To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
I’m not crazy; I’m talking to the Large Language Models getting trained by all the apps that have turned my phone’s microphone and/or camera on without my permission.
And remember, gentle reader; it’s not that your phone is listening to you; it’s that the phones and so many other devices belonging to other people are also listening to you.
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So the day after Christmas, the heating elements in our oven went out (for the third time since we’ve lived here). In the past, we’ve called an appliance repairman, a local company (not a lead generation company of any sort, although I guess most anyone now is a dispatcher for subcontractors unless the same guy answers the phone that shows up), he has ordered a part, and he’s come back to put it in when it arrived. Apparently, it’s two screws and two electric connectors, so this time, since I’m more seasoned now with washer, dryer, and refrigerator repairs, I thought I would maybe do it myself.
So I ordered a part from a seller on Amazon, not fulfilled by Amazon, and:
To be clear: Apparently, this part shipped from St. Louis, Missouri, two days later (December 28), and:
And there it sits. It is still scheduled to arrive by Wednesday, after I ordered it and twelve days since it shipped from St. Louis. Which is a three hour drive away. For some reason, it was routed through Kansas City for a week.
Criminey, I hope it’s the right part. The males in the house are missing their frozen pizzas.
And you know what else I’ve gotten this year? A couple of returned Christmas cards with this label:
What does that even mean? I would have thought I scrawled the address incorrectly, perhaps put the zip code from the wrong line on an envelope so it didn’t match the street address or the city and state, but…. No, these were the proper addresses, and Internet maps indicate they have not been bulldozed for new roads. So what gives? No clue. Maybe the Post Office’s new AI scanners (I just made that up but now looking at it, I see they are).
Meanwhile, the current Postmaster General responds to criticism like this:
That’s him. In Congress. Responding to criticism. Man, he sure trolled those Republicans, ainna? Benjamin Franklin, he is not.
Hey, I understand that the Post Office has many fiscal challenges. Public pensions, public employees, and diminishing use of the post. But it’s not helping things by adding Sunday delivery to accommodate Amazon (and then lose a bunch of that revenue when builds out its logistical network). Or extending first class mail delivery times to, what, a week now? Combined with the fact that apparently my creditors don’t send their bills until a week before the bills are due, well, even I am not mailing many checks these days.
Jeez, Louise. I hope it’s the right part.
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Commodore 64 gets a true Full-HD HDMI plus stereo sound daughterboard
Commodore 64 devotee Side Projects Lab has released a video teaser showcasing a “true Full-HD HDMI” adaptor for the iconic 8-bit home computer. Apparently, the development of this slick HDMI solution with stereo sound routed through the HDMI cable has taken a full year. If you are interested in the new HD-64, there is still some wait time though, as the first production batch won’t be ready until later in Q1.
Since reading 50 Years of Text Games, I’ve had the urge to make some room on my desk for the last CRT television we have here and a Commodore. Maybe I can wait a little while longer and hook one up to the alternate monitor that’s already here.
If there’s no soldering involved.
(Link via Pixy @ Ace of Spades HQ.)
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So of course I picked a picture book for the first entry in the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge. As you know, gentle reader, I have accumulated a number of monographs as I used to flip through them whilst spending my Sundays watching football (that is, having football on so I could sit and browse art and poetry books). However, I haven’t had the expensive football package for a couple of years now, but I’ve still picked up inexpensive art books when I can. Like this book, which I bought in October at the Sparta branch of the Christian County Library, whose sales are pretty much all bag day sales–so this book was under a dollar and probably closer to twenty-five cents given how I can pack a bag.
This is a hardback with a dust jacket, and it kind of falls between an exhibition catalog and a monograph. It contains an intro essay by oceanographer Sylvia Earle and an outro by art writer Joan Seeman Robinson, both a couple hundred words of overly vivid prose designed to sell the work, but if you’re familiar with Chihuly and a fan, you don’t need the selling. And if not, prose ain’t going to do it. The book was published in Seattle, home of Chihuly’s workshop, and you can imagine the gift shop of his museum/workshop is its natural habitat.
