Indiana Jones, Zohan, Great Debaters

Indiana Jones

Zohan

Great Debaters

OK, I'm going to be in Augusta this August for 2 weeks. Tish is supposed to be there for part of the time. Maybe she'll teach me how to do web links. Oh boy! I can hardly wait.

I took Alan and some of his friends out to the drive-in the other night. School's out and I'm nuts. The paper said Indiana Jones was playing along with Drillbit Taylor followed by the new Narnia movie. The first one wouldn't start until close to 10 which meant 5am before getting home but since I'm a responsible father I said only the first two. And I might have actually meant it this time except it started raining about 1:30 so I was saved from having to say, "OK, just one more."

When it rains in Minnesota it pours. At the drive-in you can listen to the movie on their speaker or on a radio station. It's louder on the radio but then the car has to be on. We listened to it on the speakers since it was a beautiful night (until 1:30) and I sat outside which I love. A crescent moon above me, stars in the sky, faint aroma of pot in the air.

Too bad the car next to us decided to use their radio. Their battery died and their sunroof was open. When the rain crashed down, their kids were sleeping in the back seat. We couldn't find the battery in the dark in my car so they found someone else to get a jump. It's a regular neighborhood out there.

The drive-in had decided to switch movies so Indiana was second and Narnia was third. Much to the teenage boys' delight the first movie was Don't Mess With the Zohan with Adam Sandler giving a really pitiful attempt at Jew/Palestinian reconciliation humor. I read that most Arab actors wouldn't have anything to do with this movie. Anyway, Oh boy!!! Yuck. Almost as bad as Borat. Clueless teenage boys loved it, though, as they did Borat.

It's probably not a coincidence that Zohan and Zohar are just a downstroke away from being the same word. Probably why Madonna had a bit part. No wait, that was Mariah Carey. Maybe she's also into kaballah.

Kevin James had a small part. He was the Chuck to Adam Sandler's Larry in Chuck and Larry get Anal. Interesting that that movie started off with an R rating because the MPAA deems homosexual content to be R. Sandler appealed it and got it down to PG-13.

Zohan contains vast amounts of really dumb hetero sex but only gets a PG-13. I suppose it is an advance after the Gay Deceivers in 1968 which started off with an X and then got appealed to PG-13.

Ralph, is it true that you wrote "content to be R. Sandler . . . " as a way of getting Adam Sandler to pay you for suggesting he's a rabbi?

It's called a period, Bosley. Complete sentences? Hello?

Then Indiana Jones and the Silver Spoon came on. The first one came out in 1981. I remember watching it with Mom and Dad. Great fun. Dad loved it. I think some siblings were there but what do I know? I do know that I didn't know that Indiana Jones had served in the OSS in WWII. He mentions it in this installment. Interesting that several years ago, the movie reviewer (hah! what does he know?) for our local paper commented that most of the events in WWII had been turned into movies with one major exception: The OSS missions in China. He said Hollywood better hurry before all the first-hand account-bearers, like Dad, are gone. It was already too late.

I only remember hearing a few stories from Dad about China or even France. I did hear the one about sneaking into the German camp in France to get sugar and coming out with salt. The only one I heard about China was Dad doing early morning push-ups in the POW camp so the Japanese would think he had malaria and wouldn't put him in the forced labor camp. I was never quite sure how push-ups resembled malaria. I think the idea was to look exhausted. Heck, I can do that with one push-up.

I met an 86 year-old man recently who had been shot down over Germany and finished the war in a POW camp. He told me he belongs to the Ex-POW Association. I went to their web site (link here later) and saw that they have a page to provide biographies of ex-POWs. Should we submit one for Dad?

Well, Indiana has seen better days. I missed the last half due to the rain but I think I had seen it all before. It's fun and well done, however. Lots more fun for kids who didn't see the first one when it was exciting adventure. Karen Allen got brought back. Speilberg called her up and said he had a part for her. Nice to see a romantic interest in a movie with an older leading man and an actress who isn't young enough to be his grandaughter.

The Communist Party in Russia hated the movie. They tried to get it banned there. I'm glad to see they put their efforts into something important and which means they never have to mention the 10-20 million people Stalin killed through his food redistribution program. (link would go here with a source verifing my info but you'll have to take my highly objective opinon as historical fact until Tish shows me how to actually write). Maybe it's the fact that it was poets and writers he lined up in the basement on August 12, 1952, and had executed that gives me an extra sense of disgust.

Well, the CP theme crept into the movie I finally saw tonight, The Great Debaters. Good movie. All about a small town Jew from Brooklyn who gets invited to use his GI Bill at Vassar College to debate the first southern sorioty sister he can find who wants to go out for ice cream.

That's not the real movie, but wouldn't it be a good one? The final scene could be shot in Mongolia with a whole bunch of Mongolian princesses racing their horses around the bride and groom and whooping it up with Pete Seeger. Let's see, who could we cast as Seeger's romantic interest? And, yes, I know about the controversy about Pete's CP and Stalinist roles. He did the Obama thing a long time ago. Pete for Prez!

Of course, in the real movie it's Denzel who is branded as the communist and his debate team which gets invited to Harvard. Wasn't it strange to see the Harvard Ve Ri Tas banner? I thought I was back in our dining room and looking at Dad's Harvard chair.

I loved seeing Forest Whitaker act with Denzel. They're both great actors but Forest is exceptional in all his scenes especially the ones he has with Denzel. He really gets into his roles. Denzel does, too, but they're often the same role.

Great music. Oprah's Harpo company produced it. Oddly, it takes place in Texas and the executive producer is named Davy Crockett. Was that a joke? Also the actor who plays the 14 year-old James Farmer is named Denzel Whitaker. No relation to either, but he was named for the other Denzel.

Denzel Washington plays the poet and professor, Melvin Tolson. I couldn't find any biographical info that supported the movie's plot line that he was a union organizer. Maybe they changed that just like they changed the final debate from the real-life contest at University of Southern California to the more upscale Harvard. Tolson was a famous poet. Here's an excerpt from one of Tolson's poems. (put a damn link here, Ralph! What's the matter with you?)

"The following is a section from another of Tolson’s great pieces, “Dark Symphony,” which was published in The Atlantic Monthly and won first place in a poetry contest sponsored by the American Negro Exposition in Chicago a year after the events of The Great Debaters. "

II

Lento Grave²

The centuries-old pathos in our voices
Saddens the great white world
And the wizardry of our dusky rhythms
Conjures up shadow-shapes of ante-bellum years:

Black slaves singing One More River to Cross
In the torture tombs of slave-ships,
Black slaves singing Steal Away to Jesus
In jungle swamps
Black slaves singing The Crucifixion
In slave-pens at midnight,
Black slaves singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot
In cabins of death,
Black slaves singing Go Down, Moses
In the canebrakes of the Southern Pharaohs.

III

Andante Sostenuto³

They tell us to forget
The Golgotha we tread…
We who are scourged with hate,
A price upon our head.
They who have shackled us
Require of us a song,
They who have wasted us
Bid us condone the wrong.

They tell us to forget
Democracy is spurned.
They tell us to forget
The Bill of Rights is burned.
Three hundred years we slaved,
We slave and suffer yet:
Though flesh and bone rebel,
They tell us to forget!

Oh, how can we forget
Our human rights denied?
Oh, how can we forget
Our manhood crucified?
When Justice is profaned
And plea with curse is met,
When Freedom’s gates are barred,
Oh, how can we forget?