1988's best-selling book is straight out of a time capsule

I've had this copy of The Cardinal of the Kremlin around for years (it belonged to either my dad or my brother), but this is my first read and, in fact, my first read of any Tom Clancy book. 

My introduction to Clancy was through The Hunt for Red October movie, which is still a magnificent watch, though I found every other movie iteration to come after that one to provide diminishing returns. 

Still, I was most curious to get into this one and find out why no movie was made in this case. Chronologically, it takes place after Patriot Games and before A Clear and Present Danger, both of which were of course made into films, so there had to be something that held it back.

My guess is that it was all timing. This book is out in 1988, and the film for Red October wasn't out until 1990. By the time the USSR was dissolving in 1991, there really can't have been much of an avenue to make Cardinal of the Kremlin, which you might guess by the title is a tale of the waning days of the Cold War. On top of that, the book goes all in on Star Wars, meaning the SDI laser defense system created by the U.S., and that itself was also gone by the mid 90s, which ultimately leaves this book without its basic infrastructure to tell its story.

The book itself, mind you, is thrilling enough, although even now it can't help but feel heavily dated, and not in a nostalgic kind of way. While it does offer up the vantage points of many characters and  presents both heroes and villains on multiple sides of the conflict, it nonetheless presents defection and The American Way as the ultimate achievement. Obviously this is the entire point of Red October, so there's another knock against trying to make this one work as a movie.

All that being said, I got all ramped up with the brief appearances of Marko Ramius and the crew of the Dallas. I'm sure people bent over backwards to try and make the project work, but this book is simply stuck in a specific period of history and would have felt old as soon as it premiered.

1988: The Cosby Show continues its victory lap

For the fourth year in a row, The Cosby Show has the top spot in TV ratings. In this, the most clipped and incomplete episode that I've found yet (on a Facebook video, as usual), Cliff is reluctant to get his own physical, especially as it might lead to a time of reckoning for his binge eating habits of hoagies and chocolate soda. Mmm, that sounds pretty good...

John Amos guest stars as his doctor, putting Cosby through the ringer with a more intense physical than I've ever had - do doctor's offices still have treadmills? - and, yeah, there's yet triple entendre at the end of the clip where Amos calls Cosby out, saying he knows "guys like him" who can't stop once they "get a taste." 

I know, I know, he's still talking about hoagies and soda, but ... is he?

1988 in movies: Odd couples, indeed

As must be true for any good buddy movie, neither of these two movies, 1988's top-earner Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the Oscar-winning Rain Man, works without the balance in the combination of the two leads.

                      

While the living MacGuffins of each movie are the titular characters, you need crusty ol' Hoskins and crusty young Cruise doing their darndest to put up with the antics of Roger and the particular needs of Raymond to give the movie its legs and, wouldn't you know it, it's actually Bob & Tom that have the most to learn by the story's end.

Roger Rabbit, the movie, is such a wild creation. After watching it and remembering how not for kids it is, it's tempting to look back and say "Well, I saw it as a kid," but I didn't. I was fourteen. That's a pretty great age for seeing this movie. 

While Hoskins does the work to sell everything going on around him and Lloyd was born to steal any show that he's in, Joanna Cassidy as Dolores always grounds the movie for me. 

At one point I had a VHS copy of this and I must've watched it more times than I would have guessed, because I knew every beat as the movie went along. For now, I settled for watching on Disney+.

As for Rain Man, I'm pretty sure this was only the second time I've seen it, so I didn't remember a lot of the smaller details. It sure takes some effort to go from grade-A jerk Tom in the beginning to sweetheart Tom by the end - it's possible they overshot how jerky to make him off the bat - but I think it gets there in a believable enough fashion. 

Hoffman's performance, either unfortunately or by calculation, is distilled down into memorable and quotable moments, but he's a constant throughout which I suppose may actually be a tricky performance, especially for someone as famously methodical as Hoffman. Growth of character is, I would think, something most actors take as a given throughout a film. I suppose that's why Cruise is the intended star here - although it's Hoffman who would win the Best Actor award, without even a nomination for Cruise.

