Ricky (2009)

I have another recommendation for you.

It was not until 38 minutes had gone by that I thought I had figured out what genre the movie Ricky (2009) was.  But I was immediately wrong.

If you like French movies, you might hate this one.  It's French but it's more like an American movie too.  If you like American movies, you might hate this one.  But if you like both, maybe you'll like it too.

The characters held my interest for the entire time.

The flashback at the beginning and the music threw me, but I think it was intentional.  On IMDB.com people were trying to figure out what the movie means.

It's just a good story, I think.

You could look at the events from the standpoint of each of the main characters and it still doesn't make much sense.  It's the story of some people.  And people don't really have this particular thing happen to them, but people don't make sense either.

Enjoy.

I feel like I know these people.  Don't they live just down the hall?

Help, Somebody Call 911. There's the Same Old Thing Going On Here.

So I'm trying something in this blog post.  I'll write it and then I'll title it.  That probably will work better since let's admit it, neither of us know where it's going yet.

I haven't liked pop music for about 2 and a half decades.  Well, ladies and gentlemen, which might as well be me, since I'm the writer and the reader- I like pop music again.  I turn the presets from station to station and although I'm older than I've ever been, I don't spend all my time looking at the music of today and wondering what's wrong with those pesky kids who buy this junk nowadays.

In 1972 or thereabout, I became aware of pop radio.  I'm not sure which songs were the first I heard, but I distinctly remember Dolly Parton's Jolene, Lynn Anderson's I Never Promised You A Rose Garden, some version of Locomotion, Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown and I think Simon and Garfunkel's hit that sounded to me just like the theme from H.R. Pufnstuf "kicking at the cobblestones and feeling groovy."  I wonder which songs are actually from that time and which have settled there just in my memory.

Just now, I heard the song 911 with Mary J. Blige and Wyclef Jean for the first time.  I haven't been listening to pop radio, or should I say current radio that isn't Christian (gasp) so I don't know how long it's been out.

It's easy for a generation to slip into cynicism as they leave the demographic focus group deemed more important, and to look down upon those pesky kids and decry their taste.  But Mary J. Blige can do no wrong.  As an artist, she is the real deal.  My favorite artist these days is Diana Ross, sounding better than she did in 1967, now at the age of 71.  She's beautiful, she's without peer and she's a movie star who hasn't made a movie in a long time.  She is America's diva.  Mary J. Blige is on her own way, and does things in her own way.  But when I first heard her Christmas album with orchestra, I knew.

If you can hold your own with an orchestra, you have something there that may be different than what we may have once thought.

The song itself says that she told the police her lover wasn't there but because this is the kind of love our parents warned us about, they need to call 911.

This sentiment isn't new.  It's usually sung by twenty year olds though, who want the security of living in a secure society but don't want to have to follow its rules.

When I was 8 I would play cowboys and Indians without thinking one was better than the other.  The term Indian wasn't yet inaccurate or racist.  I didn't know how stupid a term it was.  But many words change their meanings and become stupid.  Why is this America, because somebody thought there was something here once, but never came over here?

We played cops and robbers with the same equanimity.  We didn't think of one as being moral and one as being immoral.  We needed to take a side so we could have teams and play a game.  We needed opposing sides to have a narrative from which to build our play.

As teenagers, and I don't think either of these singers qualify, which I find wonderful, we flaunt the rules we used to take for granted.  We've heard the warning but want the forbidden love.  We flaunt the law when it's time to be honest with the police or pay our taxes, but we want 911 to be available should we need it.

Cynicism Here in the Promised Land (2012)

It's real easy to be cynical.

People basically don't talk.
They say whatever they can think of to convince the other person that they're the one that's right.


People basically don't listen either.
They hold their tongue as well as they can while the other person is speaking, and instead of listening; use that time to think of what they'll say next to convince the other person that they're the one that's right.

This adversarial slant to communication is why I don't like to talk to anyone.  It used to not be this bad.  I used to not want to fight.  I remember being a kid in Westgate of all places and some bigger kid tripped me on purpose on the way home from school.  I was distraught when I dropped my books but proud of myself that I walked away without giving him any satisfaction of confrontation and didn't encourage the situation to escalate.  I knew he didn't have a good reason to trip me.  He wanted to be mean.  And I knew that I didn't have any good reason to try to hurt him or to get more hurt myself.  I was proud to walk away from a fight. And real happy not to have any type of injury or additional pain.

