movies | dual personalities

This and that

by chuckofish

So hey, there’s only a week of February left! March is in sight! Spring is on the horizon, right?

I only ask because I have been shivering in my office all week, reduced to wearing a wool shawl around my shoulders because it is so freakin’ cold! Here’s the local weather report:

Some areas are seeing temperatures below zero this morning. Snow flurries are on the way for tonight, plus freezing rain this weekend.

But at least we don’t live in Niagra Falls, NY where the famous falls have frozen. Zut alors!

Moving right along…Today is the birthday of Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984), American photographer and environmentalist.

The Tetons and the Snake River

ansel-adams-1942-yosemite-valley-clearing-winterstorm

Winter storm in Yosemite Valley 1942

Ansel Adams in Yosemite 1942

It is also the anniversary of the death of the great Broadway star John Raitt (January 29, 1917 – February 20, 2005). In his honor, I suggest you watch this show-stoppin’ scene from The Pajama Game (1957) where he and Doris Day sing with gusto and precision one of the hardest darn songs to sing ever written!

Aren’t they great? This always reminds me of the episode in season 5 of Angel when Lorne (of the Deathwok Clan) has to listen to every staff member at Wolfram & Hart sing a song so that he can tell if they are hiding something. One girl sings “There Once Was a Man” and it is pretty funny. I guess you had to be there…

On the Episcopal Church front, we remember Frederick Douglass on the liturgical calendar today, the anniversary of his death in 1895.

Almighty God, whose truth makes us free: We bless your Name for the witness of Frederick Douglass, whose impassioned and reasonable speech moved the hearts of a president and a people to a deeper obedience to Christ. Strengthen us also to be outspoken on behalf of those in captivity and tribulation, continuing in the Word of Jesus Christ our Liberator; who with you and the Holy Spirit dwells in glory everlasting. Amen.

We are grateful for the lives of Ansel Adams, John Raitt and Frederick Douglass and for their contributions to our American culture. And we are grateful that the coach stopped by for dinner!

He moved some big boxes for me. Wasn’t that nice? And it’s Friday! Have a great weekend. Stay warm!

8 Comments

February 19, 2015

He was robbed!

by chuckofish

As you know, the Oscar show is coming up on Sunday. Sad to say, I probably won’t watch. I can’t stand the host this year and it has become such a fashion show and aren’t-we-great orgy, that I think I’ll once again sit it out.

I’ll be rooting for Bradley Cooper, but he won’t win.

Thinking of Cooper put me in mind of all the other great actors and actresses who have never won or didn’t win when they should have. Earlier this week I watched the great war movie Twelve O’Clock High (1949).

Gregory Peck was phenomenal and although he was nominated for Best Actor, he lost to Broderick Crawford in All the King’s Men. Please. John Wayne was also nominated that year for Sands of Iwo Jima, but I would have voted for Peck. He was just perfect.

I don’t have a lot of patience with this, “What are we fighting for?” stuff. We’re in a war, a shooting war. We’ve got to fight. And some of us have got to die. I’m not trying to tell you not to be afraid. Fear is normal. But stop worrying about it and about yourselves. Stop making plans. Forget about going home. Consider yourselves already dead. Once you accept that idea, it won’t be so tough. Now if any man here can’t buy that… if he rates himself as something special, with a special kind of hide to be saved… he’d better make up his mind about it right now. Because I don’t want him in this group…

Speaking of John Wayne, he should have won Best Actor for The Searchers (1956), but he wasn’t even nominated!

Ludicrous! This film, frequently listed as the greatest of all westerns, was not nominated for one Academy Award. Not a one. It boggles the mind. Yul Brynner won that year for The King and I–and I will grant that he was great–but the other nominees included Rock Hudson for Giant! And Laurence Olivier in probably his worst movie ever–Richard III.

I also think Paul Newman was robbed the year he didn’t win for Cool Hand Luke (1967).

Paul Newman was never better.

Anybody here? Hey, Old Man. You home tonight? Can You spare a minute. It’s about time we had a little talk. I know I’m a pretty evil fellow… killed people in the war and got drunk… and chewed up municipal property and the like. I know I got no call to ask for much… but even so, You’ve got to admit You ain’t dealt me no cards in a long time. It’s beginning to look like You got things fixed so I can’t never win out. Inside, outside, all of them… rules and regulations and bosses. You made me like I am. Now just where am I supposed to fit in? Old Man, I gotta tell You. I started out pretty strong and fast. But it’s beginning to get to me. When does it end? What do You got in mind for me? What do I do now? Right. All right.

