An Unpublished Life is Not Worth Living

For 2008

2008-01-01T23:24:00.000-08:00

Thanks to my Sister for the Inspiration

"AN UNPUBLISHED LIFE IS NOT WORTH LIVING" is going on indefinite hiatus.

Thanks for reading.

Jim Wilson

Movie Review - "I Am Legend"

2007-12-30T08:17:00.000-08:00

"Come Out, Ne-ville! Coooome Ouuuut!"

I have been in love with Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend" since I first read it in high

school. A horror- sci-fi story, it tells of a world-wide plague that turns the world into either corpses or vampires, except for the one man who carries the immunity who spends his days hunting, and his nights being hunted.

It's been filmed three times, each version having its strengths and weaknesses, but none of the them really coming to the heart (er, so to speak) of the story.

"The Last Man on Earth" (Ubaldo Ragona/Sidney Salkow, 1964) Vincent Price stars as Dr. Robert Morgan, the last survivor of a plague that has turned the majority of the Earth's population into vampires. By day, he lathes a number of wooden stakes and hunts down the creatures, driving the stakes into their hearts to kill them. The closest the movies have come to Matheson's original concept, although the ending is changed, making Morgan an ersatz Christ-figure*, impaled by a spear in a church, his arms flung wide in a crucifixion pose. Made in Italy on the cheap, "The Last Man on Earth" is still a satisfying film merely for the strength of the ideas, the dusky black and white cinematography and Price's excellent performance. But don't take my word for it--you can download it or stream it here. It's been in the Public Domain for years (although MGM has come out with a nicely re-mastered version on DVD)

"The Omega Man" (Boris Sagal, 1971) Army Colonel Dr. Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) survives a world-wide plague as a result of a biological war between the Chinese and Soviets. Holed up in a bunkered, apartment in Los Angeles he leads a solitary life--by day blasting the mutated victims with his high-powered, high-intensity-beamed assault rifle. By night listening to their taunts, armored against their organized attacks. The mutants are light-sensitive albino's, banded together as a sort of political/sociological cult ("The Family"), led by a zealot named Matthias (Anthony Zerbe), who see Neville as a threat to their way of life, and well, yeah, that's a pretty effective rifle he hauls around. Using his own blood's immunity, he's trying to bring back the pigment-challenged. One of Heston's interesting forays into sociological sci-fi in the 70's, "The Omega Man" lays it on a little thick and heavy with the race-relations metaphor, but the cast is uniformly excellent especially Heston and Rosalind Cash. Again with the Christ-allegory as Neville is impaled in a fountain, arms floating out in a crucifixion pose while giving his life-saving blood to the rag-tag band trying to carry on his work. Though not strictly Matheson, it does reflect the times in which it was made.

"I Am Legend" (Francis Lawrence, 2007) Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith)and his German Shepherd, Sam, are the last surviving unaffected Manhattan residents of a plague brought on by a mutating vaccine. All the bridges have been destroyed in an attempt to halt the disease which has become airborne. Neville is unaffected. Animals, only by contact. And the two cruise the car-jammed streets looking for food, and trying to make their way through the entire DVD inventory at the local video store. At noon, he and Sam go to the South Street Seaport, waiting for someone--anyone to respond to his broadcast plea.

"My name is Robert Neville. I am a survivor living in New
York City. I am broadcasting this message on all AM frequencies. I will be
at the South Street Seaport everyday, at midday, when the sun is highest in the
sky. I can provide food. I can provide security. I can provide
shelter. If there is anyone out there. Anybody. Please. ** You are not alone."

He has been waiting in his private hell for three years.

The effects work of a deserted Manhattan is nothing short of astonishing and several shots of Neville tracking deer in his Mustang GT500 are played out to please any action aficionado. Kudos to director Lawrence (who managed to salvage a good movie out of "Constantine" against all odds). Smith is amazing throughout this movie. He's the only game in town, literally, and he is extraordinarily frugal in what he displays throughout the first two-thirds of this movie. His rituals, his by-play with Sam, his clinging to normalcy, and his studied work ethic never give a hint that he's cracking up. Flashbacks in moments of unconsciousness are the only indication of his loss and his desperate feelings of responsibility. At some point, something's got to snap.

When they do, they take the movie with it. Oh, things are intriguing for a good long time after that, and appear that everything's fine--it's a bit like the plague really. But at some point, it becomes a confused muddle, story-wise and philosophy-wise, and that I place squarely at the hands of script-"doctor" Akiva Goldsman.***

Warning! Quarantine Zone!
Stand by for a retinal scan and display your ticket stub! This quadrant
infected with Viral Spoilers! If you have not seen the movie, proceed no
further!! I repeat, proceed no further!!!

First, let's back-track to the novel. In Matheson's original story, Neville discovers that not all the contaminated inhabitants have been turned vampiric. Some have been merely rendered sensitive to light, and during his daytime raids, Neville has killed a bunch of them. A representative from this group infiltrates his stronghold, and fills him in, telling him that he is now considered on the same scale as the the vampires of legend, coming to their houses in their sleep and killing them. Neville is eventually captured and sentenced to die for his crimes, as he ponders his fate that, now, he is the legend of death, not the ones he was hunting down.

Pretty dang bleak. But a fascinating concept, and a mind-bender of a story-turn. But nobody's done it like that. In the films Neville dies, but always as the sacrificing Christ-figure, who can one day restore the Human Race. Not the book. In the book, the Human Race is dead. Changed forever. No going back. And the last man of earth, the ancient old-guard, is the new source of horror. But the movies won't go that far--there's always got to be a glimmer of hope that the blood of the Savior can save Humanity.

Now, back to this movie. Things go swimmingly the first two-thirds of it, but things begin to snap after Neville rather ingeniously captures a female mutant to test his vaccine on (GA Series 319, compound 6, trivia-buffs). He makes a report that the mutants**** (standing in for Matheson's vampires) have stopped showing any sign of human behavior. Then he's immediately proven wrong in the most elaborate way possible--they emulate his own Rube Goldberg trap. Nothing is made of Neville's obvious miscalculation. By this time, his grief is too great and he's not thinking. And the movie is going someplace else and not using The Scientific Method doing it.

He is rescued at a very opportune time by two other survivors, who have heard his radio message and take him back to his apartment. All well and good. Something has to give in the scenario or there's no forward momentum. The woman tells him that God directed her to him to take him to a Survivor Stronghold in Vermont, to which Neville (no doubt because he's a scientist) gives her the statistics of the disease (90% dead, a few percent mutant, who eat the immune-which when you think about it, might cure them, but no such luck) telling her that with such an effective kill-rate that there can't be a God, and that we did it to ourselves, thank you very much.***** She then replies that its easier to hear God when it's so much quieter (sounds like Goldsman with the happy-meal schizophrenia, again).

So, what happens? The mutants storm Neville's strong-hold for the Third Act Attack--a staple of any action movie, and our plucky survivors head for the fairly impregnable lab, where it becomes quite apparent that Mutant #1 is going to break through the glass to get to his souless-mate. Neville grabs his vaccine, gives it to the other survivors and tells them if they find the Survivor Stronghold to give 'em that blood sample--that un-refrigerated, bound-to-go-bad blood sample--to further his work, sticks 'em in a secret hidey-culvert and tells them to leave when it's light. Then he blows himself up with a grenade and takes the mutants with him, because, as we all know from watching the news, suicide-bombing is the very epitome of heroism these days.

Fade to Black. Our two survivors end up at the fortess-walls of the colony. What will they find when they get there? More mutants? A blasted Statue of Liberty in the sand? Harrison Ford and Sean Young in that other ill-considered feel-good ending to a sci-fi movie? No, the door opens on an idyllic little town with a Main Street, and in the background a white church-steeple with a bonging bell. They've come just in time for services, it appears. And hopefully the guards with the machine guns won't force them to attend.

What we have here is one step beyond using Neville as a Christ-allegory. It's a pro-religion/anti-science zombie movie. If the Vatican was "consoled" by "The Golden Compass's" soft opening last weekend, they must be positively spilling wine on their cassocks celebrating over this one!

As good as it starts out, this one takes "I Am Legend" so much farther afield from its source material than the others, that I can't be happy about it. Smith is great. The abandoned Manhattan scenes are amazing. But...

The script obliterates a great book for another hokey feel-good ending. After all, isn't that how you're supposed to feel after a devastating plague with a 90% kill-ratio? The film ends with a Bob Marley tune (kudos to that, but Marley is used for another confused metaphor that in the context of the film is just stupid). Maybe they should've ended with a rousing up-beat group-sing of "Tomorrow" from "Annie."

Gloriosky in the highest.

"I Am Legend" is a very, very cheap matinee, but only because you'll want to see the effects scenes in theaters.

* I could do a few dozen pages on "Christ-allegories-in-the-movies," but let's just point out a few of them: E.T., the Extra-terrestrial, Cool Hand Luke, The Star Wars films, Braveheart, Narnia (of course), Blade Runner, The Superman films (especially.."Returns"), The Matrix, and ad infinitum spiritu.

** In just one of the beautiful touches in his performance, Smith's voice cracks on that one word only.

*** The name "Akiva Goldsman" on a writing or producing credit is enough to spoil any movie-going experience for me, although I have always given the benefit of the doubt--but than as I'm sure Goldsman would tell me, repeating any behavior expecting an outcome that never occurs is a sign of insanity. It was Goldsman who destroyed the first "Batman" movie franchise with his cartoonish, pun-heavy scripts. He "cracked" the script for "A Beautiful Mind" by reassuring movie-goers that schizophrenia was nothing more than delusions of grandeur with visions of Ed Harris and Paul Bethany included--forget any unpleasantness. His by-the-numbers adaptation of "The DaVinci Code" made it boring for anyone who read the book, and breezily incomprehensible for anyone who didn't. His scripts for "Practical Magic" and "Lost in Space" are incomprehensible humorless muddles. And "I, Robot" had one good, recycled and paranoid idea in its empty little head and chucked the great ones of Isaac Asimov. I'm not sure "whose windows he's washing" to be so successful with so much hack-work in his resume, but the man is the 21st Century Joe Eszterhas.
**** I've been calling them Danny Boyle "Red Bull" zombies, as they have the same out-sized aggressive energy as Boyle's "28 Days Later" zombies, but with a case of the energy drink in them. They are pigment-less, hairless albino's who start to burn at the first touch of sun, and during the day they apparently huddle in dark spaces and huff and puff spasmodically. And they screech a lot, with distended CGI-enhanced faces. So, they're basically vampires, but zombies have a higher "Q" rating, so they're called zombies.

***** I will say, however, that how the mutating disease comes to be is not only a plausible scenario, but wickedly likely.

Movie Review -"His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass"

2007-12-27T01:44:00.000-08:00

"Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return"

Genesis 3:19

Oh, there have been howls in the wilderness, and not from any armored polar bears. The Catholic Church (which's taken a few knocks lately) and the Catholic Legion of Decency have awakened like vampires and condemned this film--though the Legion is remarkably silent over the Church's own trespasses. Then there are those fans of the books who are beating their breasts with their Anniversary Editions saying that it doesn't do "justice" to them.

Well, they're both wrong, if not downright irrelevent in their arguments. The Catholics' stance won't do anything but help the movie. If they really wanted to prove they meant business they could excommuinicate Catholic Nicole Kidman, but I think that would generate so much sympathy that folks might even forgive her for "Bewitched!" And the "chapter-and-versers" will just have to live with the fact that books is books and movies is movies, and both media have their story-telling strengths that are oftentimes incompatible with each other.

Enough of the controversy, how's the movie? Immensely satisfying for a first chapter (and half-a-movie). There are unresolved issues galore, confused motivations, and the lurking feeling that things might have played out a bit faster than the time it takes to say "To Be Continued" three times fast. But the production design is killer, the performances are good (though Daniel Craig has little to do, or offer, as Lord Asriel), and the effects work is exemplary. "The Golden Compass" takes place in a world not too unlike our own, except that, instead of souls, people have "daemons," animal-like wraiths who shape-shift until maturity sets in for the host. The academics are attempting to trace the cosmic origins of "dust," a move frowned upon with great furrows by the Magisterium (headed by Derek Jacobi and...Christopher Lee, so you know they've got to be bad!) As is shown often in the film's many scenes of combat, when a person is killed their daemons go *poof* into little whisps of CGI powder with the "glimmer" program turned on "HIGH." It is this "dust," which The Church...sorry...Magisterium wants to suppress all knowledge of, despite the fact that it's right there before your very eyes. Evidently, this "dust" is a threat to the Magisterium's political power in this World. Hence, the conflict between them and the "academics." Lord Asriel has photographic evidence of this dust falling from the heavens and entering humans through the daemons--so our link to the cosmos is via "dust-bunnies" of a sort.

That's the background dust..er, stuff.

Our heroine, Lyra, is a headstrong urchin of an orphan living at Oxford as the ward of Lord Asriel, an explorer-adventurer of some note and seeker of the truth about this "dust" business, the mention of which is considered heresy by (and produce much paroxysms in) The Magisterium. Lord Asriel goes off adventuring and Lyra is entrusted with an Alethiometer, a Golden Compass, which will tell her the truth of a subject if its asked in precisely the right way--not unlike a Press Spokesman. She also comes under the slinky thumb of Mrs. Coulter (Nicole Kidman, in full "evil-squint" mode), who does "official business" for The Magisterium, whom, she explains, "tells people what to do...but in a nice way...to keep things working." Lyra is always being told to behave, yet, she has, as her two mentors, two head-strong people who like to say "no one tells me what to do." So, soon Lyra is rebelling, and escapes from Mrs. Coulter (in a scene that, in all the discourse, is given dramatically short-shrift) and embarks on a series of adventures that entails the kidnapping of two of her friends, a hook-up with a band of the taken's parents, a countrified aeronaut (Sam Elliott, never more twinklingly courtly), and a displaced prince of a polar bear playing "Hamlet."

It's this section where the film really shines. The bears are marvels of CGI animation with wonderful actors like Ians McShane and McKellan (What? Him...again? Can they make a fantasy film without this guy?) breathing life through their vocal performances. One sight that made me laugh was during the Big Fight for "Polar Bear King," when Iorek Byrnison (McKellan's bear) has his armored head-piece knocked off and the camera (computer?) follows it to the edge of the ring, where the spectator-bears stare curiously dumb at it. The film is awash with pictorial touched like that, that fill in and make this world real whenever the story-telling turns miserly.

Performances are uniformly fine--though Craig under-performs. Perhaps he'll be given more to do later, although it's pretty apparent who of the characters you're supposed to be rooting for early on. Time will have to tell. But it's quite good for being half-a-movie. Certainly it makes you anticipate the sequels.

It has been reported in the news that the Vatican has been "consoled" by the film's less-than-golden opening receipts. But probably less than they were when "Deliver Us From Evil" underperformed.

"The Golden Compass" is a matinee.

Remembering Dad...and Pearl Harbor

2007-12-26T11:00:00.000-08:00

This is a repeat from last year. I've heard new stories about my father this past year...and my Seester remembered the name of the man he waited for on the dock of the Arizona the day of the attack. Howie Whims. Yesterday, at my Sister's for Christmas, with cousins and Aunts--my Aunt Barbara looks GOOD!--there was a lot of laughing rememberances. And my Sister had on display a picture of Mom and Dad at a cocktail party--Mom, bright-eyed, compensating, with my Dad, head tilted back, squinting at the camera, a soused smile on his face. Both, younger than me. Crazy kids.

