Dawn’s Thoughts

First of all, let me say I wish I had something to write other than reviews in this blog for awhile, but otherwise it would just be what I had for dinner and looking for jobs, and that gets a little boring to write about. So here we go:

I got my Warner Brothers Archive DVD’s March 1st. They’re very good…though the ads are right that there’s no extras and no cleaning up of films for the DVDs. They’re manufactured on demand, but I’m happy to report that case artwork exists, and also on the DVD. It’s plain, but it works. The thing that was not advertised is that these disks only work if you have a DVD “play only” player — something that had me cursing until I realized I could use them in the back room. It just doesn’t work on DVD recorders or on PCs. This is stated on the box, but I didn’t hear about it in any of the reviews I read beforehand.

The films themselves look great. I got I Know My First is Steven (1989) and The Flight of Dragons (1983). The first has very good picture, with occasional dust or scratches on the film visible. Sometimes there appears to be a slight jump motion from one charactor or another, but this doesn’t happen when I run the film back and play again. The Flight of Dragons is a cartoon — one of the animes I remember enjoying before anime was a popular word. I never owned this one or saw it on television…my friends owned a copy. Now of course I understand that Rankin Bass did the cartoon, as they did The Last Unicorn, and the two films are very similar — drawing styles, music, credits, backgrounds, still pictures, etc. Rankin Bass is better known for their stop-motion work on Christmas specials like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Like the Last Unicorn, they have an excellent script, great characters, animation that’s detailed etc. I haven’t finished the film yet, but it’s good. Some years I found one of the books the film was based on, The Dragon and the Geiorge by            , which I recognized only by the character names. I read it and then got rid of it — the basic plot of the movie was there, but the storyline with the main character’s wife, Angie, was thankfully left out of the film entirely. The film was also based on the book The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson, an attempt to explain how dragons might have flown scientifically. I think I have seen this book but I haven’t bothered with it. The film combines the two ideas of the books and does very well. Actually, that’s a very interesting idea, combining two books with similar themes. In the film, Peter is transported a magical land, where he must help the wizard Carolinus defeat his evil brother — something the scientific Peter must do while trapped inside the body of a dragon. (Actually, a plot very similar to The Last Unicorn in a way). This is a good film, and I’m enjoying it.

I know My First Name is Steven shows the true Steven Stayner kidnapping case. I’ve been wanting this film, and convinently saw it mentioned on the WB website the day it was released, which intrigued me into looking through the rest of their inventory. I can say having watched a lot of contemporary movies and TV series for this time period lately (Growing Pains, A Son’s Promise) that this film has aged very well. Considering that at the time this film was made, the writers could have beat you over the head with the plot alone, with a Very Special Miniseries about strangers, complete with foreshadowing music and much wailing going on, it’s a relief to say that whoever put this together did any extremely good job.

Because it’s a miniseries, a lot of standard camera shots are used — a few closeups, a few establishing shots. Not fancy camera work, no special effects — and not that that’s a criticism. They have good locations in this movie, and it’s more of a character study — of Steven’s family, but particularly of Steven and how he changed.

There’s also some chilling throwaway lines in this script, that the scriptwriters had no way of knowing about when they wrote this. Funny. One of them is pointed out by the actor who plays the older Steven Stayner, in The Yosemite Murders by Dennis McDougal: the screenplay has Steven’s older brother make him a list of available girls at school — something I guess that was done in real life, and seems perfectly normal. The other is something I noticed. The grandfather in the story comments to Del, Steven’s dad, that if he didn’t have so many kids, he could afford a car that runs, and that if the kids were animals, they could pick the best and drown the rest.

The statement is obviously meant to show the grandfather’s relationship with the family — and one of the reasons he’s suspect later on — but wow, what a statement, considering more recent events.

The film comes on two discs, no extras, and it is quite good all by itself — in fact, it looks better visually than the last time I saw it on TV — but this is one film that really needs extras. A few documentaries, a TV promo trailer, other things, would really be wonderful.

The actors all do a good job in this film — and you get to know the characters pretty well. Steven’s brother Cary isn’t given much to say in the script — rightly so, considering when it was written — but as Steven’s big brother, the script does show him than the younger sisters. “Mom and Dad never come in here,” says Cary in the movie, when Steven compliments him on his drawing ability.

Huh.

But the focus of the movie is about Steven, of course, and the film actually has an arch to it that works — things get worse for Steven after he tries to go back home. This was in the book, too, but it’s great the movie explored it (as it could very well have ended happily like A Son’s Promise, regardless of the outcome). The little title card epilogue at the end of the film has been updated to 2004 — something I haven’t seen before– with one notable, but perhaps appropriate omission.

Great movie. Highly recommended. The people who made it took the time to allow it to be a miniseries and didn’t squash it down to a hour.

Howard Zinn: You can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train:

Maybe it was just not my morning for Howard Zinn. It wasn’t, either, the last time I tried to watch this documentary on television. Don’t get me wrong, I like Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States — the fact that he uses enough block quotations to give a good picture of events and focusing on people history usually neglects. And I’d be interested in how he came to develop these ideas.

Maybe this film tries to show it — Zinn as an activist here, there, and everywhere else — but I quickly lost interest. By the time the film showed Zinn at a book signing with students being interviewed as to why they enjoyed his books, I’d lost interest all together.

the film has some good music and the credits, with little side videos, are well worth watching for some comments.

Growing Pains Season One:

Well, this is another disk of Growing Pains the series, and I have to conclude after watching several that they haven’t aged well. I remember when the show went off the air. I watched it then. I like watching many things that I enjoyed at the same thing as this show — even those shows which stress morals — like some episodes of After School Specials.

And there are times lately where I want to watch unambigious shows — now it’s getting harder to tell who at any given moment is the bad person or good guy in a series. Something to do with filming. And it’s not just this show — others like the Andy Griffith Show and The Waltons are preachy by today’s viewpoint.

But every episode in the series so far seems to be about a Very Special Episode — sex, drugs, AIDS, stealing — and here, I’m not only speaking of this show but of Mr. Belevedere too, which I watched reasonably recently. If today’s shows could be said to cater to a common person, these shows spoon fed the masses their daily moral lesson. This is something I don’t remember continuing into the 1980’s-early 1990’s, but apparently it did.
That’s all right, so long as there are enough episodes without that to stand on their own. And there don’t seem to be. And that’s too bad. It’s not that this is a bad show, it’s easy to see that the characters in it are a happy family, but still…just in this one disk, the father threatens to hit his son twice…and there’s a moral right there, for the audience. In a show like Home Improvement some years later, a Very Special Episode came alone once a year, not once a night.

I’m sad to say that maybe I’ve outgrown these. It’s nice to see shows where people are nice to one another, but the morals on top are sometimes a bit much.

This book is printed by Thorndike Books, and I picked up for two reasons: It had a cover that didn’t draw me in, but tag lines that did, and it is a large-print that is not a 1950’s mystery for adults…very unusual.

Hav’sing finished it, I can say it has a good idea — Varina, a 15 year old girl, meets a boy, Chase, who proceeds to inform her that she is really a clone, and that they must round up the other clone children. The story starts with an interesting flashback of Chase as a little kid, on a boat with 3 scientists, two of whom treat like a son, and a startling event that occurs.

Did I mention this book has cliffhangers all over? Not that that’s a bad thing, but some of them seem far-fetched. At times I could ignore the writing style, which I found had abrupt spots, with exclamation points here and there, or sentences that just didn’t read right to me. I was hoping for another The House of the Scorpion, which like this book, dealt with power struggles and human cloning, with a child narrator, and even though this is the first book in a series, I have no need to look at the others.

