The Family Flint

Tuesday, June 7, 2022

Monday, June 6, 2022

First real mosquito attacks, Indian Springs Metropark

We're getting rain for the first time in a while and it seems to have woken up the biters.

Sleepy, rainy, chilly day

So we do the bare minimum - a trot round For-Mar.

Saturday, June 4, 2022

If you enjoyed the pairing of David Tomlinson and the gloriously husky-voiced Glynis Johns as the Banks parents in Mary Poppins, well, have I got the film for you! It's a surprisingly amusing (and surprisingly racy) little mermaid number, with Johns in all her glamorous youth as the titular semi-piscine temptress and a plethora of familiar faces filling out the cast, from Googie Withers to Margaret Rutherford, and I swear I saw Eric Sykes in a tiny role as the man delivering fish for Miranda to eat. The plot is fairly simple: a doctor who always drags his wife off on his fishing holidays is persuaded by said wife (Googie Withers's Clare - coolly sensible when all about her are getting carried away) to holiday solo this year. So, off he goes for a week in Cornwall. Well, on his first day, he is dragged by the absurdly seductive Miranda down to her underwater cave,

where she intends to keep him, having done so (she assures him) with many men before. Somehow she has managed to acquire Vogue magazines down there, and has developed a burning desire to see the big city, so our purported hero (Griffith Jones playing Paul) persuades her to let him out if he will take her to London. Initially reluctant, he realizes it's his only way out, and while he is clearly smitten with Miranda (as are all men who encounter her), he doesn't share her taste for raw fish. As Miranda is naked (with the usual voluminous hair covering up her breasts (in an interview I saw the much older Johns refer to her extensions as her "boozie-bits"), Paul has to order some (extra long) dresses to be sent down to Cornwall before Miranda can be transported home. He writes ahead to Clare to warn her that he's bringing a patient who can't walk back with him to stay at their flat, so she and the two servants (Tomlinson's Charles and Yvonne Owen's Betty) get a room ready (with its own bathroom

- clearly doctoring has done Paul well). Clare somehow expects an elderly patient, as does Charles, who lets Clare know that he doesn't intend to push Miranda around in a bath chair. (Of course, he quickly changes his tune when she arrives.) To her credit, though, Clare, with her admirable sang-froid, shows little jealousy when she sees the startlingly attractive young patient, although she does insist that she have a nurse. Paul immediately thinks of an appropriate one, a nurse whom he has previously parted ways with because of her "eccentricity" - Margaret Rutherford, of course. She is the only one other than Paul who is let into the secret of Miranda's true nature, and is instantly delighted "She's a mermaid! I always knew they existed!"

The rest of the film doesn't really progress as you might expect (especially if you'd seen Splash). Miranda's role is mainly to seduce (in a way that is somehow charming and innocent, but at the same time a little bit predatory, but brings surprisingly little feminine hatred her way), three men - Paul, Charles, and John McCallum's Nigel, who is the artist fiancé of Isobel, Paul and Clare's upstairs neighbor and hat-shop-proprietor. The men all make varying degrees of fools of themselves, but when they discover how she has behaved to the other two, are content to return to their former partners, who in turn are content to have them back. Not enough is made of the fish-out-of-water aspects of the scenario, apart from Miranda gorging herself at a mussel stand (to the horror of her nurse and delight of the other clientele), and a visit to the zoo where she manages to catch a fish intended for a seal in her mouth and gulp it down with relish. She also turns out to be a real fan of the opera, because she has the pipes to match, something that gets her thrown out. However, eventually Clare works out what she is and Miranda overhears Clare arguing with Paul about revealing her existence, and, fearful that she'll end up pickled like her aunt, she makes a break for it (pausing only to finish snacking on the fish in the flat's fish bowl). She is last seen cavorting in Majorca (she'd already made her plans to head there in May clear) with a mer-baby, it being strongly hinted that Paul is the father (the other two being ruled out as possibilities because Clare is able to establish that they had never seen her "legs").

