As you may know, I am a huge fan of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. It is one of my primary comedic influences and probably explains the very high level of silliness in my writing. Of course, the show was very silly. But like most great comedy that we enjoy as children, I didn’t get a lot of the jokes because they were over my head. I think this is how we get trained to find the absurd non sequitur funny. So much of the life of a child is trying to react appropriately to things we don’t understand.

This is why intellectuals annoy me when they talk about humor. Most jokes are funny because they work on many levels. But it isn’t the case that any one way of experiencing a joke is correct. Consider one of my favorite jokes. Question: how many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: fish. On one level, the joke is funny because surrealism doesn’t make much rational sense and fish are a common element in surrealist art. The answer “Bowler” might be more pointedly intellectual since it would also be a snarky comment on Rene Magritte. But if a young child heard the joke, he would likely think it funny simply because it made no sense. In this way, substituting “fish” with “bowler” would cut down on its appeal.

Other than silliness and puns, Bullwinkle is great social satire. This, of course, also went over my head when I was a kid. And what is especially great about it is that it doesn’t telegraph how you are supposed to feel about it. The show is at base a product of the cold war. But you can see it taking the whole conflict seriously or not. I choose to see it as making light of the period. This goes along with my general belief that 99% of the people everywhere just want to be left alone to live their lives. All the problems are created by 1% of the people. And that doesn’t mean that all of the people who make up that 1% are bad. But they are people who are prone to confrontation—regardless of the reason. It doesn’t matter whether they are Genghis Khan or Barack Obama.

So what we see in the show is a bunch of people who are leading the world focused on this very pleasant flying squirrel and a moose who is stupid even by moose standards. The whole spying endeavor is just a game. And indeed it is. Whenever old information about our spying programs are declassified, we see just how ridiculous it is. It is as though the governments think they must have spying programs but they have little idea of what the whole point is. And, of course, that leads to our wonderful foreign policy of staging coups of democratically elected governments. Of course, in the world of Rocky and Bullwinkle, it is only the Soviets who are actively evil; the Americans are just incompetent. (The Soviets are incompetent too. Hell, everyone is incompetent where a flying squirrel is the smartest guy in the room.)

I bring this all up because I just watched the following documentary about the Making of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. It isn’t great, but it has a lot of information that I didn’t know. And you get to see many of the people who made the show. If you are a fan, you will like it. And if you aren’t a fan, well, all I can say is I don’t see how you can have the good taste to be visiting Frankly Curious and not like the show. Regardless, if you don’t like the show, I can’t think of a reason you would want to watch this documentary. In fact, I don’t know why you’ve read this far! But for the rest of you: enjoy!

Renaissance composer Guillaume Dufay was born on this day in 1397. Italian opera composer Antonio Cesti was born in 1623. And another Italian opera composer Leonardo Leo was born in 1694. Although not as celebrated in his day, he is much more interesting to a modern ear. Here is his Cello Concerto Number 3:

The great mathematician Niels Henrik Abel was born in 1802. He proved that it is impossible to have a general solution to a fifth order polynomial. I always find these negative proofs amazing. It is one thing to find the generalized proof of a fourth order polynomial. That’s the sort of thing that I am up to. But I wouldn’t even know how to approach Niels Henrik’s work. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 26.

The great French opera composer Ambroise Thomas was born in 1811. Here is a bit of a performance of his opera Hamlet:

The great Russian realist painter Ilya Repin was born in 1844. The “Elephant Man” Joseph Merrick was born in 1862. When I was a kid I read a good biography of him, which seems to have been updated recently as The True History of the Elephant Man. It is very sad.

The Finnish composer Oskar Merikanto was born in 1868. I don’t think he is especially great, but he did write some really pretty stuff. Here is Valse Lente:

Unusual, proto-modern landscape painter Tom Thomson was born in 1877. Russian sculptor Naum Gabo was born in 1890. First man on the moon Neil Armstrong was born in 1930. And director of A Christmas Story, Bob Clark was born in 1941.

Composer Betsy Jolas is 87 today. I dare you to go and listen to any of her music. Actor Loni Anderson is 68. And actor Jonathan Silverman is 47.

