A Sappy Old Man Looks Back at His Childhood

Yeah, that's my family around 1958 - (from left) brother Don, Mom, sister Sue in Mom's lap, Dad, and I'm the Calvin (of Calvin & Hobbes) look-alike in my Dad's lap. The reason for this nostalgia is that Hotels.com has been using Jimmy Durante singing "Make Someone Happy" in their latest TV commercial. That just happens to be one of the tunes that made an impression on me when I was a little kid, and it got me to thinking about other songs that had that effect as well, at least before my discovery of rock, The Beatles, and the Rolling Stones. So to lead off on this nostalgic musical journey, here's the old Schnozzola:

Another song that made a big impression on me as a child was Nat King Cole singing "Smile". I seem to remember him singing that at the end of his weekly TV show. I've always loved Nat's voice and his way of styling a song, and I think his version of this tune is what set the standard for me.

Finally, like most of the kids of my generation, Disney animated movies were a staple, and they were always musical. The one bit of music that always stuck in my head was Jiminy Cricket singing "When You Wish Upon a Star" in Pinocchio. I don't know why, but there it is.

There were other musical moments in my childhood - for instance Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow" in The Wizard of Oz and the music as the heroes approach Emerald City in the same movie - but these three set the standard for everything I heard afterward. Lush orchestrations and lush choral passages are pretty corny by today's standards, but when I hear these I'm five years old again, and life is no longer complicated and stressful. Yup, I'm a sappy old man alright!

Two Birthdays

Yes indeed, TWO birthdays. For all these years I've been celebrating J.S. Bach's birthday here at Roy's World, but this year it dawned on me that it's also Modest Mussorgsky's (Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald Mountain, among others). He was firmly in the Russian Romantic school and was considered a major inspiration for later generations of Russian composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich and Sergei Prokofiev.

Interestingly enough, Walt Disney Studios used works by both Bach and Mussorgsky in the 1940 animation tour-de-force Fantasia. The movie starts off with Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philedelphia Orchestra in his own orchestration of Bach's most famous organ piece - the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.

And Fantasia ends with Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, although Disney and Stokowski decided to segue into Schubert's Ave Maria to create a stylistic contrast at the end. In any event, here it is. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Papa Johann and Modest!

Feed the Birds

I used some of my Christmas money to set up a feeding station in camera range of my kitchen window, and I put it up yesterday. Here it is today, after we had a light overnight snow:

Besides the cedar feeder full of seed there on the right, there's a seed cake with fruit and nuts beloved by Cardinals and Chickadees, etc. there on the upper left, and a suet feeder in the lower center because I want to attract Nuthatches and Woodpeckers. I'll have to go buy replacements when the seed cake and suet cake are done, but I have some back-up for the feeder just inside the back door:

That oughta last awhile! Now the birds have to discover the station and spread the news to their friends; so far the station hasn't had any visitors.

And of course I have to include that classic from the 1964 movie Mary Poppins: "Feed the Birds". Yup, that's what I'll be doing!

© 2012 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Fence

Well, this was an easy one for me. Newport is full of interesting decorative fences, and enough are within easy reach for them to be the focus of my morning walk. So here are some fences along my usual routes.

Along Dearborn St.

Marble House, Bellevue Ave.

The Flower Cottage, Bellevue Ave.

Music video time! Of course, the first thing that popped into my head when I saw the theme was Cole Porter's "Don't Fence Me In". And my favorite version is the late great Ella Fitzgerald's!

And here's the trailer for one of my favorite movies: Rabbit-Proof Fence. It's about the government program in Australia in the first half of the 20th Century to take mixed-race children - half Aborigine and half white - away from their Aboriginal mothers and place them in a school to bring them up to be servants to white Australians. They became known as the "Stolen Generation", and the movie is based on the memoirs of one of those stolen children. I first learned of it through Peter Gabriel's website; he composed the score to the movie. By all means find out if your public library has a copy of this; it's well worth watching!

Don't forget to take a look at the other Theme Thursday entries this week!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Après moi le déluge

Today was the first day of the annual Newport International Boat Show. It was busy but not yet crowded this morning, but by Saturday morning you won't be able to see the streets for the feet walking on them.

