It's Just A Movie... But Is It?

My friend and fellow blogger Bill McDonald aka Morongobill, said in reference to a comment I made about some movie once while riding down to Sammy's Camera, "it's only a movie." But is it? Isn't it more? You could also say, it's just a book. A lot of people over the centuries have said just that. Bill has a preference for books, but none for movies. Like most people he sees movies as nothing but entertainment, like a fictional book, just a story, with no value beyond that. But is that true? Think about it. Non-fiction is easy basically it's history. But, let's look at fictional books for a moment. In fiction, the writer has a tougher job than a non-fiction author, he must create a world that we the readers recognize, understand, and accept, at the very least as possible, if not being our own world. He must create characters that fit the same parameters. For this reason the job is at the very best difficult, at the worst impossible as illustrated by thousands of bad books. For instance regarding bad books,  I started reading a book called  "A Game of Thrones," a fantasy which with the others in its series is the basis of a TV show. It was recommended by a guy I work with, who watches the TV show.  So far I'm about 30 pages into it and the ignorance and violence, the psychotic nature of the characters is disturbing and unreal. It's set in a supposed time I suppose similar to the middle ages.
But, you can't say it's just a book, I'd like to, but a lot of people enjoy and believe the story it tells, and see the characters in themselves. See the fantasy world disturbing as it is as possible.
To me most movies, and books, are windows into worlds I'll never experience or into the past. But some like "Game of Thrones," and its ilk, like a lot of video games are windows into worlds most of us could not, or would not, or should not recognize.
Thinking about it I have to add: It seems that all of it, movies, TV and books of all kinds are descending to the lowest common denominator at the speed of light, as are people themselves and life in general in many ways. I'll leave the how and why to your imagination.

Lee Murray      

Different Looks Into The Past

Not the girl or her Mother

I've posted on this subject before. I'm a fan of old movies. I've said it's much the same as having a window into the past. I'm also told I live in the past, I prefer to think of it as being very aware of the past. I annoy one friend because I'm constantly saying I worked there, lived there, so and so lived there, and with him being a person of the present, I get on his nerves I guess. But in many ways it's how I relate to the present by being aware of my past, plus I can't help thinking other people are as interested as I am, which isn't always true I guess.
Also, as I get older, I see people that I knew when they were younger, my parents, relatives, friends and can't help remembering them as they were. This has led me to the awareness that every single old person I see was once a kid.  This is something that all kids should be aware of and few if any are. Every old person they see, their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents anybody 40, 50, 60 years old, or ninety, was, inconceivable as it is, once just like them, young, and vibrant with all the possibilities of youth. Too, they, much as they ignore or don't realize it, given enough time will get old, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, ninety, just like all people.
My aunt just passed away, she was 88, and I looking at her saw her as she was, frail and ancient, but looking deeper also saw her as she once was, when we moved to California in '63 when she was 40. Part of her obituary was a grouping of pictures when she was a kid, then a young woman and one as she was in her 80's.
It was amazing and strange to see how time changes us.
I never knew her when she was a kid, and vaguely remember her as a young woman, she was in her twenties when I was born, 26 or so, so my earliest real memory is when we moved and she was 40 or so. Same with my parents, I like most people always saw my parents as old. I think it's just the nature of age, we're born and our parents are old, to us. As we grow up, they grow older, always seeming old. But as old age arrives speaking from personal experience all of  a sudden they look really old, ancient. My father passed away at 71, but due to illness and age, he looked 80-85, until you looked, really looked, and saw the young man trapped inside. My mother is still here, at 84, and I see the frail 84 year old, but at the same time see her as she was my whole life, in addition I see pictures and see her as she was before I was born, as a teenager, as a child. This is an awareness and one way of looking into history.  Being aware of the past is important. But it only became important as I became old myself, don't ask me why. In my earlier years I ignored or was annoyed by old people too, now I wish I'd cared more and picked their brains. At the time I didn't realize what they knew or how important it really was.
As I said earlier, I see old movies as a window to the past. Whether from the 80's or nineties, or the 20's, 30's or whenever, it's true. The older they are the more it's true, you see things as they were and as they probably aren't anymore. Streets, buildings, stores, cars, people, how people dressed, it goes on and on.
How many people of today in their teens or twenties do you think know that through the 50's and into the 60's men actually put on suits just to go visit family on Sunday, or that women wore dresses and hats and gloves when they went out to lunch, or just to go shopping?  Not many I'll bet, it's true. True not of my parents or people their age, but I remember when older relatives came to visit, all dressed up. But even my father would change his shirt and pants and put on dress shoes when going out.

Not the Mother or Daughter

How would these people people from previous generations react to how "modern" men in their 40's, 50's and 60's are now going everywhere in long shorts or baggy pants, some with the crotch at their knees like a 10 or 15 year old, (who shouldn't dress this way either), and sneakers, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap turned backward or to the side? Or "modern" women, also in their 40's, 50's or 60's dressing like a teen, or speaking bluntly a whore, thinking it makes them look young and pretty? It doesn't. Others wear shorts, tube tops, belly shirts, sometimes so tight you wonder how. If they were 18 and 100 lbs they'd look great, but unfortunately they aren't. So our attitudes change, or do they? Hats for men I relate to the TV show Leave It To Beaver, in the show Beaver always wore a baseball hat, in the generations since, the baseball hat became the hat of choice. His parents were the previous generation, my parents generation, and dressed like adults, not like ignorant children, as many of my generation do and subsequent generations who dress even worse, if that's possible.
While on the subject, whats the deal with later generations and tattoos?  Lately you can't see a girl or guy under 50 or so who's body doesn't look like the painted whatever in a freak show in a cheap circus. I saw a girl, well a "girl" that was 30-40 years old, yesterday in line ahead of me with her teenage daughter, at the supermarket. The daughter probably 16-17-18 was wearing the bottom of a white thong bikini and a white t-shirt over it. Not bad looking, and a nice ass, the bikini bottom was pulled right up, exposing her... well take a guess, when she bent over to get the beer off the bottom of the cart. I was right behind them getting a great view, right under her shirt all the way to her neck. She was bare naked under the t-shirt, small cone shaped tits hanging down, small brown nipples looked half an inch long, as she bent over. When she was standing next to the cart you could see the dimples where her nipples pressed into the shirt. She looked back at me, looking at her, probably thought "old perv," then squatted down, pulling the last 24-pack out, and stood up putting it on the counter. She had tattoos on her arm and one leg up to the knee, but it was her mother, I assume her mother that I couldn't look away from. She was a blond, fatish, not fat, huge boobs with long nipples, fish belly white, clearly wearing no bra, under a much too tight white tank top and red shorts that exposed everything, with flip flops. In other words just normal dress for a middle aged woman in this day and age, (I'm being sarcastic, if you failed to recognize it). She had extensive tattoos on both arms up over her shoulders, and visible on her back, and on her belly through the semi transparent shirt and on both legs starting on her ankles going up, under her shorts, to I can only imagine where. Frankly, it was disgusting, but I couldn't look away, her breasts hung down the long nipples visible sticking out against her tank top, it was cold in the store. The thin knit fabric of her shorts pulled deep into her pussy, her ass cheeks half exposed, she might as well have been naked. I tried to look away but couldn't, every guy young and old in the store stared at her.  Guys are no better pertaining to the tattoos, but for some reason I find the tattooing itself less objectionable on men than on women. 
I remember reading somewhere, maybe Cayce, that Atantians were being reborn and they would indulge in body art as it was part of their culture in their previous lives. Interesting, and would account for the huge upsurge in tattoo's on men and women. Interesting if true.
I've been watching old movies for most of my life, since my teens anyway. I have a friend who basically thinks I'm an idiot, which would be the opinion of most people, when I go off on how they're like looking through a window in time. Most people are concerned with today and tomorrow. Few accurately remember, or care about what happened yesterday, or a year ago, or ten. Personally I'm cursed with a memory that goes back to a few years after birth. I don't remember a lot, but I do remember. The movies, and TV to a lesser degree, open the window wide. My friend and others I'm sure are tied to the drama, the fact that these are fiction, or at best fictionalized, stories, nothing more. Just entertainment. 
But forget the story, in this instance, it, whatever it is, isn't important or relevant. Look behind the story, look at how they act, how they dress, how they talk, the cars, horses, carriages, accessories, canes, dwellings, stores, streets, houses, apartments, furniture, decorations, landscaping, facial hair or lack of it, motorcycles, bicycles, dogs, cats, wild animals, well you get the idea.
You like many may think why do I care about old fashioned crap? Well the truth is first you get to see everything in context, two yes movies are fiction and all, but like today they had to be believable, all of what went on had to be consistent with what really happened, wearing a hat, driving a car, names of stores, etc. So if you look under the fiction, you get a good idea of what life was like in the teens, twenties, thirties, and on.
So you see there are different ways to see the past, what we remember accurately or not, and by watching the past on film or tape.

