Archives

FNFC: Sully and The King’s Speech

Jan16

We watched two of the movies on my Friday Night Film Club list this past week, one on Thursday night and the other on Friday. And in both cases the person who chose the movie wasn’t there to watch it. Oh, well, the rest of us enjoyed the movies.

Engineer Husband and I went to see The King’s Speech when it first came out in theaters. It meshed well to watch it again this week after I had just finished watching season one of The Crown, about the first several years of the reign of Elizabeth II, George VI’s daughter and heir. In both The Crown and The King’s Speech, David (aka Edward, Duke of Windsor), the abdicating king and George’s older brother, comes across as a despicable and selfish brat. Maybe he really was. I’m not sure how much happiness he gained by giving up the crown for the sake of his love for the twice divorced Wallis Simpson, but then again he probably wouldn’t have been too happy as king either. George VI and Elizabeth II aren’t exactly portrayed as “happy”, but definitely satisfied with their fulfillment of what they each perceive as their duty to the nation. Anyway, I can recommend both The King’s Speech and the Netflix series The Crown. Much food for thought.

Sully, also based on a true story, was a thought-provoking movie, too. It’s a a 2016 drama, directed by Clint Eastwood and written by Todd Komarnicki, based on the autobiography Highest Duty by Chesley Sullenberger and Jeffrey Zaslow. Sullenberger, aka Sully, is the pilot who landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after a bird strike took out both of the plane’s engines in mid-flight. This heroic landing and the rescue of all 155 passengers and crew on board happened almost exactly eight years ago on January 15, 2009.

Tom Hanks plays Sully, and as usual, he does an excellent job of making us forget about Tom Hanks and think instead about the pilot and his ability to make a split-second decision that will either save or cost the lives of all the people on board the airplane. Inevitably, I wondered whether I could function as well in a crisis as Sully and his co-pilot did, not a crisis in flying a plane, of course, since I don’t know how, but some other life-threatening crisis where I had to make a life-or-death decision. I just don’t know. How can one train for such a thing?

If I were to choose one of these two movies over the other to recommend to you, I’d choose Sully, I suppose. Although The King’s Speech is fascinating in a historical sense and as a story of one man overcoming adversity, the “overcoming” involves some misplaced and over-dramatized Freudian analysis of George’s childhood that probably had very little to do with curing his stuttering. But then again, maybe he did stutter because they made him switch from being left-handed to right-handed or because his nanny disliked and mistreated him. Who knows?

Sully is a more straightforward hero story certainly with an obstacle to overcome, namely the investigation after the emergency landing by National Transportation Safety Board, but all’s well that ends well. And as the characters in the movie point out in 2009, “it’s been a while since New York had news this good. Especially with an airplane in it.” After a year like 2016, it’s good to watch a movie about someone competent but humble, and even heroic coming out of New York.

This Friday’s movie will be Alfred Hitchcock’s The Wrong Man with Henry Fonda, Vera Miles, and Anthony Quayle. Watch it with us if you’d like to join in.

FNFC: The Three Godfathers

Jan9

Friday night we watched the first movie of the year for my family’s 2017 Friday Night Film Club (FNFC). The feature presentation was a 1948 John Ford western, The Three Godfathers, starring John Wayne. A film reviewer for World Magazine named this as one of his favorite Christmas movies, so I thought we’s give it a try. Brown Bear Daughter tried, but she only made it through about three-fourths of the movie. I think she missed the best part. She said that she doesn’t like westerns and that this one in particular was “boring.” I found it a bit hokey and both over and under-acted at times, but essentially solid with some good and memorable scenes. The movie included lots of Biblical allusions and emphasized Christian themes of redemption, mercy, and restorative justice.

The basic plot is that a trio of bank robbers from Texas are on the run from the local sheriff and his posse in Arizona when they encounter a dying mother who asks them to be joint godfathers to her newborn infant. The three desperadoes try to care for the baby after the mother dies, and they also continue to run from justice–across desert, mountains, and salt flats, an unmerciful and unrelentingly harsh terrain that tries both their endurance and their souls.

