Turner Classics was playing it and we had to watch it. It really never gets old. And they’ve cleaned up and remastered it for sound and pictures, so it sparkles like the gem it is.
There is a lot of back story to this movie. Debbie Reynolds hasn’t been shy about sharing her story, the dissatisfaction of Kelly at having to work with Reynolds — who had to be taught to dance for her role. By the end of each day of shooting, her feet would be bleeding. Kelly was a perfectionist and a bit of a slave driver. But it’s hard to argue with the result.
Whatever was going on behind the scenes, the result is a masterpiece. Sixty-one years after the original opening, it’s fresh and funny, and the choreography is a wonder and carefully works around Debbie Reynolds more limited dancing skills. If you watch “Good Morning” carefully, notice how often she is posed while Kelly and O’Connor carry the most complex parts.
The plot is a light-hearted look at the movie business during the transition from silent to talking movies.
There had been several versions ofSinging In the Rainbefore, but none of them enjoyed the success of this version. Rightfully so. It’s delightful. After more than 60 years, it still plays beautifully. A pleasure to watch and a family favorite. Many great musicals have been produced since this classic. Many were and are brilliant, but although they may be as good, they are not better. In many way, Singing in the Rain set the bar.
Until they make a new Gene Kelly, they won’t improve on it.
It was greeted with no great enthusiasm when released, yet with each passing year, its popularity grows. That is, perhaps, the true definition of a classic when the years only increase respect for a film. Time has not diminished Singin’ In the Rain.
From the first time I saw James Garner on TV as Bret Maverick, I was more than slightly in love. It was one of the television shows that I watched faithfully every time Garner was the star of the episode. They tried adding additional Mavericks, but for me, there was only one.
When I saw him in “The Americanization of Emily,” our relationship was sealed. Till death do us part. I was a fan and he could do not wrong. Although I probably have not seen every single movie he ever made, I’ve seen most of them. I’ve liked some, loved most. Whenever one of his movies shows up on cable, it goes on the DVR. Fortunately Garry is a fan, too.
Now, about the book. If you had the impression that Jim Garner is a plain-spoken guy with strong opinions, you would be absolutely right. He has a great many opinions and not the slightest reticence about expressing them. He’s an unabashed liberal, egalitarian, man of the people who made good. He thinks acting should come naturally and claims he’s never taken acting lessons.
It’s true. He never took any formal acting lesson. That he spent weeks huddled with Marlon Brando when he was shooting “Sayonara” and learned an incredible amount from the man he considers the best actor ever … I guess that doesn’t count as acting lessons. And lessons or no, this is an actor who’s easy-going, deceptively relaxed acting style makes it look easy. Making it look easy took a lot of hard work. That seems to be the way of many things that look easy … when someone else does it.
Garner is an honest guy. He tells it like he sees it, or at least remembers it. He ruthlessly reviews every television series he made in detail, including his favorite episode of each with lots of great back stories and anecdotes. He reviews and rates every movie he made. I like some of them better than he did, but mostly I agree with his assessments .. We all agree that “The Americanization of Emily” was not only his best movie, but maybe the best movie. Ever. I’m inclined to agree.
For him, is was not merely a movie he made, but a movie — and ideal — he spent the rest of his life trying to live up to.
If “Emily” was his best move, “Grand Prix” was his favorite. Like many other Hollywood stars, he’s in love fast cars and racing and Grand Prix was pure fun for him and apparently the entire cast.
Who he likes and doesn’t like? You won’t have to guess. He tells you exactly how he feels about everyone. And he’s not big on forgiving or forgetting. Given that he shares his birthday with my husband, I’m not at all surprised.
He came from a poor, rough, abusive childhood. He worked hard and is the only person who seems to have had more surgery than me. That’s a lot of surgery, believe me. It never occurred to me that acting was that physically taxing, but apparently he is by no means the only performer to have broken just about everything at one time or another.
