"f" is for "fighting"

Three images of fighting
entered my consciousness, weekend - through - today.

The movie Duplicity has, at the beginning, a scene on the tarmac at an airport, where two men who are top executives of two huge world-wide companies yell at each other, face-to-face, then get exasperated and start fighting with each other, physically. They are wearing suits. Each has an entourage -- cluster of people, some with umbrellas, standing, waiting, near the planes.

The fight is filmed in slow motion -- really slow motion -- and you see, while watching the seconds unwind like hours, how stupid fighting is.

And you really don't expect it -- the behavior -- from "top executives," whom we assume will be dignified, classy, and understated.

So it's funny.
And weird.
But -- it's only a movie.

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Reading short stories by Raymond Chandler -- "I'll Be Waiting," "The King In Yellow," "Pickup on Noon Street," "Smart-Aleck Kill," and "Guns At Cyrano's" -- encountered several fighting scenes. Bad guys routinely take a shot at Chandler's private detective heroes, with fist, "sap" (blackjack), or butt end of a gun.

There, it's part of the story, part of Chandler's style -- and I know it's fiction. No need to call the emergency room.

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Then today, heard someone at work discussing problems with his son, who has gotten into trouble by fighting. Now, that's not fiction, or dudes wearing suits in a movie -- it's a bummer for the parents.

I wonder how people go about teaching their teenage sons to organize their aggression into productive, society-sanctioned channels. ...

(I'd like to get that kid a job in the next Julia Roberts movie...He could pretend to beat people up, while wearing a suit...)

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Julia Roberts herself is rather terse in Duplicity, which is a welcome departure from the usual gooey luuuuhhhhh-vv-e stuff in some of her movies that leaves you feeling like you're trapped in quicksand mixed with sugar-frosting and you're getting sucked ever-downward. ...

Although even in this hard-edged movie about lying, stealing, cheating, tricking, trapping, spying, and general bliccchh in modern upper-corporate "world," there's still a part toward the end where it's:
(Julia Roberts): "I love you."

Oh-kay. Yadda-yadda-yadda.

(Julia): "I love you."
[yadda-yadda-yadda]
(Julia): "I really do." [I reeee--llll--yyyy---dooooo -- bleah]
[yadda]
Clive Owen: "I think about you all the time."
[ya-]

Those lines are in every freakin' movie where people are supposed to be
"iinnn-lluuuuvvvh"

come up with something original or just play some music instead --

There are two actors, besides Julia Roberts, who were also with her in the film Charlie Wilson's War -- the station chief in Pakistan who tells Charlie Wilson, "A sudden influx of money -- and new weaponry -- would draw attention..."
Charlie Wilson: "Draw attention...! I don't even know what that means. This is the Cold War! Everybody knows-about-it!..."

And the really smart weapons expert from C.W. War is also in DUPLICITY --
looking them up --
Denis O'Hare! -- is Harold Holt in CW War & something in Duplicity,
and
Christopher Denham -- is in both films.

Julia Roberts is sort of the Ingrid Bergman for our time.
Liked best: Erin Brockovich.

-30-