10 Reasons Hope Floats is a Guilty Pleasure

Hope FloatsHope Floats (1998) is not one of the greatest movies of all time, but it is one of those movies that I find myself watching whenever it pops up on TV. While the critics’ evaluation of the movie puts it at a low 25% “liked it” on the Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience puts it at a respectable 73% “liked it.” Why are regular audience members right on this movie and the critics so wrong? Here are ten reasons.

1. Forest Whitaker directs the movie, and does an excellent job. The well-known actor may have been an unusual choice to direct this movie, but he captures the atmosphere of a small town in Texas, perhaps because he was born in Texas. There are excellent shots throughout the movie, and as someone who has spent some time in the Lone Star State, I think he does a great job capturing some of the beauty of the area. He should direct more often.

2. Sandra Bullock gives one of her best performances as Birdee Pruitt. Bullock fits comfortably in the role of a likeable former small-town girl who was a cheerleader and “Queen of Corn.” She explains how the story attracted her to take the role in this video interview.

3. The movie includes a musical performance by Jack Ingram, who is playing at a dance scene. Ingram started out playing country music in Texas bars in the early 1990s. A friend introduced me to Ingram in the late 1990s when Ingram released some excellent CDs. Live at Adair’s (1996) is a great live album. More recently, Ingram got a trendy haircut and had more commercial success with songs like “Love You.” The Academy of Country Music gave him a top “new” male artist award in 2008, about a decade too late. But it is great he’s still making good music.

4. Speaking of musicians, Harry Connick, Jr. shows off his acting chops as Justin Matisse in Hope Floats. Connick has a lot of personality and it comes through in his performance here. Sure, he is not playing Hamlet or another great part, but he fits the role like a comfortable glove and is believable.

5. The rest of the cast is engaging too. The movie has Gena Rolands, who has been acting since the late 1950s and has an impressive resume of outstanding roles. She’s great here as Bullock’s mother. And Mae Whitman is able to make us laugh while at other times conveying the pain of a child with parents going through a divorce.

6. The movie has a number of elements that make it hard to classify. There are some laughs, but it is not a light-hearted romantic comedy. It is a Hollywood movie and it is not gritty, but there are several genuine moments in the movie about small-town life, death, divorce, and home.

7. The film has an excellent scene at the employment office when a former classmate gives Birdee (Bullock) her comeuppance for her popularity in high school. Neither person is played as a stereotype, and viewers find themselves sympathetic to both characters.

8. Two touching dance scenes illustrate romance, childhood, aging, and starting again: Birdie dances with her father, who has had a stroke and is in a nursing home, and she dances with Justin at the bar.

9. “Beginnings are scary. Endings are usually sad. But it’s the middle that counts the most.”

10. The soundtrack works, and the movie includes “Make You Feel My Love.” The song, sung here by Garth Brooks, is one of Bob Dylan’s later career classic songs, as we discussed recently on Chimesfreedom. In the case of both the song and the movie, the fans are right and the critics are wrong.

Is Hope Floats a bad sappy movie or is it a guilty pleasure? Leave a comment.

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    Ruth Ellis: Dance With A Stranger

    Dance With A Stranger, Ruth Ellis On this date in 1955, Great Britain hanged Ruth Ellis, who became the last woman executed in the United Kingdom. Ellis was convicted of murdering race-car driver David Blakely. Ellis and Blakely had an affair that sometimes became violent, including one time when Blakely hit Ellis in the stomach causing her to miscarriage. Ellis, a married night club hostess, was found guilty of shooting Blakely to death outside a pub in North London. She emptied the bullets in her revolver into his body and then asked someone to call the police. She immediately gave a full confession.

    After the jury convicted the 28-year-old Ellis of intentional murder, she automatically received the death penalty. She was hanged at Holloway Prison. As in the modern United States, executions of women often seem to highlight for some the barbarity of the death penalty. In Ellis’s case, thousands of people protested the planned execution.

    Although more men were hanged after Ellis, she was the last woman hanged in Great Britain. The last men were hanged in 1964, as England, Scotland, and Wales banned the death penalty for murder in 1965. In 1973, Northern Ireland banned capital punishment, and in 1998 Great Britain banned executions for all crimes, including treason.

