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100 Movies of Summer: The Searchers (1956)

Jun18

Director: John Ford
Writers: Frank Nugent from a novel by Alan LeMay
Starring: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Natalie Wood

Karate Kid says: The movie was about a girl getting captured by Indians, and some guys go out and try to find her. I don’t generally like westerns, but this one was OK. I do like John Wayne; he’s an awesome actor.

Z-baby says: I fell asleep so I don’t remember much about it.

Mom says: I’m with KK: as Westerns go, it was OK. John Wayne’s character, Ethan Edwards is a Confederate soldier, returned to Texas after the Civil War, but unreconstructed and bitter. When his brother’s family is massacred by the Comanches, Edwards is consumed with revenge. He and Marty, an adopted son who escaped the massacre, spend years searching for Debbie, the little girl that the Indians captured and took with them instead of killing.

The representation of Native Americans in the movie was appalling. The Comanches in the movie were bloodthirsty, savage, and completely irredeemable. And if a person was captured by the Indians and not rescued quickly, that person also became “infected” with Indian ways and either ended a savage or a gibbering idiot. Throughout the movie Edwards is not really as interested in rescuing Debbie as much as he is out for revenge. He’s fairly sure Debbie is either dead or unsalvageable. We discussed this bigotry about Native Americans after watching the movie, but it was hard to get across the points that yes, Indian massacres did happen, but no, not all Native Americans were brutal inhuman barbarians.

Anthony Esolen says it may the best Western ever made. I must have missed something.

IMDB link to The Searchers.
Buy The Searchers on Amazon.

100 Movies of Summer

Jun16

So the urchins and I have started a project for the summer. I’m big on projects. I’m not always so good at completing projects, but I’m good at thinking them up and good at starting. Committing myself to this project here on the blog might keep us on track. Or the urchins might enjoy the project so much that they clamor for more. Who knows?

The project goes like this: I’ve made a list of 100 classic movies. I compiled the list partly from My List of 107 Best Movies of All TIme, partly from the American Film Institute’s lists, partly from some lists of classic summer movies that I wanted to include. These are the 100 movies that we’re going to try to watch this summer. This is not a list of what I think are the best movies; some of these I haven’t ever seen. And I left out most of the movies that we have all already watched. I also left out a few good movies that I think are still too mature in content for my urchins, ages 18, 15, 13, 11, and 8. (Some of the ones on this list the eleven and eight year old won’t be watching.) We’ve already watched three of the movies on the list this week (reviews coming soon), so I showed them in bold type.

But these are the movies for the Great Movie Project 2010:


12 Angry Men
Adam’s Rib
All the King’s Men
Anatomy of a Murder
Apollo 13
The Apple Dumpling Gang
Back to the Future
Beach Party
The Best Years of our Lives
Big
The Big Sleep
The Black Stallion
Bladerunner
Bonnie and Clyde
Breaking Away
Caine Mutiny
Castaway
Cat Ballou
Charade
Citizen Kane

City Lights
Double Indemnity
Dr. Strangelove
Duck Soup
Father Goose
Father of the Bride
Field of Dreams
Fly Away Home
From Here to Eternity
The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
The Godfather
The Gold Rush
Gone With the Wind
Good-bye Mr. Chips
The Graduate
Grease
Guns of Navarone
Harvey
High Noon
Hoosiers

How Green Was My Valley
It Happened One Night
The King and I
Kramer vs. Kramer
Laura
Lawrence of Arabia
A League of Their Own
Lillies of the Field
The Longest Day
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Magnificent Seven
The Maltese Falcon
McCabe and Mrs. Miller
Meet Me in St. Louis
Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
The Moon-Spinners
Night of the Hunter
Ninotchka
North By Northwest

Notorious
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Ordinary People
Out of the Past
Parent Trap
Paths of Glory
A Place in the Sun
Pride of the Yankees
Psycho
The Quiet Man
Red River
Rocky
The Searchers
The Secret of Roan Irish
Shane
Singin’ in the Rain
Sixth Sense
Sleepless in Seattle
Stand and Deliver
Stand By Me
A Star is Born

