O Brother!

You wouldn't expect a movie set in the American south during the years of the Great Depression to be funny. It turns out that it can be done, and done well. O Brother, Where Art Thou? by The Coen Brothers is the movie that portrays the financially depressed, emotionally broke, socially racist Southern USA with humor. The adventures of Everett, Delmar, and Pete—George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, and John Turturro respectively—and an assortment of supporting characters (played magnificently by Holly Hunter, John Goodman, and many others) provide a surprisingly good time from beginning to end.

Everett, Delmar, and Pete are buddies, mostly by the unusual circumstance that they are linked together in a prison chain gang. Together they make their escape. Together they flee. And after breaking their shackles, together they seek the treasure that Everett has made their quest. And although Delmar's soul is cleansed and he is no longer a sinner; Pete is captured, whipped, and reveals the trio's plan; and the “treasure” is only Everett's wife's wedding ring left in their abandoned family cabin located in a valley scheduled to be flooded, the three men remain constantly committed to their quest.

Because the movie loosely mimics Odysseus's (aka Ulysses's) trip in Homer's Odyssey—Everett's first name is actually Ulysses!—our triad's escape from the chain gang is only the beginning of an epic voyage, both physical (across long distances) and mental (coming to major realizations about love, life, and the pursuit of happiness). They meet people and have experiences similar to Ulysses' ten-year return home after the ten-years-long Trojan war, though they take far fewer than ten years. They are influenced by a blind seer, tempted by three sirens laundering at a river side, and threatened by a cyclops. They get driven off course, captured, and forced to backtrack. They suffer abuse and get help. Still, they reach their goal, and Everett reunites with his wife Penny (Get it? Penny!) and their children after fighting off her suitor.

Historical figures, real events, and the actualities of life of the Depression-Era South impact the shenanigans that the three fugitives witness, suffer, get into, and perpetrate. Farmers lose their land, money, and homes; banks are robbed; inhabited land is flooded; confidence men work their wickedness; and deals are made with the Devil. Politicians and kin lie and betray. And a boy band makes it big. Every bit of it is laughable, as only the Coens can make it, even the potentially charged scene of a KKK ceremony with a planned lynching and all. (It's successfully thwarted by our bumbling fugitives.)

As you can probably guess, any movie with the scope of an epic journey, offers a plethora of “little wisdoms.” A lot happens in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and a lot is said, so there is a lot to incorporate into everyday life. Look forward to many posts about lessons from this comedy!

Making Deals

My husband and I have a long tradition of making deals. I walk the dogs in the morning; he walks them in the evening. I cook dinner; he cleans the kitchen. I rake the leaves; he bags them. You get the idea.

A few weeks ago, after a reminder from a friend, we watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). I cannot recall the last time I watched any of the Indiana Jones movies. Before this, we hadn't watched those movies in ages, even though the set of them is tucked into a cabinet with our other movies—between I'm Gonna Get You Sucka and Ironman, both of which we have watched in at least the last twelve months. (The Indy movies did get some play during a recent visit from my mother, though.) And so...

What a fun movie! It was great to rediscover this gem of the action adventure genre. I had forgotten a lot of the details about this story, the acting, and the cinematography. While we watched, I repeatedly thought, “Oh, yeah, this part!”

And then it happened. Just a few minutes into the movie. “Throw me the idol,” Indy says. My husband begins to laugh. And then, there it is: “Throw me the idol; I throw you the whip!”

In an instant, this became another “movie for life.”

Well, you can imagine all the uses for this! It may not work for international diplomacy. But it does well in our regular household.

Need to trade grocery shopping for dinner cooking? “Throw me the idol; I throw you the whip!”

Want to swap breakfast with the kids for reading them a bedtime story? “Throw me the idol; I throw you the whip!”

Would rather fix the plumbing than clean the gutters? “Throw me the idol; I throw you the whip!”

These little sentences are like a secret password. Give them a try. You'll be bartering and trading like a pro in no time at all.

Back to The Edge, for a minute

We don't call these "movies for life," for no reason. As Jess and I have said more than once, what gave us the idea to write about "our" films was--not that either of us harbored a secret desire to be a movie critic, but--that lines and scenes from these movies pop aphoristically onto the screen of our inner consciousness, just when we need them. Our favorites have become our friends, and they speak to us (exhort, admonish, caution, rave, celebrate, chastise) as resoundingly as does any other member of our support group. It's a bit like having an entire conversation made up of Willie Nelson song lyrics (something I heard on KUT, day before yesterday: Willie's birthday): yeah; like that!

