Indeed, according to the main story of a local rag, Media, Penna. is the first American “Fair Trade Town.”
Fair Trade is described as “a movement to make sure that the producers of goods in developing countries are paid fairly, especially small producers (more…)
Unlike Gold Rush, this silent is, apart from a perky soundtrack with piano, harpsichord, and theatre organ accompaniments, actually silent: but the situations are so typically human that one easily fills in the dialogue, with help of course from the titles. Buster Keaton plays a nebbish fellow that despite genuine qualities never can seem to impress Marceline Day, a young girl of timeless beauty; or can he?
Includes a fine throw-away scene of Keaton miming a big-league pitcher in Yankee stadium.
Full of lots of slapstick, as a silent comedy must be. The story of the heart will make the movie appealing to women as well, however.
(Warning: there is a disturbing disregard for the Sabbath that must be “bracketed” as part of the culture being depicted in order to enjoy.)
I checked this out on a peradventure, feeling one day a lonely need to hear a southern accent. I was sadly disappointed.
Trying no doubt to be funny, this movie spoofs the South by a continuous mocking of Christianity, including the frequent taking of the Savior’s name. Even Santa– which we of course reject, but which, let the viewer beware, does function as a Christian symbol for the Hollywood ignoramuses that serve up this stuff– is made more vulgar by walking around in boxer shorts.
The store’s “Chanuka in August” campaign is something only self-important Hollywood could have thought of. 98% of Americans don’t give Chanuka a thought even in December– and that includes a goodly number of Jews.
The sappy love story of the main girl (Laura Breckenridge) is deconstructed by a pseudo-reality post-production faux-interview, in which everything that might have had a bit of charm in the movie is rendered base.
This is a story about Al Capone and how the feds bagged him.
The movie could hardly be surpassed for crisp dialogue, quick character definition, and directorial placement, tension and release, angles.
It is as expected a satisfying performance by Robert Deniro (as Capone), Sean Connery, and Kevin Costner.
There is a famous scene involving, shall we say, a unique use of a baseball bat.
There is the great line from Sean Connery, “just like a dego to show up to a gunfight with a knife” which begs for the response, “just like a mic to think this dego showed up with just a knife.”
The story of Al Capone is well enough known that I cannot be accused of spoiling by mentioning the outcome: they only can get Capone for tax evasion.
This is surely the most disturbing message of the film, even if inadvertent: “We your government cannot protect you from mass murderers and extortionists as such. Hey, what are we, miracle workers?
“But don’t cheat on your income tax. Don’t hold back from us, or we’ll get you sucker. Yes, we’ll get you.”
But I thought we forked over the tax money in order to be protected from murderers and extortionists!
Avoid succumbing to the movie’s statist message by going in with your eyes open.
Apparently about a girl that wants to become a boxer, the movie is actually not about boxing, let alone female boxing. The film raises the question, can the desire to end one’s life ever be justified or at least understood.
In other words, it is about euthanasia, a word coined from the Greek for “good death” or “pleasant death,” but which actually is a euphemism for murder, or self-murder, justified by criteria supplied by a society so addicted to its god of pleasure and pride that, when that god fails, the universe should properly end.
Eastwood attempts to elevate the film to the status of a true ethical dilemma by having his character visit a priest periodically to discuss deep issues. However, these discussions miscarry. The message, also consistent with the conceit of our age, seems to be that the mere raising of “deep” questions is a sign of spirituality. But those of us that have followed the career of Woody Allen have seen through the sham of that. Always learning, never knowing.
For plotting, pacing, and structure this movie is excellent, possibly Clint Eastwood’s best.
It is, I submit, objectively painful to see females boxing. One can imagine worse things, but one has to strain. How about: a girl wearing heavy boots and heaving a live grenade into a foxhole while being torn up by machine gun bullets.
But why subject ourselves to such images?
Perhaps the grotesqueness of the image is a metaphor for the theme the movie wants to bring home: fight and win, or die. That’s what life is. Nurturing is another illusion for the self-deceived.
That’s what life without God is in fact. I don’t recommend wallowing in it.
The PCA has been beating its breast for several years now on the subject of racial reconciliation.
The 30th GA, which I believe was in 2002, adopted Overture #20 from Nashville, which declared in part:
“We therefore confess our involvement in these sins. As a people, both we and our fathers, have failed to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the laws God has commanded.”
I hope to some day deconstruct the entire overture and its backwash. Right now, I’m just stuck on the phrase “both we and our fathers.”
By their “fathers” they obviously mean their great-great-grandfathers who may have owned slaves and/or defended the practice.
They are repenting, in other words, for something their “fathers” did not see the need to repent of; or at any rate, did not repent of.
When someone repents of his fathers’ sins, which his fathers did not even believe were sins, is this a sign of being humbled under conviction of sin, or is it more likely a noisy bit of self-righteous posturing?
Moreover, since the statement defines the fathers’ sins very broadly (”failed to keep the commandments, the statutes, and the laws God has commanded”) I presume that everyone could justly follow in the footsteps of the PCA and repent of the sins of his fathers (if the PCA can justly do so).
I’m just wondering why they didn’t, while they were at it, go all the way back to their “father” Adam and repent of original sin.
A Charlie Chaplin comedy. Originally silent, but was voiced-over in the 40’s and it works well. (I suppose silent-movie purists could turn off the sound if they are willing to give up the music as well).
Many scenes tricked loud guffaws from me. The tipping-house sequence is well-known. This is not a “meaning of life” kind of movie; it’s for when you need to be tickled for an hour and a half at the end of a hard week.
Must like physical comedy to enjoy Chaplin, of course.
Psychological story about the outworking of guilt. Someone did something terrible and forgot it because of the mental pain; behavior starts to reflect the tacit guilt in strange ways. An interesting watch, though finally dry and unsatisfying due to false way of redemption. Also, some plotting defects and taking the Lord’s name. Could be a good discussion-starter on the real problem of guilt and redemption.
Italian Umberto Eco is a creative linguist and semiologist made famous in American literary circles by his novel “Name of the Rose” (which should not be judged by the dirty movie based on the novel). Cardinal Martini is an Italian prelate noted for his intellectual gifts. This book reprints a friendly newspaper debate between the two some years back.
Here is a just a brief sampler of some of the topics.
Abortion
Eco is “pro-life” but “doesn’t want to impose” etc. Sees Creationism (as opposed to Traducianism) as allowing for flexibility as to when the human soul is present. Martini appeals to meaning of life as participation in divinity, rather than divine fiat by covenant. Refers to “mother earth” “with all her tremors, fecundity, and breath.” (p. 47).
That intellectual popery must appeal to pantheism to ground a key social position of the church says all that needs to be said there. On the other side, Eco’s appeal to Creationism (thus, ironically, showing more theological acumen as an agnostic than his churchman opponent) is however very weak indeed. At best, Creationism plus a “but who knows when” converts the problem of abortion from “this is homicide” to “this might be homicide.” But this is hardly a solution to one desiring a clear conscience before God.
Role of women
Eco sees scriptural evidence as culture-determined. Can’t understand why women can’t be ordained.
Martini says…Tradition! Earlier justifications have fallen by the wayside, but they were merely culture-bound attempts to explain something that must be profound and divine to have lasted this long in both west and east.
Again, though both parties are confused, at least agnostic Eco is dealing in a theologically coherent category.
Martini’s appeal to tradition as pointing to something “profound and divine” is too convenient. At one time, any given practice that we now, with centuries of hindsight, refer to as tradition was not tradition. The question every traditionalist needs to ask is what the justification of the practice at that earlier point would be.
The hidden premise seems to be that any incorrect practice or belief will eventually die out; consequently, hindsight can be appealed to under the rubric of “tradition” to argue, by modus tolens, that a surviving practice “must be” good, divine, beneficial, or whatever.
Oddly enough, this viewpoint is a kind of conceptual Darwinism. Or we think of Marx, with his prediction that capitalism would die out due to its own contradictions.
There is some truth to the model. However, that it proves divine warrant is a category confusion. A surviving practice might show a propensity to survive certain hostile conditions in a brute way; and that might be all.
Foundation of ethics without God
At length, Martini springs the ethical “nuclear” argument: without God, how do you get to first base with an ethical “ought”?