The main character, Varina, may be confused and disoriented with the news that she is a clone and scientists are out to get her, but she swings wildly between trusting whoever she meets completely one moment, and being suspicious of their intentions the next. While this makes sense under the conditions the book sets — for instance, that she’s just met this boy Chase when he starts telling her stories — it ends up tiresome and doesn’t serve any purpose.

I was interested with the initial trouble on the boat in the beginning, and I maintained my interest during Varina’s introduction to her life with her uncle Jim, despite some reading problems I had with the story, but as the story goes on, it lose momentum quickly. Each clone is revealed to have a particular kind of superpower (which, if they actually had them in real life would probably more a lot less controllable — like the kids who can hear people through walls but wear headphones to school).

And as each clone is selected into the group, the story of each character is repeated, so that by you get two or three characters introduced, this one story seems to take up most of the short book. That’s rather annoying.

In the meantime, guardians pop up out of the woodwork with regualarity to take care of Varina and the others — commonly people she has never seen before. Meanwhile, cliffhangers on all sides, Varina’s Uncle Jim lays in the hospital, and while Varina mentions every so often, that she wants to be at his side, that she trusts him absolutely, she goes on shopping trips with an aunt she has never met before, spents one day with the woman and concludes that with all the time spent with her aunt, she’d never learnt of her family.

Well, in a day, that might not always be something mentioned on the first day. Somehow I don’t consider a day much time.

Varina and the others manage to get cars and planes with ease and always escape just ahead of the scientists — which makes sense, as all good serials do. However, even if this is for younger readers, its cliffhangers and wording jarred me out of the story on several occasions.

It’s excellent that I found it in large print…something that should happen more with books. It’s also excellent to see a large family of adopted handicapped children in the story at one point.

It is however hilarious when Varina comments that her mouth dropped open when a child in a wheelchair stood and walked.

I laughed.

This is kind of a joke in the disabled community, you understand.

While it makes perfect sense that Varina would think that, it’s really old. To the author’s credit, the family does explain why the child walks — and it’s a reason I can believe. But here’s the thing, you can be in a wheelchair and still walk, or at least some people can. You may only be in the wheelchair for long distance walking, etc.

The story ends with a cliff hanging that’s been hinted at. But most of the book, unfortunately, instead of minor world building or charactors, is spent collecting children, running from scientists, and repeating, just so the reader doesn’t forget, that they are all clones, most with special powers and tattoos. when they’ve nearly escaped at the end, it makes me wish the characters had been developed, or had done something other than the very beginning of a story. It’s the first of a series, but there’s nothing for me to hang on to in it, nothing I can’t wait to read.

Maybe they have an adventure in the next book. But this one, I’m very sorry to say, can be summed up in a sentence: “There was once a story about clone children and they had to run from evil scientists.”

That’s the start of the story. It’s a great idea. But I needed more story here.

Well, I don’t know what to say about this one. Not much happens in it, like a European film (which I guess after looking it up, it is a remake of), and it was apparently based on a 19th-century novel by Florence Montgomery. Never heard of the author or story, but I ran into the VHS for a dollar some years ago and got it because it has Henry Thomas in it (from around the time of E.T., Huckleberry Fox and Gene Hackman, so I thought it might have a chance.

The film has great cinematography…sometimes characters will be on top one building, the camera is looking down below, people moving around, and the sky too. There’s usually something interesting in the background to look at, including an interesting house set. The film summary states that after the death of the mother, the father treats the youngest boy Miles (Huckleberry Fox) like the child he is (around 4-5) and the oldest boy Andrew (age 10-11) (Henry Thomas) like an adult.

Well, that’s putting mildly. It’s not that he treats him like an adult…he treats him like an adult he doesn’t give a damn about. Even though the character in general seems to be reasonable enough, other characters like the uncle and a second nanny also try to provide support or comment that he treats Andrew too coldly. It’s not that he leaves the kid to his own decisions — though in one scene he declares that he basically doesn’t care what Andrew does, to his face no less — and even though he admits that Andrew isn’t bad only careless, he constantly does something underhanded to him, in a way that you can believe. He doesn’t hit him (well, just once), barely yells at him, (and he apologizes when he does) but there’s this mean undertone to it. He takes Miles away, ignores Andrew’s eventual lies to get his attention, reneges on promises without explanation…and Andrew gets doors slammed in his face about twice…as if all the adults are forbidding him to play with his brother, like it’s something catching. In fact, there are two seperate conversations in this that are very strange. If I can paraphrase: “You treat that kid like he’s got a cold you don’t want to catch,” says the uncle. “[The nanny] won’t let Andrew play with me,” says Miles, a situation their father ignores. An especially chilling comment occurs while the children are in Andrew’s boat (and the scenery is great, as always): “To see Mommy, you’d have to be dead,” explains Andrew to his brother.

Aside from the fact that there’s something really sad that Andrew has to become the family storyteller, that’s a comment that really belongs in a horror movie. That’s why it works here.
First off, when the mother dies he tells Andrew that he and Mommy didn’t go away on a trip together but that Mommy actually died. Andrew becomes rather angry at this. Okay, maybe this is understandable…once, in grief…but the story builds on it. Andrew is forbidden to explain to his little brother why Mommy isn’t coming home or where she went, and when he makes up a rather nice story about what Mommy’s doing on her trip, and Miles understands immediately that his mother has died, without the words ever being said, his father takes Miles away and disregards Andrew’s attempts to explain.

Now that’s downright cruel.

In fact, people guard the youngest kid in this like you wouldn’t believe. In the context of the 19th-century tubercolisis-prone childhood that I suspect this story comes from, this makes sense. But the father and an awful early nanny, who pretends Miles is sick, swoop up to take him away everytime he sets foot outside, downtown, or gets wet and they live in fear of him ever developing a cold. Since Miles tags along and is shown playing with Andrew every chance he gets, this means everyone blames Andrew when Miles happens to plot an escape.

The first nanny is downright creepy and along with a few scenes such as a trip to the market, playing war under a bed etc. the scene that works really well is when Andrew succeeds in mowing her down in her tracks with a bicycle…a scene the movie takes a certain amount of glee in. There are quite a few happy scenes in this…subtly happy, as Andrew’s father undoubtedly comes up with a crummy way to behave toward him. In fact, Gene Hackman does this so well that I find the ending hard to believe…I don’t believe the off-handed neglect here is a new thing.

There are a few sympathetic adults in this: a man at the cemetary, the father’s co-worker, the second nanny, and that and the children playing together and having fun at odd moments actually kept my interest for the entire film. It’s a European style film done in English, and I mean that.

If the film started with melodramatic though good music it occasionally returns to throughout, the rest of it is pretty downplayed. Characters don’t simutanously burst into tears at this…at least, not often…to the film’s credit, though that’s what it’s about.
The good-old-fashioned 19th-century ending was left intact, and in a way that’s great, but it doesn’t work for me — and I love 19th century books. I don’t believe anything Andrew says in the last scene.
I guessed part of the ending early on. The rest of the movie was great to watch for the scenery, but Gene Hackman’s role kept pissing me off just becuase he played things so causally.

Andrew requests repeatedly to be sent away to school toward the end and I agree that that would have worked better. Not really, because he would have been away from home and his brother, and the scenes between the two kids work, but in this type of story, if it was done in a modern style — it would be better to have him placed in a different family altogether. Hopefully with his brother, of course.

It’s interesting to see the 19th-century ending, except they didn’t complete it. Usually that’s about the midway point where this leaves off.

