Where have you been, you old goat?
Mar. 2nd, 2008 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaidenwe're beginning to make a concerted (rather than random piecemeal) effort to replace VHS tapes with DVDs. the side effect of looking to upgrade the things you already have is that you then find some things you always wanted to have and suddenly you've added as many as you replaced in that shopping trip. if you're me.
so i'm browsing through the Criterion rack (Life of Brian, score) and i make one of those finds...Hopscotch.
Hopscotch was a movie my family had on videodisc. (it was an R-rated film i had ready permission to watch as a kid, since the rating comes from language only.) when C said that i had never shown it to him, i realized that i probably hadn't watched it since i started college. i remembered that i loved it; Walter Matthau plays a CIA agent who is moved from the field to a desk job by an odious manager, and takes revenge by writing and distributing his memoirs. he sends it out to various intelligence agencies around the world, one chapter at a time, and carefully stays one step ahead of the angry and embarrassed people from Langley.
it's even better than i remember it, a moment frozen in a time where the Russians were the big bad and Bonn was the seat of government in (West) Germany. the genre is a bit tough to pigeonhole - it's a comedy, it's a bit of a spy thriller - but the humor is mostly verbal and for all the casual talk of "retiring" spies, no one dies. our hero is a jowly older man, and the love interest is a widow (with very short hair) who isn't a whole lot younger. Hopscotch requires your full attention, because there is never a visual or verbal cue to remind you about the scene earlier in the film where we set up the action in this scene. it's all shot on location, the acting is top-notch, and the music is mostly Mozart. it's about adults, and it treats the audience as such. this film is a pleasure to watch, and i'm glad to know that someone cared enough to put it on DVD.
so i'm browsing through the Criterion rack (Life of Brian, score) and i make one of those finds...Hopscotch.
Hopscotch was a movie my family had on videodisc. (it was an R-rated film i had ready permission to watch as a kid, since the rating comes from language only.) when C said that i had never shown it to him, i realized that i probably hadn't watched it since i started college. i remembered that i loved it; Walter Matthau plays a CIA agent who is moved from the field to a desk job by an odious manager, and takes revenge by writing and distributing his memoirs. he sends it out to various intelligence agencies around the world, one chapter at a time, and carefully stays one step ahead of the angry and embarrassed people from Langley.
it's even better than i remember it, a moment frozen in a time where the Russians were the big bad and Bonn was the seat of government in (West) Germany. the genre is a bit tough to pigeonhole - it's a comedy, it's a bit of a spy thriller - but the humor is mostly verbal and for all the casual talk of "retiring" spies, no one dies. our hero is a jowly older man, and the love interest is a widow (with very short hair) who isn't a whole lot younger. Hopscotch requires your full attention, because there is never a visual or verbal cue to remind you about the scene earlier in the film where we set up the action in this scene. it's all shot on location, the acting is top-notch, and the music is mostly Mozart. it's about adults, and it treats the audience as such. this film is a pleasure to watch, and i'm glad to know that someone cared enough to put it on DVD.