Today is my Father's birthday (he rarely complained that he had the bad luck to be born the day after Christmas...because we never forgot it and made sure that we had a separate but just as special celebration for his day of birth). I've written about him before (here and here), but one aspect of Dad's life I never considered until I was physically where he was. That was Pearl Harbor. He was there the day of December 7th, 1941. He had volunteered and was stationed at Pearl when the Japanese strike force attacked on a Sunday dawn raid, decimating our Navy and killing a lot of kids. My Dad made it through despite the fact that he was standing on the dock of the Arizona at the time of the raid. Church services were being held on that ship and Dad was waiting for a buddy who was late...luckily. The chapel took a direct hit, and the Arizona's still there, upside down, oil burbling up from its tanks to this day, and crested by what is called the Pearl Harbor Memorial. Dad belonged to the organization called "The Pearl Harbor Survivors" but he refused to go back to Hawaii for their reunions. In fact, he would never entertain the notion. Too many memories, I guess. Bad ones. He had a bit of hearing loss from the attack, and you can only imagine what it must have been like--the explosions, the alarms, the toxic smoke from burning oil-fires, the confusion and panic, the screams...the stench. The death. The only story Dad ever told about the War was that "late" story, but he would scream at night the first year back after V-J day. And buried it with the stoicism that all the soldiers did...until "Saving Private Ryan" and other clear-eyed looks at the conflict allowed them to remember and acknowledge what they'd been through.* Certainly my father wanted to get on with his life. They all did.

But I went back to Pearl Harbor. When K and I went to Hawaii for a first vacation I felt a duty to go to Pearl. I would be the first in my familty to do so, and I wanted to see. So, early into our time there, we went...and it was peculiar. My dad had seen Pearl Harbor movies, of course..."From Here to Eternity" and "Tora! Tora! Tora!" were all shot on location. But being there was bizarre. If my Dad had been there with me, he almost would have freaked. The barracks are exactly the same as in those movies and at the time of the attack(they were freshly-painted as they were about to be filmed for the big Bruckheimer "Pearl Harbor" movie). In fact little has changed about it except for the addition of the visitor center...and the Memorial.

The visitor center is odd. I bought a variety of flyers and souvenier books for my Mom (she collected stuff about Pearl Harbor), and went in to the middling-sized theater to see the Presentation-an artfully produced film with a toneless female narrator that stuck to the facts of the attack without any sort of judgement or jingo-ism--a quiet, contemplative movie about a subject loaded with, well, explosive repercussions. The crowd that watched it, and it was made up 75% of Japanese tourists, did so quietly, and with a funereal respect. No cracks. No sarcasm. But a sad contemplation.

This mood continued with the short ride to the Memorial by water-taxi--the same toneless female voice pointing out facts, statistics, ship-positions...strategies. Costs. And when we got off the boat and stepped onto the marble Memorial, it was, again, like a funeral...held perpetually at a pure alabaster marble church, for that is what the Memorial, in its purity, feels like---the Arizona, rusting below it--the oil from its stores still slowly smearing the water's surface after fifty years. The names of the dead are etched in the marble and there are a lot them, too many to comprehend.

And then, Katheryn pointed something out to me, something that has filled me with wonder and mystery ever since. There is another section inside the white arch of the Memorial. A rectangular edifice that makes its way down to the water and the submerged Arizona, and it, too has names etched there. But they're not the names of men who died during the attack. They're recently buried. Comrades who survived the attack, and who are now buried with the Arizona.

Now, think about that. You survive the attack. You go through the war, and you live your life. You may have a good life or it might be horrible. You may marry and have kids, have a good life and die peacefully in your sleep. But where you choose to be buried, after all that, is back at the U.S.S. Arizona, with the ship-mates you left behind...decades and a life-time ago. When I realized what it meant, it raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and tears stung my eyes. Why? After all that time...after a full life...why here? And the concept of Survivor's Guilt hit my heart like a sledge-hammer. It was a debt to repay...beyond family and friends. You go back to the ones who didn't make it. I remember seeing a documentary about WWII veterans going back to Iwo Jima, and one of the vets, barely able to get the words out, saying "Better men than me...died here." Survivor's Guilt. As if any of it...any of it at all...was their fault.

That memory stings to this day, and I think about my Dad and wonder...did he think about those men left behind? Did he carry the names of the ones he knew didn't make it? Did it darken...even an hour...of the life he fought to achieve? And I think of his strength, and I know that if it did, he bore the burden with silence and didn't reveal it.**

Except for the screams...which he couldn't help.

My father is not buried at Pearl Harbor. He's buried in Seattle...with my Mother. He never went back.

I did...for him.

And I'll put flowers on his grave today to celebrate his birth, and that life.

*When my Mom died, I found a lot of my Dad's old papers from during and after the War, one of them a letter from the military saying, basically, "it's over--put it all behind you--don't talk about it--get on with your life." Probably everybody got that letter. My ex-wife's step-grandfather was at Normandy I was told, and when I asked him 'what the hell was that like," he replied: "It wasn't good (long pause) but I'm here."

**That popular propaganda phrase "Remember Pearl Harbor"--that was for everyone who wasn't there. The ones who were could never forget.

"The Night Visitor"

2007-12-24T18:17:00.000-08:00

Movie Review - "No Country for Old Men"

2007-12-19T01:30:00.000-08:00

Signs and Wonders

Llewelyn Moss is out on the Texas veldt tracking a caribou he shot, following the blood-trail when it is suddenly crossed by another blood-trail. Following it, he finds a drug-deal gone bad--five vehicles, and several dead Latinos, a truck-bed full of cocaine and eventually a satchel filled with stacks of of money, $10,000 to a stack. Fate is good to him.

Anton Chigurh is hunting, too. He needs a vehicle, and as he's driving a stolen police car, he can pull over anyone he chooses. He walks over to the driver side of the car, carrying a gas canister and a nozzle. "Get out of the vehicle," he says. And the driver complies. "Hold still, please, sir," he says, and the driver complies. He points the nozzle at the man's forehead and fires.

Sheriff Ed Tom Bell has been Sheriff of Terrell County since he was 26 years old, and that was a long time ago. You'd think he'd seen everything, but he's beginning to wonder if such a thing is possible. Looking over that drug deal gone bad while horse-back, he surmises the way things went down. "That's very linear, Sheriff," says his deputy. "Age'll flatten a man, Wendell," he not particularly replies.

The first time I'd heard of the Coen Brothers was a Time Magazine review of their first movie "Blood Simple." When it wound up being featured at the Seattle Film Festival I went, expecting great things and their quirky ways of telling a story, like that travelling shot (by future director Barry Sonenfeld) that glided over a bar-top, rising up and over a fallen bar-fly. But what I wasn't expecting was a sequence that is one of my favorite in all of film, and is such an obvious thing to do, I wondered why nobody'd thought of it before. Ray has just murdered his lover's husband and stashed him in the back-seat of his car to take him someplace remote to bury him. But as he drives the long, flat Texas highway at night, the corpse behind him moans and moves. He slams on his brakes, pulls to the side of the road and runs...runs in a panic to get away, into a field. He runs into the dark until he stops, panting in fright and exertion. He stands there, looking back at the car. Now what? He's "safe." He got away. but he's no better off than he was before. He has to go back. And he especially has to go back before another car or truck approach and bathe the scene in light.

He has no idea what he'll find when he goes back there, but back he must go. It's the center of the Big Undecipherable that is the heart of the Coen brothers' movies--when people start to ask "how did I get here? And how do I come out, if I can't go back?" There's no going back to Square One with the Coen's. There is only the going-forward, head up or head bowed.

In its way, "No Country for Old Men" has bits of other Coen movies all over it. The "cat-and-mouse" games of "Blood Simple." The airy philosophy of "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" The sharply written common dialog of all their films. The questioning law officer with philosophical questions of "Fargo," the "what's it all worth" tragedy of "Miller's Crossing," and "Barton Fink." It stands as a good primer for all that is good in their work.

Is it their best work? The "Masterpiece" that it's been touted as? Hard to say. There seems to be a decided effort on their part to NOT make it that, to undercut the impact that the film could have had had they been more direct, hit things on the nose, as they say, rather than leaving things unsaid and perhaps confounding their audience. They've left room for interpretation and controversy, to make one think about the importance of dreams, of Fate and Destiny. One has to review the film that is, not the film that could've been. And "No Country," as is, has some exquisite cinematography (by Roger Deakins--night shooting has never looked more convincing or as beautiful as here), note-perfect performances by just about everybody in the cast, but especially all the leads--not just Tommy Lee Jones, and Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin, but also Tess Harper (where's she been?), Woody Harrelson, Stephen Root, and Barry Corbin.

What makes "No Country for Old Men" different from the other Coen movies is a departure from the insular, claustrophobic worlds they have presented in the past. Before the films never strayed beyond the orbits of the main characters of their films--the surroundings filled with extras were there as filler. But this feels like a fuller world, a complete world, where every character has worth and life seems to be going on beyond the frame. That's new, and it will be interesting to see where this aspect of their film-making will take them.

It is not as fully realized a vision as "Raising Arizona," or "Fargo," or even "The Big Lebowski." It is not as accessible as "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" But it far outshines such experiments in style as "Barton Fink," "The Hudsucker Proxy," "The Man Who Wasn't There," or "Intolerable Cruelty." "No Country for Old Men" is a stellar summing-up of where the Coen's have been, even if it doesn't quite rise above it. But the expanded universe of theirs--the more full world they present here--presages bigger and better films still to come.

"No Country for Old Men" is a full-price ticket.

Movie Review - "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium"

2007-12-18T00:40:00.000-08:00

"...and maybe avoid the slimey girl!"

I loved "Stranger Than Fiction." Marc Foster's direction gave depth and substance to the unique voice of Zach Helm's script. And every part was expertly cast and the peripherals presented in CGI gave a sprightly twist to the action on-screen. When I heard that Helm was directing his own script for "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium," I thought "Great! Now we'll see what this Helm guy is capable of!"

Be careful what you wish for.

"Magorium" is such an insubstantial froth of a movie that before you get five minutes into it, you're saying "I'm not buying this!" And with good reason--it's "Stranger Than Fiction" all over again, but from another perspective and far more precious. When I say "far more" I'm saying "falling-into-a-vat-of-Krispy-Kreme-dough" precious. The kind of gooey sap that half an hour of scrubbing with Boraxo can't shake. The same way that cake frosting turns hard as a rock after five weeks in the desert sun. Despite some clever touches and the occasional funny line, it still makes you want to walk out and punch a nun.

What's it about? A magical toy store run by a 243 year old toy impressario, wonder efficianado (and avid shoe-wearer) Mr. Magorium who has decided that it's time to go. "You're dying?" wails Mahoney (Natalie Portman), the piano-prodigy, who at 23 has not lived up to her potential. "Light bulbs die, my sweet," he bubbles. "I will depart." To get his affairs in order, he hires an accountant ("Must be someone who counts and is a mutant," says Magorium, and thereafter Henry Westin is referred to simply as "Mutant"), who is so button-downed he doesn't play one whit, not even checkers (exactly like Will Farrell's character in "Stranger Than Fiction?" you say, and you're awarded a gold star). And what's worse, the toy store is starting to bubble underneath the velvet wall-paper and turn a tainted shade of gray.

It's all just icky--icky in the way a wet lollipop collects dog hair. Dustin Hoffman finds a pretty good balance for his twee little toy-maker, looking like he's been sticking his fingers in wall-sockets for years and elocuting like Bullwinkle. Natalie Portman is the film's biggest draw-back, tamping down any effervescence by screwing up her face and looking concerned. It's really bad when instead of carrying about what the character is going through, you wonder what kind of exfoliant the lead actress is using. Any glow she has is purely pharmaceutical. Jason Bateman plays the stick-up-his-sphincter accountant...like he has a real stick up his sphincter. He managed to make straight-laced funny in "Arrested Development" Wha' hoppened? And as the Narrator/Obligatory Little Kid, Zach Mills plays it with a seriousness and dignity that seems to say "I will rise above this." Attaway, kid. Hope you're not knocking over Winn-Dixies in ten years.

Now, see? This movie didn't enchant me or make me feel warm inside. It made me think bad thoughts. Cruel thoughts. There's a lot of surface detail to "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium,"* but no depth. It needs some grit and sand beyond having the lead character kicking the Big Beach Bucket. As it stands, it's just a wad of cotton candy that you want to throw water on...just to see it disappear.

"Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium" is a cable-watcher

* Another thing: Who is the audience for this thing? Kids won't get it or be upset by it, and adults will find it just cloyingly annoying. But then a lot of kids won't get a lot of jokes. For example: there's a shot of a Buster Keaton marionette trying to untangle itslf from its own strings--a pretty funny reference, but little kids don't know Buster Keaton. The same goes for the bit where Zack starts buildings stuff out of Lincoln Logs and when he's finally finished, he's made...a life-size Lincoln! Funny, huh? But not if you don't know what the Lincoln Logs are, and nobody under 30 DOES!

Happy Birthday, Brother John!

2007-12-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

The man standing next to Ernst Stavro Blofeld is my Big Brother John, who turns mrphmty-murmph today. Called him earlier (earlier than usual, anyway) and we had a good chance to chat after I gave him the traditional serenade of "Happy Birthday" in the inimitable Wison fashion (off-key, and deliberately slow). He fairly cackled that since My Seester got her cell-phone, he could leave "Happy Birthday" on TWO voice-mails (Man! Wish I'd thought of that--he's always smarter than me!).

Happy Birthday, Big Brother. We'll be talking.

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What a wondrous sight to behold at this time of year. There at our front-door, was a jolly fat man with hair and beard the color of snow, a red bob of a nose, cap on his head and a laugh that made his belly shake.

It was Barney, the Electrician.

A few weeks ago (Hallowe'en, in fact), K and I were watching "The Innocents" when the set started to flicker, then konked out along with the reciever and DVD player. Right at a scary part, too. Killed the mood. But we got out another surge protector and plugged everything into that and plugged it into the bedroom socket. Everything worked fine. But ever since, the house has been electrically...intermittent: a socket would go dead. you'd plug something into another socket and it would come to life. Lights would flicker and die, with perfectly decent bulbs screwed in. Electrical efficacy would bounce around the house, with us chasing after it with our little gadgets plugging them into one socket, then another until they purred to life.

Which would be fine...be merely an annoyance...if we didn't live in a completely wood cabin. Then it gets to be a matter of concern. So, we called the last electrician who'd come out. Didn't return our phone-call. That's to be expected on "The Rock," the contractors get hired for some new development and all of a sudden you have to make an appointment to get a phone-call back. I tried. K tried. No spark. A couple of days ago, I tried again. I called, left messages--I did get one "live" one, though. He said he was booked up to January 17th, and he figured that might be a little long to wait. With such keen instincts I wanted to hire him on the spot, but I decided to make other calls.

I made ten, then called it a fine day of one-way convesations. Thirty minutes later, Barney called. He said he could be out first thing Thursday, I gave him directions, and he asked if I wanted him to call before showing up. "That'd be nice," I said. "It'll give me a chance to stash the dog some place." "Mean dog?" Barney asked, warily. "Nah, I said. More protective, territorial a bit." "Ah well, that's his job! Ya WANT one like THAT!"

Barney called Thursday morning: "See ya in thirty minutes!" And I took Smokey out to K's car with some chewey snacks, and half an old banana. When Barney showed up, Smokey didn't make a peep. Strange. After getting over the sight of Father Christmas in blue cover-alls, I said "The dog didn't bark." "Nah!" said Barney. "But he was sure curious! Where do you want me?"

