Posts tagged England
“Hitchcock” about the Master of Manipulation
0December 22, 2012
“Master of Manipulation”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Hitchcock is about the famous British director, Alfred Hitchcock, who was known as the Master of Suspense, and takes place in Hollywood when he was making his most famous film, the 1960 Psycho.
We see Hitchcock in 1959 Chicago at the opening of his previous movie, his 46th, and a reporter points out that Hitchcock is 60 and says shouldn’t he just quit while he is ahead.
Thankfully, Hitchcock didn’t, who is played by Anthony Hopkins made up to look like the director and using a voice as reminiscent of the popular figure on television that we soon begin to believe that he is Hitchcock.
In fact, Hitchcock says that he is looking for a nice clean, nasty little book to make into his next movie.
That book becomes Psycho, a novel by Robert Bloch, based on Ed Gein and the murders he had committed in Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, we meet Alma, Hitchcock’s wife, played by Helen Mirren, and we learn that she had even been Hitchcock’s boss in England when he was first starting out in the movie business, and they had collaborated on some of his early movies.
So, Alma helps Hitchcock with some of the casting and even makes suggestions for the plot, such as killing off the leading actress after the first 30 minutes instead of waiting halfway through.
Scarlett Johansson plays Janet Leigh, James D’Arcy plays Anthony Perkins, and in their first meeting, Hitchcock says, “Call me Hitch. Hold the ‘cock.’”
Then we see all the difficulties that Hitch had making this movie, with the studio, the censors, and even an actress with whom Hitch had a previous history, Vera Miles, played by Jessica Biel.
At one point, the picture is two days behind and $60,000 over budget, Hitch gets sick and confined to bed, and Alma goes to the set and takes over, showing everyone that she knows what she is doing.
One thing that might confuse you is that Hitch dreams and fantasizes about Ed Gein, the real murderer, and we see those scenes, but there is enough humor and lightheartedness in the movie to make up for these distractions, just like Hitch had in his own movies and TV shows.
Hitchcock is about the Master of Suspense, but he could just as easily have been called the Master of Manipulation.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
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My Cold, Dead Fingers The Naked Curmudgeon by Dan Culberson
0December 22, 2012
The Naked Curmudgeon curmudgeon n [origin unknown] (1577) a crusty, ill-tempered, and usu. old man. naked adj 6: devoid of concealment or disguise. Attempting to cover everything that annoys me, Dan Culberson.
Here’s what gets me.
Does it have to take an English major to explain the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution and put to rest this unjustifiable crutch of the right-wing, gun-toting fanatics and their conservative supporters?
For those of you who don’t remember, Amendment II states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Even for those of you who do remember, Amendment II states “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
That is what it says word for word, comma for comma, capitalization for capitalization. Notice that the subject is “Militia,” the verb is “shall not be infringed,” and the sentence becomes “A well regulated Militia shall not be infringed.”
“What about the bits between commas?” you say? Those are two appositional phrases, and an apposition is “a grammatical construction in which a noun or pronoun is followed by another that explains it.”
The subject, a noun (See how it works?), is followed by “being necessary to the security of a free State,” and it is followed by “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” in order to explain “a well regulated Militia,” the subject of the sentence.
The subject cannot be “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” because you cannot put a single comma between the subject and the verb of a sentence. You cannot write “The dog, ran around the yard.” You can write “The dog, being frightened by the gunfire, ran around the yard,” because now we have two commas separating the subject and the verb. You can also write “The dog, being frightened by the gunfire, the pet of the neighbor, ran around the yard.”
That sentence is not “The pet of the neighbor, ran around the yard,” because that would be ungrammatical, just as “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” is ungrammatical and therefore not the sentence of Amendment II.
“The right of the people to keep and bear Arms” is an apposition that explains the subject, “a well regulated Militia,” just as the other apposition, “being necessary to the security of a free State,” does. It is a “Militia” that is “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,” which is necessary to the security of a free State and which shall not be infringed.
In other words, the citizens of the United States have the right to keep and bear Arms in “a well regulated Militia,” not to stockpile weapons at home and to carry a gun around with them in some Old West mentality.
And what did the sheriff in the Old West do to maintain order? Do the words “Check your guns at the door” strike a familiar note? That didn’t mean “Inspect your guns to ensure that they are in proper working order.” That meant “Turn your guns in at the door. It’s too dangerous for you to carry guns here.”
Now, the possibility of everyone having a concealed weapon might deter a few criminal acts, but the probability that hotheads and teenagers carrying a weapon could use it in a moment of unbridled emotion is far greater.
Sir William Blackstone (1723-80), a British jurist and Oxford instructor who was the first at a British university to teach English law as opposed to Roman law (See how those appositions work?), wrote in his great work Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-69), “It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”
I believe it is better that ten crimes be committed than one innocent victim be killed by a convenient handgun.
Luke Woodham, a teenager in Pearl, Mississippi, who is spending the rest of his life in prison for murdering his mother and two fellow students in October 1997 when he was 16, kept a map on his bedroom wall with the slogan “One Nation Under My Gun.” Do we want our immature, impressionable children growing up and believing this heinous claim?
We used to see so-called Amendment II supporters brag “I’ll give up my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”
After a moment of rage, I don’t want those cold, dead fingers to be mine.
