Archives

Matrix or Middle Earth?

Mar5

I just finished watching The Matrix with some of the older urchins. I know I’m about five years behind the times, but I’d never seen it because I usually refuse to watch “R” rated movies; I hardly ever enjoy wading through all the violence, sex and language to get whatever good is there. Anyway, The Matrix is an interesting movie with lots of blatant Christian symbolism, a Messiah figure coming back from the dead, people trapped inside an unreal and ultimately evil world, a city of promise and refuge called Zion. There are also lots of references to Alice in Wonderland and Oz, fantasy/dreamland classics. The philosophical questions are asked: “What is Truth? What is Reality? How do we know what we know?”
On the other hand, there’s a lot of movie time spent on shooting and fighting and chasing, all scenes that I, like a typical chick, tire of in about thirty seconds flat. Also, I’m not sure the movie ever answers any of the questions it raises. And I have some questions of my own:

What’s with the phones? Somehow the good guys took over the phone system?
Morpheus, the god of dreams and sleep? But in the movie he’s into waking people up, right?
How are all those people being made into battery acid (or whatever) and still walking around? I know they’re “virtual people”, but doesn’t making them into battery juice affect their minds or something?
Who’s in control of all this world (in the movie)? If everybody is made up of artificial intelligence and computer programs, where’s the real intelligence?
And, finally, why is Elrond with the bad guys? He needs to get himself out of that matrix and back into Middle Earth!

February 18th Birthday

Feb18

Wilson Barrett, b. 1846, was an actor, a manager, and a playwright. He played Hamlet and other Shakespearean roles, but his most famous role was in a melodrama he wrote called The Sign of the Cross. In this very popular drama, Barrett played Marius Superbus, a Roman prefect, who attempts to seduce a young Christian maiden named Mercia. As the play ends, Mercia is condemned to be eaten by the lions; however, Marius is so impressed by her faith that he joins her in the arena and dies with her. Audiences in 1896 and thereafter loved the play. In fact, it was so popular that Cecil B. DeMille made a 1932 movie based on the it. According to reviews I read, the movie was an extravagant epic filled with blood, gore, violence and sexually provocative scenes of all kinds. The scene everyone mentions in telling about this film involves Claudette Colbert as Nero’s wife, Poppaea, taking a bath in milk, but that was by no means the most vivid depiction of evil in this film. By the way, I’m not recommending the movie. It sounds to me as if the original play was melodramatic and contrived, and the movie just went beyond all bounds. One reviewer said this movie could only have been made by DeMille before the Hollywood Production Code came into effect in 1934.

My point: We think movies are bad now, but sin has always been sin. And some movie makers, as well as some writers and other artists, will always push the limits of what is acceptable if they think they can get away with it. And even those who mean well (possibly Barrett?) can write and produce some poor stuff for mass consumption. Witness the “Left Behind” phenomenon.

Napoleon Dynamite

Jan8

The four older children and I watched this movie tonight. I picked it up at the movie rental place because I had heard that it was funny. What an understatement! I haven’t laughed so much in a long time. In spite of the fact that three of my children found the movie to be “seriously disturbing,” two of us thought it was great. Napoleon is a high school misfit with an attitude problem. His older brother Kip spends three or four hours a day talking to his friend LaFawnduh in a chat room on the internet, and his uncle Rico wants to go back in time to 1981 when he was sort of a part of an almost-winning high school football team. The whole family eats nothing but steaks, and they own a pet llama named Tina. Kip and Uncle Rico sell knock-off tupperware door-to-door until Uncle Rico comes up with an even better product–herbal breast enhancers. Napoleon tells his only friend, Pedro, that he (Napoleon) can’t get a date because he has no skills. Girls only like guys with skilllz–like numchuck skills or bowhunting skills or computer hacking skills.
The great thing about Napoleon is that he doesn’t really believe that he’s a social outcast with a bizarre family. (Well, he does think Uncle Rico is ruining his life.) Napoleon just keeps on plugging even though every day is “about the worst day of my life.” He keeps on doing whatever he thinks will make the next day a little better, anything from begging for a tube of chapstick to trying to throw Uncle Rico out of the house. Napoleon is sweeeeet, and he sure can dance. Don’t take my word for it. Watch it, and you’ll either laugh your head off or end up like Dancer Daughter, curled in a fetal position and seriously disturbed.

Napoleon’s Current Event Report
Last week, Japanese scientists explaced… placed explosive detonators at the bottom of Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland’s local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally.

???????

