Old movies don’t always seem that old: A Year in Movies 2021 – Part 5

Posted on March 1, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.

Casablanca

Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, perhaps the most perfect movie ever made.

I always think of “old movies” being movies from the 1930s or 40s – the ones that were old to me when I first got really interested in films in the 1970s or 80s. I mean, my Dear Wife and I had our second date at a campus movie series showing of Casablanca back in the spring of 1981. Casablanca came out in 1942, so it was 39 years old when we first saw it. Which seemed pretty old to 21-year-old us. The movies we’re going to look at today date from 1937 until 1981 – So they will all be older now than “old movie” Casablanca  was on that second date… (I guess since Dear Wife and I will have been married 40 years this summer, we are also old…)

When we left off last time, we had been watching an adaptation of Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King. And we will start off this time with another Kipling story – 1937’s Captain’s Courageous, directed by Victor Fleming and staring Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, and Melvyn Douglas.

Freddie Bartholomew plays the snotty rich kid who falls off a steam ship crossing the Atlantic while getting sick after drinking too many milkshakes. He is rescued by a Grand Banks cod fishing boat that doesn’t have a radio on it. The boat, of course, can’t take him to port until it’s full up with fish. Tracy won an Academy Award for Best Actor for playing the fisherman who teaches Bartholomew’s character how to be a human being. Mum-in-law watched it with me but thought it was way too sentimental. I, of course, loved it. (I listened to an audiobook of Kipling’s original story not too long ago as well.)

Next up, we have 1981’s Eyewitness, directed by Peter Yates; starring William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, and Christopher Plummer. Dear Wife and I likely saw this first when it was new, but it’s now 41-years old, so … officially an old movie. Eyewitness is a mystery/thriller, and it doesn’t bear looking too deeply at the plot, having little connection with reality. But it does have a horse stampede in downtown Manhattan, so it’s all good fun. (There is not a current home video version as far as I can tell, but it shows up occasionally on Turner Classic Movies.)

White Christmas, 1954, directed by Michael Curtiz (of Casablanca fame); starring Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen. It also stars the songs of Irving Berlin. Wonderful silliness about a pair of song-and-dance men who meet up with a couple of song-and-dance women who decide to put on a show together. It is in many ways a remake of the Bing Crosby flick Holiday Inn, but unlike Holiday Inn, White Christmas isn’t afflicted by an incredibly racist minstrel show. Great songs, great dancing, enormous fun.  (For those interested, it was shot in larger-format VistaVision.)

Bell, Book & Candle, 1958, directed by Richard Quine; starring Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gringold, and Elsa Lanchester. Novak plays a witch who casts a literal spell on Stewart in this supernatural romantic comedy. The joy of this film comes not so much from the silly plot as from seeing all these great performers come together in a story that helped inspire the 1960s TV series Bewitched (as did the 1942 I Married a Witch that we’ll get to later).

We close out this group with the 1976 mystery/comedy Murder By Death, directed by Robert Moore. It was written by playwright Neil Simon and has an all-star cast of Eileen Brennan, Truman Capote, James Coco, Peter Falk, Alec Guinness, Elsa Lanchester (whom we just saw in Bell, Book & Candle!), David Niven, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith and Nancy Walker. If you’ve seen 1985’s Clue, you’ve essentially seen this movie. Strangers arrive at a house for a mysterious weekend and end up getting murdered one by one. It’s a movie that doesn’t call on you to think to deeply – just enjoy the silly ride. (Note: Contains one of the horrid yellowface performances Hollywood was so fond of.)

Coming Attractions: From 1976’s King Kong to 2019’s Godzilla King of the Monsters

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Guest Blog Post: Media framing the news out of Ukraine very differently than that from Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan

Posted on February 28, 2022 by Ralph Hanson
Dr. Rosemary Pennington

Dr. Rosemary Pennington

Yesterday morning while I was reading Twitter,  Dr. Rosemary Pennington, associate professor of journalism at Miami University of Ohio, had a great thread on how the news media have framed the story of what is happening in Ukraine so very differently from what has happened in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. She was kind enough to edit her Tweets into this guest blog post. Great reading on a part of this story that doesn’t get enough attention.

Guest Blog Post from Dr. Rosemary Pennington

For the last week, I’ve been sharing information on social media about Ukraine. Most of this information has been authored by other people because, while I have done a lot of reading on the subject of the former Eastern Bloc, I am not an expert on the subject.

What I am an expert in is media representation; specifically, the representation of Muslims and cultures/countries that were once imagined as the Orient in media.

News media and pundits have brought those two things – Ukraine and the representation of the imagined Orient – clashing together this week.

By now, you’ve likely seen video of the CBS reporter who implied Ukraine is different from Iraq or Afghanistan because, unlike those nations, Ukraine is a “civilized” country.

There’s a lot to unpack there.

