It’s not a perfect movie, but it’s a powerful movie.
Like most people, I haven’t seen all the Iraq War movies—documentaries or fiction. And there are great ones that have already been made. But I got the chance to see STOP-LOSS last night, and because of the strength of the message it conveyed, and of most of the acting, the occasional weakness in writing and direction didn’t bother me.
Maybe because I was in the service for over four years when I was in my late teens and early twenties—the age of most servicemen and women, including the ones depicted in this movie—I cut it some slack, because the feel of what it’s like to be an enlisted man in the service certainly came across as realistic to me.
And even though I wasn’t in a war zone, nor did I see any kind of violence other than drunken brawls and the sanctioned physical and mental abuse in basic training and disciplinary actions, I remember clearly the feelings of pent up rage and frustration, of testosterone gone wild, of battling loyalties to oneself, one’s buddies, one’s country, one’s commanders, one’s mission, one’s duty, and so on seemingly endlessly.
Back in the 1960s, even when I was in college on the G. I. Bill (which Iraq veterans don’t even get to the limited extent I got, and John McCain has voted against increasing veterans’ benefits to make them more comparable to what he and I had access to!—though of course him much more because he was an officer) I never discussed my service experiences or even wrote about them.
It wasn’t until I saw THE LAST DETAIL, in which Jack Nicholson and Randy Quaid kicked ass as Naval (if I remember correctly) enlisted men, Nicholson’s character trying to return Quaid’s to the service after being AWOL (for which I was courtmartialed, so know a little about). Sitting in a movie theater in Washington DC watching that film, I felt like my head was going to explode.
I’ve calmed down since then, but even so, movies that really capture what it felt like for me in the service (another great example is FULL METAL JACKET, the first half of which, before they go to Nam, compared well on the realism scale to my experiences) move me deeply.
So did STOP-LOSS.
Ryan Phillippe and Abbie Cornish (I only heard last night and this morning about their private lives, which seem more important to the public these days than their skill as actors) are both outstanding in lead roles. Cornish isn’t as beautiful or as great an actor as Scarlet Johanson, but she has the same capacity for exposing unattractive sides of her character’s looks and personality in ways that seem much braver than most young movie actors, male or female. And I bought her character’s emotional life pretty much in every scene she was in.
Phillippe keeps surprising me. I expect him to be a pretty boy, or one of those typical young Hollywood movie actors who just can’t seem to come up to the mark of manhood that was common among young stars of the past but seems so absent since the 1980s (e.g. Tom Cruise still comes across as a boy!), but then Phillippe pulls it off, as he did in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. His youthful looks and manners seem in sync with the reality that war is a young man’s, and now woman’s, world for the most part.
And Channing Tatum has been a favorite young actor since my ten-year-old and I caught him in STEP UP, a cheezy street-vs.-academy dance film that he made work by the sheer charm of his screen presence and not-bad acting chops. He plays the big, good looking oaf in both films, but mostly pulls off the power as well as the sensitivity, and often with some subtlety. He also does the physical bits perfectly. He comes across as boyish, but that always fits the roles he’s playing. Whether he can make the transition to playing more mature characters I don’t know. But the final, and most powerful, scene in STOP-LOSS may be the prelude to his future in more mature roles.
Pretty much everyone in the film does good work, a tribute to the casting and directing (especially Timothy Olyphant as the men’s commander—he is maturing into a really solid actor—and the actors playing the parents of Ryan Phillippe’s character, Ciaran Hinds and Linda Emond, who is pitch perfect in her depiction of the strain on a young serviceman’s mother).
But on the other hand, some of the performances are much less than flawless, a mark against the direction, as well as the writing. E. g, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the kid from THIRD ROCK FROM THE SUN, makes you forget in some scenes his earlier roles and embodies the character he’s playing, but at other times he’s obviously out of his league.
There are elements to the story that I would have rewritten to make them more realistic and less formulaic, mainly the war scenes in Iraq. They’re a little too much cowboys and Indians and not enough the realities of this war (though they mean to be, but depictions of atrocities seem more Hollywood than the faux-home videos the movie incorporates into the story). Though the director’s brother has served in Iraq and the story is based on real soldiers’ experiences, the tendency seems to be to side with the soldiers, understandably. Even the “liberal anti-war lawyer” is portrayed as sleazy and insensitive, even uncaring, as if he’s in it for the five hundred bucks.
And the idea that the Army doesn’t send back to Iraq men and women who have gotten in trouble with the law when drunk, or have mental problems caused by Iraq, doesn’t live up to the reality of news stories about people with criminal records being allowed into the Army and fighting in Iraq (and responsible for many of the crimes committed there by our troops, though not all by far) and troops with mental disorders caused by the war, even Post Traumatic Distress Disorder, being shipped back, because there aren’t enough troops, and most of them have been broken by this conflict anyway, so if you were to refuse to use those who get DUIs and such, there’d be even less troops (about the only thing that can guarantee the armed forces letting you go and not sending you back to Iraq is if you are found out to have committed a homosexual act, ‘cause God knows gay soldiers are of no use on the battlefield, as opposed to criminal or mentally sick ones!).
But despite whatever quibbles I may have with the movie, bottom line, for this viewer, STOP-LOSS is one of the most powerful films I’ve seen in awhile, not a masterpiece by any means, but a film well worth seeing, and thinking about.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
THREE QUICK THOUGHTS OF SPRING
1. Has anyone ever seen a baby pigeon? I mean a little fuzzy chick, like you see for other kinds of birds when Spring rolls around. I knew kids who kept homing pigeons when I was a boy, but I don’t remember ever seeing eggs hatching and little pigeon chicks. What I do notice every Spring is a lot of uniformly colorless, almost the shade of dust, smaller pigeons, suddenly trying to get their bearings, like adolescents traveling alone a little further from home than ever before. I assume they’re the new pigeons hatched sometime when I wasn’t looking and already almost fully grown.
