Now, when you see this, whether it's on a door, or a sign, or a water fountain, you
don't use it. Now, this is the letter C. This is the first letter of the word, colored.
Now, that's what you look for, hmm? Al Freeman, Jr. explains the hard realities of the segregated
South through his great-grandson in a scene from the wonderful new film named Once Upon
a Time When We Were Colored. Based on a best-selling memoir by Clifton Talbert, it tells the story
of a rural southern African-American community in the years between 1946 and 1962, when the
community stuck together and helped each other in good times and in bad. The story is told
through the eyes of young Clif, who was taken to the town as a treat by his great-grandfather,
only to be exposed to an event he doesn't understand. Young Clif is also cared for by
his grandmother, played by Felicia Rashad, who readies him for his first day of school.
Years pass, and when Clif is 12, a friendly local white woman, played by Polly Bergen,
spots him as an up-and-comer and shares her love of books and reading.
My granddad once told me, the whole world's written down in books, but like eggs, you've
got to crack them open to get anything out. I saw Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored
at both the Virginia and the Hawaii film festivals, and both times it got a standing ovation.
The movie was directed by Tim Reed, the well-known television actor, and he achieves a nice blend
of comedy, drama, and human interest in the many scenes spanning two decades and 83 speaking
roles. The box office success of Waiting to Exhale proved that there was an audience for
movies about black Americans that didn't focus simply on the drugs and violence of the inner
city, and here is another movie like that, a wonderful movie, I can't recommend it more
strongly.
I enjoyed it too, and the opening scene that you showed, the explaining, grandfather explaining
to a child the C and the W. You know, if they had just had that one scene, I think they
wouldn't need a whole lot more, because that clearly has to be the heartbreak of all time,
explaining and seeing hatred and the object of hate passed down through the generations.
So you start at a low point, and your heart's broken. At the same time, you see how lives
are kept together, and it is through support of the community, and so it becomes a very
beautiful healing story, and it is very affecting, and it's a great job.
And it's not just all serious and downbeat, either. There are some wonderfully funny things
in the movie, some upbeat stuff, a lot of gospel music, and then also...
But it's broadly emotional.
Yeah, it is very emotional, especially that scene where the visiting dancer comes to town
of the carnival and bores with Felicia Rashad, who combs her hair, and as she does so, the
woman is reminded of her own mother, who she hasn't seen in 15 years. That is a great scene.
This lets it all out. Coming up next, how are people like insects, which have the worst
sting? Angels and insects, when we come back.
Everyone seems to be taking an interest in the natural sciences since your arrival here.
Chevy Trucks is proud to help the U.S. Ski Team get where they are today. The rest is
up to them. Chevy Trucks, proud to be the newest member of the team.
And then the raccoons ate our food, and we all got poison ivy, and that was my vacation.
We drive and drive and drive some more, and that was my vacation. After I went to a haunted
mansion, I traveled into the future and hung out with famous movie stars, and then I was
attacked by aliens, got caught in a tidal wave, and went all the way to China.
Is that all, Billy? No, but the rest is kind of hard to believe.
Co-1407W Disney. Make the dream come true. Our next film set in Victorian England has
the provocative title, Angels and Insects, and it suggests similarities between the ruthlessness
of the insect world and the human world. As a young naturalist is invited to the home
of a wealthy collector and asked to catalog his treasures, but he's drawn to more than
just the rare butterflies in this magnificent home. He's also attracted to a beautiful
daughter played by Patsy Kensett. She stuns him by almost immediately agreeing to his
marriage proposal. I cannot believe my own happiness.
You will catch cold if you cannot believe it enough to come in.
The poor young scientist is nicely played by Mark Rylance, and his intellectual attraction
to a poor relation of this wealthy family is returned with more than just a little passion.
Fill me with a desire to see those paradigal places that I shall not rest until I've seen
the great river and felt the air of the tropic. You cannot do that. Think of the fever. Think
of the terrible biting creatures. Think of the monotonous, insufficient food of the rough
men out there, the drunkenness. Yet you will get there.
That's Kristin Scott Thomas who we also saw earlier in the show in Richard III. One special
note about Angels and Insects, it has some of the best costume design I've seen in years.
I don't like to dance. Please, go away.
I think the form of the push was chosen today for the annual nuptial dance.
Angels and Insects is a very odd little film and that's why I like it. Even though the
big revelation in this film I think is the least interesting thing about it, that's just
a drama gimmick. I like the three principal characters very much, particularly the scientist.
His apparent weakness masks a remarkable strength and I wish the movie was as much about him
as Patsy Kinsett's Fierce Family. Maybe it is. Another mixed review but thumbs up from
me nonetheless.
Oh, I liked it too and I agree with you about the costumes and in particular the way they
present first the mother of the family and then later when she gets pregnant, Patsy Kinsett,
as if they're queen bees or the queens of an anthill. In fact, there's an ant farm in
the movie and they're gathered, all the workers gather around them and feed them and they
just kind of sprawl in the sun eating and then burying children so that the family is
seen like insects.
