mayo2338

Notwithstanding that the laws of physics are time-symmetric it has been our inevitable and poignant experience that the past invariably and inevitably becomes this present. A story line wherein many strive to get two folks to remarry. But more beguilingly, Joan Blondell croons "YOU"LL NEVER KNOW", there are several Gershwin songs and the miraculous grace and beauty of Eleanor Powell enchants. Given that Gershwin did compose, that Eleanor was and had her being with such grace and beauty and that there was a dimly-remembered world wherein Joan Blondell sang "YOU'LL NEVER KNOW", this movie will gladden you much, perhaps more than you'll ever know

My uncle Sid needed hernia surgery.The only folks capable of alleviating the danger pain and and anguish were WASPS who had been graduated from Dartmouth, Yale , Harvard , etc ere Johns Hopkins medical school. What the fxck was I to do. Everyone loved Sid for his benevolence, empathy and selflessnesss. He gave money and concern for those who were in their last terminal straits. So, he participated tangentially in the success of the brinks job and got paid. THOSE WITHOUT SIN MAY CAST THE FIRST STONE.It was with reluctance that we sought the blue=nose help of JOHN's Hopkins. These snobish dimwits didn't botch it and Sid was able to go on to humanitarian bank robberies that benefitted the most needy among us.Only in America.

Would that , however briefly, fleetingly, and insufficiently, the past was available . Available to undo, redress, and remorsefully retrieve the myriad cruelties and omisssions so excruciatingly beyond our access. The love unexpressed or not fully set forth. The priceless charm of those moments, personnae, and occasions that are fiendishly now irretrieveable and not wholly recalled. Thorton Wilder laid a right-uppercut properly, brutally and unforgivably upon us in OUR TOWN.

Gottfried Leibniz was the first to have observed of the cosmos,"why is there something and not nothing" I cannot fathom how he eventually came to conclude that "this was the best of all possible worlds" Was the deity under inomprehensible constraints such that the universe could noy have been sited 3/4th of a mile from where it presently is or why it could not have come into being 4 hours and thirty seven minutes prior to it's inception. In "Some Came Running" Shirley McClain suffers low self esteem and is at times an alcoholic floozy. She follows Frank Sinatra to Indiana ,where ,prim, proper, provident and pristine Martha Hyer does impel him to disesteem, by her impeccability, the wanton McClain. McClain loved deeply, truly, unreservedly and unwisely. In addition to the constaints upon the deity inferrible from Leibniz, we can think of many other failings and injustices.

The most astute among us, and if the truth be admitted, the most brave and intellectually discerning, have observed that we dwell in an insensate realm; a cosmos generated by random quantum happenstance. Yet, suppose that those who have accorded us infinite and unqualified love, have proclaimed things to be otherwise than above -stated.That we exist in a world of benevolence and Uncle Remus beneficence, and fond grace.Why would we not choose the latter alternative if all means naught and is bereft of any meaningful consequence. Crosby and Fitzgerald did well in "Going My Way".

Every urchin in NYC in 1941 , as did every kid in any town , knew that amyotropic lateral scleroris was inexorarably, inescapably , and inevitably fatal. Yet, Lou Gehrig when he addressed those in Yankee Stadium, on July 4, 1939,was sincere but fatalistic when he declaimed himself "...the luckiest man alive ...." Maybe he foresaw that Pearl Harbor and Auschwitz was forthcoming. As did Lincoln habitually, and by essence, he did summon forth the better angels of our nature.

