Tag: Little Children

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The Best and Worst of 2009

By Jim Spiegel

It’s been another exciting year, and we want to thank you all for reading and, if applicable, posting comments on our blog.  Once again, we would like to close out the year with summary remarks about good and bad stuff related to film, music, books, politics, and family. 

Best Film Experiences:

  • Jim:  Slumdog Millionaire, Inglourious Basterds, and The Blind Side. Three very different films with one thing in common: a compelling story.  See my March 2 post for extended comments on Slumdog, and our joint review of Inglourious Basterds in our October 29 post.  As for The Blind Side, I confess that I went to see it begrudgingly, figuring it would subject me to two hours of eye-rolling melodrama.  On the contrary, this simple but powerful film had me in tears the entire evening.  And I’m no sentimentalist…
  • Amy:  Jim chose the ones you’ve heard of, so here are a few older ones you might not have seen: 1927 Academy Award winning Sunrise.  I am not a big fan of silent films but this one is amazing, a perfect movie. Another oldie but goodie is The Red Shoes.  Finally, Murder!  I am slowly working my way through all the works of Hitchcock and this was one I marked off the list this year.  It’s classic Hitchcock, which is to say, suspense with heart and soul.  Finally, this one isn’t an oldie, but since I spend a great deal of time watching children’s films I will give a shout out to my friends Charlie and Lola.

Worst Film Experiences: 

  • Jim:  Little Children—Three of my pet peeves in contemporary Hollywood films are:  1) stilted dialogue, 2) gratuitous sex scenes, and 3) plotlines that encourage viewers to root for a character to commit adultery.  Well, this movie features all three of these vices.  Some thematic originality or insight into truth might have helped to redeem the film despite these flaws.  But, alas, this one was disappointing down to the last, contrived and implausible, scene.
  • Amy:  The Reader, Japanese Story, and Summertime are three that standout in their badness.  There are bad movies which are flawed in one way or another (poor writing, bad acting, etc.) and then there are movies that are faulty on a deeper level; like people who are really smart that you enjoy being with as long as you don’t think about what they are actually saying.  These films would fall into the latter category.

Best Musical Experiences of the Year: 

  • Jim:  Wilco (The Album).  Jeff Tweedy & Co. have been making great music since the mid-90s, and their latest effort is more of the same.  2009 is also the year that I discovered the Kings of Leon.  Thanks to Jason Fortner for his insistent introduction to the beauty of the Followill brothers’ musical world.
  • Amy:  It isn’t a specific album but I loved my Christmas music this year. One of my faves included Sufjan Stevens Songs for Christmas, “What Child is This” by Andrea Bocelli, and Mary J. Blige and Emmylou Harris’ Light of the Stable.  They all strike the chords of awe, sadness, and rejoicing that I love about the season.

Favorite Songs of the Year:

  • Jim:  “Breathe” by U2.  This song slaps you in the face, spins you in circles, then sits you down and caresses you into ecstasy.  What begins as an almost tuneless rapid-fire narrative resolves into one of the most melodically satisfying songs in the U2 repertoire.  Check out that entrancing combo of cello and guitar as well as the memorable lyrical images—e.g., “people born of sound” wearing songs “like a crown” and “the roar that lies on the other side of silence.”  Oh yeah.
  • Amy:  See my comments above about Christmas songs.

Jim’s Favorite Sports Moment of the Year:  The season-long dominance of the Saints and Colts (two of my favorite teams), both of whom earned home field advantage throughout the NFL playoffs.  I’m not naïve enough to think both will make it to the Super Bowl (#1 seeds almost never meet in the championship).  But I’m hopeful that one of them will play on Super Sunday.

Jim’s Most Disappointing Sports Moment of the Year:  The Detroit Tigers’ squandering their division lead on the last day of regular season.  It wasn’t so much a moment as a week-long, fated collapse.  Ugh.

Amy’s Best Eating Experience of the Year:  New Orleans’ restaurant Mona Lisa’s eggplant parmesan.  Spicy marinara sauce, crispy eggplant in a creative setting with friendly folks.  And the service is great—at the Mona Lisa everyone is treated like a regular.

Amy’s Worst Eating Experience of the Year:  “Zucchini and Basil Soup.”  In an attempt to cleanse our bodies of toxins, Jim and I did a cleanse diet which excluded all cheese, eggs, wheat, soda, and basically anything you might enjoy eating.  The diet was actually not that bad, but this cold “soup” was definitely the low point.

Most and Least Satisfying Reads of the Year:

  • Jim:  Antony Flew’s There is a God, in which the former atheist chronicles his journey to belief in God and masterfully summarizes the three main considerations which prompted him to embrace theism.  I’ve also greatly enjoyed the Arts and Letters Daily blog.  My least satisfying read was Kwame Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism—an attempt to salvage shared moral values while affirming cultural relativism.  I kept waiting for an argument, but it never came.  And until the very end I hoped Appiah would rescue his project from incoherence.  My hopes were never realized.
  • Amy:  Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth, Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit and Same Kind of Different as Me were all inspiring.  They just don’t write them like that anymore.  I didn’t like The Girls from Ames.  Also, on three separate occasions, I began reading The Shack, but I couldn’t complete it.  Bad theology and even worse writing.

