Netflix Update No. 8: “Holiday”
May 11, 2009
KATHERINE HEPBURN
We watched “Holiday,” a wonderful 1938 film directed by George Cukor, based on a play by Philip Barry. This was the second film based on that play; the first one appeared in 1930. Both were Oscar nominees.
The cast of this version included Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Lew Ayres, Jean Dixon and Edward Everett Horton. In the guise of a romantic comedy, this is an attack on conformity, greed, materialism, and hypocrisy.
The premise is that a young and rising businessman, Johnny Case (Grant) falls in love with Julia Seton (played by a rather wooden Doris Nolan), the daughter of millionaire banker Edward Seton. Johnny and Julia plan to ask Edward Seton to give his blessing to their engagement, but Edward immediately tries to take control of everything from the timing of the engagement and marriage to the future of Johnny’s career. Johnny hasn’t told Julia, let alone Edward, that his own plan is to leave business and do nothing but travel for a few years while he sorts out the real purpose of earning money. He is encouraged in this mode of thinking by close friends, Nick and Susan Potter, played with biting humor by Horton and Dixon. When Johnny is introduced into the Seton household, he meets Julia’s brother Ned – played by the talented Lew Ayres – an alcoholic young man had been browbeaten by his father to give up childish ideas like composing music and attend to the family business.
LEW AYRES
Johnny also meets, and makes an immediate connection with, Julia’s sister Linda (Hepburn) who describes herself as the “black sheep” of the Seton family and makes no secret of her disdain for its values and social circle. In the museum-like Seton home, the only place Ned and Linda are comfortable is a “play room” outfitted by their late mother, a room to which Johnny and the Potters also eventually retreat – an effective reference to their rebellion against the established order “downstairs” and to the immaturity imputed to them by the stiff-necked patriarch and his pandering, two-faced satellites.
Eventually, Johnny has to decide on what terms – if at all – he is prepared to pursue his courtship of Julia and his potential career in the Seton empire.
CARY GRANT
This is a well written and well acted film (with the exception of Nolan). Its humor and sarcasm has stood the test of time. One has to get past the idea that Johnny Case would have been attracted to Julia Seton in the first place and that it would have taken as long as it did for their values to collide head-on. Over all, though, “Holiday” is an entertaining and uplifting experience.
Buona fortuna, Nonna Maria!
May 10, 2009
MARIA DONATI
It’s only May, but I’ve already chosen my favorite political candidate of this year. It’s Maria Donati, who is running for a seat on the municipal council in Saludecio, a little town in the Italian province of Rimini. Signora Donati is 102 years old. According to a story in the newspaper “Il Resto del Carlino,” civic leaders in the town at first asked the signora if she was insane when she offered herself as a candidate, but then – by their own account – they pondered the ancient motto “Chi si ferma e perduto” – “Whoever stops is lost” – and changed their minds.
Sgna. Donati – popularly known as “Nonna Maria” – grew up in a large family in the Republic of San Marino. In fact, the elected officials in Saludecio now include many of her relatives. During World War II, the Nazis deported her husband, Poverelli Aurellio, to Germany. Although she was pregnant, and although the region was under air attack, she rode a bicycle to the headquarters of the Wehrmacht to badger authorities there about her spouse’s status. They were reunited after about a year.
SALUDECIO
The implication of the story in “Il Resto del Carlino” is that Nonna Maria never sits still as it is. She lives with her nephew and keeps busy with cooking and other chores around the house, but otherwise is likely to be off visiting neighbors – and now she will be involved in evening meetings with the other candidates.
Matteo de Angelis, who wrote the story, commented at the end that Nonna Maria’s candidacy shows that “nonostante l’età, tutto è possibile” – in spite of age, all things are possible. Stories like this always remind me of George Abbott, who died in 1995 at the age of 107. At the time, he was in the midst of revising the second act of ”The Pajama Game,” which he had written in 1954.
“Even at my age,” Nonna Maria said, “it is possible to propose many ideas.” And she might have said, especially at her age.
Omerta.
May 8, 2009
JOE GALLO
I just finished reading Tom Folsom’s book “The Mad Ones,” the story of Joe Gallo and his brothers and satellites, a clumsy Brooklyn crime family that inspired Jimmy Breslin’s novel “The Gang that Couldn’t Shoot Straight.” I feel a little guilty because these dangerous and destructive people are so much fun to read about. And Folsom makes it fun, because he seems to be having such a good time telling this yarn, using a vernacular perfectly suited to the subject. And how can you go wrong with characters like Big Lollypop, Little Lollypop, Johnny Bath Beach, Mondo the Midget and Grandma Nunziato?
