Roger O Green

Director Steven Spielberg turns 70

Spielberg won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan.

He’s Steven Spielberg, for crying out loud, one of the most consequential movie directors and producers of all time, and certainly of the past half-century. I was fascinated to see all the work he’s done in the 21st century that I have NOT seen.

Early on, Spielberg also directed episodes of TV shows that I watched, often religiously, such as Owen Marshall, Counselor at Law; Columbo; The Name of the Game; Night Gallery; and Marcus Welby, M.D., all in 1969-1971, but since I didn’t KNOW it was Spielberg, I’ll pass on those.

1968 Amblin’ (director of the Short) – I saw this well after Steven Spielberg became successful. Not much happens here. A couple of hitchhikers, no dialogue. But it’s from whence he named his productions from Amblin Entertainment

1974 The Sugarland Express (story, director) – This I also saw much later, much more fully realized
1977 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (written by, director) – I saw this in at least two different iterations; not sure the expanded version is better, but I was very fond of the original

1981 Raiders of the Lost Ark (director); 1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (director) – no, I never saw the second film. I think I liked the third film more than the first in some ways because the Sean Connery character made Indiana more real
1981 Continental Divide (executive producer) – I recall this John Belushi/Blair Brown comedy was savaged at the time, but I liked it, and current critics seemed to warm to it
1982 E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (producer/director) – I loved the suburban kid angst, and just about everything about the movie until the bike scene at the end, which I found sappy
1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie (producer, director of segment 2) – saw this movie in Binghamton, NY
1985 Back to the Future 1989 Back to the Future Part II 1990 Back to the Future Part III (executive producer of all) – I should write about all of these, but liked the 1st, was depressed by that tricky middle act and thought the western motif in the 3rd was a hoot
1985 The Color Purple (producer/director) – a lot of good things, and its flaws were minor compared with the angst over a white guy directing this. Is this still the movie with the most Oscar nominations that won zero awards?

1986 The Money Pit (executive producer) – enjoyable enough, I think, but I don’t remember it well
1986 An American Tail (executive producer) – I was taken by the story
1985-1987 Amazing Stories (TV Series) (executive producer – 45 episodes, director – two episodes) – watched fairly regularly. As anthologies go, uneven, but worthwhile
1987 Empire of the Sun (producer/director) – I fell asleep in the movie theater; not necessarily a reflection on the film, just my fatigue
1988 Who Framed Roger Rabbit (executive producer) – I loved that movie, but have not seen it since
1989 Always (producer/director) – it has Audrey Hepburn in her final role, and that’s enough for me

1991 Cape Fear (executive producer – uncredited) – never saw the original, but this was tension-inducing
1991 Hook (director) – somehow left me cold
1993 Jurassic Park (director) – one of the very few “popcorn movies” I’ve actually seen, and good for its genre
1993 Schindler’s List (producer/director) – profoundly moving. I think the two people I saw it with and I talked ABOUT it longer than the 195 minutes running time. Not sure that I ever want to see it AGAIN, but glad I saw it in the theater. It also engendered certain activism within Steven Spielberg to tell more Holocaust stories.
1993-1998 Animaniacs (TV Series) (executive producer – 99 episodes) – loved the self-referential schtick. a lot
1995-1998 Pinky and the Brain (TV Series) (executive producer – 60 episodes) – I lOVED this show. Probably didn’t find it until the second season

1996 Twister (executive producer) – serviceable film
1997 Men in Black 2002 Men in Black II (executive producer in both; actor – Alien on TV Monitor (uncredited) in 1st) – I surprisingly really enjoyed the first film, as it was very funny; the sequel I could have done without
1997 Amistad (producer/director) – a fascinating topic, important subject, I found the pacing rather slow, yet, by the end, I enjoyed it quite a bit
1998 Deep Impact (executive producer) – even within the genre, this seemed to be a preposterous story, told melodramatically

2001 Shrek (executive producer – uncredited) – I found it fun
2002 Catch Me If You Can (producer/director) – I liked this a lot, from the graphics to the characters well played by worldly Leo DiCaprio being pursued and hangdog Tom Hanks
2012 Lincoln (producer/director) – I know a lot of people thought this was a boring movie. I did not.

