Monday's Mumbles about Movies

On Saturday evening we watched a couple of movies via Amazon Prime. I picked them because, from the brief outline themes, neither promised beaucoup gratuitous violence, blood and guts.




Big Night (1996)

Big Night is one of those often engaging "foodie" stories. Two Italian brothers, immigrants to the New Jersey Shore, run a restaurant, The Paradise, serving fine Italian food. Primo is the chef, Secundo Maitre d'. The business is not doing well - near to foreclosure in fact - possibly Primo's wonderful food is simply "too good for this place". Another restaurateur with a business close by hears of their plight. He suggests that he should contact a celebrity and friend of his to ask that he and his entourage should visit The Paradise one evening to bring in some custom and help in spreading the word about the excellent Italian fare available.

I'll not spoil the film's theme further, but will say that, though we didn't dislike the movie, there were some weird omissions and a really iffy ending. It was nice to see Tony Shalhoub (Monk) in an early role here, and Allison Janney too (CJ Cregg in The West Wing).

The film received very good reviews - most of which I feel were way overblown - but the sight of great food can do that to some people!

The Virgin Suicides (1999)
Based on a 1993 novel by Jeffrey Eugenides, the film was directed by Sofia Coppola (in her feature directorial debut), co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola, and starring James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Kirsten Dunst, and Josh Hartnett. The film also features Scott Glenn, Michael Paré and Danny DeVito in minor roles, and a voice narration by Giovanni Ribisi.

I found this to be a rather peculiar movie. Like Big Night, above, it received excellent reviews. Perhaps I just didn't get it. Maybe I don't remember what it was like being a teenager (but actually, I do, though I was not one of five!)

I like a movie with a good plot, a twist or two, and a satisfying end. I do wonder if the famous surname of the director of this movie might have....well...influenced critics more than a tad! None of this story felt at all real, reasonable or believable to me - except, perhaps the first suicide.

Without giving away too much (as though the film's title doesn't!) the story's focus is on 5 young sisters, aged between 13 and 17, living in suburban Detroit with their loving but ultra-strict and over-protective parents. Those facts along with the title is really all you need to know, apart from continually needing to ask, "Why?"

I read around some reviews of both the novel and film later. I came across one comment which put a more metaphorical spin on the novel's, and therefore the movie's theme: "I see the suicides in this book as an expression of the often senseless loss and decay that is happening in the world around us today." Remember, too, that the story is set close to Detroit, a centre of recent loss and decay. So... watching the movie through that lens, perhaps it wouldn't seem quite so peculiar.

Saturday & Sundry Thoughts on This & That

Not many or particularly deep thoughts. Over the past week or so I've been feeling tired, exhausted, fatigued, fed up.... It's not really connected the breast cancer issue. Both incisions are healing well, and the pesky drain was taken out at last, on Thursday. Stitches likely to be taken out on Monday. There might be a course of radiation sometime in my future, but I have not yet made my appointment with the radiation oncologist for assessment - I need a little breathing space, damn it! It's our 15th wedding anniversary on Tuesday. We missed a celebration last year, have missed celebrating my birthday and husband's birthday already this year.

My secondary issue, lymphocytic colitis, discovered after colonoscopy, has been causing more problems after it had gradually started settling down. I suspect that side effects from the 6-week course of meds I bought - at the knock down price of $1,400 - have been kicking in during past days. I have only 5 days' worth of tablets left. Side effects of this med do include unusual tiredness, and various types of discomfort stomach/bowel-wise. These should subside once I finish the course (I hope).

Other thoughts, unrelated to health issues:

If Joe Biden eventually becomes the Democrats' nominee in the 2020 presidential election - it simply has to have been "a fix".

Happy to see the name of Mike Gravel around once more, this time in context of the 2020 election.

Two of my posts on Mike Gravel from 2007 and 2008:

https://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2007/10/soapbox-time.html
https://twilightstarsong.blogspot.com/2008/05/changing-horses.html

We watched "I, Daniel Blake"

on Netflix this week - a 2016 British movie. It made me as angry as I've ever felt watching any movie or TV drama. Angry, not at the movie itself, but at the circumstance described in it, which are present for far too many people in the UK (and in the USA too as it happens). Gold Star to the movie's director, Ken Loach (also famous for other hard-hitting films such as "Kathy Come Home" and "Kes"). Thank the gods for the Ken Loaches of this world - unafraid to say what needs to be said in ways that strike at the heart.