And an added little treat... Last night I watched Pirate Radio (in its American release; in its UK release it was called The Boat That Rocked); my public library has a copy of the DVD, and whenever it shows up on the shelf I snag it. I love that movie! If like me you were listening to lots of music back in 1966 and '67, then you'd recognize all of the music in this movie: The Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, Smokey Robinson, Otis Redding, the Who, The Box Tops, Dusty Springfield... The story is fictional, but it's based on a real situation: despite the rock explosion of the mid '60s, especially in Great Britain, the BBC was stupid enough to ban the music from its airwaves. So entrepreneurial souls anchored boats on the North Sea and broadcast rock and pop music to the eager listening public of the British Isles. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, and Kenneth Branagh. My favorite clip from the DVD wasn't part of the released movie, but writer/director Richard Curtis loved it so much that it's the centerpiece of his deleted scenes extra feature. And I found the whole clip on YouTube. So listen and watch as Rhys Ifans as super dj Gavin Cavanaugh explains how rock & roll makes sense of a crazy world!

Yup! That says it all for me. I think I need to go listen to some Kinks now!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Across the Universe, and Across the Years

I watched Across the Universe last night; actually this is the second time I've watched it (the local public library has the special edition 2 DVD set). It set off a series of thoughts and memories, which in turn led to this blog post.

I'm a definite child of the Beatles. I know yesterday was the anniversary of Elvis's death, but frankly I never cared much for him. When and where I grew up, Elvis was who the hicks with the greasy hair and white socks listened to. When I got older and went back to listen to the '50s musicians with greater understanding, I was more attracted to Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens and Roy Orbison than to Elvis. Elvis was a little too tame and mannered for me, while the others played a rawer, edgier music that I liked a lot better.

But most of all I was just the right age for the Beatles when they hit the airwaves. I was 11 years old when they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and they nailed me right to the floor. "Love Me Do", "Please, Please Me", "I Want to Hold Your Hand"; this was stuff I'd never heard before, never even imagined. Then the Rolling Stones and The Who hit, and I drifted over to them because, once again, here was grittier, edgier, bluesier music that was more to my liking (and this in a kid who had yet to discover BB King, Muddy Waters, and Howlin' Wolf!).

But then the Beatles did the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums, and once again I was hearing music I'd never imagined, and I was hooked for good. The post-Help! Beatles were my Beatles, forever and ever and always. It was more adult music than the teen love paeans of their previous music (Al Kooper calls it "I Love You Pimple" music), more complex, and starting to get more metaphysical and poetic. By the time they broke up in 1970 I was a firm fan, and still am, of the band and the solo careers they pursued afterward.

Except for a couple of numbers, the post-Help! Beatles are the Beatles of Across the Universe, too. Released in 2007, creator and director Julie Taymor created a musical using the music of the Beatles as the vehicle for the story of teens growing up in the '60s and engaging with a world in a profound state of transformation. There's certainly a lot of "hippieness" in the story, as well as drug references necessary to explain certain things that happened back then, but there's also an engagement with the social issues of the day - the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, the emergence of feminism and the Gay/Lesbian movement; it's all there. and it takes me right back to the ferment in my own life at the time.

One of the things Taymor tried to do in the film was to introduce younger generations to a time when people were passionate about the things they believed in. She says that she felt that the younger generations took so many of the cultural advancements of the '60s and early '70s for granted, so much so that the freedoms gained then were starting to be eroded without anybody caring or even noticing, and she wanted to relight that fire. For me, it pointed out just how much the things we fought for then have slowly slipped away.

Part of that was our own fault. We were so set, so focused, and we could only see things in black and white, good and evil. The irony is that many of us from back then got religion and became involved in the religious right and neo-conservatism, still seeing the world in the stark, black-and-white terms of the rigidly dogmatic. It still pains me to see so much of the passion involved in changing the world being channeled into a fearful reaction to those very changes. In many ways we were a very schizophrenic generation.

[An aside... Several scenes in the movie involved characters hitchhiking. Now I used to hitchhike everywhere, but last night I tried to remember the last time I did that, and discovered that it was probably around 1980 or so. It was around then that it started being very dangerous to hitch a ride; I had been getting lifts from some seriously creepy people around then and decided I could afford the bus after all. Now I wouldn't dare; the nation's highways seem to be the hunting grounds of serial killers and some seriously deranged individuals!]

