movies | dual personalities

November 7, 2016

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…”

by chuckofish

On Sunday our rector came the closest to giving a political sermon he has ever come. And by that I mean he quoted from The Wall Street Journal. He didn’t mention the gospel lesson which was amazingly appropriate for the Sunday before our national election day.

“But I say to you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹To him who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also… ³¹And as you wish that men would do to you, do so to them.” (Luke 6: 27-31)

I will be turning the other cheek a lot this week. Which is what I think our rector was getting at. We’re all in this together, now let’s be nice. Jesus said it better.

Meanwhile, I am reading On the Move: A Life by Oliver Sacks, the doctor and neurologist who was also a best-selling author.

He wrote Awakenings, which was adapted into one of my favorite movies in 1990. Anyway, I am enjoying his autobiography immensely. It is so well-written! (I watched Awakenings on Sunday night–so good!) Remember this:

Wonderful.

The warm weather has encouraged last year’s Chrysanthemums to re-bloom,

and the roses to keep coming.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere for all of us. Keep going.

“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”

–Martin Luther

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November 4, 2016

“You ever been in a chickie-run?”*

by chuckofish

The Star of the Month for November on TCM is Natalie Wood. Every Friday this month they will be showing her movies, including a few favorites of mine.

Rebel Without a Cause (1955) with James Dean

Love With the Proper Stranger (1963) with Steve McQueen

The Searchers (1956) with Jeffrey Hunter

Natalie’s career was a little uneven, but she was in some great movies, both as a child (Miracle on 39th Street) and as a teenager and an adult. It was a sad day indeed when she drowned at age 43 in 1981.

I am happy to toast her tonight and watch a movie with one of her dreamy co-stars.

And this news made me very happy:

For those of us who have trouble sleeping at night, here are some no-brainer suggestions from the National Sleep Foundation:

Practice yoga, meditation or deep breathing before bed, to help you feel more relaxed.
Avoid TV or computers before bed, These devices can stimulate your brain and make it more difficult to fall asleep.
Enjoy a soothing mug of chamomile tea.
Take a shower or bath.
Perform leg exercises, such as squats, to promote blood flow to the legs.
Count sheep or breathe deeply. Or imagine yourself already asleep.
Earlier in the day, make time to exercise.
If there’s something you’re worried about it, think through it during the day.

I particularly like that last one. I mean seriously. Thanks.

Have a good weekend! Don’t forget to turn your clocks back on Saturday night!

*Buzz Gunderson in Rebel Without a Cause

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October 31, 2016

“Out of the everywhere into the here.”*

by chuckofish

There were three baptisms in church on Sunday, including our favorite baby Avery Rose.

There was nary a peep out of either infant and the third-grader practically plunged his head into the font. I am always amazed by the composure of the kids at our church.

Speaking of babies, I know you are wondering about our twins. Well, it’s a boy

and a girl!

We are so happy!

In other news, I watched a very good movie this weekend–Free State of Jones (2016) starring Matthew McConaughey as a Confederate army deserter who returns to Mississippi and leads an armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Like the majority of southern soldiers, Newt Knight is not a slave owner and he becomes disillusioned with fighting for a government he does not support.

I liked it a lot.

Now we are on the verge of November. Zut alors! Where did October go? (I seem to say that a lot.)

*George MacDonald

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October 28, 2016

“There is a great disturbance in the Force.”*

by chuckofish

Halloween is upon us and we have not posted once about it. I guess that reveals my true enthusiasm for the “holiday” and also the level of my being too busy to notice. If it weren’t for the piles of Halloween candy I have been trying to ignore at work all week, I probably wouldn’t even know that it is around the corner!

That being said, the weekend is upon us and I have a few things scheduled, chief among them the “gender reveal” get-together daughter #3 has planned. Did I mention that the boy and daughter #3 are expecting twins? Well, yes, they are. We have been focused on the boy going through chemo/recovering from cancer all year, but in the background daughter #3 has been working on her own project. Ain’t life amazing?

So in view of these exciting developments, here are three movie suggestions for you.

Anything starring those famous real-life twins, Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen:

Certainly this one would be appropriate this weekend!

Any of those movies about these fictional twins:

And how about Double Impact (1991) starring not one, but two (!) Jean-Claude Van Damme(s)…

Note how I cleverly chose films which feature two girls, two boys and a boy/girl set. We are all wondering whether our twins will be two girls, two boys or a girl and a boy. I am voting for a little Luke and Leia, but que sera, sera! Anyway, I’ll let you know what we find out–stay tuned!

And, oh hey, this is interesting, although not as surprising as they make it out to be.

