Hancock, Dark Knight

Hamlet, Hamlet, and more Hamlet

So many movies—so much time. Let’s get going with Hussein’s Insanely Speedy Movie Reviews.

Great idea, Hussein, but first, do you ever use spell-check?

No.

I suppose you subscribe to what a futurely famous movie blogger once said about something like, “Pity the person who only knows one way to spell.”

Mark Twain had a movie blog?

No, but you could start channeling him and give me something else to do, like write an advice column on how to get into heaven.

Right, but still I should acknowledge an earlier defect in which I misspellede sobriety and even worse, mistakenly put a still-stunning, ravishing red-haired Georgia native in a socialist-sisters ski club at Vassar. For the record, my mother was not a member of the Communist Party at any time nor was she ever a sorority sister. Further spelling error detections should be directed to the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest which just announced its 2008 winner and which inexplicably refers to both Checker cabs which is the model that Dad had in Maryland after ditching the VW bus and also to our continuing theme of utility hole covers otherwise known as “manhole covers.”

Hence the just announced winning entry:

“Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.’”

Did you write that? No? Sounds like it could be. Movie reviews, please, Hussein.

Will Smith (note the initials) as Hancock in the revolutionary role of a black super-hero who also happens to be a drunk and along with the real Hamlet plays a tortured iambic soul who can't make up his mind. Co-starring with Charlize Theron’s cleavage (which easily out-acts Will Smith’s puckered lips). Literate movie-goers will not be looking at her earthly assets when she gets into bed wearing a tank top but will, of course, be reading the message on the tank top which bears the name of Macalester College, a pre-eminent school blocks from our house in St. Paul and the alma mater of the director, Peter Berg.

Theron’s father was an abusive drunk in real life which makes her role next to a drunken non-Scientologist all the more emotive. Will Smith claims to not be a Scientologist but he has (apparently) funded a school for budding Scientologists and (apparently) gave out free personality test coupons to the cast after the shooting was finished. Also, the entire story line in Hancock is about undergoing a personality change. So, make up your own mind. As in, does it make a difference in choosing to see a movie?

But in another incredibly coincidental convergence, Theron’s character’s name is Mary which happens to be Shakespeare’s mother’s name. As we all know, Freud said he based his Oedipus theories on Hamlet (as well as some old, dead Greek guy). So if Hamlet was mad at his uncle for marrying Hamlet’s mother because Hamlet wanted to marry her then the Hancock movie must be carrying the theory forward. But anymore and I’ll give away the vastly complex plot line. See this one at your own risk. Not really worth it as it makes "action movie" into an anagram for "I'm no actvoie." Spoiler alert: The movie does make a nice connection to angels and how they might interact with us. A much better movie is City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage which was a remake of Wim Wender's Wings of Desire which I haven't seen yet but have heard is very good.

Things got really weird after seeing Hancock in the drive-in with Get Smart as the second feature. I loved the TV show. Not the movie, which was a huge disappointment. However, erudite fans will note that the actress who plays Agent 99 is . . . . Anne Hathaway. Which is . . . Drumroooolll. . . . the same name as Shakespeare’s wife!

Bartman Hussein O’Berlin, you are nuts!

Which leads us to Batman, O’Dark Knight.

Also Hamlet?

Yes, with the exception that it’s true to the Comic Book Code which says the hero never directly kills anyone. Too bad, since Michael Caine as Alfred could have been the exception. Caine was much better in Children of Men with Clive Owen. I loved Children of Men and will spend more e-mail ink on that Hamlet connection later. If you do see it, remember that it is very sad and depressing but also one of the most hopeful and joyful movies that I’ve seen. I did have an interesting emotional response when I watched the YouTube attachment about the dancing guy that Tish sent out a few months ago. I had just watched Children of Men and then re-watched the YouTube clip for the 10^th time. The idea that an individual can bring people together in joy was the perfect real-life antidote to the possible near-future real-life of the “infertility of the individual soul” that is the story within Children of Men.

In anther stunning coincidence, the commentary to Children of Men (all the special features are worth watching) has a shot of the director wearing a sweatshirt from . . . drumrooolll . . . Vassar. We wonder what that means.