Julie Traymor used 30 Beatles songs to move the movie along. Between arrangers, set designers, and choreographers, all these scenes are really well done. But two stand out for me. One is the setting for "Come Together"; it brings Jo-Jo, a black guitarist of the Jimi Hendrix variety, to New York from his home in Detroit, where he'd just buried his little brother, killed in the riots of 1968. It starts on the bus and follows as Jo-Jo makes his way through the streets of New York, sped on its way by the voice and the presence of the inimitable Joe Cocker. The choreography is seamless, and the musical arrangement of the song is absolutely fantastic. Take a look:

But for me the show-stopper is "Let It Be". The scene is two deaths and funerals, Jo-Jo's little brother in Detroit and a young soldier killed in Vietnam (the young soldier was the high school boyfriend of principal character Lucy, played by Evan Rachel Wood). And what's brilliant about the setting is that the song is set as a gospel song, with full choir and a soloist who gets the Spirit while singing (the song starts out with the voice of Timothy T. Mitchum, playing Jo-Jo's little brother). This is just a brilliant piece of work and really stands out in the movie:

One last video clip. This is from the special features disc, and it's from the "making of" documentary - the recording session with Timothy T. Mitchum and Carol Woods, the gospel singer in the "Let It Be" segment. In this, Julie Traynor explains why she made this movie, and shows the effect it had on the people involved.

Yup, real people did these things back then, and were involved and passionate about what they were doing. I think we need to relight that fire!

Theme Thursday - Candy

As soon as I saw the theme for this week the first word to enter my tiny brain was... chocolate! And in Newport we have a real, live chocolaterie - Newport Chocolates. Hand-made chocolate goodies made on the premises, specializing in Belgian chocolate. So I marched over there yesterday and asked permission to photograph the displays so you all can drool over the shots today!

And given the direction this has taken, I guess you can guess what I've chosen. Yup, one of my favorite movies, Lasse Hallström's 2000 movie Chocolat, starring Juliette Binoche, Johnny Depp, Alfred Molina, Judi Dench, and Lena Olin. Here's the trailer:

And here's a nice little slideshow of scenes from the movie set to one of the tunes in the soundtrack, Django Reinhardt's "Minor Swing", arranged by Rachel Portman and guitar played by Depp. Really! Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Pets

For the last 20 years or so I've been living in apartments that don't allow pets, so I don't have any personal cute critters to show you. I do, however, get shots of other people's pets from time to time. Here are a few.

This is the cat who lives next door to the Clifton Burying Ground, a colonial-era cemetery at the corner of Thomas and Golden Hill Streets, up the hill behind the Newport Public Library. The charm of this particular graveyard is that it sits amidst a bunch of neighboring backyard gardens; this kitty belongs to one of those backyards, and often greet visitors to the cemetery. She often accompanies me on my crawls through the place, getting head-on views of the gravestones. She's probably wondering what this crazy human is up to.

This is Rocco, looking adoringly at his mistress (who let me tell you is well worth adoring!). This was taken at King Park on the south end of Newport Harbor, where Rocco and his lady are frequent visitors. When the summer concert series in the park is in full swing the two of them are always in attendance.

You've seen this one recently, but I had to include it here - a Golden Retriever getting a ride on his master's sit-on-top kayak at Belmont beach on the Cliff Walk.

And last but not least, Hitty's Kitties. My friend Virginia inherited these three from a co-worker (named Donna Hittie, hence the name) who died earlier this year. They are, from left to right: Merlin, Dolly, and Serafina.

Okay, on to the videos... I couldn't help myself; for a theme about pets, I just had to include one of the cartoon episodes of America's favorite domestic duo - Tweety and Sylvester.

The song that popped into my head as soon as I saw what the theme would be was Jerry Leiber and Mile Stoller's "Hound Dog". But not the Elvis version. Nope, I want to go with the original version of this by Big Mama Thornton, for whom Leiber and Stoller wrote it. So here's Miz Willie Mae in all her glory!

