Golden Door

Garrison Keillor was back in the news. He settled out-of-court with a stalker from the South. Not South Saint Paul, which is a separate city known for its dwindling supply of stockyards and for being on the way to the drive-in theater.

He's probably familiar with a movie I've wanted to see again for a long time, The King of Comedy with Robert De Niro, Sandra Bernhardt and Jerry Lewis. All of the acting is terrific, especially getting to see Jerry Lewis in a serious role. De Niro plays a fan obsessed with Lewis's talk show host character. Bernhardt is even more scary as a crazy, rich Jew who also stalks Lewis' character. Her line about waiting until "Shavous" kind of pegs her if she didn't stand out before.

It's a Martin Scorsese movie which makes it fun to wait for his customary crucifixion scene. Like trying to spot Alfred Hitchcock in his movies. De Niro gets the crucifixion scene in this one. Great shot. Probably deeply symbolic. Maybe not. We went to hear a friend sing Christmas carols in the huge Catholic cathedral in Minneapolis last month. We sat right in front of the equally huge and gory crucifix. Linda wanted me to sing along but I didn't want to draw attention to myself. I pointed up to the crucifix and said, "Look what happened to the last Jew they let in here." Peter laughed so hard that we were immediately checked for foreskin status and to see if we had stolen any blood from the crucifix.

Yesterday was the birthday of Richard Brautigan. One of my favorite writers from the '60's who I never read again. Apparently not too many other people did either after that era was over. I only know it was his birthday because I listened to Garrison Keillor last night on his Writer's Almanac. Brautigan had a much sadder life than I had imagined.

But speaking of poems and Scorsese, we watched a beautiful movie the other night, The Golden Door, or Nuovomondo in Italian. There's another Golden Door movie that hasn't been released yet but it has Snoop Dogg in it to distinguish it from the Italian Golden Door about 1900 era dirt-poor Sicilian farmers. The Snoop Dogg movie is directed by David Rosenthal who has a Master's degree from Sarah Lawrence in ... poetry. The Italian Golden Door was described as a tone poem so maybe there was a synchronistic meaning to it all.

Brautigan, Snoop Dogg, and Sicilian dreamers. Wow, makes me want to add a poem to this. I wonder if Snoop Dogg has one?

Nuovomondo would be worth watching just for the scene of the ship leaving the dock. Also for the two beautiful Nina Simone songs, especially Sinnerman at the end. Everything else works, too, if the idea of dream weaving entrances you. It did me. Beautiful. Especially the character of Lucy or Luce in Italian which means "light" and is explained a little bit more in the special feature about how the movie was made. Also worth watching.

For those of us for whom Ellis Island has meaning (isn't that all of us? Did Alexander and Harry come through there?) this movie will have special significance. The background I could find says that the scenes and details were all authentic although some people have different recollections or interpretations of the arranged marriage procedures. The main idea was that someone had to be able to vouch for you and for single women it usually meant an arranged marriage. If someone had to vouch for you, how did our grandfathers get in? Who was already here to meet them?

There's a very small part by a favorite character actor, Vincent Schiavelli, who was the subway ghost in Ghost and was one of the inmates in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He died halfway through making the movie. He's the rich character with the really baggy eyes.

Speaking of bloody crucifixion scenes, there's a movie I love called Maldonado Miracle. It's directed by Selma Hayek and has a good role for Peter Fonda. We last encountered him as the disturbed bounty hunter in 3:10 to Yuma but some of us first remember him from Easy Rider. Now that's going back to the beginning of the end of Brautigan time. Some of us might also remember Selma Hayek from a newspaper review of a movie she did with Pierce Bronson. In the accompanying picture, she's laying (lying?) on the beach with Bronson and the caption says, "Here's a picture of Pierce Bronson lying (laying?) on the beach with Selma Hayek's breasts."

Her directing work is great. Great movie, too. Miracle's really do happen in different ways. I once heard an interpretation of the Loaves and Fishes story in the Gospels. The miracle wasn't that Jesus made the food appear but that his compassion made people share what they had.

