Secretariat

Seen at: Cinema Saver 6, last night.

Alice---thought of you while seeing this movie, for obvious reasons, if you ever see it.

The movie unfortunately is rather dreadful---an amateur screenplay and textbook clumsy direction. You can really see the cast straining at the lines they are having to say. It's rather reactionary and cloying in the not-good sort of way, while simultaneously endorsing the worst of postmodernism.

The most interesting scenes were the close-ups of the horses themselves. They should have done more of that, I think---made the whole movie from the horse's point of view.

Nevertheless, I rooted for this movie. I remember the headline from the Triple Crown horse race that summer in banner type on the front page of the Des Moines Register. And that photo of that one horse, all alone, gallopping across the finish line to victory. Thirty one lengths---The number always stuck in my mind.

That's the way I thought of the world back then, that I was living in a perfect time, when the greatest of everything was happening, and that the wildest kinds of magic were possible, and that there was no reason I couldn't be a part of it too.

And the epilogue---that was freaking hilarious---snow angel hilarious.