Category Archives: Movies

Armistice Day 2019

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Not quite a year ago — after November 11 last year — we saw They Shall Not Grow Old in a movie theater. I was skeptical about the colorization of WWI, but came away convinced that Peter Jackson and his talented technical team had done a superb job of it. More than colorizing, but also adding appropriate sound and making the speed of the film more natural to our eyes.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

— Laurence Binyon (1914)

Paper Purge

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Not long ago, I decided to purge some paper around the house. Specifically, user manuals for machines that are long gone. You’d think that those would have been tossed along with the items themselves, but that’s not how clutter works, unless you’re Marie What’s-Her-Name.

Papers like this.

In the same vein, I had setup instructions for iMacs, a reel mower that now has vines on it, landline phones long junked, defunct cameras, a previous dishwasher, clothes washer, clothes dryer, and oven, and a few odds and ends I don’t even remember owning.

From a bilingual food processor manual, I learned the amusing fact that the French for food processor is robot culinaire.

Also: Woody warnings. We took the actual toy to Boot Hill long ago — well, metaphorical boot hill — after the dog did him bodily harm. Somehow, the pamphlet of written warnings was left behind.

Warnings because the only instructions involve replacing the batteries that power Woody’s voice box. The rest of the text lists warnings about the batteries: keep them away from small children, don’t swallow them yourself, put them in correctly, including the correct polarity, don’t mix different kinds of batteries, or old and new batteries, and don’t let the damn things leak, but if you do, throw them away — in a locally acceptable manner.

Pedestrian stuff. Not a single warning along the lines of: If you see Woody walking and hear him talking, you are not having a psychotic episode. Woody is a sentient creature with a secret life.

Once Upon a Time in Quentin Tarantino’s Childhood

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We went to see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood not long ago. Been a while since I’d seen a new movie, or a Quentin Tarantino movie, for that matter. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’d ever seen one of his movies in the theater — everything’s been on tape or DVD or demand, to list formats chronologically.

I left Once Upon a Time wondering how old Tarantino is. I knew next to nothing about him, except for his fondness for putting ultraviolence in his movies. From the way he depicted the period of the movie, 1969, I got the sense that he remembered it, but not as an adult. Like me.

Sure enough, he was born in 1963. That makes us contemporaries. Later he must have filled in some of the gaps his own memory might not have retained, as one does. I can’t imagine, for instance, that a six-year-old would have paid much attention to Sharon Tate or any of the movies she was in, least of all a bomb like The Wrecking Crew. (Matt Helm movies are best forgotten.) On the other hand, Tarantino probably saw old TV westerns on reruns or shows like the FBI or Mannix in the early ’70s, just as I did.

Yuriko came away baffled by many of the references. She’d come to see Brad Pitt, whom she enjoyed seeing — he had a good part — but it isn’t a past she shares. Neither of our daughters went, but come to think of it, most of the references probably would have been strange to them as well.

Despite including the Manson family and some other unsavory aspects of the period, the movie was an exercise in nostalgia — of a kid who watched American movies and TV beginning in the late 1960s. For a time when Americans watched roughly the same TV shows and movies, because options were much more limited than they are now.

What will be the basis of pop-culture nostalgia for the 2010s in 50 years, if there’s any? I’d think it would be as fractured as entertainment is now. Well, so what? Can’t say that I care. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

Pitt, as stuntman Cliff Booth, had my favorite line in the movie. In a flashback, Booth was on the set of The Green Hornet with Bruce Lee, who is characterized as a preening, vain fellow, and they’re rehearsing a fight scene.

Bruce Lee: My hands are registered as lethal weapons. We get into a fight, I accidentally kill you? I go to jail.

Cliff Booth: Anybody accidentally kills anybody in a fight, they go to jail. It’s called manslaughter.

The Joliet Area Historical Museum

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RIP, Debbie DeWolf. One Monday morning in 1988, when I was working at the Law Bulletin Publishing Co. in Chicago, the company receptionist — whose name I forget — reportedly called the company long distance from Kansas or Nebraska or the like and said she wasn’t coming to work that day. Or ever again.

Shortly thereafter, a young woman named Debbie DeWolf took her place. She was one of the more effervescent people I’d ever met and she ultimately make a career at the LBPC well beyond answering phones. I hadn’t spoken with her for many years before her death, but it was sad news.

