Allen Kopp – Page 48 – Literary Fictions

The Immortal Nicholas ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Immortal Nicholas ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The Immortal Nicholas by Glenn Beck is an unusual Christmas-themed novel that never mentions the word “Christmas” and isn’t any traditional Christmas story as we’ve come to know it. The main character is a man named Agios (Ah-GEE-os). He is embittered because his wife dies and then his young son dies through what he believes is his own carelessness while harvesting frankincense from trees growing on a mountainside that he himself has protected from intruders with poisonous snakes. He has no hope in life and wants only to die. When he is forced to leave his home, he encounters in his travels a young man named Krampus who is physically handicapped and who has been tortured by the Romans. He immediately takes up with Krampus and becomes his protector and, in a way, his father. His knowledge of frankincense and his possession of a small amount of the precious substance eventually leads him into the company of three “kings” (Balthazar, Melchior and Caspar) who are following a star that they believe will lead to the foretold Messiah who will save the world.

Agios finds himself in Bethlehem with the three kings at the stable where Jesus lay as a tiny baby. He wholeheartedly believes in the promise of Jesus’ birth and from that moment vows to protect Jesus, Mary and Joseph from those who would do them harm. He and Krampus follow Jesus around through the years, always staying in the background. He loses sight of Jesus until Jesus is a grown man and is going around ministering to the masses. Agios hears of Jesus’ ability to heal the lame and sick and he somehow believes that Jesus can cure Krampus of whatever is wrong with him if Agios can get him close enough to him. Agios and Krampus are present at the Sermon on the Mount but are not able to get very close to Jesus because of all the people. Finally, after all they go through to keep an eye on Jesus while staying always on the fringes of what is going on, they are there to witness the crucifixion. Agios is deeply stirred by the cruel death of the savior and goes away an embittered man. He believes that is the end of the promise that the birth of Jesus Christ gave to the world.

For some reason Agios doesn’t die but lives for centuries, to watch Krampus die and everybody else he ever cared about. While living as a hermit in the mountains centuries after the death of Jesus, he befriends a shepherd boy named Nicholas and learns from him that Jesus arose after his crucifixion, proving that his promise to the world was true and that he overcame death. From that moment on, Agios’ life is different. Despite his desire to not want to be near other people, he and Nicholas become close and Agios becomes a surrogate father to him. As Nicholas grows into adulthood, he becomes a priest with a very generous spirit and out of that the legend of Saint Nicholas grows, with a direct link back, through Agios, to the ministry of Jesus Christ.

The notes on the dust jacket tell us that Glenn Beck expanded The Immortal Nicholas into a novel for adults that started out as a children’s story. It’s simply written but smart and engaging enough for adults. It took a few surprising turns for me. When I started reading it, I didn’t know how a story about a man who lived at the beginning of the Christian Era could have anything to do with Saint Nicholas. I deliberately didn’t want to read any synopsis or summary while reading the book because I wanted to find out for myself where it would lead. Think what you will of Glenn Beck and his conservative principles, he is a very effective fiction writer.

December 19, 2015December 19, 2015 by allen0997

In the Heart of the Sea ~ A Capsule Movie Review

In the Heart of the Sea ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

In the Heart of the Sea was directed by Ron “Opie” Howard and is based on a non-fiction book by Nathan Philbrick called In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. It’s a true-life story that happened in 1820-21 and that thirty years later inspired Herman Melville to write his epic sea novel, Moby Dick.

The movie is structured as a flashback. The young author Herman Melville (played by Ben Whishaw, who was poet John Keats in Bright Star) visits a grizzled, middle-aged sea veteran named Tom Nickerson (Brendan Gleeson), who, thirty years earlier, at age fourteen, sailed on the whaleship Essex. Melville intends to write a novel about the Essex, but especially about the monster whale that was said to have rammed the ship and destroyed it, leaving its crew members stranded in the southern Pacific Ocean for more than ninety days. Nickerson doesn’t want to talk about his experiences on the Essex, but Melville (and Nickerson’s wife) persuades him to loosen his tongue and the two men spend all night talking about what happened, with Melville taking notes.

