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tkrolak
Reviews
Mad Men (2007)
errors in jreinhardt-1's review, but it's mostly right
Mad Men is set in 1960, not the 1950s. The Surgeon General's Report on Smoking came out in 1964.
The research report in the first episode was done by the advertising firm. When Don Draper throws the folder with the report into the wastebasket the scene is accurate. The tobacco companies had information on how lethal cigarettes were but suppressed it. This trashing of the uncomfortable truth to protect an advertising client gets added force when Don is doing his push ups before getting into bed with his wife. He wants to be fit yet doesn't know what he does almost every time we see him is roasting his lungs and hurting his heart.
Seconds later, he wonders why his wife doesn't think she is happy even though she is surrounded by material comforts. He has bought her a watch, thinking that should help her. She feels that the numbness in her hands is psychological. So, she goes to an analyst, an option for an upper middle-class woman. According to the publicity article for the series, it was a trend among women then. Was that trend reflecting the feeling many women had of being unfulfilled, not having careers outside of their homes?
This thought brings me to the scene which sticks out most in my mind. That is where Sally, the Draper's little daughter, is scolded by her mother for having a plastic bag over her head. Ignoring the threat of suffocation, Mrs. Draper tells Sally that, if that bag was used to hold one of mother's dresses she will be sorry. Nothing could affect her wardrobe, her appearance, her Barbie Doll in the affluent suburb life.
But much of the story and the characters is about superficiality, making good impressions. That's a major part of advertising. This is especially true in the scene where Don is asked if any Jews had worked there. He answers "Not on my watch." We don't know if he said that because he was anti-Semitic or was just stating a fact. But they know that they must make a good impression for some Jewish clients.
But Don Draper is the core of the plot. He is the sturdy base, the even keel who keeps the sometimes unruly bunch of admen and the new secretary who makes a play for him on the straight path. He turns down an invitation to a bachelor party, lectures a young co-worker on his behavior but keeps up a secret affair. He is the man of mystery, unknown to even his wife, the blank page. He doesn't vote, shows no enthusiasm for his firm choosing to work for Nixon's campaign.
The story is set at an interesting time. It is early 1960, a transition period, the dawning of an as yet unseen sexually liberated age. The young woman who has just come to work at the office is prescribed a new invention, the birth control pill. She is lectured by her doctor not to use the pill as an excuse for sex before marriage. But that night she does just that. The birth control pill was introduced as a remedy for menstrual problems. It's manufacturers knew how controversial an oral contraceptive could be.
Crash (2004)
good intentions, but not worth the Oscar
My main problem with Crash is that it is supposed to be about the harm that racism does but that the event which drives the plot contradicts this view. Two young black men rob, at gunpoint, a well to do white couple of their van.
Aside from the stereotype of youthful black males from the inner city committing a crime, what is the story telling us by making the victims upper middle class whites? The title is supposed to mean the collision between vastly different worlds, those of privilege and poverty, and various races. But doesn't the wound inflicted on the socially prominent husband and wife by men of color from a disadvantaged background only feed the fears of some whites? One of the gunmen, talking to his partner, days after the theft has happened, points to another young African-American man who is their neighbor. He says that he just goes after the small stuff, like snatching purses. This dialogue just further re-enforces the negative image that black males have to contend with.
Another flaw is the scene with a white policeman, a black woman with whom he has had an encounter, and a car crash. Here, his heroism is a marked exception to the racism he shows in much of the rest of the story. Is there any part of a movie released in 2005 that is more co-incidental and manufactured than that one? Also, Sandra Bullock plays such a whiny, difficult character, who could have any sympathy for her? She eventually sees how bigoted she has been and is persuaded by her Hispanic housekeeper to be nicer. Oh sure, that would happen! Her change and the cop's bravery in the aftermath of the accident put the film on the level of a morality tale that would be shown to highschool students.
Valentine (1979)
correction about Mary Martin and Valentine
Mary Martin's television debut was not in the 1979 film Valentine. She co-starred with Ethel Merman in The Ford 50th Anniversary Show musical special, broadcast on June 15, 1953. Martin also appeared on television in The General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute To Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1954, as Peter Pan in 1955, 1956, and 1960, in the play The Skin Of Our Teeth in 1955, as Billy Dawn in the Hallmark Hall Of Fame production of Born Yesterday in 1956, and as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun in 1957. Before Valentine, television viewers also saw her on the Ford Star Jubilee in 1955, in 1959 in The Sunday Showcase A Tribute To Eleanor Roosevelt On Her Diamond Jubilee and in Magic With Mary Martin and in 1966 in Mary Martin At Eastertime.
All of the above information is shown on the Mary Martin biography in the IDMb website.