2. Scientists comparing satellite photos of the East Coast of the U. S. taken over the past few decades to the present have determined by the moving line of green, indicating budding trees, that Spring has been arriving eight hours earlier every year for quite a few years. But anyone living in Alaska or the Arctic circle has been aware of the earlier and earlier arrival of Spring over the past few decades, and up there, scientists say, it is encroaching even more rapidly on what once was still Winter.
3. Anyone see the report that certain kinds of birds that winter in Mexico, and even further South into Central and South America, are dying off? Scientists studying the birds in their Winter habitats believe the debilitating effects of misuse of pesticides is what’s harming the birds. Another benefit of NAFTA’s lack of universal guidelines for environmental (as well a safety and labor) concerns?
2. Scientists comparing satellite photos of the East Coast of the U. S. taken over the past few decades to the present have determined by the moving line of green, indicating budding trees, that Spring has been arriving eight hours earlier every year for quite a few years. But anyone living in Alaska or the Arctic circle has been aware of the earlier and earlier arrival of Spring over the past few decades, and up there, scientists say, it is encroaching even more rapidly on what once was still Winter.
3. Anyone see the report that certain kinds of birds that winter in Mexico, and even further South into Central and South America, are dying off? Scientists studying the birds in their Winter habitats believe the debilitating effects of misuse of pesticides is what’s harming the birds. Another benefit of NAFTA’s lack of universal guidelines for environmental (as well a safety and labor) concerns?
Saturday, April 5, 2008
WORDS
A lot of people dismiss the power of words, especially when it comes to leadership.
Just as a lot of people try to portray all politicians as alike.
But yesterday’s NPR tributes to Martin Luther King Jr., on the 40th anniversary of his assassination, included clips from Robert F. Kennedy’s speech to a predominantly African-American crowd in Indianapolis the night King was killed.
And if ever words, and leadership, made a difference, it was that night.
As historians and commentators pointed out later, neighborhoods in over a hundred cities in the U. S. A. were in flames that night. The understandable rage of “black Americans” over the slaying of King came out as rioting, looting, burning, destroying, often their own neighborhoods.
But Indianapolis was peaceful. And it was a city that had enormous racial problems. Just a few clear, but eloquent and heartfelt words prevented the kind of senseless violence and self-destructive rage that enveloped so many urban areas across America.
The lives and property spared, not just from physical harm, but from arrest and prison or homelessness was enormous, compared to the toll taken in other cities.
RFK was simple and direct. Letting the crowd know quickly that MLK had been shot and killed. The screams from the crowd are heartrending even now. He spoke of how their anger against white people might be justified by the reality that the evidence indicated white people were responsible for the murder.
But then he went on to say that what King stood for was peace, compassion and justice. And that he too, RFK, understood how others might feel, because he too lost “a family member” I think is the way he put it, and “a white man” was responsible for that.
The only film I’ve seen that’s available of the whole talk is from Italy and has bothersome Italian subtitles, but the power of what RFK did that night still comes through. Check it out for yourself.
RFK could have easily been shot himself, or attacked by an angry mob, after delivering such devastating news to that crowd under those circumstances. But he doesn’t seem frightened or even wary. He seems appropriately solemn and serious and deeply effected by what has happened.
God it makes me miss what might have been had he not been assassinated himself only two months later, the first victim, as many have since pointed out, of Islamist terrorism in America.
His response to his own death, or to 9/11 and other recent catastrophes, shaped by the changes brought about in his own intellect and spirit after the assassination of his brother, and of Martin Luther King Jr. and the turmoil and violence and other deaths of that tumultuous time, might have been equally reasonable, understanding, and directed toward the necessary compassion, peace and justice that became his goals.
To say that that’s all dreamy headed Liberalism, is to deny the results of those changes in him that led him that night to take such a courageous but compassionate stance and to change the lives of the people who heard his words.
Perhaps if his speech had been able to be transmitted into the homes of every American—as was Bush’s top-of-the-rubble, bullhorn, macho, revenge speech at ground zero after 9/11 was—maybe all of America’s cities would have remained peaceful that night, like Indianapolis did.
Obama hasn’t been tested as much as RFK was by the time of King’s assassination, or as much as King himself was even earlier, but he has been tested. By the circumstances of his origins, by the doubt and criticism and mudslinging of this campaign, and by the events of the past several years under this administration—as we all have—and he shows a lot of growth as a result, even just over the months of this campaign. And he certainly knows how to use the words, as clearly and as eloquently as RFK.
It feels like Obama is the fulfillment of the promise King spoke of the night before he was killed, in that speech where he swore that even if he didn’t make it to “the promised land” that he had seen from the mountaintop by the grace of God (an unstated reference to Moses, as well as a foreshadowing of his death), he knew that his people would.
We have a chance to fulfill that promise as well, by believing—as Obama at his best continues to move people to believe—that we can aim for those old ideals of peace and compassion and justice, despite the struggles that will not disappear, the problems and unexpected catastrophes.
With a leader like Martin Luther King Jr. or Robert F. Kennedy—and, I believe, Barack Obama—there is the real possibility that justified rage can be turned to compassion, that justice can replace revenge, and peace replace violence.
It did that night in Indianapolis.
Just as a lot of people try to portray all politicians as alike.
But yesterday’s NPR tributes to Martin Luther King Jr., on the 40th anniversary of his assassination, included clips from Robert F. Kennedy’s speech to a predominantly African-American crowd in Indianapolis the night King was killed.
And if ever words, and leadership, made a difference, it was that night.
As historians and commentators pointed out later, neighborhoods in over a hundred cities in the U. S. A. were in flames that night. The understandable rage of “black Americans” over the slaying of King came out as rioting, looting, burning, destroying, often their own neighborhoods.
But Indianapolis was peaceful. And it was a city that had enormous racial problems. Just a few clear, but eloquent and heartfelt words prevented the kind of senseless violence and self-destructive rage that enveloped so many urban areas across America.
The lives and property spared, not just from physical harm, but from arrest and prison or homelessness was enormous, compared to the toll taken in other cities.
RFK was simple and direct. Letting the crowd know quickly that MLK had been shot and killed. The screams from the crowd are heartrending even now. He spoke of how their anger against white people might be justified by the reality that the evidence indicated white people were responsible for the murder.
