Sticky My Fingers, Fleet My Feet is a film about a man accepting his old age. The film is playful, as its characters have an exaggerated infatuation with their games of touch football, the main character even keeping a book of stats for himself. John D. Hancock utilizes sound in order to help with the over dramatization, as the suspense builds before kick-off, where comically a young girl picks up the ball before they can begin. The sound again emphasizes the child in these older men, when the main character returns home to a bath. He imagines now he is playing tennis with a brush, leaving the viewer, in the bit of parallelism, to see he can’t be humbled by his age for long.
Tag: USA
The made-for-TV When She Says No takes a prismatic, Rashomon approach to its story of sexual assault. Kathleen Quinlan plays an anthropology professor who, during a roisterous campus party, has sex with three of her colleagues. She takes the matter to court, insisting that she’s been raped. The three men insist that Quinlan led them on–even when saying “no.” Both testimonies are presented in flashbacks which substantiate the words of whomever happens to be testifying. When She Says No refuses to cop out with easy answers: the “lady or the tiger” denouement allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusion.
In this drama, set during WWII, a teacher at a military school is derided by his students because he has not joined the military. The man is deeply disturbed by their ridicule and disrespect and so pleads with the draft-board to reconsider his “essential” status and allow him to join. He is allowed to enlist, but still, because he has a punctured ear-drum, is not allowed to join. Unable to face his students, the teacher gets a job at a shipyard, then deceives his students into believing that he is at war by having a buddy at boot camp forward their letters to him.
June Lorich works at the Mesabi Mine on Minnesota’s iron range. After an emotionally and physically abusive marriage, June is determined to make it on her own. But the worsening steel industry forces major cutbacks and June is bumped down to an all-male pit. She becomes the brunt of the other workers’ hostilities and is forced to fight against them – and the man she loves – to save her job.
Based on a short story by Paul Gallico, this drama stars Sissy Spacek as Verna Vane, a small-town girl who dreams of hitting it big in show business. Verna isn’t much of a singer or a dancer, but she is able to land a job with a U.S.O. troupe entertaining American soldiers in Europe during World War II. Verna imagines this is a major stepping stone in her career as an entertainer, but even though Maureen and Eddie, two veteran vaudevillians touring with Verna, know better, they don’t have the heart to tell her. While in Belgium, Verna meets Walter, a Lieutenant in the U.S. Army who becomes smitten with her. Verna: USO Girl was first aired in 1978 as part of the PBS series Great Performances.
An unsuccessful middle-aged college professor commits suicide, leaving his wife to cope with guilt, shame, and an angry teenage son who blames her for his father’s death.
Gavin, a farm boy from a small town, has reached a turning point in his life. Follow in the footsteps of his older brother, as a professional baseball player, or continue on his parents’ farm where his help is essential. His little brother Ben, who is crippled, idealizes him and gives him morale in the face of the pressures of the farm and college. One fine day during practice he is given a chance to hit and he hits the ball out of the field…