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The_Most_Casual_Observer
Tulsa City-County Library
The_Most_Casual_Observer's Profile Shelves

The_Most_Casual_Observer's Completed Shelf

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Plunder of the Sun, DVD

DVD, 2005. Special collector's ed. Full screen
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Apr 19, 2026

Comment:

A silly but enjoyable noir adventure, the 1953 Warner Bros. John Wayne production has about four things going for it—director John Farrow’s inherent sense of entertainment, the fantastic location work including extensive scenes staged in impressive Mexican ruins, the striking Jack Draper black-and-white cinematography, and the winning appeal of the movie’s star, Glenn Ford, whose character gives as good as he gets. The 81-minute feature seems to have been at least partially inspired by "The Maltese Falcon"—there is a fat man, and an actor who plays his scenes as if he’d just sat through a Peter Lorre festival—and is standard gobbledygook about a treasure map that Ford’s character innocently comes into the possession of and that everyone else is literally dying to obtain. The film is no great classic, but it is too much fun to pass by, since with every advancing year, its own treasures become as valuable as the ones the characters are striving to obtain.

The Pirate, DVD

DVD
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Apr 19, 2026

Comment:

Not only is the 1948 Vincente Minnelli classic, starring Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, with songs by Cole Porter, a joyful romp featuring two of cinema’s greatest entertainers, but it is also one of the most colorful of all the colorful Technicolor productions, and on DVD it looks absolutely spectacular and luscious. Surprisingly, according to the DVD’s supplement, the film was generally a failure when it was first released, as hard as that is to believe now, primarily because both Garland and Kelly were expanding their range a little bit wider than audiences of the day were prepared for. But in retrospect, with the careers of those involved long since finalized, the movie is a true gem. Set on a Caribbean island early in the Nineteenth Century, Garland’s character is about to enter an arranged marriage with the island’s governor when Kelly’s character, part of a group of traveling performers, arrives and captures her heart. There is a clever mistaken identity device involving the title character that leads to several amusing comedy scenes and a satisfying finale. It is more than enough narrative energy to justify the musical numbers and even provide a satisfying emotional foundation for them. Kelly’s athletic dancing is transfixing, and Garland’s singing is transcendent, all of which are captured vividly on the DVD. The full screen picture has one succulent color after another, each delivered with a crisp smoothness. The monophonic sound is solid and worth cranking up the volume.

Love in the Afternoon, DVD

DVD, 2014
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Apr 10, 2026

Comment:

Some commenters are unprepared for subtlety in a movie, and complain about "an aging rich playboy seducing a young girl." They are missing the whole point of the movie, which is that Ariane has Flannagan wrapped around her little finger from the moment he lays eyes on her. Furthermore, it's been The Observer's experience that young women sometimes prefer the company of a man with some knowledge and experience of the world, to that of a callow youth with unlined brow and some athletic ability. Movies aren't here to present good examples for you to live your life by. They are meant to tell entertaining stories. You will notice that people watch movies about murders, and they don't say, "Oh, stories about murder are too cringe for 2026, now that we are all enlightened, and know it's bad to murder people." In addition, I notice a couple of commenters referring to slapstick in the movie. Not so! There is no slapstick in this movie at all. Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy, which may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from physical abuse and/or inept use of props. I'm surprised I have to explain this stuff.

Munich, DVD

DVD, 2006
Added Mar 24, 2026

Comment:

I wish I could find out what 1aa means by 'cutbacks.' I know what a flashback is, and what a cutaway is, but not a 'cutback,' except in budgetary terms.

Blue Moon, DVD

DVD, 2026
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Mar 20, 2026

Comment:

