Nights in Rodanthe

Nights in Rodanthe

Reader Alert!

The following review is repeated directly from the matri-familia, Mom, who has actually seen the movie, as opposed to me, who has only checked out the facts on IMDb ( my motto: Movie Reviews you can trust, you just have to trust my version of the facts.)

In Mom's words:   "5-stars." "I loved it."

(warning:   a comment on IMDb calls this a "women's film"  which means I'll probably have to see it eventually) (I try to not let Linda see "women's" films with other women and especially not by herself; she can get all the wrong messages unless she has my presence there to remind her that things could always be worse.) (wait, that didn't come out the way I think I meant it)

Before Sunrise

Lovely "talkie" movie (kind of like My Dinner With Andre but with movement meaning they get up from the dinner table). A young woman and man meet on a train in Europe and spend the night walking around Vienna. I think they lay down at some point but I was really too engrossed in what they were saying. Ethan Hawke plays the man and a French actress plays the women. Like Casey Stengal said, "You can look it up" if you want to know her name. It's in English (American-English on Hawkes' part) but interesting use of other people speaking other languages without subtitles. There's a sequel we haven't seen yet but will try to soon. The title shouldn't be too hard to guess.

 

Diva

 

Absolutely one of the most gorgeous films I've seen in a long time. 1981 French film about an opera singer (a real American opera singer who had been asked to act in the movie after the producers saw her in an opera; beautiful voice and acting, you'll wish you could hear her live) who doesn't ever record herself. A young man is infatuated with her and secretly records a performance. The rest is incidental. The whole movie is about using all our senses to experience the movie. Even the sense of touch since we had to keep finding the remote everytime the phone would ring with one of the boys asking if they can stay out a little longer. Many of the scenes are staged like a work of art. Try watching it without subtitles so you can just sense what's going on. We watched it with half the subtitles since the bottom half of the subtitles was below the screen. We could easily figure out what was going on and it was much more of a sensory experience. A comment on IMDb said if you wanted to be hip in the '80's then this was one of the three movies you had to have seen. It's past the '80's now so the other two don't matter. Other comments said everything was realistic (from a French point of view) including how the man does the recording. Great scene of a philosopher and a jigsaw puzzle, also of him buttering a loaf of bread. The chase scene is supposed to be classic. If your subtitles don't work just remember what Casey Stengal said; not the one about how he was such a dangerous hitter that he got intentional walks during batting practice.

 

Cache

 

A 2005 French film with Juliette Binoche who was in The English Patient which I loved. This one had a very interesting plot, kind of like Atonement mixed in with The Battle for Algiers. Unfortunately, it really needed subtitles and they just weren't woking well in our DVD version. We missed most of the dialogue so quit after a bit.

 

My Dinner With Andre

 

I saw this in the theatre when it first came out in 1981. Since I mentioned it here I just thought I'd say, "5-stars; "I loved it."

 

 

The Shop Around the Corner

Classics time and this is a great one to spend time with. Funny, sweet, political, beautiful acting and casting.

We liked the Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks You've Got Mail remake, too, but this is much better. We also liked the British TV comedy several years that was based on this movie, Are You Being Served?

Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart parry and marry while living out their solitary lives in a Budapest gift store.

Ralph, they don't actually get married, just engaged, assumedly.

Ok, but isn't it clever of me to use parry and marry in a sentence?

Nevermind. I give up. But where's the politics?

The movie takes place in 1938 in Budapest and the Depression is referred to several times while the lifestyle scenes show that people are trying desperately to ignore it. Not much of a statement, but still very interesting to see in 2008.

There are two fascinating coincidental uses of numbers in the film.

When the store owner (a very pleasant re-encounter with an actor who everyone grew up seeing at least once a year) gets out of the hospital after a nervous breakdown he goes to the front window of the shop. There is a close-up shot of the cash register showing the price 51.50 (in Hungarian money). Due to extensive and coincidental Internet research, I discovered that the California code for involuntary commitment for mental illness is numbered 5150.

The other numerical casting is the post office box number that Sullavan's character rents. The scene where her gloved hand reaches into the empty box is extraordinary. The box number, 237, is large and clear (also mentioned several times). It happens to be the same number as the hotel room used in Stanley Kubrick's movie, The Shining. Kubrick's choice of that number was mainly the result of needing a number in the 200's where the digits added up to 12 and of being a number that was not a real room number at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood in Oregon which served as the backdrop but not the location for the movie.