All right, I didn’t expect much from this film, just on the title and cover art alone, but it kept coming up in searches on Amazon.com, so eventually I rented it. I knew it would be a TV movie, probably low-budget, but that was all right, because there are films done that way that I greatly enjoy. Even if they show their age, are overly-manipulative or have old-fashioned sentimental music (all the old Hollywood movies do, naturally, and they are excellent).

This movie is something like an hour and 30 minutes long. In that time, the length of a good sized feature film, the movie squeezes in so many things with so little development it’s really a shame. The film structure itself is relatively simple — 15 year old Terry O’Kelley iis left as head of the family of six younger children after his mother’s death and he must adjust to the new life. Yet I spent a much longer time in this movie trying to figure out what time period it was, how individuals were related than I should have (and considering my fiction, I really shouldn’t complain on this point).

The film opens with over-the-top music. It’s as if the film producers decided, “Hey, let’s make this a Heartwarming Family Movie,” and then proceeded to do it. Granted, a lot of films have done this well. But I thought the film itself was about five years or more older than it’s actual issue date, due to the music, the credit crawls, and the way some things were presented. In fact, every single time anything good or bad happens in this film, the music will tell you — along with oddly-done echoing parts for Very Bad Things.

The film starts at a funeral. Whose it is, is not immediately clear. Townspeople — who you will never see again — come up to offer to take the younger children, as they have been farmed out before due to financial troubles. They offer help. Terry and the other boys decline and say they want to stay together — then they pile into an old pickup.

Their father was also introduced at the funeral and where he goes is unclear. A flashback with a segue (the truck) occurs, though the film had to come back to the funeral scene for me to understand that a flashback had, in fact, occured.

In the flashback, Terry is the child wrangler in the back of the truck while his parents sit up front. They drive up to an old farm and are met by two people who are not at all happy to see them. I thought at first these were townspeople, again, since the funeral had just broken up — and indeed, the old man is addressed by his name (Cecil) and there was no clear indication that they are family (though I thought of that second). The problem is that the father, whose father it is, is shown dropping off the family and then immediately leaving for town without bothering to unpack. He doesn’t address the man as Daddy (or anything else) as far as I recall, and since the film goes into the truck with Terry and his mother, we don’t see the children greeting their grandfather. I mean, they might not hug him, but there would be some interaction.

The film doesn’t take the time.

The family moves to a trailer on the property (which is seen just this once). A hatchery is mentioned as a place to work, and all the kids work, Terry says. Shortly, after this, the kids are shown working in a chicken coop — one which I thought of as a smaller section of the hatchery at first — until it’s very clearly revealed that those were home chores. From the way people talk, act, and dress in the film the time period could be anywhere from the 1960’s to today. But here’s the problem: the point where you as a child are recognized as a adult is a big moment, and during that moment under no circumstances should I, as the viewer, be thinking: “Oh, so that’s who that person is!” Because Terry addresses his grandfather as PawPaw, which is I believe the first time anyone says who the man is. The grandfather is only there in three scenes which is a shame — on the porch, working and not working — and there needed to be more. The film does this again and again, picking vital scenes and jumping right to them, instead of laying relationships ahead of time.

It is made very clear that the grandfather and Terry are related but it does make me wonder. I like the fact that everyone accepts that the father will be no help, because they would have had years of experience. But in some ways it doesn’t work, because he’s not on screen long enough for any tension to build up. And the grandfather accepts Terry as the head of his family. You’d think he’d have some problem with it (they are living on his land, after all).
The only time the children show any interaction with the grandfather is basically done to draw attention to the fact that he’s not working. With the exception of an eleven year old and the next oldest child, none of the other children are defined. When the father shows up, drinking beer on the porch, the identity of the step-grandmother is finally established — too late in the story. The father has been on screen only three other times briefly, and while it’s been mentioned that he’s a truck driver and isn’t home much, and that he can’t be counted on, he hasn’t been mentioned. So when Terry’s anger and frustration — and unfortunately, I’m guessing based on context — cause him to jump the man, complete with doomsday music and echoing effects, it’s supposed to be a big moment. And I’m watching it rolling my eyes. First of all, this is obviously a traditional rural family, and probably community too, since every person Terry interacts with is Sir or Ma’am. So when he shows his lack of respect by calling his dad by his first name, that’s probably supposed to mean something. All it means is that it needs clarification — and unbelievably, the film supplies it: “You beat up our daddy!” exclaims one of the younger kids.

That’s a shame, really. And I’m thinking for about the umpteenth time “Oh, yeah, where have I seen this before: dad’s away all the time, no money, no food, child-headed family, ulcers, beating up on people, standing in at the school for parents…” — Tex (1983), fiction by Disney. Now I have problems with that film too, but not so many. And this film is based on a true story — I looked up the news article afterwards.

And in another moment that reminds me of a S.E. Hinton novel (this time, The Outsiders — and that movie had sentimentality too) — Terry stands in for a parent at school for one of the kids, behaves like a parent, which all the people in the office accept (like in Tex) — and then acts like a kid outside the office. The point of the scene is the same as in The Outsiders: “You’ve got the grades to really make something of yourself.” Now in the context that the two older brothers have quit school to work and considering the background, I can see someone actually saying this. And then the film goes and overdoes it. Hugging, sentimental music and crying complete the scene. Well, darn. The thing that’s annoying is that it should have worked, all they needed to do was ease of it a little. It’s not the acting so much, and it’s not the material, but it would have worked so much better if they’d done things subtly. If these kids are getting up at 5:30 AM to go to work and the younger ones are making breakfast for the others, then use that — and in one scene they do. And if they don’t want the County to know, surely a lot of other people in town would understand that — it looks like that kind of place. On the one hand, adults are almost universally accepting of Terry as an adult, so maybe they didn’t want to interfere.
Eventually, the store and town are shown in a small segment, and they look about like the store and town should look, but here’s the thing — Terry meets some kid he knows but he says he can’t go out and do anything because he’s taking care of the kids. Shouldn’t that have been earlier when there was really a transition? I mean, obviously, being the child wrangler of the family, he’s somehat used to it, and there’s not much protest when he really becomes in charge of everyone — and economically, that’s probably why the family seems to survive relatively well on their own.

There are two parts that make sense to me: the publicity (and lack thereof), the job (and lack thereof) and showdown with the co-guardian, (who’s willing to be co-guardian only so long as Terry is constantly grateful and obliging with little things). When Terry pisses off everyone in town it makes sense — but it does make me wonder what happened to some of the people in the beginning who might have fixed things. It also makes me wonder about the court guardian. A sympathetic character, who treats Terry as a responsible adult but also wants to help him ease up on things, why didn’t she explain his rights regarding paperwork? Just because he’s old enough to sign things doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have representation.

And another thing: the step-grandmother vanishes off the face of the earth. Although she admits a verbal agreement, I doubt she would have surrendered the land so willingly. And the father — if Terry beat him up and “ran him off” as the children say, there needs to be something more there. Even though it’s clear that people are resolved to the fact that he’s never home and won’t help, he’s never actually shown doing much of anything. For instance, it’s never mentioned that he’s not sending money home etc. They kept the “good” scenes and threw out any backstory that would have supported it.

There are such a variety of cars in this movie that it isn’t until I saw a 1986 (or around there) Volvo in the film that I could pinpoint the time period more exactly. The fact that the court guardian drives it made me laugh and makes perfect sense. I should add that in 1986, when we got our car in the city, it was the only Volvo around. To this day, when we go to the country areas like this film shows, people ask “But what kind of Ford, etc. is it?”
I won’t be renting this again. The story is good and there was more they could have done with it. Vital scenes needed to be braced up with background, particularly for the mother, father and grandfather.