In a movie with such a plot made nowadays the three outlaws would be both worse and better than they are in The Three Godfathers. They would probably be more violent and more blood-stained in any modern movie, and at the same time, they might be portrayed as modern-day Robin Hoods who deserve to get away with their ill-gotten gains. In this story, the three thieves are plain old bank robbers, dishonest and out to take what they can get, but they only escape with a small bag of cash while shooting off their guns into the air. They definitely pay for their sins. One of the three robbers, “the kid”, is shot in the shoulder, and he has an especially hard time making it through the desert.

Nevertheless, caring for the baby awakens the outlaws to their responsibilities to God and to their fellowmen, and they end up following instructions from the Bible and sacrificing themselves for the child. I thought it was a good movie, especially the last part, the part my daughter missed, where everything comes to a head in a dramatic rescue played to perfection by The Duke himself.

The movie was filmed in Death Valley, California, although the setting is supposed to be Arizona. The story is loosely analogous to the story of the wise men in the Bible who traveled across country to find and worship the baby Jesus. If you happen to watch it, let me know what you think.

This coming Friday’s movie for our Friday Night Movie Club will be The King’s Speech (2010), the story of Bertie, or King George VI of Great Britain and his ascension to the British throne.

The Extra by Kathryn Lasky

Aug26

Leni Riefenstahl, in case you’ve never heard of her was Hitler’s pet film maker. She became famous with her 193 Nazi propaganda film, Triumph of the Will (Triumph des Willens). Then, Hitler asked her to film the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Riefenstahl became the toast of the film world as she went on a publicity tour for her Olympics movie in the United States in 1938. She told a reporter while on tour: “To me, Hitler is the greatest man who ever lived. He truly is without fault, so simple and at the same time possessed of masculine strength.”

In 1940 Riefenstahl began to make a pet project called Tiefland (Lowland), set in Spain, filmed in Spain and in Germany, and financed by the German government. As extras for the film Riefenstahl used gypsies (Sinti and Roma), unpaid and imported from the concentration camps. The Extra by Kathryn Lasky tells the fictional story of one Sinti girl, Lilo, based on the true history of Anna Blach, a Sinti girl who served as Riefenstahl’s stunt double in the movie. Although Riefenstahl never admitted to mistreating or enslaving the Roma and Sinti extras who worked on Tiefland, it is known that she chose the extras for their “Spanish looks” from the camps and that many, if not all, of them were sent to Auschwitz to die after the filming was complete.

Lasky portrays Riefenstahl in the worst possible light. In The Extra, Leni Riefenstahl is a wolf, self-obsessed, cruel, and opportunistic. Her victims/slaves are the Romani who work and receive somewhat better treatment than they would have received in the camps, but who are subject to the director’s whims and casual acts of callous barbarity. In one scene, that may or may not be true, an extra is killed while the director is filming a scene with a wolf in which she asks the extra to bait the hungry creature with raw meat in order to get a good shot.

I found some of the most interesting material in the book in the author’s note at the end. Although Riefenstah was tried four times for her part in the perpetration of Nazi war crimes, she was never convicted of anything more than being a “follower” or “fellow traveler” of Hitler and the Nazis. She never apologized to the Roma and Sinti for her part in their enslavement and deaths during the filming of Tiefland. She insisted to the end that she was “not political” and that she didn’t know anything about the death camps, although she did grudgingly say in 2002, “I regret that Sinti and Roma had to suffer during the period of National Socialism. It is known today that many of them were murdered in concentration camps.” Riefenstahl lived to be 101 years old, and she is lauded to this day for her outstanding skill as a director and filmmaker and for her second career after the war as an excellent still photographer and underwater photographer.

Can you separate the person from his or her work? If Hitler had been a talented artist instead of a second rate one, could we look at his artwork and not see his atrocities? I find it difficult, and yet I read–and enjoy– lots authors who led less than exemplary lives. Somewhere there is a line between bad behavior that doesn’t spoil the art and egregiously bad behavior that spoils everything it touches. I would find it difficult to watch Tiefland, even though the film itself is supposed to be apolitical, with any kind of objectivity or appreciation.

