Film review: Return to Oz (1985)

For some reason, I bought this some time ago, and then when Frederick was watching the original Oz yesterday I was motivated to get it out and we watched it finally.  It's...different.  It's good, I'd say, and in fact I think it's a good deal better than the more heralded Labyrinth (which we also watched for the first time comparatively recently), but I'm not sure it's a kids' movie.  It's instructive to compare it with Wizard.  I imagine it's a lot closer to the books, because I understand they were fairly dark, and it certainly is that.  Also the girl who plays Dorothy was ten at the time, which seems much more appropriate than Judy Garland's late teens.  Anyway, here's the plot in very condensed form.  Things are looking bleak chez Auntie Em and Uncle Henry, about six months on from the events of the original film: Dorothy can't sleep, her Uncle has yet to rebuild their house and is clearly malingering even though he's recovered from his broken leg.  Em has decided to take him to a doctor who uses electricity to fix brain problems, who turns out to be played by Nicol Williamson (Merlin in Excalibur, and, if there were any justice, as famous as Anthony Hopkins), with a nurse played by Jean Marsh. 

As this follows the pattern of the previous film, as you can imagine, they also play dual roles in Oz, later, with Williamson as the Nome King and Marsh as the wicked witch Mombi (both excellent in their Shakespeare-trained way).  Another element where I imagine this is closer to the books than the classic film is that it is never revealed whether or not Dorothy is dreaming all the Oz stuff.  Her Aunt certainly thinks so (part of the motivation for taking her to the shrink) and Dorothy can point to no evidence proving the real existence of Oz.  Anyway, the early part of the film is Dorothy being dropped off at the doctor's to spend the night, and at one point strapped to a gurney and about to get electro-shock "therapy" when lightning strikes the asylum and in the ensuing chaos she is freed by a mysterious older girl.  After hearing the moans and screams of "damaged" patients hidden in the basement (told you it was dark) they go on the run from the scary nurse in the rainstorm and get swept away in the flooded river.  Dorothy clings to what looks like an old crib but the other girl is lost, apparently drowned.  When Dorothy wakes, she has been joined by her pet chicken Billina, whom we saw earlier at Auntie Em's house as Dorothy was warning her that if she didn't lay an egg soon, she'd be for the pot.  Her presence (despite the absence of Toto, who was also left back at Em's house for the trip to the doctor) can only be explained by the fact that she dug up a key in the farmyard, which Dorothy interpreted as from Oz, but Em insists is an old key from the house that was blown away in the first film.  Anyway, Dorothy and (the now talking) Billina are, of course, in Oz.  But it turns out to be an Oz in ruins (which I think I would have found very disturbing, had I been the (presumed) target audience of this film, a child who loved the original), the Yellow Brick Road and Emerald City all tumbledown and, worst of all, the inhabitants, including the Tin Man (now called the Tin Woodsman - again, loyalty to the books?) turned to stone.  Oz is also overrun by the Wheelers,

who chase Dorothy and Billina into a little room (opened by the key Billina found) where they find a mechanical man called TikTok, who has three keys to wind up his mind, his mouth and his actions (laying the groundwork for a joke where Dorothy explains that it is quite common for humans to talk when their mind isn't working). 

 Later additions to Dorothy's New Crew include a character with a carved pumpkinhead called Jack Pumpkinhead,

and a sofa with a stuffed and mounted "gump" (moose?) head attached to it and sprinkled with magic dust to bring it to life.  Later horrors include Mombi's hall of replacement heads

and the Nome King's palace where doors appear after the rock has turned into multiple writhing hands.  Small wonder that this film always comes up in lists of "most traumatizing scenes in a childhood movie," or "nightmare fuel".  But I like the fact that it's a chicken that saves the day.

Film review: Amadeus (1984) [Director's cut]

Can't believe I haven't seen this before now.  I am very familiar with several scenes (mostly involving Salieri being humiliated) but not the whole thing.  And when I say "whole thing," I mean all THREE HOURS of it, because the version on Amazon Prime is the "director's cut" - always ominous.  The director in this case being Milos Forman, the member of the Czech New Wave responsible for Loves of a Blonde and The Firemen's Ball, before coming over to Hollywood and directing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  I liked the two Czech films (the latter more than the former, because the former is too sad), and Jami's a particular fan of the farcical Ball (which is clearly a satire of Soviet-style bureaucracy, which is probably either why he had to leave Czechoslovakia or his last shot as he went out the door) but having seen Amadeus I now realize that they have the same slightly chilly distance (the fact that both Forman's parents died in concentration camps invite speculation) that is really evident in this film.  Forman's specialty is sumptuously framed (and colored) still shots, within which humans act out their silly, self-defeating irrational games.  (I wouldn't be surprised to find that he was an influence on Wes Anderson.)  But I don't find myself identifying with any of the humans whose behavior we observe at a distance.  Certainly in the case of this film, it is hard to.  Salieri is a pitiful figure, but he is nonetheless monstrous.

