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September 14 movie: AV Geeks: Schoolhouse Scandal. Our friend Walt was there, as well as Jason! and his wife. And another couple, some friends of theirs, brought cupcakes. I think this is one of the best AV Geeks I've seen. (Not just because of the cupcakes!) It was all short films from the 50s from one company that addressed various interpersonal problems high school students might face. First was "The Outsider," about a girl who didn't fit in. This one I actually didn't enjoy. Watching a lonely girl stand in the hall by herself looking sad while the other kids make plans to do fun things that don't include her, well to be honest it made me a little queasy. Not that my life was ever like that or anything. Surely not!

The rest of the films didn't hit home like that, & were much easier for me to relax and enjoy. There was one about a bully, one about a disruptive class clown, and one about a school full of prejudiced snots. That one was interesting because they never show the object of the prejudice, or explain what it is the other kids hate about him. It could be race, religion or class. At the end, the victim of the prejudice heroically saves the life of two of the kids who hate him, and is injured in the process. (Prompting Georg and I to whisper to each other, Well, Homer, I won your respect, and all I had to do was save your life.) Most of the kids realize the error of their bigoted little ways and rush to the hospital to give blood. But two of the kids decide that it doesn't change anything and they still hate him. That was more subtlety than I would expect from a fifty year old short educational film.

Each film ended with questions for the audience: what can you do to make an outsider feel more welcome? How can you prevent a class clown from getting out of hand and disrupting your school? Did the students make the right choice in dealing with the bully? It was interesting that they put responsibility for how to handle these situations on the kids. In some cases (like a vicious bully) I don't think there is much other students really can do. Still it reflected the different world view of 50 years ago, the expectation that children could deal with these problems without adult intervention.

As usual Skip saved the best for last: Dance, Little Children, a short film about the evils of premarital sex. Skip said this one had been chosen in honor of Jason! who had seen it when he was in high school. (Which made me wonder: I thought Jason! was about the same age as me, which would have put him in high school in the early 80s. Why was his school showing 30-year old educational films about sex?) Jason! described the movie as, "It was supposed to scare us off sex forever, but it actually made us feel like everyone else was having much more fun than we were." The movie follows a Health Department investigator in a small town as he tracks and stops the spread of syphilis among the teen population. Who were, according to the movie, having sex constantly, everywhere and with everyone. Structurally the movie was kind of like the Dragnet of teen sex. Except that unlike Joe Friday, the health department guy was completely nonjudgmental. Plus, like every doctor in the movie, he smoked constantly. There were a lot of awesome things about this movie, and the best was the title song. That's right, a movie about syphilis featuring a catchy rock-n-roll tune called "Dance Little Children." It really doesn't get better.

I almost forgot, the film strip at the beginning was also one of the best I've seen. It was all about how the skills in conformity and complaisance that you learn in school will help you in your future career, whatever it may be. Hi-larious.

September 13 movie: Jazz, Episode 1. Netflix finally got the first episode of the Ken Burns jazz documentary. There was a lot of background to cover before they even got to the creation of jazz. Which seemed to encourage the tendency towards pomposity, especially from Wynton Marsalis. We found him in general really interesting when he was talking about the structure of music, acting out the styles of different musicians. And really annoying when he was pontificating about culture and so forth.

The introductory material meant that they spent less time talking about music in general and jazz in specific. Still, I learned a lot from this episode. The story I was most interested in, and found most tragic, was James Reese Europe. He was part of the transition from ragtime to jazz, led a military band during WWI, was a war hero, and was murdered right after the war. The movie made it sound like he would have changed the face of American music if he hadn't been killed so young. Europe also shows up in one of the other episodes we've seen. And I really want to learn more about him. The Durham library has one book about him -- non-circulating! How annoying. Amazon has one CD of his (actually 2 CDs of the exact same recordings, packaged differently) which I might buy.

September 9 movie: High Society. I have deeply mixed feelings about this movie. In general, I'm not so crazy about remakes. Especially of movies I love. And one of the changes is seriously problematic: giving C.K. Dexter Haven (Bing Crosby here) a successful career makes him a much more positive character (unlike Cary Grant's idle wastrel version), and makes Grace Kelly's contempt for him come across as pure snobbishness. Which renders her character fairly unpleasant. Plus, Kelly's overly mannered impersonation of Katherine Hepburn is incredibly irritating. After a point I was cringing every time she opened her mouth. Whose decision was that? Bing, though not much of an actor, is refreshing in comparison. At least he's playing himself rather than imitating Cary Grant.

First the bad, now the good. As I said, Bing is at ease playing himself, and has several good songs. Frank Sinatra also has several good songs, and his acting is great -- Georg pointed out that he's actually better for the character of an ordinary working class guy than Jimmy Stewart. Celeste Holm is very good in a part originated by the wonderful Ruth Hussey. And of course, the best thing about the movie is Louis Armstrong. I watched the "High Society Calypso" number from the beginning three times before starting the movie.