And I wouldn't have remembered that Rain Man is the first Tom Cruise feature to use Iko Iko as the opening song, years before Mission: Impossible II.

1987's top TV show is still Cosby

Yup, there's a screenshot of my now anticipated Found on Facebook-style episode of The Cosby Show.

This time, the image was even flipped because that'll keep the copyright police from seeing what's going on.

This clip, featuring only most of the episode, is also not episode 21 but 22, so they were close and still in the correct year, which is all that I needed.

Cliff and Clair are sick and bedridden by the titular Andalusian Flu, so Theo takes charge of the house and, wouldn't you know it, is corrupted by absolute power. Vanessa and Rudy eventually revolt against his authoritarian rule.

A fine episode with room for the kids to throw their weight around while Cosby and Rashad offer appropriately muted performances.

1987 in video games: Gunship, Bombsweeper, Out Run, and Super Mario (of course)

The first thing that jumped out at me about 1987's top game for PC, Gunship, was seeing the name Sid Meier amongst the programmers. Sid Meier! Gets me excited knowing that Civilization is just around the corner.

Alas, Gunship didn't draw me in like Civ later would (and continues to do). It was fun flying around for a bit, and I've read many testimonials of people who played it for hours on end, but even back then I don't think I would have invested that kind of playing time.

I did like being Sgt. FGD, though. You can play it here: https://classicreload.com/gunship.html

Don't be tricked by the name: this isn't famed Windows time-waster Minesweeper. Instead, Bomb Sweeper is another entry in the Nintendo Game & Watch series, with the puzzle element being the movement of partitions to create pathways and stop a bomb (or bombs) from detonating. It's a fun game, as Nintendo continued to find creative ways to exploit the rudimentary graphics and interface.

You can play it here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-bomb-sweeper

What to say about Super Mario Bros., the reigning number-one game on home consoles? I took the week off from playing it again, because I still have two more weeks after this to go!

In the arcades, the racing format continues its dominant run. It's a good chance for me to play these games because I didn't play them all that much back then. I probably played Off-Road more than any other, but that barely counts as a racing game and was more responsible for leading me to games like R.C. Pro-Am on the NES rather than something like Rad Racer.

In any case, The top arcade game for this year is Out Run, and it offers a couple of tricks: it featured slopes which occasionally cut off your viewpoint of what lay ahead, which looked really cool, but more creatively there wasn't one set path to reaching checkpoints. You could actually make choices about how to navigate the world, which was both impressive and way more challenging, because I failed to find my way to any of those points for the first couple of runs.

But choosing your own music before starting the race? That's sublime.

1987's new snack: Miss Vickie's chips

I don't have much to say about these, except that I love 'em and I'm happy that they put the year right on the bag.

Thanks, Vickie.

1987 in music: U2 comes of age and Robbie Robertson breaks out on his own

1987 is in that sweet spot of the cassette tape format, and in fact that era will soon be over as CDs arrive. My Joshua Tree tape is long gone, replaced by a CD, naturally, but I wanted to listen to 87's top-seller in the appropriate format, and along comes a tape for $1 to save the day!

It's a trap to try and pin down the number one of all time in any category, but I don't mind making a list of contenders - and Where the Streets Have No Name fits that bill for best album opening track. The rest of the album features all-time winners, some that found their way into my Grade 8 music vocal class (With or Without You, because our teacher was hip), some that became personal favourites (Trip Through Your Wires), and some that became lullabies for my kids (Running to Stand Still).

Of course, I won't say that it sounds great on tape, but it sounds just like I remember it.

I knew nothing of The Band before becoming enamoured by Somewhere Down the Crazy River, watching the video routinely on MuchMusic. For whatever reason, it was one of those times where I loved the song but never picked up the album. I didn't even really get to know the other single, Showdown at Big Sky, until years later through a CD anthology of Canadian Music called Oh What a Feeling, and as far as I knew, Broken Arrow was a Rod Stewart song.