 James Spader as Alan Shore, Candice Bergen as Shirley Schmidt

David E. Kelley, in the USA, is another such writer/director, though not as raw and hard-hitting as Ken Loach, he still managed to get said things that needed to be said. We've been re-watching (by DVD) the whole series of "Boston Legal" this week. Alan Shore's wondrous closing speeches are the jewel at the heart of each episode; these address issues that needed to be candidly addressed at the time the show originally aired. Those same issues mostly still need a candid airing in 2019 - because really nothing much changes, does it? "Boston Legal" managed to last for 5 seasons on ABC channel, 2004-2008. Those outspoken closing speeches did, eventually, raise the hackles of the network's owners, or their advertisers, I guess. Where is today's comparable show?

Escape

“Mother used to say escape is never further than the nearest book.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

During my early to mid-teenage years I loved to read novels, or see films, about prisoners of war in Germany or Japan during World War II, and their attempts to escape. A book by Paul Brickhill, Boldness Be My Friend began my fandom of such stories, I think. I'd scour the library for similar tales, and found several.

I've wondered why I had this penchant for prisoner of war escape stories. My conclusion has been that, back in my teen years, I was feeling "imprisoned" by school and home strictures and wanted to escape myself. Or...perhaps I just enjoyed reading about the way human nature adapts, sometimes never gives up - no matter what.

Over the years I've loved, read/seen (more than once) versions of A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute; The Great Escape; Stalag whatever; The Naked Island (that was a grizzly one if I recall correctly); Papillon (1973 version) and others whose titles I now don't recall.

At the weekend I noticed that Turner Movie Channel was showing "King Rat" on Saturday afternoon.

King Rat is a 1965 World War II film directed by Bryan Forbes, starring George Segal and James Fox. They play Corporal King and Marlowe, respectively, two World War II prisoners of war in a squalid camp near Singapore. Among the supporting cast are John Mills and Tom Courtenay. The film was adapted from James Clavell's novel King Rat (1962), which in turn is partly based on Clavell's experiences as a POW at Changi Prison during the Second World War.

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/king_rat

We decided to give the movie a whirl. It's an excellent, excellent film - should be much better known! There's a lot more to it than a straightforward POW movie. Escaping isn't an issue in this tale; escape would be virtually impossible due to the geographical situation of the Changi prison camp. The film examines the varied attitudes of individuals to the camp's horrendous circumstances; different psychological ways of dealing with what has to be dealt with. Acting is first class throughout, and many familiar faces (especially familiar to British viewers) pop up frequently.

James Clavell's book is now on my "to read" list - once I get through Winston Graham's 12 Poldark novels of which I'm currently in the midst. 1945 Changi, Singapore will offer quite a culture shock after so many tales of 18th century Cornwall, England!

Midweek Miscellany

We frequently see or hear quips about the older generation's fumble-fingered efforts with new (to them) technology - here's a chance for those of us of "a certain age" to have a little snigger at the younger generation:

"Are we supposed to pick up the phone and then do it?' Fun footage shows two teenagers completely baffled by a rotary telephone when given four minutes to make one call:

Teacher wears same dress for 100 days to teach students a lesson

By Hannah Frishberg

Teacher Julia Mooney dressed to impress her earthy beliefs on middle school students.

To prove that you are not what you wear, Mooney, 34, donned the same gray, button-down dress for 100 days in a row, washing it only “as needed.”

She didn’t tell her young charges what she was up to in the beginning — but slowly they caught on that she was rocking the roughly $50 frock “through ceramics projects, blizzards, whatever.”

“I was a little bit fed up with the cultural expectation to go shopping and spend all this money for other people to approve of me,” Mooney told “Good Morning America” back in November, when she launched her minimalist mission. “There is no rule that says I cannot wear the same thing every day if I choose to, so I thought, why not.

Fast-forward to February: By buying into the buzzy “fast fashion” trend, Mooney says we are cultivating what she describes as a “culture of excess” that hurts the environment — and young people.

"This is something they deal with every day as 12- and 13-year-olds,” she tells TreeHugger. “As they try to define themselves, they are often identifying with brands or superficial things like their social media presence. Many seemed excited to have a reason to talk about how silly all of that really is.................“Let’s use our energy to do good instead of looking good,” Mooney advises on her @oneoutfit100days Instagram account, where she posts about the importance of sustainability and the evils of fast fashion.

Do read the full piece (linked at the title) where there's a photograph of Ms Mooney, and the dress.

