Mock Squid Soup: April Blog List

MOCK! and The Armchair Squid are proud to present Mock Squid Soup: A Film Society!

Next meeting is Friday, April 10th.  As announced last month, the plan for April is for each participant to pick someone else's March choice to review themselves.  Let's keep this friendly, though.  If no one else's movie strikes your fancy, pick a new one to toss in the hat.  Here is the movie list, each followed by the Society member who reviewed it:

Horns - Cherdo
Death to Smoochy - Toi Thomas
Strangers on a Train - Brigit
The Dish - angryparsnip
Superman Returns - Tony Laplume
Three Days of the Condor - MOCK!
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead - The Squid

And here is the signup list:

Mock Squid Soup: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead

MOCK! and The Armchair Squid are proud to welcome you to Mock Squid Soup: A Film Society, meetings on the second Friday of each month.  We are trying a new format this month, suggested by the wise and wonderful Nancy Mock.  Instead of selecting one film for all to watch, everyone is invited to write a review of any movie they would like to share.  Then a wrinkle: in April, each participant will pick one of the other people's movies to review.  My choice for March is...

Title: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead
Director: Tom Stoppard
Original Release: 1990
My Overall Rating: 4 stars out of 5

via Wikipedia

When Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead was first staged at the 1966 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, it turned its playwright, Tom Stoppard, into a titan of the theatre world practically overnight.  The absurdist, existentialist tragicomedy tells the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet from the perspective of two minor characters who, at least from their point of view, serve little purpose in the narrative except to die.  I first encountered the play as a high school freshman when one of my best friends played the part of Ophelia.  For her, it was the first role of many that would eventually lead her to drama school.  She jabbered about it constantly.  I was already tired of the play by the time I finally watched it.

I was more receptive when we read the play senior year and it certainly helped that by that time, we'd read Hamlet, too.  Older and comfortably weirder, I was charmed by the playful banter and the philosophical musing.  I'm not sure I qualify as an existentialist but I've always found the idea appealing.  I learned the word avuncular from the play.

I'm not even sure when I watched the film the first time but I loved it instantly.  An American friend in Japan left me her VHS copy when she went back home and I would often watch it over dinner in my apartment.  The movie feels like an old pal at this point.

Stoppard directed the film himself and he's probably the only person who could have done right by the material.  For what was surely a bare bones budget film, the acting is world class.  The titular leads are Gary Oldman and Tim Roth.  It was early in both men's careers but they already had serious indie film cred - Oldman from Sid and Nancy, Roth from The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover.  The big catch was Richard Dreyfuss, who plays the Lead Player.  Ian Richardson, a founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, plays Polonius.  Filming was done in what was still Yugoslavia.

In anticipation of this post, I picked Ros&Guil (as my Ophelia friend used to call it) for Family Movie Night a few weeks back - probably not the best choice in hindsight.  The humor is occasionally a bit tawdry but not too bad.  I doubt my daughter even got most of the jokes, which was the problem.  She didn't understand what was going on.  She was a good sport about it but it clearly didn't work for her.  Maybe one needs to be a jaded teen/twenty-something to get it.  Maybe someday.

To be fair, I found myself a little impatient with the movie, too.  It's still funny but slow at times, a problem not helped by the girl's wiggling (more emotional than physical).  It's also dark - a lot darker than I need at this point in my life.  Being parent, husband and teacher, it's a lot easier to see the clear purpose in life than it was when I was young and proudly independent.  I actually docked a point from my rating.  I'd have thought of R&G as a solid 5 before but not anymore.  I've written a lot on this blog about movies that change for us over time.  The ones I've featured to this point have improved with age.  This one slipped.

Mind you, it's still a strong 4.  You should still watch it if you never have.  I'd be delighted to hear what interesting people think about it.

Next meeting is Friday, April 10th.  I'll post April's blog list tomorrow along with a list of everyone's March choices.  Let's keep this friendly, though.  If no one else's movie strikes your fancy, pick a new one to toss in the hat.  In the meantime, please be sure to visit the other society members this month:

Star Trek: Yesteryear

My friends Maurice Mitchell, Spacerguy and I are embarking on a new journey to watch all 22 episodes of Star Trek's animated series.  We'll be posting on Wednesdays.  All are welcome to join us for all or parts of our adventure. 