I certainly never knew how closely linked The Joshua Tree was to this album, through production by Daniel Lanois on both records and a shared session between Robertson and U2 that led to two collaborative songs (Sweet Fire of Love and Testimony, both on Robertson's).

Well, I've now happily rectified the oversight and enjoyed this album immensely. 

It was awarded Album of the Year at the 1989 Junos, because there were no Juno Awards in 1988 as they re-scheduled the eligibility window, and because there was nothing better that came along in 1988, I guess? 

1987's Pulitzer Prize winner Beloved delivers torment in a singular work

 

Here we go again: another book with which I am not familiar, excepting that I knew there was a movie version either starring or produced by Oprah, or maybe both. 

In one sense, it's a natural, spiritual sequel to The Color Purple, but the shared setting of continuing to expose the worst of the worst about the recent history of slavery in the U.S. is the only point where the two novels intersect. Beloved then ventures forth into horror, both spiritual and very human, through a poetic treatment of a story told by changing perspectives, allowing us to learn what's driving people in fits and spurts as details of the past emerge piece by piece.

It's tempting to dismiss the readability of such works as these as being important in a cultural and historical sense, while maybe not being a thrilling read in and of itself, but this book is much more than that. I've written before that I feel a bit silly heaping praise on an already revered novel, but what else can I do? It's not a comforting read, but it's so beautifully lyrical that it's well worth it. 

I forgot to take a picture of the copy that I had from the library, but that's the right cover above. The pages were thick and a little jaggedy, and that texture added an extra little something to the reading experience, too.

1987 in movies: Cops and emperors rule

I'm not totally sure if I've seen 87's top-grossing movie Beverly Hills Cop II, so maybe I'd seen parts of it. More likely I just remember parts from seeing the trailer a bunch of times. I think I'd only seen the first movie one time anyway.

It is so 80s. There's a hyper-violent Judge Reinhold, whose penchant for bigger and bigger weapons is a running joke until it all pays off when he rains destruction upon the baddies. John Ashton's running gag is the dissolution of his marriage, though that seems like it will work out by the end. And Murphy is a force of nature, but somehow never over-the-top.

I was most pleased to see Ronny Cox in a nice-guy role.

In my first-time viewing of The Last Emperor, Best Picture winner, I was certainly fascinated enough by the unique world it led the audience into, but most happily I found that the movie got better as it went, and that world became more and more interesting as it expanded. In short, I was quickly a little tired of the idea that Puyi is fascinated by all things Western, and I was much more intrigued by his philosophical and political concerns and quests.

His personal life, such as we may relate to it, is a mess insofar as relationships go, but I don't suppose a child emperor could be expected to grow up to what your average non-emperor would recognize as healthy, mutually beneficial partnerships. Still, the tale of his maturing and alternatingly refusing and adapting the trappings of his position was quite engrossing.

1986 in music: Beauty and the Beast?

Knowing only the hits from the year's best-selling album True Blue, I was not expecting Papa Don't Preach to be the opening track. It just sounds like a mid-album song to me. It really does feature some silly lyrics ("I'm in trouble, deep") but, boy, I see how it fed into teenage angst and melodrama. 

For my money, Cherish and Open Your Heart are the best singles, but there sure are a lot of hits on here. The in-between songs like Jimmy Jimmy and Where's the Party are perfect album fillers, and although Like a Virgin always struck me as a more iconic album, this one is a quintessential follow-up, improving and expanding her sound.

Now, then: if Madonna was a perfectly packaged pop-star for the times, Kim Mitchell is the type of Canadian success story along the lines of Leonard Cohen winning a Male Vocalist award, a successor to Bryan Adams who's even more about the rock and hardly a music video star.

