AFI's Latest List

We spent last evening watching the American Film Institutes latest list of 100 films: AFI's 10 Top 10. Naturally, as we went through it, we had a few "ughs!" some "wha?" some "where is?" and a few "wrong place." But we agreed with many of the choices.

I've now had a chance to look over the nominated films--50 in each category--and discovered most our "where is" queries are within the nomination list. I also discovered that some of the films I thought were in the wrong category also had nominations in what I thought were the correct category. For example, I think Bull Durham is one of the great romantic comedies of all time. It was nominated as a romantic comedy but made the top 10 as a sports film. Field of Dreams (what is it about Kevin Costner on the list?) was nominated as a sports film but made the top 10 as a fantasy film.

Only one of the Lord of the Rings cycle was nominated, and The Fellowship of the Ring came in number 2 on the fantasy list. If The Godfather Parts One and Two can both make the top 10 of gangster films, and Toy Story 1 and 2 are both nominated, there's no excuse for not even nominating the Oscar(TM)-winning The Return of the King. And, frankly, I thought they should both have been nominated in the epic category. After all, that fantasy The Ten Commandments was on the epic list.

I think that one less Marion Morrison film would not have hurt the western list in order to make room for The Magnificent Seven, a movie that even I have to stop and watch if I'm flipping through the TV channels and it is on. I cannot believe it wasn't in the top 10.

I've seen all 10 of the animation and science fiction winners, and eight of the gangster and epic films. My worst category (much to my surprise): courtroom drama, where I'm only certain I've seen four films. I've seen parts of many more.

While it did not surprise me to find that 2001: A Space Odyssey was the number one on the science fiction list, I'm still disappointed. While it is visually impressive (for the time it was made), it is boring beyond belief. A snore. I think that my friends who were on drugs the day we did a class trip to the Zigfield Theatre in New York to see it in 1970 were probably the ones who enjoyed it the most. I know I'm never getting those three hours back and I need them right now. I say this as someone who loved Sir Arthur's writing and I really like the short story "The Sentinel," which spawned the movie. But the movie is ponderous. I once heard someone say there's maybe 20 minutes of dialogue in it and last night Len said most of that is between Dave and Hal.

I was so pleased that The Day the Earth Stood Still was on the top 10 list. I remember when I first saw it on Saturday Night at the Movies and it still rates at the top of my science fiction list. For those who think science fiction is about ray guns--wrong! It is a way of exploring problems in this life when you can't address it with "reality." As a film, The Day the Earth Stood Still is closely related to The Crucible. It is about the communist witch hunts. I also recommend reading the short story "Farewell to the Master," upon which the film is based.

The other films I think should have made the top 10 lists are Inherit the Wind and Reversal of Fortune for courtroom drama, Lost Horizon for fantasy, A League of Their Own for sports, Iron Giant for animation (Lion King is so overrated) and Some Like It Hot, The American President and The Shop Around the Corner (which has spawned so very many variations) for romantic comedy. All were nominated (Some Like It Hot in the gangster category, not romantic comedy.) The Sure Thing was not even nominated for romantic comedy, but I suppose it is something of an update of It Happened One Night, which made the top 10.

I'm going to have Len and Michael go over the list and see if there are any films which none of us have seen to watch on a family film evening. I failed to mark 28 altogether, although there are many among those I've seen at least part of and some of which I've seen in remakes. A few of the films I've seen parts of, such as Al Pacino's Scarface, I'm not going to try and watch all the way through. Of the films I have seen, there are some I'm not interested in ever watching again. A Clockwork Orange is definitely at the top of that list. It, like Scarface, is just too violent. There's no point in spending all that time hiding my eyes.

I think that AFI should do a list of the top 100 books or stories adapted into movies. Maybe it would get people to read a little more.

Expanding the Franchise, Hobbit Style

Guillermo del Toro is off to New Zealand for the next four years to direct "The Hobbit" and what I've read is either "a sequel to The Hobbit" or "a prequel to The Hobbit." I had hoped to get Guillermo, who is a fan and acquaintance of Len, as one of our "Creative Voices" for the series here at Pierce, since he lives not far away. I guess that isn't happening any time soon.

