"H" is for "Happy"

I had a philosophy professor in college who claimed Plato called music "magic" because it can alter one's mood with no reference to prior experience. You are walking down the street and hear a song you've never heard before and all of a sudden you feel good. What is that, but magic?

My alphabetical sojourn through my Ipod has been stalled lately, but I'm up to the letter "H" and in honor of Plato, I say "H" is for "happy."

There are 90 songs beginning with the letter "h" in my Itunes, list. What follows are the songs from my list that tend to make me happy when I hear them--songs that put me in a good mood or that I enjoy hearing when I am in a good mood:

5) "Heartbreaker" by Dionne Warwick.
Okay, the bizarre thing about music is that sad songs often make you happy and happy songs often are just depressing (often, because they are insipid). It doesn't hurt that this song came out right around the time I was a junior or senior in high school, so it perfectly captures the overwrought emotional romanticism that is young adulthood. There is, perhaps, some nostalgia driving the engine--ah, to be young and to feel each nick and cut as an epic tragedy--but there is something self comforting in the song, too: "Get to the morning and you never call / Love should be everything or not at all." Of course, its always happier nostalgia because, in retrospect, one knows that the greater love was yet to come.

4) "Have a Heart" by Bonnie Raitt
Like Warwick, Raitt is able to sing about heartbreak and make it sound down right enjoyable. Still, while Warwick's song is overwrought, there is a fiestiness in Raitt's lyrics and voice that I just love. Lot of pluck. Glad I've never had to have that sort of spunk in love, but I wish I could have it in all areas of my life:

Hey!
Shut up.
Dont lie to me.
Hey!
Mister, how do you do.
Oh pardon me I thought I knew you.

I mean, that's perfect.

3) "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira

I discovered this song after reading an interview with some athlete on SI.com where they asked him, "What's the most embarassing song you have on your Ipod." When he said he had the music video for this song I had to look it up. "I never really knew that she could dance like this / She makes a man want to speak Spanish..." Okay, I was gonna say that's positively Donne-worthy, but I'll settle for Byronesque (he who rhymed "intellectual" with "hen-pecked-you-all." Besides, goofy is fun, isn't it?

2) "Heart and Soul" by T'Pau
Actually the lyrics of this song are pretty damned depressing. Good thing one can't hardly decipher them. Love the music, though.

1) "Hymn to Her" by the Pretenders
Doesn't hurt that I discovered this song when I was falling in love for the first time. Never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Honorable mentions: "Hallelujah" by Leonard Cohen, "Holding Out for a Her" by Bonnie Tyler, "Heaven is a Place on Earth" by Belinda Carlisle; "Human Wheels" by John Cougar Mellencamp; "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears.

Two Bresson posts

I have posted thoughts on two Bresson films at 1More Film Blog:

A Man Escaped

The Trial of Joan of Arc

Howard Hawks, Land of the Pharaohs

I've been busy with work recently and haven't done much new film viewing, so I've uploaded an older piece I worked on awhile back to 1More Film Blog.

I got a kick out of the reason William Faulkner said writing the screenplay for this film was so difficult.

Charles Muntz vs Ted Turner

Am I the only one who sees a resemblance? I'm sure it's probably just coincidental, no?

NBA Basketball

So, based on my recent anthropological observations, here is the skinny on NBA basketball.

NBA Basketball is a contest resembling but in no wise identical to actual High School, College, Olympic, or Recreational Basketball. The play proceeds for three and one half quarters where four players congregate underneath under baskets and attempt to beat the living s--t out of one another while one player from a team alternately bounces and scoops and carries an orange ball like a waiter's tray while trying to run into the fifth player on the other team. If he is successful at running into the player on the other team, he gets two free throws, if not he must stamp his foot three times and cover his eyes before returning to play.

This proceeds until there are are approximately four minutes left in the game, at which point the rules change. Then, one player from the team that is behind is chosen at random to intentionally wrap his arms around another player's waist (rather than elbow him in the face) before the player scooping the ball can run into another player. If the scooping player is named Lebron, Kobe, or Michael, he doesn't actually have to run into another player in the last four minutes, he only has to get within three feet of the other player--at which point the other player is obligated to run in the other direction or be called for a foul.

After the game is over, the player with the most felonies or points must then publicly thank God and the fans at the arena, while the players of the losing team must say the word "adjustments" before going to the locker room. This is repeated every three days if no travel is required or every two if the teams are not from Los Angeles, New York, or Chicago until one team is either so beat up they can't play or has so many players suspended for doing in the last two minutes of the game what they are required to do all game, that the other team moves forward.

