Tag: Reviews

What’s in the Air

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This week the Autumnal Equinox occurs and marks the point where the scales tip in the direction of night over day.  It’s subtle.  We still are enjoying days that have 80-degree temperatures, bright sun and the sound of cicadas and crickets.  But all the summer flowers are dead or dying.  The butterflies are almost all gone as are the hummingbirds.  The frogs still croak at night but their rhythm has slowed to a crawl and their hearts aren’t in it.

In a couple of weeks, the wolfbane will bloom and the short days will give way to frosty nights and the windows will close and the meals will feature oatmeal for lunch and soups for dinner.  And I’ll have to send for the guy who tunes up the heating system (may the Fire god Agni protect our dear furnace).

So indoor activities become more important.  I’ve been reading another book on the ancient DNA results.  It is very trendily named, “Who We Are and How We Got Here” by David Reich.  It has many of the results I have previously read but it made some further clarifications or conclusions.  I also watched a YouTube video that Reich was in.  In this video he made a very interesting assertion.  He said words to the effect that it probably isn’t the case that the Neanderthals and Denisovans went extinct.  Basically, they were reabsorbed in the various successive waves of migration from Africa and the Middle East northward after the last Ice Age.  He is of the opinion that the 2-4% Neanderthal genetic content of non-African humans is probably much higher, more like 10-20%.  And a similar case exists for the Denisovans.  And there may even be other intermediate species or races that we haven’t identified especially where DNA doesn’t survive as well.

Also, he clearly stated that Native Americans are a combination of about 1/3 ancient Siberian (sort of a proto-European group) and two thirds East Asian (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Japanese) ancestry that crossed the Bering Land Bridge in three waves.  There is a hint that a small relict population that includes some Australasian traits (e.g., Australian aborigine, New Guinean) exists in the Amazon rainforest but when and how they got there is unknown.

So, there is all this amazing information including the clarification of how the Yamnaya people from the space between the Black and Caspian Seas used the domestication of the horse and invention of the wagon to expand out and replace most of the inhabitants of Europe and Iran and half the inhabitants of India while spreading their language (Prot-Indo-European) to half of Eurasia and subsequently the world.

But the discouraging part of the book is how much hand-wringing Reich does about the fact that these ancient people weren’t feminists and how the conquerors managed to spread their DNA by having children with the lion’s share of the women of the conquered people.  And then we get the genetics of slavery.  Which is a similar story.  In fact, there is a whole chapter called Genomics of Inequality.  And then there is one called The Genomics of Race and Identity.  So, there is a whole lot of hand-wringing.  Oh well.  There is a lot of interesting results.  You just have to read between the whines.

I’m also reading Hans G. Schantz’s book “The Wise of Heart.”  It’s a reimagining of the Scopes’ Monkey Trial with biological sexuality standing in for Darwinian evolution in an environment where transgender activists have passed laws against stating biological reality.  I’m about a third of the way through and I can see he has carefully studied the courtroom nuances that such a legal confrontation would involve.  I’ll provide a full review when I finish.

And finally, now that the summer has ended, I hope to begin watching and reviewing the classic 39 episodes of “The Honeymooners,” the 1950’s sit-com that Jackie Gleason created.  I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for this show.  I believe it is the greatest contribution that Brooklyn ever made to western civilization (well, except for, maybe, ringalevio).

And of course, I’m continuing with my outlining of the universe for my epic sf series (WHATEVERITSCALLED).  Believe it or not musing over it actually provides measurable progress in making the choices I need, in order to provide scope and direction to the plot choices I want built into the “world.”  One thing’s for sure.  No xenomorphs in my universe.  Ridley Scott stole that monster from “Voyage of the Space Beagle” but even though that book was terrible it still gave the xenomorph a better showcase.

So, lots of good stuff going on.  Stay tuned.