His two famous battles with studios were history-making if for no better reason than he won. The second lawsuit revolved around “The Rockford Files” and the issue was shady bookkeeping practices employed by studios to avoid paying performers. Technically he settled out of court for what was apparently so much money he’s still laughing about it. He wanted to keep fighting because there was a principle involved. His friends told him to shut up and take the money. Eventually, he decided they were right. It must have been a lot of money. My guess is that the studios continue to play fast and loose with bookkeeping and will … as long as they get away with it.
I enjoyed reading the book on Kindle and then enjoyed it a second time as an audiobook. I wish Garner had done the narration himself. Although Audible found a narrator whose voice and intonation resemble Garner’s and it’s good, it’s still not the same as having Garner do it.
This is a must-read for anyone who’s a fan of Jame Garner and his movies … or for anyone who likes knowing what was going on behind the scenes on the set. It’s entertaining, honest, surprising and often funny. I enjoyed it a lot and I’ll probably read it again. I’d give this one a solid 8.5 out of 10.
When Garry and I were growing up in New York, the old Channel 11 (WPIX, I think it was) used to have a show called “Million Dollar Movie.” The theme for the show was “Tara’s Theme” from Gone With the Wind. I had never seen GWTW, so when I saw it for the first time, I said “Hey, that’s the theme for Million Dollar Movie.”
I wasn’t allowed to watch TV on school nights and only for a very limited period of time even on weekends. But, if I was home sick, I got to watch all the television I wanted, and better yet, I got to watch upstairs in my parents bedroom. It was black and white, as were all the televisions then. I don’t know if color TVs had been invented yet, but if they had been, no one I knew had one.
Million Dollar Movie played one movie per week, all day, every day, for however long they were on the air. So if I was home sick — usually for tonsilitis — whatever was playing, I saw it a lot. They also didn’t have a very large repertoire so the odds were pretty good if you got sick twice, you’d see the same movie again for another week.
Thus “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” the great James Cagney docu-musical was engraved in my brain. I believe that during at least three occurrences of my nemesis, those nasty tonsils, I watched it over and over again until I knew every word, every move, every song … with frequent commercial interruptions.
Now of course, we own the DVD and we never tire of watching it. No one danced like Cagney. No one had that kind of energy! Believe it or not, I never saw any other of his movies until I saw “One, Two, Three” in the movies when I was older.
We just watched it again and we watched James Cagney dance down the steps in the White House five times. I’ve included it here so you can watch it as many times as you want. What a great movie it is.
I thought he was a song and dance man and comic actor. I was very surprised to discover he used to play gangsters. Million Dollar Movie didn’t play those films.
Only one questions remains unanswered through all these years. How come they didn’t make it in color? Does anyone have a sensible answer to that?
Why doesn’t Microsoft keep things simple and just continue to support Windows 7? They can do whatever they want with Windows 8. If they support Win 7 AND Win 8, everybody’s happy. And it’s not like they haven’t supported more than one version of their OS before. NT? And so many others?
They could thus solve a great many problems all around. We aren’t whining technophobes. We are the people that keep MS in business. They call us customers.
There is a reason by the iPad and the iMac do not have the same operating system. There is a reason why my Kindle is a playpen, but my desktop and laptops are workhorses. Fingers? Really? I write. I’m a photographer. I edit graphics. I write articles. I’m not a kindergartener using fingerpaints.
Unlike most people, I actually have experience trying to use a desktop with a full-size 24″ HD touchscreen monitor. I hated it until after I turned off the touch functionality. There’s no valid use for it in my world and the upright touchscreen put a serious strain on my already worn out wrists, hands and shoulders.
When I say no valid use, I mean that literally. There was not a single activity for which I use my computer for which my fingers were a better input device than a mouse. Or a stylus. Or a trackball. Not a single one.
That Win8 produces a desktop-hostile environment is stupid and self-defeating. More to the point: touchscreens are not new technology any more. They’ve been around quite a while and I’ve had mine for years. It is not catching on, not spreading like wildfire. Quite the opposite. After the curiosity factor disappeared, most of the people I know who tried it, abandoned it. It has no real use in the work or home environment. I do not know a single person who uses a touch screen other than as part of a tablet designed for touch input.