So, even though I'm currently writing about another movie, I'm having an Edge moment, and I think I'll write about that, instead.

Here's the back story. I set goals for myself, goals and limits: milestones and budgets. As a freelance writer and editor, there's a lot riding on my abiding by the rules I set for myself after much careful thought and planning. This morning, I took a look in the coffers, and one of them is not where it should be. What was my extravagance? Gasoline and auto repairs; a squirrel unexpectedly built a nest in my engine, doing hundreds of dollars of damage. Also, I bought a shirt, and a whole mess of glass canisters so as to take back my pantry from fruit flies. It's not that I can't afford these things; it's that I think about where every penny goes, these days, and on my current budget, if I have to spend this money, it has to come from somewhere else, like entertainment. Dave Ramsey says this is a good habit to get into, and I have developed it.

Anyway, now I am faced with a dilemma: do I cut out some of my precious Hill Country trips in May and June? or do I raid my burgeoning savings account, which is burgeoning precisely because I do not raid it? Washing the dishes, the answer comes to me: stick close to home, spend less on gas, do X instead of Y, since X is just as interesting, and Y is 577 miles farther away. (Okay, Y is the trip to El Paso to see old friends, in case you're wondering.)

Done. And I think, suddenly: because we have the six matches left, and that's--all we'll need.

Who's this? Ah! This is Charles Morse telling Bob, after they've hiked all day in a great big circle and ended up back at their dead campsite from the day before, 'We're going to make it! Why? Because we have six matches. Enough for six campfires.'

As long as no squirrel builds a nest in--well, you get the point.

Trink has a full day of work ahead of her, she is happy to report.

Let’s Not Mince Words: Run, Fatboy, Run

I recently discovered a "little wisdom" from an unexpected source: the English romantic comedy Run, Fatboy, Run from 2007.

If you’re anything like me, right now you’re thinking, "Ugh, a romantic comedy." If you’re anything like my husband, right now you’re thinking, "Ugh, a foreign movie."

I’m not a fan of romantic comedies, foreign or domestic, but the trailer for this one made me laugh. Then, in two swift steps, it was added to my Netflix queue and bumped up to the top position.

At the center of Run, Fatboy, Run is Dennis, a loser who decides to "get his girl back" by running a marathon. Dennis’ friends and enemies, including his landlord Mr. Goshdashtidar, encourage and discourage him in various ways. They bet for him and against him, buy him running shoes and evict him from his apartment, beat him up for quitting and give him a place to stay the night before the race.

Mr. Goshdashtidar is the most direct of Dennis’ frenemies. He rides a moped along next to Dennis; exhorts, "Run, fatboy, run!" and then swats his ass with a long metal spatula.

The very first time Mr. G. said those three little words and swung that culinary tool, I smirked and thought, "Yeah, tell it like it is."

I sometimes (read: often) get tired of evasion and euphemisms, of saccharine sentimentality and round about explanations. Why can’t we just say what we mean, get directly to the point, and speak with a purpose? We don’t always need a pat on the back and a sympathetic, "Oh, you poor thing," when what our friends are really thinking is, "Well, what’d you expect?" or "You set yourself up for that." Sometimes a swat on the ass and a gruff, "Run, fatboy, run!" are appropriate, helpful, even well deserved.

I’m not a boy, but I do need motivation for many, many things. Lately, I’ve found it a bit easier to do what I don’t want to do. I just let those three words and that metallic smack run through my mind. And then I get my ass in gear to do what needs to be done.

Roan Inish: Fiona's Heritage

They say the Irish live this magic realism, half-in and half-out of the dream world. The Irish say it themselves, in fact! They say it all over the place in The Secret of Roan Inish. This movie takes some very weird things as fact: shape-shifting, for one, as the native Americans call it.  In Irish lore, about which I know not much, there is this creature called the Selkie: a seal-person, something like a mermaid, only Selkies can shed their sealskin and emerge wholly human. Apparently, they are all very good-looking, too.

Fiona's grandfather's grandfather married one. That's why, though most of the Coneellys are blond as Fiona, once in awhile they "spit out a dark one." The movie is about a family thus affected, and yet this is not what got my attention at all. I just see plucky little Fiona, driving her family toward the happiness it knows, down deep, that it wants. This involves returning to the island. That's also what this movie is about.