This book covers one series/set of his work from the 1980s. Blown glass bowls, essentially, with floppy sides and inspired by/designed to represent, sort of, aquatic life. Aside from the two essays, the book is essentially photographs of the work against dark backdrops. And unlike, say, images of paintings in monographs and art books, the photos do not do the work much justice. For one, you lose a sense of scale. Some of the work takes up a cubic yard in volume, but you don’t get that even if the photo spans two pages and the photos are the same size as 10″ works.
But, again, if it’s something designed for the gift shop, it’s more to remind you of what you’ve seen. And, you know, I can see it. Actually, I wonder if I did see it, or at least some of it. I think the Milwaukee Art Museum has or had a lot of his work or an exhibition in the early 1990s when I was at the university up the road and went to the museum a couple of times a year. So I have seen a bunch of his work in person. And now I’m wondering why I haven’t really been to the art museums since. I hit the St. Louis Art Museum a couple of times in the middle 1990s, and I’ve only been to the Springfield Art Museum three or four times since I moved to Springfield. I wonder why that is–I’m no longer trying to impress girls with a relatively cheap date, or my beautiful wife does not particularly favor art museums (she prefers botannical gardens), or because I’ve become a homebody as I’ve gotten older. Ah, well–the Springfield Art Museum is closed for a number of years for expansion and renovation, so I’m not going to revitalize my official art appreciation anytime soon.
And the easiest book is knocked off of the category list. Easier, even, than Graphic novel or comic.
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One might posit that this sort of patriotic, heroic movie of the American Revolution could not be made in the 21st century or perhaps not during a Republican administration, but one might have an easier time defending the first thesis given the cinema’s profitable embrace of patriotism during the Reagan presidency. But one would have to go to more serious outlets of movie criticism were one inclined to tease out those arguments. Personally, I just muse on what I’ve seen, and those are two thoughts that came to mind. After 2000, we have the George W. Bush presidency, the attacks of 2001, and In the Valley of Elah and Lions for Lambs. I guess some more patriotic themed films have snuck into the theaters from time to time, but they’re not the standard fare. Not that I would know, I guess: Although I saw this film in the theaters in the pre-child days, I have only seen, what, two films in the theater in the last five years? So don’t mind the musings that follow. Just click More to see the actresses.
So: In this film, Mel Gibson plays a widower Carolina farmer who had served in the French and Indian War speaks out against a war against Britain but, as the revolution erupts, he’s drawn into the conflict when a particularly brutal British officer kills his son and fires his home. When he sees that American generals, trained in the British army, are trying to use British tactics to fight the country which perfected them, he builds a small militia force for guerrila tactics and harrasses the British, but not without a cost. Gibson does some incredibly action hero things, but main characters are definitely at risk, and many die before the war is over.
So a bit slower paced than more modern actioners (or even some actioners for the time) as it pauses every once and again for speeches about liberty and whatnot. A couple splashy gore effects, mostly from cannon fire. Good for rewatching every couple of decades, and perhaps a springboard to re-learning about the American Revolution–the expedition that Gibson’s character would have been part of took place about the same time that Benjamin Franklin, whom I “studied” a bit last year (see The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin), served in the Pennsylvania militia during the French and Indian War. Does that mean I’m going to start a study of that era in 2025? Probably not, as the Nogglestead stacks are (relatively) light in material.
But, now to the More part.
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Ah, gentle reader, apparently, I have left you in the dark.
I reviewed the Springfield-Greene County Library’s Bookends magazine for the winter, and I spotted a notice for the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge which included a list of the categories (but not the form itself). So I was able to start stacking up books that match the categories (or so I hoped), and on January 2, I picked up one of the forms at the library.
Here’s what it looks like blank:
I started with six books to jump on in my annual quest to read not only the minimum five books (to get the mug), but a book in each category.
Given that it’s January 4, of course I’ve already started to fill it out. Details, and twee reflections on the books, to come.
