There's so much to love about Gold Diggers of 1933. The crazy Busby Berkeley numbers, Aline MacMahon's raunchy humor, the sweet romance between Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. It's also really interesting to see a comedy about the Depression, made while it was happening. To quote Roger Ebert, the characters in most movies (then and now) seem to be living on a stipend from God. The three women at the center of this movie are living hand-to-mouth while they try to get jobs in the theater. They share a dingy apartment so small the three of them sleep in one bed; dodge the landlady when rent is due; steal milk from the neighbors; and have pawned so many of their things, they have to pool their closets to come up with one outfit suitable to visit a Broadway producer. And they make jokes about it. And the jokes are funny!

One joke that I hadn't noticed before, which made me laugh out loud this time, is when Barney (Ned Sparks), the crochetey producer, decides his next show is going to be about the Depression. MacMahon asks if there's going to be any comedy in it, because that's what she does. "Comedy?!" Barney shouts. "I'll make 'em laugh at you starving to death! It'll be the funniest thing you ever did!"

Gold Diggers of 1933 is not what people typically think of as a "pre-code movie" because there's no actual sex. The movie could easily have been made under the code if they had just toned it down a little, removed the jokes about sex and drugs, made the costumes less revealing and the situations less suggestive. Still, it has a breezy openness about it which to me was the wonderful thing about pre-code movies. Anyone who thinks their generation invented sexual freedom (boomers, I'm looking at you) needs to watch this and learn.

The movie starts slow, giving you a chance to get to know the airmen during their long flight. The characters really aren't characters, just thumbnail sketches of broad types. In fact they aren't even given names in the credits, just listed by their position in the bomber crew. Which is my only criticism of a fine movie. Even without complex character development the performances are good, with subtle emotion. The battle scenes are very well done, especially a scene in the Philippines where the crew are trying desperately to repair their plane and get it airborne before the Japanese overrun their position.

There's also an air battle from the gunners' point of view which reminded me very much of a battle scene on the Millenium Falcon in Star Wars. Those big guns swiveling back and forth. In fact, now that I think about it, I remember my dad watching Star Wars with me and complaining about those guns. He said that was World War II technology and it was ridiculous to see it on a space ship. If they had hyperdrive, they would surely have guided missiles. I guess George Lucas thought it looked cool. Maybe he had seen this movie.

The only good thing I can say about this movie is that Michelle Yeoh is also in it, and she and Jet Li have a good fight scene.

The original was vastly superior to the Alec Baldwin/Kim Basinger version. Which almost goes without saying. You know, I just realized something -- both versions of this movie featured costars who were a couple in real life. Interesting coincidence. Also, I thought of two things about the remake which were better. First, the heavy in the beginning, the money man who sets up the robbery that goes bad, is played by James Woods in the remake. He's way too good at playing a sleazy, smug rich asshole.

Second, there's a part in the middle where they're on their way to El Paso, they're identified, they get away, go on to another town, are IDed again, have to abandon their car, flee on foot and end up in a garbage truck. In the remake this is condensed down to one action sequence in one town, which tightened up that part of the movie considerably.

As for the two bits in the remake I mentioned, with identifiable Joss dialogue. On the train, McQueen silently grabs the woman's bag and shoves it into the compartment. No dialogue. In the gun shop, the clerk never drops behind the counter and never says anything funny.

On the other hand, the part at the end with the old redneck is way, way funnier in the original. Because the old guy is played by Slim Pickins.

In this movie there are communists lurking under every rock. They twirl their handlebar moustaches, steeple their hands and murmur "Excellent" while plotting the overthrow of the US government. The Communist Party in the US is presented as being about the same as the Stalinist regime. Party members spy on each other constantly. When one party member objects to a violent tactic, another (an older woman) shrieks at her for being disloyal. And the party assassinates anyone who tries to quit.

According to the movie, the civil rights movement was a front for communists. In fact, the party leader explains that it's a fundraising tactic: they incite race riots, hopefully the rioting blacks kill somebody white, then when they get arrested the communists raise money for the "defense fund," except the communists keep the money. (Warning, this scene includes offensive terms for blacks.) Labor unions are also a front for communists, and in one scene, the communists start a riot at a strike, using lead pipes wrapped in Yiddish newspapers to beat the factory representatives, so the Jewish community will be blamed. Also, the communists have an army of schoolteachers infiltrating public schools. The teachers identify idealistic children and target them for indoctrination.

Everyone knows Lovejoy is a communist and he is universally reviled. His son disowns him, his brother beats him up at their mother's funeral, his neighbor tells him to stay away from the neighbor's son. Robert Osborne said that this movie was intended to placate HUAC, and the climactic scene, where Lovejoy finally gets to denounce the communists and vindicate himself, takes place at a HUAC hearing. After the hearing his son begs forgiveness for not trusting him, and he says he was proud of his son's intolerance. "Even when you hated me, I loved you for it." Just as with My Son John, there's no room in this world for differing points of view. You're either with us or against us, and anyone who's the tiniest bit liberal is either the dupe of communists, or being indoctrinated to become one.

The weird thing is that the movie accuses communists of cynically exploiting workers and minorities. But that's what the movie is doing. When the movie suggests that the civil rights and labor union movements were entirely driven by communist plots, it reduces the people in those movements to simpleminded puppets, unable to act on their own behalf.

I'm not an expert on this period of history, but I understand that the "red menace" wasn't invented out of whole cloth; there was a communist presence in the US, and some part of it had ties to the Soviet Union. And this movie is so far-fetched, so ludicrous, it makes that history seem less plausible.

• moving to the big city,
• not going to church anymore,
• using "two dollar words,"
• not playing football in high school,
• saying things like "our only hope is to learn to live with our fellow man. The globe is getting smaller. We must tear down our spite fences and love our neighbors," and "I love humanity. I love the downtrodden, the helpless minorities."
• wanting a "lasting peace,"
• having the apartment key of a woman who is arrested for being a communist.

The movie presents a world where all virtue resides in small towns, where people who don't fit in are suspect, where college is a recruitment ground for communism, where intellect and education are anti-American values which true patriots avoid. Early on the father tells Walker, "They tell us to be alert, and you talk like the people we're supposed to be alert against." And in the world of My Son John, the father is right. Walker is a bookish man with a dry sense of humor who doesn't like sports. Obviously he's a communist.

This movie made me sad. Not just because there are too many people who still think this way. Even worse, Robert Walker died during production of this movie. They had to piece his final scenes together with footage from other movies, mainly Strangers on a Train. Walker had real talent, and it's a damn shame that this is how his career ended.

My Son John is worth watching to understand the political climate of the early 50s -- a politician who said "Americans need to watch what they say and watch what they do" wouldn't have been condemned -- though I didn't enjoy the experience. And I strongly advise against reading the comments on IMDB, unless you're interested in lengthy discussions of whether disliking this movie makes you a pinko.

I played a little over an hour of songs about snow, which was a lot of fun. Here's the playlist. Several of the songs I played are associated with Christmas, although they never mention the holiday. Like "Let It Snow" or "Marshmallow World." The songs are about cold weather, and it's kind of a shame that no one ever plays them after Christmas. I did play one song that explicitly says Christmas: "Snowy White Snow and Jingle Bells." I couldn't resist, I love that song so much.

I had all the snow songs on one CD, which totally felt like cheating -- just sitting there letting the CD play out, and hitting "advance" if there was a gap between tracks -- but it was a good thing because one of the CD players was broken and the computing guy came in during my show to fix it. Doing my show with only 2 CD players is hard enough, add someone working on the CD player at the same time and it would have been ridiculous.

On the way home we had to take the long way around -- head up Hillsborough Rd away from town, go to Sparger and double back -- because during the afternoon some idiot had lost control and driven into a telephone pole. The wires were down and Cole Mill was completely blocked. The road wasn't that bad; they must have been driving really fast to hit the pole that hard. Thanks a lot, idiot.