by Richard Subber | Jan 30, 2024 | Human Nature, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
getting there…
Movie review:
To Serve Them All My Days
There is an utterly familiar plot line in To Serve Them All My Days (TV mini series, 1980-1981, 11 hours, 13 minutes): a Welsh coal miner’s son survives World War I, and becomes a teacher at a boys’ school in England south of Wales, and grows in his role to become the beloved avuncular headmaster.
John Duttine energetically plays the protagonist, David Powlett-Jones. Everyone calls him “P. J.” or “Pow-Wow,” with love and respect.
P. J. quite remarkably discovers that his calling, his life’s work, is with the faculty and boys at Bamfylde School. He judges everything from this perspective.
Much of the tale is an unfamiliarly rich creation of manifestly human characters who deal with the slings and arrows of life, and make the best of their worlds to give willing, deserving boys a good education and a glimpse of how to live a decent life.
The dialogue is above average in many scenes, and you will get inside the minds of the key players. There is enough reflection and imagination and longing and joy/despair for any discerning viewer.
No spoiler alert is needed here. You can’t possibly be in doubt about how the story ends.
In this story, getting there is the point of the journey.
Based on the 1973 novel (same title) by R. F. Delderfield.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Snow Goose
…it’s sensual drama, eminently poetic…
by Paul Gallico
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Dec 5, 2023 | Human Nature, Language, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
losing sight of right and wrong…
Movie review:
Dangerous Liaisons
Dangerous Liaisons (1988, rated R, 119 minutes) is not a garden of delight.
If you aspire to a working understanding of good and evil, you could do worse than listen to the riveting chatter of the leading personae: the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich). They choose each word with careful, deliciously ribald, austerely cruel, and domineering intent.
This is a boundless exposé of the worst elements—of human intrigue, self indulgence, hubris, vaunting egos, and careless poaching of souls—that masquerade as amour.
Dangerous Liaisons is an ultimately degraded experience for both the characters and viewers, who must condemn the marquise and the vicomte for so many lives destroyed…death is an anticlimax in Dangerous Liaisons.
The marquise and the vicomte are burdened with a moral framework that shuns the absolute—they have unimaginably unsatisfied desires, and no intellectual imperative of right and wrong.
They swirl through their lives, casually jousting with each other as they amuse themselves in controlling the fates of other men and women, without realizing that they are not in control of their own fates.
The movie is based on a 1782 French epistolary novel titled Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos de Laclos, available in English translation.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 52 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Sep 19, 2023 | My poetry, Other, Poetry, Reflections
no victory, but only ending…
Wonder
We’re on a strange road,
there is no straight ahead
on this strange road,
there are turnings
we have never seen,
we’re not in a race
but there is a finish line,
we’re doing it together,
one leg each in the sack,
no turning back,
no victory
but only ending,
this is a way
we’ve always imagined
but never known,
this is a strange road
and we’re learning
as we go along,
we take new steps
and wonder as we wander along…
December 18, 2021
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review:
American Scripture:
Making the Declaration of Independence
…basically, this is trash talk to King George
by Pauline Maier
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your candid comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Aug 26, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
…when “far away” means “down”
Bird brain
Her world gets bigger as she rises.
Does that robin know that she’s flying?
Does the creature know
that flight once was not foreseeable?
Does she dream a fantasy
about walking around the track?
Does she give up on the dream,
thinking “these skinny legs will never make it?”
Does avian awe intrude
in her vista when she’s airborne?
What’s it like when
“far away” means “down”?
Does she wonder what “falling” means?
Can she imagine a world
in which “flapping” and “useless”
do not have joint meaning?
Does she hide a smile
when she comforts the chick
who hesitates to make the first jump?
May 24, 2023
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
–
As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Jun 17, 2023 | History, Human Nature, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
…a perfection of evil…
Movie review:
Conspiracy
The Wannsee Conference in Hitler’s Germany, January 1942
Starring Kenneth Branagh, Stanley Tucci, Colin Firth (2001)
Here’s the short version: watching Conspiracy is like drinking molten lead.
Conspiracy is an almost flawless portrayal of naked evil being done by powerful men, each of whom has lost or abandoned his moral compass.
It is dry, withering, completely transparent, all too believable—not merely because we know it’s all true. We know that there are powerful men and women alive today who are willing to do blasphemously wrong things like killing 6 million Jews.
Conspiracy dramatizes the Wannsee Conference that first officially articulated the Final Solution for the Jews of Europe: the Holocaust.
Stanley Tucci as SS Major Adolph Eichmann, Kenneth Branagh as Hitler’s Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich, Colin Firth as Dr. Wilhelm Stuckart (a lawyer who wrote the racist Nuremberg Laws), and 12 others show how it was probably done—almost without passion—around a long conference table in a manor house outside Berlin. One of the participants failed to destroy his copy of the minutes. This surviving document was used in the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials.
Conspiracy is frightening, horrifying, and disgusting. It is a perfection of the evil that men can do.
The antidote for watching it is simple: do a good thing every day.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
the other story of the American West…
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 16, 2023 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
a short time to be in love…
I forgot to get a card…
It’s not about the candles and the cake,
it’s not about singing
the same old song anymore,
it’s not about the date anymore,
not an event,
not a stopping place—
it’s another reminder that a year
is a long time to live,
and a short time to be in love,
it’s a marker on the trail,
and the trail is rising,
and the mountains are behind us,
and the oceans, yes, and many mysteries…
Just ahead, the path turns again, as always,
and we do not see much of the morrow,
and naught of the waiting tomorrows,
but we see the coming of our latter days,
and we can sing yesterday’s songs
at each new dawn,
and sing them again and again and again,
and add new words at each new sunset…
May 8, 2017
I confess, I didn’t forget to get a card—I couldn’t find a card that I wanted to give. You can guess whose birthday I was celebrating. I decided to write a birthday poem that doesn’t actually mention “birthday” and skips all the smarmy stuff and doesn’t bother with the “you’re only as old as you feel” stuff and the “omigawd, how many candles are on your cake?” stuff. A birthday is a day in our lives. We celebrate our lives together. Every day.
My poem “I forgot to get a card…” was published in my fifth collection of 53 poems, My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited (search for “Richard Carl Subber”).
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2023 All rights reserved.
A poet is a “maker”
…and it doesn’t have to rhyme…
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many waters: more poems with 53 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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