Movies | dual personalities

November 22, 2019

“Lose your life and you will save it.”

by chuckofish

Today is the feast day of Clive Staples Lewis in the Episcopal Church. That’s C.S. Lewis, Christian apologist and spiritual writer, who died on November 22, 1963.

Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 11.05.18 AM.png

“Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom, Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Here’s an article about CSL to refresh your memory. It may be time to revisit Narnia.

Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 11.18.38 AM.png

Well, here we are and it is almost Thanksgiving! This weekend I will be getting my act together and the house ready for the big day next week, which won’t be such a big event this year. Still, there will be a turkey and all the fixins…How do you do Thanksgiving? Garden & Gun readers answered that question here.

Our mother served a distinctly New England version of the Thanksgiving feast (which was her mother’s version), and for years after she died, I replicated it, squash and all. Over the years, however, we changed the menu and simplified it to suit our tastes. I don’t think she’d mind. I hope she would approve of our cheesy potato casserole and green beans. She would be pleased that we use her china and set a nice table.

This past week I watched several Errol Flynn movies, prompted by the boy’s recommendation to watch Against All Flags (1952) which is on Amazon Prime.

Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 12.33.05 PM

He was right–it is good entertainment and Errol, although along in years (he was 43!) has not yet gone around the bend.

Encouraged by this, I attempted to watch The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) which I had DVR’d. Despite the fact that Errol was in his prime, the movie for me was unwatchable, due to Bette Davis and her over-acting. Good lord, she was too much. I gave up after half an hour. Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 12.38.24 PM

Battered but unbowed, I started The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) a few nights later. Flynn was 39 at this point and, although the movie is derivative of every other swashbuckler he made, down to the shot of him riding across a stream with Alan Hale at night followed by a posse of angry Englishmen, with the moonlight coming through the trees, he is still in surprisingly good form and very engaging. I enjoyed the movie a lot.

Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 12.53.55 PM.png

So if you are looking for something to watch this weekend, try an Errol Flynn movie. They don’t make profiles like his anymore.

Have a good weekend. Take it easy. Eat some pancakes.

3 Comments

November 8, 2019

The checkered game of life

by chuckofish

Today is the birthday of Milton Bradley (November 8, 1836 – May 30, 1911) who was an American business magnate, game pioneer and publisher, credited by many with launching the board game industry, with the Milton Bradley Company.

Screen Shot 2019-11-07 at 1.43.29 PM.png

The Checkered Game of Life, Bradley’s first big success, was originally created in 1860 and like many 19th-century games, such as The Mansion of Happiness by S.B. Ives in 1843, it had a strong moral message. In 1960 the modern version, The Game of Life, was introduced. The Game of Life was updated several times through the years. In 1991 the ‘moral message’ contained in the game was players being rewarded for good behavior, such as recycling trash and helping the homeless. They were virtue-signaling even then!

I remember playing board games and card games with my siblings–

Screen Shot 2019-11-07 at 4.06.00 PM.png

Mille Bornes, French for a thousand milestones, referring to the distance markers on French roads, in particular–but I was never very good at games. There are too many rules to remember.

I remember playing riotous games of Hearts, and Categories was always a favorite of ours.

What games do you remember from your childhood?

So regarding a Friday movie pick…it might be time to watch Jumanji (1995) or Jumanji: Return to the Jungle (2017) in honor of old Milton Bradley.

Screen Shot 2019-11-07 at 2.25.28 PM.png This is how my mind works after all…

Of course, since yesterday was the anniversary of the day Steve McQueen died in 1980, we might want to go in that direction.

Screen Shot 2019-11-07 at 4.29.02 PM.png

(@john.wayne.fans Instagram)

Well, decisions, decisions…

Have a good weekend!

4 Comments

October 29, 2019

“Hold the selfies, put the Gram away/ Get your family, y’all hold hands and pray”*

by chuckofish

On Friday I received my copy of Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout in the mail. It was a quick read and I finished it in a day. It was a big disappointment. All of the reviews I have read have been raves, so I am in a distinct minority it seems.

Olive, Again is a sequel to Strout’s Olive Kitteridge, which I loved. I have liked most of her books and almost all of them are tied up in this one. Indeed, in a series of linked short stories, we find out what happens to all those Maine characters who have populated her books. What we find out, basically, is that they are all frightened and lonely people with no spiritual life. It is a bleak world where nothing has much meaning. At the end of the book, Olive writes (spoiler alert!), “I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing.”

I could go on, but it is just kind of depressing, so why bother.

Anyway, despite reading this disappointing book, daughter # 1 and I got quite a lot done this weekend, tidying up the house for daughter #2’s visit this coming weekend. I even persuaded the OM to hang up a pair of new drapes in my office. I got them on Etsy.com and I think they look great.

We also watched Ghostbusters (1984) which I thought held up very well and is kind of a classic at this point.

