James Stewart, Alfred Hitchcock Movie: Vertigo

 John Ferguson was traumatized by a police case where he almost fell off a building, and another officer did fall.  He now has fear of heights and vertigo which forced him to retire early from the police force.  A friend, Galvin Elster (Tom Helmore) contacts him out of the blue, and hires him to follow his wife (Kim Novak), who he says may be possessed by an ancestor.  Ferguson follows her, and saves her from an aparent suicide attempt when she throws herself into San Francisco Bay.  They soon become an item.  They travel to San Juan Bautista south of San Francisco.  They kiss and profess their love when she runs off.   It appears that the wife commits suicide by going into the mission and up the bell tower, throwing herself off.  (There actually is no bell tower at San Juan Bautista.  It was added cinematically.)

Ferguson goes into a melancholy depression, and ends up in a psychiatric hospital for about a year.  After he is out he discovers a woman who looks like the diseased wife.  He dresses her up as the deceased wife, but she wears a familiar necklace and then he realizes he was duped as part of a murder plot with him as the witness it was a suicide, not a murder.  

This is a very good movie, and very good portrayal by Jimmy Stewart.  Ferguson has an admirer, Marjorie (Barbara Bel Geddes) who is always available for him but they never make the connection.  

Music Review: Sofia: Louder!

 Sofia Reyes: Louder! Warner Musica Latina, 2017,

Louder is the debut album for Sofia.  She is a Mexican singer and performer.  Sofia writes or cowrites all of the songs.  She is pretty good at this.  She sings mot of the songs in Spanish but also in English.  All oif the songs seem to have the boy and girl theme, "But if you go, nothing more."  I personally enjoy the slower songs and not so much those that are louder or rap.  Most songs she sings in both languages.  She also has a Latin beat going on.  

Tom Hanks Movie: **** Cast Away (2000)

 Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) works for FedEx.  He has a girlfriend, Kelly Sears (Helen Hunt) and it appears it is serious.  When he leaves he says he will be back soon.  However the FedEx plane gets caught in a storm and crashes in the ocean.  Noland does get in a raft, and washes ashore on an island.  This begins a four year ordeal where his only companion is a volleyball with a blood stain that looks like a face.  Finally part of a 0orta potty washes ashore, and he turns it into a sail for a raft.  With that extra push he is able to g`et over the wake and get to sea, where he floats many days, but loses his volleyball.  Finally a boat discovers him and he is saved.  It has been four years.  His girlfriend has moved on, married and has a baby.  They still love each other but realize that opportunity has flown the coup.  So Noland goes to start a new life.  

This movie shows you do not need a large cast to make a movie.  It also shows the resilience of man, as Noland has to teach himself how to survive.  

Carole King Tapestry: Live in Hyde Park 2016

Carole King Tapestry: Live in Hyde Park 2016, available through Youtube.

This is a performance of a classic album.  The album Tapestry was released in 1971.  It marked a turning point for King who had been a song writer for some time, and now was a solo artist.  Carole King is a classic artist and has been making music since the late 50s when she wrote "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow."  This album is the pinnacle of her career.  It includes classics like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow," And "You've Got a Friend."  It includes the song made famous by Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."  Another anthem is "I Feel the Earth Move."  "Where you Lead" was written as a show of support from a woman to a man, then the women's lib movement hit so she hesitated singing it.  However it was reworked for the Gilmore Girls as a daughter and mother singing it together.  Her own daughter, Louise Goffin, joined her in singing it.  It is uncanny how closely she resembles her mother of 40 years ago.  King played the guitar for the rock song "Smackwater Jack."

She also performed other songs, including a medley of songs she wrote for other artists.  There was "Go Away Little Girl" sung by Donny Osmond.  They performed Jazzman with Jamie Talbot joining them on saxophone.   

King also sang many encore numbers including "Up on the roof" which is the "when this old world starts to getting you down song."  Another encore song was "locomotion" and then "Tumbling Down."  The cast from Beautiful, The Carole King Musical  joined for a song.  She then concluded with another arrangement of "You've Got a Friend."  It is amazing to me how youthful King looked.  She was in her 70s for this concert.