The cinematography is beauty, reality, and sensation. You are soaked, by the wind and waves of the cliffed , bouldered awesomeness of the sea and Novembral austerity of Ireland's shores circa 1918.The time had long past for passionate Rosy Ryan to solemnly ,and with sanctity, mentored by Trevor Howard [ the village priest who saw to the souls of the villagers of his flock, abetted them against worldly ills and burdens[British Occupation}and strove to salvage their eternal souls from perdition]...yes the time was long past and she was joined in the sacrament of matrimony by said Trevor Howard to the gentle, fond, man of virtue and integrity, Robert Mitchum the village schoolteacher. Rosy was dutiful and respectful to her vows and husband. The British military commander, hopes and dreams dashed by a crippling wound in France and a life and career ruined thereby does chance one day into the village pub perhaps to fleetingly assuge his despair.A paroxysm of remembered combat agony renders him helpless; lost. Rosy Ryan's most passionate impulses of love and empathy for the infinite need she sees sends him to his side and succor. There ensues a scene of tender , febrile love and passion whose intensity I have never beheld. We say to T.S.Elliot that if gravity is insufficient to recall the outermost of our distant fleeting galaxies then indeed the world will be ended, an ashen cinder here and there in the vastness. The whimper will be somewhat abated in it's forlorn desolation , by the passionate humanity in Ryan's pub.

If our probabalistic quantum-fluctuation cosmos could have any meaning, all fears of such are put to rest by "The Pianist". The ultimate triumph of the valorous human spirit , which we celebrate and marvel at, is the blind , insensate product of random chance and circumstance. But are we not deeply affected. I,m advised director Polanski is a fugitive from pending charges of cogent merit: further I thought he had his "Mona Lisa" in "CHINATOWN". At any rate,indicted or not, his works give a larger significance to our scrabbling existence on the surface of this planet, which orbits an undistinguished star amid hundreds of billions of stars.

In every respect, size, magnitude, luminosity, age, position in galaxy etc etc our star the Sun is undistinguished.But Elisha Cook did slog through the mud on an 1870's random plain to uphold his honor and died at the villanous hand of Jack Palance when an insult to Stonewall Jackson demanded honor or death. Shane acted out of love and not regret for the past, or the swiftly passing of his gunfighter epoch. That he died of his wounds is a consumation devoutly to be wished for , rather than that he lived out a bathetic existence with a hopeless and wistful remembrance of things past. The last scene wherein the boy cries repeatedly "come back Shane..." distinguishes our planet, orbiting it's undistinguished star in a universe that may indeed harbor no sentient beings but ourselves.

The awesome genius of playwright Tennesseee Williams is of course acknowledged. The issue we now weigh is the human dignity of Ms Vivien Leigh as contrasted with Mr Jackie Robinson. Who could reasonably contest the fact that Rogers Hornsby was the greatest 2nd-baseman ever with Nap Lajoiie a distant 2nd and Mr Robinson a remote third. Jackie, if I may presume upon my being an ardent Dodger fan in a Yankee prone housing project, to refer to Mr Robinson thus, hit .342 in 1949 and stole home often and audaciously. His courage and dignity may have been equal to the valor and talent of Ms Vivien Leigh. Afflicted with a profound psychopathology she did nightly render the excruciating decline of the human spirit in adversity as the playwright had wrought it. Whose courage was the greater?

For each of us was there not a "Summer of '42". We were pubescent, immortal, and immeasurably prurient. This movie exudes, life, sea-breezes , sand dunes, and the stunning revelations of adolescence. The loveliness of Jennifer O'Neill is not measurable. Entropy, we are advised is the inescapable tendency toward disorganization of a closed system and is the culprit chargeable with the irretrievability of the past. Have we not all experienced the infinite joys and excruciating sorrows of the above premises, so well depicted in Summer of '42? Death[ came by mail/telegraph] but the urgency of life pressed on in an ecstatic delirium that was not to be denied.

Most of us would readily recognize that a meaningless cosmos is indistinguishable from an evil cosmos. The rare and exquisite beauty of the melodious chorus in Playing For Time did give some transient pause to those whose unnerring logic must undoubtedly cast our ballot to the unquestioned verdict that t'is meaningless and of course , evil. The Nazi death-dealers were ,however , momentarily paused. Shall we esteem and cherish this brief pause? or accede to the relentless tide of death, evil ,and meaninglessness ? Does anyone know the wagering line on next NETS-PISTONS game at Meadowlands?