Just as a quick aside,

Please.

I thought The Shining was an excellent film from many different angles. Scary movies aren't usually my choice but this is well worth it for film fanatics. And for political fanatics since Kubrick wanted to film it partly to draw attention to the genocide of native people.

The DVD of The Shop Around the Corner has a few special features. Unfortunately, no commentary, but there is an interesting short film called the Miracle of Sound, which is an old black and white MGM film that shows how sound was put on film. The opening scene has a very brief shot of a cotton field with a hand reaching out to pick the cotton (cotton was used to make celluloid). The hand, of course, belongs to an African-American and reminded me that I learned early in my teaching career to preview films that I ordered from the school district A-V department. A similar scene, yet much longer, was in a 16mm film of America the Beautiful that I showed to a class of 3rd graders in 1989. Teachable moments sometimes turn into long discussions.

And, of course, Mr. Political Correctness could not miss a chance like this to point out that 1940 Hollywood often billed the leading actress first over the actor (apparently due to chivalry), as in The Shop Around the Corner, while 1998 Hollywood billed Tom Hanks first in You've Got Mail (apparently due to Tom Hanks having greater appeal even over America's sweetheart and greatest fake orgasmic actress, Meg Ryan). Just an interesting note.

Thanks, Ralph. Apparently, you are due for a check-up.

Quickies

 

We saw Atonement last week. Just in time for Yom Kippur. I think I already used the dumb joke about the Jewish connection with the family's last name. Beautiful movie. We read the book a year or so ago. Well told story and well done movie. English accents are only a little hard to understand but since I now qualify for the senior discount at Piccadilly I'm having a harder time hearing anything. Getting my ears cleaned out helped a little.

 

Love in the Time of Cholera came in the mail recently. I love Gabriel Garcia Marquez' magical realism style of writing. I first read his short stories, then 100 Years of Solitude. Have not read Love in the time of Cholera but wanted to see the movie anyway. Beautiful movie. I loved the casting. Javier Barden was great and a pleasure to see him after not really liking No Country for Old Men. The commentary on the DVD that I watched later was very interesting mainly because the director, Mike Newell, has a great voice. Very soothing, especially for an Englishman. Even though he is mostly a TV director the movie wasn't all that bad. Pauline Kael had a good point in the 60's that it wasn't the major movies that television was hurting but the fact that television killed the B-movie which had been the training ground for directors. With television ending the B-movie market, directors were coming from television instead which is much more one-dimensional (at least at that time, supposedly). I'm not sure if Mike Newell's television background affected this movie but he did do Four Weddings and Funeral which had Hugh Grant. That's about as one-dimensional as you can get.

 

I forgot about seeing Mountain Patrol in Augusta last summer. Strangely beautiful movie about a true story in Tibet several years ago concerning the poaching of wild antelope and the attempts by local Tibetans to stop the poaching. Gorgeous scenery and great acting. I read quite a bit of viewer response to the movie and got very confused about who was really the bad guys and was the movie really Chinese propaganda to show how environmentally concerned they are by supporting the anti-poachers but really acting the other way. Or was it the other way around? Hard to tell from all the emotional responses. One news article did clarify that the scene of what was supposed to be 100's of skinned antelopes was really goats that was the normal diet for the villagers. They just lined up the carcasses for the movie. 

 

Saw the biopic about Bob Dylan, I'm Not There. All the jokes about the title apply. "I wasn't there either." "You had to be there." "There is no there, there" (Steinian philosophy). Compelling movie, nonetheless. The casting got most of the publicity. Cate Blanchett was good. Woody Guthrie has always been one of my heroes. The scene of the child actor playing Dylan and visiting Guthrie in the hospital was very moving. Interesting connection with my comment on the Mongolian Ping Pong movie about genocide practice in China. Guthrie had been recruited by the Columbia River (Oregon) Dam Company to write 26 songs commemorating the building of the dam and the resulting benefit of all the cheap electrical power. The other result of the dam being built was the total loss of the native American tribal way of life along the river. The tribes were moved inland to reservations and soon died off. The term used by other tribes in Oregon? Genocide.