Speaking of directors, Scorsese does the introduction to Nuovomondo but I don't think there was a crucifixion scene in the movie. We did see The King of Comedy the other night. It's hard to find movies that teenage boys will sit still for which explains why we saw Balls of Fury. It is nice to see movies together as a family. But every now and then Linda and I want to feel like we're on a date. Nuovomondo was just the ticket.

There's plenty of poetry I could add here but instead I'll mention two of my favorite children's books about immigration, both illustrated by a good friend, Beth Peck.

Grandmother's Runaway Shadow by Liz Rosenberg and How Many Days to America by Eve Bunting.

Alright. Here's Emma Lazurus:

The New Colossus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

The Searchers

Well, it really is 30 below today. That's with the wind chill which is a Minnesota invention along with Ole and Lena jokes.
Ole and Lena got married. On their honeymoon trip they were nearing Minneapolis when Ole put his hand on Lena's knee. Giggling, Lena said, "Ole, you can go farther if ya vant to"... so Ole drove to Duluth.


It's also too cold for the AAA battery guy to get the car jump-started which is why I'm sitting at home waiting for the tow truck guy. Lucky you. If it gets any colder in Minnesota everybody goes ice fishing. I tried it once but it took too long to cut the hole for the boat. The cold builds character which is why I agreed to move here when Linda decided she wanted to leave Utopia and move next door to Garrison Keillor. Actually, he lives two neighborhoods away, uphill. He just settled an argument out-of-court with a neighbor over her proposed garage addition. In Minnesota, garages are male which is why he didn't like it. He said it wasn't good-looking enough.

"Which is why" is my catch-phrase today. After watching The Searchers twice (second time with a great commentary with Peter Bogdanovich) I want to be like Buddy Holly who kept saying "That'll be the day." It made sense in the dialogue except once when it didn't seem to have any connection to what had just been said. But who am I too criticize Miles Davis? No, wait, Davis and John Wayne just share a birthday. Just like Aretha Franklin and our wonderful 102 year-old former neighbor who is now in the Jewish nursing home even though he's Catholic. Just like John Ford. Catholic, I mean. Ford's dead.

Aretha will not be as old as our neighbor. He will be 103, March 24th, God willing and the creek don't rise. He stayed in his house next door to us until he was 101. On his 100th birthday I wrote a letter to the editor that actually made sense and which described how much he had done for me, such as slip in a trailer hitch after I had struggled for two hours to get it in or how he jacked up a pole in my backyard that had been set in concrete or how he mixed up the concrete and patched my sidewalk all after he had turned 95. Very gracious man. He never said a word the time he came over to sit with me after I had fallen off a rope swing in the driveway that I had tried to set up for the boys. It was almost done so I tried it out thinking the boys would want to swing except right then the ice cream truck turned the corner. I fell backwards onto the concrete which is why it might not be the best place to put a swing.

John Ford as the director was the main reason I wanted to see this movie. John Wayne is a hard one to watch. Too many political issues. Of course I'd have to stop watching the Wizard of Oz if Godless Liberal Communism was my standard for entertainment. Another reason winter in Minnesota is hard is that we are close to the site and anniversary of the massacre at Wounded Knee which gets annual mention in the papers along with L. Frank Baum's editorial afterwards essentially saying that they had it coming. His descendants apologized to the tribes in 2000. Will Wayne's descendant's apologize?

Not to get too far off the topic (Bart, you lost me a long time ago) but it might be of interest to some esteemed readers of this drivel that the various Christian denominations had divided up the reservations back in the 1800's. Guess who got most of South Dakota including Wounded Knee? Yep, Reform Jews. No, really, it was the Episcopal Church. Easy to get confused. It's possible the Ghost Dancers were just trying to avert a schism unlike that other unfortunate result of colonialism, Anglican Africans. Which is why our mother will say is the reason current Episcopalians are being resettled in the California Castro St. reservation.

The Castro St. reference might have to get relayed to Tish. If you need someone to blame for the election of George the first and the second, then look no further than those California lesbians. Last time I was out there was in the election year for George the first. Lawn signs everywhere: Lesbians Love Bush.