Political High Point of the Year:  Our hopeful sides want to celebrate the seemingly grass roots movement afoot in our country against government expansion and irresponsibility.  But our cynical sides tell us that it’s all just more talk that will, in the end, be undermined by profiteering.

Political Low Point of the Year:  The revelation that (now former) Green Czar Van Jones was a Marxist…or perhaps the revelation that (now former) White House communications director Anita Dunn was a Marxist sympathizer.  Or (speaking of Marxism?) perhaps the real low point was the health care bill.

Most Outrageous News Events of the Year:  The balloon boy hoax (what can you expect from a couple who would name their kid “Falcon”?) and Bernie Madoff (an appropriate surname, until the Ponzi schemer artist got busted) and climategate (when scientists feel they have to fudge numbers, this should give pause to even the most dogmatic believers in their theory).  Ah, the hits just keep on coming, don’t they?

Our Kids’ Most Memorable Statements of the Year:

Bailey:  “I think cussing is just adults’ way of whining.” 

Sam:  “Dad, just try to name a breakfast cereal I don’t like.”

Maggie:  “I think the wind is God whispering ‘I love you.’”

Andrew:  “I never want to get married, ‘cuz you have to kiss someone every day.”

Most Satisfying Shared Experiences of the Year: 

  • Jim:  Walking around the French Quarter together at the ETS conference in November.  Also, our August vacation in Houston with the incomparable Newcomb family. 
  • Amy:  Our various bike rides together as a family; also, seeing two of our kids become communicant members of our church and sharing the communion experience with them.

New Year’s Resolutions:

  • Jim:  To get to bed before midnight more than half of the time
  • Amy: To put Ranch Pringles behind me once and for all

Happy 2010 everyone!  And happy new decade as well!!

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Snapshots

By Amy Spiegel

Brief comments on film by Amy.
Some old, some new.  Domestic films and foreign too.

John Adams—Any movie that I can get Jim to watch with me is a good movie (with the grim exception of Tropic Thunder—Ugh). Any six-hour movie I can convince him to watch is an instant classic. This one was so good that immediately after finishing the first disc via Netflix, we went out and rented the second at Blockbuster. I am a big Paul Giamatti fan (Sideways, Lady in the Water), and he doesn’t disappoint. Great performances, especially by Giamatti and Laura Linney who plays Abigail Adams.  I was in awe of the production and grateful to the filmmakers for simply telling the story without getting in the way or passing judgment. Various perspectives are presented and you are to decide for yourself what you think of Adams’ choices, both professionally and privately. They even portray marriage and commitment in a way that neither glosses over the ugly bits nor makes it appear one step higher than purgatory. If you have any interest in American history, this is a movie for you.

Proof—One of my Netflix buddies once told me that I enjoy far too many films. That may be true. However, there are at least as many that I loathe. I particularly hate movies that make me feel like an idiot for not liking them. Perhaps there should be a warning alongside the rating and the two “thumbs way up” on such films, reading something like “Be advised: People who don’t like this movie are morons and just don’t get it.” What’s not to like after all? It’s a movie about math brought to us by the mathematical genius who brought us such greats as Shakespeare in Love and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. I felt like I could hear the writer giggling behind the television, waiting to explain the movie to me in long drawn about syllables, using very small words in case I was too dense to understand. “See…it’s called “Proof’ and she needs proof that she isn’t crazy. And that he loves her. And that she can trust him. Get it?” Take my advice. Never watch a film about math where the camera pans away and music swells every time the characters actually start talking about math.

Little Children—I watched this movie after a night of domestic duties, which this film suggests is a trap to avoid at all costs. Feeding dinner to the kids, cleaning up afterward, putting them to bed—all instruments of torture. The opening scene portrays moms who come off like Stepford wives on steroids—who would be enough to send women running to the nearest pharmacy demanding a lifetime supply of birth-control pills, or at least to their local childcare facility. I am not sure whom the makers of this film hate more—traditional stay-at-home moms, wives in general, husbands in general, or law-enforcement officers. You know it ain’t pretty when the most sympathetic character of them all is a pedophile. To me, this movie is a clear indicator of just how far into the moral abyss Hollywood has sunk. This is not dangerous beauty—lies and distortions wrapped in the seductively attractive wrappings of great art. This is lies and distortions wrapped in a brown paper bag with one or two corners ripped off. In other words, not only is the movie false and evil, it is also really, really badly done. It is as if the evil lurking in Hollywood has warped filmmakers’ aesthetic sense as well as their moral code. The combination of bad filmmaking, reprehensible preaching, and gratuitous nudity make this movie one to avoid.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall—I usually review three films, but rather than end on a down note, let me recommend a movie that is worth going out of your way to see. If you are at all inclined to watch people dressed up in movement-restrictive clothing and ride around the country side on horses while searching for true love, this is a flick for you. Romance that doesn’t require you to check your morals or good sense at the door? What a novel concept. (Subscribers to Netflix can find this one in “Watch Instantly.” Great movie and it saves space in the ole queue. Can’t ask for more than that.)