Steven Spielberg “won the Academy Award for Best Director for Schindler’s List and Saving Private Ryan, as well as receiving five other nominations… The unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $9 billion worldwide, making him the highest-grossing director in history… In 1987 he was awarded the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award for his work as a creative producer.” Here’s his 2006 induction for the Kennedy Center Honors.

Music Throwback Saturday: Gene Autry

I’ve never seen any of Gene Autry’s films!

When baseball’s American League expanded from eight to 10 teams for the 1961 season, all I knew of Gene Autry was that he was the guy who owned the team initially called the Los Angeles Angels, later referred to, when it moved to suburban Anaheim in 1966, as the California Angels, then the Anaheim Angels. (The other team was the new Washington Senators, after the old team became the Minnesota Twins.)

But then I discovered this was the same fellow who performed not one, but three Christmas classics. Here Comes Santa Claus (Down Santa Claus Lane) was written by Autry, with music composed by Oakley Haldeman. It got to #9 on the pop charts in 1947 and to #5 early in 1948 on the country charts, then to #4 country later that year.

The song was covered by several artists, notably Doris Day (1949), Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters (1950), Elvis Presley (1957), and Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans (1963), the latter for that famous Phil Spector Christmas album.

The first cowboy singing star of the movies – I’ve never seen any of his films! – had his biggest hit with Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, performed with the Pinafores, which was #1 for eight weeks on a special kid’s music chart in 1949, and also hit #1 on the pop and country chart that year. It recharted for another three years, and again after Gene Autry died in 1998.

The final Christmas hit was Frosty the Snow Man, performed with the Cass County Boys. it got to #4 country and #7 pop in 1950, and #2 on the kids chart the following year. His success with just these three songs put him at #2 on the chart of the most successful Christmas singles artists, behind only Bing Crosby, at least through 2004.

He was inducted into the Country Hall of Fame, mostly for his non-Christmas music.

Listen to songs by Gene Autry:

Here Comes Santa Claus (Down Santa Claus Lane) here or here

Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer here or here

Frosty the Snow Man here or here

Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017

CHICAGO - 1987: Lee Smith of the Chicago Cubs pitches during an MLB game at Wrigley Field in Chicago, Illinois. Smith pitched for the Cubs from 1980-1987. — 1987: Lee Smith of the Chicago Cubs pitches during an MLB game at Wrigley Field. Smith pitched for the Cubs from 1980-1987.

No, I don’t have a vote for who gets into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017. Those who do must vote by Saturday, December 31, with the results announced Wednesday, January 18, 2017. Here’s the background about each player eligible.

Last year of eligibility:

1) Lee Smith, 15th year of eligibility (received 34.1% of the votes last year; 75% is the threshold)
A guy in USA Today wrote: “I happened to be a huge Lee Smith fan as a kid, and now the longtime closer’s in his 15th and final year of eligibility (though various Eras Committees will give him more shots).

“Smith seems an unfortunate victim of timing: If [Mariano] Rivera hadn’t come up just as his career was winding down, he might be long enshrined by now. But Rivera, especially, set inhuman standards for closing baseball games, and it doesn’t look like Smith will get elected on BBWAA voting.” And he DIDN’T put Smith on HIS ballot!

2) Tim Raines, 10th year (69.8%)
Probably the second-best leadoff hitter, after Rickey Henderson, with speed and power. I have hope he’ll get in this time.

Someone from the freshman class:

3) Ivan Rodriguez, 1st year
Not only a good hitter in his prime but a fine catcher. I picked him over Manny Ramirez, because of the latter’s 2009 suspension for prohibited Performance Enhancing Drugs, which hurt his team. I also considered Vladimir Guerrero, and he’d probably be on my ballot some other year.

The PED guys

The rules regarding performance-enhancing drugs were not clear before 2004. Moreover, as someone noted, this year they inducted former Brewers owner Bud Selig. “‘Under Selig’s ownership, the Brewers grew into a powerhouse, winning the AL pennant in 1982.'” If Selig was selected for his tenure as Commissioner, then so should every PED player that played while he was Commissioner.”