Joe and Larry Gallo themselves were worth the price of admission. Larry, anticipating open warfare with the Profaci gang, wiled away the time playing operatic arias on his violin. Joey spent a lifetime – what there was of it – painting, or reading Spinoza, Lenin, Mao, and Nietzsche. Joe Gallo was probably certifiably nuts, but he apparently was also a magnetic personality who sucked in people like Jerry Orbach and David Steinberg. And he didn’t kill Don Rickles for razzing him in a nightclub after being warned not to, so how bad could he have been?
Reading Folsom’s book, one wonders why Breslin had to fictionalize this whacked-out crowd who never made it to the top of organized crime in New York but shed and lost a lot of blood in the effort. The truth is entertaining enough.
The final frontier … again.
May 7, 2009
WILLIAM SHATNER
Judging from the reviews, I might see the new “Star Trek” film after having forsaken the Enterprise when the first television series ended. I don’t know why that happened, because the first series was must-see in our house. We wouldn’t schedule any activities away from home on “Star Trek” night.
Back in those days, I was driving by a theater here in Jersey and saw that William Shatner was going to appear there in “Period of Adjustment.” It seemed like an odd idea to me at first, but I learned later that Shatner had played stage comedy early in his career. Also, I realized after I had thought about it, his character on “Star Trek” often had comic overtones. I took the opportunity to interview Shatner for a preview of “Period of Adjustment.” It wasn’t a very satisfying experience. He answered as many questions as possible with single syllables. He was very good in the play.
WILLIAM SHATNER
Shatner appeared at the same theater a year or so later, and I interviewed him again. That time, he talked almost compulsively – in fact, at one point he came up for air and asked, “How the hell are you going to write this?” Several years later, I interviewed him yet again – by phone – for an advance on an appearance he was making at a local college. I mentioned to him that I he and I had spoken twice before, and he asked, “Have you learned anything since then?”
Some people don’t like Shatner’s acting – several have told me they find his syncopated speech contrived and annoying. I don’t agree; I like his acting, including that peculiarity in his speech.
WILLIAM SHATNER
I find his appearance a little unsettling. He looks like he’s full of cortisone.
One of my favorite examples of Shatner’s work is “The Andersonville Trial,” a 1970 television movie directed by George C. Scott, based on Saul Levitt’s play of about a decade before. Shatner played Gen. N.P Chipman, who was judge advocate of the military court that tried Capt. Henry Wirz, who had been commandant of a prison camp for Confederate prisoners. Shatner was a perfect fit for the courtroom drama, whose cast included Richard Basehart, Buddy Ebsen, Jack Cassidy and Martin Sheen.
It’s available from Netflix and I wrote a review of it for this blog. The review is at THIS LINK.
The chicken or the egg?
May 6, 2009
CHARLES DARWIN
As I was driving to Passaic last night, I was listening to songs by Kate Smith that had been recorded from her radio broadcasts. It occurred to me that she might have been surprised if she had been told that people – well, one person at least – would be listening to those songs 60 years later while cruising along an interstate highway.
I also thought yesterday morning, when the women on The View were talking about evolution, that Charles Darwin might have been surprised – and maybe a little dismayed – to know that 150 years after the publication of “The Origin of Species” people would still be arguing about his ideas.
But we are still arguing. The latest flurry of discourse – the one that got the tongues wagging on The View – was a study from the University of Minnesota that showed the degree to which high school biology teachers influence whether students accept the idea of evolution or question it based on its perceived conflict with the idea of creationism.
THE FORERUNNER
A story on the web site sciencenews.com included this passage: “For example, 72 to 78 percent of students exposed to evolution only agreed that it is scientifically valid while 57 to 59 percent of students who were exposed to creationism agreed that it can be validated.”
In other words, the survey suggests that high school teachers who introduce the religious idea of creationism into a science class may influence a considerable number of students to deny what is constantly being reinforced by studies of the effects environmental factors have on life forms from one generation to the next and over longer spaces of time.
I believe that high school students should be exposed to the full range of ideas that have been held and still are held by large parts of the population – including the idea that existence itself and particular things that have existence are brought into being by a deity, however that may be expressed in various religious and philosophical disciplines. I don’t believe the biology class is the place to teach that. It belongs in the humanities curriculum. To exclude from a student’s education at least the main themes on the subject of creation that are held by Jews, Muslims, Christians, Hindus and others is to send him off to college or into the working world with an incomplete understanding of how most of the people on the planet think.
POPE PIUS XII
The discussion on The View didn’t have any intellectual depth, and it seemed to imply that a person must choose between belief in evolution and belief in the idea of a First Cause. That’s partly because the women were using the term “creationism” as though it stood for every shade of thought about a divine or supernatural origin of existence. Students who aren’t taught otherwise but who are exposed to such a simplistic public discourse on the subject might draw that erroneous conclusion.