"What makes a man to wander?
What makes a man to roam?
What makes a man leave bed and board
And turn his back on home?
Ride away, ride away, ride away."

begins the movie.

"A man will search his heart and soul
Go searchin' way out there
His peace of mind he knows he'll find
But where, O Lord, Lord where?
Ride away, ride away." is the rest of the song and which ends the movie. (What movie are you talking about, Bart?) (Star Wars, pay attention.)

Loyal supporters of Public Radio (not to be confused with community radio) will recognize the song as being sung by those original public radio members, the Sons of the Pioneers.

The line "A man will search his heart and soul" sums up what the movie is about even though I had to watch the commentary to understand it. A little authoritative Internet research taught me that Ford had made the movie with the intention of pointing out white racism and our genocidal history. He knew what he was getting with John Wayne and had criticized his WWII draft dodging but knew a western movie star when he saw Wayne ride up on a horse.

The script is pretty clear (and much different from the book in case anyone besides me read Westerns; I used to, on the merchant ships; Max Brand was great). White people are humans, only pure, uncontaminated white people are worth saving. And in the end, Wayne's character has searched his soul and found his heart. Beautiful story. Amazingly beautiful film which I only appreciated after watching the commentary. Ford's use of poetic writing, art technique, and Shakespearean humor is riveting. Amazingly, I'm being serious for the first time.

If you do see it, watch for the inscription on the headstone. Also, the interaction between Wayne's character and his brother's wife. The lineage of the adopted son, Marty, is also important to understand Wayne's character.

Ford uses a lot of violent acts that we have to imagine. Also lots of techniques from his silent movie days. The scene where Wayne scalps one of the native Americans is very well done. The fact that his character does the first scalping in the movie may be Ford's way of letting us on to the fact that scalping was first used by Europeans on Indians. A blunt point brought up in the very non-imaginative movie, Blood Diamond, was that the practice of chopping off limbs was first introduced in Africa by the Belgians.

Look for the way Ford begins and ends the movie and in the way he uses long scenes and composes them like a painting. Bogdanovich points out that while Ford may have used a white actor for the Comanche chief, for all the others he cast members of the Navajo reservation from Monument Valley where they did much of the shooting. The way he shoots the Monument Valley scenes are beautiful.

There's a famous quote from Frank Capra (who Wayne did not like and thought the "dago should go back where he came from" which means Capra was probably of the Catholic persuasion):
"If you want to send a message, use Western Union."

Another famous quote that provides an antidote to Capra and apparently much discussed on the web as to its origin is "The political is the personal."
One authoritative web source said it was Margaret Mead. But the one I believe is the one that has the right name. My name. And the prize goes to Pauline Bart (sic) who said it was some French guy but who cares. It's her name that counts. Web search for "political is the personal" and see what you get.

The Searchers is definitely not a telegram but I wonder how much of Ford's political message a 1956 movie audience took from this movie. Those of us today (Bart, do you mean you?) have the hindsight of endless analysis combined with a wish that the Green Beret movie had been more fashionable.

Bart, would this be a good time to employ the clever Shakespearean trick used by Ford to balance tension with humor? Yes, it would and here to provide that balance is a collection of Episcopalian jokes. Here's the first one:

A gay Episcopalian is visiting San Francisco where he hears that there's a gay church nearby. He walks in on a Sunday and notices an attractive young man sitting by himself. The visitor sits next to him and reaches his hand over. Suddenly, two burly ushers pick up the poor visitor and toss him outside. The visitor cries out, "I thought this was a gay church." The ushers say "Yeah, but no one messes with the pastor's wife."

Here's the other one:

A Lutheran, a Catholic, and an Episcopalian go up in an airplane. The flight is terrifying and the plane finally lands. A reporter runs up to interview the three "persons." The Lutheran says, "I was scared but I went up a Lutheran and my faith kept me strong so I came down a Lutheran." The Catholic says, "I was scared but I went up a Catholic and my faith kept me strong so I came down a Catholic." The Episcopalian says, "I was so scared that I went up an Episcopalian and I came down an Ecopalian."

Well, Bart, you've cleverly impressed yourself once again with how well you can manage all those Internet searches to show how much you know. What will you do for an encore?