*The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

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October 24, 2016

Cheers, it’s Monday!

by chuckofish

Did you have a quiet weekend? I researched whether this pumpkin spice thing really has gone too far. And I got a lot of things around the house done and that felt good.

I went to church and read the first lesson–a not very inspiring passage from Sirach (one of those second-listed wisdom books from the Apocrypha). The second reader got to read from I Timothy–no fair.

Since it is that stewardship time of year, we had our weekly “stewardship moment,” which was delivered by a parishioner who is the producer of a weekly TV show. She was nervous about her testimony, so the two stars of her show came along for moral support and were seated in the congregation. Kind of sweet.

I went to an estate sale in the neighborhood and bought an “antique” wash stand which I put in my den, switching out a table that has never really fit there. I rearranged things and am pleased with how things look.

(Apologies for not having styled an appropriate vignette yet.)

I read quite a bit of Prelude to Terror, an old thriller (1978) by Helen MacInnes. After reading several books by Shirley Jackson, I was having trouble finding something to read. (Karin Fossum’s latest dreary Swedish mystery did not make the cut.) Helen seems to be just what I was looking for.

I watched Genius (2016) about the great editor Maxwell Perkins and the writer Thomas Wolfe. It was disappointing, despite having quite a primo cast.

Sigh. Well, here’s a little Wolfe to make up for the disappointment:

Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean down your ear upon the earth and listen.

The voice of forest water in the night, a woman’s laughter in the dark, the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday in hot meadows, the delicate web of children’s voices in bright air–these things will never change.

The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbors, the feathery blur and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and tongueless cry–these things will always be the same.

All things belonging to the earth will never change–the leaf, the blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of lovers long since buried in the earth–all things proceeding from the earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon the earth–these things will always be the same, for they come up from the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts forever. Only the earth endures, but it endures forever.

—You Can’t Go Home Again

So it is Monday again and we are back at the salt mine. Make the most of your day.

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October 21, 2016

“I’m sure Ferrand is wrong. Life is more important than films.”*

by chuckofish

Francois Truffaut died on this day in 1984 at the age of 52. He was a French film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor, and one of the founders of the French New Wave. You remember them–they all smoked cigarettes and wore black turtlenecks.

He made about twenty-five movies, many of them now considered classics.

His first color and only English-speaking film was Fahrenheit 451 (1966) which I saw at a fairly young age. I was deeply effected by it.

Scary

Another favorite of mine is Day for Night (1973)–or, as we say in French, La Nuit américaine. The title refers to the ‘filmmaking process called in French “la nuit américaine” (“American night”), whereby sequences filmed outdoors in daylight are shot using film balanced for tungsten (indoor) light and underexposed (or adjusted during post production) to appear as if they are taking place at night.’ I bet you didn’t know that.

Anyway, it is a movie about making a movie and stars the great Italian actress Valentina Cortese, who was so terrific as Herodias in Jesus of Nazareth (1977).

Jacqueline Bisset is in it too, along with some French actors, and it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film that year.

Americans probably know Francois Truffaut best for the part he played in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He was Claude Lacombe, a French government scientist in charge of UFO-related activities in the United States. Why, you ask, would a Frenchman be in charge of UFO-related activities in the U.S.? Who knows; it was a movie.

So my Friday pick is to watch a film by Francois Truffaut. Jules et Jim, anyone?

Puff, puff. (And this is interesting.)

*Alphonse in Day for Night

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October 20, 2016

“Be at peace, Son of Gondor.”

by chuckofish

Happy birthday to Viggo Mortensen (b. 1958) who is almost as old as I am.

We made a lot of jokes this past weekend about 28 Days (2000) and how we hoped daughter #1 would make a toast just like Sandra Bullock does in that movie and wear a black bra under her Maid of Honor dress,

and that made me want to watch it again. This movie was the last one Viggo made before he was launched into the stratosphere of movie super-stardom as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

(Yes, we still have that poster hanging in the basement…)

Up ’til then Viggo usually played the second or third or (minor) male part. Frequently he was cast as a heavy and his career was all over the map, veering from Albino Alligator to Portrait of a Lady in one year. We made it a game for awhile finding Viggo in small parts in obscure movies–sometimes the movies were way inappropriate for pre-teens–but it was fun.

Anyway, I always liked 28 Days, even though it was not a hit. Which is typical.

So happy birthday to Viggo Mortensen.

P.S. My dual personality has actually met Viggo, since he is an alumnus of her north country university (where her DH is a math professor) and occasionally returns for events. I always thought Viggo kind of looks like that other north country alum…

Kirk Douglas! The chin you say, but not just that…

Have a great day! The iris bloomed!

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September 23, 2016

“It seemed to be a good idea at the time.”*

by chuckofish

The reboot of The Magnificent Seven opens today, but you will not catch me going to see this remake of a remake. Please. I mean look at these guys.

Of course, they have changed the story so the bad guy is an industrialist. Of course he is. Bandits are so yesterday. Robber Barons–big time bandits–clever.

Also, you can bet that this new version is 100 times more violent than either of the earlier movies.

So no, I prefer to dust off the original, The Seven Samurai (1954), directed by Akira Kurosawa

and starring Toshiro Mifune as one of the seven.

Or I could watch the original American remake, The Magnificent Seven (1960) starring Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen et al.

I could go either way. You do what you want. You will not hurt my feelings.

Meanwhile the boy and daughter #3 came over for dinner last night. I figured the boy would like to get out of the house since he is still recuperating. (He gets his staples out next week.)

So that was nice. And he looks pretty good, right?

The dining room is looking pretty good too!

Have a super weekend!

*Steve McQueen as Vin in The Magnificent Seven (1960)

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September 19, 2016

Tempus fugit

by chuckofish

Happy 5th Anniversary to our blog! How time flies, right? Thanks for reading it! High fives all around.

My restful weekend turned out to be anything but that, which is typical, but okay.

Per usual, I went to the grocery store, had coffee with friends, and went to an estate sale where I rescued a needlepoint brick.

I also put a bid in for an antique full size bed. I never win when I bid at estate sales, but, of course, I did this time when I did not have access to a big car or the boy! (What was I thinking?!) So the OM and I went into figure-this-out-mode and managed to rent a pickup truck. Of course, the rental place called on Sunday morning and were like, sorry, there is no pickup truck available–will a mini van do? Long story short, we did rent a large Town & Country minivan which, when all the seats were collapsed, did the job.

Of course, we had to take the bed apart (not a terribly easy job) at the house and then make numerous trips with bed parts down the windy stairs and out to the car. Then we took it home and unloaded it and returned the minivan to the rental place.

Quite the four-hour ordeal. Oy.

The bed will stay in the garage until some day in the future when I have regained my mojo and want to tackle putting it together. Huzzah.

In other news I am still reading The Lamplighter by Maria Susanna Cummins and enjoying it very much.

I am more than halfway through this 424 page opus. The 1850s weren’t perfect by any means, but it is an okay place to escape from the 2010s.

I watched Keanu (2016)–

which is one of those movies where, literally, everything funny is in the trailer. The movie was not good and, as the boy warned me, there is not enough of the kitten in the movie.

I also watched Young Frankenstein (1974), which I realized I had never actually seen from beginning to end. It was funny (especially after Keanu.)

Last week while we were away, the wallpaper went up in our dining room!

I think it looks fabulous! I still have to put things back up on the walls and hang the curtains, but I did put the china back in the china cabinet.

So now it is Monday and it’s back to the salt mines once again!

4 Comments

September 9, 2016

This and that

by chuckofish

The weekend is upon us once more. Huzzah! It is raining now and that’s okay–the temperatures have cooled off.

If you missed Bells Are Ringing (1960) a few weeks ago, you can catch it again on TCM today at 5:45 p.m. It is not one of the great musicals of all time, but it is fun and the performance of the great Judy Holliday is worth watching. And Dean Martin is Dean Martin.

Personally, I have a soft spot in my heart for Bells Are Ringing because I remember going to go see the “Troubadours” production of it at Country Day in 1971. I was in the ninth grade and my friend and I were dropped off at the school to see it. I felt pretty grown up. It’s funny how experiences like that loom large in one’s memory. Not that my life has been all that exciting–so maybe it’s understandable.

Someone left the entire Masterpiece Theatre DVD set of I, Claudius (1976) in our giveaway basket at work, so I brought it home and I am watching it now.

Again, I remember watching it with my parents back in the day and how much they enjoyed it. It is excellent and some of the performances–Sian Phillips as Livia in particular–are pretty great.

All this nostalgic TV viewing makes me wonder what my children will look back on fondly. Back in the day, watching something like I, Claudius was such an event. You watched an episode and then you had to wait a whole week to see the next installment. Also, if you missed it for some reason, there was no DVR or VHS, so–drama! Schedules had to be re-arranged, dates turned down, priorities set.

We are spoiled now. There is no such thing as delayed gratification anymore.

Not that I’m complaining exactly. Here I go sounding like an old lady again. Mea culpa.

Anyway, this weekend I will be immersed in Ancient Roman political intrigue. How about you?

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