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So last year (he said in italics because it was only last week, but he runs a bit behind on blog posts and wanted to emphasize how behind he runs), I picked out this film on one of those “I want to watch something, but not something too weighty or important or, well, most of the things I’ve bought over the last 20 years” moments. Which differ from the “I want to watch this movie which I’m sure I own but cannot seem to find, so I doubt that I own it and think I’ve rented it or recorded it to the DVR back in the days when that was an option” moments which lead me to watching nothing at all. On Any Movie nights, I pick something out. Well, I do about half the time these days; the other half, I still think “Do I want to invest two and a half hours (counting wandering to the bathroom, to fold laundry, or whatnot breaks) in this film?” Well, kismet or something like it led me to this film a week ago. And the answer is (spoiler alert!), “Nah.”
So.
I bought this film in September 2023, so it’s not like it’s “First In, First Out,” although…. Yeah, with as many films as I watched in 2024, it kind of is. I bought it because it’s a Van Damme film, and I’ve watched one or two in my lifetime (Univeral Soldier, and…. okay, maybe one), and I was thinking about Steven Seagal films recently, and probably picked this film out (it’s not Under Siege or Under Siege 2: Dark Territory which I thought about after having watched Die Hard and Die Hard 2 this holiday season). Okay, yeah, so I hoped for an 80s action film or a 90s throwback, but no.
Van Damme plays a boxer from 1925 France (which explains his accent, badly) who is asked by Downton Abbey‘s Mr. Carson (with his French accent from Top Secret! intact)–well, he’s told to take a dive in the second round for a bunch of money. Mr. Carson, or the French gangster equivalent, has a moll who is Van Damme’s character’s former fiancéé (being this movie is set in Francé, thé éxtra apostrophés and accénts should bé éxpéctéd). But! Van Damme (forget the character dodge) does not take the dive! He knocks out the opponent, and he hopes to escape to America (frog, yeah!) with the girl. But! Pursued by the gangsters, he finds himself in the foreign legion’s recruiting office (staffed, of course, late at night). And he signs up to the foreign legion to escape.
So he ships off to North Africa, where he meets and gets on with, eventually, many different diverse types, from an American black man escaping from 1920s racism to bad Germans to Englishmen escaping their pasts and Italians trying to impress their girls families. UNFORTUNATELY! a photo from a newsman is seen in France by Dark Mr. Carson who sends killers to enlist in the Foreign Legion to find and kill Van Damme. AND! They catch up when Van Damme’s group is going to an outpost to defend it or be slaughtered by the Berbers or Barbers, whichever looks the least like Perry Como.
So! They march out there, get ambushed, have to trust each other, and all die except Van Damme whom the Berber leader says has “courage” and finis!
Wait, what?
Yeah, no, it ended abruptly. After the battle of Rorke’s Drift, uh, that cheap set, the credits roll. We don’t get any resolution of the triggering story, the boxer and the girl, but someone said she went to America (in the 1920s, not the 19th century, so not in colonial times, mate). No resolution with Deja Vu Dark Carson. Nothing past the speech that the West were occupiers in northern African (whose leaders kinda look Arabic) lands. Honestly, I thought the film was made a decade (or maybe but a half) later with a message that seemed anti-War on Terror. But I guess the message resonates among the “Western” entertainment industry past 1990 or so which thinks history starts somewhere in the (late?) 20th century and ignores all the part before we became the baddies according to popular culture.
So. Not a good film. Ech.
On the other hand, I have it on DVD, so I can watch it whenever I want. Which is ultimately less than once now that I have seen it.
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Ah, behavioral economics is not just for humans anymore. Now it can just be made real by algorithms.
I’ve been following Scott Walker on Facebook since he was a governor (and should have been a presidential nominee in 2012).
Anti-Scott Walker random posts? I’ve been ‘following’ them since Facebook decided I need to see them as a preface.
And, to be honest, I’m not sure why I’m still seeing Scott Walker prominently in my Facebook feed. Because he posts about the Packers? I have no clue.