It was the year of southern crime dramas (Bonnie and Clyde as well as Cool Hand Luke) and the Academy voters went with the racially fraught In The Heat of the Night and Rod Steiger. Well, I guess we can be grateful that Spencer Tracy didn’t win for Guess Who’s Coming For Dinner.

Another heart-breaker for me was when Steve McQueen lost in 1966 for The Sand Pebbles. Nominated for eight Oscars, it took home none. This was Steve’s shot and he lost to Paul Schofield in A Man for All Seasons–a movie I loathe.

I am also of the opinion that Doris Day should have won in 1959 for Pillow Talk. This was the year Ben Hur won everything except for Best Actress, which went to Simone Signoret in the forgettable Room at the Top.

(Thelma Ritter also lost Best Supporting Actress.)

Don’t get me started on actresses. All they have to do to win an Oscar and be taken seriously is put on a fake nose or gain weight or look un-glamorous (see above, Simone Signoret). Actresses like Doris Day, Myrna Loy, Irene Dunne, Carol Lombard–even Audrey Hepburn after her first movie–never had a chance. Despite the fact that they were all comic geniuses, they never won.

Really, there is no understanding how Academy members vote and there are many, many other examples I could list, but I am a broken record, right?…Albert Finney in Tom Jones, Robert Di Niro in Awakenings, Alan Ladd in Shane, Robert Redford in The Natural, Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity …

But for me those listed above are the main ones.

So take my advice and watch one of these great films instead of watching the award show.

6 Comments

February 13, 2015

Love your life

by chuckofish

Emily McDowell, of course

Here’s hoping we all have a happy Valentine’s Day, complete with candy and grocery store flowers. If you don’t have someone to give them to you, buy your own. And love your life. Enjoy the day! Smile, even when you don’t feel like it! Someone will smile back.

Just remember: your glass is half full, not half empty.

And if you are lucky enough to have a husband/wife/partner, remember that having the same exact thought at the same time is not habit or routine–that’s a blended soul. You are meant for each other. Set me a seal upon your heart.

I have no specific plans, but I will probably watch one of my favorite romantic movies. I have to say that the lists of such movies I’ve seen on the internet are pretty pathetic. Usually they include nothing older than twenty years and those chosen are pretty lame. Maybe the list will include some old chestnut like An Affair to Remember (1957) with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr–which really is a terrible movie and doesn’t deserve to be on any list ever–but that’s a big maybe. List-makers usually haven’t seen a movie older than Titanic (1997)!

My list would include:

Captain Blood (1935)

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Casablanca (1942)

Key Largo (1948)

The Quiet Man (1952)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

The Princess Bride (1987)

Green Card (1990)

The Man Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain (1995)

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Chocolat (2000)

Dear Frankie (2004)

Of course, there are many more, but I couldn’t think of them and particularly anything from the 1970s (Worst. Decade. Ever.)

What is your favorite romantic movie?

7 Comments

February 12, 2015

This and that

by chuckofish

There has been a lot of head-scratching and wink-winking over the fact that Bob Dylan is featured in the February/March issue of AARP. But Bob does not consider himself too cool for AARP. He is 73 after all.

In this interview he talks a lot about his new album of standards from the American Songbook (“Shadows in the Night”), many popularized by Frank Sinatra.

These songs are songs of great virtue. That’s what they are. People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it — everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life. These songs are anything but that.

Bob speaks the Truth. He has a lot to say, including this about Billy Graham:

When I was growing up, Billy Graham was very popular. He was the greatest preacher and evangelist of my time — that guy could save souls and did. I went to two or three of his rallies in the ’50s or ’60s. This guy was like rock ’n’ roll personified — volatile, explosive. He had the hair, the tone, the elocution — when he spoke, he brought the storm down. Clouds parted. Souls got saved, sometimes 30- or 40,000 of them. If you ever went to a Billy Graham rally back then, you were changed forever. There’s never been a preacher like him. He could fill football stadiums before anybody. He could fill Giants Stadium more than even the Giants football team. Seems like a long time ago. Long before Mick Jagger sang his first note or Bruce strapped on his first guitar — that’s some of the part of rock ’n’ roll that I retained. I had to. I saw Billy Graham in the flesh and heard him loud and clear.