I pointed to the walls with the problems--the one behind the wood-stove and the one with the view-windows. "I'll start over there." He pointed to a socket in the open. "I like to start with the easy ones." "Just like eating dessert first," I remarked. "Yup," said Barney gravely. "Life's uncertain."

As if to prove his point, he started to pound on the walls. "You'd be surprised what good this does," said Barney. "Sometimes in the cold weather, it'll just solve the problem, but at least if I see a light flicker, I can trace it." He opened out his pen-amp-meter, looking to see what sockets were "hot." "Yeah, I've had enough of winter," he said as he sat in a corner to test the plug by Smokey's crate (I wondered if winter had even started yet).* Every breath was a grunt and a wheeze as he made his way from one socket to the next alternately pounding the wall, and making his pen chirp. "Lemme go look at the box," he said, and K came out from the office to see what all the noise was about. Suddenly, from the bedroom, he yelled, "Number Six!" "Go see what that's about," said K, and eyes eide, turned to go into the office. I was curious myself. Had the last electrician put in those exotic No.6 fuses by mistake? "What's up?" I said.

"Oh!" he chuckled. "Number Six! I saw your coaster here. The Prisoner! I loved that show!" He was looking at a coaster NPR Dan had sent us from Portmeirion in Wales, where they'd filmed "The Prisoner" in the '60's. It was one of my and K's favorite shows, too, and we'd planned for some time to go there one day. NPR Dan beat us to it, but sent us some piquant tchotchkes. "Man, I loved that show! Too bad it was a limited one!" We gabbed about the show for awhile--a friend of his had made the "kit" car that Patrick MacGoohan drove in the opening. "Aw nuts, here's a white wire," he said, and did something about it. We moved a chest of drawers to see if there was a socket back there, and though we didn't find one, we found the sneakers that K had been missing for months. Then we turned to the plug where all the trouble began. He tested it. No problem.

"Have you got a...?" He opened the door to the bedroom. "Yup! Here's an outlet behind the door." It was the one we'd plugged the surge-protector into. We thought it was the only thing in the vicinity that was working. "You got a flashlight?" asked Barney on the floor. I didn't think to question why a socket-jockey didn't have a flashlight, but I dutifully went off to get one. I handed it to him. "Wait a minute!" I said. "I've got a better idea!" I handed him my baseball cap with "The Bug" on it--the LED clip-light my sister-in-law got me one Christmas. "Try this on for size," I said. "Woh!" said Barney. "That's a BRIGHT one! That's GREAT! I'm almost ashamed to BE here!" He replaced the socket, corroded and with a couple scorch-marks on it, and he managed to do it with one hand, holding the socket in his paw, and using his fingers to twist the wires. Quite the trick. Then he screwed everything in place. "I think I've screwed enough screws to go to the Moon and back," said Barney. Then with a large grunt, he got off the floor and lurched into the living room. "He found it!" he joked to K, as I wrote him a check for $85 (pretty darn cheap, we thought). "Well, have a Merry Christmas" he said as he roared out of sight.

Be seeing you, Barney. I have half-a-mind to send him a "Bug"...and one of my "Prisoner" coasters for Christmas. I think he'd genuinely enjoy that.

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Speaking of bologna, I got some at the store the other day, I'm not sure why, but maybe it has something to do with my Father. I've been thinking of him a lot since the 7th, and I remember him once walking into the kitchen, and looking at the lunch my Mom had made him. "Ya know," he said a bit wistfully, "last night I had a dream where I was sent to Hell, and all there was to eat was bologna sandwiches." My Mom shot him a look that spit daggers, but he'd made his point...and maybe he didn't get a bologna sandwich the next day (if he was lucky to get a lunch at all!)**

So, I'm eating a bologna sandwich a day until his birthday, December 26th. I mentioned this to K, who thought it was a bit wierd that I'd be focussing on bologna, but I did manage to keep the dog away from her while she was eating dinner by tempting him with the word "bologna" said in the same reverential tones we say the word "bacon." I knew he'd like it, but I didn't expect the ecstatic look on his face when he tasted it for the first time. He looked like he was going to cry, he enjoyed it so much. I walked into the bedroom where K was eating, with my bologna sandwich, and told her about Smokey's reaction. "Actually," she said, "the way I've been eating lately (she's been on a strict, almost harsh diet), I'm wondering what it tastes like--I'd like to try it..." I gave her a bite. "That is really good," she said.

Ah, bologna.

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K. mentioned that "Alvin and the Chipmunks" was playing at the local drive-In, and wanted to know if I wanted to go. I didn't particularly (it sounds like "My Name is Earl" with extra vermin), but Smokey might like a trip to the Drive-In. I asked her if she wanted to go, and she said "No. I hate the Chipmunks--always have." ***

I told her we could check out "Enchanted" (which we might), but I really want to see "I Am Legend." I told her the story--it's one of my favorite books, and she became intrigued, especially at the premise of deer running up Broadway. "He just stays in his barricaded apartment with his German Shepherd," I said. "Just like a New Yorker," she said, going back to her paper, "...keeping a German Shepherd in an apartment..."

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*Nope. Not 'til December 22nd. Glad I didn't tell Barney.

** Which brings to mind an ethnic joke, and for the requisite "dumb" minority I will use "Irish Catholic" since they're taking a lot of hits lately, and since I was one, I can get away with it.

Three construction workers, a Latino, an Italian and an Irish-Catholic were sitting on a girder, eating from their sack-lunches. "Madre Dios!" says the Latino. "Tacos again!! I swear if I get tacos for lunch again, I'll throw myself off this building!" The Italian looks at his lunch. "Mama Mia!!" he says. Another meat-ball sandwich!! I swear on the souls of my grandparents that if I get another meat-ball sandwich I will throw myself off this building!!" The Irish-Catholic looks at his lunch. "Faith and begorrah!" he says, "Ecumenically blesssed corned beef and cabbage AGAIN!! I swear, by all that's holy that if I open this bag tomorrow and see ecumenically blessed corned beef and cabbage, I will throw myself off this building!"

The next day at noon, the three open their lunches. "Tacos! Tacos again!" yells the Latino and throws himself off the building. "Ayee," says the Italian. "Meat-ball sandwich again!!" and throws himself off the building. The Irish-Catholic looks in his bag and yells "Ecumenically blessed corned beef and.." and he's dead before he can get the whole thing out.

At the funeral the wives are bereft. "Oh, if only I could have made burritos that day," says the Latino's wife. "If only I could have put in a slice of pizza...anything different...he'd still be here," wails the Italian wife. They look expectantly at the Irish-Catholic's wife.

"Well, don't look at me," she says. "He made his own lunch!"

Thank you, try the salad bar, we'll be here all week.

*** Last time in Portland a DJ (on 106.7 "K-HITS") played "Christmas, Don't be Late" and ended the song, saying "Looove the Chipmunks...especially roasting on an open fire")

On this same radio station, this same DJ made a joke about the O'Jays song "Used to Be My Girl" that went something like"...and here, from the soundtrack of 'The Rene Richards Story'--'She Used To Be My Girl." I thought "That's a rather arcane reference for a joke about a sex-change..." and it was right then I realized I'd made the exact same joke when I was a DJ...it wasn't so arcane back then.

Movie Review - The Complex Art of Film Noir, Winter 2007

2007-12-13T23:41:00.000-08:00

I: "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead"*

In Broad Daylight

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Just ask Andy and Hank Hanson. They both need money because they want to do right by their families: Andy, so he can get out of debt and maybe move with his depressed wife to Rio De Janeiro; Hank, because he's a few months late in child support, and he wants to do right by his daughter...oh, and his mistress, and ...well, all of Hank's dreams are short-term.

But Andy has a plan that's fool-proof: a robbery. "No one gets hurt. It's perfect." Trouble is, Hank's a fool, and he agrees before he knows all that it entails. Andrew, a real estate accountant, gives him a down-payment. "There's $2,000. See what that does for you. Imagine the rest."

They can't imagine. Because, as they say in the magazine-shows, things go "horribly, horribly wrong."

"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" might belong to that sub-genre of comedy films called "The Incredible Mess," where seemingly simple plans go increasingly awry, but it's no comedy, except in the perverse way perfect disasters pile upon perfect disasters. But I would contend that the movie, as written by Kelly Masterson, is a film noir, that species of film where the world maliciously has it in for an honest man, and corruption runs so deep that it's manifested in a shade of fathomless blackness--"where the world is dark with something more than night," as the saying goes. One of the laureates of the proto-noir story was Raymond Chandler, who laid out the ground-rules for his brand of detective fiction in an essay titled "The Simple Art of Murder," first published in 1944, and quoted extensively below.** In it, he railed against the "drawing room" brand of of detective fiction as weak and unrealistic, and that a detective-hero must try and find Truth in a fabric of deception, obfuscation, and agendas so thick it's like wading through a cess-pool. "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is so steeped in layers of corruption that any transgression amplifies to the worst possible conclusion, and by chain reaction drags the innocent down as well as the guilty in a tragedy of Shakespearean consequences. No one is immune from the veil of evil. The world of "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is so corrupt, there is no hero. And it all happens in broadest daylight.

There's been "daylight-noirs" before, like "Gun-Crazy," and, of course, "Chinatown" takes place in sun-blasted L.A. But "Devil" takes place in New York, and mostly gentrified New York at that. New York, because the director is Sidney Lumet, who quite rarely makes a movie anywhere else. Lumet's an odd choice for a noir film, although he's made many films in the squalor of New York--"Serpico," "The Pawnbroker," "Prince of the City," "Q & A," and he's made many movies that intertwine family and crime--"Dog Day Afternoon," "Murder on the Orient Express," and "Family Business." As a director, he's not very stylish, and is, in fact, pretty clunky, as in "Twelve Angry Men," and "Fail-Safe," or, dare I mention it, "The Wiz." Lumet expends his energy on performance, rather than construction. In fact, Lumet has rarely risen above his roots as a director of live television: a master shot, the occasional close-up, and that's about it. His camera work is utilitarian, at its best, sometimes inelegant, brightly lit, nothing fancy. He tends to using film scores, thinking them too pervasive and detracting from a scene's manufactured reality. When he does try something different (in other films, it was crudely distorting lenses) it's always in your face. Here, it's an editing transition that flashes forward and back three to four times, similar to the "druggy" transitions in "Easy Rider," but with an annoying clacking noise at each edit. The story-telling technique employed is similar to that of another noir, Stanley Kubrick's "The Killing," where the actual caper is viewed from one character's point of view, then rewinds back to another participant's during the same time period and beyond. The plot advances and coalesces in increments until the inevitable end-game where all stories come together. And "Devil" ends in the only way this noir-in-daylight could end.

Because it's Lumet, it's the performances where the movie shines: Philip Seymour Hoffman is all sweating self-pity as Andrew, Ethan Hawke is Hank, a pitiful train-wreck doing a poor job of trying to appear together, Albert Finney goes a bit over the top as their father Charles, and Marisa Tomei shows the promise that her early Oscar win belied as Andrew's wife, caught in the middle. But the smaller performances of minor characters like Michael Shannon and Aleksa Palladino stand out as well. It's a blackly depressing film that owes whatever greatness it achieves to the writing and performances.

"Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is a cheap (and sleazy) matinee.

II: "Gone Baby Gone"

That, in All Things

Now walk down these mean streets a little further--all the way to Boston. Here you'll find private detective Patrick Kenzie, the very definition of the term John D. MacDonald used to describe Raymond Chandler. "He writes," said MacDonald "like a slumming angel." Kenzie knows the back-alleys, the crack-dens, the gang-bangers, the dealers, the dive bars and the angles and he knows how to handle them with a cock-suredness that belies his years.*** But that street cred only takes you so far, because although he's lived in Boston his entire life, New Orleans transplant detective Remy Bressant (Ed Harris--extraordinarily good) tells him "I've been here longer than you've been alive." And Bressant has seen the long continuous story of those places Kenzie merely visits. But if Bressant knows more, nobody tops Captain Doyle (Morgan Freeman, completely dominating the three scenes he's in), whose daughter was kidnapped and killed, and has dedicated his life to making sure it doesn't happen again on his watch. 4 1/2 year old Amanda McCready has gone missing from the neglectful eye of her good-for-nothing mother and Kenzie and his partner Angie Gennaro (Michelle Monaghan) have been hired by an aunt to find her, however reluctant they are to take the case. Within 24 hours, there's a good chance they can find her alive and unharmed. She's been gone, now, for 60.

And soon, after all the slumming and the chance-taking, the compromises with the police and the stake-outs gone bad, the case comes to a dissatisfying end, and like any good noir dick, that's just not good enough for Kenzie. He has to keep pushing for Truth, no matter how hidden, no matter the consequences. But the Truth hurts and can lead to decisions made for the best of reasons but the worst of consequences. And this "slumming angel," this noir-hero by Chandler's precise description, will suffer the consequnces for his decision, both personal and professional. But because he is the hero, he must fight that corruption even if the result is not a more perfect world, but the same tainted world as when he began. And maybe, even one that's worse.

As it happens, there is no moral high ground here. There is no "right" and "wrong" for the situation is too far out of control for there to be a "right" and a "wrong" and the two step over each other's line as often as a police tape is crossed. The resolution of the story, the choices made can be argued for days, and the last shot of the movie damns even as it takes the film to a logical conclusion.

This has been a great year for Casey Affleck. First, he stepped out of the star-crush to become more than a glorified extra in "Ocean's 13," carried the bulk of "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," and now holds his own against Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris at the heighth of their powers. His performance in "Gone Baby Gone" shows great versatility and an amazing range. But if Casey's potential has come to fruition, the emergence of Ben Affleck as a director is nothing short of revelatory. Here he shows a command of time and place, and a wonderful eye for faces that lend authenticity to the grime of the surroundings. An action scene at night may not be as focussed and suspenseful as it should be, but the rest of the movie is assured, and negotiates moral discussions without getting bogged down in high-handedness or slowing the movie down. That fine directorial touch extends all the way to the wickedly oblique final shot that will creep on you days after the fade to black. Given this auspicious debut, one looks forward to the next film featuring Ben Affleck behind the camera.

"Gone Baby Gone" is an impressively full-price ticket

* After the Irish toast: May you have food and raiment, a soft pillow for your head. May you be forty years in heaven before the devil knows you’re dead.

** Raymond Chandler, perfectly describing the fetid world of "noir" in "The Simple Art of Murder:"

"The realist in murder writes of a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, in which hotels and apartment houses and celebrated restaurants are owned by men who made their money out of brothels, in which a screen star can be the fingerman for a mob, and the nice man down the hall is a boss of the numbers racket; a world where a judge with a cellar full of bootleg liquor can send a man to jail for having a pint in his pocket, where the mayor of your town may have condoned murder as an instrument of moneymaking, where no man can walk down a dark street in safety because law and order are things we talk about but refrain from practising; a world where you may witness a hold-up in broad daylight and see who did it, but you will fade quickly back into the crowd rather than tell anyone, because the hold-up men may have friends with long guns, or the police may not like your testimony, and in any case the shyster for the defense will be allowed to abuse and vilify you in open court, before a jury of selected morons, without any but the most perfunctory interference from a political judge.

It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it. It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization."

*** Raymond Chandler, "The Simple Art of Murder" again, describing the detective hero:

"In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.

If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in."

Even More Tales from the Socialist Literary Collective*

2007-12-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

"Friday Night Lights" (Peter Berg, 2005) I missed this movie in its first go-'round, but seeing the pilot for the eventual NBC series put "the hooks" in me. I wanted to see what had inspired the series, which had impressed me, and see if the movie was as good.