The Honeymooners – Complete Series Review – Overview

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I’ve always been a big fan of this show.  But nowadays the audience it was created for are either old or really old.  But, so what?  Shakespeare’s audience has been dead for over 350 years and his stuff is still plenty popular.  Am I saying Jackie Gleason compares to the Bard?  Maybe in comedy.  Have you ever watched “Taming of the Shrew?”  There really are an enormous number of similarities.  Kate and Alice Kramden are sisters under the skin.  And Beatrice from “Much Ado About Nothing” is right there too.  And Ralph Kramden and his buddy Ed Norton could be compared to Falstaff and Prince Hal.  Well, maybe not.  And Jackie Gleason and Art Carney had enormous chemistry together.  They were able to riff on whatever ridiculous plot device they were pursuing to incredible comic effect.  Physical comedy and clever dialog abound.  As clowns they stand up with anything Shakespeare produced.  And Alice Kramden’s aggrieved, long-suffering wife is perfection and provides the foil Ralph needs to justify his craziest schemes.  The weakest part of the cast is Trixie who really only acts as a plot device.  She’s a sounding board for both her friend Alice and as Ed’s wife whenever Ralph has gone so way overboard that Ed must rebel.

But anyway, there is an everyman or at least an every-Brooklyn-man of the mid-twentieth century in Ralph and Ed.  These are the guys who fought World War II and came back to Brooklyn and didn’t get to be the man in the grey flannel suit.  They’re the guys in the blue-collar uniform.  They don’t work in a Madison Avenue advertising office.  They work in the sewer or on a Madison Avenue bus and make awful wages and live in two room apartments in Bensonhurst and try to escape every chance they get to a game of pool or bowling or a Racoon Lodge Meeting to avoid their wives nagging them about the broken-down appliances, the bad plumbing and general lack of funds.

Ralph is the not-terribly-bright guy who thinks he is full of million-dollar ideas to get rich quick.  Norton is his best friend who follows Ralph’s lead and of course suffers the consequences constantly.  Their wives, Alice and Trixie are long suffering housewives who have more or less reconciled themselves to the marginal edge of the middle-class but not silently and often quite sarcastically.  The Kramdens and the Nortons are sort of the economic losers of the post-war economy.  But Ralph is always searching for that million-dollar idea and Alice and Norton and Trixie are right behind him being dragged along for the bumpy ride.

Jackie Gleason’s Ralph, Art Carney’s Ed and Audrey Meadows’ Alice are iconic characters that speak directly to Americans who believed in the American Dream.  Their striving and their frantic scramble to enjoy the American life of that time speaks to timeless pursuits of the human condition.  The Kramdens and the Nortons are a very lively spot in the history of fictional people.  The thirty-nine episodes produced in 1955 and 1956 are fine wine.  I like to watch them every once in a while, to remind myself of a happier time than our own.

Aspects of World Building – 1

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As is natural for a man of my era, Heinlein is the exemplar when it comes to science fiction craftsmanship.  But whereas in his youth he was something of a progressive I am a conservative.  So, whereas his earliest “what if?” scenario for his future history was the United States becoming an unlikely Christian theocracy, I’m confronted with the reality of a United States that’s already halfway to becoming a woke oligarchic police state.  Therefore, I’ll use that as the first component of my world building.  Of course, it’s hardly original or surprising.  Maybe it’s even lazy or boring.  But I think it fits.  Besides it can be a one off that’s quickly cured by a revolution that leaves a more interesting and fertile chaos in its wake.

And just as easy to add to the pot is the looming energy drought that is already a part of the daily conversation.  Global warming, green energy, fear of nuclear power; all of these conspire to make the future a bleak prospect for the everyday people trying to eek out a living and raise their families.  Therefore, technology around new energy sources and technologies is a no-brainer.

Now, all that’s good stuff but we need some cooler technology than geothermal turbines.  So, we’ll add in cold fusion (or at least warmish fusion) based on the alleged ability of some heavy metals (platinum group, tantalum, etc.) to produce neutrons under the right conditions.

And we’re going to need a Mars mission I’d say.  Why?  Why not?

What about global unrest?  I guess so.  I’m not all that interested in Asia or Africa, or Europe for that matter, anymore.  I guess I should think about their status to make the story convincing but I’ll leave that alone for the beginning.