First, I would turn you onto the Twitter feed of Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a scholar of race and Blackness in the USSR and GDR (socialist East Germany) and a PhD student in the University of Pennsylvania’s History Department. She’s been tweeting about race in Ukraine, but also about the way that Ukraine has been othered, and at time racialized, in the European imagination.

While Ukraine is being embraced right now as European as it fights off a Russian invasion, it hasn’t always been.

Second, this framing – that Ukraine is somehow civilized while MENA nations (Middle East and North Africa) like Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria are not – is Orientalist. It’s Eurocentric. It’s racist.

If we unpack the whole “Iraq and Afghanistan are uncivilized” frame it takes us back to discussions of European and American imperialism and militarism which we, as a collective “West,” have not truly reckoned with.

And, frankly, it is a framing no one needs to make.

We are watching the destruction of a nation on the internet and on TV. It is terrible. There is no need to do some sort of comparison. There is no reason to be racist to make people care about Ukraine. I saw the “Russian warship: Go fuck yourself” video. I saw the hard-core woman tell a soldier to carry seeds so sunflowers will grow when he dies. I watched explosions rip apart cities. How can one be human and watch this happen and not feel? Not care?

You do not need to compare the suffering of Ukrainians to the suffering of Afghans or Iraqis or Syrians in order to prove Ukrainians are worth protecting or saving. All human life is worth protecting and worth saving.

I almost kept my mouth shut after watching that CBS reporter spew that Orientalist and Eurocentric claptrap. But then – oh, there’s always a “but then” – I saw other reporters use the same sort of language. I saw pundits, not all speaking in English, using the same framing.

So, here I am, yelling into the internet at people who do not pay attention what some academic in Washington, DC, has to say. But, I am a former journalist and a journalism professor. My hope is always that the profession can do better, be better. So I yell.

If we don’t call out problematic, racist, things as we see them, then that framing continues. It’s why those reporters and pundits are so comfortable suggesting that Iraqis or Syrians or Afghans are somehow less human – it’s the implication, even if it’s not the intent – because not enough people have called them out on their dehumanizing coverage of conflicts in those places in the past.

Instead, journalists continue producing news coverage of places  like Afghanistan or Syria that is Islamophobic in nature and which helps fuel anti-Muslim sentiment.

Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, I’d started listening to The Trojan Horse Affair podcast. It deals with a similar issue. Listen to the podcast, if you haven’t. I won’t spoil it. But, the gist is the UK government took an Islamophobic letter at face value and used it to wage a very anti-Muslim campaign of terror against Muslims in the UK.

At the time, this witch hunt had a fair amount of support because of the historic framing of Muslims (and Muslim countries) as somehow less civilized, less modern, less human than non-Muslim countries.

Allowing people to be framed as somehow less human, or less worthy of our empathy and compassion, often means that when violence is committed against them, we fail to speak out. Rather than stand as witnesses to violence, we turn away and pretend we don’t see it.

I watched people talk about The Trojan Horse Affair podcast, particularly those not in my field, saying things like, “How could this happen?” I wanted to yell, “Because you watched 24! Because you bought the weapons of mass destruction lie! Because you believe the Middle East to be unmodern! You have for centuries, fueled by European imperial expansion into the Near, Middle, and Far East.”

How could this happen? How could experienced and educated journalists report on one tragedy – and Ukraine is a monumental tragedy – while dehumanizing the tragedy of certain other people?

Because those people are generally a) brown, b) non-Christian, and c) from non-European countries. That combination has for a very long time been portrayed in political, media, and cultural discourses as though it was foreign. As though the people with those characteristics are others not worth our time, care, or compassion because they are uncivilized and unmodern.

And, for the record, this isn’t some screed along the “Why are we talking about Ukraine and not X other conflict” lines. (Though, I think those are conversations we also have to have at some point.)

This is very much about how reporters are framing a current crisis and how troubling and, frankly, unethical it is to dehumanize one group (or many groups) of people in order to make your point.

It’s also just lazy  journalism.

We should care about the violence in Ukraine because human beings deserve to live in dignity. We should care about the violence in Syria because human beings deserve to live in dignity. We should care about the violence in Afghanistan because human beings deserve to live in dignity.

It has nothing to do with civilization or modernity. (Who gets to decide who is civilized or unmodern anyway?)

It has everything to do with ethics, compassion, and humanity.

There is amazing reporting coming out of Ukraine, but if we don’t call out the racist coverage as we see it, it will continue. And the ethical mandate for journalists to “minimize harm” will be something we can never live up to.

Dr. Rosemary Pennington is an associate professor of journalism at Miami University, where she also serves as the area coordinator of the journalism program. She’s the co-editor of two books from Indiana University Press – On Islam: Muslims and the Media with Hilary Kahn and The Media World of ISIS with Michael Krona.

 

 

 

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Remembering Dr. Paul Farmer

Posted on February 23, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard-educated doctor who devoted his life to serving the health needs of the poorest, most remote, and sickest of the world, died of an “acute cardiac event” earlier this week at a hospital in Rwanda he had helped establish. He was 62 years old. He was a huge hero of mine.