Screen Shot 2019-10-28 at 11.52.53 AM.png

The scene at the beginning in the New York Public Library…

Screen Shot 2019-10-28 at 3.10.30 PM.png

reminded us of Lottie…LOL!

Screen Shot 2019-10-28 at 3.19.25 PM.png

“No human being would stack books like this.”

Meanwhile, the boy had a fine time at the wedding in Rye, New York.

There he is to the right of the bride

And now he is home again, home again, jiggety jig.

And now I am back to wondering what to read. Have a good week!

“I don’t myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn’t given us any new amazements, except of the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn’t given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins-not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It’s the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You’ll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don’t think you help people by making their conduct of no importance-you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that’s what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.”
― Willa Cather, The Professor’s House

*Kanye West, “Closed on Sunday”

4 Comments

October 22, 2019

“Somebody’s comin’, Pa!”

by chuckofish

Well, for anyone who was wondering, the OM and I watched Shane (1953) the other night for our anniversary and we were reminded, once again, what a really great movie it is.

Readers of this blog know how much I love John Ford westerns, how I think some of them are truly works of art, and that John Wayne is my favorite actor of all time. However, Shane, directed by George Stevens and starring the unlikely Alan Ladd, is my favorite western and, probably in the last analysis, my favorite movie.

Based on a novel by Jack Schaefer, the screenplay is by the great A.B. Guthrie. Everything is not black-and-white in this story. The good guys (the homesteaders) are sometimes weak and whining. The bad guys (the ranchers) make some strong arguments and are understandably frustrated. Into this mess rides Shane, the reluctant gunslinger, who is hired by Joe Starrett to help on his homestead. Shane likes Starrett and wants to help him, but his presence shifts the balance, and the ranchers bring in their own equalizer, the gunfighter Wilson.

Screen Shot 2019-10-21 at 2.33.55 PM.png One hot-headed homesteader is killed and the other homesteaders want to run.

Shane rallies the homesteaders; the inarticulate but stalwart Starrett says he’ll take care of things. (My son thinks Starrett is the real hero of the film–the hardworking father and husband who is willing to die so his family can have a better life.) But Shane, even though he has fallen in love with Starrett’s wife, can’t let his friend get himself killed, so he goes into town himself to take care of Wilson.

It is a simple story beautifully told with minimal dialogue. The characters are so authentic in their ill-fitting, wrinkled clothes and muddy boots. The children, especially Brandon de Wilde, are real in ways seldom caught on film.

The pacing and balance of this film are near perfect with homey moments of family life on the frontier interspersed with moments of jangling violence. Indeed, the editing of this film is some of the best ever in film history. It is sharp and crisp and drives the action.Think of the barroom brawl where Starrett and Shane fight together against the cowboys with the timid homesteaders watching, and then later when they fight each other in the yard with the horses and cattle going nuts and Marian screaming and Joey wide-eyed. And yet nothing is overdone.

Prior to Shane, George Stevens was a good director, but here he rises to a whole other level. He never patronizes the homesteaders (or his audience) with any aw-shucks scenes. Their feelings are real and raw. The funeral scene is a good example: the quietly sobbing wife, the distracted children, the heartbroken dog, the harmonica-playing friend, and Starrett standing in for a minister, because they have no one else. And Stevens pulled a truly great performance out of B-team player Alan Ladd, who surprised everyone with his portrayal of the lonely gunfighter who tries to seize one last chance at a “normal” life, but sacrifices himself for the greater good. Ladd was not particularly good at expressing feelings (as I have mentioned before) and in Shane he is all about repressed feelings. It works. All the actors in this movie are excellent and believable in their parts.

Shane won the Oscar for Best Color Cinematography (Loyal Griggs) and the award was well-deserved. How beautiful is this movie!

Well, I guess I got a little carried away, but I will stop here and just recommend that you watch this movie. I saw Woody Allen interviewed once where he was talking about Shane and how it is one of his favorite movies. He has probably seen it 100 times, he said, and no matter where he is, if the movie comes on tv, he will stop and watch the whole thing through. I can relate. No matter how many times you see Shane, you see something new.

Anyway, the rest of my weekend was pretty quiet. The wee babes came over for dinner on Sunday night. They rearranged the furniture as usual.

I can’t wait until they are old enough to watch Shane!

4 Comments

October 18, 2019

Hanging in there

by chuckofish

Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 12.37.44 PM.png

“Love is not a big enough word.”

So the OM and I are celebrating our 39th anniversary today! I grant you that celebrating may be too strong a word for what we will actually be doing…

…but you know that I am always looking for a reason to toast or celebrate. And 39 years is a long time!

1970s College ID–good grief!

He still has that shirt and it still fits…

The parade did not pass us by…

…and the soundtrack never changed…

(Always with the free advertising…)

Thirty-nine years deserves champagne, but we will probably be hunkering down in front of the telly and watching a movie (sans champagne), per usual on a Friday night.