The day, however, belongs to one of the greatest Hollywood directors John Huston who was born on this day in 1906. He directed and usually wrote any number of memorable films. Just to name a few: The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, Moby Dick, Prizzi’s Honor. Here is a great scene from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre where Fred C. Dobbs goes from creepy to crazy in two minutes. The funny thing is that when I first saw the film, it seemed over the top. But since then, I’ve had some experiences with a number of actually crazy people. It’s pretty accurate. The combination of intelligence and paranoia is powerful. The one thing that is wrong is that they don’t laugh. It is deadly serious to them.

Happy birthday John Huston!

Despite my better judgement, I went to see Man of Steel yesterday. Comic book heroes are silly. I mean, really? You have super acrobatic abilities and can echolocate so you dress up in a red costume with DD printed on the chest? Really?! It makes no sense, especially given that both the bad guys and the police want to get you. But as they say: there’s silly and then there’s silly. Daredevil may be silly, but Superman is silly. He is arguably the silliest of all super heroes. But that isn’t bad; it’s fantastic! It’s in the same league with Elvis impersonators.

What you don’t do is take Superman seriously. And Man of Steel takes Superman very seriously. Deadly serious! There is almost no humor in the movie. The “S” that Superman wears on his chest means “Hope” on his home planet. Under normal circumstances, that would have been kitschy enough to pass. But not here! The first 20+ minutes of the film is spent with Russell Crowe channeling Richard Burton at his most serious. The powers that control Krypton have brought on environmental catastrophe. But he has a really great idea: they’ll all die. But they can feel good about it because he’ll send his new baby off to earth to repopulate the race with the natives. Or something. It all involves some kind of genetic codex that for some reason was in some kind monkey skull but in what maybe was supposed to be a surprise we learn it was transferred into Superman himself. Regardless, the whole sequence is ponderous, helped along by the worst Hans Zimmer score I’ve ever heard.

If you doubt me, check out this trailer which is a perfect representation of the film:

But the most important aspect of this opening is when Superman’s mother complains about blasting him off to earth. She says, “He will be an outcast. They’ll kill him!” And his father replies, “How? He’ll be a god to them!” Did I mention that the dialog in this film is really bad? Moving on… That’s not bad all by itself. But the rest of the film makes the metaphor concrete. The most brazen example is when Superman goes to a church to talk to a priest. There is a shot (I swear I am not making this up!) of Superman on the right and a stained glass image of Jesus on the left. And the shot is held a lonnnggg time! But there are all kinds of other examples. We constantly see him with his arms outstretched as though he were suffering on the cross. Plus there is lots of talk about the people not being ready to know the existence of Superman and how he is their savior.

The film even ends with Superman destroying a satellite the military has put up to locate his ice home or whatever. It is right out of the Tower of Babel. Oh the hubris of man!

There seems to be a trend in superhero films to go this “serious” road. The last Spiderman film was more that way. Thor is necessarily that way. (And therefore should never have been made!) But this is a wrong direction to go. If Hollywood wants to make serious films, it could, I don’t know, make serious films. But films like Man of Steel simply take their silliness seriously. A more interesting thing would be to create a badass Jesus come back from the dead. I realize that would offend Christians. But if they were paying attention, they’d be offended by Man of Steel.

Afterword

There is much more to say about the film. It is deeply disturbing. I’m particularly bothered by the Superman as Ubermensch aspect of it. Even though Superman is a “good guy,” he does define his own moral universe. He has no problem breaking the law for his own purposes. He is also shown to be one vindictive son of a bitch. I would be very worried indeed if he were hanging around on the planet. If Superman really wanted to be helpful, he would do what is shown in this Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon. (Check it out; it’s brilliant!)

