July 11, 1996
Dear Everyone:
Last Thursday being
a holiday, I took the adjoining Wednesday and Friday as vacations days
for a nice, long 5-day weekend.
Needless to say, it was too short.
I took absolutely
no work home with me, instead
whiling away the hours with a little shopping, a little visit to the
Exploratorium in San Francisco, a couple of movies, and some serious
couch potato-ing with the VCR.
I experienced only a single attack of
puritan work
ethic when I became compelled to wash and wax the kitchen floor; but
I justified it on the grounds that my feet kept sticking to the floor
every time I went to get another Diet Coke.
OK, movies...
I went to see
The Hunchback
of Notre Dame by myself on Wednesday, because I knew I couldn’t
drag “Jeannie” with me. She
draws the line at The Lion
King. Consequently,
she missed the opportunity to see a preview of
Glenn Close as
Cruella De Vil
in an upcoming remake of
101 Dalmations.
Serves her right.
As for
Hunchback, that whirring sound you hear is
Victor Hugo
spinning in his grave. Those
fun-loving folks at Disney
have turned his dark, socio-commentary novel into an animated musical,
for heaven’s sake. With a
happy ending, no less. This
means that an entire generation of kids is going to grow up thinking
Quasimodo was some
happy-go-lucky guy who swings on ropes and dances with gargoyles.
As for the
gargoyles, the short, round one who’s always eating is called Hugo.
And the tall, “dignified” (i.e., stuffed shirt type) one is
called Victor. Listen.
Is that whirring sound getting louder?
What next?
Paradise Lost?
On the plus side,
the animators’ rendition of the cathedral is quite simply beautiful.
But please, fellas, go back to fairy tales.
There must be something
left in
Hans Christian Andersen or the
Brothers Grimm
that you can use and leave the adult classics alone.
Next movie:
Independence
Day. This one is
much more sensible. I’m
better prepared to believe in space aliens than dancing gargoyles.
Science fiction movies are making a comeback.
This is in part because we’re running out of bad guys.
The Russians aren’t villains anymore.
It’s politically incorrect to pick on any ethnic types.
Even
James Bond is scraping the bottom of the barrel, looking for
opponents.
Aliens, on the other
hand, don’t have a particularly strong lobby.
As for those people who think the aliens are tied into some
ultra-secret government cover up, they should, as “Marshall” says,
remember: These are the same
people who run the
Postal Service.
Independence Day works because they didn’t rely solely on special effects, of which
there are plenty. They also spent money on quality actors and a
“believable” plot. This is
your basic David versus
Goliath story, with a few people up against impossible odds winding
up in the right places at the right time and don’t look too closely at
the solution. What place
does logic have in the movies?
Thoroughly
enjoyable, especially when it’s over 90 outside and the theater is
air-conditioned.
Less than three
weeks until
Ashland.
Love, as always,
Pete
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