Movies in 2026 94

 

Closely Watched Trains, (Jiri Menzel, 1966)

Last night in my Images of Fascism class I showed my students one of my favorite movies: Jiri Menzel's 1966 film Closely Watched Trains. It was the decidedly deserving recipient of an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, and is based on a Bohumil Hrabel novella. Milos (Vaclav Neckar) and Hubicka (Josef Somr) do most of the work at a sleepy train depot in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, and get involved with a plot to blow up an ammunition train, although the younger, and dreadfully inexperienced and clumsy Milos, spends most of his time hoping to get laid. Mainly I wanted my students to think about the notion that anybody can be a hero, no matter how unlikely, which seems like a perfect lead-in to Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which we're starting next week. This film is required viewing.

9

 So, shit is getting real, as I've now passed into single digits. After leaving campus last night I'm left with only 9 days left wherein I have to be on campus (again, not counting Finals Week). Speaking of Finals Week, I remember my senior year at Franklin College. The tradition was that if you were a graduating senior, and you were happy with your grade, you had the option of not taking a class final. I was satisfied with my four classes, having locked in my normal 3.75 (my students are always amazed that I never actually pulled off a 4.0 even once in my college career - I try to convey to them that graduate schools are also looking for people who actually left their dorm rooms and did stuff)) so I decided to not take my finals (I think there was an off-chance that I could have pushed the B up to an A, but it didn't seem worth my time). As I approach my last Finals Week I'm tempted to give all my students that option. My fraternity voted to make me go home for the week, arguing that me hanging around during Finals Week without anything to do was a menace (which, doubtless, it would have been).

Thanks to Jon Ryan for loaning me his #9 for the Countdown. I thought I should finally include a kicker in the Countdown, although, obviously, Ryan is far more than simply some random kicker. He was actually born in Regina, Saskatchewan, including playing for the University of Regina Rams, although he spent most of his career in the NFL. Ryan was the punter for the Seattle Seahawks for ten seasons, including winning a Super Bowl with them. He also kicked for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Edmonton Elks, Hamilton Tiger-Cats, and his hometown Saskatchewan Roughriders. He's a member of the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame (and he's the first Saskatchewan player to win a Super Bowl). While playing for the University of Regina he caught a 109 yard TD pass - and he's the part-owner of two summer college league baseball teams - so he seems like a pretty cool guy.

Movies in 2026 93

 

Daisies, (Vera Chytilova, 1966)

Since we're in the middle of a three week run of 1960s Czechoslovakian films in my Images of Fascism class I guess it's not too surprising that I've ended up taking the opportunity to revisit other films in a very rich Criterion Channel collection. Last night I re-watched Vera Chytilova's 1966 Czechoslovakian New Wave classic, Daisies. It's a surreal and anarchic commentary on perceived women's roles and bourgeois expectations. Mainly, it's Marie I (Jitka Cerhova) and Marie II (Ivana Karbanova) running amuck and causing destruction. I liked it a lot more on this second viewing. Recommended.

10

 And another week down, only five weeks to go. My students were immeasurably dense this week, staggeringly dense, even factoring in that it was the week after spring break they were breath-takingly dense. It would be great to finish out my long career with great, engaged students (to be fair, I do have a few really good kids this semester), but in other ways finishing with under-prepared and unengaged students is making this transition easier. It's frustrating because I'm teaching two sections of my Journey to the West class, which I originally created because I thought learning about Sun Wukong would be of natural interest to the gamer kids and also support their professional interests, and two classes on Fascism, because, well, duh. Sadly, the majority of the students seem pretty disinterested in both topics, the former leaves me sad, the latter leaves me frightened.

Thanks to CFL Hall of Famer Bernie Faloney for the use of his number 10 in the Countdown this week. Faloney was born in Carnegie, Pennsylvania, and eventually starred at Maryland. In 1953 he led Maryland to a share of the national championship and finished fourth in the Heisman balloting. He was drafted in the first round as the 11th pick by the San Francisco 49ers, but they viewed him as a defensive back and an backup quarterback - and only offered him $9000. Edmonton (at the time the Eskimos) told him he could compete for the starting quarterback job - and they offered him $12,500 (it's so odd to read about these early stories where CFL teams outbid NFL teams for players) - so Faloney headed north. He helped Edmonton win the Grey Cup, but then returned home but then returned home to serve his military duties. After two years, he returned to the CFL, this time signing with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, for whom he became a legend (one of the roads next to the Tim Hortons Field is name after him), leading the Tiger-Cats to two Grey Cup wins.

