The Writer's Poke

If high school football matters to west Texas, then size matters to Wales. Because quite frankly, what else sets Wales apart? Everyone easily recognizes Ireland, Scotland, and England, but Wales? What's it known for?  I'm sure there are a few mainstream movie titles that are longer, but at 12 words long, this one is pretty long. And, it essentially contains the synopsis of the story. Anson (Hugh Grant) is the Englishman. He and his partner come to the small Wales community to measure the mountain, and World War I is in the background. Soldiers in Europe have dug trenches across the continent. They know what's possible.  So, when the measurement is complete, the "mountain" turns out to be 16 feet short. It's just a 984-foot hill. But the town decides, with the blessing of the local clergyman, to make their hill into a mountain, one pailful of dirt at a time. Everyone pitches in, and after climbing the hill five times in single day. the octogenarian Reverend Jon...

Did you remember that Billy Bob Thornton (Coach Gary) is in this one? I didn't.  For the most part, I guess I'm not a big fan of this genre of movie -- the football team that overcomes all the obstacles, or in the case of this specific movie, maybe doesn't. Is/Was west Texas this much into football? Is football really all towns like Odessa have? That's really sad, as is the idea that your life peaks in high school, and after that, all you have is your high school football ring. (And what about the male cheerleaders? The movie shows that there were some. How were they treated in high school and the local community?) According to the notes at the end of the movie, many of the kids on this team would go on to have at least some minor success in football at the college level. That makes me think that maybe life doesn't peak in high school after all. Maybe it just feels like that in the moment, although Charles (Tim McGraw) is definitely an example of a guy that peaked i...

Like most people, I'm watching this one for the Angelia Jolie/Antonio Banderas pairing, but as I stroll through the reviews, I noticed that one person mentioned this is a remake of Mississippi Mermaid (1969) -- aka La sirène du Mississipi. So yeah, I'm going to have to watch that one to see if the story is better told in the original.  For this remake, I like the story, although I'm not always sure about the plot or the backstory. First, Luis (Antonio Banderas) advertises for a mail-order bride, but he lies about his wealth, claiming to be a clerk, not an owner, of a coffee plantation. He wasn't looking for someone who looked like Angelina Jolie. He was content with a woman who was plain, kind, and had good breeding hips. He doesn't believe in love, but he does believe in a long, stable marriage.  Julia (Angelina Jolie) also lies. She wasn't the woman who responded to his ad. How did she know Luis was rich? There'd be no reason for her to try to catfish a cl...

Mockery might not be a fable in the strictest sense, but the simplicity of the characters and what they represent made me think of it as a kind of fable as I was watching it.  Sergei (Lon Chaney) is a poor peasant somewhere in the Siberian forest. Countess Tatiana (Barbara Bedford) runs into him and asks for his help getting to Novokursk. This is during the Russian Civil War, and although Sergei doesn't know she's a countess, he's obviously going to help her. She's a beautiful woman, and Sergei would probably help her regardless. His only fear is that they will get to Novokursk and then she will forget about him.  When they arrive in Novokursk, her Countess identity is revealed, but she stays true to her promise, helping Sergei find employment. But they are of different social classes, and so this limits the amount of time they will have together as "friends."  Meanwhile, Sergei is listening to Ivan (Károly Huszár), who is poisoning Sergei's mind against t...

Steve Martin was 34 when he played Navin in The Jerk (1979) -- probably 10 or 15 years too old for the role in my opinion. He's over-the-top and basically the Steve Martin of the "wild and crazy guy" stage show, not yet an actor. Thirty years later, he plays Adam in It's Complicated. His "wild-and-craziness" is limited to about a 5-second scene when he's on the dance floor after taking a hit. Otherwise, he plays the part with quietness and total reserve. It's just amazing to see how far he came as an actor, but 30 years prior, he could only be "on," and over his acting career, he learned how to shift gears. He didn't always have to be his persona. He could act. In a way, Steve Martin's acting journey reminds me somewhat of Robin Williams's -- both are known for being completely over-the-top, but both learned how to take on serious roles. I really liked this movie. The focus of the film is on Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Alec Ba...

Larry (Steve Martin) comes home one day to find his girlfriend, Danielle (Robyn Douglass) in bed with Raul (Richard Delmonte). She tells him to leave, and he does, taking out the trash on his way out, as she instructed him to do. Fifteen minutes after being dumped, he runs into Jack (Steve Lawrence), who's out on a stroll with his wife and his girlfriend. He tells Larry that he's heard about Larry's break-up (the one that happened just 15 minutes ago), but not to worry. Danielle has already broken up with Raul. Now she's dating a rock band. It's that kind of movie. Anyway, Larry ends up in the park. He's taking up the right side of a park bench, and here comes Warren (Charles Grodin). He's in the same position as Larry, but he seems a little wiser to what happens next. Warren takes up the left side of the park bench, and the two become fast friends. I love Charles Grodin. Mainly, I remember him for the intentionally awkward segments he would do with Letterma...

It was Marlow (Humphrey Bogart) who tells Rigby (Steve Martin) that dead men don't wear plaid. "What does it mean," asks Rigby rhetorically, "I'm still not sure," he admits. But who wears plaid in film noir, period? No one. Maybe it would ruin the feng shui. So the "gimmick" of this movie -- the "seamless" blending of archival footage from classic films -- is actually pretty cool, and if it's been done before or since, I'm not aware. The closest thing to it I can think of is how Forest Gump is integrated into historical events... but Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid is a groundbreaking film with the technique being utilized, and I don't think it's ever been attempted again. In Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Martin gets to "interact" with maybe 15 or 20 classic actors -- from Bogart and Cary Grant and James Cagney to Barbara Stanwyck and Veronica Lake and Ingrid Bergman. It's a real sight to see, and I can imagin...