But feel free to discuss amongst yourselves or to think amongst yourselves whether it’s predictable or not that the person with the handwritten note has to long-term borrow a vehicle from a parent.
Oh, one presumes so much.
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So, to sum up, here is what I have read this year:
I have to say that the Winter Reading Challenge really does kick my year off right. And with this year coming, where I am starting off with extra free time, might prove to be my best year yet! (Although, to be honest, I often ring the bell at hitting all fifteen categories in the challenge, and I once read 16 books, hitting one category twice.
So what did I read in 2024?
I dunno, five or six “classics?” A bunch of sword-and-sorcery. A couple of books about television and movie genres. A pile of poetry. Several Westerns and/or books by Western authors. Three or five books I’ve read before. Two or four books of cartoons or magazine gags.
You know, not a bad selection. But maybe next year I will get to that ideal 100.
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This is the third of these little Salesian Missions booklets I’ve read this year; I read The Way in June and Priceless Gifts in August. Given that I bought another booklet when I got this book and The Way in April 2023, I have at least one more floating around the stacks here in an unread state. They tend to get jammed into narrow slices between larger books only to pop out at strange times, like when I’m not hoping to start a larger book before the Winter Reading Challenge begins on January 2.
So: a booklet small enough to fit into a #10 envelope with poems by Whittier and Whitcomb Riley which won’t help me to keep them straight (although remembering Riley is the Little Orphant Annie and Old School Day Romances guy helps me to remember that Whittier was the more serious of the two). Several poems by Helen Steiner Rice back when she was a going concern (I just read her Wikipedia entry, and an interesting but brief story which is told with greater detail on her Web site–she died in 1981, and she has a Web site, so let that be an indicator of what a big deal she was to some).
At any rate, you could do worse than to read these little booklets with their focus on inspirational messages and mixtures of greeting card scribblers and major poets and to read old Ideals magazines which are mixtures of the same with some grandmothers’ poetry included as well. I recently bought a stack of a major poetry magazine issues from the last year, and I’m telling you that they are, in fact, much worse. So don’t laugh at me for picking some of these up and wondering if I should start actively collecting them (given that they were published many per year for decades, probably not). And enjoying them for the little literary charcuteries that they are. Designed to be disposable but with indispensible literary merit within. What a culture we once were.
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Ah, gentle reader, I just watched the first two Crocodile Dundee movies, wherein just is somewhere between 2015 when I bought the first at a garage sale and when I started dilligently writing movie reports (2021 or so?) and now. Or maybe I only watched the first; when I picked this from the library, I thought it was the second of the Crocodile Dundee films, so either I didn’t watch the second five or eight years ago, or I kind of blended the plots. Because, c’mon, man, the plots are secondary: They’re movies about an outback Australian in the big city.
In this case, Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) has been living with Mick Dundee and their son Mikey in Walkabout Creek, Australia, but her father has a proposition for her: To run the Los Angeles paper, where the previous editor, an investigative reporter, died pursuing a story. So she brings Mick and Mikey along, and they live in Beverly Hills whilst she tries to discover the secret behind a movie studio that loses money but keeps making sequels to its flops which are partially filmed in Eastern Europe. Mick, in between his fish-out-of-water antics, gets a job on the set of the movie studio and works undercover. Suddenly, Mick is discovered, leading to his being hunted on movie studio back lots, and finis!
So, yeah, a film that really probably only got made because Paul Hogan wanted it and maybe because it came with some Australian government money. Much of the material seems recycled from the earlier films or otherwise tired and maybe a little fish-out-of-date. It did make me think about watching the first movie again, though, which rather captured a bit of lightning in a bottle, but it was the 1980s, man.
The film profferred Kaitlin Hopkins as Mikey’s school teacher.
Continue reading “Movie Report: Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles (2001)”
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You know, a couple of years ago, I reported on a rewatch (mostly) of all the Conan movies, but apparently this one escaped my notice. Although the main character is Robert E. Howard’s Kull the Conqueror, the IMDB entry indicates this was to be the third Arnold Schwarzenneggar Conan film, but he turned it down–so the De Laurentiis family got Kevin Sorbo, who was doing the Hercules television series at the time, and changed it to Kull so he would not have to play a continuation of the character. It blends elements from several Howard properties, but I’m not going to tease them out for you. Instead, you can read up about it on IMDB or Wikipedia.