Hussein, another incredibly nebulous blog.

What the hell does nebulous mean?

Not clear.

Then why use the word?

Nevermind. And stop getting your jokes from the newspaper comics. And what the hell does “emotive” mean?

What?

Back from vacation

It’s too much, Bosley. I can’t take it anymore.

Can’t take what, Ralph? And it’s not Bosley anymore. It’s Hussein, thank you very much.

I can’t take the suspense and where did you get Hussein from?

We’re all big O’bama supporters up here and he’s getting a lot of flak for his middle name sounding Egyptian or maybe Yemenite. Many of us are adopting his middle name as ours. That way we’ll all sound Kuwaiti or Omani and no one can say that his name doesn’t sound Americani. And what’s all the suspense?

Ok, so you’ve been reading the papers. Good for you. So how are things up there, anyway?

Oh, big happenings. The lesbian bloc rose up and had a mass self-resurrection of their souls. They’re all coming back. Remember what I said earlier. Don’t diss any dykes.

What’s up with them? Did the California vote on gay marriage get them all excited?

No. Most of them care more about finding out if Shakespeare really wrote those plays himself. Once you get up here you realize there is some truth to what that liberal Anglican priest said that arguing about gay marriage is really about rich people arguing about sex while the poor still look for justice.

Interesting point. So what’s heading up the annunciation?

Your new Poet Laureate. She’s a dyke and a hot mountain biking Californian, too. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/352?gclid=CPuUlrTT4ZQCFQN2sgodwFswSA

Poetry is what gets people worked up up here, not marriage. Remember that. Your lovely wife might like a little poetry from you.

I’ll work on it. What about the gay men? Doesn’t poetry get them excited, too.

Not as much as television. But they may be self-resurrecting, too, now that As the World Turns has a gay couple.

That’s right. Their name is Nuke as in Noah and Luke, just like Brangleina and what’s his name. Wow, I wonder what my mother’s mother, Granny, is thinking about that. She watched that show like it was a religion.

I’ll ask her. Of course, I still love Billy Crystal in the old TV comedy, Soap. That was good TV. What’s happened down there since scientists discovered that the brain in gay men closely resembles the brain in straight women? Any research on lesbian brains?

Still looking for one, but we did have a potential lesbian scare the other day. Amy Adams, who played the fairy tale princess in Enchanted, had her picture in the paper with the caption reading, “Adams to marry high school sweetheart.” Right next to her picture was a picture of Pamela Anderson. My first thought was not pretty.

Too much fantasy for you, huh?

What?

I’m still waiting for the suspense, Ralph.

Well, maybe I’ll use Hussein, too, and the suspense is all about which one of my siblings won the bet.

What? Bad bet, Black Bart? I mean Ralph or Hussein, or whatever. At least you didn’t switch to Bartman who was the spectator who stole the World Series from the Cubs in 2003 by interfering with the foul ball. Of course, you could be Bartman Hussein O’Berlin. Which would put you back in Ohio since Oberlin College is there and in an amazing coincidence so is the home office for Ho’Bart dishwashers.

Sure, and the bet was about how long I would last with keeping my mouth shut.

All Shall Be Restored

by Kay Ryan

The grains shall be collected

from the thousand shores

to which they found their way,

and the boulder restored,

and the boulder itself replaced

in the cliff, and likewise

the cliff shall rise

or subside until the plate of earth

is without fissure. Restoration

knows no half measure. It will

not stop when the treasured and lost

bronze horse remounts the steps.

Even this horse will founder backward

to coin, cannon, and domestic pots,

which themselves shall bubble and

drain back to green veins in stone.

And every word written shall lift off

letter by letter, the backward text

read ever briefer, ever more antic

in its effort to insist that nothing

shall be lost.

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?

There Will Be Blood

There Will Be Blood
Feast of Love

Well, yesterday was the anniversary of the U.S. Congress passing of the amendment to allow women the vote (it still had to be ratified by the states) (thanks to Garrison Keillor's Writers Almanac). And yesterday was the presumed crowning of Barack O'bama as the Democratic presidential nominee (right here in downtown St. Paul).

