Time away from school has given me the opportunity to watch some movies. Unfortunately the only movie I got out of the house to see was King Kong. Yuck. I have seen some movies recently out on DVD. If you need a date movie, you couldn't do much better than Hitch. This film is wise about the ways of men as they try to attract women, and it is also pretty funny. While it gets a bit too "Hollywood" at the end, it is still an effective film. Another film on men and women is Broken Flowers. Bill Murray now has done the quad. This is his fourth straight film where he plays the bored middle aged man going through his crisis. The other films were Rushmore, Lost in Translation, and The Life Aquatic, which I present in order of chronology and quality, although I must say they are all worth watching, as is Broken Flowers. The film asks the question, "Why do men want/need women." I don't think it gives a definitive answer, but the investigation is worth seeing. I warn you that the movie has one of those "That's the ending?" endings. Cinderella Man was a disappointment. Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger are perhaps my two favorite actors and the film consciously tries to mimic the films of my favorite director, Frank Capra (the appellation "Cinderella Man" was ascribed to Longfellow Deeds in the original Mr. Deeds Goes To Town). But the film seems to go through the motions of the tear jerker/sports film. At best movies do a mediocre job of filming boxing, and Cinderella Man is worse than most. In real boxing the fighters don't just wail away on each other until one goes down. Also, I discovered later that the film does a hit job on the boxer Max Baer. The film depicts him in cartoonish fashion as an ignorant womanizing goon. It turns out he was an admirable man.
And thanks to Todd Epp, I've been listening to a lot of Bing Crosby. I also have many collections of Irving Berlin music I have been listening to (by the way, Crosby and Al Jolson do a mean duet on Alexander's Ragtime Band). Here is the intro to one of my favorite Irving Berlin songs, "Let Me Sing And I'm Happy."
What care I who makes the laws of a nation
Let those who will take care of its rights and wrongs
What care I who care for the world's affairs
As long as I can sing this popular song
Recent Comments