Summer isn’t the same this year

Summer is here

We’ve all heard of the Boston Tea Party, but do you know what types of tea were thrown overboard? If you’re curious, read Scott Lee’s Tea Tales column.

Vern Lawson shares some of his memories of his early life in the Antelope Valley. He moved here in 1949 to take a job with a newspaper and has been here ever since.

Keeping fit during this pandemic is important and Cheryl Mashore tells us how to keep ourselves in check mentally.

Even though we can’t enjoy any fireworks shows this year, we can grab an ice cold drink and enjoy some time around the barbecue with family.

Until next month ...

INDEPENDENCE DAY

“Independence Day” has become a sort of tradition in my family to revisit every July.

It’s an alien invasion picture like the ones Hollywood released in droves in the 1950s and it retains all of the charm of those films without an ounce of cynicism (and a hefty special effects upgrade).

The film, which utilizes a number of brilliantly realized miniatures and sparing CGI, holds up wonderfully in 2018 and if your last exposure to this film was through its repulsive 2016 sequel, you owe it to yourself to give this unabashed popcorn flick another go.

President Thomas J. Whitmore’s (Bill Pullman) glorious July 4 speech just before humanity’s last stand against the alien invaders is corny, over the top and offers just a taste of American arrogance the rest of the world sees in this country’s worldview, but I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the most rousing monologues I’ve ever heard. You can’t help but cheer.

“South Park” creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s irreverent marionette action flick pits a ragtag crew of “world police” against the evils of the world, namely terrorists and Kim Jong-il (Kim Jongun had just cleared puberty upon this film’s release) in a race to secure global freedom for all.

And while the film’s title song, “America, F--- Yeah!,” is brash and vulgar and, sure, patriotic the rest of the picture instead examines world geopolitics of the early-2000s with a surprisingly thoughtful touch. Except, you know, with puppets.

At the start of this rollicking adventure film, the thin, short and sickly Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) has a different sort of American Dream: instead of wealth and personal prosperity, he seeks only to serve his country as World War II ravaged most of the globe.

His diminutive appearance (achieved with effective CGI wizardry) forces recruiters to turn him away, but his earnestness eventually catches the eye of Dr. Abraham Erskine (Stanley Tucci), who works with Howard Stark to create an army of super soldiers that would help turn the tide for the Allies.

Since the genre began to gain a following in the early-2000s, superheroes have strived for depth and darkness to create character, but Rogers (and Evans) works so well with audiences because of his blissfully idyllic All-American persona. He leads his group of freedom fighters behind enemy lines and we’re with him the whole way.

A mid-film montage of Cap leading his friend Bucky and others in various raids against Hydra (a supernatural Nazi faction), Alan Silvestri’s heroic score triumphantly blasting, is enough to have you standing in salute.

The Fourth of July is the nationwide celebration of our freedoms enjoyed as Americans, and Steven Spielberg’s criminally overlooked historical drama, “Amistad,” is arguably the directors finest celebration of that freedom.

Telling the prolonged legal battle that followed a 1839 slave revolt aboard the Spanish slave-trading ship La Amistad, Spielberg paints in big emotional strokes of patriotic beauty.

Abolitionists represented by Roger Sherman Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey) and his fictional associate Theodore Joadson (Morgan Freeman) lead the fight to free the Mende captives once they are imprisoned by the United States Navy and charged with piracy.

Through it all, there’s a reverence for this country (imperfect it may be), its laws, the language present in some of our key documents and its future (though open Civil War is looming).

As the former president John Quincy Adams, Anthony Hopkins continued his 1990s string of fantastic performances and offers one of the finest presidential bows put to film with quiet restraint and steadfast resolve.

But it’s the magnificent and powerful Djimon Hounsou who offers “Amistad’s” most complex performance and walks away with the film. Although his character, Joseph Cinque, is from Africa, his climactic courtroom refrain, “Give us, us free!” echoes a profoundly American (and human) ideal that reverberates throughout the film and, indeed, this country’s history.

In a time when the public’s perception of public servants seems to be at an all-time low, what better film to remind us of how our politicians should be: like the titular Jefferson Stewart.

Once the junior senator makes his way to Washington, his only hope is to propose a bill that would start a children’s camp, whose goal would be to instill leadership qualities in his district’s youth. Yet he is confronted with corruption and dirty dealings at every turn.

As James Stewart proclaims near the end of his iconic filibuster, “there’s no place out there for graft, or greed, or lies, or compromise with human liberties. If that’s what the grown-ups have done with this world that was given to them, then we better get those boys camps started fast and see what the kids can do. It’s not too late.”

The film is a classic, but its message didn’t quite catch on back then. Maybe someday (soon?) it will. Our country might be better for it.

Phillip Kaufman’s three-hour historical drama is an unabashed celebration of the men who risked life and limb to take America into the Space Age, Virgil Grissom (Fred Ward), Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid), John Glenn (Ed Harris), Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), Walter Schirra (Lance Henriksen) and Donald K. Slayton (Scott Paulin).

Based on Tom Wolfe’s hit non-fiction book and featuring representations of local heroes like Yeager, Kaufman’s film is a great primer for those interested in the High Desert’s far-reaching aerospace histor y.

The early scene of Yeager’s breaking of the sound barrier is as

thrilling a set-piece you’re likely to see in any action film.

Edward Zwick’s 1989 Civil War film about the first all-African American Union unit is a brutal war film that exudes patriotism amid the bitter sting of defeat.

Matthew Broderick plays Col. Robert Gould Shaw, a young officer who takes command of the 54th Massachusetts regiment, and leads his trailblazing unit into the annals of military lore with a number of daring charges deep in the South.

The final battle to take Fort Wagner is a glowing flash of Hell on Earth, red rockets blaring across the night sky as Union soldiers race to breach the fort, set to James Horner’s apocalyptic score. Among fine performances from Broderick, Carey Elwes and Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington turns in his early career’s star-turning moment as a headstrong private who comes to admire Shaw. His character’s moment of finally bearing his regiments flag is perfectly earned.

The film’s final images of a mass grave being filled with the bodies of both black and white Union soldiers piled upon one another is a tragic one, but ultimately reveals the film’s true glory:

brothers in arms resting eternally together. It’s a film of unimaginable violence and bloodshed, but a rousingly inspiring one to watch during this Fourth of July weekend.

Bookended by images of a gently waving flag dancing in the cool sea breeze off the coast of now-tranquil Normandy, France, Steven Spielberg’s first ode to the Greatest Generation remains my favorite World War II picture, ever.

The story, about a small squad of Army Rangers scouring the French countryside for a soldier who lost his three brothers in the days leading up to D-Day in 1942, is based on a similar event that occurred during the Civil War.

The thrilling opening half hour is what this film is largely remembered by, but the rest of its nearly three-hour runtime, with its quiet moments of regular American GIs questioning their purpose in the deadliest global war in human history (but still pressing on to ultimately do what’s right), is what makes the film the monumental achievement it is.

An all-star cast led by Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and Tom Sizemore, stunning photography by regular Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and a somber choral score from John Williams make for one of the most unforgettable films in modern histor y.