 

We tried to watch The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir (1939). It's billed as the "greatest movie ever made" mainly for the cinematic artistry. Unfortunately, the subtitles were obscured by the background so we gave up. Too bad since I love Renoir's film, Boudru Saved From Drowning (nicely remade as Down and Out In Beverly Hills). Pauline Kael is credited with praising the film enough to give it a new life in the US in the 60's. It's well worth the trouble to find it. Subtitles aren't all that necessary as the acting is so expressive.

 

We saw Moon Over Parador awhile ago. Richard Dreyfuss stars who I always like. Very funny movie. Sweet story. Great acting all around. Dreyfuss' brother plays the dead dictator in the freezer.

 

Tried to see something called Mona Lisa but I thought I had ordered the Julia Roberts film (another Mike Newell direction) and instead got some incomprehensible English gangster movie with Bob Hoskins. No idea if it was any good. Damn those English accents.

 

OK, that's enough for now.

 

Thk gdnes. OMG! I thought you'd never stp.

 

Yes, and damn those text messages from outer space.

 

Mongolian Ping Pong

 

Alright, so it wasn't The Little Shop of Horrors Around the Corner which is what I was thinking. But if you join the Blockbuster movierentalsbymail (tell them I sent you) and type in Little Shop Around the Corner you not only get The Shop Around the Corner but you also get The Little Church Around the Corner which was a 1923 movie written by Olga Printzlau who wrote well over 60 movie scripts as well as several Broadway plays. They all sound good. I'd love to watch them sometime. I love really old movies mainly for the sense of getting a sense of the time. Some are hard to watch. I tried watching a silent movie last week written by and starring Harry Houdini, called Man From Beyond. Too hard to watch due to the incredibly annoying soundtrack but maybe if I played Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd at the same time it would be easier.

Anybody every try to watch the Wizard of Oz with Dark Side of the Moon as the soundtrack?

One of the founding members of Pink Floyd was named Richard Wright. He died last month which was the same month as the birth of the writer Richard Wright who we last visited in the McCabe and Mrs. Miller review. His birthday is September 4th which alert siblings and grandmother will note is the birthday of the famous teen rebel with many causes and ping pong extraordinaire, Peter Berlin.
Well, on to an extraordinary movie, Mongolian Ping Pong.

Actually flimed in Inner Mongolia which apparently means it's really China. Who the hell knows anymore? Outer Mongolia is apparently the Chinese name for Mongolia while Inner Mongolia is in China and has a majority of ethnic Han Chinese population with enough real Mongolians left alive to act in this movie. Apparently genocide is a term that hasn't been translated yet. If you want to know anymore then look it up yourself on wikipedia.

What I do know and will gladly share is that Mongolian music (inner or outer) and the technique of throatsinging is absolutely beautiful and the practice probably goes back thousands of years. Sadly, silence goes back even further which means the soundtrack to this movie is mostly that. A little throatsinging at the beginning and end. Just enough to whet your whistle as they say in Texas which also has a history of throatsinging amongst cowboys on the range.

The silence is obviously a way to get us to appreciate the awesome landscape and vast stretches of more awesome landscape. Somewhere inbetween is a remake of The Gods Must Be Crazy but not as funny. Cuter, though. Cute kids. Cute horses. If you want anymore then watch it yourself.

Evan Almighty

Evan Almighty

Linda and I hired two resident teenagers sometime ago. They moved in several years ago and agreed to eat and sleep in exchange for access to transportation and cash money. Apparently, it's the way things are done where they come from. Parents as taxi and ATM. Prior to their employment as teenagers, they were young and innocent enough to have seen Bruce Almighty at an early enough age to have God imprinted on their brains as Morgan Freeman. Now as resident teenagers, they have become very religious and seem to naturally gravitate towards any movie that has God's voice or face.

Except Evan Almighty, which we got on DVD just recently and after they began to realize that not everything God acted in was really all that good. So, only the younger resident teenager stuck around to watch it. It wasn't that bad, amusing but oddly unfunny. Jim Carrey did not want to do the sequel to Bruce Almighty so Steve Carell got talked into it. I haven't laughed at any thing I've seen him in. Is he supposed to be funny?

