Back to Shiawassee now the mosquitoes are gone

Absolutely positively the last swim of the Summer

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Frederick, being over 6'6", has been hanging off the end of his bed for a while, so we finally got round to buying him one that fits.

Meanwhile, we've been "rationalizing" our book collection and relocating it from the basement (and sitting room) into our NEW LIBRARY - i.e., Thomas's room, that he has vacated to move to Colorado...

 

Dog days

Film review: Prey (2022)

 

I'm a little reluctant to sign up to just one streaming service after another, but we finally caved recently and got Hulu (largely because of Only Murders in the Building, which I can highly recommend, especially for Martin Short), and this film is heavily advertised on it, as an original film that they bought for themselves rather than have it be in cinemas first.  That's probably a pity for the filmmakers, because it absolutely deserves to be seen on the big screen, but, hey, it works for us.  It's a prequel to the 80's Schwarzenegger flick Predator, of which I am fond (it's probably his third best after Terminator and Total Recall), but may even be superior.  For those unfamiliar with the classics, the premise is that a seven-foot-tall alien with all kinds of gnarly weapons regards Earth as a sport-hunting ground and is here to get trophies.  In the original, the setting was some South American jungle where some American mercenaries were on a mission and coincidentally ran into this beastie, who, rather unfairly, has an invisibility cloak that it uses all the time (but to make up for it, it makes an incessant clicking noise).  Besides its three-dot laser sight and many nasty weapons, it also sees in infra-red, which enables Arnie to hide from it by daubing himself with thick mud. Perhaps the most famous line he utters in the original is upon coming across its luminous green blood: "if it bleeds, we can kill it".  And, of course, he eventually succeeds.  Naturally, they had to repeat the line in this one, and our hero also finds a way to disguise herself from the infra-red vision... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Prey is set on the great plains in the early 1700s, among the Comanche, and our protagonist is the brother of the next-in-line to be chief, who is equally adept at hunting, and chafing at the bit to be recognized, and in particular, to undergo a rite whereby she gets to hunt something that will hunt her back.  Her chance arises when one of the tribe is (apparently) dragged off by a large mountain lion.  She is allowed along by the sexist males (well, except for her brother) because she is good at tracking and medicine, and both will be needed (especially if the tribe member is still alive).  We have already been introduced to a special orange flower petal, and she gets to use it on the wounded warrior when he is found, and it has the effect of bringing down his body temperature (hmm... will that come in handy later?).  The brother says that catching the lion will be the rite of passage that she wants, but it goes wrong and she gets knocked out.  Her brother brings her home and goes out again in search of the lion, but she has already noticed that there's something else out there that leaves big footprints and skins snakes, and was the reason the warrior was still alive (he survives, too, because of her medicine) because the lion was spooked away from its den.  She wants to go out to help her brother but he comes home triumphant with the lion.  He has lost faith in her, though, so she decides to sneak off and see if she can catch the whatever-it-is to prove herself.  She makes it through some spectacular scenery, but finds all kinds of things amiss, such as a whole herd of skinned bison.  She also finds a shell-casing nearby, which lets us viewers know that it's probably not the Predator.  Anyway, she also runs into a bear, which she also fails to kill, and it chases her into a beaver dam, 

and is about to break in and kill her when it is dragged back, and she gets to witness it battle and lose to an initially-invisible foe, which is revealed to be a huge biped when it holds the bear aloft and the blood drips all over it.  It sees her, but she escapes down the fast-moving river.  (I forgot to mention that her companion in this is a dog who is very endearing (don't worry - it survives) and apparently was not a trained movie dog, but a rescue.)  Anyway, shortly afterwards she is found by a quartet of her more chauvinistic fellow tribe members who won't let her pursue her quest and in fact tie her up so they can transport her back.  They tell her they were traveling in search of her with her brother but he's gone off in another direction.  At that point, the Predator catches up with them.  Some of them put up a decent fight, but he slices and dices them fairly quickly.  She is sprinting away with him (?) close behind when her foot is caught in a bear trap.  She is surprised to find that this makes him not kill her, so clearly he has rules for his sport.  Instead she is captured by some French fur trappers, who are clearly the ones who skinned the bison.  They take her back to their camp, where she finds that they have also captured her brother.  The trappers have also noticed that there is something roaming these woods and intend to use the siblings as bait, so they are tied to a tree in the middle of what looks like a forest that has recently burned (there is ash everywhere).  However, true to form, he doesn't go for helpless bait, he goes for the trappers, and reveals that his wrist-fan-shields can repel any bullets they manage to fire.

The siblings escape and the brother goes off after some horses.  Our heroine goes back to the trapper camp to get her dog and polishes off quite a few of the trappers left at camp in the process.  One more, the only one who can speak her language, shows up with a gun and a missing lower-leg (thanks to the Predators flying scythe-like weapons) and begs for her medicinal help in return for a lesson on how to use the gun.  She gives him the orange flower medicine and gets the lesson... and the Predator shows up.  She hides as he prowls around, and the wounded trapper plays dead.  She soon works out that the Predator can't see him, and it must be (dun dun DUN) because of the orange petal medicine.  However, unluckily for the trapper, the Predator treads on his stump and his howl of pain gets him noticed.  The Predator also runs down our heroine nearby, and it's looking bad for her until the brother comes galloping in and knocks his helmet off.  This reveals that it's the helmet that has the sight attached, and that the steel rods that his weapon fires will home in on whatever the three red dots of the sight are resting on, even if it's not what he wants to shoot.  This will ALSO come in handy later.  Anyway, I've forgotten to mention a quicksand-like bog that our heroine nearly drowns in earlier, and the skull of a wolf that the Predator has hung from his belt (after melting the flesh off it with a kind of spray), both of which feature in the climax that approaches.  All in all, I thoroughly recommend it.  It's relentless tension throughout and brilliantly realized.  The premise might seem very high concept, but it totally works, and I think it's the best depiction of Native Americans I've ever seen in a genre picture.  More like this, please!  (Oh, and if Amber Midthunder, the actress (who looks a bit like a stockier Aubrey Plaza) who plays the main role, doesn't become a huge star, there is no justice.)

