By Rob Fagin
MEMORIAL CHOICES
And, if Lee Marvin screaming at a dozen
bad-asses in the background is your
reminder of what this day is all about, then
the movies have done their part.
Meanwhile, let's go to the beginning of this
American holiday.
First up:
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Dir. Robert Enrico, 1962
Availability: Netflix & Amazon Instant (The
Twilight Zone S.5/Ep.23)
Clint Eastwood in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Catching the right pair of movies back-to-back can
illuminate wildly different details, create a whole
new viewing experience and, just maybe, BLOW
your MIND. Plus, it's fun! Here's your monthly
guide:
Every year, we kick off summer a month
before it actually begins, with barbecues and
mini stay-cations on a holiday meant to
remember fallen soldiers. Not that we are
being callous. We just live in a time and
place where the stressful demands of daily
work/life mix anxiously with our sacred
right to pursue happiness - which means
that, goddammit, we'll take what we can get
when we can get it.
So we turn to the memory-jogging
Memorial Day War Movie Marathons. The
interesting thing about these marathons is
16 illinoisentertainer.com may 2014
how heavily they focus on World War II which makes sense since this is the war that
is most accessible through its strong character of brotherhood, chivalry, overseas
romance and struggle against world-wide
Evil. The rest of our major conflicts might
seem a bit too murky, too distant or too
recent, slicked with empirical chess play and
chemical horrors to go down well with
pulled pork and Miller Lite.
Of course, nobody could ever deny that
the men and women who have served our
country in any capacity, during any era,
deserve our gratitude and remembrance far
beyond the bounds of our humble capabilities. Perhaps grilled burgers and good
friends sitting around in backyards is the
perfect form of celebration as memorial.
Several regions of the country claim to
have observed the first Memorial Day - first
known as Decoration Day, the day designated to decorate the graves of soldiers who
had been killed in the American Civil War.
We may not know precisely when and where
the commemoration started, but we do
know why. Well over half a million men
died in this four-year war, making it by far
the deadliest conflict in our history.
What an utter shock and terror this period must have been - the economic, sociological and political fractures of which can still
be felt 150 years later. An Occurrence at Owl
Creek Bridge is a brief and haunting little
story inspired by that hellish time.
As a man is about to be hung, time slows
and senses heighten for a breathless adventure. If you read the short story by Ambrose
Bierce (the guy who first wrote about
Carcosa, for you True Detective fans), you'll
learn the specifics of how he got this noose
around his neck. This 25 minute moviepoem (that you'll probably only be ab H