Cartoon by Mad John Peck (1971) - the idea never gets old!

A movie "coming soon"- actually at the end of June 2019, is said to offer a new slant on Beatlemania, with a spoonful of sci-fi added.

A failing musician finds himself the only person in the world who remembers, after a weird world-wide sci-fi type event, the Beatles and their music. Guess what a failing musician might do next in such circumstances!

If the movie hadn't been written by Richard Curtis (from a story by Jack Barth) I'd probably be very wary of its potential, but Curtis has written such delights as Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Notting Hill (1999), Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), Love Actually (2003)... Yesterday is directed by Danny Boyle.

This coming movie has to be worth a look (keeping disbelief suspended!)

Official trailer:

Mid-week Movie ~ The Pumpkin Eater

Returning to the weekend's topic of TV/movie drama: a few nights ago we watched (via Amazon Prime) a British 1964 film, The Pumpkin Eater. I'd heard of it, but hadn't ever seen it, nor had my husband. I was persuaded to watch by the cast list : Ann Bancroft, Peter Finch, James Mason, Maggie Smith....what could possibly go wrong?

I'm still not sure exactly what went wrong, for me . It could've been Harold Pinter's screenplay (though this was much lauded by others). I'm not good at appreciating the arty-farty in film, so that could have been my basic problem.

I kept remarking to husband along the lines of, "People do not, and did not in the 1960s, as I recall, converse like this! " Apparently, in Pinter's world, they did. I simply was unable to believe any character in this movie, in spite of the A-list actors involved. They, of course, could use only the story and material presented to them.

Leading female character was played by Ann Bancroft. This woman, from what we could perceive from the script, was neurotic and self-absorbed to the nth degree. Why then did she continue having children, yet seemingly taking little notice of them as their numbers grew: 3, 4, 5, 6, and I think more, but lost count. She eventually passed on responsibility to a nanny and/or to her 3rd husband (played by Peter Finch) in a then-failing marriage. She gave little thought to the lives she was forcing onto those kids in an at times ugly, emotionally-charged, if fairly wealthy background. I felt little sympathy. Her 3rd husband was unfaithful on the one hand, but seemed to love the kids who were not his, equally to any who were (I was never sure which were which). I had no sympathy for him either, except a grudging admiration for his continued devotion to the kids, in spite of having warned his wife of potential difficulties in that area, before they married. I think they were, then, 3 in number. The two eldest were shuffled off to boarding school quick sharp, before getting to know their parents at all.

I'm sorry, but I could not dredge up sympathy for a woman who had hardly ever worked a day in her life, but insisted on procreating when it became obvious she did not have the required stability in relationships to be responsibly doing so. My sympathy was reserved for the kids.

The best thing about the movie, for me, was the lush black and white format. "Lush" seems an odd adjective, but, on our screen the black and white (or rather 1000 shades of grey) of this movie did come over much better than black and white format in other movies of the same age. I enjoyed just looking at the pictures!

I realise that my view of this film is not once shared by many. I haven't read the book by Penelope Mortimer upon which the film was based. I've read several reviews of book and film; the movie and its actors received plaudits and awards for their performances. Perhaps I'm just not up to appreciating certain nuances - or perhaps, if the screenplay and dialogue had been written by a woman it would have felt more true to life. I wonder if, and how, any re-make in 2019 would be different. Perhaps things have changed so much in intervening decades that this movie belongs among historical dramas, almost as much as do Poldark and Lorna Doone! (See last weekend's post). Or, alternatively, as a reviewer at Time Out wrote: " ..... the world of the Hampstead soap opera now seems so far away as to almost rate as science fiction. "

MUSIC MONDAY

What have I heard, seen, done during the past week or so that had some musical connection? On New Year's Eve we watched two separate chunks of films on TCM channel, "That's Entertainment # I", and "That's Entertainment # III" - book-ending our other movie viewing that evening, until it was time to raise a glass to 2019. Those shows are such good value - patchworks of old musical movies of the MGM variety. Lots of dancing and spectacle rather than any concentration on purely vocal numbers. The dancing was, of course, perfection. Personally, though, when it comes to movie musicals I prefer the Rogers and Hammerstein types: Oklahoma - of course, Carousel, Show Boat, Kismet, The Student Prince - those kinds of musicals.

We watched a couple of movies with a musical heart during the week: The Jazz Ambassadors, and Lifted, available on Netflix or Amazon Prime - memory fails as to which. The Jazz Ambassadors is an interesting documentary; also been shown on PBS at some point in the past.