Update (27 April 2015 12:27 pm)

Oh, and honest trailer:

I have long been a fan of the Scottish director Bill Forsyth. He is most remembered for two of his earlier films: Gregory’s Girl and one of the greatest movies ever made, Local Hero. Annoyingly, after that, few people seemed to care, even though he made three excellent films in quick succession: Comfort and Joy, Housekeeping, and Breaking In. And the two films after that (Being Human and Gregory’s Two Girls) have been savaged. I am here to tell you that there is a 90% chance that whatever films you watch over the course of the next month will be worse than the weakest Forsyth film, and there is a 99% chance they will be worse than his average.

Over the last week, I’ve been revisiting Forsyth’s film. It all started when I at long last got to see his first film, That Sinking Feeling. It tells the story of a bunch of unemployed youths who learn how much steel sinks are worth. From there it turns into a bizarre heist movie that is really just an excuse for spending some time with all of the colorful characters Forsyth has created. And that’s pretty much what goes on in all of his films: there is some plot that is an excuse to meet and hang out with what are always very interesting people.

After that, Forsyth made Gregory’s Girl, which was hugely popular based almost entirely on its overwhelming charm. It tells the story of Gregory’s search for a girlfriend and a kind of “girl’s union” that sees to it that he gets the right one. What makes it so enjoyable is that it portrays boys as various kinds of nerds who are focused on whatever (like one friend’s obsession with Venezuela because he’s heard there are many more women than men there), guided along by wise and practical girls who are immune to such nonsense. But mostly, there are just wonderful characters like Gregory and his ten-year-old sister Madeleine.

This theme of Forsyth’s continues in his next film[1], Local Hero. But instead of boys, it deals with men. From the owner of an oil company to the old beachcomber who stands in the way of a deal, all the men are strangely detached from the practical aspects of life. The film emphasizes the importance of the larger community to the individual. This is distinct from later films were he is more interested in sub-communities where people find meaning together outside their larger connections. I suspect this film is so well loved because it is Forsyth’s most overtly artistic film. There is lots of material to allow the viewer to speculate about meaning. But again, it is really just an excuse to hang with more wonderful characters.

Next up is probably my favorite Forsyth film, Comfort and Joy. And typically, it isn’t even available on DVD in the United States. It tells the story of a guy whose crazy girlfriend leaves him heartbroken. In attempting to get over her, he becomes involved a turf war between two ice cream truck companies. Rarely does a film combine three of my favorite things: crazy women, the meaning of life, and ice cream. Don’t pass up the chance to see this film. And right now the whole film (in 7 parts) is on YouTube. But don’t wait! It may disappear soon!

After a couple of years off, Bill Forsyth came back with his first theatrical film based on someone else’s story, Housekeeping, from the novel of the same name by Marilynne Robinson. He couldn’t have chosen better—it exemplifies the themes that clearly interest him. But it adds one that doesn’t come easy to him: the way in which the larger society can stifle the individual and keep sub-communities from existing. All of Forsyth’s films are deliberately paced, but they tend to be rather loud and chatty. Housekeeping is very quiet and arguably his most beautiful film. It also features a remarkable performance by Christine Lahti as crazy Aunt Sylvie.

Two years later, Forsyth was back to his old tricks with Breaking In. Again, he didn’t write it, but he chose well; it was written by another of our greatest modern storytellers, John Sayles (if you haven’t seen it, go watch Silver City—I’m figuring you’ve already seen The Brother from Another Planet). It is about a bored teenager who breaks into houses just to hang out. One night, he meets a professional thief when they both break into the same house at the same time. They start working together and become good friends. Here we get back to Forsyth’s fascination with the nerdy interests of men: in this case, burglary.

The last two films took five years each to see the light of day. The first was his largest budget film, Being Human starring Robin Williams with a really excellent supporting cast (John Turturro, Bill Nighy, Vincent D’Onofrio, Robert Carlyle, Hector Elizondo, and on and on). I don’t have much to say about it because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. It was originally 3 hours long and the producers had it cut down to 2 hours. The director’s cut has never been released. It is clearly not Forsyth at his best, but it is a lot better than people say. Give it a watch if you can find it.

