As with all the 12 New Movie reviews , I will attempt to do the following:
Rate each movie on a 1 (worst movie ever) to 5 (best movie I have seen) scale.
Provide a 2-3 sentence summary of the movie.
I will share 1 theme from the movie.
Write one thing I liked about the movie and 1 thing I disliked about the movie.
State who I think would make the best audience for this movie.
The Train (1964) Rating 3 stars out of 5
Summary: At the end of World War II, A Nazi officer (Paul Scofield) attempts to bring a train filled with French art masterpieces to Germany. The station master (Burt Lancaster) who is also part of the French resistance is tasked to stop the train from getting to Germany.
Theme: Is art worth dying for?
Likes: When I heard Paul Scofield (A Man for All Seasons, Quiz Show) was in this film I jumped at the chance to see it. Scofield does not disappoint. His performances are known for being multilayered and this is no exception. I also like the fact that this is filmed in black & white.
Dislikes: This movie did not live up to the expectations I was given on line. It would have worked as a straight action movie and it would have worked as a straight character study. It almost works as both and almost is where the disappointment comes from.
A Good Audience for this Film:3 audiences come to mind: People who like WW II films, admirers of the films directed by John Frankenheimer, and people like myself who come running when they hear the name Paul Scofield.
2025 New To Me Film Update
I have watched and reviewed 3 films:
Films released from 2009 to 2024 Watched 0 Remaining 2
Films released from 1994 to 2008 Watched 1 Remaining 1
Films released from 1979 to 1993 Watched 0 Remaining 2
Films released from 1964 to 1978 Watched 1 Remaining 1
Films released from 1949 to 1963 Watched 0 Remaining 2
Films released before 1934 and up to 1948 Watched 1 Remaining 1
Around 5 years ago Allen Levi shared this song on you tube. It was April 27th 2020. We were about 6 weeks into Co-vid lockdown and Allen shared this song from his porch. I meant to share it last Sunday which was the 5 year anniversary of it's release. I was just at the end of catching up in the A to Z challenge and finishing the last week up. Now that the song is 5 years and a week old I'm sure it will resonate just a little differently than it would have last week at 5 ...
Welcome to our first post A to Z Challenge Team Saturdazzle of the year.
I am on the road today so I am literally phoning this post in. I am emailing this directly to my blog from my phone.
This morning Amy Charlie and I participated in the Northern Illinois Foodbank 5K. It was a lot of fun. We all finished in less than an hour. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to run the entire race without walking but I was able to.
In the A to Z challenge this year in the A to Zs of me J stood for Jester and I was in full jester mode at the race. Where my self designated task was to bring fun and merriment wherever I went. I would make jokes as I passed people and say things like don't these Saturday DMV lines get longer every year. When I ran past the 2 mile marker I told one of the many volunteers encouraging us along the path to ask me to tell her a Broadway themed 5 k pun when she obliged. I said 1 mile more and I'll be less miserable.
The Jesting did not end after I finished the race. I waited for Amy to near the finish line and let the audience in on the big reveal...
After the race Amy and I grabbed some lunch and drove to the Rosemont L station where we took a blue line train then a red line train to Comiskey park in Chicago. Now in fairness it hasn’t been called Comiskey since 2003 it’s now on it’s 3rd name change I’ll just call it Sox Park.
Today the White Sox played the Astros and despite getting 5 strong innings from their starter and scoring 3 runs in the bottom of the first for an early lead they lost to Houston 8 to 3.
This is not what brought Amy and I to the ball park today. Amy went because she’s always up for an adventure and I went for the commemorative Dick Allen bobble head.
In The Box
Outside The Box
Photo by John Iacano/Sports Illustrated
The Bobble head was modeled after the iconic 1972 Sports Illustrated cover of Allen juggling in the dugout in his first season with the White Sox. By the 1970's public perception was already changing about smoking. Allen was reprimanded by the White Sox for the incident. The bobble head is true to the SI cover except Allen is not smoking.