While my favourite song of his, I Am a Wild Party, doesn't actually appear on this album despite the title being a lyric from that song (it was a live track that he played on tour to support this album, and would later show up on concert and hits records), any album that can boast Patio Lanterns (and my second favourite Mitchell track Easy to Tame) is worth celebrating; and it was with a Juno for Album of the Year. The non-single track Alana Loves Me was a new stand-out track for me.

1986 in video games: Biking, dragon slaying, and more Mario

The top arcade game of 1986 is a descendant of Pole Position called Hang On. 

I would have fed a few quarters into it back in the day, and I like the feel of driving a bike more than the cars, but it still doesn't keep me coming back to play again and again. I made the first checkpoint and I was satisfied, but certainly ended up on my heinie enough, too.

On PCs, the year belonged to Xanadu: Dragon Slayer II. I've never played it, but that's okay because I've never played Dragon Slayer I. It actually looks expansive and pretty fun, but this was another one for which I couldn't find a playable version that wasn't asking me to install, and I'm just not going down that path for this project.

In lieu of playing, I watched a stretch of gameplay here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8J9zoojIvE

And on the console and handheld front, Super Mario Bros. is still firmly in charge. I played the original game on the Switch again, this time going through the second quest (it's a little harder version of the same game, if you aren't familiar with it) and felt no shame in using the rewind feature throughout. 

There was also a Game & Watch release of Super Mario Bros. which played nothing like the Mario game proper but was a simple dodge and avoid game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bal1d9_oLcM

I found a playable version (a site I've used for other Game & Watch options), and the gameplay looks the same, and the shell they use is the same, except it doesn't look like Mario - it looks like Felix the Cat. Or Splat the Cat. Or Bill the Cat. It looks like a cat.

https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-super-mario-bros-crystal-screen

It was also really hard! But that's the hallmark of most older games, right? Like they weren't meant for fun and relaxation but for challenge and aggravation. 

1986's Pulitzer Prize winning novel a terrific portrait of a semi-functional family

 

It's at this point in my project, where I'm about a third of the way through, that I'm starting to recognize that I'm certainly enjoying revisiting much of the things that I remember and love, but I'm most appreciative of reading the books that I've never heard of. In truth, even if I've never seen a movie or TV show, listened to an album, or played a video game, it's very rare for me to have not at least heard of it.  The books, on the other hand, have often been completely unknown to me - at least the Pulitzer Prize winners (the best-selling books have usually been more familiar).

For that reason, as well as trying to spread the wealth and not keep reading the same author, I've definitely gravitated more towards choosing the Pulitzers and not the best-sellers for each week.

Anyway, for this week: it's a wonderfully told tale, with more and more layers and understanding unfurling as new things come to light through conversation, occurrences, or realization through the narrator, Phillip.

Phillip's story in A Summons to Memphis is one of seemingly straightforward family squabbles between his father and his two sisters, but as he is now middle-aged and looking back upon the events throughout his life, he's gaining the wisdom and understanding that can only come with age and experience and he revisits and reconsiders what he had grown up to know as absolute truths.

There's no doubt that everyone is lying at different points of the story, including Phillip which always requires a careful read if you can't totally rely on the narrator. What's left for us to parse through is why the characters lie, for what intent and purpose, and whether those lies were helpful or hurtful in the end. 

I'd recommend taking more than a week to read this one, because even in my rushed digestion I found it fascinating to think back to an earlier part of the book and challenge my own interpretation of it as new information comes to light. 

In short, it's a novel about the mystery of people and the quantum mystery of relationships. I look forward to reading it again.

1986 in movies: Top Gun soars while Platoon gets into the mud

I don't know if everything happens for a reason, but owning Top Gun on laserdisc certainly did. Back in the waning days of the format, I found an advert for the Columbia House Laserdisc club in an American magazine. Having already expertly worked the system for upwards of a hundred CDs and the entire Star Trek: The Next Generation series on VHS, I was thrilled to be able to bolster my LD collection. I had to have them shipped to my friend's parents' house in Michigan and collect them whenever he would return from a visit.