And last but not least... Who doesn't know about Andrew Lloyd Weber's Broadway-musicalization of T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. Yes, I'm talking about Cats, but I promise not to post a clip of "Memory"; I'm not that cruel! However, I do want to send this one out to my friends Ina and Kevin in memory of Gus, their sort-of resident feral cat who didn't come back from his Winter wanderings this year. So here you go, guys - "Gus: The Theater Cat". Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2007, 2008, & 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Pink

Mama Gaia likes pink a lot!

Deptford Pink, a member of the Carnation family.

A very close-up macro of individual Milkweed florets.

Star-gazer Lilies.

Swamp Rose Mallow.

On to the videos... In December of 2006 singer Pink (aka Alecia Beth Moore) composed an open letter to then-president George W. Bush and sang it with help from the Indigo Girls - Amy Ray and Emily Saliers - called "Dear Mr. President". I've never been prouder of the new generation of R&B singers than I was when I first heard the song. Bravo, Pink! This video is from her performance at Wembly Arena in London during her 2006 "I'm Not Dead" tour.

Another "pink" popular music act is one of my favorites - Pink Floyd. I found this fantastic live performance of "Time" (from the Dark Side of the Moon album) at Earls Court in London in 1994.

And finally, I couldn't do a "pink" theme without a nod to the Pink Panther. Here's Henry Mancini's famous theme, featured in the opening credits of the 2006 revival movie starring Steve Martin. Enjoy!

Photos & text © 2007, 2008, 2009, & 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Once - A Movie Review

I normally don't do movie reviews; I have friends here and there on the Internet who do a far better job at that than I do. But I stumbled across this DVD in my local public library, found the blurb on the back cover interesting, took it home, put it in the DVD player... and entered heaven! I couldn't help but let everybody else know about this, too.

This is such an intimate little movie, shot with one camera (often hand-held) in the streets of Dublin and in the homes of the people involved in the movie, and shot in available light rather than spend precious budget money on lighting systems. And except in maybe two cases, all the actors weren't actors at all, but just everyday people. It was an extended (85 minutes) home movie. And it works brilliantly!

Basically, Once (filmed in 2006 and released in 2007) is about the lives of musicians on the "starving artist" level, only able to practice their art on a limited basis in order to keep a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs. The focus is on the Guy (played by Glen Hansard), a guitarist singer-songwriter who busks on the streets of Dublin when not working for his father in a vacuum-cleaner repair business, and the Girl, played by Markéta Irglová, a Czech immigrant with a small daughter who plays piano and sings but makes ends meet by selling magazines and flowers on the street. The Guy is good but has no confidence in his talent. It takes the Girl to recognize that talent and do her best to bring it out. They strike up a friendship and begin writing songs together, and eventually she helps him get studio time to put together a demo disc (backed by a street band who seem to make their living playing Thin Lizzie covers) to take to London in hopes of finally going professional.

Reading that, you might suspect a love story. Well, not really. The Guy has an ex-girlfriend he really wants to get back together with who lives in London. The Girl is married with a small daughter, and her husband still lives in the Czech Republic. Both couples are estranged, but the Guy and the Girl are intent on putting things back together. The thing is, when they get into the music, they're absolute magic together; their voices blend with no effort at all, and their songwriting collaborations are exquisite. So naturally an attraction builds and almost bursts into bloom several times. But in the end, the Guy goes to London to further his musical career, and the Girl finally convinces her husband to come to Dublin. But they've given each other such wondrous gifts: the Girl basically finances the studio session by haggling with the studio owner and playing one of their livingroom tapes for the bank loan officer to get the money to pay for the studio time; and before leaving for London the Guy buys a piano for the Girl (she has to practice on the instruments in a music shop because she has no piano at home) and has it delivered to her flat. They may not become romantically involved, but they leave a lasting impression on each others' lives. In the end, you come away from this movie with a deep sigh that's half sadness for what might have been and half contentment for a reasonably happy ending.

What really makes this movie work as well as it does is the casting. While Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová aren't actors, they are working, professional musicians who had already been working together as songwriters for a couple of years before the movie was made. And in fact it was the musical connection that pretty much created the movie in the first place. Hansard has a band called The Frames, and John Carney, the movie's director and screenwriter, had played bass in the band for a while. It was his intimacy with the world of struggling musicians that spurred him to make the movie, and naturally he recruited people he knew from that world to be a part of it. It's the chemistry between Glen and Markéta that makes this movie the magical thing that it is, both in their relationship and in the music they create together (yes, they wrote the songs performed in the movie). And that relationship continues. For a brief time during and after the making of the movie they became romantically involved, but that didn't work. They are still very close friends, and these days they tour as The Swell Season (visit their website here).

For such a small, cheap (it was shot for €130,000, about US $160,000) movie starring two non-actors, this movie made quite a splash when it came out in 2007. It made much more money than anyone had a right to expect, and garnered great reviews from just about all the major reviewers (see the "Critical Reaction" section in the movie's Wikipedia article). It appeared at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. The soundtrack got two Grammy nominations, the movie itself won the 2008 Independent Spirit Award for best foreign film, and the song "Falling Slowly" won the 2007 Oscar for best original song. And accolade of accolades, Steven Spielberg was quoted as saying: "A little movie called Once gave me enough inspiration to last the rest of the year." That's major magic for a little movie that only took 17 days to shoot on a budget of $160,000!

Get this movie! You can visit the movie's official Fox Searchlight (the movie's distributor) website. You can get the movie itself as an mp4 digital download from iTunes, as well as the soundtrack album. Or you can buy the DVD directly from Fox (at a decent discount, at the moment). I suggest buying the DVD rather than the digital download; the DVD has some great background and behind-the-scenes documentaries that are really worth watching.

So what's all the fuss all about? Here are some examples. First, take a look at the trailer:

Then there's this video of the Oscar-winning song, "Falling Slowly". This scene is especially poignant because it's the first time Guy and Girl play together. They've only recently met, and he's just found out that she's a musician, too. Girl takes him to the piano store where they let her play on the instruments there, and he drags out the lyrics to the song and gives her the basics of the chord progressions in the different segments of the song. And when they launch into the thing, pure magic happens. I couldn't find a video of that scene in the movie (at least, one that worked), but this video is a live in concert version from their 2007 tour as The Swell Season. I like this because it captures the feel of the movie scene quite well.

There were some great scenes in the recording studio. There's an absolutely gorgeous scene with the song "Fallen from the Sky", which favors a drum machine beat and chords on a cheap Casio keyboard that's delightful, and the scene includes a visit by Girl's mother and her daughter; it's cute and playful as all get-out. Unfortunately the clip doesn't exist on YouTube. But this scene, the recording of the first song, "When Your Mind's Made Up", has great music as well as the reaction of the recording engineer Eamon, who goes into this expecting terrible schlock from a bunch of rank amateurs, only to discover that these guys are good. The reactions on his face are priceless!

And that's my review of the movie that has just become my all-time favorite. Find yourself a copy and enjoy!

Review © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Theme Thursday - Polka Dot

Well, I don't have any photos of things polka-dotted, and I did a whole post on Polka - the music and the dance - not too very long ago, I was kinda stuck, especially since I don't post any photos but my own (well, except for the public domain shot of the Hedgehog for Groundhog Day). But I had me an idea, so I opened Photoshop and played around, and this was the result:

Meanwhile, I found some interesting videos to go with this. NOT the "Yellow Polka-dot Bikini" song; and decided to be merciful and spare you that earworm. I did find some nice videos of Jimmy Van Heusen's and Johnny Burke's "Polka Dots and Moonbeams", though. Not the Sarah Vaughn version, drat the luck! But here's a nice version with Johnny Desmond singing with the Ray McKinley GM Orchestra:

And purely for giggles, I found this great 1948 Tom & Jerry cartoon, "Polka-Dot Puss". Enjoy!

Graphic & text © 2010 by A. Roy Hilbinger
PS - Sorry I was so late getting this posted; the Verizon Broadband service in my area code was down until a little after noon. And there I was all ready to upload everything at 8 this morning!

Christmas in the Trenches

It's a sad fact that down through the ages the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace has been overshadowed by war, and men and boys (and now women as well) have spent that day trying to kill other men and boys. Despite the fact that Jesus advocated peace and advised his followers:

"You have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.

"You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matthew 5:38-45)

Unfortunately humankind seems to find war necessary, and developed the theory of a just war in order to satisfy their need despite claiming to be followers of the man who gave that sermon above. And so men kill each other on a day which is supposed to be given over to peace.