Short answer. Yes. And a bit better. It's another High School football movie, replete with all the drama that situation lends to it. The pressure on the kids to win. The pressure on the coach to make them winners. The crush of expectations, and the town's sense of worth wrapped up in the team. It's all there, but shot in the "caught off-guard" style of a documentary that gives it more power, more immediacy. You don't feel sympathy for Tom Cruise in "All the Right Moves" because, hey, he's Tom Cruise. But a bunch of nobodies, with the melodrama tamped down, takes it out of Hollywood contrivance, and makes you look away from the glare of stars and see into the drama. You begin to think that anything can happen. You begin to care. The film is dedicated to Alan J. Pakula, producer-director, who in the 70's made dispassionate, stylistically intimate films that had that same lived-in quality--"Klute," "All the President's Men"--even if it was Jane Fonda and Robert Redford on the screen. Here the biggest star in Billy Bob Thornton, who excells at low-key, lived-in, but even he feels like a bit of a distraction from the rest of the movie's verisimilitude, so completely does Berg maintain the illusion. It's a damned good film.

"The Night Of the Hunter" (Charles Laughton, 1955) One of the most stylized, creepiest movies ever made--the only one ever directed by actor Charles Laughton--"The Night of the Hunter" tells the story of an almost-elementally corrupt minister who comes to town seeking fortune by seducing and murdering the wife and terrifying the children of his old cell-mate, and tells it in the manner of a magical fairy tale. As two of the targets of the Rev.'s obsessions are the impressionable children of Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), the film becomes a battle between Good and Evil as seen through their eyes. The Good is represented by the Grandmother, played forthrightly by silent film star Lillian Gish. The Evil is the right Rev. Harry Powell, who strides into town with the conflicts in his soul tatooed on his fists. It's a bravura performance by Robert Mitchum, who wasn't known for bravura performances, usually satisfied maintaining a laconic air to get by. Here he brays and exhorts like a bull and it's an amazing thing to see so theatrical a performance out of him--in fact, it's the role he's best remembered for. The film itself is a creepy blend of reality and fantasy, of realism and theatricality and the clashes of those sensibilities jar one's attention, while burrowing into the soft places of one's skull. Despite poor box-office and crtical pans when it opened in 1955, "The Night of the Hunter" abides. It abides and it endures.

"Wilde" (Brian Gilbert, 1997) A nearly definitive biographical film of the scholar and playwight whose career was destroyed and life shortened by the spiteful trial and imprisonment for "indecent acts" directly relating to his gay trysts. Stephen Fry plays Wilde, and he's a bit too old for the part but the resemblance is there, and his bulk and refinement put you in the sphere of what it must be like to be a bull in a china shop. Vaness Redgrave (wonderful, as always) plays Mother Wilde, Jennifer Ehle as his wife Constance, and as the earnest young men in Wilde's affections, a virtual parade of young British heart-throbs--Orlando Bloom (for 3 s., tops), Ioan Gruffud, Michael Sheen, and as Wilde's obsession Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas, Jude Law in full schizophrenic movie mode. One becomes aware all too quickly that Wilde's problems stem from a bad match and his tragedy is that he could never stop going back no matter the cost to him or those around him. Frye communicates the "struck dumb" quality that must have evoked, which for a man of Wilde's intellect and eloquence must have been over-powering. Tom Wilkinson is hissingly malevolent as "Bosie's" father, The Marquess of Queensbury, the acknowledged "rule setter" for the subtle art of bashing someone's brain in. Here he forgets his own rule about hitting below the belt. The film is a cautionary tale of how reaching the heights of fame guarantee the hardest of falls, and how hubris has a remarkable way of proving to be one's undoing.

"I Know Where I'm Going!" (Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger, 1945) Wendy Hiller stars as a determined woman whose whole life has been planned out and played out according to her own well thought-out scenario. Now, she's travelling to the Scottish Highlands to marry her industrialist fiancee on the Island of Kiloran. But to get there she must book passage from the Island of Mull. But Nature and Fate conspire to keep her Mulling and scuttle her schedule, while the cutely eccentric citizens cast a spell all their own. Powell and Pressburger create a film concoction with fantasy elements, surreal dream sequences and musical interludes, taking a straightforward story and apply an extremely creative approach to it. The story may seem overly familiar, but not the approach to it which keeps one watching intently to see not so much what will happen, but how. It's a lost little gem that shows what a creative force "The Archers"--the team that made "The Red Shoes" could be. Also, look for a short appearance by a child-actress named Petula Clark. Yup, that one.

"All the King's Men" (Robert Rossen, 1948) The Oscar-winner for Best Picture of 1949 and it's hard to argue. Rossen's adaptation of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the corrupting powers of politics, it boasts two powerful (and Oscar-winning)performances: Broderick Crawford as innocent-turned-player Willie Stark and Mercedes McCambridge as his cynical-to-the-marrow political assistant. McCambridge is so good and so inventive that she might just as well have been given the statue for the next five years. Would that the other performances have been as electric as these two, but one could say that they shine even more brightly next to the lesser lights. It's particularly interesting to see Crawford so restrained at the beginning of the film, but once he sees how the game is played he turns on the after-burners and soars over everybody else in the frame with him. Mention should be made of the ocassional glimpses of a documentary style in the rally scenes amid the more traditionally blocked studio framing. And the film may seem a bit abrupt in places--but that's because Rossen, determined to get the film below two hours, gave his editor instructions to take most of the scenes and cut precisely thirty seconds from the front of it and thirty seconds from the back (making sure not to clip off any dialog). What was left was the hard nugget of the scene's core and "All the King's Men" feels more brutal in its pace and attitude because of this uncompromising strategy.

"The Lady Vanishes" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938) Poor Iris Matilda Henderson has "been everyhwere and done everything," and is on her way to marry what her travelling companions call a "blue-blooded check-chaser" when she gets beaned by a suspiciously-unanchored flower box. She is helped onto her departing train and administered to by the elderly Miss Froy, a vacationing governess in love with the music of the Alps. Waking up from a recuperative nap, Iris discovers the woman missing, and what's worse, no one on the train claims to have seen her. Is everyone on the train lying, or has Iris just imagined the whole thing? The only ally she can find is the eccentric and rather obnoxious musicologist (Michael Redgrave, father of Lyn and Vanessa, and grandfather of Joely Richardson), whose racket has kept her awake nights at their lodgings. But now he comes to her aid ("My father taught me to never desert a lady in trouble. In fact I think that's why he married my mother!") to determine just what's been lost--the old lady or Iris' mind. Redgrave supposedly didn't get on with Hitchcock, and didn't have much respect for movie-acting, either--until another cast member saw him on-stage and wondered why he was so brilliant on the boards and so lackluster on-screen. For his part, Hitchcock took the material and accentuated the comedy and sexual situations, giving each of the train participants their own contrary behavior. It proved to be one of the most beloved of Hitchcock's British films, and legitimately can stand up to any of "The Master of Suspense's" later classics.

"Road to Rio" (Norman Z. McLeod, 1947) I've got a weakness for the "Road" movies--those Paramount programmers with Hope, Crosby and Lamour--where the least excuse for a plot is thrown together (usually the boys are scammers on the run), Hope and Crosby do their best to ad-lib over the other one, and the fourth wall is practically nonexistent. In fact, one of my favorite jokes in this one, has Crosby and Hope do a 3/4-quarters-in recap of the plot and what has to happen to resolve everything, when suddenly there's an off-screen scream. "What was that?" says Bing, and Hope looks askew and says "It's the Warner Brothers--they're jealous." Right. This, the fifth in the "Road" series has the boys on the lam to Rio De Janeiro, where they hope to keep Lamour, hypnotized by her scheming aunt, from marrying a hand-picked ne'er-do-well. And with that much sophistication to the plot, you know Hope-Crosby have to get hypnotized, too. It ain't art-house material--more like burlesque-house--but it is entertaining.

"Broken Flowers" (Jim Jarmusch, 2005) Don Johnston ("You're Don Johnson?!" "No. With a 'T'") is in a funk. A computer millionaire, he has no energy for anything. No desire. No drive. Certainly no energy for his girlfriend who walks out on him at the beginning of the film. In other words, he's Bill Murray's usual grown-up slacker, but without the savage wit. Murray may be the best conveyor of malaise since "Buster" Keaton was drummed out of the talkies. Adding to his girl-friend's anger, he has just recieved a pink envelope addressed in red ink from an old girl-friend, who warns him that the son he never knew existed is looking for him. It's a mystery,a nd he wants no part of it. But it's a "clue" to his mystery-buff neighbor (Jeffrey Wright) who sets up an elaborate scavenger hunt with four of his "passed ships" as the check-points (and they are Sharon Stone-really good, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, and an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton). It's a bit like Ulysses on an Odyssey of old battlefields. But he's a reluctant Ulysses and never too sure what to say to the women, but the object of his quest is his son. And by the end of the film, his world has been opened up, or at least there are more opportunities for him to get into trouble.

"The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao" (George Pal, 1964) One of those movies I wanted to see as a kid, but never got the chance. An ersatz Western directed by film-fantasist George Pal ("The War of the Worlds," "The Time Machine") with a screenplay by the mordantly sunny Charles Beaumont, responsible for many of the best mind-twisting "Twilight Zone" episodes. Dr. Lao is the "Mysterious Stranger" who comes into the troubled town of Abalone with a circus that exposes truth, shines a light on hypocrisy, and turns lives around. One might be a bit off-put by Lao's initial pigeon-English, but it's as epehemeral as everything else about Dr. Lao, for he's not any nationality ("He looks like a 'Jap' to me" "Naw, he's more Chinese" "How d'you know that?" "'Cause I'm not stupid!"), sticks to no dialect or any sex, for that matter--if he's made of matter, at all! One should be more concerned with the idea that a "Good Man" will unstarch the collar of the Local School-Marm, except that this transformation (by the Circus' "Pan") leaving Barbara Eden sweating and panting is bravurely provocative for a G-rated kid's film. That's something Disney wouldn't try! Everything turns nicely-nicely at the end, but there is trauma along the way to balance it. Tony Randall plays Lao beneath all sorts of William Tuttle (another "TZ" alum) make-up that doesn't hamper the elasticity of his performance, and as a kind of bow/acknowledgement he appears in the circus audience gravely shaking his head.

But back to Beaumont. Check out this thesis speech delivered in low reverent tones by Randall:

"The whole world is a circus, if you know how to look at it. The way the sun
goes down when you're tired, and comes up when you want to be on the move.
That's real magic. The way a leaf grows. The song of the birds. The way the
desert looks at night with the Moon embracing it. Oh, my boy. That's circus
enough for anyone. Every time you watch a rainbow and feel wonder in your heart.
Every time you pick up a handful of dust, and see not the dust, but a mystery--a
marvel, there in your hand. Every time you stop and think "I'm alive, and being
alive is fantastic!" Every time such a thing happens, you're a part of the
Circus of Dr. Lao."

That is heavy stuff, delivered in an intoxicating rhythm and smoothness of tone--it's joy mounting as the commonness of the examples increases, getting down to the dirt. That's a great speech. And as Beaumont could be dark in tone, his words could excite and throw apart any veil of despair. But even if that speech gets a little heavy, Beaumont has the cure. "I don't understand," the child answers. Lao grabs the top of his head and leaps over it. "Neither do I!" he exults, and begins a high-kicking dance. Life is too wonderful to spend your time saying how wonderful it is. Use it. Dance!

"Get Out Your Handkerchiefs" (Bertrand Blier, 1978) French comedy about a man in love with a woman who is acutely depressed. He doesn't understand women. He doesn't understand much of anything. All he knows is he wants to make it better so he'll feel okay.

Hilarity ensues.

Well, not so much. The hilarity is under the surface a bit, since the film only shallowly reflects real behavior for comic effect. Below the goofiness, though, is some truth. For instance, to prod her out of her zombie-like depression, Raoul (Gerard Depardieau) approaches a narcisistic academic (who loves Mozart--acts like they're best of friends--and his apartment is dominated by a collection of every Penguin Pocket Book ever published, alphabetized). "She's attracted to you! Sleep with her!" he says. And as she's attractive (and spends much of the film undressed) he does. But she's still subject to collapsing into a fugue state at the drop of a stitch (she's a constant knitter--and folks, that's a clue) Suffice it to say that these adults aren't nearly mature enough, but she does find happiness, fulfilment and a good jolt of "wake-me-up" in unexpected places. It's safe to say that this film is in the top five of Mary Kay Letourneau's favorite films.

As I do with foreign language films, I watch the English language version and turn on the captions to see if there's any major disconnects between translation and performance. Nothing too disparate here, But there was an odd side effect. The actor dubbing Gerard Depardieau's "Raoul" has a distinctive New York whine that sounds alarmingly like Jerry Seinfeld. Within ten minutes, I was seeing the film as just another "Seinfeld" episode, albeit one with a point besides how self-absorbed people can be.

* Your Public Library
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Bumper Sticker of the Day: "Driver Does Not Carry Cash (He has six grand-kids)"

Song in me head: "So What" (Miles Davis)

Movie Review - "Fred Claus"

2007-12-10T12:41:00.000-08:00

Sibling Revelry

I know what you're asking: Is this a Christmas Movie where someone has to SAVE CHRISTMAS and do they?

Short answer: Yes.

Come to think of it, just about every Christmas Movie is about SAVING Christmas. From the Martians, from the Grinch, from Tim Allen, from adults, from the Gubernator, from just about everything, except all the right-wing nutters who really DO think there's a War on Christmas. Excuse me, Xmas.

The "SAVING Christmas" movie is so prevalent, it could be a genre all to itself. As long as you threaten Christmas verbally, physically, psychically or by omission, in the real or fantasy-sense, that's all that's required. How many movies or stop-motion animation specials can you name? Swell, I just came up with dinner-table conversation for this Christmas. And believe me, I looked at this blog's budget, that's all you're getting (I need the lumps of coal to heat the house).

So, in "Fred Claus" it turns out that Clement Moore didn't know a thing about Santa Claus' older, dumber, bitter brother. That's right, the Clauses had another son, who after the birth of little Nicholas, was left parched of his parents' affection. I mean, c'mon, how can you compete against a really cute fat baby whose first words are "Ho Ho?" It doesn't take long before Fred has transitioned from Promising To Be The Best Big Brother In The Whole World to throwing things at the little saint's head.

Fred goes off to the Real World, while Nick becomes an icon with a Factory-town at the North Pole with an indentured population of elves. Guess the North Pole is outside the jurisdiction of fair and best practices law. Anyway, Santa has built up quite the little illegal monopoly up there, plus there's the stress of reading every kid's mail, producing the specifically-requested toys for delivery and then shipping them all in one night on a twelve hour turn-around. Add to that, this year there's an Efficiency Expert (played by Kevin Spacey--when did he stop knowing how to be funny?) prowling around who seems determined to Shut Santa Down, though "Why" and "For Whom" goes unanswered (and the possibilities dance like sugar-plums in my head--China? Wal-Mart?).**

Then, Fred calls out of the blue, wanting to borrow money, and Nick is SUCH a Nicely Overwhelming Holiday Icon that he can't say no. Well, he does attach a rider saying that Fred has to work it off at the North Pole determining who is "NAUGHTY" and who is "NICE" and then condemning the former children to an unhappy Christmas. Despite this, Santa still has the snow-balls to say to his wife "I'm a Saint, sweetheart. Tough love is a little difficult for me!"

Not for me, sweetheart. "Tough" love is the only love this flick will get.