But then he went on to say that what King stood for was peace, compassion and justice. And that he too, RFK, understood how others might feel, because he too lost “a family member” I think is the way he put it, and “a white man” was responsible for that.
The only film I’ve seen that’s available of the whole talk is from Italy and has bothersome Italian subtitles, but the power of what RFK did that night still comes through. Check it out for yourself.
RFK could have easily been shot himself, or attacked by an angry mob, after delivering such devastating news to that crowd under those circumstances. But he doesn’t seem frightened or even wary. He seems appropriately solemn and serious and deeply effected by what has happened.
God it makes me miss what might have been had he not been assassinated himself only two months later, the first victim, as many have since pointed out, of Islamist terrorism in America.
His response to his own death, or to 9/11 and other recent catastrophes, shaped by the changes brought about in his own intellect and spirit after the assassination of his brother, and of Martin Luther King Jr. and the turmoil and violence and other deaths of that tumultuous time, might have been equally reasonable, understanding, and directed toward the necessary compassion, peace and justice that became his goals.
To say that that’s all dreamy headed Liberalism, is to deny the results of those changes in him that led him that night to take such a courageous but compassionate stance and to change the lives of the people who heard his words.
Perhaps if his speech had been able to be transmitted into the homes of every American—as was Bush’s top-of-the-rubble, bullhorn, macho, revenge speech at ground zero after 9/11 was—maybe all of America’s cities would have remained peaceful that night, like Indianapolis did.
Obama hasn’t been tested as much as RFK was by the time of King’s assassination, or as much as King himself was even earlier, but he has been tested. By the circumstances of his origins, by the doubt and criticism and mudslinging of this campaign, and by the events of the past several years under this administration—as we all have—and he shows a lot of growth as a result, even just over the months of this campaign. And he certainly knows how to use the words, as clearly and as eloquently as RFK.
It feels like Obama is the fulfillment of the promise King spoke of the night before he was killed, in that speech where he swore that even if he didn’t make it to “the promised land” that he had seen from the mountaintop by the grace of God (an unstated reference to Moses, as well as a foreshadowing of his death), he knew that his people would.
We have a chance to fulfill that promise as well, by believing—as Obama at his best continues to move people to believe—that we can aim for those old ideals of peace and compassion and justice, despite the struggles that will not disappear, the problems and unexpected catastrophes.
With a leader like Martin Luther King Jr. or Robert F. Kennedy—and, I believe, Barack Obama—there is the real possibility that justified rage can be turned to compassion, that justice can replace revenge, and peace replace violence.
It did that night in Indianapolis.
Friday, April 4, 2008
TRAIN FILMS
The other night, coming back from Manhattan after meeting Terry Winch at Tir na n-Og, the Irish restaurant across Eighth Avenue from Penn Station, my ten-year-old and I were sitting in the first car of a New Jersey transit train, and as soon as we exited the station tunnel, the conductor pulled the whistle, once, then pause, then once again, then pause and then two long ones in a row.
The sound made me smile and feel deeply at peace, as it always does, but especially to be right there at the source of it. I grew up on a street that was a block-and-a-half long, with the half block ending at the Lackawana Railroad tracks, back when they carried not just commuter trains (which didn’t go to New York then, only nearby towns and Newark), but also freight trains that rumbled through all night.
So I often fell asleep to the sound of not just trains riding the nearby tracks, but to the melancholy-yet-full-of-promise sound of a train whistle, just down the street. It’s one of the most comforting sounds of my life, and I have usually lived near where I could hear it (or the equally comforting sound of foghorns and buoys coming from the sea). I live near those same tracks now, and it is not only convenient but, still comforting.
Our little venture into the city by train, my little boy and me, was preceded by our watching on Turner Classic Movies THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, the 1903 original that introduced the idea of multiple-cuts editing to tell a story. Silent movies created a brand new way of story telling, and THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY was the first great success at it, with twenty-one, I think the man said, different edits to make the story work.
Though I showed this famously pioneering movie many times when I taught film in college classes back in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, it was still a thrill to watch again the hand-colored frames, the histrionic death scenes, the almost contemporary styles, all filmed under the aegis of Thomas Edison (directed by an electrician-turned-director/cameraman/editor/etc. named Porter), and filmed not far from the Edison company studio and headquarters in New Jersey, not far from where I was raised and now live again.
My son got the importance of the film and how unique it was for its times, and on the train ride into the city, catching up on homework, used the flick in a sentence he had to write with the word “version” in it, saying something like “They made a newer version of The Great Train Robbery.”
All of these things got me thinking about not only how much I love trains (I still ride them when I can, rather than fly, including across the country and up and down the East Coast). And then I started thinking about how much I love movies set on trains or with great scenes set on trains.
So naturally, falling asleep last night, I couldn’t resist making another alphabet list of favorite movies in which trains figure importantly. For those of you just tuning in, I came up with the idea of alphabet lists because I used to make lists to help me fall asleep (rather than counting sheep or life’s problems etc.) and then would want to remember them in the morning and couldn’t, until I came up with making them conform to the alphabet, which made the list making task more difficult, making me fall asleep usually before I finished, and helping me remember them in the morning.
Usually the titles just come to me, but when I get stuck on a certain letter, I just rifle through my brain files for a particular movie star or director, as in this one after I got the several titles for the letter “s” which all came to me in a row, and then some other letters, I started running out of ideas, so began going through favorite movie stars, which generated the rest of the list.
I didn’t include movies that take place on or have great scenes on subways, though there are a lot of them (and I did include THE COMMITMENTS because that was more of a train even though it’s kind of Dublin’s rapid transit).