Finally we come to Gregory’s Two Girls, a sequel to Gregory’s Girl, set 20 years in the future when Gregory is a would-be radical, teaching English at his former school. I heard nothing but horrible things about this film, so I was really worried going into it. But as usual, the complaints of the critics were meaningless. I think the problem is that critics will only be happy if Forsyth makes Gregory’s Girl or (especially) Local Hero again. Gregory’s Two Girls is everything that I’ve come to expect from him: interesting characters, strange but ultimately pointless plot, and a bold and positive theme. Now I know how Forsyth could have made Gregory’s Two Girls into a film that everyone would have loved: changed the beginning and end. The opening is a most inappropriate sexual fantasy between a teacher and a student. He could have cut two minutes off it and everyone would have found it charming. Instead, they tended to find it disturbing. I think Forsyth thought it was funny as hell, and it is on a second viewing after you know what’s going to happen. People also have a problem with the ending which would likely work better in a novel than it does on the screen: it is too uncertain. But Forsyth knows what he’s doing; it isn’t a random ending.

And that’s the thing about the reactions to Forsyth: people get angry when he doesn’t provide them with the film they hoped he would make. This is my biggest criticism of film “criticism”: rather than approach a film on its own terms, the ombudsmen complain that it is not a different film. In the long run, history is kinder to the artists who maintain their idiosyncrasies. And that defines Bill Forsyth. That Sinking Feeling fully predicts Gregory’s Two Girls. And I’m glad for that. I am so tired of seeing innovative filmmakers turn into predictable Hollywood hacks.

Now go and sin no more. And watch Comfort and Joy while there’s still time!

Afterword

To make it very easy for you, I’ve created a play list so you can watch all of Comfort and Joy together:

Update (28 April 2013 4:19 pm)

I just watched the whole film. There is a problem. It cuts off during the credits. There is a voice over during them where Dicky reads an add for the new product. It isn’t critical to the film, but it is a nice touch. The film is every bit as good as I remembered it. And it is a lot funnier than I had recalled. It’s brilliant.

[1] Forsyth made a TV movie Andrina based upon a George Mackay Brown short story. It has never been released in any form so far as I know.

Longtime reader and insightful commenter JMF had mentioned a few times that he really liked the Sergio Leone film Once Upon a Time in the West. I hadn’t thought that much of it, but I’d only seen it once about 20 years ago. So I decided to revisit it. And it was a revelation.

One thing I wouldn’t have noticed 20 years ago is just how beautiful this film is. In fact, I’ve been trying to think of a film that is clearly better and nothing comes to mind. Every shot is beautiful. There is absolutely nothing in the film that does not show great care in terms of art direction, lighting, and camera. Even the rear projection is beautiful.

But the biggest revelation is how political the film is. This shouldn’t be surprising. Leone was generally pretty political, and in ways that I very much agree with. I especially like his comment on power and revolution in Duck You Sucker! (A Fistful of Dynamite). But in Once Upon a Time in the West, he has created an allegory. It tells a story of human initiative and how it is destroyed by the status quo of corporate hegemony. What’s more, we see how these power elites not only use organized crime but are in fact the same thing. There is a great scene where Frank (Henry Fonda) sits behind the desk of Morton (Gabriele Ferzetti), the railroad tycoon. Morton asks, “How does it feel sitting behind that desk, Frank?” And Frank responds, “It’s almost like holding a gun, only much more powerful.” Indeed.

There is too much mother/whore nonsense going on in the film about the heroine Jill. But I must admit, Claudia Cardinale is a wonderful actress and one of the prettiest women who ever lived. Her character is very interesting, though. She has done and will do anything she needs to in order to survive. At one point early in the film, she explains herself, “If you want to, you can lay me over the table and amuse yourself. And even call in your men. Well, no woman ever died from that.[1] When you’re finished, all I’ll need will be a tub of boiling water, and I’ll be exactly what I was before—with just another filthy memory.” Unlike Frank and Morton, she has a soul; so she cleans up fine.

One thing that I used to dislike in Leone films that I now see as an advantage is his lack of transitions. In Once Upon a Time in the West, important plot points are simply not shown. Normally they are explained later. For instance, Morton and his men are found all shot up. Who did it? We don’t find out until the very end of the film, although it’s pretty clear. Drama requires that the alpha hero kill the alpha villain and the beta hero kill the beta villain. (And the gamma villain is often referred to as the “dog villain” because drama shortcut for such characters is to have them kick a dog.)

