I loved this movie. A wonderful story, beautifully told. The writer in me was happy, the story lover in me was happy, even the movie lover in me was happy.
I don’t know why it is, but the occasional Pixar movie these days seems to do a better job of portraying the human condition than any number of flicks with real actors. Perhaps it’s because they’re unafraid of sentiment. They feel no need for irony or wallowing in misery and despair, while at the same time they manage to find depths of raw sorrow in their narratives that frequently come off as plain painful in other movies. Perhaps it’s because these movies are cartoons, and we know they’re going to have happy endings, but I do know that the five minute sequence early on that summarized Carl’s and Ellie’s sweet, sad marriage affected me about as much as anything I’ve seen in a long time.
And there were talking dogs, too.
Squirrels!
This actually fell right in the middle between Likes-Some-Things and Likes-Nothing. Being such a positive guy, I decided to give Stew the benefit of the doubt. After all, I love his discs.
The last four songs of the show were what I really liked. Stew is a great singer, larger than life personality, and very funny. All this came through in the last four songs. The first two-thirds of the show, however, were a bit too overwrought for my taste. Stew drinking, Stew crawling across the floor into a mini-fridge. And the video show playing on three screens was ho-hum at best. There is a reason I’ve never been part of the art crowd, where the banal can be worshiped every bit as much as Beethoven’s 5th. And the songs seemed overproduced, which is the musical sin I’m least likely to forgive.
Maybe it was because this was the last night of the show and Stew and the band were either trying too hard or not trying hard enough.
But the last four songs were wonderful. Am listening to some of them right now.
Chicks in chainmail and soubrettes with swords just don’t do it for me any more. I’ll take a 19th c. spinster who can do sums any time. She takes on her tradesman father, marries one of his workingmen, and gets her sisters settled into the bargain. If you can get past Charles Laughton hamming it up as a drunk, this is a very funny flick.
Boy, do I. Best book I’ve read in a long time, fiction or non-fiction. Throes of Democracy is the second book in Walter A. McDougall’s projected multivolume history of the US. The first, Freedon Just Around the Corner, took us from the European arrival in North America to Jackson’s election in 1828. The current volume continues the narrative to Rutherford B. Hayes’s disputed election in 1876. (And you thought 2000 was bad.)
The books are smetimes glib to a fault. They are surveys of their times, not in-depth analyses. McDougall’s tone is ironic and conservative, with a touch of the gleeful cynic as well. But the conservatism is not the false conservatism of the current day, which wishes to conserve nothing but ts own power. It is an older conservatism that does not believe in the perfectability of humanity, and views all such attempts as vainglorious, dictatorial, and more than a little self-serving. In short, it is a scholarly point of view that is very much out of step with mainstream progressive American scholarship (the NY Times savaged the book), or the conservative backlash that currently represents the other side of the debate.
Whatever you think of the theme, it is a great read. McDougall has no sacred cows (except maybe Lincoln), and savages everyone from the Transcendentalists to the Know-Nothings. (Having been forced to worship Emerson and the Transcendentalists at my New England college I enjoyed their skewering very much.) He views the Civil War as a disaster for all parties, with the freeing of the slaves barely making up for the century of Black American sufferng that followed. His main thesis, that the US has always been a nation of self-interested hucksters draping ourselves in moral hypocrisy in order to justify our ambition and greed is, in my opinion, completely accurate. And very appropriate, given our current natonal condition.
It’s a beutifully written and very interesting book. If you like the bashing of sacred cows, do yourself a favor and take a look.
So sad to hear she’s gone. Her cleverness, her fluid style, and above all the good humor of her books, will be missed. A wonderful writer.
I really, really liked this book by Botswana/South African writer Bessie Head - When Rain Clouds Gather. I picked it up for research purposes (didn’t help much there - the village life described is too poor for my purpose), but it really is a delightful story. Almost no conflict, and way too much telling, but a wonderful, sweet, simple, non-judgmental voice. So much more enjoyable than the world-weary dreariness of V.S. Naipaul. Some sections read almost like Trollope in Africa. And, though race was everywhere in the book, it was also nowhere. Many very interesting insights for someone like me who knows nothing about village life in Africa.
Why is this not a huge cult favorite? It’s even funnier than Sean of the Dead. For one thing it has a better ending. And almost as much gore. Writers should love it - nothing is introduced without being used later.
Favorite bit - the goose.
See? I do like some things. I even like a few things everybody else likes.
But I have a question. Apparently the movie is based on a series of five books called The Crane-Iron Pentology by Wuxia novelist Wang Dulu. Why have these books never been translated into English? Are they written in Manchu or Cantonese?
Anyone out there know?
I must have these books.
I’d forgotten how much I like this flick - one of the best anti-war movies ever made.
Okay, I see the jokes coming already, but really, there’s no crack you can make that isn’t already in the movie.
Does anyone remember this one? From 1999, Dick stars Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams as a pair of 15 year old girls who get to walk President Nixon’s dog. Basically, it’s Jan and Marcia Brady as Deep Throat. Really. A wonderful movie, I saw it in theaters when my two oldest daughters were 14 and 16. They loved it; I loved it; and I loved it tonight when I just watched it again for the first time. Dan Hedaya is the best Nixon - ever. I mean, this movie is so much better than Frost and Nixon on so many levels. Nixon was never tragedy - he was only farce.
Favorite line - Nixon, after the girls see a room full of staffers manning the shredders: “My hobby is papier mache.”
Why is this movie not a huge cult hit?
