Dog Day Afternoon

This 1975 movie is based on the real events surrounding a bank robbery in August, 1972 in Brooklyn. Al Pacino and John Cazale play Sonny and Sal two losers attempting to commit the robbery. It is a comedy of errors from the beginning. Their third accomplice quits just as the robbery starts so that are forced to let him leave just after they have taken control of the bank. This leaves us with the scene of Sonny letting him out of the bank whose doors have been locked and then getting him to leave the keys to the getaway car.

Sonny has worked at banks before so he knows some of the tricks that might be attempted to foil the robbery, unfortunately he has never committed a robbery before and his inexperience clearly manifests itself. The bank had a deposit pickup shortly before his arrival, he had been counting on a drop off, and this leaves him with just over $1000 cash. He decides to steal the travelers checks but then to not allow these to be traced he decides to burn the register in a trash can. This causes smoke to billow inside the building and alerts a neighborhood barber to call the police.

From there Sonny has to negotiate his way out. This character is one of Pacino's best. He is intensely, if not likaable, at least sympathetic. This was not what he wanted and he clearly did not really understnad the ramifications.

We later learn that one of the motives for the robbery was to gain money so that his male lover, or wife as he calls him, named Leon needs a sex change operation. Sonny is also married to a woman and has two kids. Surely Sonny has alot on his plate. When the movie was released Sonny was an antihero as he raged about Attica and garnered the support of raucous crowds behind the police barricades.

John Cazale plays Sal as an understated almost mute man who lets Sonny do the leading, in fact you get the sense that he has been led into this by nothing more than the volume of Sonny's personality. Sal is a religeois man who considers his body a temple and chastizes one of the hostages from smoking as " your body is a temple." This is especially powerful as we know that Cazale died less than five years later of mestatsized lung cancer.

Charles Durning plays the police detective negotiating with Sal and he is wonderful in this role, perhaps epitomizing by trying to hold the crime scene together how crazy the whole city of New York was in that turbulent time.

This is a period peice, certainly without knowledge of how crazy the seventies were, especially in New York City, the movie loses some of its appeal but taken and understood with the right backdrop this movie is powerful and the ending cannot help but leave one a little shook.

A movie whose characters stay with you, considered one of recently passed director Sidney Lumet's best.

The Heat of the Night

This 1967 movie starring Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier tells the story of a murder in a small Mississippi town called Sparta. Poitier playing a Philadelphia police detective visiting his mother is caught up in the investigation by no choice of his own and then refuses to leave until he has solved the case.

Rod Steiger won the Oscar for Best Actor and deservedly so. His portrayal of the small town sheriff who still harbors many racist feelings having to deal with an African American detective who clearly knows more than him in how to deal with a murder.

Twice in the movie Chief Gillespie locks up the wrong man based on circumstantial evidence. As an aside here we should all sleep less soundly knowing that this sort of police work is still done in a great many cases. Often the evidence is tailored to fit the suspect.

The movie is a study in race and the Deep South. Racism permeates everything. White folks do not want to talk in front of black folks, serve them in their restaraunts or offer them any other courtesies they take advantage of.

In the end the murder is solved. We hear Poitier tell the Chief when asked what they call him in Philadelphia " They call me MR Tibbs." which has become an iconic statement.

The last line in the movie is the Chief telling Virgil " To take care you hear" is a classic understatement of an acknowledgement of a change in their relationship.

This is a great movie.

The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee

This book has just recently won the Pulitzer Prize for non fiction for 2010. The book, called a biography of cancer, tells the story of cancer. Treatment of the diesesase in early times through the methodologies used today. The author a phyician at Columbia Medical Center follows in the footsteps of Atul Gwande as medical professionals who write books about medical issues that are accessible to the layperson.

Reading the New Yorker each week I find the occassional articles by Gwande as well as Oliver Sacks to be some of the most interesting articles in the magazine.

So it was with very high hopes that I picked up this book. The books starts with a case history of a recent cancer patient diagnosed by the author with cancer of the blood, luekemia.