A Hitch at the Fairmont by Jim Averbeck

Aug19

Alfred Hitchcock films are some of our family’s favorites. Engineer Husband says Vertigo is a masterpiece. Brown Bear Daughter likes The Lady Vanishes. Betsy-Bee and my sister say they are both fans of Rear Window. I rather like North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief, only partially due to my crush on Cary Grant.

Author Jim Averbeck harbors a fondness for “Hitch”, too, and he’s made the famous director a central character in his debut middle grade mystery novel, A Hitch at the Fairmont. After his aspiring actress mother drives her car off a cliff, eleven year old Jim Fair is a double orphan. His horrible Aunt Edith, his sole surviving relative, takes him to live with her at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, but when Aunt Edith disappears, Alfred Hitchcock is the only adult Jim can trust to help him find his awful aunt and avoid the social worker who wants to take him to an orphanage.

There are lots of reverences and allusions to the canon of Hitchcock films as Jim and Mr. Hitchcock careen through their own film-worthy adventure. It’s San Francisco, and one chapter takes place at the Mission Dolores. Also a ghost lady lures the crooks out of hiding. (Vertigo) Jim gets a ransom note embedded in a news article titled “Birds Terrorize Coastal Town” (The Birds). Jim and Hitch briefly mull a theory that Aunt Edith might have been carried out of the hotel, dismembered, in several suitcases or trunks, and another part of the action takes place in a building that is a “camera obscure” that the two use to spy on their suspect (Rear Window). Hitchcock talks to the social worker from the shower while pretending to be Aunt Edith shaving his/her leg (shades of Psycho!). In The Lady Vanishes and in North by Northwest, the police disbelieve the witnesses to a kidnapping/disappearance, and the same thing happens in A Hitch at the Fairmont. And Jim and his mentor Hitchcock meet the kidnappers in a church while the congregation is singing a hymn, similar to the Ambrose Chapel scene in The Man Who Knew Too Much.

I’m sure that fans will find several more echoes of Hitchcock films as they read A Hitch at the Fairmont, and middle grade readers who are not familiar with the movies Mr. Hitchcock directed might find this book an entertaining introduction to Hitch. I thought the book was fun and intriguing, just as Alfred Hitchcock’s movies were.

The 5th Gift of Christmas in Room 13, Oliver Street School, 1944

Dec5

51Z3YQ1adYL._SX258_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_From The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes:

Dear Miss Mason: How are you and Room 13? Please tell the girls they can keep those hundred dresses because in my new house I have a hundred new ones all lined up in my closet. I’d like that girl Peggy to have the drawing of the green dress with the red trimming and her friend Maddie to have the blue one. For Christmas. I miss that school and my new teacher does not equalize with you. Merry Christmas to you and everybody. Yours truly,
Wanda Petronski

“The teacher passed the letter around the room for everybody to see. It was pretty, decorated with a picture of a Christmas tree lighted up in the night in a park surrounded by high buildings.”

Since bullying is the topic du jour these days in children’s books and school assemblies, a retrieval of this classic story about Polish immigrant Wanda Petronski and her encounters with the girls of “Room 13” would certainly remind us that the problem of the strong pushing around the weak is not a new one. And the story gives some keys to the solutions: empathy developed by understanding, distance sometimes, and inner strength. Art helps, too.

Today’s Gifts from Semicolon
A song: In the Bleak Midwinter, lyrics by Christian Rossetti, music by Gustav Holst.

A booklist: Biographies of the U.S. Presidents (books I’m planning to read)

A birthday: Christina Rossetti, b.1830.
Walt Disney, b. 1901. The movie, Saving Mr. Banks, about Walt Disney and author P.L. Travers and the making of the movie version of Mary Poppins opens in theaters December 20th.

A poem: Love Came Down at Christmas by Christina Rossetti.