We know that people can be as obsessive in their behavior as the insect population with
its even more limited brains. People get into the same rut too and that's what we see and
that's what's so fascinating. From the collector to the scientist to the daughters and other
things that are going on in the film.
The movie is based on a story by A.S. Byatt who also had a big best seller a couple years
ago called Possession. She loves to have intellectual people who somehow get their intellectual
pursuits confused with their emotional life and that happens here.
There's a lot of confusion in this film.
When we come back, our video pick of the week, a Japanese animated film about a rather extreme
method for treating old folks.
Star light. Star bright. The first star I see tonight. I wish I may. I wish I might.
Make my wish come true tonight.
They're out there. They're not like most of us. There's a passion that unites them like
a family. Some people even call them rebels. They're Saturn owners.
Hey guys, this must be the place, huh?
Ladies, hurry up. The factory guy's gonna talk.
I don't know. I guess if you don't own one, you probably wouldn't understand.
Do not pay till August. It's the final day. Super Sunday. The final eight hours of our
greatest sale ever at Sun Valley Waterbed. This Super Sunday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. only.
Everything on our floor is marked down for immediate liquidation. All floor samples,
all discontinued lines, dressers, nightstands, waterbeds, futons, kids' beds, sheets. Everything
at immediate liquidation prices. Plus, do not pay till August. No payments and no interest
till August. Hurry, it's the final eight hours this Super Sunday. Offer ends 5 p.m. at Sun
Valley Waterbeds.
Never again. I'll never go back to hydrocortisone for my dry skin itch. I switched to lanocaine.
New medical testing on itch nerve shows the direct action of lanocaine relieves itching
faster and keeps working better than hydrocortisone. Look, in the first crucial minute, lanocaine
gave faster itch relief.
And the relief really lasts.
Over time, lanocaine kept working better.
Fast relief that lasts. I like that.
Lanocaine not only relieves itching faster, it keeps working better than hydrocortisone.
The Century Plaza, offering the finest in luxury service in Southern California style
adjacent to Beverly Hills on L.A.'s fashionable West Side. The Century Plaza Hotel and Tower,
a Westin Hotel.
Now it's time for our video pick of the week, and my pick this week is Rujian-Z, a new animated
film by the Japanese director Katsuhiro Otomo, whose 1990 film Akira has become one of the
best-known animated visions of a nightmare future world. Another one of those horrible
futures.
Yeah, but this is at least much more colorful.
Okay, now he's back with a quite different but equally savage satire about healthcare
for the aged in the 21st century. Scientists are alarmed that there are too many old people
and the caring for them is a dead end for medical students obsessed by their careers.
So they invent a machine called Z001, which becomes the permanent home of old people.
They live in the machine. It bathes them, massages them, shows them movies and video
games and even attends to their bathroom functions.
Excretion. Disposal.
This task, which has so long been the measure of true devotion, is taken over uncomplainingly
by Z001. Forget foul-smelling diapers and bedpans.
The machine is run by its own atomic reactor, and the movie even helpfully explains that
in the case of a nuclear accident, the machine will instantly bury itself and its patient
in concrete. In the case of Z001, it goes haywire and runs away with its patient, leading
to a bizarre chase through the city.
I don't believe it. How did he get himself up there?
Americans are still mostly accustomed to thinking of animation in terms of Disney musicals or
cute little animals. But in Japan, where animated films control up to a third of the market,
they're made more for adults. And in this film, you can see a director like Otomo using
them for satire that would be difficult or impossible to pull off in a conventional movie.
The name of the movie is Rujan Z and it is now slowly rolling out across the country
before being released on home video in a couple of months. It's worth seeking out.
Now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed this week. Two thumbs down for
Screamers, the War of Minimachines on a Distant Planet. Two thumbs up for Richard the Third
with its vision of a Shakespeare villain clawing his way to the throne in a fascist England
in the 1930s.
We split on the love story Bed of Roses. I thought it took Christian Slater and Mary
Stuart Masterson forever to get to a completely preordained destination, but Gene was intrigued
by Masterson's character and gives the film a marginal recommendation.
Two thumbs up for Tim Reed's moving and nostalgic Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, which
shows how a rural black community in the segregated south stuck together and taught important
lessons to its citizens. This is one of the year's real sleepers.
Two thumbs up for Angels and Insects, the story of a young bug collector who falls into
the web of a family that's basically collecting him.
That's it for this week. Next week we'll be back with reviews of more new movies including
The Juror starring Demi Moore as a mob target stalked by hitman Alec Baldwin and also White
Squall with Jeff Bridges as a ship's captain who steers his crew of teenage boys into a
deadly storm. That's next week and until then, the balcony is closed.