Still the greatest, as time goes by...

So, I went to see "Casablanca" tonight at Regal Cinemas West Town, a special Turner Classic Movies-sponsored showing for the film's 70th anniversary.

With one exception, which I'll get to in a minute, it was a great time.

This is a perfect film, a true testament to the studio system, the best American film ever made, with all due respect to the American Film Institute and "Citizen Kane." There is not one wasted word, not one miscast actor, not one flawed scene.

And the crazy part is the whole darn thing was an accident.

"Casablanca" was just another film rolling through the Warner Bros. factory in 1942. The script arrived daily, in pieces, and didn't have an ending. Director Michael Curtiz was great with the cast and terrible with the crew. Ingrid Bergman didn't think much of the film itself.

But a classic it became and, of course, it found an ending, a perfect one, courtesy of the Epstein brothers. Oh, and did you catch that the whole thing is an allegory for American involvement in World War II?

And what a cast -- Bogie, Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Dooley Wilson, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, S.Z. Sakall. And that song, that haunting, beautiful song, immortalized by Wilson, you must remember this.

All those money quotes:

"Here's looking at you, kid," and "I'm shocked -- shocked -- to find that gambling is going on here" and NOT "Play it again, Sam." Listen carefully. It's never said.

TCM host Robert Osborne filmed an introduction, telling us the movie was shot for about $900,000. He talked about the script problems and repeated the story (which may indeed be apocryphal) that Ronald Reagan was almost cast as Rick Blaine.

This is the movie that made Bogart a motion picture star. He was tough and he was vulnerable and, yes, he could play the romantic leading man and play one quite well.

Our only unpleasantness for the evening was, again, a disappointing experience with digital projection. Yes, the print looked pristine. But, it kept getting interrupted with occasional pauses and a bizarre flashing message about someone not being authorized to view the film. At least it wasn't as bad as the time I tried to see the documentary "Senna" at Downtown West and the subtitles -- much of the film is in Portuguese -- were cut off.

Say what you will, none of this would have ever happened with a 35mm print.

But, even those annoyances couldn't ruin classic Hollywood's cinematic triumph, a film for the ages, still the greatest of them all, as time goes by.

Happy birthday, Gipper!

Happy 100th birthday to the best president during my lifetime and one of America's 10 best, Ronald Wilson Reagan!

Take note of Norman Rockwell's four renderings of the Gipper's image.

Here is a link to CBS News coverage of Reagan's January 1981 inauguration.

'The Interrogator' vs. 'The Great Communicator'

Just in time for the Gipper's 100th birthday tomorrow, here are classic clips from "60 Minutes" interviews Mike Wallace conducted with Ronald Reagan in 1975, 1976, 1980 and 1989.

Oh, to have a president like this again...

As an added bonus, here is a clip of an interview Jim Lehrer conducted with the Gipper in 1989, in which Reagan discusses debating Jimmy Carter during the 1980 campaign.

'We are all Egyptians'

More fine work from Nicholas Kristof, who is risking his life to report what may become the story of the decade.

His latest dispatch, for the New York Times, can be found here.

Ronald Reagan, who would have turned 100 this Sunday, would have loved this democratic display in Cairo. He taught us to always strive to be the Shining City on the Hill, promoting democracy throughout the world, forever looking forward to a better tomorrow.



Iran-Contra notwithstanding, I believe that Mr. Reagan believed in the cause of freedom more strongly than anything else save the inherent goodness of ordinary Americans. Don't forget that the Gipper was once an FDR Democrat. Although he became disillusioned with the Democratic Party, he never lost his idealism.

Another popular president, John F. Kennedy, stood in the shadow of the Berlin Wall during his final summer and declared, "Ich bin ein Berliner," -- "I, too, am a Berliner."



We wait for the smoke to clear in Cairo, yes. Free and legitimate elections must be allowed to happen or else this becomes one big mess.

But reading the accounts of those on the scene, observing Hosni Mubarak's heavy-handed response to the anti-government protesters during the past couple of days, learning, if you bother to do so, that the Muslim Brotherhood appears at best to be a bumbling fringe element in Egypt, it's difficult not to yell "Innaharda, ehna kullina Misryeen!" at the top of one's lungs.

Remembering the Challenger 7, 25 years later

Michael J. Smith. Dick Scobee. Ronald McNair. Ellison Onizuka. Gregory Jarvis. Judith Resnik.

These six astronauts, and teacher Christa McAuliffe, were killed 25 years ago, Jan. 28, 1986, when NASA Mission STS-51-L went horribly wrong 73 seconds into its flight. The space shuttle Challenger broke apart. Its crew perished. A nation reeled in shock.

High school social studies teacher Dean Harned, 33, will never forget it. Knox County Schools were closed that day -- it had snowed -- and Harned was one of the relatively few people who actually saw the shuttle break up while watching the launch live on television. (CNN was the only network to carry it live. Many children around the country were able to watch the launch because NASA provided a broadcast feed on its TV network to schools because of McAuliffe's participation in the flight as part of the Teacher in Space program).

"I thought it was neat that a teacher was going up," Harned says. "My mom is a teacher and I thought it was really cool. I remember hearing that the shuttle had exploded and going out in the garage to tell my father. He had a look of disbelief on his face and said, 'No, no...'

"No doubt, it's our generation's Titanic moment."

The news spread quickly by 1986 standards. Within an hour, more than 86 percent of the country had heard about the accident, which occurred just after 11:39 a.m. (EST). CBS News was reporting the incident by 11:45.

