Monthly Archives: August 2021

THE YEARS AT OCCIDENTAL COLLEGE IN THE LATE SIXTIES CHARLES E. ROUSE

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Events in this book are about the author. The college setting is an accidental backdrop.

The book does not tell about the effect of significant, outside events on the Occidental College campus or among the students: Were there anti-War protests, demonstrations and writings on campus by teachers or students? What were the effects of rioting elsewhere? The author did not see Martin Luther King speak at Occidental College in 1967, but in less than a year Doctor King had been assassinated. Where there reactions about assassinations at Occidental? What did the administration do?

An odd fact out: I doubt if the yippies organized the 1967 Pentagon demonstration, as the author reports. This demonstration was inserted like other significant events: Tet, student riots, student politics campus to campus. Merely mentioning events does not tell what happened to anyone or to anything at Occidental College.

The author is loyal and devoted to Occidental. He identifies every class he had and every professor. But little is told about the teaching, the learning or the students action and growth of the author, or of other students. Everyone at Occidental was smart. They liked to drop names and supply authorities, venturing into German philosophy or onto someone’s newly discovered poem. The author’s favorite authorities were Thomas Wolfe – Electric Kool Air, etc – and Ayn Rand.

The author was awkward around girls, but the psychological diagnosis is incomplete. The reader does not learn if the trouble with women is the root cause of psychological disabilities, or merely one manifestation of other problems. Lots of pages are given to girlfriends (ambiguous suggestions of sex: Everyone was chaste at Occidental?), to mental issues, to eastern religions and to meaningless comments from persons or others in quotes.

For IRONY, try. On the back cover squirb, the author mentions that Barack Obama spent two years at Occidental College during the 1980s. Not mentioned is a state legislator, decades later always trying to please Obama, had a stretch of the 134 Freeway named after Obama. Those four miles, east of the 2-Freeway to Figueroa Avenue, is the route to the Scholl’s Canyon Dump.

Avoid this book.

THE SEA WOLVES, 19

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Gregory Peck, David Niven, Roger Moore, Trevor Howard and a group of middle aged British actors.

Being unaware of this movie set in India in 1943, I noticed it was done well. But the story and characters seemed like a mediocre script writer’s effort written and produced to do a World War Two story to compete the spy thrillers in 1980.
NOPE, the story is TRUE, and events happened as casually, awkwardly and as surprising as shown, likely with little input from the script writer’s craft.

One set of images, as an undercurrent, is also present. The British in India, and their elevated, privileged place in society held by Britons, the last vintages of colonialism. Within four years the British were removed and India and its people were free.
Since the events are true, it is a movie to see.

CALIFORNIA RECALL

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The Recall is five weeks away, so I thought I ought to pass on my impressions.

Leave it to Californians to demonstrate how wacky residents here are. Whatever you think appropriate about the Recall of Governor Gav, the recall has brought out the strangest sorts of persons who want to replace Newsom. Most of these people are Republicans, 46 of them. I don’t know all the names and I don’t want to know. But this is the Internet age. Let’s shorten the reference to Reps. Democrats can be called Dems. Dems might mistakingly call their opponents, the Reps, Reptiles.

Most Rep candidates have local constituencies. Most notably is Caitlyn Jenner, nee Bruce Jenner, an Olympian athlete before the operation. I do not believe Caitlyn will corral the transgender vote, so I don’t know why she is running except to get some publicity and perhaps money will come her way from that. The media report Larry Elder, radio talkshow host, is rising in the polls. But who wants a less prominent entertainer (has no TV shows and no film prospects) as governor?

The Dems are counting on Gav, and have brought in big-gun supporters like Elizabeth Warren, known throughout America as Pocahontas. A biography of Pocahontas told the two women are not alike. The native American was a diplomat supreme, persuasive, and urging and working for peace and cooperation between her peoples and the recently arrived immigrants. On the other hand Liz Warren is stringent, distance, pretentious, scowling, condescending, know-all, mean- spirited and not credible. She should not be involved in the anti-Recall effort. And I don’t mind calling Elizabeth Warren a half-breed Scandinavian immigrant.

THE HADES FACTOR

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Avoid

This made for TV movie taken from a Robert Ludlum story unsuccessfully tries to replicate the thrills from the Bourne movies. The bad guys are everywhere – Afghanistan to the Middle East, in the government and among pharmaceutical companies. And not everyone else is squeaky clean or filthy dirty.

Characters do stupid things. Sophia Myles plays Stephen Dorff’s wife [girl, financee]: Let’s go to dinner. She steps from the hotel. I need a sweater. Another ten minutes of film later, she and Stephen have checked out of the hotel, yet she leaves her cell phone in the room. I would hope her work as a medical researcher of infectious diseases was handled with more care, but she seems soporific. She is clearly seems someone to be murdered, and later she killed.

Stepping into Sophia’s place is Mira Sorvino, once a bedmate of Dorff’s. For the first 90 minutes of film, the former lover waiting in the wings, is her role. She supposedly is outside all agencies, so she has no connections. She’s completely free lance, yet she is well-informed. She suddenly appears in Afghanistan, having previously been in Paris. It’s convenient to have extra friends show up to help kill bad guys.

Stephen Dorff’s, former secret agent, has a bad time in this movie. In every fight he is outweighed by 30-50 pounds, and every opponent is at least six feet tall. Right off, when Stephen Dorff returns to the hotel room to retrieve Sophia’s phone, he get into a fight with a bad guy. He turns his opponent around – face to the wall – and the audience can see what’s coming next: An elbow from the opponent sent Stephen sprawling. Next is a foot chase which Stephen loses.

At that point I realized there would be many scenes ahead in this overlong movie where fast forward on the DVD could be used – one-quarter, perhaps a third of the movie. Every time Stephen confronts a bad guy the audience knows he’s going to get pounded. This is not “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.” Yet, like the Champ, Stephen emerges with no bruises on body or face. Indeed, no ill-effects linger from the last fight: Stephen, wounded, fights bad guy, wounded, on a bridge. They fall off, into the sewage treatment plant known as the Potomac River.

By The End Stephen Dorff doesn’t seem much mutated, but I noted that Mira Sorvino had the grace to avoid the final scenes.

JUNGLE CRUISE – Review

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I’ve now seen enough trailers, snippets and scenes from this movie during its promotion to cobble together the story and players.

For decades producers have tried to put an attractive guy and a good-looking babe in the jungle, as happened with Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen. [I’m not mentioning Tarzan and Jane.] I’m not sure which was more drunk – Bogart or the crocodiles.

Upon seeing ten minutes of The Jungle Cruise on TV, to support the story line and good- character development, I’ve concluded that Emily Blunt’s character should not be around when the boat returns to home port: Either she goes missing in the jungle (happens all the time) or she’s swallowed whole by a python. The audience can have a good cry, and the movie can garner loads of sympathy and big bucks for people who have gone missing in far-off places.