Paul Farmer

Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder Partners In Health

The term “saint” gets thrown around pretty easily at times to describe people who seem to be perfect in a moral/religious sense. That’s a tough standard, and I don’t think many people, especially actual saints, can live up to the idea of being perfect.

As Fr. James Martin has written, the canonized saints have been egotistical, difficult, impatient, struggle with their faith, and struggle with the world. Saints can also have a sense of humor about themselves and their responsibilities. They have not led blameless lives. What they have done is devoted their life to carrying out God’s will the best they can.

Fr. Martin writes that Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Workers Party, is in the early stages of being considered for sainthood and might seem like an unlikely candidate. She got pregnant out of wedlock and had an abortion. She later had a common-law husband with whom she had a child. But what mattered most in her life was her devotion to the lives of the poor and the church’s commitment to them. That was how she directed her life after an adult conversion to Catholicism. She saw her call to “work among the poor and marginalized in the big cities.”

In my mind, Dr. Paul Farmer, who died at age 62 earlier this week, was a saint. He was far from perfect. He was egotistical, impatient, and demanding. But he also insisted that people who were poor or lived in remote areas still deserved high-quality medical care for difficult diseases like HIV/AIDS or drug-resistant tuberculosis. He co-founded  Partners In Health, a non-profit designed to build sustainable clinics in the poorest, most under-served areas.

I first learned about Farmer from Tracy Kidder’s book Mountains Beyond Mountains that told of Farmer’s campaign to bring care to the hardest to serve – people living in the mountains of Haiti or in Russian prisons. Kidder’s book got started as an article for The New Yorker 22 years ago called “The Good Doctor” that has been a staple for years for my feature writing class. As an example, Kidder tells of Farmer treating a young man with AIDS in a remote area of Haiti:

“My situation is so bad,” the young man said. “I keep injuring my head, because I’m living in such a crowded house. We have only one bed, and I let my children sleep on it, so I have to sleep under the bed, and I forget, and I hit my head when I sit up.” He went on, “I don’t forget what you did for me, Doktè Paul. When I was sick and no one would touch me, you used to sit on my bed with your hand on my head. I would like to give you a chicken or a pig.”

When Farmer is relaxed, his skin is pale, with a suggestion of freckles underneath. Now it reddened instantly, from the base of his neck to his forehead. “You’ve already given me a lot. Stop it!”

In another case, Farmer was working with a sick teen-aged girl:

A thirteen-year-old girl with meningitis had arrived by donkey ambulance. The young doctors on duty hadn’t done a spinal tap, to find out which type of meningitis, and thus which drugs to give her. “Doctors, doctors, what is wrong with you?” Farmer said. Then he did the tap himself. Wild cries from the child: “Li fe-m mal, mwen grangou.” Farmer looked up from his work and said, “She’s crying, ‘It hurts, I’m hungry.’ Can you believe it? Only in Haiti would a child cry out that she’s hungry during a spinal tap.”

Farmer routinely worked in clinics serviced by a “donkey ambulance” – literally sick people brought in by donkey. Not where you would expect to see someone with a Harvard medical degree and doctorate in antrhopology and two faculty appointments at major US universities.

In a remembrance of Farmer for the New York Times, Kidder wrote:

Paul’s basic belief was that all human beings deserve equal respect and care, especially when they are sick. His dream, he once told me, was to start a movement that would refuse to accept, and would strive to repair, the grotesque health inequities among and within the countries of the world. When I first met him — in Haiti, in 1994 — he had already created a growing health care system in a desperately impoverished area. I thought he’d done a lot already. Now, looking back, I realize that he was just getting started.

When Farmer was a medical intern, he would sometimes get his paycheck and immediately sign it over to an AIDS patient who was in danger of becoming homeless. He did not come from a wealthy family and by normal standards, he could not afford to do this. But Farmer says he was never in any danger of going homeless himself by giving away his pay. There was always be someone who could loan him money. (You can view this whole conversation between Farmer an Kidder that aired on C-SPAN back in 2003 in the video embedded below.)

Farmer was, as I mentioned at the beginning, far from perfect. Kidder told wonderful stories about his impatience with the world. He could be harsh toward those who weren’t trying hard enough, who were cutting themselves too much slack.

Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange [Hatie], I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, “If you’re making sacrifices, unless you’re automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you’re trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don’t have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence.” He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn’t bristle, but his tone had an edge: “I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can’t buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent. Comma.” 

This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer’s use of the word comma, placed at the end of a sentence. It stood for the word that would follow the comma, which was asshole. I understood he wasn’t calling me one—he would never do that; he was almost invariably courteous. Comma was always directed at third parties, at those who felt comfortable with the current distribution of money and medicine in the world. And the implication, of course, was that you weren’t one of those. Were you?

