{"id":562,"date":"2011-08-18T22:09:38","date_gmt":"2011-08-18T22:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/?p=562"},"modified":"2011-08-18T22:12:00","modified_gmt":"2011-08-18T22:12:00","slug":"glen-husers-movie-and-book-picks-for-august-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/2011\/08\/18\/glen-husers-movie-and-book-picks-for-august-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"Glen Huser’s Movie and Book Picks for August, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

My Book Pick: Miss Rumphius\"\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

My book pick for August is a picture book that I have loved over the years \u2013 Barbara Cooney\u2019s Miss Rumphius <\/em>(Viking, 1982). As a teacher-librarian for most of my life in elementary schools in Alberta, I made certain my shelves were stocked with books illustrated by Cooney \u2013 her Caldecott award-winning The Ox-cart Man<\/em> (text by Donald Hall); Emma,<\/em> chronicling the life of a Grandma-Moses type who takes up painting as an elderly woman; and her Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree, <\/em>about an Appalachian family struggling to enjoy the midwinter holiday while worrying about Dad\u2019s failure to return home following the armistice in World War I. Cooney, who died in 2000, left a heritage of her artwork in 110 books.<\/p>\n

Of all of the books she illustrated, Miss Rumphius<\/em> is my favourite \u2013 and it is one that Cooney declared connected in a biographical way to her own life. We meet Alice Rumphius as a little girl at the beginning of the book, helping her grandfather with his paintings:<\/p>\n

In the evening Alice sat on her grandfather\u2019s knee and listened to stories of faraway places. When he had finished, Alice would say, \u201cWhen I grow up, I too will go to faraway places, and when I grow old, I too will live by the sea.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is all very well, little Alice,\u201d said her grandfather, \u201cbut there is a third thing you must do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked Alice.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou must do something to make the world more beautiful,\u201d said her grandfather.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll right,\u201d said Alice. But she did not know what that could be.<\/p>\n

In the meantime Alice got up and washed her face and ate porridge for breakfast. She went to school and came home and did her homework.<\/p>\n

And pretty soon she was grown up.<\/p>\n

Miss Rumphius becomes a librarian, and then we follow her on her travels to faraway places. Growing old, she finally settles in a little cottage by the sea, but she worries about what she might do to make the world a more beautiful place \u2013 that is, until she realizes that the lupines she has been planting have been spread beyond her garden, making wonderful splashes of color. Recovered from an illness, she makes it her mission to sew lupine seeds along the roads and fields, around the schoolyard, behind the church\u2026<\/p>\n

A few years ago, I moved with my parents and my sister to a new home in Edmonton. My father was failing with Alzheimer\u2019s, and we were rallying to help look after him. The former owners of the house had been avid gardeners and, with the coming of spring and summer, I was thrilled to find the back garden lush with lupine flowers. Something of a sign, I believed. We grieved for my father\u2019s gradual slipping away from us, but the lupines reminded me that he had done wonderful woodcarvings \u2013 in his own way making the world a more beautiful place.<\/p>\n

Following my father\u2019s death, moving to a co-op in Vancouver, I was invited over to have tea with one of the elderly co-op members. As we sipped our Earl Grey I listened to her recounting her life adventures \u2013 as a little girl taken by her grandfather down to the docks to see the great ships, and then of her career of working aboard commercial sea vessels and traveling to faraway places.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a book I think you\u2019d enjoy reading,\u201d I told her as I was leaving. \u201cI\u2019ll drop it by.\u201d<\/p>\n

A couple of days later, she phoned me and said, \u201cIs there any way I can get a copy of this book for myself? I absolutely love it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So I gave her my copy. I think Barbara Cooney\u2019s works, like lupine seeds, should be spread.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>My Movie Pick: To Kill a Mockingbird<\/h1>\n

The impact that a wise adult can have on a child is borne out in my movie pick for August \u2013 To Kill a Mockingbird.<\/em> Atticus Finch also has his gaze fixed on what we might do to make the world a more beautiful place in which to live.<\/p>\n

