Today’s prayer, the Reader’s Digest version:
One Good Thing:
Flipping through the channels last night (yeah, big Friday night party time!), I came across “Jaws” on TNT. This is my favorite movie of all time (a close second is “Withnail and I,” but this one has the added sepia fuzz of childhood nostalgia). I caught about twenty minutes of it, the scene on the boat where Quint and Hooper compare scars, and where Robert Shaw, as Quint, does a magnificent job chewing up the scenery with his Indiannapolis monologue: “1100 men went into the water, 300 come out, sharks took the rest. June the 14th, Nineteen hundred forty five.” That movie is the perfect blend of character, action, humor, suspense and horror. And just in case you feel you’ve accomplished anything in your life, remember that Spielberg had it in the can well before his 30th birthday. God I love that movie. It’s one of my favorite comfort food flicks.
What are yours?
One Bad Thing:
About two weeks ago, my nine year old son Gabriel figured out how to whistle. We’re the only two in the family who can do it. My wife Linda can’t, my older son Rafael can’t, even my brother-in-law can’t. At the dinner table last night Rafael asked me and Gabriel to whistle “Jingle Bells.” So we each took turns. Gabriel went first, and did a great job. You could recognize the song from note one. Then it was my turn, and it was over before it began. I kicked ass. Destroyed it. Each of my notes varied subtly in volume and emotional interpretation. I started with a standard rendition of Jingle Bells and a minute later had created THE Jingle Bells, the benchmark version by which all other whistled holiday classics will be judged. In a nutshell, I kicked Gabriel’s ass. But when Gabriel asked his mother, my wife, who did better, she answered without hesitation: you did. WTF!? That is so not true! God, she’s always taking his side!
Jaws is indeed one of the best movies of all time, if not the best. Robert Shaw was one of the greats of his time, and few actors compare.
My favorite comfort flick would be The Hustler (1961). At a time when chain-smoking on screen was acceptable and Hollywood was transitioning over to color film, The Hustler was one of the last of the great black and whites.
The movie moves fluidly in many aspects, from the scene transitions to the memorable quotes: “Boy, he is great! Jeez, that old fat man. Look at the way he moves: like a dancer… And those fingers, them chubby fingers. That stroke… it’s like he’s, uh, like he’s playin’ the violin or somethin’.”
The acting was spot-on and the characters were real. Towards the end of the film, there was an overwhelming sense of loss that echoed outside of the boundaries of the movie, perhaps as a statement: of Hollywood, about black and white media, about the end of the 1950s, about America maybe.
Unfortunately, it was released during the same year as West Side Story (1961) so it basically lost all of its nominations: best lead actor, 2 best supporting actors, best lead actress, best director and best picture.
I would strongly recommend this film to anyone who’s interested in watching something different from today’s crappy movies.
—
I don’t have anything good or bad today, other than the fact that I’m going to be outside shoveling snow for the first time this winter (good?), and it’s like brick outside (bad)
Update on bad:
I went out twice in the past four hours to shovel snow and there’s no sign of the weather letting up. I expect to be shoveling another 2 times before midnight. 7:16pm EST
[...] fellow Offender Alfredo recently wrote about how Jaws is one of his favorite “comfort food” flicks—those movies you can watch over and over and [...]