I knew Nashville held itself out as the Music City, and the home of country music. I had no idea, however, that it was a place where middle America came to get tanked.
On Broadway, about 8 blocks from our hotel, is a riotous collection of bars, music venues, karaoke joints, t-shirt salons, and cowboy boot emporiums, all lit up like a Christmas tree against the Nashville night sky. Throng of red-faced, boot-wearing folks crowd the sidewalks and jam into the bars, swilling beer and listening to an unknown group — some very good, some not so — do covers of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jimmy Buffett, and Eric Clapton tunes. On our walk tonight we saw bachelorette parties, rednecks ready to brawl, and families with kids, all ready to take in that Nashville ambiance.
With all the neon and motorcycles and crowds out on the streets, it reminded me somewhat of American Graffiti. To complete the image, we saw a sign warning that there was to be “no cruising” from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.
What is 4DX? Basically, it sounds a lot like a theater version of a theme park ride. 
Annette Funicello, on the other hand, was not a significant historical figure. Instead, 
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I mean, look at these things! Just look at them! Multi-hued, horizontal-striped pantaloons, leggings, and tunics. Huge shirtsleeve cuffs and ruffled, lacy collars that look like they belong in a Rembrandt painting. Steel conquistador-style helmets with their sharply curved, pointed brims, burnished to a gleaming pewter glow and topped with bright red ostrich feathers. And they carry pikes for weaponry. Pikes!
Perhaps you went to the University Flick, on High Street. Or you went to the repertory theater in your college town. Or you went to see the odd, often old, movies shown by your school’s film and cinema department. Or, because you are just a perverse individual, you were fascinated by David Lynch’s epic Eraserhead.
I’m heartily sick and tired of this kind of sanctimonious stuff. I don’t see anything wrong with a First Lady participating in the Academy Awards broadcast if she wants to do so (although I’m not sure that, if I were the First Gentleman, I’d want to be part of the phony, kissy-face Hollywood scene). It’s not as if Michelle Obama — or any other First Lady — is expected to be pondering weighty affairs of state at all hours of the day and night. Even her husband, who unlike Michelle Obama was elected to his current leadership position, is not begrudged an occasional vacation, golf outing, or basketball game. Why should anyone care if the First Lady wants to spend an hour of her time appearing on an awards show?
Movie reviews serve an important public purpose. Movies are increasingly expensive — some theaters here charge $9.50 a ticket, which is real money — and a fair but cautionary review can allow you to avoid wasting your hard-earned cash on abysmal Hollywood dreck.
Scientists in Great Britain launched a careful search for the remains of Richard III, and they are convinced they found them
Still, Argo is a very enjoyable, high-tension ride. As Iranians breach the gates and pour into the U.S. compound, six embassy employees escape. They make it to the Canadian embassy, and then American government has to decide how to get them out. Ben Affleck plays a CIA operative who is trained to extricate people from hostile territory, and he concocts the idea of having the six Americans play Canadians scouting for locations for a fake sci-fi movie called Argo. The first part of the movie follows Affleck as he sets up a phony production company, buys a script, and sells the idea to his CIA bosses; the last half of the movie sees Affleck in Iran, rallying the six Americans and steering them to their hair-raising escape.
A lot of threads make up the tapestry of this movie. Daisy is introduced to Roosevelt’s curious family situation, with his domineering mother, his wife Eleanor, who insists on treating the royal couple in egalitarian American fashion, and Roosevelt’s secretary and occasional lover, Missy. There is the young, stuttering King of England, who worries that he is not up to the task of winning the support of FDR and the American people, and his wife, who is sensitive to any perceived slight and a bit mystified by the challenge of being served hot dogs and dealing with commoners — and Americans, to boot — in close quarters. There is the evident split in American views of the royals, with Roosevelt’s mother and the other Hudson Valley aristocrats trying to show they belong in the same room with the king and queen, while the average people want to show there’s nothing special about them.
Stripped of creature distinctions and deep metaphysical analysis, the movie is about a quest, and an unlikely hero. The quest involves helping dwarves who have been displaced from their home by an evil, gold-loving dragon, and the unlikely hero is a hobbit Everyman who would rather be in his comfortable burrow with his books and his pantry than camping out and fighting evil orcs, but who rises to the occasion when he needs to. There is a journey, which helps because it gives everyone a chance to see some stunning on location scenery. And, because it’s apparently a law that you cannot make a self-contained Middle Earth movie, this is only part one, with part two yet to come.