The movie cost 200 million dollars to make and still lost money. Wow! Imagine that! It was the most expensive comedy ever made and only made a strong argument for how the hell small countries can survive on less money. Of course, it was a green movie as the director bought everyone bicycles and insisted on having everyone plant trees in order to off-set the movie's carbon footprint. They certainly didn't want to get out-done by those Jewish green movie-makers, the Coen Brothers who had a statement at the end of No Country For Old Men about it being a neutral carbon emission movie.

It was hard to tell if this was a Jewish version of the Noah story, a Christian version, or a Messianic Mormanish version. When some of us were younger, God was much more clearly Jewish as evidenced by George Burns in Oh, God! The Southern Baptists protested the movie in Augusta way back when so it must have been the Jewish version of God.

There were several clever references to scriptural verses in Evan Almighty which only clever people like me understood especially after I read the trivia page on the IMDb website. I did, however, immediately recognize one of Dad's favorite sayings when Steve Carell tells Morgan Freeman that building an ark was not in his plans. God, of course, laughs as in Mann traoch, Gott läuch, which Alex translated the Yiddish for us at the funeral as meaning "Man plans, God laughs."

Evan Almighty is rated PG even though there is a cutesy reference to the really stupid 40-Year Old Virgin movie, so you can use it for Sunday School to teach the fun version of the Great Flood or you can use it in a socialist adult day care to teach a fairly literal version of the Great Flood of Johnstown, Pennslyvania, of 1899. Oops, I just gave away the plot. I'd apologize but according to most professional reviewers the plot was quickly obvious to everybody but me.

The Johnstown Flood was not, as the National Geographic fatuously said several years ago, a natural disaster. None of the wealthy members of the Hunting and Fishing Club got convicted of deliberately overloading the dam so they could have more water to hunt and fish but Andrew Carnegie did build a nice library for the survivors. And to add more insult to tragic injury a poem was written about the Johnstown Flood shortly after it happened. Not just any poem but one by Willaim McGonagall. It's called The Pennslyvania Disaster and is terrible which is fitting since McGonagall is famous for being declared the worst poet in the English language. He was probably also declared dead long before he actually died in 1902. He was known as the Bard of Banality before the title passed on to me. You will be utterly grateful that I am not pasting his poem here. It is awful.

We do want to extend our wishes for a speedy recovery to Morgan Freeman who was in a car accident recently. Sadly, he was also served with divorce papers at the same time.

It's hard enough for someone like my lovely wife to be married to someone who only thinks he's God.

No banal poems to paste, but since the subject of Jews came up, I'll just cut and paste some haikus from a website I can't bother to link to:

Jewish Haiku

*****

After the warm rain
the sweet smell of camellias.
Did you wipe your feet?

*****

Her lips near my ear,
Aunt Sadie whispers the name
of her friend's disease.

*****

Looking for pink buds
to prune, the old moyel
wanders among his flowers.

*****

Today I am a man.
Tomorrow I will return
to the seventh grade.

*****

Harsh Scrabble discord--
someone has placed "putzhead" on
a triple word score.

*****

Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she sighs softly.
But her son is forty.

*****

The sparkling blue sea
reminds me to wait an hour
after my sandwich.

*****

Tea ceremony--
fragrant steam perfumes the air.
Try the cheese Danish.

*****

Lacking fins or tail
the gefilte fish swims with
great difficulty.

*****

Yom Kippur-- Forgive
me, Lord, for the Mercedes
and all that lobster.

*****

My nature journal --
today, I saw some trees and birds.
I should know the names?

*****

Like a bonsai tree,
your terrible posture at
my dinner table.

*****

Beyond Valium
the peace of knowing one's child
is an internist.

*****

Jews on safari --
map, compass, elephant gun,
hard sucking candies.

*****

Coroner's report --
"The deceased, wearing no hat,
caught his death of cold."

*****

The same kimono
the top geishas are wearing:
got it at Loehmann's.

*****

The sparrow brings home
too many worms for her young.
"Force yourself," she chirps.

*****

Jewish triathlon:
gin rummy, then contract bridge,
followed by a nap.

*****

"Can't you just leave it?"
the new Jewish mother asks -
umbilical cord.