And still they swim

Ron's gone wrong (still swimming in mid September)

Film review: One, Two, Three (1961)

 

How is this film not better known?  It's a BILLY WILDER film, and the two before it were Some Like It Hot and The Apartment.  And it stars JIMMY CAGNEY!  

And on top of that, it's really funny.  Possible explanations: it makes fun of both America and the USSR (albeit the former fairly gently - although one of the main characters does get lines like "capitalism is like a dead herring in the moonlight - it's shiny but IT STINKS!").  Like another lesser-known Billy Wilder film, A Foreign Affair, it's set in a still-battered divided Berlin, where Cagney is a Coca-Cola executive who is trying to claw his way back to prominence after a Benny-Goodman-related disaster in the Middle East torpedoed his seemingly-inevitable rise to the top of the corporate ladder.  He thinks he's cemented it with a deal to bottle Coca Cola in the Soviet Union, but is blindsided when his boss calls from Atlanta and not only nixes the idea of Coke behind the iron curtain but announces that his wild-child 17-year-old daughter will be arriving any minute.  Before this point we have been fully introduced to Cagney's fast-talking, philandering (his hot blonde German secretary, Fräulein Ingeborg keeps promising to teach him about umlauts, which is clearly some kind of innuendo, and he has promised her a good time as soon as his wife and two kids head off on a vacation) schemer C.R. "Mac" MacNamara.  We also introduced to three Soviet representatives 

who try (and fail) to gouge him into giving them the Coke formula, and who also fall head over heels for Fräulein Ingeborg.  We see more of them later.  Anyway, the daughter, Scarlett, shows up on a flight from Paris, having persuaded the flight crew to let her fly and got them to bid for her (the winner, Pierre, is very put out when Mac and his wife whisk Scarlett away.  Scarlett looks like she'll be a handful - she's a little Southern princess, used to getting her way, and who has managed to be engaged several times, which is part of the reason her parents sent her off on a whirlwind tour of all the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Europe.  She is also very ditzy, and fond of words like "marvy".  Anyway, the plan is to watch her for a couple of weeks, but we cut to two months later and a very smug Mac is on the phone with her father (Mr. Hazeltine) saying that it's been no trouble and she's a changed girl, having been taken to all sorts of museums and cultural events in the interim.  Hazeltine is delighted, and hints that he will reward Mac with the big promotion (to the London office) he's been lusting after, and is arriving at noon the next day to pick Scarlett up.  Of course, in the middle of this phone call Mac gets another one from his wife to inform him that Scarlett is missing.  After getting off the 'phone Mac mobilizes the troops (and calls people like David Brinkley) to find her, and discovers that his chauffeur has been dropping her off at the Brandenburg gate every night and picking her up before morning for the past six weeks (for 100 Marks a pop). This means, of course, that she is now missing in East Berlin.  Except that about ten minutes later she strolls into his office.  His relief is undercut by her then announcing that she has married a communist called Otto, who is waiting outside on his motorcycle.  Otto is played by Horst Bucholz, who is probably best known for being the really annoying youngest one in The Magnificent Seven, but he reveals here a deft touch with farce (although apparently he really pissed Cagney off, because he complained about him always trying to steal scenes and said he came close to thumping him a few times), and it is he who delivers the herring line, along with many others critical of capitalism and the West, prompting outraged responses from Mac.  

It soon further emerges that Otto has won a place to study rocket science in Moscow and he and Scarlett are scheduled to board a train thence tomorrow, but Mac has a plan.  First he gifts Otto his own personal cuckoo clock as a wedding present (which, unbeknownst to Otto, has a little Uncle Sam in place of the cuckoo, and plays Yankee Doodle Dandy) and second he has his assistant Schlemmer put a balloon that says "Russkis go home" on his motorcycle's tailpipe.  

These have the desired effect of getting Otto arrested, which means he is unavailable to pick Scarlett up the next morning at 6:30 as she expects.  All is well, Mac thinks, except that Scarlett collapses and the doctor who examines her discovers that she is pregnant.  So now Mac has to break Otto out of the prison (where he is being tortured with non-stop playings of "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini") he got him put in.  This involves the help of Ingeborg and Schlemmer 

and the three Soviets.  But it is only the start of his problems.  Although Otto is now thought an American Spy (the music drove him to sign a confession) and cannot return to the East, he is still far from the ideal match to please Hazeltine, so the final third or so of the movie is Mac marshalling all available forces to convert him from Otto Piffl, humble communist student, into Otto von Droste-Schattenburg, scion of one of the oldest (and most inbred - they're bleeders) houses of Europe.  This is Cagney at his most rapid-fire, and his delivery is quite astonishing.  (It's also the explanation of the title, as he keeps listing his demands on the phone as he snaps his fingers.)  Will Mac pull it off?  Will he get his promotion?  Will he save his marriage, as his wife knows about Ingeborg's umlaut lessons and is heading back to Atlanta (which Mac refers to as "Siberia with mint juleps")?  Let's just say all is wrapped up as nicely as a cuckoo clock that plays Yankee Doodle Dandy.