However, the list of movies that comes up when you google “wedding anniversary movies” is truly bizarre. I mean, really, Gone Girl (2014) is #1.

Shane (1953) is #22 on the list, I suppose because Joe and Marian Starrett celebrate their wedding anniversary on the 4th of July shortly before the denouement of the film.

Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 11.43.04 AM.png Well, I haven’t been able to come up with a list of my own…except that Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) comes to mind…

Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 4.44.42 PM.png

…wherein Diane Keaton and Woody Allen play a married couple trying to solve a mystery involving a neighbor who may or may not have been murdered. I think it is hilarious but the OM despises Woody Allen. (And there is something vaguely familiar about Diane and Woody.)

Then there’s always Cary Grant and Irene Dunne or Rock Hudson and Doris Day or William Powell and Myrna Loy in a variety of films featuring them as married couples.

Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 4.52.08 PM.png Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 9.05.14 PM.png Screen Shot 2019-10-17 at 5.00.00 PM.png

Well, we’ll figure something out. Any suggestions?

Here’s to 39 years! And to a few more!

Have a good weekend!

7 Comments

October 11, 2019

This and that

by chuckofish

Well, when you least expect it, you get a surprise. And the Cardinals really surprised me. They won the NLCS in a remarkable game 5, scoring 10 runs in the first inning and winning 13-1.

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 9.16.21 AM.png Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 9.08.54 AM.png In other news I went to the pumpkin patch at the local Methodist Church and met the wee babes there after school.

We picked out some pumpkins and they ran around.

A good time was had by all! And we got pumpkins.

History Fun Fact for the day: During a visit to St. Louis on this day in 1910, Theodore Roosevelt flew with pilot Arch Hoxsey, becoming the first U.S. president to fly. The former president must have been a pretty fearless guy–to go up in a plane with a 26-year old pilot! (A few years earlier he had startled the country by diving beneath the waters of Long Island Sound in a submarine.)

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 2.38.32 PM.png Sadly, the pilot died a few months later while trying to set a new altitude record. The Wright brothers paid for his funeral.

Yesterday was the start of Dolly Parton Week at the Opry where they are celebrating Dolly’s 50th Opry Member Anniversary. This week-long celebration of her impact on music and the Opry leads up to her 50th anniversary performance on the Opry stage on Saturday. How I wish I could be there Saturday night! I’d also like to see that, yes, truly “every sequin tells a story” at “Dolly: My Opry Memories”, a special limited-time exhibit at the Opry House. I want to “go back in time with wardrobe pieces Dolly has worn on the Opry and Ryman stages over her Opry career!”

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 4.03.21 PM.png Disappointing, indeed, but as usual, I’ll be hanging out at home having a quiet weekend. I hope to at least make it to an estate sale that looks promising. Maybe I’ll watch a Dolly movie this weekend. Anyone for Steel Magnolias (1989)?

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 4.23.38 PM.png

or Rhinestone (1984)?

Screen Shot 2019-10-10 at 4.27.06 PM.png

Well, we’ll see.

Have a good weekend!

O Lord, heavenly Father, in whom is the fullness of light and wisdom: Enlighten our minds by thy Holy Spirit, and give us grace to receive thy Word with reverence and humility, without which no man can understand thy truth; for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord.

–John Calvin (1509-1564)

4 Comments

October 8, 2019

We are creatures, we are creatures of love*

by chuckofish

Over the weekend I put out some of my Halloween decorations…

Yes, fall has officially arrived, pumpkins and all.

I watched three Charlton Heston movies in honor of Chuck’s birthday: The Mountain Men (1980), The Buccaneer (1958) and Arrowhead (1953). Of the three I can recommend The Buccaneer, which co-stars Yul Brynner as the pirate Jean Lafitte.

Screen Shot 2019-10-07 at 7.10.23 PM.png

Heston plays Andrew Jackson.

Screen Shot 2019-10-07 at 7.10.08 PM.png

Historically speaking, I have no doubt that it is rife with error, but I enjoyed it.

Besides these Heston histrionics, it was a pretty quiet weekend. I puttered around and did some “desk work” and cleaned up my office.

The wee babes came over on Sunday night and the OM barbecued. Before they came over I had cleaned up daughter #2’s old LittleTikes dollhouse and put it out on our coffee table. Lottie ran in and exclaimed, “A dollhouse for Lottie!” The wee laddie was hot on her heels, though, and laid claim to the dollhouse as well. We had to assign the 2nd floor to Lottie and the first floor to the bud (to be used as a garage for his cars and trucks).

Anyway, a good time was had by all.

Here are some bonus pictures of the wee babes on an outing with their parents to the Eckert’s Fun Farm in Millstadt, IL on Saturday. They had a a super fun time and picked/ate a lot of apples.