I'm going to finish The Satanic Verses before Peter does.

Wow, you are smart.

It rhymes with the right name.

3:10 to Yuma. The remake.

There are some movies I won't admit to watching and this was one of them. Until I looked it up on the IMDb to see how it got its favorable reviews. The more I read about it, the more I wanted to watch it again. I did. The next day.

It was fascinating the second time. The first time it struck me as the stupidest movie ever made. How could so many totally implausible film scenes get made? It all came together the second time, especially when I noticed Russell Crowe whistle 3 times in the first 20 minutes. It makes the ending powerful combined with what he says in the train station after what Christian Bale tells him while he's being choked. Listen carefully because both lines make the movie make sense. The implausible scenes are still implausible and completely distracting the first time. The second time they seemed either less implausible are less important. It's also very bloody and bloodthirsty, but on a second viewing it made sense in the story.

It's probably a film more for those of us men who have always doubted our manhood or who have always hoped for that moment when we could prove ourselves and then realize (hopefully) that we prove ourselves just by being the kind of man we are meant to be without having to be more heroic than just being a decent person.. Russell Crowe and Christian Bale's characters tell that story beautifully. There's also what has to be a great homoerotic character in Ben Foster's role of the second-in-command outlaw. His eyes at the bar scene when he realizes his hero has other interests!

The movie comes from a 1950's short story by Elmore Leonard, not to be confused with Elmore James who can be heard on a movie that Tish recommended, The Sheep Killers, a homoerotic CIA-al Queda buddy flick alternative to the Kite Runner. Not really, but it sounds exciting my way. Plus I got to use homoerotic twice even though Peter says I don't know what it means.

Tish is also the one who recommended I start a blog. When I asked how much and she said they're free, I said, Great, I'll take ten.

(Bart, didn't you mean to use that joke last time?)

Each character in 3:10 to Yuma has a story and most of them have a fate that fits their story, but it's hard to tell if it's redemptive or something else. The very annoying second-in-command banker sings a line to a song. I picked this up from the IMDb. I thought the age of the singer-songwriter was interesting.

"The title of the song used in the film is "The Arizona Killer" (lyrics and melody are by prolific Arizona folk singer/songwriter, Katie Lee http://www.myhero.com/myhero/hero.asp?hero=k_lee, still performing locally at age 88)"

It's a 1995 variation of an older ballad, "The Tennessee Killer" variously described as "Traditional" and an "Ozark Folk Song" (1rst known appearance: 1942)

---

The Arizona Killer

I killed a man in Dallas, And another in Cheyenne But when I killed the man in Tombstone I overplayed my hand

I rode all night for Tucson To rob the Robles Mine And I left old Arizona With a posse right behind

I rode across the border And there it did not fail The men that was a-follerin' me They soon did lose my trail; they lost my trail

They galloped back to Tucson To get the Cavalry While I stayed on in Mexico Enjoying liberty; Ayi-ha, enjoyed my liberty

I promised my Rosita A pretty dress of blue She said, "You'd go and get it If you really loved me true; did love me true"

So I went back to the border Just to get that gal a dress I killed a man in Guaymas And two in Nogales; killed two in Nogales

But the posse was a-waitin' To get me on the trail Now in Tombstone I'm a layin' In the Cochise County jail; the Cochise County jail

They-re gonna hang me in the morning A'fore this night is done They're gonna hang me in the mornin' And I'll never see the sun

I want to warn you fellers And tell you one by one What makes a gallows rope to swing A woman and a gun

---

The original 1942 song

---

The Tennessee Killer

Oh I've killed men in Georgia, And men in Alabam' But kill a man in Arkansas And God your soul will damn!

I'd killed a man in Memphis In the State of Tennessee, And I rode straight through to Arkansas With a posse after me.

I rode into the Ozarks And there it did not fail, The men that were a-following me They soon did lose the trail.

They rode right back to Memphis In the State of Tennessee, While I stayed in the Ozarks, Enjoyed my liberty.

But I went down to the city For to get my gal a frock, I killed a man in Conway And two in Little Rock.

