P.S. I Love You

Great film from 2007 starring Hilary Swank. The geographically intersting segments are in Ireland. Great shots of rural Irealnd near Wicklow National Park, located south of Dublin. The small roads are shown and the rustic life of the rural lands is woderfully displayed. Swnk's character loses her husband before his death he sets the sending of 10 letters to her to lead to recovery. Visiting Ireland with her friends is the result of one of these letters. During that visit the lonely expanse of the Irish countryside is a part of the haunting sensations the film develops. Set adrift on a lake fishing, the housing, the rocky surfaces, all make Ireland what it is to those who dream.

Hairspray

Hairspray is a musical movie based up a 1988 movie by John Waters. The movie is driven by Water’s love of his hometown Baltimore. The show begins with a fantastic song--“Good Morning Baltimore”--as Tracy Turnblat makes her way from her row house to school. In just this opening, we get a glimpse into the urban history of the city. For students used to wide open house lots and fields, the tightness of houses in row house settings will be shocking. The houses are, of course, tight to each other with no front yard. Back yards are also small. The point being that cities were built around keeping people as tight together to minimize the transport cost to work.

The postmodern city is based on spreading out based upon the bus and automobile allowing travel to further spots at a time and financial cost that is still minimal versus incomes. The space of the suburb is allowed by the fact that one can still drive to work in an acceptable time and cost; and have a big lot and space between houses.

Row houses come from the time when walking was the transport form, then the horse cart, and streetcar. Incomes were lower and the time factor meant that one stuck homes as close together as possible to the city center, or later to the bus stops.

While small and tight now, they functioned perfectly in the early 1900s and prior. The house also is small inside and has two or more stories. This maximizes land use.

Many cities have row houses as they reflect a time point in the development of cities and transportation. While Baltimore celebrates its row houses, other cities have very few. In Minneapolis there is one small area in the Cedars-Riverside neighborhood that has some left. Minneapolis would have developed at a different time and redevelopment has tended to eliminate this housing type.

And this is just with the opening scene! The film goes on. The racial divides of the 1950s and 1960s are clear. African-Americans and Whites have “their” parts of town, and do not mix. Even integrated dancing on the TV show [a local version of American Bandstand] is shocking and banned. The kids, of course, prevail and the barriers are broken down through the film. The racism, no doubt, seems extreme and even silly to postmodern children used to an integrated world; but the movie is an accurate reflection of its times. Even having African-Americans and Whites on the same TV show was forbidden ground. What would the audience think and what would the sponsors do? That the detention room in a high school was nearly African only amplifies the message.

But Tracy breaks the barriers and the barriers crash though the film. The film becomes a historic record of the 1960s challenge to the racism of the past. A demonstration is met by a police barricade. Even the suggestion of integration forces parents into extreme actions that now seem ridiculous. But they existed and the film brings this out.

The film also establishes the divisive nature of housing discrimination. There are distinct parts of town where those of each race felt real fear over being in the “wrong” place. It works both ways. Unfortunately an issue that does remain in American society.

Hairspray is a movie that combines some great 50s sounds with history and geography lessons; and it is an entertainment gold mine to boot.

Rent

“I’m a New Yorker. Fear is my life.” These words from an AIDS patient in Rent tell you alone that musical is taking you deep into the depths of New York City life. With all its bright lights and charisma, New York City has an underbelly of degradation, loathing, sorrow, and sin. And, Rent tries to show it all.

Rent is La Boheme with Mimi as a pole dancing, stripper. Rudolpho becomes Roger, a down and out musician with AIDS. The setting is not the classy poverty of Paris, but the streets of New York City’s broken society. Urban New York City is unclean and dirty. It is in such disrepair it clouds the vision and dreams of those who see it. It is a place of row house tenants who ride the infamous subways.

Even songs like “Tango Maureen” bring the frustrations together. The tango is a moody dance of dark tones; sultry, but dominated by remoteness and grey. It is not a dance done with a smile, but rather a hard face stiffened by life and cultural decline

Rent is filled with sex, drugs, bondage, lesbianism, transexualism, AIDS, heroin use, and massive multiculturalism. It is filled with a sense of alienation actually common in Broadway’s biggest hits; from “Old Man River” in Showboat, to “You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught” in South Pacific, to “America” in West Side Story. If you can’t see the isolation and cold in Le Miserables, you are not watching and listening very well. Broadway’s hits often play to the sense of alienation in American society.

Of course, like the dancing hoods in West Side Story, it does take work to accept drug addicts and outcasts singing and dancing; but like West Side Story, it is worth it. And you get to see the underbelly of the glitter that is New York City.

Men in Trees

Men in Trees does not seem like a show that will last, but while on, it has some wonderful views of Alaska. Some mountains, some streams, some tight indoors. Sort of a Northern Exposure on hormones, it is quirky, but entertaining.

A Prairie Home Companion

A Prairie Home Companion offers a quick look at one of the Midwest’s great sources of humorous stereotypes. Garrison Keillor has been taking us out to the middle of the country where Lutherans roam for more than two decades now, and this film. This film takes a different tack on PHC than a normal show, but one would have to do that unless one was just videotaping a real PHC show.

While one will not see much of the Midwest or Minnesota, one can get that sense of PHC’s take on the values of the Midwest. The reserved nature of the host is pitted against the wild lives of the singers. The homespun values of the quaint old radio show are pitted against the greed-driven values of the company that has bought the station and wants to close the show. Indeed a place is seen through much more than just the physical elements. The values by which life is lived are just as much an element of place as the mountains the trees.

Of course, one element that is real is Mickey’s Diner. This diner is at 36 W. Ninth St. in St. Paul. It was built in 1937-39 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. This unique feature of downtown St. Paul has a clear place in the film as a site for discussion.

In the end, the general consensus has been that a fan of the show will love the movie, while a stranger to the show will wonder what is going on.

The Lake House

The Lake House offers some fantastic views of Chicago and the lake shore to the north. One of those films that you have to buy into a complex change in the nature of time, some may have trouble buying the plot. Two people find love except for the fact that they live in world's two years apart. He lives in 2004 and she in 2006. Through complex messaging via a magic mailbox, they find each other.

The sense of urban Chicago is clearly established against the isolated, unique location of the lake house to the north. It is open and isolated while Chicago is a mass of buildings and people. The house is almost all glass, while Chicago is closed off from the world.

A nice little film with a lot of Chicago buildings to look at.

American Idol V Continues

Now at the poiint of going down to the last 10, Idol has been illustrative of some regional differences with in the US. The most significant of these would be the showing of distinctly rural southerners.

Kellie Pickler is a poor southern girl who acts like she just came out of the backwoods. Even in a stunning black strapless dress she feels uncomfortable. She should have seen it as a Cinderella moment in her life, but it so conflicts with her ruralness, that she is uncomfortable in it, despite how fantastic she looks.

Bucky could not figure out the menus in Los Angeles at one piont. He longed for the simplicity of rural southern fare. He wanted corn, potatos, chicken, etc. He did not understand what he was getting with all the fancy names.

Most of the rest of the group is more urbane than this. These two stand out in their display of a section of the United States.

American Idol V Begins

America Idol has begun its Fifth big season. As it does it shows people from a variety of places, yet it makes those places seem very similar. Whether in Detroit or Chicago [as with the first shows], the performers are the same as they were in other scites in the past. They look alike. They sound alike. A great geographic uniformity is in place.