On Sunday, Ann and I spent some time in Joliet. We noticed that the Blues Brothers pop up in odd places around town, such as on the wall of an auto parts business and at the main entrance to the Joliet Area Historical Museum.

The Joliet Area Historical Museum

That’s pretty remarkable traction for not only fictional characters, but for characters created more than 40 years ago. Then again, Jake’s nickname was “Joliet,” and he was seen being released from the Joliet Correctional Center when The Blue Brothers opened (and come to think of it, he was back in the jug at the end of the movie), so I guess Joliet can claim him.

Better than the city being associated forever with the prison. The museum doesn’t particularly downplay the long history of the prison, but it isn’t exactly celebrated either. In any case, it will probably be a few more decades before “prison” stops being the first answer in a word association game with “Joliet.”

It’s a longstanding tie. In 1972, Chicago songwriter Steve Goodman recorded a song called “The Lincoln Park Pirates,” about an aggressive Chicago-based towing service that regularly ransomed cars. It included the following lines:

All my drivers are friendly and courteous
Their good manners you always will get
‘Cause they all are recent graduates
Of the charm school in Joliet

The Joliet Area Historical Museum is a well-organized example of a mid-sized local history museum, with thematically grouped artifacts and reading material. In its main exhibition hall, the centerpiece re-creates a section of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which passed through Joliet. The view from the first floor.
The Joliet Area Historical MuseumThe view from the second floor, with stained glass from a demolished local church in the background.
The Joliet Area Historical MuseumAnother transportation-related artifact: a Lincoln Highway signpost.
The Joliet Area Historical MuseumAs it happens, the Lincoln Highway still runs through Joliet, half a block south of the museum, as U.S. 30. There’s also a sign in downtown Joliet marking the intersection of the Lincoln Highway and a branch of the former U.S. 66.

The museum does acknowledge the prison. In fact, there’s an entire gallery devoted to artwork made from material and debris and found objects from the former pen, or paintings inspired by it.

Even here, there’s no getting away from Jake Blues.
The Joliet Area Historical Museum“Fight Girl,” “Caught” and “Jake” by Dante DiBartolo. Interestingly, the images are painted on metal shelving scavenged from the prison.

Part of the former prison burned in 2013 — arson — and some of the burned items were later used for art as well. Such as a scorched TV set for “Ren-ais-sance Man” by Terry M. Eastham.
Joliet Area Historical MuseumI didn’t see a title for this one.
Joliet Area Historical MuseumRemarkably, the work is by a 7th grader named Sophia Benedick. The words on the work are, “It’s Never Too Late to Mend.”

There is also a room in the museum devoted to John Houbolt. He was the NASA aerospace engineer who pushed successfully for lunar orbit rendezvous for Apollo, a concept that made the landing possible by 1969. I’d read about him before (and seen him depicted in the superb miniseries From the Earth to the Moon), but missed the detail that he went to high school in Joliet.

Besides the museum, we spent a short time in downtown Joliet. One of these days, I want to attend a show at the Rialto Square Theatre. Supposed to be pretty nice on the inside. The outside’s not too bad either.
Rialto Square Theater JolietOn the grounds of the Joliet Public Library downtown is Louis Joliet himself.
Louis Joliet statue Joliet Public LibraryUnlike Jebediah Springfield, he didn’t purportedly found the town or anything. Joliet just passed this way.

Woodstock Walkabout

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At noon on Saturday, the sun was high and mighty and toasting northern Illinois well into the 90s F. Later in the afternoon, an unexpected storm blew through. Unexpected because I hadn’t looked at any weather reports. By late afternoon, the storm was over and temps were in the pleasant 70s.

A good time to take a short walk in Woodstock, Illinois, which might be one of the state’s most pleasant towns. A good place to start was Woodstock Square. At the very center of the square is a GAR memorial to Union soldiers and sailors from Woodstock, which was founded in 1852.
What’s a town square without a gazebo?
Woodstock Square IllinoisStrolling south from Woodstock Square, I passed by the Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple. I noticed it on a previous visit to Woodstock.

Blue Lotus Temple Woodstock Illinois

I don’t believe these statues were there the last time. It’s been seven or so years, after all. Plenty of time to add a few depictions of Buddha.
Blue Lotus Temple Woodstock IllinoisBlue Lotus Temple Woodstock IllinoisThe temple isn’t the only religious site in the vicinity. Cater-cornered across the street is Woodstock’s First Church of Christ, Scientist. Not far away are the First United Methodist Church and the Unity Spiritual Center of Woodstock.