Now, for those that don't remember the glory days of Columbia House, you would start your subscription to the service by obtaining a good chunk of records, tapes, or discs for just one penny (!) and then be on the hook to make five (or so) more purchases to close out your contract. There was a monthly pick that would be sent to you automatically, meaning you bought it, if you didn't decline it. So, the only catch to an otherwise sweet deal was that, if you weren't paying attention, you'd buy full-price (see: over-priced) items until your contract was fulfilled. If you were on top of things, though, you could decline the monthly items and purchase something cheaper and clear your servitude that way.

Out of the many times that I'd signed up and fulfilled a subscription, only once did I mess up and inadvertently buy an overpriced monthly pick. Care to guess which one it was?

This seventy-something dollar laserdisc of a movie that I never really cared for has been in my possession for 30-35 years and I'd watched it once - out of obligation to, and frustration from, my error.

And after all this time ... it's still fine. I can see why it was the number one movie, and why it served as an inspirational advertisement to join the Air Force, and why it was instrumental in creating the stunt-loving, daredevil Tom Cruise that we all know and love today, but it's really just an okay movie.

Top Gun: Maverick, on the other hand, is much more fun.

Speaking of fun: Platoon wasn't. 

A dark, grimy, uncomfortable movie that won the following year's Oscar for Best Picture, and part of a rich history of films (and books, and songs, and more) trying to understand the sins of war, but in this case there's no movement to absolve any of those sins. Everything unfolds in front of the audience without a heavy-handed highlighting of right and wrong; awful things just happen and we move on to the next awful thing.

I can't say that I enjoyed watching it, and in a certain light I don't need a movie like this to illustrate to me that war is atrocious and hurtful to all. So, was it worth the watch? Insofar as completing this project it was, but other than I didn't need this in my life.

It's also hard not to acknowledge the pay-it-forward boon that this double bill gave to the creation of Hot Shots! and Hot Shots! Part Deux. Even though the latter was more Rambo-based than it was Platoon, there's no doubt that Sheen learned how to handle himself in a military fashion in this role and he played that off perfectly for both Hot Shots! movies. 

So, for that I owe both Top Gun and Platoon a big thank you.

1986 in TV: Cosby keeps on chugging

Once again, I'm forced to find an episode of The Cosby Show, the number-one show on TV for 1986, mind you, on someone's Facebook video post.

I won't bother repeating all of the same things that I've already written about what it feels like to watch Cosby, but rest assured that the strange mixture of so many elements - nostalgia, general creepiness, not to mention the odd places I've found the episodes - holds true for today and will for the next three weeks, too.

Now, interestingly, this episode featured something of a day off for most of the cast, excepting Pulliam as Rudy. She accompanies her friend to the dentist because he's super nervous, which may or may not be alleviated by Danny Kaye being the dentist. He hams it up, wins Peter over, and generally saves the day ... in his last credited role before passing away the following year.  

It was old-school comedy chops featured in what is now an old-school sitcom.

1985 in dessert, breakfast, and candy: Blizzards, Strudels, and Sour Patch Kids

I don't want to be a stickler, but shouldn't my Blizzard have been free if the cashier didn't flip it? I wasn't going to push it, especially as I'm in a celebratory mood. So, we just did the flipping instead.

Looking up the original flavours, and getting a chance to watch Dick Clark shill for DQ at the same time, I found our only option was Oreo (which was just called "cookies" in 1985 before they finally entered into a partnership with Nabisco) because Heath isn't in Canada, and Butterfinger (which is available up here only relatively recently) isn't on the menu. Mind you, the best Blizzard flavour of all time was Crispy Crunch, which was a better version of a Butterfinger anyway, and I haven't seen that on the menu in a dog's age.

We got one Mint Oreo just to shake things up.

Here's another food that I didn't realize had been around since the mid 80s, because this fantastic commercial about the heartbreak of a child painfully recognizing his mother's care as outdated while being emotionally unable to broach the topic with her, leading to a burdensome waste issue with no clear solution, didn't come around until about ten years later: https://youtu.be/Kn22ikkiUlU

Strudels are good, but in the long run I'd pick Pop-Tarts.

Finally, this is a bit of a cheat as the brand of Sour Patch Kids launched in 1985, but the candies had been in production since the 70s. I wasn't going to miss a chance to have some and call it research, though.

 

1985 in music: Dire Straits makes an impeccable album and Glass Tiger sneaks onto my week's playlist

Brothers in Arms was among the earliest CDs that I purchased (the very first was a 4 CD Led Zeppelin boxed set, which I purchased before I had a player and just ... waited), and since that was the late 80s or possible into the early 90s, I'd mostly appreciated this album's hits through music videos. Obviously, that includes Money for Nothing, but Walk of Life was probably my favourite in the long run.

The rest of the album paid off handsomely when I finally owned it: Your Latest Trick is great and is a tribute to the lucrative career of saxophone soloists while the good times lasted, but The Man's Too Strong is my favourite track; I love when a chorus is more defined by instruments than lyrics. 

Alas, that CD fell victim to one of my many purges, so hopefully someone out there in the wild is enjoying it. I listened on Spotify.

In Canada, Glass Tiger took the Juno for Album of the Year for 1986, which would normally be for an album from the previous year, but in this case the album actually is from 1986, which is something that the Junos will be addressing by doing a reboot of their timing over the next couple of years (stay tuned). 

I still stuck to my routine and listened to it this week, but to keep things contemporary I also spun other nominated albums that were released in 85: Lovin' Every Minute Of It, Power Windows, and Alien Shores.

Back to the winners, though. For me, this album hangs heavily upon Don't Forget Me, which is probably my favourite Glass Tiger song. What that means is that even though nothing else really jumped out at my from the rest of the non-single cuts from the album, it's fine. I'm happy to pay the price of admission for the pleasure of hearing that song. 

The album on YouTube.

1985 Games: Karate Champ, Super Mario Bros., Hydlide, and Blackjack

I don't know, maybe I had to be there in 1985, because I don't remember ever playing this number one arcade game back then, and Karate Champ was not fun to play now.

It's quick and difficult, meaning my matches were over before I knew it. Of course, it makes a difference playing on a keyboard rather than an arcade layout, but after I was defeating handily in a couple of matches, I'd already felt like I'd had enough and there wasn't anything driving me to get back at that guy in the red gi.

I didn't even get to sweep the leg ...

https://www.retrogames.cc/arcade-games/karate-champ-us.html

Now, then: onto my wheelhouse. I 'd never played Mario Bros. in the arcades, so I can only presume that the hype commercials for the coming Nintendo Entertainment System were really driving me to pick up this new game system, rather than me gunning for the game itself.

However, like millions of others, Super Mario Bros. fed into my already deeply-rooted love of video games and guaranteed I'd be a gamer for life. This week it takes its spot as the top-selling console game of 1985.

Now, I've owned a couple of NES consoles throughout my life and an alternatingly increasing/decreasing library of games, but right now I'm on a digital kick so I played the version included with the Switch Online library. I do look forward to rebuilding a physical collection in the future, hunting for games again like it's those early glory days. 

I played it once-through using the "Time Stone" rewind feature and once through without it (but I did use warp pipes).

The game naturally feels a little small now, but every beat, challenge, secret, item, and music cue are all still permanently etched in my memory. It's not quite the same as when I played Mario 2, 3, or any other sequel. Again, those games are larger so it makes sense that it's harder to remember the whole gameplay, but it also speaks to just how many times I ran through this original game. It's a good thing the NES didn't tally gameplay hours.

Hydlide is not a game I've played, either in 1985 when it was the top-selling PC game, or today as I couldn't find a site hosting the game without asking me to follow a few sketchy steps to install it. I've read a lot of comparisons to The Legend of Zelda, but it reminds me more of Ultima, which I never owned on PC but can remember playing at a friend's house. And maybe a bit of Dragon Warrior later on for the NES, from what I remember of that.