The Cold War and Civil Rights collide in this remarkable story of music, diplomacy and race. Beginning in 1955, when America asked its greatest jazz artists to travel the world as cultural ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and their mixed-race band members, faced a painful dilemma: how could they represent a country that still practiced Jim Crow segregation?
[From IMDb]

Lifted is a movie from 2011, and not our usual fare - it has a blend of 'flag-waver' and Christian-themed story-line. Anyway, we'd started so decided to finish! I didn't hate it, didn't love it. It's the story of a young boy who entered a singing competition hoping to win some money to help with family finances; his father, a reservist, had been called to service in Afghanistan. The boy's mother was a drug addict. Acting was okay, singing was okay, and the story did take a surprisingly odd turn.

Music Monday ~ Eye Eye!

We're back at the hospital again this morning - from 6.30 AM this time! Husband is having cataract surgery on his left eye today - right eye was "done", successfully, last Monday.

Another eye song, then, for this Music Monday:




Doctor, my eyes have seen the years
And the slow parade of fears without crying
Now I want to understand I have done all that I could
To see the evil and the good without hiding
You must help me if you can Doctor, my eyes
Tell me what is wrong
Was I unwise to leave them open for so long........



POSTSCRIPT - We saw the new movie Bohemian Rhapsody on Saturday afternoon - enjoyed it! 10/10. Excellent performance by Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury.

Once Upon a Picnic

During my week of "unplugged" leisure we visited a few cities in Kansas, including city of my husband's birth and young years, Salina. Our wanderings also took in Hutchinson (known as "Hutch" to locals), McPherson and Abilene. Salina and Hutchinson had their 15 minutes of fame back in the 1950s when scenes in the movie "Picnic" were filmed there. Recognisable locations include the h-u-g-e grain elevators in Hutchinson - biggest I've ever seen:

Riverbank scenes in "Picnic" were filmed in Salina. When, in the movie, William Holden stoops to splash his face, my husband, just a young whippersnapper at the time, recalls that locals leaned over the bridge, to watch filming. As Holden began to splash his face with river water, a communal cry of "EEwwww - urrrr" was heard from spectators, who had direct knowledge of content of that water!

Anyway, no picnics for us, though we did rent "Picnic" via ROKU last evening to refresh our memories of the movie. We enjoyed it - but as, since the film was made, William Holden had become typecast as a quite different type of character, it was hard to "believe" him in this role. If the film had been made a few years later, Paul Newman or Burt Reynolds would have been a better fit.

We had a very pleasant few days away in glorious early autumn weather, lots of antique stores to investigate, and some beautiful Fall colour to be enjoyed; none, as yet, has emerged back home in south-west Oklahoma.

As it's Music Monday an apt offering: theme music from "Picnic"

"Moonglow and Theme from Picnic" is a 1956-released medley of both "Moonglow" (1933) and "Theme from Picnic" (1955), by Morris Stoloff. It is from the film Picnic, starring William Holden and Kim Novak.

The 1933 piece, "Moonglow", was written by Will Hudson, Irving Mills and Eddie DeLange. The 1955 piece, "Theme from Picnic", was written by George Duning. (Steve Allen set lyrics to the tune, and is credited on vocal versions of the song as a co-author, but not on the hit instrumental versions by Stoloff and others.)

The Stoloff version spent three weeks at number-one on the Billboard Most Played by Jockeys music chart in the spring of 1956. The B-side to the Stoloff version is "Theme from Picnic" by George Duning.

The medley was also covered by George Cates in 1956, charting at number 4 on the charts.

This is a nice rendition by the James Last Orchestra (with scenes from the movie)-




The original film version of the piece:

Music Monday - Stars Being Born - and Re-born

A Star Is Born has been re-made yet again. The 2018 version stars Lady Ga-Ga and Bradley Cooper. I usually feel distinctly cynical about re-makes, they can often be vehicles for the sole purpose of depositing more dosh into the pockets of film industry magnates. This story though, more than most, does lend itself to being re-done - adjusted to fit the current generation's musical tastes and the way the entertainment industry is perceived and experienced.

A Star is Born has a long history. It didn't, as I had suspected, originate as a novel, but began as a 1937 American Technicolor romantic drama film (not a musical) produced by David O. Selznick, directed by William A. Wellman from a script by Wellman, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker, and her husband Alan Campbell. Nice to see Dorothy Parker's name there! The original film had themes picked up, polished and expanded upon, from a 1932 film What Price Hollywood?