What other technology?  Well, biological and genetic should be in the mix.  Maybe the ancient DNA information turns up some anomalies that point to a more complicated hominid prehistory that can be leveraged for some genetic engineering stories.  Maybe some research produces a useful understanding of how other aspects of the cellular apparatus beside the DNA mediate evolution.  Maybe some kind of evolutionary acceleration can be controlled using biochemical stimuli that are not currently recognized.  Maybe this science is unlocked by a genius who wants to change humans.  What kinds of change?  Obviously, intelligence but how about gills to breathe underwater?  Look at all those millions of square miles of ocean.  Maybe make humans photosynthetic.

Artificial intelligence is a for-sure part of the universe.  We need AI’s that in many ways appear to be conscious but whether they actually are I don’t currently know.  I’ll have to see what works.

Extraterrestrials?  I really don’t know yet.  Maybe it’s too early for that.  After all I don’t currently have a star drive.  Maybe I’ll start by finding out if there’s simple life somewhere in the solar system.  Could it be bio-pollution from Earth.  Could algae and tardigrades have drifted from Earth to Mars.  Sure, why not?  And could they have developed some interesting new tricks trying to survive on a freezing, almost airless desert?  Of course!

I used to toy with the idea that the gas giant planets (Jupiter and Saturn) might have a stable layer somewhere in between their hot cores and cryogenic surfaces where creatures swim and fight and live and die.  Maybe that would be fun to play with or maybe an ocean inside of one of the Jovian moons would be better.

Okay, I think that’s enough to start with.

Guest Contributor – Ed Brault – 15SEP2024 – Known Space

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You might try fitting your story into Larry Niven’s Known-Space/Man-Kzin Wars Universe. Since Niven allowed other writers access to what is now a shared universe, over 15 books of short stories, novelettes, novellas and novels have been written by numerous authors. The Tech timeline goes from 19th Century India, through the age of fusion reaction drives, Bussard Ramjets, and the 3-days per lightyear Hyperdrive. You could set your story in any period along more that 1000 years of technology. The Kzinti Occupation years on Wunderland are ripe for Resistance stories, as are the post-liberation years of political upheaval as surviving working-class colonists try to overthrow the semi-aristocratic Herrenmen who are descended from the original Fifteen Families in the first colony ships, who claimed all the good farmland, industrial concerns, and control of the government.

Known Space – Wikipedia

How Do You Concoct a Science Fiction Universe with Plenty of Elbow Room?

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Different science fiction writers have produced every kind of world imaginable and for many different reasons.  A very large chunk of writers did this because they wanted a paycheck and they were told that science fiction was the golden way.  And depending on how talented they were, the stories they wrote were more or less interesting, memorable and coherent.

The earliest of these stories were cobbled together based on an author’s understanding of other genre literature.  So, if the writer wrote cowboy stories previously, then we got Showdown at the Betelgeuse Corral or some such thing.  And in the grand scheme of things that’s not really the worst outcome.  I mean, if our western author is a good story teller then the Showdown may be a very interesting space cowboy story.  And who doesn’t like space cowboys?

But if science fiction should include some world-building that actually has something to do with science then an author should go the next stage and make some kind of hand-waving exercise to justify the technology being used.  You know, warp drive fueled by matter/anti-matter mediated by di-lithium crystals that provide the warpity-warpity part (somehow).  Okay sure.

Now you have the means for a story but why is it?  Who is doing what to whom?  And here is where the cowboy story might be just what you want.  Or maybe it’s the Roman Empire writ large or space Arabia with monstrous spice sandworms or the American Revolution on Luna or Vietnam in space or, or, or.  Whatever gives you a good idea for a story with humans or humans and aliens or just aliens.

And if you want the story to be really worthwhile, well, learn enough about humans to write them somewhat convincingly.  Of course, this is going above and beyond.  There were (and probably are) plenty of writers who apparently have never spoken to or even bumped into living humans.  So, they’re forced to base their characterizations on themselves and thereby end up with some truly weird conversations and interactions.

