The Capital City Film Festival is, well, just what you'd think from the name. It's been running sixteen years now, although for no particular reason we've never gone to one of their showings. We have been in our hipster bar when something for the festival got going, but we were there for our own purposes, understand. This not-particularly-intended skipping ended a week ago Sunday when we went to one of the venues --- a church just north of the Capitol --- for a showing of Animal Farm. Sort of. They'd be doing it with a live soundtrack playing, on jazz instruments, a form we've never seen a movie do before. They did the show by stripping out almost all the soundtrack to the 1954 film --- you know, the CIA one --- a process that left the event's composer with a deeper appreciation than he already had for the music, as he talked about in the question-and-answer session afterward that didn't go too badly.
On the way in we happened to see old pinball friends PHD and RED, although we quickly got separated and didn't catch up with them later. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger even missed seeing RED as the ticket-taker wanted to say something to her.)
It's probably not weird that I hadn't seen the movie before, and only slightly weird that I've never read the book. This is when I learned the movie was animated by Halas and Batchelor, who also animated some of the Gene Deitch Popeye cartoons of the 60s, so I was thrown by recognizing their style only not in ``picture moves like one out of every three seconds''.
So the movie, famously, alters the end of George Orwell's downer of a story, resolving with the Animal Farm animals deciding the time for revolution has come again. I can't say it doesn't fit the logic of the story, though, especially since I got to live through the late 80s where that kinda actually happened, with stunningly less bloodshed than your average revolution.
So it all made for a good experience and I'm more interested in seeing the original movie as it actually appeared. Might even read the book sometime. I certainly felt smart identifying all the allegorical elements in the movie (you can't tell me the pathetic showing of the farmers trying to retake Animal Farm isn't mocking the Allied invasion of Russia in 1918) and given the book is such a favorite choice for high school classes they can't be that much harder to pick out in the actual text.
Now, let's enjoy some pictures of Idlewild.
Comic foreground asking you to picture yourself on the Lincoln Highway, which Idlewild is. You might dimly recall that so is Dutch Wonderland.
And here's Rollo Coaster, one of the few roller coasters built in the 1930s. It's a really good terrain coaster, hugging the landscape for its fun.
Since our last visit the park had (because of an accident) replaced its old cars with these, that have seat dividers, lap restraints, and even side restraints keeping hands away from trees. When we last rode it, the train had nothing, just a bar to grab onto if you felt unsure.
We'll get back to Rollo. Here's the carousel, (one of?) the last Philadelphia Toboggan Company original-build carousels.
There's the rounding board with an eagle icon on top.
Here's the historical landmark plaque and one of the three PTC Shield horses on the ride.
Trivia: In the October 1678 issue of his Le Mercure Galant newspaper editor Donneau de Visé observed that ``in the past two years, two colors have come into existence'' and that ``this is something that happens very rarely''. One of the colors was straw; the other, Prince, some manner of near-black with hints of midnight blue and crimson fire. Source: The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour, Joan DeJean. The color Prince was consistently written with a capital P. It seems to have faded out of common parlance in the 18th century and fortunately there's no trouble searching the Internet for ``Prince color''. Oh.
Currently Reading: Michigan History, September/October 2025, Editor Kristen Brennan.