I went to see old friends at work a couple of weeks ago. All their office computers are now Macs. I never in my wildest imaginings expected to see these people who had been married to MS for office use (UNIX and other stuff for development) would ever switch. I asked why and my old boss (co-proprietor/head of development) said “We wouldn’t touch Windows 8 with a long pole. Not going near that monstrosity.”
He wasn’t buying into the “we’ve made it better” because he’s one of the guys who looks under the sheets and say Microsoft has NEVER cleaned up their code, never fixed underlying problems throughout their history and isn’t likely to start now.
Microsoft just doesn’t get it. They should out into the real world. They’d discover touchscreens are not the next big thing. Most people will soon own regular and tablet computers. Many already do. They are different paths, serve different needs.
Commonsense should have told them that from the first.
Original Publication date: October 1, 2005, Kindle Publication date: May 14, 2013
At Winter’s End: The New Springtime, Volume 1. By Robert Silverberg, .
The falling death stars came again at last. Long predicted, the recurring catastrophic collision of earth with the world-destroying celestial bodies arrived on scheduled. In its last pass, it had killed the dinosaurs, brought the ice ages and ultimately, the ascendency of humankind as Earth’s dominant special.
It is many hundreds of thousands of years in the future when the cycle recurred. By then, Earth had not only humans, but other intelligent species — vegetals, mechanicals, hjjk (insect-like) and emerald-eyes (heirs to the dinosaurs) sharing the planet. Of the intelligent earth-based species, only humans and the hjjk were destined to survive the longest cold winter of the Earth. The others either could not or would not endure the 700,000 years of the Long Winter.
Simians who will become heirs to humanity have survived in an underground cocoon. Within this highly structured, rigidly organized society, they are driven by a singular goal. Endure until the New Spring comes. Survive until the sun warms the Earth. It’s an unthinkably long wait.
When finally signs portend the arrival of spring and The People are led by their chieftain Koshmar and chronicler Taggoran from the cocoon into the Outer World, it’s terrifying to many. The odds against survival are formidable. There are but 60 of them in total, the exact same number who entered the cocoon. This number has been maintained through ruthless reproductive control and pre-scheduled death dates. The number of tribe members has never in all 700,000 years been allowed to grow by a single member. But now, it’s a new day. The rules are gone and from where will the new rules come?
Earth does not exactly throw the People a welcome party. Many are glad to see them, but not for the happiest of reasons. The rat wolves, the bloodbirds, endless vermin, bizarre predators and hideous insects await them … hungrily. With the warming has come the yearning for a taste of warm flesh.
The hjjk — those strange, cold insect like beings — have survived, to no one’s surprise. But there seem to be no other humans or humanoids anywhere. Koshmar’s band is so small and the earth so huge and empty. Losing Taggoran, the Old Man and Chronicler — preserver of the People’s knowledge and history — to the rat wolves means Koshmar must anoint a new Chronicler. She chooses the 9-year-old prodigy Hreesh-of-the-questions. It’s never been done before … but nothing is as it was. Everything must change.
Can this small doughty band of survivors fulfill the age-old promise to become the masters of the new-born Earth?
This is a long book with a lot of philosophical content. I enjoy the speculative nature of science fiction. That’s why I read it and that is, in my opinion, what sets sci fi apart — as a genre — from other kinds of fiction.
Sci fi is concept-oriented rather than centered on personal and emotional stuff. This is classic science fiction. There is a lot of thought-provoking stuff in here, much of it about the importance of following rules — and when rules no longer apply. How to know when it’s time to change and when it’s better to stand fast. If you are looking for a novel that explores the personal feelings of people and their relationships, you’ve come to the wrong book. If you like to give your brain a little exercise, don’t mind philosophical meandering (better yet, you enjoy it), give this one a read. And then read volume 2 — The Queen of Springtime. If you like one, you’ll like the other.
