Dirty Dancing (1987) (movie review)

Dirty Dancing (1987) (movie review)

by | Apr 4, 2022 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews, Tidbits

…ready to pop…

 

 

Dirty Dancing (the 1987 movie)

 

Patrick Swayze, Jennifer Grey

Director: Emile Ardolino

100 minutes

Oscar for Best Music, Original Song: “The Time Of My Life”

 

I want to go deeper than the “ugly duckling/Prince Charming/red hot final dance” story—for me, highlights of the film are Baby’s naiveté, and her ingenuous embrace of the very hot Johnny, and her eager awareness of her rising woman’s heat…

Some context: in 1987 many Dirty Dancing viewers would have been more than slightly discomfited by the matter-of-fact abortion episode, and perhaps nonplussed by Baby’s casual deception to come up with the $250 to pay for it. Wowee. It’s great to help out a friend of a friend and all, but that seems like a baffling stretch for a timorous young girl of Baby’s obvious unworldliness.

On the other hand, Baby’s hormones are ready to pop.

You know, you really can say “dirty dancing” in a nice way.

Alone with Johnny, in the prelude to intimacy scene, Baby suddenly opens up: “I’m scared of everything…I’m scared of who I am, and most of all I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”

That’s a heartbeat. You felt it, too.

Here’s hoping that you’ve had a moment, an embrace, a volcanic new feeling of desire that you feared you would never feel the rest of your whole life.

I have.

And now I know I didn’t have to be afraid.

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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2022 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: Tales from Shakespeare

the summaries by Charles and Mary Lamb…

click here

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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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The Wind and the Lion (1975)

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

by | Jan 19, 2021 | Human Nature, Theater and play reviews

a first-class bad guy…

 

 

Movie review:

The Wind and the Lion (1975)

 

Candice Bergen as Mrs. Eden Pedecaris.

Sean Connery as Mulay Achmed Mohammed el-Raisuli, Lord of the Rif and Sultan to the Berbers.

In real life he was Mulai Ahmed er Raisuni (Raisuli) (1871-1925), a Sherif and Lord of the Rif in Morocco, a tribal leader and brigand, “the last of the Barbary pirates.”

The Wind and the Lion is a dramatic interpretation of a real incident in Morocco in 1904. The real Raisuli kidnapped an American, Ion “Jon” Hanford Perdicaris (1840-1925) and his stepson, and held the two for ransom. President Teddy Roosevelt sent U. S. marines to rescue the men. Ultimately, the government of Morocco paid the ransom and the men were released.

The movie is wonderfully dashing, and the brutal details are romantically minimized. The captive American, Candice Bergen, doesn’t quite fall in love with Sean Connery, but it seems to be a close call.

Connery, with all of his moustaches and flowing robes, is a first class bad-guy hero, and he has a good heart. He’s happy to get his money, but he’s sorry to say goodbye to Mrs. Pedecaris.

In the final scene, the Raisuli and his lieutenant, the Sherif of Wazan, are silhouetted on a high beach against the setting sun, and the Sherif plaintively declares “Great Raisuli, we have lost everything. All is drifting on the wind as you said. We have lost everything.”

Raisuli revives the heart throbs: “Sherif, is there not one thing in your life that is worth losing everything for?”

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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2021 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: The Proud Tower

…a lot more than a history book…

by Barbara Tuchman

click here

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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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Guess who wasn’t coming to dinner…

Guess who wasn’t coming to dinner…

by | Dec 22, 2020 | Human Nature, Reflections, Theater and play reviews, Tidbits

 

Guess who wasn’t coming to dinner at your house in 1967…

 

Well, if you grew up in a white family, it’s a pretty good bet that a handsome black guy—a doctor!—wasn’t planning on sitting down to dinner and telling you he planned to marry your daughter.

That’s the reality that was.

So, about 50 years ago, Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy and Sidney Poitier and Katharine Houghton and Beah Richards and Roy Glenn got crazy in Hollywood and filmed Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. It was a blockbuster. Houghton (daughter) and Poitier (doctor) played lovely young people who were in love, and everybody got with the program by the end of the movie, and they lived happily ever after. (There were Oscars, click here).

It’s a poignant and dramatically dynamic movie. Every character throws firecrackers at least a couple times, and everybody catches the firecrackers with high art and deftly normalized social criticism and passionate declarations about the right thing.

I’ve watched it several times. For me, it doesn’t get old. I like to live in the world with people who say “If you love somebody, you gotta love somebody, so go ahead and do it.”

The movie turned a lot of heads, but I’m guessing it didn’t change a whole lot of minds.

….and don’t forget that the last recorded lynching of a black man (Michael Donald) in America was near Mobile, Alabama, in 1981.

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Movie review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.

 

Book review: The Blithedale Romance

by Nathaniel Hawthorne, not his best…

click here

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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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Review: The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill

Review: The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O’Neill

by | Aug 20, 2018 | Theater and play reviews, Tidbits

A slow eruption of despair…

 

Review:

The Iceman Cometh

A play by Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953)

Written in 1939, first performance in 1946

 

Stamina is one thing you need to load up on so you can read or watch The Iceman Cometh.