    I just learned there is a movie about the case, Dance With A Stranger (1985). It does not appear to be available on Netflix, but is available other places. Dance With A Stranger stars Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, and Ian Holm. If you have seen the movie, leave a comment. It seems to have received pretty good reviews by critics. Ellis is also portrayed in the movie Pierrepoint: The Last Hangman(2006).

    The murder of Blakely and the hanging of Ellis led to other tragedies. According to a detailed Wikipedia article, Ellis’s husband, George Ellis, hanged himself a few years later. Ruth Ellis’s son by another man, who was 10 when his mother was hanged, suffered psychological problems after the execution and eventually killed himself in 1982. Ruth’s sister Muriel Jakubait has worked unsuccessfully to clear her sister’s name, although many have argued that Ellis suffered from battered spouse syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    Albert Pierrepoint, the official hangman of Great Britain who hanged Ellis, wrote in 1974 “that executions solve nothing.” The United Kingdom eventually agreed, but it was too late for Ruth Ellis. More details on the case are available on the TruTV website.

    Have you seen Dance with a Stranger? Leave a comment.

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    Dylan’s Late Career Classics: Make You Feel My Love

    One of the many amazing and unusual things about Bob Dylan is that he continues to write great songs after such a long career. Most talented artists have a short period of brilliant creativity, but Dylan has transcended time. Few artists in any field have had such a long career of such quality.

    While Dylan is most famous for his early output, in his later years he continues to create relevant and beautiful music. One of those songs is “Make You Feel My Love” from his 1997 album, Time Out Of Mind.

    Bob Dylan Time Out of Mind The song has been covered by number of artists. Garth Brooks and Billy Joel, two great pop songwriters themselves, recognized the brilliance of “Make You Feel My Love.” They each released cover versions immediately after the song was available, with Brooks’s song going to number one on the country charts. The song also has been covered by Adele, Kelly Clarkson, Bryan Ferry, Joan Osborne, Kris Allen, Shawn Colvin, Neil Diamond, and Garth’s wife Trisha Yearwood, among others.

    Garth Brooks and Bob Dylan are anti-You Tube, so it is harder to hear their versions online, but you may hear a clip of Bob Dylan’s original on his website. If you are brave you might try this short clip of actor Jeremy Irons singing “To Make You Feel My Love.” Rebecca Ferguson, the season runner-up on the 2010 United Kingdom’s X Factor received a standing ovation from Simon Cowell for her version of the song, and 2009 American Idol winner Kris Allen also performed the song on that show. The Garth Brooks version also appeared in the Sandra Bullock movie, Hope Floats.

    By contrast, music critics have not been so kind to the song. Nigel Williamson’s Rough Guide to Bob Dylan calls it the “slightest composition” on Time Out of Mind. In Still on the Road, Clinton Heylin claims that the song shows Dylan’s inability to emulate Tin Pan Alley and that the song “truly belonged” on the Billy Joel album. Critics of the cover artists and shows like American Idol might argue that those artists reflect the poor quality of the song. They are wrong.

    The song is timeless and sounds like it has been around forever, which is the magic of so many of Bob Dylan’s songs. I agree with the critics that Time Out of Mind has greater songs in some senses, like “Not Dark Yet.” But it is “Make You Feel My Love” that will be covered for decades to come. Many of the lyrics are typical love song cliches, such as “I could hold you for a million years.” And some of the words do not look like they would work when you see them on the written page, including “I’d go hungry, I’d go black and blue / I’d go crawlin’ down the avenue.” But the combination of words with the melody create something timeless that is more than the separate parts. And the lyrics for the final bridge are something special:

    Though storms are raging on the rollin’ sea,
    And on the highway of regrets;
    Though winds of change are throwing wild and free,
    You ain’t seen nothin’ like me yet.

    This 2003 live version by Joan Osborne in Sausalito, California is one of the best versions of the song. There is something about this beautiful version on a sunny cool afternoon next to the ocean. Osborne’s heart really comes through her voice, even as the people talking in the crowd do not realize what is happening on stage. Thank goodness for YouTube so others can appreciate what they were missing. Her studio version of the song is on her 2000 album Righteous Love.

    In Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager says that the song “is at best a lament for, or at worst a creepy plea to, an unattainable woman from a man getting more desperate by the minute.” He also points out that some have interpreted the song as being about the relationship between humans and Christ (“I could hold you for a million years”).