Everett Sloan and Josph Cotton were certainly among the most accomplished actors and excellent of their's or any era. If Orson Welles intended a slovenly spoof upon us in Citizen Kane he should have chosen less worthy victims. This is a magnificent achievement and dares us to think if ROSEBUD exceeds all bathetic else that does ensue.We think the past insuperable, magnificenet, irretrievable and which did inspire Welles to attempt it's achievement in Citizen Kane. We think he failed; the past is irretrievable and genius cannot rescue it.

I never seen Tara or Miss Scarlett O'Hara but our unit skirted TWELVE OAKS and I waved to Mr Ashley Wilkes. Everytime we met up with Yankees , cavalry or foot, they seemed to crumble and skedaddle. Having come up the beauteous and bountiful Shenandoah valley in early summer of 1863, we were advised that Hill's advanced brigades on July 1 and Longstreet's mighty corps on July 2nd had not been quite able to dislodge the stubborn Yankees and their vaunted Iron Brigade, consisting of dauntless but hardly literate Irish immigrants. We were honored therefore to be assigned to join the division of Major George E. Pickett. Our forces unleashed a devastating and certainly lethal artillery barrage upon the Yankee center on July 3rd and with whoops of confident victory did begin the mile-plus gentle ascent up the meadow to the Yankee bastions.I feared not for my own fate, harkening back to the proud and principled upringing my loving mother had conferred.I was barely deterred when a Yankee minnie-ball tore my left clavicle...brave and valiant cries urged us on...then all went dark.

Einstein's special and general theories have never been controverted. It must however be acknowledged that the quantum theorists, those who are brazen and gutsy enough , have demonstrated the validity of their ideas of a probabilistic universe to a greater degree than relativity's premises . This brings us, naturally, to Bus Stop and the ethereal and incomparable charm and lovliness of Marilyn Monroe, whose nether bifurcations are an infinite haven to we mortal fools , but which assure us that Einstein must be right; and if he ain't we prefer his version anyway. I was an ardent Dodger fan when Branca pitched to Bobby Thompson on Oct 3, 1951. Therefore, I know what sustains a soul.

But you went for the price on Wilson.."The most astute minds among us are devastatingly persuasive that we live in a cosmos of meaningless random happenstance. Yet, I recall On the Waterfront with the bloodied but unbowed Terry Malloy ascending from the barge with head held high and principles intact. I note the oft uncelebrated excellence of Carl Malden and Eva Marie Saint, not to mention the incomparable Rod Steiger. I dub this a ten, and confess myself addled with spirits and ask that those among you with faculties intact assign a 10 in that it is meritorious and I cannot ballot effectually.

I'm advised by physicists reckless enough to publish, that were we to reconcile Einstein"s macroscopic explanations [special relativity, 1905 and General relativity 1915] with Bohr's ,Dirac,s Werner Heisenberg's and Schrodingers wave equations we"d have the explanation and justification of our cognitive self-awareness. With Fred Zinneman having contracted for Tex Ritter to render ...do not forsake me oh my darlin..." majestically and hypnotically against the ill-advised valor of Will Kane risking life , limb and ethereal valor, along with the love and ardor of Grace Kelly to uphold ideals that few of us comprehend or empathize with, seems to render the quest of the physicists noted above both bathetic, ill-advised and unachievble.

Yes, we live in a world where guiltless gargantuan killer whales, deftly and with agile grace do belly-flop in shallow surf to gulp down baby seals. We cogitating folks live in a more convoluted , subtle world wherein Generals of France ,in elegant splendour and impeccable grace,amid backdrops or Versaille opulence, do with grace and decorum bandy about the most recent or next upcoming carnage with a gelid cynicism of soul that gives evil a bad name. Colonel Dax is impelled to ameliorate the random executions of three soldiers from a unit that did not accomplish a known impossible mission.The darwinian ruthlessness of fate and injustice selects three souls for death {souls as inept, mystified by existence and perplexed as we all.} Perhaps the only humane moment occurs when one of the condemed squashes a cockroach to appease a fellow condemed who decried that the insect on the morrow would have a more robust connection with the deceased's wife than he. Kubrick merits kudos and Adolph Menjou and George MacCready are terror for our souls as the mannerred French Generals. This is an 11.