This marks the début of At Winter’s End on Kindle. The book has lost nothing of its power. Robert Silverberg is a master science fiction writer and the story of a band of humanoid survivors as they set forth to repopulate and rule the earth is a gripping journey of fear, hope, despair and triumph — and not necessarily in that order. Earth reborn.
I mentioned on last Friday’s post that I thought the E-P5 was Olympus’ take on Fujfilm X100S. — the retro style, the packaged 35mm prime (34mm to be exact) lens and the premium pricing to match. My friend Mike aptly says it’s closer to a Fuji X-E1 because of the interchangeable lenses. Even though the X-E1 does not yet off a 35mm equivalent, he has a good point. Either way, it seems like Olympus created an upscale camera that echoes cameras of a bygone era. The big question is, is it worth the premium price?
I’ve been busy with my, yet unannounced, equipment changes so I really didn’t look into the E-P5, until today. I knew I wasn’t going to get one any time soon. After all, I already bought an E-PM2, late last year and the image quality should be the same. But what if I didn’t get the E-PM2? Would it make sense to buy the E-P5? As I already mentioned, it’s pretty much the camera I wanted last year — it has most the features on my wish list.
First, let’s compare the E-P5 vs. the OM-D E-M5. The two cameras mostly share the same feature set. Sure the body style is different, but they both have the same sensor, same image processor, the roughly the same 5 axis image stabilizer and the same speedy focusing system. You lose the water resistance and the EVF (Electronic View Finder) on the E-P5 but gain WiFi, 1/8000s max shutter speed and a faster 1/320s flash sync speed. The OM-D body is $999, the same price as the E-P5. However, keep in mind that the body-only E-P5 doesn’t come with an EVF. Bought separately, the EVF costs more than $200. So effectively, the E-P5 body is sold at at least a $200 premium.
Second, the E-P5 replaces the E-P3 introduced in 2011. The E-P3 with the standard $100 kit lens ran $899. Subtract out the kit lens and a fictional body-only E-P3 configuration should run $799, again $200 lower than the E-P5 body-only price.
Third, assuming you support my premise that Olympus is competing against the Fuji X100S with the 35mm equivalent lens, consider this. The Fujifilm X100S is priced at $1299. The Olympus E-P5 with the 17mm lens (34mm equivalent) and the EVF is packaged at $1499. Now, despite the retro look of both cameras, they are very different beasts. Direct comparisons are a bit of a stretch, but let me try. On the plus side for Fuji, you get a very good hybrid optical/EVF, arguably better image quality, true analog exposure controls and an attractive well designed body with a seamlessly integrated viewfinder. The E-P5 has the advantage of a world-class in-body image stabilizer and the flexibility of interchangeable lenses. People can quibble of the price but I believe the two cameras should be priced the same. Certainly, I find it hard to justify a $200 premium over the X100S.
My conclusion, the Olympus E-P5 is overpriced by $200. The body only price should be $799 and the kit price should be $1299. Still expensive, but it makes sense based on the competition. So is the camera worth it? Only you can answer that question, however, if I were in the market for an Olympus, I wouldn’t pay $999 for the body or $1499 for the kit. So despite my fondness for Olympus micro 4/3, I can’t recommend the E-P5 at the current price.
I also predict that the prices will fall fairly quickly. Olympus will inevitably have a $200 rebate or just reduce the price. No guarantees of course, but that’s been Olympus’ pattern over the last couple of years. What do you think? Is the E-P5 worth it to you?
Davis Way used to be a cop in Pine Apple, Alabama. Her name sounds like a road and the name of the town looks misspelled, but really, that’s her name and Pine Apple is indeed the town from which she hails. She used to be married. To Eddie. Twice. It didn’t work out the first time and it’s hard to figure why she married him a second time.
In the course of the second divorce from her first-and-second husband — she refers to him as her ex-ex — Davis and Eddie behaved badly. Badly enough to get her fired from the force by her father and for a 2-way retraining orders to get slapped on Davis and her ex-ex. The juicy details of what happened are never given. I assume future books will flush out that piece of history.
