There aren’t many songs for Susan B. Anthony Day so I guess Sister Suffragette from Mary Poppins will have to suffice! This song is about the struggle of women to get the vote in England so it mentions Emmeline Pankhurst instead of Susan B. Anthony.
In America, the 19th Amendment, guaranteeing all women the right to vote, was ratified in 1920. Thank you, Susan B. Anthony!
Unknown Artist
Today is Susan B. Anthony Day and today’s scene that I love is one that she would have appreciated. In this scene from 1994’s Little Women (the best film version of Little Women in my personal opinion), Jo (Winona Ryder) argues for the right of women to vote.
4 Or More Shots From 4 Or More Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!
As a photographer, I love a good silhouette shot. Here are some more of my favorites.
4 Shots From 4 Films
Nosferatu (1922, Dir. by F.W. Murnau)
Gone With The Wind (1939, Dir. by Victor Fleming)
The Exorcist (1973, Dir by William Friedkin)
Saving Private Ryan (1998, Dir. by Steven Spielberg)
by Erin Nicole
Happy Day after Valentine’s Day!
Today’s music video of the day is the latest from the great Black Keys!
Enjoy!
Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Saved By The Bell, which ran on NBC from 1989 to 1993. The entire show is currently streaming on Prime and Tubi!
This episode, a select few are getting married.
Episode 1.12 “The Mamas and the Papas”
(Dir by Don Barnhart, originally aired on November 11th, 1989)
For a class project, the students are all spending a week seeing what it’s like to be married. What’s odd is that there are only three couples despite the fact that there are a bunch of other students in the class. Basically, six people are taking part in the project and the rest of the class is just there to watch. That sounds like an incredibly boring week for the rest of the class but whatever.
Zack has been paired up with Kelly. Slater has been paired up Jessie. Lisa has been paired up with Screech. When Lisa complains about having to be Screech’s wife, Mr. Belding says that the couples were selected alphabetically. However, if that were true, Screech Powers would be married to Jessie Spano and A.C. Slater would be married to Lisa Turtle. Seriously, Mr. Belding’s a liar. How much did Screech pay him?
Lisa starts to twitch violently whenever Screech is near. When Screech announce that he’s moving into her bedroom, she nearly has a seizure and, quite frankly, I don’t blame her. This is a terrible class project. Because the project is putting Lisa’s health at risk, she is allowed to annul her marriage to Screech. Yay! Instead, she is reassigned to be Slater and Jessie’s daughter while Screech becomes Zack and Kelly’s son. When Kelly sees how negatively Zack reacts to being Screech’s father, she wonders if he’s the man to whom she wants to be fake married.
The stuff with Kelly and Zack and Lisa and Screech is pretty dumb. Slater and Jessie is where the action’s at. This is the first episode to really establish that Slater is a sexist pig and the Jessie is a straw feminist. Jessie wants to keep her maiden name. Jessie wants to have a job outside of the home. Jessie feels that she should be an equal partner in the marriage. What’s funny is that I agree with Jessie on all of these matters and yet I still laughed whenever Slater said, “Oink oink, baby.” That’s largely due to the fact that Jessie was written to be so strident and shrill that her feminism and her politics often felt rather performative. Slater may have been a chauvinist but at least he was honest about it and he was loyal to his friends. Plus, he was cute. (It’s high school, folks. People are shallow in high school.)
This episode ends with Jessie apologizing to Mr. Belding for not being able to make her marriage to Slater work. Belding says that sometimes, two people just aren’t meant to be together and there’s no shame in that. (As a child of divorced parents, I always appreciated the fact that this episode was honest about the fact that not every marriage can be saved.) Zack and Kelly’s marriage survives, at least until the project ends.
This episode …. actually, it really wasn’t that bad. By the standards of Saved By The Bell, it was actually one of their better episodes. As a general rule, the more time that is spent with Jessie and Slater fighting, the better the episode. Still, forcing Lisa to marry Screech …. that’s just mean.
The Winter Olympics (All week, Peacock and NBC)
I wrote about Korey and Cory this week. On Tuesday, I watched as they won the Silver Medal in a match with Sweden and I have to admit that I was depressed for the rest of the day. That’s nothing against the Swedish team. They did a good job and they earned the win. It’s just that I had gotten so invested in Korey and Cory that it was hard for me to accept that 1) it was over and 2) it ended with them coming in second.
I’ve watched the Olympics off-and-on since then but I have to admit none of the other athletes have really captured my attention the way that Korey and Cory did. I do like our hockey teams, because they’re all blue collar and they don’t talk badly about my country. Our skiers appear to be a bunch of spoiled rich kids.
