Desert Bloom

Living in a part of the U.S. where there is definitely a winter (Chiberia, anyone?), I thought I would try to find a film taking place in a hot locale for a change.

When I picked up this movie, for some reason I thought Christine Lahti starred in it and that it was a contemporary film (I confused it with a film called Housekeeping). She does narrate as the adult version of the character played by Annabeth Gish (though Gish doesn't even get a credit on the VHS box despite being the central character).

Gish plays Rose, a 13-year old living in Las Vegas during the Korean War era, on the cusp of A-bomb testing. Her stepfather (Jon Voight) is unstable and abusive and her mom (JoBeth Williams) tries to hold things together. Although stepdad is at times loving, his behavior becomes increasingly less so when he drinks and when he has PTSD/hallucinations from WW2 service, which as we know now was not well-diagnosed back then. Mom starts becoming more independent by working outside the home and trying to keep a cheerful face when he has to spend some time in an institution due to the stress. Rose though, as a child, still cannot understand what is happening to her stepfather, and can only relate it to herself: the abuse, what she perceives as his hatred of her. Small gifts she gives him are looked on with distrust and paranoia.

A glamorous aunt (Ellen Barkin) visits after a breakup, at first a breath of new life then straining the family. She is at first seen as glamour and happiness, but her relationship troubles and intrusion at a difficult and tenuous time for the family affect them negatively and then causes a betrayal for Rose. Her "makeup" with Rose was too

Allen Garfield plays an astute sympathetic teacher, Jay Underwood a nice guy friend.

Past seven days

Despite another almost repeat of a polar vortex, I'm still stuck watching TV dvds and not movies.


American Experience:  The Poisoner's Handbook
American Experience:  Triangle Fire
American Experience:  Tupperware!
Frontline: The Secret State of North Korea
The Legend of Drunken Master

Past seven days

I guess I am on a Sherlock Holmes kick, rewatching my DVD sets of the newish Sherlock series from BBC.  Here are some other DVDs I watched in the last 14 days:

The Big Clock
Burning Love
I Love You, Man
Sesame Street Old School
Sherlock Holmes and he Baker Street Irregulars
The Soloist

Never Cry Wolf

Oh, the weather outside is frightful!  Keep warm indoors but still get into this winter weather!

Never Cry Wolf is based on Canadian writer Farlew Mowat's autobiographical novel of the same name.  The film starts with a written intro about wolves suspected of killing off the caribou population in the arctic.  Since no scientist has verified that wolves are the culprits, the government sends Tyler (Charles Martin Smith) to track wolves and monitor their impact on the environment.

Tyler opens the film with narration in a diary style (which he does for most of the film), observing the people he meets, including a brash bush pilot (Brian Dennehy, although he's not in the film for long).  Tyler is unsure of his assignment and he is a fish out of water in this environment, he's frightened and is intimidated by the first wolves he encounters.

At first he just sits and watches for signs like tracks, but as the weather warms he decides to go out in the open and make himself visible, thus inviting curious wolves to come up to him and making it easier for him to observe.  As time goes on, Tyler learns to be more savvy to nature's way of doing things.

He eventually observes a family of wolves and makes assumptions about their behavior.  He gets a visit from some Eskimos, one who has traditional ways (Zachary Ittimangnaq) and the adopted son who has more modern values.

Past seven days

Although I did watch a lot of DVDs, very few were movies, and in fact, the two I did watch were movies I had seen before on the big screen. Hope your 2014 is getting off to a film-filled start!

Berberian Sound Studio
The Muppets