1 degree...

...according to our outdoor thermometer this morning. In honor of the weather everywhere:

The Rural Juror, etc.

I'd never watched 30 Rock until a few weeks ago. After hearing a few good things about it I started watching it from the beginning, on my computer via Netflix. I'm about half way through season one and it's terrific - very funny stuff. I didn't think they could make funny shows anymore on network television. The whole "Rural Juror" gag is hilarious - I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. Perhaps because I can't say it myself. I've always had trouble putting r's and l's together, for instance the word "scholarly" - can't do it unless I talk real slow. Anyhow, if you haven't seen "The Rural Juror" episode and plan to you don't want to watch the below video. If you have seen it and enjoyed it, enjoy again:

Jack's Back?

I mentioned awhile back that 24 had jumped the shark last season. Always implausible, it nonetheless had been riveting television for many years and served the useful purpose of reminding Americans that there are people out there who want to kill us. But last season descended into pure ridiculousness, what with a man cutting off his own arm (in silence no less, while Jack Bauer stood on the other side of the door), Russians smuggling nuclear weapons into the country and then threatening to go to war with us (!) because, after Jack secured the bombs, one of them went missing and it had all the Russian defense secrets encoded on it's internal computer chip (idiots). Then there were Jacks' dad and geeky brother being involved with the terrorists, some shady Chinese, a comatose Audrey, and other various and sundry howlers. The whole season was a mess and I looked forward not at all to the coming season. I figured I'd give it a shot for a few episodes but if it hadn't improved would drop it and never look back. It's very rare for a television show that's jumped to jump back.

I've watched the first three hours of this season and am so far pleased. It really got going in the third hour when (spoiler alerts!!!) Jack (along with old faithfuls Bill Buchanan and Chloe O'Brian) helps Tony Almeida escape from the FBI - Tony hasn't turned terrorist after all, he's under "deep cover" trying to find out who has infiltrated our government. The plot is quite intriguing and I'm looking forward to finding out what happens next. One quibble: did they have to use the execrable Janine Garofalo as the FBI's version of Chloe? Who knows though, she might be perfect for the part: maybe we're supposed to hate her. At any rate, my wife and I got a kick out of "the battle of the Chloes" with the real Chloe breaking into the FBI's computer system and the other, no doubt lesser Chloe, trying to keep her out. Being 24, you know our girl will always win out. We love Chloe.

"You're Quite a Boy"

So says Ingrid Bergman to Cary Grant in the opening sequence of Notorious and who would argue with her? Not Eva Marie Saint, a few years later, in North By Northwest: (Grant: "When I was a little boy, I wouldn't even let my mother undress me." Marie Saint : "Well, you're a big boy now"), nor Grace Kelly, in To Catch a Thief, as she presents Grant with some cold chicken at a picnic: ("You want a leg or a breast?"), nor Audrey Hepburn, in Charade: ("Won't you come in for a minute? I don't bite, you know, unless it's called for.") It's true that when Ralph Bellamy tells Rosalind Russell, in His Girl Friday, that he finds Grant sort of charming, she responds: "Well, he comes by it naturally - his grandfather was a snake," but that was the early Grant, the pre-war Grant, the slapstick Grant of Bringing Up Baby, the bravura comedian of Gunga Din. No woman alive would have called the "Cary Grant" character of the post-war years a snake. That Grant, as Pauline Kael wrote in her monumental essay, The Man From Dream City, was:

...a peerless creation....[w]ithout a trace of narcissism, he appears as a man women are drawn to - a worldly, sophisticated man who has become more attractive with the years....[t]he sensual lusciousness was burned off: age purified him....His acting was purified, too; it became more economical. When he was young, he had been able to do lovely fluff like "Topper" without being too elfin, or getting smirky, like Ray Milland, or becoming a brittle, too bright gentleman, like Franchot Tone. But he'd done more than his share of arch mugging - lowering his eyebrows and pulling his head back as if something funny were going on in front of him when nothing was. Now the excess energy was pared away; his performances were simple and understated and seamlessly smooth. In "Charade," he gives an amazingly calm performance; he knows how much his presence does for him and how little he needs to do. His romantic glamour, which had reached a high peak in 1939 in "Only Angels Have Wings," wasn't lost; his glamour was now a matter of his resonances from the past, and he wore it like a mantle.

