The Writer's Poke

How could a Bogart/Hurston/Capote/Lorre movie not be an immediate winner?  I'm sure I've seen this one before (I checked, and I did about 10 years ago), but like a lot of movies I've previously watched, if I wasn't writing a review and trying to remember what I thought, I completely forgot almost everything about any previous viewing.  My copy of the film is not restored -- although on the cover it claims to be. That's the first thing I noticed. I put the DVD in, and it just immediately starts to play the movie. I take a quick look at the reviews for the film, and I see that quite a few people comment that it was "made on the fly" without a real script, and that Hurston made it just to have an excuse to drink and smoke with Bogart. All of that seems rather dismissive, and the non-restored quality reinforces the idea that no one on the film side thinks it's a classic worth the effort to maintain.  Then some of Bogart's early lines. He does seem to b...

  Too simple? Jonathan Jr. (Robert Cummings) is set to marry, but his father is dying and wants to meet his son's fiancée. He can't find her, assumes his father will be dead by morning, and substitutes the hatcheck girl, Anne (Deanna Durbin).  For whatever reason, Jonathan Sr. (Charles Laughton) doesn't die. Maybe Anne revitalizes him. But anyway, you know from the beginning that Jr. and Anne will end up together. His fiancée is never depicted as a bad woman, and if they were engaged to be married, you assume she and Jr. loved each other. I guess the only "bad" thing about her was that she's attached to her mother, which would, I grant, make the honeymoon awkward.  Laughton is fun as the old man, but this is a romantic comedy with little real comedy. If you wanted to push the limits of the plot, why not have Sr. fall in love with Anne? She does teach him to dance, after all, but the movie never goes there. All we're left with is the idea that maybe Sr. dec...

The world might have been at War in 1944, but Hollywood was still cranking out the movies, including this singing Romantic Comedy.  This month I've been going through Deanna Durbin films. Most can be classified as "cookie cutter" and "light entertainment," which is not to say they're not somewhat enjoyable to watch... but this film had me smiling almost all of the way through. Great comedy, great use of technicolor -- maybe the best technicolor film I've ever seen, or at least the best one I've seen in quite some time.  Basic plot: Caroline (Deanna Durbin) is a senator's daughter -- so, rich and privileged. She's in love with a military man, Lt. Robert Latham (Robert Latham), but he's just a social climber, previously in love with the daughter of another senator, until that senator lost reelection.  Actually, I think that's a little harsh. Latham might actually love her, too, but that Caroline is a sitting senator's daughter is ju...

I appreciate the pacing. The author's epilogue includes her mission statement -- historical fiction as a way to keep history alive. Romanis is an obscure place, but she hopes people reading the book will take an interest in its history.  She also makes the point that there are no clean endings. So, the evil dictator and his wife were killed, but the problems they created didn't magically go away, the country still had to find its way and move forward, and it was a process. 

  In 1994, I wore my In Utero shirt to college. I’d walk down the hall, and people would look at the shirt. I still remember a professor looking at it, not apparently hip to the scene. She asked, “Bret, is there something you’re trying to tell us?” I had no idea what I was trying to say. Kurt Cobain had just shot his head off with a shotgun. Before that life-changing event, I hadn’t been the biggest fan of Nirvana, but I did recognize the immediate impact “Smells Like Teen Spirit” had on music, or at least on MTV. Nirvana had seemingly killed and buried Hair Metal, and they had done it single-handedly. What exactly was this “Alternative” sound? It was weird, because soon it felt like everything was “alternative,” and that didn’t make any sense. Once everything is the same, how can it be anything but standard, normal? Nirvana was okay, but at least at the time I was wearing the merch, I was much more into Offspring and Green Day and Tool. And that’s about as far as I went into...

I first heard of Sean Davis last week. He created an online magazine called The Federalist in 2011, and he currently has about 500,000 followers on X.  It was about last week that he posted something amazing. He suggested if the Supreme Court doesn't rule the way they should, not only should Trump just ignore the ruling, if they keep obstructing the administration, he should just dissolve the Court altogether.  And I thought, wow. This guy is saying outrageous stuff like that, and there's an audience for it.  So, I decided I'd listen to an episode of The Federalist podcast: April 17, 2025 -- Deportation, Due Process, and Deference to the American People (40 minutes) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/deportation-due-process-and-deference-to-the/id983782306?i=1000703904873 In the 40-minute conversation, the host and guest discussed why due process wasn't required for illegal immigrants.  The case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia was mentioned for a brief second, but...