Month: September 2009

A Fistful of Dollars – the Movie

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies1 Comment

Devin suggested I watch the famous The Man with No Name trilogy, starring Clint Eastwood. I didn’t know what I was getting into, so I rented the first one, A Fistful of Dollars, and sat down to watch.

I found the movie corny, slow, predictable and difficult to understand, both in following the plot and due to the mumbling of the characters. I almost lost interest about halfway through and then it picked up a bit and I stayed with it.

Supposedly, this movie made movie history. Published in 1964, it was Clint Eastwood’s first movie. Before that he was just an obscure TV actor. I didn’t know, until the day after I watched it, when I did my research, that it was directed by Sergio Leone, the man who made the Spaghetti Western famous. So A Fistful of Dollars is a Spaghetti Western. And now it rings a bell. The music, the photography, all points forward to Once Upon a Time in the West, the big movie that Leone would do in 1967. Once Upon a Time in the West has always been one of my favorite movies of all time, and I love the music.

So, even though I was convinced I was not going to have the patience to watch the other two No Name movies, once I realized that Leone was involved, I changed my mind, and on we go.

However, this movie on its own just doesn’t do too much  for me, so the rating is low.

Rating: *

State of Play – the Movie

On By Norbert HauptIn MoviesLeave a comment

A journalist named Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) is friends with a congressman Stephen Collins (Ben Affleck) who takes on a private security firm named PointCorp that provides mercenary services in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money goes to PointCorp, which, it turns out, is completely out of control, and has no qualms about killing anybody that gets in its way. Congressman Collins is on a committee that investigates the firm. Then people start dying. Cal starts running down the leads and eventually uncovers a huge dragnet of corruption, involving members of Congress, aids, staffers and of course private enterprise.

While I didn’t intend to actually watch this movie, I could not turn it off. I know this is fiction, but if this kind of stuff really goes down, I am scared for our country. This is Bush/Cheney stuff we inherited and it will take decades to clean up, while innocent people will continue to die.

But then, it’s a movie, it’s fiction, and perhaps it’s just an Orwellian warning about what might be.

And will somebody tell me why its title is “State of Play?”

Rating: **

Chelsea / Letterman / Obama

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, Relatives / FriendsLeave a comment

Chelsea travels to New York City for a week. She schedules to attend the David Letterman show on Monday. It turns out it’s the show where the exclusive guest is Obama. At the beginning of the show, when Obama walks in, the camera pans the audience a couple of times, and there is Chelsea, wearing a red shirt and white sweater, front and center, in the first row, standing and applauding.

How cool is that?

Men are Created Equal – Almost

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, History, PoliticalLeave a comment

The United States at the time of the American Revolution (the signing of the Declaration of Independence) had a total population of 2,500,000 people in the 13 original states. Out of those 2.5 million, 500,000 were black slaves. In Virginia alone, there were 200,000 slaves. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, both Virginians, owned about 200 slaves each. They were among the richest citizens in the country. John Adams from Massachusetts, a lawyer of modest means in comparison, owned no slaves at all.

The most famous section of the Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

It would take another 90 years before slavery was abolished after the Civil War and another almost 150 years before women could vote.

Book Review: The Little Book – by Selden Edwards

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Three Stars, Time TravelLeave a comment

Imagine, if you will, that you find yourself transported from 2009 to Vienna in 1897. Don’t ask how it’s possible. Just assume you are there. You go to the train station and take a train outside the city a couple of hours, and you get off in a small town named Lambach. It’s early afternoon on a weekday, and you wait in front of a nondescript house in a quaint neighborhood for a boy to come walking home from school. Here he comes. A skinny boy, darkish hair, fair complexion, a bit shy, with a book bag on his back. You let the boy pass. He greets you “Guten Tag” and you greet back. You know the boy’s name: Adolf Hitler.

You know that the boy would eventually grow up, enter politics, and through a series of maneuverings and sheer luck take control of Germany and bring about the death of upward of 10 million people, Jews in concentration camps, civilians on both sides killed, soldiers on both sides killed by the millions. Would you strangle the little boy right there on the sidewalk and save those 10 million lives and change history?

That’s the question Wheeler Burden had to ask himself in this magnificent story of time travel and history.

Somehow Wheeler and his father Dilly Burden end up transplanted in time, for reasons they themselves cannot understand, to Vienna in 1897. At that time, Vienna was at its pinnacle. It was a leading city in the arts, science, philosophy, music, writing and politics. Kaiser Franz Josef of Austria was still in power, and the Hapsburg empire was still thriving. Nobody but a few intellectuals realized that the empire would collapse within decades and practically disappear. Vienna, at that time, was very much the center of Europe.

The Burden family, starting with the matriarch, Wheeler’s grandmother and her husband Frank, is a prominent Boston society family that somehow descends on Vienna to make history. The plot is so intervowen and so full of surprises, that it’s difficult to describe. Let me just say that besides Adolf Hitler, there are other well known characters that participate in the story, including Winston Churchill, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, Richard Wagner (in reference only) and many more minor characters.

Wheeler is an American hero, a star student in secondary school, a Harvard graduate, a super baseball player, a rock star, a writer, a philosopher, a liar and impostor, and a time traveler. His father Dilly is just as illustrious. The entire Burden family is unreal. You wonder how the 20th century could have happened without them. But it’s a novel, so you accept it.

When you read a book you learn a lot about its author. To enjoy this book, you have to be interested in European history at the turn of the previous century. Edwards certainly know his history. I imagine he went to Harvard, since the university is too omnipresent in this story. He loves Vienna, its language and culture. He is definitely a baseball player. He knows a lot about psychoanalysis. And he is probably a snob. He worked on this book for over 30 years and it’s his debut novel. He does a good job, and there will be other books, if he can do another one before 30 more years go by.

Rating: ***

The Other Boleyan Girl – the Movie

On By Norbert HauptIn MoviesLeave a comment

A historical soap opera that plays on the court of King Henry VIII. The Boleyan family has three kids, two daughters, Mary and Anne, and a son. There is a mother and her brother, the scheming brother in law, and the father, who play their children like chess pieces in court intrigues to gain, as a family, the favor of  the king. In the process, they ruin themselves.

I do not know if this is a fictional story, or if it is based on actual history. Queen Elizabeth, a redheaded girl, is born to Anne as the legitimate heir to the kingdom, and Mary also gives the king a son, albeit out of wedlock and therefore making him a bastard son.

This movie puts a spotlight on the depravity of the English system of nobility and court life in general as it lived through the centuries. The system of inherited monarchy seems outrageous today and bewildering and frustrating then, but it was the system they had to live under. Backstabbing and intrigue were rampant. Men were manipulated by women, kings or not, and history changed, lives were made, and destroyed, all due to the horny whims of one man who just happened to be born to be king.

The costumes and the filming were splendid, as you’d expect from a soap opera, the acting was fine, but it was the story that kept me watching. I kept thinking how glad I was to be alive now in America, not then in England, as to be successful then you had to be scheming to get the kings favors, not matter how asinine the man was.

Watch the Boleyan family destroy itself trying to simply be successful.

Rating: **

A Star is Born – the Movie

On By Norbert HauptIn MoviesLeave a comment

Be careful what movies you watch and what music you listen to when you are twenty years old. It imprints itself on you and you carry it with you all your life.

I first watched A Star is Born in the first week of January 1977 at the theater in the Chautauqua Mall in Lakewood, New York. And while I have heard the soundtrack since, and have seen sections of the movie here and there flipping through channels, I have not seen  the whole movie again since then – until now. There were entire sections that I had completely forgotten about, there were songs I had not remembered that were in the movie, but overall it simply transported me back to age twenty – now 33 years ago – and it was like I was  there again.

I remembered how one of my dreams at the time was to build a house in the desert, like theirs outside Tucson. I have actually built houses in the desert, but they were family homes in neighborhoods, nothing exotic like that. I remember looking forward to building an exotic life of fame and riches, just what twenty year olds think about. I have had a good life, a rewarding one, but not an exotic one, and there are probably many more dreams that faded than dreams I have realized. I guess I have to watch some other old movies to remember those. I remember the bathtub scene with the candles, some of them held by Schlitz beer cans, and how I was sure that one day I would have my own big bathtub and occasions to light up candles all over the rim. I tried that on at least one occasion and the effect was nothing like in the movie.

A Star is Born is probably the only musical that I actually like, and I am sure it’s not because of the quality of  the movie itself, it’s because of the personal associations. But I think the movie works fantastically because there is an entire generation of people, approximately my age, that were affected similarly and hold the movie high on their list of favorites. For that reason, I classify it as very powerful and influential.

Go rent it and bring back the memories.

Rating: ****

Ronald Reagan Presidential Library

On By Norbert HauptIn Political, TravelsLeave a comment

Yesterday we visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. I must confess, this is the first presidential library I have ever visited, but now I know it is not the last.

I didn’t know what exactly to expect from a presidential library. It’s a museum, laid out and run like any other specialty museum. Reagan’s is very well done.

Located on a hilltop in Simi Valley, overlooking a great panorama of rugged Southern California mountains, it is definitely a memorable place of reflection. The main building has the feeling of a Mission. The large open courtyard has a fountain in the center, and the surrounding buildings are lined with covered walks and columns.

Once in the museum, we got to walk through many exhibits chronicling Reagan’s long life and many careers. Reagan was a born leader, starting out in sports, playing football and other sports in high school and college. Later he was a sportscaster, then an actor, and finally a politician, first Governor of California, then the President of the United States. Whenever he belonged to a club, its seems he became its president, or in sports the team captain.

As we walked the various exhibits we saw real memorabilia of Reagan’s life at the various stages. The most interesting two exhibits are the Air Force One and the Oval Office.

An exact replica of the Oval Office as it was during Reagan’s second term, 1984 to 1988, is represented. I found it fascinating to be standing in the Oval Office, seeing the furniture arrangements, the pictures on the walls, the decorations on the counters, and the desk. The desk is a replica of the “Hayes” desk, built in the 1870s and first used by President Hayes, and later by many other presidents, including Kennedy and Reagan. The original desk is currently used by Obama. There is no practical way for any ordinary citizen to get into the real Oval Office, so seeing a replica is the next best thing.

The tour guide had some anecdotes about the Oval Office, of course, and at one point talked about Reagan never going into the Oval Office without a suit coat. We have heard this before, and then echoed by George W. when he touted early in his presidency that he would reintroduce decorum and respect to the Oval Office, after the purported indiscretions of Clinton.

Well, right after walking out of the Oval Office, I came upon a picture wall showing Reagan in a number of situations with the public, and right there he was, in the Oval Office with a number of people, sitting behind his desk in a jogging suit jacket.

So much for the mystique about the suit and tie.

The Oval Office is such a famous locale and institution of our government, it carries with it a mystique that is almost unparalleled, except, perhaps by Air Force One.

The decommissioned Boeing 707 with the call sign 27000 is on exhibit in the Air Force One Pavillion. Now this was worth the visit. This plane was brought into service in 1973 and was first used by Nixon. The last president to travel on it was George W. Bush. You get to walk through the entire plane. You see the president’s office and the various other sections. Every one of them is instantly recognizable from movies and news reports, of course. I remember seeing Nixon stand outside the doors raising of both arms in his famous last farewell. I stood right there at that door. The president’s desk is much smaller than it looks on TV. The “secure phones” look archaic. The little “communications nook” looks like something out of a fifties movie. The whole thing is surprisingly low-tech. Of course, they didn’t have laptops then and when Reagan answered mail, he wrote on a legal pad by hand, so it could be typed later.

I was overwhelmed by history walking through this plane, used by Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush. But of the more than one million miles logged by the plane during its service, Reagan clocked  over 600,000 of them. He alone took more than 220 trips using this aircraft during his years.

Many years hence perhaps we can see one of the new 747 Air Force One planes in a presidential library, and we will then marvel about Clinton and Bush and Obama and the trips they took. But with the years of service still left on those planes, I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see that.

After this experience, I have resolved that I will seek out other presidential libraries. Next will be Nixon’s, which is within driving distance from our home, and then others as I travel to the various places. I’ll just need to take extra time on my trips to make it possible.

Movie Review: Taken Woodstock

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Two Stars1 Comment

Some viewers might come away from this movie disappointed. For me, I got exactly what I expected. A comedy with a pop-culture backdrop that I was interested in. There is enough mystique about Woodstock to feed another generation’s marvelings.

I went to the town of Woodstock once, only to realize it wasn’t Woodstock where the concert took place, but Bethel. Why we’re not calling it the Bethel festival I don’t know. I am sure a lot of others of my generation, who were to young at the time, drive into Woodstock off of I-87 and stop at a diner, just to have been there.

In Taken Woodstock, we learn that the town of Wallkill, NY actually turned down the festival. They didn’t want the traffic and other headaches. Go figure. I wonder what would have happened to the name if Wallkill had been the venue of the festival as originally planned? We’d be calling it the Wallkill Festival now.

Central to the story is a young Jewish man, Elliot Teichberg, an interior designer who moves up from the city to help his parents save their funky and dying motel business. He becomes the hapless president of the Bethel Chamber of Commerce and in that role has the brilliant idea of contacting the New York organizers of the festival that were turned down in Wallkill. Shortly after that, helicopters and limousines from the city converge on his motel with brown paper grocery bags of cash. Soon nothing is the same anymore for a few months in Bethel, as preparations for the festival start.

Comedic action comes from the hilarious cast of characters helping Elliot, including his miserly mother, his aloof but resourceful father, both first generation Russian Jewish immigrants, the transvestite he hires for security and the theater troupe living in his barn that can’t seem to keep their clothes on. One priceless scene is when Elliot’s parents scare away the mafia when they show up and try to get in on the deal.

Once the festival actually starts, Elliot is drawn into the scene like everyone else, and it appears that just like most people there, he doesn’t get to hear much music, but he copes with the basics of survival that would inevitably surface when you herd half a million kids onto one large pasture in the country in torrential rain.

If you expected good music in this movie, you will be disappointed. There is none. You hear the concert going on in the distance occasionally, and that’s it. There isn’t a single concert shot or score. I took this as seeing and experiencing the festival like most people that were there did: far away from the action, too far to get much out of it. The action was in your own head, propagated by LSD, pot and an occasional hash brownie.

I enjoyed the story and the movie for what it’s worth. I kept wondering if this was based on some historical reality. Was there really an Elliot that made it all happen, and a motel that he was trying to save? Or was it a nice frame for a light comedy?

It worked as a nice comedy and I got my money’s worth in entertainment value.

I’ve Loved You So Long – the Movie

On By Norbert HauptIn MoviesLeave a comment

I find it refreshing to watch a foreign movie once in a while. It gives me another perspective on reality, and takes me out of my American middle class bubble, sort of like a trip to Mexico does, or like eating authentic Indian food. Wow, that was different.

“I’ve Loved You So Long” is an odd title for a movie and it may well sound different in French. This is a French movie, with English subtitles, and I definitely needed the subtitles. Moreover, the movie isn’t just a movie where they speak French. It’s French through and through. One of the things I could not help but notice immediately was the constant smoking of the main character, Juliette. I could smell the smoke in my clothes after the movie. It was everywhere, all the time – well, French.

Juliette was played by Kristin Scott Thomas who was in The English Patient. This actress can switch between English and French effortlessly. In this role, she spoke only French.

The story is about two sisters who are reunited after Juliette, the older, comes back from a prison sentence of fifteen years for murder. Juliette is staying which her sister Lea and her family, consisting of a husband, two adoptive Vietnamese daughters, and her husband’s father, a stroke victim whose ability to speak has vanished. No subtitles needed for him.

Being cast into a difficult situation in a family setting, Juliette copes with the integration one small step at a time. As the movie progresses, we are finding out the details of the mysterious crime Juliette has committed so long ago.

When the credits rolled to a French chanson, I sat there listening to the song all the way through, in revery, recapping the tragic story, but also yearning to go to France for a few months, immerse myself in the language and soak in some of its culture.

If I could only leave out the smoke.

Rating: ***

A Stricken Marine

On By Norbert HauptIn Commentaries, FeelingsLeave a comment

The news blub at MSNBC below was published today with the following second paragraph:

While an Associated Press photographer was embedded with Marines in Helmand last month, a Marine convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, or RPG. It struck Lance Corporal Joshua M. Bernard severing his legs. He was treated on the scene, but later died at a combat field hospital.

This kind of paragraph is easy to write for the AP reporters or MSNBC. Let me give it a try:

A young American named Joshua, somebody’s son, brother, friend and classmate, joined the U.S. Marines after High School. He was proud of his decision to serve his country, and he knew intellectually what he was getting into. He was sent to Afghanistan in the heat of the summer. He wrote emails home to his family and friends, complaining about the intense heat of the desert, describing how scared they all were. But he was trained for this and he was proud of what he was doing.

On a routine patrol mission their convoy was hit. It happened so fast,  there was no time to reflect or think. Joshua looked down and noticed that his legs were gone, blood rushing from his stumps. Intense pain and blurred vision overtook him. Utter panic overpowered him. He had just enough time to wonder about how in the hell he got himself into that situation. It had not been his plan to die in the dirt far away from home. He would not see his family again. There was also that photographer. Joshua noticed he took pictures of him. He closed his eyes. What a waste. Darkness. And then the pain faded away.

I think about the war differently when I put myself into the head of Joshua. Is it worth it?

Frequency – the Movie

On By Norbert HauptIn Movies, Time TravelLeave a comment

Flipping through the channels I stumbled upon the movie Frequency with Dennis Quaid that came out in 2000. It’s a time travel story where nobody actually travels, but a father and son team manage to manipulate the fabric of time to take out a serial killer and make their own family whole.

The time travel phemomenon is woven into a crime mystery story. The crime paces the action, and the time travel makes it unique.

Well, it’s not actually time travel. A father and son team, the son a cop in 2000, the father a firefighter in the late 1960 decade, both ham radio operators, discover that they can talk to each other over the radio through time after peculiar sun storm activity and atmospheric conditions that result in major northern lights all the way down in New York. They live in the same house, the father in 1968, with the son a little boy already bouncing around, and then the son in 2000, with his father passed away.

I won’t give the story away here. But my favorite scene is the passing of the wallet. The plot has finger prints of the perpetrator on the father’s wallet in 1968. The son needs those finger prints in 2000. How is he going to pass them to him? While they are talking on the radio, the son has the father put the wallet carefully into a plastic bag and seal it. The father knows of a loose floor board under a bay window seat. He hides the wallet there so it won’t be found for 30 years. The son then walks over to the window, lifts up the floor board and voila, in a dusty plastic bag is the father’s wallet. They lift the finger prints at the police lab, and the story moves on. This is one of the simplest yet most intriguing and delightful time travel effects I have seen in any movie.

If you have not seen Frequency, rent it, it’s well worth it.

Rating: ****

The Red Violin – the Movie

On By Norbert HauptIn MoviesLeave a comment

This Canadian-Italian production of 1998 won a Best Original Score Oscar and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language film.

In 1681, an Italian violin maker by the name of Nicolo Bussotti, creates his masterpiece instrument for his unborn son. When his wife dies in childbirth the violin is not yet varnished. He varnishes it the night his wife dies. The varnish has a clear red hue.

The movie plays in Italy, Poland, England, China and modern Canada, as we follow the violin through its life and we watch the many owners over the centuries. They all cherish the violin, yet it gets stolen several times, almost burned, shot and smashed.

The music is heavenly. Rich violin solos accompany us as we observe the lives of those fortunate enough to get to play with this instrument, and we can’t help but marvel at the complexity of its long life. When we see antiques in museums, like old furniture, paintings, articles of clothing and, of course, instruments, we don’t realize how may lives were affected by those objects.

And of course we will never know who all was touched. We can only wonder in awe.

Rating: ****

Book Review: Judas Unchained – by Peter F. Hamilton

On By Norbert HauptIn Books, Two StarsLeave a comment

This is the sequel to Pandora’s Star, another 1008 page book with small print. After reading Pandora’s Star, I didn’t think I would read the sequel. Too much work and detail, not enough action. Then a business associate told me that it would be better than the first book, so  I went for it.

The first half of the book was slow, and I once again found myself paging over entire sections that just didn’t capture my attention. Hamilton is meticulous about crafting entire thought universes with incredible detail. He is a master at creating political undercurrent and intrigue inside a science fiction story. But there is always too much of it. I want the action, and I don’t want to deal with the political alliances.

Reading a Hamilton book is serious work, if you want to do it right.

I am not sure why the thing is called Judas Unchained. Perhaps I missed that in the pages I skipped over. The Prime aliens (MorningLightMountain) attack again and wipe out billions of humans on dozens of planets. Sheldon invents some superweapons and star warships and the Commonwealth strikes back, eventually neutralizing the Prime as well as the Starflyer. Ozzie finishes his journey with the Silfen and then hijacks a starship for some more mavericky stuff that he is known for.

Entertainment? Yes. Do I have time for another Hamilton book? No. Would I read a sequel to Judas if he wrote one? At this time, probably.

Rating: **