Monthly Archives: October 2015

SABOTAGED

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Using Hitchcock’s title, Sabotage, but no hint of Hitchcock’s story, this is a usual Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. In the end he gets the bad guys.

This movie has a redeeming quality, a lot to see of Mireille Enos, part of Arnold’s law enforcement team who turns out to be a naughty, rotten woman. Near movie’s end in a car chase gun fight Arnold and Mireille exchange a few thousand shells and rounds, and miss. Finally, Arnold has to end the film. No matter what the role, it’s a living.

Beware that Joe Mangeniello is not Joe Mantegna, a mistake on my part.

STRAWMAN STUART

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THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, JOHN FORD

This revered John Ford movie makes James Stuart’s character a straw man – a fake and a phony. He ventures into the frontier and believes he can use only law (and law books) to resolve disputes. Someone who is that idealistic could not live during the time the movie was set (1865 – 1875). Stuart isn’t a Quaker so he doesn’t have that religion as support. Stuart mouths off while joining the community of Shinbone. It’s no wonder people beat him up or wonder about him.

Everyone in the American west knew that law was a casual thing. Adherence to laws found in books was isolated. The late nineteenth century in America was greatly affected by the Civil War. Violence frequently proceeded or accompanied law. Frequently there was a sense of community equity. Those lessons were not forgotten by the generation which fought the War, nor subsequent generations.

But the movie only makes sense if the audience forgets history and goes along with the  thinking of James Stuart’s character. Spoiler alert! I can only say, to make it a story, thank God John Wayne shot Liberty Valance. Spoiler alert!

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

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Collected Stories

I have read many complimentary opinions and laudatory paragraphs about these stories. I bought a fat book, 1000 plus pages, two columns per page. I began on page one “The Ball of Fat” about Prussians occupying a town. It seemed like a short story; the writer was practicing his descriptions so it was full of experimentation. Four columns on an open book is very daunting, like I was living in the nineteenth century reading a single story in a newspaper printed in eight columns per page. That type to retrocession is nothing nobody needs unless one reads the Bible.

My next thought about reading the story, “The Ball of Fat,” which I assumed does not eventually refer to a person but a cherished ingredient used for cooking. Both the Germans and French cook with fat. It was easy to stop reading because I don’t need my life influenced by this dietary heresy.

I wondered about the next story, “The Diamond Necklace,” but again was stuck on the four columns over two pages. I was suspicious, so a revelation came: I had bought the wrong book. Someone better than than I likely had put the best Maupassant short stories in one regularly columned book. If “The Diamond Necklace” appeared in a thinner volume with a normal format, it likely meant that story was worth reading.

So I stopped reading Maupassant in bulk. Perhaps I’ll reread Stephan Crane – “Blue Hotel” and “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky” to relearn how short stores can be perfected.

Sky” to see how short stories can be perfected.