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by the process of transcribing the written word into film. As a teenager in the days before video tapes and DVDs, I had very limited access to movies, but I read books about them and I tracked down the stories \u2013 which were available in the stacks of the downtown Edmonton library and read them in anticipation of someday being able to see the movies made from them \u2013 Vicki Baum\u2019s Grand Hotel, George Martin\u2019s Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, Samuel Hopkins Adams\u2019 \u201cNight Bus\u201d (which served as the basis for It Happened One Night), Richard Llewellyn\u2019s How Green Was My Valley, Betty Smith\u2019s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn\u2026to name a few.<\/p>\n

When Harper Lee\u2019s To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> was published in 1960, I fell in love with the novel and could hardly wait to see whether or not a film version might capture the same magic. I was not disappointed. In fact, it was hard to imagine a more perfect transcription of text to film. For once, the moviemakers seemed to get everything right. Could anyone else other than Gregory Peck have portrayed Atticus Finch with the same authority?<\/p>\n

Harper Lee herself, in an interview with Ron Newquist in the early 1960s, stated: \u201cI\u2019d never seen Mr. Peck, except in films, and when I saw him at my home I wondered if he\u2019d be quite right for the part. The next time I saw him was in Hollywood when they were doing tests for the film. They put the actors in their costumes and slam them in front of the camera to see if they photograph correctly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did Mr. Peck\u2019s test on the lot on the little street where the big set had been erected, and the first glimpse I had of him was when he came out of his dressing room in his Atticus suit. It was the most amazing transformation I had ever seen. A middle-aged man came out. He looked bigger, he looked thicker through the middle. He didn\u2019t have an ounce of makeup, just a 1933-type suit with a collar and a vest and a watch and a chain. The minute I saw him I knew everything was going to be all right because he was Atticus.\u201d*<\/p>\n

But it wasn\u2019t just Atticus that director Robert Mulligan aced in choosing his cast. It\u2019s pretty well spot on throughout and Mary Badham\u2019s depiction of Scout seems so effortless and true that, with each viewing, I find myself shaking my head with the wonder of it. I had a chance to hear Mary Badham talk about the film following a screening at the Turner Classic Film Festival in April, and she indicated that Mulligan\u2019s approach with the children (Phillip Alford plays Jem and John Megna plays Dill) was to have them \u201cplay\u201d scenes as if they were, in fact, \u00a0child\u2019s play.<\/p>\n

Badham indicated that she believes the film\u2019s enduring popularity resides in the timeless message it conveys about what it means to be human and caring about our fellow beings. The book and film emerged at a time when the civil rights struggle was at its most intense in the Southern States. I can\u2019t help wondering if it was, in its own way, as moving a force in the advocacy of equal rights and acceptance of all people as the marches and boycotts.<\/p>\n

A good part of Harper Lee\u2019s gift, that translates so beautifully to film, is the humour that we find in Scout\u2019s behavior \u2013 and in her voice. Working with teachers in training over the years, I have often shared the sequence in which Scout complains about her first days at school in grade one with the teacher insisting that Scout has been taught the process of reading incorrectly, insisting that she learn to sound out the words (even though she is already a fluent reader). Very funny!<\/p>\n

As a couple of final notes in my song of praise for this film, I have to commend producer Alan J. Pakula\u2019s and Robert Mulligan\u2019s decision to film in black and white \u2013 so right for the Depression-era period (and Boo Radley\u2019s ghostlike emergence at the end of the picture). And Elmer Bernstein\u2019s music \u2013 minimal and exquisite with a childlike simplicity.<\/p>\n

If you haven\u2019t watched To Kill a Mockingbird<\/em> recently, give yourself a treat. It\u2019s a film I probably view at least once a year.<\/p>\n

*You can read the full Harper Lee interview at: http:\/\/www.thebluegrassspecial.com\/archive\/2010\/july10\/harper-lee-interview.php<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Mary Badham and Gregory Peck -- Perfect Casting<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My Book Pick: Miss Rumphius My book pick for August is a picture book that I have loved over the years \u2013 Barbara Cooney\u2019s Miss Rumphius (Viking, 1982). As a teacher-librarian for most of my life in elementary schools in Alberta, I made certain my shelves were stocked with books illustrated by Cooney \u2013 her […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-glen-huser-movie-and-book-picks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":571,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562\/revisions\/571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glenhuser.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}