Oh, and I see the island, too. Fiona wouldn't make half the impression on me that she does, if she were lifting and exhorting everyone in the direction of -- a mountain, say. No; it's the rocky beach, so much like beaches I've walked on, eaten homemade sandwiches on (as does Fiona), and wrecks of boats I've poked around. It's looking through curtains at a far-off light, sleeping safe in grandparents' house--it's familiar, this Ireland. Maybe I'd like to visit it.

Maybe I just wish I could go to grandparents' house and be eight, again.

Tink is posting late on Sunday, but it's still Sunday! Back to regular weekly posts, now!

The Big Question: And Then What?

As many movies do, ATL ends with a tidy wrap up of the main characters' lives. After a brief fade to black, Rashad returns with a soulful voice over similar to the one that opens the movie. During it, we witness the progression of the main characters' lives.

Esquire is grinning with undisguised joy while jogging at an unnamed Ivy League college. Brooklyn has found a menial job he has kept long enough to get promoted. Teddy has his own grills business. And Rashad has become a cartoonist, a possibility briefly foreshadowed earlier in the movie.

We don't need to ask, "And then what happened?"

But ATL's ending is not like real life.

As we go along, we don't get to find out at the end of 90 minutes whether our choices work out, whether our needs are met, whether our future is bright. We may see changes after a 5-week period, as I inferred from the movie's timing. 5 weeks is a little while or a long time, depending on your situation. A lot can happen during 5 weeks. A whole life can change in that amount of time. Something you do in 5 weeks may affect the rest of your life, or it may be the rest of your life.

Whatever your outlook, be it 5 weeks or a lifetime, every little bit of wisdom you can get helps you navigate through life. And you can get them from anywhere. Take Marcus the drug dealer. He is by no stretch of the imagination a good role model or pillar of the community. But he exhorts gems like, "Say no to drugs. Dare to be different." Sure, he advises this in jest. But you can apply it in any context you want. When was the last time you dared to be different?

When you're feeling a little too proud of yourself, remember Marcus’s other witticism: "Just 'cause your head big doesn't make you smart." A little reminder to check yourself.

ATL has other more upstanding sources of guidance, like Mr. Garnett. It is very often true, as Mr. Garnett tells Esquire, that getting ahead is not always about what you know. "Sometimes it's who you know."

Let's not forget Uncle George. On the morality spectrum, he fits in somewhere between Marcus and Mr. Garnett. And during one of Rashad's most difficult moments, Uncle George gives decent advice. "It's all just feelings," Uncle George tells his troubled nephew. "From females to friends to funerals... It's all about the feelings."

Nothing can help you predict the answer to, "And then what?" But every bit of good advice can help you imagine it and then live it. Maybe some of these ATL wisdoms will help you.

Skating, Dancing, Sexing

Skating is a big part of ATL. It's a pastime, a lifeline, and an art form. For Rashad it's a way to relax, a way to be himself, and a way to show off. Skating reveals a lot about Rashad, as it does about his friends, and about all the other people who frequent the Cascade rink on Sunday nights. The skating in this movie reminds me of dancing in real life.

I've often thought that how a man dances is a glimpse at how he makes love.

Now, I don't mean Michael Jackson moon walking and kicking up his leg. I mean moving to a rhythm, in sync with a partner, present in the moment.

Maybe the salsa music and dancing in my childhood is to blame for this notion. Maybe my own special mania is. Whatever the reason, I've always thought that a man who knows how to move on the dance floor also knows how to move in the bed.

Think about it.

Picture it.

Is he engaged with his partner? Or might he as well be alone? Is he controlled, or frenzied? Is he smooth on the rink? On the dance floor? In the bedroom?

The first time I watched New New tell Teddy that she's seen him skate and that tells her "everything [she needs] to know about a man," I nearly shouted, "Exactly!"

Poor, Teddy. He doesn't understand. He goes on to explain that he is "the quickest one out there... [he] be pumpin' it out there." Again, New New and I are in sync when she says, dismissively, "Exactly. A quick pumper."

I know what you're thinking. "Skating is not dancing." You're right; it's not. And dancing is not lovemaking. But all of these activities require moves and style.

Do you know what you like? You have to know what you like to get what you like. Or like New New, you have to know what you don't like to avoid disappointment.