Richard Linklater’s outstanding 2025 real time portrait of Hart on the day of his career’s myocardial infarction, March 31, 1943, the opening night of the show Rodgers composed with Oscar Hammerstein II, "Oklahoma!." It is set in the famous New York bar in the Broadway district, Sardi’s, where Hart, played by Ethan Hawke, has retreated without watching the curtain calls after the final, “Yo!.” When he first comes in, there is only the bartender, hatcheck and cigarette girls, a soldier at the piano (picking up some cash while on leave) and nestled in a corner like a benign spider, E.B. White. He has conversations mostly with the bartender, played by Bobby Cannavale, but also with the soldier and White, and then, after a half hour or so, other members from the show’s production company begin coming in and milling about. He is waiting for a Yale coed, played by Margaret Qualley, the daughter of one of the producers, with whom he has had a flirtatious relationship spanning a number of months (the story is actually based upon their correspondence), and later they retreat to the hatcheck room and share intimate stories about each other’s lives. His goal is to become even more intimate with her, while her goal is to meet Rodgers, who is played by Andrew Scott in a perfect pull-away-the-veil transition from Drake. Eventually, the gathering at Sardi’s breaks up as various individuals head to other late-night parties and Hawke’s character, who isn’t able to score with Qualley’s character or the soldier, is left to find his way home on his own. Screen cards explain that he passed away a few months later, under the circumstances pretty much depicted in "Words and Music" (including his fatal collapse, which is also shown in "Blue Moon’s" opening prolog). The film runs 101 minutes. The key to Hart’s lyrics was his interior rhyming, sometimes to the point of rhyming one word with the second syllable of another word, and then letting that word’s third syllable begin the next phrase. Not only do many of his lyrics, then, come across as witty, they are subliminally witty, because the rhymes are heard even if they are not consciously recognized. American musical theater during the time of "Words and Music" was made up primarily of romantic musical comedies, at least the shows that tried to do more than just present variety acts and revues. Hart was content with this, because he was a master of the form, but Rodgers wanted more (he also wanted a dependable, sober partner). George Gershwin and Jerome Kern had created musical melodramas that verged on opera, and Rodgers knew he could do the same thing, especially after he got together with the more grounded and workmanlike Hammerstein, who could eschew wit in service of character and lyricism. Yes, what they created wasn’t operatic, but it wasn’t a disposable confection, either, and beginning with "Oklahoma!," they altered the standards of American musical theater forever (the closest Rodgers and Hart had come to that was "Pal Joey").

After the Flying Saucers Came, BookA Global History of the UFO Phenomenon

by Eghigian, Greg
Book, 2024
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Mar 19, 2026

Comment:

An interesting and even-handed history of the UFO movement, staying neutral on the question of whether UFOs and aliens really exist on Earth. This movement has been going on literally as long as I’ve been alive, and finding an account of what was going on behind the scenes all that time with people I have heard of in the news and so forth was entertaining. I can tell you, though, that there are no alien-associated UFOs on the planet, for the simple reason that it’s too far for them to travel. You may think it’s a long way to the moon, but that’s nothing. We’re talking about million-year travel times. Too far! We’re not going to see them, and they’re not coming to visit.

Lover Come Back, DVD

DVD, 2004
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Mar 16, 2026

Comment:

A LESS ELEGANT but relatively successful attempt to extend the dynamic that worked so well in "Pillow Talk," Rock Hudson’s character again manipulates Doris Day’s character into thinking he is someone else. The 1961 film opens with a succinct and, for its time, surprisingly accurate portrait of how the glass ceiling operates. The two stars play rival ad agency representatives. Day’s group stays up all night long to put together an excellent campaign for a potential client, but that same night Hudson’s character is showing the client the city’s nightlife, and he has the client’s signature on the contract before Day’s character can even get to her pitch. Tony Randall appears again, too, with a solidly comical effort as Hudson’s ineffectual boss. Running 107 minutes, the film then settles into the extended manipulation gag. Hudson’s character is not as joyfully wicked as he is in Pillow Talk, but as an extension of that film’s pleasures, the movie works well enough. The slapstick and repeat gags are reasonably humorous, and the conclusion is satisfying. There is also a reference to marijuana at one point, and the plot hinges around candy that acts like dope. As for the virginity myth, well, to spoil things, she and Hudson’s characters get married just in the nick of time, since she is on a delivery table about to give birth when they finally tie the knot.

Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?, DVD

DVD, 2006. Widescreen
Added Mar 16, 2026

Quotations

  • Rock Hunter: That's right, sweetie, I'm president of Rita Marlowe Productions, Inc., but Miss Marlowe is the titular head.

Borrowers, DVD

DVD, 2003
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Mar 01, 2026

Comment:

The wonderful 1997 fantasy film with terrific special effects is a delight on several levels, presenting a city that is an odd mix of present technology and past designs, and it moves seamlessly between depicting the standard human inhabitants and the finger-tall protagonists who also live there. The narrative is a standard concoction—a villain, played by John Goodman, has stolen a will and wants to tear down the house where the heroes, big and small, live—but it is filled with intriguing visions of life on a shorter scale and the creative joy of having the two worlds intersect. On a technical level, the narrative takes several big leaps to keep things moving and defies its internal logic at a couple more junctures for the same reason, but the fantasy is so well executed and so potent that few viewers will be put off by its shortcuts. It almost doesn’t deserve to be pigeonholed as a family film, since its action, comedy and visual panorama are as sophisticated as they are universally engaging.