Now I see and feel the fight in every conversation so I don't want to do that anymore.

Remember Beefaroni/Beef-O-getti?

I always thought the 1970s commercial said "Beefaroni, Beefasketti, Beefaroni, Beefasketti.  Do you want to fight?

No, I want to siiiiiiing!"


And that's what I want to do.


We have entire tv channels devoted to getting us to vote in one direction or the other.  Objectivity was never anyone's goal in mass communication but we used to pretend that it was.  We used to pretend that other people were the ones with propaganda and we were just telling it like it is.

And so it was with the desire to find a narrative to escape into rather than to be sold anything that I approached viewing the film Promised Land (2012).

It's a movie about fracking.

It's not really a movie about fracking, but rather what one does with what one thinks.  But let's just say it's about fracking.

Is a movie about fracking a place one might go to find respite from being told what to think?

I don't know anything about fracking.  But I know that I've heard much about it that could convince me that I know something about it.  It has to be evil, right?  It sounds evil.  I wonder who made up that word; someone who espoused the process or someone who crusades against the process?

Let me guess.  It sounds fracking horrible, doesn't it?

Whoever coined the term was probably a fracking genius and that word itself will probably be enough to determine the fate of its namesake.

  Between Pro-Life and Pro-Choice which term was used the most?  Surprise, that side won!

      Between Marriage Equality and Marriage Integrity which one was used the most?                                     Surprise, that side won!

Have you ever noticed the difference between the generic name for drugs and the name that they're sold under?  It seems to me that the marketable name is used by the company.  That's understandable.  They want to open and close the commercial with some name that sounds nice before and after the 10 minute listing of side effects.  Some of these drug names have such a nice ring to them and if you didn't know what they were you might think they'd make a good nick-name or a name for your next puppy.

If you didn't know what it is, Chlamydia sounds like the name of the cute check-out girl down at the corner grocery.  I think her sister's name is Phyllis something.  Oh no, it's Si-Phyllis.  That's it.  Right.  Yup, that's her.  We know her.


Those companies- I guess it's those companies, I don't know- use longer harder to pronounce names for the generic version that they won't make any money from.  Who would buy Grotsingraphitimininideperoxican if they could buy a bottle of the same thing in a pretty package called something nice?

Maybe these are the scientific names.  I don't know.  But if they're trying to get you to buy something, they go to the trouble of making it look and sound real nice.

That's what we're sick of.  Being told that every choice we make is either real nice or the worst choice ever that will end life on this planet.

Take fracking.

When I saw who made the film I assumed that they were some liberal Hollywood types who never had a real job who left their coasts to come to Middle America and make fun of the locals and tell the whole world how evil fracking is.

Then I realized that I don't really know the politics of these Hollywood types.  Maybe they're part of the vocal Conservative Hollywood minority wanting to save the movie industry from the devil.  Maybe they're trying to tell me that fracking isn't that bad.  You either like fracking or you like the devil, right?

Maybe they're trying to make a good movie.  I'm so jaded I couldn't tell.

Beautiful Kate (2009)

It's very easy for me to equate beauty with goodness.  But those are clearly two different things.  Sometimes it seems as if movies are designed to convince us that beauty is good.  Even when the hot evil person comes along, we can usually tell their morality with a glance at their face.

You know, their eyebrows are crooked and their face isn't as symmetrical as the hero's.

Or like Jeannie and Samantha, they've put on a black wig and a look of naughty glee.

This just really isn't the case, in reality.  You really can't tell the villain by looking.

"What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness!" says Tolstoy.


This is a beautiful movie.  Beautiful Kate is a beauty.  The director said that the story, taken from an American context and moved to an Australian one, reflects the isolation of farm life.  I am so surprised to disagree with her on this important point because I found the movie to be so good.  It's really good and you should see it; but only if you're an adult.

I think the movie is about the individual and it doesn't matter where it takes place or even into what family a person is born.  Inside each of us there are good and bad things which may or may not be beautiful. Sometimes sad is beautiful.  Sometimes good is boring.  Sometimes the picture is more beautiful because it's not on kilter.

I didn't find anything boring about this film.  But I like this kind of pace.  I like to be drawn in to characters and I was.