It's all meant to be whimsical, but one walks out wanting to "clock" a bell-ringer. The North Pole seems to have all the charm of a Wal-Mart town, with exactly the same sort of benefit-policy for their work-force. To determine who will be stamped "Naughty" or "Nice" Santa and his pint-sized voyeurs in the "Judgemental" Department have a magic snow-globe that they use to spy on every child's behavior. You think Homeland Security is a threat to privacy--you've never ever thought about peeping Santa. Just the emphasis that Santy sees you when you're sleeping and knows when you're awake (just like the NSA!) is probably not too jolly an idea to bring up during these liberty-crushing times, but "Fred Claus" makes it a key plot-point.

The cast does what it can, in its best "Tim Allen/Chevy Chase-in-overdrive" way, but it all amounts to hanging tinsel on a dead tree. Vaughn pulls off some nicely ad-libbed fast-talk. Paul Giamatti as Santa has a bit more sand to it than you might expect--but you just know the rest of the cast said "Hey, Giamatti's in it--there's gotta be something to this," so you have Rachel Weisz (as "Girl-friend"), Miranda Richardson (as Mrs. Santa), Kathy Bates as "Mom" Claus, all vamping, waiting for the movie to become better. And it doesn't.

Maybe next Christmas, kids.* Maybe instead of saving Christmas, someone should try to save the Christmas Movie.

"Fred Claus" is a cable-watcher, but I have a better time in Mall-traffic.

* Okay, there is one scene that works. Fred decides to go to a support group for "overshadowed" brothers, and among them is Frank Stallone, Roger Clinton, and Billy Baldwin. That scene is genuinely funny, as the 'brothers" gamely mock themselves.

** Doesn't all this turning of childhood fantasy into a corporate metaphor a little creepy? Saving Christmas, Pshaw! How about saving childhood?

Tossing the Dice

2007-12-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

Today, the links are highlighted. They're all parts of the story.

First off, today is Pearl Harbor Day--a not-insignificant date in the life of my family, as regular readers *of this blog know.

The echoes of that event have reverberated down through time, and the memory of it resulted in this story, which was the first spark for my returning to the "QWERTYUIOP" keys to write again.

But every spark has to have a generator and that was Mr. Jeff Hoyt who, one day in a mass e-mailing, asked for stories with lessons learned for a class he was auditing. He took that piece and made it part of a collection called "Memory Song." "I want to do something with that thing of yours," he said last year, and a couple of weeks ago, he stumbled onto this blog through the vibrating strings of the Intra-web, and decided, "Now's the time."

You can peruse that story (Now called "From Mom to Mary," and any number of Jeff's brilliant little pieces) on his Pod-Cast Central "Hoytus Interruptus." It should be "up," starting today.

But another story about my Mom and Dad, and Pearl Harbor, and War, and the sacrifices and the courage that Life takes.

When Pearl Harbor "happened," my Mom (Mary) was living at home with her folks. Her Father was a former Sheriff of King County, and once had run unsuccessfully for Governor. He served as sheriff during a time of bootleggers and corruption that is now quaintly looked on as Seattle's "colorful" past. My grandfather had a reputation for implacable honesty, which was tough to do in those times in the Seattle PD. He was not a glad-hander, a panderer, a slick operator, or an easy mark, but he was a stubborn man--a determined man, and he expected the same integrity from his children. He was a strict disciplinarian. He and my Grandmother had six kids that survived the ravages of childhood disease--one son, Buddy, never made it past three--and he made sure that the Survivors toed the line, and would not bring Scandal and Dishonor to the reputation that his incorruptibility fought against for so many hard years.

Mary was working as a fashion-buyer at Frederick and Nelson downtown. She met John (my Father) through the urgings of his twin sisters, Katherine and Marybeth, who were models at the store. Their first date was to see "Fantasia," (Mary's first words upon seeing John at the door were "You don't look anything like the girls!"-- which is not an auspicious beginning) and when my father asked Mary how she liked it, she tartly replied, "Well, I saw it already last week." With another guy. With better prospects.

His twin sisters were waiting up for a report on how their little match-making escapade went. "Didja kiss her?" they wanted to know. "No," he said quietly. "But I'm going to marry her."

Sounds just like my Father.

This is the story of how they got married.

Mary was home. John was at Pearl. My grandfather heard the news of the attack over the radio and had to break it to her. What must have it been like to hear that the country had suffered a terrible attack with so many casualties, so many dead, and know that your fiancee was right in the middle of it? What must that have done to someone? And she wouldn't hear from him for days. A black-out had occurred, security was tight in Hawaii, and within days Roosevelt had declared war. World War. But where was John? News wouldn't come for quite awhile, and when it did it came in the form of a post-card, with few options to be checked off. "I am well." "I am injured and in hospital." He had checked off "I am well." One check-mark. That was all she got. That's all he was allowed to make. A scratch of life. And the only hope. Not much to go on.

But soon they were writing. John couldn't say much, but at one point, he said he would be getting leave in San Francisco, and they should get married while they could. Mary agreed.

Her family thought she was nuts. Get married in war-time, while he's in the service in the Pacific? Insane! Stupid! Throwing your life away! She got all that. Probably said it a couple times to herself, but she was determined to go to San Francisco. And if there were any doubts about her father's views on the subject, they were answered when he wouldn't accompany her to the train station. Her mother, dutifully, saw her off. Her father stayed home, for all the good it did.

And she went by herself to San Francisco. Along with all the other service-wives with their infant children, to greet the ships when they came to port, to see their husbands, their fathers--to catch a glimpse of them before they returned to the war from which many of them wouldn't return. She took the trip alone. Without the blessing of her parents. And she helped with babies, and talked with the wives. She was surrounded by the possibilities of her choice the whole way and knew, they all knew, that they were rolling dice taking a chance on the future when war was chewing it up.

She said it was all worth it when she saw John. They made arrangements to be married in between church services at a local parish, and Mary stayed with John's fabled Aunt Marie. On the day of the wedding, traffic was bad and Mary was late for the service. When she got there, with John and the priest and the early-birds for the next Mass, he looked at her in terror and said, "What, are you trying to kill me?" which is a rather ironic thing to say, considering.

They got married. That's them, up at the top of the page on the day of their wedding, photo by Aunt Marie. Eventually, John returned to the war. Mary took the train back to Seattle, to wait for him and for the war to end...for Fate to play out.

Don't we all?

* Are there regular readers? Really?

K's back! (November)

2007-11-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

A little later than planned. A little earlier than expected. K's* back and we celebrated by taking Smokey (who was so excited to see her he jumped onto the hood of my car!) for a long, long walk along "Two Cliffs" Beach. The tide was high (but not as high as its gonna be--they're expecting records off the Oregon coast!), and Nature has done some re-surfacing work and pushed a lot of the driftwood further North. Still, we walked all the way to the point--a solid two-hour walk with a dog that wanted us to throw his floating chicken every step of the way--then went to "Besta Round Pizza" for a meat-ball sandwich and a spinach/chicken salad split between us. I did some provisioning and K went home to a hot shower. It's good to have her back. She's around until after Christmas, then back to Eugene.

Today's a day of recycling--I take the junk out to the recycle place in CoupeDeVille, and I start chopping more wood for an anticipated series of soggy, frigid days--maybe another couple of rounds will be stored away. Who knows?

Tomorrow, it's brunch with Jean-o, and an afternoon session with The Agents--they have a handful of projects through Christmas, which is good because I was starting to feel a little strapped. In between I might stop at the Fantagraphics Bookstore--they have some early original "Peanuts" strips on display, and I'm always interested in seeing where the touch-ups and paste-overs occurred--I know Schulz would appreciate that. And if the Agents don't happen--I might have to see a guy about a cattlegun.

I've got a ton of reviews to write, from the SLC and three first-runners: one is a film I'm half-hearted about, and the other two were SO good, that I've combined them into a mega-review, with some assistance by Raymond Chandler. Hope it lives up to its potential. And there are a couple just arrived that even K has expressed interest in--she's still waiting for "The Golden Compass" and is half-way through "The Subtle Knife" in anticipation. I'm reading "Atonement" before the film comes out, but the book is currently on "Pause" while Life happens. It'll take two days max. That's my week.

Thanks to everyone who's written in. Keep reading.

* One of the topics at various "LaRonde" get-togethers is that some folks having not SEEN K, suspect that K is really a "K," and doesn't, in fact, exist, ala Corky's "wife" in "Waiting for Guffman." Oh, she's real, alright, as Walaka, and The Gang of Four, and most other folks we've known the past ten years can attest. But (if I can use bird-watching terms) as K's basic nature is migratory, it should be noted that her responsibility is merely to exist, it is the responsibility of the keen observer to be alert to her presence.

Movie Review - "Beowulf"

2007-11-25T14:00:00.000-08:00

Getting Pixelated at the Mead Hall

"Beowulf" tells the age-old story about the hero who rides into town to defeat a inhuman beast, then its mother, and finally, late in life, a fearsome dragon which proves to be his final battle. Robert Zemeckis directs from a screenplay by Neil Gaiman ("Sandman," "Stardust") and Roger Avary ("Pulp Fiction").

First off, the screenplay by Gaiman and Avary takes a few liberties with the old text, making Beowulf something of a blow-hard, the struggle of Beowulf and Grendel's mother a different kind of tussle, and that fateful dragon becomes the issue of that liaison, just as Grendel is the product of an earlier assignation between Grendel's mother and Hrothgar. That ties it all very neatly together, and sets up a nice little "sins of the father" echo.

It also neatly dispels one of the problems I always had with the story (I first read it in a Scholastic Book Club edition) was that Beowulf maims Grendel, tearing off his arm, then marches off to dispatch Grendel's mother. Having done so, he marches back to the Mead Hall bearing the head of Grendel. Grendel? What about Mom? Since he's taking souvenirs, why doesn't he bring back her head? I mean he cut it off, did he lose it somewhere? Struck me as a bit of a disconnect, it did, and I went on with the story vaguely distracted by that point.

So Gaiman and Avary, citing that Beowulf is boastful, supposes that Beowulf didn't kill Grendel's Mom, but was seduced by her instead, thus the only trophy he could bring back, save for a "loathsome" disease, would be Grendel's head, and he just says he killed her. And that child is the dragon that King Beowulf fights to their mutual destruction.* As I said, tidy.

This is Zemeckis' second big motion-capture film after "The Polar Express," the "beloved" children's story made slightly creepy because all the characters look like those artists models, with resemblances of people plastered on them. One wishes to say that it's a "revolution" and all, but I'm still unimpressed, despite the thousand of person-hours involved to produce it. The landscapes and inanimate objects look great, but the people still have a clumsy way of walking and expressing themselves that takes you right out of the moment. The eyes seem all wrong, and the animation of the mouths when talking looks pinched and unconvincing, as if every character has had a few rounds of plastic surgery--the women in this are all unlined and Barbie-doll-ish. The characters played by Hopkins, Malkovich, Wright-Penn and Jolie all resemble the actors, which is also a bit of a distraction--they've done a lot of work to get Jolie "just so," but despite that there are instances where it looks like Jolie morphing into Jennifer Garner. ** But Ray Winstone, and Brendan Gleeson look like totally original characters that make them a bit more accesible. Generally, everything looks wonderful in dim-light scenes, but in the glare of daylight, the illusion falls apart.

A few other things bother, like the fight where Beowulf vows to fight Grendel naked (just to keep things even), and we are presented with object after object getting in the way of proving it. It was a running joke in "Austin Powers" and "The Simpsons Movie," but here, it's done completely straight-faced--which makes it all the more funny. The presentation of Angelina Jolie as Grendel's Mother makes the seductress role a little easier to see, but when she approaches Beowulf in all her "might-as-well-be-nakedness," there is a shot of her feet, which are cloven--but have spiked heels. Claws, yes. But spiked heels? Did Grendel's mother get the image to present herself from "Victoria's Secret?"*** Then, there's the problem that I'm seeing in more CGI movies--the "we're under a tough deadline, so let's make everything move really fast, so we don't have to do a lot of detail work" that shows up in such things as "Spiderman 3" and this film. Propulsive? Yes. Distinguishable? Not a bit. But it's easier to do a complex sequence if your make everything kind of a "smear." Finally, there's Crispin Glover as Grendel--one of those handful of roles you could say that Glover was BORN to play, but even here he's bizarrely strange--his words undecipherable, and his performance turned to "11." Like a lot of things in the film, it may produce unintended fits of giggling.

Also, this may be an animation film, but there is no way that a kid should go to this. There's a lot of gooey, icky violence, disturbing images, and nudge, nudge jokes that will have them in therapy within a week. Also, I didn't see the 3-D presentation of it--a lot of pointy things get stuck in your face in both versions--but I've been told the 3-D effects are, indeed, staggering and probably the most successful 3-D process yet produced.

I know a lot of things will stay with me--particularly the way Ray Winstone says: "Moi Nime is Baya-woof! An' Oi've cahm to kill yo' monstah"

"Beowulf" is a rental, by crom!

* I'd cite some sort of "Spoiler Alert" here, but as it's the oldest manuscript in "British" literature, and was written around 1100 AD, you've had plenty of time to read it by now!!

** A trick not beyond Zemeckis, who in the space-warp segment of "Contact," morphed Jodie Foster's face with Jena Malone's, the actress who played the character as a child.

*** Want to know what's really wierd? You go to the web-site that has the Beowulf translation on it, and there are two google ads: one for "Olde English" and the other for "sexy pics" of Angelina Jolie. One has to wonder whether the film-makers have done more harm than good.
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POINK!!!

Smokey and I came back from a walk and hunting-and-gathering (at the Payless Food Store) after dark, so I was glad to have left the porch-light on to guide us from the car to front-door. Half-way there with two bags of groceries, mail and his leash gathered together in an ungainly crush, the porch-light went out. "Well, " I thought, "that means a trip to the hardware store to get a new light tomorrow." Then I looked around. No lights up and down the street (even the full moon was behind some clouds!).

Hmmm.

Cancel that trip to the hardware store.

We lost power about 5:36 PM last night. No idea why. There were no storms, no wind, no snow, or anything else visible that could have caused it--which usually means human error of some kind (I'll bet it had something to do with the hasty work being done on the Keystone-Pt. Townsend ferry dock that's being re-jiggered for foot traffic only--but that's just a guess--all the power on "The Rock" comes from up North, and if anything disturbs it, the whole island goes out. Isn't that con-veeeenient!). But we're prepared out here. By the time my neighbor Jim had his generator puttering away, I had the three candled storm lanterns fired up, the battery one operating, the crank-radio/recharger/light/siren charged up, the flash-lights in plain view, and a fire in the wood-stove. Then I made some phone-calls. Seester. Dog-sitter. FarmerScott.

Then at 7:17pm (ZZZZT!) the power came on. Emergency over. Nothing to see here. Back to your homes. Re-set your blinking clocks.

Still...it was fun while it lasted.

More power to us.

Thanks-giving for the Memory

2007-11-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

Friday was a day to do things at home, like sleep in, chop wood (a lot! I got rid of three rounds, chopping them into nice wedge shapes that have been thrown under the tarp to dry off for use later in the Winter), and got around to wrapping the outside pipe, since the temperature has dropped down to below freezing. I can't use one of those handy-dandy foam contraptions ("foam-boobs" one of the elder ladies at the Normandy Park condo used to call them) to just latch onto the nozzle to tighten, so the process is to find one of my socks with holes in them, take a few of the more "thick" pages of the Voters Pamphlet and wrap them around the pipe and cover the wad with the rolled-up sock (Nothing like a sock full of hot air to keep the pipes from freezing). Presto! See you in the Spring.

