December 2009 - Page 6 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

MOVIE REVIEW: An Education

The wife and I had a babysitter a couple weeks ago, so we looked at the movies playing at our favorite cinema emporium, the Spectrum 8. While there were other movies we hadn’t seen, none had intrigued me as much as An Education, a movie for which Nick Hornsby – who had scripted About A Boy, a movie I liked a lot – had written the screenplay, based on a Lynn Barber memoir. The film had also received big kudos at one of the film festivals. AND my wife is an educator.

Based on a true story, An Education is a tale of a girl named Jenny, 16 going on 17, in 1961 suburban London, England. She’s a very smart secondary school student, probably posed to go to Oxford University. Yet she is also quite bored with her perceived lot in life, secondary school to ensure getting to Oxford University.. During a rainstorm, a man in his 30s offers her cello a lift. This starts a very subtle and slow-moving courtship, not just of romance but also of lifestyle, which involves wooing her parents as much as the girl.

This is a very subtle film, with few BIG MOMENTS. Watching the film, directed by Lone Scherfig, I didn’t have big reactions until near the end. Thinking about it afterward, it all made a great deal of sense.

Even critics not loving the film, and it has a 94% positive rating in Rotten Tomatoes – gave kudos to the lead actress, who is a real find. Played by newcomer Carey Mulligan, she plays the character with that know-it-all teenager without being too grating. She has a certain young Audrey Hepburn-type beauty in this film.

My favorite character in this film is actually Jenny’s father, Jack, played by Alfred Molina, who I probably last saw as Doc Ock in the Spider-Man 2 movie. Jenny thinks of him as a real stick-in-the-mud, and maybe he is, but he shows colors of who he used to be.

Also starring Cara Seymour as Jenny’s mom, Majorie; Peter Sarsgaard as the suitor, David; Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike as David’s friends Danny and Helen; Olivia Williams as Jenny’s teacher, Miss Stubbs; and Emma Thompson as the headmistress. It was actually an Emma Thompson line that I most reacted to until near the end.

My wife liked the picture but didn’t want to because David was not who he said he was. But we see this throughout the film; at some level, Jenny sees this too. I do wish I loved this picture, but it felt somehow at arm’s length. It was a well-crafted film, and I enjoyed it well enough.

ROG

Christmas Shopping QUESTIONS

Are you a Black Friday shopper? Or even a Thanksgiving day shopper? I’m not. I HATE shopping on Black Friday, with something approaching religious fervor. More accurately, the one time I went out there in the big box stores, I felt like an atheist at a tent revival.

Actually, there was a Black Friday a few years ago that wasn’t so bad. We went shopping in a little town called Delhi, NY. It was no more crowded than a normal shopping day. It was relaxed and pleasant.

Are you a Cyber Monday shopper? I have been, and would have been this year, save for the fact that I had a sick child who was not so ill that we couldn’t play the usual coterie of games (Sorry, Uno and Candyland) over and over, plus reading to her.

For years, I used to have a tradition before online shopping got so easy. I’d take off a weekday from work around December 17 and do all my shopping in one day. It was early enough that if it didn’t pan out, I still had the weekend, but close enough to create urgency in me without anxiety.

What kind of Christmas shopper are you?

ROG

Majority Rule, Minority Rights

Suddenly, I was feeling nostalgic for those thrilling days of yesteryear, when the “liberal, activist” Warren Supreme Court ruled the land.

In Gideon v. Wainwright, (1963), the Court ruled that indigent defendants had a right to counsel, even if they couldn’t afford it. In Miranda v. Arizona (1966), the court determined that the police practice of interrogating individuals without notifying them of their right to counsel and their protection against self-incrimination violated the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.

And, most on point, Loving v. Virginia, the Court declared the state of Virginia’s antimiscegenation law unconstitutional.

If it were up to the general public in the 1960s, would every suspect get a lawyer and a Miranda warning? Heck, no, but it was the right and just thing to do. Or would Virginia and 15 other states have dropped their ban on interracial marriage without “assistance”? The proof is this: 12 states still had the ban on the books into the 1970s, though the laws were legally unenforceable. Alabama removed its law from its books in November 2000.

So, while I understand the political reality of trying to allow gay marriage via state legislature votes (New York, et al.) and public referenda (Maine, et al.), the issue seems so self-evidently right and just that I had a twinge of judicial nostalgia.

