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This holiday season, give her the gift of Tropic Thunder, this year’s funniest movie, now available on DVD. Pop open a six-pack of Booty Sweat and let the good times roll. Playa.
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This is fantastic!!!! Turner Classic Movies - the greatest movie channel on television, in my not-so-humble opinion - has decided to devote December to Family Classics. I realize that sounds a bit dull and obvious, but wait till you see the list! The Herbie movies! The Apple Dumpling Gang! Candleshoe! The month will be awash with Don Knotts and the pre-Taxi Driver Jodi Foster. These were the movies my Dad rented on videotape for the weekend visits scheduled in the divorce agreement.
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We are not in a Depression. Not even close. We are simply, possibly on the verge of one. Keeping that in mind, you may want to consider giving your kids a lesson in spunk, to prepare them for riding the rails and selling apples on street corners.
To that end, I highly recommend the movie “Kit Kittredge: An American Girl,” which will be coming out on DVD on October 29th. This is a surprisingly nuanced movie. In keeping with the mission of the American Girl dolls, it goes to great lengths to be historically informative in an accurate and sensitive way. We get terrific glimpses of everyday life during the Depression: how people shopped and dressed and made dinner. Most importantly, for kids, are the complex portrayals of what it felt like to be a kid back then, with the fear of losing everything hanging over your head. The kids whose families have slid from respectability are mocked by some of their better-off classmates, and those with no family at all live their lives in the shadows, at the mercy of the kindness of strangers. Read the rest of this entry »
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In 1978, my family and I moved from a suburb with no jobs for my single mom, to a house on the edge of the city of Boston. Mom got a job at the radical Arlington Street Church as a part-time secretary, and there she met Norman, the man who would become her best friend, and a whole group of other gay men who made her laugh and feel feisty, which she sorely needed after the brutal divorce from my father.
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Ralph Fiennes little nephew plays the young Tom Riddle. How fabulous! This looks cool and dark and fun. I am thrilled.
Anyone else excited?
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I have been incredibly, horribly lax about posting in the month of July. In fact, I haven’t posted at all. In part, this was due to exciting developments Chez Jen, to be detailed at a later date (no, I am not pregnant). One of the many other distractions this month was my 20th high school reunion, coordinated by yours truly. Naturally, my mind spent a lot of time running through famous high school reunions in film in preparation. Here are some of my favorites:
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The Museum of Television and Radio hosted a marvelous interview with George Carlin years ago. He tended to give a great interview; he seemed to love conversation. Being in the audience was terrific, and remember feeling sated by what I learned. Yet, the only part I really remember was his description of his work habits. He had a file of thousands of little slips of paper, and when he was working on a routine he would pull them out and sort through them. Later, ideas would be transcribed to index cards which were posted on the wall and moved around until they had the right relationship with each other.
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It is lucky that Huxtabled’s Diana Fischer and I live less than a mile from each other and can arm wrestle periodically, because the line between television and movies continues to blur. If I watch Slap Shot on a television through free On Demand, per Diana’s recommendation, am I watching TV? A movie? Both? Has this question taken on the dimensions of a Zen koen at this point? The internet has further complicated things. My daughter watches both Enchanted and the Mary Tyler Moore Show on my laptop and doesn’t quite grasp why we old folks call one a movie, and the other a TV show. All of which is merely an attempt to prevent a beat down from Diana, because now I am going to discuss how thrilled I am that the Dick Van Dyke Show is available for free on Hulu (which I first heard about from G. Xavier, but let’s not bring him into this).
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Harvey Korman, king of the corrupt cranks, died last week at the age of 81. His work on the Carol Burnett Show was legendary, but to me he will always be Hedley LaMarr in Blazing Saddles, a movie that always makes me laugh. I’ll be watching it, for the thousandth time, tonight in his honor. Here is a brief clip for you to enjoy:
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As previously discussed in the Playground, I am starting up an Errol Morris discussion group, in honor of the release of his latest film Standard Operating Procedure. It was decided that since so many of you live in places where Errol Morris movies don’t tend to show at the local theater for months after the initial release, if ever, we would wait a while before discussing Standard Operating Procedure. Instead, we’ll work our way through his filmography, discussing on Wednesdays.
About the joys of sitting in a darkened theater, covered in bits of popcorn, feet sticking to the floor while a world unfolds before your eyes.
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