I’m going to re-watch a bunch of Leone films and compare them. But I think JMF is right: Once Upon a Time in the West is probably Sergio Leone’s best film.

[1] For the record, yes, I know: lots of women have died from that.

Last night, I finally watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Normally, when I see a trailer for a film, I am filled with scorn. Trailers are very predictable and usually turn even good films in a mush of cliches. But that wasn’t the case with this film. Probably it had something to do with the cast: I’m fond of them all, most especially Tom Wilkinson and Maggie Smith. So I went in with great hopes and thusly great concern that I would be disappointed. I was not.

The film tells the story of a small group of retired people from England who for various reasons come to a retirement hotel in Jaipur, India. Once there, they find that the hotel is not all that was promised—it is run down and dirty. The owner, Sonny, is a man with great dreams. He tells them his philosophy of life (also of the film), “Everything will be all right in the end; if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end.” Most of the guests get used to hotel and slowly grow to the love the people and the place. Yes, it is an entirely typical scenario for a film. But that isn’t really bad because it is mostly interesting for the characters.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is not a great film, but it is highly entertaining and I loved it. It is hard to say why the film works so well. It contains a lot of different plot strands and it cross cuts between them in what I would think (from a technical perspective) would not work. It seems too regimented without a central thread to hang everything on. What’s more, the third act is a bit of a muddle with many of the characters seemingly waiting around for a resolution. And yet it not only works, it is captivating.

Clearly, the film has a lot going for it on a technical level. It has a great cast with a director (John Madden) who is used to directing great actors. But I think the script itself is better than one might think with such a tired setup. The core of the film is the lives of the characters, and everyone of them is interesting. The biggest problem with films that cut from one story line to another is that the viewer is often disinterested in one or more of the stories. This just isn’t the case here. I found I was even deeply involved with the most dislikable character, Jean (played brilliantly by Penelope Wilton). That isn’t to say that everyone will see the film the same way I did. However, it is clear that all of the stories work.

There is one standout scene that I think describes the film. Muriel (Maggie Smith) is a casually racist woman who has come to India for hip replacement surgery. She becomes close to the hotel maid. They don’t talk, because the maid cannot speak English and Muriel sure the hell can’t speak Hindi or any of the other languages of India. But they still manage to communicate. She asks Muriel (through a translator) if she has children. Muriel goes on to tell her story as a domestic and how she always took care of other families. The translator soon gives up translating. Muriel gets more and more emotional as she explains the effect of losing her job, “Because they said I was no longer useful to them. They thanked me for my service as if that was all it was. I found a flat in the end. My problem was what to do with all the time I had. I mean the flat—it’s so small, I can have it spotless in half an hour. And then, you know, what am I supposed to do? For the rest of the day?” It wasn’t necessary for the maid to have those words translated.

Otherwise, the film is more than competently made. The art direction and costume design provide a very celebratory mood. There is lots of moving camera work and some very planned (and subtle) cuts. The music is a bit too emotionally forcing for my tastes, but then, it usually is. It looks shockingly good for its $10 million budget. Bottom line: it is a highly entertaining film made for grown-ups.

As I was putting together today’s birthday post, I came upon Adrienne Lecouvreur, a French actress during the early 18th century. I had no idea who she was, but she was born in 1692 and it got me to thinking about the laws against women actors in England during the Elizabethan theater. As I recalled, this law was repealed at some point in the middle of the 17th century, but I wasn’t sure when.

In my search for that information, I came upon an interesting page on the Yahoo! “answers” subnet. It purported to answer the question, “Were women allowed to act in the theatre in the Shakespereian era?” That questioner wrote, “I remember reading that there was a law in Spain that said they could. But I don’t know if that only covered Spain.”

