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Dreams, (Dag Johan Haugerud, 2024)

It's really difficult to express how much I love and appreciate the Criterion Channel, and not simply because they provide me with more good movies than I could possibly watch in a month. I'm introduced to so many directors and actors that I would never come across is I just depended upon HBO Max or Prime, etc. One of this month's special collections focused on the Norwegian director Dag Johan Haugerud and his Love/Sex/Dreams trilogy, all of which came out in 2024. I started off with Dreams, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film focuses on Johanne, a high school student who falls in love with her French teacher, Johanna. Throughout the story Haugerud keeps you guessing about whether the love affair was consummated or not, but then realizing that in the end does it matter. A year after the end of the affair Johanne writes down the story, which she shares with her grandmother and her mother, who have dramatically different interpretations about what this means, including coming to the realization that this is a story that could be published, and does that trump any concerns about the young girl writing the story. It's so intelligent and beautifully filmed and acted, and I started watching his Love almost immediately. How could you not love someone like Dag Johan Haugerud, who lists himself as a librarian, novelist, screenwriter and film director - in that order. The other thing about the Criterion Channel that makes me happy is that it gives me hope for the future. There are actually people out there making intelligent, personal films, and not just adaptations of comic books and video games. Very highly recommended.

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Little Caesar, (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931)

The Criterion Channel has a new collection of pre-Code films directed by Mervyn LeRoy. Because they're pre-Code they're a little rougher and not marked by definitive moral lessons. The first film I watched was LeRoy's Little Caesar, starring Edward G. Robinson in a star-making role as the gangster  Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello, and co-starring Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. as his friend Joe Massara, who doesn't want to me a gangster anymore and would simple prefer to be a professional dancer with his girlfriend Olga Stassoff (Glenda Farrell). It was entertaining and started gangster film genre.

21

 My final 21st official day at Champlain was also an odd day, as it was last Monday when we buried unto a foot and a half of snow. Yesterday I was sick as a dog, so I carried out class from here at the cabin. Still, not every day is a pretty one - but it is still a day.

Today it is Simoni Lawrence who is helping me celebrate mu retirement countdown. Lawrence attended college at the University of Minnesota, and, like a lot of CFL players, had repeated stops on NFL practice squads (St. Louis Rams, Philadelphia Eagles, Chicago Bears, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Minnesota Vikings) without ever appearing  in a game. But still, he persisted, playing along the way for the Hartford Colonials and Las Vegas Locomotives (both of the United Football League). Eventually he found his way north, playing one season for the Edmonton Eskimos before settling in for a long-run with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He holds the Hamilton record for most tackles and defensive tackles, and the CFL records for most tackles in a game (17).  Lawrence is also a three-time winner of the James P. McCaffrey Trophy, given three times to the best defensive player in the East Division.

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Prelude to War (Why We Fight), (Frank Capra, 1942)

And since we're talking about World War II propaganda films that I'm using in my Images of Fascism class, last night we watched Prelude to War, the first installment in Frank Capra's Why We Fight series. In World War I the US government discovered that a series of dry lectures given after an exhausting day of training was not a good system to explain to the soldiers the point of their sacrifice. Two decades later they turned to Frank Capra - yes, that Frank Capra (It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night, You Can't Take It with You, etc.) - to provide a more entertaining cinematic explanation. Walt Disney provided the animation. Janet, who had never seen the series, kept turning to me in amazement. It's more than a bit jarring to watch a previous US government laying out the beliefs and actions that define Fascism and how they match the beliefs and actions of a present US government.

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The Eternal Jew, (Fritz Hippler, 1940)

Not every film I'll watch this year is a happy experience, obviously, not simply because it may be a film that I'm excited to watch and in the end I didn't like it - or it might be a film that I know in advance is not going to provide any joy but I need to watch it anyway. Fritz Hippler's 1940 Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew definitely fits into the latter category. It's a film that I'm, not surprisingly, showing in my Images of Fascism class, and it's also a movie that I had not watched in its entirety in decades. Before the advent of Youtube it was a film that was hard to find, and I remember plaguing graduate school connections to track down a copy back when I taught my old World War II & Film class. For my class purposes, I want my students to see how authoritarian regimes define and describe the minority group that they demonize and use to justify their grossly unconstitutional and inhumane actions. 

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The Great Dictator, (Charlie Chaplin, 1940)

There are some films that make me cry every time I watch them, and one of them is Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. His impassioned speech at the end, when the Jewish barber is mistaken for the dictator, and he takes the opportunity - essentially breaking away from both characters to speak directly to the audience as Chaplin, trying to convince the world to not embark on this madness, simply breaks me. I'm showing it in my Images of Fascism class. Every time I watch it I'm reminded that while I always focus on that speech, there are so many great moments in the film. Obviously very highly recommended, especially now. One final note: it's interesting how it's often the comedians who are the only ones brave enough to provide actual critique in the face of authoritarianism.

CFL Attendance or Pre-Retirement

 I don't think you can be more thoroughly in a pre-retirement mode than taking time out from grading and writing to update the CFL map outside your office by sticking in little pins to celebrate the number of people that you have taken to games over the years. I just focused on number of people, not total visits, which would have been much harder to calculate. Again, this process is essentially retired.

I've dragged 19 different people to Alouettes games, 1 person to an Ottawa game, 2 people to Toronto games, and 2 people to Hamilton games (my cousin Nick is already excited about being the third to attend a Tiger-Cats games, one of our plans for the summer).

And 1 to an Edmonton game and 1 to a Calgary game. Kevin is the leader with five CFL cities visited (doubtless, he'll have to be a part of an Ottawa game this summer so that we can be tied at six) and Andy is second at three.