After a very long search for some kind of job, she is hired by a Biloxi casino, purportedly to discover how someone(s) is beating the machines to collect the jackpot on their Double Whammy Poker slot machines. The terms of her employment are murky, never fully explained. From the get-go, Davis is sure that there’s something seriously awry with the entire setup but she needs the job. She needs the paycheck.
It’s hard to do your job when you aren’t sure what your job is. Harder still when nobody is who or what they appear, including Davis herself. Davis gets in deeper and deeper until she is about to be swallowed by the crime she is investigating. Eventually, with help from unexpected parties, she extracts herself from the quagmire that threatens to keep her in prison for a very long time. And she finds love. Her own double whammy.
Mostly, I liked it.
The book is funny with a witty, ironic flow. The biggest problem for me were narrative leaps. Transitions are missing and I found myself backing up and rereading to make sure I didn’t miss something. Even a couple of words to bridge those gaps would have been helpful.
Too much of the humor derives from “thought balloons.” Davis is “made funny” by overlaying her with a kind of dopiness that is out of character and artificial. Davis comes from a small town, but she’s no hick. She has degrees in Computer Science and Criminology. There’s not a dumb bone in her body. She has the potential to be a strong female character and jokes at her expense made me uncomfortable.
The plot is complicated and contains a few more characters than I thought were entirely necessary. It left too much unexplained personal history and baggage. I would have willingly traded away some of the plot wrinkles for a smoother narrative.
That being said, I like Davis Way. She’s observant, creative, dedicated and brave. She has a lot of heart. The book is uneven but Gretchen Archer has a fresh voice I’d like hear again.
As a first novel, Double Whammy is ambitious and well-realized. She has created a strong main character and a story with plenty of action. Despite trying a bit too hard, she handles a complex plot, a whole bunch of characters, a love story and accompanying back stories and still manages to tie up the ends. That’s a significant accomplishment for a new author. I’m convinced as Ms. Archer gains skill at her craft, her characters will grow and mature too.
It’s a pretty good book. Not deathless prose but fast-paced, lively and charming. It leaves plenty of room for character development and future stories. If there are more books in the series, I will read them. I’m expecting good things from Gretchen Archer.
She has been compared to Janet Evanovich (Stephanie Plum). There are similarities in their writing styles, but that’s where the resemblance ends. Davis Way is potentially a very strong character. She a computer expert and criminologist. She’s been brought up by a police chief father and knows how to handle weapons. She’s got the instincts of a real detective and I hope the author develops these qualities. Davis could be a terrific sleuth.
Double Whammy is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle. At a $2.99 introductory price on Kindle, it’s priced to sell. It’s more than worth the price. It is also available from Audible.com.
About the Author
Gretchen Archer is a Tennessee housewife who began writing when her daughters, seeking higher educations, ran off and left her. She lives on Lookout Mountain with her husband, son and a Yorkie named Bently. Double Whammy is her first Davis Way mystery and her first novel.
When Windows 8 was initially released, my first thought was “You’re kidding. Surely they don’t expect me to use that!” Yes, they really did. They seemed to be of the opinion that the future of computers would be touchscreens all the way. Which made me wonder if anyone at Microsoft had actually tried using a vertical touchscreen. Not a tablet or a tiny laptop, but a real, full-size 24″ high-definition touchscreen on a desktop. Because I sure had and it was not a happy experience.
Touch screen is for tablets, not desktops — or even laptops.
I actually bought a big touchscreen PC more than two years ago. What a waste of money! Forget software issues. Software was not an issue. The concept itself is hopelessly flawed.
I bet you need a real world example, just so you know I’m not making this up or displaying uninformed prejudice against new technology. If you know me at all, you know I love new technology. I embrace technology. But I abhor “upgrades” that make things that were easy difficult. It’s just a way to grab more money from our already depleted wallets. More exercise for the credit card.
Following are a few good reasons and a possibly entertaining anecdote to explain why, if the future is going to be all touchscreen, I’m saying “no thanks.”
