Up In Smoke

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Has anyone not seen the movie Grease?  Well, maybe some people.  For me, it holds the distinction of being the *very first movie* I ever saw at the movies with my friends.  That means my parents dropped me off and picked me up, but I got to watch the movie with my friends.  In other words, Grease made History in my Personal History Book.  I loved it so much that I saw it two times at the theatre, bought the record, and my best friend and I choreographed a dance routine to Greased Lightning and took 3rd place in the local talent show.  Yeah, that movie is a Stand Out for me.  I do believe that I posted early on about my love for Cher as a young person.  I loved her songs, her hair, and even pretended to be her with the help of a towel (for my hair).  I pretty much felt the same way about Olivia Newton-John after Grease.  

Nicole, over at The Madlab Post Blog, is back at it with her regular Monday Feature at the movies.  Today she is asking everyone to think about characters who smoke in the movies.  This is not a brain bender.  Of course, everyone smoked in the movies in the 1950s and 1960s... just like so many people were doing in real life.  It was still fairly prevalent in the 1970s.  All kinds of smoking go for this meme... that means cigarettes, cigars, and even weed.  

I am choosing Grease because it is a movie done in the 1970s about the 1950s.  Of course, almost everyone smoked.  The smoking was a "sign of the times."  Cigarettes were not known by any of their current monikers.  No one called them cancer sticks, for instance.  In fact, the opposite was true.  Smoking was considered classy and sophisticated.  In the 50s, the marketing was still working fabulously.  Who smoked?  Rich people.  Successful people.  Movie stars.  Who didn't smoke?  Naive people.  The unsophisticated.  In other words, smoking didn't have any negative social stigma attached to it yet.  And no one had an inkling that it HARMED you in any way.  

I love this clip of Sandy attempting to pull off her her show of joining the club of the elite.  She is "moving on up."  She is about to nab her man and let him know that she is no longer a naive little girl.  First up in her bag of tricks: I have mastered smoking... sort of.

This is an excellent use of smoking as a plot device because it works.  She has no idea what she is doing and it SHOWS.  She is completely out of her element with that cigarette.  And that is how every movie should use any prop, be it a cigarette, or anything else... deliberately.

For the record, Danny loved Sandy before she was all big hair, skin tight black clothing, and a smoker.  When the furor dies down he will still love her.  He loved the girl from Summer Nights.  She is the one who is real... even though this is a great song.  And Olivia Newton-John totally pulled off the outfit...

What movie can you think of that used smoking as a plot device really well?  Did you see Grease and love it or hate it?  Was there a movie from your youth that goes down as a Stand Out for you? 

Back When We Were Friends.

The Madlab Post Blog, which is written by Nicole, who is a host of the A to Z Challenge in April, is also putting on a weekly Monday Challenge that takes you to the movies.  This is always stimulating.  It makes a person put on the memory cap and dig around in there for appropriate movie material.

I have actually devoted a full hour to thinking on this subject already.  I know.  The subject matter for today is Between Friends.  The goal is to find a movie that has a theme in it or a plot device that has two friends divided by someone's decision.  That decision alters the nature of the friendship, either forever or for a while.  In either case, it set them at odds and puts a real strain on the friendship.  It is that not-so-gentle reminder that we do not live in a vacuum, and people can and will respond to what we do.  In other words, our decisions do have consequences.

Some of the movies that came to my mind were plausible for this theme, but I hadn't seen them in so long that I didn't feel comfortable discussing them in a blog.  It was a reminder that I did need to watch them again, though.

So, what did I choose?  X-Men: First Class.

If you have watched the X-Men movies, then you know that The Professor and Magneto are Enemies in the later movies (or the original movies... yeah, it gets confusing).  This is despite that the fact that they both have Powers, or are Mutants.  Whatevs.   X-Men: First Class is the movie that goes back to the beginning to when they were friends and shows how that relationship disintegrated.  It really was devastating.

The Dilemma

Charles, later to be known as the Professor, always believed that Mutants and regular old human beings could co-exist.  He thought that there was good in most people, and that the ones who were evil were the exception, rather than the rule.  He didn't see the War as being between Mutants and Humans.  It was more of a Good vs. Evil thing.  You fought Evil wherever you found it, whatever Face it wore.  Eric, later to be known as Magneto, had a very difficult childhood.  It was so much easier just to hate Magneto on principle before this movie...:sigh:  He watched his mother die in a concentration camp BECAUSE Shaw, another Mutant, suspected he was a Mutant and wanted his abilities to come out for exploitation purposes.  So, Eric was raised by Evil.  Meeting Charles was his best shot at ever coming out on the side of Good.  However, his judgment scales were always a bit tipped the other way.  In his mind, it was always Class Warfare with Humans on one side and Mutants on the other.  His finger was always on the trigger.  On the one hand, he liked the idea of Charles, but what he really wanted was to sway Charles to his way of thinking.  If Eric could make Charles see that he he was right, then his Rightness was Assuredly Right.  The problem was that Charles was never going to believe that it all boiled down to Humans vs Mutants, and Eric was never going to believe that in the end it was anything but Humans vs. Mutants.


The Boiling Point

At the end of the movie missiles were bearing down on the Mutants.  In Eric's mind, this all served to prove his point:  It really was Humans vs. Mutants.  Charles made the argument that "someone" gave an order and a person on the ship followed an order, but that didn't mean thousands of people needed to lose their lives.  This was when everyone had to choose up sides.  Eric, with his power of moving magnetic objects, could easily do what he wanted with all of those missiles.  (Stupid order.)  After he made his choice is when chaos erupted among the Mutants that changed not only the direction of the friendship between Eric and Charles, but Mutant Interaction for years.  Instead of solidarity, Mutants would spend the remaining years fighting each other to come out on top and garnering power. 






What movie scenes have YOU seen where a disagreement between friends changes the nature of their relationship going forward?