Year: 2013

The Best Movies That Were Never Made

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Suppose, by some outlandish quirk of life, you found yourself sitting in a movie theater, watching the new remake of The Great Gatsby, with a rap soundtrack. You don’t know how you got there: it’s like waking up in Dracula’s castle.

To save your sanity, you slide hurriedly into a trance. And now you’re in another theater, with another movie playing. One of these, in fact–great movies that were never made, but should have been.

1. Ulysses starring Toshiro Mifune, directed by Akira Kurosawa. It just doesn’t get any better than this. Homer’s epic would translate beautifully to an old Japanese setting, especially if the screenwriters concentrated on what happens when Ulysses finally gets home and finds his house occupied by “suitors” planning to rape his wife and murder his son. The Kirk Douglas Ulysses is one of my favorite films, but this would be even better. Much better.

2. Only in New England starring Joseph Cotten, directed by Otto Preminger. This is from a 1959 book by Theodore Roscoe, subtitled “The Story of a Gaslight Crime.” A writer vacationing in a New England shore town delves into a murder that happened some sixty years before, in the very house he’s staying in. As he uncovers the strange secrets of an extinct family, we get a strong impression that murder is sneaking up on him, too. In glorious and creepy black and white!

3. The Hollow starring Virginia Christine as an evil movie star, Michael Rennie as an egotistical doctor suddenly freed from his obsession with her, and Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, called in to solve a murder. This is, as you’ve guessed, an Agatha Christie novel. (By the way, if you don’t think Virginia Christine would be up to the challenge of this role, see my Oct. 20 post, “Blessing the Mummy’s Curse.”) In this haunting tale, Christie created such complex characters, and peered so deeply into their troubled, complicated souls, we almost (but not quite) don’t care about the murder.

OK, that’s it for non-movie time today.

If you know of some other terrific movies that were never made, I’d love to hear about them.

Tolkien’s Son Doesn’t Like the Movies

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Christopher Tolkien, now 87, has made it his life’s work to bring to light the immense body of unpublished work left by his father, J.R.R. Tolkien. Although Tolkien was most famous for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, those were only the tip of the iceberg. He left behind some 70 box-loads of unpublished work–all of it having to do with his fantasy world of Middle Earth! Thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of it.

In a recent (and rare) interview with the famous French newspaper, Le Monde, Christopher Tolkien voiced dismay over what our popular culture has done to his father’s work. He thinks they’ve dumbed it down (gee, ya think?) and tried to turn it into a money machine. He finds Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies particularly obnoxious and is not looking forward to the newest installment, The Hobbit.

I haven’t seen the movies because I don’t want any of my money to wind up in Ian McKellan‘s pocket. The actor who plays Gandalf is a homosexual who brags about defacing Bibles. So there’s not much I can say about the movies. But I can say that Tolkien’s books, as written, especially Lord of the Rings, strike a note of stateliness. It inclines the reader to take them seriously.

What vexes Christopher Tolkien is the way the movies changed public perception of his father’s work, and spun off into video games, cartoons, imitators, figurines, amusement park rides… Dreck is not stately.

Well, Chris, what do you think your father’s dear friend, C.S. Lewis, would say if he were alive today and saw the mess the movie mob made of his Narnia tale, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader? I think one or more persons would get punched right in the nose. That bit in which Lucie, a pre-teen little girl, kung-fus a bunch of grown-up male villains who attack the heroes, just whups the tar out of them… barf-bag, please.

Hint to fantasy fans who really don’t like dreck: never mind the stupid movies. Read the books!

If you’re as tired as I am of superheroes and movies made of comic-books, read the books as the authors wrote them.

Hang in there, Christopher. Believe it or not, there are still some of us who like your father’s books just the way he wrote them.

A Reminiscence of My Father

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

My daddy was a hard worker at the Ford plant and a very busy man at home. But he loved his children, and he loved to take us with him wherever he went, whenever he had the chance.

When I was a little boy, I loved those trips to the hardware store (the paint-mixing machine always fascinated me); to Cheap John’s, where they had the world’s biggest pair of blue jeans on display; and, of course, to my father’s favorite fishing holes, and to the Ford workers’ softball games, and even ordinary errands that often saw us wind up with ice cream cones in our hands. I felt about 10 feet tall, the day my father’s friends let me play the outfield in one of their games.

It would have been nice to skip adolescence; but public education, over the years, taught me that the most important people in the world were my age-group peers and my “friends” (How many of them were false friends! And how long it took me to see it!), and that family was boring and stifling and not cool, not cool at all. And that was before public schools started teaching there wasn’t even any such thing as a family–or that “alternative families” are really where it’s at.

My father died some years ago. Which means my father lives: for the Lord has said so. And I hope he knows I love him.

An Archeological Enigma: Potbelly Hill

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

http://www.archeolog-home.com/medias/images/potbelly-hill-temple-1.jpg

In 1995, German archeologists made an eye-popping discovery in southern Turkey. At a site whose Turkish name means “Potbelly Hill,” scientists are digging up what they claim is the oldest temple in the world. You can see many pictures of it here.

How old is it? Scientists estimate it was built around 10,000 B.C. Some Creationists will object to that, but I’ve become agnostic about prehistoric dates. After all, God has not told us how long Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, or what He was doing with the rest of the planet during that time. Anyhow, 10,000 B.C. is only a guess, based on the style of the site’s monoliths and artwork.

Suffice it to say they’re convinced it’s really, really old—older than Stonehenge, older than Mesopotamia’s oldest cities, older than the pyramids of Egypt: way older than any of these.