The film was a big enough hit that there was a (less well-received) sequel.
An admittedly slight film, but, much like Miranda herself, effortlessly charming, largely because of the quality of the performers, particularly the three leading women. If you just know Johns from Mary Poppins (where she shows startling disregard for her children's safety but admirable zealotry for the suffragette cause), you might be surprised at what a glamorous and slightly alien creature she can portray. If she didn't perform Oscar Wilde at some point, the world was cheated: her delivery is perfect for his lines.

Friday, June 3, 2022

Sunny again, so off to Sand Lake

Somebody with a drone made a video of Sand Lake.

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Film review: Emergency (2022)

Well this is a film that's much better than you might expect. It sort of bills itself as a college bro-comedy (if you go by the trailer, at least - the poster obviously isn't going for that kind of mood), and while there are elements of that, the characters are entirely too well-acted and well-rounded for that kind of film, on top of which there are long stretches that are almost unbearably tense, and there's a real (albeit admirably non-preachy) social message, all-the-more effective because of the sneaky delivery. The outline is this: two young black buddies at some fairly prestigious (although fake) university are approaching the end of their senior year,

and to celebrate, Sean (the almost ridiculously charismatic RJ Cyler) wants them (the other being his "Oreo" overachieving child-of-Nigerian-immigrants pal Kunle) to complete the "legendary tour" of seven famous parties thrown by various student organizations/fraternities. If they do this, they will go up on the wall of "firsts" at the Black Student Union as the first black people to do it (this is not an especially diverse university, clearly). Meanwhile, Kunle is hiding from Sean that he has been admitted into Princeton for graduate school (so Sean's plan that they should live together next year is not going to happen) and is worried about his "babies" - the cultures that are part of his final project. He puts them away safely in the lab fridge as they head out, but we see the door pop open after they've left. Fortunately, he remembers that this fridge does that unless you lock it, but by this point they will be behind schedule if they go back. Sean agrees, but they have to hit their pad first. The first sign that their night will not go as planned is that their door is open. Sean immediately blames their other roommate, Carlos (whom he is hoping to avoid having come along on the tour, especially as he's only acquired two tickets to each party) and they quickly go room-to-room to check if anything's been stolen. They don't find anything missing, but they do find a white girl passed out in their dining room, who, when stirred, simply vomits and passes out again. And here the dilemma begins. Kunle immediately suggests they call 911, but Sean is vehemently opposed, pointing out that if the cops find a white girl passed out in the home of brown people, said brown people will instantly be arrested. (This is not the first time Sean has had to call out Kunle's naivete: the movie begins with them attending an English class where they (actually English) professor puts the N-word up in giant font on the board and wants to discuss it. Sean is gobsmacked, and in discussing it with Kunle afterwards puts it this way: black people just have one rule for white people - don't say that word, but white people don't want to have to do what black people say, so keep trying to find ways to weasel round it.) Anyway, Carlos (an extremely nerdy Hispanic engineer, who wears a fanny-pack constantly and is prone to offering all and sundry the granola bars he keeps therein) is soon found gaming in his room and he sides with Sean re: not calling 911. After a brief humorous interlude when they try to work out white people they can ask to call 911 for them (a good candidate, "White Sean," who is a football player, turns out to be on a tour of microbreweries with his mother - presumably the whitest thing the screenwriters could think for him to be doing), they quickly decide on a plan: she's obviously just come from one of the parties, so they should prop her up outside one of them and watch for her to be found by partygoers. Of course, that doesn't pan out, and their next plan is to get her to a hospital. But a broken taillight, along with lots of cops stopping people for sobriety tests (the Night of Parties is indeed legendary), along with the girl's sister, friend, and sister's would-be-boyfriend tracking our heroes via the unconscious girl's phone,

convinced that they have abducted her (and with none of the qualms about calling 911 on three brown guys), things get tenser and tenser. It wraps up nicely, though, although the last (pre-credits) scene is a gut-punch. (The mid-credits scene is a welcome comedic moment.) Highly recommend.