"Riddle of Fire" is like a modern Ruth Manning-Sanders fairy tale

Last night, Ashar and I watched Riddle of Fire, a quirky and utterly delightful 2023 film written and directed by Weston Razooli. It's hard to describe or shoehorn into a genre, and I strongly suggest that you don't watch the trailer before seeking it out for a viewing. The trailer gives away too many of the plot's twists and fun moments. 

The best way I can describe Riddle of Fire is that it's as if you took the structure and offbeat logic of a Ruth Manning-Sanders fairy tale and applied it to a 2020s children's movie made to look like something filmed in the 1970s or early 1980s. There's a group of plucky children, a quest for a necessary item, obstacles, villains, magic, side quests, plot twists and loads of wry humor. The "logic" of the film, such that it is, could be described as the tale you'd hear if you asked a long-winded, sugar-fueled 10-year-old to spin a harrowing adventure involving a group of kids battling the world of comically mean-spirited adults.

I love how Austin Shinn described it on Bluesky in early May: "I love trying to explain Riddle of Fire. It’s a 70s/80s neogrindhouse movie except it’s a kids movie and it’s trying to evoke those bizarre indie films that would blow through small towns and play matinees and make zero sense and feel like a kid wrote them. It’s amazing"

One reviewer on IMDb.com hit the nail on the head, too, in stating that movie reminded them of "the films produced in the UK by the Children's Film Foundation." Yes! That struck a chord with me. There's DNA from 1976's The Man from Nowhere in this movie, even if Razooli has never seen that.

But the movie Riddle of Fire most reminded of — and this is extremely specific to a Gen X kid who watched the same half-dozen films over and over on cable in the early 1980s — is The Little Dragons. That 1980 movie (crazily enough, one of the first directorial efforts of Curtis Hanson) features a pair of karate-student brothers who are out of their element when they go camping with their grandfather, but suddenly find themselves in an adventure as they try to rescue a girl from a group of bumbling backwoods villains. It would probably make me wince today, and it only has a 4.3 rating on IMDb, but the overall vibe is similar to the retro feel Riddle of Fire achieves with great success. It's a movie that's lived in a tiny cubbyhole in my brain for decades. ("Souffle" is a good alternative cuss word, according to actor Charles Lane.)

Now, go watch Riddle of Fire.

A letter my grandmother mailed to me 33 years ago

This week I came across a short letter that my grandmother, Olive Virginia Hartford Otto (1914-2006), mailed to me during my junior year at Penn State University in 1992. Snail mail was still in its heyday then, though the end was getting close with the rise of email.

Bambi, as my sister and I called her, lived in a small apartment in Easton, Pennsylvania. My first two jobs after I graduated from Penn State in 1993 were in Gettysburg and York, so I was able to drive up and see her a few times per year in the mid 1990s. We had quiet, relaxing visits. She sat in her rocking recliner and we'd watch The Lawrence Welk Show, Hee Haw, Walker, Texas Ranger and lots of pro bowling and golf.

Her February 12, 1992, letter, in fairly neat cursive, is interesting. Here's an excerpt:

Dear Chris –

Thank you for your letter. You sure are kept busy. Haven't been doing much. ... The country is a mess. Pappy and I went thru it in 1935. He only worked 3 days a week. He went from door to door selling Bleach. So I know what hard times are.

I can't believe that it is 2 months today that Pappy passed away. I sure do miss him. 

Are you watching the Olympics? I enjoy the ice skating. How about Mike Tyson? He was a nice guy. His attitude was very bad. ....

I'm going out for a walk and will mail this to you. Take care. I love you.

Always,

Bambi

Travel diary downsizing stress

As family members passed away, I came into possession of the world travel diaries of:

• My great-grandmother: Greta Miriam Chandler Adams (1894-1988)
• My grandmother: Helen Chandler Adams Ingham (1919-2003)
• Mom: Mary Margaret Ingham Otto (1948-2017)

They've been taking up a fair amount of space in a drawer. But I really must continue downsizing, and what am I supposed to do with them? It's kind of overwhelming and stressful, to be honest. (And, yes, I know this is a First World Problem.)

A big issue is that much of Greta's and Helen's handwriting is nearly indecipherable to me. And that's saying a lot, because I've prided myself on deciphering the old cursive handwriting on many postcards and other pieces of ephemera over the years for Papergreat. I could probably decipher most of it eventually, but I'm not sure if it's worth the work, and I'm not exactly swimming in time. This may be unfair, but 90% of it is along the lines of "Seas were calm today," "Had lunch with a nice couple from Topeka" and "Walked around the city and bought a pair of shoes." Going through pages and pages and pages of that is not how I envision my days. On the other hand, though, it's family history.

I'm going to try my best to sort through them, keep just a handful, and put the rest on eBay as a bulk lot. If the diaries can make someone else happy and I have less STUFF in drawers and closets and boxes, I think that's a win-win. 

In the meantime, here are some photos from the sorting ...

In the end, I went with about a 50-50 split, with half of the travel diaries going onto eBay (below, left) and the others going back in the drawer for now (below, right). I'm OK with that as progress. I'm keeping all of Mom's and among the others I'm keeping is a travel diary Greta kept in the summer of 1915, when she was just 21 and had much better handwriting. That will be well worth reading, I think.