New Contributors to 1More Film Blog

I'm pleased to be able to add content to 1More Film Blog from two new contributors.

Dan Mohr has graciously allowed me to republish some of his discussion board thoughts on the new Star Trek film. I like Dan's writing style and (although we largely agree on this particular film) his ability to disagree with a prevailing attitude or critical consensus while avoiding personal insults and just dealing with the substance of an idea or critical opinion.

I've known Laura J. Morefield much longer, as a sister-in-law and friend. She describes herself on her blog thusly:

Laura Morefield is a poet, budding novelist, political commentator, wife, sister, aunt, daughter, friend, person fighting cancer and occasional life coach.

Laura's skills and experience as a creative writer give her a perspective which, I think, nicely complements my own as an academic and critic. In her own blog, she has written about how fighting cancer has effected her perspective about her own political writing, and I suspect this experience can't help but influence how she feels and writes about art as well. It is for this reason I especially welcome her perspective as she works through Academy Award winners or other films. Her most recent piece is about The Life of Emile Zola.

There is, of course, something that threatens to reduce a person and put her (or him) in a box when we focus too much on one specific aspect of their perspective. Just as I like to think of myself as more than "just" a "Christian critic" or a "literature teacher" even though I like to think my faith and profession help shape and differentiate my perspective, so too Laura is so much more than "just" a cancer fighter, or a creative writer, or a woman writer. All these things (and more) inform and differentiate her perspective and make her someone I enjoy listening to and someone who I inevitably learn from.

When Facebook Applications Go Bad, Part II.

Yeah, I can't possibly think what could go wrong here, either.

Star Trek Rant

Originally posted at Cinevox. Spoliers, of course.

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Spoilers abound, of course.

So Peter, Beth, Cindy and I saw it.

My goodness, my transformation to effete film snob is nearly complete. I know intellectually this movie isn't half as bad as it felt (or maybe it was) and that I'm responding as much to the adulation it is getting (confirming my growing suspicion that most of the people in the world who aren't me--or at least agree with me 95% of the time--are idiots) as its mediocrity.

Peter and Beth want a full-on ATK rant. Not sure I'm up to that--but I guess I'll give it the old James T. Kirk try. The abbreviated version, in rising order of what I found irritating:

--the prolonged and ever increasing chase factor, turning the franchise from a science-fiction film into an action film. Mission: Impossible in space, if you will.

--either be a reboot (and ignore the continuity issues/problems) or a prequel (and spend time explaining how to get Nimoy, etc into the movie), but don't do a half-assed job at both and thus a satisfactory job at neither.

--The explicit coda delivered in dialogue for those too stupid to understand what a movie they have just seen is about.

--(I realize I may be the only one who cares about this one, but...) I find it to be the wrong cultural moment for the political self-congratulatory tone of our humanistic, Western federation valuing of life and even mercy towards our enemies. Spock is supposed to be the moral hero because he recognizes he has been "emotionally compromised" and thus relieves himself of command. Kirk offers mercy to the terrorist slayer of 6 billion life forms b/c that may be the only way to build a diplomatic bridge to the terrorists? Sure, he's happy when they say they'd rather die than submit, allowing us to simultaneously exercise genocidal vengeance yet still feel morally superior in, you know, a Christian sort of way. It's the sort of fantasy wish fulfillment of the sort (pandering to our basest instincts masquerading as moral superiority) I haven't seen since, well, Left Behind. Rather than deal with or even acknowledge our most problematic (Kaplan uses the word "shameful," I think, in Female Perversions) urges, let's construct fantasy scenarios in which giving in to them is actually required of us and therefore morally noble rather than compromised or even base. It's the philosophical/moral equivalent of the Kobyashi Maru scneario--let's rewrite the program to that some problem isn't a problem at all and congratulate ourselves at our cleverness in being able to have our cake and eat it too. I've never been a great follower/fan of the television incarnations, but I've respected what I've seen, in part because there seemed to be an actual ideological idea or world-view that was being expressed. This film reminded me of the first Harry Potter film--working feverishly to get in all the superficial surface paraphernalia (as though those were the things that made it great rather than just nostalgic buttons to push) but totally whiffing on the spirit that animated them and made people love it in the first place.

Should make a couple gazillion billion dollars and serve marvelously as a tent pole reboot. And it's my fault, because like the last two Star Wars movies, I know I'll probably go see them all.

On the upside, I had a great afternoon with friends and family, so that was well worth eight bucks. I guess if I had to choose between that and loving the film but finding the people I see it with really annoying, I'll take the company every time.