Continue Reading “An Archeological Enigma: Potbelly Hill” →

Have I Solved the Riddle of ‘The Hunger Games’?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Remember how puzzled I was by the total absence of religious references in The Hunger Games? How I combed through Suzanne Collins interviews, and never found a single mention of this strange omission? There has never been in all of history a human society completely devoid of religion; but Collins has never volunteered a word of explanation as to why she depicted such a society in her book.

But today, voila–brainstorm! Although I must still ask myself, “Could it really be for such a simple reason as this?”

The Hunger Games and its sequels have been taken under the wing of Scholastic Press and promoted in thousands of public schools–an environment from which teacher unions have striven to erase all evidence of religious belief (except for Islam, which they use as a bludgeon against Christianity).

If Scholastic is pushing you in the schools, your book is going to make a fortune. Why jeopardize that by making any incautious remarks about God? You’ll be so much better off if there’s no trace of God at all inside your book. No atheist will complain, and Scholastic will be very happy with you. Ka-ching! Hear those cash registers ring!

Because of Collins’ silence on the issue, I have no way to prove my conjecture. It’s just a little idea of mine.

But I’ll betcha I’m right.

 

A Pause That Refreshes: The Last of the Summer Wine

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Sometimes I just can’t stand it anymore, this debauched and benighted period of history. And that’s a good time to turn to The Last of the Summer Wine.

This BBC sitcom was one of the longest-running TV series ever, from 1973 through 2010, and only had to stop, finally, because almost everyone involved in it died of old age. Because the main characters were post-middle-aged to begin with, cast members did die out. They kept replacing them as needed, but finally had to call it a day.

Summer Wine is about a few eccentric retired men in a small town in Yorkshire, and their talent for getting themselves into ridiculous situations. And believe me, some of those situations are monumentally ridiculous. The way this show worked, they amble along sedately, creating a tone of mild amusement, and then suddenly spring something on you that’ll cause you to explode with laughter. We were watching an episode the other day in which the comedic climax caught my wife with a mouthful of tea. And I laughed so hard, I couldn’t see for all the tears in my eyes.

Man, I needed that!

Along with the comedy, you get soothing and often witty background music and even more soothing, absolutely beautiful, Yorkshire scenery.

A lot of PBS affiliates carry The Last of the Summer Wine, some episodes are available on youtube video, and you can buy DVDs of whole seasons. I recommend the latter: you’re going to want to see these again and again.

How to Insult the NRA

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Actually, it’s not hard to insult the National Rifle Assn. or just about any other organization. Just liken them to a teachers’ union.

In New York City, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is in a huff because King Michael Bloomberg I said AFT is “like the NRA.” The union boss said, “You take that back! We demand an apology!”

For the benefit of all, I will explain how the AFT is not a bit like the NRA.

The NRA serves useful functions in society, safeguarding the Second Amendment and teaching people how to handle firearms safely. The AFT is a teacher union.

The NRA is funded 100% by membership dues paid voluntarily. But you can’t teach in New York unless you join the AFT, and they take out of your paycheck whatever they please.

The NRA is not a money-laundering operation. All teacher unions are.

The NRA consists of law-abiding citizens who love their country. The AFT is a teacher union.

The NRA actually succeeds in doing the things it promises to do. The AFT is a teacher union.

No one has to contribute to the NRA who doesn’t wish to. The AFT is a teacher union.

The NRA is not parasitic. The AFT is a teacher union.

This controversy, by the way, is all about the AFT’s efforts to block the establishment of any meaningful kind of teacher evaluation.

Bloomberg should apologize to the NRA for comparing it to a teacher union.

 

Is This What You’re Afraid Of?

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Cynthia Chase, a member of the New Hampshire state legislature, says Free Staters (that is, conservatives or libertarians) “are the single biggest threat the state is facing today.” So she proposed “to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will find here [emphasis added].”

Chase made her comments on the blog, http://www.bluehampshire.com on Dec. 21.

She did not say exactly what kind of “measures” she would legislate to restrict the freedoms of persons to whom she objects politically. But I’m sure she’ll think of something.

One dynamic of history I never understood: how some jerk, supported by other jerks, can take captive an entire state. It happens all the time. Are there really that many cowards and idiots in any given country, that any mediocre mind, propelled by manic ambition and a total lack of scruple, can take it over? Or is it just that nobody ever acts to stop it until it’s too late?

Meanwhile, take a good look at this character. You can see a nice, big picture of her on http://www.breitbart.com/ , Jan. 3. I nominate her as the poster child for the American Left–either that, or this year’s winner of the “Cesare Lombroso Was Right” Award.

The Time Machine

Posted By: leeduigon(patty)Posted On:

Patty and I have a custom, every New Year’s Day, to watch The Time Machine–the George Pal production from 1960, starring Rod Taylor, Alan Young, and Yvette Mimieux.

It’s wonderful for its story, its acting, its mind-blowing sets, and its musical score: truly one of our favorite films. But this year we  both noticed that the post-apocalyptic world discovered by the time-traveler, some 800,000 years in the future, is a progressive’s wet dream.

Think about it. The Eloi people have their food and clothing provided for them. They have no work to do, no responsibilities–just play. They know nothing of the past, and can’t conceive of any future. Their rulers, the Morlocks, give them everything they need. The poor, dumbed-down Eloi give their rulers blind obedience. When they reach a certain age, or ripeness, the Morlocks eat them.

Now that’s Agenda 21! That’s Detroit without the ruined buildings!

And that’s exactly where our own smart-as-paint Morlock wannabes will take us, if they can.