And Mozart, for whom we should have compassion, is filtered through Salieri's gaze and never much more than a buffoon, an inexplicable vessel for music of genius.  (As he says at one point "I am a vulgar man - but my music is not.")

There is no real attempt to represent Mozart's life - even major events, like his marriage (which appears to be happy, despite it being to the common daughter of his landlady) and the birth of his son, just happen off screen.  Really the only scenes that jump out at you are the famous scenes of Salieri's humiliation, first when Mozart proves that he has memorized the ditty that Salieri composed to welcome him to Vienna by playing it, and as he does so, recomposing it on the spot, improving it instantly,

and then second when he is at a party offering to play parodies of particular composers and the masked Salieri suggests his own name, whereupon Mozart follows an insulting banal number with a gigantic fart.  Oh, and of course the scene where Mozart's wife brings some of his work to Salieri and Salieri is able to hear it in his head just by reading it:

And that's it.  Except... we went to bed with half an hour left and then resumed the film the next night, and I found the last half hour riveting.  It's Mozart on his deathbed composing the Requiem (which Salieri, disguised to make Mozart think he's the ghost of his father (or something) has himself commissioned) while Salieri transcribes it.  It's a clinic of acting by F. Murray Abraham, who won the Oscar for this (has he ever done anything before or since?  He must have originated the role on stage or something) and the underrated Tom Hulce (whom I only know for Animal House otherwise - oh, and as the voice of Quasimodo in Disney's Hunchback), and is transcendent.  It's disappointing that the whole story seems made up whole cloth, and Mozart actually rumored to be very shy (although his letters to his beloved sister, whom (my 1972 Blue Peter Annual informed me called "Horseface") are supposed to be filthy).

John and Dave the path-builders

This is the walking map for my new favorite state park (sorry Seven Lakes, you've been superseded).

(Here's the satellite view from Google Maps.) Normally (that is, for the previous five or six visits since there was still ice on the lakes) we've done the walk around Wildwood and Valley Lake, usually starting at 19 or 24 and going in a circle. This is very nice (you're never more than about 6 yards from the water, but the view changes because of the crinkles in the lakes), but today we (okay, I - Frederick gamely suffers my choices) decided to try something new. We started at 17 and headed North. We were going to go all the way up to 7 and maybe back via 5 and 6, but when we got to 8 we discovered there was a secret option, that I have added in red below:

Actually, it just said that you could go to 15, but the path forked and we took the left-hand option and found that it went in a circle around an idyllic swampy little lake that you should be able to see below.

When we got back on the main path between 8 ad 15 we came across this magnificent tree.

You might have wondered, looking at the map(s), how you get to 15, given that there is a lake in the way.  I was wondering that myself when we met discovered the answer:

Who made this bridge, you may ask?  And to whom am I speaking in the video below?

John (left) and Dave, that's who!  And they were still working on it.  They lent us walking sticks (you can see Frederick using one) so long as we snapped their picture (that's what I'm talking about in the video - I used Dave's phone, but I also took one for myself).

Goodbye John and Dave!  Thanks for your service to our dry feet!
All in all, a delightful walk on a beautiful (high of 60) day.

Film review: (The) Strawberry Blonde (1941)

More confirmation that Jimmy Cagney can do light comedy (although this film also has dramatic moments).  This was supposedly one of Rita Hayworth's breakthrough roles: she is the titular "strawberry blonde"

(because she famously had red hair, even though her real hair color was black, just like her Spanish father) with whom Cagney's Biff Grimes is in love, before he realizes that her friend (played by the, to my eyes much prettier, Olivia DeHavilland

(who, believe it or not, is STILL ALIVE at the age of 103)) is the one for him.  It's a bit of a picaresque number, set in the gay 1890s, with the main body of the film a flashback to ten years before.  At the beginning, Biff is married to DeHavilland and is a dentist, playing horseshoes in his back yard with his old friend, Greek English-mangler Nick Pappalas.  A nearby band playing "And the Band Played On" (which is what the film should have been called, given its recurring role, although "Strawberry Blonde" is actually taken from one of its lyrics) reminds him of Hayworth's Virginia Brush, and in turn he is reminded of his former friend Hugo Barnstead who stole her from him.  He discusses with Nick what he'd like to do to him, when his wife calls him to wash up to go for a Sunday stroll, and when he's in the house, the phone rings.