Roan Inish: Setting the Scene

As I said in the last post, The Secret of Roan Inish is my favorite "take heart!" movie, ever. I thought of putting a photo of little Fiona looking out the window, on my desktop, to remind me to be single-minded and childlike. (It seems to work for a lot of things. I'll get back to you on that one.)

One reason Gess and I decided to call these "movies for life" is because snippets of them play through our daily ups and downs: we find ourselves repeating lines; asking, for example, "What would Fiona do?"--and so on. So I'll set the scene for this film with an image: Fiona is patiently lighting a fire on her first trip to the island, using two flinty rocks and some twirly dry moss.

There are two movies that have tinder-lighting images in them that remind me to take heart when I am overwhelmed. One is, in fact, The Edge, though I didn't mention it, in those posts: Charles Morse builds a fire. The other is The Secret of Roan Inish.

To back up: Fiona makes several trips to the Island of the Seals, and hangs out there by herself, while her uncle and her cousin are delivering mail or setting (crab? lobster?) traps, as the case may be. Never mind that no one in the family's "set foot" on this place of bad memories since "the evacuation"; they seem willing to let the little girl knock about there for half a day or so, while they go about their business. Everyone's got a lot of nostalgia--more algia than nost, as it were--for the place, so maybe they were just waiting to be asked.

Fiona's undaunted by the state of disrepair in which she finds the three cottages. Evidently, when she was younger, she lived in one of them. She pokes around. On the second trip, she heads straight for the one that appears to be inhabited. Sure enough, there's kindling lying about, and all she has to do to build a fire is bump a couple rocks together a few times with her chubby hands. A spark flies; the tinder flares; a fire is built. She curls up for a nap, and has a vision that's more important to the plot than the fire is; however, it's the fire that sticks with me: tiny twigs burning and crisping, lighting other tiny twigs....

Perhaps it's the fact that my life seems to keep returning to 'Start,' that makes this image, and its sister image in The Edge (when the men resign themselves to their fate, and gather crisp moss to start their fire) so powerful. Nowadays, when I'm faced with startup woes, startup resistance, startup angst--I see a spark fly and a fire light. It reminds me that home fires are built one crackling twig at a time.

Tink is at work.

Hurry Up to Grow Up

At the beginning of ATL, Rashad shares something his father used to tell him. "Dreaming is the luxury of children. I should enjoy it." But when Rashad's parents die in a car accident, Rashad's own childhood ends, and he forgets his father's advice.

When we met Rashad, he is dealing with school by day and cleaning offices and stores with his uncle by night. He is also trying to watch out for his younger brother Ant. Rashad is saving his meager wages for Ant's future. He plans to send Ant to college with what he is saving.

At the same time, Rashad is forced to remain a child. He must heed his uncle's rules at home. He must attend school and do well. He is not grown yet.

Rashad's brother Ant doesn't seem to have heard his father's wisdom. He isn't waiting for some undefined future. He is eager to be grown. He wants to get his and now. To Ant, that means getting paid and getting laid. In the early part of the film, Ant approaches several girls and women with no luck. And in one daydream sequence, he swims after floating bills in a pool. He resorts to selling for a drug dealer. It gets him the girls (at least one that we see), but not much money. He gets arrested. And worse, when he doesn't have enough to pay his boss, he gets shot. His rush out of childhood comes at a high cost. In the end, he backpedals to regular teenage life.

Another character in the film who doesn't know Rashad's father's good advice is New New, aka Erin. She is Rashad's pretty, mysterious girlfriend. No one has told New New about childhood and dreaming. She is eager to define herself on her own terms. But she is subject to her parents' terms. She lives two opposing lifestyles at once: upper class glamor with her parents, ghetto fabulousity with her friends. She attends the private academy of her parents' choosing, but plans to attend a Historically Black College or University of her choice instead of the Ivy League school of their choice. She tries to live the "black" heritage her parents now deny. (Though glimpses of her parent's backgrounds seep through. In a heated discussion with Erin, her father yells, "Keep talking to your mother like that and your lips are going to beat you to the hospital!") Eventually, New New's façade of urban culture is revealed and removed. It nearly costs Rashad's love.

Remember your teenage self. How often did you ache to be older, grown, making your own choices? What were your plans? Who were you going to be as an adult? What job were you going to have? Where were you going to live?