As I’ve said in these pages before, as recently as W is for White Sox fan, Dick Allen is one of the main reasons I became a Sox fan.
Allen was at long last posthumously elected to Baseballs Hall of Fame earlier this year. Several members of Allen’s family were on hand today for the celebration and will be in Cooperstown in July when Allen will be inducted into the Hall.
It was really quite a day.
The 2025 A to Z challenge is over. I finished. My theme this year was the A to Z's of me .
During the last few weeks of each year I spend a lot of time tinkering with the look of my blog. I made a text box called Me from A to Z. It had an attribute of me from A to Z. As I shared in my theme reveal the original 26 attributes were :
Amateur Parodist, Blogger, Christian, Daring do-gooder, Evangelical sans Trump Kool-Aid,
Father of 3 adult children, Giraffe lover, Husband of one amazing wife, Illinois resident,
Quintessential worker ,RITA (Republican in theory, anyways.) ,Sixty something
Teller of jokes,U of I Parent - ILL,Voracious reader, Willy Wonka Wannabe, Xenophile ,Yankovic enthusiast ,Zoo attender
I made the list , put it on my blog home page and kinda forgot about it. As I began to prepare for the challenge I ruminated between several ideas for themes. I thought about going without a theme
or even not participating and just concentrating on reading and commenting. Then I remembered the list. I hadn't even considered using it for the challenge when I created it.
As I began to prepare posts that matched the titles it became clear that some of those titles weren't going to make it to the final product. I have emboldened the attributes I didn't use in the list above and the attributes I replaced them with in the links below. For example in the middle of March I stopped subbing at the middle school I'd been at for over 2 years. So M for Middle school had to go. Others were so similar that expanding on them made it seem like I was being redundant.
This is the 4th year that I have been copying and pasting the same introduction at the beginning of my posts. I did use 2 variants of the intro this year: 1 for when I was posting on time and 1 for when my posts were late. In the latter I would say how many posts I was behind. I stayed up to date from amateur to Iguchi and caught up at Xenophile and was still on pace when I ended at zoo. I was late for a little more than 1/2 of the challenge. The funny thing is I posted on my blog on both the K and the L day which is where I fell behind. They just weren't A to Z posts.
Being behind didn't bother me too much. I was always confident that I would finish. It did impede with my reading and commenting on blogs which was the least I have ever done in all my years doing the challenge. I did get to more of that in the last few days once I caught up.
Something I did this year that really helped me get to this reflection right away is that from day 2 I built the index of the challenge on my daily post. So, it was a simple matter of changing the topic from the previous day from "A is for " to "A was for" and then copying and pasting the whole thing to the current letter. Today all I did was take my list from the beginning of Wednesday's post and change is to was for Z. I'll change them all back to is when I put the index on a page in my blog later this month.
One thing that surprised me this year was how many of my posts had political or spiritual components. I guess I shouldn't be so surprised since my theme was me and I do have spiritual and political components. I did go hard after Trump on 3 occasions and restrained myself from making it four when I was writing X is for xenophile.
There were many posts including lots of A, some of B, and all of C where I reused previous posts, pictures, poems and songs. Again, with the subject being me, it felt natural to share as many examples of me as possible.
A is for Amateur Parodist may have been my favorite post this year. It had links to works by 3 other parodists, examples of some of my older parodies, and 2 that were written while I was writing the post. I was especially proud of Amlodopine, which is a parody of Yesterday that starts with someone singing the praise of the efficacy of their blood pressure medicine and quickly changes into a rant of how Trumps first 100 days is making him more dependent than ever on the medicine. In my mind, the song became an homage to the old Sesame Street segment when Kermit The Frog would interview Don Music at the piano and after a little head bashing on the piano due to writer's block the lyrics of the song would change dramatically from the original.
I enjoyed participating in the A to Z challenge again this year. For more about the A to Z reflections click here. To sign up for the reflections click here.For the reflections spreadsheet click here.
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