In most stories, the hero is good and good-looking.  But in reality those two qualities collide sometimes and disagree sometimes and lead into all kinds of directions.

I think Ned's propensity for younger women, or even the desire for woman after woman might be considered morally neutral by many people today.  But there's some other stuff in this film that we all agree on could not be right. But where exactly should one draw the line?

I'm glad to see Maeve Dermody has many roles coming up from IMDB.com.  I thought she was great from the minute she put her feet up from awakening in the backseat, which we could only see in the rearview mirror, until she disappeared down that long dusty road.

I believe it would be easy to dismiss her character.  But she's perfect.  She's smart and she's really dumb. She's forthright.  She's great.  When do we ever see a character be forthright?

Once a boss told me I was the most forthright person they had ever met.

So I guess I like that quality and I know that I value it.


Rachel Griffiths is always good.  But I can't see her as Australian because her American accent was so good on Brothers and Sisters when I first saw her.  So whenever I see her sounding Australian I think for a minute how good she is at the Australian accent, before I remember she is Australian.

Have you ever heard an American sound Australian convincingly?  Me either.  But the Australians can surely speak like us.

The photography and the editing are masterful in this film, along with the music.  A contributor on IMDB.com said the film was excruciatingly good.  I agree.  Having no idea where the story was going, I was totally drawn in by the transitions between the present and flashbacks and found it to be a great story.  I kept the film on purpose in order to watch it again about two weeks later, and this time, knowing exactly what was going to happen, I noticed more of the masterful craft involved in a fine piece of film.  The one particular scene that for me and for most watchers that was most significant could not have been edited more perfectly.

Beautiful.  And terrible and awful and somehow, normal.

Conductor Chris Confessore Knocks it Out of the Park at Disney's Epcot

I knew something was different.

I've heard these arrangements.  I've sung these arrangements.

But from off the side of the stage, near one of the huge fire torches that surround World Showcase lagoon, at about torch #9, some wonderful difference in the music caught my attention and I looked up.

From that point, waiting in line for the next show, I tried to figure out among the chatter and my people watching, without a good eyeline toward the stage, what was different about this night.  Yes the lights twinkled off the lake and the breeze was slightly cool and the night was perfect.  Yes the choir was all there and the Disney magic was working its wonders with the greatest story ever told.  But I've been here before. What was different about last night?

I realized it was the conductor.

I have been intimately familiar with the music of Epcot's Candlelight Processional at Walt Disney World since the early 1980s.  Rock Hudson was about to become a national celebrity again, but we were just high school students and he was just a guest narrator hamming it up for us in a big warehouse way behind Pirates of the Caribbean and I was just glad to be behind the scenes at the happiest place on earth.

The Candlelight Processional has been doing its thing since the 1950s at Disneyland.  And here I was, a small part of it with my battery operated candle in the same building where floats hide until they can become part of the Electrical Light Parade once the magic needs to be kicked up a notch when darkness descends over the Magic Kingdom.

Since then, I've seen many performances at Epcot.  This one was my third this week.  Over the years I've seen it many times and like to list the celebrities I've heard read the story.  I always try to figure out who was the best, as if a reading from the Bible or the recitation of One Solitary Life (not a part of the show this year) should be taken as a contest.  I think it was Ashley Judd.  Yep, even with her namaste bows to the crowd she was probably the best.  She was so sincere.  Jim Caviezel may have been more sincere, but I think she was just better.  He gets the prize for most exuberance.  He could hardly hold back.  Maybe he meant it more than most, or not, but he did a great job too.  This is high praise for both of them considering the amount of star power I've been exposed to narrating this same show.  It's a company of high quality- much better than Circus of the Stars or its Dancing update.

Congratulations Chris Confessore, the conductor, for putting the finishing touches on the music in such a way that I actually noticed the conductor for once.  It's always professional and it's always very good.  I'm not sure exactly what you did differently, but I noticed it before I heard your name or realized that we had been students of The Florida State University School of Music (now the College) at the same time.

Epcot's Candlelight Processional takes place under the stars with a wonderful set of carols and other Christmas songs featuring choir and orchestra in masterful arrangements that are simple and utterly good. You have to hear how the men and women alternate in What Child Is This? just a little unexpectedly, with phrases of various lengths taking the simple melody to its height.  It's indicative of the whole show.  It's a crystalline distillation of the genre that is nearly perfect.  And every once in awhile a leaf falls from the trees above and startles an audience member.  Kids stand up and sway with abandon and play orchestra conductor spontaneously.  Generally parents let them as they're too tired to worry about their reputations at the end of a long walking day.  Maybe the parents are enraptured with the sound, or too tired to protest.  It's a great venue. The lighting may be the best feature of the show because unless you've been there many times, you don't even notice its intricacy.