For a similar movie, with a lot of children and a emotionally incapitated father, see Papa’s Angels (2000) if you can find it. It’s on VHS but not DVD yet, though I’m waiting impatiently. I almost didn’t see this film on TV and I’m glad I did. It’s about an Appalachian family in the 1930’s. The book, by the lady who played Mayella Ewell in To Kill a Mockingbird was okay, but the movie fleshes it out, adding more characterization, a wonderful set that you really get to know, and excellent bluegrass music. Yes, it’s a TV family movie, too, and I believe it was done by Hallmark (and it shows) but it is done slowly and should have had more recognition than it did. I got the VHS by chance since I never saw it distributed in stores, and I believe they spent a longer time advertising in TV guide and on TV than distribution. It’s really a shame. The father Grins (Scott Bakula) as a great relationship with his kids — among them the deaf oldest child (and narrator of the book), the tomboy daughter, and the oldest boy, all well-defined. When his wife dies, there have been enough scenes with her that the viewer understands what this means to the family. By the time Grins gets to a similar point in the story as Terry got into with his father, at a country dance, and loses his temper, it’s effective. For one thing, the story very carefully established beforehand that Grins doesn’t get mad very often, and when he becomes grief-stricken and changes completely, it sure works. Neighbors and family, like the teacher and grandmother are also shown quite a bit, help support the family and talk about Grins even if he isn’t able to support the family (they don’t skip over this like A Son’s Promise does). Occasionally the story gets a little sentimental, but it works. Rent A Son’s Promise if you want — and it’s too bad I can’t recommend it — but the film is dated, unfortunately, even if the subject matter would still work today and should have worked when it was first filmed.

And go find a copy of Papa’s Angels. The movie is actually better than the book (one of te few times I will ever say that).

(As an aside, the newspaper articles I originally found for A Son’s Promise were through Google News archives — type in Terry O’Kelley and Gainesville, GA, and 1986 articles pop-up all over — but there’s an update that’s very interesting as well at http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/OKELLEY/2005-03/1111980162). It shows that the story didn’t end as happily as the film shows — Terry O’Kelley won custody but had to give it up after a year (and it also gives a more sympathetic view of the co-guardian than the film implied). (The headline for this newspaper article is Band of Brothers: Seven O’Kelleys hang tough despite hard times).

The September 29, 1986 People Magazine, Vol. 26, No. 13, “Promises to Keep,” gives a lot more of the backstory before the mother’s death — living in trailers, moving all the time, having no shoes, having no friends and little education because of moving, the decision to quit school, the history of the father and mother, the younger kids crying after their father left etc.  http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20094623,00.html Great article. It also talks about the grandfather — he was tough but the kids idolized him.

There’s also a nice photo of the house in the movie — apparently on location http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertlz/3235625920/

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=861&dat=19861128&id=rCMPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=NoUDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5025,6944790 the headline for this one is “7 Brothers Still Apart After Nationwide Help” The Victoria Advocate, November 28, 1986, refers to when te brothers took care of themselves: “Moldy food was left out and the pet goat was allowed inside…”

Now the real question is, with all these articles, even if the kids were disillusioned by them either factually or from overexposure, why didn’t the film have any of this? Why didn’t it have the reactions to the father living, the backstory about moving and trailers…kind of shame…here the story is in articles, and they actually had enough time between 1986 and 1990 where the film was done to really do it right. There’s some great material here. They should have waited on the material and done the film later. Maybe a remake.

I haven’t watched this movie recently, so I hope I can do a good review of it. It reminds me a lot of Joe the King. Like Joe the King, A Home of Our Own is also supposed to based on a true story (in Joe the King, the main character is Joe Henry, the scriptwriter is Frank Joseph Whaley; in A Home of Our Own, where the narrator is Shayne Lacy, the scriptwriter is Patrick Sheane Duncan. Kinda neat, huh?).

Of course, everything that happens to a character in a film or book shouldn’t always be assumed to have happened in real life. For example, Patrick F. McManus, Robert Newton Peck, J.G. Ballard, etc. all have characters with their names — and not everything should be assumed to have happened.

That said, this movie’s tone is similar to Joe the King — not much happy happens here, great scenery, filming, good acting — and yet, so much bad happens that it is either true-to-life or badly edited.

Having commented on that, I should also say that due to the amount of time this film spends in its environment — a house being built, literally, by scrounging — you really get to know where the characters live. I wish I could say you get to know all the characters, but there are a lot of them — six children in the Lacey family, only two of which get any particular character development, and the mother, played by Kathy Bates. As usual, Kathy Bates looks and acts like a completely different person in this role than she did in, say, Fried Green Tomatoes, as she should. Like Joe the King, the movie also seems a lot longer than its actual length.
The main parts of the story deal with family warfare between Bates’ character, Frances Lacey a no-nonsense, hard-working, old-fashioned poverty-stricken widow, and her 15 year old son Shayne, the man-of-the-family. (Something she continually reminds him of throughout the film). (One of the repeated funny lines concerns Frances’ husband, referred to consistantly cheerfully as “that Irish son-of-a-bitch” by all concerned).
Like Joe the King, the pattern of A Home of Our Own is set within the first minutes of the film. Shayne is brought home by the police. Frances defends him, then calls for the belt to punish him for petty crimes. This is what makes her decide to move the family into the country.

In fact, in a 104 minute film, Frances calls for the belt about six or seven times if I remember correctly — until it is pretty much assumed that every time Shayne raises his voice, he’s going to get it. (But the film only shows one moment where Frances really physically loses it). Eventually, I began to understand this film in the context of a family study of the time period (the film is set in 1962).

It’s clear that Frances loves her children, though she never apologizes to them, and in fact the driving point of the movie is that she does everything for them, but it seems selfish because she thinks she can go out on dates but the children for example don’t need time to play or toys to play with. Frances wants to instill in them the self-respect to accept no charity — so that when Murray, the only other well-defined family member, barters in a wonderful salvage yard — you understand that she has made a positive impression.

In the context of, say, a working-class family of 1911, the film makes more sense. In that time period, you were expected to work as a general rule, to play as you worked — and people were not neccessarily going to praise you for that. All wages belonged to your family. All work was for the good of the family as a unit. What we think of today as becoming an adult may not have been true then. Doing the work of an adult did not neccesarily mean you were free of family discipline. For example, in one account of the Triangle Fire in 1911, a 16-year-old returned home from the fire, dirty, disheveled, etc. and got a beating from her family (I forget what the reason was, but of course, when they learned of the fire, they were sorry — I also forget which book this is from). In Little Britches by Ralph Moody, Ralph has vocational training at age 8, herding cows and being a cowboy at a ranch. His father says they are partners, and there is one scene in the book where Ralph steals a bit of chocolate, reasoning that it is his because his wages go in the pot. His father finds him, spanks him, and tells him that because they are partners, he could have had the chocolate due to his wages if he had asked and not snuck around.

Set in this type of context, A Home of Our Own makes more sense. Frances never apologizes because her children are children. She is the head of the family and if she wants to go out after working, she has earned that right. The children, meanwhile, are part of the unit of the family, and thus should work on buiding the house — and are shown to be in general remarkably willing to do so. (There is one well-done scene involving a construction accident and Murray). Shayne’s viewpoint is, I assume, that he is the man of the family, which he doesn’t particularly want to be, but if he is, he’s old enough to want to speak like an equal, to address things that he believes are unfair, such as Frances telling fairy tales of how life will be. Frances sees this not as a man-of-the-family trying to act in the role but a child acting in defiance to her.

Interestingly, despite the younger children shown doing destructive things like scribbing on Shayne’s homework or acting up in the car, Frances is seen being rather lenient toward them. There are other complications, too many almost, but there are good scenes as well– the nieghbor, Mr. Moon coming over for holiday dinner, Frances’ boss surprising her by his support, townspeople paying tips with power tools, a scene with the “family bathtub etc.)