Jan5

semiotics: the study of signs and symbols, including words, images, sounds, gestures, and objects
Has anyone read The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco? Did you understand it? I must confess, I didn’t. I must further confess that I only “understood” T.S. Eliot after a kind friend in college explained to me that I should be content in reading Eliot to grasp phrases and sentences here and there instead of trying to bring the poem into a coherent, organized narrative. So that’s how I read Eliot and most other modern poets. And I guess that’s how I should have read Eco, just being happy to understand parts of the whole. Anyway, Umberto Eco, semiotician and novelist, was born on this date in 1932.
I may read The Name of the Rose again someday when I’m feeling particularly intelligent, linguistic, and post-modern. I like Sean Connery and medieval monasteries and mysteries. I can get it, really I can.

Romanticizing Sin

Nov25

The four oldest children and I went last night to see Finding Neverland, the (somewhat fictionalized) story of J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. At least some of us thought the movie was so romantic and sad and sweet. Party pooper that I am, I thought it was well-acted, thoughtful, and ultimately frustrating. I don’t like movies that romanticize adultery, and it’s adultery when you leave your spouse for someone else whether the outside relationship is physically consummated or not. In the movie, Barrie (played by Johnny Depp) leaves his wife alone day after day to pursue a platonic friendship with a widow and her four boys. One scene at the beginning implies that Barrie’s wife has already lost interest in him before this other friendship takes him away, but in another later scene the wife practically begs Barrie to at least come home to her in the evening, at least eat meals with her, if he can’t share his inner life with her. Barrie tries, but when the other woman needs him, he chooses her. The boys sense, I think, that Barrie is not really grown-up, can’t really be depended upon to keep his commitments. At one point, Peter, the boy whose name Barrie has borrowed for Peter Pan, corrects the adults at a party, pointing at Barrie and saying, “I’m not Peter Pan. He’s Peter Pan!”
At another place in the movie, Barrie tells Peter that he will never lie to him. But their entire relationship is a lie. Barrie isn’t a father to Peter and his brothers, and he is not free to husband (protect and defend) their mother. He is a married man who’s left his dying marriage to befriend a needy family and use them for inspiration. Just because the marriage is dying, it doesn’t justify desertion. In the end, as the mother of the four boys is dying, she makes Barrie co-guardian to her sons, an attempt to legitimize their relationship, but the conclusion is not satisfying. I picture Barrie getting tired of the boys as they grow up and he remains Peter Pan. Or maybe he can grow up, too, and take responsibility for this new parent-child relationship, whether it serves his needs or not.
Johnny Depp is a good actor, and the child who plays Peter does a fantastic job of portraying a troubled and grieving child. The movie concludes with the idea that the boys’ mother has “gone to Neverland,” and they can see her there anytime if they will “only believe.” Believe in what or in whom? Believe in Neverland, a place Barrie made up in order to deal with his own childhood demons? Believe in Barrie himself, when he can’t father the boys or keep their mother from dying? Or is Peter, the little boy, just supposed to believe in himself, find the resources within himself to survive the loss of both his parents? All these questions the movie leaves unanswered.

Halloween Movies

Oct30

The urchins are watching Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy. Meanwhile, I would like to know where to buy old silent movies on video or DVD. A long time ago when Engineer Husband and I were dating, my roomates and I had a Halloween party. We showed old 16mm silent films that we borrowed from the library; we used a white sheet on the wall for a screen. One of the movies starred Harold Lloyd; I think maybe it was this one called Haunted Spooks. I would love to own some of the best of these old silent movies–Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and Harold Lloyd. However, it probably wouldn’t have the same ambience unless we projected the movies onto an old sheet . . .

Quote from actor and director Harold Lloyd:

I’ve found that the bigger the idea under a picture, the more popular it is likely to be. Up to date I count Grandma’s Boy my most popular picture, and why? Not because of thrills, or stunts, or even laughs.
Because under that picture is an idea – that we can be what we think we are, if we have the backbone.

A movie with an idea “under it;” what a novel thought. Oh, and Harold Lloyd married his leading lady, Mildred Davis, and stayed married to her from 1923 when they were wed until her death in 1969. Another almost unthinkable idea in Hollywood these days!

Sin Leads to More Sin; Movies Lead to Catharsis?

Aug13

Alfred Hitchcock: “”Seeing a murder on television can help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.”

Today is also the anniversary of the birth of Alfred Joseph Hitchcock (b.1899, d.1980). I have seven Hitchcock films on my 102 Best Movies list: The Man Who Knew Too Much, North By Northwest, Notorious, Rear WIndow, Rebecca, To Catch a Thief, and Vertigo.

