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gromit

Posted: Fri Mar 31, 2017 10:22 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

I just started reading a book which is about a family with liberal/negligent parenting. The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls. It's basically a memoir of her childhood. They traveled around the southwest desert, often staying one step ahead of creditors. Mom likes to paint, and believes kids can largely take care of themselves. Dad gets occasional jobs, but is mostly interested in perfecting a device that can help them find gold. In one house, the kids sleep in a big refrigerator sized cardboard box. One Xmas, he walks the kids out in the desert one by one and gives them the gift of any star they choose.
Dad has a bit of a wild streak and is a good bullshitter. Etc.

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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

whiskeypriest

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 2:30 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 6916 Location: "It's a Dry Heat."

Vertigo is on TCM. I could overdose on James Stewart.

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I ask you, Velvel, as a rational man, which of us is possessed?

bartist

Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2017 6:17 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6964 Location: Black Hills

Quote:

An aircraft engineer down the peninsula designed it; he worked it out in his spare time.

(what's she referring to?)

Gromit, seems like it's the dad who is usually the parent with the craziest ideas, in those sorts of stories. And usually one child who is more oppositional than the others, which I've heard tends to follow a birth order pattern - usually a middle child. I'll look for TGC.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

gromit

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 1:25 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

The absent, irresponsible or unknown Father has a long tradition in literature, in written form at least dating back to The Odyssey. It's easy for Dad to be gone for up to 9 months before a birth, while Mom by definition has to be there. Then you add the pressure/difficulty of earning money for (at least 3 people), and Dad might hoof it to avoid responsibility or even to find work and meet his obligations.

Not sure, why, but I've always been a sucker for stories about charlatan/hucksters Dads who aren't able to make it as normal fathers. I guess their attempts and failures, avoidances and adventures are more fascinating than those of single mom stuck raising the kids alone.

I've always felt that not every makes a good parent, and not everyone is suited to have children. But up until recently, nearly everyone did, form a combination of social pressure and lack of contraceptive knowledge/availability.

I'll try to think of some of my favorite irresponsible dad stories.
Off the top of my head:
- My Father More or Less -- Jonathan Baumbach (Noah's Dad)
- Johnny Cash's song A Boy Named Sue (written by Shel Silverstein)[/i]

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

carrobin

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 1:40 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 7795 Location: NYC

Don't forget J.R. Ackerley's "My Father and Myself"--after his father's death, Ackerley learned that he'd had a second family, which included a couple of daughters. Ackerley helped them out but never told his mother about them.

gromit

Posted: Sun Apr 02, 2017 2:11 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

I don't know that one, but there was the documentary film My Architect, by Nathaniel Kahn (2003) after his famous architect father Louis Kahn died, and it was revealed he was an active bigamist with a secret second family.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

Syd

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2017 11:28 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12934 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I'm now going through the Hollow Crown, and, like the BBC series of Shakespearean plays, I don't know whether they belong here on in "Television."

So far, I've watched "Richard II" and "Henry IV, Part I" and the Hollow Crown versions are better, partly because they open up the plays more, but not entirely so. For instance the wonderful farewell between Gaunt and Bolinbroke kind of disappears here, and, though the youth and passion of Mortimer show better here, the BBC version showed better why he is devoted to his wife. In this version, Hotspur tries too hard to live up to his name, fuming passionately to the point that you wish someone would throw a bucket of ice water in his face. But it's nice how he proclaims his honor and everyone talks about how brave and honorable he is, even while he is committing treason, is actively conspiring to partition the country he supposedly cares so much about (a historical fact), and does a great deal to undermine his own cause. And yet, King Henry admires him and wishes Hotspur were his own son, Prince Hal praises Hotspur even while they're fighting to the death, and I have to say WTF? Clearly Hotspur looks a lot better until you get to know him a bit.

I find it interesting that Hotspur and Mortimer have truly admirable wives (in Hotspur's case, a hell of a lot more sensible than he is), while King Henry and Hal seem to have not much in romantic relationships at all. Hal, by the way, is Tom Hiddleston, who is very good, and not really admirable, though you have to wonder why he puts up with Falstaff to begin with.

