Category: Movies

Mary Poppins

Posted on December 18, 2013December 18, 2013 By Mark Tiedemann

There was a hardcover copy of a Mary Poppins book in my grade school library.Â I remember finding it and being very excited.Â Naturally, I’d seen the movie and I was already discovering how much better the books from which films were made could be.Â So I checked it out and took it home and that night opened it up and—

Took it back the next day, unfinished.Â To say it was nothing like the film is beside the point.Â To say I found no magic in it would be closer.Â But frankly, the Mary Poppins of P.L. Travers—of which we now are so vigorously concerned of late—I found to be a cold, humorless drudge who was obsessed with discipline.Â …

Boycotts and Bully Boys

Posted on November 5, 2013November 5, 2013 By Mark Tiedemann

I’m not going to the theater to see Ender’s Game, not because I’m boycotting it or Mr. Card, but because I don’t care enough about it to spend coin on it.Â Of course, that can be said of 99% of the movies released in the last couple of decades—we don’t go to the movies anymore.Â It’s a habit we got out of shortly after buying a house.Â Priorities, y’know?

Not that I don’t eventually see them.Â (We finally saw The Time Traveler’s Wife this past weekend, long after it’s theatrical release.Â A couple of weeks back we saw Cloud Atlas at a friend’s house.)Â …

Where Is Found A Soulful Mind?

Posted on November 15, 2012November 15, 2012 By Mark Tiedemann

Roger Ebert, the film critic, recently wrote a piece about the possible death of the Liberal Arts.Â It’s disturbing, not so much for the dire forecast of a nation of business majors and software geeks who know nothing of Montaigne, Sontag, or Charlie Chaplin, but because of what it implies about those who keep track of Culture.

We are university-centric in our appraisal of where the Culture lies, where it is going, and what value we produce of what may be called a national geist.Â Ebert talks about the days in which writers were celebrities and the universities, if not the actual mothers of such luminaries, were at least their midwives.Â …

It Was Fifty Years Ago, Mr. Bond

Posted on October 3, 2012November 26, 2021 By Mark Tiedemann

“Do you expect me to talk?”

“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”

The exchange between Bond and Goldfinger may sum up the attitude of many who are tired, offended, or otherwise ambivalent or disinterested in the absurdly long career of the improbable James Bond, 007.Â Even those of us who have been more or less unable to let go our adolescent attachment to the character have doubtless wondered why he hasn’t just died.

He should have, certainly after the criminal treatment he endured toward the middle and end of the Roger Moore years.Â All due respect to Mr.…

The Golden (Silver?) Good Ol’ Days

Posted on June 21, 2012June 21, 2012 By Mark Tiedemann

I just finished skimming through a fascinating little bit of fannish history, Earl Kemp’s Who Killed Science Fiction?Â Fannish in the sense of science fiction fandom.Â It has a rich and varied history and the concerns within the genre are as fraught with angst, ennui, and ambition as any literature.

I am always a bit bemused when I read about this sort of thing, because I came into science fiction through the rotary rack at my local drug store.Â (Literally—Leuken’s Pharmacy, on the corner of Shenendoah and Compton, a good old fashioned drug store with a soda fountain, a magazine stand, and two circular racks for paperbacks, two blocks from my house.)Â …

The Last One

Posted on January 30, 2012January 30, 2012 By Mark Tiedemann

The last motion picture theater of my youth is gone.

For several years, The Avalon, sitting on Kingshighway, across the street from a mortuary that has now become a church, has been shuttered and slowly decaying and finally has met its inevitable fate.

In a way, good.Â It has been an eyesore for some time, a constant reminder of neglect and a ruin of a bygone era.

Hyperbole? Indeed, yes, but true nonetheless.Â As you can tell by what remained, it was an elegant, simple building, with a lovely facade.Â A symbol of an age thoroughly gone—the single-screen, stand-alone movie theater.…

An Age of Wonder and Annoyance

Posted on October 14, 2011October 14, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

I have two things to talk about that are related by the slenderest of threads. Bear with me.

First I’d like to say something about how marvelous is the age in which we live, at least from the perspective of someone who has now lived in a couple of “ages” since arriving on this planet in 1954.

A short while ago I had lunch. While having lunch I like to watch something, so I popped the DVD of The Right StuffÂ Â into my player and settled back to my roast beef and movie.Â While watching, it occurred to me how blase I’veÂ become at this technology.…

Star Wars and Science Fiction

Posted on August 4, 2011September 13, 2024 By Mark Tiedemann

On Thursday, July 21st, I gave a talk at the Daniel Boone Regional Library on the nature of science fiction. I had a good turn-out, the room was almost full, and the talk was generally well-received.

I used a comparison I’ve grown used to deploying, comparing Star Wars to something else and pointing out how it is not science fiction but rather a quest fantasy dressed up like SF, which is not at all uncommon, but can be confusing when talking about the differences that make SF unique. Normally, this point gets across without too much trouble and for that reason, perhaps, I’ve grown a bit complacent in how I present it.…

Dead Stuff

Posted on April 26, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

This may be social suicide, but I’m going to say it anyway.

I don’t like zombies.

Not too thrilled with vampires, either.

I mean—hell, they’re dead.Â Dead.Â And motivating.Â The contradiction alone is…

I am tired of zombies, though.Â And vampires.

In the last several months, I have picked up at least two novels I was very much looking forward to reading because their premises looked really cool.Â I put both down because zombies got dragged into them, and I thought unnecessarily.Â Zombies are cool right now, though, and apparently a lot of people like reading about corpses shambling around trying to eat the neighbors.Â …

My Obligatory Piece About Ayn Rand

Posted on April 24, 2011August 4, 2011 By Mark Tiedemann

From time to time, here and there, someone brings Ayn Rand up as some kind of role model.Â Lately it’s even in the national news, thanks to the Tea Party and an apparently not very good film of Rand’s seminal masterwork, Atlas Shrugged.Â The uber conservatives now crowding reason out of the halls of congress with their bizarro legislation and their lectures from the floor and on committees about how their toilets don’t flush right so why should regulations on light bulbs be passed are the children of the Dragon’s Teeth cast randomly by Ms. Rand and her philosophical cult followers.Â …