Now, all of these things are on my to-do list for my foray into sf but I want one more ingredient.  I desire my world building to be the basis for more than one story or even one series.  I’m ambitious.  I think of Heinlein building his “Future History” timeline with its torch ships, terra-forming, social crises and advances in medicine and longevity and the first halting steps to the stars.  Now that’s the way to do it.  Build up a framework that will allow for a whole suite of related but not interlocking stories.  Give yourself some guidelines and parameters but leave plenty of elbow room for different events, characters, locales, times and moods.  I want to make sure I don’t paint myself into any corners so I need some kind of overall outline that I’ve thought through.  That way I’ll be satisfied with whatever restrictions are involved.  For instance, maybe in this universe there isn’t any working star drive and maybe there never will be.  Or maybe the sun is dying and my Earth is working out a crash program to send colonists in suspended animation to every solar system that’s been telescopically identified in the hope that at least some of them will survive.  Or maybe a universe where the aliens found us and have put us in a remedial program to become less stupid and we have an enormous inferiority complex that is causing terminal ennui.  Whatever the setup is I’ll have mentally signed off on it.

So that’s what I’m working on (in a sort of retroactive way).  I want to build a world that my sniper story can be nested into.  I like the idea of our real world being reflected in a story with a way of resolving the problems we have run up against.  But I think I have to put a lot more potential in the story beyond the political conflict.  So, I’m trying to look at the big picture and add as many gee-whiz angles to make it more fun.  I think I may add cold fusion to the mix.  I’ve always liked the idea of some research into some of the heavier metals providing some unhoped-for breakthroughs in advanced physics.  Maybe not as drastic as the E. E. Smith trick that gives his Skylark characters a star drive but definitely limitless and elegant power production.  It’s definitely cheating but I’m thinking about it.

But all this big picture stuff is hurting my head so it’s a tough slog.  But I think it’s the right order of operation.

Sweet Smell of Success (1957) – A Movie Review

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(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to recommendation section at the bottom to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

“Sweet Smell of Success” was produced by Burt Lancaster’s independent production company and starred Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker a New York City newspaper entertainment columnist whose influence allows him to make and break careers of entertainers, politicians and anyone who displeases him.  Tony Curtis plays Sidney Falco; a cynical and morally bankrupt press agent who depends on Hunsecker’s largesse to survive in the shark infested waters of New York City’s entertainment industry.

Falco is being punished by Hunsecker because he hasn’t been able to break up a love affair between Hunsecker’s sister Susan and a jazz musician named Steve Dallas (played by Martin Milner).  And most of the plot revolves around Falco and Hunsecker’s efforts to smear Dallas’s name and/or have him arrested for marijuana possession.

Hunsecker’s influence with a brutal NYPD police detective named Kello eventually leads to Dallas being arrested on a trumped up marijuana possession charge, assaulted by Kello and hospitalized.  Near the end of the movie Susan rebels at the plot that her brother and Falco concocted against Dallas and she tells Falco that Hunsecker will blame him after she commits suicide by jumping out the window of her Manhattan penthouse.  Falco stops her from jumping but when Hunsecker walks in on them and sees his sister in her underwear with Falco he believes her when she says that Falco had attempted to sexually assault her.  He slaps Falco several times.  At that point Falco reveals to Susan that it was Hunsecker who hired Kello to beat Dallas.  As revenge Hunsecker calls Kello and reports that Falco framed Dallas and he should be arrested for this offense.  But Susan finally rebels against her brother and walks out of their apartment to join Dallas.  When Falco tries to flee the apartment, he is met on the street by Kello who beats him mercilessly and drags him away to jail.

Recommendation

This is one hell of a strange movie.  Lancaster and Curtis spend the whole movie bantering back and forth at each other with a rapid-fire dialog composed of some kind of 1950’s beatnik/hipster patois, or at least what someone in Hollywood thought beatnik/hipster patois should sound like.  It’s truly bizarre.  Such lines as:

”I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”

“You’re blind, Mr. Magoo. This is the crossroads for me. I won’t get Kello. Not for a lifetime pass to the Polo Grounds. Not if you serve me Cleopatra on a plate.”

“You’re dead son. Get buried.”

“Sidney, this syrup you’re giving out with… you pour over waffles, not J. J. Hunsecker.”

And as you could imagine this is an incredibly downbeat movie.  Almost none of the characters are admirable or even likable.  The ending is something of a redemption for Susan but hardly worth the ordeal of swimming through J.J’s and Falco’s cesspool.  I can’t recommend this movie to most people.