However the whole book in its entirety was dissapointing. The research into past treatments and the history are stilted and less than interesting. Perhaps writing a whole book about the subject rather than a magazine article predicates the need for an attempt at more a serious tome with historical weight. In anycase I was disapointed and at this point think perhaps the fault was mine as the book has surely been rewareded with acclaim.

Still compared with the articles I have read however the book was disappointing.

Friday Night Lights - Season 5

This is the last season of Friday Night Lights and after watching the first two episodes we are sure to ask why it must be so. This is one of the best shows on televsion. A show about football that really has very little to do with football. This show is about relationships, characters that are much more than the usual one dimension we often see and often about loyalty.

Watching Coach Taylor manuever through the minefield of Texas high school football and still maintain his ethics and sense of what is important is a great thing. One can wonder how in state with the worst record of public education a school can afford to have a full time football coach that to my knowledge does nothing else for the school district and make a living is another question. It is Texas however. As close to a foreign country as we can imagine here in the Northeast.

The actors in this show are the best you will see on an ensemble. This series is also an unfortunate example that good shows do not get ratings and in most cases do not get the chance to mature. By ratings alone this show should not have made it past one season. NBC stuck with it and it is an example of what can happen when a network is patient.

We will miss it

The Wild One

Marlon Brando plays Johnny Strabler leader of the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club who invade a small town on a weekend run. Brando is the leader of a group that does not appear to be bad so much as bored and looking for an escape. In fact during the movie he says that the club is a way for the members to let off some steam on the weekend.

Still interesting to me is that in watching as an adult I do not find much admirable about this group who come in and terrorize the town. They are not evil but still racing in the street and physically picking up an old man out of his truck can never be in my eyes seen as a funny thing.

In the movie eventually some vigilantes in the town decide to act and this leads to a confrontation. Mistakes are made and misinterpetation of the events occur. The situation becomes dangerous.

This movie was interesting. It was not great. Mary Murphy is good as the girl, the ineffective police officers daughter and Brando exudes whatever it is that stars exude. The role is not challenging but one can see that Brando owns the screen.

When Johnny is asked what it is that he is rebelling against he asks " Whaddya got? " It is a line we always remember and for Brando one of many we remember.

Watch the movie, learn your movie history but do not expect a masterpiece. This is a bit overrated.

Rio Bravo

I love Westerns and this is a typical Western. Actually I will say this is a great Western. Dean Martin plays a deputy turned town drunk who is in the process of being rehabilitated by Chance the Sheriff ( played by John Wayne.) In this role there is nothing of a stretch for Wayne. This was the Wayne role.

Interestinlgy I find now that the director Hawks did the film along with Wayne as a response to High Noon which they hated and took as an allegory to the blacklisting in Hollywood of the early fifites as releates to the Red Scare. I like to think I am a pretty bright guy but I did not see it in either movie. Certainly the Sherriff's in the movies act differently. Cooper looks for help and is deserted and Wayne refuses help not wanting to put others at risk. To me in my mind if any allegory is to be found Wayne's character would seem to be more in compassion to those blacklisted figures who refused to cooperate thus not seeking help but then again maybe it is just beyond me.

Now as a movie the story is very good. The cast is wonderful. Wayne is as at home in this role as any I have ever seen him in. Dean Martin, always likeable, is very good and Ricky Nelson adds a nice touch as Colorado. Angie Dickinson is pretty and sassy as a former card hustler that becomes the romantic interest of Wayne, this seems a stretch in regards to their age difference, and perhaps my favorite is Walter Brennan playing Stumpy who offers a comedic turn but also fits in every role he does. Brennan could act and always makes me smile.

Forget about the allegory and enjoy the movie. It is a winner.

Easy A

This movie came via Netflix last weekend and my wife and I watched it Saturday night. Emma Roberts plays Olive a high school girl that feels invisible. She has a good friend, Rhi, who acts further advanced than she is.