And the connection, Ralph?

Glad you asked. Since black men got the vote (technically or theoretically) way before women did then it follows that a black man will get the chance to be the prez before a women. Follow?

Sure, but what's with the apostrophe in Obama?

That's to help him get the Irish vote in Alabama since the university football team there is known as the 'Bama.

Wow, just like your Irish cousins who started O'berlin College in Ohio.

You got it. Now get this--

"1st Revelation: Jesus born of an Immaculate Conception

2nd Revelation: Christ returns from the dead, opens doors of heaven

3rd Revelation: the endtimes -- Jesus returns w/ his father and the Holy Ghost, raises the dead, and sits in judgment of all humanity for eternity.

The Church of the Third Revelation, then, is the church of the end of the world. Daniel is the 3rd revelation, because he is the final evolution of American capitalism. He goes from poor lone independent worker (first scene), to small wealthier entrepreneur (all business ventures before Little Boston), to stratospherically rich monoplolist (stranglehold on SoCal oil). Note that each permutation leads to more people under his control, and progressively less family/community."

Ralph. what the hell are you talking about?

There Will Be Blood. It's from an unlinked webpage I found that tries to explain the background for the Church of the Third Revelation which seems to be a central metaphor in the movie. The other central "metaphor that hits you in the face" is a how-to guide on how to acquire end-stage alcoholism. No wait, that's not a metaphor; that's a depressing movie to sit through. The opening music should be a clue. If you can sit through that then you can sit through the movie. Daniel Day-Lewis' extraordinary acting makes it worthwhile unless you were thinking there might be a more-than-two word speaking part somewhere in the movie for a woman. Of course, this makes it a good movie to watch in honor of Obama becoming the nominee since it is unlikely that Hillary will get a speaking part in the race.

Ralph, you should get the nomination for your genius in being able to make really stupid connections.

Thanks, but wait, there's more.

Daniel Day-Lewis' character is named Daniel, he is married to Rebecca Miller (Arthur Miller's daughter) who has a brother named Daniel, and the Book of Daniel in the Bible provides the background for the spiritual theme of the movie. And to continue this extraordinarily brilliant thread, his mother is Jewish, his wife's father is Jewish, the Hollywood industry is Jewish (as evidenced by a comment from a reporter who said "Hollywood is so Jewish that if you move there, your foreskin falls off after six weeks," and the movie was filmed in Marfa, Texas, which is where No Country For Old Men was filmed (at the same time) as well as Giant (not at the same time) and everybody knows that the Coen Brothers are . . .

"Are" what?

I can't say it. It's too brilliant.
I'm sure it is, but isn't it true that the Marfans still like Giant a whole lot better than these Jewish movies?
Bosley, you just asked that so you could say "Marfan."
Moving on to Feast of Love. WARNING! Men, make sure you know what color your significant other's eyes are before seeing this movie. Women whose significant other is a woman: Don't worry about it. You already know.
Alright, we loved this movie. Cliches and tears aside (and great sex), it is a sweet, funny, predictable, fluffy movie. Very good, and it has a Leonard Cohen song which makes most movies watchable. It also has Morgan Freeman as God (who else since George Burns died?) and Greg Kinnear who I first saw in As Good As It Gets so I always thought he really was gay, but in this movie he's just really happy. All the time. Even when he's filleting things he shouldn't be. It's his wife who is gay.
Lots of sex. Lesbian sex, straight sex, teddy bear sex. Rated R probably because the teddy bear is naked and the lesbians are white.
But the best part (yeah, right) is that it's filmed in Portland since the actual location in the book is really boring. Filmed in actual coffee houses in Portland and using my alma mater, Portland State University, as a backdrop, even though the campus scenes were shot on Reed College since PSU is really boring.
And to make another brilliant connection, it's directed by Robert Benton who co-wrote No Country For Old Men. No wait. He co-wrote Bonnie and Clyde. No Country For Old Men was the remake. Did I mention the sex?

