Double Feature Reviews

Last night was Double Feature night at the Hunter House, Sandy Plains Road Branch.  We have not had the time in a long time to watch a move, so we watch two, trying to catch up.  We watched  SELMA and THE COBBLER.

Man!  SELMA was about a terrible time in history when blacks were simply refused the right to vote because the color of their skin.  Legally they had the right, but the officials required much more when a black person tried to register.

I would say that was creative artistic liberties to dramatize or bend reality, but I know from first hand experience it was reality of the past:  When I turned 18, in 1959 I went to the courthouse to register to vote.  The person who had me fill out the form, had a good old boy personality , smiling with southern politeness.  I think he might even said he knew my father and his brothers.   When I filled out the form he said there was one more requirement.  He gave me a little piece of paper and told me to read aloud what it said.  It was Lincoln's Gettysburg's Address.

"Four Score and Seven Years ago...."

He interrupted.   That's good, you passed.

I said, "I haven't finished reading it."

He said in his good old boy smiling charm, "You read enough, if you had said, "FOE SCOE and seven years" I would have to disqualify you."  We don't want illiterates voting, no telling who they might vote for."  And winked and  laughed.

I think he thought he was being a patriotic American.

About seven or eight years later when equal voting rights was in the news it was brought out that a Morehouse College English professor (black of course) failed the literacy test.

Those times were terrible times if you happened to be born black.   And it took a movie like SELMA to bring it out.  I think there was a case of over-acting when the violent scenes were shown, but that could have been over-directing more than over acting.

THE COBBLER was a funny movie, almost like a fairy tale.  The Cobbler, played by Adam Sandler,  found a way he could instantly change identities.  It sort of got confusing at the end, who was who.  But a good escape.

It reminded me of the vintage MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN newspaper comicstrip that Mandrake could cloud people's mind with his identity by hypnotizing  them.