SUPERHEROES AMONG US

Goodbye Solo and X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Goodbye Solo, 2009. Directed by Ramin Bahrani, written by Bahrani and Bahareh Azimi. Starring Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West, Diana Franco Galindo, Mamadou Lam, and Carmen Leyva.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine, 2009. Directed by Oscar-winning hack Gavin Hood, and written by David Benioff and Skip Woods (both of whom have written such trite garbage that you wonder how it can be called writing). Starring Hugh Jackman, Danny Huston (please stop wasting your career), Liev Schrieber (ditto), a non-entity named Will i Am, Lynn Collins, Kevin Durand, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch, Daniel Henney, and Scott Adkins. Very few of these people will go on to do anything of value, ever.

You might ask yourself: what in the hell could Ramin Bahrani’s modest Goodbye Solo have to do with the mighty, mighty extravaganza that is X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Aside from the fact that on this bright and sunny May Day, the start of when Hollywood shifts in its cave like a bear emerging from its winter slumber and unleashes its blockbusters, both Solo and Wolverine open here in Minneapolis. But aside from their debuts, it is apparent from watching both that they’re about superheroes, fighting and struggling to maintain order, and bring peace and harmony to the world.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on May 1, 2009
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DOLLAR SIGN ON THE MUSCLE

Sugar and Tyson.

Sugar, 2009. Directed and written by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck. Starring Algenis Perez Soto, Jaime Tirelli, Rayniel Rufino, Richard Bull, Ellary Porterfield, Ann Whitney, and former Cincinnati Red and current disgraced scout Jose Rijo.

To boil it down, Sugar is a baseball movie. Now I can already imagine art house patrons and filmgoers in general beginning to close their minds like gates in front of a Brooklyn Liquor store at the thought of yet another treacly film about the noble sport. So when I mention that Sugar is one vital part of the great American mythology, the essential tale of a Latin American immigrant struggling to make it here, well, then I find myself trying to shake into consciousness the hordes of baseball fans who want their movies as clean and crisp and sharply delineated as Rick Monday’s flag-saving sprint. Alas, Sugar, then, seems to hover in a netherworld between these two communities, who, if judging by box-office returns in Los Angeles and New York, are missing out on what is, simply put, a damn good movie.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on April 23, 2009
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THERE WAS THIS MOMENT IN TIME…

The More The Merrier, 1943. Directed by George Stevens. Written by the crazy quintet of Robert Russell, Frank Ross, Richard Flourny, Louis R. Foster, and an uncredited Garson Kanin. Starring Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn, bug-eyed Richard Gaines, and a cast of happy homeless in Washington, D.C.

There was this moment in time when the world went crazy and everyone took up arms. Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain, America… really, almost literally the whole world decided to try and kill one another and wreck the cities and the countryside. It was terrible. Good men and women here in the United States went off to fight this war or to do the jobs necessary to the effort. No one knew what would happen tomorrow. For all anyone knew, they or their loved ones might be dead in short order.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on December 6, 2008
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THERE ARE NO GHOSTS NOR ANGELS, HEAVEN IS IMAGINATION, AND ONLY MEMORY, BLESSED MEMORY, IS OUR SALVATION

But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me. Second book of Samuel, 12:23

We can talk all we want about the afterlife. We can guess and ponder, speculate and believe with an assurance so strong it convinces others to join our faith. But what do we really know? Nothing. OK, I know nothing. You might be convinced.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on October 10, 2008
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THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH

And so we drove away. Early Wednesday morning, this house of his empty, scrubbed of almost every scrap and trinket that would let you know that a man named Peter Schilling once lived here. Except for his customized chopping blocks he made to fit perfectly on top of the washer and dryer in the kitchen. Or the strange two inch wide, handpainted pieces of wood with one inch holes, fitted with little screens to allow fresh air to circulate with the air conditioning on. We left those behind. Otherwise, there is nothing left. No one will remember him at this particular house.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on July 20, 2008
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LOAFING AROUND THE HOUSE

There’s a wake tonight, from 6 to 8, for Dad at the Hibernian Pub in Raleigh. I’m hoping for a night of wonderful, crazy, strange memories with good people. While toodling around on Dad’s computer, John found the above photo which sums up the man pretty well. Somehow, he took three pictures of himself and then Photoshopped them together to make this panorama of his house in Benson, NC. This is the same place he used to hold his Mule Days party every year.

by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on July 17, 2008
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CURSE, BLESS ME NOW WITH YOUR FIERCE TEARS, I PRAY

 And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears,
I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.
–Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” 

Here’s the obituary I wrote for my Dad, who passed away just a few days ago:

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on July 17, 2008
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THE BIRDS OF RADIOGRAFIA Y FLOROSCOPIA 10

Swallowing and eating. Doing a crossword puzzle. Moving, talking, pissing, writing. These are the little things we now mark as larger achievements, but they lack the shiny feeling of a toddler’s first steps or inaugural word.

Some days he wants to play cribbage, and I ask him to count the score off, out loud, in order to work his mouth and his tongue, and try to get that brain of his squared away for talking. I don’t know cribbage so well, and sometimes the scoring gets a bit touchy–for instance, when he says “eighteen” over and over when he means “eight”. I’m confused, trying to figure out if I’ve scored incorrectly, which is certainly possible. The funny thing is, after repeating the former number, he’ll shake his head and say “I don’t mean ‘eighteen’, I mean ‘eight’,” and then he can say the correct score. So we laugh and continue the game.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on July 6, 2008
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FATHERS WATCHING MOVIES WITH SONS

Allow me to delve into the deeply personal for a moment: my Dad, Peter Schilling Sr., was diagnosed last March with stage III lung cancer.

This was an incredible blow for him, obviously, and it devastated me for a few days before I righted myself and sought to help him fight this damn thing. Well, on a visit to North Carolina to see him last month, on the Saturday morning before Father’s Day, he suffered a massive stroke due to the tumor in his lung, which had thickened his blood. Were my brother, John, and I not visiting, he would probably not have survived, or have lost completely the power to speak, perhaps even been confined, forever, in a wheelchair. Continue reading →

by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on July 1, 2008
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I WAS AT THAT GAME, I WAS

Last night I dreamt that I visited Tiger Stadium. I visit the old house frequently in the night-it’s a part of the Sleep City that I live in now and again. Sleep City isn’t Detroit, not entirely, just as it isn’t New York or Chicago. They’re approximations, amalgams of the city as I imagine it from books and movies, past experiences there, and whatever residual shit from the day asserts itself in my slumber.

Last night it was Detroit, a bit friendlier, perhaps, though still run down. The streets are never straight, which is unlike the Motor City, but curved so that you can never see very far, mazelike and mysterious.

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by Peter Schilling Jr. Posted on May 14, 2008
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