Farmer was responsible for one of my favorite concepts/catch phrases – one that has spread throughout my family: the “H of G.” Kidder writes:

“An H of G” was short for “a hermeneutic of generosity,” which he had defined once for me in an e-mail: “I have a hermeneutic of generosity for you because I know you’re a good guy. Therefore I will interpret what you say and do in a favorable light. Seems like I’m the one who should hope for as much from you.”

The H of G says that we should always be looking for the best in people or a situation, even if it isn’t necessarily earned.

I must admit I have felt inadequate trying to write about Farmer. He was such a complex character who demanded so much of himself that his actions serve as a challenge to us. Kidder admits that he was at one point reluctant to write about Farmer because he knew it would challenge his own privileged life. “I knew if I followed this guy around, it would disturb my peace of mind.”

Fr. Martin did not call Farmer, a devotee of Catholic liberation theology, a saint, but it was his writings that convinced me that this funny, prickly, demanding doctor was emphatically one. In a prose poem/prayer, Martin writes:

Help me to believe that your Spirit can do anything: raise up saints when we need them most, soften hearts when they seem hardened, open minds when they seem closed, inspire confidence when all seems lost, help us do what had seemed impossible until it was done.

If Farmer hadn’t done the things he did, it would have been easy to call them impossible. I know that Farmer would have been uncomfortable being called a saint. He was just doing what he needed to do, comma…

Tracy Kidder / Paul Farmer C-SPAN Video

Click on this image to view a C-SPAN book talk by Tracy Kidder and Dr. Paul Farmer.

 

 

 

 

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Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Women's Olympic skating finals 2022

  • Why has ViacomCBS changed its name to Paramount?
    The simple answer is, “Why not? Everyone knows who Paramount is.” The more complex answer is: Given that most of my media literacy students have never heard of Viacom before enrolling in my class, it’s no surprise that the broadcast/cable/movie giant is taking on Paramount as its brand name.Viacom got its start as a production company run by CBS back in the 1960s, but the broadcast company was forced to spin Viacom off in 1971 because it was too much power in the hand of one company (isn’t that quaint!). Viacom was then bought in 1987 by movie theater owner Sumner Redstone, who added Paramount Studios to his portfolio. And then, given the big changes in the FCC’s feelings about ownership, Viacom bought out CBS. They danced around having separate stock for several years, and then, in 2019, following an extended and rather ugly battle among management and members of the Redstone family, the two companies came back together with the rather awkward name ViacomCBS. So the new name not only makes the company more identifiable, it also helps put the internal battles for control of the company into the past.
  • Why did Sarah Palin lose her libel suit against the NY Times?
    Courtroom illustration of Sarah Palin.The simple answer is that Palin never had a case. The more complex answer is that both the judge and the jury ruled that the former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate had not demonstrated the high legal status of “actual malice” that public figures are required to meet. The NY Times did print a false statement in an editorial that was relatively quickly corrected. And Palin was unable to show that she had really been harmed by the quickly corrected error.

And finally…

  • Has there ever been a more perfect hour of low-key television than Micahel Palin crossing from Dubai to Bombay on a dhow on his Around the World in 80 Days travel show?
    Michael Palin on the dhow on his trip around the world in 80 days.The simple answer is “no.” There is no complex answer.The show aired on the BBC back in 1988 and not long afterward on PBS. I saw the series when it first aired in the United States, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve managed to watch the TV series or listen to the audiobook since then. Palin’s challenge was to make it around the world in 80 days or less without the use of modern air travel.The people he meets and the experiences he has  (including being shaved by a blind barber in India) all unroll at an unhurried pace of another era. Palin is accompanied on his travels by a small film crew he refers to as his Passepartout (the valet for Jules Verne’s original hero Philias Fogg).

    The best episode of the series is where Palin has to cross the Persian Gulf on an old-school regional cargo boat (a dhow) that runs on a diesel engine supplemented by a sail when feasible. During his eight-day crossing, Palin connects with perhaps the purest part of his entire journey. He has only an open deck with a tarp cover for accommodations, and the toilet is an open seat over the sea. (Note: All is not well with Palin’s stomach for several days.) The journey across the Persian Gulf was slow, it could be scary at times, and it was often incredibly dull. But Palin writes that it was the part of the trip he will never forget. There’s no official way to see the series in the US anymore, but you can find a reasonably good copy of the series on the Internet Archive. It’s worth digging up.

    P.S. PBS is currently showing a reimagined version of Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days that has been absolutely excellent, staring British actor David Tennant as Fogg, French actor Ibrahim Koma as Passepartout, and German actress Leonie Benesch (from Babylon Berlin) as journalist Abigail “Fix” Fortescue. Highly recommend getting caught up on it if you have access to PBS Passport streaming.

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Why do news update e-mails insist on putting sports spoilers in the subject line?

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Why do news update e-mails insist on putting sports spoilers in the subject line?