September 8 movie: This Could Be The Night. I loved this! Really, really enjoyed it. Jean Simmons stars as a schoolteacher who gets a part-time job as the secretary for a nightclub full of colorful, and not quite respectable, characters. It's basically the "bad boy myth" writ large: not just the love interest (Anthony Franciosa) but the entire organization is reformed by the influence of the nice girl. Much of the comedy comes from the staff figuring out that Simmons is a virgin -- though of course they never come right out and say so. The closest they come is "greenhorn" and "no runs, no hits, no errors." Anyway they realize she's a virgin and then Franciosa spends the rest of the movie trying to protect her from ever being alone with any man in the place. My favorite subplot involves the strip-tease girl who wants to become a chef. Also there was excellent singing by Julie Wilson, who I had never heard of before. I will definitely watch this again next time it shows up on TCM.

September 7 movie: It Happened in Brooklyn. This was a fun, inconsequential movie starring Frank Sinatra and Peter Lawford. We wondered if this movie was where they met. Sinatra had several good songs. Jimmy Durante was in it too. And that's really all I have to say about this one. Watch it if you're really into Sinatra, or Durante.

September 4 movie: Le Fantôme d'Henri Langlois. This was a fascinating documentary about Henri Langlois, founder of the Cinémathèque Française film archive. I didn't know much about Langlois before watching this. He comes across as having seen film preservation as a calling, having been incredibly passionate about that calling, and incredibly good at inspiring people to share his mission. Unfortunately, not so good at the ongoing work of his mission: maintaining the films, handling the details, running a large organization. The movie is kind of defensive about this issue, but mismanagement of the Cinémathèque was clearly a problem.

Still, Langlois' contribution to movies was enormous. According to the movie he invented film preservation, invented the revival house, brought together the people who became the French New Wave movement. Okay, I'm not so crazy about New Wave movies, but for those other two, I'm in Langlois' debt. I think the most thrilling part was the early stuff about Langlois and his partner, Mary Meerson, literally risking their lives to protect movies from the Nazis. According to the documentary, Hitler was intent on destroying all copies of the German language version of The Blue Angel. Langlois saved the movie by cutting a deal with an SS officer who was a Marlene Dietrich fan.

The big bummer of the movie was when they walked through Langlois' museum. An amazing collection of film artifacts, collected and displayed in innovative ways. When they got to the original set from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I burst out, "We have to go to France so we can see this museum!" Immediately (literally, right after I said that) the movie explains how there was a fire in the building that opponents of the museum used as an excuse to dismantle it "temporarily," twenty years ago. So sad.

September 3 movie: Along Came Jones. Decent Western starring Gary Cooper as an ordinary guy who gets mistaken for a notorious outlaw, Loretta Young as the woman who saves his life, and William Demerest as Cooper's sidekick. Young gets the best line: "What I aim at, I hit! And what I hit, that's what I was aiming at!"

September 2 movie: Gidget. In catching up on the weekend's movies, I almost forgot about Gidget. It's a cute, fun beach movie which embodies a staggering array of ugly stereotypes about male-female relationships. It's really kind of amazing. Stars Sandra Dee as Gidget, James Darren as her love interest "Moondoggie," and Cliff Robertson as "The Big Kahuna."

September 3 movie: The Simpsons. What fun! I haven't seen a movie in the theater in ages, and this was great. It can be difficult to translate a TV show to the big screen, especially a show that's still on the air. They did a great job with it. My only quarrel with the movie was that, as I was watching and enjoying and thinking to myself what a good movie it was, the thought popped into my head that this explains why the show has seemed so stale lately. All their creative energy must have gone into the movie.

September 2: In a Lonely Place. This was dark, complicated psychological drama starring Humphrey Bogart as a Hollywood writer with, um, anger issues, and Gloria Grahame as the woman who falls in love with him. There's no way for me to write my thoughts about this movie without major spoilers, so I'm just going to do it, behind a cut.

September 2 movie: One, Two, Three. I saw this movie a couple of years ago and hated it. Then I read a review on another website calling it Billy Wilder's funniest movie. That's quite a statement to make about the director of Some Like it Hot and writer of Ninotchka and Ball of Fire. Okay, I've been wrong before, I was willing to give it another try.

I've been wrong before, but not this time. It was amusing at times, made me laugh out loud once, but for the most part, no. Way too shouty. Also too stagey -- I mentioned that to Georg and he said "Do people keep walking in and out of doors?" As a matter of fact, they do.