Upon installing and activating my exciting new 24″ touchscreen all-in-one desktop computer, I discovered:
1) Every time a mosquito landed on the screen, it reconfigured my computer. What a MESS. And a little spider crawling across? Oh my god! We live in the country. Yes, Virginia. There are ants, spiders, mosquitoes and other icky things. No avoiding them, not out here in the woods.
Sidebar: Huh?
As the shades of the evening drew on, I retired from my office and went to the living room to join my husband on the reclining love seat. There, with our smelly hounds and our popcorn, we settled down to watch a movie or a few TV shows. Eventually we noticed there was extremely loud heavy metal music playing. I thought my granddaughter, who lives downstairs, had friends over and I didn’t want to rain on her parade, so we patiently waited for the noise to subside. When she appeared at the top of the stairs asking us to turn down the music, I said … huh?
My computer had found a music channel. A heavy metal music channel. It had, apparently with the help of a music-loving insect friend, selected the channel, turned it up to full volume and was blasting it through the house.
When I looked at the monitor, there were (literally) dozens of windows open. Such a busy little bug. And all my preferences had been changed. AND SAVED! Who knew our six or eight-legged friends were so computer savvy? I sprayed the office for things that crawl, fly and scurry, and grumped off to watch something on television, which is where I had begun. It happened again the following day, only this time, I knew from whence the problem originated and promptly went to deal with it.
The offending crawler, a small flying thing smaller than a mosquito, but bigger than a fruit fly, was sitting on my monitor, laughing at me. I swear he was laughing. I sought in vain for some way to reduce the sensitivity of the monitor or better, turn it off completely. It wouldn’t have mattered what software was being used. It was the touch sensitivity that was the issue, not the software. A very big strike against touch screens. Actually, I think it was a foul ball, double play, side out sort of strike if you catch my drift.
More Good Reasons to Not Get a Touchscreen on Your Next Computer
2) The physical position required to use a vertically positioned touch screen is total hell on wrists already suffering from carpal tunnel. We are talking SERIOUS pain, nothing minor. Every time I made any attempt to use it, I had to grit my teeth. I had to cut my fingernails all the way to the quick because I didn’t want scratches all over my monitor. I got the scratches anyhow.
3) Nothing I want to do works well with fingers. It is slow, imprecise, essentially useless. I am not going to use my fingers to work in Photoshop. I’m not going to finger edit a manuscript. If I wanted to draw, I’d use a precision tablet, not my index finger thank you. I couldn’t figure out under what circumstances touch sensitivity would be an advantage. There was not one single computer activity that could be done better with my fingers than a mouse. Not one. So exactly why was this “the way of the future?” Whose future? Not mine!
4) FINGERPRINTS. It’s taken me a very LONG time to get the screen clean again. It’s amazing how determined fingerprints can be. I still haven’t gotten it completely clean, but it’s closer each time I find a new lens cleaning formula and give it a try.
5) Fingers are much slower than a mouse. I can scroll. I can move all around, up down and sideways with a mouse quickly and precisely. About the ONLY thing I could do precisely with my finger was close a window. Press X. THAT I could do.
6) I finally disabled the touch input functionality. I spent an entire day searching for the menu until finally, at long last, I found it. After it stopped being a touch screen, life improved.
Then out came Windows 8. I almost broke a tooth I was so aggravated.
I do have a Kindle. Touch works fine on it, though I yearn for a way to scroll that doesn’t involve a finger and a real keyboard rather than poking one key at a time. Some of us actually know how to touch-type. We don’t type with our thumbs or index fingers. Ponder that.
So now I hear that “Windows Blue” (not its real name) is going to replace Windows 8 and will address issues we ignorant clods (AKA “users”) have with Windows 8. I do hope, among many other things, that they make it less ugly. I know usability is the big issue, but aesthetics matter when this dreadful, inelegant block of crayon colors is in my face day after day. If this isn’t the least attractive design ever put on a computer monitor, I don’t know what is. It would offend a first grader and I’m assured they like primary colors.
I live in hope of a better Windows operating system, a system designed for actually getting tasks done and the ability to do it all without having to relearn how to use my 4 computers. I live in hope.
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
