Fellowship
Plus film reviews of Best In Show, In a Lonely Place, and more.
It’s in the single digits on this frigid evening in Queens.
This Saturday, I went to go see the Lord of the Rings in theaters with my girlfriend. I try to watch the trilogy at least once a year, usually around the holidays since they instantly bring me back to the warmth of my childhood.
I remember clearly being awoken one late evening in December 2001, my Dad waking me up while I was in pajamas on a Thursday night to tell me we were going to the movies. “He’s got school tomorrow, he sleep,” my Grandma said in her broken english as my Dad grabbed my jacket and assured her that little Max will be fine. Back then I rarely saw my Dad during week cause he’d be out working construction in the city all day before getting caught in deadlock traffic on the Long Island Expressway heading back home. He did all this as a single parent, while my grandma took care of us during the week. So seeing him get me out of bed for a surprise visit to the movies in the middle of a school night was out of character.
I remember walking into the lobby with him at the midnight screening, definitely the only kid at the debut of The Fellowship of the Ring. The opening monologue and battle sequence that laid out the universe completely blew my six year old mind away. I never heard of LOTR, and all of a sudden I was enthralled in the adventure of the fellowship in their journey to vanquish evil. Heroism, friendship, and loss were all concepts that I couldn’t comprehend but through this experience I was able to realize their importance.
Each year as I get older, each time I watch these films, it brings me back to that first night seeing it with my Dad. A formative memory cause when I went to school the next few months it was my whole world, I read all the books, cut my hair like Elijah Wood, dressed up like a ringwraith for Halloween, and even took my Dad’s old wedding ring, donning it around my neck at school much to his shagrin.
That world of Middle Earth seemed hopeful to me. I was two years removed from losing my mother and at the time was unaware of the grief I was experiencing. That world on the screen felt was an escape, a friendship determined to bring light into the darkness. I would go onto read Tolkein’s adventures from The Hobbit to The Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin through to high school.
Fast forward, I’m now thirty years old and AMC has decided to re-release the extended versions of the trilogy into theaters in honor of it’s 25th anniversary. Naturally, I wanted to see them in theaters once more and the experience was just as I’d imagined. With everything going on, either politically or personally, these films really do manage to capture the spirit of perserverance in the face of defeat. I want to remain hopeful that things will get better cause how can people be willing to let things go on. Tolkein wrote these stories in the trenches of World War I. In the face of horror, he chose hope.
My great grandfather fought in those same trenches at the battles of Meuse-Argonne and St. Mihiel on the western front. He made it out alive and returned to New York City, the rest is history.
Film Review Corner
Best In Show (2000) - Directed by Christopher Guest
“We both love soup” - Sherri Ann Cabot (Jennifer Coolidge)
Director Christopher Guests mockumentary on the fictionalized Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show and it’s brilliantly cast of middle American oddballs competing for a brief moment of fame is the blueprint of modern comedy. Anchored by comedic heavyweights Eugene Levy (sporting big chompers and two left feet), Catherine O’Hara, Jennifer Coolidge, and Fred Willard just to name a few. The film not only inspired the creation of the annual Thanksgiving dog show but you can feel the influence it’s had on future mockumentary projects like The Office and Parks & Recreation.
In a Lonely Place (1950) - Directed by Nicholas Ray
“I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I lived a few weeks while she loved me” - Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart)
In a Lonely Place is classic post-war noir that follows two lost souls in Hollywood that hope to find solace in one another’s chaos. The turbulent, cynical screenwriter Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart) is in the throes of writer block and lethargy when one night’s event leads him towards salvation in the form of a mysterious neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame). Bogart’s veil of coolness is challenged by the character of Dix Steele, a vapid man who’s turned longtime friends into enemies, mistrust for all, and has a penchant for violence. Grahame’s Laurel Gray is an equal to Bogart, rooting out the complexities of Steele with a sleek charm that shields the pain of her character will endure. Fiction rules the lives of In a Lonely Place, the grandure of our egos and folly ambitions come hurdling down on us.
What TV Shows I’m Watching…
Neon Genesis Evangelion
The Traitors (Season 4)
What Books I’m Reading…
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What Albums I’m Listening to…
Dry Cleaning - Secret Love
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