And I didn’t include films that evoke the horrible misuse of trains to transport Jews and other victims of the Nazis to the death camps (with the exception of THE TRAIN and VON RYAN’S EXPRESS, which are more metaphoric about the Nazis misuse of trains than direct, as in SOPHIE’S CHOICE and SCHINDLER’S LIST and many documentaries), since this is more about my associations with the romance of trains. Nor did I include well known scenes that don’t hold up as well in re-viewings over the years, like the originally hilarious scene in PEEWEE’S BIG ADVENTURE with PeeWee and the tramp singing songs in the boxcar where PeeWee goes from enthusiastic to have-to-escape (unfortunately the feeling I got after re-watching that scene with my son too many times, unlike say the biker-bar scene which continues to crack me up).
Here’s what I came up with before dropping into dreamland.
ANNA KARENINA (the original Greta Garbo version, based on the Tolstoy novel with probably the most famous train scene—or scenes if you count the foreshadowings—in literary history)
BLUES IN THE NIGHT (the so-unique-even-when-it’s-terrible-it’s-original ‘40s flick I caught a few months ago and posted about that was selected by Matt Groening in the TCM guest host series, the last scene in a boxcar is so impossibly Hollywood unreal it’s surreal, but other scenes and montages are actually meant to be surreal, I think!)
COMMITMENTS, THE (the scene where they finally start to get their groove on, singing together on the train)
DOGMA (I might be on of the few fans of this flick, and the train scene isn’t necessarily the best in the film, but it’s essential to it, and I couldn’t think of any other “D”)
E? [EAST OF EDEN came to me during a discussion with my daughter Cait, the scene with Dean on top of the freight car popped into my head, and of course a train was involved in the fiasco of his character's father's business venture shipping iced vegetables]
FISHER KING, THE (this movie doesn’t entirely hold up, though Jeff Bridges is as always his underrated great acting self, and it doesn’t really have any train scenes, but that one fantasy dance scene in Grand Central terminal has to be one of the best train STATION scenes ever filmed)
GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, THE (the above mentioned 1903 original) and Buster Keaton’s silent classic THE GENERAL, and THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (from as I remember it the 1980s, that starred Sean Connery and was based on a real incident having nothing to do with the original, silent, 1903 film)
[HARVEY GIRLS, THE (one of Judy Garland's lesser known movies with a some great numbers incorporating trains)] and A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (some of the best train scenes ever filmed, still funny and entertaining)
I? [INTO THE WILD has a great train scene, as my daughter Cait and Richard and Robert and others commented or emailed me about]
J?
K?
LADY VANISHES, THE (Hitchcock’s original 1930s black-and-white classic)
MUSIC MAN, THE (have to include this for that opening train scene and song) and MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (a bit campy, but still fun and totally entertaining)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (one of the great double entendre classic movie scenes between Cary Grant’s character and Eva Marie Saint’s takes place in a dining car, and the final and famously original jump cut ends in a sleeper compartment).
[OKALAHOMA!, which my daughter Caitlin had to remind me of, and the great scene where Gene Nelson's character has just returned from Kansas City where, as Cait remined me, "Everything's up to date" and the dance he and the crowd does incorporates the train station and train itself into it)] ON THE WATERFRONT (okay, it probably looks like I’m sneaking in another favorite movie that seems to have nothing to do with trains, but in fact, the scene where Brando’s character finally confesses his involvement in Eva Marie Saint’s character’s brother’s death to her, what he’s saying is drowned out by the screaming of a train whistle in the Hoboken train yard in the background, and it is one of the most memorable scenes in that movie, or any other for me)
PALM BEACH STORY, THE (some great and at times hilarious, if dated and racially insensitive, Preston Sturges train scenes with Claudette Colbert and as I remember it “the quail and ale club”)
QUIET MAN, THE (I know I use this all the time, but it’s not just one of my favorite flicks, it also has two great train scenes, when Wayne’s character arrives and the engineer and conductor and other Irish characters portrayed by members of The Abbey Theater do a hilarious round robin of misdirection, and the other when Maureen O’Hara’s character pretends to be leaving to rouse her pacifist husband into finally taking on her oafish brother, played by the great Victor McLaughlin, and Wayne strides down the station platform looking into each train carriage, slamming doors as he goes until he finds O’Hara feigning hiding and drags her out of the train by force—maybe a sexist take on Irish romance of the time, but nonetheless a great scene played perfectly by all involved)
RUNAWAY TRAIN (the mid-‘80s John Voight underrated flick)
SHANGHAI EXPRESS (Marlene Dietrich at her peak), SHADOW OF A DOUBT (the great black-and-white Hitchcock flick starring Joseph Cotton and my home girl Theresa Wright uses a train for the denouement) STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (another Hitchcock black-and-white classic, this one from the 1940s, starring the great Robert Walker whose character, in the opening train scene, mentions my home town!), SOME LIKE IT HOT (maybe the best comic train scene ever, with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe), SILVER STREAK (the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comic tour de force), SANTA FE (not the best but still a Randolph Scott—the poor man’s Gary Cooper—Western, this one about “building a railroad”)
TWENTIETH CENTURY (one of the all time greatest train movies and probably Carole Lombard’s best), THIS GUN FOR HIRE (not just Alan Ladd’s debut as one of the classic film noir stars, but the first teaming of him with Veronica Lake, and a train as the device for their meeting), [3:10 TO YUMA, both versions, thanks to Tom for reminding me] and THE TRAIN (one of Burt Lancaster’s pretty good later flicks)
UNION STATION (not the best detective story from the early 1950s, but I had to include it if only for the name and the great shots of the station as it was back then in black and white)
VON RYAN’S EXPRESS (not his greatest, but still Sinatra)
WILD BUNCH, THE (that great scene where the posse hiding in the train is suddenly released and their horses leap out of the boxcar with the men on them)
X?
Y?
Z?
The sound made me smile and feel deeply at peace, as it always does, but especially to be right there at the source of it. I grew up on a street that was a block-and-a-half long, with the half block ending at the Lackawana Railroad tracks, back when they carried not just commuter trains (which didn’t go to New York then, only nearby towns and Newark), but also freight trains that rumbled through all night.
So I often fell asleep to the sound of not just trains riding the nearby tracks, but to the melancholy-yet-full-of-promise sound of a train whistle, just down the street. It’s one of the most comforting sounds of my life, and I have usually lived near where I could hear it (or the equally comforting sound of foghorns and buoys coming from the sea). I live near those same tracks now, and it is not only convenient but, still comforting.