But every now and then the spirit of the season overtakes the smoke and flames of war and something beautiful happens. At the very beginning of World War I just such an event occurred, on Christmas Eve of 1914. On that night German, British, and French forces facing each other across "No Man's Land" from their trenches, began singing Christmas carols, and joined in when carols shared between the cultures came up. Eventually the troops came out of the trenches and met in No Man's Land, sharing food, drink, and cigarettes, said Christmas Mass together, and collected the dead in No Man's Land and gave them a proper burial. Even the artillery fell silent, perhaps in recognition of the feeling sweeping that night. The High Command on both sides of the conflict were furious, and the British commanders actually ordered increased artillery bombardment on Christmas Eve for the remainder of the war.

But for one night in the midst of one of the most devastating conflicts in history the combatants laid down their arms and celebrated together. And that night has been celebrated ever since, on stage, in the movies, and in song. I want to share one of those movies and one of those songs with you.

In 2005 French film-maker Christian Carion wrote and directed Joyeux Noël, a film about this wondrous night. It focuses on French and Scottish forces facing German forces, how they came to leave the safety of the trenches to celebrate Christmas together in No Mans Land, how it affected individuals involved, and its consequences for some of those individuals. I first came across it two years ago, and I've made it a "tradition" to watch it on Christmas Eve every year since. You can read about the movie here and here. At the moment I just want to show you what the movie looks and sounds like. The first video is the trailer for the movie, and the second is a collection of the musical scenes. I highly recommend finding a copy to watch!

Probably the most famous song to come out of the Christmas Truce of 1914 is John McCutcheon's "Christmas in the Trenches", telling the story of that night through the experience of a British soldier, one Francis Tollever from Liverpool. I chose this video version especially because John prefaces the song with the story of the elderly German former soldiers who came to one of his concerts to listen in sheer joy; they'd been there that night but nobody would believe their tale, so it was good to hear someone verify their stories.

The most telling part of the song is the last verse, where Francis as an old man recalls the lessons learned that night:

"The ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame,
And on each end of the rifle we're the same."

Amen! Someone, I forget who, said that if the old men who declared war were the ones who actually had to fight it, we'd have world peace overnight. This song and the movie Joyeux Noël pretty much make that point! Enjoy! And have a Merry Christmas!

Photo & text © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Window Shopping: A Preview (and Happy Birthday Mickey Mouse)

I went out last night well after dark to take pictures on Bellevue Ave. for this week's Theme Thursday. Everything in tomorrow's post will be in black & white, but this shot worked so well in color, too, that I thought I'd post it today as a preview.

And now for an extra treat... Did you know that Mickey and Minnie Mouse are 81 today? Yup! Disney's first sound cartoon, "Steamboat Willie", featuring Mickey with an appearance by Minnie, premiered on this day in 1928. So naturally I had to go find the cartoon on YouTube. Enjoy!

Photo & text © 2009 by A. Roy Hilbinger

Marking Time

I just finished watching The Shipping News again. I believe I've talked about that movie before. It's such a quiet movie that makes such a major point: it's possible to recover from incredible hurt. Kevin Spacey does such an excellent job of portraying Quoyle, the ultimate nebbish, a man whose childhood has left him with such low self-esteem that he practically becomes invisible to the people around him. Judi Dench plays his Aunt Agnis, a crusty old woman who herself has endured pain and found a way out. And Julianne Moore plays the woman who brings Quoyle happiness and helps him recover from his hurt, and in the process recovers from her own.

The real star of this movie is the director, Lasse Hallström. I've talked about his work before (see my February 27 post). The man just can't do bad work. The more I see of his work, the more impressed I am. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Picture of the Day

This is a pair of red-fronted mergansers. The black and white one is the male and the brown one is the female. This is most likely a mating pair, it being that time of year. Mergansers spend the winter in coastal salt water, the kind that doesn't freeze over. In a little bit they'll head back north to the lakes and ponds in the interior, where they spend the summer, just loke loons. They're gorgeous birds, aren't they?

Well, enjoy your day!