Olympic RingsOk, I get it. It’s almost impossible to avoid results of a high-profile Olympic event that takes place early in the morning but gets aired on TV during prime time that same day. And if you are on social media, you’re going to get spoilers.

But why do e-mail news updates, especially just general news updates, have to put the results into the subject line? I am, of course, referring to the dramatic results of this morning’s women’s figure skating finals.

I raised the question on Twitter earlier today on why the Washington Post had to put the results in the subject line of their e-mail and tagged several media reporters in a followup. I heard back from Post news media reporter Paul Farhi:

Which to me begs the question – Why keep doing it?

Years ago I used to watch a lot of motorcycle racing from around the world (MotoGP and World Superbike) and the United States that typically was on a multiple-day TV delay. Websites, like SuperbikePlanet.com, that gave real-time coverage of the races would send out e-mails with results of qualifying, supporting races, and the main events. And for all the final races they would use a subject line along the lines of “Italian MotoGP Results!” If you wanted to know the results, you clicked on it, if you wanted to wait you ignored it.

I understand that it’s vastly easier to avoid spoilers for obscure sports like motorcycle racing. But news outlets like the Washington Post or New York Times could do better on this. Especially since, “People have been complaining about this since the invention of  e-mails and news alerts.”

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What a great year for Best Animated Feature Oscar Nominations

Posted on February 16, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Generally, I have mixed feelings about the Best Animated Feature Oscar category. I mean, if Disney/Pixar comes out with a vaguely credible effort, they generally win. This was particularly true in 2016 when the oh-so-carefully constructed “important message” Zootopia beat out the wildly creative and original Kubo and the Two Strings.  Kubo was beautifully told through some of the best stop action animation in recent memory, it was family friendly, it told an uplifting story, and it featured a great cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” from Regina Spektor. But Disney’s Zootopia was a huge success and everybody loved its rank sentimentality. (To be fair, Kubo did suffer from whitewashing, with prominent white actors voicing Asian characters.)

https://youtu.be/8hUOKjy-9-o

There have, of course, been some notable exceptions – most significantly when Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse beat out Pixar’s Incredibles 2 and Disney’s Ralph Breaks The Internet. But there was no way the most innovative animated film in decades could have lost.

This year, however, there is a rich, diverse, and exciting field of nominees from three different studios. And I’ve been fortunate enough to see (well, mostly see) all of them.

Disney/Pixar has three nominations:

  • Encanto – A Columbian-set musical featuring hit songs from wunderkind Lin-Manuel Miranda. If you have small children, you have spent the last month (at least) listening to “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” on rapid repeat. It is also a wonderful film with great dancing, a fantastic Latinx-themed story, and truly vibrant animation. For me, this was the best animation out of the House of Mouse since at least Big Hero Six.

  • Raya and the Last Dragon – A well-done fantasy adventure set in legendary China, starring the voice acting of the ever-popular actor/comedian Awkwafina, and, to my eyes, looking a lot like a kid-friendly version of Ten Rings.

  • Luca – A Pixar release that I actually got so bored with I skipped much of the middle to get to the end. I never do this. And I was predisposed to love this movie. I mean, two boys lusting after a Vespa scooter over the course of the summer, right? And yet… It just suffered from a massive lack of storytelling. It felt a lot like a short film that just got stretched beyond its limits.

Sony Animation has one entry – The Mitchells vs. the Machines. Coming from the same studio that brought us Spider-Verse, it’s no surprise that this movie has an animation style that looks like nothing else – it just pops off the screen with bits of text and explosive colors. It tells the story of a teen-age girl who wants to go to film school. She has big issues with her father (and this is the great part) which have nothing to do with her being gay. Dad wants Katie to get outdoors, and Katie wants to shoot and edit films. In fact, her sexuality is an underplayed part of the story – it’s just who she is. There’s none of the “very special episodeness” of the story. I will confess that I’m biased on this film – friends of my eldest and his Dear Wife worked on it. But it would still be one of my favorites.

And finally, there’s Flee, the Danish-language (with segments in Dari) documentary about a real-life teen-aged refugee who has to live a lie in order to escape Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. It takes he and his family years to escape first to Russia and then to various European countries. Like Mitchells, the protagonist Amin is gay, and while it is an important part of who he is, it is not central to his challenges escaping to the West. Unlike all of these other films, Flee is hand-drawn (on computers) with 2D animation. It also switches from a muted earth-toned full-color pallet to gray-and-black lines-and-wash to depict the most perilous moments. Flee is rated PG-13, but it’s not for the younger set. It’s a disturbing and uplifting film that gets at the refugee experience in a way that is interesting, touching, and honest. In addition to being nominated for Best Animated Feature, Flee has also been nominated for Best Documentary Feature as well as Best International Feature.

So there is no question that Encanto is going to win Best Animated Feature. It tells a great story, it has fantastic animation, it has multiple hit songs, it hits both fun and serious notes, and it arguably could have been nominated for Best Picture.