Lee Murray

Bad Guys but Great Actors

If I had to pick I'd say my favorites are the gangster and film noir movies from the thirties to the early or mid fifties.  Anything with Cagney, Bogart, Robinson in them. There were others of course, Raft was great too, or Muni. The original Scarface in 1932 had Paul Muni with George Raft as the coin flipping sidekick. It was a fantastic movie, much better than the Pachino remake. I'll never understand what makes some of these actors believe they can do it better than the originals. Generally they can't. Modern gangster movies, the Godfather, Goodfellas, Resevoir Dogs, etc. are good, but not as good, I don't know why, as movies they may actually beeee better, at least to some, but I prefer the older films.  Back to Raft for a minute, he played a cop here and there, but was known for his gangster roles, and real life friendship with real gangsters. In my opinion he was the most real onsceen, watching the movie you tend to forget you're watching somebody act, and see a real person instead.  The same thing was true about Cagney, but Raft was even more real.  Bogart and Robinson were good, but they were actors and watching them you don't forget that. I've said for years that in his later movies, The Maltese Falcon, High Sierra, et al, Bogart was playing Bogart, the same thing applies to Robinson, but Raft and to a slightly lesser degree Cagney came across as real. Which isn't to say I don't like Bogart or Robinson, the movies are great, if I had to pick favorites, for Robinson it would be Little Caesar from 1931, an excellent film, at the end after he's gunned down by the cops, his last words are, "Is this the end...of Rico?" Then he dies in a ditch.  For Bogart my favorite is probably High Sierra.  

But the best in the gangster genre is James Cagney. Nobody did it better. From Public Enemy in 1931 through White Heat, and on to the end he never lost his touch.  Speakig of White Heat most people think it's the ultimate gangster portrayal, a psychotic mama's boy with an itchy trigger finger.  Nobody but Cagney could have brought it off, Cody Jarrett was not a guy you'd want as your best friend.  It's where the line "Top of the World Ma"  came from.  But my personal favorite is Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye from 1950, similar to White Heat, but more real. Cagney's Ralph Cotter is a genuine SOB and makes no bones about it. Escaping from a prison camp, he kills his buddy as they escape, then uses his buddy's sister who's waiting in a car to help them get away, then blackmails and seduces her, until he's ready to move on to a younger richer girl, he kills, and robs, and sets up crooked cops, etc. Finally the sister catches on, tells him to Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye then shoots him dead. The film was banned in Ohio as "a sordid, sadistic presentation of brutality and an extreme presentation of crime with explicit steps in commission." You can't ask for a better endorsement than that...

Lee Murray

A Time Machine exists

sort of...  Not in the Jules Verne way with Rod Taylor sitting in a seat as he's wizzed into the past or future. But it does exist, and I'm willing to bet most who've seen it never realized it. I don't know what you think of if you think of time machine, but I think how great it would be to watch what actually happened at the sermon on the mount, or the building of the pyramids, or DaVinci as he paints the Cistine Chapel, or Van Gogh as he cuts off his ear, or the Wright brothers taking off, etc.  My other idea is load a jeep and machine gun and go back to the old west and show them how robbing a stagecoach or bank should be done, I know, not a good idea.
Anyway, I not too long ago realized in one sense we do have a time machine, it's old movies, or tv for that matter. I've always loved movies from the thirties, forties, and fifties. I at some point realized that if you watch the stuff going on around the fiction/story, you're watching the past, as it was 30-50-70 or more years ago. You'll see the cars, airplanes, trucks, and trains in context, in use, not static displays in museums. You'll see how people really dressed, hairstyles, talked, how they traveled, the stores that existed at the time, streets as they were, offices, stores, homes as they were, you'll see life as it was lived.  
Since I started watching this time machine, I've realized that we today are virtually no different if you take away the computers. With that exception, and the super casual dress of both men and women, there is little difference. 

Lee Murray