While I'm swinging the axe (and to keep him happy, and out of the arc of my swing) the dog is chewing on an "O-bone" from the butcher's shop. He likes to gnaw on them 'til they're nice and shiny, while the action does the same for his teeth. His vocabulary has expanded to where the word "0bone" makes his ears perk up, and he snaps to attention.

While I was doing these chores I also managed (for the second time since we moved to "The Rock") to brain myself by stepping on the tongs of a metal rake in the cluttered shed. The handle snaps up and clobbers me, just the way they did in the silent movies. My reaction both times has been to laugh like a hyena, probably because that joke always works for me, but also because it rattles my brain and drops my IQ fifty digits.

The big toe on my right foot feels better. For the past few days it's been swollen and hurting. I don't know why but I surmise that when I stuck my foot into a shoe this week, I might have been stepping into the new home of a spider, who "bit it." But before "biting" IT, he bit my toe. All better today, though it's just made me reflect that I've acquired more scars since living here than I have in my entire life previous. Which brings to mind the old Red Barber quote: "It's not the one with the most toys, wins. God doesn't count the toys. he counts the scars."

That in mind, I should get on Ebay and sell some of these toys.

But all this activity was just an excuse to think about Thanksgiving, which was rough. A little devastating, really. And I've needed time to think things through--to digest from Thanksgiving, not only gastrically, but also mentally.

Things started off well with the Walaka/Otis pumpkin pancake feast. A fine time was had by all, even by Smokey who got a couple good walks in and got to bound around the RD. It was splendid to see everyone and engage. I disengaged about 1300, and headed for My Seester's, where we went to a local dog park and tossed the frisbee for Smokey until he was taking extended "time-out's." Then we headed for Thanksgiving dinner at a local hotel, with Claudi's neighbor Joan, my cousin Rob and his Mom, Aunt Chris. Chris is my Mom's youngest sister. She's 80. And she's had a series of small strokes, and may possibly have Alzheimer's. Anyway, Rob was helping her with her food--making "runs" to the get, helping her negotiate the utensils, stuff like that. I would engage Chris in conversation, and found that she still had the same caustic wit she always had, which I found was the same with my Mom. That basic core-personality of the person hangs on right until the end, so if anybody thinks they're going to get "mellow with age," they're confusing human beings with wine. So, I kept making Chris laugh, went and got her some dessert to let Rob eat, and helped her with that. At the end of the dinner, she looked at me and said--"You're a pretty nice guy." I thanked her, but it felt like a knife in the heart. That's what my Mom used to say to me on my visits long after she'd forgotten who I was. "You're a pretty nice guy." We talked about Rob for awhile, and then I had to leave. I had to "deal."

I went to the men's room and took long deep breaths, splashed cold water on my face, and tried to keep my heart from racing. It was all coming back and I wasn't handling it well. I took a few minutes, gathered myself, and went back. We had a wonderful time.

But I woke up this morning still obsessing, and my plans for heading to the Mainland were scattered to the winds. I had to digest this as much as I had digested the Thanksgiving dinner, and it was going to take time, activity, and time. And activity. And time. But I'm okay now. I've been thinking about my Mom a lot lately, because the "thing" I wrote all those years ago about her and Alzheimer's and reality had been brought up a few times in the past week (more on that later), and that story was comfortably filed away in my thoughts as "The Past."

And here I was being confronted with it again, like an echo, in the form of my Mom's sister saying the same words, meant to compliment, but bringing no comfort.

Despite things like Alzheimer's, and the other afflictions with similar symptoms, you never really can lose The Past. And whether it warms the heart or chills the soul depends on the prejudices and attitudes of the one who keeps it, or is kept by it.

Like a scar.

Just in Time to Celebrate the Birth of the Baby Jesus...*

2007-11-23T00:21:00.000-08:00

Happy Black Friday

Every year for the longest time, I had a Christmas Tradition. I would go out and buy the tackiest Christmas ornament I could find--the one that least celebrated the True Meaning of Christmas, in the Schulzian sense. First one I ever bought was an ornament of Shaquille O'Neal hanging off a basketball rim. There have been some great ones--a Harley Davidson motor (with sound!), the killing of the Wicked Witch of the West from "The Wizard of Oz" (it just SAYS "Christmas" doesn't it? "Whattaworld, whattaworld!"), and Star Trek ornaments of "Worf" with a Klingon scimitar (as if to say "Honor the Holidays..or I'll sever an artery!!"), and "7 of 9" in a skin-tight bio-morph cat-suit. I can't even make a joke of that one.

Well, finances keep me from buying it, but I've found the ornament for this year.

Don't you want an Airstream trailer hanging from your tree in all its silver glory? Why, look, it even has the propane tanks on the hitch! The wheels turn and (subsequently, I'll bet) the awning extends. Now, if Mary and Joseph had one of these babies they wouldn't have had to sleep in the barn! This even beats out the "Star Trek II" ornament that has a space battle between Kirk and Khan (with animation and sound!)

* That's a quote from Phil Harper (RIP), who, as one of the most prolific of Seattle voice-actors, took a decidedly irreverent tack when doing commercials. Every ad for Christmas, he would intone with a wildly enthusiastic introduction "Just in Time to celebrate the Birth of the Baby Jesus!..." to be followed by news of 50% off sales, holiday chocolates, jewels, furs, whatever. Phil would inevitably end commercials with "...so go out and buy some of this shit to-day!" I miss that.

And I should mention that as a promotion to ad agencies in town to use his Claus-like voice, he sent out a newsletter that said "Let Phil be your Christmas Ho!"

Thanksgiving 2007

2007-11-22T00:19:00.000-08:00

"Only a Turkey Isn't Thankful!"*

(Like my hand-turkey? Only took me 30 seconds (!!) with the computer! And it's just as good (or BETTER!!) than the ones I made when I was...oh....two.)

So, here is my "Thanks" list from last year. It's still a pretty good record of many of the things I'm grateful for...like:

1. For no longer having to sit at the kid's table

2. For living in the Greatest Nation on Earth...it has such potential. Give it a year...

3. For having a roof over my head (to keep out #7)

4. For my wife...and her infinite patience and grace

5. For my family...always there in good times, but especially in bad, and that includes the Niece and Nephew who have made the area a "haynt."**

6. For my friends who have stayed friends...no matter the distance...no matter the time, and the new folks I've met since last year who have enriched my life and made me appreciate the shock of the New

7. For the Nature that has surrounded me these past few months and made me stop...and consider...even if said Nature can be pesky and danged inconvenient at times

8. For the opportunities that life affords me on a day to day basis

9. For reading this, you stray readers who've made this a regular "haynt"** (even those of you who come here because of a stray link to a Leif Garrett picture, or the Norman Rockwell "Freedom from Want" painting, or even that employee of the State Department who was looking for a picture of Kato from the "Pink Panther" movies (you know who you are, and probably so does "W")--anyway, I have to subscribe to the "Premium" version of "Sitemeter" now...not that I'm complaining

10. For the memories*** (especially the ones still to come)

But I also wish to thank those of you who have helped me out this year, just through kindness when you didn't really have to, or a place to stay when I was on the road, or work when you didn't REALLY have to, or slipping my name to a colleague, or making me feel welcome, or just keeping in touch when I've fallen behind in my correspondence. Everybody is everybody else's Life Support System, and I've never believed that so much as this year.

Let's all be here next time this year.

* Thanks to the Church reader-board I passed for that

** That's a Carolina version of a "haunt"

***Which brings us to this audio blog by my buddy, Jeff Hoyt, courtesy of "Hoytus Interruptus" http://www.hoytus.com/?p=35

Movie Review - "Lions for Lambs"

2007-11-19T00:41:00.000-08:00

"Never engage the enemy for too long, or he will adapt to your tactics"

Carl Von Clausewitz

There are three arenas in play, and as the film begins the protagonists are checking their ledgers and statistics: Lt. Col. Falco (Peter Berg) is checking his strategy briefings; Senator Jasper Irving (Tom Cruise) is looking at dropping poll numbers; Professor Steven Malley (Robert Redford) is checking the quarter's attendance; Reporter Janine Roth (Meryl Streep) is looking at her unopened note-book--an empty slate. Thus begins "Lions for Lambs"* a polemic about the current Middle-East War, the entities that package and sell it, and the public that may not like it, but won't do anything to oppose it. All the stories intersect a bit and the movie takes place over a few hours. The script is by Matthew Michael Carnehan, who also wrote "The Kingdom" Its director, Peter Berg, who plays Falco here, said that film was "98% Action, 2% Message." Here, that ratio is reversed, and, man, is it tedious.

First off, there is a heavy veneer of liberal self-satisfaction (though not as much as when conservatives put the hammer down). The senator is a Republican tyro, trying to bolster his party's (and his) poll numbers by setting up a new front in Afghanistan (Senator's can do that? I mean besides Charlie Wilson?) He's given Roth a solid hour (this is supposedly a big deal) to argue his case that this attack (no, really, this one!) will win the war in Afghanistan, the war on terror, the hearts and minds of Afghans (he really says this) and presumably bring the troops back home for Christmas (he doesn't say this, but he might as well have). Cruise was bio-engineered for this role (and you just know this is the part Redford would have taken during his career in the cynical 1960's), an opportunistic-photo-op-ready politico, with flags on the desk, pants-press in the office, and flashing Chiclets in his mouth, while Meryl Streep is all shambling messiness, trying to counter the arguments (is that her job?) that Cruise spins on the head of a pin. Their section is the sort of "greased-pig" argument and obfuscation bull-session that keeps me from watching the "pundit" shows--nothing's less fun or informative than watching two used-policy salesmen, hectoring each other trying to get their feet stuck in the open door of your mind. Finally it gets down to my favorite argument when rats-on-their-hind-legs are cornered--The Multiple Choice Bottom-Liner: "Do you want to win the War on Terror: Yes or No?". ("Well, I don't know, Senator, when did you stop beating your wife?") At one point Streep asks, "When does the new offensive start?" Cruise looks at his (supposed) Rolex. "Ten minutes ago." So much for pre-selling.

And in that ten minutes, the mission is already SNAFU'd, when two grunts are bounced out of a helicopter taking heavy fire, turning the offensive thrust into a rescue mission. Not a good start to winning those hearts and minds.

And by a curious coincidence--or a heavy-handed ploy by the screenwriter--those very two soldiers were both students in Professor Malley's political science class, who, in a school project capped their volunteerism argument by enlisting. Now, Malley uses them to guilt a slacker-student who can't be bothered coming to class because he's "busy with stuff," into considering a more activist stance before the bigger challenges of jobs, mortgages, ball-games, and watching "American Idol" zombies away any chance of him doing any critical thinking for the rest of his life. That's a valid argument to make, whichever side of the aisle you take bribes on. But instead of making the arguments, Malley turns them into three-corner shots that kind of dance around the problem, rather than saying something, oh, like "I would suggest you start coming to class or I will flunk your lazy frat-ass: your call."

The trouble here is that the issues are so immediate that the arguments the film is making were too late four years ago. So, it's a bit like soft-ball preaching to the choir. The arguments are sound, but they have very little relevance to extricating us from the tar-pit of this conflict, and, yes, people are getting chewed up by it, but that's the business of war, and why you try to avoid it, rather than rush in like a damned fool. It's great to be able to say all this with 20-20 hind-smugness, but it's essentially useless. Now tell us something we don't know, and how we can avoid it the next time. "Is he failing you?" a fellow frat asks the student about his meeting. The movie certainly is.

"Lions for Lambs" is a cable-flick.

* The title derives from a phrase from World War I, but, the exact nature of the quote is subject to debate, and its history, like the film, is a bit muddled.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ken Levine is currently on strike, but though he's not writing professionally (as he did on "M*A*S*H," "Cheers," "Frasier," "Wings," --then graduated to shows with more than one word in the title like "Dharma and Greg" and "Everybody Loves Raymond"), he does have a blog, which is sometimes informative and sometimes just damned funny, like his overview for the Holiday Movie Season. Priceless. The link, it is hidden.

Intermission

2007-11-18T13:51:00.000-08:00

Movie Review - "Into the Wild"

2007-11-17T14:18:00.000-08:00

Finding oneself and getting lost

There is a pleasure in the pathless wood,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Lord Byron

The films of Sean Penn's directorial career have all carried the underlying theme of obsession. But until now, he has always shown the dark side of it-- "The Indian Runner," "The Crossing Guard," "The Pledge"--the latter two focussing on revenge, of sorts--the Need to get even, to balance the books, to set the world and Nature right. But with his Oscar-winning role in Clint Eastwood's "Mystic River," he seems to have cauterized that need from his system. His new film, "Into the Wild," is just as obsessive but presents more of a spiritual quest. Nature is already balanced. Now one must become a part of it. Based on Jon Krakauer's book (which is expanded from this article on "Outside Online"), it dogs the footsteps of Christopher McCandless, who upon graduating from college, disappeared on a journey across the country and eventually to Alaska, where he tried to live off the land, and his body was found by moose hunters in an abandoned bus. If he wanted to become one with Nature, he achieved it. But there's no great trick doing that. As so often happens, the destination isn't as important as the journey.

Penn (who also wrote the complex screenplay) presents McCandless' Odyssey as a rite of passage, literally divided into chapters, starting with his shedding of everything tying him to a middle-class life like his parents (played cold and shrill, by, respectively, Willian Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden), and simply disappearing, leaving no trace, and ensuring that he would have at least a couple months head-start before anyone knew he'd left. These chapters serve as flash-backs of a sort (given the opening of the film, the whole thing could be a flash-back) to McCandless' day-to-day life living in the abandoned bus/hunting drop that would unwittingly be his last stand. The narrative is punctuated by McCandless' writings in dreamy, floaty script, and a journal-like view from home from the perspective of his sister (played by Jena Malone). Each chapter begins with an extended montage played over songs by Eddie Vedder (which sounds like it could be horrendous, but Vedder's introspective lowing is the perfect counter-point to the images--one begins to look forward to the transitions). The results are never less than hopeful while never losing sight of the hardships along the way, the lessons learned and the experiences along the way.

Or the people. Along the way in the form of jobs worked, beds crashed, and meals shared, McCandless (who travels by the name of "Alexander Supertamp") encounters reflections of his parents and free spirits who push him to abandon his mental baggage, that, instead of establishing lasting ties, only steels his determination to complete his trek to Alaska. Here the movies shines with wonderful performances by Catherine Keener, Vince Vaughn (who's great), Hal Holbrook (who is heart-breakingly good-he should be recognized for this) and some folks that Penn just found on location (including a guy named Brian Dierker, who runs a ski shop in Flagstaff, Arizona--first movie--endearing performance). And its here that if the movie has a weakness, it is that Everybody Loves Chris, wanting him to settle, and by having that be the sole reaction, one's manipulation-shield is engaged, wondering if Penn is stacking the deck, making his McCandless not merely charismatic, but near-messianic. Counter that with the fact that these people are road-blocks to his purposes, while being necessary way-stops on the journey, and those quibbling mountains become mole-hills.* I suppose one could have done more to balance his character (for example, including the opinions of the native Alaskans who thought him merely "stupid"), but short of showing him rolling a drunk, I'm not sure that such a pruning would be all that worthwhile. His encounters are already showing the roads not taken, it is THIS path that is the subject of the film. Anything else would be a detour.

I didn't want this film to end, frankly. It's truly exciting to see a director use a kaleidoscope of techniques to tell a story that celebrates life.

"Into the Wild" is a full-price ticket.