Odds are that few, if any, of your plans and dreams came true. It's more likely that you have wished, on occasion, to not be grown just yet. To have your basic needs and more met through no stress, worry, or effort on your part for a day or two. Of course, you can't go back again. But you can remember those days with more fondness than when you were living them. After all, they have made you who you are today.

Living with a Passion

As I said before, Rashad and his friends have worries. They are on the verge of adulthood, and already they are dealing with younger siblings, menial jobs, and an uncertain future. And of course, there are relationship problems, between them and with others (girls, mentors, family). Their one release, and the one passion they share, is skating at Cascade on Sunday nights.

Cascade is a skating rink of a style not very far past that nevertheless many consider bygone. On Sunday nights, it's the place for the teenagers of ATL to be. As Rashad himself shares in an innocent voice over, inside Cascade, "it's like all our problems don't exist. Only place where we all felt like we could be free... School sucks. Rent past due. Your girl left you. On Sunday night, none of that count. You could be whoever you wanted to be."

Skating is their passion. Cascade is the place to be. Especially for Rashad, who explains that even when the rink is full to bursting on Sunday nights, sometimes he feels "like I was out there all by myself floating above it all. No lies. No pain. And no worries about what tomorrow might bring."

That's exactly what a passion should do for you: make you feel like you're all by yourself, floating above all your worries.

What's your passion? I know you have one. Everyone does. It's the thing you're always thinking about, always want to be doing. When you're engaged in it, the whole rest of the world fades away, and the hours pass swiftly. It may be knitting blankets for patients at a children's hospital, or planting in your victory garden. It could be reading all of Jane Austen's works, or restoring vintage muscle cars. What is it?

Have you made time for your passion lately? Are you living it, or putting it off? Daydreaming about it, or acting on it? (If you're not living your passion, maybe a five-week plan will help you make time for it.)

I'm not going to waste time telling you that life is short, and you can sleep when you're dead. I'm only going to say, live your passion. Make time to engage in it. And in those minutes, let all your cares fall away.

A lot of things in life are complicated. But this little lesson is not. Do what you must and what you are passionate about. That way, you'll be a happier you.

New Movie! The Secret of Roan Inish

They say the Irish are storytellers, and this is the story of how a plucky little Irish girl reclaims her heritage after being treated to a series of them--stories, that is--told to her by various relatives on her visit back to rural Ireland. Apparently, Fiona Coneelly is island stock. Her aunt and uncle are renting a cottage with a view out its windows of the land that the Coneellys left, years back, but still own. Fiona's sent to stay with them, and she starts right in asking about the island.

The Secret of Roan Inish is a bit hard to get into, at first. The plot advances a bit slowly; the editing's a bit stiff; the Irish English, a bit, well, impenetrable. I discovered it before I had the luxury of turning on subtitles, and I taught myself its lines, by, well, you know, watching it over and over. Once I'd seen the film enough times that I could understand what the characters were saying, I could pretty much say it along with them, and so many of their lines stuck in my head, in the brogue in which they were delivered.

The Secret of Roan Inish is taken from a children's story. It's magic realism, I guess they'd say; the real-life tale is interspersed with fanciful chapters of the family's history, which appears to be all tied up with the local seals--I do not mean Navy, here!--thanks to the fact that, back generations ago, the Coneellys apparently mixed blood with a Selkie woman. Their mainland neighbors whisper about it, still, making the family wish it could just go back and live on Seal Island (that's what Roan Inish means). Fiona's the catalyst, but first she has to grok the present-day environment; she's spent the last few years living in Dublin with her alcoholic father who's a factory worker, there. They own some pretty cool real estate, for peasant folk. If I owned an island, I'd rattle the cage about it, too; I would!

This is my favorite encouragement film. Fiona's the 'little engine that could,' and in the end she makes things happen. Many of the quotes occur to me “in times of trouble,” and, though I take issue with more details in this story than in the others I’ve reported so far, I love it all the more for what I perceive to be its flaws. (Why does your uncle drop you off on the island the first time you ask him to, when no one else—neither adult nor child—is allowed to go there? Why is your uncle so willing to launch into a maudlin tale about the day the family evacuated the island, right after he declares his reluctance to speak of those events? Why are the little boy’s footprints bigger than his sister’s hand? And so on.)

I’ll attempt the usual five (more) posts about Roan Inish:

1. Arrival, Setting the Scene
2. Fiona’s Heritage

3. A Plan is Hatched  

4. Life Goes On
5. Forced Into Action

It’s a sweet film, I think you’ll like it as much as I do!