I'm not sorry I saw One, Two, Three, but I don't think I would see it again. And I have to wonder about someone who would call it Wilder's funniest movie. Have they not seen Some Like It Hot? Stalag 17 isn't even a comedy and it's funnier than this.

September 2 movie: Top Hat. Another old favorite, and one that I never get tired of. What luck we happened to turn TCM on just as it was starting. There's so much to love about this movie. The whole cast -- of course Fred and Ginger, and also Edward Everett Horton, Helen Broderick, Eric Blore, and Eric Rhodes -- were so funny together.

September 2 movie: Duck Soup. Okay, Monkey Business is great but Duck Soup is still the Marx Brothers' funniest. So many hilarious routines that describing them all would take as long as watching the movie. My favorites are the justly famous mirror scene; the fight between Chico and Harpo the peanut vendors and the mean lemonade vendor; and Chico's description of tailing Firefly. "Tuesday we go to the ballgame but he fool us: he no show up. Wednesday he go to the ballgame but we fool him: we no show up. Thursday was a double header: no one show up. Friday it rained all day, there was no ballgame. So we stayed home and listened to it over the radio."

Kevin's comment is well-taken about Monkey Business being comedy gold because the Marx Brothers were completely unrestrained by plot. Duck Soup has a plot, but I don't think it gets in the way of the comedy. I think the comedy is diminished in the later movies when the scripts start depicting the brothers as a positive force trying to help people. It's especially a problem for Harpo, who is funniest as a sort of happy anarchist who loves destroying things. Trying to shoehorn his shtick into a helpful character with a positive goal, as they do in movies like A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races, does interfere with the funny.

September 1 movie: The Feminine Touch. Romantic comedy starring Don Ameche, Rosalind Russell, Kay Francis and Van Heflin. Ameche plays a college professor who goes to New York to sell his book about advancing the human species by eliminating jealousy. Which he has attempted to do in his own life, to the intense frustration of his wife, Russell. Ameche spends the movie throwing Russell at lothario Van Heflin, which drives Russell insane because she doesn't want Heflin's attentions, and drives Kay Francis insane because she does.

I have known people who believe that jealousy is a blight on humanity, and that they are more evolved because they don't feel it, and I find them incredibly annoying. I also think they're probably lying (maybe to themselves as well as to me). I only know one person who claims to never feel jealousy who I completely believe.

That said, I can't get behind the movie's premise that love isn't true love without jealousy. Kay Francis sums up the movie thus: "How could I know I wanted a man if I didn't hate everybody else who wanted him?" Gosh, Kay, maybe you know you want him because you want him? I dunno, just a thought.

Looking over last night's post it occurs to me that it probably makes no sense to anyone who hasn't seen the Mummer's parade. So here's a brief overview:

The Mummer's Parade is a New Year's Day parade in South Philadelphia. It's been around for just over a hundred years, and I think it existed in some unofficial form for several decades before. The parade comprises four parts:

1. The comics. My impression is this is the least formal part of the parade. Folks dress up in funny costumes, often but not always in large groups. I think there's generally no performance except that they do the Mummer's Strut (a dancing walk traditional to the parade). Here's a cute photo of a comic club, and here's another.
2. The fancies. These are sort of like small floats or big costumes. Lots of ostrich feathers, lamé and mirrored surfaces. Some are on wheels, with the person inside pushing; some are smaller and are carried by the person the whole route. I seem to recall that there are lots of rules governing each type of fancy entry, for instance they have to include certain symbols like diamonds or horseshoes. I found a Flickr stream with great photos from 2007 including a large fancy and tricolor fancies.
3. The string bands. The string bands, for me, are the best part of the Mummers. They put on elaborate performances with dancing, a musical medley and elaborate costumes on a theme like "Jungle Jam" or "Toyland Comes Alive." The music is mainly banjo, accordion and sax, although I don't know the entire band lineup. Like the fancies, the costumes feature lots of ostrich feathers, lamé and sequins. I think the string bands would probably seem somewhat familiar to anyone who's seen the New Orleans Mardi Gras krewes. This is a nice photo of a string band. It's fun sometimes to try to guess the theme based on the costumes: are these guys supposed to be Peruvian? And here's a costume closeup, of a guy wearing baguette epaulettes because he was in a Paris-themed performance. That is so Mummers.
4. The fancy brigades. The fancy brigades aren't actually in the parade route. They perform at the Convention Center after the parade. They're a lot like the string bands -- a competitive music and dance competition with big shiny costumes -- but since they don't walk the parade route, the props are much bigger and more elaborate. And I think they use recorded music, not live string band music. I couldn't find any photos of the fancy brigades on Flickr. Just someone who posted dozens of fancies mislabeled as fancy brigades. Here's the photo album from Shooting Stars, one of the biggest fancy brigade clubs.