*****

The shivah visit:
so sorry about your loss.
Now back to my problems.

*****

Our youngest daughter,
our most precious jewel.
Hence the name, Tiffany.

*****

Mom, please! There is no
need to put that dinner roll
in your pocketbook.

*****

Seven-foot Jews in
the NBA slam-dunking!
My alarm clock rings.

*****

Concert of car horns
as we debate the question
of when to change lanes.

*****

Sorry I'm not home
to take your call. At the tone
please state your bad news

*****

Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done?

*****

Today, mild shvitzing.
Tomorrow, so hot you'll plotz.
Five-day forecast: feh

*****

Left the door open.
for the Prophet Elijah.
Now our cat is gone.

*****

Yenta. Shmeer. Gevalt.
Shlemiel. Shlimazl. Tochis.
Oy! To be fluent!

*****

Quietly murmured
at Saturday services,
Yanks 5, Red Sox 3.

*****

A lovely nose ring --
excuse me while I put my
head in the oven.

*****

Hard to tell under
the lights--white Yarmulke or
male-pattern baldness

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

McCabe and Mrs. Miller

Alright, Hussein, it's time for a Golden Oldie.

Hold on, Ralph, you aren't that old yet. This was an early '70's movie.

So was Billy Jack. That was pure gold then.

And just plain old now. Have you done anything new and exciting with yourself since 1971?

Well, last summer I did something that may be too difficult for some of our under-30 readers to be able to stomach.

Ok, let's hear it.

I sent my very first text message.

Wow! I feel sick just imagining you trying to find the spell-check feature.

Well, that was a challenge, but once I figured it out it 's been non-stop, especially during those exciting staff meetings when I can text without it being real obvious. Now I just need someone to text me back.

Well, don't hold your breath, Ralph, but what kept you from being so technologically advanced all this time?

You mean besides having to wait for a phone with spell-check? Money, Hussein. Until I ordered the family text plan and manipulated the boys into paying most of it I wasn't about to pay the 10 cents.

You're a good father. What a champ. So anyone bothering to read this and who has an unlimited texting plan could text you at 763-350-2522 and get to read more drivel.

Yep, but I like the word "dribble" which I found in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure and who has the duke or friar or somebody say, "the dribbling dart of love."

Ralph, some true-blue texters don't know the meaning of fear. You don't know the meaning of pedantry. But what do you think Shakespeare was talking about besides the fact that he was the first one to use the word "pedant?"

The clap, Hussein. Dribbling darts of gonorrhea. He had just introduced us to Mistress Overdone, the madam of the brothel. Of course, he might have meant syphillis which may have been more common then and would explain the incomprehensible English accent which makes English movies needing subtitles.

Did you just insult an entire ethnic group called Anglo-Saxons? Welldone, I say. Movietime now, I say as well.

I wanted to see this movie again since the entire song list is made up of Leonard Cohen songs. I love Leonard Cohen. Good movie but only three Cohen songs. The movie starts out with a beautiful long scene of Warren Beatty riding up to the village of Presbyterian Church while Cohen performs his The Stranger Song which matches the scene so well that it could be a music video. The story I read somewhere on the Internet is that the director, Robert Altman, heard the song while making the movie and realized that it coincidentally fit the movie. Some DVD versions of the movie can be set for French which means you can hear the songs in French. I don't know if Cohen sings them but I'd like to hear it.

Ralph, Wikipedia is kind of wasted on you, isn't it? Good thing you don't need a proton accelerator. That would be 8 billion dollars down the drain.

What? Well, anyway, the movie has gained a following among Robert Altman fans and many film critics. It is good and bears a second viewing. It's supposedly a Western with an "anti-hero" which means Warren Beatty dies in the end to the great relief of those of us who don't care for him. Julie Christie plays the brothel madam, or as one reviewer put it, "the whore with a heart of opium."

The other prostitutes all seem to be portrayed as having hearts of gold. Good thing because they had very little else in those tents they started out with. There was a scene of all the women having fun together while soaking in a hot tub after they upgraded to hotel status. I don't know if that was too show that they weren't badly treated or just to show that they were human beings with the same desire for joy and companionship as everyone else. The movie did make a point of showing the prostitutes as being some of the first on the water brigade when the church catches fire. It is an interesting scene especially since no one ever went to the church yet everyone was anxious to save it when it started burning.