In Olive's English class they are doing a section on The Scarlet Letter and unlike most of the students who have just watched the movie and relate it to Demi Moore she has to, embarrassed almost by it, admit to her teacher, played by Thomas Haden Church , that she has read the book. The Scarlet Letter becomes the backdrop in a literary sense of the movie that follows.

Trying to avoid a camping trip with her friend Rhi, and her friends hippy parents, she lies and says she has a date. This lie later manifests into that she had sex with the college boy she had a date with. This conversation is overheard by a young Christian girl who is overzealous to say the least. She ( played by Amanda Byrnes) spreads the rumor like wildfire and soon everyone is assuming she Olive is a bad girl.

A gay friend asks her to pretend to have had sex with him so that he can escape the rumors about his sexuality. She agrees to do so, at a party they go into a bedroom and make all the requisite " sex" noises and the rumor is sealed.

The story takes off from there with the ramifications of an ever expanding series of lies and exaggerations until Olive giving in to the ludicrousness of it all starts wearing a Letter A on her clothes to identify with Hester from the Scarlet Letter.

At times I commented that the movie was stupid and it was not really even that good. Still by the end of it the story did come full circle with some cute eighties flashback references and the tie to Scarlet Letter was clever.

Worthwhile but do not have too high an expectation.

Henry IV Part 1 by William Shakespeare

Continuing my reading of Shakespeare I picked this history to try. Shakespeare is not easy and as you read it sometimes you wonder if it is worth the struggle. Yet when you have fought through and finished you realize that the story told was well worth hearing.

Wishing to continue the tale with part 2 I now realize that Shakespeare's histories are if not written in chronological order would be best read so. So now before I move on to Part 2 of Henry IV I am going to go back to the beginning and start with King John

In the story which I have read we meet some characters that still are culturally significant, the most notable perhaps that of John Falstaff the rogue who Henry the IV slums with before he decides to be a responsible member of the Royal family.

In this we see King Henry IV beset by an army attacking as well as some disgruntled Lords and Earls joining the fray.

Falstaff and is lies and protestations offer a humorous outtake from the true story of the battle to be fought and Henry the V, Prince Hal as his known grows into himself and makes his father proud.

As the story ends more battles loom as the war of succession is not complete but one thing we can be sure of is that Shakespeare will tell it well.

These works are not for the easily discouraged but there is a story underneath them that would tell just as well today as over 500 years ago. Digging for it makes it read even better when it all comes together.

Occasinally a quote is found that rings true and could be used as easily today as then. One is " Why, thou owest God a death " a statement the Prince makes to Falstaff as battle approaches urging him not to worry of what will be. One can draw the line to Hemingway and some of his short stories particualry for me Francis Macomber advising that we have but one death and to make it a good one. ( paraphrased as I did not look up the exact quote but remember the story.)

It may be that Shakespeare is the beginning of all modern literature.

James McMurty, Childish Things

James McMurtry has developed an unlikely following in Maine. The son of author Larry McMurtry ( Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and many more) sings country rock, alternative country and other Texas themed music.

He has played the Bangor waterfront, The Grand in Ellsworth, and other local sites many times. When he returns to Ellsworth in June my wife and I will go. I am very much looking forward to it.

Live in Aught Three was a concert album that showed McMurtry at its best and sold very well. In 2006 a new release was called Childish Things. The album featured the earlier released single " We Can't Make It Here Anymore" a paaen to the Bush years popular in Maine with a line about Portland Maine. The album however has many good songs including the bookends Holiday and Memorial Day. McMurtry tells stories in his songs, some of them quite long but he has a way of snarling in his word that lets you feel just how strong he is in his convictions.

His songs are one sided, he is a rock and roll Woody Guthrie. If you are worrying about losing the Bush tax cuts McMurtry is not for you.

We look forward to seeing him.

The Path to Power by Robert Caro ( Book One in The Years of Lyndon Johnson)

Robert Caro is known as a master biographer and his series on Lyndon Johnson is perhaps the best biographical series ever published on a President. The detail in this series is stunning and makes this a wonderful resource but also not a series for the casual reader. This book of 700 pages only takes us through the death of FDR.

