Wake Up, its a beautiful morning!

So like I watched 'To kill a mocking bird' last night and, holy cow batman, that is one fine movie.

From 1962, it has Gregory Peck playing quite possibly the coolest dad in the movie world ever, a couple of 'pesky kids' (kinda Scooby do style….) and a sharp lesson in southern politics….

But more importantly, this band's name now makes so much sense...

  

Now we all know that the book that inspired this movie  by Harper Lee is Superman's favourite read (we did? - Ed) so it's not surprising that this sentence makes no sense.

Moving on to better sentence structures, the film is all about children's innocence and loss of it -  set in a land of economic depression and racist topography.  In plain English – the kiddies learn the world is full of good and bad guys and their dad is The Greatest American Hero. Or something like that….

What appeals to me most about this movie is the title and its meaning – after a scene when the pesky kids are told that to kill a mocking bird is a sin – basically because they are beautiful and do no harm – I spent the rest of the movie trying to figure out how this would play out in the movie – and focussed my attentions on Tom, the black guy on trial for rape in a white town. Basically all the white folk in town hate him and presume him guilty – Hero Daddy, in striving to set a an example for his kids to live by, does his best to defend Tom. Thus it all seemed to head in this direction – Tom is the mocking bird.

But as usual I was wrong (and should have seen it coming), the scriptwriter mocked me gently, and  the mocking bird – i.e. the thing of beauty – turned out to be the ugly Boo Radley – a basement dwelling ogre that eats 'raw squirrels' for breakfast.

Boo was a feared by the children. A neighbourhood recluse, he was an enigma to the children. Without them realising it, he was their watchful guardian and in the end saved their lives from murder at the hands of a drunken red neck.

So ra ra ….while the kids were observing racial prejudice affecting their lives and that of Tom on trial, they didn't see their own prejudice towards Boo Radley as the same thing – until they slowly began to piece it together and reach the inevitable climax which frankly is knife edge….

Meh, because in jokes are stupid and I'm probably making no sense - go rent this movie, its better than other stuff.