Altman used the novel as a starting point and then heavily interpreted it for his own sense of the story he wanted to tell especially given the era of Vietnam and the strong anti-war movement. He had just finished MASH and was able to get this made on the success of the MASH movie. I found out through the wonder of the Internet that the literary agent for the novel's author was the widow of Richard Wright, the author of Black Boy and Native Son. Wright also wrote several thousand haiku poems in his last year of life. About 800 of them were published in a book called This Other World. I happened to come across it last year in a bookstore. Beautiful poems.

Five Haikus

1.

I am nobody:
A red sinking autumn sun
Took my name away.

2.

I give permission
For this slow spring rain to soak
The violet beds.

3.

With a twitching nose
A dog reads a telegram
On a wet tree trunk.

4.

Burning autumn leaves,
I yearn to make the bonfire
Bigger and bigger.

5.

A sleepless spring night:
Yearning for what I never had
And for what never was.

Here's one of Cohen's poems that I love. Each pair of lines has a double meaning which I know because I actually read about it in a book.

As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill
So my body leaves no scar
On you and never will

Through windows in the dark
The children come, the children go
Like arrows with no targets
Like shackles made of snow

True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun

As a falling leaf may rest
A moment on the air
So your head upon my breast
So my breath upon your hair

And many nights endure
Without a moon or star
So we will endure
When one is gone and far

True love leaves no traces
If you and I are one
It's lost in our embraces
Like stars against the sun

Lotsa Movies

Moliere

The Apartment

Buster Keaton

Benny and Joon

Iron Man

Charlie Wilson’s War

Watermelon Man

Stromboli

Tropic Thunder

More Hussein’s Insanely Nebulous Movie Reviews from the uber-guru of the True Church of Reform Islam, Balack Hussein OBerlin.

Ralph Hussein, are you making fun of a particular presumptive presidential candidate?

No, Hussein II, but I should point out that he has fathered two black children. The world needs to know this.

Maybe so, but you need to know that getting into heaven is a lot easier the lighter you are which means losing the ego, O mighty uber buber. Even with your recent fan mail there is still a chance that your reviews are enjoyed the same way as fruitcake.

What? Well, onto the races, of which all but the first one was viewed in Augusta while mooching off my mother while various siblings dropped in or stayed in as in Tish.

Moliere, the 2007 version, was great fun, good acting, sweet story. Based more on his plays than his life. A reviewer on IMBb said it better than I have time to, even if I could: “Moliére may not fully capture the true essence of the French author but the fact that it does suggest a writer of depth, wit, and inspiration may entice the viewer to seek out the source material first hand. Granted that the film is speculation, not biography, but it is art and the payoff is a romantic and richly entertaining tribute to one of the greatest playwrights in history.”

The Apartment (1960) with Shirley Maclaine, Jack Lemmon, and Fred McMurray was great. Wow! What a story and acting! Billy Wilder had fun pushing the Production Code (precursor to the ratings system we have now) to its limit. Adultery and how to do it in the era of hotel detectives might have been the obvious plot, but just as obvious, through the incredible directing, is the same story as in Children of Men. Faceless individuals who get lost and lose their soul. All three main characters have no clue as to how their own actions affect their ability to become individuals. Much more of a drama than a comedy. Jack Lemmon’s character has become a model for man as mouse.

I had brought some Buster Keaton movies after having seen Benny and Joon 20 times. Silent movies are fun to watch, but unfortunately Buster Keaton used a really annoying musical score in College that worked much better with the sound turned down. He sure looks like Johnny Depp. Or is it the other way around? It’s eerie to watch him and see how much he influenced Depp not only in Benny and Joon but in Depps’s other movies.

Benny and Joon is just a beautiful movie. The soundtrack along with Depp sitting in a tree makes the movie. We didn’t watch it this trip, but I had to mention it.

Iron Man is great fun. As a certain California-based musician wryly noted, “Robert Downey, Jr. is so sardonic.” “Yes, he is, California musician female-type person”.

