Arts & Entertainment

“Jeopardy!” Ethics,” 2023

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments

“Jeopardy!,” the apparently eternal TV game show that has persevered even as its once difficult questions have become increasingly pitched to the less-than-astute, ended its 2023 with a surprise. Mayim Bialik, the actress who is also (for an actress) unusually credentialed educationally, announced this month that she has been let go as a host of “Jeopardy!” Since 2021, Bialik, who had previously portrayed “Big Bang Theory” head nerd Sheldon’s girlfriend on the series, had shared the role of host with legendary “Jeopardy!” champ Ken Jennings. Bialik was the more reliable and professional of the two, perhaps because of her long performing background. Jennings was at the center of far more gaffes and controversies, though Bialik had her share. This season, for example, she disallowed all three contestants’ answers of ”Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn” because she found their pronunciations of the Russian writer and dissident’s name insufficiently accurate.

Continue reading →

Confronting My Biases, Episode 5: The Speed Hump Weenies

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

For this continuing series examining the biases that make me stupid (or not), on the one month anniversary of the last installment, I want to take up the matter of drivers who slow to a crawl or even stop their vehicles entirely when they encounter a “speed hump” in the road.

This past week two such drivers almost caused my car to run into them. In recent years Northern Virginia has gone speed hump mad, putting the things virtually everywhere that isn’t a highway or a main thoroughfare. I don’t mind them, however, nearly as much as I mind the way some drivers seem to regard them as explosive devices. You can safely drive over a speed hump at a moderate velocity; your transmission or axles aren’t going to fall off if your car doesn’t slow down into single digits.

I confess: I regard drivers who freak out at speed humps as emblematic of creeping weenie-ism in the nation. I imagine such drivers as still wearing masks alone in their cars, spending nights shivering in terror over the certain doom that the world faces if we don’t start living like prehistoric cave dwellers, fearing to allow their kids to walk unaccompanied a few blocks home from school, and who want the U.S. to minimize the deployment of its military to tasks involving expanding LGBTQ rights and advancing the cause of diversity, equity and inclusion. I envision them applauding when some anti-gun fanatic shouts that it would be worth eliminating the Second Amendment “if it saved one life” and crippling the First so no feelings are ever hurt by unwelcome opinions.

Continue reading →

Everybody SING! “Trump’s Deranged for Christmas…You Can Count on He…”

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments

...Trump might blow the race to Joe
By acting crazily.
Christmas Eve found Donald
Roasting no chestnut
Trump’s deranged for Christmas
He’s in a nasty rut!

Here is what the man who wants to be trusted to hold the most powerful job on earth sends out to the public…

Continue reading →

“A Christmas Carol”

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

-A-Christmas-Carol2

The entire text of “A Christmas Carol” is and has been for a long time listed under Inspirations on the Ethics Alarms homepage. If you haven’t read it (preferably out loud, to your family) recently, I urge you to do so. It is wonderful, and still, after all the movies and TV specials and songs and rival Christmas-themed stories, the best of the genre. It is also delightful literature, and, because I am an incurable romantic, a sap, and a Christmas addict, the story and Dickens’ telling of it gets to me every time.

I just realized that the last time I directed a production that wasn’t my own, it was a staged reading of “A Christmas Carol.” I miss directing greatly—no one has been clamoring for my comeback—so it that was my last hurrah, I can live with that. “A Christmas Carol” is, after all, one of the greatest ethics tales of all.

The first version of the film adaptations of “A Christmas Carol” I saw when I was knee-high to Robert Reich was the version starring Alistair Sim. Many aficionados of “A Christmas Carol” movies think it is still the best, and I won’t argue with them. Because the movie is in black and white and has been superseded by so many other versions, it is hard to find it on TV now except for the streaming services. Even the much inferior version starring Reginald Owen (with the entire Lockhart family, including young pre-“Lassie,” pre-“Lost in Space” June, as the Cratchits) is shown more than the classic Sim film. In these cynical times, the version of “A Christmas Carol” most likely to be available, sort of, is Bill Murray’s “Scooged.” It’s not the worst version—the musical starring Albert Finney wins that booby prize (“Thank you very much! Thank you very much!” Yecchh.)—but cynicism and dark humor really don’t belong in this story

My personal choice for the best adaptation goes to the 1984 George C. Scott version, if you don’t count “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol,” and you probably shouldn’t, though I love it. The 1984 film has David Warner as Bob; Edward Woodward is the best (and tallest) Ghost of Christmas Present ever; and I think this is the scariest version of Marley.

