John Q, Requiem for a Dream, Death at a Funeral

Sorry, Denzel.

We had not seen a movie with Denzel Washington that we did not like. He had always been dependable for teenagers, mom and dad. But, sorry, John Q. just didn't get us past the 20 minute mark. He plays a father whose son needs a heart transplant and they can't afford it so Denzel takes over the hospital emergency room and forces the doctor to put the son on the transplant list without having to have the down payment. Exciting! Well, Michael Moore probably liked it as it's mostly a movie about how bad our health care system is. Imagine an action movie based on that. Wow! Of course Sicko let Moore wax self-rightous about how bad we are on health care without him ever having to acknowledge any responsibility for his role in keeping health care costs down. But then a research article made the news recently that said obesity and smoking-related diseases actually cost less for the health care system since those people die much earlier while healthy people live longer and put more of a drain on the system.

Ok, if that's all John Q. was then we could have lasted but it was also about how bad everyone else can act except Denzel. Sorry.

Then I really wanted to like Requiem for a Dream because Ellen Burstyn is in it and it was directed by someone whose last name is Aronofsky which sounded like Martha's last name. But, sorry, again. Way too depressing a movie about drug addicts and with a director's technique of making the viewers feel like we were on a drug trip. Ellen Burstyn is a great actress but we couldn't last. She had converted to Islam several years ago and practices the Sufism of Rumi and Hafez. Not quite enough to keep me watching.

Since we get the Blockbuster deal of 3 at a time (which means we can watch them and exchange them at the store for more movies which is double value) we saw a third movie that I gave up on. Death at a Funeral. A British comedy and I don't remember who was in it but it wasn't Hugh Grant which means I wouldn't have watched it in the first place. But the main character, of course, was the f-word and a bunch of other impossible-to-understand English dialogue.

So, three movies in one night and it took less than an hour.

Bart, that Blockbuster deal sounds like you like to save a buck.

You bet.

How cheap are you?

Cheap enough to take my Gideon to Bible study.

Wow, that is cheap. Was it supposed to be funny, too?

No, but but it means there's more text to print out so when I send this to my mother I don't waste paper by having too much blank space.

You could write a personal note.

What?

Bart, speaking of your mother, do you think she misses the name she gave you at birth? You changed it when you got married and got rid of the Ralph and added your lovely wife's last name as your middle name.

Well, it has been 17 years ( 18 this June 16th) and she just sent me a letter with my new name.

Ralph could be a good blogger name for you. I bet she'd like that.

How about Ralph Bosley Bart?

Sounds good. And the initials seem familiar.

Speaking of names, I still think about The Defiant Ones and how the two main characters were so lonely in their anger and hatred and then how they found each other. Tony Curtis' character had a name that kept changing and Sidney Poitier's character's last name was Cullen but all through the movie I thought Tony Curtis was saying "Colored" since I thought he didn't know his real name. So without names that people knew then they were really lonely.

There's a poem by an early 20th century Israeli poet named Zelda called Each of Us Has a Name. It's based on a kabbalistic understanding of how we acquire our name. A modern folk music duo, The Roche Sisters, put it to music and released it on a CD called Zero Church which was the address in NYC where they recorded it. Well worth hearing. The CD was put out by Red House Records which was owned by a good friend of mine, Bob Feldman, until he died two years ago.

EACH OF US HAS A NAME

Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls

Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors

Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.

© Translation: 2004, Marcia Lee Falk From: The Spectacular Difference Publisher: Hebrew Union

Michael Clayton, Beowulf, He Was a Quiet Man, 5000 Fingers of Dr. T., Gay Deceivers.

Gay what?

Bosley! where have you been?

Sorry Bart, we've been in the middle of a major Moroccan movie marathon.

You mean that metaphorically, don't you, Bosley? You don't really watch movies up there, do you?

Oh yes, it's all movies, all the time. It's movie heaven. Well, except for the gay ghetto.

What happened there?

They were doing OK until they had to start letting in lesbians. Eventually one of them got the job of entertainment director and it's been non-stop, back-to-back showings of Personal Best and Desert Hearts.

Bosley, you read that in the St. Paul paper last week. A new gay senior-citizens home opened up and one of the senior men was quoted saying the same thing.

OK, maybe I did borrow, but it was funny, wasn't it? And it is true about the barrio going butch. Some people think Big L stands for another L word besides Love.

Who's Big L?

We're not sure. Just don't diss any dykes.

What's with all the awesome alliteration, Bosley?

Bart, that's how Beowulf was written in the Anglo-Saxon and since that's the language that Grendel is using in the new Beowulf movie I thought I would help you show your regal readers how smart we are.

And you read it in the Anglo-Saxon, Bosley?

We read all languages up here, Bart. It's what makes it paradise. Except for having to learn the accents.

Did we like Beowulf?