I rest my case.
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“The Master” an Exercise in a Waste of Time
0October 13, 2012
“Exercise in a Waste of Time”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
The Master has received good reviews and bad reviews, and this is definitely one of them.
It was directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, known for directing the 1997 Boogie Nights and the 2007 There Will Be Blood, both of which I thought were very good and enjoyable to watch.
On the other hand, between those two excellent films, Anderson directed the 1999 Magnolia and the 2002 Punch-Drunk Love, which I didn’t enjoy.
So, perhaps the story on Anderson is that he makes either good or bad films, which, if true, means that I am looking forward to his next film.
In this film, Anderson was supposedly inspired by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, but, if so, the story has been fictionalized, and there are no references to either the man or the religion.
The story takes place mostly in 1950, but there are flashbacks to World War II and some background on one of the characters, Freddie Quell, played by Joaquin Phoenix, and Quell’s service in the U.S. Navy and the South Pacific.
Freddie has emotional disturbances from his wartime experiences, and when he gets out of the Navy, he has trouble keeping a job because of his obsession with sex and his alcoholism, which he feeds by making his own hootch from whatever ingredients he finds at hand.
Then Freddie meets Lancaster Dodd, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who claims to be a doctor, writer, and theoretical philosopher.
Dodd, who is called The Master by his followers, tells Freddie, “I do many, many things.”
Freddie inspires Dodd, who claims that his teachings can allow people to access their past lives, and that his process exercises can even cure such diseases as leukemia.
Dodd’s wife, Peggy, played by Amy Adams, seems to have just as much influence in The Cause, as it is called, and Laura Dern even shows up as one of The Master’s converts.
The story moves from on board a boat to New York City, to Philadelphia, to Phoenix, Arizona, and finally to England, but it could have been edited better.
Both Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and even Amy Adams deserve much better.
The Master is quirky, thought provoking, interesting, but also boring, much too long, doesn’t pay off, and in the end is a colossal waste of everyone’s time.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
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“Hysteria” about the Singular Most Popular Sex Toy
0June 23, 2012
“Singular Most Popular Sex Toy”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
Hysteria is about the invention of a device that is widely used, but not commonly discussed, and when it is, usually there are snickers and Monty Python nudges of “Know what I mean? Know what I mean?”
And I am not talking about the candy bar.
The word “hysteria” comes from the Greek word meaning a woman’s womb, and in the 1800s when it was used to mean a psychoneurosis marked by emotional excitability and disturbances of the psychic, sensory, and visceral functions leading to behavior exhibiting overwhelming or unimaginable fear or emotional excess, doctors in England believed that behavior in women was caused by their uterus, and the way to treat them and to cure that behavior was to apply stimulation to the woman’s organ.
What I don’t understand is why any woman paid a doctor to treat her that way for the all-purpose catchword of hysteria would go back to him and pay him again for treatment when she could just treat herself at home for free.
All puns intended.
The story begins in 1880 in London, and Hugh Dancy plays Dr. Mortimer Granville.
Dr. Granville interviews for the job as assistant to Dr. Robert Dalrymple, who asks Dr Granville, “But tell me, Doctor, what do you know of hysteria?”
Dr. Dalrymple says that the work of treating women for hysteria is tedious and boring, but Dalrymple is London’s leading specialist in women’s medicine, and his waiting room is always full of women waiting to be treated by him.
Know what I mean? Know what I mean?
Dr. Dalrymple has two daughters, Emily and Charlotte, who is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, and they, too, are doctors. Emily lives at home and is a phrenologist, or a scientist who feels the bumps on someone’s head, which determines the person’s mental faculties and character.
Charlotte, however, is at odds with her father, because she is always borrowing money to keep her Settlement House in the East End open, where she treats poor people and many women and children. When we first meet Charlotte, she is having an argument with her father and storms out of his office, slamming every door behind her.
Hysteria takes too long to get started, could use some good editing, but eventually gets around to the discovery of the singular most popular sex toy.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
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My visit to Windsor Castle
0April 14, 2012
Sylvia and I took a day trip up the Thames river to the Royal Castle one summers day in August. Windsor Castle sits on 13 acres in the country in Berkshire county England. Coincidentally, I grew up in the Berkshires in New England not that I lay any claim to royalty or the castle, but a visit to Windsor is awe inspiring.
To give you some perspective, Windsor Castle was originally built by William the Conqueror in the decade after the Norman conquest of 1066. It is surround by the beautiful Windsor park In all it is the size of Boulder….well nearly
Sylvia was American English. She looked very English. We were young in love and on an adventure. She studied fashion design at Bournemouth College. I was a staffer at International Times in London.
The castle is so big it was used as a fortress and was a small town complete with everything for self sustainability. Even today as the Royals official castle and sometime summer home it maintains a staff of 400 just to keep it going.
We were drawn to one part of the castle the Crimson drawing room which stretched on for ever.
And then there was the Kings Bedroom also in crimson.
Anyway, if you do go to England this summer or any summer, do go to Windsor Castle if you want to be blown away. Yes, but go in the summer. The winter is too cold and dreary. and make sure the Royals aren’t there, because they won’t let you in.
From Royal Boulder
Jann Scott