Strangers on a Train
Sullivan’s Travels
Sunset Blvd.
Swing Time
The Ten Commandments
Tender Mercies
The Third Man
The Three Musketeers
Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trouble in Paradise
Unforgiven
The Verdict
The Winslow Boy
Witness for the Prosecution
Wuthering Heights

That’s 96. I can add four more. (Why 100? Because it’s a nice, round, even number?) Does anyone have a suggestion for numbers 97-100? It may be something we didn’t put on the list because we’ve all already seen it, but nevertheless suggest away.

Additions, informed by your comments and by this list at Mere Comments:
Desk Set
Penny Serenade
Rope
Come Back, Little Sheba

The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson

Jun15

The Other Side of the Bridge is Mary Lawson’s second published novel, and it made me want to read her first, called Crow Lake. That’s a fair compliment.

It was the characters in The Other Side of the Bridge that made the book. The way the characters interacted and the author’s insight into their motivations reminded me of Marilynne Robinson’s twin novels, Gilead and Home. And that comparison is high praise indeed.

The plot is somewhat similar to Gilead and Home. The Other SIde of the Bridge has a prodigal son, Jake, best beloved by his mother, scorned as a useless wastrel by his father. Arthur, the older son, is his father’s right hand, the dependable, steady oldest son. Jake is a lot like the Biblical Jacob, always playing an angle, restless, never quite trustworthy. However, the story is told from Arthur’s point of view. And although the reader is 95% sure that Jake is the deadbeat that his father believes him to be, there’s that five percent of doubt or hope or wondering about what might have been. What if the father in the story had tempered the mother’s favoritism and indulgence with more loving discipline?What if the mother had been able to see that her son was headed for disaster and could have corrected him more effectively.? What if both Arthur and Jake had gone away to war? Would the army have changed them? In good ways or bad?

I think these same thoughts about my own children. What if we had not decided to homeschool them? Would they be different? Would their life choices be better or worse? What if we had not missed the deadline for Computer Guru Son to apply for a scholarship to the college he thought he wanted to attend? Would he be graduating from that college now instead of stuck in a holding pattern, unable to decide what he wants to do with his life? Would Unnamed Daughter have listened or rebelled if we had forbade her to be friends with that young man who turned out to be a heartbreaker just as we thought he might be? Are all of my children stronger because we allowed them more freedom than some homeschooling Christian families I know, or should we have protected them more and for a longer time?

I don’t know. I never will know. The Other Side of the Bridge is a book about choices and about how the decisions we make change us. It does feature the story of Arthur and Jake, but also the story of Ian Christopherson, a young man on the brink of adulthood who has his own decisions to make, relationships to resolve, and forgiveness to give. Part of the story is told from Ian’s point of view as he works on Arthur Deen’s farm and comes to an understanding of some of the family dynamics and history. As you can see from this post, I found the book thought-provoking.

Sunday Salon: Gleaned from the Saturday Review

Jun13

The Sunday Salon.comStrength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder. Recommended by Ruth at There Is No Such Place as a God-forsaken Town. I like Tracy Kidder. I read Soul of a New Machine a long time ago and thought it was some of the best nonfiction I’d ever read. I can also recommend House, the story of a couple who supervise the building of their own house, and Among Schoolchildren, a chronicle of a school year in a fifth grade classroom. Last year I read Mountains Beyond Mountains, a look at the work of American philanthropist Paul Farmer in Haiti and other places, fighting tuberculosis and poverty.

Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean by Richard Logan, PhD, and Tere Duperrault Fassbender. Recommended by Heather at Age 30+ . . . A Lifetime of Books. A true survival story with some kind of mysterious twist (Heather didn’t give it away). I wanted to read this one as soon as I read Heather’s review.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. Also recommended by Heather. Watch the book trailer featuring author Tracy Chevalier. The book sounds fascinating.

Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart. Recommended by Carrie at 5 MInutes for Books. Carrie is a trusted source, and if she gives it such a high commendation . . . this memoir must be good.

The Wife’s Tale by Lori Lansens. Recommended at Whimpulsive. I like the premise here: a massively overweight woman manages to leave home and find herself beneath the layers of physical weight and emotional pain.

Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. Recommended by Sarah at Library Hospital. Sarah says the book is nothing like the movie, although both are good. I’m intrigued.

Mrs. Tim Carries On (Leaves from the Diary of an Officer’s Wife in the Year 1940) by D. E. (Dorothy Emily) Stevenson. Sarah also mentions this book in her review of Mrs. Miniver. I want to read more books by D.E. Stevenson.

Comienza La Bloggiesta

Jun11

Let the Blog Party Begin!

blogiesta

Thanks to Natasha at Maw Books we all have this weekend about twice a year where we come together as book bloggers, eat nachos, and prettify our blogs. It’s called Bloggiesta.

I’m going to continue to update this post as I do things to make Semicolon more beautiful and useful to you throughout the weekend:

1. I applied with Chitika for advertising that supposedly only shows up when people come to the blog via a google search. Is this true? Anyone use this ad service and like it? Anyone not like it?

2. I’ve now written a review policy combined with a general information page. Will someone read it and tell me what you think?

3. With a little help from Bloggiesta partiers and from my Computer Guru Son, I fixed a whole bunch of links that were broken. Long story about how they got that way, but thanks to a “find and replace” wordpress plugin, I’m good to go.

4. I signed up with Google Analytics, but the information page says it may take 24 hours to start getting statistics. We’ll see how that goes. I may not really need another place to look at statistics other than Sitemeter.

Escaping the Tiger by Laura Manivong

Jun9

Ms. Manivong says that this fictional account of a Laotian family trapped in a refugee camp in Thailand after escaping from the Communist Pathet Lao regime in their native country is based on the true story of her husband and his family.

“My husband, Troy Anousone Manivong, spent eight months in Na Pho refugee camp in 1988, when he was eighteen years old. While Vonlai is a fictional character, many of his experiences are a reflection of stories my husband shared with me over the years. But their experiences also differ in far greater ways.”

Escaping the Tiger is about Vonlai, 12 years old at the beginning of the book, his sister Dalah, and his Meh (Mom) and Pah (Dad). As the story opens Vonlai and his family do manage to escape from Laos, but they find much more hardship and suffering to face in a refugee camp in Thailand, Na Pho. In fact the camp is in some ways worse than life Communist Laos, so the book is about the family’s struggle to hold on to hope of a better life. The wait for an interview and papers and approval to emigrate to France or to the United States is interminable and tedious and sometimes dangerous. SOme of the Thai people want the Laotians to disappear or return to Laos. And Vonlai and his family face the constant fear that the world has forgotten about them and that it will never be their turn to find a new life in a free country.

Manivong’s book is not long, only 210 pages, and the protagonist is a boy when the story begins, although he grows to be a young man of sixteen before the book’s end. Perhaps those two aspects of the book as well as the publisher’s imprint, HarperCollins Childrens Books, explain why the book was classified in the juvenile section of my library. I thought it was wonderful book, evoking my sympathy and desire to do something to help, but it’s definitely more than I would want my eleven year old to read. Vonlai’s sister must face the violence of a lecherous Thai camp guard, and although the scene is not graphic or explicit, the threat of rape is definitely obvious —and of course, very sad and probably true-to-life. I would give this one to young adults, especially those who already know the adversity that life can bring or those who need to know how blessed they are in comparison to many young people in the world.

More fiction set in Laos:
Little Cricket by Jackie Brown. Another story of refugees escaping to a camp in Thailand, and eventually to the U.S. Middle grade fiction.
Tangled Threads: A Hmong Girl’s Story by Pegi Dietz Shea. Middle grade fiction, takes place mostly in the U.S. after this Laotian girl has already immigrated from Laos via Thailand.
The Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotterill. Murder mystery featuring a Laotian coroner in the 1970’s. The series is up to six, the latest published in 2009, The Merry Misogynist. Adult fiction.
Carpe Diem by Autumn Cornwell. A sixteen year old American girl goes backpacking through Southeast Asia, including Laos, with her eccentric grandmother. YA fiction.

