The Man Who Knew Too Much
Alfred Hitchcock, 1934

Just watched the original British version with Peter Lorre as the heavy. Charming 30s clunkiness from early in Hitch’s career. The orchestra scene was simpler, but delivered on the rising tension. What surprised me based on the relative restraint of the American remake was how the ending of this one turned into a shootout with quite a high body count. It also didn’t go easy on the kidnapped girl, who looked truly traumatized in the end even when her dad was telling her she was fine. Low-nonsense crime drama. Good stuff.

Asked ChapGPT to write me a haiku about Mr. Lorre:

Eyes wide and haunting,
Peter Lorre’s eerie presence,
Forever unique.

Not A+ work, really. How about:

More than just evil
Eyes reveal a broken heart
Disguised as weirdness

2023-04-23

Didn’t mean to stalk these people through the woods tonight, but the shot turned out okay.

2023-04-18

Indeed

2023-04-08

Goodwill Sunday

One man’s creepy doll is another man’s bargain. Stopped by our local Goodwill to look for … something … and found everything else.

2023-02-28

2023-02-10

Ikiru, Take 2

I did finally watch Ikiru last night. It’s an amazing film, of course. I somehow never realized that “Parks and Rec” borrowed it’s opening premise from this film, with Leslie Knope finding purpose in becoming the irresistible force pushing the creation of an Indiana park through the unmovable object of city hall bureaucracy.

The soulful Takashi Shimura is impossible not to feel with as he absorbs the news of his terminal diagnosis and reacts first by abandoning himself to all the pleasures of distraction he had faithfully avoided and then, finally, by deciding to use himself up in “making something” meaningful as his way of emulating the irrepressible, glittering energy of young Miki Odagiri’s character. I loved the extended scene toward the end where all his fellow paper-pushers slowly realize what a truly heroic thing Watanabe accomplished as they gradually get more and more drunk at his wake.

Most poignant of all, for me, are Watanabe’s unrequited feelings of longing to connect with is grown son before his death, something he abandons as hopeless, thinking his son cares only about his retirement bonus and savings. Kurosawa does not attempt to solve the questions of the meaning life, but he does suggest that a bit of redemption can be found in overcoming the inertia of existence to serve others before we go.

2023-01-20

Let There Be

2023-01-20

“Salamanders in a carnivorous pitcher plant” - Nature’s Pitfall by Samantha Stephens © Samantha Stephens | cupoty.com

2023-01-20

A single shot of the earth and the moon taken by the Korean lunar orbiter Danuri.

2023-01-21

Downtown Saturday night

2023-01-15

2023-01-04

Had our annual fondu Christmas extravaganza with the entire fam. It’s fun over function but always memorable.

2022-12-28

The brave men of Fort Cody remain ever vigilant in North Platte, Nebraska.

2022-12-29

2022-12-29

Cyrus Made Great by God

I’ve been loving a newsletter called Areopagus by a man named Sheehan, who calls himself the Cultural Tutor. Each issue includes seven short-ish cultural lessons about music, art, a historical figure, and much more.

The most recent issue included a short biography of Cyrus the Great (600-530 BC), who conquered much of the world, forming “the largest empire ever seen until then, and the first in the world to be truly intercontinental, multiethnic, and multicultural.” Cyrus, king of Persia, is the one who finally defeated the Babylonians and insisted on sending the Jewish people back to their own homeland from their season of exile.

Cyrus did not worship the Lord God of Israel, but he did give Israel’s God credit for his success in building his own vast empire:

“This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them’” (2 Chronicles 36:23).

And this is what the Lord God of Israel said about Cyrus, who did not worship Him in spite of knowing that God is the one who made him great (Isaiah 45:1-7):

This is what the Lord says to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I take hold of to subdue nations before him and to strip kings of their armor, to open doors before him so that gates will not be shut:

I will go before you and will level the mountains; I will break down gates of bronze and cut through bars of iron.

I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name.

For the sake of Jacob my servant, of Israel my chosen, I summon you by name and bestow on you a title of honor, though you do not acknowledge me.

I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me,

so that from the rising of the sun to the place of its setting people may know there is none besides me. I am the Lord, and there is no other.

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the Lord, do all these things.

Who else has God made great for a season in order to fulfill His own purposes for the world? Who among them knew it was God that did it and still refused to bow before Him?

2022-12-17

Opting Out of Feelings

I’ve been meaning to see the classic Japanese film Ikuru for a long time. It’s about a man, a faithful government bureaucrat, who learns he is going to die and begins thinking back over how he has spent his life. One of the first things he recalls is the death of his wife when their only son was young.

The man and his son and her parents, perhaps, are riding in a car. The boy is staring ahead at the hearse they are following and panics when it turns a corner and he thinks they are going to lose track of it.

I turned it off shortly after that. I will finish it soon, maybe after Christmas. I’m actually assuming that it will be very life affirming in the end. In that moment, though, I knew I just didn’t want to feel all the closely observed feelings that make a powerful film so effective. I didn’t want to cry for all the vulnerabilities of my own only son or my own aging father. I decided I wanted to watch something blow up while nobody’s father walked away from the explosion without looking back. Weakness or self-care? Failed or functional masculinity? Yes, probably.
2022-12-19

Coco unleashed last spring.
2022-11-26

M

Directed by Fritz Lang, 1931

Had somehow never seen this film. I knew it was about a serial killer of children, and that it was German. I had forgotten it was made in 1931 as the Nazis were coming to power. It doesn’t deal with Nazis, but apparently the Nazis had the power to stop it from being made before being convinced by Lang of the content of the story.

Not surprising that it regularly appears on the best films of all time lists. Working on the edge of filmmaking technology in sound, lighting, editing, and camera work, the movie is still so impressive and also remains a remarkable document of the era.

After establishing that the story is about the hunt for a killer of children, the movie spends most of the second act observing how the police’s obsessive search terrorizes the citizens of Berlin both by failing to find their man and by intruding on every aspect of public life. The criminal class decides that they must make it their business to find the killer to get the police to back off the constant surveillance and raids. Loved the scene that cut back and forth between the city leaders and the criminal bosses holding simultaneous strategy sessions in extremely smoked-filled rooms.

The ending was even more surprising. Instead of simply killing murderer once he is caught, the criminals and poor of the city hold an impromptu trial, complete with a defense attorney, to legitimize their execution of him. Although Lorre’s character insists that he cannot help himself, they argue that the reason they must kill him is because he will use the insanity plea to escape punishment and kill again. It’s the same argument I remember having in a class in college.
2022-11-28

The geese love to hang out on the baseball fields this time of year.
2022-11-28

Baylor Humanities Prof Alan Jacobs:

Students today … have grown up in a media environment in which, as far as I can see, language is almost exclusively used for three purposes: to praise cultural friends, to condemn or mock cultural enemies, and to declare the Truth. The idea that language might be used to explore a way of seeing the world without judging that way — without issuing a thumbs-up or thumbs-down emoji — is pretty foreign to most of them, especially since most of the literature they’ve been assigned in school is either intrinsically didactic or is taught to them didactically.
2022-11-30

Glorious progress

2022-11-09