I haven't seen either of the recent WICKED pics. I don't plan to see them. Years ago I had some interest in the OZ fantasy world. Back when it meant the Frank Baum books on the one hand and the 1939 movie on the other. The Baum books were written as an allegorical take on the monetary debates of Baum's day. The word "Oz" itself suggests ounces, the standard measurement for gold. The notion of a "yellow brick road" suggests gold bricks, and perhaps that an insistence on a gold standard was leading the farmers of the US, the Kansans, toward danger. And so forth. Of course the Garland movie didn't do much with the allegory -- It could have, since the '39 movie came out between FDR's abandonment of the gold standard (1933) and his partial reinvention of it by way of Bretton Woods (1944) -- but it didn't. Personally, I have never asked myself prequel-producing questions like "how did the monkeys learn to fly" or "why does ...
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song called "One Tin Soldier," performed by various artists and harmonically close kin to Pachelbel's Canon, was very big in North America in the early 1970s. I remember thinking it was incredibly stupid, and making myself obnoxious on this subject to a couple of the song's admirers. [If you happen to read this -- sorry guys.] Upon reflection, I don't know why it struck me that way. But, for the record, it was the soundtrack version, from Billy Jack, that especially annoyed me. Anyway, just for old time's sake and to make up for a hasty judgment of my callow youth, here is the refrain: Go ahead and hate your neighbor/ Go ahead and cheat a friend Do it in the name of heaven/You can justify it in the end There won't be any trumpets blowing/ Come the judgment day On the bloody morning after one/ tin soldier rides away.
Spoiler Alert. Turn back if you want to see this movie without any ides of what will happen in it. Still here? Too late. The Oscar-winning movie 1917 follows the simplest and perhaps the oldest of plats. The protagonist and a companion have to cross forbidding terrain to get an indispensable job done. The companion dies during the course of the trip, and the protagonist is heartbroken, but he has to find it in himself to carry on. The job is done. The companion's death has not been in vain. Not plot novelties. But of course show business has never thrived on plot novelties. It thrives on the expenditure of its energies and talents on filling out and giving new twists to precisely the old familiar plots. One great thing about this movie is a brief scene where the two central characters are being chased by a low-flying airplane. Its a period-accurate biplane, of course but the scene still looks like a hommage to an analogous scene in a Hitchcock film.
You, dear reader, may have noticed that obits of an idiosyncratic sort are an infrequent but regular feature of this blog. In the fourth quarter of 2018 thus far there have been three: Adolf Grunbaum, Whitey Bulger, Mary Midgley. Three obits in a little less than three months. That frequency is characteristic. Two philosophers and a gangster. That's a decent sampling, too. During that same period, lots of other important people have passed away about whom I've had nothing to say, including most prominently George H.W. Bush, Bernardo Bertolucci, Paul Allen and William Coors! A politician, a director, and two captains of industry. Is there a principle of selection? None known to me. I'm not averse to writing about the holders of public office, or artists of any medium, or business titans. I've written about all of those and I believe (without checking this moment) I've done obits here of tokens of each of those types. If any of my readers has noticed a patte...
There is a certain genre or perhaps subgenre of fiction of which I have been thinking a lot lately, mostly because it doesn't have a name, and I think it needs one. The kind of thing I have in mind is a combination of the police procedural with the caper plot. A caper or heist goes back and ends up as a stand off, with police outside of a building of some sort, a criminal gang on the inside. An early example might have been the movie DOG DAY AFTERNOON. I typically think of these things as movies, although there are novels and for all I know epic poems that fit the model I have in mind as well. The structure is police procedural. We're introduced to detectives, hostage negotiators, whomever -- we're told they have their personal stories and we get some glimpse of them, and we may be regaled with minutiae of their protocol. They may sometimes remind each other to "do this by the book." But the heart of the genre I have in mind isn't with them, it is with t...
I like the fact that the English speaking world still uses the term "movies" for these two hour blocks of audio-visual entertainment. One could play an endless language game with what counts as a movie. Once some level of audience interactivity is involved doesn't it cease to be a movie and become a "video game"? Do we want to privilege av entertainment designed to be shown (as first run) in a theater, as a collective experience, over stuff made for television? The former are still called "movies" without adjective, the latter are usually called "TV movies" or something else. Or is that distinction fading as obsolete? Language games aside, I like the fact that we still use the term "movies" because it reminds us of the longer expression "motion pictures" and THAT in turn reminds us of the original surprise that the first viewers more than a century ago might have expressed. "Wow! ... those pictures MOVE!"...
"Once It's Been Done, One Can See It Was Always Inevitable." A movie about a ghost dog who plans a wedding. http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2017/11/21/the_first_ghost_dog_wedding_planning_movie_is_here_at_last.html
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...
Strange movie. Had its moments, but ... what happened to the theme of foot size? SPOILER ALERT. As usual, I will proceed to discuss this movie without any regard to whether you've seen it or not or what plot twists I may be revealing. TURN BACK if you don't want to learn what this might teach you. Anyway, half of the movie is the set up, the other half is a "who done it" where the "it" is "impregnated Bridget." The two suspects are: Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, and Jack, played by Patrick Dempsey. Bridget has a long history with Mark; Jack is the new guy in her life. Before my train of associations went elsewhere, I was going to say something about foot size. At one point, Bridget gets a sonogram, and learns that her baby (a) is a boy and (b) has large feet. A little later, we're privy to a conversation between Bridget and her father, where Dad mentions that HE has "dainty" feet which Bridget has inherited. Yes, I ...
I'm thinking about The Light Between Oceans, a movie in the historical romance genre. It opened on September 2, which is called a "fall release" in Hollywood marketing terms, though sticklers will point to the calendar and say it was released in the summer. It was not a huge commercial success. I saw it, in a less-than-packed theater, that first weekend. It was sixth at the box office that weekend. SPOILER ALERT. Don't read further if you plan to see the movie and may want to be surprised by the plot twists, such as they are. But commercial success isn't what I'm thinking about this morning. I'm thinking about the "compare and contrast" the movie makers set up between their story and the classic Bible story about Solomon and a baby. Much of the film takes place on a small island off the coast of northwestern Australia, where the protagonist couple tend a lighthouse. There is talk about how critical the lighthouse is, as the Indian and ...
This movie got terrible reviews. Indeed, it got at least one non-review review that turned into a discussion of why some movies should never get sequels, but Hollywood obliviously makes sequels anyway, and ... etc., the writer was off the the races then, writing about everything except this movie. But the theater was packed when I was there, and I enjoyed the show. Most people around me (admittedly not all) seemed caught up in it. This must have included at least some who weren't familiar with the original. I'll avoid any spoilers, which seriously limits how much I can say about a movie of this sort. But I'll plow on anyway. There is a Big Reveal moment that takes place on a barge in the middle of the Thames. So if you find London scenery inherently fascinating, that'll be a plus for you. The ending, the very ending, didn't work for me though. Perhaps the five minutes or so after the Big Reveal on the aforementioned barge might charitably be see as wind-d...