Film

Movie Review: “O”

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(This is a rerun of a post from 2010–I was reminded of this movie by Paula Marantz Cohen’s WSJ article about teaching ‘Othello’)

Odin James“O”is a high-school basketball star. His friend Hugo also plays for the team, though not on O’s level. When O singles out another playerMichaelfor special recognition, Hugo’s already-high jealously level reaches a fever pitch.

Roger, a wealthy but awkward and widely-disliked student, is hopelessly in love with O’s girlfriend, Desi. Hugo enlists him in a plot which he sells to Roger as a way of luring Desi away from O…but his real intent is to destroy both O and Michael, with Desi as collateral damage.

Does the plot sound a little bit familiar?

This is, of course, “Othello,” set in an American prep school instead of in Venice, and with the title character as an athlete rather than a military commander.

O is Othello (Mekhi Phifer)
Desi is Desdemona (Julia Stiles)
Hugo is Iago (Josh Hartnett)
Roger is Rodrigo (Elden Henson)
Michael is Michael Casio (Andrew Keegan)
Emily is Emilia (Rain Phoenix)
The basketball coach, nicknamed “Duke,” is the Duke (Martin Sheen)

No attempt is made to use Shakespearean language, which was probably a wise decision. While this adaptation may sound contrived from the above description, I think it actually works very well. (The film was released in 2001.)

There are a few interesting differences between the film and the original play, as well as some interesting angles for transforming Renaissance Venice into a modern high school:

(1)In the movie, Hugo/Iago is the coach’s son, which plays an important role in his jealousy of O/Othello. There is no such relationship or motivation in the play.

(2)In the play, Iago’s hate of Othello and of Michael Casio is driven largely by Othello’s decision to choose Casio, rather than Iago, as his principal lieutenant. The recognition/elevation of Michael is also an important factor in the moviehowever, in the play, Othello’s promotion decision is based largely on factors which Iago, with some justice, sees as extraneous: book-learning and family/social connections rather than combat experience. Hugo/Iago suffers from no such social-class disadvantage in the movie.

(3)In the play, Iago convinces Othello that he, Iago, understands more about the true nature of Venetian women than Othello the Mooran outsider to Venicepossibly can, and that hence, Othello had better listen to Iago’s advice. In the movie, this turns into an assertion by Hugo that O…the only African-American in the school…needs to pay attention to Hugo’s greater experience with white women (“They are all horny snakes,” he warns O.)

(4)In the play, Michael Casio is portrayed in a very positive way. In the film, he comes across as more than a bit of a jerk.

(5)Like the play, the movie ends with the murder of Desi and Emily/Emilia and the suicide of O/Othello…but whereas in the play, Michael survives and is designated as Governor at the end, in the movie he is shot and it is left ambiguous whether or not he survives. I think Shakespeare perhaps intended the elevation of Michael Casio at the end to symbolize the continuity of society and of proper authority: there is no such symbolism in the film. The ending of the film is at least as dark as that of the play, and that’s pretty dark.

An interesting sound track, ranging from hip-hop to opera.

Certainly not a substitute for the original, but very well worth seeing, in my opinion.

TV Break – DANGER UXB

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In our complete avoidance of what is being offered in the way of American-produced broadcast and cable TV series, the Daughter Unit and I are ransacking the various streaming services for serial diversion of an evening: series old and new, new to us, or perhaps something old, something that we vaguely recall watching a good while ago and thought that it was worth another round. Last week our choice hit on the 1979 series Danger UXB which came out the year before my daughter was born and featured a practically teen-aged-appearing Anthony Andrews. (Although he was nearly thirty at the time and seemed to be almost ubiquitous in those British TV series which appeared on Masterpiece Theater in that era. The Daughter Unit loved the 1982 version of the Scarlet Pimpernel, where he co-starred with Jane Seymour. She practically wore my copy of that series on videotape to bits.)

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Do You Have Lamarr in Your Car?

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It has been suggested that the short-range wireless protocol known as Bluetooth  should instead have been called  Lamarr, in honor of the actress/inventor Hedy Lamar.

Hedy (maiden name Kiesler) was born in Vienna in 1914. From her early childhood she was fascinated by acting–and she was also very interested in how things worked, an interest which was encouraged by her bank-director father.  She began acting professionally in the late 1920s, and gained fame and notoriety when she appeared–briefly nude–in the film Ecstasy.  It was followed by the more respectable Sissy, in which she played the Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

In 1933, Hedy married the arms manufacturer Friedrich Mandl, finding him charming and fascinating and also probably influenced by his vast wealth.  She was soon turned off by his Fascist connections and his extremely controlling nature–rather ridiculously, he even tried to buy up all copies and negatives of Ecstasy.  He did not allow her to pursue her acting career, but did require her to participate, mainly as eye-candy, in high level meetings with German and Italian political leaders and with people involved in military technology.  What she heard at these sessions both interested and alarmed her.

Finding her marriage intolerable and the political situation in her country disturbing, Hedy left and first came to London. There she met MGM head Louis B Mayer, who offered her an acting job at $125/week.  She turned down the offer, but booked herself onto the same transatlantic liner as Mayer, bound for the USA.  On shipboard, she impressed him enough to receive a $500/week contract.  He told her that a name change would be desirable, and she settled on “Lamarr”…the sea.

With the outbreak of war in Europe, Hedy followed the news closely.  For reasons that are not totally clear, she began thinking about the problems of torpedo guidance:  the ability to correct the weapon’s course on its way to the target would clearly improve the odds of a hit.  She had heard the possibility of a wire-guided torpedo discussed over dinner at Mandl’s…but this approach had limitations.  Radio was an obvious alternative, but how to prevent jamming?

