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Welcome to plumjoe.com!

plumjoe.com is an online magazine by people who are interested in, oh, everything - for people who are interested in all sorts of things. We don't aim to to be high mucky-mucks of culture, but we want to talk about the things we love: music, and books from 'literature' to comics, and art, and film, and the people who create these amazing things, and travel and the planet and the nature of things and people and food and wine and beer and cool things no matter where we find them. If we get interested in and passionate about something, we want to share it with you.

Our writers are all over the place, with a variety of tastes and experiences. But all of us have not only a passion for writing, but a passion for what we talk about, and we hope you will get passionate about what you read here.

It's a big world out there, with wonders and joys and good things still to be experienced and savoured. And it's a world where people who think about things, and hang out and have actual conversations still exist, even through the fragmentation and polarization that we see in the media. Our writers have limitless interests, and our magazine reflects that.

But we really love music, and books, and film and art, and good food, and...

We hope you like what you see!

Karen Koski

owner, editor, writer kind of person

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

112 minutes, directed by Julian Schnabel, Miramax Films, distributor (US)

A review by Anna Alexander

I first heard about The Diving Bell And the Butterfly while listening to a podcast of Studio 360. I was driving around town running errands and Kurt Anderson was interviewing director Julian Schnabel about the movie which had just came out on DVD. I sat in the grocery store parking lot intrigued by the premise of the movie and made a mental note to rent it.

Two months later I finally rented it and I’m kicking myself for not seeing it sooner.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is based on the French memoir by former Elle Magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who suffered a massive stroke at the age of 43 which left him with a condition called Locked-In Syndrome. He became paralyzed from the neck down and could only communicate by blinking his left eye and grunting letters.

The film is initially told from the perspective of Bauby as he awakes from his three-week coma. We see what he sees and feel what he feels. We get to hear his thoughts as his doctors try to give him hope that he will come out this very rare condition. We see him in the ocean in a diving bell which he compares to floating and sinking to his end. When he’s feeling calm and serene he “listens to the butterflies that flutter in my head.”

The movie takes it’s time getting us used to Bauby’s thoughts and surroundings before we get to see him. When the camera angle changes it’s almost shocking because you don’t expect him to look the way he looks.

Bauby learns how to communicate, through the help of a persistent speech therapist, by blinking his left eye as someone spells out words. He eventually writes his memoirs and takes us with him on trips to the ocean and into his daydreams.

Flashbacks of Bauby’s life and his daydreams are woven in throughout the movie to create a gorgeous canvas. Director, Julian Schnabel (Basquiat) uses nature imagery (glaciers falling, insects) and some of his paintings to give the movie its depth. Schnabel also uses music to set the scene and give it a sense of urgency. In one scene, he uses U2’s song Ultraviolet (Light My Way) as we watch Bauby’s mistresses’ hair fly in the wind as they drive to Lourdes.

This movie will make you hold your breath until it’s over.

The movie is in French with English subtitles and might not work for the “I don’t like to read movies” crowd. But this movie is not for them. This movie is for people with vivid imaginations and for those who like to stand too long in front of a beautiful painting. I loved this movie.