The captain of the ship, George Pollard (Benjamin Walker, who played Lincoln in Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter) and the more-experienced first mate Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth) don’t like each other very much. Captain Pollard, from an old navy family, doesn’t let Owen Chase, the son of a farmer, forget that he is in charge and has final authority in all matters. Pollard has promised investors that he will return with his ship full of whale oil (which might take as long as two or three years) and isn’t interested in taking precautions that Owen Chase believes are necessary to protect the lives of the men on board. What’s a life here or there when there’s money to be made?

They go out to isolated areas of the ocean and find whales and kill them (I know, it’s cruel), cut them open and extract oil from them. After several months at sea, they haven’t found enough whale oil to satisfy Captain Pollard, so he is willing to risk going to an area in the southern Pacific that he has been warned against. The Essex has an encounter with a giant white whale a hundred feet long, but the men are not able to kill it because it’s so big. (When it’s man against nature, man always loses.) They succeed in angering the god-like whale and it eventually “stoves” the ship, leaving all surviving crew members to toddle around in life boats thousands of miles from the coast of South America.

For those of us of a literary bent, In the Heart of the Sea is interesting because of its connection to Herman Melville and the creation of an American literary masterpiece, Moby Dick. It’s an old-fashioned kind of movie that could have been made in the 1940s or ‘50s (using the latest in 3D technology, of course) and for that reason it’s not going to be for everybody. (For my money, a true-life seafaring adventure like this one is much more interesting than a fabricated, flight-of-fancy piece of fluff like The Martian.) During the action sequences, the dialogue is almost unintelligible, so we can only get the gist of what’s being said, but that’s usually all we need. Christ Hemsworth as the star is not as commanding or charismatic as other male actors (for example, Tom Hardy in Mad Max Fury Road), but that’s only my opinion. Those considerations aside, there’s plenty in In the Heart of the Sea to recommend it to the discriminating moviegoer.

December 15, 2015December 15, 2015 by allen0997

Krampus ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Krampus ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

If you like Christmas movies and also horror movies, Krampus is a combination of both. A boy named Max lives with his family in their beautiful suburban home. As Max sees all the Christmas superficiality around him, he wishes that Christmas could be the way it used to be. When his creepily androgynous cousins tease him at the dinner table about still believing in Santa and one of them steals and reads Max’s letter to Santa out loud, Max has what my mother would call a fit and says he hates Christmas and all his relatives. That’s when things begin to change for the family. A monster blizzard hits the neighborhood, the streets become impassable, the power goes off, it’s still a couple of days before Christmas and the house is crammed with sickening relatives.

In Austro-German folklore, Krampus is a demonic spirit who is the opposite of Santa Claus. If Santa rewards you for being good during the year, Krampus punishes you for being bad. Max has a German-speaking grandmother who, we see via animated flashback, had her own experience with Krampus when she was a little girl during World War II. Max’s declaration that he is through with Christmas brings down the hideous Krampus, the antithesis of Santa and the opposite of holiday cheer, on himself and his family. Krampus starts out as a shadowy, hulking being that jumps from house to house in the neighborhood, and things only get worse from there. The nearly silent grandmother makes sure the fire is kept burning hotly because she knows that if Krampus enters, it will be through the chimney.

Krampus is full of creepy snowstorm effects (I like snowstorms) and demons galore, including murderous Christmas cookies. Besides Krampus himself (itself?), there is a whole host of hideous elves to help him wreak havoc. In the not-very-likeable family, most of us will probably recognize some of our own relatives, especially in the grouchy aunt and the nasty-at-the-core cousins. With a nod toward Dickens, Krampus resolves itself at the end in the expected way. We’re all going to wake up and everything will be all right, won’t it?

