Ok, so I loved the original movie Escape to Witch Mountain when I was a little kid, and it was a major disappointment in my life that no, I did not have mentalist powers and I was was not going to go off on and live in the beautiful mountains with Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard.
I recently had a Netflixing “aliens in our world” movie marathon with both “Starman” and “Escape to Witch Mountain”* and I noticed that Escape was based on YA novel, and I’ve been reading away on it. The novel is much better than the movie, actually. It’s written from Tony’s viewpoint, and Tia is more otherworldly and mysterious than in the movie, and so far I’ve encountered this gem:
It was just like her, he thought, to ignore any money she’d found. She’d always said there must be something very bad about money, because those who needed it most never had it, and so many who already had it would do such awful things to get more of it.
*I also view Escape from Witch Mountain during movie marathons around the theme “Gratuitous Ray Milland Watching”
This reminded me of a movie netflix recently recommended – “Perverts Guide to Ideology” which is a strange and fascinating deconstruction of famous movies/scenes and uncovering all the implicit narratives and social commentary. It’s sort of like being lectured by a very pop culture savvy Russian grandfather about the parallels of Taxi Driver and modern US foreign policy, in a good way? Not quite living happily ever after with Uncle Jesse, but worth a watch.