Get Along, Little Lamb Chops

Film: The Sheepman
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

There are a few classic Western plots. The first is that the railroad is coming through town and people fight over whether or not the railroad will be a good thing or a bad thing. Generally speaking, someone is buying up all the land in the area to make money off the railroad and the peaceful and good ranchers will end up getting screwed by the landholder when the train comes through. The second classic plot pits cattle ranchers against sheepherders. With a title like The Sheepman it should be obvious which of these two plots is going to take place here.

Jason Sweet (Glenn Ford) rolls into a fairly stereotypical town (you know, one hotel, a saloon, lots of cattle ranchers) and immediately starts making waves. It’s not long before he has demonstrated to the people in town that he gets what he wants whenever he wants it and takes no guff from anyone. In fact, within those first few minutes, he has managed to bamboozle the local merchant into giving him a saddle at a steep discount, bought the livery stable owner’s personal horse for a pittance, and picked a fight (and won) against the toughest man in town.

Come Sail Away

Film: The Long Voyage Home
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

John Ford was one of five Hollywood directors who went to war in the 1940s. Of the five, Ford essentially joined up before the U.S. entered the war under the assumption that we’d be there eventually. He was also the only one to enlist in the navy. Ford’s main concern initially was figuring out how to film in wartime conditions. The Long Voyage Home, adapted from a series of Eugene O’Neill short plays, was Ford’s first attempt at this. This is tangentially a war film, since we’re dealing instead with the Merchant Marine, but it’s taking place in wartime conditions, and has a plot updated from the plays to include real events of the ongoing conflict.

So, while this is a war film, we’re not going to see or hear a single shot fired. Instead, we’re going to spend time both at sea and in port with the crew of a tramp steamer called Glencairn. It’s a diverse crew of Americans, British, Irish, and Swedes who seem more or less to get along and who are happy to live under the sway of Aloysius “Drisk” Driscoll (Thomas Mitchell). Drisk likes a good scrap and loves a good drink, and so as he goes goes the crew of Glencairn. On board with him are Smitty (Ian Hunter), a taciturn Brit with upper-class tendencies; Cocky (Barry Fitzgerald), a man who has seen too much to go back to land; Yank (Ward Bond), who’s happy to be wherever he is; and Ole Olsen (John Wayne), a Swedish farmboy taken to sea and longing to get back home.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 1961

The Contenders:

Audrey Hepburn: Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Piper Laurie: The Hustler
Natalie Wood: Splendor in the Grass
Geraldine Page: Summer and Smoke
Sophia Loren: Two Women (winner)

She Wears Seal Coats by the Seashore

Film: Song of the Sea
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

There are plenty of times that Oscar nominates the wrong film, but there are times when a nomination brings attention to a film that would otherwise be missed or ignored. This is what happened in 2009 when The Secret of Kells was an unheard of film that managed a nomination. Filmmaker Tomm Moore earned another, similar nomination in 2014 with Song of the Sea, which uses some similar animation to tell another story based in Celtic mythology. This time, the story is centered more in the modern world, although one pre-cell phones.

Ben (David Rawle) is a young child awaiting the birth of a new sibling. He’s helping his mother Bronach (Lisa Hannigan) prepare a room for the new child by helping paint scenes of Celtic myths on the nursery walls. Ben goes to sleep, with his mother giving him the gift of a seashell horn. That night, the child comes.

Beginnings and Endings

Film: Marriage Italian Style (Matrimonio all’Italiana); Divorce Italian Style (Divorzio all’Italiana)
Format: DVD from NetFlix (Marriage) and streaming video from Kanopy (Divorce), both on laptop.

The school I work for has recently signed up for a new movie database called Kanopy. I did a quick check of what it has, and there are a few I’d really like to see lurking in tis corners. When Marriage Italian Style showed up from NetFlix, I knew it was time to take Kanopy on a test run as the back half of a double feature. As it happens, of these two movies, Marriage Italian Style was released second. However, it only makes sense to have the marriage before the divorce.

The premise for Marriage Italian Style is entertaining. A wealthy businessman named Domenico Soriano (Marcello Mastroianni) is summoned to the home of his mistress. She has collapsed and is near death. We get a long flashback from him to tell us the story of him and his mistress. The two met during a bombing raid in World War II. Domenico finds a young girl in a brothel who refuses to leave because the public will see her and know where she works. This is Filumena Marturano (Sophia Loren), and it’s the start of a long relationship.

Afterlife Delight

Film: Ghost
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on The Nook.

The biggest shock in revisiting Ghost was not that Demi Moore can and Patrick Swayze could act. It’s that this was directed by Jerry Zucker who is far more famous for directing films like Airplane! I say “revisiting” in the sense that I think I’ve seen all of Ghost at one point or another, but I’m not sure I ever watched it start to finish. There’s a lot here worth recommending, and that comes from someone who doesn’t generally choose romances and who also has no supernatural beliefs. Obviously, they did something right here.

Chances are good that you’re already familiar with Ghost, so I’ll keep the plot summary to a minimum here. Banker/financier Sam Wheat (Patrick Swayze) and his artist/pottery wheel aficionado girlfriend Molly Jensen (Demi Moore) have decided to move in together in a big old loft that they are refurbishing. Naturally, since Sam pulls down bank at the bank and Molly is evidently successful enough to get pieces in galleries, their place is pure moviedom fantasy.

Off Script: Angel Heart

Film: Angel Heart
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various players.

By the time it wraps up, Angel Heart has gone through almost a half dozen gruesome and grisly murders and has moved from New York to New Orleans. But the film could have essentially been a short feature. We as the audience jump through a lot of hoops and have to keep a lot of plates spinning to get to the final sequence that finally reveals what many of us will deduce from previous scenes. Ultimately, we realize that a great deal of the film could have been handled by extending an early scene instead. Because of this, Angel Heart is about the journey rather than the destination.

Downtrodden private investigator Harold Angel (Mickey Rourke, back when he still had his own face) is contacted by a lawyer named Winesap (Dann Florek) to meet with a client. This client, Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro) is an imposing gentleman with a full beard, immaculate black suit, and long, pointed fingernails that intentionally look like claws. Cyphre tells Harry Angel that a singer who was starting to make a name for himself a dozen years previous during World War II has backed out on his contract. He wants Angel to track the man down.