Colleagues and folks: If a deity exists there were two anguished choices. We could have a world including a film -drama by one Alfred Hitchcock; entited perhaps "lifeboat" ,included in the cast might have been, Tallulah Bankhead, Wm Bendix, John Hodiak 'whom death may have claimed early' Heather Angel, Hume Cronyn, Canada Lee and several other worthy players.{Not the least of whom was the incomparable and eventually suicidal Walter Slezak' Whatever defamation and denouncement is appropriately due such a deity , we believe she is due praise for deigning to have Hitchcock film "lifeboat".

The plot is banal, insipid, vapid, inane and in other respects boring. There are musical numbers that redeem these utterly. Were extra-terrestrial beings to evaluate this production , I feel they would be delighted by "LET YOURSELF GO" and deeply affected by LETS FACE THE MUSIC AND DANCE and empathize with we transitory beings who counsel among ourselves that flight is preferable to confrontation by those who may insist that " ....we pay the bill...." for this inestimably priceless existence.

When last formally convened, the above posited that the best and only way that Katharine Ross in the Graduate could be justly appreciated is with a spoon. The acting of Dustin Hoffman, Buck Henry and Anne Bancroft does not admit of any comparisons we would here venture. A couple of magnificent numbers by Simon and Garfunkel including that which hauntingly beseeeches "...where have you gone Joe Dimaggio.." adds grace and charm to that which needs it not.

My esteeemed colleagues and beings ; do we not exist in a pervasively absurd and meaningless realm. Even Shakespeare cannot dissude us fom this despair. The music of Mancini, the beauty and grace of Audrey Hepburn and the genius scribe Capote can only distact us transitorily from the excruciating absurdity of our lot. How do you gutsy folks abide ?

Were you not thrilled in August of 1953 upon the release of From Here To Etenity. Did not the scene of embrace in the rocky surf cause the auricles and ventricles of your heart to quicken? The magnificience of Montgomery Clift, Ernest Borgnine , Frank Sinatra et.al and so many others deserve commendation. But did this scene not quicken our pulse and leave us a tad transcended ? Are we paltry in heart and intellect or can we not like Shakespeare aspire to state our aspirations and recognition of our fiendesh and meagre limits. Colleagues , we can maybe, do as well and better.

Andy Devine is amiable; Louise Platt shows a dignity and courage that is indomitable; Thomas Mitchell, the drunken physician, gives a portrayal that merited and got an Oscar;Donald Meek is incomparable as one hapless and exploited; John Carradine evokes for all of us the doomed valor and, chivalry with attendant and fateful defects of the gallant and vanquished Confederacy; Berton Churchill is commendably detestable; George Bancroft is a lawman with integrity and quiet valor; Tim Holt, he of SIERRA MADRE 1948 gives a brief but commendable portrayal and Tom Tyler presages the villain of HIGH NOON. Whatever quarrel one may have with the societal philosophy of John Ford there is no gainsaying the majestic scope of his direction. I believe that John Wayne and Claire Trevor also appear in this film.

Physicists,commendably, have discerned that we contemplative, noble, base, foolish, wise, circumspect and regardless beings exist in a realm consisting of quarks and electrons energized by four forces only; gravitation, electromagnetism, and two others, obscure and unsensed and sub-atomic. From these bagatelles evolved Carole Lombard and her portrayal of the thoughtless socialite in My Man Godfrey. One is inclined to celebrate the author of this evolution ; alas base reason intrudes to dissuade us and lead us to inevitable and converse conclusions.