I’d come to Woodstock to see Greg Brown at the handsome Woodstock Opera House. He’s a vastly underappreciated singer-songwriter-story teller from Iowa.

It was dark after the show, but I didn’t want to hurry away from Woodstock. Besides, I’d read that there was a new(ish) mural just north of Woodstock Square. So it is, in an alley — which the town calls a “pedway” — off Main Street next to Classic Cinemas Woodstock Theatre.

The mural honors the likes of Groundhog Day, filmed locally and remembered elsewhere in town.

Woodstock Illinois Movie and Stage Mural

Orson Welles, who spent part of his youth in Woodstock.

Woodstock Illinois Movie and Stage MuralThe town also remembers Chester Gould, though the Dick Tracy Museum in Woodstock closed a number of years ago.
Woodstock Illinois Movie and Stage MuralThe alley features two statues as well. One is a wood carving of Woodstock Willie, presumably the town’s answer to Punxsutawney Phil, created by carver Michael Bihlmaier.
Woodstock WillieOddly enough, also near the mural is a small bronze of Welles by a local artist, Bobby Joe Scribner.
Woodstock Orson Welles statueAccording to the information sign near the work, it’s the only statue of Welles on public display in the United States. Interesting that it depicts an older Welles. His Paul Masson period, you might say.

High Summer Hiatus

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Saw a few fireflies the other day, a certain sign of that nebulous period, high summer. The days might be getting shorter, but you don’t notice that yet — like the long moment at the top of ballistic trajectory. Back to posting around July 7.

Usually I rely on rain to wash my car or, if absolutely necessary, a hosing down on a warm day. But after our recent summertime jaunt to central Illinois-Indiana, enough bugs had met their insectoid maker against the leading edge of my car that I ponied up for an automated car wash. Half price ($5), though, since I had a coupon.

I find the journey through the car wash, at less than two minutes, visually and sonically interesting. I get that for my money, besides the removal of bug splatter.

So I held my camera as steady as possible during the splashing and blooping and hissing and flapping, along with elements of a minor light show.

The dog spent some time this morning trading insults with a resident squirrel. At least that’s how I want to think of it. The dog spotted a squirrel in the major back yard tree around 9 and immediately started looking up and whining at it, as she often does. Soon the squirrel was making its own noise, something like a duck with laryngitis.

Age has slowed her (the dog) down a little, but not yet when it comes to guarding the back yard against other creatures. Earlier this year, she spent time trying to scratch through the deck to reach what I suspect was a brood of possums. They seem to be gone now, since that dog behavior has stopped for now.

Chanced on a site called Yarn the other day that purports to offer a search “by word or phrase for TV, movies, and music clips.” So I decided to test it.

Why that phrase? Just popped into my head like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.

Thursday Whatnots

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News I missed, and I miss a fair amount, which I figure is actually healthy: “For the second time in history, a human-made object has reached the space between the stars,” a NASA press release from December says.

“NASA’s Voyager 2 probe now has exited the heliosphere — the protective bubble of particles and magnetic fields created by the Sun…

“Its twin, Voyager 1, crossed this boundary in 2012, but Voyager 2 carries a working instrument that will provide first-of-its-kind observations of the nature of this gateway into interstellar space.”

Voyager 2 is now slightly more than 11 billion miles (18 billion kilometers) from Earth. Or 16.5 light hours. That’s still in the Solar System, though. “It will take about 300 years for Voyager 2 to reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud and possibly 30,000 years to fly beyond it,” NASA says.

Not long ago, the original Godzilla — Gojira, to be pedantic — appeared on TV, in Japanese with subtitles. Not that the famed atomic beast needs any subtitles. I had my camera handy.
I didn’t watch it all, but that’s one way to approach televised movies. Not long ago, I watched the first 15 minutes or so of The Sting, a fine movie I’ve seen a few times all the way through. But other tasks were at hand, so I quit after Luther is murdered.

Later, I had the presence of mind to turn the TV back on and watch the last 10 minutes or so, when the sting is put on gangster Doyle Lonnegan. It’s a satisfying ending, but it got me to thinking.

A con with that many people would surely generate rumors. Just as surely, the rumors would make their way to the murderous Lonnegan, who wouldn’t rest until Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker were dead. But that’s overthinking things.

