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Took a few days off from blogging. These are just two brief comments on two movies  and two poems/jokes

I re-watched one of the lesser-known James Bond films called License to Kill from 1989. First saw it at a difficult time in my late adolescence. It starts with Bond attending the marriage of his U.S. friend and intelligence agent Felix Leitner in Key West, when a Colombian drug lord mutilates Leitner.

I like the actors in this film. Timothy Dalton only made two Bond films, as I recall. He is one of the more gentlemanly and serious Bond actors, in my opinion. The lead actress, Carry Lowell, playing a Drug Enforcement Agency person, is very beautiful. She was married to Richard Gere for a while in real life.

Apparently. it isn’t clear which actor will be the next Bond. I think Henry Cavill would be good, but there seem to be others in contention.

Also re-watched Romeo + Juliet lately. I also first saw this at a sensitive time in my life at an outdoor screening while on  vacation in my mid-20s.

I think the adaptation is brilliant and well-cast. Leonardo De Caprio can play young men well (but I don’t like him as much playing older men; whatever), The film has a celebratory mood that captures the excitement of adolescence, has great cinematography, and uses pop music well. I liked Harold Perrineau as Mercutio: “Ask for me tomorrow. and you shall find me a grave man” has to be one of the best literary puns, and he expresses well “a curse on both your houses!” as dying in a darkening beach environment.

“Pun-ch” by yours truly

“I’m very thirsty. Where is the pun-ch?”

“The past is perfect, so remember much.”

“Don’t let your classmates steal your lunch!”

“We can agree on that much.”

“Paradox” by yours truly

“Define ‘liar’s paradox’ in one sentence.”

“If you say you are not lying, you could be lying.”

On another movie

Just re-watched Cloverfield after seeing it when it first came out a few years back. It is a “found-footage” horror/disaster movie, and I don’t usually like them. They usually seem sloppy to me. I didn’t like The Blair Witch Project (personal technology is affecting a lot of people’s lives, and this movie was ahead of its time in a way but did like one of the writer/director’s  later films that was not done in found-footage mode, Lovely Molly.)

Cloverfield is about a man in NYC who is about to move to Japan for work and is being filmed by a buddy. I think one of the themes of the film is that there are dangers to globalization; it isn’t all good. The city is suddenly attacked by giant monsters, and the US military fight back while the lead character tries to save his friends.

I think this film may be a reflection on the movie Godzilla, which was also about a giant monster. The movie was made soon after World War II and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese may have wanted an artistic metaphor for that destruction.

Don’t think I will ever watch Cloverfield again, but it is an interesting film if you like fantasy and action.

On a recent movie and a joke/poem

Just re-watched a re-make of The Crazies, which was originally a film by George Romero, who basically invented the horror zombie genre through  a series of movies.

This movie is not about zombies; it is about a bad virus and government and army over-reaction to it. So it seems relevant to the recent/current Covid-19 situation.

I also like the lead actor in the remake, Tim Olyphont. He has a quality like Clint Eastwood, both good and confident.

I think the reason some don’t like the horror genre is because they don’t like allegories. Usually horror is really about psychological problems. I don’t like the really gross stuff either.

“Much” by yours truly

“You talk too much.”

“About this and that? Such and such?”

“Are you Starsky or Hutch? Make up your mind, and please don’t wine (don’t like winos).

“Ohh.”

Just a brief joke//poem today. Will try to get back to serious writing soon.

“Mommy” by yours truly

“Sir, do you want to sleep with your Mommy?”‘

“Well, maybe sometimes, Dr. Pun… but it is no trauma-y. She is attractive, but it would get radioactive.”

“Let’s stay fact-ive.”

“I might even act if….”

“Have some more tact if….”

“Yes, we would cause a storm.”

“It would be quite against the norm! Find another, brother,”

 

 

On a passage from the novel The Institute

“‘Dead,’ he said. ‘Dead, dead., can’t be fed, that’s what I said. The Jack is dead.'”

One of the best movie adaptations of Stephen King fiction, in my opinion, is The Dead Zone about a burnt-out English high school teacher who develops supernatural powers. King almost himself became a high school English teacher before writing fiction.

King has written some poetry too. The poet W.H. Auden was told by one student that he or she wanted to say something important through poetry,  and he replied something like it is more essential for a poet to want to play with words.

 

More on Mass

i just watched Mass  and think there is an important difference between sacrament  and sermon,

Sometimes , one matters more than the other. Frankly, I don’t remember anything the pastor said in his sermon today, even though I like him.

It gets hard to remember things as you  get older.. I guess the repetition of the sacramental text makes it easier for some to remember.

On two quotes from art

“I had some dreams; they were clouds in my coffee, clouds in my coffee.”  –Carly Simon

I actually spoke with Simon briefly while in Boston on vacation. She was being treated for cancer at the the time and just made a brief funny comment. Anyway, I think this line has to do with dealing with disappointment, sometimes just through a cup of coffee. Used to be a heavy coffee drinker, but right now prefer calmative tea.

“Life is simple, but it isn’t easy,” –Robert B, Parker

This is from one of Parker’s novels about functionally alcoholic police chief Jesse Stone, who moves from L.A. to a small town on the Massachusetts coast. Sometimes just doing chores and caring for yourself can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a spouse. They adapted many of the Stone stories into short films with Tom Selleck as the lead character.

On newspapers

I subscribe to three on-line newspapers now but to be honest don’t read them much. They are The Wall Street Journal, The Irish Times, and The Washington Post. 

For the past more-than-a-decade, I have tilted more to art than mainstream news or economics. These publications seem to have solid arts articles. Of course, as you get older, it is possible to have less mental energy. I used to read newspapers avidly. I read a lot of the London papers in my mid-20s while living there and later subscribed to The New York Times a while when I returned to the U.S.

I have said before that my problem with journalism, even though I was working in it  a long time, is that reporters may have command of facts and details but not see the larger picture. To be honest, as a reporter, I just felt pressure to write something each day, no matter how banal.

It may be like posting a daily blog. Haha.

On Sex and the City

I didn’t watch much of this TV show or any of the movies made from it, but do distinctly remember going to a bar with my younger sister and one of her friends where they showed an episode. It was very explicit and rather disturbing to me.

One of the actors from the show died this week.

On anger

This is just a very personal blog today.

What do we do with anger?

Many times we have to censor or edit it. I can get very angry at people closest to me, but I usually leave it out of direct talk. Frankly, I think it is like sexual attraction; you often feel it, but usually you don’t do anything about it, except, you know….

I made some jokes a few months back about the warning: “control yourself” from an authority figure. But we do have to stay in control. Authorities also need to stay in control; just because the law is often on their side; doesn’t make them morally right.