No, the only judicial “activism” we get these days are cases such as Kelo v. City of New London (2005), in which the “liberals” on the court allowed the city to use eminent domain to take private property and sells it for private development. I expressed my serious doubts about this case at the time. Turns out that the whole imbroglio ended up being a big money LOSER for New London.

I think gay marriage and other gay rights, such as ENDA will come about throughout the United States. But I’m now pretty convinced that gay marriage nationally will take another generation, another 20 years, to be fully realized. Maybe longer. And it makes me more than a little sad.

The New York Times was Live-Blogging the Gay Marriage Vote in New York State. State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr., one of the eight Democrats voting against the bill, is quoted as saying, “If you put this issue before the voters in a referendum, the voters will reject it.”. Probably true. But as some letter-writer noted, “I wish someone would ask Mr. Diaz if he thinks the civil rights acts of the 1960’s should have been put up for popular votes in the states.” As I said, just is just.

ROG

Truth, or a Variation on the Same

This is one of those breakfast blogs Dan VanRiper said I write.

The New York Times recently ran a story about how Rosa Parks WASN’T =the first black person to protest treatment on the bus. How did these others get ignored by history? Because history is arbitrary and not generally 100% accurate. And as a friend of mine put it, “Food for thought about figureheads…Teenagers don’t get respect!”

Jackie Robinson was not the first black to play major league baseball, only the first one in several decades, which does not at all diminish his breakthrough. Meanwhile, the black players who reintegrated the NFL, friends of Robinson, BTW, are all but forgotten, or were until this recent Sports Illustrated story. Even if you’re not a sports fan, read it, if you haven’t. One writer has suggested these players ought to be in the football hall of fame.

My wife, who teaches English as a Second Language, tells me that sometimes only the primary teacher in a classroom is considered the “real” teacher by some students, whereas the specialists (ESL, speech) are though of more like teachers’ aides. This is particularly true when the primary teacher is a male and the specialist is a female, and all of the specialty teachers in her schools are women. Stereotypical gender roles, even in our “enlightened” 21st century, come creeping back.

I’ve mentioned that when I was my daughter’s age and in the hospital for an uncontrollable bloody nose, I was slackjawed to discover a male nurse and a female doctor; even at five and a half, I could be surprised that the world wasn’t as I expected it to be.

I was listening to the podcast KunstlerCast #90: The Demise of Happy Motoring this week. The host, Duncan Crary, didn’t know that “Happy Motoring” was a catchphrase of Esso gasoline (later Exxon). Duncan told Jim Kunsler said he’d Google the phrase, and I ended up doing the same. Apparently, Esso tried to be culturally diverse in its ads. Here are the Esso logo morphing into folks from the British Isles, and, showing some real stereotypes, these American folks.

Here’s 18-and a half minutes of sharp political commentary. Eighteen-and-a-half minutes? Shades of Rose Mary Woods!

There seems to be no clear consensus on the meaning of Boxing Day.
ROG

Actors Stalking My TV Set

Ever get that feeling that some actors show up every season on some show or other that you’re watching? Sort of like that movie season where Jude Law was in every third movie. Or that period of time when Gene Hackman really WAS in every third movie. Or how Tom Bergeron hosts every third reality show.

Ken Levine cited Sonya Walger and Kim Raver; I don’t happen to be in Ms. Walger’s sphere of influence, but yeah, I think of Ms. Raver as that person on 24, yet here she is doing a stint on Grey’s Anatomy. I could have sworn that there are other working actors in Hollywood, most of them not working at all in their chosen profession; I speak of “Hollywood” generically, not geographically.

It’s not quite as pervasive, but I think that way about Jessalyn Gilsig. She plays Terri Schuester, the glee club teacher’s wife, on Glee, but wasn’t she doing Heroes and Nip/Tuck at the same time? I know her best as a teacher in the early seasons of Boston Public, and a cop in the later seasons of NYPD Blue.

Then there’s Julie Bowen, who is now on Modern Family, and I first noticed on Ed, but seemed to show up on Boston Legal, Weeds and Lost interchangeably. And I just saw her on JEOPARDY! to boot.

I was watching Glee recently, and noticed that on that particular episode, there were two NYPD Blue alums, though they did not share a scene. Charlotte Ross, who was bad seed Eve on Days of Our Lives when I was actually watching DOOL, is now old enough to play the mom of the pregnant cheerleader on Glee. This somehow makes me feel old.

Any actors showing up a lot on the shows you watch?
ROG