Here’s another example of a dim algorithm. Just about every time I use YouTube, I see anti-teen smoking PSAs. Or maybe they’re blanketing the medium, regardless of audience. Still, if I didn’t take up smoking 45 years ago, I’m not going to now.

That brings to mind the first time I remember seeing one of my contemporaries with a cigarette. That was about 45 years ago at a place called the Mule Stall.

The Mule Stall was a student space on the campus of my high school with a few rooms, chairs, a pool table and I don’t remember what else. It was tucked away about as far as you could get from the rest of the school, opening up to the street behind the school.

High schoolers used it, but junior high kids from the district had gatherings there occasionally as well. The event I remember might have been the wrap party for one of the plays I was in. Besides not acquiring a taste for smoking back then, I also discovered the theater wasn’t for me, except as an audience member. But ca. 1974, as a junior high school student, I did a few plays.

There we were, hanging out at the Mule Stall, when we noticed a girl named Debbie, who was in our class, pass by with a cigarette between her fingers. I didn’t know her that well, and I don’t remember much about her now, though she had curly hair, glasses and the sort of development adolescent boys pay attention to. At that moment, I guess she was on her way out to smoke the thing, though we didn’t see that.

I don’t know anything about her later life. She attended high school with us for a while, but either moved away or dropped out before the Class of ’79 graduated. I wonder if even now, she holds her cigs in yellow-stained fingers and spends part of the night coughing.

As for the Mule Stall, we had occasional high school band parties there later. One in particular involved almost everyone lining up to dance to the “Cotton-Eyed Joe.” That was fun. As Wiki accurately says, the dance was very much alive in Texas in the 1970s.

In fact, the Wiki entry has a description of the style of dance we did. Someone who did the dance seems to have written it, because this is exactly right.

“This dance was adapted into a simplified version as a nonpartner waist-hold, spoke line routine. Heel and toe polka steps were replaced with a cross-lift followed by a kick with two-steps. The lift and kick are sometimes accompanied by shouts of ‘whoops, whoops,’ or the barnyard term ‘bull s–t.’… The practice continues to this day.”

We used the barnyard term. An administration with no sense of history apparently razed the Mule Stall in the 1990s. Now the site is parking.

Geezer Mail

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Got a paper catalog in the mail today, one that comes periodically despite the fact that I’ve never ordered anything from it, not once in however many years I’ve been on the mailing list. The merchant must be waiting patiently, hopefully, like a dog under the dinner table waiting for some food to fall its way.

It offers DVDs. I look at it and always see a few movies I’ve never heard of and probably won’t ever see. Not that I dismiss old movies, or black-and-white movies, or subtitled movies out of hand, though I hear that some people do. Rather, there isn’t enough time to see everything, or even everything worth seeing.

Besides, my attitude toward DVDs is rent, not buy.

Speaking of the passage of time, when I opened the catalog this card fell out.

Catalogs are increasingly geezer mail, and if you need any evidence of that, look no further.

Thursday Bunkum

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Our latest snow was less convenient than previous ones this winter, falling in mid-week. I spent a fair chunk of Wednesday shoveling more snow around, this time wetter masses than the last snowfall. Now an arctic blast is blasting its way toward northern Illinois. Subzero temps ahead.

Ah, fun. We’ve been down this road before, of course.

I just found out today that the Emperor of Japan is going to abdicate on April 30. That was news in December, but I missed it. I chanced across the information in a copy of the bilingual Chicago Shimpo, a paper Yuriko picks up for free periodically at the Mitsuwa grocery store.

The Imperial Household Agency, known for its mossback ways, is on board with that?  Yet abdication from the Chrysanthemum Throne isn’t unknown. The most recent abdication was of Kōkaku, who quit in 1817. Pretty recent, considering the longevity of the Yamato Dynasty.

In even earlier times, back when the emperor was more of a political football than in recent centuries, one emperor was sometimes forced out to make way for another.

Now that I’ve finished reading Stalin — which I read after John Wayne: The Life and Legend by Scott Eyman (2014), an excellent book — I’ve decided to read some more biographies. A biography bender. Next I want to pick one from around the house, one that I haven’t read.

My choices, at least those I’ve found so far, include works on Francis Bacon, Benedict Arnold and Babe Ruth.

Something called Indywire asserted recently that: Coen Brothers Shock With ‘Buster Scruggs’ Oscar Nomination

I’m not shocked. I’ve seen five of the six stories in the The Ballad of Buster Scuggs so far and they’re really good, especially “Meal Ticket” and “The Gal Who Got Rattled.” Not that being good necessarily gets a movie nominations, but it helps.