It's someone calling to set up an emergency dental appointment for... Hugo Barnstead!  Nick plots gassing him with nitrous oxide and slitting his throat (!) and... cue flashback.
Biff, it turns out, was the son (no sign of a mother) of the neighborhood Irish charming ne'er-do-well (played wonderfully by Alan Hale), and Biff is bouncing (that's a pun, given one of the jobs) around various odd jobs while taking a dentistry course by correspondence (one letter a month).  He hangs around with a gang of similarly-aged neighborhood youths, of which Hugo is the spivviest, most scheming and most go-getting.  They like to hang out in the barbershop (where Greek Nick works) and whistle at attractive girls, although the one that Biff is too polite to whistle at is Virginia.  Hugo is bold enough to talk to her, though, and arranges a double date.  He comes to pick Biff up that evening as he is experimenting on his father with Nitrous Oxide

(this film has some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments and lines, that tend to creep up on you, and this scene is great.  One line I remember is later in the film when Biff is still studying to be a dentist while also working as a milkman.  He's getting near the end and his wife says he can give up the milkround, and he says he doesn't mind it because he likes the horse - "he has interesting teeth".)  Biff only agrees to come if he gets Virginia, and Hugo agrees, but of course reneges (a running theme).  Biff is not impressed with Virginia's friend Amy, who is (a) in a nurse's uniform, (b) spouting suffragette slogans (Virginia warns her to sound less like a pamphlet before the men show up), (c) claims her mother was a "Bloomer girl" and her aunt was an actress, and worst of all, (d) asks for a cigarette (which causes Biff to call her a "nicotine fiend"). 

That is not Biff's cup of tea AT ALL.  (And in reality, it's not really Amy's, as we find out later.) From here we see a series of events - Hugo moves up in the world and gets his own office

and one day, on another double date, Biff and Virginia get separated from the other two (contrary to Hugo's plans) and he spends a lovely (if expensive) day wooing Virginia.  He even gets a repeat date for "a week on Wednesday" (Virginia has a LOT of suitors).  But when the week on Wednesday comes around, it's Amy who meets him and (although she tries not to break it to him) it emerges that Virginia has married Hugo that afternoon.  Biff settles for (the obviously superior) Amy and pursues his dentistry degree (cue the line I mentioned earlier) until Virginia visits the old neighborhood and invites Biff and Amy to dinner.  There they are fed the faddish newfangled meal of "spaghetti" (which none of them knows how to eat) while sitting under electric lights, and Hugo and Virginia boast of their wealth and exploits, while Biff touts the virtues of good old American craftsmenship in the face of the Euro-touting, until Hugo (on Virginia's prompting) offers Biff a vice-president position in his construction company.  This is another one of Hugo's poisoned chalices, though, as the construction company cuts all kind of corners, which ends up killing Grimes senior and getting Biff holding the bag and getting sent to prison.  While in prison he pines for Amy and finishes his dentistry studies (although not without some bridgework misadventures involving the warden) and we get to the other half of the bookend.  Will Biff kill Hugo?  Will he fall for Virginia all over again? 

What's with "And the Band Played On" (which is a sing-a-long for the audience at the end)?  Watch it and see - it's great!

Happy Birthday Frederick!

Frederick had difficulty sleeping last night and dropped off on the sofa around late morning, but he perked up no end when first Grandma ad then Emily and family visited with a PRESENT BONANZA!

He was so excited, he forgot his shoes!  And unfortunately, what with the unseasonable cold and social distancing, Emily and co. had to drop the presents off and leave.  But opening them was certainly fun.

Thanks Emily, Greg, Ava and Allannah!

