If you know the Old Testament better than you do Katherine
Paterson, this page's name probably
doesn't make a lot of sense--less if you know neither. Kind of a second best
category, though God and parents don't play best and second best games. One
is the favorite and the other isn't (what happens with a choice of more than
two I don't know): Louise and Caroline, Jacob and Esau, Cain and Abel (who occurred
to me as the pair that clinch this assertion).
I created this category when I began to write about "Parenthood"
and realized I didn't love or admire it as much as the rest of my favorites.
And I decided Esau was a fine title for it when comparing "A Lion in Winter"
to "Beckett." For Louise's
sake, I tamper with the Old Testament and the Esaus are my second favorites,
not my hated movies.
Christmas movies Everything elseFaux
Arthurian Fare Teenage movies
that no longer make the cutChristmas MoviesMy sister CLH has lived her whole
life almost as Cindy Lou Who. Boris Karloff and neat nasty songs: one
Seuss, at least, not ruined by filming. Plus there's Max: getting sewn into
the sewing machine, waving hopefully from the back of the sled as it careers
downhill, finally redeemed in the victorious return to Whoville.
Ver' early indeed.
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If I hadn't been abjectedly miserable at the time, leading to my seldom sleeping
and thus being that much more vulnerable, I probably wouldn't have been so susceptible
to this. "Please, go ahead, manipulate my emotions with a pastry whisk.
I am jello in your hands." Hmm, what happens to jello with a pastry whisk?
Anyway, I had a lovely cry. Ayn Rand must've hated this movie. I bought it for
RDC Christmas of 1995.
Christmas Eve 1991, very early in the morning/late at night, on AMC in Old Lyme.
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My first unanimated Christmas movie (only the original version of course),
which I saw well after I was Told, but I believed anyway. I remember liking
the headline consonated with K: "Kris Kringle Krazy..." (I don't remember
it all). And I love the D.A.'s son telling the truth in court, innocently disclosing
that his daddy deliberately told him what the man now asserted to be a lie (what
a grown-up the DA is). And how
did the cane wind up in the house? I bought this for CLH Christmas of
1995, and I'd known I'd chosen wisely even before she gagged
when RDC opened his.
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ABW detests all musicals on the
principle that it is wholly unnatural for people to be going about their business
then suddenly break into song, and this she holds as the exception that proves
the rule. Pleasantly gorey (isn't Edmund Gorey conveniently named?). Aha! And
HAO loves this flick and can sing
along to do it (and does).
Christmas of 1994 with RDC, ABW, and KRW, chez the later.
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I still can't believe DEDBG didn't
see this until she was almost 22--although mostly I envy her growing up without
the temptation and influence of television. She was all excited about Burl Ives.
Herbie is going to be a dentist, and In-de-pen-dent, and Rudolph wants to be
in- inde- in- "whatever you said" too except that he wants to be it
with Herbie. I like to be in-de-pen-dent also and have often been grateful that
Bumbles bounce, although I do not think the best thing to do was to get
the women back to camp.
Also ver' early.
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Everything
elsePeter O'Toole and Richard Burton show themselves thoroughly debaunched. Peter
O'Toole simply is Henry II, and Burton makes a fine Beckett, but why
did the play and then the movie--or just the movie?--have to make Beckett Saxon?
He was Norman as well. Or maybe my pro-Harold anti-William the Bastard sentiment
clouds my judgment (or is that obvious from my using his first epithet and not
that C-word?).
At home in Denver, 1996
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If I could be assured of children like Billy and Susie (but not like Dawn)
and that they'd have a grandfather like theirs, I might reconsider breeding:
"I think you got him, Grandpa. He was limping when he ran off," and
"It's because they're still learning. Mommy stays still and Daddy moves
on top of her. That's how you do it when you know how."
The grandfather was Ratty
himself with adages like "Don't lose the punt for the pole" and his
conviction the London suburb would be the end of the children. Plus he kept
cockatiels in his yard, and Percy and Blake have both responded, even waking
from sleep to do so, to the other 'tiels indignantly squawking upon the cricket
ball slamming their aviary.
Somewhere at UConn before 1989
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I like Jeremy Irons a lot, though I don't like many of his movies (the opposite
of William Hurt: I don't like him but "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and
"Children of a Lesser God" have deeply affected me); this is an exception.
I liked the novel Damage, though I later learned I shouldn't've; and
I rave about "M. Butterfly"; neither cinematization was remotely successful.
And "Dead Ringers"! Don't get me started. But "Kafka" (and
"Waterland") is super. I could draw parallels between it and "Brazil"
for several hours. As many years as it's been since I've seen it though I have
still only read "The Metamorphosis," but neither "The Penal Colony"
nor "The Trial" nor "The Castle." Oops.
Norwalk, CT in May 1992 with MRC
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Tatum O'Neal gives the performance of a lifetime here. (Unfortunately for her, she was only ten at the time.) Fortunately for us, the viewers, this piece of acting radiates. Perhaps the stars' familial relationship gave them an edge in portraying the same on screen, but to believe that is to diminish Tatum's brilliance into an Electra complex. A flawless work.
I love Steve Martin, I love whoever that is who plays his wife. I think this
was the first time I saw this actress, and I loved her from that role onward.