Pathos, not so much. Your usual willingness to embrace pathos will be fully engaged, because Eugene O’Neill boiled this play in pathos.

The short version:

A bunch of broke-down drunks in a 1912 Greenwich Village bar sprawl in the chairs, mutually reinforcing their relentless pursuit of a maundering besotted state that creates the milieu for exercising their pipe dreams.

When their hero, the traveling salesman they call Hickey, tries to talk them into exorcizing their pipe dreams, they oh so tentatively agree…but they fail in oh so predictable ways.

In the final scene, Larry—forlorn, a lapsed anarchist—mutters “Life is too much for me, I’ll be a weak fool, looking with pity at the two sides of everything ‘til the day I die.”

That’s really The Iceman Cometh, in simplest language. It distinctly examines only one side of everything. The play makes no pretense about having redeeming qualities. It’s a slow eruption of despair. It’s a slow walk through the dark side. There is no exit except death’s door. I was glad, at the end, when I could stop watching it.

Early in his career, Marlon Brandon turned down an offer to play a key role in Iceman, saying that O’Neill’s work was “ineptly written and poorly constructed.” To each his own.

I think The Iceman Cometh is a masterpiece of truth-telling. He tells some truths about life that are all too real for some people, and all too horrid contingencies for the rest.

I imagine that watching it is a lot less terrifying than living it.

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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 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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Book review:

Shakespeare: The World as Stage

The Bard was the lucky one…

click here

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“Whither,” a poem of wanton love…

“Whither,” a poem of wanton love…

by | Jun 7, 2018 | My poetry, Poetry, Theater and play reviews, Tidbits

“…yearning that has ever filled her…”

 

 

Whither

 

He the tempter, she the temptress.

 

Roles they never imagined in their separate worlds

   before they chanced to come together,

roles they accept without skill or will to play,

roles animated by the drab constraint of her clan,

and the drear, deadened danger of his career

   in thrall to loveless intrigue.

 

Quickly they see each other as woman and man,

quickly the heat is on them,

quickly they twirl in dance without dalliance,

quickly they know their plight,

awkward in their pauses,

denying the impulse to embrace.

 

At day’s end he faces her, silent,

his desire wantonly on offer,

his smile closed by fear that he will charm her

   into a love that must become a misery in his world.

She faces him and does not speak

   but offers herself with lust she cannot name

      and yearning that has ever filled her.

Her smile awaits his beckoning,

for long moments…

He lowers his eyes in despair, she turns away

   and accepts her failure with no whisper,

no waiting,

no wishing for another chance,

no words to claim him for a love

  that would wither in her world.

 

They give without taking.

They reach to each other

   across an unimagined gulf

      that sears their willing hearts,

they lean to the threshold of desire

   but they do not take the last step.

 

They part, to languish in the limits of their lives.

They learn that heart can be another way

   to spell hurt.

 

February 14, 2016

Inspired by the film Witness (1985)

My poem “Whither” was published January 23, 2018, in my second collection of 47 poems, Seeing far: Selected poems. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”

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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.

 

We Were Soldiers Once…and Young

…too much death (book review)

Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore (ret.)

         and Joseph L. Galloway

click here

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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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Book review: Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen

Book review: Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen

by | Jan 16, 2018 | Book reviews, Books, Theater and play reviews

“Millions of women…”

 

 

Six Plays by Henrik Ibsen

 

by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)

Norwegian playwright, theater director, and poet

The Modern Library, New York  1957

Translated and with introduction by Eva Le Gallienne

 

In this volume, for your delectation:

A Doll’s House

Ghosts

An Enemy of the People

Rosmersholm

Hedda Gabler

The Master Builder

 

Ibsen is OK for beach reading whenever the sun disappears and you have to scooch down in your chair with a blanket and a hoodie to keep warm.

Of course it’s possible to argue with the notion that this is a collection of Ibsen’s best—for my taste, just about any half dozen of Ibsen’s plays is worth putting in the beach bag.

My favorite in Six Plays is “A Doll’s House.” It’s Ibsen’s stark, unforgiving play about men and women, with a dreadful undercurrent of desperation. Torvald Helmer offers only bland, devastating condescension to Nora, whose despair grows ever more public as she realizes that she has drowned herself in the domestic dead end of being Torvald’s “doll-wife.”

If you ache, like me, to bash Torvald and comfort Nora as you experience the pervasive and thinly veiled brutality in the Helmer household, then you, like me, must realize how much you wish it could be unimaginable in any way…but in vain…

Nora tells her husband that she had hoped he would take the blame for her transgression, and the disdainful Torvald rebukes her: “…one doesn’t sacrifice one’s honor for love’s sake.”

Nora replies with quiet thunder: “Millions of women have done so.”

Enfin, we understand how Nora could be too hurt to cry, and too happy to remain in a doll’s house…

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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2018 All rights reserved.

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Book review: Ethan Frome

not being satisfied with less…

by Edith Wharton

click here

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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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