The answer is that it depends upon the country, but in England, women were not allowed on the stage until 1660. Of course, you wouldn’t know that from reading the Yahoo! “answer.” In fact, the best that anyone did was to know as much as the questioner did. The “best answer” was by user “liz h,” who wrote:

Americans especially like to think the English are now and always have been better than their darker skinned brothers and sisters in Europe. This is not the case. The English are generally every bit as vile and disgusting as everyone else. And when it comes to sins of sexual repression, the English often lead the pack. That was certainly true in terms of their laws about the theater.

Most of Europe was far ahead of England when it came to allowing women on the stage. And the plays of that era were much improved by having woman play the female roles. As Gary Taylor discusses in his fabulous Reinventing Shakespeare, the fact that boys played all the female roles in English plays of that time, generally limited the plays to having two kinds of female characters: nubile women and old hags. The plays of Lope de Vega exhibit a much wider range of characters.

The “best” answer offered by Yahoo! is offensive and it is an example of the danger of the internet’s “polling” approach to the truth. The other answers are just as bad in their own ways. The one person who was aware that women were allowed on the stage in Spain claimed that actors were all disreputable, which is simply not true; the most successful actors were very well connected, being included even in court functions. Another writer thought that England was the only place that had an important theater movement. There was also a common implication that the female parts were played by men. In fact, even the old women characters were played by boys. (I suspect they got most of their information from watching Shakespeare in Love.) In fact, allegations of pederasty was one of the biggest complaints about the theater at that time. (Of course, those people generally wanted to abolish theater, not just transvestite acting.)

It is always disconcerting to see pages like this “answer” on Yahoo! And they make it hard to set the record straight. I’ve tried in the past, and even after registering, I wasn’t able to post anything. But even if I’d accomplished that, my answer would just go to the bottom of the list, where few would even see it. That is part of the brilliance of Wikipedia: when information is presented, it’s out there in front so everyone can see it, and it is a simple matter to fix if it’s wrong. It’s just too bad that there is no “question and answer” interface to Wikipedia.

Afterword

Note also in the “answer” the attack on Spain about the Inquisition. First, it was primarily the Catholic Church that started the Inquisition; it was not specific to Spain. What’s more, it was started in 1480s, not the 1300s. And England was Catholic at that time. And it wasn’t intended to suppress minorities. It was intended to make sure that the converted Jews and Muslims were maintaining the church orthodoxy. Later, of course, they started their “convert or leave” policy. Anyway, liz doesn’t know what she’s talking about, and this stuff has nothing to do with the question.

I’ve been sick the last two days. Because I write some stuff ahead of time, I can fake it to some extent. But it is only now that I’m getting back to work. Interestingly, I find the process of writing itself has made me feel better. It helps to have a purpose, even if that purpose is a little blog and a small following. Well, here goes nothing: another birthday post!

This is not a terribly impressive day for birthdays. I checked the birthday frequency chart and it isn’t an especially low birth day. Then again, it is low even by March standards, and March is a low birth month. And it isn’t devoid of some interesting people.

The great Spanish cubist Juan Gris was born on this day back in 1887. Not one of my favorite actresses Joan Crawford was born in 1904. And the fine magic writer Milbourne Christopher was born in 1914. (He was also supposedly a great performer, but I don’t know anything about that.)

The main singer and songwriter of the band The Cars Ric Ocasek is 64 today. The good thing about being ugly is that aging isn’t so painful. I take great solace in that. Also Catherine Keener is 54.

Some days, I really have to think about who to name the winner in this little birthday contest. Today, there was no contest, because back in 1910 Akira Kurosawa was born. I am very fond of him. I think I own more movies by him than any other director except for Orson Welles. I don’t write much about him, because I’m not sure I have much to add. But Rushomon, RAN, Sanjuro, Seven Samurai, and Yojimbo are all on my list of very favorite movies. And this is in addition to a list at least twice as long of his film that I think are at least excellent.

I wish I knew how to say “Happy Birthday!” in Japanese, but I know that Kurosawa spoke English, so this will have to do: Happy birthday!

Afterword

Google Translate give the following for “Happy Birthday.”

But I get this if I translate “Happy Birthday!”

After Afterword

Here’s a little The Cars: