*Spoiler Warning! If you have not seen "Star Trek" or "Three Cheers for the Irish" and don't want your viewing experience to be ruined, read no further!
Thanks to my father-in-law, my color film ended up being the new Star Trek (2009, directed by J.J. Abrams), which I thoroughly enjoyed! That might have something to do with the fact that I'd watch lots of Star Trek reruns in college when I had some downtime (that and the SciFi channel...Mutant X, anyone?). I loved that they did it "prequel" style to the TV shows, and it was very well done. A quality film that stayed mostly (Uhura & Spock? hmmm) true to the TV show while introducing up-to-date effects and fun background info on some of the characters. If you haven't seen it, go see it!
My B&W movie ended up being a film called "Three Cheers for the Irish" (1940, directed by Lloyd Bacon), which I'd never heard of but they ran all these Irish themed movies on St. Patrick's Day so I figured "why not?". The only actor I recognized was Dennis Morgan from "Christmas in Connecticut". It was your average film from the 40's, it had a few funny moments and the standard happy ending that you could see coming a mile away but there was a lot of racism (meant to be light-hearted and normal for that time period) that just bugged me because it wasn't funny and seemed out of place. Peter Casey is an Irish policeman who is expecting a big promotion after taking down an armed gunman, he is instead forcibly retired to make room for the new recruits fresh out of "police college". He takes his anger out on his new trainee (Dennis Morgan as "Angus Ferguson")who just happens to be Scottish (they do this thing throughout the whole movie where Casey calls him "Scotchman" and Angus yells back "Scotsman! There's no such thing as a Scotchman!"). It got old after the first 3 times. Predictably, Angus stops by the house and meets the youngest of Casey's 3 daughters, they fall in love and start dating on the sly to keep her father from blowing his lid (ALWAYS a good plan, let's let Dad find out on his own I'm dating the man he hates because he'll be much less angry that way than if we tell him upfront and make him deal with his racism) and the film goes on from there. The part that irritated me the most was a side-story involving 2 minor characters, one a small and feeble Irishman and the other a large, oblivious, usually drunk Irishman who got it in his head that the feeble man was the enemy and was always pouring beer on his head, chasing him around tables, pushing him into garbage cans, etc. I've no doubt there are people like that out there, but this bit was put in the film to be the comic relief and I didn't find it funny at all.
If you like movies from the 40's, you might find it entertaining, but I won't be returning to this particular film.
Now that it's April, I'm ready for my next two films. I've been recording films on TCM like a crazy woman and I'm really excited about a lot of them! It's been hard to wait for the next month and I don't know what to watch first! I've got films like North by Northwest, Jason and the Argonauts, Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, Frankenstein, Of Mice and Men, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Painted Veil, The Defiant Ones, Sweet Bird of Youth, and some random ones with character actors that I love. It's scheduled to record a bunch more, too!
I'm thinking April's movies will the "The Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Arsenic and Old Lace" but we'll see if that changes!
If you have any recommendations, please don't hesitate to tell me! Color or B&W, doesn't matter, I can fit it in somewhere!
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