As an anti-jamming technique, she hit on the idea of having the transmitter and the receiver change frequencies simultaneously and continuously…she may have been inspired partly by the remote-control radio receiver which was available at the time, possibly either she owned one or had seen one at somebody else’s home.  With synchronized frequency changes at both ends of the radio link, jamming would be impossible unless an enemy knew and could emulate the exact pattern of the changes.  But how to synchronize the transmitter and the receiver?

Enter Hedy’s friend George Antheil, who called himself “the bad boy of American music.”  Antheil was fascinated by player pianos and had created and performed compositions which depended on simultaneous operation of several of these players.  Maybe the punched paper strips used by player pianos could provide a solution to the frequency-hopping problem?

US Patent 2282387, issued to Hedy Kiesler Markey (the name reflecting a brief unsuccessful marriage) and George Antheil, implemented this approach.  The feeding of the paper strip on the launching ship and that inside the torpedo would be started simultaneously, and the holes in the strips would select the frequencies to be used at any given time…88 rows are mentioned, offering 88 frequency choices, but obviously this number could be smaller or larger.  Commands to the rudder of the torpedo would be sent via modulation of a carrier wave on the always-changing frequency selected.  (The two inventors had retained an electrical engineer to assist with specification of some of the details.)

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Divorcing Hollywood

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I used to like going to the movies. When I was growing up, going to the movies was an occasional treat. In the very early days, it was the drive-in movie double-feature. Likely this was because it was cheap, and Dad was a grad student with a family, and on a tight budget: JP and I in our pjs, with bedding and our pillows in the venerable 1952 Plymouth station wagon, the back seat folded down, and falling asleep almost as the titles for the second feature rolled; Charlton Heston as El Cid, seen dimly through the windshield of the Plymouth, between Mom and Dad’s heads, and the rearview mirror. Sean Connery as James Bond, bedding another of an enthusiastic series of chance-encountered and spectacularly-endowed women, and me thinking, as I dozed off, “Oh, that’s nice she hasn’t got a hotel room, and he’s sharing his …”
Yeah, I was six or seven years old. That’s what it looked like to me, curling up in the back of the station wagon, as my parents finagled their own low-budget date night. Later on, it would be a Disney movie in one of the splendid, then-sadly-faded old picture palaces in Pasadena; the Alhambra, the Rialto, or the Academy, accompanied by Granny Jessie this after much discussion of which movies appropriate for grade-school age children were available at a matinee showing. This would be one of only one or two movies we saw in a theater for the entire year, so we would choose very carefully, indeed. I think Granny Jessie was grateful when we were able to appreciate somewhat more mature fare, such as It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, and What Did You Do in the War, Daddy.

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Two Quick Movie Reviews

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Review 1: Cuban Food Stories

I saw this one at the Tower Theater while drinking Cuban coffee on an empty stomach. It’s a documentary by a Cuban emigre who travels around Cuba and talks to people about food. These are people who catch, grow, prepare, serve and/or sell food. The film is beautiful, the people charming, the settings picturesque, the food wonderful. There are spectacular drone shots of colorful towns, lush forests and rural landscapes, and closeups of ceviche, grilled octopus, roast pork and other delicacies. You will leave the theater hungry.

This movie made me feel good about Cuba, which leads to another thought. In addition to its good qualities this movie is slick, well done propaganda. Perhaps the film maker really is ambivalent about having emigrated, as he suggests. Or perhaps he would not have been allowed to make this movie without showing Cuba in the most favorable light, i.e., things were bad in the ’90s but today they are getting better, people are better off and happy, it’s a great place to visit, etc. However, the hardships of daily life are obvious to anyone who looks. As my movie viewing companion said afterwards, the people in the film spend most of their time looking for food. One notices their teeth, their overall look of having been through hard times. The electricity fails. The happy fisherman was trained as a physicist and now rationalizes his difficult life (what else can he do?).

I recommend this movie as long as you can enjoy the food and not be bothered by any political subtexts. Verdict: Four thumbs up, one thumb down.

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Review 2: The Black Stallion Returns (also available on Netflix)

This is a really bad movie. I enjoyed the original whose plot involves a special horse that falls off a boat and saves the little boy who rides the horse to victory in the big race. Cartoonish but so are most movies and this one was visually beautiful, apolitical and had a happy ending. Plus the horse porn if you are into such things. Then I got talked into watching the sequel.

The newer movie revolves around a struggle between good and bad Arabs to repatriate the famous horse to the Sahara where they plan to run it in a hokey every-5-years race on which tribes with poor risk-management skills bet the farm. You can tell the good from the bad Arabs because the main bad Arab is fat and has a Brooklyn accent and the good Arabs are thin and have Roman accents. Also we are made to understand that the bad Arabs cheat rather than follow important movie rules of noble-savage fair play. The good Arabs take the horse and explain to the little boy that it’s really theirs, and who can blame them. They head off for Casablanca and the boy follows in a flying boat. Much drama and silly plot escapades follow until inevitably the little boy wins the big race for the good Arabs but then is too stupid to either take the horse back home with him or sleep with the hot Arab chick who would do him in a second since he’s now the high-status race winner.

I recommend this movie if you liked Mystery Science Theater, or if you have young daughters who are into horses as horse porn is probably more wholesome than vampire porn. Verdict: Four thumbs down, three thumbs up.