Any other year, Mitchells could have been a contender for the win. It was so much fun with the technology-run-amok story line, an adorable pug sidekick, and all the fun moments from Katie’s short films. Mitchells was exactly the kind of escapism we needed on Netflix during the peak of the pandemic.

And then there is Flee. I have to admit that Flee was probably my favorite of all these films. I bought a copy so I could see it, but I can’t say I was looking forward to it. And yet, once I started Flee I don’t think I paused it more than once, if at all.  Serious, adult-oriented animated films never win this category. The Breadwinner, Persepolis, The Triplets of Belleville and the Wes Anderson animated features were never in serious contention. I hope that Flee will win one of the other two categories it is nominated in.

Encanto is going to be another win for Disney, and it’s going to deserve it. But don’t miss seeing Mitchells vs. the Machines or Flee. They are equally deserving of your time.

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When did I realize I was all-in on e-books?

Posted on February 14, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Last night.

Michael Palin, Travelling to Work, Diaries 1988-1998I had previously read and really enjoyed the first two volumes/decades of former Python/travel host Michael Palin’s diaries, but had held off reading the thick third volume, Travelling To Work, for several years.  I mean, the book has literally been collecting dust on my nightstand since I bought a used copy back in 2015.

It occurred to me last night, I hadn’t read it because it was too big to conveniently take with me places and was too heavy to comfortably read in bed. My Dear Wife asked why I didn’t just get a Kindle copy.

Well?

While I really don’t like buying the same book twice, I really do prefer e-books now. So I bought the e-book.

Why do I like e-books so much? A number of reasons.

  • As I hinted at above, I’m a big fan of my iPad tablet, and it goes with me almost everywhere. It’s a great platform to read on. It’s not very heavy. And it adjusts the background and brightness to the conditions around me. And Amazon’s Kindles are good readers as well.
  • It weighs less than a lot of the books I want to read.
  • It keeps track of where I am in the book.
  • It’s easy to highlight text or take notes on the text. (Not so important when I’m reading for pleasure, but much more significant with work reading.)
  • I can have instant gratification. If I want a book and it’s available in e-book format, I can have access to it instantly. (This sometimes is not such great thing.)
  • I don’t have to worry about losing the book in our big home library. I buy a lot of books for research at the moment I discover them, but I may not be reading them for months or even a year or two. By that point I might not know where the book is or even remember that I bought it. But if it’s on my e-book reading list, I know exactly where it is. Of course, a lot of the books I get are out-of-print used books only available in physical form, which is fine. But now I have fewer of those to keep track of.

And finally… my Dear Wife and I love books, and every bit of open wall space in our house is covered with bookshelves.  And all of those book shelves are at capacity. So when new physical books come in, lesser desired ones need to go out. E-books let me help dodge that problem.

I understand completely why people love physical books. We have a good collection of autographed books in the house. And I do love the heft and feel of a physical book. (But that heft and feel can also be a disadvantage.) And I totally get that people need time away from technology and screens. (My Dear Wife only reads books in paper form.)

I’ve heard a number of people say to me that they don’t like reading e-books on their computer or their phone, and I agree with them wholeheartedly! Neither of those are great platforms for reading a book. (Unless, perhaps, you have one of those giant big-*ss phones that I refuse to have.)

But a good e-book reader like a Kindle or a high-quality tablet like my iPad Pro can be an easy-on-the-eyes-and-wrist way to read. My late mum-in-law was a long-time Kindle user because the reader let her turn every book she bought into a large-print book.

How do you feel about e-books vs.paper books? (Please note, they are all “real” books.)

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Sometimes you just need old favorites: A Year in Movies 2021 – Part 4

Posted on February 11, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

In December of 2020, when it became clear we were not going to be returning to normal life any time soon, we purchased a big honking 55-inch 4K TV and settled in for a year of watching movies at home. By Dec. 31, 2021, we had watched 236 movies either together or separately. This is one of series of blog posts about those films.

Sometimes you want to see the latest greatest movie at the theater, and sometimes you’re in the mood for an old classic you just haven’t gotten around to see yet. But sometimes you want to watch a comfortable favorite you’ve already seen too many times to keep track of. Those are the kind of movies we’ll be looking at this time. Mostly.

This batch starts out with Charade, which is often misattributed to Alfred Hitchcock. A.V. Club writes, “Some have called it the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.” It is great, it does feel like a Hitchcock movie, but it was directed by Singin’ In The Rain’s Stanley Donen. It has all of the key elements of a great Hitchcock thriller: the ever glamorous Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, moral ambiguity, mistaken identity, murder most foul, and something important missing (in this case, a large sum of money). My Dear Wife had seen it before with her mother, but it was a first watch for me.

