Pass National Health Care Now With Public Option

Movie Monday

I so feel like Cato The Elder when I type my banner. I also feel like a fool, though a hopeful fool.

I like Chris Hedges when he wrote Obama should admit he believes in socialism as his enemies insist; socialism for corporations that is:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090914_stop_begging_obama_to_be_obama_and_get_mad/

But this is Movie Monday so let’s talk about movies.

This is going to be a posting of this and that which means I didn’t sit through any movies this week long enough for a review. But I do have some movie thoughts.

1. Apparently, there was a Golden Age of movie reviews exemplified by reviewers like Pauline Kael and James Agee. Now, we’re in the age of Thumbs Up and Thumb Down reviews but read Agee and Kael for a very interesting look at what movie reviews can be - when people wrote.

2. Which brings me to observation two: Can an average person (like me) review a movie from one movie visit? I don’t think so. Case in point: Michael Clayton. I get more out of that movie with each viewing. My recent thought: Is the part of Michael Clayton gender specific? Could a woman play that role?

I’m the fixer. I’m the janitor. Clayton says. Could a woman say that (or a variation) believably?

3. How did I miss the wall color in Three Days of the Condor? WTF? You ask.

I think I have seen 3 Days.... at least one time all the way through and then have picked up sections along the way. But some things never registered until a viewing about a month ago. Perhaps for the first time I took in that the CIA research office where Redford worked was in NYC (I guess all the obvious references to NYC just didn't register) and that Faye Dunaway had a walkout basement apartment in the city.

But this time, I noticed that her bar/counter divider was painted in a bright burnt-orange and I thought: Whoa, Nellie. Those are CA colors. What were they thinking? Very seldom are such musings answered but mine were. A few scenes later Dunaway “mistakenly” opens CIA Director Cliff Robertson’s NYC office door. And there is Robertson at his desk with the entire window wall behind him painted in the same burnt-orange. I guess the set designer got a good price on that color paint.

This, of course, is a trivial point but does give me an excuse for watching the same movie again and again - I’m just trying to be sure I miss nothing.

4. Pirates 3 and terrorism. Having the boy alone last evening and it being Sunday, he got to watch a movie. Yep, it was Pirates 3. He didn’t last long. Even he got bored, but it started me thinking. Looking at the movie from the POV of the establishment, the pirates can easily be classified as terrorists and yet we are asked to make them our heroes and hiss when Cutler Beckett and his henchman appear. Then I started to think about other good guys vs. bad guys movies. Often, movies extol the heroism of the “pirate” as he battles an evil establishment.

Another example is Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Walter Raleigh is decried by the Spanish. However, Raleigh is one of the heroes of this movie. It does go back to the old saw: One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.

Remember Mel Brooks’ famous cave man skit where Cave 1 is fighting Cave 2 and is chanting: Let's hear it for Cave #1. There’s something primal in jingoism. Our caveman altruist who said: What, Cave 2 has no food? Have them eat with us, probably left the human gene pool without a trace eons ago.

Well, that’s it for movies this week. Just random thoughts which hopefully now that they are down on paper are no longer cluttering my brain so I can write a real review for next Monday.

Happy movie watching.