When I lived in Portland (where Linda and I met on a forest trail on the first day of spring) I was very involved with what was called at the time the Association for Retarded Citizens, now just called the ARC, and was part of the Citizen's Advocacy program. A major friend of the program had been Lloyd Reynolds (1902-1978) a long time professor at Reed College. He was a champion not only of the rights of people with disabilities but also of the art form of italic handwriting. He also studied Zen poetry extensively and used a form of it he called Weathergrams. I do this with my class every year.

from The Calligraphy of Lloyd Reynolds by Gunderson & Lehman:

“Weathergrams are poems of about ten words or less. They are written on narrow strips of kraft paper cut from used grocery store bags. They are hung on bushes or trees in gardens or along mountain trails. There are generally seasonal and are left out for three months or longer. The name means ‘weather writing’ — notations by sun, wind, rain, and possibly ice. Written with the proper inks, the writing lasts. Let them weather and wither like old leaves. In composing one, let the meaning grow out of things, with some action involved if possible — in a here and now. The meaning is not all on the surface. The unexpected is essential. It is not a condensation, but a moment of vision.”

Here's an example:
"Bud,
blossom,
then fruit,
the final
goal.
But,
the seeds . . ."

Battle of Algiers

Battle of Algiers

Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Silk

Homeward Bound

The Battle of Algiers. Incredible movie. Filmed two years after the Algerians finally became independent from France but during a coup that removed one Muslim ruler for another. The director, Gillo Pontecorvo, had been asked by the Algerian revolutionaries to make a film about their struggle. He agreed, but only if it was kept neutral in regards to how either side was viewed. Since he was a committed Marxist (although he quit the CP in 1956) he still had a bent towards the people and put it in at the end with a graffiti sign in French reading "Only one hero-the people" (thank you to a web site which I can't remember and don't have to since no one is paying me for this). Pauline Kael called him "the most dangerous kind of Marxist, a Marxist poet." Roger Ebert saw it in 1968 and thought it was good and presented without too much bias but then he saw it in 2006 after it got re-released in DVD with better sound and he said he could tell that the music was definitely composed to favor the Algerian side. Since Pontecorvo said he used music as the driving force in the movie it seems reasonable to agree with Ebert. Now, do I really care? I probably wouldn't have picked it up if I hadn't done this exhaustive and back-breaking research on the web and saved you, the dear reader, the trouble of doing it yourself..

Pontecorvo was a friend of Jean Paul Sarte. During the movie a character mentions that Sarte favored the Algerian revolutionaries. Sarte did favor them and was influential in changing public opinion in favor of independence. Several years later, Sarte went to visit Andreas Baader in prison. Baader was a member of the German Red Army Faction and had said that the Battle of Algiers movie was his favorite. Sarte came out of that prison meeting and said Baader was "incredibly stupid and an asshole." Just thought I would throw that in but of course I have no idea what web site it came from nor what relevance it has with anything.

Ralph, did you ever think about doing a little web page linking?

Linking? Isn't that what my sister, Tish, was talking about when she made the snide little insinuation that I don't know what a link is?

Yes. Do you? And she wasn't insinuating.

No. What?
Moving on; Pontecorvo's obituary in the UK Guardian (2006) mentions that he was the fifth child in an Italian Jewish family of 8, none of whom were interested in being Jewish. He wound up having to leave Italy because of Mussolino's racial laws and then working with the Italian resistance during WWII. (link would go here if I knew what it was; golf? sausage?)

The Battle of Algiers is also famous for being screened by the Pentagon in 2003 and by the Black Panthers and every other revolutionary group. Of course, the Berkley crowd was reported to have applauded hysterically in 1968 whenever a Frenchman was killed. Little did they know that they were only planting the seeds of anti-french fry mania after we went into Iraq. But the main discussion seems to be how the movie got made without using any newsreel footage or actual documentary film and with only one professional actor. Apparently, the bomb scenes would be illegal to shoot today and since Pontecorvo used Algerian citizens for the crowd scenes and bombings maybe he was trying to send a message.
A major reason to see this movie, however, is to be grateful for the evolution in burqa fashion. And also grateful that more men don't try to model the burqini like they do here.
Also, it shows how true it is about the French only winning wars that they fight against themselves.

Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Beautiful movie. Very, very slow. Good way to fall asleep in the first half-hour, but you would miss a great story and movie. Don't prematurely judge all the characters in the movie since in real life some of the roles weren't the way the movie presents it. I will see it again, but after reading the book he wrote.

Silk
Even slower than Diving Bell and even more beautiful. Just feel it, don't try to understand it or critique it. The music, the actors as they change physically and emotionally, the visual poetry. Watch it with someone you really like and who will appreciate the beauty of feeling.
Several reviewers who had read the book said it is a good adaptation. The long letter that is read by the brothel owner is much longer and more detailed and erotic in the book excerpt that I found on the web.
I really liked not having the Japanese dialogue subtitled and having the American and English actors play French parts without using French accents.
The director also did the Red Violin which we loved.
Albert Molinas is in this. He's always great. Watch him in Chocolate and in Not Without My Daughter. Also, the second Spiderman if you have nothing else to do or if there are young children around.
And yes, my expert research reveals that Japan did really have ice cubes in the 1800's.

Homeward Bound (the 1993 version)
One of my students brought this in so we watched it since it's May and I stop teaching until September. Disney does do well with these feel-good movies. Very good. I even stopped writing my customarily detailed lesson plans to watch it. Don Ameche voices the older dog. His voice makes you want to adopt him. Sally Field and Michael J. Fox are also good. If you've ever seen Sybil then listen for the possibly unintentional joke Sally Field makes about a bookcase.
The cat does not drown. It's a sock and special effects in the river (in case anyone thought otherwise).
I rarely write lesson plans. That was a joke.

I'm falling over laughing, Ralph.

Cold Mountain

Cold Mountain

John McCain has been getting very cozy with Joe Liberman (sic) lately. Could Ol' Joe be VP material again? Maybe Secretary of State? Just in case it's SS, we watched Cold Mountain in honor of the last time a Jew was four heartbeats away from being president of a North American nation.

Puzzled? Need a brush-up on anti-American history? Think of the design of the highway seatbelt signs in Georgia.

Yes, folks, Cold Mountain is probably one of the few movies where you could watch a Confederate soldier and cheer him on as he makes his Homeric quest to get back to Translyvania.

Ralph, less famous (living) movie reviewers than you have commented on the fact that Cold Mountain was actually a pretty good movie. Your snide tone of voice sounds like maybe you didn't like it.

Well, Bosley, I almost turned it off after half an hour but then Renee Zellenger shows up and does an origami rooster quicker than it took Jeff Davis to slip away and become a respected snake-oil salesman after killing well over a half million sons and brothers and sisters and mothers.

I liked it after that. It starts out like the book, which I didn't read, but Linda did so I can make up stuff, with lots of back-and-forth time passages, and which tries to establish the whys and wherefores but makes it as hard to follow as Jude Law trying not to get hard sleeping next to Natalie Portman.

Ralph, you're hard to follow.

What? Anyway, I didn't even mind the clean sheets that Nicole Kidman sleeps on after she frees her slaves or her great complexion after several years of eating rooster eggs.

I know roosters lay eggs because that's what I so incredibly insightfully told Great-Great Aunt Bees her scrambled eggs tasted like when I was eight. See, even then I displayed a magnificent vocabulary. Aunt Bees was probably old enough to have heard nearly first-hand of our Civil War-era ancestor who was trying to mind his own business in Brunswick and was captured by the Union Army who was sure he was a Reb and then shipped to a prison in Virginia where he finally gets out after the war and tries to get back home but dies of pneumonia enroute. Very sad story and explains why his picture in Mom's living room is of a young man but his wife's picture is of an elderly woman. Call her up sometime and get the full story. It gives a personal connection when watching Jude Law try to get back to Cold Mountain. Remember, if you call Mom, you do not need to press one for more information.

Ralph, that was insightful yet boring. But what's with the Translyvania connection?

Well, Bosley, we also watched Cold Mountain in honor of Tish and Frances being there this week and of Frances' sister, Barbara, and family, who live there.