Our little venture into the city by train, my little boy and me, was preceded by our watching on Turner Classic Movies THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, the 1903 original that introduced the idea of multiple-cuts editing to tell a story. Silent movies created a brand new way of story telling, and THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY was the first great success at it, with twenty-one, I think the man said, different edits to make the story work.
Though I showed this famously pioneering movie many times when I taught film in college classes back in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, it was still a thrill to watch again the hand-colored frames, the histrionic death scenes, the almost contemporary styles, all filmed under the aegis of Thomas Edison (directed by an electrician-turned-director/cameraman/editor/etc. named Porter), and filmed not far from the Edison company studio and headquarters in New Jersey, not far from where I was raised and now live again.
My son got the importance of the film and how unique it was for its times, and on the train ride into the city, catching up on homework, used the flick in a sentence he had to write with the word “version” in it, saying something like “They made a newer version of The Great Train Robbery.”
All of these things got me thinking about not only how much I love trains (I still ride them when I can, rather than fly, including across the country and up and down the East Coast). And then I started thinking about how much I love movies set on trains or with great scenes set on trains.
So naturally, falling asleep last night, I couldn’t resist making another alphabet list of favorite movies in which trains figure importantly. For those of you just tuning in, I came up with the idea of alphabet lists because I used to make lists to help me fall asleep (rather than counting sheep or life’s problems etc.) and then would want to remember them in the morning and couldn’t, until I came up with making them conform to the alphabet, which made the list making task more difficult, making me fall asleep usually before I finished, and helping me remember them in the morning.
Usually the titles just come to me, but when I get stuck on a certain letter, I just rifle through my brain files for a particular movie star or director, as in this one after I got the several titles for the letter “s” which all came to me in a row, and then some other letters, I started running out of ideas, so began going through favorite movie stars, which generated the rest of the list.
I didn’t include movies that take place on or have great scenes on subways, though there are a lot of them (and I did include THE COMMITMENTS because that was more of a train even though it’s kind of Dublin’s rapid transit).
And I didn’t include films that evoke the horrible misuse of trains to transport Jews and other victims of the Nazis to the death camps (with the exception of THE TRAIN and VON RYAN’S EXPRESS, which are more metaphoric about the Nazis misuse of trains than direct, as in SOPHIE’S CHOICE and SCHINDLER’S LIST and many documentaries), since this is more about my associations with the romance of trains. Nor did I include well known scenes that don’t hold up as well in re-viewings over the years, like the originally hilarious scene in PEEWEE’S BIG ADVENTURE with PeeWee and the tramp singing songs in the boxcar where PeeWee goes from enthusiastic to have-to-escape (unfortunately the feeling I got after re-watching that scene with my son too many times, unlike say the biker-bar scene which continues to crack me up).
Here’s what I came up with before dropping into dreamland.
ANNA KARENINA (the original Greta Garbo version, based on the Tolstoy novel with probably the most famous train scene—or scenes if you count the foreshadowings—in literary history)
BLUES IN THE NIGHT (the so-unique-even-when-it’s-terrible-it’s-original ‘40s flick I caught a few months ago and posted about that was selected by Matt Groening in the TCM guest host series, the last scene in a boxcar is so impossibly Hollywood unreal it’s surreal, but other scenes and montages are actually meant to be surreal, I think!)
COMMITMENTS, THE (the scene where they finally start to get their groove on, singing together on the train)
DOGMA (I might be on of the few fans of this flick, and the train scene isn’t necessarily the best in the film, but it’s essential to it, and I couldn’t think of any other “D”)
E? [EAST OF EDEN came to me during a discussion with my daughter Cait, the scene with Dean on top of the freight car popped into my head, and of course a train was involved in the fiasco of his character's father's business venture shipping iced vegetables]
FISHER KING, THE (this movie doesn’t entirely hold up, though Jeff Bridges is as always his underrated great acting self, and it doesn’t really have any train scenes, but that one fantasy dance scene in Grand Central terminal has to be one of the best train STATION scenes ever filmed)
GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, THE (the above mentioned 1903 original) and Buster Keaton’s silent classic THE GENERAL, and THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (from as I remember it the 1980s, that starred Sean Connery and was based on a real incident having nothing to do with the original, silent, 1903 film)
[HARVEY GIRLS, THE (one of Judy Garland's lesser known movies with a some great numbers incorporating trains)] and A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (some of the best train scenes ever filmed, still funny and entertaining)
I? [INTO THE WILD has a great train scene, as my daughter Cait and Richard and Robert and others commented or emailed me about]
J?
K?
LADY VANISHES, THE (Hitchcock’s original 1930s black-and-white classic)
MUSIC MAN, THE (have to include this for that opening train scene and song) and MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (a bit campy, but still fun and totally entertaining)
NORTH BY NORTHWEST (one of the great double entendre classic movie scenes between Cary Grant’s character and Eva Marie Saint’s takes place in a dining car, and the final and famously original jump cut ends in a sleeper compartment).