While I really hoped that Peter Jackson would direct, Guillermo is a good choice and Peter Jackson will produce. Weta is, I presume, doing all the special effects and props.

There's an awful lot of material which could constitute a prequel to The Hobbit, but they've already done a sequel, and it is called "The Lord of the Rings." When I first heard about two films being made, my reaction was "what do you do to fill up the time?" It is a short book and aimed at a very different audience than The Lord of the Rings. The stage play only takes two hours. I know. I've seen it twice. My sister starred in it when she was in high school. She made a fine Bilbo Baggins. (I also caught a children's theatre production of it in Washington, D.C. when my son was little.)

I really started thinking about what might make a movie betwixt The Hobbit and LOTR when I read Heidi MacDonald's report about Guillermo on The Beat and I suddenly had a flash of inspiration: there's the untold story about what Aragorn is up to as a ranger between the time of the Hobbit (when he probably met Bilbo at Elrond's; it's quite clear in the book of the Fellowship of the Ring that they are old friends) and LOTR, such as riding to war with Eowyn's grandfather (referenced in the extended Two Towers), looking for Gollum (in the book of Fellowship of the Ring) and protecting the border with other rangers. Clearly, Legolas and Aragorn have some history (based on the exchanges of the council of Elrond--Legolas might even have been at home when Bilbo visited the Woodland Elves) and somewhere along the way Aragorn and Arwen fell in love and had to deal with her father's disapproval.

That's it! An Aragorn film. I'm there. And so are a lot of my fellow female aging boomers who get the vapors over Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn.

Celebrity Horses at Equine Affaire

I felt like I had a whirlwind visit to Equine Affaire in Pomona, California on Saturday. Usually, I go to do some shopping along with watching some of the clinicians. My time was really limited this year because I could only go one day and I had to get home in time to take care of the Arab prince and change to go to a concert.

But once I saw the schedule, I knew I couldn't leave the fairgrounds before 4 P.M., giving me the opportunity to see presentations of two of the "Celebrity Horses" present at the event. If they had celebrity horses in past years, I must have missed the notice. Or maybe they weren't from a couple of my favorite horse movies.

The notice that clearly caught my attention was that one of the horses who portrayed Shadowfax in the Lord of the Rings would be in attendance. I'm still not sure how he came to be owned by someone in the States when the LotR:TRotK extras video indicated that Blanco was in happy retirement in New Zealand, but there he was.

I decided against carrying my digital SLR because of the weight, but I almost always have my point and shoot Nikon S1 in my bag and that camera is not so good for shooting still photographs, but it isn't bad as a little video camera. So the first video above of the gray horse is Blanco as he's led back in to the exhibit hall to show off some of his tricks. He's a well-trained liberty horse, as the LotR video showed, and a really sweet Andalusian.

The second video, of the black horse, is TC Bey Cedar, the stallion who portrayed Al Hattal in Hidalgo. He's a stunning Arabian, a son of the famous Bey Shah, black except for a coronet ring of white on his back left foot. He's tall for an Arabian at 15-3, which, with his lovely personality, is how he got the gig for the film. He's got a gorgeous head, which I don't think you really see in the film (I watched it again on Saturday night) because it is somewhat obscured by his tack.

Both Blanco and TC Bey Cedar demonstrated rearing on cue. A way to teach this move was demonstrated by the trick training clinician. I'm not so sure it's a great idea to teach this trick to the average horse and TC Bey Cedar's trainer kept saying to people it is a trick best left to professionals. Rearing is somewhat less controlled than the airs above the ground moves of classical training. Personally, I'm happier when Ace keeps all four of his feet closer to the ground. I'm not even thrilled when he decides to do "the flamingo" where he bends one of his front legs and holds it up for quite a while when I'm sitting on his back. I usually wonder what it is he's trying to tell me is bothering him.