I should also say that I have only seen one other film with a salvage yard (The War, 1993) and this film does a great job with that, and with the thrift store the Laceys frequent as well.

The other Lacey children in the film are basically there to complete the large impoverished family and are unfortunately underdefined. If they were poor, something good must have happened. Indeed, the good that happens in the end is somewhat manipulative, but makes sense — though I also feel that it comes too close behind the final show-down between Shayne and his mother to be as effective as it probably should. (For one thing, even if Frances loves her kids, and even if the family bands together as a “tribe,” you are geniunely afraid for what will happen to Murray — and no, it doens’t involve his accident). Also, much like Joe the King, and like real life, any change that happens in this movie is very small — there are no massive Scrooge-redemption moments here, and maybe that’s as it should be.
Having said all this, I would probably watch this again, simply because as much as I would have preferred parts of the film to do otherwise, they must have done something right or I would not be able to think of a character study to do on it. Most films would not show enough to build on.

Today I started scanning old creative writing comments so I can have them on the computer. Then I made a shopping list, stopped by Fry’s to get a very long flash drive for my new Library of Congress player, among other things — God, I’m going to like this thing, I will have to give it a review all to itself — the bank, the cobbler’s to fix my broken purse strap, and the bagel shop to eat a cream cheese thing called a boureka. Very good. I also got a response back from History San Jose re: their archives. They finally got their email and computer problems fixed after lightning hit their light tower, and I have a tentative appt for Thursday. Yay! It’s been a couple months.

I watched two movies over the past two days: Out of the Ashes, which I found cheap enough to replace my VHS — and I Am Because We Are.

The first is about Dr. Gisella Perl, a woman I hadn’t heard anything about until I saw the movie a few years ago. It’s about a inmate-doctor at Auschwitz, and i’ve run into a few old hardbacks from after the war that are similar, though I haven’t read them. I rented it from Hollywood Video. It’s a Holocaust movie and has the — well, if you can say so — usual horrers about it — tattooing, life before the war, how that life was changed, adjusting, causal cruelty — you name it, it has it.

What makes the film spooky is not that Gisella Perl was forced to participate as a doctor, against her will, but using her training to better the lifes of those around her — but the use of flashbacks. These flashbacks are short cuts of film or longer versions as Dr. Perl tells her story to New York officials who want to stop her from practicing in the U.S. What makes them spooky is their suddenness, the change from a perfectly normal conversation in the film to a memory of Dr. Mengele, music on the radio, sudden accusations from other inmates in broad daylight, and also, a very distinct palette change.

Scenes in New York in this film are bright and colorful and except for when Dr. Perl is in her house, which has wood paneling, generally not dark. The scenes from Auschwitz are dark, lit only by one or two bulbs, dingy — often oddly green colored from security lights. These scenes are intercut and the results are striking. You know instantly where you are in these flashbacks — standard colors are “modern-day” post-1945 New York, green or drab colors are Auschwitz, and a gold sepia color are flashbacks from when Dr. Perl was a child.

This is a good cable-produced movie, but not one I generally watch at night.

I wanted to like I Am Because We Are, a documentary about AIDS orphans in Africa…but I disagreed with the delivery. The film is narrated by Madonna and within the first few minutes or so I was hooked.

The film draws you in with the opening lines, has excellent snippets of news footage about the area’s history…a large percentage of child-headed households, an orphanage basically run by children who are assigned or at least take care infants (with an 9-year-old carrying a baby); juvenile prisons where children wait to be aged out into adult prisons. for crimes like stealing a radio; the witchcraft form of disease such as alcoholism (and very likely AIDS as well), and mutilations.

So many interesting things. Anthropologically interesting, humanly interesting…excellent, startling photographs, a wonderful though impoverished area to film in, and an intriguing question somewhere in the middle. How can these people, who sing and are so happy, be happy with such poverty and disease, while we in America cannot? It raises the question of the modernized society and whether a modernized society is right under these circumstances. I thought this was a wonderful question.

And yet…

I actively watched for 30 minutes, and fast forwarded every so often thereafter.

The film has the usual talking heads, officials, doctors, etc. which is fine. It explores the stories of a number of adults and children and gives a good overview of the problems in the country…but talking heads do not always make a good documentary.

After 30 minutes or so of the Poverty Hotline soundtrack playing constantly in the background, the talking heads restricted eventually to an almost constant appeal for help in the area, actually saying that we were all people, etc. I wanted it to end.

It felt as though I was watching a station break program. You know, with the starving children that you need to help.

Are they starving? Most likely. Do they need help? Most likely. Is it a shame they’re orphans? Yes, it is.

Do I wish the film had shown me more in-depth stories of the children and their remaining parents?

Certainly.

The film explains how Madonna adopted one of her children there. Now if she felt the need to adopt, she must surely have seen something in the people she liked, or at least been sincerely interesting in helping one of the children. But this film does not convey that. It tries so hard to convince the viewer that these are humans in need of assistance, that ultimately it fails, in my opinion. The tone is wrong.

For example, one child explains that he is only fed once a day and he is seen to be wringing out his spare shirt and hanging it out to dry. He has friends with families and envies them. But that is all it explores. I wanted the camera to follow this child…what does he do for fun? When? Where? Does he get his shirts at the same place as the food?

If there were only 2 adults to be seen at the orphanage, what else did the children do there? Obviously, as in the child-headed households, they had taken on adult responsibilities, but show me that…

This film has great scenery and good overview, but what I have highlighted above is unfortunately what I felt it showed that was different and better than the usual Help-Children station break. The rest, I felt, was standard…filmed well, but standard.

Maybe I only have a different view of documentaries…But then again, I find nothing wrong with historical documentaries, which are almost nothing but talking heads, photographs and reenactments. This leaned too heavily on the side of the talking heads, and spent astonishingly little time interviewing the children involved. The DVD does include additional interviews in the extras, but I didn’t watch those. I wanted the film to show me a human side of the story…what could it tell me that no other film on the subject could? They had the subjects, the landscape, the experts, but if the film was about the children, then show me directly and without preaching why their stories are important.

Well, the film doesn’t preach, but you get the idea. There are some things I was fairly surprised to see, like the anthropological witchcraft, but all in all…

I wouldn’t rent this again. The tone did not sit well with me.

(2/13) I just finished Snowy Mountain Passage by James D. Houston. The occasionally shifting tense didn’t work for me, and I didn’t get particularly attached to the story. That’s either because I know the story all ready — it’s about the Donner Party — or because I find the way the sentences are structured jarring. I haven’t figured out which.

However, as historical fiction it explores one particular aspect of the Donner Party that I’ve always considered underdocumented and that is, what happened when James Reed and William McCutcheon went over the mountain? MCCutcheon is always described in historical accounts, if at all, as a big man who liked to swear, recite Shakespeare, and didn’t much care what people thought about what he said. Houston remembers this when he makes McCutcheon a character.

Houston also remembers several things that are trickier to find — such as the fact that rescuers were paid large sums to retrieve the survivors of the Donner Party, that streets in San Jose are named for the Reed family (Reed, Martha and Virginia Streets — though Houston only mentions Reed), and that McCutcheon left behind a daughter in the camp. The story mentions in passing that the child died — but doesn’t detail how, which is probably just as well, since the one account I’ve found is shaky at best. If Houston found the same account, perhaps he thought it was too historical unreliable. Houston also mentions that the Reed family settled on Market Street, and that Reed was given a (later contested) orchard. I haven’t heard of the orchard before, or that Salvador’s brother came looking for him. I think maybe that’s fictional.