    Both interpretations from Trager are worth some thought, but ultimately the song seems more in the tradition of love songs like “My Girl” by the Temptations (“I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day/ When it’s cold outside I’ve got the month of May.”) or “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers (“I’ve hungered for your touch/ A long lonely time/ And time goes by so slowly”) or “Here, There, and Everywhere” by the Beatles (“I want her everywhere”). There is a long tradition in pop music of using hyperbole to explain the unexplainable human emotion of love. And when you watch the Joan Osborne version above, there is no trace of Trager’s creepy old man left. While Dylan may be Dylan and may have intended something different, the song has taken on a life of its own through various interpretations, becoming one of his late career classics and a beautiful love song.

    What do you think? Is “Make You Feel My Love” a classic song or just a bad pop song or something else? Leave a comment.

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    Chimesfreedom Greatest Hits

    Greatest HitsChimesfreedom recently added a new feature to our main page entitled, “Featured Blog Posts,” in the right-hand column of this page under the “Archives.” When you visit Chimesfreedom, that section will randomly select among some of our best posts, chosen because of reader interest or because we think they are among our more interesting blog posts. It is sort of a selection of greatest hits.

    So, if you are new to this website, or even if you are a regular reader who may have missed some posts, periodically check to see what posts are featured and click on the links to read the ones that interest you. This new feature allows you to find older posts of interest in addition to the other ways of clicking the “Category” links at the right or the “Headlines” tab at the top.

    Speaking of older posts, if you have not checked the live feed of the Iowa bald eagles lately, the birds are growing up. Check it out.

    Also, you may now “Like” Chimesfreedom on Facebook.

    Keep coming back and we appreciate your comments!

    Hail Atlantis!

    This morning at 11:30 a.m. EST, the space shuttle Atlantis successfully launched, marking NASA’s final shuttle mission. Atlantis will be in space for twelve days before returning to earth at Kennedy Space Center.

    Donovan Atlantis

    A previous Chimesfreedom post featured some thoughts about the end of the shuttle program, but watching this final launch online this morning at NASA HD-TV brings back a flood of memories, ranging from the excitement about the program when it was first announced, the thrill of the first test flights when the shuttle rode piggyback on jets, and remembering where I was when we lost the heroes on the Challenger in January 28, 1986 and on the Columbia on February 1, 2003. So today, it is hats off to all of the men and women (as well as some animals) who have contributed to the space program through the years, and here is hoping for future safe adventures.

    The space shuttle is named after a seafaring research ship, following a practice for naming the shuttles after ships. The articles do not say where the research ship got its name, but one may surmise that the name “Atlantis” comes from stories about the lost civilization and the continent that was buried beneath the sea. Tales about Atlantis, whether myth or reality, have circulated for centuries, and Plato wrote about it around 360 B.C.

    A little more recently, in 1969, Donovan released an album featuring the classic song about the lost civilization, “Atlantis.” It is an unusual and unforgettable song, where the singer begins by telling us about the island’s tragedy as an epic story and ends with his sadness over a lost love. The song was originally released in the U.S. as a B-side to the song “To Susan on the West Coast Waiting” because the record company thought U.S. record buyers would not be interested in a song with a long talking introduction. But they were wrong, and “Atlantis” became a much bigger hit than the A-side did.

    Around the Internet, there are rumors that Paul McCartney sings in the background and plays tambourine on “Atlantis,” although he is not listed in the credits for the song. Give it a listen and you will hear the McCartney-like voice near the end. But in a 2008 Goldmine interview, Donovan said that it was not McCartney (although McCartney claps and giggles on Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow“).

    And as you listen to “Atlantis,” send good thoughts to the astronauts on their journey, as well as to “the poet, the physician, the farmer, the scientist,/ The magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends.”

    Bonus “Atlantis” song: On Twitter, someone pointed out that The Shadows recorded an instrumental song also called “Atlantis” in the early 1960s. For readers who may not be familiar with the group, as explained on Allmusic.com, The Shadows were a landmark U.K. band in the 1960s and became one of the most popular instrumental groups in the world. Also, they often performed with Cliff Richard. Check them out if you do not know them already. (Thanks to @RetrospaceAndy.)

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