Screen Shot 2019-10-07 at 4.21.32 PM.png

Life is good. Enjoy your Tuesday!

*Talking Heads

3 Comments

October 4, 2019

Friday movie pick(s)

by chuckofish

Today we toast Charlton Heston (1923-2008), actor and Episcopalian, on his birthday. Since I was a child, I always liked Charlton, in everything from The Big Country (1958)

Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 9.13.37 PM.png

to Secret of the Incas (1954)

Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 9.16.33 PM.png

to 55 Days at Peking (1963)

Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 9.18.07 PM.png

to Planet of the Apes (1968)…

Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 9.21.31 PM.png

He never disappointed. And he made a lot of good movies besides Ben Hur.

Tonight I will watch one of them. Maybe two.

It is also the birthday of Frederick Remington (1861-1909), artist and Episcopalian, who would have enjoyed painting/sculpting Charlton Heston I think.

Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 9.35.44 PM.png Screen Shot 2019-10-03 at 9.34.36 PM.png

Besides this I have no big plans for the weekend. Some puttering maybe, between naps. The weather has (finally) cooled off and I wish I could take a walk, but I’ll have to settle for sitting on the patio and maybe trimming some ivy.

I’m not complaining. It’s all good.

3 Comments

September 20, 2019

“Scars make better stories than tattoos”*

by chuckofish

So another week comes to an end. It’s Fri-yay!

Screen Shot 2019-09-19 at 8.07.26 PM.png

I will be taking it easy this weekend, finishing Land of Wolves by Craig Johnson. Walt Longmire is back in Wyoming (where he belongs) and all the old characters are there with him. 👍 I am enjoying it very much and trying not to read it too fast.

I’ll probably watch some baseball–the Cards are playing the Cubs. Everyone here in STL is sort of cautiously optimistic as the Cards are still in first place as the playoffs approach. We’ll hope for the best.

Since today is the birthday of Sophia Loren (she’s 85!), we will toast her and watch one of her movies, my favorites being Houseboat (1958) with Cary Grant

Screen Shot 2019-09-19 at 9.44.23 PM.png

and Legend of the Lost (1957) with John Wayne

Screen Shot 2019-09-19 at 9.45.48 PM.png

…which both feature worthy co-stars.

And who can forget when she shared the joy with Roberto Benigni when Life is Beautiful won Best Foreign Film at the Oscars in 1999?

A great moment indeed.

And here is some wee babe goodness to tide you over…

Have a good weekend!

*Craig Johnson

3 Comments

September 10, 2019

The slow-drawn wagon

by chuckofish

I had a very quiet weekend. In fact I never left my house! The wee babes came over on Sunday for dinner and shook things up for a wee bit, but they weren’t too…rowdy…

They are always so good at entertaining themselves with the same old toys and books while the grownups talk.

Speaking of books, I read one I picked up on the giveaway table at work–This Dark Road to Mercy by Wiley Cash.

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 5.01.18 PM.png

It was pretty good, but I can’t say it lived up to the cover hype that it was a cross between Harper Lee and Elmore Leonard. There were two children in the book, but they weren’t exactly Jem and Scout, and, yes, it took place in the South. Comparisons are odious and sometimes downright embarrassing.

I also watched a couple of good movies–Rooster Cogburn (1975) with John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn…

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 5.21.09 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 5.12.46 PM.png

and Wagon Master (1950) directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr.

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 5.17.59 PM.png

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 5.16.41 PM.png

Rooster Cogburn is worth watching to see the two great stars (both 67 at the time) so obviously enjoying themselves. Clearly they liked each other and were having a fine time. Who cares if the plot is a bit shopworn? The scenery is beautiful and the music rousing.

Wagon Master, on the other hand, is a real masterpiece…and there is nary a star in sight. Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr., usually supporting players, are called upon to carry the action, along with Ward Bond, and they do just fine. It is a beautiful movie filmed in black and white by Bert Glennon in Moab, Utah. The story, which follows a group of Mormon pioneers going West, is a solid one and, as usual in Ford movies, is populated with realistic characters.

Screen Shot 2019-09-09 at 8.14.44 PM.png

Yes, that’s Russell Simpson as a Mormon elder next to Jane Darwell.

So I recommend both movies.

Now it is back to a busy week at work. I am also looking for something to read!

The big doors of the country barn stand open and ready,
The dried grass of the harvest-time loads the slow-drawn wagon,
The clear light plays on the brown gray and green intertinged,
The armfuls are pack'd to the sagging mow.

I am there, I help, I came stretch'd atop of the load,
I felt its soft jolts, one leg reclined on the other,
I jump from the cross-beams and seize the clover and timothy,
And roll head over heels and tangle my hair full of wisps.

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 9

2 Comments

Category: Movies

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish

by chuckofish