Now we move into the true comfort category with The Maltese Falcon from 1941, which was the great John Huston’s directorial debut. It’s based on Dashiell Hammett’s novel and stars Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Gladys George, Peter Lorre, and Sydney Greenstreet in his movie debut. (He had been a stage actor previously.) There’s so many reasons for this to be a favorite – Bogart, Lorre, and Greenstreet together always makes for a great movie, it’s a  film noir, and it has all the elements that let the movie play around with the restrictions of the Hays Code. (By the way, if you like this style of movie, be sure to check out Eddie Muller’s late-night weekend show Noir Alley on Turner Classic Movies.)

Return of the Jedi (directed by Richard Marquand) and Rogue One (directed by Gareth Edwards). I have always loved the original Star Wars trilogy. (Ok, I saw the 1977 Star Wars in the theater 13 times the summer it came out. It was pre-VCR, pre-cable. Get over it…) We had been gradually rewatching the initial movies, and it was time to view  Return of the Jedi. I do actually own a copy of the original theatrical cut of the movie, but it’s on a non-anamorphic DVD, so it is low resolution with black bars all around on a hi-def TV, so unfortunately I had to see the latest editing of it on Disney+. On the positive side, that copy is in 4K. Anytime I watch a Star Wars movie, I end up needing to rewatch Rogue One, by far the best of the subsequent films and really (in my mind) the fourth movie of the original series.  I love the darker elements of it that deal so wonderfully with the fact that the rebellion was really an insurgency. And it has a magnificent score from Michael Giacchino, by far my favorite currently working film composer. This will not be the only time this year I watch Rogue One.

The Man Who Would Be King, 1975, also directed by John Huston. This stars Sean Connery and Michael Caine as a pair of 19th century adventurers going deep into the Himalayas to pretend to be kings, maybe even gods. Needless to say, it doesn’t turn out well for our heroes. The movie also features Christopher Plummer as the narrator, Rudyard Kipling. Kipling, of course, was the author of the novella the film is based on, but he was not a character in the original story. Along with the great director and cast, it has an epic score from Maurice Jarre, best known for scoring Lawrence of Arabia,

Coming Next: Movies from 1935 to 1981

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Guest Blog Post – Looking Back at Banned Books

Posted on February 7, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

I saw on social media last week that my former student Stephanie Ballard Conrad was talking about studying banned books back when she was an undergraduate nearly 20 years ago. I asked if she could give us a look back at what she read and learned about challenged books years ago.  She was good enough to send me this. Thanks, Stephanie!

Stephanie Ballard Conrad

Stephanie Ballard Conrad

In the spring of 2019, I received an unexpected package via campus mail to my office at the university where I completed my undergraduate degree years before. As I opened the bulky manila envelope I found a blue Mead notebook with a pale pink Post-It note on the cover. It was from my former English professor, sharing a “blast from the past” — it was my reading journal from my independent study course from spring semester 2003.

I was quickly taken back sixteen years to my final semester as a public relations major, minoring in English literature. I had registered for one of the professor’s higher level literature classes and on the first day, every seat in the room was full. To help mitigate the size of her class, she offered the option of creating an independent study to students who were interested. I was game. We were advised to come up with a theme for our study and after weighing several options, I landed on banned books with my professor’s enthusiastic support and approval.

Every few years the concept of book banning becomes a hot topic and I think back to this college endeavor. I’m not sure if this was the spark that inspired my theme, but I knew that by exploring works that were controversial, I would find books that were interesting and relevant.

I started by looking at lists online of commonly banned books. Interestingly, I had already read many of them as part of other classes as early as middle school – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Animal Farm by George Orwell to name a few. These and other works are considered classics yet still face criticism for discussing topics perceived as controversial. Selecting other classics from the lists for my independent study, I chose to read Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, Death of Salesman by Arthur Miller, Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (surprisingly, I didn’t read that in high school), and select chapters from Homer’s Odyssey.

One lasting lesson that has stuck with me, even eighteen years after that independent study, was that in considering the reasons why some books were banned during a certain time period, the actual passages or themes or words used didn’t seem so controversial years later. For instance, according to my notes, Death of a Salesman was banned in the 1970s and 1980s for profane language. The Odyssey was banned in ancient Greece because of themes of freedom which were contrary to Greek government ideals during that period in history.

Also, other books incorporate themes that continue to cause concern for some today. Song of Solomon and Catcher in the Rye deal with serious issues such as race, suicide, and sexuality – some of the exact same topics that are sparking book bans again in the US in 2022. These topics are complex and remain ones that people continue to face.

As I look back today, my opinion on banning books hasn’t changed nearly 20 years later. Even after having my own children who I want to protect and nurture, I still see these and other books as important. They teach valuable lessons and help readers know that they are not alone in their experiences and/or feelings.

I noted back in 2003 that some books were obviously more appropriate for certain age and reading levels, which I also still believe today. I wouldn’t expect to see Song of Solomon in an elementary library, for instance, but I would hope that high schoolers would see it on their library shelves. That caveat aside, book banning creates a culture of avoidance – and we can’t learn from avoidance.