The Battle of Shrewsbury is rather incoherent in both versions, but what it comes down to, both in the plays and real life, is that the King and Hal were sorely pressed until Hotspur was killed in mid-battle, here in a duel with Prince Hal, in real life in a do-or-die charge against the royal forces.

It's interesting that the Battle of Shrewsbury is fought on a snow-covered field because it took place on July 21, but that makes for an effective ending with King Henry riding away across a snowy field strewn with corpses with no insigna indicating which side they died for.

_________________
Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter!

Syd

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 10:05 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12934 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I'm watching Marguerite, which is a French Florence Foster Jenkins, and wondering if, since the title character is named Marguerite Dumont, whether I can expect the Marques Brothers.

[The name choice was not an accident.]

_________________
Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter!

bartist

Posted: Mon Apr 10, 2017 10:55 pm

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6964 Location: Black Hills

Finally read your review, Syd, of Passengers. I liked it, too. The production design was remarkable, inverting the usual sterile and Spartan aesthetic of a starship, with something more like a luxury liner or a fancy shopping mall. It was a fine and absorbing character drama up to the point where "Aurora" cries that "Jim" has ruined her life, and then slipped a bit more into the formulaic, but still a better formula than 90% of screen sci-fi that I've seen. The science wobbled, as usual and I have to mention a few bloops;

-if magnetic containment for fusion fails, the plasma disperses and cools right away, so it wouldn't really need "venting"

-stars forward the travel path would be heavily blue-shifted at .5 c (no movie ever gets this right)

-a meteor the size of a cantelope colliding at that velocity would have done far more damage (and who plots an interstellar ship's course through a debris belt like the one they show? or swings so close to a star?)

-centrifugally generated pseudogravity doesn't instantly "shut off" and set everything instantly floating because a large turning wheel has considerable angular momentum (but they wanted that swimming pool f/x and it was pretty amazing)

-the system-wide power failure should have shut off the shields, which, at that velocity, would be like scouring everything inside the ship with a highly ionizing particle beam (the consequences of relativistic speeds is rarely dealt with in the movies)

- no engineer would design a robot that doesn't automatically shut off when it's getting a heavily corrupted signal, so I found it unlikely that Arthur had to start headbanging, etc.

But good science makes for a duller movie, I guess is the thinking?

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

Syd

Posted: Tue Apr 11, 2017 8:25 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12934 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I've decided that of the two takes on Florence Foster Jenkins' career, I prefer Meryl Streep's version (which is closer to the truth, and a lot more plausible) to Catherine Frot's, which has altogether too many gratutious cynical scenes. Although it's the French film that grabbed a lot of awards.

_________________
Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter!

Ghulam

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2017 12:52 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY

.
On Moonlight:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/04/20/moon-over-miami/

.

bartist

Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2017 9:00 am

Joined: 27 Apr 2010 Posts: 6964 Location: Black Hills

Dipping my toe in the (Bela) Tarr with "The Man from London," a 2007 B/W art film that seems like a slow child born from the marriage of "Eraserhead" and "The Third Man." Mercifully, the damaged DVD stopped playing about midway through, so I was relieved of some misguided sense of duty to eat my cinema broccoli and try to say something useful about its existential depths. Every action of every character is shown in its entirety, at a glacial pace - eating soup, sweeping water puddles off a loading dock, drying out pound notes on a stove. I'm sure, given the right mood and dosage of MMJ, it could be fascinating.

_________________
He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days.

gromit

Posted: Sat Apr 15, 2017 10:51 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

I liked some of Man from London, but it didnt really come off.
If I recall, the first half setup was the better half.

I think Tarr's Werckmeister Harmonies is a great film.
Satan's Tango is very long but has some amazing long takes.
But every action goes through to completion, which at times is mesmerizing.

_________________
Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number.

yambu

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 1:01 pm

Joined: 23 May 2004 Posts: 6441 Location: SF Bay Area

Monsoon Wedding is about a family whose wealth and education vault them past society's ironclad traditions. And yet these come to the fore when needed. I can't say just how, but the kindly patriarch knows just where to reach, only once, for the power to protect his family's well being.

billyweeds

Posted: Sun Apr 16, 2017 1:19 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

yambu wrote:

But did you like it? I did--a whole lot.

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