A Star is Born has been re-born three times since 1937, when it starred Janet Gaynor and Frederic March. Each re-make does carry the flavour of its time: the 1954 version starred Judy Garland and James Mason; in the 1976 version Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson led the cast, and in 2018 Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper take the starring roles.



I've seen the 1954 and 1976 versions, though not the original. One reviewer of all three films considered the original to be the best of the lot, mainly due to its superior dialogue and writing.





As it's Music Monday, let's re-listen to a song from the 1976 film, enjoy the sound of Streisand and the sight of Kristofferson - young again !






The new version of this story will be on release in October, we shall see how it measures up, in due course.

South, In the Pacific with R & H - "Who can explain it, who can tell you why?"

Last week, in a thrift store, I found a DVD of South Pacific in a version I'd not had the pleasure of seeing - a film made for TV in 2001. In this version Glen Close plays Ensign Nellie Forbush, the part played in the original, 1958, film by Mitzi Gaynor. Another well-known name in the cast: Harry Connick Jnr playing Lt. Joe Cable (John Kerr's part in the 1958 film). The rest of the cast weren't well-known (to me, anyway).

I thoroughly enjoyed this version of the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. It'd be hard to dislike anything by that well-matched pair of musical wonders! The themes of the film are based on parts of James Michener's book of linked short stories about South Pacific Island life during World War 2.

After reading reviews of this 2001 version at imdb HERE I suspect that I'm the only person with a good word to say about it - I'm easily pleased, I guess!

Glen Close, of course, was not quite right for Nellie, as originally written - but I found it easy to view the story from a slightly different perspective age-wise. It wasn't Glen Close's age that mattered to me, but I did find it hard to see her as an unsophisticated racist "hick" from Arkansas - we know her from so many other roles, just too well - and no amount of decent acting could erase our ingrained image of her. Harry Connick Jnr was a tad underwhelming, but perhaps that was how he interpreted Joe Cable. I'm waiting for the the book to arrive from e-bay find out how Mr Michener originally described him.

The singing and dancing in this newer version, while not up to the best stage musical level, were adequate. Rodgers and Hammerstein's words and music are of such high quality, and have magic enough to carry a less than top notch vocalist.

I liked the fact that more background detail of the war was included in this 2001 film - it kept things more real and properly oriented for me, rather than being completely swept away by the froth of the lighter side of the stories being told.

I read, on the net, that another re-make of the film version of South Pacific was in the works (but some five years ago). Names being thrown around, then, for starring roles were Michelle Williams, Hugh Jackman and Justin Timberlake. Hmm.

I was sure I'd done a post on Rodgers and Hammerstein in the past - they certainly had a magical bond - but on checking the archives - nope! That needs to be rectified. Below are their natal charts - I'm interested to see what astrological links there were. Richard Rodgers was the composer, and Oscar Hammerstein the lyricist, by the way. Their greatest successes include: Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music.

A snip from HERE

As businessmen, R&H revolutionized Broadway. Rodgers and Hammerstein fully understood that the show is just half of show business, wrote business historian John Steele Gordon in American Heritage (1990). They became the first men from the creative side of Broadway to establish a permanent organization to handle the business side of what they created. In doing so, they built a business empire that earned them the first great American fortune to be based on creative theatrical talent.

Like ASCAP [American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers ], which had been established a generation before, R&H wanted to protect the writer; that they were writers themselves made the duo especially sensitive to the issues. They both detested Hollywood because there the writer was well paid but stuck at the bottom of the evolutionary scale; but on Broadway, on stage, they knew the writer could and should have control over his or her work. Producers held too many of the cards, they felt, and the best way to wrest some of that control was to become producers themselves.

Richard Rodgers born in New York City on 28 June 1902 at 2.3-AM. (Astrodatabank)

Oscar Hammerstein born in New York City on 12 July 1895 at 4.30 AM. (Astrodatabank)

Both men had natal Sun in Cancer and natal Moon in Pisces. Hammerstein had Cancer rising, with Mercury on the ascendant angle (excellent placement for a lyricist!). Rodgers had Taurus rising, with Venus, planet of the arts in Taurus, a sign ruled by Venus, and in First House.

There are helpful links between Uranus (innovation) and Jupiter (expansion, publication) in both charts, trine for Hammerstein, sextile for Rodgers.

