End of Silence

I just happened to catch Taps on TCM this week. I hadn’t seen the movie in quite some time, but I vividly remember most of it. Apparently it was released at Christmas 1981 which would mean that I was 10 when I saw it in the theater. I probably saw it with just my mother, but it might have been a family outing. My sister would only have been 7 so not sure if she was also there or not.

It pre-dated me being enrolled in an all boys school but just by a year. There are a lot of parallels between a military academy and a Catholic school. The movie opens with a mass. I remember being impressed by Timothy Hutton and identifying with Charlie and the younger boys. I had just seen George C. Scott in another movie that nobody knows but is still a great ghost movie, The Changeling. Upon re-watching, I already knew it was an early Sean Penn and Tom Cruise movie, but it also stars a young Giancarlo Esposito as Pearce who is the cadet who gets injured in the generator mishap. Ronny Cox is also in it and he went on to some pretty memorable roles in the 80s. Young Charlie’s friend is the actor who plays Rusty Griswold’s (Anthony Michael Hall) cousin in Vacation (“Ya ever bop your baloney?”).

This time around, I noted that it rains an awful lot in the film. Apparently that was a real problem for them filming in Valley Forge. It required them to run elaborate filming schedules to get the right shots. It’s interesting to hear the themes about military and civilian considering how politicized that has become in the last 25 years. Anyway, if you haven’t checked this movie out, you should. It’s worth a viewing.

As with the DID post, I was hoarding these in a custom MySQL database with some formatting and delusions about keeping images along with the Amazon links with my kickback URL. I can still do that, but keeping it outside of WordPress seems stupid at this point since I have a bunch of other data here. And given the death of my father this year, it’s clear that if you want things to be remembered and accessible, you need to make that easy and in one place. How’s that for old man morbid…but realistic?

So here’s my DIM list as it was in the early 2000s. As with the music, I don’t think I’d change it. I just might add / comment. Which means it’s a pretty good list. There are only 7 because I included the X-Files first season, the Monty Python entire disc set and Beastie Boys anthology and, in retrospect, I think that’s cheating. I need to stick with movies. So I’ll do an addendum post with these 7 and some worthy additions.

• Jacob’s Ladder – Adrian Lyne – 1990 – This movie works on many different levels. It’s a horror movie but with a spiritual theme. I like that it takes more than one viewing to absorb. The DVD has some cool extras. I consider extras a requirement to be a DID unless I REALLY like the movie.
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Robert Mulligan – 1962 – One of the few examples where the movie is at least as good as the book. The new collector’s edition includes some nice goodies.
• Casablanca – Michael Curtiz – 1943 – I don’t think I really need to explain this choice. Bogie is the coolest.
• Raising Arizona – Joel and Ethan Coen – 1987 – Totally hilarious. I love the Coen brothers. Unfortunately, I can’t include Miller’s Crossing in my list (and it certainly would be included) as it isn’t available on DVD.
• Unforgiven – Clint Eastwood – 1992 – Eastwood’s final word on westerns. There’s a reason why this won best picture. There are several other westerns that I’d love to include, Wild Bunch, Once Upon a Time in the West, High Noon among others, but I’ll live with this one.
• The Great Escape – John Sturges – 1963 – This is an epic WWII movie that has been one of my favorites since the first time that I saw it as a kid. Steve McQueen is so cool in this one that they had to work it into his nickname in the film, “The Cooler King.”
• The Player – Robert Altman – 1992 – Robert Altman’s return after a string of forgettable work in the ’80s. A wonderful satire of the film industry. It’s fun just to watch all of the cameos. I also really enjoyed Short Cuts and Gosford Park.

Current movie follow up.

• Miller’s Crossing is available on DVD. I’m not sure it ever wasn’t, but I’ll give myself a break. I’d put that on the list. The Big Lebowski is also up there.

Much has been said about this movie over the years. I recently read a review of the new insanely expensive book that came out about it. It sounds like a very definitive guide and I might consider purchasing it if they ever make a reasonably priced copy. The article is a nice mix of how it influenced Pixar’s Lee Unkrich, someone I already follow on Twitter and his busting of some of the myths about the film in the course of researching the book. I have previously posted a link to the film that Kubrick’s daughter made during the making of the Shining. I remember seeing it in the theater with my mother and some family friends. I’m pretty sure I was the youngest there and probably shouldn’t have seen it at my age (a recurring theme if you know me). It came out in the summer of 1980, so I was 8 years old. The actor who plays Danny is less than a year younger than me. And to show what a rabbit hole the Internet can be, in double checking Lloyd’s age on IMDB, I was introduced to another documentary called Filmworker about english actor Leon Vitali who was an assistant to Kubrick for 30 years. Now I need to watch that. Apparently it came out in 2017 and I completely missed it. In general, I’m a Kubrick fan at least of the visuals. The actual movies can be hit or miss. The Killing is amazing. I can really only sit through parts of 2001 and Eyes Wide Shut. Same with Clockwork Orange. It’s too much.

I didn’t read Stephen King’s book until later but my mother told me that the book included animal topiaries that came to life that were left out of the movie (presumably because that was going to be too difficult to pull off in the late 70s). It was that one and The Stand that I learned about from her early on.