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Hooray for Analog!

Hooray for Analog!

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Steven Spielberg’s movie “The Post,” which I saw yesterday, was a rousing paean to the press. But it was also a loving tribute to an analog world.

Reporters pounded out their stories on manual typewriters. Copyeditors used pencil on paper, making those marks that once seemed like a secret language to me — and are now a secret language to almost everyone. Typesetters set lines of type in hot metal, loaded slugs into plates. All the weighty, tangible things of a world left behind.

Now we live a digital life, ones and zeroes. We skitter on top of ice that we may at any time fall through. On Saturday, the people of Hawaii were on high alert for 38 minutes, thinking they were under imminent missile attack — a glitch made possible by one person making the wrong selection in a drop-down menu.

Are some things easier now? Yes, I type, my fingers tapping keys that don’t have to be pounded, correcting errors with a click instead of a messy white  liquid. Is it just my imagination, though, or do the stakes seem higher in this unweighted, digital world?

War of Words

War of Words

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One of my favorite scenes in the movie “Darkest Hour” follows the rousing speech Winston Churchill delivered to Parliament on June 4, 1940. This is the speech where Churchill exhorts his countryman to stand firm against the Nazi threat, the speech in which he says, “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets … we shall never surrender.”

This scene was constructed to give us chills … and it does. It’s by no means guaranteed that Churchill will be able to build momentum for his plan, which seems almost daft. A flotilla of pleasure boats to evacuate soldiers across the English Channel? Fighting Hitler’s army to the death if need be?

The lines I loved most came right after Churchill’s speech when a member of Parliament asked, “What just happened?” and Viscount Halifax responded, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

At a panel discussion about the film, Director Joe Wright said the movie is a “recognition of the power of the word and the power of political speech to move nations.”

I tried to imagine that speech being given today, the sort of sacrifice it was asking for, the moral purpose it presupposes. It came from an era of words, not of pictures. Maybe that had something to do with it.

(Photo from “Darkest Hour”: Wizardworld.com)




Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article190595739.html#storylink=cpy
Make Bearable

Make Bearable

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Last night was the final episode of Burns and Novick’s Vietnam War. It began and ended with Tim O’Brien reading from his book The Things They Carried. 

“They marched for the sake of the march. They plodded along slowly, dumbly, leaning forward against the heat, unthinking, all blood and bone, simple grunts, soldiering with their legs, toiling up the hills and down into the paddies and across the rivers and up again and down, just humping, one step and then the next and then another, but no volition, no will, because it was automatic, it was anatomy, and the war was entirely a matter of posture and carriage, the hump was everything, a kind of inertia, a kind of emptiness, a dullness of desire and intellect and conscience and hope and human sensibility.”

While he read, the people who had been our companions through this series — the Americans, the South Vietnamese, the North Vietnamese, the Viet Cong, the soldiers, the antiwar activists, the vets, the military brass — we got to see what they are doing now. They are teachers and counselors, a judge. But more of them than not, it seems, are writers.

This brought some comfort. The film stirred up feelings in all of us who lived through the war, raised questions that will never be answered, dredged up divisions that still rankle. But it showed that sometimes art can distill and, if not heal, at least lance, drain and make bearable.

All Together Now

All Together Now

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I’m still being riveted nightly by the 18-hour documentary film “The Vietnam War.” And I mean that literally — as in riveted each night.

It’s interesting to talk with people about the show and the different ways they are watching it. Some started it a week ago Sunday, kept up with last week’s nine hours as best they could but will admit to being a little behind.

Others are recording it and planning to binge-watch it later, seeing it as all (or most) of a piece. This is the television style of day, of course. To take control of one’s viewing, watch as little or as much as one wants at a time, place (and with a delivery method) of one’s choosing.

As for me, I’m watching the film in real-time.  Even night before last, when Claire and Tomas were over for dinner, I watched what I could and then caught up with the rerun, also known as an “encore presentation,” which my PBS station runs directly after the first show of the evening.

While my viewing habits are in part dictated by lack of technical knowledge (including DVR technique), they are also generational. I like keeping up with the show on its own time. I feel a kinship with all the people watching at the same time. There’s a communal aspect to this that soothes and heals.

And where did I develop this habit of communal viewing? From annual TV events like “The Wizard of Oz” and “Peter Pan,”  From watching “My Three Sons” with Mom and Dad (provided I brush my teeth beforehand so I could jump in bed the minute the show ended at 9 p.m.). And … from watching some of the same evening newscasts that have been replayed on “The Vietnam War.”

(Photo: CNN.com.)