Honest parenthood, parents who make mistakes, parents who admit to their mistakes,
parents who want their children, and children who are more than plot devices
(rare for Hollywood). Plus Martha Plimpton, Dianne Wiest, Keanu Reeves (playing
himself), and Leaf Phoenix. Dianne Wiest, grateful finally to understand what
has changed her younger son, stumbles over the uncomfortable facts that the
influence has been sex and his choice in movies: "I guess you're watching
these movies because you're curious about sex--or, or filmmaking."
Summer of 1989 with MEWN in Waterford's Gigaplex. I remember taking my Omni
way too fast around Saunders Hollow curves on the way to her house from where
I was house-sitting.
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Richard
IIIAugust 1996, with RDC at home.
Can you say "post-modern," boys and girls? I thought you could! I
seldom trust my own judgment about movies like this, but can I say "Zounds!
Good idea, my lord!" ("Of course it's a good
idea!"). But what happened to Edward III's
dog when the tank crashed through the wall? Probably one of those things They
("They sure do talk a lot, don't they?" ) cut out
because it would alienate viewers, and I confess, I'm one of them--it was a
Labrador, after all. I wouldn't've turned it off, but I would have been squicked.
Putting Marlowe to a 1940s melody, making Edward's widow an addict, every other
touch to change the year, but not the mood, the drama, the power. And even his
cry for a horse, which as the most famous line could not have been omitted,
flowed well into the action, was not an anachronism. Did anyone else have nightmares
of his laughing, jubilant, falling to a flaming death face?
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(Does placing it at the end of an alphabetized list indicate its sub-Esau-ness
sufficiently, or is this disclaimer necessary?)
Just as I cannot read the window-washing chapter of Jacob Have I Loved
without crying, so can I not quietly sit through Matlin's climax. I'm sorry
I don't remember the actress's name; I confuse her name with the staunchly Republican
female who married (James Carville?), the staunchly Democrat male. The only
way she can get William Hurt to pay attention to her is finally, brokenly, screamingly
to talk, which she has always refused to do. I saw parallels to my own, current,
stifling relationship, which I didn't face as courageously as she did hers:
it took me a year longer to extricate myself from it.
Spring of 1988, UConn
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(Does placing it at the end of an alphabetized list indicate its sub-Esau-ness
sufficiently, or is this disclaimer necessary?)
Once I set a curfew on my babysitting engagement so that I could get to this
flick. Camp. Susan Sarandon. Camp. Tim Curry. Camp. Sheer stupidity. I stopped
counting after 30.
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Faux
Arthurian FareTerry Gilliam, and madness: this one's a Jacob.
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Indiana Jones, Denholm Elliot (Mr. Emerson),
Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, and Arthurian legend? What could be better?
Sallah: "What is this 'Junior' you keep saying?"
Henry: "That's his name!" Jabbing his thumb at his own chest, "Henry
Jones," then indicating Indy, "Junior."
Indy: "I like Indiana."
Henry: "We named the dog Indiana."
Indy: "I have a lot of fond memories of that dog."
Sallah: "You are named after the dog?" (roars with laughter)
1989, with CLH in Boston.
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More Arthurian derivations. Good rude fun. Big pointy teeth. A Trojan rabbit.
"You make me sad."
Early freshling
year at UConn (1986).
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Okay, not even remotely Arthurian, but in the same spirit.
"No more rhyming! And I mean it!" ~~>"Anybody want a peanut?"
Summer of 1988, Boston, with DEDBG.
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Also not Arthurian, but every fantasy element you could want in a movie, including
allusions to everything that's gone before (Joseph Campbell must have loved
it). Obvious ones like the evil queen looking like the archetypal Disney evil
queen, and her war duke looking like Darth Vader, plus the queen's turning everyone
into pigs as Circe did Odysseus and his men. Plus Val Kilmer. The most beautiful
moment was when Willow touched the braid his wife had sacrificed for him as
he began a journey that evolved into a much more arduous undertaking than either
could have imagined. I don't remember when I first saw this, but I was grateful
that SEM had it when I lived in his
house.
1990, probably
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This movie represents freedom for me just because I drove the 30 whole miles
to see it despite the unnatural fears of my mother (who somehow thought this
movie would make its way to Waterford (20 miles), whose movies cater to the
Navy and Coast Guard crew of the area). I was 21, but she insisted I be in by
11:00 and actually had a nightmare before I got home (on time) that someone
had followed me home from the Big City and my father had to beat him up outside
(this from the woman who claims never to remember her dreams). Sheltered doesn't
begin to describe her attitude. Anyway.
I love Winona Ryder; I love her even though "Beetlejuice" was the
first time I ever saw her (Tim Burton ought to stick with claymation). She was
the only reason I survived that otherwise hideous flick: "My life is a
darkroom. One, big, dark room." About her stepmother: "She's in there
sleeping with Prince Valium." She only got better in "Heathers"
and I named my first computer Veronica. She wrote in her journal, "Is this
just another spoke in my menstrual cycle?" played strip croquet, and faked
a Harold-like suicide. Yep. I like her a lot.
10 June 1989, York Cinema, Yale, New Haven
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Not your basic teenager movie of boy and girl get each other but also a powerful
statement on freedom of speech. Plus a super soundtrack: the Pixies' "Wave
of Mutilation," Above the Law's "Freedom of Speech," Concrete
Blonde, and Cowboy Junkies.
Summer of 1991, Old Lyme
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John Cusack blasts "In Your Eyes" to his love: Peter
Gabriel is all you need. Plus Liv Taylor (?): "Don't be a guy.
There are plenty of guys. Be a man."
UConn Ballroom, December 1989.
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