Episode: "Yesteryear"
Series: Star Trek: The Animated Series
Season 1, Episode 2
Original Air Date: September 15, 1973

via Memory Alpha

Kirk, Spock and a team of Starfleet historians pay a visit to the Guardian of Forever, a time portal first featured in "City on the Edge of Forever."  Upon returning from his time travel adventure, Spock is suddenly a stranger to all but Kirk.  The Enterprise has an entirely different First Officer, an Andorian named Thelin.  Apparently, there has been a disruption in the timeline and Spock must travel back to his own childhood in order to save his own life.
 
Of all the animated series episodes, "Yesteryear" has by far the strongest legacy within the Star Trek universe.  The story provided broader concepts of both the planet Vulcan and Spock's personal history, to be drawn upon by future series and films.  Producer Gene Roddenberry was explicit in his instructions to screenwriters that they should take full advantage of the opportunities animation presented.  D.C. Fontana's story was a perfect demonstration of such possibilities, covering more ground on Vulcan than had been feasible with TOS's one visit in "Amok Time."

*****

via Memory Alpha

Thelin

Thelin's support of Spock's quest to rectify the past, knowing it would likely cost him his own position on the Enterprise, is touching.  Presumably, in the corrected timeline, Thelin still has a career in Starfleet on another ship.  We just don't know which one.

Thelin never appeared on television again but he does turn up in two Star Trek novels: The Fire and the Rose and The Chimes at Midnight.  He is granted a full name in the licensed material:  Thelin th'Valrass.  In "Yesteryear," he is voiced by James Doohan.

If you would care to join us for all or part of our travels, please add your link to the list below.  In the meantime, please visit my fellow participants.  Next week: "One of Our Planets Is Missing."

Family Movie Night: Grease

Title: Grease
Director: Randal Kleiser
Original Release: 1978
Choice: Purple Penguin's
My Overall Rating: 3 stars out of 5

via Amazon

Before John Hughes started cranking out teen classics in the mid-1980s, there was Grease, a box office smash and one of the iconic films of its era.  Set in a 1950s California high school, good girl Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) and bad boy Danny (John Travolta) are in love, though they treat each other horribly for much of the story.  Their colorful friends - the Pink Ladies and the T-Birds - aren't much help.  As far as a plot synopsis goes, I can't possibly do better than Tom & Lorenzo.

Our daughter had never seen Grease before but her interest was piqued when I was playing the Broadway soundtrack in the car.  As I have written before, musicals tend to have either strong music and mediocre story (My Fair Lady) or the other way around (A Chorus Line).  Rare indeed is the classic that can pull off both (take a bow, West Side Story).  Grease falls solidly in the My Fair Lady camp.  On the strength of its songs - "Summer Nights," "Greased Lightning" ("That was cool!" the Purple Penguin said), "We Go Together" and many more - Grease will live forever.  While the '50s imagery and the farcical concept of teen life are still fully capable of capturing the imagination of adolescent girls (one of my current middle school students is obsessed with the movie), Grease was never a threat to win a Pulitzer.

My Wife kept reassuring the girl that high school isn't really like what's portrayed in the film.  For one thing, I pointed out, there's no way so many of the guys at her school will be able to dance.  Apart from the music, the dancing is very strong, led by Travolta, of course.  For the second year in a row (Saturday Night Fever came out in '77), he was the perfect casting choice in a movie where his feet alone could have carried the film.  The next Gene Kelley?  Not a chance.  It would be 16 years before he got another role with comparable cultural impact.  21 years after that, he made an ass of himself at the Oscars.  Oh, Danny...

As for the rest of the cast, Olivia Newton-John is there for her voice and her looks, not her acting.  Most of the supporters are strong, especially those cast in the few "adult" roles: Eve Arden as Principal McGee, Sid Caesar as Coach Calhoun and Joan Blondell as Vi.  The class of the operation is Stockard Channing, admittedly a bit old at 34 for the part of Rizzo.  Already an accomplished stage actress, her stock soared after Grease and decades of acclaimed work followed, rewarded with a Tony and three Emmys.

There's no shortage of dirty jokes but I think most of them went over our 11-year-old daughter's head.  She didn't even complain about the kissing.  The dance-off story required some explanation afterward but otherwise, she enjoyed the movie.

It's amazing to think Grease is nearly 40 years old.  I have no doubt that 40 years from now, it will have lost none of its charm.  The story will still be dumb but "Greased Lightning" will always be cool.

