Happy New Year!

Looking for something different to occupy your mind on a day when Resolutions abound and hopes for a better year are still alive...

"Things To Come"

"This is a powerful yet spooky and somewhat cheesy science fiction film made in 1936, produced by Alexander Korda, based on the H. G. Wells classic book & brought to the silver screen as a vision of what warfare will bring mankind in the century to follow. That is to say the century that has now gone.

The story shows the destructive nature of war and how it will catapult us back to a state of barbarism, warlords, and another Black Deathesque plague called the "Wandering Sickness." However, because MAN clings to science, MAN will rise above all this and create a new, modern society free of warfare. (again?)

The film does have a lot of historical inaccuracies to its "dis"credit, but much of what it preaches is scarily plausible, and much of it has become prophetic.

The theme that man can prevail and keep discovering/conquering new vistas is laughable, in hindsight. The film shows that progress and science are the things which advance us as a people.

Personally I love the idea that the scientists and/or inventors had formed their own civilization, free of corruption and violence. I just wonder who does the cleaning up.

The pace of the film is a little slow at times, but have watched it several times, and it is still very, very compelling. The set designs are outstanding in the futuristic world of 2036 (where they valiantly try to put a rocket in space to make a preliminary orbit around the moon). The acting is rather good considering the time it was made. (Having just come out of "talkies" and still having a tendency to chew the scenery and everything within a 5 mile radius.)

Raymond Massey and Cedric Hardwicke give great performances, but it is Ralph Richardson as a "Boss" who deserves the most praise for giving a powerful performance of a man with inherent human traits that just ruin progress. A thought provoking film and quite spooky in it's observation of human nature. Of course HG Wells was a genius indeed!"

Made in 1936! Incredible. Just 20 years short of a century old. And here we are now, all those years later, still in wars, still acting like barbarians toward each other... not much has changed...

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As for local news, here on the homefront, we spent New Year's Eve with our nearest & dearest (the dogs!) watching one of our old favorites on the DVD, called "Campion" starring Peter Davison, and we all were tucked up in our beds before 8:30 p.m.

We spent a goodly amount of time earlier watching the news reports of the big fire in Dubai at The Address Hotel. Wow. It was my considered opinion that what happened there was this: They were saying that a curtain had caught fire at around the 20th floor which is where the main lobby of this 63-story hotel is situated. It looked to me as though that fire lept upward and caught something on the balcony above it (maybe a gas grill?) and from there each grill would ignite going up the building, and that was the cause of the mostly-external nature of the fire. All the rooms/apartments seemed to have these large balconies, and I would imagine people were out on them grilling something to munch on while they got ready to watch the spectacular fireworks to come at midnight.

You may all have seen it by now, but it was quite the scene. One huge luxury hotel burning wildly in the night while across the water, the New Year's fireworks display went on as planned at midnight.

I think that was the right decision... they had people all milling around ready to watch, and they certainly didn't want all those people to just break up and go back into the area around the big hotel fire! But it was very bizarre! Fireworks on one side of the telly screen, and a real live burning inferno lighting up the night just to the right of it across the water.

So... here we are now, in 2016. And as for Resolutions, I don't really make them... or if I do, they never are kept. I wrote in someone's blog the other day, when she asked what our "one-word resolution" would be, that mine was to "Think." I also added that it wouldn't be too hard to keep that resolution as it's something one must do from the minute one arises in the morning, in order to get through one's day! It is, after all, required!

So I "THINK" I'll end this first-blog-of-the-year, and go back and watch the movie above. I tuned into it on TV but it was within minutes of ending, so I never got to see the whole thing. Raymond Massey is one of my favorite actors. So I'm off to the Past... 80 years ago... to see how accurately they predicted this old World would turn out!

I wish you all a happy (if possible), healthy (ditto), and peaceful (please!) New Year!

Cheers,

Bex & Co.

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals...
They are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied... not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

~ [Walt Whitman, from "Leaves of Grass, No. 32"] ~

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