What?

Translyvania. It's the new North Carolina. Or the old since it has mountains with no telephone wires which would have to be edited out on the Apple software that cost less than 1000 dollars which the film uses and which is, apparently, going to change the face of cinema. Also, cheaper all around than filming the gorgeous mountain scenes in the actual Cold Mountain, NC. Which is ironic in light of a statement early in the movie that the reason for the South fighting the war is to preserve "the view."

But, since the author, Charles Frazier, wrote it partly as an Odyssey reenactment then we can see that the Trojan War was probably fought to preserve the view of Helen. Just like slavery really wasn't the issue in our civil war. Of course, the Odyssey story is well familiar to those of us erudites who have seen O Brother, Where Art Thou a few dozen times. Cold Mountain's blind seer isn't quite as mystical as O Brother's but the Siren scene is a heck of a lot more corporealistic (sick).

So, good movie. Good music. Sting and Bob White (sic) playing hoedown music should draw the kids.

Ralph, did you know that Odysseus means Man Of Constant Sorrow?

Yes.

And what's with all the (sic)(k)s?

Well, if Pauline Kale (sic) can make up stuff about what people said in the theatre then I ought to be able to make up stuff so I don't have to bother with looking it up.

Bravo. Very mature. Speaking of up, isn't your time up?

Yes, but then I remembered this Scottish lullaby that I used to sing to the boys which fits here since the white residents of Cold Mountain in the Civil War were mostly Scottish heritage. Apparently, that explains the statement about the South fighting for the view since supposedly most of the Blue Ridge Scots did not own or care about the slavery issue. Apparently and supposedly. I don't know. Anybody have an opinion? Anybody care? Anybody reading this? Hello?

The Skye Boat Song

(Chorus)
Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing
Onward the sailors cry
Carry the lad that's born to be king
Over the sea to Skye

Loud the wind howls, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air
Baffled our foes, stand by the shore
Follow they will not dare

Chorus

Many's the lad fought on that day
Well the claymore did wield
When the night came, silently lain
Dead on Culloden field

Chorus

Though the waves heave, soft will ye sleep
Ocean's a royal bed
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head

Chorus

Burned are our homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men
Yet e'er the sword cool in the sheath
Charlie will come again.

For some strange reason, the boys started to doubt this was a lullaby when Alan looked up at me one night and said something to the effect of "Dad, that is one helluva sad song."

OK, time's up.

Wait, I just found this great web page on IMDb. I'll just paste this little sucker in here and get back to my day job.

"Charles Frazier, Taoist writer, has based his book of the same name on the poet Han Shan, meaning 'Cold Mountain.' In the film, which is based on a place in the North Carolina mountains by the same name, Frazier has seen the elusive 'pattern' of Tao in the hills, the American Civil war and its sadnesses against the backdrop of two people almost inexplicably find they must be together.

The subtleties of the I Ching (the ancient and mystical Taoist Book of Changes) are found throughout the movie: When leaving on a train to fight in the civil war there is the slightest slip of a book page with a turtle and hexagrams. His woman (sic), left behind in Cold Mountain, goes to a well and sees the future-a vision in the water of the well that reveals the soldier's return to her. Her vision, that of him walking on an Indian trail with crows flying in front of him towards her is a vision imperfectly understood but this vision forms the basis of the events to come.

You will never see the I Ching treated so beautifully and with perfect subtlety in any book or film.

A poem by the poet, Cold Mountain, Han Shan:

I divined and chose a distant place to dwell-
T'ien-t'ai: what more is there to say?
Monkeys cry where valley mists are cold;
My grass gate blends with the color of the crags.
I pick leaves to thatch a hut among the pines,
Scoop out a pond and lead a runnel from the spring.
By now I am used to doing without the world.
Picking ferns, I pass the years that are left.

Charles Frazier is writing in the Taoist style where mystical things are hidden within the text or characters (as in writing)

Layers of Meaning: Found in Taoist writing including the I Ching:

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail."