I’ll definitely rewatch the figure skating.
Also watched and reviewed:
Ronnie Miller (Miley Cyrus), who is 17 and way too rebellious to be likable, travels to Georgia to spend the summer with her father, a former concert pianist named Steve (Greg Kinnear). Ronnie is a sarcastic brat up until she discovers that a racoon is trying to eat a nest of turtle eggs. She tries to protect the turtles. The aquarium sends over a volunteer named Will (Liam Hemsworth) to watch over the turtle eggs and he and Ronnie fall in love over the course of several nights on the beach. Ronnie starts to straighten out her life but then she learns that her father has cancer and that the reason he invited her and her brother to Georgia was so he could have one last summer with her.
This is a Nicholas Sparks story so, of course, someone has to die. I always tell myself that I’m not going to cry whenever I watch a Nicholas Sparks movie and then I do. Greg Kinnear was really likable as Steve and Liam Hemsworth was really cute as Will and I know I would have fallen in love with him too if we were protecting turtle eggs together. When the eggs hatched, the baby turtles were adorable.
It’s too bad Miley Cyrus can’t act because her performance was so bad that it ruined the movie. Even the racoon that tried to steal the turtle eggs outacted her. I got tired of Ronnie and her attitude. No matter what happened, Ronnie had to be sarcastic about it. Even when she finally realized that the world didn’t revolve around her, Miley still delivered all of her lines in the same flat, smartass tone of voice so I didn’t buy her change of heart at all.
I’m glad the turtles made it back to the ocean.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Saturdays, I will be reviewing Baywatch, which ran on NBC and then in syndication from 1989 to 2001. The entire show can be viewed on Tubi.
This week, we meet John D. Cort.
Episode 1.13 “Home Cort”
(Dir by Paul Schneider, originally aired on January 12th, 1990)
There’s a new lifeguard on the beach!
His name is John D. Cort (John Allen Nelson) and he’s a former Navy SEAL with a dark and mysterious past. He drives a motorcycle. He wears a cowboy hat. He has a quick smile. He’s dangerous and he’s now a member of the cast. I’m going to guess that he was added to bring some mystery to the show. Originally, Eddie Kramer was supposed to be the dangerous lifeguard with the mysterious past but Billy Warlock was just too earnest and young to really pull that off. John D. Cort, on the other hand, is at least 40.
Now, I said that Cort was the “new lifeguard on the beach.” That’s not quite true. It turns out that he’s actually an old lifeguard who was a friend of Mitch’s and Craig’s. In fact, it’s insinuated that their friendship is legendary amongst the lifeguards. Of course, no one’s ever mentioned Cort before but whatever. Baywatch was never exactly known for its continuity.
Cort says that he’s returned to the beach so that he can work as a lifeguard for ten days and keep his eligibility. Actually, he’s been hired to retrieve a mysterious package that’s at the bottom of the ocean. He recruits his old friend, Sam (Bruce Fairbairn), to take him out into the ocean so that he can retrieve the package. However, an explosion costs Sam his life and forces Cort to deal with the fact that someone wants him dead. Who wants Cort dead? Some guy named Jack Burton (Drew Snyder). Why does he want Cort dead? Who cares? I got bored with the whole thing so I missed his motive. I could go back and find out but, as far as I’m concerned, if the answer was worth knowing, I wouldn’t have gotten bored the first time around. The story is really just an excuse to introduce Cort. At the end of the episode, he inherits Sam’s surf shop and makes peace with being a regular member of the cast for at least the rest of the season.
As for the B-plot, Shauni and and Jill go into business selling sandwiches on the beach! They take a lot of business away from crooked sandwich hustler Buddy Semple (played by George Clooney’s future production partner, Grant Heslov). Buddy reacts by hiring two women in bikinis to hand out his sandwiches. That’s the entire plot.
Oh, this episode. I’ll be so happy when the first season of Baywatch is over with and the show fully and cheerfully embraces the stupidity of its concept. Until then …. welcome to the beach, John Cort!
Every year, I like to share some of my favorite romance comic books!
Starting in the late 1940s, many comic book companies tried to broaden their audience by publishing romance comic books. These comics told dramatic love stories in which young women had to deal with issues of cheating, divorce, jealousy, heartache, and the search for the one.
It’s Love!
What is the lesson that we can take from these vintage comic books? I think the main thing we can learn is that love is never easy.
But, even if he is a member of the establishment or has long hair, it’s totally worth it. Right, Nicky?
They sure do look happy! Happy Valentine’s Day!
Through the Shattered Lens