In relation to the link above describing this duo's building of a business empire - I look to Saturn in their charts and find it well placed in both. Rodgers had a trine from Saturn in Capricorn (it's sign of rulership) to Venus in Taurus - linking business (Saturn in Capricorn) to the arts (Venus in Taurus). Hammerstein had Saturn in Scorpio in trine to...yes Mercury on the Cancer ascendant - linking business (Saturn) to sensitive word-smithing (Mercury in Cancer).

It's not hard to see, astrologically, why these two were such a successful pair!

Saturday & Sundry Pieces of Interest

 Mabel Lucie Attwell's illustration

Why the Democrats Are Also to Blame for Brett Kavanaugh by Joshua Frank at Counterpunch this week:

Snips

If the Democrats cannot cobble together a solidified opposition to Trump’s most egregious policies, why would the Kavanaugh nomination be any different? Instead of drawing up a visionary blueprint that aims to excite a true grassroots movement against the corporate establishment, they continue to shiver in the face of internal upheaval as they have with the recent victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York.


The Democrats don’t control the Senate for a reason. They have not galvanized the majority of Americans who oppose the Wall Street takeover of our government and the perpetual wars that prop it up. Why? Because the Democrats don’t actually oppose either. They aren’t inept, Democrats are simply professional defenders of the status-quo................

Remember, this is the same party that demonized Bernie Sanders’ supporters and believed the movement he sparked and the issues he raised were unworthy of recognition.

This is the same party that rubber-stamped the endless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, the slaughters in Libya, Yemen, and more. This is the same party that backs Israel’s brutal occupation of Paletine. This is the same party that overwhelmingly backed the PATRIOT Act and the ongoing evisceration of our civil liberties. This is the same party that dismantled the welfare system while increasing corporate welfare. This is the same party that claims to believe in climate change but hasn’t done a damn thing to stop Big Oil. This is the same party that supports the death penalty, mass incarceration and a militarized Police State. This is the same party that claims to support women’s rights in the US but outright ignores the horrible working conditions and abuse their neoliberal policies inflict upon the women, many of them girls, who toil away in sweatshops around the globe in the name of profit.

They will whine that they’ve been steamrolled by Trump and the Republicans, but shed no tears for the Democrats. You can’t be steamrolled if you aren’t even standing in front of the machine that’s about to crush us.

The New Age of Astrology

In a stressful, data-driven era, many young people find comfort and insight in the zodiac—even if they don’t exactly believe in it. An interesting piece by Julie Beck in The Atlantic earlier this year.

It begins:

Astrology is a meme, and it’s spreading in that blooming, unfurling way that memes do. On social media, astrologers and astrology meme machines amass tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, people joke about Mercury retrograde, and categorize “the signs as ...” literally anything: cat breeds, Oscar Wilde quotes, Stranger Things characters, types of french fries. In online publications, daily, weekly, and monthly horoscopes, and zodiac-themed listicles flourish.
This isn’t the first moment astrology’s had and it won’t be the last. The practice has been around in various forms for thousands of years. More recently, the New Age movement of the 1960s and ’70s came with a heaping helping of the zodiac.

In the decades between the New Age boom and now, while astrology certainly didn’t go away—you could still regularly find horoscopes in the back pages of magazines—it “went back to being a little bit more in the background,” says Chani Nicholas, an astrologer based in Los Angeles. “Then there’s something that’s happened in the last five years that’s given it an edginess, a relevance for this time and place, that it hasn’t had for a good 35 years. Millennials have taken it and run with it.”

Lots more at the link!

A recent challenge at Quora brought about many answers, all entertaining: Remove one letter from the name of a TV show or movie. What's the premise of the new show or movie?
Here's one of the first, and more compact answers I stumbled upon, it's by a Quora friend Charlie Anne Excell, who gave her permission for its use on my blog.

I enjoyed the chuckles:

••NOW••SHOWING••

Mad Ma - Crazy mother of a hero takes the car keys, for pimpin' her car again. Gets to bingo quicker tho..

Forrest Gum - Mentally challenged son learns to blow impressive bubbles, which rise & save him after falls off shrimp boat. Mum likes it, she really really likes it…

One With The Wind - Frankly, people not giving a damn about openly farting during their public meditations.

Lord Of The Rigs - Tall hatted magician helps hairy-footed kids, hairy-faced equestrians and pointy-eared models drive an evil semi-trailer smack into a fireplace.

0 Shades Of Grey - Smartass guy and oddball chick sit round knitting, reading the phonebook and yawning. (I know.. I removed a number, not “a letter!” Sheesh, CHILL!, hava cold shower..)