[OKALAHOMA!, which my daughter Caitlin had to remind me of, and the great scene where Gene Nelson's character has just returned from Kansas City where, as Cait remined me, "Everything's up to date" and the dance he and the crowd does incorporates the train station and train itself into it)] ON THE WATERFRONT (okay, it probably looks like I’m sneaking in another favorite movie that seems to have nothing to do with trains, but in fact, the scene where Brando’s character finally confesses his involvement in Eva Marie Saint’s character’s brother’s death to her, what he’s saying is drowned out by the screaming of a train whistle in the Hoboken train yard in the background, and it is one of the most memorable scenes in that movie, or any other for me)
PALM BEACH STORY, THE (some great and at times hilarious, if dated and racially insensitive, Preston Sturges train scenes with Claudette Colbert and as I remember it “the quail and ale club”)
QUIET MAN, THE (I know I use this all the time, but it’s not just one of my favorite flicks, it also has two great train scenes, when Wayne’s character arrives and the engineer and conductor and other Irish characters portrayed by members of The Abbey Theater do a hilarious round robin of misdirection, and the other when Maureen O’Hara’s character pretends to be leaving to rouse her pacifist husband into finally taking on her oafish brother, played by the great Victor McLaughlin, and Wayne strides down the station platform looking into each train carriage, slamming doors as he goes until he finds O’Hara feigning hiding and drags her out of the train by force—maybe a sexist take on Irish romance of the time, but nonetheless a great scene played perfectly by all involved)
RUNAWAY TRAIN (the mid-‘80s John Voight underrated flick)
SHANGHAI EXPRESS (Marlene Dietrich at her peak), SHADOW OF A DOUBT (the great black-and-white Hitchcock flick starring Joseph Cotton and my home girl Theresa Wright uses a train for the denouement) STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (another Hitchcock black-and-white classic, this one from the 1940s, starring the great Robert Walker whose character, in the opening train scene, mentions my home town!), SOME LIKE IT HOT (maybe the best comic train scene ever, with Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe), SILVER STREAK (the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor comic tour de force), SANTA FE (not the best but still a Randolph Scott—the poor man’s Gary Cooper—Western, this one about “building a railroad”)
TWENTIETH CENTURY (one of the all time greatest train movies and probably Carole Lombard’s best), THIS GUN FOR HIRE (not just Alan Ladd’s debut as one of the classic film noir stars, but the first teaming of him with Veronica Lake, and a train as the device for their meeting), [3:10 TO YUMA, both versions, thanks to Tom for reminding me] and THE TRAIN (one of Burt Lancaster’s pretty good later flicks)
UNION STATION (not the best detective story from the early 1950s, but I had to include it if only for the name and the great shots of the station as it was back then in black and white)
VON RYAN’S EXPRESS (not his greatest, but still Sinatra)
WILD BUNCH, THE (that great scene where the posse hiding in the train is suddenly released and their horses leap out of the boxcar with the men on them)
X?
Y?
Z?
Thursday, April 3, 2008
A LITTLE JAZZ RELIEF
I know I've been posting a lot of links lately. But all of them are worth it, especially this one on the post called A LITTLE SCIENTIFIC/A LOT OF SPIRITUAL RELIEF.
Today's I picked up from the COOLBIRTH blog, which you can check out for yourself. But Alameda Tom was trying to turn us all on to a jazz drummer named Terri Lyne Carrington, a former child prodigy who I guess has been around for years and I didn't notice. But I did after checking out this link to her with a brilliant group led by Stan Getz!
Today's I picked up from the COOLBIRTH blog, which you can check out for yourself. But Alameda Tom was trying to turn us all on to a jazz drummer named Terri Lyne Carrington, a former child prodigy who I guess has been around for years and I didn't notice. But I did after checking out this link to her with a brilliant group led by Stan Getz!
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRUCE ANDREWS/R.I.P. ROCHELLE RATNER
Last night I went to a birthday party for old friend, poet Bruce Andrews at his partner, the dancer and choreographer, Sally Silvers’ East Village pad, as we used to call apartments back when I was first hanging around that neighborhood.
Somehow I wrote the address down wrong and where I had it was the middle of Tompkins Square Park. I worried for a minute I’d been punked, since it was April Fool’s Day, but eventually I found her place and the party and at it several old friends from the downtown poetry scene of the 1970s.
One of them, the poet and critic Charles Bernstein told me Rochelle Ratner had died the day before. Another loss, as time marches on but seems to be making more stops for family and friends these days.
Rochelle was not just a poet, but a poetry enthusiast. I liked her a lot and we spent many afternoons and post-poetry reading evenings in local bars talking poetry back in the ‘70s. She interviewed me once for one of the alternative newspapers of those days, THE SOHO NEWS, and produced a very flattering article for it that made me feel famous for a few days, at least on the downtown scene.
Rochelle and I didn’t have a lot in common, except for our poetry jones—as poet and publisher James Sherry put it last night, referring to all of the poets of those times as having a “poetry jones,” and pointing out that had a lot of us poets from those days been able to give up that jones, we would have been better at making a living.
At any rate, I felt the loss of Rochelle in my heart when Charles told me, that feeling of shock and loss, despite the fact I hadn’t seen her in many years, decades probably, though I’d heard from her and of her a few times over that period.
But the loss I felt was balanced by the fullness of what I found at the party, old friends and acquaintances, as well as new ones, hopefully, who have that same kind of jones, whether for poetry or dance, or whatever creative or intellectual expression that offers great rewards to the heart and soul but few, if any, financial rewards, and only fleeting fame or renown—or, as often in my case in the old days, notoriety.
That was the common thread connecting us all in Sally’s East Village space that was like a dance studio with a bed and bookshelves, and a sound system that still included a turntable and audio cassette tape player. It reminded me of the loft I lived in with my two older children back when Washington Market had just been renamed “Tribeca” by the real estate business.
Sally’s been dancing in downtown venues for decades, and like the rest of us was known to other artists, whether painters or dancers or poets or etc., especially from her collaborations with Bruce, but now may be a little better known to the wider world since the dance critic of THE NEW YORKER began giving her much deserved kudos.
It’s always a pleasure to see people whose work you dig getting the attention and acclaim they deserve, especially when you know that whether they get it or not, they will continue to do the work and keep developing as artists.
Most of the poets at Bruce’s party, at least the ones of his generation (the first wave of so-called “Baby Boomers” born after WWII, as opposed to my generation of “war babies” born a few years earlier) were associated with the creation of the poetry movement known as “Language Poetry.”
I was associated with that scene as well, as many others were when it began, but Bruce and Charles and James were central to it, both as poets and publishers (Bruce and Charles edited the magazine that brought their approach to the poem to a wider audience and influenced many younger poets to pursue the same or similar approach(es)—the little mag called L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E).
I’ve been known to knock some of what that movement has wrought, including a kind of exclusivist demarcation that puts anything other than that approach into the realm of reactionary or backward looking creativity, a claim I would argue with strenuously, obviously. And just the generally elitist perspective of some of the “lang-po” (as people call it on Silliman’s blog and elsewhere) advocates.