The 2nd Gift of Christmas at Lake Truckee, California, 1846

Dec2

Margret [Reed] did her best to revive a few hours of Christmas joy for her hungry children. She’d saved a meager hoard for the occasion–a few dried apples, a few beans, a little tripe, and a small piece of bacon. The children watched as the treats simmered in the kettle, and when they sat down to this Christmas feast, Margret told them, ‘Children, eat slowly, for this one day you can have all you wish.’ For the rest of her life, not matter how grand a Christmas dinner spread on her table, Virginia never forgot what her mother did for them. ‘So bitter was the memory relieved by that one bright day, that I have never since sat down to a Christmas dinner without my thoughts going back to Donner Lake.'” ~Women of the Frontier by Brandon Marie Miller

The Reed family was a part of the famous, or infamous, Donner Party, a group of families headed for Oregon/California who attempted to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the fall of 1846. Many of the settlers in the party perished of cold or starvation when the winter snows trapped the group at Lake Truckee, now called Donner Lake to commemorate the unfortunate Donner Party. Margret Reed, her husband, James, and their four children—Virginia, Patty, James, Jr. and Thomas—survived the ordeal to settle in California.

Today’s gifts from Semicolon:
A song: One of my favorite songs by one of my favorite singers, Karen Carpenter singing I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.

A movie: I’ve become fond of The Ultimate Gift with a really aged James Garner as the grandfather/gift-giver. It made me feel old to watch and remember The Rockford Files when James Garner was young(ish) and played one of the great TV detectives. The movie has a great message, and if the plot gets a little thin at times, the characters and the heart make up for a creaky plot.
A booklist: Gift books for what they want to be when they grow up.
A birthday: David Macaulay, b.1946.
A verse: Christmas Bells by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The entire poem has seven stanzas or verses.

Movies Based on Books, Upcoming

Nov21

51dxiVSpLwL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Of course, the big news this week is the new Hunger Games movie, Catching Fire. One of my urchins wants to go to the midnight premiere on Thursday. However, there are other movies coming down the pike for November/December release:

The Christmas Candle, based on the novel by Max Lucado.

A movie called Tar, based on a book of poems by poet C.K. Willams and on the life of the poet, is set to release on December 1st.

From IMDB: “Based on the beloved bestselling book, The Book Thief tells the story of a spirited and courageous young girl who transforms the lives of everyone around her when she is sent to live with a foster family in World War II Germany.” I didn’t really care for the book, but I actually think the movie may be better.

The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug opens December 13th. I can hardly wait.

51ZWVmpx8uL._SY344_PJlook-inside-v2,TopRight,1,0_SH20_BO1,204,203,200_Saving Mr. Banks tells the story of the collaboration of Walt Disney and P.L. Travers to make Mary Poppins a household name. Starring Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as Travers, it opens December 20th.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a remake of the 1947 movie with Danny Kaye, this time starring Ben Stiller, It’s about a man who lives in his imagination, and it’s based on the short story “The Secret World of Walter Mitty” by cartoonist James Thurber.

Ender’s Game, based on the book by Orson Scott Card, and How I Live Now, from the YA novel by Meg Rosoff, are already in theaters. Anybody seen them? Anybody planning to make the midnight showing of Catching Fire?

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: Redux

Nov14

In light of the movie that’s just been released, I thought I’d re-run my review of Ender’s Game from 2006 when I first read it. I would add the updated perspective that I’m much less inclined to think of books as “boys’ books” or “girls’ books” nowadays, having been proved wrong so many times by my own children and others. Suffice it to say that Ender’s Game is violent, with few or no well-rounded female characters.

******************

I hate mind games; this book was one big mind game.
I’m not too fond of war movies or novels or violence; Ender’s Game is all about war and violence.
I’m more of a fantasy fan than a science fiction fan; Ender’s Game is science fiction with a vengeance.
And to top it all off, this violent science fiction novel that tries to play games with the reader’s mind is definitely a boys’ book. It wasn’t written for girls, and it probably won’t appeal to many of them.

However, I thought Ender’s Game was one of the best books I’ve read in a long time; maybe the best science fiction novel I’ve ever read. Someone told me that Ender’s Game is on the required reading list for Marine Corps officer candidates. I can see why; did I mention that this book is very military, very male?

