Month: December 2021

Gone with the Wind Banned in Memphis [September 2017]

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I enjoyed the movie Gone with the Wind (1939) starring Clarke Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Hattie McDaniel because I like movies that are historical, showing how people lived back then–the housing, costumes, songs, etc.  But I always thought that a four-hour movie was too long.   Perhaps the movie has already been shown in parts like a mini-series.  [Exception:  The Justice League: The Snyder Cut 2021]

As a Black woman, I say things have gone too far when we are trying to ban or get rid of everything historical.   I agree that no confederate flags should be flying over any municipal or federal buildings anywhere in the U.S.   However, you can’t study history without including every ethnicity and ideology.  This is what makes up our world history.  [Today, there are Congresspersons who don’t want Critical Race Theory taught in schools at any level.  According to Wikipedia, CRT is a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement that began in the United States in the post-civil rights era, as 1960s landmark civil rights laws were being eroded and schools were being re-segregated.]

I don’t have a problem with White people showing pride for their own history on their personal belongings. Remember, the Dukes of Hazzard–a popular tv show–had their General Lee car.   And, remember, the statues were dedicated during a different era, but they are still part of American history. 

[In the movie, Places in the Heart, the white hooded store owners tried to discourage a widow (Sally Field) from keeping her farm and growing cotton.   The Black farm hand (Danny Glover) was beaten and forced to leave.   But one of the store owners’ relatives, a blind man (John Malkovich) was also helping her out because his relative coaxed her into hiring him, recognized all the voices of the hooded men and shamed them into letting her alone.   I’m sure there were people in power over the store owners who directed them to threaten the widow.]

Since the statues are a part of American history, museums are the places for the statues, etc. although dedicated to slavery and prejudice.   They should all be moved/given to the Smithsonian system of museums.   [I suspect that U.S. President No. 45 missed the whole point of Black and White protesters being able to protest the statues without getting shot or bludgeoned in 2020.]

Like I saw engraved on a monument to the Jewish holocaust, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  George Santayana, 20th century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana

{I posted most of the above article on 9/4/17  to http://www.chicagonow.com/friendly-curmudgeon/2017/09/gone-with-the-wind-banned-in-memphis-actually-indicts-the-confederacy/

friendlycurmudgeon@yahoo.com} 

[bracketed information is new]

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Review of miniseries, Taken

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Sci-Fi channel production also known as Steven Spielberg Presents Taken, December 2-13, 2002.  Executive producers:  Leslie Bohem and Steven Spielberg.   

When I hear of the movie title, Taken, I don’t think of Liam Neeson’s Taken, Taken2, or Taken3 about evil people kidnapping his family members. You can’t copyright a title so the same title can be used by anyone else. 

Instead, I think of producer Stephen Spielberg’s Taken miniseries (10 episodes written by Leslie Bohem) in which evil space aliens keep kidnapping and torturing humans all over the world, and treacherous humans take advantage of humans and aliens, but the story is focused on three generations of families over five decades–the Clarks, Crawfords, and Keys.

The story is narrated by 8-year-old Allison “Allie” Clark/Keys (Dakota Fanning), who sounds so mature giving the overview of each episode.

Aliens can appear in any organic shape especially human.  Humans are either their alien victims or fierce enemies trying to kill everybody including aliens.

Casualties

The series started with fighter pilots in a battle with German planes who see blue lights during the battle and it seems that the lights help the wounded among them.   The memories they have later of the surgeries are different.  They all survive in spite of their wounds but end up with physical and mental problems and all except one die early for no apparent reason.  The child of the survivor will be abducted by aliens for years.

Women in the series are fodder for military men and the women’s husbands or boyfriends, i.e. the Colonel Thomas Campbell’s (Michael Moriarty) daughter, a farm woman, a fresh woman, two female mediums, government undercover psychologist Harriet Penzler, etc.

Even military contractors were casualties.  Dr. Kreutz (Willie Garson who we lost this year) was a treacherous German-accented scientist working for the U.S. military; Dr. Goldin (Rob Labelle) a Jewish scientist who died because he wanted the alien to keep him in the memory of the happiest time in his life–his bar mitzvah; and Matt Frewer as an astrophysicist.

The only alien casualties of record were the ones who looked like doctors treating the soldiers injured in the original dog fights and the handful of aliens captured over the decades.

The actors were excellent.   I believed the treachery of the captain/killer Owen Crawford (Joel Gretsch) of humans assigned to the project of tapping into the one alien ship they had for decades instead of the fake weather balloon reported at Roswell

There was a different director for each of 10 episodes:  Breck Eisner, Felix Enriquez Alcala, John Fawcett, Tobe Hooper, Jeremy Paul Kagan, Michael Katleman, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Bryan Spicer, Jeff Woolnough, and Thomas J. Wright.   It was so interesting hearing the directors’ opinions in the extras after the miniseries.   I saw the miniseries week by week from its origination in 2002.   And, luckily for me, the Baltimore County Library had the miniseries I could borrow recently.  The pace is action, action, action!

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Review of movie “Separation” (2021)

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I can’t blame the wife Maggie (Mamie Gummer “Ricki and the Flash”, “The Right Stuff”) for thinking her husband Jeff (Rupert Friend “Hitman: Agent 47”) is irresponsible.   He always seemed to be in a daze all the time—his mind only thinking of ideas for his past graphic novel career to the detriment of his wife and young female child Jenny (Violet McGraw “Black Widow”, “Doctor Sleep”, “Ready Player One”).

For instance, at his wife’s wake, he sees his face on a family portrait catch fire but stands there stunned.  If left to him, the house would have burned down around his guests.  Thank God for his daughter’s babysitter Samantha Nally (Madeline Brewer “Hemlock Grove”) who put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. 

But I believe the father-in-law Mr. Rivers (veteran Scottish actor Brian Cox “Red”, “Red 2”, “Red 3”) turned the wife against her husband by talking in her ear all the time.   And the babysitter (opare?) always seemed focused on the father’s artistic talents rather than his child.

Every time the husband sees strange events like the demonic loose-limbed Marcel Marceau-type mime Nerezza (non-CGI uncredited Troy James) a duplicate of one of the characters from his old graphic novel and doll on his daughter’s bedroom shelf, he just keeps backing up and acting like it never happened and tells no one.   The father burns breakfast for himself and his child  when they both see something else strange.   But isn’t that something he should tell somebody?   A lot of these happenings he thinks are dreams, but it turns out they are not.  

The father runs away leaving his little girl with the babysitter with no explanation.  Taking the subway (demon scene there also), he went to his friend’s new job site.   He finally gets a job but stays away all day without telling the babysitter.   An employer Alan (Simon Quarterman “WER”) tells him there is a “dark energy about you”.  

The acting was superb.   I assumed they all did what the director wanted, but there is a disconnect somewhere in the script.   The little girl’s father couldn’t be that dumb.

(Spoiler) The villains:  the father-in-law, the babysitter, the dolls made from his prior graphic horror novel, mommy and demon mommy, and the father himself.   The husband and daughter finally make peace with demon mommy and all should be well.  But, when the mommy demon returned from demon town, she must have let other demons through.   No way should they have a sequel after this but the Marcel Marceau mime type loose-limbed horror returns practically begging for a sequel.

Directed by William Brent Bell.   Writers Nick Amadeus, Josh Braun.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin