In writing about Spellbound just now, I was reminded that I have an old, dusty grad school essay on Miller's Crossing (one of my Top 10 and Time magazine's Top 100 movies) and narrative. I just glanced through it, and though the opening paragraphs don't really make any sense, I think the rest of it is a pretty strong "reading" of that film.
For your reading displeasure: Miller's Crossing and the Critique of Genre
Amy and I finally watched Hitchcock's Spellbound the other night after Netflix delivered it, like, a month ago. Thank goodness for no late fees!
I'm not that crazy about a lot of Hitchcock, and I have to say that this was not a favorite (despite a really cool dream sequence designed by Salvidore Dalí). Ingrid Bergman is an icy psychiatrist working at a mental hospital. Gregory Peck plays the new hospital director, Anthony Edwardes. Or is he who he says he is? As usual, with Hitchcock, the "mystery" is merely a pretext for some psychological exploration. It's pretty quickly, and unceremoniously, revealed that Edwardes is not Edwardes but an amnesiac who thinks he killed Edwardes but can't remember. Bergman, however, falls in love with him and cannot believe he's a murderer, so she sets about trying to help him recover his memory and figure out what really happened. The pop-psychoanalysis is pretty hokey, as are the overly-earnest performances (except Michael Chekhov as Dr. Brulov, who is wonderful).
But Hitchcock's films always get me to thinking about film in general. Hitchcock is loved by us Film Studies types precisely because his films are often more about the process of filmmaking and film-watching than about whatever the plot is. Since much of Film Studies is [rather ludicrously] derived from [mis-readings of] psychoanalysis, I can see how this film in particular must have gotten my former colleagues all hot and excited.
What was interesting to me, however, was to think about how the the film, if it were made today, would suffer from a narrative problem due to modern technology. This is a line of thought I had just started to pursue when I was still in my MA program, but never really got an opportunity to explore in depth.
Magician Penn Gillette has a thoughtful and kind-hearted essay on NPR's "This I Believe" web site concerning his non-belief in God (or, rather, his belief that there is no God). The whole piece is short and quote-worthy, but I especially liked this:
Believing there's no God stops me from being solipsistic. I can read ideas from all different people from all different cultures. Without God, we can agree on reality, and I can keep learning where I'm wrong. We can all keep adjusting, so we can really communicate. I don't travel in circles where people say, "I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith." That's just a long-winded religious way to say, "shut up...."
As someone with two degrees in Film Studies, I should have done better than 56/100 on Time's list of the 100 best movies, especially since a lot of the ones I haven't seen were on syllabi of classes I took (I tended to skip a lot of screenings).
All the usual criticisms and caveats of any "Top n Whatevers" list apply. It's put out there for debate and discussion moreso than to be definitive. So let's debate and discuss, shall we?
A couple weeks ago, I posted about the inexplicable goings-on in the house across the street from us. I ended Part 1 just as Chickie and Boyfriend seemed to finally settle down together. But things got weird again during the summer, especially when the 7-year old boy showed up.
Amy and I cheated today. On the South Beach Diet, that is. We went to brunch with some friends and indulged in eggs Benedict, part of a cinnamon roll, and some potatoes. All in all, I didn't think too much of it ... until about hour later.
I've always enjoyed a good, healthy relationship with booze, but there are enough witnesses who would immediately call bullshit if I claimed that I could handle my liquor like the Irishman I am. Nevertheless, a glass or three of red wine never really did much to me except make me a little bit funnier and feel a tad warmer. Maybe it's the effects of the South Beach Diet, but the other night two-and-a-half glasses of Charles Shaw's ("Two-Buck Chuck") shiraz combined with a particular Calvin and Hobbes cartoon sent me into convulsions of drunken sobbing.
I was thinking of alternative career choices today (it's been a bad day at work) and got to wondering: if I had become a therapist/psychologist/shrink, would I, as an atheist, be ethically compelled to treat believers as if they suffered from a pathology (i.e. belief in an imaginary being who has influence over their lives)?
So, I got to Googling and turned up some interesting results on "god belief psychological disorder"
As religious zealots on the Kansas school board turn their state into a laughing stock over "Intelligent Design," Pennsylvania voters come to rescue and oust all eight members of their State school board who backed ID, and particularly stomped on member Alan Bonsell who should be charged with perjury over his contradictory testimony during the Dover trial.
I've been following the Dover trial on the Pennsylvania ACLU's blog, but I haven't been posting much about it because they're doing such a great job. Check it out.
Here's the NY Times on the school board's decision in Kansas, and on the elections in on Pennsylvania.
I went to the dentist today, which until recently was quite a fearful experience for me. A trip to the dentist always makes me think of the time I had my wisdom teeth extracted by an insane doctor with a bit of an anger problem.
I was 19 and my dentist, who was a wonderful, funny man, determined that all four of my wisdom teeth were "impacted" and needed to come out. He recommend an oral surgeon who had an office just up the street. On the day of the appointment, I was nervous enough because of the nature of the operation, but little did I know that that was really the least at my concerns.
The house across the street is a rental — the only one on the block. The current tenant is a 50-something year-old man who drives a huge pickup truck and who has never spoken to us. We (including Ray) call him "Man," and as many serial killer have benn described before, he is quiet and likes to keep to himself.
Man's roommate is "Chickie," a 20-something bleached blonde who favors skimpy clothing but, unfortunately, doesn't quite have the body for it. Chickie's boyfriend ("Boyfriend") is a frequent guest at the place.
About 2 weeks before Halloween, the household began accumulating pumpkins at the rate of a about one per day. A few days before, a large decorative witch appeared on their front porch bearing a sign that read "Trick or Treat." I was intrigued since no one in the house seemed at all inclined to being neighborly or engaging with the public in any way. I wondered: "Are they going to dole out candy on Halloween?"
Halloween came and went and the lights on the house never even came on. No one entered or left. They were all out doing something else. Why, then, the dozen pumpkins and the witch? This incident, however, is hardly the first such confounding mystery surrounding the house across the street.
I've read 28 of Time magazine's Best 100 books.
I love "Best of" lists. People complain about them all the time, but if you just don't them too seriously they are a good source for reading/viewing suggestions. I had previously been using the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list from 2003. I made a Palm-sized version of it for my PDA so that whenever I was at the library and couldn't think of anything to get, I'd have it handy. I ended up reading a lot of good books that way, ones I wouldn't have otherwise considered.
Observations from the Time list:
It looks like they also have a 100 Best Movies list, which I'll have to post about another time.