The sheriff saw me do it, He got the drop on me, I went up to the jail-house, Give up my liberty.

So they'll hang me in the morning, Ere this long night is done, They'll hang me in the morning And I'll never see the sun.

Beware, beware, you fellows, If you must have your fun, Go do it in a harmless way, But do not touch a gun.

Stardust

Stardust. A beautiful movie not loved by everyone. I wouldn't see it when it came out in the theater since it sounded like a remake of the Princess Bride which is our family's favorite movie. We've since seen it at least 3 times on video and again last week. A long way to go before it catches up to Princess Bride but it shows promise.

We first saw Princess Bride as a television movie when we were visiting in Augusta about 6 or 7 years ago. Normally, I would have made the boys read the book first but I lost that struggle when I wanted to see Spencer Tracy in The Old Man and the Sea so made the boys read the book. They didn't mind the book but hated the movie. They still haven't read the Princess Bride but love the movie.

Dad taped it for us on VHS while we sat in the living room and watched it. If anyone ever wondered why the living room was such a gorgeous deep burgundy and obviously painted by a professional drunk it's because I happened to show up at the house once years ago when Mom and Dad were going away for the weekend. They asked me to paint the living room. I said sure and as soon as they left I realized that the color they had picked out was going to require two coats. Hah! Not after I went to the paint store. Actually, I didn't start on the beer until I decided to paint the sun room next. Wasn't it a lovely minty green? I almost choked to death afterwards because I celebrated with a lunch at the Cafe Natural. They were still learning to cook and had dumped an entire jar of bay leaves in the eggplant dish I had ordered.

Dad loved to hold the remote while watching TV so he could mute the commercials. I do too, and feel like the Duplex comic where the dog walks in and asks Eno why he's holding a calculator while watching TV. Eno replies, "I couldn't find the remote." Men gotta hold something.

The same commercial came on at each break during the Princess Bride. Dad would try to mute it but we wanted to watch it. It was a young man tossing pebbles at a second floor window. A woman comes to the window and thinks he's trying to romance her but he's really trying to knock down the box of crackers that's resting on the window sill. When he finally does and the woman realizes she was tricked, she drops a flower pot at his feet. Very funny. We still watch the taped version that Dad made for us just to see the guy throw the pebbles at the window.

Now watch Stardust and tell me that it's possible it's a remake of Princess Bride since it's remotely possible that Dad wrote to somebody in Hollywood a few years ago and said, "Hey, my son, Leonardo, likes movies with guys throwing rocks at windows. Why don't you humor him?"

The Bucket List

Saw the Bucket List in the theater last night. I had taken Peter to a snowboarding slope and instead of driving all the way home just to come back soon I stopped halfway at a suburban multiplex. Four bucks for a matinée. Not bad, but I do like to use the neighborhood theaters usually. I miss seeing most of my movies in the theater. There's a different experience. The sound, the size of the screen, the audience comments, and oddly enough, I really like to watch the credits for the names and for the fonts. It's an art form. Watching fonts, I mean.

My earliest theater memories are from when we lived in Maryland and I would go into Baltimore with Dad when he got the car serviced. For some reason, we always seemed to get there when the show was half over. We would go in, watch the last half and then stay for the next showing and watch the first half. I wonder if that accounts for why I tend to write somewhat inside out.

I saw Kathie's name on a movie credit list years ago. I don't remember what movie. It might have been a Western.

I do like to hear audience reactions. I saw Akeelah and the Bee in Augusta with Mom and Alan. The theater was full and we were the only white people. There was applause, not at the end of the movie, but at the end of a particular scene. I asked people in St. Paul who had seen it in a suburban theater (meaning no one but white people) if they heard any reaction. They said it was quiet. No clapping. Interesting difference that would not get noticed in Blockbusterland. Me? I clap for fonts.

When we lived in Portland, we would go to a neighborhood theater that showed mostly foreign or independent films. People would stay to the end just to clap when the symbol came up on the screen indicating a union projectionist. It was a highlight.