But Houston mentions that the Donner Party were a bit out for themselves after awhile, that when a second murder occurred they didn’t try to string that person up as they wanted to with James Reed (something I hadn’t heard before). In alternating chapters, he cuts between Reed’s banishment from the camp and journey back to his family, and Patty Reed’s remembrances as an old woman. Occasionally, he makes good use of other cultures which would not have recieved much notice at the time: John Sutter’s native Hawaian wife, or Salavador’s memory of the priests at the mission. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that the Donner Party happened right between the Spanish missions and Native Americans, and just before the Gold Rush. Houston points out these things.

Does make me wonder though…did John Sutter have a Hawaiian wife? This book (and Sutter’s Fort museum) say he was Swiss, which I had never read until I went on a field trip there.

Houston also tries to get inside Jim Reed’s head as he’s getting help for his family and the others. What is he thinking about? What does he regret (other than the stabbing that led to his banishment). Houston raises an interesting point here.

[If I could only remember what it was…]

I always thought Jim Reed was, in a way, remarkably lucky that he almost got himself hung, because if he hadn’t gotten banished, the liklihood that anyone else would have been so determined to go into the mountains in a snowstorm, seems less. Of course, Houston makes it clear that Jim Reed the character may have felt very differently.

Now of course, I’m wondering where the Reed orchard was located…
In the end, Houston wraps up the story by giving a summery of people. He notes one of things I always founds neat, but sometimes hard to find: that kids threw rocks and things at Keseberg later on because of what he did; that Jim Reed was involved in the city council. If I remember right, although he mentions San Jose’s contest for state capital, he doesn’t mention that Reed was involved in that, or that Reed and McCutcheon got into some kind of argument through the newspapers.

What Houston does say is that the Reed’s house on Market Street was eventually lost when Patty Reed was grown. Now there’s something I didn’t know. Now I have to look that up. I know Virginia Reed’s house burned down in downtown San Jose fairly recently, historically speaking, because I’ve handled the historic resource inventory for the address at internship.

I know that McCutcheon and Amanda his wife had other children — if I remember right, one of them was given to the family doctor, and that child may have been the one to become a lawyer in San Francisco — but I’m not sure, as I haven’t looked at paperwork in the California room for awhile. I know that McCutcheon became the sheriff, though it’s a shame there’s not more documentation after that about him. If I remember right, there was a William McCutcham who was a general laborer after a time, and due to spelling differences, that might be have been William McCutcheon. But I don’t know. In his account, Houston has other characters refer to William as Bill or Mac.

Well, even though I know James D. Houston has done history books before, I haven’t read many of them, aside from the book Farewell to Manazar, coauthored by his wife (which I’ve always enjoyed). I met him briefly once at a booksigning at SJSU — I forget for which book. I won’t try and argue historical scholarship here — Houston has enough little throw-away lines in this book that are historically hard to find, that I suspect he’s really done some research.

But even though I’m historically and personally interested in the Donner Party, and especially in William McCutcheon and company, I can’t say the story here ultimately grabbed me. Something about the way it was written. I gravited more toward the Patty Reed entries, the more commonly fictionized character, than I did to the Jim Reed sections. It’s not the language — sentences in this often have great imagery — but some of the rest I found too abrupt.

Maybe that’s just me. Other people no doubt will find that this book moves along fine, that they love what’s been done with it. I have to say i’m impressed with what’s in this book — but not necessarily with the way it was done. I’m not sure why. But because it deals with a part of the Donner Party that’s somewhat neglected and reimagines it, and because it has a better epilogue portion than most, I can’t be too harsh about it. I would refer to this in future if I needed a memory jog about a historical location or something, if I already knew where to search — but I would not refer to it for its fiction alone.

I watched two movies over the past few days, and I have to say ultimately I did not like them. But they did some things which I admire, and so I thought I would write them here. I’ve avoided seeing the movie In the Bedroom for awhile, even though I knew what it was from the trailers. We had to read it in English –  the short story is Killings by Andre Dumas. I’d forgotten much of what happens in the story but after finishing the movie, I was reminded of some of it, and can say that if you enjoyed the story, probably your favorite scenes are here — the son being tended by his parents and the ex-husband’s ride in a car are two scenes that jogged my memory.

However, even though I remembered liking the setup in the story, I also remember as being extremely long, and I was not particularly attached to any of the characters. In the movie, thankfully, I am more able to see them as people — at least until the midpoint.

In the Bedroom starts out with 3 scenes that I was amazed by. The camera goes up and down several streets, showing neighborhoods and houses, goes by a harbor with boats, and shows a neighborhood party where the priest shows up, everyone responds to a woman’s ex-husband coming, and a bunch of kids are playing on the swing set. 3 shots, in the very beginning of the movie. I thought that was great. It showed very quickly what kind of neighborhood this was — everyone knows each other, and if they filmed this on location somewhere, they picked a great spot as far as houses.

The people are also established quickly as a family — they’re smiling and joking and having a great time, and you can believe that they have a good relationship. The mother and father and their college-age son; the son’s older girlfriend and her two sons; the woman’s ex-husband…are all well done. And the father, by the way, takes the girlfriend’s kids out fishing, so it’s obvious that the girlfriend is on good terms with them.

Whoever plays the ex-husband does a good job. Again, any violence is off-camera (maybe for budget reasons), but it works better. You don’t actually see him doing anything violent, but it’s implied that he can. I like the set dressing too…there’s one of those little wall-hanging coat racks with a bunch of jackets on it, and I thought that really worked well. Also, during the midpoint scene — which I won’t give away in case you haven’t read it or seen the movie — there’s a lot of toys smashed all over the floor. That was a nice touch.

But after the midpoint is where I begin to lose interest. The family that was so carefully set up begins to fall apart, which is the point, but still…the father doesn’t take the girlfriend’s kids fishing anymore, no one talks, and there is a complete breakdown of everything that went on previously. Including the community. I mean, the poker games still go on, and that’s shown, and the priest is still there, but where’s the community? I fastforwarding a lot through this.

Then comes a very significant car ride in the film, and after that things will never be the same. While this is similar to several other movies I can think of that I have watched, in some ways it doesn’t work as well — even though the father’s reaction is actually more realistic. The film leaves him in bed, hardly moving, while his wife calls from downstairs.

I didn’t like the ending. The actual midpoint made sense, and realistically so did the character’s reactions throughout, but it didn’t work for me. When the camera pulls away and does a similar aerial shot for the ending, it doesn’t work. The movie leaves the characters right there and doesn’t make an ending for them. Are they all right? Will they stay together? Will things continue as they are? Doesn’t say, and if I remember right, the story didn’t either. This is one of the few times I’ll probably say I liked the movie more than the story. But I don’t need to rent it again.

I saw Joe the King in the video store when it first came out. I thought it might be something like King of the Hill (and no, not the cartoon…the Great Depression version where the kid is constantly lying and hungry…honestly, it’s a funny movie). But I avoided it because I heard bad reviews about it.

So, should I have avoided it?

Yes and no. It’s rated R, not necessarily for any violence or special effects, but for the almost constant swearing. I mean it. Parents, teachers, kids, and shop owners regularly cuss each other out in this. That being said, it’s not quite like it would be if the film was set today — there’s no gang members etc. It’s the 1970’s.

Again, the film has great sets. The insides (and under porches) of houses, railroad containers in front yards, alleys, and a great visual shot of getting to school (hopping over a K-rail). Really does a good job with setting. But there’s also a problem. I could believe that all this stuff could really happen, and I could believe that it could all happen to Joe, who is 14 — but here’s the thing — the character in King in the Hill, in somewhat similar circumstances has a sense of humor — funny things happen, even though he has to survive. That’s kind of what’s lacking in this story. Where are the things that kept Joe going?

