I have been away from the keyboard for several days (surely, you've noticed), so I need to catch you up with a couple of reviews, one movie, one book.
The movie is the "Captain Phillips" starring Tom Hanks and directed by Paul Greengrass. Finally caught up with this one on Blue-ray DVD. Great movie about the capture of a United States merchant ship by Somali pirates, and the subsequent rescue efforts by the US Navy. Suspense and excitement galore in this one and an absolutely tremendous performance by Tom Hanks in the title role.
The film has been justifiably nominated for Best Picture of the Year by the Motion Picture Academy, and actor Barkhad Abdi, who played the captain of the Somali pirates, has received a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Greengrass did not receive Best Director nomination, and in an unbelievable omission, Hanks did not receive a nomination for Best Actor. You know what I have to say to that?
Seriously, I look at all the Best Actor nominees, I haven't seen all the performances, and surely they deserve their nods, but I don't know how Hanks could have been left out.
This marks the second movie this season where Hanks has put forth a terrific performance - "Saving Mr. Banks" being the other - and looking at these two movies, plus his career body of work, one has to say that Hanks is among the very best actors of his generation. Is it too much of a reach to say that he belongs in the same breath with other "actors of their generation" such as Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, and Paul Newman? I don't think it is.
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The book I just read is Bill Bryson's "One Summer - America, 1927".
As the title suggests, Bryson - and if you've never read Bill Bryson's books, you are missing out on a very informative and entertaining writer - documents all of the momentous events that took place in America in that one Summer. Why 1927? Consider the following:
- Charles Lindbergh flew from New York to Paris, and immediately became the most famous person in the world.
- Babe Ruth hit hit 60 home runs for what may have been the best single season baseball team ever.
- Four international bankers met in secrecy and set in motion a chain of events that led directly to the 1929 stock market crash and the great depression.
- Floods of wiped out much of the Mississippi River Valley.
- Perhaps the most successful business man in America was Al Capone
- Great store was put into a frightening plan of social engineering called eugenics (look it up; it's scary stuff).
- Sacco and Vanzetti were executed as the nation was set upon by the anarchist movement (domestic terrorism is nothing new).
- A guy planted a bomb in a school house that killed over 40 children.
- Calvin Coolidge was President of the United States and governed with a hands off approach that is unimaginable today. It was almost a part-time job for him.
There is lots of other stuff written about in "One Summer", but the central figure of the book is Lindbergh, and the main story line is the development of the aviation industry in America and the world during that time. Following the first World War, the aviation industry in America was non-existent to, at best, primitive. In fact, the United States lagged far behind many European nations. Hard to imagine. However, that all changed once Lindbergh made his historic flight, and followed that by flying his Spirit of St. Louis on a nationwide tour. Each stop along the way drew tens of thousands of people, Lindbergh was mobbed everywhere he went and never had a moment of privacy again. As Bryson phrased it, "Like others before him, Lindbergh discovered that it was a lot more fun getting famous than it was being famous."
Lindbergh's fame crashed when he associated himself with a movement called America First, defended many of the leaders of Hitler's Germany, and espoused theories of race relations that were closely aligned with the extreme policies of Nazi Germany. While he supported the United States when their entry into WW II came about, his days as an American hero were pretty much over. The arc of Lindy's celebrity really is a fascinating tale.
Lindbergh died in 1972 and some thirty years after his death, it became know that from 1957 until he died, he had secret relationships with three women in Germany, two of them sisters, with whom he fathered seven children. He supported those children until his death, and visited them once or twice a year, although they never knew his true identity, and his own wife and family in America never know of this double life he led. How he managed this is a story that will probably never be known.
I highly recommend this book. It is entertaining to read, and you really can learn a lot form reading it. What more could you ask for in a book?