The freedom that I felt from creating my own independent study and then selecting my own readings from lists of previously banned books is a kind of freedom that I hope other readers, young and old, continue to experience.

Stephanie A. Ballard Conrad, MA; West Virginia University, Class of 2003, 2021

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Book Banning & How Students Learn About The Holocaust

Posted on February 2, 2022 by Ralph Hanson

Banning, challenging, parental control… Call them what you want, there’s a lot of people out there upset about a lot of books in schools and libraries lately.

The United States has a long history of vocal parents being offended/upset by a variety of content in either teaching materials or library books.  Enough so that the American Library Association has a list of the most banned or challenged books in the United States, categorized by year.

If we go back 20 years ago to 2002, this is what the list looked like:

Top 10 Banned/Challenged Books for 2002
Out of 515 challenges recorded by the Office for Intellectual Freedom

  1. Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling
    Reasons: occult/Satanism, violence
  2. Alice (series), by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
    Reasons: homosexuality, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
  3. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
    Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
  4. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
    Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group, violence
  5. Taming the Star Runner, by S.E. Hinton
    Reason: offensive language
  6. Captain Underpants, by Dav Pilkey
    Reasons: offensive language, unsuited to age group
  7. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
    Reason: offensive language
  8. Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson
    Reasons: occult/Satanism, offensive language, violence
  9. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, by Mildred D. Taylor
    Reason: offensive language
  10. Julie of the Wolves, by Jean Craighead George
    Reasons: unsuited to age group, violence

An interesting mix, to be sure – ranging from the Harry Potter series  for satanism to I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, for essentially clear discussing what it was like for Angelou to grow up in a culture of racism.

By 2020, the list had changed quite a bit:

Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2020
The ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom tracked 156 challenges to library, school, and university materials and services in 2020. Of the 273 books that were targeted, here are the most challenged, along with the reasons cited for censoring the books:

  1. George by Alex Gino
    Reasons: Challenged, banned, and restricted for LGBTQIA+ content, conflicting with a religious viewpoint, and not reflecting “the values of our community”
  2. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Ibram X. Kendi and Jason Reynolds
    Reasons: Banned and challenged because of author’s public statements, and because of claims that the book contains “selective storytelling incidents” and does not encompass racism against all people
  3. All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
    Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, drug use, and alcoholism, and because it was thought to promote anti-police views, contain divisive topics, and be “too much of a sensitive matter right now”
  4. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
    Reasons: Banned, challenged, and restricted because it was thought to contain a political viewpoint and it was claimed to be biased against male students, and for the novel’s inclusion of rape and profanity
  5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
    Reasons: Banned and challenged for profanity, sexual references, and allegations of sexual misconduct by the author
  6. Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins, and Ann Hazzard, illustrated by Jennifer Zivoin
    Reasons: Challenged for “divisive language” and because it was thought to promote anti-police views
  7. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
    Reasons: Banned and challenged for racial slurs and their negative effect on students, featuring a “white savior” character, and its perception of the Black experience
  8. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
    Reasons: Banned and challenged for racial slurs and racist stereotypes, and their negative effect on students
  9. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
    Reasons: Banned and challenged because it was considered sexually explicit and depicts child sexual abuse
  10. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
    Reasons: Challenged for profanity, and it was thought to promote an anti-police message

The 2020 list is characterized by being primarily objections to discussions of race.

It is worth noting, however, that most of “challenged” books are not banned. Instead, they are subject to complaints from a few concerned parents, for whom they might get removed from a required reading list. Or perhaps a school district will send a consent note home with students. But that is the extent of most of the attempts to “ban” books in the United States. As an example, in 2019, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird was removed from a Mississippi junior high reading list because of complaints that the book’s language “makes people uncomfortable.” The book was not removed from the school district’s libraries, however.

The idea that books make children or their parents uncomfortable has been a big part of why certain books have been attracting controversy this year.

The most noteworthy was the removal of Art Spielgelman’s Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic-novel portrayal of the Holocaust with mice as Jews and cats as Nazis from the McMinn County School District in Tennessee. Some parents had objected to the presence of curse words in the book along with a single portrayal of female nudity. (It shows a woman who has committed suicide.) Spiegelman’s parent survived the Auschwitz concentration camp, but his mother committed suicide.

Page 34 from Art Spiegelman's graphic novel "Maus"

A page from Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel “Maus.”

Spiegelman, who in addition writing and drawing Maus, is well known for his many New Yorker covers. The NY Times quotes Spiegelman as saying he was baffled by the removal:

“This is disturbing imagery,” he said in an interview on Thursday, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day. “But you know what? It’s disturbing history.”

As I was digging into material about the attempts to control what middle-school students learn about the Holocaust, I was struck by the following comments from Jewish graphic-novel artist/writer Sophie Goldstein:

 

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