Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Who's got wings?

Today (Monday) my feet do, compared to yesterday during the run. I might go out for a interval walk later, one interval being bare dry sidewalks, and the other being wet slippery ice. Should be fun.

There's been a bit more ice chipping to keep things going. The older channel is beginning to look very polished.


Don't drive over this. Just don't.

I like the rilled pattern of snow melting in the patio. The hanging plant will emerge from the snow any hour now.

A rose is emerging from the snow.



Every now and then I like to watch old movies. Really old. Older than that. The path to this one lead from a book about living gracefully, which happened to mention Cary Grant. As you all know, he is one of the classiest and most handsome men ever to act in Hollywood. He makes George Clooney, who is pretty classy, look like a clumsy upstart.

In any case, they mentioned some of his movies, and not like I know them all off by heart, but I've at least heard of most of them. Except one I hadn't, and it's even an airplane movie. Then I saw it in the library, and of course I grabbed it. Only Angels have Wings, from 1939. Yes, 79 years old.

Be honest now, how many of you have seen it? How many of you have even heard of it? Not you, mom, I'm not surprised in the least if you have, but then your timeline is just a little longer than most of my readers.

One of the things I hate about new movies (just one of many) is the interminable credits, before and after the movie.

I took a couple minutes and timed Only Angels have Wings, and counted the credits scenes.
From the Columbia statue, through the stars, the title, also, screen play by, other crew, and directed by Howard Hawks, the start credits take 53 seconds.
From The End, through the players on a short scroll and a tiny bit of legalese, the end credits take 38 seconds.

91 seconds. A minute and a half. For many movies now it takes that long to get through the, presents, in association with, a x production, of a blah blah film, just to get to the title. Don't get me started on end credits. There are days I think the credits list everyone that appeared on the set during filming, including the people delivering sandwiches to the extras.

Did I enjoy enjoy the movie, you ask? Yes I did. It's nice to see old airplanes flying, to see a major star in his prime, working his magic on screen. The special effects are pedestrian today, of course, but that's not why I got it. For their day they were described as excellent. There's a few scenes that last a little too long, but not many, at least by my standards. By those of today's childhood audiences I would imagine it seems impossibly slow. The black and white alone would break their brains, I suspect.

1 comment:

  1. That movie sounds terrific. We like old movies too. We used to watch a double bill on TVO every Saturday night back in the day. I think our local library just inherited a bunch of old films from a fantastic video rental place that closed last year. I'll have to check it out and see if the collection included any really old stuff.

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