You can read the interview here.

And here’s a tidbit from the Let’s-Not-Mince-Words Dept.:

“One might wish that the leadership of the Episcopal Church would come to grips with reality. The people of the Diocese of South Carolina voted by an overwhelming majority to leave the Episcopal Church. Any church bureaucracy that would try to force its will on a Diocese where the majority of people have said they no longer want to be affiliated is manifestly evil. They are just trying to suck the life out of the Diocese of South Carolina (and the other dioceses they are suing) by bleeding them dry through lawsuits. (That’s just my opinion, of course. But this kind of continued pernicious evil from the Episcopal Church’s leadership has been going on long enough that it just makes you wonder what it will take to finally drive a stake through the vampire’s heart.)”

–Rev. Robert S. Munday, former President and Dean of Nashotah House

He’s talking about the bruhaha in South Carolina where part of the Episcopal Church has broken off and joined the Anglican Church. The problem comes down to money and who owns church property. Read the whole thing here.

The other night I watched A Tale of Two Cities (1935) which I had DVR’d from TCM. I was really impressed. This movie is 80 years old, after all, and you might think it would be a tad dated/stilted. But it really isn’t and Ronald Colman is superb.

He was nominated for an Oscar three times, but not for this movie! He is so engaging and sympathetic as the doomed Sydney Carton, who, you will recall, switches places with the husband of the woman he loves and goes to the guillotine in a final act of selfless sacrifice. I nearly wept. Really. (If the music had been better, I would have.) All the supporting players are marvelous as well: Reginald Owen, Basil Rathbone (excellent as the Marquis St. Evremonde), H.B. Warner, Blanche Yurka (Madame De Farge), Edna May Oliver (wonderful as Miss Pross), and Isabell Jewell as the little seamstress.

Well, anyway, if you are ever looking for something to watch, remember this one. You’ll be glad you did. By the way, TCM is showing Academy Award-winning or nominated movies all month in their “31 Days of Oscar.” I check every morning before work and set my DVR accordingly.

And, hey, just a reminder…

Happy Thursday!

4 Comments

February 9, 2015

When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me

by chuckofish

How was your weekend? We enjoyed a glorious mid-winter weather break this weekend with record-breaking temperatures in the low 70s. Wow. After church the OM and I headed down to Ted Drewes only to find it closed with a sign saying it would be open by Valentine’s Day! Why? I have no idea. Confused and let down, we drove back to our flyover town and settled for Andy’s frozen custard, which was good, but just not the same.

Otherwise the weekend was pleasant enough. I did some more work on the basement re-organization project and went to lunch with some girlfriends. Again, we were thwarted in our plans, due to our chosen restaurant being too busy. Everyone and his brother was out and about this weekend!

Since I had finally gotten the DVD back from the boy, I watched Road to Perdition (2002) and enjoyed it a lot.

I was quite struck by the cinematography, so I looked up the cinematographer, Conrad Hall who, it turns out, won his third Oscar for this movie. I found out that he was the son of James Norman Hall, who along with Charles Nordhoff was the author of Mutiny on the Bounty. He was born in Tahiti and studied filmmaking at USC. Nominated ten times, he won Oscars for American Beauty (2000) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1970) and the aforementioned Road to Perdition, his last film. He was nominated for one of my favorites, The Professionals (1966), but not for another favorite, Cool Hand Luke (1967). Indeed, he was a great cinematographer.

The beautiful musical score is by Thomas Newman, who is the son of the great Alfred Newman (How the West Was Won and many others) and the cousin of Randy Newman. Thomas has been nominated twelve times for an Oscar, but has never won. He composed the music to Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and Oscar and Lucinda (1997) among many others.

Considering that The Road to Perdition is a movie about Irish-American mobsters, there is not an overabundance of violence. (But it is directed by Sam Mendes and not Martin Scorcese.) Bad things happen, terrible things, but first and foremost it is a very low-key film about fathers and sons. Tom Hanks plays the anti-hero who is so screwed up by his upbringing that he cannot escape perdition, but he does the best he can to save his son.

Daughter #1 sent me the link to Bob Dylan’s speech accepting the MusiCares Person of the Year Award. Read the whole thing, because it is quite the speech. Bob is just the Best.

