Motion Picture Daily, 1949
Hello my friends lately I have been watching all of the Ma & Pa Kettle movies, playing the new Super Mario 3-D All Stars and reading C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters and I thought I would briefly share my thoughts on each.
Before recently I have only seen one of the Ma & Pa Kettle movies (Ma & Pa Kettle (1949)) but after finding a DVD set of all ten Kettle movies (including their debut as supporting characters in The Egg and I (1947) and the two movies after Percy Kilbride (Pa) left the series (The Kettles in the Ozarks (1956) and The Kettles on Old Macdonald's Farm (1957))), I decided that watching all of them sounded like a great way to spend my time. I was completely right. These movies may not be on the same level as the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy, but they don't have to be. They are a lot of fun in their own right. Some of the films in this series may be stronger than others, but all of them entertained me and isn't that why someone would watch movies like these. One of my main reasons for watching these films was Marjorie Main. I had never seen a movie with her in it, where she did not brighten up the screen when she was on and I still haven't. In fact I am more convinced now that she was one of moviedom's greatest character actresses. I also grew more respect for Percy Kilbride watching these movies. What a great comedic actor he was and he played the part of Pa Kettle to perfection. Not only did his often deadpan delivery provide many laughs but he brought a well humanity to Pa that made him feel like a real life neighbor to me. Adding to this was that he and Marjorie Main had incredible chemistry together. Beneath all the bickering and over the top slapstick you got a sense these two really loved each other. Too often slapstick comedies fail when the filmmakers try to hard to put sweet touching moments (Charlie Chaplin could do this extremely well but few other can) into the films. These films don't have the problem because the sweetness is in the characters' relationship with each other and therefore the movies never need to take time out for touching moments and can simply focus on the slapstick comedy. The movies made after Percy Kilbride left are honestly quite funny but they are missing the effortless heart apparent in the earlier films.
Motion Picture Herald, 1952
I have read many complaints about Super Mario 3D All Stars and I understand all of them very well. The original Super Mario All-Stars was my introduction to Mario games and it was a great one at that. The classic games on there had their graphics completely touched up and still don't look dated today. I admit when I first played Super Mario All Stars I thought that was how the games originally looked and it was only years later that I realized how impressive what had been done with them was. It is understandable (especially with how dated Super Mario 64 looks to modern eyes) to think that the same would have been done here, but very little has been changed.
Despite these complaints, I have been enjoy this so much. These are three great games that still look and play great. The controls are moved extremely well to this new system. I have mostly been playing Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy and remembering just how great these games are. Super Mario 64 is still one of the most fun and exciting games our favorite plumber has been in. The worlds are still incredibly well designed and atoshperic, the game play is still amazing and it is just tons of fun to play. Super Mario Galaxy is one of the most clever and imaginitve Mario games and I love the way it plays with gravity and uses its new setting to give Mario games a whole new feel while still staying true to what made the previous ones work. I haven't played much Sunshine yet, but I have just been enjoying the other two too much to get around to it.
C.S. Lewis is one of my favorite authors and The Screwtape Letters is one of his greatest books. For the past little bit I have been following my daily bible reading with a chapter of this book and after finishing, I am blown away by how great this book is. At one minute it can be hilariously satiric and at another deadly serious. At all times it is extremely intelligent and insightful. What it has to say about the spiritual pitfalls Christians too often find themselves in and the nature of temptation is just as true today as it was when this book was first published in 1942. As a Christian when I read this I realized how often I, myself have fallen into these traps. This book addresses subjugating your Christianity to a political belief system or your own intellectualism until it becomes indistinguishable and then regulated to a minor part of life. This is important to note because it is so subtle and gradual that you do not see yourself falling into this trap. The using of an unreliable narrator of a demon from Hell is a brilliant idea. It forces us to view the world for a completely different set of eyes. Most Christian books (especially fictional ones) tend to focus on Heaven instead of Hell, yet knowing how the devil might attack us and the tricks he uses is more than a little helpful in those moments when we are weak and most susceptible to temptation. This book also allows the narrator to shed a light on the dark unsavory parts of human nature and understand how easily evil can be justified in people's minds. Yet knowing all the while that this narrator is unreliable, a lair and a follower of lairs, we are able to approach what he says with a healthy dose of skepticism and at the same time ]with a stronger faith in what the real truth is. Despite this book being about demons from Hell, God certainly had his hand on C.S. Lewis as he wrote it. This is a book that will strengthen Christians rather than tear them down, while at the same time give them a lot of thought provoking ideas to consider. This is an intelligent and enriching book I believe ever Christian should read, and I know re-reading it over these past couple weeks will help me move forward in my Christian walk wiser and stronger.
-Michael J. Ruhland
No comments:
Post a Comment