The Civil War

I watched Gods and Generals last night. It wasn't a movie I could find much to like in - pretentious, overdone, stilted and unnatural dialogue... Nope, not at all impressed. But it did get me thinking about the Civil War.

One of the comments made in the "Making of..." documentary on the DVD was that after Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson's death the fortunes of the Confederacy's army went downhill, and suggested that maybe the South lost something important with Jackson. Well, I'm not sure I'd go that far. Jackson wasn't a major strategist, his value as a military man was that he followed orders without stinting. He was good at figuring out artillery problems, probably one of the best that West Point ever turned out, but as for planning major battles, he left that up to Lee and Lee's inner circle. The argument has been made that Jackson had become a legend in his own time and the effect of this on Confederate morale was tremendous, and that Jackson's death in 1863 demoralized the army. Far from it, it had the opposite effect - regiments would charge into battle shouting "Remember Stonewall!" and completely overrun Federal positions. So Jackson's death didn't cause the fall of the Confederacy.

Essentially, Lee lost the war when he turned North and crossed the Potomac. At that point he became the aggressive invader. To that point there were many in the North who felt for the South, people who felt that the South had gotten a raw deal and had suffered invasion by Federal troops on Lincoln's orders. Most people in the North didn't care squat about the slavery issue - the Abolitionists were a very small minority. They were very vocal and loud, but they were tiny. And northern whites were uncomfortable with blacks and didn't really like the ones they came across. Even Lincoln himself didn't go into the war planning to end slavery, and once he became committed to that path he thought the best solution would be to send all American blacks back to Africa - he didn't think that blacks belonged in America with whites. When Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation his popularity dropped dramatically.

What Lee accomplished by crossing the Potomac and heading North was to alienate what sympathy the South had in the North, especially those farmers in Maryland and Pennsylvania who were in the path of his army. The South had been fighting a defensive war to that point, driving back the perceived invader. Now they themselves had assumed to role of invader, and the effect was electrifying. Enlistment in the North skyrocketed. Before Antietam enlistment had been dying off, but after that boys started rallying to drive off the invasion of their home ground.

This was exactly what had rallied men and boys to the Confederate regiments at the beginning of the war. Their home was being invaded by Lincoln and his bullies, and by God they were gonna show those Yankees what for! So it's no surprise that the North would react the same way when their home was invaded. You'd have thought that Lee and his circle, and Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet, would have seen that one coming. Apparently not.

And of course the rest is history. The Federal army fought the Confederates to a bloody halt at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and that was the beginning of the end. While more and more northerners joined the Federal forces, the Confederate forces started experiencing a drain in their own numbers. A lot of poor boys from the mountains and the swamps left their weapons and headed for home, sick of the constant death they were seeing, and finally realizing that what they were fighting for was the huge, slave-powered plantations of the ultra-rich landowners. The war had never had any advantage for them and they started to realize that finally after the bloody mess of Gettysburg. They went home in droves and Lee ended up trapped in Appomattox.

The Confederacy could have survived if they had followed their original strategy. If they had held to the aggrieved victim role, if they had pushed the Federal troops out of Virginia and held the borders, they could have held still and gathered support. England was certainly making supportive noises, and even certain promises. France was also exploring possibilities. And there was definitely feeling north of the Mason-Dixon line that Lincoln and the Republicans were pushing things a little too far. If they had held to the defensive stand for at least another year they would have gathered enough support to declare a cease-fire, start negotiations with Lincoln, and establish a new, independent nation to share the North American continent with the United States and Canada.

But their blood was up. All of a sudden they were winning major battles when they knew they were the underdogs. They were outnumbered in troop strength and outclassed in war materiél, but they succeeded in holding off the Yankee threat. Indeed, at Fredricksburg they handed the Federal forces a major and very bloody defeat. Nobody could believe it! Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet in Richmond started believing that their dream of a seperate, independant nation could come true. So they told Lee to go north, circle around the Federal troops into Pennsylvania, and approach Washington DC from the north and lay seige to it. And Lee agreed. And they lost the war with that decision.