Ender Wiggin is an illegal Third (third child), but like his brother, Peter, and his sister, Valentine, he is a genius. The powers that be hope he is also the one kid who can save the world from the Buggers who have already invaded Earth twice and are expected back anytime. Or maybe we’re planning to get them before they invade for a third time. Either way Ender, still a child, must learn enough very quickly to lead Earth’s army in what may turn out to be Armageddon, the final battle for domination of Earth and its colonies.

The themes in this book make it intriguing even as the plot twists and surprises keep the reader turning the pages to see what will happen next. Ender’s Game asks questions about power and violence and sin and forgiveness. Is it morally acceptable to use overwhelming force against an enemy when you know that enemy is willing and able to destroy you? What if you begin to enjoy the exercise of violence and power over others for its own sake? Can members of very different cultures communicate and make peace, or are they doomed to destroy one another? Is it acceptable to strike first to destroy an enemy who has already attacked you once? Can people change? Does a truly evil child, a torturer, become civilized? How? How are leaders formed? What makes a group, an army unit, for instance, a cohesive force? How does a leader go about creating that cohesiveness?

Lots of questions. Some of these questions are questions that we’re still pondering and muddling through as a country in the aftermath of 9/11. Orson Scott Card certainly doesn’t have all the answers, and I thought the ending of the book was its weakest part. However, he definitely asks the right questions, questions that we will be forced to answer as we deal with our own crises in this post 9/11 world.

Highly recommended with one caveat: the language is army language, rough and crude. If that bothers you, skip this book. (To tell the truth, crude language annoys me. However, it wasn’t gratuitous; I would imagine that men whose profession is violent use just the kind of language that is in this book, only worse.) I think it’s worth skimming over some words in order to read this story and think about its implications.

******************

I assume the movie asks and attempts to answer some of the same questions. I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve heard it’s quite violent, in keeping with the source material.

Andew Jenks: My Adventures as a Young Filmmaker by Andrew Jenks

Oct19

Before reading this book I had never heard of Andrew Jenks, and now I’m something of a fan, albeit a fan who has never seen an episode of his MTV series, World of Jenks. I’ve also not seen either of the two documentaries that jump-started his filmmaking career, Andrew Jenks, Room 335 and The Zen of Bobby V. So I classify myself as a fan on the basis of the book and the video series I watched on YouTube called It’s About a Girl. (I recommend the video series. It’s sweet.)

The book grabbed me. From his childhood as a geek who carried around a video camera everywhere he went, to his first documentary in which he arranged to live in a nursing home for a few weeks, to his next project which took him to Japan and Japanese baseball, to his debut on MTV, I followed Andrew Jenks as he followed other people and made films out of the stories of ordinary, and extraordinary, people. And I started feeling all motherly toward. I hoped he wouldn’t get himself into trouble when he filmed a former criminal, turned rap producer, and a “houseless” young woman on the streets San Francisco. I wanted to give him some advice about slowing down and savoring the moment and being careful not to let his success go to his head. (I’m not sure he needs my advice, but I wanted to give it anyway.)

I guess you could say I was invested in the book and the young man who wrote it and who had all of the adventures. I know three twenty-something young men who want to make movies. One of them is my nephew, and two others go to my church. I think they would enjoy reading through Andrew Jenks’s adventures. It’s inspiring to read about or watch someone who is living his passion. In a way, it wouldn’t matter that Mr. Jenks has been so successful as a filmmaker at such a young age (except that it takes money to make movies so most of the adventures in filmmaking wouldn’t have happened without the initial success); I would just enjoy reading about someone who is doing what he wants to do and having so much fun and working so hard at it.

“The reward for all this work isn’t fame. . . No, the reward for working hard is getting to do more work. And better work. . . For me putting the world down on film is living. Giving people a voice.”

I like that, and I wish Mr. Jenks all the best in his filmmaking endeavors. Even if he is an Obama fan.

Andrew Jenks: My Adventures as a Young Filmmaker has been nominated for the Cybils Award in the category of Young Adult Nonfiction. The thoughts in this review are my own and do not reflect the thoughts or evaluations of the Cybils panel or of any other Cybils judge.