The Edge: The Accidental Victor

Something came unravelled when I brought Elle MacPherson's character into such sharp focus in the Faithless Trophy Wife post. I realized how shallow she was, and then I saw why she had to be. The film is not cleverly spare; it is willfully simple-minded. Or, is it? Let's say it is. Let’s say that, to the extent that Mamet draws these characters simply, consistently, he reveals less about the human condition than about himself, his prejudices. It's not that the world of men is like that; it's that Mamet wants it to be like that.

If we decide to question the premise, Hopkins' contribution to the film becomes all the more striking. In his portrayal of Morse and Morse's interactions with the other underdeveloped people, Hopkins treats Mamet's characters with more respect than Mamet does?! I'm breaking new ground, here. It is exhilerating. I guess that’s why we do these, Gess and I. I wish I could see the original screenplay from which this was taken. Suddenly, the ending makes sense to me, where it never has, before:

Charles Morse is finally rescued, and they clamor around him on the dock. The Faithless Trophy Wife stands apart, abashed, her mind a tangle of conflicting emotions. She watches as they unload Bob’s shrouded corpse from the ’copter. Morse is making his way through the throng. First, he passes the innkeeper. Morse turns, gives him a long look, and speaks in reprise: “Why is the rabbit unafraid?” he reminds him.

A look of understanding passes between the two men, and Jenkins grins a crooked, scarfaced grin. “Hmp! Because he’s smarter than the panther!”

Morse, the humble victor, arrives before his spoils. He presses her dead lover’s watch into her palm—a watch with an inscription that belies her faithlessness—in a gesture that makes clear his knowledge of the transgression. She looks down in surprise. Her face collapses.

Gently, now, having dealt this blow, Morse raises a grimy hand against a barrage of reporters’ questions. “We are all put to the test.” He stops. “…but it never comes in the form, or at the…point…we would prefer. Does it?”

“Mr. Morse,” another interjects, “The other men. Your friends.” It is a question.

“My friends,” Morse repeats, without inflection.

“What happened to them, sir?”

Silence.

“How did they die, sir?” prods a female reporter.

“They died,” says Morse, huskily, “saving my life.”

There’s a moment, like Rutger Hauer’s final moment in Bladerunner, when Hopkins blinks, falters. His eyes flicker heavenward. Now: Is Morse acknowledging the unfairness of it all? Or is Hopkins lamenting the paucity of material his fellow actors have been given, to work with?

It’s important for me to take issue with this simplicity, I think.


Ta-DAA!

Five Weeks

In ATL, we meet the main characters at a crucial moment in their life: five weeks before the end of the school year, the beginning of summer vacation, and the Skate Wars at their neighborhood hangout. (Other crucial things are happening with side characters, but they are not our concern.) For Rashad, his two high-school-senior friends, and their older buddy Teddy, it is five weeks before adulthood descends abruptly upon them. They will no longer have childhood to shelter them.

Only for Esquire, bound and determined to go to college, will the academic year ever mean anything again. Brooklyn's string of part-time jobs have already given him a taste of his future in menial jobs. So has Teddy's little business selling grills(1) given him a glimpse into the future.

Rashad's story is altogether different. He doesn't have a plan. What he has is a lot of responsibilities.

Rashad has responsibility at school by day (the least of his worries) and cleaning offices and a Value Village store with his uncle by night. (Uncle George does little of the work and keeps most of the money.) Rashad has a responsibility to his younger brother Ant, for whose future Rashad is saving his meager wages. (Ant isn't waiting for some undefined future though. He wants to get his now.) Rashad has a pretty, mysterious new girlfriend, too. (She's really into Rashad, but she's keeping a very big secret from him.) Rashad has a responsibility to his buddies, too, to plan and practice and perfect a winning skating routine for the Skate Wars.

Needless to say, Rashad broods. It doesn't matter that he is a teenager and that there are many more serious things waiting for him in adulthood. He worries, and I think, "I've been there." You've been there, too, with too much to do, to plan, to worry about. Heck, in these days of economic recession and shrinking government budgets, you may be there right now.

Sometimes living in these modern times in this first-world country gives us much to worry and brood about. There are immediate issues, mid term worries, and long term planning. What's for lunch? How am I going to send the kids to college? Will I ever be able to retire? One way to deal with life's issues, questions, and decisions is to look five weeks ahead.