An extensive investigation later determined that a faulty O-ring seal on the right solid rocket booster was responsible for the breakup of the space shuttle (it actually did not explode in the common usage of the term). An investigation by the Rogers Commission later determined that NASA had known about the potential problem with the O-rings since the late 1970s. Bitterly cold temperatures the morning of the flight also contributed to the disaster. Read about the entire incident here.

And here are a few horrifying facts you may not know. After an extensive recovery operation, NASA later learned that Challenger's flight cabin survived the initial breakup. At least two -- and likely all -- of the crew members were still alive and could have survived until the flight cabin crashed into the ocean at 204 mph about three minutes after the breakup. Three of the four Personal Egress Air Packs on the flight deck had been activated. A History Channel video provides further details.

NASA was heavily criticized for both its initial response to the disaster (officials all but avoided the press the day of the accident) and for its fatal decision to launch the shuttle under less than desirable conditions, despite warnings about the O-ring problem and other issues from engineers and others at both NASA and contractor Morton Thiokol.

The U.S. space program grounded to a halt for almost three years until Discovery launched on Sept. 29, 1988. Barbara Morgan, McAuliffe's backup who trained with her for the Challenger flight and watched the launch from Kennedy Space Center, flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavor as a mission specialist in August 2007.

Harned says the Challenger disaster was a game changer.

"That episode put to rest for generations the possibility that we would see a manned mission to Mars. After Challenger, NASA's timidity, the way it addressed the situation, they decided those dreams needed to be put on hold for awhile."

And, for a young boy, the Challenger disaster was Harned's initial brush with mortality.

"It was my first realization that we are fallible. There was something special about the first teacher in space. Christa McAuliffe represented the link to the future -- that ordinary Americans would one day go to space.

"Watching the reactions of her parents and her students, it was horrifying. Those mental images are burned in my head. It was very traumatizing."

The unedited CNN broadcast of the Challenger disaster can be seen here.

President Ronald Reagan's address to the nation on the disaster can be seen here.

CBS News's coverage following the disaster can be viewed in several parts beginning here.

An in-depth report on the disaster by NBC reporter Jay Barbree can be found here.

As President Reagan said in his memorable address, we will never forget the Challenger 7, nor the last time we saw them, moments before they "slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God."

Please feel free to leave your memories of that awful Tuesday by clicking on the comment link below.

The Wasteland

Unless I miss my guess, 2008 will go down as one of the worst presidential elections in history in terms of quality of candidates. Across the board, on both sides, all one can see is a vast wasteland, what writers during the first World War would have called no man's land -- barren, pock-marked, and with barbed wire twisting at either end.

It's depressing. The times cry out for greatness. We have real problems that will require real solutions. But all this field seems to promise is "Back to the Future" or symbolism over substance.

I watched "West Wing" last night and mused over the possibility of electing a president fluent in the classics who can think and talk in complete sentences and still seem like a regular person. Somebody who isn't a policy wonk or partisan viper.

Yeah, keep dreaming.

Whatever you might think of Ronald Reagan, what I loved about him was his eloquence. The Great Communicator's hero was FDR -- he ripped "Rendezvous with Destiny" straight from the patrician from Campobello -- and his most effective tool, like Roosevelt's, was his words. I remember watching his farewell address that January of 1989 and thinking America stood at the dawn of a second Renaissance.

Instead it's been more like a second Dark Age.

And so it goes. I think I'll bury myself in my history books until this election season (my god we've started early) concludes. And whenever one of these morons takes office, I'll start reading them all over again.

Where have all the good ones gone?

Drops dripped: Conquering 'War and Peace': OK, here goes. Today begins my Everest ascent into Russian Romanticism. My copy of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's new translation of Tolstoy's "War and Peace" arrived in the mail this weekend. I'll begin the first chapter in a few minutes.

I'll keep you abreast of my progress. I'm determined to climb to the top this time.

The legend

What a sweet, wonderful victory was last night's makeup game with the Toronto Blue Jays. Left for dead, the Detroit Tigers rose Lazarus-like from the grave. And who was the savior this time?

Who else, but Maggs.

I don't know if this team will make the playoffs. It doesn't look likely. But what joy they've given us this year amid all of the injuries, all the disappointments.

A-Rod will win the MVP. We know how things go in the American League as far as those bastards are concerned. But every Tigers fan knows how much that long-haired right fielder has meant to this team.

There is a symmetry to baseball. The season begins, the days turn into months, then it ends. It appears in the spring, the world anew, and slips silently away into the chill of the fall.

I'll miss it when it's gone. The game has kept me company during this most difficult year. Kidney stones and palpable pain have dotted this season for me just as much as fly balls and home runs.

Last night, the Tigers secured for me a joy that the Bengals and Ravens couldn't have conjured up in a million years. When Maggs hit the walkoff, 2 RBI double, I was 7 years old again, oblivious to the harsh realities of the world. All that mattered were those two runs reaching the safety of home plate.

That joy, the ability to instantly transport one back to the innocent bliss of childhood, is why this is the greatest game of them all.

Baseball represents the best about this country, the small town, friendly neighbors, five and dime store, "aw shucks" America that Ronald Reagan insisted for eight glorious, illusionary years still existed somewhere in the amber waves of grain. Football is closer to what this country actually is -- big, expansive, violent, knock the other guy on his ass before he does the same to you.

The fact that football has replaced baseball as our national pastime should tell you quite a lot.

For me, I'll take the illusion, the black-and-white comfort of three strikes, three outs, three times three innings and that's all she wrote. I'll keep believing in my heart that Reagan's America really is out there somewhere, even if my head insists that it isn't.

When the legend becomes fact, print the legend, or so somebody once said. And, boy, do we ever need that legend now.