But these guys were the originators, along with, as I said, many others, including friends who had a similar approach to poetry before the “language” moniker was even created, like Ray DiPalma, who I have written about before on this blog. And to their credit, they were usually more inclusive than many of their followers have become.
But all that aside, the pleasure of the party was seeing folks I hadn’t seen in years and some in decades, running into younger poets who I dig as well, like Anselm Berrigan and Corrine Fitzpatrick, and meeting people for the first time whose intellect and artistic interests made for stimulating conversation for me, though I suspect my life-story-anecdotes dominated the conversation.
And add to that the pleasures of a Spring evening, that finally felt like Spring, walking through Tompkins Square Park in the dark, remembering my first and great love “Bambi” as she was when I first met her, both in our late teens after she had just moved from Atlantic City to an apartment on the South side of the park, one of the very few African-Americans in the neighborhood back then, and all the changes I’ve seen that park go through over the years, and that neighborhood, from Eastern European ethnic working-class, to hippie central, to darker-skinned and more inclusive, through riots and celebrations, and now this ongoing gentrification that diminishes for me the power of the place, but obviously creates a new kind of urban personality that will go through its own phases over the course of my little boy’s life as his yet-to-be-labeled generation grows old.
And isn’t that what the “poetry jones” and other creative compulsions that cannot be denied are all about? That unstoppable drive to extend into the unknowable future not just the genes and/or the personal and generational history, to see it continue to live and infuse the future with the meanings that mattered to us, but also to see the intellectual and artistic discoveries and subsequent developments inspire the next generation of creative activity, to take future generations to places of not just inspiration, but contemplation and engagement, even enlightenment, or—not to be dismissed—entertainment, and pleasures beyond the intellectual and artistic. Pleasures, perhaps, yet to be discovered.
Maybe someday they'll even discover the "poetry jones" gene, and other creative cimpulsion markers. I certainly know that I was born with mine in me already. I remember making the decision to become a musician, an actor, and other creative activities I've pursued in my lifetime, but poetry? I was born with that jones.
Somehow I wrote the address down wrong and where I had it was the middle of Tompkins Square Park. I worried for a minute I’d been punked, since it was April Fool’s Day, but eventually I found her place and the party and at it several old friends from the downtown poetry scene of the 1970s.
One of them, the poet and critic Charles Bernstein told me Rochelle Ratner had died the day before. Another loss, as time marches on but seems to be making more stops for family and friends these days.
Rochelle was not just a poet, but a poetry enthusiast. I liked her a lot and we spent many afternoons and post-poetry reading evenings in local bars talking poetry back in the ‘70s. She interviewed me once for one of the alternative newspapers of those days, THE SOHO NEWS, and produced a very flattering article for it that made me feel famous for a few days, at least on the downtown scene.
Rochelle and I didn’t have a lot in common, except for our poetry jones—as poet and publisher James Sherry put it last night, referring to all of the poets of those times as having a “poetry jones,” and pointing out that had a lot of us poets from those days been able to give up that jones, we would have been better at making a living.
At any rate, I felt the loss of Rochelle in my heart when Charles told me, that feeling of shock and loss, despite the fact I hadn’t seen her in many years, decades probably, though I’d heard from her and of her a few times over that period.
But the loss I felt was balanced by the fullness of what I found at the party, old friends and acquaintances, as well as new ones, hopefully, who have that same kind of jones, whether for poetry or dance, or whatever creative or intellectual expression that offers great rewards to the heart and soul but few, if any, financial rewards, and only fleeting fame or renown—or, as often in my case in the old days, notoriety.
That was the common thread connecting us all in Sally’s East Village space that was like a dance studio with a bed and bookshelves, and a sound system that still included a turntable and audio cassette tape player. It reminded me of the loft I lived in with my two older children back when Washington Market had just been renamed “Tribeca” by the real estate business.
Sally’s been dancing in downtown venues for decades, and like the rest of us was known to other artists, whether painters or dancers or poets or etc., especially from her collaborations with Bruce, but now may be a little better known to the wider world since the dance critic of THE NEW YORKER began giving her much deserved kudos.
It’s always a pleasure to see people whose work you dig getting the attention and acclaim they deserve, especially when you know that whether they get it or not, they will continue to do the work and keep developing as artists.
Most of the poets at Bruce’s party, at least the ones of his generation (the first wave of so-called “Baby Boomers” born after WWII, as opposed to my generation of “war babies” born a few years earlier) were associated with the creation of the poetry movement known as “Language Poetry.”
I was associated with that scene as well, as many others were when it began, but Bruce and Charles and James were central to it, both as poets and publishers (Bruce and Charles edited the magazine that brought their approach to the poem to a wider audience and influenced many younger poets to pursue the same or similar approach(es)—the little mag called L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E).
I’ve been known to knock some of what that movement has wrought, including a kind of exclusivist demarcation that puts anything other than that approach into the realm of reactionary or backward looking creativity, a claim I would argue with strenuously, obviously. And just the generally elitist perspective of some of the “lang-po” (as people call it on Silliman’s blog and elsewhere) advocates.
But these guys were the originators, along with, as I said, many others, including friends who had a similar approach to poetry before the “language” moniker was even created, like Ray DiPalma, who I have written about before on this blog. And to their credit, they were usually more inclusive than many of their followers have become.
But all that aside, the pleasure of the party was seeing folks I hadn’t seen in years and some in decades, running into younger poets who I dig as well, like Anselm Berrigan and Corrine Fitzpatrick, and meeting people for the first time whose intellect and artistic interests made for stimulating conversation for me, though I suspect my life-story-anecdotes dominated the conversation.