Additions?

Claim to Fame by Margaret Peterson Haddix

Jun7

“This is my secret. I would call it a hidden talent, but talents are supposed to be happy possessions, something to rejoice over and nurture and maybe even gloat about. My secret skill has brought me nothing but pain. At any given moment I can hear anything anybody says about me., anywhere in the world.”

I like Margaret Peterson Haddix’s books. I enjoyed The Shadow Children series, The Missing series, and her stand alone novels such as Leaving Fishers or Double Identity. Claim to Fame is another good, solid entry into Ms. Haddix’s catalog of short but thoughtful YA fiction.

The premise is good: child actress Lindsay Scott finds that she can suddenly “hear” anything anyone says about her anywhere in the world. She’s about to go crazy from all the babble and gossip, good, bad and indifferent, when she finds a place where she can escape into silence. But now after five years as a recluse, things are changing again. Lindsay must find a way to deal with her “gift” as an adult and not a self-absorbed teenager.

Of course, that’s the key. Don’t we all have to find a way to use the gifts and cope with the disabilities we have without being self-centered, attention-seeking narcissists? It’s a part of growing up, and at 52, sometimes I’m still working on it.

One of the urchins says she wants to be famous. (She plans to achieve this fame on Broadway.) I told her earlier today that fame as a goal wasn’t really worth the effort. She asked if I would be ashamed of her if she became famous, and I told her that I’d rather she had a goal to become excellent. If she becomes an excellent artist or actress or engineer or sales clerk and becomes famous as a by-product, I’d be proud of her. But fame by itself is rather empty. Ask Lindsay Scott, fictional celebrity, who hears all about herself every time she leaves her house in an echo chamber that points out all of her failings, insecurities, and vulnerabilities incessantly. Fame ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Margaret Peterson Haddix on the inspiration behind Claim to Fame.

Book Blogger Appreciation Week

Jun7

OK, so I’m registering for Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and they want a list of my five best posts (from this year?). I’m not sure what those are , so I think I’ll just choose something from each month, January through June. Those of you who want a review, enjoy.

12 Tips for New Bloggers, Especially Book Bloggers

Boarding School Books

Poem #1: Psalm 23 by David, King of Israel, c. 1000 BC

Sunday Salon: On Reviewing Books

Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser

And here are a few bonus “blast from the past” posts from before 2010:

The End of the Alphabet, Wit, and John Donne

Where I Am From . . .

Inspired by . . . Book-loving Books

Narnia Aslant: A Narnia-Inspired Reading List

If you’re book blogger, you should register, too. It’s going to be lots of fun.

For the Win by Cory Doctorow

Jun7

Book #3 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 5 hours
Pages: 475

Workers of the World Unite! Let the Games Begin! It’s The Sting (Robert Redford, Paul Newman) on steroids and inside/outside a computer game!

Mr. Doctorow knows a lot about economics and about computers and computer games. I don’t know much about either.

Mr. Doctorow also has a gift for telling a good story. And he ties up the loose ends a lot better than the writers on LOST did.

I enjoyed this techno-thriller by author of Little Brother even though unions and computer games are not my thing. I learned a lot about economics and banking and derivatives and hedge funds currency and inflation and deflation, but I still don’t understand any of them.

The characters made the book:

Mala is a brilliant fifteen year old gameplayer from the Mumbai slum of Dharavi. Her nickname is General Robotwallah, and she leads an army of gamers in battle over the internet each day.

Jiandi is the host of The Factory Girl Show, broadcast over the net to twelve million Chinese factory workers every evening.She listens to their questions, give answers, and encourages the factory girl to fight for justice.

