The Way--A Movie

Martin Sheen stars in this film directed by his son, Emilio Estevez. Sheen plays a doctor whose son dies while on a pilgrimage in Spain. Sheen's character decides to finish the pilgrimage for his son.

Of the movie, Sheen told reporters, “It is hard for Hollywood to get their head wrapped around a film like this… Hollywood now makes movies targeted at 16-year-old boys. They have stopped making films for adults.”

That in itself is reason enough to see it.

"The Way" is only going to be in a few theaters. Check out their website to see where it will be playing.

Beethoven's 7th Symphony and The King's Speech--revisited

I know The King's Speech has been out there a while, but I finally found a clip from the original movie showing the *perfect* blending of music and acting that beautifully depicts the unbearable tension felt by both the King and the British people on the eve of the Second World War.  The citizens of Great Britain endured a great deal during that war--something most of us in the United States can not even imagine.

I think Geoffrey Rush's acting equals that of Collin Firth in this extremely well-done movie.

The Sound of Civilization

I just read an excellent article by Anthony Esolen, on the movie, The Sound of Music. Basically, this article illustrates what has gone wrong with modern civilization and modern "entertainment media". Here are some snippets from the article (in italics--the rest is my summary.)

1. The movie takes for granted that some things are holy.

 There are nuns. The Mother Superior is portrayed as very wise and loving. The nuns are such an integral part of Maria's life, that she gets married in the convent chapel. Marriage is holy. You don't see Maria and the Captain having sex. Or Liesl and Rolf for that matter.

2. There is such a thing as innocence -- and it is not the same as ignorance.

Maria is innocent and yet she sees the harm that the Captain is doing to his children and she calls him on it.

It is also quite telling which characters in the movie are not innocent. The Baroness. (Remember her?) The Nazis. 'nuf said.

3. There are such things as children, thank God.

The children are not miniature grown ups. That is one of the main points of the movie. The children need to be children. That is what Maria, in her wisdom, fights for throughout the film. After Maria enters their life, we see the children play together and work for the positive attention of the adults rather than living separate lives as many film (and real life) children do today.

4. There are such things as boys and girls, and men and women.

Captain Von Trapp is a man. As the article says, he was manly, patriotic, clearheaded, decisive, and courtly. Maria was a real woman, tender, cheerful, largehearted and a great complement to the Captain's manliness. They turned out to be a beautiful team. Can you imagine what it would have been like had the Captain married the Baroness as planned?

5. Today, no one can sing. No one knows why people ever sang.

 This is a very telling observation. Esolen says that even the radios have lost their music, to be replaced by news and talk, filling our lives with worry and paranoia.

We cannot now have musicals, Esolen says, because we do not sing; and we do not sing because we have lost the sense of anything to sing about, or anyone to sing to.  

Hair Spray, Hon!

DH and I saw Hairspray last weekend and enjoyed it. As a native Baltimorian, I appreciated John Travolta's attempt at a Baltimore accent. It seems they worked certain words into the script for just that purpose. Of course, NO ONE else in the entire cast had anything near a Baltimore accent, but, that's ok.

Dh kept telling me where in Baltimore he thought the movie was filmed, and I didn't have the heart to tell him, until after it was over, that I read it was filmed in Toronto or somewhere!

They definitely got the 60's down pat though. Other than the segregation, which is a running theme throughout the movie, there are 2 scenes in particular that made me smile at how much things have changed. One scene shows a faculty room which is awash in cigarette smoke. It brought back all those gatherings of adults in my childhood where everyone was smoking.

The other scene was a quick shot of a bar. We see 2 very pregnant women smoking and drinking some sort of cocktail. Yes, those were the '60's, alright!

Oh, another eerie thing: the movie opens with a shot of a newspaper. The date: my first birthday. If it had been my actual birth day, I think I would have screamed right there in the theater.

Here's a YouTube of "Good Morning Baltimore" from the movie soundtrack.