Tempted by fast food? Visualize a healthier you five weeks from now if you don't have that fatty, greasy meal. Planning for your children's future? Take five weeks to research your options and set one in motion. Can't figure out your retirement? Well, start thinking about it five weeks from now.

Simply put: in five weeks' time, you can change the course of your whole life.

(1) Grill (jewelry) In hip hop culture, a grill (also front or golds) is a type of jewelry worn over the teeth. Grills are made of metal and are generally removable. They began to be worn by hip hop artists in the early 1980s, but they became widely popular during the mid-2000s due to the rise of Dirty South rap. Though grills are fitted to the tooth impression of the wearer, whether they are safe for long-term wear is unknown. (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The Edge, Antibonding: More Quotable Lines

I've not really moved this plot forward much for you readers, have I? It's because, in my memory, the plot is not my focus. "There's a plane crash, and then there's a series of bear chases. And then there's a moment of bonding, followed by a moment of confrontation--then home." For me, that's the plot. The things I carry with me, from state to state to state, about this movie, are the lines: moments of humor or connection between the men (they start out as three); barbed comments; sudden discovery; triumph--it's all there. As with No Country, I am wont to insert these bits in places in my own life, when it's appropriate. I have tried to limit this practice to my journals, however; people tend to eye me with suspicion, otherwise.

Here are a few quotes that I remember:
 
Exhorting:
1. After a big disappointment, a mistake in navigation that puts them back at Square One, the men begin lashing out at one another. Morse reminds them not to give up:

"Shall we lay down and die, Bob? [shouting] Shall we lay down and die?"

Bonding:
2. Bob and Charles are scanning the horizon after making camp for their wounded comrade, Steven (a non-character in his own right). "Puts things in perspective, doesn’t is?," says Bob, smoking.
“What’s that?” says Morse.
"Out here. Little different from the fashion world. Little different from snorting coke off the girls’ hip bones.”
“In what way?” says Charles, smiling at his little joke.

Humor:
3. Bob and Charles are relaxing on a log, roasting bear meat after the great triumph.  "You see, Charles, that’s why they call it personal growth. A month ago, old Smokey here woulda reared up, you probably woulda called your lawyer!"

                                    

"No, " says Morse, slowly, "I wouldn't do that to an animal."

This camaraderie is short-lived. Once it seems they'll in fact make it back to civilization, Bob's old envy returns like a drug habit, like the snake in the fable: “because it’s in my nature!” The moment is recorded in a facial gesture. Bob begins to plot. He plots, and fails. He connives, and loses. Morse uses Bob's own weaknesses--his weight, as it were--to kill him. On the principle of the deadfall. And then, he scoops him up and rushes him back to the modern world, tries to save his life. Sort of like, "You had to mess with me! You know I have to defeat you, when you mess with me! But, I didn't want to have to defeat you! You made me!!"

I am thinking Mamet's original tale is much more smug and nasty, on both men's parts. Hopkins’ Morse is older, gentler, and, yet, some people really are that foolish. I'm coming to grips with the fact that maybe this movie is just about some stupid people. It almost doesn't matter whether or not their author is stupid right along with them.

ATL: What It Is

The movie ATL is not unique. It's a buddy flick. It's a coming-of-age flick. It's a learning-right-from-wrong flick. It's a doing-right-and-making-mistakes film. It's a comedy, and it's a drama. You've seen this movie before.

ATL is a lot of other things, too. It's a stage for an impressive cast of black actors, including several rappers and musicians. It's an ode to a certain Atlanta neighborhood. It's a window into a certain way of life and its opposite lifestyle. It's "a new American story," as its tagline declares. And it's a source of little wisdoms apt for everyday use.

Let me be clear, I'm not talking about the big, obvious lessons of the film. Do Rashad and his friends, like teens everywhere, suffer angst? Duh. Is it difficult for Uncle George and for Ms. Gayle to parent headstrong teenagers? Heck yeah. Should Ant, eager to be grown and rich, turn to "grown man business"? Obviously not.

Tune in to my next five posts to find out how the little wisdoms of this big film stick with me and will stick with you. You'll find yourself wanting to live your passion, looking back at your younger self, dancing in the mirror, looking ahead in five-week chunks, and asking yourself the big question, "What's next?"

Until then, get ATL. Watch it. Pay close attention. And keep in mind that "just 'cause your head big doesn't make you smart."