* I wrote this entire review without mentioning the amazing work of Emile Hirsch as McCandless--the guy's in the ENTIRE movie, and if McCandless is too much of a good thing, it's because Hirsch's performance is so constantly winning, and focussed. You're compelled to keep watching this kid, and fear that his next step will be wrong. It's an involving, remarkable performance. While Penn's work is astonishing, he has the best co-conspirator in Emile Hirsch. His next role? He's playing "Speed" Racer. He looks just like him, but...I mean, c'mon AAAAUGH!

Movie Review - "The Kingdom"

2007-11-16T15:01:00.000-08:00

Cries and Whispers

On the American military compound in Rhiyadh, two terrorists command a security vehicle and open up machine gun fire on a family softball game leaving carnage before they are killed. But like the WTC attacks, it's a two-pronged assault, the first wave of terror providing the means for a devastating explosion during the rescue efforts. For four FBI investigators it becomes a personal duty to investigate the scene and find out what happened and who was responsible. They only have five days. They're under constant surveillance by the local police. Their movements are restricted, their presence resented and the attack zone compromised in the clean-up efforts. The only thing they do have is an Exit Strategy, which has been formulated before their arrival, and things have a way of changing. But it's personal, and they have to find a way, doing an impossible task, in an unfamiliar and hostile area, without leaving a trace because it's not exactly sanctioned by the U.S. government. Yeah, good luck with that.

"The Kingdom" is directed by Peter Berg, whose previous film was "Friday Night Lights," a film I greatly admire. Berg shepherded that film over to a fascinating series on NBC, and unlike his previous series "Wonderland," has made it all the way to a second season. He started out as an actor-- was the slightly lump-headed first seduction of Linda Fiorentino in "The Last Seduction," and he starred for several seasons on "Chicago Hope," where he first started directing. Berg is a genuine find--an intelligent director who communicates everything-- gives you all you need to know, keeps things logistically decipherable, and lenses with an oblique eye that takes everything in but doesn't beat you over the head with it. An action-director who gives his audience credit for intelligence and propels the film along, trusting that the audience will keep up.

Berg has a flashy cast for "CSI: Rhiyadh" (scripter Matthew Carnehan describes it as "Imagine a murder investigation on Mars") in Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman (as well as Danny Huston, Frances Fisher, and Jeremy Piven--who basically plays his "Entourage" character working for the State department). Everyone's performance is tamped down, but the fact is they're all stars--well, Bateman is there for comedy relief--and unlike the cast of "Friday Night Lights," they stand out like sore thumbs, which actually serves the film well. But the stand-out performance is by Ashraf Barhom, whose Col. Faris Al Ghazi takes his job of providing protection for the team so seriously that he hampers their efforts at every turn. And given that his job is to stand in for the entire Arab world (almost every other local is a bit of a cypher), he carries off the role with a subtlety that doesn't betray the heavy lifting.

Berg has stated that he didn't want to make a "message" film, saying that the ratio for a film to make a point and make an audience is "98% action, and 2% message." That may be overstating the case, as there's a lot more message in the film hidden between the frames. But...though the film does put a face to the Arab world, though it does reflect the heavy-handed presence of America there, though it may bring into sharp focus the folly of having a formalized military presence in a guerilla situation and the dangers that that presence can provide in escalating the conflict--though it may say all these things that point to the folly of invading Iraq, that 98% action still has the effect of having the audience jingo-cheer on the Americans (even with Arab back-up) in a fire-fight in a hotel building. You have to have your message and the action that belies it. That's troubling. But while one contemplates that, the film moves on and delivers a spoken coda that says that, really, we're all not so different after all.

Boo-yah.

"The Kingdom" is a cheap matinee

Gray-Day-tion

2007-11-16T12:46:00.000-08:00

(Before we go any further, JohnBai and Steve don't have to read this...well, nobody HAS to!)

Man!

Has there ever been a day as gray as this one? Dark, dark, dark! Like the sun hadn't even come up! I went out to chop wood early this morning before the rains set in, because I'd used everything up, and I figured I'd be needing it before the sun went down. It's a day of cleaning and staying indoors (unless the clouds part!) and tending to things that need be done. The office is a wreck and an invoice has to be sent out (I think I've invoiced every day this week!). The dishes have stacked up, there's a ton of recycling (I mean that--a TON!) Oh, and writing (taking care of that now).

Expect three more reviews, one of which is kinda blocking right now, but there's a TON (I mean that--a TON!) of movies out today that are screaming to be seen...and I still haven't seen "Gone Baby Gone" and "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." No time in the sked (or "shed" for you stray Anglo-attendees).

I've been to the Agents twice this week to set up their audio room. It's been moved from a space that was designed to be quiet to one that couldn't be if a project depended on it. But what are ya gonna do? It's going to make putting those "subliminal" accents in a little problematic, but that's the hand that's dealt. It's not my shop.

This weekend, it's some socializing, and K will be "in the area," but I don't know if she's coming back up to the Rock yet before the next leg of her journey to Eugene. She's been in Mehico, "spa-ing" with her Niece which will help in the never-ending battle for a tobacco-free lifestyle. We've been out of communication since she's been down there, but I'll bet dollars-to-regular-priced-doughnuts that's she's doing well in a world without a black cloud around her head.

Speaking of which, have you looked outside lately? Man!

Tales from the Red Envelope

2007-11-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

"The Pink Panther" (Shawn Levy, 2005) I've always been a big fan of the Blake Edwards' "Panther" films (until they became out-take reels, anyway), so when I heard of a new version with Mike Meyers as Clouseau, I didn't give it much of a chance. When Steve Martin signed on to take the role Peter Sellers made famous (and has been briefly taken over or supplanted by, respectively, Alan Arkin, Ted Wass, and Roberto Benigni) I gave it even less of a chance. The result...is not too terribly bad. Martin doesn't so much copy Seller's Clouseau, as spoof David Suchet's Hercule Poirot. His Clouseau is still informed of ego and little else, and is blithely unaware of what a prat he really is. Martin resists the urge to play it more broadly (which is his weakness), and if he doesn't have Sellers' innate ability to take things in a perversely savage manner, he does manage to keep the comedy up and the timing semi-precise (he's aided immeasurably by a bit too aggressive sound-design). One also has to credit the writers and Levy for matching Blake Edwards' ability to make a joke out of taking a small inconsequential act and turning it into a disaster. There is a terrific Edwards-ian gag involving a large globe (but NOT having Clouseau catch his finger in it as it spins) that builds quite precisely and would fit just as well into a silent film, which is from where the physical comedy of the "Panther" films sprang, and did a prat-fall. There are big changes. No Cato, though the gag is kept. Closeau still has a deadpan assistant (though now it's Jean Reno, whose potential is a bit wasted). And the plot is a combination "Pink Panther" and "A Shot in the Dark," although Beyoncé does not show as much screen-potential as Elke Sommer (that's one of those things you think you'd never write!) Someday Beyoncé may find a vehicle for her talents, but right now she's a bit behind Mariah Carey in the "Diva Most Likely Not To..." category (Somebody's going to have to overcome "The Curse of Diana Ross!"). And nobody can replace Henry Mancini, so Christopher Beck (who scored a lot of "Buffy") doesn't even try to match the sophistication. Michael Giacchino would be a better choice. And Kevin Kline feels a bit...restrained as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, though why no one thought of casting HIM as Clouseau is beyond me.

"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" (Mike Newell, 2005) Year Four at Hogwarts, and Harry must learn that he can not stop death, that at times he must stand alone, trust his friends, and though he may be a natural at magic, it can't keep him from acting like a stupid muggle in front of girls. Oh, and (He Who Must Not Be Named) comes back. That's big. Who's new? Lots of kids (Hogwarts is visited by exchange students from France (girls) and some teutonic country (boys), Miranda Richardson as The Daily Prophet's gossipy-pain-in-the-neck Rita Skeeter, Brendan Gleeson (marvelous) as "Mad Eye" Moody, and Ralph Fiennes, chewing as much CGI scenery as possible as HWMNBN--Fiennes clearly relishes the role. At this stage of development, all the regulars are at the heighth of awkwardness, looking slovenly and disheveled, and just a bit homely. Harry must participate in a prom as well as the Tri-Wizard's Something-Or-Other, and one had best place their bets on Harry on the latter (in the former he's a complete wash-out). Director Mike Newell bustles things along and tries to put eveything in at the cost of giving A Big Important Event For Harry (and the emotional high-point of the film) a little too little background to make us care. The films are getting darker, both in subject matter--but also in lighting, the beginning of the film is nearly indecipherable without one of those divining maps from Part Three, "Harry Potter and the Rather Inocuous Magical Prop" (that was the name of it, wasn't it?).

"Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" (Alex Gibney, 2005) This "buy the book" documentary scrupulously tells the unscrupulous story of Enron, the energy-trading company whose fall was so huge it sucked down the accounting firm of Arthur Andersen, as well as the pensions and retirement accounts of its employees. At the eye of the "Big Suck" was a triumvirate of robber-barons with grandiose schemes on how to shuffle energy it didn't have, and what energy it did have was used to "cook the books." Those smartest guys are now infamous--Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andy Fastow. They began as all fortunes do--they came up with an idea no one else had. Deficit Financing--don't get rich making a profit, get rich saying you're going to make a profit. And when you don't, offset the loss with dummy corporations set up solely to take the hit. And in this shell-game where money is a concept more than a commodity, the longer you can keep the plates spinning on the sticks, the more successful you might become. You just have to know when the plates begin to fall, then cash in. The film-makers have access to company films, P.R. pieces, and, most damning of all, the ribald voice recordings of the taders on the floor, famously yukking it up about gramma freezing in California. Skilling and Lay built up a cult of personality that gives them access to powerful friends who can manipulate the market to their advantage, delay investigations, and blue-sky security ratings (The speculation is that Lay helped formulate the Bush Energy Policy, which is why Dick Cheney has fought so strenuously to keep the names secret). The hubris becomes so great that soon they think they can sell a sunny day--tape recordings have company officials speculating on selling "weather futures." There is a damning wealth of information provided on the durth of anything approaching ethics and the depths to which the greedy can sink. One wonders if there's something deeper about Enron's company slogan: "Ask why."

"The Score" (Frank Oz, 2001) It's notable for being the last movie Marlon Brando was in, and his presence is probably why DeNiro and Norton and Bassett signed on, because, really, this is no great shakes as a film. It's a simple "heist movie," with some interesting switch-backs along the way, which works as an effective metaphor for a bunch of people generating a paycheck for themselves. But if you expect to see sparks fly between DeNiro and Brando (The Two Don Vito Corleones) the way they did between Pacino and DeNiro in "Heat," you're going to very disappointed. Bassett is completely wasted in the movie as "The Girlfriend," and Norton pulls off one of his "so-good-it's-scary" impersonations, this time as a retarded kid, which borders on the cruel. No, the only sparks are the ones that happened between Brando and director Oz. Brando didn't like the way he was being directed, so he decided he'd play games calling Oz "Miss Piggy" (of course, Oz played her in "The Muppets") It's just another indication of how far Brando was slipping--a perpetual jokester and lover of comedy, he couldn't even be charitable acknowledging Oz's gifts as a performer. "The Score" is not a great indicator of anyone's work (except the cinematographer's), but it's a shame that Brando went out on this one.

"God Grew Tired of Us" (Christopher Dillon Quinn, 2006) An amazing documentary (which won both major Documentary Prizes at

the 2006 Sundance Festival)that has a lot of godfathers* and a long history. "God Grew Tired of Us" tells the story of "The Lost Boys of the Sudan," 27,000 refugees who fled the Sudanese Civil War and made their way by foot to Ethiopia and then to Kenya. 10,000 survived the trip across the desert. After education in a refugee camp, the oldest of the young men get the opportunity from the International Rescue Committee and the to travel to other countries--3800 live in the U.S. The film concentrates on three of them-Panther Bior, John Bul Dau, and Daniel Abol Pach as they adjust to life in America, fight loneliness and isolation, and achieve personal goals of jobs, finding surviving family and forming their own charity and help organization to help their fellow countrymen, in the U.S. and at home. There must have been warehouses of material to choose from because it covers a lot of ground over many years. That the film is so powerful and an inspiration is a testament to all those in front and behind the camera.

* The financiers are NewMarket Films, Silver Nitrate and National Geographic. The film was shepherded by Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, Mike Myers and the dispassionate narration provided by Nicole Kidman.

Movie Review - "American Gangster"

2007-11-12T10:00:00.000-08:00

"That's What's Wrong with America. You can't Find the Heart of Anything to Stick the Knife In"

"American Gangster" tells the story of Frank Lucas, who, for a time in the 60's and 70's, ran the most successful narcotics operation in Harlem. The film is based on a "New York" magazine article from an interview with the real-life Lucas, so it must be based on fact, right?*

Ridley Scott's played fast and loose with facts before (1492, Black Hawk Down), so one should take the credit "Based on a True Story" with a kilo of salt. But, that aside, how is the movie?

It tells the parallel stories of Lucas' rise in power on the Harlem streets by "cutting out the middle-man" smuggling in raw opium from Thailand, and manufacturing a concoction called "Blue Magic" that had twice the potency, but at half the cost, with the story of the cop who eventually busted him, a down on his luck detective named Richie Roberts who's too honest to be trusted by the New York Police. While Lucas starts to make his version of the American Dream, Roberts continually has his legs knocked out from under him--his wife leaves him, takes his kid, he struggles with classes to better himself (public speaking, law), his partner turns junkie, and implicates him in a murder. The movie drips with irony at every turn, constantly showing the easy path of Crime and the tough road of Law Enforcement, that recalls that epitome of the thesis-"The French Connection."** In a montage of Thanksgiving, Lucas is shown with his entire family at a stereotypical Thanksgiving spread (and in one of the more heavy-handed of Scott's directorial choices frames it like Norman Rockwell's "Freedom from Want" painting, while Roberts, makes a cold sandwich of canned turkey-spread and potato chips over the kitchen sink. But then the director re-ups it by showing junkies shooting up between their toes in grimy bathrooms, and a mother passed out in bed, while her child is screaming in the room. Whatever glamour Lucas may enjoy, Scott is particular about showing the cost in human misery. No one gets off Scott-free.

Sometimes the tables are turned. Lucas occasionally has troubles in the operation, and however much he may espouse core-values of honesty and integrity, the very nature of his business starts to rot his dreams for his family. And the more Roberts investigates, the closer he comes to his target, the more his team of "Untouchables" gel, and his investigation and life begin to come into focus.

Ridley Scott misses as much as he hits. For every good film (The Duellists, Alien, Black Hawk Down, Thelma and Louise), there is a terrible one (Legend, 1492, Someone To Watch Over Me, G.I. Jane, Hannibal, A Good Year), and some that have just enough quality in them (Blade Runner, Gladiator, Matchstick Men) that his directorial brio can compensate for weaknesses and messy scripts. But here, he has a cracker-jack script by Steve Zaillian, no worries about creating "a world" out of whole cloth, and a stunning cast that includes Clarence Williams III (uncredited), Joe Morton, Armand Assante, Josh Brolin, Cuba Gooding, Jr., the magnificent Ruby Dee, Ted Levine, Roger Bart, Carla Gugino, Chiwetel Ojiofor, and top-lined by Russell Crowe, but especially Denzel Washington. When these two heavy-weights get together, their scenes crackle with invention. Everybody does incredibly lived-in work.

And nobody less than the director. This is Ridley Scott's best film in ages. At times the details get a bit murky, but Scott does so to keep a multi-faceted story moving at a brisk pace. And he pulls off some amazing little camera tricks that stun, and some of the most unpretentious action-sequences put to film. Those action sequences are rough stuff--the film begins with the immolation and point-blank gundown of a mob rival--and the junkie sequences are harrowing, so one should be warned. But missing it would be missing a great film.

