Take Me Out to the Ball Game

 

1949 MGM musical starring Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly and directed by Busby Berkeley.  How could it be anything but wonderful.  Amazingly, it's terrible.  Frank and Gene are baseball players who play vaudeville in the off season.  Esther Willliams is the new owner of the baseball team (and just happens to live in a hotel with a swimming pool).  There are no familiar songs, other than the title song.  It was boring, boring, boring.  Lucky Ned--he had other things to do today!

Hollywoodland

Did George Reeves kill himself...or was he murdered?  It is still a mystery today, despite the 2006 movie exploring the possibilities.  Ben Affleck is wonderful as Reeves in the many, many flashbacks that structure this film.

Adrien Brody is the investigator who sets out to disprove the suicide, but in the end the movie reached no definitive conclusions.  As Ned put it, just four possibilities and no answers. It was an OK film, but not one of the better ones.

Easter Parade

 

It's Easter.  You HAVE to watch Easter Parade on Easter.  I knew Ned wouldn't be interested so I thoroughly enjoyed it myself.  Fred Astaire, losing his dancing partner, Ann Miller, goes out and finds a girl in a chorus line (Judy Garland) and says he can teach her to dance.  After some difficulties finding the right style for her, they become big hits and after a romantic misunderstanding is solved, romantic partners as well.

The famous "We're a Couple of Swells" comes from this movie.

Oddball

 

Oddball is based on a true story of a dog who learns how to protect a penguin sanctuary in Australia from the foxes who nearly killed thousands of penguins.  I watched this on Saturday, Ned's day to record his radio show, so I picked a movie I was sure I would love and he might not. 

Wikipedia summary:  In the early 2000's there was a thriving Little Penguin colony on Middle Island. Over a number of years foxes began to swim over and kill the penguins. So the Warnambool Coastcare Landcare Group took charge, hence The Middle Island Maremma Project began in 2006. Little Penguins on Middle Island where declining due to fox predation. Maremma Guardian dogs were trained and placed on Middle Island to protect the penguins from foxes. Hence this is where Oddball comes into it and saves the penguin's where he is a very mysterious and naughty dog back on land so this is his second chance to prove that he is a good dog.

Sherlock Holmes

It's difficult to review this movie.  Robert Downey, Jr. is wonderful, the recreation of the grim London of Victorian times is great, the fight choreography throughout the film is amazing, but, in all honesty, I had a terrible time following it.

I'm accustomed to closed captioning, especially in movies like this where the accents make it difficult to understand, even with my earphones, so I really don't know what this movie was actually ABOUT, but still it was great fun.

Hotel Rwanda

Whenever someone says that the Holocaust should teach us to "never forget," I think of places like Rwanda, nearly 50 years after the concentration camps were liberated.  Hotel Rwanda is not a pretty movie (lord do I need a comedy tomorrow!), but tell os the genocide of the Tutsi people by the Hutu militia in Rwanda.

The real Rusesabangina

Don Cheadle plays Paul Rusesabangina,  the manager of a luxury Hotel des Milles Collines in Kigala, Rwanda, who sheltered more than 1200 Tutsi irefugees in his hotel and prevented them from being slaughtered, after they were abandoned by every United Nations nation.  The UN evacuated all the of UN people and left the Rwandans behind to be killed.

Both Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo, who plays his wife, were nominated for Academy Awards in 1994.  Cheadle won the Golden Globe for hisi performance.

The only good white guy in the film is Colonel Oliver (Nick Nolte), head of the UN Peacekeeping force, who tries as hard as he can to support Rusesabangina. 

There is no "down" time in this movie.  It starts with slaughter and is filled with one harrowing thing after another.

The thing about Rusesabangina (a Hutu married to a Tutsi, with three children) is that what perhaps made him so successful in saving as many people as he did was he never lost his self esteem, always remained a hotel manager, treated people as guests, and learned how to work the system to get protection from those in charge.

Blasts from the Past

 

Calvin (Christopher Walken) is convinced the US is about to be bombed by the Russians and has built an extensive bomb shelter for himself and pregnant wife (Sissy Spacek).  There is no bomb, but a plane crashes into their house while they are in the shelter and he thinks that the bomb has surely exploded and sets the lock on the shelter for 35 years, after which it will be safe to emerge.

Son Adam (Brendan Fraser) is born in the shelter and raised there for 35 years, at which time the locks open and Adam emerges from the shelter to replenish the food for his family.  He knows nothing of the world of 1999 and manages to meet Eve (Alicia Silverstone).  All sorts of things happen, but she finally realizes that he 's telling the truth and he finally brings his family to the surface and all ends happily, though Dad still thinks the story about the plane was a hoax.

A fun comedy and I enjoyed it a lot.