Midnight Oil:Movies and More

In “A League of Their Own” (1992) IMDb, Tom Hanks and Geena Davis get the chance to shine while the boys are away at World War II. This entertaining flick about women’s baseball during the war exposes some interesting moments examining feminism in a previous era as well as relational dynamics between men and women and amongst women. Penny Marshall directs a strong supporting cast that includes Rosie O’Donnell, Lori Petty, Madonna and Jon Lovitz to a winning finish in a movie that most anybody can appreciate (including non-sports types such as myself).

View the video preview on TVO for “ A League of Their Own”.

Catch the video trailer of "A League of Their Own" (1992)

"Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955) INDb Spencer Tracy shows up as a mysterious one-armed stranger in an isolated desert town.  It soon becomes clear that people have something to hide. Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin and Walter Brennan are just some of the shady (or should we say "in shades of grey") characters that inhabit the town.  An interesting study of group dynamics and social problems in the post-war era.

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Cheyenne Autumn (1964) IMDb , billed as John Ford’s final Western masterpiece, is a film that pricks the conscience of North Americans about “the Indian problem”. Richard Widmark plays the conflicted Captain Archer in charge of retrieving the “delinquent” Cheyenne band who has escaped their deathtrap Indian reservation in the desert. Carroll Baker plays his love interest, a Quaker woman caught between the native culture and the whites. While Sal Mineo, Ricardo Montalban and Dolores Del Rio might not be entirely convincing as Cheyenne tribes people, they get the job done in portraying the plight of the native Americans in a sympathetic light.

This Christmas on TVO's SNAM, Barbara Stanwyck and Dennis Morgan whip up some silly and frothy holiday fare that's just right for those of us who are in the mood for some seasonal schmaltz.

It’s really easy at Christmas time to enter into some kind of a weird headspace that’s chock-full of ooey gooey sentimentality and high calorie nostalgia. We should all know better by now than to indulge, but for some reason, because it’s the holiday season, we just let ourselves go and run hog wild with the schmaltz and the schlock.

For me, a movie like "Christmas in Connecticut" fits in there somewhere in that weird headspace.

Read the rest of the Hunky Dunky Holiday archived entry for the review of "Christmas in Connecticut" on the Midnight Oil journal.

See also the Barbara Stanwyck classic "The Lady Eve" on the Midnight Oil Video Journal.

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Catch the TVO video preview for "Christmas in Connecticut".

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