Movie Review: ****Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)

 Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant)is dead set against marriage.  In fact he wrote a book against marriage.  But love takes over, he falls for and marries his neighbor's daughter, Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane).  He comes home to tell his aunts who raised him, Abby and Martha (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair) and discovers a body in the window seat.  He now has a problem on his hands.  The aunts admit that they have been killing elderly gentlemen because they look so peaceful when they are dead.  They advertise for boarders just for that reason.  Mortimer's brother Teddy (John Alexander) is mentally ill in which he believes he is Teddy Roosevelt.  The aunts impose on him to bury the "yellow fever" victims in the locks (the basement).  They have collected twelve gentlemen so far.  Another brother returns, Jonathan (Raymond Massey) after years out of the house.  He is a criminal and has a corpse in the rumble seat of the car.  He brings Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre) with him who is to operate on his face for a disguise.  Mortimer decides the best thing to do is get Teddy to a sanitarium.  He ignores his new wife while he works on this, and keeps sending her home to her father's house next door.  That night Teddy takes the victim to the basement and Dr. Einstein brings the body in from the car.  He ends up in the window seat.  The aunts are well liked by the police and they are in and out of the house which interferes with Jonathan and his escapades.  At one point Jonathan has tied up Mortimer and is ready to kill him when the police come into the house.  Dr. Einstein hits Jonathan. on the head to keep him from killing one of the police officers.  The director of the sanitarium (Edward Everett Horton) finally arrives to take Teddy.  He has been playing his trumpet scaring the neighbors.  The aunts don't want him to go and in the end they decide to go as well.  Dr. Einstein, the fake doctor, signs the papers and makes his escape.  They finally recognize Jonathan from the police bulletins and haul him away.  Mortimer is sure his marriage won't work because of his family genes.  However he learns from his aunts that he is actually adopted.  He and Elaine can finally get on with their honeymoon.

Funny and macabre at the same time.  The aunts are distressed when a body ends up in the locks that is not one of "their gentleman."  They talk about the bodies in the basement with the police but Mortimer convinces them they are crazy so nobody goes down their to look, except for the new wife.  

A Frank Capra movie.  It has its funny parts, and its part that are too chaotic and loud.    

Movie Review: ****^ October Sky (1999)

 Homer Hickam (Jake Gyllenhaal) wants to build a rocket having been inspired by Sputnik.  And so he recruits a team from school, Quentin Wilson (Chris Owen) is the nerd and the brains behind the group; O'Dell Carroll (Chad Lindberg) who help with tracking the rockets; Roy Cooke (William Lee Scott) who has a car.  Their first rocket gos sideways, and Homer's father (John Hickam), who isn't keen on the idea of rocketry, orders them off company grounds.  He is the foreman.  Homer feels he favors his older brother, Jim (Scott Miles) who plays football and gets a scholarship for football.  The company is a coal mine which extends several miles, but they do find a place to test their rockets, and they slowly get better.  They use a company engineer (Elya Baskin) for some of the parts.  Miss Riley (Laura Dern) is a school teacher who encourages the boys to enter a science fair.  It could be a springboard to get a scholarship and an education and work away from the coal mines.  Homer's mother (Natalie Canerday) is also supportive.  

At want point they close up their project.  They are accused of starting a fire and are hauled off to jail.  At this time Homer quits school and works in the mines because father is injured in a mining accident. During this time Miss Riley encourages Homer to read a book on rockets and trajectory.  Through this he determines it couldn't have been their rocket that caused the fire.  Using their calculations they are able to find the rocket they couldn't account for.  They actually see the rocket and it is a weather apparatus from the military.  Homer comes back to school and they are off to the county science fair--and actually win.  They are off to the national fair, and only Homer is able to go due to school budget restrictions.  At the fair the De Laval nozzle is stolen and Homer's picture of Dr. Wernher Von Braun, a rocket scientist.  His father has the machine shop worker make him a new part and they ship it to him.  And they win the first prize.  All the boys in the rocket project go to college and have careers outside the coal industry.  Homer works for NASA.  Homer and his father resolve their differences.  

This movie is based on a true story and the memoirs written by Homer Hickam called Rocket Boys.  Miss Riley gets sick and dies but she knows she helped the kids become successes.

Clint Eastwood Movie Review: ***^ Space Cowboys (2000)

 Frank Corvin (Clint Eastwood) and his team were taken off a space mission in favor of a monkey by Bob Gerson (James Cromwell).  40 years later NASA comes calling for Corvin again.  There is a satellite falling to earth and it is imperative to capture it and fix it.  It has a guidance system designed by Corvin.  Corvin insists he is only in if his entire team is resurrected.  These are Hawk Hawkins, Jerry O'Neill, Tank Sullivan and (Tommy Lee Jones, Donald Sutherland, James Garner).  Sara Holland (Marcia Gay Harden) is all behind getting them ready for the mission.  Gerson is thinking he will discard them before the mission.  However news of the geriatric team leaks and they are in by popular demand.  Eugene David (William Devane) is in charge of mission control.  Two other astronauts join the shuttle crew, Ethan Glance and Roger Hines (Loren Dean and Courtney B. Vance). They discover the satellite has nuclear bombs on board from the cold war.  Instead of fixing the satellite they need to do something with the nukes.  Hawkins almost couldn't come on the trip.  He is dying of cancer.  He takes the old satellite into space and he himself makes it to the moon.  Ethan Glance goes rogue and gets himself killed, and almost everyone on the mission.  Corvin has to pilot the ship home.