Movies in 2026 92

 

Stagecoach, (John Ford, 1939)

Whenever I ask questions like, "Who is the greatest American director?" - and my long-time friends will tell you that I ask questions like that much too often (although, truthfully, can you ask question like that too often?) - for some reason I never promote John Ford as an answer. Obviously, he would be a completely legitimate answer. If you just wrote down the list of his truly great films he would naturally compete with any other American filmmaker. The other night I re-watched his 1939 breakout film Stagecoach - which also launched the career of John Wayne - and reshaped the American perception of the Western. It's currently in a Criterion Channel collection on movies with great stunts, which I don't normally think of when I think of Stagecoach (simply because there are so many other things to love about the film), but it does have great stunts. It's odd to think that Wayne received second billing, with Claire Trevor receiving top billing - she is very good, and for some reason I always forget that she later received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Key Largo. And speaking of Academy Awards, Thomas Mitchell received one for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Doc Boone. The film itself did not receive an Academy Award for Best Picture, because it was 1939 and that's the legendary year where all the films were all-time classics (unlike this past year, where you had a bunch of pretty good films which will seem like strange choices when people look back in a decade). Clearly, watching Stagecoach is essential.

And a star is born. Here's your first scene of John Wayne in Stagecoach, as he waves down the stagecoach - an iconic scene. Wayne had been in movies before, but this is where his true stardom began. Yes, life is pretty dreadful right now as we pass into an authoritarian nightmare and turn our back on every promise that we ever made as a nation, but I guess there's still John Wayne starring in John Ford films to give us some fleeting joy. In the foreground you can see Mollie's ears, as she carries on her nightly duties of sitting on my lap while I watch movies on the  Criterion Channel.

A Single Volume Ramayana - And a Bit too Much Excitement

 You know, there are moments when I have to admit to a ever so slightly nerdy moments. Generally, I accuse many of my friends (for instance, Cyndi) of being much bigger nerds than me (well, Janet gets a pretty consistent accusation), but, maybe I may have an ever so insignificant, almost unmeasurably small, degree of nerd in me. No one should be so excited about the arrival of a thousand page version of the Ramayana. To be fair, I do love the Ramayana, but the arrival of a single volume is huge for my Epics project. I have been able to tie my research and writing to single editions of the Iliad (Robert Fitzgerald), the Aeneid (Robert Fagles), the Shahnameh (Dick Davis), and Journey to the West (Anthony Yu, although Yu's classic is four volumes - he did create his single volume The Monkey and the Monk, which I use every year). All of these are easy to track down and inexpensive to acquire. The outlier was always the Ramayana. There simply wasn't a single volume that featured the original text from the Indian poet Valmiki. There are several much shorter retellings, but I wanted my readers to experience the original text, and not a modern retelling. So, I tied my writing to Robert Goldman's massive Critical Edition, which is extraordinary, but something that would be hard to find unless you had access to a library at a research university. So, the arrival of The Ramayana of Valmiki: the Complete English Translation from Robert Goldman and Sally J. Sutherland Goldman is a godsend. I have my single, affordable edition that I can tie to my research (although lining things up to my original citations from the Critical Edition, and factoring in new translations, is a late challenge to my work) solves a big problem. Beyond everything else, I was simply way too excited to have the book arrive, and provide me yet another opportunity to delve into the Indian classic.

Robert Goldman, who is a major scholar but also a very nice guy, told me about the publication of the single volume Ramayana (which somehow I had missed). It's still a tome, obviously, but here it is next to the seven volume Critical Edition of the Ramayana from which it is culled. 

Earthquake Museum

 And how did I never post anything about the Earthquake Museum? I've talked about the famous Lisbon earthquake of 1755 many times in various classes over the years, most recently in my Nature of Evil class in the fall. It inspired a poem from Voltaire., and, for that matter, Candide and his crew witness the earthquake in the novel Candide. Some philosophers propose that it was to philosophers of the 18th century what the Holocaust was to philosophers of the 20th century. That is, they are not claiming that the two events are close in regards to loss of life, obviously, but rather that they provided an existential threat to a worldview. That is, they were both events that thinkers had to address, in that you simply couldn't ignore them. The 18th century was dominated by the Enlightenment and the emphasis on reason, and the random nature of the earthquake, killing tens of thousands who were all in Church on All Saints Day, certainly spoke to the absence of God in daily life. I had wanted to visit it for a while, but in this particular case I was hoping, unrealistically, of leading one last student trip before my legs gave out entirely. Sadly, I had a heart scare (which turned out to be overrated), and I had to cancel the trip before it ever got off the ground. When you visit Lisbon a trip to the Earthquake Museum is definitely worth your time.

The museum does a pretty good job building the anticipation. Plus, well, it's a popular tourist stop, and they move you along pretty quickly.

It's pretty high tech jazzy, although this reminded me of the movie Tron.

There's a fair bit of scientific learning and quizzes. 

You get a sense of what Lisbon looked like pre-quake. The woman in the background is part of a sophisticated video of people walking in and out of the scene.

The high point of the experience is sitting in pews in a church as the earthquake hits, the jarring ride begins, which is synced up with the video.