Kull tries to join the army of Valusia, but he’s showed up a bit and is called a barbarian by the general who notes the army is all noble blood. He (Kull) somehow gets into the palace when the king is slaughtering kinsfolk who he says are conspiring to take his throne. Kull tries to stop him from slaying others, and in the ensuing fight, Kull kills the king, which should make him king, but the king’s kin don’t think that’s right. But the dying king bequeaths his crown to Kull, who starts to throw off the slaves shackles and bring a more modern barbarian sensibility to Valusia until he is corrected by the crown’s eunuch (played by the head of Rekall from Total Recall). Kull is smitten by a fortune telling slave (played by Karina Lombard), but the scheming kin of the previous king raise an ancient goddess (played by Tia Carrere) who seduces Kull but fakes his death so she can assume the crown. Kull, the fortune-telling slave, and a priest of an another god escape to find the quest object which can stop the goddess.
It blends a lot of Conan history and elements from the Hour of the Dragon but with a prettier antagonist. A scene takes place aboard ships, hearkening back to the hero’s days as a pirate and so on. It also has a sense of humor about the film genre’s conventions where the original Conan movies were more earnest–but by the 1990s, that sly humor was worked into entertainment. At one point, Carrere’s character says, “I’ve altered our pact. Pray I do not alter it further.” which is clearly a hollaback to The Empire Strikes Back.
So it did not do well at the box office–it’s more of a direct-to-video or direct-to-cable quality–and it’s a little slow, but 80s action films (which this really is despite its release date) were slower, too, so I guess that’s not much of a wash. Also, I found the fight scenes a little underwhelming–Kull prefers an axe to a sword–but in close quarters against lightly armored opponents, it’s likely to be a little more pokey than slashy. But I’ve never actually fought a real sword fight and the only time I’ve worked with weighted weapons, I’ve gotten my hands whacked a bunch. So who knows.
I enjoyed it, but it might not be for everyone.
The film also featured Karina Lombard as the card-reading slave.
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I picked up this collection in September at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale. It’s a fairly nice little hardback collecting poems and aphorisms grouped by topic (Beauty, Music, Love, Friendship, Brotherhood, Inspiration, Courage, Achievement, Truth, Happiness, Faith, Patriotism). The collection includes a number of poems from classics such as Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Longfellow, Pope, and even a poem by Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton (the “It was a dark and stormy night” guy) so on, but also some quotes from other famous leaders and a couple of anecdotes that are a couple paragraphs at length. Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” makes an appearance, as do a couple of poems by the author and an anecdote of visiting the house of a Japanese school employee after a death. Running 87 pages with multiple pieces per page, it’s heavier than a Hallmark book and definitely several nights reading. I found myself reading the name to which each piece was attributed (below the piece) first as I guess I am a snob.
So a nice relatively quick bit of edification, but you know what’s even more interesting? The editor.
He has a Wikipedia page because he was a college football (and baseball and basketball) in the 1920s and 1930s. Just as he was finishing up his doctorate in education (according to his obituary) he was called to run a school for the children of American servicemen during the occupation of Japan. After which he returned, published this book when he was 80, got his doctorate finally at age 84, and passed away in 1987 at 94. The obit indicates he wrote about his experiences in Japan for the equivalent of the dissertation. You know what? I would like to read his biography and/or that work about occupied Japan as much as this book. Ebay has dozens of copies of this book in several editions listed, but nothing else by the author. More the pity.
At any rate, my reading for the year is winding down. Most years about now, I call it early for the year–my reading list generally runs the last week of the year to the last week of the year, and not January 1 to January 1. However, the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge starts on January 2, so I am reluctant to start anything that I won’t finish before then. This is my 95th book this year, but it might not be my last. I guess we will find out in the coming week.
