My New Favorite Movie: Witness for the Prosecution

I've been going through a list of several classic law movies.

Today I watched Witness for the Prosecution, which is from 1957, and was in black and white.

I loved it!

Basically, it's the story of a lawyer (Sir Wilfrid) who had some heart problem and is not supposed to stress himself, but then defends a guy accused of committing murder.  And then there's this huge surprise, which is that his wife testifies against him.  I think that's probably about as much as the cover would say.

There are six parts that I just really loved (enough to take note of), in addition to many other amusing parts.

1.  At the very beginning, Sir Wilfrid is coming home to like, his law building (downstairs) and house (upstairs), and he has this way uptight nurse who is coming home with him.

She's chattering in the car and says, "Shall we roll up the window, Sir Wilfrid?"

And he says, "Just roll up your mouth, you talk too much. If I'd known how much you talk I'd never have come out of my coma."

2.  They've had a stair lift installed while he was in hospital, and he plays with it, riding up and down.  I didn't even know stair lifts existed in the 50's!

3.  The nurse keeps trying to get him to go upstairs and rest, and he's started talking to these men about the case that he is definitely not supposed to take, and at one point, the nurse calls from the top of the stairs, "Sir Wilfrid!  You're dawdling again!"  And then she claps at him!  Love. It.

4.  There's this part where the guy accused of murder is explaining how he knew the lady he was accused of murdering, and he's talking about how they became friends, and about the first time he visited her home.  And the lady had a collection of African masks and stuff, and they're from when the lady and her belated husband had lived in Africa.  And the lady talks about this one mask that was a witch doctor mask.  

Lady:  "Hubert and I collected all these things when we lived in Africa.  Hubert was my husband."

Accused guy:  "Well, now, there's a loveable chap."  (And he points at this wild mask.)

Lady:  "That's the mask of the witch doctor.  He wore it when he pulled our servants' teeth.  So Hubert used to call him a witch dentist.  Hubert was so witty."

A witch dentist!  That kills me. I would have liked Hubert, I think.  Almost as much as Sir Wilfrid.

5.  They've told Sir Wilfrid that he can take this case only if he promises to go somewhere relaxing like the Bahamas or something right after the case, like so that he can't keep doing stressful work.  And at one point they're bothering him about vacation stuff, and Wilfrid snaps at his nurse, "Shut up.  You just want to see me in those nasty shorts."  (Bermuda shorts that they've ordered him.)  This maybe doesn't sound very funny, but it is quite funny coming from an old English guy who wears one of those powdered wigs and a monocle.

6.  Okay, this last part isn't really a movie quote.  It's an announcement that comes on as the credits are starting at the end.  It announces, "The management of this theater suggests that for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending of Witness for the Prosecution."  Gasp!  An official announcement telling every viewer not to spoil the ending for other people?!  Amazing.

So.  I won't tell you how things all end (because I care about your greater entertainment), but this is definitely a movie to see if you haven't seen it yet.

Hogle Zoo

When Erin and I went to the YSA Summit thing, we had a few hours off during the afternoon.






We went to the zoo.

We saw the white aligator.

We took pictures with ferocious animals.

We saw the baby giraffe.

AND--this is why it's still worth blogging about way later--we saw an ape that had a water bottle. He was collecting water from his stream, and drinking it. It was excellent. See proof below.

With Silver Bells and Cockle Shells and Pretty Maids All in a Row

You're probably all guessing that by now my garden has flourished. I probably had to figure out what to do with everything being crammed into tiny squares. Since I've got to be close to my 55 days to harvest or whatever, I should be eating fresh vegetables pretty soon. Right?

NO!

Unfortunately, my garden has not grown since I transplanted it, back whatever day that was. Fortunately, however, it hasn't died. It's just stayed the same. The beans have grown a little bit. Some strawberries have grown. (Stupid snow in April!)

I had abandoned the many carrot sprouts that were no way going to fit, and a couple sprouter things that hadn't grown, and was waiting to carry the indoor-greenhouse to the trash with everything else. A few days later, everything was dead except for a little tomato sprout that had grown and reached out in search of light. It really obviously wanted to live, so I moved it outside with everything else, though it isn't planted.

I also wanted to post today about a couple movies that were part of the reason I started a garden this year. Entirely coincidentally, after I saw the blog post about square foot gardening (but before I planted mine), I had two gardening movies come through Netflix.

It turns out, there aren't a lot of gardening movies out there. Today I Googled gardening movies, and basically a lot of people talk about the scenery in movies about other things (like, for example, Sense and Sensibility). But a few movies do come up on any list of gardening movies. Included are BOTH of the two that Netflix had randomly suggested because of other movies that I'd liked before. They were both clever, funny movies.

The first movie that I saw was Greenfingers. It's based on a true story. It's about some prisoners who get all into gardening, and go on to compete at England's huge garden show. It also has a kind of funny romance in it. I loved this movie. (It kind of reminded me of the Shawshank Redemption, although I don't think it's quite as clever. Still, the prisoners and the library/gardening projects struck some kind of a chord for me.)

The other movie came next after Greenfingers, and it was Saving Grace. The premise for that one is, it's this old lady whose husband dies. She finds out that he's left her deep in debt from his little get-rich schemes that didn't work. It's so bad that she's about to lose the house that they've like, spent their whole lives in. She's all into gardening, though, and her gardener gets her started growing marijuana. This one's kind of about that, and the way her town gets all into it. I worried that this one would be stupid, because marijuana makes people say and do stupid things. It actually wasn't a stupid movie, though. The plot flowed well. It ended differently than I expected. It's not one that I would buy, but I did really enjoy it. It was very funny. And it won the Audience award at Sundance.

Both came out in 2000. Netflix recommended them to me because I liked: Waking Ned Devine, Chocolat, Dear Frankie, Children of Heaven, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Amelie. So if you liked those movies, you'll probably like these, and if you hated those movies, then you probably won't like Greenfingers or Saving Grace too much.

ALSO, please note that you may want to use ClearPlay or find edited copies; they take place in the UK and one of them involves prisoners, soooo... there aren't blood and guts, or intense adult scenes or something, but there is a fair amount of bad language.

They're great movies, though. Non-stuffy gardening movies.

Well, that's basically it.

Except, when I Googled "mary mary quite" to be sure that I had my title spelled correctly, I found out a lot about that nursery rhyme. It's actually kind of gross, and interesting. Wikipedia has a page about it. I can't believe everyone teaches their kids this stuff.

And finally, this is my 100th post.