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, eBook

by Christie, Agatha
eBook, 2012
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Mar 01, 2026

Comment:

The story hinges on an English custom affecting the witnessing of a will. The detection is done by a titled lady and her (not very bright) sweetheart. The merit consists largely in the maintenance of suspense about the small mystery of a name.

Beloved, DVD

DVD, 1999
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 26, 2026

Comment:

This adaptation of Toni Morrison's unusual ghost novel, directed by Jonathan Demme, seems to achieve the impossible: it spins one very strange supernatural yarn, yet it remains a sometimes ultra realistic slice-of-life portrait of a Black mother and her daughter. They live on the outskirts of Cincinnati in 1873, on "124 Bluestone Road." Oprah Winfrey (also coproducer) stars as Sethe, the mother who carries a dark secret about her family from the days right after the Civil War. To set the stage for the supernatural elements, the film opens with an 1865 prologue in which a furious poltergeist is at work within a house, hauling a dog across the kitchen, after plucking out one of its eyeballs and breaking one of its legs. Then comes a character study of day-to-day life for Sethe, her daughter Denver (Kimberley Elise), a former slave Sethe knew years before named Paul D (Danny Glover), and a strange young woman (Thandie Newton) who wanders out of nowhere one day surrounded by supernormal clues that hit that she is not of earthly origin. At first this newcomer appears to be mentally ill, but when she announces that her name is "Beloved" (the name of one of Sethe's dead children), it becomes clear that she is a ghostly manifestation, and a key to that horrible incident from Sethe's past. However in no way is "Beloved" a genre ghost story. Beloved doesn't pop in and out like a spectral visitor. She's solid flesh and blood and lives in the house, interacting with the others. Presumably she is a baby spirit transferred into an older body, for she struggles to learn the simplest tasks, and talks as if intellectually challenged. Newton's performance is nothing short of remarkable, given the demands of the role. How do you play a non-traditional ghost? Demme does not make this an easy movie to watch. Many segments are unsettling and past and present are intermingled to show that Sethe never escapes the memories that haunt her. Costuming, sets, and an intense attention to period detail recreate life in and around Cincinnati at a time when the Black population was adjusting to a new way of life. "Beloved" definitely has a heightened sense of time and place. Winfrey, Glover, and Elise are all excellent.

Green for Life, BookThe Updated Classic on Green Smoothie Nutrition

by Boutenko, Victoria
Book, 2010
Added Feb 22, 2026

Comment:

Notice the comment below from Mike117, in 2014, twelve years ago. It was his last, to date, on any book.

Bottle Rocket, DVD

DVD, 2008. Director-approved special ed.
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 22, 2026

Comment:

A somewhat contrived comedy about three young men in their twenties who go on an inept crime spree, it is rescued about halfway through when it turns into a sweet romance between one of the young men and a motel maid, the latter played with exquisite charm by Lumi Cavazos. Floating on the good feelings generated by the romance, the contrivances become less troublesome and the 1996 movie achieves the insubordinate comical tone it wants desperately to convey.

Profiles in Ignorance, BookHow America's Politicians Got Dumb and Dumber

by Borowitz, Andy
Book, 2022. First Avid Reader Press hardcover edition
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 21, 2026

Comment:

A heavily researched study of how dimbulbs of the past prepared the way for successful politicians of the present. Not just a recitation of anecdotes, it compares and contrasts the ignorant of the past with our current crop of meatheads, and shows how we came to accept and even celebrate the Sarah Palins among us as leaders.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, DVD

DVD, 1998
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 18, 2026

Comment:

The best sound effect in the 1994 Kenneth Branagh film is the crackling electricity that surrounds you when the monster is getting zapped into life. Your whole viewing room is charged. The film was generally considered to be a failure, and watching it we longed for stars who would have been less consumed by their parts, but the show is still fun. It has some engaging moments, particularly when Dr. Frankenstein cuts off the head of his deceased bride in order to restore her on another body. Branagh stars as the doctor, with Robert De Niro as the monster and Helena Bonham Carter as Elisabeth. On a detail level, the film has many flaws in its own logic but, as a modern costume adaptation of a horror classic, it gets most of the emotions right and has enough memorable sequences to seem worthwhile.

Why Didn't They Ask Evans?, DVD

DVD, 2025
Added Feb 17, 2026

Comment:

They probably did ask Evans. Half the people in Wales are named Evans, and the other half are named Jones.

Larceny, Inc, DVD

DVD, 2008
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 17, 2026

Comment:

Woody Allen’s "Small Time Crooks" could well have been inspired by Warner’s 1942 production directed by Lloyd Bacon, "Larceny, Inc.," in which Robinson and Broderick Crawford take over a luggage store next to a bank with the intention of burrowing under the cellar and into the vault, but are continually distracted from their goal by the success of the luggage business. Jane Wyman, Anthony Quinn and Jack Carson are also featured, and a very young Jackie Gleason has a notable part. The strength of the film is in the performances by the stars (Crawford, playing a good-natured dumbbell, is particularly fun) and the bit players. Running 95 minutes, it is a lighthearted, enjoyable concoction in which humor takes precedence over any plot contrivances.

The Cocoanuts, DVD

DVD, 2004
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 16, 2026

Comment:

The very first Marx Bros. film, "The Cocoanuts," is one of the very best. Based upon a stage show (with music by Irving Berlin—how come Ella Fitzgerald never did "Monkey Doodle Doo?"), the 93-minute film from 1929 is loaded with practiced routines and amusing slapstick, yet it is much less static than their second film, "Animal Crackers," from 1930. "Cocoanuts" is set in a Florida hotel during a land boom, combining crooked villains, earnest heroes (a poor architect has a vision for what is thought to be an unusable plot of land) and the Marx Bros. in the middle of it all, creating delightful chaos. Their routines are fresh, yet (thanks to the stage) as precisely timed as they are maniacal and seemingly free-form. To this end, the film also seems to capture the last live-like-there’s-no-tomorrow atmosphere of the flapper culture, so that its antiquity works in its favor—it’s so ancient that it seems new and different.

Animal Crackers, DVD

DVD, 2004
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 16, 2026

Comment:

Running 97 minutes, "Animal Crackers" is set in a fancy mansion, where Groucho is a famous explorer who has been invited to visit and there is some folderol about one of the paintings. The set designs have some lovely art deco touches and unlike "Cocoanuts," the film is completely isolated from the stock market crash or the causes of it. There are fewer close ups and inserts than there are in "Cocoanuts" (even the cut to Chico Marx’s hands fooling with the piano keys is nervously quick) and the film feels somewhat more confined, although it is still a highly entertaining concoction, full of reliable humor and slapstick.

Monkey Business, DVD

DVD, 2004
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 16, 2026

Comment:

The 1931 "Monkey Business" was the first Marx Bros. film not adapted from a stageplay, and it demonstrates that their antic humor was even better suited for the unrestrained boundaries of the motion picture screen. The first half of the 77-minute film is set aboard an ocean liner and the second half takes place in a mansion (and a barn on the grounds), but they’re all over the place in both locations and scenes zip from one set to the next to instill the entire film with the energy of the chases that make up much of its narrative, about rival gangsters, with the heroes as lowly stowaways and then party crashers who foil their plans.

Why I Am Not An Atheist, BookThe Confessions of A Skeptical Believer

by Beha, Christopher
Book, 2026
Added Feb 15, 2026

Comment:

Yeah, I’d probably be an atheist, if I had any interest in religion.

A man and a woman, DVDUn Homme et une femme

DVD, 2003. Language: French
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 12, 2026

Comment:

During a scene when Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant are riding in a car in the Claude Lelouch film, Aimée reaches down to turn on the radio. There is an old love song playing, and she giggles at its antiquity, but Trintignant cautions her good-naturedly, “You mustn’t laugh. It was enough to make you cry in 1914.” “A Man and a Woman” did not make audiences cry in 1966, but its fresh romantic energy dazzled viewers across the world and it remains one of the most popular French films ever made. But where films like “Breathless” and “Day for Night” have retained or even gained in critical vitality over the years, “A Man and a Woman” is viewed as a recherché product of its era. A love story, yes, and one innovatively designed, but without greater meaning, as if love and family were not the most important things in the world. Later in the film, the two share an anecdote about the sculptor, Alberto Giacometti, who was reported to have said that if he had to choose between saving a Rembrandt painting or a cat from a fire, he would save the cat. The film cannot be discounted because of its emotional directness. It is too relaxed and too full of excitement about life and film to be a cliché. Both characters are widowed—they meet while dropping off their children at a boarding school—and Aimée’s character is apprehensive about beginning a new relationship. Intercut with her gradual acquiescence are scenes of her former husband’s work, as a stunt man, and scenes of Trintignant’s job, as a race car driver. These sequences give the movie its little boy enthusiasm and counterbalance the simplicity and gradualness of its love story. Much of the film consists of long, lyrical passages depicting the couple simply walking or sharing space together, but these scenes are accompanied by Francis Lai’s pulsating score, and the music is so integrated with the way the story is presented that the film could easily be categorized as a musical. There has been no greater cinematic stylist in the past half century than Lelouch, and it is painful to consider how many of his wonderful films have never been shown in America, let alone made it to home video here. He wields the camera like a paintbrush, both instinctively and precisely, with an unbounded, visceral joy for what can be recorded and created with film. “A Man and a Woman,” though not his greatest work or his first feature, was his debut to the world. It helped define the excitement of the possibilities held by free-form moviemaking and, to viewers in America, the potential of a hip global culture. As much as any French New Wave feature, the film remains fresh and unique in its emotional expression, and to deny the validity of its narrative would be to let the cat burn.

Slumdog Millionaire, DVD

DVD, 2009
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 10, 2026

Comment:

Told in a double-layered flashback to explain how he knew the answer to each question, and why winning was irrelevant to him, the invigorating and 2008 Oscar-winning film explores the lives of three impoverished children—two brothers and a girl—on their own in India, as one of the brothers, still a teenager but substantially aged, participates in a game show and is then accused of cheating as he advances. Different sets of actors play the kids as youngsters, pre-teens and grown teens. Directed by Danny Boyle, the film celebrates the style of popular Indian cinema—which is more well known in Britain than America, but has still made its imprint upon world culture in the same way that Hong Kong cinema, Italian cinema and so on have—but also explores the realities of enormous urban ghettos in a manner that commercial Indian films rarely if ever broach. A good portion of the film is in English, but the rhythm of the dialog is different than western English and adds to the film’s often feverish pace. The kids are marvelous, and the perseverance and alertness of their characters sustain the film’s 121-minute running time effectively. The most intoxicating aspect of the movie, however, and the part that stays in your head for days afterwards, is not the music or a triumphant plot turn, but the way in which the game show host, played by Bollywood idol Anil Kapoor, reads his show’s signature line, “Who wants to be a millionaire?” The film takes something that could not be more banal and, like a fairy tale, turns seemingly tasteless and worthless straw into gold.

Dark Victory, DVD

DVD, 2005
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 10, 2026

Comment:

The classic terminal illness movie, in which Bette Davis’ character has one of those Hollywood diseases that renders its victims both eloquent and graceful right up to the final fatal moment. We all should die so well. Humphrey Bogart (with an Irish accent) and Ronald Reagan (not very convincing as a playboy inebriate) have supporting roles. George Brent is a little more effective in the principal secondary role as the doctor who treats her and then falls for her—the film achieves its entertaining dramatic hook through the efforts of the two characters not wanting to upset one another, how convenient the disease is and how individual sequences are structured.

America's Secret History, eBookHow the Deep State, the Fed, the JFK, MLK, and RFK Assassinations, and Much More Led to Donald Trump

by Harris, Steve
eBook, 2020
The_Most_Casual_Observer's rating:
Added Feb 10, 2026

Comment:

The 2020 book "America’s Secret History: How the Deep State, The Fed, The JFK, MLK, and RFK Assassinations, And Much More Led to Donald Trump's Presidency," which purports to contain “the truth behind the stories they don’t want you to know”, might perhaps be judged to be the epitome of 20th- and early 21st-century conspiracy thinking, and a potentially canonical text for QAnon-adjacent activists (were it not for such groups’ proclivity to suspect anything like this of being establishment psyops). The book promotes pretty much every significant and familiar politically-oriented conspiracy theory you can think of, and purports to offer e.g. conclusive proof that Sirhan B. Sirhan didn’t kill RFK, that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King, Jr. – the book instead blames (of course) the US Government, the FBI, and the city of Memphis of first conspiring to kill MLK and then cover it up – that the establishments of the Carnegie, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations were the beginning of The Deep State, and that John Hinckley, Jr., who tried to assassinate Reagan in 1981, was an agent of George Bush Sr. Also, of course, 9/11 was an inside job (controlled demolition), and so on. At least the book manages to utilize an impressive number of deranged historical sources, including paranoid anti-communist government reports from the 1950s like the "Reece Report," and embellishes them with wild-eyed speculation. The book was, of course, well received by other conspiracy theory authors.

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