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In years past, I’ve not been able to enjoy this Christmas movie because we did not have a copy of it. Sometime last year or earlier this year, I stopped at Vintage Stock (whilst killing time, when buying gift cards for Christmas, or whilst spending a gift card received for Christmas), I picked up a copy. And my beautiful wife, my youngest son (who is 16 and a half at this point, so old enough for exploding gremlins), and I watched it over the weekend. It might represent only the second or third time I’ve seen it–which is not a lot considering I cheekily put it on the top five Christmas movies list (so maybe Night of the Comet will someday replace it).
At any rate, the plot: An inventor/tinkerer is trying to hawk his inventions and to buy a present for his son in a Chinatown when he comes to a hidden shop and discovers a small cutesy made-for-merchandising mogwai which the old man in the shop won’t sell him–but his grandson does, and who tells the man the three rules. C’mon, say them with me:
Well, of course, that doesn’t happen. What does happen is that the son’s friend, played by a young Corey Feldman, spills water on Gizmo, the good mogwai; the water causes the mogwai to blister and spawn other mogwai; the other mogwai trick Billy, the son, into feeding them after midnight; and the mogwai go through a pupal stage to become gremlins, which then go on a rampage through town until Billy and his girlfriend-to-be save the day on Christmas.
I mean, there’s more to it than that–scenes of, frankly, shocking brutality and practical effects as gremlins are killed by a variety of kitchen gadgets and other ways. And the gremlins dispatch several sympathetic characters rather casually and has an unnecessary gruesome story featuring a basic misunderstanding of modern chimneys–this is a Steven Spielberg production, but it smacks of a different Stephen. My mother-in-law took her twelve-year-old daughter to see this film in the theaters, and that’s how she learned Santa wasn’t real.
Still, a family tradition of sorts might begin here, although the number of years I have with offspring at home is dwindling and the number of years I have until I can watch it with grandchildren should be at least fifteen years if not more. So maybe it will be me just watching it every couple of years.
Even if it does feature Phoebe Cates as Billy’s girl.
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I got this book this summer in an attempt to stuff my stacks with Christmas novels so that I would easily find one, surely, when it came time to read my annual Christmas novel. As it happens, I read three Christmas novels already this year from Karen Kingsbury’s Red Glove series (Gideon’s Gift, Sarah’s Song, and Hannah’s Hope), but they did not impress me nor help my heart grow three sizes, so I grabbed this one as well since it was nearby on the stacks (that being lying atop the ranks of books atop my bookshelves in the office where so many recent acquisitions go until I can fit them onto actual bookshelves). And, you know what? This might be the best modern Christmas novel I’ve read in the thirteen years I’ve made this a personal tradition.
So, the setup: A former war correspondent has been put on the no-fly list for an outburst at an airport. After his retirement of sorts from overseas journalism, he has written feature material for women’s magazines and other pieces like that. He gets a chance to do a story on traveling by train during the Christmas season, which also will allow him to join his casual, on-again/off-again opposite coastal lover for a trip to Lake Tahoe. But their phone conversations indicate something is off–is the wealth voice actress getting tired of him? Coincidentally, the One Who Got Away, a lover who left him some years ago when he would not commit or give up his exciting and dangerous lifestyle, happens to be on the train as the writer for a Hollywood director who is thinking about doing a movie about trains. So will they/won’t they? On the ride along the Capitol Limited and the Southwest Chief, they meet a couple who want to marry on the train as they elope; a retired priest; a former railroad employee who rides the trains because he misses it; and a variety of colorful employees and regular passengers–and, apparently, a thief who steals a single item from every sleeper compartment several times.
I won’t give away the bit of the twist at the end, but it’s a pleasant book, and it has depth and richer writing than I found in most of the other Christmas novels I’ve read. It might be the best of the lot, although Lloyd C. Douglas’s Home for Christmas from 1937 might hold onto the top spot simply because it hits upon the nostalgia notes that so many Christmas songs do from the early part of the 20th century and the transition from rural to urban lifestyles.