All the stories get the Coen Brothers treatment, so you know that something bad is going to happen to at least one of the characters. In the “The Gal Who Got Rattled,” the feeling was particularly poignant, because as the story moved along, both the man and woman evolved into remarkably sympathetic characters. Then one of the dangers of the 19th century smites them.

Parts of the movie were based on sources much closer to the 19th century than our own, such as “The Girl Who Got Rattled” by Stewart Edward White and Jack London’s “All Gold Cañon,” while other parts evoke cowboy pictures of yore.

That only goes to show that there’s a vast and largely untapped galaxy of source material for movies — books, short stories, historic events, myths, graphic novels and on and on. Do moviemakers show any interest in mining these riches? Mostly not, seems like, and if they do, commercial pressures disabuse them of the notion. The Coens are exceptions. I’m glad they’re able to make the movies they want to.

Joe the Georgian in Story and Song

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Sometimes you pick up a book that’s been on the shelf unread for many years and you think, time to read it. So it was around the beginning of the year with a copy of Stalin, subtitled “The History of a Dictator,” by H. Montgomery Hyde (1907-89).

It’s a paperback, originally published in 1971 and which no doubt my brother Jay bought. The copy’s pages are yellow and a little brittle with the passage of so much time, and the front cover is partly torn — and repaired with tape — but the book withstood my reading it. Not bad for a paperback not meant to last long.

Of course there are newer biographies of Stalin, such as the work of Stephen Kotkin, whose three-volume bio had its second volume published in 2017. Those sound really good. Later books have the advantage of at least partly open former Soviet or other Communist archives, including things unimaginable in 1971, but even so I wanted to read Hyde’s book. For one thing, it’s on my shelf.

More than that, I was curious how Hyde approached the subject without access to those archives. With a fair number of workarounds, it turned out, and perhaps leaning a little too much on Khrushchev, who has to count as an unreliable narrator. On whole, though, I’d say Hyde did a good job with the material he had to work with.

Sometimes, Hyde pointed out, history and the fate of millions (very possibly) turn on a small event: “If the final stroke of apoplexy had been delayed for a few months or weeks, or even days, Lenin might have succeeded, even without Trotsky’s help, in ousting Stalin from his place of power, such was the immense following Lenin could command in the Party and country. But it was not to be.” (p. 203)

The book isn’t the only Stalin-related diversion for me lately. As in the last year or so. While in New York last March, I went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Rose Cinemas, where I paid New York prices to see The Death of Stalin, then a first-run movie.

It was worth full price. As dark as comedy gets, Death managed to be a funny movie about one of history’s most unfunny subjects, Stalinism. Loosely based on actual events and hardly solid history, but that didn’t matter because of the rule of funny.

Another reason to like the movie: it irritated humorless, authoritarian bureaucrats. According to the imdb: “The movie was banned in Russia on January 23, 2018, two days before it was due to be released… One member of the Culture Ministry’s advisory board was quoted as saying, ‘The film desecrates our historical symbols — the Soviet hymn, orders and medals, and Marshal Zhukov is portrayed as an idiot,’ and added that the film’s release in advance of the 75th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Stalingrad (February 2nd), would be ‘an affront to Russia’s World War II veterans.’ ”

Whatever, Ivan. I will point out that Zhukov wasn’t played as an idiot, but as canny and flamboyant. Canny the real Zhukov surely was, but flamboyant I doubt. Again, the rule of funny. The movie Zhukov was a hoot.

One more Stalin-oriented bit of entertainment: “Joe the Georgian,” an Al Stewart song (1995). Back when I saw him at the Woodstock Theatre in 2008, he sang it, and did his usual patter beforehand. I don’t remember the exact words, but he said that his agent or his label or someone encouraged him to write a dance song. Dance songs sell.

“So I wrote a dance song,” he said. “The trouble was, it was about Joseph Stalin.” Enormous laughter from the audience.

In the song, an unnamed Old Bolshevik, newly arrived in Hell, ponders how he got there.

We all set off together
On this sorry ship of state
When the captain took the fever
We were hijacked by the mate
And he steered us through the shadows
Upon an angry tide
And cast us one by one over the side

His consolation is that when Stalin arrives in Hell, as he surely will, the Old Bolsheviks will torment him with heated pitchforks for “the next few million years” while they “dance, dance, dance.”