December 11, 2015 by allen0997

Slade House ~ A Capsule Book Review

Slade House ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

Slade House is a horror/mystery/fantasy novel by English novelist David Mitchell. There’s something very peculiar about the house in Slade House. To the casual observer, it doesn’t even exist in this “small English city.” The place where the house is (or was), however, has been the scene of several unexplained disappearances. On the last Friday in October in 1979, a middle-aged woman, Mrs. Bishop, and her adolescent son, Nathan, disappear without a trace. Then, nine years later, on the last Friday in October in 1988, a young, divorced policeman named Inspector Detective Gordon Edmonds disappears. Then, nine years later, in 1997, it’s an unhappy, overweight college girl named Sally Timms (along with several “friends” who are exploring psychic phenomena). In 2006, it’s Sally Timms’ lesbian, journalist sister, Freya Timms, who is trying to uncover some clues into the disappearance of her sister. We learn that all these people who vanished have something in common: they are all “Engifteds,” meaning they have a special “sense” that allows them to see beyond the veil of the unknown.

Gradually we learn the secret of the house, which I won’t give away too much here. There are two “proprietors” of the house and they are twins, Jonah and Norah Grayer, who are well over a hundred years old. They are “soul vampires,” but they won’t be satisfied with just any souls—only the souls of the rare people who are the “Engifteds” will do.

The secret of the house is ingenious: the real house that sat on the site was destroyed by German bombs in World War II. The “house” of Jonah and Norah Grayer exists in what is called an “orison,” which is a “reality bubble.” The people whom Jonah and Norah choose to come to them are able to find the “aperture” in the brick wall in the alleyway; the aperture, a small iron door, is a “portal” into the orison in which the house exists. Each of those lured in have (or think they have) a special reason for wanting to get in. Once inside, they are tricked into eating or drinking a substance called “banjax” that will make it easy for Jonah and Norah to extract their souls. (They must have a soul every nine years to continue to exist.)

Slade House is a fascinating, compulsively readable novel, spare and concise in its 238 pages. It’s also smart and ingenious, not quite like anything I ever read before—a new twist on the traditional haunted house story. Now, if somebody will just make a quality movie out of it that’s as intelligent as the book, that’s a movie I would certainly pay money to see. Just don’t put Sylvester Stallone in it.

December 9, 2015December 9, 2015 by allen0997

If You Don’t Tell Santa What You Want, You Won’t Get Anything

If You Don’t Tell Santa What You Want, You Won’t Get Anything ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

We lived in a small town with small stores, where there was no sit-down Santa to talk to. The nearest big stores were in the city two hours away. Every year my mother and grandma took my sister and me to see Santa and do some Christmas shopping.

I was little and didn’t know any better so I liked the city, which was so unlike the town we lived in. I liked the cars and the crowds of people standing on the street corners waiting for the light to change so they could walk across; the tall buildings and the roaring buses that had a particular smell of their own. I liked the whistle of the policeman directing traffic and the clang of the bell-ringing Santa on the sidewalk (not the real Santa, I knew) who was trying to get people to drop money into his pot. Of course, it had to be cold weather (the colder the better) and not raining, or none of this would have held any appeal for me. Cold weather was absolutely essential to get the feel of Christmas.

I was six so I still firmly believed in the myth of Santa Claus. I also believed that if you weren’t able to talk to Santa and tell him what you wanted in the run-up to Christmas, you would be out of luck and would get nothing. No presents, no Santa, no nothing. I already knew the world was a hard place.

Mother had lived in the city before she was married so she knew her way around downtown. As she maneuvered the car through the traffic to get to where she wanted to park, I was still sleepy from the Dramamine I had been given before we left home but I didn’t feel like vomiting, so that was the important thing. She parked in a pay parking lot a few blocks from where we were going and we all got out of the car.

“They charge a dollar now for parking,” mother said. “I don’t know what the world is coming to. Just last year it was fifty cents.”

Grandma helped my sister and me on with our hats and gloves and we began the several-blocks walk down to the department store where Santa was.

This store was famous for its animated Christmas windows. We stopped to take a look at them but there were so many people crowded around that we couldn’t see them very well, so we went on inside the store. I was starting to feel little-kid anxiety about seeing Santa. I might freeze up when I sat on his lap and not be able to tell him what I wanted. I felt my throat constrict at the thought.

To get in to where Santa was, you had to walk through the “Winter Wonderland” that was supposed to be the North Pole. There was a wooden walkway to get through it and there were plenty of elves around to make sure nobody left the walkway and tried to walk on the fake snow, pull on the fake trees (trees at the North Pole?) or try to get a closer look at the reindeer. It was all very pretty, with Christmas music blasting over the sound system, but I couldn’t wait to get through it and in to see Santa.

After we passed through “Winter Wonderland,” There were ropes on poles to keep all the people in a neat line. It was about half adults and half kids. Some of the women held tiny babies or pushed them in strollers. You knew they were too young and would only waste Santa’s time. Most of the kids, you could tell, were trying to hold still and not squirm too much. A few of them looked as nervous as I felt.

In about fifteen minutes, we finally came to the place where we could see Santa on his throne. I breathed a sigh of relief when I was actually able to see him and know he was there. There were still about twenty more little kids in front of me, though, before it would be my turn.

Santa was flanked by yet more elves to keep the line moving and keep any one child from taking up too much of his time. Each child was placed on Santa’s lap, Santa leaned over to let the child speak into his ear for about twenty seconds and then the child was removed in an elfin movement of robotic efficiency.

My heart was beating too fast as I got nearer to Santa. I tried to keep in my mind what I was going to say, but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to remember it. I knew my mother, sister and grandma were somewhere behind me, watching me, but I wasn’t thinking about them. I only wanted to get this over with.

Finally it was my turn. A burly elf with acne put his hands on either side of my rib cage and hoisted me up; I swung my legs over and found myself face to face with Santa. He smiled at me and I could see his thick lips through his whiskers. He breathed on the side of my head.

“What would you like for Santa to bring you?” he asked.

“Uh, I want a sled and a pair of cowboy boots and…”

“What else?”

“A Howdy-Doody puppet and a racing car set and some books and…”

“Yes?”

“That’s all I can think of right now.”

“Have you been a good boy this year?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!”

He gave me a candy cane, and the same elf who had lifted me up then lifted me down. I realized then how silly all this was.

After my sister had her turn with Santa, I rejoined mother and grandma. “Did you tell him everything you wanted?” mother asked me.

“Everything I could think of,” I said.

“Now, that doesn’t mean you’ll get everything just because you told him you wanted it.”

“How does he remember what people tell him without writing it down?” I asked.

“I guess he has a photographic memory.”

“He’s really something, isn’t he?”

We had lunch on the mezzanine level where you could look down and see hundreds of people moving around like ants. There was nothing like that back home. Then after lunch it was on to the serious shopping.

December 7, 2015December 7, 2015 by allen0997

Victor Frankenstein ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Victor Frankenstein ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

There have been dozens of movies with the word “Frankenstein” in the title, some of them memorable and some not. The latest variation on the Frankenstein myth is Victor Frankenstein, which stars James McAvoy as the titular mad scientist and Daniel Radcliffe as the person who comes to be known as Igor.

The Daniel Radcliffe character is a nameless hunchback who has always been with the circus, where he’s mistreated and locked in a cage. When a female acrobatic artist named Lorelei, with whom he is secretly in love, has a bad fall while performing, Dr. Victor Frankenstein just happens to be on hand. When he sees how the nameless clown hunchback keeps Lorelei from dying, he realizes what a talented (self-trained) physician the pitiful hunchback is. He arranges for the young man to leave the circus with him and thereafter takes charge of him. He recognizes right away that the hunchback isn’t really a hunchback but is suffering from an abscess on the spinal column with a huge sac of fluid. When he drains the fluid from the hunchback’s spine, the hunchback is a hunchback no longer and he begins, with the help of a back brace, to stand upright. Dr. Frankenstein gives him the name of Igor, after a “flat-mate” of his who, we later discover, has died of a drug overdose and been frozen in a block of ice by the doctor.

Igor soon realizes that he owes everything in his life to Dr. Frankenstein, who rescued him from his degrading life in the circus. (Therefore Dr. Frankenstein is, in a way, the creator of Igor.) When Dr. Frankenstein realizes what a talented, though self-educated, physician Igor is in his own right, he lets him in on his secret of creating life in the laboratory, thereby conquering death. The first example of his laboratory-created life is a hideous, uncontrollable, ape-like creature, but it is just successful enough to attract a wealthy investor, who, we learn later, has base ulterior motives. The wealthy benefactor also has in his possession a family castle in an isolated part of Scotland where Dr. Frankenstein and Igor might conduct their experiments away from prying eyes. From what source might they draw enough electricity to spark life into their new creation? Why, from lightning, of course.

Igor, in his transformed, non-hunchback self, reunites with Lorelei and she acknowledges that she owes her life to him and falls in love with him. They all reconvene to the castle in Scotland where the two mad scientists, in a sort of anti-climax, do in fact create a gigantic “homunculus” that has the potential to change the world. It needs a little more work, though, doesn’t it? It only wants to kill and maim. This is not good.

Victor Frankenstein is not one of the best movies of the year, but if you like escapist, period films set in the Victorian era about mad scientists who challenge the accepted order or things, then you will find it passable entertainment, better in the first half than in the second. If nothing else, it’s pretty to look at.

December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 by allen0997

The Last Days of Hitler ~ A Capsule Book Review

The Last Days of Hitler ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

One of the most compelling and improbable chapters in the history of the twentieth century is the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany in the 1930s. Hitler had no formal education to speak of and no military training (he had been a soldier in the First World War), but with surprising ease he was able to take control of the government, industry and military, and transform Germany into a Nazi state. His goal was to destroy European culture and create a new barbaric empire, with world domination his ultimate objective. His early successes made him believe he was the greatest military strategist the world had ever known. Everybody would bow down to him, he believed; he could do nothing wrong and was, in fact, a god in mortal form. The people who could have stopped him before he got started stood by and did nothing, but that’s a different story.

In 1944 and 1945 the Nazi empire began to unravel. Germany was losing the war and, in spite of the self-delusion of Hitler and his inner circle, there was to be no turning tide that would change their fortunes. The Third Reich that was supposed to last a thousand years came to a hellish end in April 1945 when the Russian army invaded Berlin and Hitler killed himself. The Last Days of Hitler by British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper is a fascinating account of the last ten days of Hitler and his inner circle in the Fuehrerbunker fifty feet below ground in Berlin. This small group of corrupt, inept and self-serving individuals who once believed they could not lose now saw that the end was near. Some of them sought to end their lives, while others ironically hoped to continue to serve in a reformed Nazi government that would survive after the war. They didn’t seem to realize that they would be viewed by the world as villains and war criminals and, no matter what they did or what they promised, they would never be able to redeem themselves.

Hitler was bitter at the end. He believed he was let down by his generals and betrayed by some of his most-trusted confidantes, including Heinrich Himmler. He wanted to punish the German people for not doing more to win the war. When he saw the end was coming and that the army that would arrive to save him was only one of his delusions, he envisioned a grand, Wagnerian “Twilight of the Gods” ending in which he and some of his followers would die a ritual soldier’s death. After he married his long-time (possibly purely platonic) girlfriend, Eva Braun, the two of them committed suicide, she by poison and he by gunshot to the mouth. When it was all over, he instructed his people to take his and Eva’s bodies outside and burn them with large quantities of gasoline so that his body would never be displayed, vilified or exploited by the enemy. Before his death he was able to envision, or at least to believe possible, a rebirth of Nazism with himself as its ritual, martyred head. The scariest man in the world is the megalomaniac who believes he can do no wrong.

The Last Days of Hitler is a readable 270 pages, focusing on the end of the Nazi dream (a dream for a few and a nightmare for millions of others). The end was inevitable from the beginning, and the fact that it took place in a hole in the ground in Berlin is altogether fitting and appropriate. In the history of the world, dictators are successful in the beginning, if they are successful at all, but they never last. There is no such thing as a dictatorial government lasting a thousand years. Dictators always come crashing down, done in by their own hubris and corruption or by the belief in their own invincibility.

December 2, 2015December 2, 2015 by allen0997

Brooklyn ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Brooklyn ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Brooklyn is a small movie, an “art film,” set in, you guessed it, Brooklyn, New York, in the early 1950s. Saoirse Ronan (who was in Atonement, The Lovely Bones and Grand Budapest Hotel) plays Eilis (pronounced AY-lish), a sweet, decent Irish girl who leaves her devoted sister, Rose, and her widowed mother and goes to America in search of a better life. She is seasick on the boat going over because nobody bothered to tell her she shouldn’t eat on the first day and, once she gets to America, she finds it a disappointment. She lives in a rooming house with several other girls and a bossy landlady named Mrs. Kehoe (Julie Walters) who takes it upon herself to provide moral instruction for the girls. The landlady likes Eilis, though, and after a while she gives her the best room with its own entrance.

Eilis experiences acute homesickness in her strange new world and is unhappy. She gets tearful letters from her sister, Rose, but they don’t help much. She works as a saleslady in a department store and has a hard time making the customers feel important so they’ll keep coming back. She doesn’t want to spend her life behind a sales counter so she goes to night school a couple nights a week with the thought of someday becoming an accountant. Soon she meets Tony (Emory Cohen), a sweet, decent Brooklyn boy who is a plumber. Eilis and Tony fall in love and this is when her unhappy life begins to take on a different hue. Things go along smoothly for her until she gets word that her sister, Rose, has died back in Ireland of an undisclosed ailment. Eilis is heartbroken because she can’t be there for the funeral. She decides to go soon after Rose’s death and see her bereft mother, who isn’t very cheerful to be around. Before she leaves Brooklyn, though, her boyfriend Tony insists that she marry him so she’ll be sure and come back.

When Eilis goes back to Ireland for what is supposed to be a brief visit, she doesn’t tell anybody she married Tony back in America. Her mother and her old friends begin to expect that she’s back to stay and won’t want to return, since her mother now has no one left but her. A boy in Ireland named Jim Farrell (Domhnall Gleason, who was in Anna Karenina and Unbroken) becomes interested in her. She likes him but doesn’t want to encourage him too much because she’s secretly married. Then an accounting job opens up for her that she can have on a permanent basis if she’s willing to stay. Ireland suddenly seems so much more appealing than it did before and she is faced with a dilemma: will she stay in Ireland where things are finally working out for her, or will she return to her husband in Brooklyn?

Brooklyn is about the immigrant experience and about finding oneself. It is like the period in which in is set, the 1950s: sweet and innocent and so much different from what life is like now. Like all art movies, it is for a “niche” audience, so it’s not for everybody. If you’re looking for laughs or thrills, you won’t find them here, unless it’s the thrill of solid storytelling.

November 28, 2015November 28, 2015 by allen0997

Looks Like Wally Fay

Looks Like Wally Fay ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

“Did you get a good look at the man?” Officer Miggles asked.

“Oh, yes,” Miss Dragonette said.

“Can you describe him for me?”

“Well, he was kind of heavy-set without being what I would call fat, if you know what I mean.”

“So he was moderately overweight?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Did you notice anything else about him? The color of his hair?”

“He was wearing a hat so I couldn’t see his hair. I would imagine it would be dark, though. Underneath the hat.”

“How tall was he?”

“Rather on the tall side. About six feet and one inch, I’d say.”

“What was he wearing?”

“A long brown topcoat that came down to his ankles. Cashmere, I think.”

“Cashmere?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Can you tell me anything else about him?”

“He was wearing a brown tie with little yellow birds on it, like parrots.”

“All right. How old would you say he was?”

“If I had to guess, I’d guess late thirties. Thirty-eight or thirty-nine.”

“How would you describe his face?”

“Well, let me think, now. He needed a shave. I did notice that right off.”

“So he had stubble on his face.”

“Yes, dark stubble. The color of the stubble on his face was what made me think he would have dark hair, even though I couldn’t see his hair because of the hat he was wearing.”

“Can you tell me anything else about his face?”

“He looked like that actor in that movie about the woman with a spoiled daughter who shoots the woman’s husband.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, ma’am.”

“I know! It was Joan Crawford!”

“So, the man looked like Joan Crawford?”

“No! It was a Joan Crawford movie. The man looked like one of the actors in the movie.”

“Do you know the actor’s name?”

“No, I can’t think of it offhand. It wasn’t the playboy who was Joan Crawford’s second husband and it wasn’t the first husband, either. It was the other man. The one in business with Joan Crawford’s first husband.”

“Okay, ma’am. I don’t think we’re making much progress here.”

“I remember now! His name was Wally Fay.”

“Whose name?”

“The man in the movie with Joan Crawford. The name of the character he played was Wally Fay. I can’t think of his real name, though. It’ll come to me later, I’m sure.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t much help.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Can you tell me anything else about him at all?”

“He was in another movie where he played Paul Newman’s brother.”

“No! Can you tell me anything else about the man who fired the gun?”

“Paul Newman was married to Elizabeth Taylor and he had this brother they called Gooper. I suppose that was a nickname, though.”

“I don’t need to hear about a movie.”

“Gooper was married to a coarse fat woman named May. She and Gooper had a lot of little kids, and Paul Newman’s wife, the character played by Elizabeth Taylor, didn’t much care for them because they made so much noise.”

“That won’t help us to catch the man we’re looking for, ma’am.”

“Well, I’m trying to remember! I’m cooperating with you. It seems the least you can do is be patient and polite.”

“I’m sorry if I seem impatient but I don’t need to hear about any movie.”

“Where was I? Oh, yes. Paul Newman and his brother Gooper had a rich old father who didn’t like anybody in his family. Well, the entire family was gathered because the father had just found out he had a fatal disease and the two sons—especially Gooper—were worried about who was going to inherit the estate. It was in the South, somewhere. Mississippi, I think.”

“Okay, that’s enough about movies. Can you describe for me what you saw the man do?”

“Well, I was just walking along the sidewalk, minding my own business, on my way to buy a new pair of shoes. I heard a commotion in the street and I stopped to see what it was. I saw a bunch of police cars with flashing lights. It seemed to be something terribly important, but I didn’t know what it was.”

“Then what happened?”

“A bunch of people had gathered along the sidewalk to watch, but I stayed back. That’s when I noticed the man in the cashmere coat come out of an alleyway.”

“What made you notice him?”

“He just stood there, looking very dignified. He wasn’t trying to elbow in to get a closer look, the way the other people were. He just looked straight ahead as though in a trance or something.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, after all the police cars had passed with their lights going, I saw the big black car of the governor. I could see him in the car smiling and waving—I recognized him from his pictures—and I knew then what all the commotion was about. All the people were trying to get in to get a closer look at him.”

“So you didn’t know until that moment that the governor was going to be visiting here that day?”

“No. Why should I?”

“Don’t you read the newspapers? Don’t you watch the news on television?”

“Never.”

“Go on.”

“When the car carrying the governor came about even with where I was standing on the sidewalk, the man in the cashmere coat took a few steps forward.”

“Toward the car?”

“That’s right.”

“Then what did he do?”

“I looked away for a moment and that’s when I heard the gunshots.”

“How many gunshots?”

“Three, I think. Some of the people screamed or ducked down as if they thought they were going to be shot, but I wasn’t afraid because I saw where the bullets came from and I knew they weren’t directed at me.”

“All right. Then what?”

“After the man fired the shots, he just simply disappeared.”

“People don’t disappear.”

“I know they don’t, but that’s the way it seemed to me. He was there and then he wasn’t.”

“Okay. Then what?”

“The governor’s car stopped and all the police cars stopped and everybody was running around trying to find out where the bullets came from. There were more people than ever now crowding around to get a better view. You know what people are like.”

“I suppose I do.”

“Well, the police spotted me standing on the sidewalk and, well, I guess it seemed to them that the bullets had come from about where I was standing, so they asked me if I had seen anything and I said I had and that’s when all these questions started. Can I go now? I’m feeling a little shaky after all the excitement.”

“It seems you were the only one who saw the man in the cashmere coat.”

“Yes, that’s because I was the only one standing back where he was standing. Everybody else was crowding toward the front.”

“As the only witness, you’ll need to make yourself available for further questioning.”

“Please, I’d rather you kept me out of this, if you don’t mind.”

After Office Miggles took her name and address, Miss Dragonette continued two blocks up the street and stepped off the curb between two parked cars. Looking around to make sure she wasn’t being observed, she took the gun out of her purse and threw it down a storm drain from which could be heard the sound of rushing water.

Satisfied that she wasn’t seen, she snapped her purse shut smartly and crossed the sidewalk to a store window where two high-fashion female mannequins in fur coats stood side by side. She looked into the face of the mannequin on the right and returned the artificial smile. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to make your acquaintance,” she said before continuing on her way.

November 27, 2015March 20, 2016 by allen0997

Bridge of Spies ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Bridge of Spies ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

In the 1950s and ‘60s, the United States and the Soviet Union are at war. It isn’t the kind of war that’s waged on a battlefield, but a war of intelligence. Both sides are desperately trying to get military and strategic superiority through secret information that has to be stolen or gained surreptitiously by spies. It is a game of one-upmanship: If you can steal our secrets, we can steal yours.

In 1957 American agents capture a Soviet spy named Rudolf Abel (played by Mark Rylance) in Brooklyn. He isn’t what you would expect a spy to be. He is in his mid-fifties, soft-spoken, self-effacing and an artist who paints pictures. When a Brooklyn lawyer named Jim Donovan (Tom Hanks) takes on the unpopular job of defending Rudolf Abel (on the theory that everybody, no matter what they’ve done, is entitled to due process and a fair trial), the two men become unlikely friends. When Abel is tried and found guilty, the popular sentiment is to send him to the electric chair, but Jim Donovan argues, successfully, that Abel might be used as a bargaining tool in the event that the Soviets capture an American spy.

American pilots are at this time flying spy missions over the Soviet Union in U2s. The U2 flies at 70,000 feet and is supposed to be undetectable, but one of them is shot down and the pilot, Gary Francis Powers, is taken prisoner. The Soviets hope to get all the valuable information they can from him before they let him go. The American side proposes a spy swap: we’ll give you Rudolf Abel if you give us Gary Francis Powers.

Bridge of Spies is about the negotiations between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to swap one spy for another, which turns out to be a delicate balancing act and one that might never come off, even when it seems it will. The Soviets, after all, are as tricky as they are allowed to be and don’t always play by American rules. Jim Donovan, the lawyer who defended Rudolf Abel, is the unofficial negotiator for the American government without being employed by the government in any capacity.

The spy swap is further complicated by the capture of an American college student in East Berlin named Frederic Pryor, just when the wall is being built. He’s in a very bad place at a bad time; the Soviets believe he is a spy and are in no hurry to release him. The American negotiator in the Abel-Powers spy swap makes the release of Frederic Pryor a condition of the trade. Will the Soviets comply, or will they engage in some of their nasty Cold War games?

Bridge of Spies is a weighty movie (as opposed to fluffy or brainless) on a weighty subject, so, if you’re looking for laughs, this is probably not what you’re looking for. It’s a “prestige” picture, directed by Steven Spielberg, the most famous of all current movie directors. (It’s interesting that Joel and Ethan Coen wrote the screen play.) It’s a thoroughly satisfying movie, beautifully made in every detail, for the serious-minded among us. Talky at times but talking the talk that is worth hearing. You’re looking at a man who likes talking to a man who likes to talk.

November 23, 2015November 23, 2015 by allen0997