Greenwich Polo Club gallops into another season

May 31, 2014

There’s no Prince Harry to spice up the Greenwich Polo Club this year, but that doesn’t mean fans aren’t in for an exciting season.

Things get off to a rollicking start Sunday, June 1 with the White Birch home team – named after club founder Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm and White Birch Paper – in action against CT Energia. The home team will be led by Argentina’s Mariano Aguerre, considered one of the all-time greats, and his fleet countryman Hilario Ulloa. In April, the two teamed to help Alegria take the U.S. Open title.

The polo club is set in Greenwich’s verdant, undulating backcountry. Recently, I had a chance to chat there about the season with Australia’s Nick Manifold, who’ll be playing No. 2, an offensive position, for CT Energia Sunday. What a treat it was to sit out in the grandstand on a picture-perfect spring day, the cottony cumulus clouds so ripe and low that they seemed ready to touch the Jim Dine sculpture (think a huge, modern “Winged Victory”) that stands guard across the field. As the staff put the finishing touches on the immaculately manicured expanse and added patrons’ nameplates to the box seats, Nick gave this relative newbie a polo primer, something I was extremely grateful for as my one experience with the game had been last May’s Sentebale charity match starring Prince Harry and Nacho Figueras that was an otherworldly media event. (Polo does, however, figure in “Criterion,” the third novel in my “The Games Men Play” series, the story of a star-crossed equestrian family told in part from the viewpoint of a horse trying to win the Triple Crown.)

On ‘Words and Pictures’ – and words and pictures at The Lionheart Gallery

May 21, 2014

We’re all patterns in the universe, swimmer Daniel Reiner-Kahn reasons in my new novel “Water Music.” But sometimes it’s only when we’re at the end of a journey – maybe even life’s journey – that we understand how the strands came together. At other times, we recognize how the strands fit as they’re being woven.

Last week, I had an onstage conversation with film critic Marshall Fine at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck, N.Y. about the relationship between language and images after a screening of “Words and Pictures,” which opens this Friday, May 23. It’s the story of a tempestuous rivalry between a prickly artist (Juliette Binoche) and a showoff writer (Clive Owen). Four days later, the writer (me) and the artist (David Hutchinson) came together more happily at a reading from “Water Music” at The Lionheart Gallery in Pound Ridge. After, I opened up the floor for a discussion about David’s paintings and drawings there, which are based on the perverse writings of Jean Genet.

First, a few words about “Words and Pictures,” a rather contrived but nonetheless absorbing movie about a love-hate relationship that sparks a contest between the artist’s students and the writer’s. It occurred to me after that the only arena in which men and women compete is the intellectual one.

A dandy Andy

May 18, 2014

Saw a good movie the other night at the Emelin Theatre in Mamaroneck, where I was invited to speak as editor of WAG magazine and former art critic of Gannett Inc. about the relationship between writing and images. (More about that in a later post.) Suffice it to say that “Words and Pictures” is about the tempestuous relationship between an increasingly crippled, cantankerous artist (Juliette Binoche) and an alcoholic writer (Clive Owen). It’s a bit contrived, but I did find the old writer’s prejudice against having photos do anything but serve my precious prose stirring within me.

Yet I had to laugh when I whizzed through Mark Hodgkinson’s “Andy Murray: Wimbledon Champion, The Full Extraordinary Story” (New Chapter Press, $19.95, 307 pages). What, I thought, no photos inside? Where are the pix of Andy hugging Rafa, Roger and especially Nole at the net? I mean, there are whole websites devoted to the stuff. You could write a book on it. (Indeed, I did, so to speak….

‘Cinderella’ rises from the ashes

May 13, 2014

“In both darker and lighter versions of fairy tales, a woman’s suffering is demanded in exchange for true love and happily ever after,” Roxane Gay wrote in “The Marriage Plot” for the May 11 New York Times’ Week in Review section.

That may be, but not all fairy tales are created equal. Take “Cinderella," on Broadway in its Rodgers and Hammerstein incarnation. She’s not waiting for Prince Charming to rescue her. Rather she goes out to find the man who will appreciate her for who and what she really is.

Rossini’s operatic version, “La Cenerentola,”goes the Brothers Grimm and Rodgers and Hammerstein one better.

Phelpte moves on to Charlotte

April 28, 2014

So in the end, Michael Phelps didn’t make the final of the 50 free in the Arena Grand Prix in Mesa, Ariz. (He swam his patented butterfly stroke in the prelims. The rules allow you to swim any of the strokes in the free.) And Ryan Lochte bowed out of his final races. (He’s been nursing a knee injury and said he had pushed himself too hard in February.)

But having them back racing each other is certainly a boon for their sport despite the emergence of some young swimmers.

Phelps and Lochte – together again

April 24, 2014

Is it any surprise that the Arena Grand Prix – which takes place Thursday, April 24 through Saturday, April 26 in Mesa, Ariz. – is sold out? Michael Phelps is swimming in his first meet since the London Games in what looks like the beginning of the comeback trail and may face off with pal and rival Ryan Lochte in the 100 butterfly and 100 freestyle. Michael is also swimming in the 50 free while Ryan is entered in the 200 free, the 100 and 200 backstroke and the 200 individual medley.

There are a lot of other stars at the meet – including Nathan Adrian, Conor Dwyer and France’s Yannick Angel – but all eyes will be on Michael and, to a certain extent, the old rivalry.

For his part, Ryan has said he always knew Michael would be back.

‘Son of God,’ ‘The Bible’ and the tradition of the beautiful Jesus

April 18, 2014

Was it sacrilegious – not to mention completely shallow – of me that I bought “The Bible” miniseries for the hunky guy who plays Jesus?

The series itself – from Roma “Touched by an Angel” Downey and her hubby, “Survivor” impresario Mark Burnett – isn’t very good, concentrating too much on the dreary dutifulness of religion rather than the joy it can bring. Which is, I think, part of Jesus’ message.

The actor who plays Jesus in “The Bible” and the subsequent Downey-Burnett collaboration “Son of God” – Portugal’s Diogo Morgado – is one of a long line of beautiful Jesuses. Think of Jim Caviezel in “The Passion of the Christ.” (The moment I saw him in “The Thin Red Line” as the otherworldly Christ figure Witt, I knew he’d make an excellent Jesus.) Or Robert Powell, my favorite, in Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jeffrey Hunter’s blue eyes were so dreamy in “King of Kings” that some critics dubbed the film “I Was A Teenage Jesus.”

Sure, there have been stern-looking Jesuses (a miscast Max von Sydow in “The Greatest Story Ever Told”) and even commonplace Jesuses. (Dennis Potter’s “Son of Man,” with stocky, course-looking Colin Blakely in the title role, was lambasted for making Jesus ordinary, even homely, when it aired on British TV in 1969.)

But these are the exceptions that prove the rule: Jesus must be gorgeous.