We did love the movie and saw it in the cheap theatre with the Augusta-based matri-familia type person who also liked it. Apparently and inexplicably, I may have found some of the more sardonically sexist jokes funnier than my companions found them. I do think that Terence Howard deserves much more than being cast as the token A-A gofer, best buddy character. But still a very good comic book movie. Great message movie which Nicholas Cage also did so well with in Lords of War. The real-life arms merchant that Cage’s character was based on was finally arrested this past year. No news yet on what happened to him next. I’m sure someone else stepped in right away.

We saw Charlie Wilson’s War the other night. The bonus feature on the real Charlie Wilson was good. Movie was good, too, but the book might be better according to Chris who lives in Birmingham, Alabama, not Birmingham, England, which recently discovered that their city’s webpage uses a picture of the skyline of Birmingham ---- Alabama..

Watermelon Man from 1970 was funny, still-topically satirical, and very dramatic at the end. Godfrey Cambridge stars and was very good. He starts off a white bigot and then wakes up black. Some early reviewers called it worth seeing but a one-joke movie. It is a long joke, however, with many layers.

Stromboli was the 1950 Ingmar Bergman movie in which she fell in love with the director, Rosellini, and left her husband and child for him even though she had just learned how to speak Italian and probably didn’t know any better. Then she left him several years later after she learned what those Italian men are really after.

Fascinating movie. Some actual book research in the library told me that the original version is a good bit longer than the international version and has a different ending. I couldn’t tell which version we were watching. It was VHS without any special features. It was also full-screen which means we may have missed some parts of the scenes without the wide-screen option of which letter-boxing fans like me and Tish were out-voted by old-school matriarchs like Mom. Still, a well-worth watching movie. The in-house Bergman expert visiting from California (at least, Tish claimed to have read her autobiography) said Bergman was the only professional actress on the set. All the others came from the island of Stromboli (the resident food expert visiting from St. Paul just stayed hungry throughout the movie; Pinocchio experts were missing ). The big mystery in the movie is why in the hell anybody lives on an island which has a volcano that blows up frequently. The evacuation scene in the movie looked really difficult.

Speaking of difficult, Tropic Thunder must be at the top of whatever level of difficulty movies are judged. It’s also near the top of the list of movies not to see with your mother. A Clockwork Orange is probably the first movie people think of when trying to find a movie not to see with their mother. Tropic Thunder is a close second. But, fortunately, I’m at the age now where when I go to a movie like TT with my mother (and adult sister, I might add) I can rest assured that at any time I can look over at Mom and see that she has fallen asleep.

The jokes in this movie-within-a movie, which is supposed to be a joke in itself, are mostly a repeat of Ben Stiller’s one-joke empire. The satire is appreciated. The irony is lost. At least on me.

I think it’s wonderful that Stiller and company included a skit on making fun of movies that use mental retardation as a theme. Unfortunately, they aren’t the ones to make that kind of joke. Most of the people who will see this movie (other than me, of course, and two other people of which at least one was awake for most of the movie) are going to be adolescent boys who may not understand that calling someone “retard” really is not a joke. It is sad that as the “N” word gets to be finally politically incorrect the “R” word is replacing it. Wow! What a surprise.

But the worst part about Tropic Thunder was that Robert Downey, Jr., while good, was not sardonic. According to Tish. I’m still learning what the hell that word means. And after 10 days in Augusta playing tournament Berlin Scrabble (rules are constantly shifting in Berlin Scrabble) I learned that my mother can add an “O” to “blini” and call it an Irish pancake which means that sardonicy has risen to new heights. I also learned that cheating at Scrabble gets harder when other people can see how long I’m taking to look up a word after a challenge. A certain old-school person had a strong objection to the Scrabble dictionary and since her one vote counted for more than any number of other votes we had to resort to calling up loved ones who happened to have Internet connection so they could look up a non-sensical two-letter word for us.

We finally forced our way in and bought a Scrabble dictionary but allowed the use of the in-house Webster’s to also count. Big mistake. Tish played “ra” which I knew was not in the Scrabble dictionary but she found it in the Webster’s which meant I lost my turn. I got so upset I called the phone number listed in the Scrabble dictionary and was promptly told that I should have insisted on using only one dictionary.

Wow, Ralph Hussein Oblini! And to think that only a few months ago I was happily enjoying heaven and now find myself in hell being channeled by a fruitcake.