Movies | dual personalities

Category: Movies

July 21, 2014

We are climbing Jacob’s Ladder

by chuckofish

Lovebirds circa 1988

Since my dual personality already posted about her silver anniversary and the wonderful wedding in England that started it all, I will refrain from doing so. My pictures from the big event are pretty much the same.

I will limit myself to this one of daughter #1 (almost 5) and the boy (2 1/2).

The boy, as previously noted, was coming down with chicken pox, but he was enough on the ball to be quite taken with the wedding. It was in the fall, after all, that he came home one day from pre-school and announced that he “had decided.” “Decided what?” I gamely asked. “I’ve decided to marry Lauren B.”

And, reader, he did. Just about twenty-three years later, he did–and in July as well!

I don’t think he would have been contemplating wedlock if he had not attended this great wedding in England. You just never know what your younguns are thinking.

What a bud.

Anyway, how was your weekend? I estate-saled, ran errands, tore wallpaper off the walls of an upstairs bathroom (you gotta have a project), attended church, and planted a rose bush.

As I noted on Friday, I planned to watch Road to Perdition, but I could not find my copy! Can you believe it? Curses again. Instead I watched The Naked Jungle (1954) with Charlton Heston, Eleanor Parker and William Conrad with a really bad French (?) accent.

You remember–it’s the one about the plantation in South America that is in the path of a 2-mile-wide, 20-mile-long column of army ants! It was clearly shot on a soundstage, but it is better than it sounds. Charlton is always worth watching.

On Saturday night I watched The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

I am not a fan of Wes Anderson–he is highly over-rated, if you ask me–so my expectations were low. I enjoyed it, however, mostly because I am a minor fan of Ralph Fiennes. He is wonderful (who knew he could be funny?) and elevates the material. There are the usual cameo appearances by Wes’s hipster friends (Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Ed Norton, Bob Balaban, etc.) and inappropriate (and an inordinate) use of the F-word, but it is worth watching for Ralph and his sidekick played by the very funny teenager Tony Revolori.

I was a reader once again at church (substituting for vacationing lay readers) and I read the story of Jacob’s dream of the angels ascending and descending the ladder (Genesis 28:10-19a). I also read Romans 8:12-25, which includes “you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear” and also “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” Good stuff.

Here is a terrific rendition of the old negro spiritual “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder” sung by a Dutch men’s chorus. (I love that they pronounce Jacob as “Yacob.”) We don’t hear this one much anymore–probably because of the refrain: “Soldiers of the cross.” Listen to the whole thing–it’ll rev your engines to start the week off right!

If you love Him, why not serve Him?

(Here are all the words.)

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July 18, 2014

Darn, darn, darn, darny-darn! or What was I thinking?

by chuckofish

So we watched The Lego Movie (2014) the other night. One of my nephews reviewed it here back when it came out in February–you can read all about the plot etc. there. He thought it was “perfect” and I will not dispute that. I just think I am getting too old for this kind of movie. There were too many distracting cameos–I spent a lot of mental energy trying to hear whose voice was who–and too much whiz bang action.

I mean I get what the movie is about. We had lots of Lego when my children were growing up and we were not the kind of parents who insisted on keeping the sets whole and “glued,” as it were, together. We got that it’s about the child being creative and making its own world, usually after the Lego world has been mastered. I’m glad they made that clear in the movie. And I like that they made a point of using Lego-friendly language, i.e darn, dang and oh my g.o.s.h. Isn’t it ironic, however, that it has a PG rating for “cartoon violence” and tense situations?

Anyway, it poked fun at the right things: terrible, mind-numbing theme songs, vulgar one-joke TV shows that are not funny, sports bars, and people who are known for just one thing. It is nice to know that there are still people (in Hollywood especially) who understand that our culture is all about being banal while asserting that everyone is “special.”

I think it is sad, however, that no one can make a movie this good for adults. Or is it that the adults, including the makers of this movie, don’t really want to be grown ups? They just want to be kids forever, making childish inside jokes about imaginary people and super heroes. When was the last time you saw a “new” movie about real people–not make-believe James Bond or Captain America people?

You haven’t, right? I thought so.

Yeah, I know, I’m turning into an old coot. Well, so be it.

Just for laughs I looked at a list on IMDB.com of the “Top 100 Movies of the Decade 2000-2010”. I found six movies that I liked: Gladiator (2000), Black Hawk Down (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), Million Dollar Baby (2004), Crash (2004), and The Hurt Locker (2008). I only own one of those movies–Road to Perdition. So I guess that’s my movie pick for this Friday!