I’ll confess that about once a year I want to watch this movie, sort of as a joke.  Maybe I just kind of like Falco saying, “You’re blind, Mr. Magoo.”  And there are many people who admire this movie for its gritty portrayal of something or other.  I’ll leave it to the individual to decide.

Stage Fright (1950) – A Movie Review

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Stage Fright is an Alfred Hitchcock suspense movie.

(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)

Jane Wyman is Eve Gill an acting student who is in love with Jonathan Cooper.  Unfortunately, Jonathan is in love with Charlotte Inwood (played by Marlene Dietrich) who unfortunately is married to a man she doesn’t love.  One day Jonathan comes to Eve and asks her for her help.  He tells her that Charlotte came to his apartment in a dress covered in blood and told him that her husband started beating her and in self-defense she killed him with a fireplace poker.  She asked Jonathan to go back to the scene of the crime to get her a clean dress.  But while he was there the maid saw him and called the police.

Jonathan asks Eve to help him hide from the police until he can figure out how to escape from the trap, he has found himself in.  Eve enlists the help of her father “Commodore Gill (played by Alistair Sim) who owns a boat that Jonathan hides on.  Meanwhile Eve goes to Charlotte’s home to see what the police are up to.  While snooping around she meets police detective Wilfred Smith (Michael Wilding) who happens to be working on the case and she proceeds to fall in love with him.  She also manages to insinuate herself into Charlotte’s household by impersonating a relative of Charlotte’s maid and theatrical dresser.  In this role she discovers that Charlotte has no intention of disrupting her life but instead expects Jonathan to flee the country permanently.,

Meanwhile Jonathan sneaks into the theater where Charlotte is playing and confronts her.  She explains that she will not be joining him in permanent exile and he reacts by saying he has the bloody dress and he might give it to the police if he has to.

Finally, Eve and her father arrange for the police to eavesdrop on Charlotte being confronted about the bloody dress in a fake blackmail conversation with Eve.  But in the conversation Charlotte states that even though there is blood on her dress Jonathan murdered her husband in front of her.  Meanwhile Inspector Smith has captured Jonathan at Eve’s home and he has been brought to the theater for questioning.  He breaks loose and Eve helps him hide in the theater basement with her.  While this is going on Smith reveals to Eve’s father that Jonathan is actually a dangerous maniac who has killed before.

While hiding with Eve, Jonathan confesses to Eve that he did indeed murder Charlotte’s husband more or less at her instigation.  He also admits that he previously killed another man, but was cleared based on self-defense grounds.  And then he hinted that he would be executed for this new murder unless he was thought completely insane.  And the only way he could think of convincing a jury of that would be if he killed another person for no reason at all.  Now Eve sensed her personal danger and she tells Jonathan that they must escape the building before the police got down into the basement.  And as he walked through a door ahead of her, she locked it behind him and screamed to the police to capture Jonathan.  Jonathan was now on the stage and trying to escape so the police dropped the heavy fire curtain (actually a heavy metal sheet) to trap him but just as he reached the edge of the stage he tripped and the steel curtain crushed and killed him.

Great Caesar’s ghost, I’m exhausted just reciting that plot.  And I left several subplots and characters out.  There’s Charlotte’s manager that she’s having an affair with and Charlotte’s mother who is estranged from her father and Eve’s friends, one of whom is played by Hitchcock’s daughter, and on and on.  It’s a bit much.  Plus, Dietrich sings several songs and that maybe okay for her French song but the one in English wasn’t so good.  Without a doubt this movie is very odd.  I enjoyed it, maybe because of its oddity, but I tend to doubt most people are like me.  Let’s say this is for Hitchcock fans who like the theatrical.

$180MM in, Disney Cuts Its Losses on the Acolyte

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Disney has systematically dismantled the greatest cinematic money-printing franchise by turning the Star Wars brand into a woke, feminized version of the space fantasy series that George Lucas spawned back in the late 1970s.

Generations of boys and men have enjoyed the good/evil, dark/light, David/Goliath dualism that is as old as Thermopylae, the Odyssey and the Bible itself.  But Disney (and Lucas himself) had to mess with the classic “apprentice becomes hero and wins the princess” and instead went with girl-boss saves the universe despite helpless and/or evil men.