I can not tell you how much I love it that he quotes the old hymn “Stand By Me” in front of all those unbelievers! Testify. When I do the best I can / And my friends don’t understand / Thou who knowest all about me / Stand by me.

The Old Testament reading on Sunday was the wonderful passage from Isaiah 40:21-31:

²¹Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth?

²²It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

²³That bringeth the princes to nothing; he maketh the judges of the earth as vanity.

²⁴Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble.

²⁵To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.

²⁶Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

²⁷Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?

²⁸Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.

²⁹He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.

³⁰Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

³¹But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

So do not faint and grow weary, Kiddos. All will be well. Have a good Monday.

7 Comments

January 23, 2015

Friday movie pick: “Well, they’ve got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that’s for sure.”*

by chuckofish

On this day in 1879 the Battle of Rorke’s Drift ended.

The Defense of Rorke'e Drift by Alphonse de Neuville

The Battle of Rorke’e Drift by Alphonse de Neuville

Just over 150 British and colonial troops successfully defended the garrison in Natal, South Africa against an intense assault by 3,000 to 4,000 Zulu warriors. The Battle of Rorke’s Drift lasted 10 hours, from late afternoon till just before dawn the following morning. The massive Zulu attacks on Rorke’s Drift came very close to defeating the tiny garrison. By the end of the fighting, 15 soldiers lay dead, with another two mortally wounded. Surrounding the camp were the bodies of 350 Zulus. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders, along with a number of other decorations and honors.

You can read all about it here. I am more interested in watching the movie Zulu (1964), which is one of our all-time favorites.

My dual personality and I were, of course, too young to see it when it came out, but my parents did and so did my older brother. They all loved it and we heard all about it in vivid detail. When we eventually got a chance to watch it on television, we were not disappointed.

My heroes: Bromhead and Chard

It has all the elements of a great battle yarn. As Victor Davis Hanson writes, “…in the long annals of military history, it is difficult to find anything quite like Rorke’s Drift, where a beleaguered force, outnumbered forty to one, survived and killed twenty men for every defender lost.”

So my movie pick for this Friday is Zulu (1964). The film stars Stanley Baker and introduces Michael Caine (“Well chin-chin…do carry on with your mud pies.”)–in his first major role, with a supporting cast that includes Jack Hawkins (“You’re all going to die!”), James Booth (“I’m excused duty.”), Nigel Green (“Because we’re here, lad. Nobody else. Just us.”), and Patrick Magee–a veritable who’s who of 1960s English actors. The film begins with a narration by the famed Welshman Richard Burton and ends with his reading a list of the eleven defenders who received the Victoria Cross for the defense of Rorke’s Drift, the most awarded to a regiment in a single action up to that time.

I should also note that the soundtrack by John Barry is one of the greatest. We had the LP when I was a child and we loved it. It includes the narrated parts by Richard Burton.

Zut alors! This movie is over 50 years old! Can you believe it? Well, chin-chin, have a good weekend!

*Private Owen

5 Comments

January 20, 2015

Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening

by chuckofish

Did you enjoy your long MLK weekend?

We celebrated (belatedly) the birthday of daughter #3

and I celebrated (belatedly) the birthday of an old friend with my pals.

The OM and I watched American Sniper

with Bradley Cooper and–this is the last thing I thought I would be saying–he was awesome. He really deserves the Oscar. This movie is really, really good. Clint Eastwood–and I am not a big fan of his directing–knocked one out of the ballpark. I also have to say kudos to Clint, who is eighty-four, for even being able to attempt this at his age. (I know a lot of guys in their eighties and it is hard to imagine any of them making a movie in the desert.)

Put this movie on your “to do” list!

According to Forbes, American Sniper blew past all reasonable predictions and crushed the January record books with a scorching $90.2 million Friday-to-Sunday and an estimated $105 million Friday-to-Monday debut frame. Well, no kidding. This is a movie with an actual (non-comic-book) HERO in it, with a plot, characters, action, tension–the whole nine yards. Of course, people are going to go see it. Duh. Wake up, Hollywood.

In between bouts of reading Middlemarch, I read a Louis L’Amour oater, Ride the Dark Trail, about one of the innumerable Sacketts. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I am also enjoying Middlemarch, which is full of passages like this:

“My mother is like old George the Third,” said the vicar, “she objects to metaphysics.”