I must say I was disappointed I didn't run into Viggo Mortensen. It would have been cool if he dropped by to visit two of his equine co-stars. Cooler yet (well, nothing would be quite as cool as running into Viggo, I suppose) would be an appearance by T.J., the paint that played Hidalgo and whom Viggo now owns and keeps somewhere in nearby Topanga.

The other neat thing about this year's Equine Affaire was that the horse on exhibit at the Region 2 Arabian Horse Association booth turned out to be a close blood relation to my boy. I noticed the animal's name (I think it was All Flame) and immediately thought, hmm, sounds like it could be. Then I saw the pedigree--a Bask Flame son. Bask Flame is Ace's maternal grandfather. So the chestnut horse on display was Rocky's (Ace's dam, Flames Sirocco) half-brother (technically, a half-sib in the horse world comes from the same mother with a different sire, and different mothers mean a designation of "same sire," but I'm a human) and Ace's half-uncle and they did bear a familial resemblance. Ace has more chrome (white markings.) I did wonder whether Cody had inherited the hot Bask Flame personality that Rocky got or whether his dam had cooled him down. Since Cody's owned by a 12 year old girl, I'm guessing the latter. Cody's actually a few years younger than Ace.

I didn't do any shopping worth mentioning, unlike the years when I've come home with new riding pants or helmets or DVDs. I spent $5, on a 2007 Breyer Christmas ornament to give to a friend. Cheap date.

The Joy of Reading

When I was a child, I was the kid who you'd find in a corner in any room reading whatever happened to be available. There were certain homes of friends of my parents I particularly liked to visit because of the vast quantities of reading material (full sets of encyclopedias, old National Geographics, "Zoo Doctor") which I didn't have at home. Raiding my grandparents attic, where I found my aunts' and uncles' copies of Nancy Drews, Hardy Boys, Robinson Crusoe, Heidi, and other unabridged classics was the best, because those went home with me. I love books. Books are my friends (who are taking over my home and storage bays.)

Being flat on my back for almost a week gave me an opportunity to do something which would otherwise take a couple of months: rereading the entire Harry Potter series back to back to back. I'm within about 200 pages of finishing the task and I've enjoyed the hell out of it.

I had read the first four books at least twice before, but did not have time to do that with five or six, and, of course, seven just came out. There is so much that Rowling set up in the earlier books that I had forgotten by the time I got to seven. And I read seven in a hurry so as not to let anyone spoil the ending. It isn't about the ending. Ultimately, it is about the journey.

This is very much like watching "The Sixth Sense." Most people I know, including those who are professional writers and who can spot what's going to happen, were taken by surprise by that punch-line. Having seen the film, I couldn't wait to see the DVD to catch the clues I missed the first time out. That's how the Harry Potter books are. By book four, she was already paying off things she set up in book one, but other things don't pay off until book seven.

I missed some of the movement of the Deathly Hallows the first time through. Now I'm getting it. I realized that I had forgotten key scenes in book seven a mere three weeks after reading it the first time. It is amazing how you remember the broad strokes but only selective details.

I've also been watching the films as I finish each book, so now I can see why Michael's been less satisfied by them than I have been. I still think that three through five are really good films, but they are less faithful adaptations than I recalled. One and two remain pretty faithful to the narrative but lack any great spark as films. Chris Columbus is one of the world's worst directors, IMHO, and it is only due to the great skill of British actors that they are able to carry off the film without any important contribution by the director. Films three and five have terrific directors who are able to enhance the material. Four was o.k., but not in his element (I really liked some of his other films a lot more.)

My husband is what he calls an "organic" writer--he doesn't do a lot of planning and the story unravels before him. He doesn't like to plot and relies on his great skill with dialog and emotion to pull off some of his stories. (In all honesty, his stated failure to plot out things over long stretches of time and story isn't entirely true based on some of his talk about long runs he had on certain comic books where he set up things months or years into the future, but he doesn't do charts or story cards or anything like that.) Rowling appears to have done a whole lot more plotting and planning. She seems to work in the way I was told Dickens did--every character's movement through a book was charted out and events were carefully set up. It leads to a very rich reading experience.