Of course I'm enough of a moralist to believe that the Confederacy deserved to lose. After all, they seceeded from the Union and declared war. And for what? To preserve a feudal system that placed everybody, blacks and poor whites alike, under the total control of the plantation owners. All of the government of the Confederacy came from the landowner class, as did the majority of the officer corps of the army. They were all slave-owners. The "poor white trash" from the mountain hollers and the swamps had resented the landowner class for decades, but they joined the fight because the Federal army invaded Virginia and thus invaded their "home". Once that illusion was stripped from them at Gettysburg they went home and left the rich boys on their own.

And that's my take on the Civil War, nudged out of me from watching Gods and Generals.

Picture of the Day

When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbin' along! It's getting to be that time of year. Although to be honest, we had robins all winter this year. For that matter I seem to have noticed robins being around all winter for at least the last three years. Global warming anyone? Anyhow, this guy was sitting on the fence and playing coy with me, and I though he made a good composition sitting on that fence. If you click on the picture you'll get it in full size.

Movie musings

I watched The Cider House Rules again tonight. The Newport Public Library has a copy of the DVD; I had taken it out about a month ago and really liked the movie, so when I saw it back on the shelf again today, I decided I needed to see it again.

Why do I like this movie? Hmmmm... Well, it's exactly the kind of thing I like best - intimate, personal, and poignant. I like John Irving's writing, and not only is his original novel a great book, but his own screen adaptation is just as brilliant. And of course what makes the movie intimate and personal is director Lasse Hellström, who has made a career out of that kind of movie. Hellström is also brilliant at casting, and the actors in this case fit Irving's characters like old, comfortable and well-used flannel shirts. I'd read the book years ago, and on watching the movie I just couldn't imagine any other actors fitting those roles. Michael Caine - well, what can you say about Michael Caine! When he says "Good night you princes of Maine, you kings of New England", you believe him. And Tobey Maguire's wide-eyed wonder as Homer Wells is just perfect. I hated him as Peter Parker/Spiderman, but he was born to play Homer Wells. Charlize Theron is also perfect as Candy, the girl who just isn't any good at being alone. And Delroy Lindo as Arthur Rose - that man is just so good! Remember him as West Indian Archie in Malcolm X? A brilliant actor.

But most of all this movie is good because of Lasse Hellström. I've gotten to be a real fan of his stuff - My Life As a Dog, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, The Shipping News, and An Unfinished Life (I haven't seen Casanova yet - I saw the trailers and a film clip; I suspect that like Chocolat this is going to be one of the few Hellström films I really don't like). Shipping News is my favorite, although I saw an Unfinished Life and am waiting for the DVD to come out so I can watch it a few more times and settle into it. What he and Morgan Freeman and Robert Redford did to create the relationship between those two old ranchers was probably the best work the three of them have created (although Freeman's role as Red in Shawshank Redemption with Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and directed by Frank Darabont is pretty close to being just as close-knit, natural, and elegant).

But what Hellström did with Annie Proulx's novel The Shipping News, and especially the job he did with Kevin Spacey to create a character totally unlike anything Spacey has ever done before... I didn't like Cate Blanchette in that one, but then again her character was unsympathetic anyhow, so I guess she did a good job. But the real working ensemble was the Newfoundland cast, with Spacey and Julianne Moore and Judi Dench, and the job Hellström did with them to create three damaged characters healing and becoming whole was some of the most beautiful acting and filmmaking I've ever seen. Again, the man is brilliant at casting. Who would ever have seen Quoyle, the ultimate personality-less nebbish, in the acting Spacey had done to create his characteristic rash, devil-may-care characters? Moore and Dench had already created roles similar to the ones they played in Shipping News, but Kevin Spacey was a pleasant surprise. And Julianne Moore seems to be making a habit of playing serious, truly great theatrical roles. Remember her as Laura Brown in The Hours? Ahhhhhh! But that's Lasse Hellström's genius - he chooses just the right actors to fit the roles and creates the cinematic atmosphere in which they do their best work.

Oh, and one hilarious irony in Shipping News: I cracked up seeing both Cate Blanchette and Judi Dench in the cast; they both had played Queen Elizabeth I - Judi Dench in Shakespeare In Love (1998) and Cate Blanchette in Elizabeth (also in 1998).

And that's my musing for today. Be sure to check back here tomorrow night - I'm putting together a photo essay on my spiritual home. Until then, sleep well, live a good life, and enjoy every moment.