“I object to what is wrong, Camden. I say, keep hold of a few plain truths, and make everything square with them. When I was young, Mr. Lydgate, there was never any question about right and wrong. We knew our catechism, and that was enough; we learned our creed and our duty. Every respectable Church person had the same opinions. But now, if you speak out of the Prayer-book itself, you are liable to be contradicted.”

It is a sure sign that I am really getting old, that I identify with the minor, comic characters, I suppose.

Oh, lordy, life is good, right?

7 Comments

January 16, 2015

Friday movie pick: “I once was lost, but now am found”

by chuckofish

Considering that this is the long MLK weekend and we will be celebrating the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. on Monday, I think an appropriate film to watch tonight is Amazing Grace (2006)–a really good movie about the wonderful British saint William Wilberforce, who headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for twenty-six years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. (I have blogged about him previously here.)

Directed by Michael Apted, it stars a bevy of British hotties, including Ioan Gruffudd as Wilberforce, Benedict Cumberbatch as William Pitt and scene-stealing Rufus Sewell as Thomas Clarkson. Former hottie Albert Finney is John Newton, who, you will recall, though once the captain of a slave ship, experienced a spiritual conversion, became an evangelical Anglican priest, and wrote the much-loved hymn “Amazing Grace.”

I watched it again the other night and was quite impressed with the screenplay, the beautiful production values and the acting. It is a rare movie where the Christians are the good guys!

P.S. It is interesting to note that everyone–from Alan Jackson to Celtic Thunder and everyone in between–has recorded the hymn “Amazing Grace.” I like it played on the bagpipes myself.

We had a piper at my mother’s funeral and he played “Amazing Grace.”

Have a good weekend!

5 Comments

January 12, 2015

“I live my life a quarter mile at a time.”*

by chuckofish

So here we are well into January and I haven’t written anything about the new year or January or anything like that. Tant pis. I haven’t been feeling it.

This weekend, however, I spent all day Saturday and a good part of Sunday putting away Christmas decorations and generally getting the house in order. I feel much better about Life and 2015 and all that.

It is good to welcome back a few old friends who were put away for the holidays.

Hello, Nigel and Errol, you handsome devils. (My mother named these guys many moons ago.)

I hesitate to make any great claims for change in the new year. Change happens despite us, so I prefer to stay on course and hope for the best. The OM and I have pledged to clean up the storage area in the basement and Throw Away a lot of accumulated stuff. This seems like a worthy goal for the rest of the winter months.

Meanwhile I am back reading Middlemarch, which is really good!

People haven’t changed so much since 1871. I recognize quite a few in this study of provincial life.

The OM and I have also enjoyed watching the Fast and the Furious movies he received for Christmas.

I mean who can resist these two cuties?

Vin Diesel and Paul Walker

So onward, I say, in 2015.

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Amen.

–BCP

*Dom in The Fast and The Furious (2001)

3 Comments

January 9, 2015

“You interrupted a very important discussion on serious matters regarding big things”*

by chuckofish

Well, gee, I know what I’ll be doing this weekend! I am going to stay home and enjoy not having much to do except put my house in order. That and watching a few good movies.

Yesterday was Elvis Presley’s birthday (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) so I DVR’d quite a few Elvis movies on TCM.

Guess I’ll be watching some of those–along with my therapeutic binge-watching of John Wayne movies.

I started last night by watching Angel and the Badman (1947).

I enjoyed it a lot! It was about Quakers and outlaws. John Wayne (as the badman–not really) rides hard and throws things around and bursts through doors and is altogether manly. He is won over by the Quaker (Gail Russell)–no surprises here. I recommend it.

Add to this a cup (or two) of cheer and you have the start of a weekend! Have a good one.

*Angel and the Badman

7 Comments

dual personalities

Tag: movies

February 20, 2015

This and that

by chuckofish

February 19, 2015

He was robbed!

by chuckofish

February 13, 2015

Love your life

by chuckofish

February 12, 2015

This and that

by chuckofish

February 9, 2015

When the storm of life is raging / Stand by me

by chuckofish

January 23, 2015

Friday movie pick: “Well, they’ve got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors, that’s for sure.”*

by chuckofish

January 20, 2015

Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening

by chuckofish

January 16, 2015

Friday movie pick: “I once was lost, but now am found”

by chuckofish

January 12, 2015

“I live my life a quarter mile at a time.”*

by chuckofish

January 9, 2015

“You interrupted a very important discussion on serious matters regarding big things”*

by chuckofish