 

Odyssey. TV Miniseries (1997)

 With the big hubbub about "The Odyssey" I decided to watch this version on TUBI and not have to worry about the R rated movie version.  I imagine the story is the same, but the special effects probably not as great.  Odysseus is 20 years trying to get home, ten warring and another ten traveling.  Poseidon was against him.  All of his men die along the way.  But he finally makes it home, and cleans out the den of freeloaders who have been tormenting his wife.

• 

  Armand Assante

  Odysseus

  
  
• 

  Greta Scacchi

  Penelope

  
  
• 

  Geraldine Chaplin

  Eurycleia

Movie Review: **** The Penguin Lessons (2024)

 I found this movie truly enjoyable for a couple of reasons.  It is set in Buenos Aires shortly after the military coup which would have been shortly before I was in the country.  I was witness to some of the things which take place in the movie.  

The story is about a disillusioned english man, Tom (Steve Coogan) who takes up a teaching posiition at a private school in Buenos Aires outside the capital.  He teaches English and poetry and is assigned to coach the rugby team.  He barely knows the rules to rugby.  When the actual coup takes place, the boys are sent home for a week, and Tom travels to Uruguay for a vacation.  There he comes upon a group of penguins who have gotten caught in an oil slick and perished.  One is alive so he nurses it back to health.  The penguin becomes attached to him, and won't let him alone.  It won't go back to sea.  In the end he brings it back to the school where he hides it in his apartment.  During the day his housekeeper, Maria (Vivian el Jabber).  He befriends she and her granddaughter, Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio).  Sofia is active in politics and protesting against the military coup.  When she and Tom are out shopping, she is picked up by the military government and Tom is unable to intervene or protect her.  He deals with his failing until he cannot any longer, and he confronts who he knows is the head of the military secret police on behalf of Sofia asking for her return.  As he result he too is picked up and beat up and then returned.  He is a British subject.  It is only when the head master, Buckle (Jonathan Pryce) gets involved and talks to the government official that Sofia is released.  There was a point when the penguin is discovered and Tom is taken by the military police that Buckle had asked him to resign.  However he is spurned to to action and resolves this with himself.  The penguin becomes a part of the class, and the students actually learn when the penguin is in the classroom.

This movie is based on the memoir of Tom Michell of the same name.  In the movie the lead character is older and more crusty than Tom Michell was when he actually taught in Buenos Aires and had a penguin for a pet.  Other things from the movie I saw--the grandmothers protesting in the Plaza de Mayo across from the Pink house by the cathedral for their disappeared children and grandchildren.  Many of the grandchildren were adopted out after their parents were killed.  The checking of documents randomly on the street by military men in uniform.  I also knew a doctor who disappeared and then was retuned after being tortured.  And another woman who was grieving the loss of a child who had been taken and she didn't know what had become of the child.  And the story of another woman and her husband who taught in the illiteracy program.  They escaped to Spain but all their home was taken and given to a military family.  

Alfred Hitchcock Movie: ****Murder (1930)

 Diana Baring (Nora Baring) is accused of murder.  She does not remember what happened; but her defense in court of being in a fugue state does not go with the jury.  But one juror, Sir John Menier (Herbert Marshall) still has his doubts.  He was convinced to vote guilty, but he still believes the woman.  She doesn't remember what happened.  He wants to find out.  

So he begins his own investigation.  She was the only one in the room.  He interviews the owners of the apartment Doucie and Ted Markham (Phyllis Konstam and Edward Chapman).  They do not give much information, but Ted decides to investigate with him.  Miss Mitcham (Marie Wright) isn't much help either.

They go to the theater where they work and find more clues there.  Here are people who are on the edge of society--circus performers.  Also people who can get into tight spaces, one being an acrobat.  Baring has been hiding the identity of a man in the room.  But she does mention he is half caste (bi racial).  At the circus Menier discovers Handel Fane (Esme Percy).  He is suppose to be biracial, and the murder victim had discovered this so he kills her to keep her silent.  It was taboo to be biracial during this period and would have reuined his career.  The victim and Baring were in deep conversation so he was able to sneak in the window, go past them and strike a blow with the poker.  

Menier traps him through the guise of reading a script for a theater production.  The script has the last page blank, and Menier recruits him to finish it, which he does describing how he completed the murder before killing himself.  

Fane is a male performing a trapeze act dressed as a woman.  He also hides his identity, as well as his involvement in the murder.  When this all comes out it is more than his psychic can take and he hangs himself from the trapeze bar.