Clint Eastwood directed.  I found myself caring for these characters ane whether or not they would make it.  

James Stewart Movie: ***^ You Gotta Stay Happy (1948)

 Dee Dee Dillwood (Joan Fontaine) is engaged, and having second thoughts for the sixth time.  Her psychiatrist convinces her to go through with the wedding to Henry Benson (Willard Parker).  So she says I do, and then regrets it.  She runs away from him at the hotel, and ends in the room next door, which is the room of Marvin Payne (James Stewart).  She sleeps in his bed and he on the couch, but she requires sleeping pills, and is over sedated in the morning.  He has to take her with to the airport.  He flies a cargo airplane and runs Payne Air with his copilot Bullets Baker (Eddie Albert).  She finagles her way onto the plane, and they also take a newlywed couple Georgia and Milton (Marcie McGuire and Arthur Walsh) and a man Mr. Caslon (Porter Hall) (who unbeknownst to them is an embezzler).  They also have cargo that needs to be delivered quickly despite the weather.  They get caught in a storm and make an emergency landing, at a farm and a family with lots of kids.  Mr. Caslon holds a baby, and misses his own wife and kids so admits who he is, and Dillwood and Payne start to fall in love.  However after discovering her secret things don't go very well.  She is an heiress worth $50 million.  They are hauling a chimpanzee and she is the only one he likes.  They get back on their way,  but because of the delay the lose big on the cargo.  But Dillwood buys the stock and saves the company.

James Stewart Movie: ****^ The Glenn Miller Story (1954)

 The Glenn Miller Story is an excellent movie.  Glenn Miller (James Stewart) is a struggling trombone player who aspires to write his own arrangements and to be a band leader.  He also has a girl, although she doesn't know it that he met in college, Helen Burger (June Allyson) and a friend, piano player Chummy (Harry Morgan) that he often plays with it.  They eventually go on tour together, but Glen Miller still wants to develop "that sound."  He moves to New York to find it, but a couple years later he still hasn't and takes work playing in the orchestra on Broadway.  He invites Burger to come to New York to get married and so she does.  Burger is good at saving money, and when Miller decides it is time, she has the money put aside to give him a start.  But he still hasn't found the sound, even though they are opening with a big band.  The trumpet soloist cracks his lip, and they bring in a clarinet to play the solo part, and find the sound.  That is the start of a very prosperous career.  When WWII comes, Miller wants to do his part.  While in Europe, flying to set up a performance, he dies in a plane crash.  I didn't know Glen Miller passed away in the war.  He and Helen had two children they had adopted.  

James Stewart Movie: ***^ Harvey (1950)

 Elwood P. Dowd (James Stewart) disturbs everyone with his friend Harvey.  Harvey is a six foot rabbit that no one else can see.  This is making a big fuss with his family.  His sister (Josephine Hull) lives with him, and talk of Harvey seems to scare any suitor his niece (Victoria Horne) might have.  The have had enough and send him to the sanatorium.  However when they get there Dr. Sanderson (Charles Drake) hospitalizes the sister instead of Elwood Dowd and all kinds of pandemonium results.  Through everything Dowd is calm and peaceful.  The niece falls for the orderly (Jesse White) and it is serious.  The head doctor, Dr. Chumley (Cecil Kellaway) is upset with Dr. Sanderson for hospitalizing the wrong person, and fires him.  In the meantime he finally confesses his love to the nurse (Peggy Dow).  And Dr. Chumley sees the rabbit which is a pooka.  So in the end nobody ends up in the hospital, and Dr. Sanderson is unfired, and the pooka stays with Elwood.  

A funny show in its way, and James Stewart down plays everything and is just happy.  And his naiveté leads to two new relationships.  

Music Review: Yo Yo Ma: Bach Cello Suites: Six Evolutions

 Yo Yo Ma: Bach Cello Suites: Six Evolutions, Sound Postings, Sony Music, 2018.

Six cello only suites performed by Yo Yo Ma and they seem to have a progressive theme: Nature of play; Journey to light; Celebration; Building; Struggle for hope; Epiphany.  Each suite has six parts: Prélude (short piece of music), Allemande (moderately paced Baroque or Renaissance dance in 4/4), Courante (triple meter dance), Sarabande (slow dance in triple time), Menuets I&II (moderate tempo dance in triple meter) or Bourrées I&II (fast paced dance) or Gavottes I&II (court dance), Gigue (fast lively).  This music with just cello is a good piece with which to relax.  Yo Yo Ma says for six decades these six suites have given him "sustenance, comfort, and joy during times of stress, celebration and loss."