The Bucket List was not exactly a highlight, although it was funny to hear one older audience member comment on the number of younger people in the theater. I know which group everyone else falls into. The movie is definitely a tearjerker and very funny in places, but sillier in too many other places. I did like watching Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson act together. There now, I just gave Freeman top billing next to a white, male actor. Will it happen in the theater in my lifetime?

Nicholson isn't a big draw with the two resident teenage cynics, I mean critics. Well, maybe not. But Freeman is. They loved him as God and as the Voice in War of the Worlds. They also liked him in Glory. I like Freeman, too. Not so much Nicholson who seems to have the same roles in every movie.

The hospital scenes were meaningful to me. Not realistic, but in that I had just spent several days visiting with an elderly couple in the hospital while the husband was dying, I felt awed by how important end-of-life issues are.

movie marathon

It’s a movie marathon—or as we like to say out here in toe-tapping, wide-stance airport men’s room-la-la-land—“The copper made me do it.”

Larry Craig needs to watch more movies. His excuses could use a little Hollywood edge.

Anyway, it was 30 below zero last week so all we could do was to watch the mailman deliver our little Blockbuster movies-by-mail and then sit back and veg out. No, wait. It was 30 above. Oh well. It’s easy to get mixed up here. But we still watched a lot of movies. Peter had his Ipod plugged in and Alan was still recuperating from his waterboarding accident.

First movie: Juno. I know it was still in the theater, but we saw it at matinee prices and at a neighborhood theater. Very funny movie. The boys loved it, too. Peter said the scenes in the high school were just like his school. The screenwriter is a woman who lived in the Twin Cities and wrote the screenplay from a local coffeeshop. It takes place in Minnesota but was shot in Canada, same scenery. Juno is the main character’s name and the name of a street 3 blocks from our house. It also has something to do with classic Greek mythology, too, according to the movie, but I just focused on how Romanesque it really is. And how I finally got to use some wisdom I learn from doing crosswords. She knows the neighborhood, just mixed up on Hera vs Juno. Or maybe that’s the way she meant to write it since she also mixed up Morgan Freeman with Denzel Washington.

Cute movie. Worth an afternoon. Good music.

Then the mailman came with the videos.

Talk To Me with Don Cheadle was a good movie. Based on Petey Greene who was a very influential radio host in Washington, DC, in the 60s through the 80s. Great way to see 1968 from a different perspective. Wonderful performance from Cheadle. Also Martin Sheen always does a good job. If you can, see him in the Dorothy Day Story. Moira Kelly plays Dorothy Day and Sheen is the priest.

Lots of swearing but might have been less than it really was when Petey Greene was on the air in Washington. I don’t remember him (maybe I was little young) but I do remember where I was when Dr. King was killed. Powerful scene in the movie.

An unfortunate result of the movie though is that it gives the impression that Petey Greene died without ever getting clean. In real life he was clean and sober and had a family years before dying of cancer. Also, according to a bio I read, his manager never reconciled with him in real life and the James Brown concert took place in Boston, not Washington. Strange reasons moviemakers have for changing things around.

The movie opens with James Brown’s It’s a Man’s World which I think was the first record I brought home when we lived in Damascus. It was a 45rpm. I played it in the living room to annoy everybody, but Mom and Dad ruined it when they said they liked the music. Parents! Of course, anybody who had Mississippi Fred McDowell records had to have some James Brown inside.

Then we watched Catch a Fire with Tim Robbins and Derek Luke. Powerful apartheid-era movie. I hadn’t read the description very well so I thought it was just another action movie that the boys would like. Robbins’ accent was hard to believe until I read a review later that said it was pretty good. He was powerful in Mystic River.

Derek Luke was also great. You have to see him in Pieces of April. One of my favorite movies especially with a pre-TC Katie Holmes.

For all the controversy that the African National Congress generated in pre and post-South Africa, this quote from the movie sums up my feelings:

“My children, when they speak if their father, they will say he was a man who stood up for what was right, a man who said he must do something now. What will your children say about you?”

The last movie was Paradise with an amazingly good Don Johnson and an always good Melanie Griffith along with Frodo as a ten year-old human. I thought this was a very well-done movie. I was drawn into it even though the main reason I had ordered it was to get movies with a female director. There’s a different perspective between us, unbelievably, and this movie brings out some of the best differences just in the things that get emphasized.