Well, the response from the paying audiences has been souring over the last decade and now it’s bottomed out.  And the latest symptom of this rejection is the cancellation after one season of “The Acolyte.”

This incredibly expensive television series was trashed by the fans and viewership plummeted by the season finale.  And so it’s been cancelled.  And the reason that the producers attribute the cancellation to is:

misogyny/homophobia.

Well, there you go.  The misogynistic homophobes have voted with their feet.  Now will Disney learn from this or do they need to lose some further hundreds of millions of dollars?  Let’s see.

2024 Summer Movie Talk – Part 14

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My All-Time Favorite Movies

I won’t make any claims other than these are my favorite movies of all time.  They are not in strict order because that would be impossible to achieve.  And in fact, this list is the most conflicted and unsatisfying.  Basically, this is the end of the world list.  If nuclear Armageddon was to strike and I had to pick the movies for my private collection that I would be able to watch (somehow) for the rest of my life, what would I have to have?  So, of course, this could only be my list.  Your list will differ radically because the list is as much about you as about the quality of the movies.  But for better or worse this is what I chose.  Multiple dates after the movie title signify multiple versions of the story I would take.

Well, as usual, have at it in the comments.

  1. IT’S A GIFT (1934)
  2. A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935)
  3. MAN ON THE FLYING TRAPEZE (1935)
  4. GROUNDHOG DAY (1993)
  5. THE BIG LEBOWSKI (1998)
  6. OFFICE SPACE (1999)
  7. THEM! (1954)
  8. FORBIDDEN PLANET (1956)
  9. INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)
  10. FIREFLY (2002 – 2003)
  11. SERENITY (2005)
  12. TOMBSTONE (1993)
  13. TRUE GRIT (1969, 2010)
  14. BABES IN TOYLAND (1934)
  15. THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939)
  16. THE PRINCESS BRIDE (1987)
  17. THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1989)
  18. THE LORD OF THE RINGS (2001 – 2003) all three films in the extended version
  19. BATMAN BEGINS (2005)
  20. THE DARK KNIGHT (2008)
  21. IRON MAN (2008)
  22. CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER (2011)
  23. MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS (2012)
  24. DEADPOOL (2016)
  25. KING KONG (1933)
  26. DRACULA (1931)
  27. FRANKENSTEIN (1931)
  28. ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (1932)
  29. BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935)
  30. THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH (1934)
  31. SHADOW OF A DOUBT (1943)
  32. NOTORIOUS (1946)
  33. DIAL M FOR MURDER (1953)
  34. REAR WINDOW (1954)
  35. THE MALTESE FALCON (1941)
  36. THE BIG SLEEP (1946)
  37. OUT OF THE PAST (1947)
  38. KEY LARGO (1948)
  39. THE THIRD MAN (1949)
  40. THE ASPHALT JUNGLE (1950)
  41. THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946)
  42. BAND OF BROTHERS (2001)
  43. THE CAINE MUTINY (1954)
  44. MASTER AND COMMANDER: THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD (2003)
  45. GUNGA DIN (1939)
  46. TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944)
  47. THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)
  48. TREASURE ISLAND (1934)
  49. SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009)
  50. SHERLOCK HOLMES: A GAME OF SHADOWS (2011)
  51. CYRANO DE BERGERAC (1950)
  52. SEVEN SAMURAI (1954)
  53. THE NATURAL (1984)
  54. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT (1934)
  55. A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1938, 1951, 1984)
  56. NINOTCHKA (1939)
  57. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945)
  58. CAESAR AND CLEOPATRA (1945)
  59. THE BELLS OF SAINT MARY’S (1945)
  60. LIFE WITH FATHER (1947)
  61. MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (1947)
  62. HAMLET (1948, 1990, 1996)
  63. A LETTER TO THREE WIVES (1949)
  64. THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940)
  65. ALL ABOUT EVE (1950)
  66. ABSENCE OF MALICE (1981)
  67. CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (1958)
  68. THE STING (1973)