Freddy Goes to Florida

Altogether, Walter R. Brooks published 26 Freddy the Pig books. I'd never read this one before I picked it up on a momentary whim while waiting for my kids in the children's section at our public library last week.

Recently I had re-read Freddy the Detective, and while it was at least interesting, and amusing in spots, it didn't rekindle any warm childhood memories or feel particularly fulfilling. Not a disappointment, exactly, but not what I had hoped for.

Freddy Goes to Florida, on the other hand, felt more like the genuine article. The first in the entire Freddy series, it was originally published in 1927 under what must be a contender for Worst Title of All Time ("To and Away"). In it, Freddy is only a bit player among the many animals involved; in fact, here his name has a comma. (Having to remind the reader about which animal is which, they keep referring to him as "Freddy, the pig.") On the whole, this book was a satisfying read. Lots of adventures--crocodiles, bad guys, buried treasure--kind of like a road trip movie, only with richly-drawn humanized animal characters.

21

Supposedly based on a true story about some MIT students who employed a card-counting scheme in Las Vegas casinos to try and make a bundle of money. The real story probably has some interesting components, but somehow the life has been squeezed out of this mutt. Sadly, this movie is to worthwhile cinema as a paint-by-number is to Van Gogh--and they didn't even bother filling in all the numbered spaces.

So okay, I understand that movies have to use a certain narrative shorthand to get the story across, but the filmmaker's first duty is also to suspend the viewer's disbelief. So: If these MIT kids are so smart, how come they keep going to Las Vegas one weekend after another, and even to the same casinos? Why couldn't they have gone to Reno or Atlantic City once in awhile to avoid drawing attention to themselves? And if this kid is so smart, how come it never occurs to him to stash his six-figure winnings in a safe deposit box instead of hiding them above his dorm room ceiling tile? And why is Kevin Spacey's mastermind character so intent on going back again and again, rather than just making a bundle and walking away?

Grade: D.

88 Minutes

After we started watching this, I found that it was nominated for a Razzie last year for both Worst Picture and Worst Actor.

It didn't win either, and sometimes the Razzies are way wrong, but this time I'm with them on the Worst Picture part. Hard to believe that a psychological thriller with Al Pacino in it could be so utterly uninteresting, but it was. Not only is it impossible to care about any of the characters in this show, but--well, the basic premise is that Pacino's character gets a phone call from an old enemy and is told that he has 88 minutes to live--and before the movie is half over, you find yourself wishing they would speed up time and make good on their threat, just to get it over with.

Neither of us were able to sit through the whole thing. Don't know whodunit, and don't care.

All About Eve

Hadn't seen this one in a long time, so when I came across it at the library I thought I'd give it another try. In retrospect, I won't stay that I wish I hadn't, but I will say that I don't think I'll need to see it again for another couple of decades.

I have a great deal of respect for Bette Davis, but I'm not quite sure why. I've never been crazy about her looks or any of her characters or anything. And she turns in a solid performance here as a self-absorbed star actress, so the movie didn't do anything to change my opinion of her one way or the other. For what it is, though, and for the times in which it was released, I guess the movie remains indestructible, as does Ms. Davis.

Best Part: George Sanders as the self-serving unscrupulous drama critic Addison DeWitt. I've always enjoyed listening to him ever since I first heard him as the voice of Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book. Marilyn Monroe also has a few lines in this show, and--as it was before they made her into Marilyn Monroe(TM)--she looks gorgeous and is fun to watch.

Howl's Moving Castle

In earlier days I felt that detectable changes from one frame to the next were a hallmark of cheap animation. This was especially true in animations produced for television: Hanna-Barbera may have been the most commercially successful animation studio ever, but for Heaven's sake! Do they HAVE to keep lowering the bar so @#$%#@$ far?

Once they had lowered the standard, they were copied and things only got worse. Watch an episode of Pokemon, for example, and the technique is--well, I'll just say that the cutting of corners to make the animation process cost-effective is plainly evident.

The previous result for me has been a knee-jerk dismissive reaction anytime the animation wasn't perfectly smooth. If they were putting fewer than 24 fps on the screen, somebody didn't care enough.

But then I started watching Miyazaki films. Quite often--maybe always--the transition from one frame to the next is evident. But if the drawings are beautifully executed with great care, does it matter so much? In this case, since so many of the drawings are executed by only one person--and since the result is soulful and thoughtful and magnificent in so many other pleasantly surprising ways--I'm finding a new ability to ignore frame counts.