Crocodile Undee - ‘Tables are turned' as U.S. journo chick pervs at reptile wrangler's bum cheeks in U.S. thong undees, as he gratuitously bends to look in water for a croc.


Star War - Basic type space movie. Doubt there'll be a sequel.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: Harry Otter; Py Kids; The Leg Movie; SharkNad!; When Harry Et Sally; Fiddler On The Roo; and, Itchcock.

Pitch with an Imperfect Purpose

Interesting, and a tad disturbing, piece by Caitlin Johnstone:

I Paid To See A Movie About Singing. I Got Ninety Minutes Of Pentagon Propaganda.


It begins:

To cap off a long, strange day, my husband and I took the kids out last night to see Pitch Perfect 3. The first Pitch Perfect is a firm favorite in our household, the kind of movie we end up watching when we can’t agree on what to watch. We’d been waiting til we all had a night to see the latest one together, so we made a night of it and went out for some dinner, too. I even had a Coke. The sugary kind. This was a big night, people! So we were all in high spirits and I entered the theater excited to see some good music and have a good time.

I wasn’t expecting a masterpiece, but I also wasn’t expecting to be blasted in the face with ninety minutes of blatant war propaganda from the United States Department of Defense...........

I'm pretty sure we saw the original Pitch Perfect movie, and enjoyed it, not sure about #2. #3, having read what Ms Johnstone has to say about it, will be on our 'movies to avoid' list.

Arty Farty Friday ~ Churchill's Darkest & Lighter Hours

Last weekend we watched, via rented DVD, the movie Darkest Hour.

Darkest Hour is a 2017 war drama film directed by Joe Wright and written by Anthony McCarten. It stars Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill, and is an account of his early days as Prime Minister, as Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht swept across Western Europe, threatening to defeat the United Kingdom during World War II.......

Many critics noted Oldman's performance as one of the best of his career; he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role for his work. At the 90th Academy Awards the film earned six nominations, including Best Picture, and won for Best Actor and Best Makeup and Hairstyling. At the 71st British Academy Film Awards it received nine nominations including Best Film and Outstanding British Film.

The movie, and Gary Oldman, deserved all the plaudits and awards they received. The film, though factual, wasn't handled in the often dry style films with such themes can fall into. There was a sure creative and and artistic hand behind the photography and general tone of the movie.

While considering a post for this Arty Farty Friday, I remembered one I wrote back in 2009, relating to one of Churchill's other talents: painting. A re-airing, then - lightly edited:

Can Churchill's love of art be found in his natal chart? He has Mars and Jupiter in Libra (ruled by Venus, planet of the arts). His natal Moon (inner life & emotion) is in harmonious trine to Neptune (creativity), and completes a Grand Trine with Venus : Grand Trine linking Moon/Neptune/Venus sounds very arty to me!
I think I need look no further!

I don't see it as the chart of a born war leader - he didn't ask for that role, but thank goodness he was in the right place at the right time to take it on, and was able to adapt and inspire. In his own words: "I was not the lion, but it fell to me to give the lion's roar". I dread to think what would have happened to Britain with a lesser man at the helm, 1939-1945. Revisionists may revile him for some of the decisions taken late in World War 2, but I shall never lose my utmost respect for the man.



He has written, with regard to his art:

Just to paint is great fun. The colours are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out. Matching them, however crudely, with what you see is fascinating and absolutely absorbing.

The painter wanders and loiters contentedly from place to place, always on the lookout for some brilliant butterfly of a picture which can be caught and carried safely home.

Light and colour, peace and hope, will keep painters company to the end of the day.

A few samples of his work:

Movie Mistakes or Ad Libs Can Become Movie Hightlights

There must have been hundreds of these, over the years; those listed below are a few I easily recall.

When Dustin Hoffman says his iconic, “I’m walkin’ here!” line in “Midnight Cowboy,” he is said to have been actually almost hit by a New York taxi. Neither the experience nor the line was supposed to happen.





In the original Raiders of the Lost Ark, there is an iconic scene in which a sword-wielding man in black appears out of a crowd, does some complicated moves with his sword, and the feeling is that we were going to see a major duel with Indiana Jones. Indiana (Harrison Ford) rather casually draws his gun and shoots the guy. The story goes that actor Harrison Ford got tired of re-shooting the scene many times and pretended to shoot the guy.