There was an interesting NYT article last December about the difference perspective means in the work of Alan Lomax and his folk music collecting.

“Mr. Work, the most eminent of the black folklorists, was not merely an acolyte of Mr. Lomax but clearly had ideas of his own. Where Mr. Lomax tended to treat black vernacular music as an artifact in need of preservation, Mr. Work sought to document it as it was unfolding. Thus on “Recording Black Culture,” instead of spirituals harking back to the 19th century, we hear febrile gospel shouting set to the cadences of what soon would become rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll.”

Thoughts on the Great Debaters and Mission Impossible

I haven't seen The Great Debaters yet. It's in the theaters which means we can't afford it since we have to finish paying for the BIG TV. Of course the budget is almost balanced since we cancelled the gym membership. Stretch, 1, 2, 3, reach for the remote, Bend, 1, 2, 3, reach for the popcorn. It's a simpler life now.

I'd really like to see it in the theater. One less trip to the coffee shop should pay for it. We like Denzel Washington. I can't think of anything we've seen him in that wasn't at least worth the time.

The Great Debaters sounds like a good movie. A great and tragic story. Peter tried debate last year. There's Lincoln-Douglas debate which is civilised and policy debate which is a contact sport. Contact meaning the spit coming from the debaters mouths as they try to say as much as they can in 8 minutes. Peter did policy debate. The first time I saw it I almost ran out screaming. I would have except I had foolishly volunteered to be a judge which says something about how much it means at the novice level. He tried varsity this year but I forbade it. Too much time committment from the parents. Now he has a part-time job in a bicycle repair shop where they hang out and listen to loud music and goodness knows what else. No real marketable skills but then I don't have to get up early to take him to practice.

We saw Mission Impossible III with TC Cruise. Putting aside the objections to TC and especially putting aside the objection to the PG-13 rating for a movie that opens with TC and his fiancée in bed together—where the hell is Scientology on the issue of morality? No wonder we're all going to die at the hands of Godless Liberal Communism when the only 3 people who can save us are all Scientologists. Free Entertainment coupon to anyone who name the third after TC and JT.

My real objection was that the critical moment when TC is tied up by the super bad guys his fiancée is being held captive near-by because the bad guys are really bad. They want TC to reveal a secret before releasing her but he has to know she's still alive. So the bad guy holds up his cell phone to TC's ear who promptly bites off bad guy's hand at the wrist and escapes to save the world.

Our dear 80 something year-old mother, sister, aunt, cousin, friend has a cell phone with technology so far advanced over the M-III franchise that if she had been the bad guy we might have been spared the possibility of a sequel to The Hustler. No, wait, that one came first.

But back to MI-III. Yes, Mom's phone has the feature that would have meant she could have held her arm far enough away from TC to avoid getting Scientology cooties.

She has a speaker phone.

A Lesson Before Dying

We watched A Lesson Before Dying the other night. It's another good book by Ernest J. Gaines and the movie is almost as good and well worth watching after reading the book. The book gives more emotional impact in the writing; the movie gives it in the acting. Great acting. Don Cheadle plays the main role and is always good. His mother is played by Irma P. Hall who makes the movie worth watching just to see her performance. She was the character in The Ladykillers with Tom Hanks who was the target and the only reason to watch that movie. I thought the movie was basically a silly excuse to say the f-word as much as possible.

Cicely Tyson is the aunt and just as good and almost as old a character in another very good Gaines' book and movie, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.

If you've seen Dead Man Walking then you know part of the plot except Lesson Before Dying was done as a TV movie and doesn't have the splash of Hollywood major stars which I think makes it a better movie given the subject matter. This might be about a lesson before dying but who learns the lesson and what they learn about living is well-told. The moment that Jefferson gets a glimpse of the lesson is as meaningful as when Patty Duke in The Miracle Worker gets the word for water. It's not as dramatically filmed but still a great bit of acting. Except The Miracle Worker is almost iconic so probably not the best comparison but I've always wanted to use the word "iconic."

What about a remake of Marty with the cast from A Lesson Before Dying?