Also, the book is a bit of a love letter to Amtrak (along with some asides that the government should fund it more even though rail remains a fairly limited and highly inflexible travel option). I mean, I recognized the names of the longer lines listed (the Capital Limited, the Southwest Chief, and the Texas Eagle). No mention of the Anne Rutledge, which ran from Chicago to Kansas City, the Hiawatha Service (Chicago to Milwaukee) or Empire Builder (Chicago to the northwest), but I traveled back and forth between Missouri and Milwaukee many times during college, so I got to learn all the names. I even rode the Texas Eagle from St. Louis to Chicago early on Sunday mornings on my trips home (the Anne Rutledge was an afternoon train, and I wanted to get back to Milwaukee early in the afternoon since I was taking a city bus home). So the book made me want to take a cross-country trip on a train just to see what it’s like, but it’s unlikely to be as good as it’s presented in this 20-year-old book.
Still, a good read and a good way to wrap up my Christmas novels for the year. It looks like this might be Baldacci’s only departure from thrillers and detective stories into Christmas novels, so I guess I’ll have to look elsewhere for Christmas novels next year. Of course, by this time next year, I will have found and lost again several Christmas novels which I buy to seed the stacks here at Nogglestead so that I can find at least one Christmas novel in December, and I will have bought and lost several others that I buy throughout the year for the purpose. But with enough seeding, I should be able to find something. Although knocking off four of the Christmas books in the stacks doesn’t help the effort.
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In related news, I finally got to share Invasion U.S.A. with my youngest last night, so he’s finally learned what I’m imitating when I summon him to dinner by saying in a low voice, “Rostov. It’s time to dine.”
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It’s not a Christmas movie, but I picked this movie up when I wanted to watch a movie instead of watch a particular movie (such as The Bishop’s Wife). When I want to watch a particular movie, I often fruitlessly search the media library for it and think I must have recorded it on a DVR or rented it from the video store (relatively recently). This happened recently with Dazed and Confused which my oldest wanted to watch; I hunted for it and could not find it, so we didn’t watch it, but I see one of the boys has found it because it’s now atop the cabinets instead of shuffled somewhere therein. I’ve done that a couple of times recently, such as getting in my head I wanted to watch No Country for Old Men which will remain hidden amongst the DVDs until I want to watch something else.
So I wanted to watch something after nine o’clock one night last week (my contract included evening meetings ending a little after 8pm, and I’ve been a little too wound up to go to bed at normal time). So I plucked this film from the box atop the cabinets, where it has languished for over a year along with other titles I bought at that particular Friends of the Library book sale.
The film opens with Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn as parents sending their last child overseas, leaving them empty nesters. Martin’s character has a job interview in New York, and he invites his wife along, but she declines. However, she shows up on the plane, and hijinks ensue. Their plane is diverted to Boston, their luggage is delayed (with no connecting flight or announced load out?), they miss the train, they rent a car and get lost coming into New York leading to a hijinkal crash on the docks, they’re mugged walking to their hotel and lose everything, they crash a sex addicts support group leading to the revelation that Steve Martin’s character has lost is job and needs the job for which he’s interviewing, and…. Well, other set pieces ensue, including Steve Martin’s character dosing on acid whilst in jail (how did the fellow prisoner get into jail with acid on his person?) which gives Steve Martin the ability to Steve Martin for a couple of scenes, and, well….
You know, the film stars Steve Martin and is “Based on a screenplay by Neil Simon,” which would sound good, but the actual screenplay for this film was by another guy. This is a remake of an earlier film from the 1970s, and much like my viewing of The Heartbreak Kid remake last year, the film underwhelmed and disappointed me and made me want to see the original to see if it had more point (1970s zeitgeist notwithstanding–but as a child of the 70s, I can appreciate it). This film was updated to include the acid trip, among other things, with the principals staying in New York whereas in the original, they turned down the opportunity to stay and returned to Ohio. Perhaps that was one of the stipulations of getting New York money or getting Rudy Giuliani to portray himself in the film. But the comparison between the then version and the now (also now a then version since this film is 25 years old–the portrayal of New York probably changed a lot between 1970 and 1999).