In Roman Holiday when Audrey Hepburn appears afraid after seeing Gregory Peck apparently missing a hand after placing in in The Mouth of Truth, it turned out to have been a prank played deliberately on Audrey by Gregory Peck. It was not planned or scripted for the film. Peck told the director he wanted to pull a secret prank on Audrey. Audrey Hepburn’s terrified countenance was genuine or, one would suspect, at least the result of an unexpected change in the script.






In Pretty Woman, when Richard Gere's character presents Julia Roberts' character with a necklace, she was supposed to just lift it out of the box. He snapped the lid closed, and Julia Roberts laughed. That was a natural reaction, the director loved it, and it has become a well-remembered scene from that movie, but was never supposed to happen!






In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, John Cleese was supposed to say, in the part of The Enchanter, a really long and complicated name (classic Python) when King Arthur (Graham Chapman) asked. Cleese allegedly forgot the scripted lines, paused, and just said "There are some who call me... Tim" - and the scene continued.

A Movie Made Me Hopping Mad.

About a week ago we watched a 1992 movie, School Ties on Amazon Prime. It was an early vehicle for many of today's well-known faces in film and TV: Matt Damon, Brendan Fraser, Ben Affleck and suchlike - all still fresh-faced. The film made me hopping mad! I still seethe when I think of certain scenes in it. The film was not pure fiction, but was based on truth too. Dick Wolf, best known for the creation and executive production of the long-running Law and Order franchise on TV, also co-wrote the screenplay of School Ties.

From an archived article The Talk of Hollywood; Anti-Semitism Film Strikes a Chord With Its Producers, by Bernard Weinraub.

The idea for the film was first proposed by Dick Wolf, a well-known television writer and producer, who attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., in the 1950's. The film was written by Darryl Ponicsan, a novelist, and directed by Robert Mandel. Mr. Tartikoff, who took over the studio in July 1991, when the movie was about to begin filming, said he was startled when he read the script.

"It was such an eerie coincidence that when I got to Paramount, this project that I had nothing to do with in the first place looked like it was a homage to my own experiences at prep school," said Mr. Tartikoff, who grew up in Freeport, L.I., and attended the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, N.J., from 1962 to 1966.

"There were 15 Jewish students in a school of about 650 kids," he said. "I went there seven months after my bar mitzvah. The anti-Semitism wasn't as overt as it was in the film. But you heard people making remarks; there were fist fights; people called you 'dirty Jew.' I was a pretty popular kid, on a couple of varsity athletic teams, but there was was this steady undercurrent of anti-Semitism. It made me aware that I grew up quite insulated. It made me aware that I was in a distinct minority."

Nutshell plot: Set in early to mid-1950s. A working class young Jewish guy, David Greene (played by Brendan Fraser) from Scranton, New Jersey, brilliant athlete and football player is head-hunted by a sports coach for an elite school in a posh area of Massachusetts. Coach needs a good quarterback in order for their team to beat a bitter rival team. David Greene gets a scholarship and enters the kind of scenario totally alien to him. His main purpose was to get himself a scholarship to Harvard, eventually. After a veiled warning from coach, he does not mention his Jewish background, removes his Star of David necklace.

David's was a charismatic personality, and in spite of very different economic backgrounds he soon got on well with his new school colleagues, especially when they realised how valuable his football prowess would be to the school. Mat Damon plays Charlie Dillon, younger son of the very posh local family. He and David become friends, until David inadvertently entrances Dillon's longtime girlfriend.

Somehow David's Jewish faith is made known to one or two pupils, and word spreads rapidly.

This is where I started to feel hopping mad. The level of anti-semitism and outright bigotry displayed was shocking, especially bearing in mind that World War 2 was less than a decade past. Nobody mentioned that millions had died fighting something born of the bigotry and ignorance being displayed!

Alright - these boys were young-ish, maybe didn't fully understand World War 2 - but their teachers should've and should have been stamping hard on antisemitism. The boys' relatives, or some of them, would surely have fought in the war, some of their teachers too.

"WTF!?" was my cry again and again!

Now, had the movie been set in the 1930s, though no less sickening, would have been more understandable.

With School Ties still batting around my mind, at the weekend I watched Schindler's List on Netflix. I'd seen it before, but too many years ago. What a great piece of film-making that was! I wish it had been made in time for those ignorant louts at the posh US boarding school. They should have been made to watch it once a week for life! Instead, I'd not be surprised if many of 'em are in places of power as I type - or have been so in recent years. Disquieting thought, that!