Old Movies You Should Have Seen by Now: Harry & Tonto

by Ginger Makela-Riker on June 4, 2011

Harry & Tonto

1974

Director: Paul Mazursky

Principal Actors: Art Carney, Tonto the Cat

Gut-level Take

Everything either changes or dies. Observe it, accept it, and keep moving on.

Basic Plot

Evicted from his lifelong apartment in New York, old-guy Harry and his old cat Tonto take a road trip west meeting sweet, eccentric people along the way.

Themes

  • The death of your generation and its culture
  • Meeting strangers is transformative
  • Individualism vs community
  • Animals as family
  • Is the world really getting more dangerous, or do we just perceive it to be more so?

Unexpected Awesomeness

  • 1970s economy referred to as the “worst since the Great Depression” — gave me hope that the dire economy now will eventually get better
  • Melanie Mayron (eccentric photographer in Thirtysomething) as a kooky young runaway with crazy round glasses
  • A road movie in which nothing bad happens to the travelers
  • Larry Hagman as a wanna-be West Coast playboy with a penchant for tightly tied neck scarves

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Old Movies You Should Have Seen by Now: Full Metal Jacket

by Ginger Makela-Riker on May 30, 2011

Full Metal Jacket

1987

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Principle actors: Matthew Modine, Vincent D’Onofrio

Gut-level take

It’s impossible to be ironic, detached, intellectual, and objective in war.

Basic plot

A journalist enlists in the Marines, and we follow his journey from basic training to reporting on the front during the Tet Offensive.

Themes

  • The importance of chain of command
  • Sadism and bullying
  • The desire for peace vs vengeance
  • Price of freedom via militarism

Unexpected Awesomeness

  • Hearing the origin of 2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny” samples
  • John Terry (Christian Shepard on Lost) as a journalist lieutenant
  • Seeing the origin of R. Lee Ermey’s drill sergeant persona in pop culture

See also: the Kickstarter project to turn Matthew Modine’s limited edition book Full Metal Jacket Diaries into an iPad app.

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Old Movies You Should Have Seen by Now: The Conversation

May 29, 2011

The Conversation 1974 Directed by: Francis Ford Coppola Principal actors: Gene Hackman & Harrison Ford Gut-level take An introvert’s greatest nightmare is being observed without knowing it. Basic plot Gene Hackman plays a guarded surveillance expert hired to record the conversation of two people in SF’s Union Square but his morality starts to intrude on [...]

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150 things to read, watch and listen to, so you don’t die of boredom this summer, according to Sassy Magazine, July 1990.

May 10, 2011

It was the summer of 1990. I was 14 years old and at a crossroads. New Kids on the Block, Sweet Valley High books, and Growing Pains didn’t appeal to me anymore, and I was looking for whatever would come next. I’m not sure how I came across Sassy magazine for the first time, but [...]

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