(Semicolon’s 107 Best Movies)

So Hitchcock is my favorite director. He made scary movies that were not (usually) gory nor full of gratuitous violence. I don’t include Psycho or The Birds on my list because I watched them both ages ago and they scared the bejabbers out of me. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I do know that I plan never to see either one of them again. As for the others that did make the list, they are full of suspense, plot twists and engaging characters. I would have preferred that Hitchcock had cast someone besides Kim Novak in Vertigo, but as compensation, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart are about my favorite leading men.

Hitchcock, again, with the last word: “‘Once a man commits himself to murder, he will soon find himself stealing. The next step will be alcoholism, disrespect for the Sabbath and from there on it will lead to rude behaviour. As soon as you set the first steps on the path to destruction you will never know where you will end. Lots of people owe their downfall to a murder they once committed and weren’t too pleased with at the time ‘”

Frontier House

Aug11

Computer Guru Son and I have been watching the PBS version of reality TV, the series Frontier House. I checked out a DVD of the entire series at the library, and we’ve watched all but the final episode. In the series, three families from various parts of the U.S. are asked to live on a homestead in Montana using only the tools and survival skills available to a family in 1883. I’m impressed with the amount of work, ingenuity, and just grit that it took to live on the frontier–even in the summer/fall of the year. I can’t imagine surviving a Montana winter. I told my son that I don’t think I’d last any longer than two days, but then even in my rather sheltered life I’ve found that people often can do whatever they have to do. In other words, if there were no choice, if I were “stuck” on a homestead in Montana in 1883, I might find that I could do what had to be done. I thought the historical aspects of the program were very interesting, and the concept is intriguing. However, I did find it amazing that at least two of the three families were willing to air so much “dirty laundry” in public. These families know that they’re going to be on TV, yet they feud and gossip and talk about divorce and about their private lives. I doubt if families of the 1880’s would have been anywhere near so open with their private affairs. But in our day and age we “let it all hang out.” I’m also amazed at what some people write on their blogs for all the world to see. Propriety is a lost concept.

The Terminal by Steven Spielberg

Jul30

Two of the girls and I went to see this movie starring Tom Hanks tonight. I thought it was great. The movie has been out for a while (still in theaters), and it got mixed reviews. Some people thought the plot was too unbelievable or that the sentimentality was too contrived. However, I think Tom Hanks’ acting and the character he played totally overcame any weakness in the plot. Tom Hanks is just a good actor. In this movie, he plays a “man without a country”–or at least a man unable to return to his country. And Hanks’ character Victor is a good guy. He submits to authority, even unreasonable and stupid authority. He finds legal honest ways to support himself. He makes friends. And he only lies in order to help a man who’s in trouble, not to get himself out of his own predicament.
I wish I could say the same for Victor’s love interest who’s played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. Amelia is a stewardess who calls herself “poison to men.” and at least she’s got that right. Victor deserves better.
The movie was funny and thoroughly enjoyable. If the script writers had left out the few obligatory off-color remarks, it could be suitable for the whole family.

Tea, Bread and Tulips

Jul27

I just finished“The Book of Tea”, by Kakuzo Okakura (1862 – 1913). a Japanese scholar who tried to keep Japanese traditions and art alive in a time when Japan was trying hard to imitate the Western world. It’s about the Zen ceremony of tea, but also presents a fascinating snapshot of Japanese culture, and also offers some fresh insights for the artist in any field (Okakura considers the tea ceremony an art). Here’s a quote:

“The claims of contemporary art cannot be ignored in any vital scheme of life. The art of today is that which really belongs to us: it is our own reflection. In condemning it we but condemn ourselves. We say that the present age possesses no art – who is responsible for this? It is indeed a shame that despite all our rhapsodies about the ancients we pay so little attention to our own possibilities. Struggling artists, weary souls lingering in the shadow of cold disdain! In our self-centered century, what inspiration do we offer them? The past may well look with pity at the poverty of our civilization; the future will laugh at the barrenness of our art. We are destroying art in destroying the beautiful in life. Would that some great wizard might from the stem of society shape a mighty harp whose strings would resound to the touch of genius.”

Tonight we watched an Italian film called “Bread and Tulips”. It was about a woman who gets fed up with her unappreciative family and runs away to Venice, where she meets interesting characters and creates a new life for herself. I enjoyed it; I like most of the foriegn films I’ve watched, but especially “Il Postino”, “La Vita ? Bella” (Life is Beautiful), “Cyrano de Bergerac”, and “Jean de Florette”.