And add to that the pleasures of a Spring evening, that finally felt like Spring, walking through Tompkins Square Park in the dark, remembering my first and great love “Bambi” as she was when I first met her, both in our late teens after she had just moved from Atlantic City to an apartment on the South side of the park, one of the very few African-Americans in the neighborhood back then, and all the changes I’ve seen that park go through over the years, and that neighborhood, from Eastern European ethnic working-class, to hippie central, to darker-skinned and more inclusive, through riots and celebrations, and now this ongoing gentrification that diminishes for me the power of the place, but obviously creates a new kind of urban personality that will go through its own phases over the course of my little boy’s life as his yet-to-be-labeled generation grows old.
And isn’t that what the “poetry jones” and other creative compulsions that cannot be denied are all about? That unstoppable drive to extend into the unknowable future not just the genes and/or the personal and generational history, to see it continue to live and infuse the future with the meanings that mattered to us, but also to see the intellectual and artistic discoveries and subsequent developments inspire the next generation of creative activity, to take future generations to places of not just inspiration, but contemplation and engagement, even enlightenment, or—not to be dismissed—entertainment, and pleasures beyond the intellectual and artistic. Pleasures, perhaps, yet to be discovered.
Maybe someday they'll even discover the "poetry jones" gene, and other creative cimpulsion markers. I certainly know that I was born with mine in me already. I remember making the decision to become a musician, an actor, and other creative activities I've pursued in my lifetime, but poetry? I was born with that jones.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
SCI FI FLICK LIST
I may have done this before, or one like it, last year, but the other night when I stayed up to watch CHARADE on the RETROPLEX channel, the movie I caught before it was INDEPENDENCE DAY. I was amazed at how well it took me in again, despite the schmaltzy and sometimes really terrible dialogue and direction.
But the action moves fast enough (great editing) and the stars are compelling enough (especially Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Randy Quaid, and Viveca A. Fox) and the special effects not too campy to keep my attention and interest, despite the sci-fi and action movie conventions and clichés.
The scene when Will Smith arrives in the stolen helicopter to rescue Fox’s character (and Mary McDonnel’s underused “first lady”) made me think of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND, until they uttered the trying-to-be-clever dialogue that in this scene unfortunately wasn’t.
But the thing that struck me most about this 1996 flick was how much I wish Bush Jr. had watched it before 9/11 and then emulated it afterward. Especially when Bill Pullman’s not very realistic but heroic president faces an already proven violent alien threat, and he decides not to go to the bunker, but to send his vice president and cabinet instead. He stays in the White House and broadcasts to the nation, so that the populace doesn’t panic.
There were more parallels with 9/11 than I expected, not having seen the movie in its entirety since before that tragedy. Anyway, it got me thinking of Sci Fi flicks and their metaphoric relationship to current events in many cases. So last night while falling asleep, I decided to make a favorite “science fiction” alphabet film list. As always, I welcome any suggestions for the missing letters.
ALIEN
BLADE RUNNER (and I have to add BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET)
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THE
E.T.
FAHRENHEIT 451
GODZILLA (not really a “favorite” except for the campy monster and the idea of it)
HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS
INDEPENDENCE DAY
JURASSIC PARK
K?
LOGAN’S RUN (the original—also, like many of these, kind of campy, but still somehow relevant to current events at the time they were made, as many of these still are)
MEN IN BLACK
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
ON THE BEACH
PLANET OF THE APES
QUIET EARTH, THE
RUNNING MAN, THE (especially cheesy in that so-bad-it’s-good way)
STARMAN (and of course the original STAR WARS, renamed A NEW HOPE)
TWELVE MONKEYS
U?
V FOR VENDETTA
WATERWORLD (I may be one of the few people who dug this movie)
X THE UNKNOWN (‘50s flick, but still metaphorically, at the least, relevant)
Y?
Z? [Ray DiPalma suggests ZARDOZ for this letter, but unfortunately I never saw it, I'll have to check it out as it stars Sean Connory back in the day when he was always fun to watch on screen no matter what the film was]
But the action moves fast enough (great editing) and the stars are compelling enough (especially Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum, Randy Quaid, and Viveca A. Fox) and the special effects not too campy to keep my attention and interest, despite the sci-fi and action movie conventions and clichés.
The scene when Will Smith arrives in the stolen helicopter to rescue Fox’s character (and Mary McDonnel’s underused “first lady”) made me think of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in GONE WITH THE WIND, until they uttered the trying-to-be-clever dialogue that in this scene unfortunately wasn’t.
But the thing that struck me most about this 1996 flick was how much I wish Bush Jr. had watched it before 9/11 and then emulated it afterward. Especially when Bill Pullman’s not very realistic but heroic president faces an already proven violent alien threat, and he decides not to go to the bunker, but to send his vice president and cabinet instead. He stays in the White House and broadcasts to the nation, so that the populace doesn’t panic.
There were more parallels with 9/11 than I expected, not having seen the movie in its entirety since before that tragedy. Anyway, it got me thinking of Sci Fi flicks and their metaphoric relationship to current events in many cases. So last night while falling asleep, I decided to make a favorite “science fiction” alphabet film list. As always, I welcome any suggestions for the missing letters.
ALIEN
BLADE RUNNER (and I have to add BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET)
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, THE
E.T.
FAHRENHEIT 451
GODZILLA (not really a “favorite” except for the campy monster and the idea of it)
HONEY I SHRUNK THE KIDS
INDEPENDENCE DAY
JURASSIC PARK
K?
LOGAN’S RUN (the original—also, like many of these, kind of campy, but still somehow relevant to current events at the time they were made, as many of these still are)
MEN IN BLACK
NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR
ON THE BEACH
PLANET OF THE APES
QUIET EARTH, THE
RUNNING MAN, THE (especially cheesy in that so-bad-it’s-good way)
STARMAN (and of course the original STAR WARS, renamed A NEW HOPE)
TWELVE MONKEYS
U?
V FOR VENDETTA
WATERWORLD (I may be one of the few people who dug this movie)
X THE UNKNOWN (‘50s flick, but still metaphorically, at the least, relevant)
Y?
Z? [Ray DiPalma suggests ZARDOZ for this letter, but unfortunately I never saw it, I'll have to check it out as it stars Sean Connory back in the day when he was always fun to watch on screen no matter what the film was]
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