Category Archives: Entertainment

At the Movies With Lincoln

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Lilly didn’t want to go to the movies by herself on Saturday. Her mother and younger sister were going to one picture she didn’t want to see, and I was going to another, and we each offered to take her to our respective multiplexes to see something else of her choosing. Hastily texted friends couldn’t make it, so she stayed home.

Maybe it’s a function of being a 15-year-old girl. I don’t ever remember being reluctant to park myself alone in a movie theater. If I’d never gone to the movies by myself, particularly in my early 20s, there’s a lot of worthwhile ones I might never have seen. One of my early experiences along those lines was seeing a revival of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Broadway Theatre in Alamo Heights when I was younger than her — too young to really appreciate it, but I was wowed by the spaceships. Of course, going alone would defeat the purpose at some movies, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I went to see Lincoln. Been meaning to for a while. Aside from a few quibbles, such as (especially) the business about the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address and the stretcher that had Mrs. Lincoln and her black servant attending the debate in the House regarding the 13th Amendment, along with some lesser odd details, it’s rousing good historical fiction, about as good as you’re going to get in a movie.

The Mad Little Boot

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I, Claudius, that remarkable combination of comedy and horror, is worth watching (again) for many reasons, but few better than seeing John Hurt do Caligula. Such as in this scene, which only goes to show there’s no profit in reasoning with a lunatic who also happens to hold absolute power.

It’s all a fine production all the way through, but once Caligula is offed, the story loses a bit of its spark. A bit of its insane spark, that is.

Christmas Morning ’12

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Christmas morning isn’t quite the land rush it used to be, but the girls still want to open their presents as they always have. Ann had some trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve, but that was because she’d slept late that morning, rather than excess excitement for Christmas morning (though there was strong anticipation).

Gift cards, clothes, a little money, toys for Ann, a lot of sweets—it was all in the mix.

This year on Christmas and on the Sunday before, I managed to catch a few hours of a radio show devoted to Christmas music oddities hosted by two guys called Johnny & Andy on WDCB, the public radio station at the College of DuPage. I’d heard them years ago, maybe even these shows, since this year’s seemed to be rebroadcasts from earlier years.

So I got to hear “Solar System Simon, Santa’s Supersonic Son,” by one Francis Smith, which I haven’t heard in years. I’d forgotten how bluegrass-like it was. I’m also happy to report that when you Google that title, mid-2000s BTST entries turn up. Space Age Santa songs seemed to form a short-lived, and little remembered, subgenre of Christmas songs ca mid-1950s. Johnny & Andy even played a song of that exact name by I-forget-who-and-am-too-lazy-to-look-up (that guy records a lot of songs).

Other Christmas recordings played by Johnny & Andy included elf songs, Cajin-themed holiday tunes, Christmas polkas, and songs that tried to capitalize on the monster success of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” all in vain. One involved putting a light on Dasher’s tail, another had two reindeer named Percival and Chauncy becoming Donder and Blitzen, and one parody included the line, “Rudolph is lazy, tired, and has been fired.”

Even Gene Autry recorded other reindeer-themed songs, such as “32 Feet – 8 Little Tails,” and “Nine Little Reindeer,” which aren’t exactly forgotten, but hardly the hit Rudolph was. Then again, Autry recorded a lot of Christmas songs.

Christmas Tintinnabulation

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Ann wanted to go to the library last night, and when we got there we chanced on a performance of the Random Ringers, a handbell ensemble. They were playing in a part of the Schaumburg Township Library sometimes given over to movies and small concerts, with about 50 people watching.

The ringers were more than half finished when we got there. Ann wasn’t especially charmed by the music, but I insisted on staying for a few songs, because I liked them—especially the large bells. The handy “Major American Handbells Sizes and Weights for Diatonic Pitches” says that the bells can weigh as little as 7 oz. or more than 18 lbs. I’m not sure the largest of the Random Ringers’ bells were at the large end of that scale, but they looked big enough to be weapons.

The Random Ringers include 12 performers and a conductor, Beth McFarland of Mundelein, Ill. “Random Ringers is a community-based choir and not affiliated with any religious environment, but most members ring in their own churches,” says the concert program (leaflet, really). “Members hail from the North and Northwest suburbs and practice in Arlington Heights each Monday night.”

We heard “Welcome Christmas,” “Good Christian Men Rejoice,” “He is Born” and “Silent Night.” A fine tintinnabulation, it was.

Skyfall

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Cold days, cold nights. I’d say winter’s just about here, but I haven’t managed to spot Orion in the sky just yet. Then again, skies were mostly overcast when I took out the trash last night, except for a hazy, nearly full moon.

I looked at the imdb entry for Skyfall today and under the subsection “External Reviews” there were 440 links. Under the category “News stories,” there are 5,010 listed. So I doubt that I can add anything about the movie. Yuriko and I saw it on Saturday, while Lilly and Ann saw Wreck-It Ralph at roughly the same time. That was at Ann’s request, and Lilly went along with her at our request. I had little interest in Wreck-It Ralph, since I’m content to leave arcade video games in the past.

Skyfall is a deft piece of entertainment, everything a Bond movie needs to be and then some. Not only that, some of it is flat-out gorgeous, such as the title sequence, and when Bond and an assassin are fighting to the death in a Shanghai skyscraper.

Speaking of Shanghai: the establishing spots drove home the point that there’s been a lot of development since we were there in 1994. Of course, establishing shots can distort the reality of a place, but I think in this case Shanghai has been practically re-created since then. (But I’m glad to see that the storied Astor House Hotel, where we stayed, has been renovated rather than destroyed.)

I recognized Hashima Island, which is actually Japanese territory, but passed off in the movie as somewhere not too far from Macao. Not because I’ve been there, but because I’d read about it some years after I left Japan. It’s a ghost town that happens to be on a small island.