On the Coffee Table: Best of Enemies

Title: Best of Enemies: A History of US and Middle East Relations, Part One: 1783-1953
Writer: Jean-Pierre Filiu
Artist: David B.

via Amazon

The lesson has become clear.  Want to learn about the world?  Read comic books.  It's a great place to start, anyway.  Over the past few years, I've explored ancient India, pre-war Berlin, 20th century Japan, the Holocaust, Israel, Palestine, Iran and West Africa through the dynamic medium of sequential art.  Most of the work has only recently been translated from either Japanese or French, two literary traditions that embrace comic books as mainstream reading material to a far greater extent than does the English language tradition.

Such is the case with Best of Enemies, a series originally published in French, outlining the history of US relations with the Arab/Muslim world from American Independence to the present day.  This first book begins with the Barbary pirates of the late 18th century and ends with a CIA-orchestrated coup in Iran, 1953.  I'll admit upfront, I knew very little of this history before.  I knew the ancient and medieval history through the Crusades.  I knew a little about the Ottomans in World War I and the carving up of their empire afterwards.  I knew the history of the Israeli conflict from 1948 onward.  But the rest was all new.  I'd heard of the Barbary pirates, sure, but never really gave much thought to who they were.  The lesson is clear: learn about the world through comic books.

There is plenty of debate over how much of the world is actually encompassed by the term Middle East.  Is it just the Arabian peninsula?  Just the Arab-speaking countries?  Plus Israel?  Does Turkey count?  Iran?  Egypt?  North Africa?  For its purposes, Best of Enemies includes all of the above under the umbrella.

Impressively, the book manages to stay reasonably neutral.  There are no heroes, exactly.  Plenty of mud is flung in both directions.  The history of relations between the two entities is one of compromise, corruption and manipulation.  For both sides, money has always been king.  American and Middle Eastern regimes have been willing to compromise myriad principles for the sake of cash.  The discovery of oil only made things worse.  The black-and-white artwork is somewhat satirical though again, evenhanded.  I'm definitely keeping an eye out for Part Two: 1953-1984.

Star Trek: Beyond the Farthest Star

My friend Maurice Mitchell and I are embarking on a new journey to watch all 22 episodes of Star Trek's animated series.  We'll be posting on Wednesdays.  All are welcome to join us for all or parts of our adventure.

But first, an acknowledgement of the great loss suffered by the Star Trek community this past week.   There isn't much I can say about Leonard Nimoy that hasn't already been said.  Spock is Trek.  Nimoy was Spock, and a whole lot more.  He lived long and he prospered.  The legacy will certainly outlive the man.

via Wikipedia

RIP, old friend.  Thank you for sharing part of your journey with us.

Episode: "Beyond the Farthest Star"
Series: Star Trek: The Animated Series
Season 1, Episode 1
Original Air Date: September 8, 1973

via Memory Alpha

Four years after cancellation, Star Trek was thriving in syndication.   Fans clamored for new stories and a Saturday morning cartoon was the result.  The show's run was very short, only 22 episodes over two seasons.  The jury's still out on the place of the series in the overall franchise canon.  But this much is beyond dispute: since 1969, these 22 episodes are the only new stories about the original characters to air on network television.  As such, they're certainly worth a gander.

"Beyond the Farthest Star" finds our heroes exploring the outermost rim of the galaxy, thus the title.  Pulled into the orbit of a dead star, the Enterprise finds another ship in a similar predicament, apparently trapped for the past 300 million years!  Our friends manage to pull away, but not before a non-corporeal entity sneaks onto the Enterprise and gains control of the starship.

The story is solid Trek.  Losing control of the ship to a more powerful being is a long-standing formula.  Our heroes win by convincing their nemesis that they would rather destroy themselves than submit to its domination, knowing the damage it could do to others.  The franchise's moral compass is intact.  There's some subtle elegance in the storytelling, too.  The tale begins and ends with essentially identical log entries about star charting - rather Jabberwocky-esque.

The animation is a mixed bag.  Characters are very stiff, almost like shadow puppets.  But everything else is gorgeous.  One of the advantages of an animated show in that era was that you didn't have to worry about special effects.  If you could draw it, you're all set.  The alien ship the Enterprise crew discovered is genuinely beautiful and would have been a major challenge to produce in a live-action show.

Overall, a strong opening offer.  There are no references in future Star Trek stories, though a similar narrative is explored in the third season TNG episode, "Booby Trap."

