Lary Bloom
Writer, Editor, Teacher
The Bloom Blog
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Saturday, January 28, 2006
Mary Poppins, Please
It's much too late for you to nominate films as the best of the 20th Century. But if you could, would you cast your vote for masterpieces by Fellini or Bergman or Trauffaut, or perhaps Citizen Kane, which you've never stayed awake through, but which all the critics praised to the heavens?How could any of those compare to the spoonful of sugar that perks you up when you watch your four-year-old granddaughter, whom you don't see enough of because she lives far away, clap joyfully at Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, and get entirely lost in the sidewalk immersion scene as Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews transport everyone into an imaginary paradise?
In 1965, there you were, in the fraternity house in Athens, Ohio, playing Let's Go Fly A Kite and I Love To Laugh and Feed The Birds on the old upright, only to hear a frat brother bark, "What kind of crap is that?" That's what we're growing here, an American fraternity that doesn't know how to open its heart to miracles. Mary Poppins in one such miracle -- a perfect movie. When you need a jolt, when you are convinced that life is overrunning you, take a copy of it out of the local library and pop it in. Remind yourself of what's possible when the stars are aligned, and you want to get re-acquainted with the child in you.
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 1:55 PM
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