Film review: Sleuth (1972)

I bought this on DVD a while ago because we were talking about it and discovered it is one of those rare films that you can't even stream on Amazon. And yesterday Jami said we should watch it, so we did.  It's based on a play by Anthony Shaffer, whom I thought was the writer of Equus and Amadeus, but that's his brother Peter (with whom he co-wrote three detective novels - thank you Wikipedia), but who actually wrote the classic British folk-horror film The Wicker Man.  It's funny to discover that Shaffer wrote detective novels, because the Laurence Olivier character in this, who is thoroughly loathsome, is a detective writer whose detective, St. John Lord Merridew, is a parody of the Lord Peter Wimsy-style toff sleuth school of fiction.  But it makes sense, given that there are several twists and turns in this that obviously are more loving references to the genre.  It is a credit to the production that only at the end do you realize that there have never been more than two people on screen at any one time, and in fact [SPOILER]

...it's the same two people.  I say spoiler, even though it's pretty patently obvious that the "Detective Doppler" (above) who shows up about halfway through, despite being credited to one "Alec Cawthorne" in the credits, is actually Michael Caine in brown contacts, a wig and a fat suit, doing a remarkably creditable Wiltshire yokel accent.  This is the second of the major twists, or possibly third.  The film opens with Caine's Milo Tindle showing up to Olivier's Andrew Wyke's fancy Wiltshire estate and struggling to locate Wyke in the center of his ornamental maze (the first of Wyke's profusion of puzzles and games that we encounter) where he is dictating the denouement of Merridew's latest adventure.  It turns out that the maze is impossible unless you know the secret rotating section of hedge, an early clue that Wyke is a nasty cheat.  After some badinage that reveals that each man is more or less contemptuous of the other, Wyke reveals that he knows that Tindle has been sleeping with his wife and in fact expects him to demand that he be able to marry her.  He claims that he has no objection, because he'd rather be with his Finnish mistress Tea, only that he doubts Tindle can afford to keep his wife, since, although he owns two hair salons, one in London, the other Brighton, neither is profitable yet.  So he suggests a solution: Tindle steal some very expensive jewels that Wyke bought to circumvent Britain's draconian tax laws (see the Beatles' Taxman) which he can fence in Amsterdam (to a fence Wyke met while researching one of his books) while Wyke collects the insurance.  Of course, they have to make the theft convincing, so Wyke gives Tindle a clown costume, and there is some amusing business of a clown-clad Caine struggling to climb a ladder. 

But after Caine has the jewels, Wyke insists that they fight to make it more convincing, and then finally reveals that the true purpose is to give him cover for shooting Tindle and escape prosecution because he was defending his house against an intruder.  He puts his gun (which has already fired two bullets at pictures in the room) up against the whimpering Milo's head and pulls the trigger, and Milo falls down, dead.

Or is he?  We cut to Wyke making himself a late-night snack when the bell rings and Inspector Doppler arrives.  It is, we learn, about three days later, and Doppler claims to be investigating Tindle's disappearance.  We expect Wyke to lie, but in fact he describes everything that happens, whereupon we learn that Milo wasn't dead, only in a dead faint, because Wyke's real purpose was just to humiliate him, and the third bullet in his gun was a blank.  But Doppler is unconvinced and soon has Wyke seriously panicking that he's going to be hauled off for murder.  It's then that Milo reveals that he is Doppler.  But that's not enough for his revenge on Wyke: he also reveals that, while setting up various plants in Wyke's house (such as his (Milo's) clothes in Wyke's closet, that Wyke swore Milo walked off in) the day before, Tea came round, and after "screwing" her, he, Milo strangled her, and has hidden incriminating clues around the house and told the police to meet him there, because he suspects that Wyke has murdered his mistress.  Thus begins the nastiest part of the film.

I must say, while I was absorbed, I am torn about this film.  I didn't like either character that much.  We are supposed to hate Wyke, but by the end he's a pathetic figure.  We want Milo to get revenge, but he goes too far.  BUT: both principals are exceptional, and if I had to pick the superior it would be Caine, who does not appear in the least overawed by the great Sir Larry.  He does have the showier role, particularly as he gets to play Doppler as well.  Did Olivier play anyone likeable in his later years?  At least he isn't a Nazi in this one, I suppose.

Film review: Footlight Parade (1933)