-- Han-shan


The poem above, found on the cover of the book, is a tip: Cold Mountain means the town, its people and the events that shape their lives which has the Well where they try to 'see' their sweethearts, AND ALSO the poet, AND the mystical place where 'there is no through trail' In the mystical sense Cold Mountain becomes that place of magic where the Well can be found that will reveal the future, sometimes in dark visions.

This is traditional Taoist writing practice-many Chinese poems have hidden meanings and references. For example in writing 'The Secret of the Golden Flower" by the looking at the writing contains the idea for immortality as I remember.

The Well, Hexagram 48, is the primary symbol (there are certainly others) of the I Ching's reference to itself-the Well, the well that reveals the future.

Men ask the way to Cold Mountain.
Cold Mountain: there's no through trail."

-- Han-shan

Han-shan and his friend, Shih-te, were Chinese Zen recluses who lived at a place called Cold Mountain in the T'ien-t'ai range that stretches along the coast of Chekiang Province, south of the Bay of Hangchow, in the late eighth or early ninth century.

What we know of them comes from the preface, written by a T'ang Dynasty official named Lu-ch'iu Yin, for Han-shan's Cold Mountain Poems :

"He looked like a tramp. His body and face were old and beat.

** Yet in every word he breathed was a meaning in line with the subtle principles of things, if only you thought of it deeply. Everything he said had a feeling of the Tao in it, profound and arcane secrets. ***
[so, is Frazier saying he writes in the same way, with profound and arcane secrets?]

"His hat was made of birch bark, his clothes were ragged and worn out, and his shoes were wood. Thus men who have made it hide their tracks: unifying categories and interpenetrating things." [This is the pattern or li another fundamental Taoist concept-the categories unified and events interpenetrating.]

http://weblog.delacour.net/archives/000381.html

Why do you think there is no through or direct way to Cold Mountain? You cannot get there from here-meaning your logical mind cannot get there, only your Tao mind, for in this layer of meaning "Cold Mountain" means the Tao or the Way."



In memory:
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974)

War Dance, Blue State, Starting Out in the Evening

War Dance
Blue State
Starting Out in the Evening

In honor of Israel Independence Day, I watched War Dance, a documentary about Ugandan children who have been orphaned or displaced by warfare and how they use music and dance to keep their lives together. Beautiful movie. Watch the deleted scenes. It's accurately rated PG-13 for the descriptions of atrocities.

OK, Ralph Bosley Bart, how is it accurately related to Israel?

Come on, it's Uganda. The alternative homeland suggested by Theodore Herzl in the 1890's. Maybe he was joking. I don't know, but it's what gets taught in the Israeli history books. Speaking of which, we watched Blue State tonight. Very funny line half way through about what doesn't get taught in US history books.

Blue State is also about a fathead Godless Commie Liberal who moves to Canada to protest the reelection of GW Bush. He travels with Anna Paquin who, according to a line in the movie, could be a Godless Commie Lesbian. Paquin is from Canada but I think the director isn't and missed a few key points that he would have picked up if he had read the IMDb comments first which means he would have had to make the movie last. Oh, never mind. I'm confusing myself.

Speaking of Canada, Moses almost took the Israelites there but he stuttered, so when God asked him did he want Canaan or Canada, Moses tried to say Canada but couldn't so God gave up and gave him another country with formerly free health care. I might be making up that last part. It sounded funny. But Blue State is also very sweet and partially fulfilled someone's MFA requirement at Columbia so watch it and feel helpful. At least now I finally know what people mean by Blue State/Red State.

We loved Starting Out in the Evening. Well told story about a young female graduate student who wants to do her thesis on an aging writer because she loves his books. It could easily be seen as an improbable, pretentious movie or just let all that go and see it as well-crafted movie about love between people and between people and books. Two of the characters go to a movie theatre. One of the movies that's playing is Battle for Algiers which is a real movie several people have recommended to me. It's on my Blockbuster queue.

It's somewhat significant that on the IMDb message board 21 people responded very intelligently to a question about one very small scene. Also, several people said they loved the book and the movie.

Well, thanks, Ralph. You have kept it blessedly short this time.

I could go on.

No.