If you don't know Jesus, this show is a nice introduction.  The lady next to me the day before yesterday simply stopped watching for a moment, put up her hand in quiet praise and spoke to Him for a minute in the middle of the show.

Last night, the orchestra was having so much fun that every once in awhile they slipped- sorry brass section for calling you out, but you sounded great, not perfect- as they would if they were playing like they meant it. At FSU once, a student asked Robert Shaw which was better in a musician, technical proficiency or emotional connection.  He said they were the same thing.

I don't think that's true.  And it's not just because I've never been technically proficient.  I'm very glad to have heard the same music, a little differently last night.  It was wonderful.

It was Disney.

It gave us a glimpse of the truth behind the glitter.



Thank you Chris.

One Solitary Life

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

This essay was adapted from a sermon by Dr James Allan Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” © 1926 by the Judson Press of Philadelphia (pp 123-124 titled “Arise Sir Knight!”). If you are interested, you can read the original version .

The Rich Young Ruler

I've encountered the story of Luke about the man who asks Jesus what he needs to do- three times in the past week in three different venues.

Upon this reading it struck me that the man was very sad because he was extremely rich.

And I thought about unhappy rich people in this world.  We're all rich, according to biblical standards.  If you have time to read this without worrying about what you're going to eat next or where you're going to sleep tonight, you are what they would have called rich.

Why was it harder for the man to give up everything because he had a lot?  I understand that if he had a lot he would be giving up a lot.  But if he had little and was asked to give that up, wouldn't the result be the same?  He'd be a man with nothing and yet everything.

If I only had a dollar would it be easier for me to give it away than giving away what I actually have?

Christmas Radio

For years I've wondered why I want to break into song in a completely inappropriate way in certain places when hearing White Christmas.  And tonight I found the answer.  I heard the version by The Drifters, and it's great.  And what they do in the song- "I, yai, yai, yai'm dreaming... of a white Christ-ma-as" is perfectly appropriate with that genre of 50s style pop rock.  But I could never understand why I wanted to do something like that when hearing Bing Crosby.  Thank you Orlando radio for clearing that up for me.

Today I also heard Steve Lawrence and the woman with the best name in show business- Eydie Gorme. Happy Holidays has to be one of my top favorite Christmas duets; but I don't think they say the word Christmas.  My favorite is Andrea Bocelli and Mary J. Blige singing David Foster's version of What Child is This and also heard today; Faith Hill and Josh Groban's The First Noel- rounds out the top three.  Baby It's Cold Outside is one of the best duets ever- and I love Ann Margret and Al Hirt's version, but I love Johnny Mercer and Margaret Whiting also, and others too.  I can't hear Ann Margret coo without going right there. It's hilarious and hits me every time.  But I guess the other three are more musically artistic.

Steve and Eydie are a match made in heaven, and the other two are matches made only during Christmas. Faith and Josh share the same restrained drama and only veer from the melody just enough.  Mary J. and Andrea take that ancient melody to a whole new and old place at the same time.  I love it.  

First Candlelight Processional 2015

Tonight I went to Epcot's Candlelight Processional for the first time this year.  I don't know how many times I've heard basically the same setlist, but I think it has been scientifically designed.

Sometimes there's a noisy crowd and sometimes I've been more tired than others, and sometimes "when they saw the star, they rejoiced with great joy" seems more tacky than others, but the whole thing gets me every time.

It's really nice to be able to drop in for a few hours after work and see a quality show, or just walk around the lake.  The Christmas decorations are up, and I like how everything looks that way, and then when those things are gone, it's a nice change back to "normal" after the holiday look is over.