I won’t go that far – I’m not picking the single-dimension hitter Sammy Sosa – but I would put in the two best players in the past 30 years.

4) Barry Bonds, 5th year (44.3%)
Even by 1998, he had near HoF stats

5) Roger Clemens, 5th year (45.2%)
Seven ERA leading seasons

They were close last time:

6) Trevor Hoffman, 2nd year (67.3%)
One of the greatest save pitchers ever

7) Jeff Bagwell, 7th year (71.6%)
Should have gotten in a couple of years ago.

This category also includes Raines

Other worth candidates:

8) Curt Schilling, 5th year (52.3%)
I find him personally offensive for all sorts of reasons. But he was a fine pitcher, bloody sock and all.

9) Edgar Martinez, 8th year (43.4%)
I guess I’m getting over the fact that he was a designated hitter for most of his career, and I HATE the DH.

10) Mike Mussina, 4th year (43.0%)
He was seldom the best pitcher on his team, just a solid pitcher for a lot of years

If I had an 11th vote for the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017, it’d be for Jeff Kent (4th year, 16.6%) who doesn’t get enough love

December rambling #1: 21st Century Schizoid Man

New York Times investigation: Guards punish black inmates more severely than whites inside New York State prisons

The Essential Selfishness of School Choice

Why didn’t Andrew Cuomo’s special-session wish list include closure of LLC loophole?

Reagan press aide’s response to AIDS crisis

John Key departs as New Zealand prime minister, and the civility of opposition leader Andrew Little was stunning, compared with American politics

The long history of the U.S. interfering with elections elsewhere

John Glenn Dies At 95. He was the first American to orbit the earth, before his political career. He was a Presbyterian ruling elder, for whom one of my pastors was named.

Faux news

From Richard S. Vosko: Benjamin Corey, who studies theology and culture said, “the problem isn’t that people write things that are untrue, but that so many people are quick to believe things that are untrue.”

Fake news is like Jessica Rabbit and No facts? What does that mean?

Weather Channel: Note to Breitbart: Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real and Please Stop Using Our Video to Mislead Americans

Despite social media outrage, the “Fisher Price Happy Hour Playset” is not real

Fake Or Real? How To Self-Check The News And Get The Facts

Revealing fakery – and stupidity

I was telling one of my sisters, just this weekend, what a pain this “fake news” is for a librarian, who deals with the dispensing of information every day.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but don’t all Americans live in their own little worlds?

DJT

The Trump Dump: Tracking the New Administration’s People and Policies

If Hollywood designed the perfect candidate to represent the anti-Christ for evangelicals, he would be thrice married, twice divorced, a builder of casinos, a sexual predator (unless the women are ugly), a liar and a man so in love with himself that his fondest wish is to die in his own arms.
– From an Oklahoma pastor

Demagogue in Chief

ADAPTING TO TRUMP’S LIES

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Trump Won In A Landslide.

WHY SCIENTISTS ARE SCARED OF TRUMP

Trump to Remain Executive Producer on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’

The president-elect is issuing statements to world leaders that benefit his family’s corporate empire

Fox’s Shepard Smith Debunks Trump’s False Claims Scrubbing Russia Of Involvement In The US Election

This is what happens when Donald Trump attacks a private citizen on Twitter

Saturday Night Live Is Basically Just Reciting Facts About Donald Trump Now

Only a ‘Love Army’ Will Conquer Trump

It’s difficult to deny his incredible impact on the news this year ― for better or worse

Will Ivanka Trump Be the Most Powerful First Daughter in History? If she weren’t doing the family business, I’d have no problem with her unpaid advising her father in govt. It’s, as Big Brother and the Holding Company noted, The Combination of the Two that’s the REAL problem.