There's been much talk about whether or not these books will stand the test of time. I strongly suspect they will because every one who loved these books will remember them and pass them on to their children, grand-children, nieces and nephews. I've done that with books which were childhood favorites of mine, like "The Boxcar Children," "Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates, " or "Swiss Family Robinson," and books I read later such as "The Little Prince," "Lord of the Rings," and "Way Station."

The Potter books have an added bit of sticking power, having been put on film so close to their publication, so even post-literates are familiar with their content. I did not read "Peter Pan" until after I saw the Mary Martin stage production, nor the "Wizard of Oz" until after seeing Judy Garland go down the black and white road the first time it was broadcast on television. There's many a good book I read after seeing what turned out to be really bad Disney-izations of the original material. With a book, you can see your own adaptation in your mind's eye.

Like "The Lord of the Rings," the Harry Potter books are made for critical reading. I wonder if I could convince my son to get his college degree if I told him that he could do his thesis on Harry Potter? I'd probably do better suggesting "Classic Literature as the Basis for Conflict in RPGs."

Nine Skillion Channels and Nothing to Watch

Once again, Len's off somewhere and I'm trying to find something to watch on the television. There is absolutely nothing worthwhile on any of the hundreds of channels supposedly available on our cable system. You'd think on a Saturday night there would be something I'd be interested in watching, but no. I've got something called Happy, Texas on, only because I haven't seen it before, but it isn't really that interesting. I don't know how to operate the DVD in this room, so I can't put on anything I'd really rather watch while I'm trying to get the laundry done.

I think there should be an all Lord of the Rings channel so I can watch it while I'm doing housework.

Thanks to Len, I've added a countdown until the day the pretender is out of office. It's on the right side of the page.

Nostalgia

Long, long ago in a Galaxy far, far away, I lived in a small town in upstate New York. Thank goodness it was in the past, because if there was a bright center to the Universe, my home town was its farthest outpost.

Setting aside George Lucas, or whoever wrote that for him, I used to say my home town was founded in 1785 and lost in 1786, much like Brigadoon. I do have great fondness for several things about it, even if I haven't been back for a visit in 13 years.

First and foremost is the Ogden Free Library, a wonderful slate building which was only a very large block (it included the elementary school and all playgrounds and sports fields) from my house. It was my refuge from many things and I would use any excuse to spend time there. I do not remember the name of the very patient librarian who managed to order books from other places to satisfy my curiosity and who let me read Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when I was in grade school (there were age limits on sections of the library.) It was there I first met authors I would actually come to know and photograph, like L. Sprague de Camp and Andre Norton. It was there I managed to find the basis for the "Frodo Lives" button I saw Micky Dolenz wearing in a 16 Magazine photograph, thus changing my life forever. The Lord of the Rings is still my favorite book to re-read, and the copy that my college boyfriend gave me for Christmas is in beautiful shape for all of the times it has been read (not so much the box for the set, which has suffered from so much packing and unpacking over the years when I moved a lot.)

That brings me to the second thing I've begun to realize I miss: sitting on the porch reading during summer rain. We don't get much in the way of rain in the summer here in Los Angeles. But in New York, it was as likely to rain as to not rain in the summer and spending such a day with special books like The Lord of the Rings was definitely a plus. Our house had a front porch, a back porch and an upstairs porch. The last was my favorite hang-out, away from the traffic of the back-door, which was the one we actually always used for entering and leaving the house.

I know I'm feeling depressed when I give any long-term thought to moving back to my home town, because I wouldn't do well being that isolated from my friends and the life we live out here. But I do think about all of those large Victorian homes for sale for a fraction of what our tiny slab house is worth out here or of the farms with many acres we could afford to buy and have a place for Ace and any other horse or dog we might want to take in. Then I think about winter, snow, closed roads and the flood pictures I've seen on the Internet and good sense returns.

Maybe I can build a porch on the side of my house or a gazebo in the back by the pool to curl up in when it rains. Or maybe I should stick to curling up on the couch in front of a fire in the winter with a good book.

P.S. All eclairs should taste like the ones from the home-town bakery of my childhood. They don't.