by Richard Subber | May 4, 2025 | Theater and play reviews
meditative, that’s evil for you…
Movie review:
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Among more than 30 film adaptions of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, a 1945 release (not rated, 110 minutes) starring Hurd Hatfield as Dorian Gray is generally acclaimed as the best. It got four Oscar nominations. Different viewers will have different opinions. It’s not my favorite.
Just indulge the fantasy element: a painted portrait ages grotesquely while its subject, Dorian Gray, lives an unimaginably dissolute life and never looks older than a handsome 20-year-old. Gray’s impulse to sell his soul for eternal youth was an offer The Evil One couldn’t refuse.
The 1945 B&W version superficially treats Gray’s moral struggles and capitulation which are so vividly probed in the book. A young Angela Lansbury was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her rather placid role as Sybil Vane, Gray’s first victim. The actors talk too fast.
I like the 1973 version (rated TV-14, 111 minutes) starring Shane Briant as Dorian. The pace is natural, the cinematography is well staged in color, and the script obviously reflects the often meditative tone of the novel. Briant is a credible Dorian. The women in this production are rather conventionally feminine and they tend to be a part of the scenery.
A 2009 film titled Dorian Gray (rated R, 112 minutes, Ben Barnes as Dorian) gets this classic story mostly wrong. This is a Hollywood-ized version, with too much action, too much graphic sexuality, and too much violence. Wilde’s philosophical ruminations on good and evil get lost. Colin Firth as Dorian’s amoral mentor, Lord Henry Wotton, is a quite believably demonic tempter and a cad.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
“Tear it up,” says Kurt Vonnegut
“Write a six line poem, about anything…
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Empyrean: new poems with 57 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”
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by Richard Subber | Apr 6, 2025 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
through the looking glass…
Movie review:
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Frances McDormand can do comedy, in case you were wondering.
She plays the title character in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008, rated PG, 92 minutes).
Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged, lonely, unlucky governess looking for work—any job will do—in London in 1939.
She gets mixed up with a flibbertigibbet American celebrity whose lifestyle is different, way different. She steps onto the fast track for a while. There’s a fair share of wide-eyed gaping on the part of Miss Pettigrew.
Miss Pettigrew obviously has her own set of moral standards, and her own expectations about what life should have to offer, and her own approach to living the good life.
Miss Pettigrew steps through the looking glass for a time, does her best to make things better for everyone, and finds a gentleman who’s willing to share her tomorrows.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Comanche Empire
here’s the other story of the American West…
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 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 | Mar 9, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
Cue the “Brodie girls”…
Movie review:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969, rated PG, 116 minutes) is all Maggie Smith, all the time.
There is a story line: deeply committed and outspoken teacher pushes young girls to maturity while she dabbles in love and grasps everywhere for approval.
Miss Jean Brodie (Smith) creates a mostly adoring set of “Brodie girls” as she flourishes and flaunts and flounders at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in 1930s Edinburgh.
She leaves a trail of broken hearts and endures the ultimate humiliation of losing her job after she is “betrayed” by a student who almost grows up in the process.
Good acting, good story, good entertainment.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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 | Feb 9, 2025 | Theater and play reviews
lions know much
Movie review:
Out of Africa
1985
Rated PG
161 minutes
Out of Africa is a lovably unconventional love story, and the African scenes of flora and fauna are just lush. It won seven Oscars.
A daughter in a rich Danish family, Karen Blixen (Meryl Streep) works hard to maintain a coffee plantation in early 20th century Kenya, and in time she falls hard for the cavalierly independent Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford). They enjoy an ill-fated romance, ended by his untimely death.
This poem reflects my “Thumbs up!” review:
Lions know much
The she-lion came first
before sunrise lighted the lower plain.
She did not sniff the square of whitened stones,
nor the deranged, softly mounded earth.
She kept walking, slowly, in the lifting dark.
Later, she returned, with her mate,
to dally on that sunlit slope,
and gaze at the heedless beasts
on the plain below.
The pair returned, another day,
with easy steps,
to tarry in that terraced space,
they could not know, perhaps,
of the man who had been laid
in their earth, in their domain,
they lingered, not knowing, perhaps,
that the still form beneath their feet
had been a gentle man,
but aware, somehow,
that he had been of their world,
that they could add grace to his grave.
The film is based on the 1937 book, Out of Africa, by Karen Blixen (1885-1962) (pen name Isak Dinesen).
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Movie review. My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 74 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”
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by Richard Subber | Dec 31, 2024 | American history, History, Human Nature, Theater and play reviews
to be or not to be…
Movie review:
Old Henry
The tension builds slowly in Old Henry (2021, not rated, 99 minutes) and you may be tempted to stop waiting to find out what it’s all about.
Truth is, it’s easy to stay with it.
There are no “stars” in Old Henry, and no Hollywood gush.
It’s a 1906 Oklahoma western that doesn’t need a soundtrack.
There is father-son conflict and bonding galore.
There is persistent necessity to consider the yin and yang of what’s right and what’s wrong and a lot of the in-betweens.
You’ll learn a few things you don’t already know about the real-life Henry McCarty who called himself William Bonney and is known to history as Billy the Kid.
You can take some time to think about this: are we who we were, or are we who we are, or can we be who we want to be, or should we be who our loved ones think we are…
Old Henry received the “Best Feature” award at the 2021 Almeria Western Film Festival.
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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
“The beginning is always today.”
(quote, Mary Shelley)
so get started…
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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 3, 2024 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Joys of reading, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections, Theater and play reviews
unforgettable…
Movie review and book review:
Atonement
Atonement is a story of lives of irredeemable sadness. Ian McEwan wrote the book that is faithfully portrayed in this 2007 film (rated R, 123 minutes)—it got seven Oscar nominations—starring Keira Knightley (Cecilia), James McAvoy (Robbie), Romola Garai (child Briony), Saoirse Ronan (18-year-old Briony), and Vanessa Redgrave (mature Briony).
In brief: Briony, a child, tells a dreadful lie about her sister’s lover, forcing Cecilia and Robbie to live separate, desperately tormented lives during World War II.
This poem is my “Thumbs Up” review of the movie and the book.
Unforgettable
This memory is lava hot,
it mingles, lava slow,
in all my thoughts,
in all my mind.
It is a crumble, peat, dark,
peat rich, no single whole,
but bits of all.
I cannot grasp it entire.
It fills me,
it is full of me,
full with my dread imaginings,
full with my discarded dreams,
so full…
It burns, it sears,
a red haze in my every gaze,
a scarlet shackle on each heartbeat.
I accept the impotence of atonement.
My long-ago childish deed cannot be undone,
that indulgence in excitement
and attention and novelty
and vengeance and purest love.
Unbidden, I saw an act I didn’t understand,
two lovers, I cherished them,
their coupling had no inner meaning for me,
yet showed they had more love for each other
than each for me…
Later, a twisted crime he did not—could not—commit,
yet I accused—“I saw him”—I lied,
to hurt him and to keep her, apart, for me.
That lie broke them.
At that moment, the words tasted brave
and older than my years.
The taste became gall.
Later, I was to know that I killed them.
My life has been my penance.
Now I understand what I could not see
and could not then feel.
Now I feel their horror that I invented
in place of their happiness.
Now I endure the unhappiness
they could not escape,
the terror born of a child’s simple plan
in a child’s heart.
…I keep those false words—“I saw him”—
spoken in righteous innocence,
in unknowable ignorance,
in unremembered pleasure…
I did not know I was trading my portion of happiness
for a memory that I keep
in a hole in my heart.
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Movie review. Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2024 All rights reserved.
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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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