This film, in particular, is beautiful. I found the story rather convoluted and a little disappointing in its complexity, but that's my only complaint. It's definitely on my to-own list.

Kiki's Delivery Service

Kiki's Delivery Service was the first Miyazaki film I ever saw, and we just got it from the library again. It's been a couple of years since we first saw it--the twins didn't remember it at all--and I found it even better the second time around.

The film begins as Kiki, a young witch, decides that it's time for her to leave home and try to make her way in the world. The rest of the film is about her trying to get settled in her new life, and the adventures that happen to her along the way.

One of my favorite things about Miyazaki is the way that he will stir together disparate elements from past history and, because the story is already dreamlike, the elements seem to fit effortlessly, as if they always belonged together. The cars in Kiki's new town all seem to be from about the mid-1930s, and there is a dirigible in the story, but there are also transistor radios, and television. The locals regard Kiki as more of a remarkable surprise than a fright; nobody is horrified to see her flying around on a broom. And the message behind the film is a powerful favorite of mine.

The only downside to this movie is that Kiki's cat, Jiji, was voiced by Phil Hartman. I never heard of Phil Hartman until he became famous for the wrong reason, and I can't listen to his work here without being saddened by that. Sigh.

Ellen Tebbits

I have been a huge fan of Beverly Cleary for about 25 years. And before that, I knew of her stuff because of the one book of hers we owned at home growing up, which was Ellen Tebbits.

I must have read that book at least half a dozen times, just because it was there. It wasn't until much later, when I began to improve as a writer, that I really came to appreciate Ms. Cleary's amazing talent.

I've read most of her books to the twins--everything in the Henry Huggins series, everything in the Ramona series, everything in the Ralph S. Mouse series, and a couple of her other books as well (including her book Otis Spofford, which also features Ellen Tebbits in a supporting role). But this book never found its way to our shelf until last week when Charlotte brought it home from school.

And so I re-read it today. Wonderful, again. (Coincidentally, Charlotte brought home this edition, which has the Alan Tiegreen illustration on the cover, but the same drawings inside as the 1951 original that we had when I was a kid.)

Currently Reading

Even-handed historical narratives about the inventors that helped shape the American present.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, about as many of the names associated with certain inventions are gifted with more talent for marketing than inventing, and so have made themselves into household names.  Some were more interested in inventing than anything, and barely stopped to apply for patents, or left it to their assistants. And others stuck doggedly at their work against all odds until they were favored by dumb luck.

About this last group, especially: you wonder how many hundreds of would-be inventors kept going against all odds but never got there, or were beaten to it. Quite a few, probably, that we'll never hear of.

Disfarmer

When I come across something like this, it often feels as if everyone else already knows about such things and I'm just behind the times. I just found out about Mike Disfarmer from a recent issue of The New Yorker.

In case you missed that issue, the guy was kind of a flake. Raised in the rural southern town of Heber Springs, Arkansas, he claimed to have been desposited by a tornado and raised by an adoptive family. To distance himself from his rural origins, he changed his last name from Meier ("dairy farmer" in German) to Disfarmer ("dis-farmer").

Flake or no, he was an amazing portraitist. Some of his images can be seen (or copies bought) at www.disfarmer.com. Many more are available for viewing on flickr.com, like this one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/photomartimages/sets/72157604293857762/

Castle In the Sky

I feel as if there's not much to say about this film. Anyone who enjoys animation probably already knows about Hayao Miyazaki and all the things that make his stuff wonderful:

- unpredictable storylines in fantastical settings

- traditional (i.e., hand-drawn) animation, with computers used only rarely

- magnificent artwork

and that, until recently (due to age), he drew many of the frames and usually checked every single frame himself (over 100,000 for a single film). And people who aren't familiar with Miyazaki are not likely to appreciate his stuff until after they've seen a couple.

If you haven't seen his stuff before, this is a good one to start with; also, Kiki's Delivery Service or My Neighbor Totoro. He won a richly-deserved Oscar for the stellar Spirited Away, but some might find it less accessible than the others.

One other item: we just got this one from the library, and it was wonderful, but it's from 1986 (not released in the US until much more recently). I confused it with his more recent Howl's Moving Castle, which we haven't seen yet.