Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Recently saw a 1966 movie called THE CHASE, with amazingly young actors and actresses with famous names -- Robert Redford, Jane Fonda, Angie Dickinson, Robert Duvall, and Marlon Brando were all there. With such a cast, I left the movie a little surprised that it isn't better remembered. The plot was nothing special -- it involved a man who escapes from a Texas prison, and we see him making his way back to his hometown. For the first half of the movie the story of his voyage across Texas countryside is regularly interrupted by the story of the lives of the people who lived in that hometown, and knew the truth about why this fellow had gone to prison in the first place. At the midpoint, the convict (Robert Redford) gets back to the town, and the storylines converge. It isn't really a movie about a "chase" in any conventional sense, even when we see Redford on the lam in the first half we don't really get a sense of watching a chase. But much metaphorical ch...

I saw "The Judge" recently. A decent movie, though it didn't blow me away. Robert Downey Jr plays Hank Palmer, the sort of city-slicker defense lawyer Hollywood loves, because he is both glamorous and sleazy, so there's plenty of room for tragedy and personal growth. Robert Duvall plays his father, a small town judge who gets into trouble soon after his wife passes away, and who desperately requires the service of a good, even if sleazy, defense lawyer. That's the set up. The leading lady is Vera Farmiga, whose character, Samantha Powell, was the high school girlfriend of Hank Palmer. Of course they went their separate ways. Hank went to law school and a big city practice. Samantha stayed in the rural town they grew up in. One of the subplots of the story involves whether Samantha's daughter is Hank's child. I'm trying to be good and avoid spoilers here, so I'll say no more. As you may already have gathered, the plot is a bit formulaic,...