We read about Johnson's history, his families history and how both his families history and the history of the geographical area known as the Hill Country affected him and his belief system.

Johnson saw his father who as a young boy was his hero lose everything in various times and was determined to have money.

Johnson was determined to be a success and really had no political ethics to get in the way. He was in bed to a great degree with the Texas oil interests especially Brown and Root ( which interestingly became todays Haliburton ). Wanting to be with the winning side he proclaimed his belief in the Roosevelt plan and convinced his money backers that hated Roosevelt to forget his spoken word in favor of FDR for the favors and protections he would give them.

Johnson was not all evil. He was an extreme opportunist. He put electricity in the Hill Country of Texas perhaps ten to fifteen years before they might otherwise have received it but he did so to help his political career as much as to help those inhabitants.

This book in its breadth offers great looks at figures such as Vice President Garner, Sam Rayburn and Pappy Daniels. These in themselves are revaluations. Johnson's complicated relationship with Rayburn is detailed well.

Enough good things cannot be said about this book. Johnson is at various times petty, hateful, loving and good. He is perhaps the most complex politician of his times and this book tells us of his beginnings.

Wonderfully done.

The Killing

After watching and enjoying Rubicon on AMC last fall and finding that is has been cancelled without any real conclusion I was a bit hesitant to invest in this series but decided to try the first episode.

It was a quite intriguing show. Mirielle Enos, last seen having her hair caught in a truck window and strangling on Big Love, plays Sarah Linden a homicide detective in Seattle on her last day of work as she prepares to move to California with her boyfriend and 13 year old son.

The story centers on the killing of a high school girl. Told in the format of a murder mystery we meet the characters, many of them, including parents, friends, rich boy losers, odd guidance counselers and school officials. We also have a parallel story of a city councilman who is running for mayor dealing with leaks in his campaign who has some issues in his background though we know not what. In the first episode a campaign car is where the body of the young girl is found when the car is pulled from a small resoivoir.

One gets the sense that with the huge cast of characters we are not going to know who did this for many episodes and we should expect many red herrings along the way. The show is kind of dark. My sons watched it with us and I would have preferred they not. My wife always wants to include them while I have no issue having shows that I prefer they not watch. It was dark. My wife called it a middle of the afternoon show not a last program to watch before bed show.

I agree. Tivo. Open the curtains. Watch it.

The Fighter

We watched this movie over the weekend. For those of us who remember Mark Wahlberg as Marky Mark it is quite remarkable that he has become a very good actor. I am not sure that he ever strays far from his typical role but that said he is very good at what he does.

In this movie, a biopic based on the life of Mickey Ward and to a lesser extent his half brother Dicky Ward, Wahlberg plays Mickey a down on his luck fighter from hardscrabble Lowell, Massachussets.

A fighter managed and trained by his family he begins to and has reason to doubt the advice and counsel he is getting from his family and his career is in decline. Eventually pairing with a more professional training team he gets a chance, embraces his brother again as his trainer and victory comes.

Amy Adams is stellar in her role, playing against type playing a foul mouthed, big hearted bar tender who falls in love with Mickey and pushes him to distance himself from his family.

Melissa Leo and Christian Bale both won Best Supporting Oscars for their roles as the Ward brothers Mother, and Dicky Ward the crack addicted ex fighter.

You do not have to like boxing to enjoy this movie. This is a winner, a very good movie.

Rawhide Down, The Near Assassination of Ronald Reagan by Del Quentin Wilber

I had been interested in this book after hearing about its forthcoming publication a few months ago. The book, a short one, gives a very detailed description of of the events of March 30, 1981, the day that John Hinckley attempted to kill the President.

I remember this day vividly. I was in high school, sophomore year, and not a fan of Reagan at all. However it was a huge moment. I remember the controversy that took place because the NCAA chose to play the championship game that night rather than postpone it.

Del Quentin Wilber tells us many details that we did not know, but the inescapable fact through the whole book is how very close the President was to death. We hear from the doctors and nurses, agents and members of the administration and we also learn a bit of a backstory on Hinckley and hear his actions on that fateful day.