I'm glad I can't really remember every detail of the things I like about it, and that one by one remembrances hit me and I'm simultaneously reminded and slightly surprised.  Tonight I noticed the herald trumpeters, and wondered if they sound different than a shorter trumpet.  It seems like the sound travels in a more focused way and that you can tell which one is playing, unlike when a trumpet is part of the orchestra and you might see where the sound is coming from, but it fills the whole auditorium.  Are they louder than a normal trumpet, or just longer so they look more Medieval?  The high notes at the end of some of the songs were beautiful as always, whether by soprano or violin.  The songs don't seem too short or too long.  I'm sure the whole thing is too old-fashioned for some, but it really seems deliberately balanced to appeal to the most people as possible.  There's not too much text.  There's room for a little humor if the narrator wants it.  And then of course there are the drunk people drinking their way around the world.

Every time I go to Disney there are familiar things and new things, and there are so many things that there are things I may have never noticed before.  I remember working at Animal Kingdom and sometimes being all alone somewhere walking through the park, and then I could really notice details and I literally noticed something new every single day.  There are so many little touches.

Tonight there were a bunch of loud drunk guys in the bathroom.  And one was cursing, which is kind of rare for Disney.  When I got out of the restroom some of the drunk guys had joined some of their drunk girls and one of them was kicking a soccer ball through the crowds of people walking by.  Even her drunk boyfriend didn't think that was the best idea.

I was struck by how unslippery the surfaces were as I walked quite a ways.  I didn't even start to slip although it was the kind of slow rain that makes floors slick.  I noticed one father cautioning his little girl not to slip, but instead of interpreting the situation as dangerous, she was thrilled that the floor had become somewhat like an ice skating rink.  What kind of world would it be if we all more often interpreted things that way?

The rain started again and a few of the audience scurried away, but most sat still and paid attention in the seated area, even with no awning or ceiling out there underneath the stars.  Standing in the back, loud twenty-somethings were talking a lot about not being able to take pictures that were close enough.  They weren't watching the show much, but talking about it and looking at their phones and telling each other to be quiet.  I know people talking through a performance happens quite a bit, even when they like it.  And this is hard for me to understand, but there it is.  Some people mind visual distractions and/or audible ones more than others.

I think when I'm old I won't be able to go to a concert or a movie without earplugs.  The twenty-somethings have listened to their headphones so much that the volume in public places will be unbearable for someone who hasn't.

I sat in the rain, on the side, with no one behind me to distract me with their chatter, looking at the lake and the fires and the lights to my left and the great show in front.  I remember another time, being soaked through watching Epcot's night show including Let There Be Peace On Earth, glorying in the narrative and the truth behind the glitter.

For unto us, a child is born.

Helen Mirren Tries to Hathaway

When I watch an old movie from the 40s or 50s and see a famous star who I've gotten used to over the years supposedly depicted as ugly or shy or plain, it doesn't quite work.  One of my favorite movies is Now Voyager with Bette Davis.  She is probably the best actress on film, but of course she's a little stylized and not everyone's cup of tea.  There was a difference then between stars and their public that we've bridged in the subsequent decades.  We don't have pictures of Bette that are designed to show how normal and real she can be.  And everything she did was staged and looks like it.  The concept of reality tv, which isn't very real, wasn't on the radar.  People didn't share with the world pictures of their lunch back then.

In Painted Lady (1997) Helen Mirren plays a retired? hippie with a nose ring.  Don't dismiss the film just from that.

Look at this great shot which one can appreciate whether or not they know the reference.

As the retired? hippie, Ms. Mirren decides to change her look and change her clothes and cut her hair.  She didn't take off a pair of glasses and turn around in a circle like Wonder Woman or Oh Mighty Isis, but she did try to Hathaway.  I watched I Dream A Dream again with the Oscar winner and I love it.  But let's face it; if you cut your hair on camera it's a gimmick that worked.  For the remake I suppose the actress will have to remove her front teeth on film as the character does.  Anne hathaways in every movie, but it's not her fault. Why can't we just start with the assumption that she's a gorgeous talented woman?

I guess that will come in a decade or two.  For some reason people need to be either hot or talented; except for Helen Mirren.

I see Helen Mirren now as ageless.  Was she playing someone in Painted Lady who was past their prime who managed to be hot?  Was she trying to go from slovenly to sophisticated, or was it beautifully eccentric to beautifully polished.  I can't tell.  Was she playing not sexy and then hathawaying to sexy?  At a certain point, a star is a star and although I can enter the world of the movie, I can't really see Billy Bob Thornton as dumb or Ernest Borgnine as socially awkward.

And I can't see Bette Davis as shy or beautiful.  She's just fabulous.  She's just Bette.