Leonard, aka Wei-Dong, is a seventeen year old game-obsessed high school student from Los Angeles who somehow ends up helping the Webblies, a new union of workers from all over the world, who are uniting to fight for better pay and conditions for illegal gameplayers and for other oppressed workers.

Connor Prikkel works in Coca Cola Games Command Central, hunting down illegal gold farmers and monitoring and adjusting the games to work as perfectly balanced economies. Connor is a gamerunner, and he hates “third-world rip-off artists” who cheat and mine the games for virtual gold and other assets.

Matthew Fong lives in Shenzhen in Southern China, and he’s determined to build his own successful gold-farming operation despite threats from the bosses and harassment from the police.

Big Sister Nor is the mastermind behind the Webblies, a union struggling to organize gamers from all over the world and get them just rewards for their labor and safe workplaces.

It’s a good book, even if I’m not so sure about the politics involved. By the way, you can download and read Doctorow’s book for free. Mr. Doctorow believes that he’ll make more money and everyone will be happier if he makes a name for himself by giving away his his books on the internet. My copy came from the library.

The Long Way Home by Andrew Klavan

Jun5

Book #2 for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Book Challenge
Reading TIme: 2.25 hours
Pages: 345

Andrew Klavan takes a subtle dig at his own book in a paragraph near the middle of The Long Way Home, the second book in the Homelanders series of YA thrillers.

“I missed Rick and Miler and Josh. I missed having someone to kid around with and talk to. I missed long conversations about girls and sports and arguments about whether Medal of Honor was cooler than Prince of Persia and why part 2 of any trilogy was never as good as parts 1 and 3. I missed being with the guys who knew me best and liked me just the way I was. I missed my friends.”

Yeah. What he said. This book was fun, but not quite as suspenseful as Book 1 of the series, The Last Thing I Remember*, and probably not as satisfying as the last book in the trilogy that comes out in November 2010, to be titled The Truth of the Matter. In fact, I would suggest waiting until November and then grabbing the the set of three books for any pre-teen/teen guys on your Christmas list —and another set for yourself.

Here’s why:
1. The books are suspenseful. Maybe I’m just dumb, but I haven’t figured out yet why Charlie has amnesia and is missing a whole year of his life or why the bad guys in the story think he was on their side and has betrayed them. Nor have I figured out how Charlie West is going to get out of the mess he’s in.

2. The bad guys are bad, and the good guys are good. Not a lot of nuance here. I think that’s a good thing. I think all of us, teenage guys especially, need heroes and a way of seeing the world as a place where they can tell the difference between good and evil and align themselves/ourselves with the good.

3. Lots of action. Several scenes are really violent, bad guys get beat up, and karate is used freely. Also there are car chases and motorcycle chases and on-foot chases, lots of movement. KarateKid, age 13, would like this aspect of the books.

4. In this series, boys are boys, and girls are girls. The protagonist, Charlie, is a boy, and he and his friends tease and mock each other mercilessly. Charlie’s girlfriend, observing all this male bonding, says (more than once), “You guys are so mean.” Also, the girlfriend, Beth, is a girl. When she’s in danger she doesn’t wimp out, but she also doesn’t take over and become the heroine of the story. Charlie is the hero, and Beth is his helper and inspiration.

5. No sex and no foul language. There is some chaste romance; Charlie and Beth eventually kiss. But these are good kids with their priorities in place, and they respect each other. Not all teen guys are thinking of one thing only all the time, and they don’t need to be told endlessly that every other teen guy is thinking of that one thing all the time.

6. Author Andrew Klavan also has his priorities in place, and I can trust him to deliver a good, fast-paced, satisfying ending to this series. That’s why I feel comfortable recommending the third book in the series before having read it. Thirteen or fourteen is about the median age for this series, and guys will like it better than girls, mostly because of Reason #3.

*I read The Last Thing I Remember during my Lenten blog break, and I wrote in my journal at that time: “Yeah! A middle school boy book! A book that celebrates faith, karate, self-defense, and American values without being didactic or cheesy!”