1843 Magazine/The Economist: The Scientists Who Make Apps Addictive

Altruistic People Have More Sexual Partners

Metric matters

Will Lacey was just a baby when doctors diagnosed a rare form of cancer and told his family there was only one end. Nobody then could imagine the journey ahead

Chaz Ebert: A BAKER’S DOZEN: 13 MORE MUST-SEE FILMS OF 2016

Denzel Washington reunites with his childhood librarian for her 99th birthday

Medieval graffiti ‘peacock’ discovered in Sudbury church

NOT ME: One of those held hostage was Roger Green, who said he spent the entire time praying

Now I Know: Ring Around the Lunar Orbit and NASA-L and When Your Brain Nose Something Is Missing and Home Sweet Apartment Building

Color of 2017: Greenery

How is ketchup made?

Music

Greg Lake, Emerson, Lake & Palmer Co-Founder, Dead at 69 – the first Greg Lake vocal I recall: 21st Century Schizoid Man – King Crimson ; also from that album, Epitath; Welcome Back My Friends – Emerson, Lake and Palmer

Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize in Literature was accepted on his behalf by the musician Patti Smith -it was transcendent; Bob Dylan’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

Ravel, Bolero

Cantina Auditions

Ain’t No Sunshine

Come Together With More High-Caliber Beatles Analysis

The Definitive List of the 41 Best-Selling Cast Recordings of All Time

What if, instead of writing and starring in Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda et al. had instead done Sweeney Todd

The Secret Jewish History of Robbie Robertson and The Band

Leon Russell in the Dark

The Four Functions of a Church Choir

The Great Guitar Drought of 1960-1963

Movie review: Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols

“On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pled guilty to ‘cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.'”

Part of the general complaints from the 11% of the critics who did not like the new movie Loving was that it wasn’t exciting enough. The Wife and I saw it at the Spectrum in Albany, and we thought it was wonderfully understated.

This is based on a true story of a couple, a white man named Richard Loving (Joel Edgerton) and a black woman named Mildred Jeter (Ruth Negga) who had the audacity to fall in love in late 1950s Virginia. Mildred gets pregnant, so Richard does the honorable thing and proposes marriage.

But that wasn’t an option in the Dominion State in 1958, which had passed the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, making marriage between whites and non-whites a crime, so they go to Washington, DC to get hitched. They settle back in the small town of Central Point, VA. Based on an anonymous tip, the local police break into their domicile – a terrifying moment in the film – and find the Lovings sleeping in their bed. Mildred pointed out the framed marriage certificate on the bedroom wall, but they were told the certificate was not valid in the Commonwealth.

“On January 6, 1959, the Lovings pled guilty to ‘cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.’ They were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended on condition that the couple leaves Virginia and not return together for at least 25 years,” an apparently generous offer worked out by a local attorney. “After their conviction, the couple moved to the District of Columbia.”

Frustrated by being away from their extended families, and not happy with urban life, Mildred Loving wrote a letter to US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. RFK referred her letter to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and young, inexperienced attorney Bernard S. Cohen, who, eventually, with fellow lawyer Philip J. Hirschkop, filed a motion on behalf of the Lovings in the Virginia trial court to “vacate the criminal judgments and set aside the Lovings’ sentences on the grounds that the Virginia miscegenation statutes ran counter to the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.”

This is a slow legal process, and the taciturn Richard is uncomfortable with the need to get publicity for the case, while Mildred appreciated its strategic importance. The tension might have split up a lesser couple. When the case was to be argued before the Supreme Court, the lawyers asked Richard what he’d want to say to the justices. Richard: “Tell them I love my wife.”

I had written about this case here, specifically Loving Day, on June 12, 1967, the date Loving v. Virginia overturned the laws not only in their case but in 14 other states.

Unfortunately, “Richard Loving died aged 41 in 1975 when a drunk driver struck his car in Caroline County, Virginia. Mildred Loving lost her right eye in the same accident. She died of pneumonia on May 2, 2008, in Milford, Virginia, aged 68. The couple had three children: Donald, Peggy, and Sidney.” Peggy was involved in the making of the movie.

As I suggested, there is tension in this film, but it’s subtle, such a brick around the LIFE magazine article they appear in. This was a mostly quiet, but extremely effective film for which Edgerton and Negga rightly received Golden Globe nominations.