*****

via Memory Alpha

Arex

Animation also allowed the introduction of characters who would have been challenging to produce with contemporary makeup capablities.  The absence of Chekov in the animated series also left the navigator's chair open for Lieutenant Arex, a member of a tripedal species called either Edosians or Triexians depending on whom you ask.  Arex is seen in "Beyond the Farthest Star," though not voiced.  In later episodes, James Doohan was his voice.  Arex would have a life beyond the animated series, appearing in both novels and comic books.

If you would care to join us for all or part of our travels, please add your link to the list below.  In the meantime, please visit Maurice and any others who are participating.  Next week: "Yesteryear."

On the Road: Pastéis de Nata

Our new February break tradition is a short family vacation in Montreal.  The city is just a couple hours from our house in northwest Vermont, yet it is an entirely different world: urban, multi-lingual, cosmopolitan, etc.  A couple days is enough to provide an escape from our much quieter country life, and also to remind us why we chose it.  A few highlights from this year's trip:

The city of Montreal doesn't have a zoo, exactly.  Instead, it has the Biodome.  The animal exhibits are divided into four replicated ecosystems:  Tropical Forest, Laurentian Forest, The Saint Lawrence Marine Eco-system and a polar area divided into both Arctic and Antarctic.  Within each zone, the animals wander more or less freely.  Climates are carefully controlled so the tropics are warm and humid whereas the Laurentian zone is set for brisk autumn.  There are a few larger mammals and reptiles.  We saw caimans and a capybara in the tropical zone.  Most of the animals in the Lauentian forest were asleep, including a Canadian lynx, whom we had seen on a previous visit.

Most of the animals on offer are birds.  The tropical ones are the most colorful, including turquoise tanagers and scarlet ibises (surely on the short list of the world's most beautiful animals).  There are puffins in the Arctic and penguins in the Antarctic.  The latter, of course, were our main reason for coming.  As mentioned in previous posts, our daughter is penguin-crazy.  The Biodome has four penguin species in all, including the regal king penguins.  The display is not as engaging as the the one at the New England Aquarium in Boston.  There is plexiglass between birds and humans.  On the one hand, it allows one to be physically closer to the birds and surely helps with climate control.  But there's something nice about being in the same room with the penguins, hearing them, smelling them, almost feeling they could splash you if they felt like it.  Even so, we were glad to see them.

My main objective for the trip was the Pâtisserie Notre-Dame du Rosaire, a bakery that specializes in Portuguese treats.  As discussed here, I am currently exploring breakfast traditions around the world.  The Portuguese are into pastries and when I looked up the recipe for the favorite choice - pastéis de nata - I instantly realized it was beyond my own current baking capabilities.  While I might learn to make them eventually, best first to try one to see if they're worth it.

The bakery was different from what I expected - better.  The website suggests a sleek, modern operation with the usual French varieties with a few Portuguese offerings.  But the reality is a more quaint shop in a traditional ethnic neighborhood known as Little Portugal.  The natas consist of an egg custard in a tart shell.  The pâtisserie had the traditional, sugar custard (top left corner) but also other options including maple (a Canadian variation?) and chocolate.  Verdict: they're delicious and well worth learning to make myself someday.

Our best meal of the trip was our dinner at Saka-Ba!, a ramen restaurant in the Mont-Royal neighborhood.  I yearn for the traditional noodle shops I knew in Japan and, not surprisingly, have never been able to find quite their equal in North America (though there is a place near the Time-Life building in New York that comes close).  The reviews for Saka-Ba! were good so we had high hopes.  The food was excellent.  My kimchi ramen was outstanding, and so spicy I couldn't even finish it.  In my book, that's a very good thing!  The ladies both went with more traditional choices and were thoroughly satisfied.  The atmosphere was less pleasing - more singles bar than homey Japanese izakaya.  Come to think of it, the atmosphere of the bakery was really what I wanted for the ramen shop, too.  Oh well, you can't have it all.  The noodles were plenty good enough to make up for the noise.

Overall, it was a most enjoyable visit.  We stayed closer to downtown this year at the Hotel Quartier de Spectacles, right on Rue St. Catherine and just around the corner from the nearest subway station.  We didn't have quite as nice a room this year but breakfast was better (though not included gratis).  As ever, it's nice to be back home but I look forward to future Montreal adventures.