Pope Pius XII, hardly a progressive, wrote in his 1950 encyclical letter “Humani Generis”:
“The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men experiences in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.”
More recently, in 1996, Pope John Paul II – taking note of what Pius had written – added this:
“Today, almost half a century after publication of the encyclical, new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”
Many Catholics, I’m afraid, are unaware of this point of view and I know that many of them are creationists as such, rejecting evolution out of hand. They and parents like them, more than the biology teachers, may ultimately be responsible for this outdated argument to go on for at least another generation.
… and what’s more, they believe it.
May 5, 2009
CARRIE PREJEAN
The blather that is issuing from the controversy over Carrie Prejean and her view of same-sex marriage might set a record even in this blather-soaked age. I have paid only passing attention to this story until today – most of my attention has taken the form of amusement over the talking heads discussing it with straight faces as though it were really important – but today I came across the report in the San Diego News that photos of Prejean modelling in a state of near nakedness have started showing up on the Internet, and that some of her critics are saying those photos cast doubt on her claim to be a Christian. Given the wide application and interpretation of the word “Christian,” that in itself is a example of the silliness that has infected this incident.
This is a bit of what the San Diego paper reported:
Alicia Jacobs, a judge at the April 19 Miss USA pageant during which Prejean made her highly publicized statement opposing same-sex marriage, said the pictures go beyond what the Miss California pageant says are appropriate.
“I can assure you they were quite inappropriate, and certainly not photos befitting a beauty queen,” Jacobs, a reporter for NBC’sLas Vegas affiliate, told NBC News.
ALICIA JACOBS
Alicia is in a position to make such judgments about what is or is not appropriate, because she herself is a former “beauty queen” who has graduated to her present status as one of those jewels of 21st century journalism, an “entertainment reporter.” According to her home station, KVBC:
Alicia’s revealing one-on-one interviews with A-listers read more like comfortable chats between friends. Celebrities have come to trust her journalistic integrity, & viewers have come to expect Alicia’s easygoing way, to showcase the “real” side of their favorite celebrities.
That’s a reassuring thing in these troubled times when life can get so hard to understand.
Farrago of this kind is being circulated because of Prejean’s answer when she was asked her opinion of same-gender marriage, and her answer sounded like it could have come from the governor of Alaska:
“I think it’s great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage,” Prejean said. “And you know what? I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”
Huh? What’d she say? She’s glad Americans have the choice, but she doesn’t want them to?
PEREZ HILTON
Perez Hilton – another wonder of celebrity journalism – asked the question of Prejean in the first place and then turned on her, complaining – according to the San Diego paper – that Miss USA is supposed to unite Americans, not divide them. What century does he live in? The very fact that an anachronistic beauty contest was the launching pad for a debate that trivializes a subject that deeply affects the personal lives of millions of men and women is in itself a sad commentary on the state of public discourse in this country.
While you weren’t looking, Perez, Bert Parks died.
Netflix Update No. 7: “The Notebook”
May 4, 2009
RACHEL McADAMS
We watched “The Notebook,” a 2004 film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. The film stars Rachel McAdams, Ryan Gosling, James Garner and Gena Rowlands, and is directed by Rowlands’ son, Nick Cassavetes. The premise is that an elderly man (Garner) living in a nursing home regularly reads to a fellow resident (Rowlands) from a romantic story handwritten in a notebook. Flashbacks that make up the bulk of the movie tell the same story, a romance that began in 1940 in Seabrook, South Carolina, between teenagers Noah Calhoun (Gosling) and Allie Hamilton (McAdams). It becomes clear almost immediately that Garner and Rowlands are the older manifestations of Noah and Allie, and that the older Allie – suffering from dementia – is absorbed in the story but seldom remembers who she and Noah are or that this is the story of their own relationship.
RYAN GOSLING
This movie is well cast, well performed, and beautifully filmed and directed. Gosling and McAdams could not be more appealing as the quirky lumber yard worker and the vibrant young socialite. Garner and Rowlands are credible and moving as the aged couple. The only reservation I had was that I couldn’t connect Noah as played by Gosling with Noah as played by Garner. The two men are so dissimilar that it is difficult to make that leap and accept them as the same person. I thought it was particularly ill-advised at a certain point in the film to flash a montage of black-and-white photos of the young Jim Garner, who was nothing at all like Ryan Gosling. Still, the movie as a whole is absorbing and entertaining and avoids the mawkishness into which such a story could easily descend.
“Pssssst! ‘Farrah Fawcett.’ Pass it on.”
May 3, 2009
HOPE DAVIS
I’m taking a break from the usual blogging today to put the WordPress system to the test. I have noticed what I think are odd results in the list of terms that readers ostensibly searched in order to reach my journal. By now I have dozens of entries in this blog, but the readers who come in through search terms seem to have an inordinate fixation with Hope Davis, Farrah Fawcett, and Andrew Johnson – the latter having been the 17th president of these United States.
