vertigo

after many promises that vertigo was not a scary movie, i watched my first hitchcock film this past weekend! i knew hitchcock made psycho and the birds, both of which i had been warned by several people who know me well to never watch, so i was a little apprehensive about vertigo. i am happy to report that i enjoyed vertigo, and that i'm looking forward to watching rear window and north by northwest someday.

vertigo is a movie about a retired san francisco detective with crippling acrophobia that causes vertigo. he is hired to follow the wife of a college friend around who appears to be somewhat off kilter. the film stars james stewart and kim novak. even after seeing the movie, i still get jimmy stewart mixed up with a singer (maybe john stewart?) and a night show host (perhaps jimmy kimmel or another john stewart?).

i enjoyed the movie, but thought the ending was kind of anticlimactic, with judy falling out of the tower because the nun surprised her. i also thought some of the acting was awkward and the kissing scenes were painful to watch. the funniest (and most awful) part would have to be where midge shows scottie the portrait she made of herself in carlotta's place. so hilarious, but also so, so, so terrible.

bad news bears

a friend of mine often makes statements about bad news bears in conversation. for some reason, i thought it had to do with making decisions, but just recently discovered that it is actually in reference to a movie.

bad news bears, which came out in 1976, is about an alcoholic ex-professional baseball player who coaches and tries to turn a losing little league team around. there were two sequels to the original - the bad news bears in breaking training and the bad news bears go to japan - and even a tv series on CBS! the original movie was recently remade and released in 2005, although i don't remember hearing anything about it.

according to wikipedia, what made the film notable for the time was the amount of vulgarity and politically incorrect statements said by the child-actors. the film also touched upon the issue of adults who value winning as more important than sportsmanship or the enjoyment of the game. unfortunately, wikipedia did not tell me who won the big championship game that i'm guessing the bears made it all the way to, so i may have to watch the movie one day to find out.

as for what my friend says, i'm still not clear what she means by "bad news bears", but i'm pretty sure she's not talking about baseball.

shel silverstein

my exposure to poetry began at a young age with shel silverstein. i loved his fun, whimsical poems and the funny but sometimes disturbing drawings. countless hours were spent pouring over a light in the attic, where the sidewalk ends, falling up, and the giving tree. i even remember reciting one of his poems for school - something along the lines of "homework oh homework / i hate you, you stink / i wish i could wash you / away in the sink". the shel silverstein website is awesome - some of his poems are displayed with animations! this makes me wish even more that the internet was around when i was a kid.

i had assumed that shel silverstein was just a poet and was surprised to learn that he was, along with many other things, a song writer for many famous artists. between serving in the u.s. army and writing stage and screen plays, shel silverstein wrote quite a few songs for johnny cash. he even won a grammy for "a boy named sue". not bad for a man who wrote poems about toucans and anteaters.

batman!

it's been years since i last watched cartoons, but one of my favorites was batman. batman was awesome because he didn't have any super powers. being fabulously wealthy and devastatingly good looking was a huge bonus, but he was just a normal human being using what was available to him. the appeal of the character was that it made me feel that yes! i, too, could become an avenger in the night!

i was actually a little resistant to the cartoon in the beginning, having seen some of the tv series before. the cheesy acting and the cartoon drawn screen flashes of "pow" and "bam" and other sound effects were a turn-off, but the truth is that the show also frightened me because the eyes of batman and robin looked so beady through their masks. also, seeing the bad guys as real living beings made my imagination run wild.

batman, created by bob kane and bill finger, was published by dc comics. batman first appeared in detective comics #27 in 1939 and then grew from there. at one point, batman and superman even teamed up! batman has a long history, and it's neat to read about how it had developed over the years.

i was a huge fan of batman after watching the batman cartoons in the 90's and batman forever. around the time that i stopped watching cartoons, a fascinating new series, batman beyond, was starting up. i've also seen batman begins, which exceeded any and all expectations i had. i was a little skeptical about batman begins after hearing so much about batman and robin being a complete joke. in that movie, apparently george clooney wore a fun batman suit!

star trek

until i was in high school and finally watched a new hope, i would get star trek and star wars mixed up. the titles were too similar and i had friends who were obsessed with either or both. having never seen any movies or episodes of star trek/wars, all i knew (or so i thought) was that they were about fighting, stars and people in space.

star trek, the creation of gene roddenberry, is a huge franchise. the star trek world seems pretty elaborate. nations and races were developed, alliances created, battles fought, and some pretty amazing technology was created to allow travel faster than the speed of light. how does that work? does that mean that everyone else not traveling at the speed of light turns really old? or maybe it all cancels out because everyone is travelling at the same speed. my understanding of physics and special relativity is too rusty to argue this point.

computer games, novels, fan fict, and an attraction in las vegas have spawned off from this show. there are seven star trek series. ten (!!) star trek movies have been made, with an eleventh in production. i don't know how i've made it this far in life without having seen any star trek!

i'd heard of captain kirk, although only through martial arts, when somebody nicknamed the stomach throw the "captain kirk throw". when i was young, i went to a space center in florida where they have the handprints of astronauts and famous "space" people preserved in concrete for people to see. i remember comparing my hand print to that of either captain kirk, dr. spock, or some famous star trek person and thinking it was fake because the hand print was incredibly large.