Here it is…

The 2023 Ethics Companion To “Miracle On 34th Street” [Updated and Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

2023 Introduction

What makes “Miracle on 34th Street” the most appropriate classic Christmas film for 2023 is its theme: the importance of conquering cynicism and  pessimism, and always keeping one’s mind and heart open to hope. This has been a truly awful year, not one of the worst in our history but to a lot of Americans it seems that way (because they “don’t know much about history,” like Sam Cooke), but bad enough that we should be glad to see it go. I know my year has been especially miserable on multiple fronts. Nonetheless, I remain, at heart, about 12 years old. The same things make me laugh; my level of optimism remains high; I believe in this nation’s miraculous ability to somehow get out of the fixes it gets itself into; I’m still a romantic, and, yes, I think with a little luck and one more starting pitcher, the Boston Red Sox can make it to the World Series next year. I am being constantly confronted with old friends, some much younger than me, who have suddenly decided to be old: they think old, they act old, and they seem to have given up the future as irrelevant. The Santa Claus myth represents faith in the possible, or rather the impossible. Yes, its easier when you are a child, but it is worth the fight to never lose the part of you that still believes in magic and miracles. Kris Kringle really isn’t Santa Clause: he’s nuts, basically. But somehow that tiny wisp of a hope that he might be the real Santa is alive at the end of the movie. It’s really quite wonderful. It’s also important.

The production of “Miracle on 34th Street” itself epitomizes the ethical values of competence and integrity. Watch any of the attempts to remake the film over the years; some aren’t bad, but none equal the original, or even justify a remake that places the story in contemporary times.There have been four remakes starring, as Kris Kringle, Thomas Mitchell, Ed Wynn, Sebastian Cabot, and Richard Attenborough. That’s a distinguished crew to be sure. Mitchell was one of the greatest character actors in Hollywood history. Wynn was nominated for an Academy Award (for “The Diary of Ann Frank”) and Attenborough won one, Best Supporting Actor Award in 1967 for “The Sand Pebbles.” Cabot wasn’t quite in their class, but he was a solid pro, and looked more like Santa Clause than Mitchell,  Wynn, or Attenborough.

None of them, however, were as convincing as Edmund Gwenn. He made many movies—all without a white beard— and had a distinguished career in films and on stage, but even audience members who knew his work had a hard time reminding themselves that he wasn’t Kris Kringle while they watched the movie. I still have a hard time.

 The film is one more example of the special, unappreciated talent of Maureen O’Hara, who never was quite regarded as a top rank a movie star, as lovely and strong an on-screen presence as she was. Her ability to anchor great movies while never dominating them is the epitome of the “collaborative art” they always blather about during the Oscars, but which is seldom truly honored.  O’Hara was the female lead in four genuine classics: “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” “The Quiet Man,” “How Green Was My Valley,” and “Miracle on 34th Street.” She also starred in the original “The Parent Trap” for Disney.

“Miracle on 34th Street” is an ethics movie in part because its artists committed to telling a magical story and charming audiences by working as an ensemble selflessly and  efficiently. John Payne, as the idealistic lawyer in love with Maureen, is never flashy, just completely convincing. One reason may have been that, as he told an interviewer once, the role of Fred Gaily perfectly matched his own ideals and beliefs.  This is the magic of performing talent: they make audiences suspend disbelief because they seem to believe in the story and characters too. The director,  George Seaton (who also directed “Airport,” which is NOT an ethics movie), also wrote the script that won him an Oscar. He cast his movie brilliantly, and making the correct but bold decision to stick with a matter-of-fact, realistic, unadorned style that keeps the story grounded. There are none of the corny features or inexplicable gaffes in this film that make other holiday-themed classics inherently unbelievable, like the cheesy battlefield sets in “White Christmas” or the heavenly dialogues in “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“Miracle on 34th Street” is, as I said at the start, about the importance of believing in good things, hopeful things, even impossible things. Today many of my friends, colleagues and associates are depressed and fearful of the future—their future, the future of the nation, even the future of the planet. (The planet will be fine…the rest? As Samuel L. Jackson says in “Jurassic Park, “Hold on to your butts.”) “Miracle on 34th Street” reminds us that wonderful things can happen even when they seem impossible, and that life is better when we believe that every day of our lives. Of course, some days are easier than others.

Never mind. As the Fairy Godmother in the musical version of “Cinderella” sings, “Impossible things are happening every day.” Continue reading →

Unethical Tweet Of The Week: Barbra Streisand

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

I thought Barbra was smarter than Alyssa Milano, Rob Reiner and Joy Behar.

I’m sure she is, or once was; dementia creeps up on you. I really don’t know how to explain this.

Is she being cleverly deceitful? Yes, some prices are falling, like gas, but prices as a whole are not. They are still rising, the effects of Biden’s inflationary policies are still hurting the middle class and the poor, and the Democrats’ “Inflation Reduction” Act: has had slightly more salutary effects than Gerald Ford’s W.I.N. button, but nothing to boast about. Inflation “coming down” means that the rate of prices going up is lessening, not that prices are actually less than they were. Does Streisand really not know that?

The claim about Trump is definitely deceit. The mainstream media helped with that one,using the pandemic lockdown results that savaged the American economy to conclude that, as CNN, that scrupulously unbiased news source, wrote in September 2020 as part of the media’s push to elect a mentally-declining President because the public thinks he’s a nice guy, “Trump’s job losses are the worst of any American president on record.”