Not really. The teenage boys did, but they don't know the story and the book really is so much better even in English. The animation, especially in 3-D, is what everyone is talking about along with Angelina's high-heels.

Did we like Michael Clayton?

It was actually annoying. Too much going on and not enough to care about. Sydney Pollack was in it. He directed The Interpreter with Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. That was a better movie. Nicole Kidman had a great line: "Vengeance is the lazy way to grieve." A significant contrast to V for Vendetta which is all about vengeance being justified.

The Beowulf story is based on the vengeance tradition of kinship retribution where if someone hurts your family then you go and kill their family. Interestingly, you live in Minnesota which has canonized Longfellow's Christianized version of Hiawatha. The historical Hiawatha lived about 500 years in what became the Six Nations area in upstate NY. Kinship retribution was the standard practice then. Hiawatha's wife and children were killed by a neighboring tribe. He decided to not retaliate and instead went to live by himself for a year. When he came out he said he had been visited by a strange man (The Peacemaker) who told him to gather all the tribes and tell them to stop the kinship retribution.

Great story and would have made a great movie in 1940 when the idea was suggested except the peacemaker role was seen as too Communist. Maybe somebody will try it again. In 3-D with Angelina playing Minnehaha. Sorry, bad joke.

Wow, Bosley, how do you know all that?

Bart, your son, Alan, wrote a paper on it in 5th grade so you know it, too. And today is his birthday. Happy birthday, Alan.

What about He Was a Quiet Man with Christian Slater and Elisha Cuthbert?

Good. Interesting story. Requires some thought. Great acting by Christian Slater. We loved him and Marisa Tomei in Untamed Heart. Baboon kings doing open-heart surgery made for a great love-story.

Well, I did like He Was a Quiet Man, too, except it's hard watching movies with medical issues when there's a female-type nurse watching it with me.

You mean your lovely wife?

Yes. She likes to point out all the silly inconsistencies and illogical medical stuff. That's the difference between men and women. When a beautiful quadriplegic is laying next to a beating heart monitor then the nurse-type woman will focus on the fact that she is not hooked up to it and the man-type man will focus on the fact that Elisha Cuthbert's beating heart is lying underneath her bare breasts.

I see what you mean. Better to let it pass. What made you rent The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T.?

Stanley Kramer produced it and after watching The Defiant Ones I looked him up. Very interesting. One of the writers for The Defiant Ones was blacklisted at the time and was originally listed under a pseudonym then relisted years later under his real name.

Sounds like that Woody Allen movie, The Front.

Yes, one of the few of his I could understand. Anyway, the 5000 Fingers of Dr. T. was a Dr. Seuss book that became a fascinating live-action musical with great choreagraphy and a main character named Bart. I showed it to my class in preparation for a visit from the symphony. They loved it.

Wow, Bart, that main character sounds like someone you could relate to.

Yes, also it was made in 1953 which was my birth year.

Sounds traumatic. Anything else happen in 1953?

Dylan Thomas finally finished pickling his brain a month after I was born.

I bet you fancied yourself as kind of a Dylan Thomas neophyte.

Yes, except for the pickle part.

Any good Dylan Thomas stories? Maybe with a nurse in it.

Well, I was in Augusta way, way, way before I got married to a beautiful nurse and I had been reading Dylan Thomas to Mom and Dad shortly before Dad went in the hospital for a short stay. Some surgery of one kind or another. I happened to score a date with another nurse a few days later who told me about this patient she had who kept calling out,"Rage, rage against the dying of the night."

Any other nurse stories?

Only the time I tried to get a date with the nurse at the Jewish nursing home in NY where Grandma was after she got hit by the bus. She turned me down so I took my poker winnings from the ship I had just gotten off and had a fantastic meal at the Windows on the World restaurant on top of the World Trade Center.

Alright, Bart, we need to wrap this up. I have to get back to the Moroccan film fest. What did you see in the Gay Deceivers?

Another Defiant Ones connection. The 8 year-old boy who should have been killed when he hits his head on the rock after Sidney Poitier pushes him was Kevin Coughlin who I thought looked familiar so I looked him up. Tragically, he was killed in 1973 by a hit-and-run driver on Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles while he was washing his car's windshield at 1:45 in the morning while his wife was watching. I have no idea what he was doing washing his car window at 1:45 in the morning on a busy street but that's what the Internet says. He also starred in the Gay Deceivers which predates Larry and Chuck by 4 decades and was a little funnier but a lot more satirical. It was released in 1969 which was the same year as the Stonewall Rebellion. It was originally given an X rating due to a psychologist saying that it might entice any latent homosexuals in the audience to become unlatent. The director, Bruce Kessler contested the rating and got it changed to an R. Very interesting movie with the same theme as Chuck and Larry. Some of the personal reviews on IMDb said audiences in Hollywood laughed through the entire movie. I'm laughing now. Also time for bed. Goodnight, Larry.