Monday, 5 April 2004 04:35 pm
Audrey, Humphrey, Errol, Olivia, Robert D., Greer, and me
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deckardcanineToday I deleted one of my professed interests. It's not that I don't take interest in it anymore, but I decided it was silly to list it when nobody else did. Besides, "long friendly conversations" wouldn't help much even if somebody did profess to share the interest.
This action, tho seemingly trivial, may mark a change in me. I now have a list of 13. My peculiar history of superstition includes the avoidance of that number when I can. It's not that I've thought it increased my chance of getting bad luck, but if bad luck did come with it, I'd cringe at the irony (if you can call it irony). Maybe the fact that "deckardcanine" has 13 letters influenced my decision to break with personal tradition. It is nice to have one less compulsion.
Now for a series of spoiler-free movie reviews following my spring break. If anyone here is enrolled on the Grown-Up Movie Forum (unlikely, given its small roster), you will see this again. Numbers in parentheses indicate the year of release, the IMDb rating and, where appropriate, the placement in IMDb’s top 250.
SABRINA (1954, 7.6) – Note: Do not confuse this with the ’95 remake or the teenage witch.
I’ve become a sucker for Bogart, having seen The African Queen, Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon, To Have and Have Not, and yes, Casablanca, tho I was 10 at the time and should see it again to appreciate it. If there are deviations in this movie from his typical role, it’s because he took it when Gary Cooper backed out. (Isn’t it fun to hear who backed out of hit movies?)
Bogart does not disappoint, but neither does he outshine the others. It was about time I saw Audrey Hepburn outside of My Fair Lady and recognized William Holden as not just another face. And Hepburn, despite the waistline of a Disney princess, demonstrates that you didn’t need long blond hair in the ‘50s to turn men on. My only slight beef is that I expected more laughs from a Billy Wilder comedy, but that’s more my fault.
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938, 8.2, #150) – Inspired by my Literature of the Fantastic course, I had to see a version of the legend other than the middling-at-best Men in Tights. I considered the Disney animation, in part because I love red foxes, but I couldn’t bring myself to see something that juvenile without somebody else. (Is that the reverse of what you expected?) I had never seen Errol Flynn, and he and this movie had won favor with the American Film Institute (AFI), so I went for it.
The film was everything I expected: intense, idyllic, colorful, corny…everything hyperbolic, tho not without a minor edge. It made me want to bite into a red delicious apple. (Hope somebody understands.) Technicolor entertainment doesn’t get much better for me, altho I could do with a couple fewer ambushes from tree branches and a less predictable gallows rescue.
I had not known about the importance of Norman and Saxon divisions in the tales, or Miriam’s trouble with the court. Neither had I known until later that Olivia de Havilland, whom I’ve seen in Gone with the Wind and The Snake Pit, starred in eight movies with Flynn. Now I want to see more of them.
GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (1939, 7.9) – Since I was returning to Oberlin for the last time, I saw fit to watch a story of a teacher. Silly as it may sound, this movie struck me most with the likeness of its archaic school to Hogwarts. It made me wonder if American public schoolers appreciate Harry Potter better or worse than English boarding schoolers. The alien yet familiar environment kept me and even my mother, who rarely likes movies with almost no women, engaged. Also striking to me was the uncomfortable resemblance of Mr. Chipping’s shyness to my own.
Robert Donat, whom I knew from The 39 Steps, at first seemed comically exaggerated, especially as an elderly man. The script, however, carries him onward to respectability such that even his conservative ways, like Jefferson Smith’s in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, win my fondness. And while I got more laughs out of the misbehaving old-school boys and men than out of Sabrina, there are some very serious moments herein, particularly with Greer Garson, whom I know from nothing else. I find it interesting that the AFI placed Chipping on its list of the 50 greatest heroes in American film just for maintaining traditional school discipline, but then, any list that compares James Bond and Atticus Finch is going to be odd.
This action, tho seemingly trivial, may mark a change in me. I now have a list of 13. My peculiar history of superstition includes the avoidance of that number when I can. It's not that I've thought it increased my chance of getting bad luck, but if bad luck did come with it, I'd cringe at the irony (if you can call it irony). Maybe the fact that "deckardcanine" has 13 letters influenced my decision to break with personal tradition. It is nice to have one less compulsion.
Now for a series of spoiler-free movie reviews following my spring break. If anyone here is enrolled on the Grown-Up Movie Forum (unlikely, given its small roster), you will see this again. Numbers in parentheses indicate the year of release, the IMDb rating and, where appropriate, the placement in IMDb’s top 250.
SABRINA (1954, 7.6) – Note: Do not confuse this with the ’95 remake or the teenage witch.
I’ve become a sucker for Bogart, having seen The African Queen, Key Largo, The Maltese Falcon, To Have and Have Not, and yes, Casablanca, tho I was 10 at the time and should see it again to appreciate it. If there are deviations in this movie from his typical role, it’s because he took it when Gary Cooper backed out. (Isn’t it fun to hear who backed out of hit movies?)
Bogart does not disappoint, but neither does he outshine the others. It was about time I saw Audrey Hepburn outside of My Fair Lady and recognized William Holden as not just another face. And Hepburn, despite the waistline of a Disney princess, demonstrates that you didn’t need long blond hair in the ‘50s to turn men on. My only slight beef is that I expected more laughs from a Billy Wilder comedy, but that’s more my fault.
THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938, 8.2, #150) – Inspired by my Literature of the Fantastic course, I had to see a version of the legend other than the middling-at-best Men in Tights. I considered the Disney animation, in part because I love red foxes, but I couldn’t bring myself to see something that juvenile without somebody else. (Is that the reverse of what you expected?) I had never seen Errol Flynn, and he and this movie had won favor with the American Film Institute (AFI), so I went for it.
The film was everything I expected: intense, idyllic, colorful, corny…everything hyperbolic, tho not without a minor edge. It made me want to bite into a red delicious apple. (Hope somebody understands.) Technicolor entertainment doesn’t get much better for me, altho I could do with a couple fewer ambushes from tree branches and a less predictable gallows rescue.
I had not known about the importance of Norman and Saxon divisions in the tales, or Miriam’s trouble with the court. Neither had I known until later that Olivia de Havilland, whom I’ve seen in Gone with the Wind and The Snake Pit, starred in eight movies with Flynn. Now I want to see more of them.
GOODBYE, MR. CHIPS (1939, 7.9) – Since I was returning to Oberlin for the last time, I saw fit to watch a story of a teacher. Silly as it may sound, this movie struck me most with the likeness of its archaic school to Hogwarts. It made me wonder if American public schoolers appreciate Harry Potter better or worse than English boarding schoolers. The alien yet familiar environment kept me and even my mother, who rarely likes movies with almost no women, engaged. Also striking to me was the uncomfortable resemblance of Mr. Chipping’s shyness to my own.
Robert Donat, whom I knew from The 39 Steps, at first seemed comically exaggerated, especially as an elderly man. The script, however, carries him onward to respectability such that even his conservative ways, like Jefferson Smith’s in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, win my fondness. And while I got more laughs out of the misbehaving old-school boys and men than out of Sabrina, there are some very serious moments herein, particularly with Greer Garson, whom I know from nothing else. I find it interesting that the AFI placed Chipping on its list of the 50 greatest heroes in American film just for maintaining traditional school discipline, but then, any list that compares James Bond and Atticus Finch is going to be odd.