I have discovered that I am a huge Jimmy Cagney fan.  The man is just a magnetic screen presence.  Previously seen in White Heat, at his most dangerous and gangsterous, we now see him in a light musical comedy, where he gets to display his very impressive hoofing skills (and sing a little, too).  And it's got Busby Berkeley choreography in all its ridiculous fabulosity!  And to top it off, it's got my fave pre-code actress Joan Blondell as Cagney's character Chester Kent's long-suffering secretary who not-so-secretly pines for him.  Plus ace tap-dancer and doll-like wholesome cutie Ruby Keeler!  What more could you want?  Why aren't you watching it RIGHT NOW?  Possibly because it left the Criterion Channel last night, which is why we watched it.  And aren't we glad we did, because it's non-stop entertainment.  The basic story is that Chester used to put on shows but thanks to the advent of the talkies, nobody wants to go see live singers and dancers any more.  EXCEPT: apparently "prologues" for the movies were a thing, where short song-and-dance numbers would precede the film showings at certain theaters (and indeed, this was a way to pull the punters into your theater rather than a rival's), and Chester hits on the idea of having traveling prologue groups putting on the same show at a string of theaters all over the country (he gets the idea when he discovers that aspirin costs 18 cents at the chain drugstores but 25 cents at the Mom-and-Pop's.  He needed them because his chiselling wife just divorced him because the money from shows dried up).  This economy of scale persuades the two producers who had been putting on his shows until they switched to the movies to sign him up as a partner.  The only trouble is that he has to keep coming up with prologue ideas and run a fantastically complicated system whereby he has seemingly dozens of traveling performers on the road at once and has to be constantly recruiting and training new ones.  He is helped only by his super-efficient secretary and his long-suffering dance trainer, who keeps insisting that he can't do it, he's going to quit, because what he's being asked to do is impossible.  There's also a rich relative of one of the producers (Ruth Donnelly) who keeps insisting that they employ various distant relatives of hers, one of whom is Dick Powell, who turns out to have genuine talent, and who falls in love with then-secretary Ruby Keeler (weirdly, they both switch professions during the course of the movie - she from secretary to hoofer, and he in the reverse direction).  Chester becomes more and more overworked and yet sees no reward, because his crooked partners are cooking the books to make it look like the profits are being sown back into production.  There's also the problem that the rival prologue-making company keeps stealing Chester's ideas (his best one that we see is a Cats forerunner) and then Chester's partners secure a deal with comical Greek theater-owner (all his theaters are named after Greek gods) Apolinaris, but only if they can put on three absolute show-stopping prologues, one after another at three different theaters, and in only 3 days time!  Meanwhile Chester's actually-not-ex-wife shows up and demands $25,000!  Joan Blondell takes it upon herself to confront the cheating partners about their cheating (she's heard rumors) and gets a check, whereupon Chester, realizing he's been cheated, quits.  But of course he's got to do the shows!  And after 3 days where everyone is locked in (so the rivals can't steal his ideas through their plant) they put on the most ridiculously over-the-top, patently impossible, Busby Berkeley numbers.  (And, as with Gold Diggers, it is amazing how salacious he is able to be in a post-code era.  An opium den!  A whole number set in a "honeymoon hotel" with the same little person actor from Gold Diggers, again both playing an infant and also acting like he's got the libido of Benny Hill.  A massive swimming number (remember, this is supposed to be put on in a cinema, in the tiny bit of stage in front of the screen, so there is absolutely no attempt at realism here) of supposedly naked-except-for-strategically-placed-hair wood nymphs.  And a final show where Cagney gets to dance (because, just like with Gold Diggers, the person who's supposed to be doing it chickens out) which consists of an American in China looking for his Shanghai Lil (an unfortunately made-up Keeler),

and smuggling her aboard his Navy ship disguised as a sailor.  These shows are amazing, but I sort of wish they'd been spaced out through the movie a bit more.  However, they're not repetitive, because the first one is mostly a singing number, the second one a swimming number and the third focuses on dancing (as well as a huge brawl!)  But wait, you ask, does Joan Blondell get her guy?  Well after disposing of a rival

of course she does!  Here, enjoy her best bits from the film.  But really, you should watch the whole thing - I guarantee you will not regret it.

Frederick's quarantine art

Frederick and I have done our best to stay creative during these long and uneventful days.  A few weeks ago we started working on this mosaic, which Frederick designed.  I cut the glass, grouted it and hung it in his room.  The rest was all Frederick.

Stars.

Then we worked on clay.  That is even slower than mosaicking since it takes 12-18 hours to fire and cool the kiln.

Finished and on display.

For a bit of fast art, we switched to painting.  We have a lot of painting supplies: brushes, paints, canvases...not a lot of wall space, though.  This was our first.  We have both learned a lot about using acrylic paint this week.  Hint #1: do the background first, not last.  Hint #2: paint light on dark for a glowing sky or water.

Finally out of the kiln.

Second painting.  Notice more colors being used and lots of layering.

Our first Dinosaur Portrait.  Also first use of blending colors.

Frederick does love a good eyebrow.

First appearance of teeth and nostrils.

Even more blending going on here.

Now trying adding white, gray and black to increase color hue (as opposed to mixing two colors to create a new color).

Ta Da!

We are out of canvases so, while we wait for Slow Poke Amazon to ship, we are going back to mosaics tomorrow.   I have a LOT of glass and grout we can use...