At last I have seen a TV news-magazine story even worse than the documentary, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It is the 60 Minutes piece, “A Fair Shot” (4/4/21), a race-related survey of COVID-19 vaccinations in Florida which is immediately suspect. Initially it furrows the brow, it rings false, and then—well—it apparently gets stupid. Read the article, “60 Minutes’ Dishonest Desantis Hit Job” on nationalreview.com, and there are other Internet articles on the subject one can read as well. (Yes, Republican governor Ron DeSantis is the target.)

Tom Perrotta‘s “The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face” is surely one of the best short stories about baseball, specifically Little League, ever written.

Twelve-year-old Lori Chang is an ace pitcher for the Town Pizza Ravens. Happy Chang, Lori’s quiet, sullen Chinese-American father, always attends her games, including one the Ravens play against rival team the Wildcats. The coach for the Wildcats, disagreeable Carl, orders his pitcher son to hurl a dangerous pitch to Lori when she is batting, and after Lori is hurt by the pitch, Happy runs out to the field and pummels Carl until the police arrest him. Unexpectedly, Happy’s behavior leaves a smile on his face.

The story deals not only with baseball but also foul aggression. We learn that Jack, an umpire for the game as well as the tale’s narrator, envies Lori’s father after the attack on Carl. This is because of the smile—Happy’s smile over his just-deserts violence. From Jack, however, just-deserts violence does not come. The disappointed father of a probably homosexual son, Jack once hit the boy and broke his nose in an accelerating conflict, thereby driving Jack’s wife to file for divorce.

At the baseball diamond, Jack does something (which I shan’t reveal) meant to show his ex-wife and children that he possesses “the courage to admit that he’d failed.” Unforgiven, Jack is a man ever “trying to explain.” Perrotta points out he is unhappy. Not like Happy Chang when he was wearing that smile.

Bizarre, Bizarre (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Drole de Drame (Funny Drama, 1937) is, like Children of Paradise, a Marcel Carne-Jacques Prevert film.

Derived from a novel, it is a comic fantasy set in London (with French actors) where false accusations of murder drive a hulking botanist and his wife into hiding.  Everywhere there is a blithe disregard for authority and mores, but, to be sure, authority figures in the film behave inanely, hypocritically.  They can’t really be taken seriously, almost as though anarchy is justified.  At the same time, Drame satirizes mob justice, the mob mentality—as crazily unreliable as the pillars of society.

All this is handled with a light touch, with some high spirits, with odd details (multiple milk bottles left by Billy the milkman, Henri Guisol‘s Buffington constantly reclining on a sofa).  It’s too bad the actresses here are not very attractive—not even Nadine Vogel (as Eva)—but the histrions’ performances shine.  They make for true and engaging “funny drama.”

Also called Bizarre, Bizarre.  It can be.

(In French with English subtitles)

Showing on Netflix, A Week Away (2021) is an obtuse, unimaginative and unfunny Christian musical comedy. There are good inspirational and spiritual pop songs performed in it, but a well-written ditty about Christian life like Steven Curtis Chapman’s “The Great Adventure” deserves to be in a better flick. So does the felt Michael W. Smith ballad, “Place in this World” and, to a lesser extent, Rich Mullins’s “Awesome God.” These are all old songs, fortunately—they’re melodic—and pleasantly sung. But this movie, which is even quite unfocused, is a very rickety vehicle.

Reviews are by Dean

Mrs. Hyde (2017) is a weird French film, by Serge Bozon, which stars Isabelle Huppert as a bashful and passive schoolteacher persecuted by her students and disliked by her peers. Almost none of the teenagers in her physics class care about learning, albeit the one who gives her the most trouble—the disabled Arab boy, Malik (Adda Senani)—actually shows promise. Then, after she is struck by lightning, the schoolteacher, Mrs. Gequil, gains new energy and a strange measure of control over her students, Malik most of all. Soon, however, the magic ends, with Mrs. Gequil unable to keep herself from being preternaturally destructive. The film is a pessimistic dark comedy about European schools. Indeed, while it seems to expose a present-day culture of insults and contempt, it is subtly saying that traditional French society is on its way out and is taking French public education with it.

Yes, certain individuals will always show promise, and more, but mass learning is dead. Moreover, the character of a teacher is so vital to any success a school enjoys that it must not be broken down or subverted. But this is what happens in a metaphorical, outre way in Bozon’s Nutty Professor-like picture, with Huppert pulling it off like the great actress she is.

(In French with English subtitles. Currently available on Amazon Prime.)