As the 30th anniversary has come this month there has been much talk about Hinckley and his unsupervised releases from the mental facility in which he has lived for the last 30 years. I am unsure how I feel about this controversy. If he was truly mentally ill or incapacitated when he made the decisions that led to the assassination attempt by law once deemed cured he is to be released. It is likely had he shot John Smith and been found insane he would have been released already. However like Sirhan Sirhan and Mark David Chapman he is finding that the notireity sought when killing a world famous figure is often harmful to any chance for release that otherwise might be received later in life.

Reagan comes across as likable and genuine in this book. Not being a fan of his policies I have felt for years and certainly since having read Lou Cannon's biographies of Mr. Reagan it has been easy to see why he was so well liked even by his political adversaries. We have heard the stories of he and Tip O' Neil battling all day and then having drinks after six. The appeal of that sort of a professional, adult relationship is long missing in Washington.

Reagan was an actor, so he knew how to present himself in an appealing light. Even so it is a rare politician today that could make you like him while disagreeing with him. Reagan was one who could.

A very worthwhile book.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

I had read this book in high school. This one was so accessible that I did read it when assigned. A 50th anniversary has been everywhere in the last year so I decided to revisit this book again.

It is masterful. Librarians rated this book as the best book of the twentieth century. Because the book is written so well and the narrative is so easy to follow perhaps the book is considered not in the canon with Hemingway, Faulkner and other great American writers of the last century. Of course writing only one book will limit your comparison.

The story itself is told through the voice of Scout between the ages of six and nine in a small town called Maycomb, Alabama. Her father Atticus Finch is a moral, upright man who is a calming presence on all he comes into contact with. The brilliance of the story is that we until the last third of the book know that Atticus will be defending a black man accused of attacking a white woman and this is in the background of the youthful exploits of Scout and her brother Jem. The trial and its results takes center stage in the last third as well as the characters responses to it.

This book has in some cases been deemed controversial and offensive as being written in 1960 about the mid thirties in the deep South Scout being a small child and the narrator dos not have very expansive visions of black folks saying at one point " He's just a n***er." Certainly this is difficult in today's world to read.

However the background setting is neccesary, the story theme certainly tackles big issues. A wonderfully accessible book telling a very important story.

Read this. Move it to the top of your list. A wonderful book.

Marty

I had watched this movie before but when it appeared on TCM recently I recorded it and watched it again. It was and is a great movie. Ernest Borgnine won Best Actor, Paddy Chayefsky won Best Screenplay and the movie won for Best Picture. In an era of epic movies with huge stories and scripts this was a simple character driven story.

A brief aside about Ernest Borgnine. Watching him in Red just a few weeks ago at 92, seeing him in the Wild Bunch, The Dirty Dozen and countless other movies including The Posidion Adventure it becomes clear he was a wonderful actor with significant range. Perhaps the only thing he could not do was play the traditional lead actor as he was not considered typical handsome.

In this movie he plays Marty an Italian American butcher who describes himself as " a heavyset fellow." Good natured, earnest and sincere at 34 years old he lives with his mother and is lonely. He also is tired of all of the neighbor ladies at his butcher shop advising him that he should be married as all of his younger siblings have.

After work on a Saturday night Marty goes to a dance at The Stardust ballroom and meets a schoolteacher who has been dumped by her blind date as he was looking for some more action than she would presumably give. Marty, ever the gentleman, consoles her and they dance. Eventually they go for a walk down the streets of New York and sit at a diner and talk for hours.

As many of can understand and remember when Marty tells his bachelor friends the next day of this young lady he is advised to dump her, that she is too plain, ( though Marty calls himself a little fat man) and many other dispariging things. In short misery loves company and his friends are miserable.

The movie ends well and we have hope for Marty's future. Borgnine is a wonderful actor, and has become an American treasure.

For a view of loneliness and the dreams we all have that is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago watch and enjoy this wonderful movie.