You know the old saying: if you can't play 'em, watch 'em: https://youtu.be/NB-rXRAl9KE

Finally for this week: I played some Blackjack on a suspiciously DS-looking Game & Watch system and followed my rule for going to a real casino: I left with the same amount of money I went in with (they give you $500 to start).

Along with continuing to track arcade, PC, and console games, handheld games are now here to stay in a big way and, no spoilers here, are going to be dominated by Nintendo all the way through to the end of my project. As with last week's "Punch-Out" game with its creative detachable controllers, we have Nintendo continuing to mess about in fun and weird ways, and in so doing create the model on which the hugely successful DS will eventually be based. 

You can try to make more money than me here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-blackjack

1985's top-selling book The Mammoth Hunters full of prehistoric high school drama

 

I realize that I'm applying a different standard here but, unlike how I stopped reading the book Rabbit Redux because I realized that it was part three of a trilogy, I didn't have the same hesitation about reading part three ot this Earth's Children series. Somehow, I sensed that it wasn't going to be as important.

I think I was right.

Whereas the relationships in the Rabbit novels seemed to be built upon the happenings of the previous books without explicitly recapping past events, thus motivating me to read them first, everything that previously happened with Ayla, the main character of The Mammoth Hunters, was recounted in overt detail by either the narrator or through dialogue.

I would have presumed that this book became a top-seller thanks to interest in the series after the release of Clan of the Cave Bear, the film based on the first book, but nope ... this book came out a year before the movie. So, it was just a big hit amongst those seeking some ancient mating and hunting rituals action?

Because, to be blunt, that's pretty much what this book has to offer. Some interesting tidbits about the emergence of humanity and early drops of civilization sandwiched in between plenty of harlequin sequences of longing, spurning, yearning, throbbing, and hundreds of pages of conflict built upon simple misunderstandings.

The dialogue flitted between stunted proto-English ("How you know what I feel?"*) and verbosity ("Oh, it's going to be so exciting to go on this adventure with you!"*) that it often sounded more like a time travel adventure of two timelines crashing together.

There are also moments of Forrest Gump-style banging up against history with inventions a-plenty and even the first domestication of wolves, which aren't problematic but were simply amusing.

I don't feel the need to read the other books, but I'll watch the movie sometime.

(*not actual quotes)

1985 in movies: Back to the Future is still so very nearly perfect and Out of Africa impresses

Given another boost from the movie gods, Back to the Future was in in just the right week when I needed to see it. 

Now, it hasn't been all that long since I watched it, but since this may well be the movie I saw the most times in the theatre, what does it really matter?

I know I'm not going way out on a limb here, but everything just clicks. It does so well in laying foundations for so many pay-offs, has such strong players in so many roles, and dances rather beautifully around a mirrored Oedipus story construct (I enjoyed the story from the Netflix show about the making of the movie that told of a Disney exec reading the script and declining by saying something like "Are you crazy? We're Disney, and this is about incest.")

Now, speaking of dancing ... my only gripe about the movie, and though it's glaringly unnecessary to me it's still far from ruinous because of the quality of the movie on the whole, is this:

Why, after besting the bully beast, did George have one more obstacle? And why was it this maniacally laughing guy who cuts in on the dance? It's just a weird bit.

Out of Africa is a movie I knew only by name, and not even really by reputation or by any details. 

The movie was beautiful and I loved the pace. I also appreciated how Redford was granted first credit before the movie but, because this was Streep's film (quite legitimately, as it was based on her character's (auto?)biography, she got top billing by the time the final credits rolled around.

It's capping off the remarkable run by Meryl Streep in the Oscar-winning movies I've watched (narrowly taking first place in appearances over Vincent Schiavelli and Jahn Cazale, although I think Schiavelli might take top prize for overall showings by the time I'm done, but I'll tally that up later).