Film · Prime Video · 1952

High Noon

Keep it. Office is a duty even when the public would rather you leave quietly.

Will Kane could go. Everyone with a speech about community finds a reason to be elsewhere when the outlaws are actually arriving. The film's anger is at respectable people. Amy's pacifism is treated seriously and then brought to a choice, which you may argue with, but the picture of a town that wants law without the noon hour is exact. Clocks have rarely been used so honestly.

Watch it when your own group is full of good reasons. The good reason is sometimes fear. Name it, and then look at the clock.

The eight

Industry
7/10
The office is the work.
Household
6/10
A marriage begun under a threat.
Piety
4/10
Conscience against respectability.
Courage
10/10
He walks the street alone.
Republic
9/10
A town that will not keep its own peace.
Temperance
7/10
No swagger. Fear, governed.
Truth
8/10
The speeches of the townsmen are exposed.
Stewardship
8/10
It hands on a picture of staying in office.

Live historicallyDo the job you were sworn to, especially if the room has gone convenient.

Film · Prime Video · 2006

Charlotte's Web

Friendship, a farm, and a death that is not a betrayal. One of the true ones.

Wilbur is a spring pig, which means he is scheduled to die, and Charlotte spends her silk to stop it. She succeeds. She also dies, because that is what spiders do, and the film does not cheat this into a reunion. Fern grows up and starts to look away from the barn, which is also true, and also a grief.

E. B. White's story is one of the few that trusts a child with mortality without using it as a thrill. Watch this version for that trust. The famous words in the web are not marketing. They are a friend spending her life.

The eight

Industry
7/10
A farm with chores, a fair, a spider's actual craft.
Household
8/10
Fern, a pig, a barn household. Growing up pulls her toward the boy and away from the pen.
Piety
5/10
No sermon. A created order in which things die.
Courage
8/10
Charlotte works until she is done. Wilbur keeps the egg sac.
Republic
6/10
A fair, a farm, a community that will kill a pig without malice.
Temperance
7/10
Appetite is the farmer's calendar. Friendship interrupts it once.
Truth
9/10
Death is not softened into a nap.
Stewardship
9/10
She saves him and leaves him her children. That is the whole charge.

Live historicallyTell a child the truth about a good thing that does not last, and do not rush past it.