The cold is more or less gone. At least the worst of it has passed. A little bit of sinus involvement, but I can no longer claim basso profundo. Shucks.
I didn’t know much about A Christmas Story until introduced to it last year by my daughter. It was filmed partly in Canada and stars Melinda Dillon (from Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and Darrin McGavin. Probably one of the funniest Christmas stories ever filmed, chock full of every cliché a parent ever said to a kid to get him to do something, and yet, despite its huger than life portrayal of certain events, it rings true. One line that resonated with me was “My mother had not had a hot meal in ten years.” My mother was exactly like that, too, hopping up and down throughout the meal to make sure the next course was ready or to get the tea or to refill plates. The movie also has a “Walter Mitty”-esque nature, and who can’t laugh over McGavin’s cursing diatribes in the basement that feature such curse words as “platypus.” He worked in profanity the way other artists might work in oils or clay. It was his true medium — a master…In the heat of battle, my father wove a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan.”
We watched Bonneville, starring Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, Joan Allen as three Mormon women on a road trip from Idaho to California with Lange’s husband’s ashes in a jar. Her husband’s daughter from his first marriage (a shrill Christine Baranski) threatens to sell Lange’s house out from under her if she doesn’t deliver the remains to the memorial service. Of course they have adventures along the way, including meeting a trucker played by Tom Skerritt who becomes smitten with Bates. The Mormon angle is downplayed—Allen’s character is the most devout but by the end she’s had coffee, alcohol and won money in a Las Vegas slot machine. Funny, light, with a great cast.
Then we watched a French film called The Page Turner about a young girl who is traumatized by a careless act by a judge in a music exam and who, several years later, enacts her revenge on the judge. It’s been compared to Notes from a Scandal, and I guess that applies, but there are some pretty immense unanswered questions that made the film seem a little contrived. The girl gets herself hired as an intern in the judge’s husband’s law firm and insinuates herself into their lives a step at a time. Her plan works absolutely flawlessly, though. The victims couldn’t have cooperated more at every opportunity if they’d been in on the scheme themselves. Still, the film generates suspense through subtle actions and inactions. All the girl has to do at certain points is nothing to traumatize her victim. Her final act is a trifecta. Interesting and tense if you don’t ask too many questions along the way.
Last night we stumbled upon Dangerous Minds on VH-1. The same movie has been made any number of times. Michelle Pfeiffer plays a teacher who ends up with a class of inner-city kids who are unruly beyond belief on her first day of school and who love her to death by the end of the movie. Pfeiffer’s character is an ex-marine, but that doesn’t really enter into the story beyond the first half hour. Of course she goes above and beyond the call of duty, spending her own money to reward the kids and using Bob Dylan’s poetry to reach them. It’s barely distinguishable from Freedom Writers, which starred Hillary Swank, but it has its moments all the same.
