Tread on Dreams

Broadcast News (1987)
Romantic Comedy
Starring William Hurt and Holly Hunter
Directed by James L. Brooks

Dear Holly Hunter,

It’s not always about you.

Sincerely,

Me

Movie Rating? C
Favorite line(s)?
“I think we have the kind of friendship where if I were the devil, you’d be the only one I would tell.”

~ Albert Brooks as Aaron Altman

Strictly Ballroom (1992)
Musical
Starring Paul Mercurio and Tara Morice
Directed by Baz Luhrmann

Can I just say that I loved the soundtrack, especially the instrumental “Time After Time.” (Even though it has that horrible sax sound that the 90s was unbearably fond of. Seriously now!) And yes, okay, Doris Day does the best version of “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.” But the Cake version is a very, very, very close second.

This is very clearly a Baz Luhrmann movie. I’ve seen, of course, Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge, and this movie definitely has the same feel about it. The particular style that would find its ultimate expression in Moulin Rouge. The hints of extravagance, the not-so-subtle over-acting, and even the shooting and editing, to some extent. (Or so I think, at the very least. Perhaps I’m wrong.)

I really liked the movie. It wasn’t spectacular, sure, but it was sweet and adorable. Some days you just need sweet and adorable. I could just about forget the whole father/mother side plot and just watch them dance together. And oh, the mother…

What a bitch!

My favorite part of this movie, though, was the “Vivir con miedo, es como vivir a medias!” line repeated throughout. Quite the maxim, that is.

But why shouldn’t you love it? Just because it’s a ballroom dancing movie? As I recall, there was another movie about ballroom dancing that you enjoyed (Mad Hot Ballroom ringing a bell…)…?

Movie Rating? B+
Category Rating?
Favorite line(s)?
“A life lived in fear is a life half lived. ”

~ Tara Morice as Fran

Arthur (1981)
Romance
Starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli
Directed by Steve Gordon

Oh, this movie was adorable. Unexpectedly so. I mean, come on!

Dudley Moore?

Liza Minnelli?

Are there two people in the world less suited to be romantic leads than these? And yet, somehow, it works. They work.

I love Dudley Moore. I really do. I have loved him in every movie I’ve ever seen him in. That’s right, both of them. This is probably because the first, and only other, Dudley Moore film I think I’ve seen is Santa Claus and I don’t think I was even ten when I saw it. Who could hate that movie, I ask you, who?

Anyway, I loved Dudley Moore in this movie as well; apparently I have a soft spot for the unapologetically alcoholic. I loved him even before he got all grown-up and sober, too, so… His progression from blissfully drunk to wretchedly drunk to sadly drunk to blissfully drunk and in love was adorable.

The 80s, though, man. They did love to play with the storylines concerning money, ethics, and the debauchery of the upperclasses, didn’t they? One of my other favorite 80s movies involves Dan Akroyd as a well-to-do executive who switches places with a homeless man when two rich brothers make a bet on a whim. Classic 80s!

But the kicker of this movie was definitely the Hobson storyline. Oh, poor Hobson. Poor hard-shell, gooey-inside Hobson. His brief (he’s an English butler, he does not waste words) speech to Arthur was just lovely. “Take off your helmet” … “Take off your goggles” … [smack].

It made me smile.

Movie Rating? A
Favorite line(s)?
“You spoiled little bastard! You’re a man who has everything, haven’t you, but that’s not enough. You feel unloved, Arthur, welcome to the world. Everyone is unloved. Now stop feeling sorry for yourself. And incidentally, I love you.”

~ John Gielgud as Hobson

A cousin of my cousins died today. She was eleven and had been slowly dying for years as the tumors grew bigger and harder to control. Experimental treatments, trips out of state to specialists, traditional and holistic, years of hospital admittances, missed opportunities, and watching the world, her siblings, her friends, everything pass her by.

I probably won’t go to the funeral–the family’s grief is too large for interference from the peripheries.

But I feel for the family at this time, the conflicting feelings they are sure to have, mourning her loss but thankful for an end to her suffering. This upcoming holiday, this day of thanksgiving and the accounting of blessings, of family and of friends, will always be bittersweet now. Joy tinged with sadness and loss.

Chasing Shakespeares
Sarah Smith
General Fiction / Literary Mystery
(Atria: New York, 2003)
337 pp.

Aside from a couple of great quotes, the book itself was pretty bad.

“The Greeks believed in hubris, the kind of pride that goes before a fall, the sin of building just too fucking big. The Elizabethan image for that kind of tragedy was a wheel. Go up with the wheel, you forget it’s going to go down.”

Regarding the London Eye, of course.

“Shakespeare had walked here; Shakespeare had seen this very piece of ground. I once read that in every breath you take is an atom of oxygen once breathed by Julius Caesar. I leaned my forehead against the fence, overcome, sighing like an Elizabethan melancholy gallant, breathing the air Shakespeare breathed.”

I have felt exactly like this, running my hands along ancient stone and delicate parchment, as if by touching it, you will take up some of the history into your own self.

“I shall tell you what I believe. I believe God is a librarian. I believe that literature is holy, Mr. Roper, it is that best part of our souls that we break off and give each other, and God has a special dispensation for it, angels to guard its making and its preservation.”

Amen to that, sister.

“Someday we will know whether the play we are in is tragedy or comedy or farce. Someday we’ll look back on this moment and know its meaning, say, “What a bad poem that was after all,” or “Do you remember when we read it first? Do you remember the moment?” But day by day we only live, making do, step by step, imagining and acting and writing out our lives.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

We know what we are. Maybe.

We know what we are.”

