriage therapy.  Steve Carell who plays their marriage counselor is thoroughly convincing as a compassionate and intelligent therapist striving to help them save their relationship.  Jones is just as wonderful as a curmudgeon who believes marriage therapy is bah humbug.  There comes a time in many relationships when it is time to throw in the towel.  Hopefully, before that point, couples are able to look back and remind each other what it was that brought them together in the first place.  This endearing film may just leave you springing tears of joy.

Ellsworth Kelly's Plant Drawings @ the MET

The American painter/sculpture Ellsworth Kelly is probably best known for his abstract paintings generally portraying one bright color image of an irregular shape.  The plant drawings & paintings on exhibition display a close observation of the structure of plants in a deceptively simple form.  The figurative drawings give a very elegant rendition of the inherent beauty of natural plants and flowers.  Matisse had a major impact on Kelly's work as reflected in some of his line drawings.  The beauty of the drawings are in the details; particularily in the thistles, corn and blades of grass.  There is also some whimsy with Kelly's use of color in yellow tulips & green sunflower.  Kelly said that what gave him the most pleasure in life was seeing the world and translating his vision for others to see.  This serene and lovely exhibit is a refreshing look at a different style of Kelly's work which was new to me and a quiet respite within the multitudes of shows @ the MET.