Also, I haven’t bothered with the character names because, c’mon, man, they’re fairly stock Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn characters. So you already know what you’re going to get.
At any rate, this film has mostly been forgotten, and it’s pretty forgettable. And, to be honest, I thought Date Night with Steve Carell and Tina Fey was a remake of this movie or its original as they’re similar plot-wise, but I guess not (and Date Night is atop or in the to-watch cabinet, so you’ll hear about it sometime in the future). Perhaps I thought it (Date Night) was a remake of this film because when I thought of Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn in a movie, I probably thought 1985 or 1989 instead of as late as 1999.
And although I said Goldie Hawn, no pictures for you, gentle reader. She falls into that uncanny valley of “Pretty, but she looks a lot like my mom’s sister” which makes one feel squicky in admiring too closely.
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We watched the holiday movie Die Hard 2: Die Harder last night, and today we learn Die Hard 2 star dies after long health battle as heartbroken wife pays tribute
It was Art Evans, who played the engineer Barnes.
I need to stop reading and watching anything since people I read or watch keep dying.
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Last year, after watching Meet Me In St. Louis, I asked:
Now, do I dig out The Bishop’s Wife or go right into the action-oriented Christmas movies?
Clearly, I did not watch the film last year, gentle reader, or I would have let you know about it. And although I am pretty sure I set my DVD copy of the film atop the cabinets for easy access at the time (or maybe during the Christmas season in 2022), I could not find the physical copy the evening I wanted to watch it. I was pleased to find it was available on Amazon Prime. But with limited commercial interruptions. So, to recap: We’re paying a hundred and increasing number of dollars annually for “when we get to it” shipping (free to anyone on orders over $25) plus streaming now with commercials to watch a couple of football games and a couple of movies a year? Ah, Amazon Prime, you are definitely falling to about even on the worth it scale. And trending to not with the next rate increase or additional uninterrupted after this interruption.
At any rate: In this film, a bishop (David Niven), presumably Anglican since he preached at St. Timothy’s but is married, is hoping to build a grand cathedral, but he is at the mercy of wealthy donors who have their own ideas including putting a widow’s dead husband’s name on everything. He prays for help, and it arrives in the form of Dudley, an angel played by Cary Grant, who acts as the bishop’s assistant, but more importantly, focuses on the bishop’s wife (Loretta Young). Dudley helps the wife and daughter find joy in Christmas again and charms everyone he meets, including the wealthy widow whom Dudley convinces to give her money to more worthy charities instead of building the cathedral–thwarting the bishop’s plans, but returning him to a happier place in his life as a preacher at the aforementioned St. Timothy’s. And then Dudley leaves, and nobody remembers him, taking his example and works as their own inspiration.
I dispute a common take on one of the last scenes in the film, though. Wikipedia says:
As the climax to the movie approaches, Dudley hints to Julia his desire to stay with her and not move on to his next assignment. Although Julia doesn’t fully understand what he’s talking about, she senses what he means, and tells him it is time for him to leave.
He doesn’t hint–he comes on pretty strong. But I don’t think this was Dudley actually making a move on the bishop’s wife. Instead, I think he was trying to get her to realize she loves her husband and to excise any feelings she might have developed for Dudley or confusion before he left, and perhaps she had to send him away–that he was an answer to her prayer and not the answer to her husband’s prayer. I suppose I could watch it over and over again and pore over the screenplay and whatever production notes or materials I could find to make this case, but I’m not a serious student of film. So you get this paragraph, gentle reader.
So it’s a classic, and it’s a Cary Grant film, and it’s been too long since I rewatched it.
Especially as it contains Loretta Young as the titular bishop’s wife.
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Powerline’s Week in Pictures informs us:
Not here at MfBJN, where we have enumerated the top five Christmas movies since 2003 as:
Even though we’ve not seen Night of the Comet yet, it is unlikely to break into this pantheon of 80s deliciousness.
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