We are on the way to knowing.

10. In the 2004 Presidential election, I voted for Bush. Three years after 9/11, in the very early stages of a war in the Middle East, and a lack of faith or belief in any of the Democratic or other names being tossed around. To be honest, until I got into the voting booth I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. But as I stood there thinking, and I did think, I decided that I couldn’t, not with any semblance of conscience, vote against the incumbent president. I was still scared, 9/11 left a deep impression on me, deeper than I knew at the time or for several years afterwards. I liked the president who talked big about anti-terrorism, about going after those who would threaten us, those who would seek to shake and topple the very core of our nation. I felt that he hadn’t had enough time yet to make a difference in the Middle East, and the other candidates were talking of pulling out, removing our troops. You can’t start a war and leave it unfinished. And there were other reasons as well, not worth mentioning now but important then. I kept quiet about who I voted for then because I was surrounded by people who would question my choice. I think I knew even then that in the long run, I’d regret it. But at the time, scared and unsure, I was willing to exchange a lot (civil liberties included) for some semblance of comfort.

9. After my grandmother died I kept everything that was even remotely associated with her. The things she had painted decorated my room for years, even though I thought they were kind of ugly. They were what was left of her and I felt like removing them, getting rid of them, would be a betrayal. I kept her watch, I had a pair of her slippers, a letter she had written me from her hospital bed. Most of those things I’ve gotten rid of now, grown beyond, but I still have the watch and the letter, a few favorites from the paintings. I can, to the disgust of many, be shockingly sentimental.

8. I absolutely hate the smell of cucumber and melon. I had a lotion with that scent given to me during my early pre-teen years. And ever since then, I cannot stand the smell. Perhaps, just maybe, it was a little overdone at times. But my sister, coincidentally also 14, loves the smell. Which is why a few times I week I burn the cucumber/melon candle. So that she’ll think I love her birthday present and so that it will just eventually burn down.

7. My iPod is full of embarrassing teeny-bopper music. I’ve got a little Jonas Brothers, a little McFly, some Mandy Moore and more. I may have a Hanson song on there. I certainly have some from The Veronicas. And at least one Avril Lavigne. (When called on it I blame my sister.) That’s what the “skip” button was invented for, folks.

6. I find myself unbearably bored by Masterpiece Theatre, modern or classic. I know, I know. I should like it. But that doesn’t change the fact that I absolutely cannot stand it. I’ll give it a try usually to please someone else, or to be able to participate in a discussion with someone else, but on the whole, I cannot stand it. I can think of two, maybe three, things that I have really enjoyed but the rest of it is just torture to get through. Maybe it’s the time (I have watched many a Masterpiece Theatre show on DVD via Netflix), maybe the format (the having to tune in more than once–I’m notoriously bad with miniseries). Or maybe it’s just that, on the whole, I find the stories just plain boring.

5. I am both addicted to and repulsed by CNN. It’s like a never-ending train wreck. The stories on there are just horrific but I cannot look away. Every now and again, though, I am rewarded by some heart-warming tale that makes everything else worth it.

4. Until very recently (okay, Wednesday) I thought that Luther’s Diet of Worms actually referred to a diet of worms. I just had never given it that much thought; the name itself seemed fairly obvious. Why should I question what it meant? Okay, perhaps I should have paid more attention in Western Civ, round 1.

3. I find myself torn between my conscience and my religion. To be honest, I don’t know if I can call it “my religion” anymore. I see a disharmony between the word and the action. I don’t know if I’d say that my faith is suffering, or being called into question, but my willingness to forgive the difference between my own experience in the world and the teachings of the Church is growing thin. For a variety of reasons. And while this is probably the place, this is certainly not the time.

2. I actually like Westerns. And I have always been a sucker for a man in a cowboy hat. One of my favorites is A Lady Takes a Chance, more Romance than Western, certainly, but sweet and satisfying nonetheless. Why would I claim I don’t like them? For a few reasons. Because it frustrates certain individuals. Because sometimes you just want something for yourself, something that’s yours and yours alone.  (I also believe we went to the moon.)

1. If I tell you I’m fine, I’m probably not. If I tell you something is “okay,” again, probably not. If I say “whatever” like it didn’t matter anyway, it did.

“[My sister] accommodates me, never reproaches me with her doctrine, never tries to change me. She accepts me and loves me, despite our differences.”

~ Joy Harjo

Lord knows, this is something I need to work on.

“Sisters either learn to accept on another as independent individuals with their own sets of values and behaviors or cling to the shadow of the brother or sister they once knew.”

~ Jane Mersky Leder

I love you,
I say aloud to the empty elevator,
To the hall, to the early morning sunrise
On my way to work.

I love you–
I practice saying it,
Forming the words in my mouth,
Wrapping my tongue around them
And setting them free.
I have this dream that one day,
When the time comes and
The moment is right,
They’ll come easily,
Naturally.

I am no good at telling the people
I love how I feel, what they mean to me.
I fumble the words,
Stumble through the motions;
My own special handicap,
A cross I must bear alone,
Always.

There was a man once who wanted,
And I, all too briefly, wanted back.
At least until everything burned,
Too hot, too fast, too strong.
I could not feel for him what he wanted,
Give him what he desired,
Say the words he asked to hear,
Words in a language I had not learned,
That did not belong to him;
A promise he had no claim to.

But for the one person,
The someday, sometime, someone
Meant to hear these words,
I want to be ready.

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Me:  (walking into the living room holding a hair I’d just pulled from my hairbrush)  Sara, what color is this hair?

Sara:  Blonde.

Me:  That’s my girl.