Now, I think the world of Hope Davis as an actress, I sympathize with Farrah Fawcett for her health problems, and I have a perhaps inexplicable fascination with Andrew Johnson. However, I have referred to Hope Davis and Farrah Fawcett only once each in this journal, and I may have referred to Andrew Johnson twice or, at the most, three times. And yet those terms show up every day on the report, and the journal entry that mentioned Hope Davis – it consisted of my comments on one of her movies – has become my “all-time leader.”
So I have deliberately referred to all three of those personalities in this little rant to see if this entry, too, causes activity in the report on search terms.
More about this when the results are in.
Ike as in “like”
May 2, 2009
DWIGHT EISENHOWER
I just finished reading “Ike: An American Hero,” the 2007 biography of Dwight Eisenhower by Michael Korda, a former RAF pilot whose books include a biography of Ulysses S. Grant. This book seemed almost as long as the Second World War, but it provides a lot of insight into the military realities of the allied campaign for control of North Africa, Sicily, and ultimately the European mainland via the beaches of France.
Korda, who is British, tries to sort out the conflicting judgments about Eisenhower’s military leadership, which varies in direct relationship to which side of the Atlantic it comes from. That’s an interesting point in itself, because what Korda finds to be the key to Eisenhower’s genius is that he was able to manage and manipulate the constant head-banging among allied leaders – Winston Churchill, Charles DeGaulle, Joseph Stalin, and Franklin Roosevelt – who seemed to have few common interests beyond defeating Nazi Germany, and – on the other hand – who had many interests that were in conflict.
Scholarly rankings of the presidents – a pointless exercise in many respects – usually place Eisenhower among the top 10. Korda – while acknowledging several embarrasments and failures in the administration – gives Eisenhower a balanced report card for his eight years in office, but devotes most of the book to Eisenhower’s military career and particularly to the war. He emphasizes a point that may be lost on later generations, namely that as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, Eisenhower exercised – and successfully – what was arguably the greatest measure of military and political power ever placed in the hands of a single person, before or since. He acted in some cases – for instance, in dealings with Stalin – as though he himself were a head of state.
Korda discusses Eisenhower’s analysis of the Korean War – namely that it couldn’t be won without an American military commitment that probably would have sparked another world conflict; his refusal to send American combat troops into what he considered the French colonial war in Vietnam, and his caution against American military involvement in the Middle East – a bitter lesson for Eisenhower himself in Lebanon.
I got to see Eisenhower in person in 1964 or 1965, when I was a graduate student at Penn State. I was working in the public information office and heard there that Eisenhower, who lived in Gettysburg at that time, was going to visit State College to address a group of high school students. Eisenhower was the first person to be protected under the Former Presidents Act, but you couldn’t tell it from his appearance at Waring Hall. I had no business there, but no one stopped me from going in and sitting in a balcony looking down on Eisenhower as he stood alone on the stage talking to those teenagers.
PORTRAIT OF EISENHOWER
He spoke to the students about civic responsibility, about not exercising their democratic rights by standing on the sidelines of political life. He was in his late 70s then and had suffered some serious health problems, but he stood ramrod straight with the military bearing that had been drilled into his DNA. He also had that good-natured ease of manner that Korda repeatedly argues contributed as much as anything else to Eisenhower’s success in the Army and in civilian life.
Ducks on a Pond
May 1, 2009
static.howstuffworks.com
Mike Adamick, blogging for the Los Angeles Times, says his three-year-old daughter has become fascinated with the jargon of baseball. For instance, she loves the term “dying quail,” which refers to a fly ball that suddenly loses steam and drops to the ground. “Where are the quails?” the little one asks whenever a ball is hit into the air. She also likes “worm burner,” a hot ground ball that skids across the grass. “Poor worms!” she says after every hard grounder.
I recently gave a short talk about this subject as part of a job application process. I asked the group I was speaking to if any of them were baseball fans, and several hands went up, but none of them could decipher the terms “can of corn” (an easily caught fly ball), “cup of coffee” (a player’s short stay in the major leagues before returning to the minors), or “cutting the pie” (deliberately rounding first or third base without touching the bag). They were befuddled by the hypothetical statement: “Jeter tried to shoot the cripple with ducks on the pond, but he started a Lawrence Welk,” which means that, with the bases loaded, Jeter tried to get a hit off an ineffective pitcher but grounded into a double play from the pitcher to the catcher to the first baseman – a play that is scored one-two-three (a-one and a-two and a-three).
My audience was able, however, to distinguish between the hot dog who shows off making one-handed grabs and the hot dog that costs six bucks at the concession stand.
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