The Washington Post this morning publishes this fine article by Sarah Kaufman about Grant. The article is timely in that a week ago I mentioned in passing that Humphrey Bogart was "my favorite actor this side of Cary Grant." Kaufman, who references Pauline Kael's article in her column, attempts to get to the bottom of the same thing Kael was writing about above: how critical Grant's physical grace was to his success.

It's always there, in every role, in the way he walks, the way he slips a hand into his pocket, the way he stands, with his shoulders melting just a bit toward the co-star his character is invariably secretly in love with.

Kaufman also reference's David Thompson's quote about Grant being "the best and most important film actor in the history of the cinema." Yes. She also calls His Girl Friday "one of filmdom's most perfect creations", and I couldn't agree more. Grant's portrayal of the Walter Burns character in the movie is perhaps the finest comic performance in the history of the movies. Watch the first six minutes of this video to get a taste:



Finally, here are a couple of clips from later period, once Grant had transformed himself into the suave, sophisticated icon, the man every other man wanted to be, the man every woman wanted. The first is the famous kiss scene with Ingrid Bergman in Notorious, the second Grant's conversation with Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest, two of the sexiest scenes in movie history:

Groundhog Day

Sometimes you post something at just the right time. In my previous post (scroll down) I mentioned that I considered Groundhog Day one of the best movies of all time. I backed up my assertion by referencing conversations I've had about the movie with my buddy Mike and then linking to Jonah Goldberg's homage to the movie at National Review.

Then, right on cue, the New York Times earlier this week published Stanley Fish's Ten Best American Movies and he includes Groundhog Day. Fish is some sort of post-modernist literary theorist so there was some talk between Jonah and Mark Steyn on The Corner about how non-post-modernist Fish's list was. Steyn mentions Fish's inclusion of Meet Me in St. Louis, about as corny (but wonderful) a movie as can be, as perhaps some sort of joke Fish was pulling on his readers. But is Fish any different from most people who make up these lists? How often do you find movies from the past ten or twenty years on these lists? Answer: rarely. Almost all of us go back to the past when we consider the movies we love best, which is pretty fair evidence that they don't make 'em like they used to. Fish may be a post-modernist but he knows an enjoyable movie when he sees one.

So what do I think of Fish's list? Not bad. We agree on Groundhog Day. Besides that, Fish includes a lot of very good movies, some great. The Best Years of Our Lives, Sunset Blvd., Shane, Meet Me in St. Louis and Red River are all very fine movies though I certainly wouldn't put them in my own top ten.

Raging Bull I consider to be highly overrated. Certainly Scorcese's talents are fully on display here but is the movie really that enjoyable? I got much more enjoyment out of Goodfellas, Mean Streets, and Taxi Driver than Bull.

Vertigo is also a fine movie but Hitchcock probably did a dozen things better. Off the top of my head I think of The Lady Vanishes, The 39 Steps, Foreign Correspondent, Rebecca, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, and North By Northwest as being superior to Vertigo.

I've never seen A Tree Grows in Brooklyn so I can't comment on that.

That leaves Double Indemnity and here Fish is on to a real gem - I love this movie, film noir at its very best. If is not in my top ten then it is very close. Fred MacMurray is perfect and Barbara Stanwyck even more so - she is the femme fatale of all-time. What man would not follow her down to his doom? He may even know it's coming but oh what a ride. If you've never had the pleasure, see Double Indemnity. A clip from the movie of MacMurray and Stanwyck's first encounter to whet your whistle:



My own movie top ten list will be forthcoming. I know you await with bated breath.