Eco sees the answer in an ego-other dialectic that is rooted in the ego. The other defines and validates the ego; thus, an other-oriented ethic is inescapable.
However, this confuses “is” with “ought.” Mix together “this is” and “I prefer” and shake as hard as you like; you will never get an “ought,” as C. S. Lewis and others have pointed out.
The weakness of both men’s arguments on various issues should serve as a confidence-booster to reformed ethicists of presuppositional orientation.
This is a play done as a movie. The whole story takes place in a motel room, via dialogue and antics.
It is an exposé of conscience. One friend (Ethan Hawke) challenges the other to be honest in terms of the way he thinks about and talks about a certain incident with a girl that happened a few years before. Hawke is relentless in not allowing the friend to evade and self-deceive. Then the girl (Uma Thurman) shows up! The dialogue continues with even more mutual examinaton.
It is painful but edifying. It is strange to see unbelievers (the personae make no religious connections) fuss so much over honesty and integrity. By the same token, no redemption is offered other than the self-cleaning that presumably occurs by the process. The movie is thus both a rebuke and a scare-crow to any Christian that has become presumptuous.
There is a gratuitous taking of our Savior’s name that almost ruins the movie, unless one thinks that this brings out the bankruptcy of salvationless, autonomous man to an even greater extent.
About the WW2 battle of Stalingrad, Russia, lost by the Germans.
Shows some of the horrors of war in the tradition started by All Quiet on the Western Front.
The two main problems:
On the other hand, for stunning, evocative cinematography and emotional “moments” it exceeds anything Spielberg could do.
Thus, I’m giving it a 1; a squeaky 1, but a 1.
(See also MRB’s review of the documentary by same name.)
Obviously, there are many systems out there for rating movies. We may catalog the systems like this:
The problem with the first (binary) system is not so much the subjectivity of the rater. That is a given anyhow. No, the problem is that it makes no distinction between “this is a movie that could be enjoyed once, especially if nothing else is available” and “this is a movie to be seen yesterday it’s so good.”
Hence the move to the graded system. However, there are two problems with most graded sytems. The first is accidental yet pervasive: it is usually based on the “vote” of many people whom you don’t know and (frankly) whose opinions you don’t necessarily care about. This is especially unuseful for those whose tastes do not generally move with the herd.
But even where the graded number is given by someone you have come to trust, or tend to agree with, or whatever, a distinction is missing between quality simpliciter and quality that nourishes. A movie might warrant a “3″ according to one criterion, or a “5″ on another one. A system using emoto-words like “liked it,” “loved it” still falls short: a movie that I loved watching might still be in the “once was enough” category, while one I merely “like” might be worth seeing several times.
The problem with the multi-category system is simply that it is too complicated, and moreover, the number given in each category is liable to the same criticisms given for the simple graded system.
Hence my system. The definition of the Harris Index is this: the number of times I would think it worthwhile to view the movie in a lifetime.
Sometimes, you are sorry you saw the movie even once. It gets a Harris Index of 0.
Many times, you are happy you saw a movie, but now you’ve seen it, and that will do. It gets a 1.
Other times, you know you will want to see it again. I submit that often, you even intuit how many times will probably be right in a lifetime. That number is the Harris index. A great movie might get a 10, 20 or even 30.
Butler observed that there is an ambiguity in the Harris Index for high-index movies, namely, the number would increase with increasing projected life span. There are some movies so great that one could imagine still watching over and over at the age of 1,000. What number to use then?
This led to Butler’s corollary to the insight, which kicks in for certain ultra movies. The Butler index is the number of times you would expect to see a movie every decade, ad infinitum (d.v.).
A movie like Godfather, for example, one might expect to see, say, twice a year into the indefinite future. It gets a BIx of 20. On the other hand, maybe Sound of Music, great as it is, would be exhausted after the 25th viewing, no matter when or how. It would get an HIx of 25.
Obviously, most movies only qualify for an HIx. There might be 10 or 20 ever made that will qualify for a BIx.
The BIx is necessary for those 10 or 20, however, since the HIx would be infinite unless one made an arbitrary assumption of life-span.