So, I Finally Went...

Film: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens
Format: Market Square Cinemas.

There are benefits to seeing a huge release on opening weekend. No need to avoid spoilers. There are smaller, but no less real, benefits to seeing something for the first time weeks later. One of those benefits is that you get the theater pretty much to yourself. I finally went to see Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens at a late show last night. There was only other person in the theater with me. No screaming kids, no rabid fanboys. Just the movie, and that’s pretty great.

My relationship to the Star Wars franchise is that of many. I’ve been hurt by it. It was my first cinematic love. I saw the original nearly 20 times in the theater as a 9- and 10-year-old, going literally every weekend to the second-run theater in my home town the summer of 1978. I loved The Empire Strikes Back more. It was darker and more disturbing and, as a good middle section of a long story should, put the heroes as low as they could go and the bad guys has high as they could. I liked The Return of the Jedi even if it was the least of the original trilogy (damn Ewoks).

Off Script: Prison

Film: Prison
Format: Internet video on laptop.

There’s a sense with any list of films that advertises itself specifically as containing obscurities of the listmaker(s) putting things there specifically because they are obscure. It’s not so much a measure of quality as it is a measure of “let’s show how much I really know.” In the case of Prison, there’s a little bit of that. On the other hand, this is a film directed by no less than Renny Harlin and starring Viggo Mortensen at an early stage in his career. So, while it’s pretty obscure, it’s got a slight pedigree.

As the title suggests, this takes place in a prison. Specifically, this was filmed in a dilapidated old prison in Wyoming, and evidently used actual convicts for a number of the convicts in the film. We start 20-some years in the past, witnessing the execution of an inmate for a reason we’re not told. One of the people witnessing that execution is Sharpe (classic that-guy Lane Smith). This will become important eventually.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1999

The Contenders:

American Beauty (winner)
Being John Malkovich
Magnolia
The Sixth Sense
Topsy-Turvy

Guess Who's Coming to Marriage

Film: One Potato, Two Potato
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

There are some movies that age well and play pretty much the same way now as they did when they were created. Other movies, particularly social issue movies, don’t always age that well. We look at something like Brokeback Mountain that was really special in 2005 would be a lot less so now. It wouldn’t be less of a movie, but the story itself would be much less of a conversation in a world where marriage equality has become much more normal in many places around the world. This is also the case with a film like One Potato, Two Potato, made almost hand-in-hand with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the United States. Since this is a film about the way races are treated in the U.S., that’s a nice little bit of history.

It’s worth noting that the virtually forgotten One Potato, Two Potato came out a solid three years before In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, two films that are regularly trotted out as moving the conversation forward. Why this film is forgotten may simply be a case of having less photogenic and personable stars. Specifically I mean that those two films feature Sidney Poitier and One Potato, Two Potato does not.

Make a Wish

Film: Three Coins in the Fountain
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various players.

I have online office hours on Sundays and Tuesdays. It’s a rare event that someone actually shows up to them, but I have them anyway. On nights like these, I spend a couple of hours in my office and need to find something to watch to pass the time. I have a tendency to watch things on NetFlix in this situation, because I can use something other than the laptop, which I need for those office hours. Tonight, for no reason beyond whim, I decided on the oldest of the movies on my Oscar lists currently streaming: Three Coins in the Fountain. I expected something light and breezy. What I got was a film that never really figured out what it wanted to be.

The fountain in question here is Trevi Fountain in Rome. An American secretary named Maria (Maggie McNamara) arrives in Rome to begin working at a U.S. government agency. She is met at the airport by another secretary, Anita (Jean Peters). In fact, Maria is replacing Anita at her position; Anita is returning to the States to get married. The two head to Anita’s current and Maria’s new home, and apartment they share with Miss Frances (Dorothy McGuire), who is the private secretary for a well-known writer named John Frederick Shadwell (Clifton Webb).

I'm Gonna Live Forever

Film: Fame
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on laptop.

Anyone who knows me knows me knows about my girls pretty quickly. Most parents are proud of their kids, of course, and like most parents, I’m extremely proud of my kids. I think I have reason. My older daughter is 17 and a college junior. She was invited into the dance program during her sophomore year in high school, and she finished high school a year early. My younger daughter was just accepted into the Joffrey Ballet’s five-week summer program, an offer made to 150 students nationwide. So, based on the fact that I live in a world of ballet, jazz, and tap, it’s surprising that it’s taken me this long to get to Fame.

Fame follows four years of students at a New York high school for performing arts. The students spend their mornings working on their specialty—acting, dance, music—and the afternoons on academic subjects. It’s no surprise, though, that this is not going to be a drama about chemistry or English. No, we’re going to be dealing with drama all about, well, acting, dance, and music. We’re presented with a standard variety pack of students with the standard variety pack of issues. To whit:

A Dickens of a Tale

Film: Little Dorrit
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

When I did the 1001 Movies list, one of the (many) things I tracked was film length. I didn’t want to end up with a bunch of three-hour movies in the last couple of months. I made it a goal to watch two of the top-10 in length movies every month, and it really helped. That’s something I’ve gotten away from in the last year or so, and because of this, the lengths of the movies I still have to watch on my current list has slowly crept up and up. Well, no more. Today I’m reversing that trend by knocking out Little Dorrit from 1988. It’s not only the longest movie I had left to watch, it was the longest by almost two hours, clocking in at just under six hours total.

This version of Little Dorrit (and this might be common—this is the only one I’ve seen and I’ve never read the book although this seems to be consistent with the novel) is broken down into two three-hour segments. In the first segment, we see the story from the perspective of Arthur Clennam (Derek Jacobi). Arthur was shipped off to China to work for his father at a young age. When the story starts, Arthur has returned home to England after the death of his father. He’s realized that his entire life has been lived at the behest of other people and that he’s never really done anything that he’s wanted. His mother (Joan Greenwood in her final role) is a fundamentally religious harridan who hasn’t left her room in a dozen years. All he wants is to get out from under her thumb.