We'll Always Have Paris

I'm reading a marvelously entertaining book by Aljean Harmetz, The Making of Casablanca:Bogart, Bergman, and World War II, another Christmas gift from my wife. For many years, if asked, I would claim my favorite movie of all time was The Godfather but lately I'm not so sure. I find Casablanca so compellingly watchable that any time I run across it on television I can't pull myself away. There are a few other movies like that, movies that I can watch any time with pleasure - The Shop Around the Corner, (which I mentioned in one of this blogs very early posts), It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday, Groundhog Day. "Groundhog Day", you say? Yes, Groundhog Day. For years my buddy Mike and I discussed and considered the movie as one of the all time greats. It was not just a great comedy, it was also a love story, a morality tale, and a story of redemption, all wrapped up inside a tremendously funny movie. Mike and I thought it was just the two of us who appreciated its greatness until Jonah Goldberg wrote this column in National Review a few years ago. Clearly it wasn't just us. Read Jonah's appreciation of the movie, then rent it and watch it again. One of the finest movies ever, certainly of the past twenty years. (Another of what I consider one of the best movies of the past twenty years that may surprise you: this one.)

But I think if at this point of my life I had to pick a single desert island movie, it would be "Casablanca." It's as near to a perfect movie as can be. It's full of humor, romance, and suspense. It has some of the most memorable lines in movie history, and it has the perfect ending - the cynical hero performing a selfless act for the greater good. He gives up the girl, and his cynicism, to rejoin the fight. And, of course, it has Bogart, my favorite actor this side of Cary Grant, and Ingrid Bergman, the most radiantly beautiful actress ever. She exuded both innocence and sensuality at the same time. She had a perfect face and a perfect voice. When she is on the screen it's impossible to take your eyes off her.

"The Making of Casablanca" is chock full of interesting nuggets. Ingrid Bergman would apparently fall in love with many of her on screen lovers during filming (though interestingly Bogart was not one of them.) The book claims she had over a dozen affairs with her costars or her directors. But her love only lasted until the filming was complete:

...she was happiest when the emotions she was feeling on screen could spill over into real life. Bergman's first husband, Petter Lindstrom, told a biographer that his wife worked best when she was in love with her costar or her director. Whether the love was chaste or carnal, it never lasted beyond the last scene. Of his affair with Bergman on Saratoga Trunk, a bemused Gary Cooper told one journalist, "In my whole life I never had a woman in love with me as Ingrid was. The day after the picture ended, I couldn't get her on the phone."

That story made me laugh out loud. The book contains dozens of other interesting and amusing stories about the making of the movie, the studio system and its workings, the actors and their off screen personalities and peculiarities (Bogart, for instance, was extremely difficult to get to know. While not a primadonna, he was a loner who would retreat to his trailer once a scene was complete. Bergman summed it up: "I kissed him, but I never knew him.")

At any rate, if you love the movie the book will entertain you. If you don't love the movie, well, what's wrong with you?

Here's that perfect ending:

UPDATE: Looks like the original video I posted is no longer available. Here's another version:

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

New Year's Day, time to take down the Christmas tree. When it's over, it's over, and it's time to move on. I put on disk two of the Bing Crosby collection It's Easy To Remember, a Christmas gift from my bride, while I worked. The first song on the record is the title of this post and it made me smile and shake my head. A pretty appropriate song to see out 2008, don't you think? The worst part is that the song may also sum up 2009 and beyond. Economically, things are bad out there and there's not much good on the horizon. I don't see anything changing until at least the second half of the year and probably not even then. I'm a bit afraid we may be entering the start of a long period, measured in years, of little or no growth, with static, moribund economic conditions. Obama's economic stimulus package will stimulate little, just as its model, FDR's New Deal, didn't. Aah, but I won't get into ideological battles, not today. Like I argued over a year ago, conservatism is dead in this country and those of us who still adhere to its tenets are in the political wilderness. And that's okay. Life is not all about politics (God forbid) nor is it all about money. Time to concentrate on other things. If I'm going to start blogging again my conversation will concentrate less on politics and economics, more on the arts - books, plays, movies, television - and life in general.

Happy New Year to you. My mom got me this Jo Stafford collection for Christmas this year and it is simply outstanding. What a voice. Ms. Stafford, who passed from the scene earlier this year, enjoyed a long, successful career, though apparently was not as popular with the critics as the public. But the public was right. Her voice was gorgeous, rich and resonant, and she sang the songs straight, with impeccable phrasing. Few are the female vocalists who could deliver a romantic ballad like her. There are about 100 songs in this collection; here is just one example of what you'll get if you purchase this record, the finest version of "Long Ago and Far Away" I've ever heard: