Review of Movie The Man with the Iron Fists (2012)

If you like Asian martial arts movies, you’ll like this American one—all the artistry and violence you can stand.

RZA plays an American slave who was given his freedom upon his master’s death.   The local white men took his freedom papers and intended to kill him but he escaped to China. There he became a blacksmith and also found that there were Chinese slaves there whom he tried to help.  

This was a different role for a heavy-set Russell Crowe who looked handsome playing a gunslinger while mostly relying on a combination gun/knife to win fights.  He also came to the rescue of the people.   It is said that Crowe joined the cast because of his previous working relationship with RZA.  (Wikipedia)

This was a different role also for Lucy Liu as a brothel keeper of the best girls in the region.  Her character made a deal to basically sell the services of her girls to Ho’s boss, Silver Lion (Byron Mann), for a small percentage.   Turns out she hated Ho the Rodent Chief (Darren E. Scott) and his comrades.   In a twist, she and her girls tried and were successful in killing many of the Silver Lion’s men.

Eli Roth was a character in Wolf Clan #2.

A warrior Zen Yi (Rick Yune) also tried to help but was wounded.

Dave Bautista played a contract killer, Brass Body, who could change any part of his body into metal to avoid wounds which wasn’t fair at all to anyone he fought.   He could not be hurt.  I love Dave in the “Guardians of the Galaxy” movie franchise.

So glad to see Dustin Nguyen, Vietnamese, that I knew as a pretty boy in the 21 Jump Street tv series.  I did not recognize him at first.   In this movie, he wore heavy makeup which really gave him a rugged, handsome older man look.   His character was a leader of the enslaved Asian people but couldn’t make a move for fear of having more of his people killed.   The “figure head” Ho killed people for nothing and had them fight his best men for sport.    Eventually Nguyen’s character had no choice but to fight back.

Scintillating music and songs were so appropriately assigned to the scenes.

There’s an ironic twist at the end of the movie that I didn’t expect.

The Man with the Iron Fists was produced by Eli Roth, Marc Abraham, Eric Newman, and Thomas A. Bliss.

Distributed by Universal Pictures, rated R (more for violence/blood than nudity).

Directed by RZA, written by RZA and Eli Roth.    The music was co-scored by RZA and Howard Drossin.

I understand that RZA (Robert Fitzgerald Diggs) was the de facto leader of the hiphop  group Wu-Tang Clan of rappers and this was his directorial debut.   (Wikipedia)

RZA and Eli Roth wrote the screenplay.   RZA also directed the first episode of season one of Marvel’s Iron Fist TV show on Netflix (Screen Rant).

The onscreen title of the movie is Quentin Tarantino Presents The Man with the Iron Fists.  It was said that Quentin Tarantino mentored RZA in directing after RZA produced the soundtrack for Tarantino’s Kill Bill movie.  (Hollywood Reporter)

“One of the best bad movies ever…”  (LATimes)

I disagree.  It was like a very violent fairy tale or myth like the ones of old told to teach a moral lesson.  I loved the choreography and the CGI effects.

On YouTube there is a great preview of the movie done by LIGHTDARK FILMS, THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS MUSIC VIDEO.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Review of the movie My Salinger Year (2020)

A young woman, Joanna (Margaret Qualley) leaves her musician former boyfriend, Karl (Hamza Haq) and comes to the big city New York after graduating from college.  A poet herself, she is hoping to become a published writer of poetry. 

Joanna is hired by literary agent Margaret (Sigourney Weaver) to work at a publishing house, as a person to read/answer JD Salinger’s fan mail (which Salinger was not allowed to see) and to answer his calls when he phoned, thinking this would lead to a writing career for Joanna.  The only one nice to her at work was Daniel, a higher-up staffer member (Colm Feore).  In the movie, Judy Blume (played by Gillian Doria), who wrote more books than Salinger, wasn’t treated as well.

After moving in with a married couple of friends, Joanna meets a bookstore clerk Don (Douglas Booth) who writes an explicit manuscript about himself and wants Joanna to edit it for him.  They move in together with only her name on the rental contract (his idea).   

She never seems to have time to work on her own poetry because her job involved extracurricular activities like making sure things were delivered at odd hours in addition to editing her new boyfriend’s manuscript.

If Joanna stays with either boyfriend, she will always be second without shining at all—supporting one of them and not being supported herself.   The concert musician will want her full adoration of his skills while the bookstore clerk thinks all her time should be his.  There was even a very good dream dance number with the musician boyfriend which was the end to their relationship.

JD Salinger published his first novel Catcher in the Rye in 1951 at the same publisher and his last work in 1965.   Joanna answers his calls and he questions her and encourages her to continue to write her poetry every day.

I can relate to the relationship between author and first contact.   I once worked at a publisher where I loved talking to authors about their expected payments.   I also loved the small library of published works the publishing house had.   Although I tried to get them to do imprints of smaller works like a book of my short stories, they wouldn’t go for it, so I can relate to her situation.

Catcher in the Rye was the only novel written by Salinger.   I read it when I was a teenager and I don’t remember it at all.   I’ll have to read it again.   His novel has been banned many times over the years.   Maybe because the novel’s 16-year-old Holden Caulfield’s language and life situations were and are considered to be too mature.

Let’s not forget what our young people are watching today as animation:  The Simpsons where never-aging son Bart tells his father to “eat his shorts”; South Park where in one episode, grown men make their testicles grow so huge that the men can ride on them and collect disability; Family Guy where the baby Stewie is a literally super child who commits felonies, etc.  These are things I’ve seen flipping through channels.                       

Although this movie My Salinger Year portrays Salinger as a total recluse, Riley’s article says he went to church socials in New Hampshire.   “He was hanging out with people who think good fences make good neighbors and that people who come asking about folks that prefer their privacy don’t deserve much in the way of cooperation.”

Aldrich says that Catcher is an “incredibly educational novel which promotes moral lessons essential for high schoolers.”

Salinger’s worth at his death in 2010 was $20 million.   He made most of his money selling short stories to New Yorker and other magazines.

Screenplay written and directed by Philippe Falardeau.  Based on author Joanna Rakoff’s memoir.   The MPAA rating for My Salinger Year is R for language and some sexual references.   I must have missed those things or I am used to seeing just as much of that in PG-13 movies.

Sources:

Eleanor Ringel, “’My Salinger Year’—A Lightweight Movie Based on J.D. Salinger’s Literary Agency”, saportareport.com, March 22, 2021.

Peter J. Riley, “JD Salinger Really Was a Park Avenue Rich Kid”, Forbes, October 3, 2013.

Wikipedia

Elena Nicolaou, “11 Best Judy Blume Books That Will Take You Way Back to Your Tween Years”, https://www.oprahdaily.com, April 8, 2020.

Rae Alexandra, “JD Salinger’s Pursuit of Teen Girls Gets Renewed Attention After ‘Allen v. Farrow’”, Arts and Culture, KQED.org, April 2, 2021.

Haley Aldrich, “4 Reasons the Catcher in the Rye was Banned”, Bookstr.com, June 9, 2021.

“Catcher in the Rye Should Not Be Banned”, 123helpme.com.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Review of Movie Here Today (2021)

This movie is a hopeful, positive, and funny version of the descent into memory loss which is just one facet of Alzheimer’s disease.  You may say there is no humor in that subject, however the writer and director of this movie handle it carefully and artfully.  It uses a very different way of approaching the subject with laughter and tears.

Two unlikely people who are strangers meet for lunch.  Emma Payge (Tiffany Haddish), a young black woman, meets a white veteran comedy writer, Charles Burnz (Billy Crystal).   She uses her ex-boyfriend’s $22 raffle ticket and of course Billy is not thrilled with the idea that somebody spent so little money to lunch with him.

Charles is a comedy supervisor for a television show similar to Saturday Night Live with different actors/comedians acting out skits written for them.

Emma is a popular street singer who works with a small band which makes money from donations.  Tiffany Haddish did her own singing in this movie, singing funny songs like “Your Feet’s Too Big”.  She did a great job singing upbeat songs which drew crowds.  Her band was great also.

Charles and Emma start hanging around so much together that they become friends.   Emma and her band get an offer to tour in another state.  

Charles had developed a way to walk to work every day by memorizing the exact route.   But, one day construction blocking his usual route sends him into a panic holding up traffic.   His memory is getting so bad that he has to consult Dr. Vidor (Anna Deavere Smith).

Once Emma finds out about Charles’ inability to remember things, she decides to set aside her music career to take care of him.   “There are people outside blood can call family.” (quote from the movie)  This is the only part that is not believable to me for a couple who has not known each other long, but Emma is a person who gets along easily with most people.

Like in a horror movie I was hollering at the screen for Charles to “tell your children before its too late.”   He thinks that his children blame him for their mother’s death so he doesn’t want to tell them that he has been developing Alzheimer’s in the past few months.

I watched it on DVD 3 times.

Six other movies I’ve seen with an Alzheimer’s theme and loved them all:

“Iris” (2001) stars Dame Judith Dench and Jim Broadbent.    True story of English novelist Iris Murdoch’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease and the unconditional love of her partner of 40 years.

“The Notebook” (2004) stars Ryan Gosling and James Garner; Rachel McAdams and Gena Rowlands.  The movie goes from a young couple’s parents not wanting them to get together to their old age when the wife no longer recognizes her husband and he has to put her in a home to keep her safe.   But, she no longer knows him as anything but a stranger.  So he makes sure she reads the notebook daily until she remembers him.   But, he has to do it each time he visits.

“Away from Her” (2006) stars Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent.   A wife is in a living facility and forgets who her husband is and starts a relationship with another man there.

“The Leisure Seeker” (2017) stars Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland.   An elderly man with Alzheimers and his wife travel in a new RV until they realize that they don’t want to travel any more and take the situation into their own hands.

“What They Had” (2018) stars Blythe Danner and Hilary Swank.   A mom wanders off to do what she is used to doing.   Her adult children have to decide what to do about mom’s safety.

“The Father” (2020) stars Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.   An elderly father imagines living with a daughter and a son-in-law as well as himself living on his own.   Just when you think a scene is one way, it switches to the opposite way you just saw because the director wants you to see both sides.

Great sources:

Alzheimer’s Association of Greater Maryland, 1850 York Road D, Lutherville-Timonium, MD 21093.  410-561-9099.   I attended virtually 4 sessions presented by the Alzheimer’s Association’s (alz.org) 17^th Annual Pythias A. and Virginia I. Jones African American Community Forum on Memory Loss on November 6, 13, 20 and December 4, 2021, each 10-11:30 a.m.  A lot of experts presented expert research, statistics, exercise demos, nutrition talks, etc.   The sessions were not dull.

AARP, “Dementia vs. Alzheimers—How to Tell the Difference”, Kathleen Fifield, June 15, 2020, http://www.aarp.org/dementia/alzheimer’s

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Gone with the Wind Banned in Memphis [September 2017]

I enjoyed the movie Gone with the Wind (1939) starring Clarke Gable, Vivien Leigh, and Hattie McDaniel because I like movies that are historical, showing how people lived back then–the housing, costumes, songs, etc.  But I always thought that a four-hour movie was too long.   Perhaps the movie has already been shown in parts like a mini-series.  [Exception:  The Justice League: The Snyder Cut 2021]

As a Black woman, I say things have gone too far when we are trying to ban or get rid of everything historical.   I agree that no confederate flags should be flying over any municipal or federal buildings anywhere in the U.S.   However, you can’t study history without including every ethnicity and ideology.  This is what makes up our world history.  [Today, there are Congresspersons who don’t want Critical Race Theory taught in schools at any level.  According to Wikipedia, CRT is a cross-disciplinary intellectual and social movement that began in the United States in the post-civil rights era, as 1960s landmark civil rights laws were being eroded and schools were being re-segregated.]

I don’t have a problem with White people showing pride for their own history on their personal belongings. Remember, the Dukes of Hazzard–a popular tv show–had their General Lee car.   And, remember, the statues were dedicated during a different era, but they are still part of American history. 

[In the movie, Places in the Heart, the white hooded store owners tried to discourage a widow (Sally Field) from keeping her farm and growing cotton.   The Black farm hand (Danny Glover) was beaten and forced to leave.   But one of the store owners’ relatives, a blind man (John Malkovich) was also helping her out because his relative coaxed her into hiring him, recognized all the voices of the hooded men and shamed them into letting her alone.   I’m sure there were people in power over the store owners who directed them to threaten the widow.]

Since the statues are a part of American history, museums are the places for the statues, etc. although dedicated to slavery and prejudice.   They should all be moved/given to the Smithsonian system of museums.   [I suspect that U.S. President No. 45 missed the whole point of Black and White protesters being able to protest the statues without getting shot or bludgeoned in 2020.]

Like I saw engraved on a monument to the Jewish holocaust, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  George Santayana, 20^th century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism.

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Santayana

{I posted most of the above article on 9/4/17  to http://www.chicagonow.com/friendly-curmudgeon/2017/09/gone-with-the-wind-banned-in-memphis-actually-indicts-the-confederacy/

friendlycurmudgeon@yahoo.com} 

[bracketed information is new]

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Review of movie “Separation” (2021)

I can’t blame the wife Maggie (Mamie Gummer “Ricki and the Flash”, “The Right Stuff”) for thinking her husband Jeff (Rupert Friend “Hitman: Agent 47”) is irresponsible.   He always seemed to be in a daze all the time—his mind only thinking of ideas for his past graphic novel career to the detriment of his wife and young female child Jenny (Violet McGraw “Black Widow”, “Doctor Sleep”, “Ready Player One”).

For instance, at his wife’s wake, he sees his face on a family portrait catch fire but stands there stunned.  If left to him, the house would have burned down around his guests.  Thank God for his daughter’s babysitter Samantha Nally (Madeline Brewer “Hemlock Grove”) who put the fire out with a fire extinguisher. 

But I believe the father-in-law Mr. Rivers (veteran Scottish actor Brian Cox “Red”, “Red 2”, “Red 3”) turned the wife against her husband by talking in her ear all the time.   And the babysitter (opare?) always seemed focused on the father’s artistic talents rather than his child.

Every time the husband sees strange events like the demonic loose-limbed Marcel Marceau-type mime Nerezza (non-CGI uncredited Troy James) a duplicate of one of the characters from his old graphic novel and doll on his daughter’s bedroom shelf, he just keeps backing up and acting like it never happened and tells no one.   The father burns breakfast for himself and his child  when they both see something else strange.   But isn’t that something he should tell somebody?   A lot of these happenings he thinks are dreams, but it turns out they are not.  

The father runs away leaving his little girl with the babysitter with no explanation.  Taking the subway (demon scene there also), he went to his friend’s new job site.   He finally gets a job but stays away all day without telling the babysitter.   An employer Alan (Simon Quarterman “WER”) tells him there is a “dark energy about you”.  

The acting was superb.   I assumed they all did what the director wanted, but there is a disconnect somewhere in the script.   The little girl’s father couldn’t be that dumb.

(Spoiler) The villains:  the father-in-law, the babysitter, the dolls made from his prior graphic horror novel, mommy and demon mommy, and the father himself.   The husband and daughter finally make peace with demon mommy and all should be well.  But, when the mommy demon returned from demon town, she must have let other demons through.   No way should they have a sequel after this but the Marcel Marceau mime type loose-limbed horror returns practically begging for a sequel.

Directed by William Brent Bell.   Writers Nick Amadeus, Josh Braun.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Reading Expands Your Mind

Reading has been one of the important things in my life along with writing.   They both can teach and transport us safely to unknown places.  Some books whether fiction, nonfiction, poetry, children’s, etc. can add value to our lives. 

One of the eye-opening books of my life is John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath published in 1939.   It alludes to White people treating other White people criminally during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.   A mass migration began from Oklahoma and other states to California.   Along the way, we find why there developed a need for unions (who will pick a bushel of fruit for a $1, then .75, then .50, and before you know it your family has to pick several bushels at .25 per bushel.  Certainly not enough to feed a family after buying essentials in that same farmer’s store), tenant farmers who gave their lives to work land they would never own, and man’s inhumanity to mankind.  Even in the Bible, the Jews were instructed to leave some of their crop for the poor.

“Steinbeck’s book is historical fiction and was banned and burned by citizens although it was the best-selling book of 1939.  It won the National book award and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the Nobel Prize for Literature.   The most fervent attacks came from the Associated Farmers of California, and the book was challenged off and on into the 1990’s.”  (Wikipedia) Director John Ford made the book into the movie Grapes of Wrath in 1940.

Don’t be afraid to tackle a thick book.   The more you read the better you get.   Some books are now in audible form and can be borrowed from the library, my favorite place.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Review of movie Shadow in the Cloud (2020)

A young woman, Captain Maude Garrett (Chloë Grace Moretz), finds herself in a deadly hair-raising adventure.   All she planned on doing was hitching a ride with a combat Royal Air Force B-17 Flying Fortress plane during World War 2.   The chance of being on a plane which is likely to get blown out of the sky would be enough for me to pass up that trip.   So, obviously, she had a good reason for being there—a secret mission to deliver a satchel for the base commander.   Unfortunately, something else hitches a ride as well.

She was constantly trying to help the crew with the battle since she did have some flying experience but she was insulted at every turn, basically told to stay in her place as a woman.   So much so that the captain (Callan Mulvey) commanded that she be locked in the lower gun turret “for her own safety” especially after she mentioned the creature she saw flying in the cloud.  

The plane was in terrible shape that they all found out eventually when they tried to do things like get her out of the turret once the two battles started:  the one with the enemy planes and the one with the creature.   She constantly asked if her top secret satchel was ok, and she asked a certain crew member to keep an eye on it.

Because the crew couldn’t get her out of the turret, she had to fight the creature alone.   She was “Wonder Woman in fatigues”.  What was the creature attacking her?  It was the mythological Gremlin that is credited with tearing military planes apart.   It had wings like a bat, long teeth, long arms and legs, and a long tail.   It was nothing like the puppet-like creatures in the Gremlins horror movie comedies.

According to Wikipedia, “a gremlin is a mischievous folkloric creature that causes malfunctions in aircraft or other machinery.  Often, they are described or depicted as animals with spiky backs; large, strange eyes; and small, clawed frames featuring sharp teeth.   Originates in Royal Air Force (RAF) slang among British pilots stationed in Malta, the Middle East, and India in the 1920s, with earliest recorded printed use being in a poem published in the journal, Aeroplane in Malta, April 10, 1929.”

There were two other horror dramas about gremlins:  the Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 feet” with William Shatner (1963), directed by Richard Donner, based on a short story by Richard Matheson.    Also, there was Twilight Zone The Movie, “The Gremlin on the Wing” (1983), with John Lithgow suffering from aviophobia.

I first saw Chloë Grace Moretz as a daughter in the re-make of the horror movie The Amityville Horror (2005) with Ryan Reynolds; as a child vampire and the only vampire in the movie, Let Me In (2010).   This movie was re-made from the 2008 Swedish-speaking movie with subtitles, “Let the Right One In”, that I also saw.  She was also the goddaughter in the movie Hugo (2011).

Chloë also starred as Hit Girl in the Kick-Ass movies (2010) and Kick-Ass 2 (2013).   I also saw her as the werewolf daughter in the movie Dark Shadows (2012), as Carrie in the movie Carrie (2013), a Russian gang victim in the Equalizer movie with Denzel Washington in 2014, and the action movie The 5^th Wave (2016) about aliens taking over the earth.   There may be The 5^th Wave 2 coming in 2022 I hope because the first one left me hanging.

I got a copy of Shadow in the Cloud from the library but would have liked to see it on the big screen.   It’s action-action-action!   The director is Roseanne Liang.

There was a tribute to military women at the close of the movie!

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Caregivers Part 3—A Little Selfishness is Good

I watched Paul Bettany play a character who was raised to put only God first in the movie, “The DaVinci Code”.   A bishop took advantage of this man’s self-mortification by flagellation (torture of his own body) and assigned him in the name of God to kill the members of a secret society who believed that Jesus was the father of Mary Magdalene’s baby. Here’s a character who gave his all to God not realizing until the end that he had been used for nefarious purposes.

Like the penitent man in the movie, many of us who are caregivers give our all without thought to our own mental, social, and physical well-being, especially those of us who serve family members 24 hours a day and are not paid. 

I was raised to believe in the “Golden Rule”—Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.  According to Matthew 7:12, “Therefore whatever you desire for men to do to you, you shall also do to them; for this is the law and the prophets.”  (World English Bible) “For there is no man who would that another should act towards him with a double heart” (Augustine).  Today, it’s kind of been twisted into “do unto others before they do unto you”.

According to Christie Bates, an author on Medium.com website Human Parts Humans 101, “You’re Supposed to be a Little Bit Selfish”, March 9, 2021.   “So many of us neglect our own needs to avoid seeming self-centered, and then we wonder why we are so unhappy.  It’s a scale of self-negation (freezing cold) vs. selfishness (boiling hot).  A little selfishness puts us at an average 98.6 degrees for this example = self-caring and responsible.   There’s a whole range of normal temperatures/healthy ways to be responsible to both ourselves and others.   Self-mortification is just as self-centered as selfishness.

As a child, we only thought in extremes.  Too much or too little is a problem.   Maybe you were having a hard time saying ‘no’ to babysitting.  Either extreme of identification with self is inauthentic and can lead to stress and pain for you and others.”  [A summary–Please read the article for yourself]

I’ve heard of couples leaving their young children at home alone to go on vacation.   Too hot.   Never going on a vacation at all?  Too cold.   I remember from church that we were supposed to put God first, then others, then self.   That doesn’t leave much for ourselves.   I know a woman who alternates between getting her own hair done and getting her loved one’s hair done.   That makes sense to me.

A good thin book to read is Teraleen Campbell’s Carefree to Caregiver.   It tells section by section what she learned in taking care of her mother who went from staying in her own home to having to be moved to a nursing home near friends and relatives for her comfort but a distance away from her daughter/caregiver.   She explains what she and her mother went through.  She also leaves a page for notes after each section.   Ms. Campbell includes the things she found out along the way which would be useful for a caregiver to know.   We in the Coffee Tea and Me Caregivers Support Network just finished reading and discussing Ms. Campbell’s book over the past few weeks.   Her book is available on Amazon.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Review of movie, The Raven (2012)

If you are an Edgar Allan Poe fan, then this movie is for you!   But, if you are not a fan of “bloody violence and grisly images” (IMDb), you may have to avoid it.   This is why the movie is rated R.

I’m a fan of mild horror.  For example, I don’t like movies where people are killing people just for the thrill of it.  Rob Zombie comes to mind.

This movie was released in 2012, but I enjoyed seeing it again recently.    However, I didn’t remember that the Pit and the Pendulum (one of Poe’s short stories) scene in this movie followed all the way through slicing a man in half.  It made me jump out of my chair with each pass of the huge blade.   I thought the director would have left that scene to our imagination.  Poe’s short story ends differently—the man is rescued.

John Cusack does a great job of portraying Poe as a sad drunk mourning over his dead wife.    He hasn’t been able to write for a long time though he is supposed to be writing for a newspaper headed by Maddux (Kevin McNally Maddux of Pirates of the Caribbean, Downton Abby, Supernatural, New Tricks, Underworld, etc.).  

And, because Poe has not written any new stories in years, a villain hopes to inspire him to write more by reenacting Poe’s previous short stories at a high price.   Poe is the prime suspect at first.   The movie is a series of puzzles that Poe and Detective Fields (Luke Evans of Dracula Untold, The Alienist, Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Beauty and the Beast, etc.) must figure out.  But, there is romance and dancing to curb some of the violence.

The movie is fast-paced because they have to find his kidnapped fiancé, Emily Hamilton (Alice Eve of Replicas, Star Trek into Darkness, Men in Black 3, etc.) before she becomes one of the grisly bodies.    Her father, Captain Charles Hamilton (Brendan Gleeson of Harry Potter, Edge of Tomorrow, The Village, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, etc.), hated Poe’s guts even before his daughter’s kidnapping.   

The excellent villain is played by Sam Hazeldine (The Huntsman, The Hitman’s Bodyguard, The Village, Ripper Street, The Wolfman, etc.), but I’m not going to tell you what character he plays.   The ending is unexpected.   The director is James McTeigue.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

Believe in Yourself and Make This a Brand New Day of Love. The Rest is Still Unwritten.

These are songs of love and hope at a time when we all need them.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE, SWEET LOVE

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It’s the only thing that there’s much too little of.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

No, not just for some, but for everyone.”

Excerpt from Source:  Musixmatch.   Songwriters:  Hal David and Burt F. Bacharach.  Lyrics © New Hidden Valley Music Co., Casa David Music, Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd (Hal David).  

We “still” need love because in the last four years we seem to have less and less love for each other.   No matter what your religious or political view, there should be something that you have in common with another human being.   Try it!

BELIEVE IN YOURSELF

“Believe in yourself, right from the start
You’ll have brains
You’ll have a heart
You’ll have courage
To last your whole life through.

If you believe in yourself
As I believe in you.

If you believe
Within your heart you’ll know
That no one can change
The path that you must go.”

Excerpt from Source: Musixmatch.   Songwriter: Charlie Smalls.  Believe in Yourself (Dorothy) lyrics © Warner-tamerlane Publishing Corp.

This song was in the 1978 movie The Wiz with an all-star cast consisting of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, Richard Pryor, Lena Horne, Theresa Merritt, and Mabel King.  I loved The Wiz. Directed by Sidney Lumet who also directed other movies I’ve loved:  12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Serpico, and the Verdict.

You can do it.   Keep believing in yourself.  Don’t be discouraged.

A BRAND NEW DAY

“Everybody look around
‘Cause there’s a reason to rejoice you see
Everybody come out
And let’s commence to singing joyfully
Everybody look up
And feel the hope that we’ve been waiting for.

Everybody’s glad
Because our silent fear and dread is gone
Freedom, you see, has got our hearts singing so joyfully
Just look about
You owe it to yourself to check it out
Can’t you feel a brand new day?

Everybody be glad
Because the sun is shining just for us
Everybody wake up
Into the morning into happiness

Hello world
It’s like a different way of living now
And thank you world
We always knew that we’d be free somehow
In harmony
And show the world that we’ve got liberty

It’s such a change
For us to live so independently
Freedom, you see, has got our hearts singing so joyfully
Just look about
You owe it to yourself to check it out
Can’t you feel a brand new day?”

Excerpt from Source: Musixmatch.   Songwriter: Luther R. Vandross.  Music composed by Quincy Jones, Charlie Smalls, and Anthony Jackson.  A Brand New Day lyrics © Wb Music Corp.

This song was also in the 1978 movie The Wiz with an all-star cast consisting of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, Ted Ross, Richard Pryor, Lena Horne, Theresa Merritt, and Mabel King.  I loved The Wiz. Directed by Sidney Lumet who also directed other movies I’ve loved:  12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Serpico, and the Verdict.

UNWRITTEN

“I am unwritten
Can’t read my mind
I’m undefined
I’m just beginning
The pen’s in my hand
Ending unplanned

Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find

Reaching for something in the distance
So close you can almost taste it

No one else can speak the words on your lips
Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

I break tradition
Sometimes my tries are outside the lines
We’ve been conditioned to not make mistakes
But I can’t live that way

The rest is still unwritten.”

Excerpt from Source: LyricFind.   Songwriters: Danielle A. Brisebois / Natasha Anne Bedingfield / Wayne Steven Jr Rodrigues.   Unwritten lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Domino Publishing Company.

I fell in love with Natasha Bedingfield’s singing of “Unwritten” the first time I heard it on the radio.   Phrases like “break tradition”, “outside the lines”, “conditioned to not make mistakes”, “live your life with arms wide open”, etc.   The song could apply to writers or anyone living his or her life.   And it is a hopeful song with a great beat.

Merry Christmas to all and God bless us everyone!

Submitted by Rosa L. Griffin