Inner Cowboy

Inner Cowboy

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I waffled about the title. Should I say “Inner Cowgirl”? Or perhaps the gender-neutral “Inner Cowherd”? No, I’ll stick with the inaccurate and politically incorrect “Cowboy”— because it’s the word to use when describing the TV series “Lonesome Dove,” last weekend’s escape fare.

I can’t get the show or its theme song out of my head, even though I’ve watched it before and read the book it was based on. It’s same effect every time — one of enlargement, and even (despite the tragedies that beset the cattle drive from Texas to Montana) of joy.  It’s the characters and their quest.  It’s the frontier, the heartbeat of a nation. And it’s the sweeping views of rivers and plains and buttes and valleys.

As national myths go, it’s not a bad one, though it has certainly gotten us into trouble: the rugged individualist wedded to guns and glory. But if offers to the suburban commuter some sense of elemental wholeness, of a time when life was harder but perhaps truer. I could be all wrong on this, though. It could just be my inner cowboy talking.

Can’t Stop Listening

Can’t Stop Listening

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The La La Land soundtrack is colonizing my brain. After seeing the movie twice and listening to songs on YouTube, I bought the album on iTunes so I could blare it from my laptop while cooking dinner.

But the music didn’t stop when I turned off the machine. I hear it in my head when I’m brushing my teeth or waiting for the bus or taking a walk. I hum it under my breath. I tap my feet at my desk.

Last evening, I played the soundtrack while bouncing on the trampoline. That may be the best use yet for the music, which seems to carry one urgent message. Get up and dance! Turns out, I’m not the only one who feels this way.  And the lyrics say it all:

I hear them everyday
The rhythms in the canyons that will never fade away
The ballads in the ballrooms left by those who came before
They say we got to want it more…



(Photo: Wikipedia)
Many Are Called…

Many Are Called…

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I’ve been interested in the reaction to Sunday night’s Oscar snafu. Many have praised La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz for stepping up to the mic and saying there was a mistake, that “Moonlight, you guys won.” Horowitz has been called a true gentleman and a truth teller.

Horowitz did what we all wish we would do in similar circumstances: he handled a disappointing and embarrassing moment with dignity, empathy and humor. He even joked about it the next day, saying he got to win an Oscar for Best Picture, thank his wife and kids and then present the same Oscar for Best Picture. “Not many people can say that.”

In fact, no one else can say that. But what watching him makes me wish is that I could handle all the petty ups and downs of my life in such a generous, big-hearted way.

A worthy goal. Unattainable, but worthy.

Surprise!

Surprise!

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I figure since I won’t be able to sleep for at least another 30 minutes, I’ll write about the strangest thing I’ve seen in the years I’ve been watching Oscar presentations.

After actors Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty opened the envelope and read that La La Land won best picture, there was a flurry on the stage, a waving of red envelopes — and the astonishing announcement: Not La La Land but Moonlight was the winner.

The entire cast of La La Land had assembled on the stage, and they looked stricken. The Moonlight cast looked shocked.

Those who gave up on the Oscars and went to sleep early may reconsider next year. As a newscaster said, “It was a long broadcast but all anyone will remember is the last 30 seconds.”

Amen to that. And goodnight!

Photo: Wikipedia

Hats Off!

Hats Off!

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Reading today’s obituary of Mary Tyler Moore (the only front-page story I could stomach in today’s Washington Post), I thought about what set this actress apart.

She called herself a “funny straight woman,” and that was part of it. There was her spunkiness, her niceness, her grace under pressure. But there was more.

A decade younger than my parents she was still part of that generation, a generation that’s vanishing and that I miss more every day. And one of the things I miss most about them is their self-deprecation. They just didn’t take themselves as seriously as we do.

Moore said she was reluctant to be a symbol of women’s liberation, and tried not to think about the 50 million people watching her on TV. A photo that accompanied the obit showed her mimicking a statue of herself, hand upraised, right before she doffed her hat and threw it into the air.  

(Photo: People.com)

The Nominations

The Nominations

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The nominations are in and movie-goers have their marching orders. The Academy nominated nine films for best picture this year, and, in a departure, I’m going to try and not compulsively see every one!

But a few, like LaLa Land, Moonlight and Arrival, are on the list. And last weekend I caught Fantastic Beasts and Hidden Figures.

It had been a while (maybe since last Oscar season) since I’d been in a theater, and I’d forgotten how expansive it feels to slump down into a comfy seat, train my eyes on the big screen and lose myself in a film.

It’s about the best thing you can do this time of year.