The interesting set-up for this movie starts right in the beginning. People throughout this movie are routinely sarcastic and nearly all of them make snotty little comments — all of them. I get that parents and teachers could do this, but even at work, at the pawn shop? Everyone in town? The funny thing is if Joe doesn’t get enough sleep because he works all night and he doesn’t eat because there’s no food, why isn’t he bouncing off the walls? Instead, even though he rarely seems to cause any trouble in class, except by coming in late, teachers single him out and then pull him aside to ask him to pester his father to pay back their money. You’d think they’d want to be nice to him so that the money would get paid back faster.

The movie is kind of like what would happen in The Outsiders if the character Johnny Cade was telling the story. (Actually it’s filmed and lit kind of like that too — to the movie’s credit, because if it was filmed today, it would be blue-colored and darker, and it wouldn’t work).
The theme is pretty well set right in the beginning — Joe is the scapegoat of the story. The early scene that begins it is kind of freaky. The camera shows all the other kids playing — a seven or eight year old Joe is already smoking. (And no, that’s not the freaky part, it’s the kid’s haircut…Good God…).

It’s kind of hard to say why this scene is here, but it’s good to know some background. Joe’s father is the janitor at his school, something he repeatedly denies when asked in class. It’s interesting here that Joe answers the teacher’s initial question correctly — but isn’t praised for it. Some snotty comments from students are encouraged and arrive and Joe is hauled up for a spanking.

I was very surprised, considering more snotty comments from both parents when Joe gets home, that they didn’t immediately add to the spanking. I browsed the web and read some reviews — almost all of which described the father in this as drunk and abusive to his wife and kids. Huh. Well, he is a drunk in this, and a later scene shows that he’s clearly abusive to his wife, and it’s pretty well implied by the way he yanks the kids around and threatens to knock their heads off on a fairly regular basis that he likely is abusive toward them as well. But here’s the interesting thing. The movie only shows him slapping Joe twice. I had to read This Boy’s Life in English and afterwards watched the movie — good movie, but grueling, and so I’m happy to say that while this movie is downbeat and somewhat grueling in it’s own way, there’s no knock-down-drag-out fight at the end either. But that’s good for this movie. It’s grueling because of the snotty comments and the work (and stealing) it shows Joe engaged in every day, but the parents don’t inspire much. You can believe that they’re capable of ignoring their kids when not making snotty comments, but they aren’t really menacing characters.

The movie shows Joe playing at the roller rink — where he’s so euthusitac he doesn’t know how to act — and thereafter shows him running various places — to a night job, to school, under the porch. There are some vaguely sympathetic characters — Joe’s big brother is like his best friend, although he’s friends with a boy who also has a drunk mother — the man at the record store never makes snotty comments, and the guidence counselor, while asking Joe what he wants to do with his life, and ultimately changing things for him, though not in the way you;d expect, says he looks like a bum. (Other people in the movie say the same thing). But while his brother wears at least an fatigue jacket every day and maybe a different shirt, Joe never changes clothes. Which makes sense. His brother also works at the school, cleaning floors, and it’s unclear whether this is to pay for lunches or not — so both kids have jobs and support each other by sharing food when they find any. His coworker at a diner makes sure he eats so he doesn’t eat off other people’s plates.
One of the funny scenes happens when Joe steals some doughnuts. He finds that he has to feed the whole neighborhood’s kids too, because they swarm around the minute food makes an appearance. Joe helps people a little in this movie — he steals everything but he brags about stolen money only once; he pays back creditors; he buys something nice for his mother; he wanders around the house at night tucking in his parents and brother — and interestingly doesn’t appear to know what to do with himself when he’s home alone.

When I looked at reviews I can see why this was compared to the French film The 400 Blows. Both deal with kids who aren’t really bad people but who have parents who are disinterested in them and get caught in the system. But in The 400 Blows, it’s made clear that the parents’ problems occurred because, while the boy clearly got in the way of how they wanted their lives, they didn’t feel they could hit him.

And no, I looked up the title…it doesn’t mean anyone hit him…it’s an expression about raising hell.
In that movie, the boy was fed, got to school late, and in the one scene where he goes out with his family, is shown to be having a pretty good time and joking around with them. I just finished watching that recently as an ex-library item, and then got rid of it. It was slow, which I’m used to, but I also didn’t get a good feel for the boy, his life or the neighborhood. In this movie, you do. (Even though, in this movie, the rather opposite is true — part of Joe’s problem is they do hit him at home).

The 400 Blows clearly influenced a few films — probably this one, and another called The Slingshot, all of them end with in such an usual way — with freeze-frames — that it looks like a signature. The Slingshot is a fantastic film, by the way, and I wish it could be on DVD. I’ve tried to look up the book, but didn’t care for the part I found in an anthology. It has a similar ending to The 400 Blows and Joe the King, but it’s funny. In that movie, Rollie has a good relationship with his family — except maybe his brother. He jokes around with his father, and the main problem occurs because he doesn’t understand what he’s done. (The Slingshot of the title is one he sells to other kids made from his mother’s illegal condoms).

And, in The Slingshot, just like in Joe the King, the family is ultimately sorry about what happens, whereas the same can’t be said for The 400 Blows. The Slingshot is a happier movie, and I like it best, but I can also say that I like Joe the King better than the more-famous The 400 Blows. I guess a different style of movie making. The 400 Blows just didn’t grab me, and I spent much of it with the subtitles on fastforward. While I fast forwarded over bits of slower scenes in Joe the King, I can say that I’m glad they left the slow scenes in, and I even wish they’d included some more. Not because Joe the King is a happy story, but because it does so well making the scenery around Joe’s life work that I wanted to know more about what he thought about. The slow scenes they have are well filmed.
The film doesn’t have a plot so much as an everyday life kind of thing. (When Joe falls asleep in class after being up all night, it reminded me of what a substitute said: it was against school policy to wake these students in New York because they paid the rent and needed sleep more than education). The lowest point in the film, if that could be said in a film were almost nothing lighthearted happens, is when Joe’s brother refuses to speak to him. I guess the lighthearted parts are when Joe does something kind to people he has no reason to be kind to. Strangely, nearly all the children in this movie, except in the beginning, are in general supportive of each other. They cuss each other out and there’s some horseplay, but they like each other. So when they don’t along, in the neighborhood where everyone uses swear words as their first language, it’s actually surprising.

in contrast, Billy Elliot is another more famous film like this one — but I hated that movie. Same swearing, working-class background, fed-up father (Mum has died in that one) and in that case, the dad actually does punch one of the kids, and in the end is supportive but I hated that movie. I swear. For one thing, being supportive in the end didn’t work for me because I doubted the father would be supportive in that particular way — besides the fact that another opportunity would have come along, and people would have come looking for the dad for what he does in being supportive. For another, that film was lit in blue and is very dark — and when the subject matter is like it is, I’m glad that Joe the King is filmed somewhat brightly.
The 400 Blows may be more famous, and this film may be more downbeat than it probably should, but there’s something in this story that I really liked. I would rent it again — whereas I have no desire to watch The 400 Blows again (and that’s kind of tame compared to this). I started watching the commentary on the DVD and I’ve got to say if you want directors to get back to the technical commentaries and stop playing around with various actors on tape, than this a good place to start. So far it hasn’t shown which parts of this movie were semi-autobiographical, but it does show why certain camera angles were used, what was cut out, and why. It’s good to see that.

The thing that reminded me to watch this movie was www.joblo.com, (if you search for Jo Blo scripts in Google, you’ll find the section I want) has readable movie scripts for Gran Torino, Back to the Future etc. Some of them are the awful transcripts — better than nothing, but still…and some are actual scripts. Joe the King was in their system when I reviewed Gran Torino, but darn it, when I checked back, it’s not there. Too bad. The commentary refers regularly to scenes that were cut and I wanted to find out more. But the script so far as I can tell is gone.

The commentary says a lot of description was removed from the script. Kind of a shame, really. I’d like to read that.

Today I’ll be reviewing The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson. (No, it’s not about pirates). I picked it up to read on the train the other day, and it’s a fantastic historical book about an 1800’s cholera epidemic. It sets up the neighborhood in London first by explaining the various scavengers — rag-pickers, bone collectors, scrap metal, as well as the people who worked specifically in the sewers (a job I only recently read about fictionally in The Quincunx by         ).

But this book is about an actual epidemic. This book has cliff-hangers like any good detective story. It explores what the inhabitants of the neighborhood did for a living, what they ate and drank, and also the common medical beliefs of the day  — humors, constitutions, miasmas — and the social class problem. I’m familiar with this terms and their medical meanings, but I haven’t seen a book explore them before by demonstrating how they were used in combination, and how this restricted the germ theory.

This actually makes sense because today we believe in the germ theory, that diseases can be transmitted by water, and that you must rehydrate yourself if you have a fever. I may have picked the wrong things to demonstrate, but the fact is that we don’t generally believe in these things are isolated from one another. Likewise, Johnson shows that the social bias of the time influenced how neighborhoods were built, which influenced where people got their water — which in their own minds reinforced the idea that the lower classes by their inferior constitutions (something like an immune system) and filthy habits which caused miasmas (bad smells which caused disease) — brought about their own deaths from cholera. It also explores how religion influenced medicine.

Like a detective story, this book shows how a doctor interpreted these events, how he set out to prove that cholera came from the water when folkloric medical beliefs suggested otherwise. He did two very important things — interviewing people about deaths and any details about their daily life, and making a map that showed not only where the cholera began and how it traveled but why. The maps adds sociology — and this I think is especially interesting, given that years later, in 1911, Popenoe’s eugenics textbook will still hold to the old ideas, that internal constitutions of poorer, schizophrenic patients make their deaths from consumption likely — not that the sociology and living conditions make the germs spread.

So this study of cholera was very much ahead of its time. The doctor in it sets out to prove cholera’s transmission through water against the commonly accepted disease theories of the time period. The author supports any theories mentioned by explaining thier history, but then goes back to the drama of the neighborhood’s inhabitants.

I liked this book and would highly recommend it, especially if you want to understand how people thought about disease transmission, about how Victorian cities were built, or what it was like to live and work in London. I’m surprised I have not heard of The Ghost Map before.

I thought I would review Emily of New Moon today, although it’s been a few months since I’ve read it.

I discovered the TV series at a store, and was immediately interested, if for no other reason than it was a historical children’s drama done in Canada. I love the way some of those TV shows are filmed and written (Pit Pony season 1 comes to mind, excellent illustration of family life and child labor and has well-defined characters). I rented Season One and was by turns impressed by some scenes (as when Emily confronts Aunt Elizabeth about her books, or when Emily damns a group of relatives to hell), and dismayed or irritated by their melodrama (Emily spends much of episode one screaming at various times as her cat is left behind, tossed from a wagon and thrown out of a window). Even though the novel was written by L.M. Montgomery, the author who wrote Anne of Green Gables, and this implies it is an early-20th-century book, (as it is), but I was inspired to read the series of books because I was certain some of the scenes had been stretched to fit modern tastes.

Would a child in 1915 really speak to a group of adults as Emily does? I thought it was pretty bold for a child of that time period.
Now other rude children like Mary in The Secret Garden spring to mind, but the answer is yes, in the first book she does speak rudely to the adults, and she does confront Aunt Elizabeth about her books in roughly the same way as in the movie.

There are extensive changes from the books, and in most cases, I think for the better. I slogged through the second and third books, uninterested by Emily’s various suitors, understanding why the book was so internal (Emily wants to be a writer and it is largely how she develops skills), but I felt that there were missed opportunities. You don’t learn very much about the inhabitants of the village in any way except through Emily’s diary at times, I didn’t feel attached to Teddy, Perry or Ilse, Emily’s friends, etc. Also, very little seems to actually be happening (more happens in the first book, in my opinion). This makes sense because the book is about observing things, and its said that the Murrays of New Moon keep to themselves, but wouldn’t observing townspeople at least or church or rare gathering places be useful? Granted, I suppose it’s more realistic than Anne of Green Gables, in that Emily is not off having adventures all the time, but I felt that was rather a shame. I’m not a large fan of Anne of Green Gables or L.M. Montgomery anyway.
The TV series keeps the best parts of scenes in the books, makes up several others so that something happens in each episode (sometimes melodramatic, sometimes not), and changes several incidents. For instance, the first book starts with Emily’s father dying of tuberucolis — a common theme in books like this, and one that would have been familiar in reality to people of the time. But this means that Emily’s father is too tired to do anything during the first chapter, except die. The TV series corrects this, by showing that he dislikes public school (which is amplified by a beating Emily gets at school) — causing her father to knock the teacher around. Well, at least he’s doing something. Then a sudden heart attack finishes him off, and Emily is made to draw lots as to which relative wants her.

I thought for certain the lots were created for the TV series, but there they are in the book too. Also, another scene (Lofty John and the apple), and a funny scene where chore boy Perry ends up naked before company are also in TV series and book. Other things I wish the TV series had developed further — they make good use of an unconventional teacher, and Perry’s aunt (who appears in a second season), but the episode that tries to show what happened to Cousin Jimmy to make him “not all there” is more confusing than the lines in the book that inspired it.

For instance, early on in the TV series, Emily is asked to take out the cows — and if writing and reading are forbidden in this new home (a device I thought was wonderful) — why is she not also making up stories while doing chores? In the book, if I remember correctly, she is rarely shown doing any chores at all, and you can’t tell me that a working farm during this time period, however poor, would not have children working. In the TV series, Perry the chore boy is hired, and the scene where he wants to go to school is expanded, but very little use is made of his character — even though he lives in the same house as Emily and she sees him every day. In the book, she’s friends with him as well, but I thought good use wasn’t made of her friends there either (though I did enjoy the “yo’ mama equivilant in the series and book between Emily and Ilse).

In the second season, cows, chickens and sheep are ordered slaughtered by Murray relatives (who did not exist in the book). Although you see the horse and occasionally cows, and the barn is Cousin Jimmy’s place, you rarely see any chores except sweeping up being done and I was not aware the family actually possesed sheep.

so I read all the books. I like the first one best, though I doubt I will check it out again. I had no use for the second and third, and I felt they dragged, and although I find the TV series has it’s high and low points, and is not as well-produced as Pit Pony, I am in the middle of the second season and plan to watch the third. I feel that they actually made improvements by changing what happens drastically. As far as production values, I should add that the scenery, props, lighting, costuming and general construction of the series are as well done as I would expect from a Canadian period piece. They are as well done as Pit Pony or Anne of Green Gables. That said, there are parts of this series that are over-acted or difficult for me to believe — almost never the case with the Pit Pony series, even though both that and this series contain ghosts.

So I am finishing season two, waiting for season three, and waiting for impatiently for season 2 (the final season) of Pit Pony on DVD. The first was released years and left an excellent cliff-hanger and I’ve been dying to find out what happens to the characters. I can’t say I have the same impatience for this series — but be that as it may, I now own the first season of Emily of New Moon on DVD.