Movies Watched -- The Marriage Circle (1924)

92 minute running time, which is long for a silent movie. Lubitsch, 1923 or 1924 … Viennese high society, unhappily married women, seduction, jealousy, betrayal, etc. Interesting historical artifact, but not a must-see.

Find another doctor, please

Movies Watched -- Hustlers (2019)

104 minute running time, so not too far over the 100 minute upper limit. What are we supposed to think about these strippers who drugged and robbed their clients? They try to conflate the Wall Street mortgage securities “fraud” with the crimes these ladies were committing, but it doesn’t fly. Could there be a more improbable stripper than Constance Wu? She’s obviously sweet and smart, probably grew up in Richmond, Virginia (she did), she can’t dance to save her life, just absurd. Is there a single Chinese-American girl working at Scores? Jennifer Lopez is a more believable stripper (and looks amazing for her age (my age)), but still, none of them was sufficiently dumb and desperate enough to do this. There were some funny bits, but not enough to outweigh the morally repugnant story. Avoid.

Anyone can own one nice suit. You wanna look at their shoes, their watches, briefcases. [I laughed]

Movies Watched -- The Kid (1921)

50 minute running time … silent movie (1921) … Charlie Chaplin comedy (and drama) … like all of Chaplin’s work, it’s a must-see, green-go.

Please love and care for this orphan child

Movies Watched -- Sabrina (1954)

113 minute running time, so about 20 minutes too long. Romantic comedy from the mid 50’s … Humphrey Bogart in an unusual role since he’s such an unlikely sex symbol (54 years old then) or comic actor … was supposed to be Cary Grant playing “Linus,” but he dropped out at the last minute. Anyway, the movie really belongs to Audrey Hepburn (24 years old then), who is wonderful. The first half of the movie is weaker when she isn’t front and center, but once she is, it becomes charming and lovable. The script is uneven, apparently written on the fly, so some parts are funnier than others. But in the end, this gets a green-go rating.

Mon frère a une jolie fille

Movies Watched -- Way Down East (1920)

145 minute running time? I don’t remember it being that long, but it was too long … D.W. Griffith picture starring Lillian Gish … silent movie (1920) … country girl tricked into a mock marriage and its aftermath … pretty amazing stunt scene involving an ice floe on a fast river. This was a John Farr recommendation.

Tell me more

Movies Watched -- To Catch a Thief (1955)

106 minute running time so only six minutes too long. More Hitchcock. Sunburned Cary Grant at age 51, I’m not sure he could have gotten it on with 26-year-old Princess Grace, that ship had sailed. Uncomfortable to watch the Princess speed around those cliffs in the south of France considering how she died. Story isn’t that great, but the dialogue is pretty risque, a lot more sexual double entendres than I’m used to with mid-50s pics. Doesn’t get a coveted green-go rating, but I’ll have to see more 1955 movies before I make the final decision.

Palaces are for royalty. We're just common people with a bank account.

My Beloved Dad

From Chris Buckley’s interview on Booknotes:

“I call it [Vietnam guilt] sort of a sense of having let my country down. James Fallows has written about this very eloquently. The point he made, the point that I reiterated, was that people of my, call it class, if you will--the privileged class, the upper-middle class, whatever you want to call it--prolonged that war by not participating in it because if it had been us getting killed, our parents would have been on the phone to the congressman and the president who were running this country and saying, `Stop this goddamn war.' But as it was, it was the blue-collar kids who bore the brunt of it. And so I was left with--yeah, call them feelings of profound sadness.“

You feel profound sadness for Chris Buckley because he can’t just be himself, he’s always trying too hard to be funny or clever, and he should just say, “My dad is an asshole,” which you know is what he really thinks.

The Gilded Ghetto

From Leslie Chang’s interview on Booknotes:

“… at the time that I knew her that was what she was trying to sort of realize her dream, was just gambling these amounts of money on speculation, especially the commodities market … But my mother's reason, which is the reason why many of these women do that kind of thing, is that--I think that she didn't know what to do with her life. You know, she was a little bit bored but very smart, and she had no other outlet. And so stocks were an interesting thing. And she has a lot of friends who do play stocks and read all about the different companies that are on the exchange. And I think that that's a way of channeling their energy into something that they feel is productive because they never had the chance to do that.“

All members of the Dragon Ladies’ Technical Analysis Association.

Disillusioned with Liberals

From David Brock’s interview on Booknotes:

“… at Berkeley I did become disillusioned with what I saw of left liberalism … I found the left to be intellectually intolerant. This was the very beginning of the whole PC movement, the PC controversy, where speakers who came to Berkeley such as Jeane Kirkpatrick were being shouted down and not permitted to present their own points of view. I found that even some of the arguments that I made as a newspaper editor on the campus daily were attacked. For example, I wrote a column praising the Grenada invasion in 1983, and the argument there was never on the merits of what I had said in the column. It was simply that an editor of the daily paper, the Berkeley Daily, a progressive newspaper, couldn't hold such obscene views. There was a lot of that at Berkeley. I wouldn't say that made me conservative, but it did make me somewhat disillusioned with liberals. I had always thought liberals were for freedom of thought and freedom of the press and all of that, and it turned out not to be the case in my experience.“

The Embodiment of Liberal Activism

From William Chafe’s interview on Booknotes:

“[Another] secret that [Allard Lowenstein was] dealing with is the fact that he discovers -- says in his diary when he's 14 years old that he doesn't know how to deal with the fact that he has these very strong impulses -- sexual impulses toward young men. We're talking about 1943, a period of time in our history when there is no cultural sanction, no space, no room for talking about sexual impulses and ambivalences; no room for support for people who may have homosexual impulses. And so he says at that point, “The only way I think I can deal with this is to make good friends, to make best friends.” And that's how he does choose to deal with it.“