Continue reading →

Politics Doesn’t Have To Ruin Everything: Netflix’s “The Fall Of The House Of Usher”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Ideologues and perpetual political warriors do get tiresome, and both ends of the ideological divide are guilty. On Newsbusters, the conservative media watchdog, Stephanie Hamill goes after the latest Netflix horror series by Mike Flanagan (not to be confused with the Baltimore Orioles ace of the late Sixties and Seventies). Her indictment: a liberal agenda “is both overtly and subtly promoted throughout the show’s eight episodes, starting with the incredible amount of LGBTQ characters.” My defense: Oh, lighten up. All Stephanie has is a hammer, so a clever and complex Edgar Alan Poe mash-up that only brushes up against political issues—and, I would say, in a tongue-in-cheek manner—seems like a progressive screed to her. That’s too bad: she can’t enjoy a quality show because she’s so intent on finding signs of Hollywood wokism.

Flanagan is a genuine horror auteur, and he has found his metier in the streamed, multi-episode series. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is his fourth (and last, apparently, for Netflix: he is moving over to Amazon). Nothing is likely to top the writer/director’s re-imagining of Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House,” which might be the best horror movie ever made, but “Usher” is still a blast. Using almost all of Flanagan’s large rep company (which includes Henry Thomas of “E.T.” fame), the series is an Edgar Allen Poe fan’s dream, challenging us to recognize the myriad references familiar and obscure. which range from names to plots to poems. Since the conceit of the show is to make the Usher family the thinly disguised avatars for the infamous Sackler clan that brought us the opioid crisis, Flanagan is naturally hard on the corporate mentality….and the Sacklers deserve the abuse if anyone does. In addition, his greed-busting results in some of Flanagan’s best writing: I already highlighted the instant classic monologue by Bruce Greenwood as the dying, damned family progenitor.

Continue reading →

The Complete “White Christmas” Ethics Companion, With A New Introduction For 2023

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

White-Christmas

2023 Introduction

In last year’s introduction, which I recommend if you are seeing this Guide for the first time—it’s longer and more informative than what I’m offering this year— I concluded by writing, “The movie works (even I get choked up at the end); you just have to turn off your brain to fully enjoy it the way it was meant to be enjoyed.” That’s all that matters right now for me. I’m posting the second of the ethics guides to classic Christmas movies tonight because, to quote Jerry Herman’s one Christmas song, I “need a little Christmas” about now, and as flawed as it is in so many ways, “White Christmas” does bring back memories of happier holidays. My Dad, Army through and through, was a sucker for the climax of the film when the old general (Dean Jagger) sees his former company assembled to give him tribute just as he was feeling useless. Bing Crosby is forever associated with my many happy Christmases as a child, and Christmas itself evokes warm memories of my mother, who treated every December 25th as the challenge of a lifetime: it had to be “the best Christmas ever for her family,” whereupon she would worry that the next Christmas wouldn’t be as good, and that would depress her. My mother thought every Christmas was going to be her last.

So in a year when the Marshalls are not going to have their usual spectacular Christmas tree that takes me five hours to decorate, when as with Thanksgiving, there will be no festive banquet at a table surrounded by family and friends, there will be no stockings or presents because choosing ethics as a pursuit has its disadvantages and being destitute at the end of the year is sometimes one of them, a sappy Christmas movie that ends with two happy couples, an old man being reassured that his life had meaning and Bing singing “White Christmas” is just what the psych ward ordered. I’m going to watch the movie tonight, and then I’ll “go to sleep, counting my blessings.”

1. The First Scene

Continue reading →

Look! Another Racial Casting Controversy!

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

I love this one: it involves one of my favorite actors and one of my favorite historical figures.

Denzel Washington has lapped Sydney Poitier as the most successful and, in my view, most versatile and best black Hollywood star in film history, so one would think his casting to portray any historical figure would be seen as a boon to that figure’s fans. In this case, you would be wrong. Denzel is playing the Carthaginian general Hannibal in a Netflix historical epic, and Le Monde reports that in Tunisia, Hannibal’s old stomping ground, Hannibal’s admirers are furious. The casting has even been debated in the Tunisian parliament. Tunisian MP Yassine Mami railed about “the risk of falsification of history” while calling on members to join him in “defending Tunisian identity”.

Continue reading →

The Story Of “Do You Hear What I Hear?”….And The Christmas Kick-Off Open Forum!

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Last week’s forum was the deadest ever, so I’m hoping that injecting some holiday cheer into this one will spark more dialogue. After all, if the wind, a lamb, a shepherd boy, a mighty king and people everywhere can have a productive conversation, Ethics Alarms readers should be able to bring some Goodness and Light too.

As some inspiration, I’m reposting below the Ethics Alarms entry about the origins of my favorite of the modern—“modern” as in “post World War II”—Christmas songs, first sung by my favorite Christmas minstrel.

*** Continue reading →