kirk douglas

pictures of dvds and book

We spent most of last week just sitting around with family celebrating the life and mourning the death of my brother-in-law Paul. It was a long, difficult week. But we did have a little fun as well. The funeral was on Thursday so on Friday we went bowling and then played Dominoes.

At some point, my wife and I went to McKays, a wonderful little used book/music/movie store and I bought a few things. Honestly, I was pretty much dazed at that point so I didn’t really know what I was looking for so I just grabbed a few things that looked fun.

I am a big fan of boxed sets where you get several movies from an actor, or director, or maybe that cover a theme. These usually don’t include the big named films but will give you some lesser-known films for a cheap price.

The Tough Guys set has three films each from Kirk Douglas, James Cagney, and John Wayne. I’ve not heard of most of them (except The Strange Love of Martha Ivers which I think I already own and is excellent) but I’m looking forward to watching some lesser movies from three actors I really enjoy.

I love me some Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey. The disks in this collection come in those cheap snap cases, but I’m hoping the movies are good.

For reasons that are beyond me (besides racism) the 1930s found a lot of white actors playing Asian detectives. A number of actors (most famously Warner Oakland) played Charlie Chan in a series of films, Boris Karloff played Mr. Wong and Peter Lorre starred as Mr. Motto.

I’ve seen several of the Chan and Wong films and quite liked them so I’m interested to see what Lorre does as Motto. It is pretty gross watching these very non-Asian actors play Asian characters (often stereotypically so) but I have definitely learned to overlook any number of varying degrees of offensiveness in older films. You really can’t judge films made nearly 90 years ago by 2020 standards. Here’s hoping the actual mysteries are enjoyable.

Lastly, I grabbed another Maigret book. I always look for that series whenever I go to a book store.

What have you all picked up recently?

the final countown

I used to be really fascinated with time travel. I guess I still am, but I used to spend a lot of time pondering whether time travel could ever be real. One of the questions I raised was that if you could travel in time then wouldn’t you try to kill Hitler? Wouldn’t you find a way to stop the Holocaust from happening? But then maybe there is such a thing as fixed points in time. Certain events have to happen and you simply cannot stop them.

Or maybe time travel is real, but it isn’t invented for many thousands of years in the future. The Holocaust is one of the more terrible events of the last century, but for those removed from it by millenea it might just become a footnote in the history books.

Or something. I’m not smart enough to understand the complications of time travel. But I still enjoy a good time travel story. The Final Countdown is about an aircraft carrier from 1980 accidentally traveling back in time to 1941 just one day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. The ship’s crew must then decide if they will try to stop it from happening.

That’s a pretty cool idea, but the film doesn’t seem to know what to do with it.

Kirk Douglas is the captain of the ship. Martin Sheen is a civilian observer on board to make suggestions on how to improve efficiency. Charles Durning plays a US Senator from 1941 who just happens to be taking a leisure cruise on his yacht along with his assistant – played by Katharine Ross – off the shores of Hawaii on that fateful day.

The Senator is important because in real life (or at least the film’s version of real life) because he was someone who had warned of the Japanese attacking Pearl Habor and was in a position to become Vice President before the attack. But he mysteriously disappeared on that day. If the ship can save him it would impact history in unknown ways. Destroying the Japanese fleet would impact history too, of course, but there is a question of when they should attack. If they hit the Japanese before they hit the US then that could be seen as a sign of aggression, an act of war. But if they don’t then American lives will be lost.

Again all of this is interesting, but the film never makes it exciting. It is too busy moving to the next scene to allow time for the characters to chew on the dilemmas.

One of the difficulties for a film like this is how to end it. If they change history then we, as an audience, know the film is a fraud. It feels fake somehow. All cinema is fake, but alternate histories feel even faker. But if the characters wind up not changing history, then what’s the point?

I don’t mind so much when the film is good. But I found The Final Countdown to be rather dull. It doesn’t help that they gained full cooperation from the US Military and in return the film is filled with a lot of footage of the ship’s crew going about their work. If you like to see planes take off and land on a carrier (and it is technically impressive) then this film is for you. If you want some real action or drama, then you might look eslewhere.