"American Gangster" is a full-price ticket

* a casual glance at the internet will disprove a lot of myth from fact. Lucas did not work for crime boss "Bumpy" Johnson for 15 years, but five (he's been in prison before), he was not with him when he died, did not marry "Miss Puerto Rico," or own "Small's" nightclub. And that's just the start for Lucas. The real Roberts is a bit miffed that to attract Crowe, they beefed up his part by making him more of a loser. Lucas admits that the film is "about 20% true."

** The names "Eddie Egan" and "Sonny Grosso" are invoked early on, and Crowe's Roberts employs a foot-chase under the "El" that figured so prominently in the movie.

We Interrupt This Broadcast...

2007-11-11T16:20:00.000-08:00

...to be narrow-minded.

The FCC snuck in like thieves in the night the other day to grudgingly hold a "Town Meeting" Friday night at Seattle's Town Hall on the subject of station consolidation.

They're for it.

They want more of it.

That's why they're considering letting the entities that own every radio and television station in town, also own the newspapers as well.

That would make everything neat and tidy, wouldn't it?

But because the broadcast channels and air-waves are a public trust--we own them, they administer them--they had to hold a meeting in various cities to get the public's reaction. We were the last. And because it's such a big deal, the commissioners made sure they gave very little notice or announcement of it. God forbid, that people should show up and actually give their opinions.

But people did...in droves. And one of them was conservative commentator John Carlson.

Here's a report of the meeting and what he said there.

http://blatherwatch.blogs.com/talk_radio/2007/11/john-carlson-sp.html#more

Thanks to Michael Hood and his snarky little broadcast blog "Blatherwatch" for the word.

"Oh, Wasted 'Sleuth'"

2007-11-10T20:16:00.000-08:00

"In Olden Days a Glimpse of Stocking Was Looked On as Something Shocking, now I suppose....Anything Goes"

"Sleuth" started out as a hit play by Anthony Shaffer. It was inevitable that a movie would be made of it, and in 1972, a spit-and-polished version of "Sleuth" hit the screen. Shaffer wrote the screen-play, and it was directed with a rich panache by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who knew a thing or three about theatricality) and the cast could not be improved--top-lined by Sir Laurence Olivier as mystery writer Andrew Wyke, and Michael Caine as the London hair-dresser Milo Tindle, currently having an affair with Wyke's wife. Mankiewicz's film is devilish fun, a clash between The Old World and The Terminally Hip with the battleground being Wyke's gadget and gee-gaw filled Manor House (designed by Ken Adam). Add to it John Addison's frothy hapsichord score and however dark the film becomes (and Mankiewicz gives it a creepily saw-toothed edge), it is never less than fun to watch, especially seeing Olivier energetically dashing through each scene, precisely mimicking accents and dialects--a brilliant murderous man-child forever playing games and Caine keeping up, trotting warily behind. At the time, that theatricality and staging made everything seem a trifle--a little bon-bon for the rinse-set. But over time, one can't help admiring the energy brought to the fore by Mank and Olivier, defying age and frailty to knock another one out of the park. And Shaffer's play is filled with all sorts of opportunity to...play. It stands as definitive...a champion documentation of the play.

Good Authors too Who Once Knew Better Words, Now Only use Four Letter Words Writing Prose, Anything Goes.

It must have seemed such a good idea to re-do it. With Caine old enough to play the Wyke role, and who else but Jude Law as Tindle, making it "The Battle of the Alfies" (and if you think this is coincidence, a couple of lines makes it obvious it was uppermost in the film-maker's minds). Then, to adapt (at one point Wyke says, cheekily, "You know what the word 'adapt' means, don't you?"), the great Harold Pinter, and to direct, Kenneth Branagh, both men who can mine rich veins out of depleted quarry. And the result? "Sleuth" is still there in skeletal form--it's still Wyke vs. Tindle, but only one line of the original remains*--it's been completely stripped. The fussy old school mysteries Wyke wrote are gone, replaced by "crime novels" that regularly turn up on British telly, exemplified by sweating policemen grilling suspects. Milo's now an actor, who does hair, does the occasional chauffeur job. He plays "killers...sex-maniacs, perverts mostly." Not only is the dialog stripped down to essentials ( and in nice....short little...bursts), so is the attitude. Any veneer of civility from the play has been scraped away, starting in the first moments with the chilly pause before a hand-shake when the two men first meet. No, they start off scrapping and spitting at each other right from "Hello" using all manner of Anglo-Saxon terms for each other, mutual contempt hurled in both directions. Which tends to throw the rest of the play on shaky ground. I suppose the makers didn't think Caine could pull off a stuffy, fusty Brit, and made it two working-class toipes throwing knives between their two sets of blue eyes. It takes the class warfare sub-text completely out of the center of the thing, leaving it all to ring just a bit hollow. The play pretty much runs its course, but the Second Act is considerably shortened, and the Third Act, if you will, is dragged on and on (despite all this, new-"Sleuth" lasts 86 minutes--the first was 2 hr, 18 m-- but seems longer) All this is staged in a hi-tech sterile interior (Wyke had nothing to do with it, he claims which seems...odd). And although there's a lot of bantering and word-play, sometimes annoyingly non-sequitir, it's just NO fun at all. Not a jot. At the end of the original, there is the satisfying finish with two simultaneous wails, along with mocking laughter. Then a curtain comes down. Here, nothing. Silence. Not even the impulse to applaud.

"Sleuth" (1972) is a strong matinee.

"Sleuth" (2007) is a waste of time.

* "The shortest way to a man's heart is humiliation."

Movie Review - "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford"

2007-11-09T21:05:00.000-08:00

Poor Jesse had a wife to mourn for his life,
Three children, they were brave;
But the dirty little coward
that shot Mr. Howard*
Has laid Jesse James in his grave.

That's from the old song "The Ballad of Jesse James" which I remember from my youth, forever enshrining James and the "dirty little coward" Robert Ford in my memory. It was written by one Billy Gashade (who took pains to include himself in the lyrics, naturally) soon after the outlaw's death. As with so much in the Jesse James business, it is reflective of the myth of Jesse James rather than the reality. For instance (as the Ford character points out in the movie) Jesse only had two kids. The fact behind the myth was that Jesse James was a vicious little punk--racist, paranoid, just as capable of killing friends as enemies, and women and children in the bargain. And while it's true he did rob from the rich--his target was banks and trains (or Union veterans)--the legend that he gave to the poor only extended to himself and members of his gang. No one who sees Jesse James as a folk-hero, or seeks to profit from that image mentions the mutilations he would perform on his victiims. It kinda gets in the way of the "fun." Yet, folks in Missouri still talk of the history of Jesse James (I once stayed in a hotel that advertised he slept there), and there's even a feud going on about whether Jesse really did die, and there are folks who want to dig him up to check DNA evidence to claim family affiliation. The myth rolls on. The lies that were sold in the pulp-magazines during his life are still at work, and as the line from "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" goes: "This is the West, sir. If the Legend becomes Fact, print the Legend." Even if it is a god-damned lie and the guy was a scum-bag.

It is the yin and yang of truth and fiction that suffuses "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," but then it did in reality, too. The conceit of the film (and the book by Ron Hansen on which it is based) is that Robert Ford was a product of a pulp-western inspired hero-worship, that Jesse had his eye on the stories, too, and their mutual attraction and loathing of the truth behind it was the music to the dance of death they engaged in. Robert Ford was a nobody, and, in the film's words "Jesse James stood as tall as a tree." And that set up a love-hate relationship with the unstable hoodlum. "I can't figger it out," says Brad Pitt's Jesse to Casey Affleck's Bob Ford. "Do you wanna be like me, or do you wanne be me?" The fact is Ford doesn't know himself and the answer changes depending on his fortunes...and his fears. But as the cliche goes there's only room for one of them, and if there's no doubt that the strong will prevail, there is some question which one that would be. Maybe it will merely be a case of who is the least weak. Ironically, both will go on to greater fame and infamy.

Andrew Dominick's film meanders between an informative narration** spoken over landscapes beneath time-lapsed speeding clouds, as if Nature is careening to a foregone conclusion, while the figures take their own sweet time getting there. Dominick has a formalism going with those fleeting clouds and shots that are framed by a time-distancing diffusion. But it's very inconsistent, and rendered meaningless--no doubt due to post-production cutting by Producer Ridley Scott and star Pitt to punch up the pace. If it's not all Dominick wanted it to be, at least there remains some terrific performances all-around. Pitt is at his enigmatic best here, an unreadable half-smile on his face in all occassions. Sam Rockwell as Ford's older brother and fellow gang member gives another off-kilter performance that is spot-on. Along the way there are terrific cameos by Sam Shepard, Michael Parks and Ted Levine (and one distracting one by James Carville), but the stand-out is Casey Affleck. Affleck is every insecure, withdrawn kid who talks big, with a defensive smile on his face, and eyes that roll protectively up into his head when challanged. He's a train-wreck waiting to happen. And Jesse James specialized at trains.

If you're of a patient frame of mind, and have a taste for an unromantic West with heavy-handed irony then "The Assassination of Jesse James"is for you. But if not...

"The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" is a rental.

* "Thomas Howard" was the alias Jesse James was using at the time of his death.

** The narration has its own problems. One is not too sure of its reliability. For instance, in describing Jesse it states that he had "granulated eye-lids" which caused him to blink excessively, though part of Brad Pitt's performance is a protracted concentration, where he stares but does not blink. Then, the narration goes all flowery on the subject "...caused him to blink as if the world was too big to take in for too long." The film has its own problems with truth and myth.

More Tales from the Socialist Literary Collective*

2007-11-07T15:08:00.000-08:00

"Call Northside 777"(Henry Hathaway, 1948) There was a brief period in American films where Hollywood embraced the neo-realist school coming out of Italy--where stories were filmed out in the streets, not in the rarified atmosphere of a film-studio (Italy's huge studio, Cinecitta, was being used to house refugees), and it dove-tailed with the gritty world of film noir and crime-thrillers. Elia Kazan made one, even Hitchcock did. But the most well-remembered of them was "Call Northside 777" with James Stewart as blasé "Chicago Times" reporter Jim McLane, who, upon taking an assignment he doesn't want, turns it into a cause celebre and his own obsession to see Justice done.

This was one of the first movies Stewart did after his Air Force service, as he was beginning to challenge and even destroy his callow image at the beginning of his career. Now, with an added maturity he could actually pull off the cynical journalist role he wasn't too convincing as in "The Philadelphia Story" (which won him a "sympathy" Oscar after losing the previous year for "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" the year before) He returned from the war determined to play characters with a darker edge.

Henry Hathaway directed with a subtle eye, finding interesting deep-focus shots in lackluster surroundings. McLane's first encounter with a scrub-woman washing the stairs of a cathedraled office building carries the visual weight of years of work needed to raise the reward-money to help spring her imprisoned son (Richard Conte). The jailhouse of the visitation scenes IS the jailhouse, and the arrest of Conte's character looks and feels like actual newsreel footage. Finally, you get to go back in time and watch vital clues produced by the old technology of wire-photo transfer. It's another instance where the straight-laced neo-noir style goes a long way in selling the truth of a story, however implausible it might seem.

"The Wages of Fear " (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1952) Some movies are so good they defy time, place and stay universally fresh, seemingly like they were made yesterday. Clouzot's "The Wages of Fear" is that kind of movie, and I would call it the best film 0f 2007 if it was released today instead of 1952. It tells the story of four vagrants scratching out a living in a South American village existing in the shadow (and under the thumb) of an American oil company. One of the distant oil rigs goes up in flames, and these four are hired to drive two trucks of nitro-glycerin over unforgiving roads to the inferno to snuff it out. Why take on this task? $2,000 per man--enough money to fly out and make a new life. Why these four? They're not union workers, and should they die--the odds are fifty/fifty, hence the two trucks--they have no families who might sue or require compensation.

It's a neat little trap, and that doesn't cover the obstacles that Nature (and uncaring road-workers!) have along the way. All these desperate times call for desperate measures and the efforts taken can be undone in the blink of an eye, or a flash of fire. For the four, the journey strips them down to their real selves, all pretense and masks disappear in the face of impossible challenges that must be overcome, and the looming threat of death riding behind them. The wages of fear may be death, but "The Wages of Fear' is a bleak metaphor for life itself.

All of this is played out over a blasted landscape, the results of the presence of Big Oil, and the journey feels like going back through time as well as space, through the spare white jail-bars of a denuded forest, back to the primordial ooze and finally ending up in Hell. By the end one can't help wonder if the fate of Nature and the nature of Fate are intertwined. Except for one fairly amateurish performance this is a near-perfect movie.

"Tom Jones" (Tony Richardson, 1964) I have been hearing for years and reading in books of the freshness and originality of "Tom Jones," and after seeing it, one wonders what all the fuss was about. Yes, it's fun and frivolous. Yes, it won the Academy award for Best Picture. Finney is marvelous, but one also looks at the techniques used and must admit that it has not aged at all well. One must be careful, though, as a film should be considered as it was of its time. The current discussion (one could hardly call it a controversy) where "The Searchers" is a classic--for the simple reason that its sensibilities are of another time and picture-making makes one wary of arguments like this. I've also had to defend "2001" for being full of cliches--yes 'tis, considering every "space" or sci-fi movie since then has ripped it off--merely because it was of a time and sensibility. To someone growing up on MTV cutting "2001" must look stunningly tame (Be that as it may, I'll bet an MTV movie-goer, would still be affected by "long-take" syndrome, where the longer a film-scene goes on, the more nervous-making it becomes.

They'd never have that problem with "Tom Jones." But after sitting on it a week, dissipating the expectations and prejudices and going in for another viewing, one has found the context: the past is not a pageant. Historical dramas before it, were as stiff as the multi-layered costumes and as formal as a ball-waltz. "Tom Jones" got rid of the tracking camera and the stately walks, and made the 2-dimensional costume-fillers 3-dimensional people, and did so with a markedly ribald sense of humor, and the understanding that what drove them, drives us. Since then, Richard Lester and Ridley Scott (and Merchant/Ivory and everybody else making historical dramas of classic novels) has taken Richardson's path and taken the "hit-the-marks" formalism out, and lensed with a satirical eye to show us the past and how we repeat it. "Tom Jones" bursting on the scene must have felt as relieving as removing a whale-bone corset!

"The Spirit of the Beehive" (Victor Erice, 1973) Victor Erice is the Terrence Malick of Spain (though to be correct it should be the other way around). His films are precise and planned so carefully that he has made three films since 1972's "The Spirit of the Beehive." "Spirit" tells the story of two children; Father is a bee-keeper, Mother is a repressed housewife. The children go to see a matinee of James Whale's "Frankenstein," which deeply affects the youngest, Ana. She wonders why, in a pivotal scene, the monster kills a young child (in the film it's never seen) and if the monster is real. She's told by her older sister that the monster is a spirit who will come at her call--"Hello, I am Ana." This sets in motion a series of events that juxtaposes life and freedom, identity and society, death and repression. This film was made in the last echoes of the Franco regime and the people walk around in a form of zombie-state, their expressions impossible to read. That the Frankenstein monster is seen in this context as a symbol of life and freedom shows what a palpable symbol it remains, and how malleable.

"The House on 92nd Street" (Henry Hathaway, 1945) Another of those neo-realist films, filmed in the locations in which they occurred. But this one goes a step further--except for the lead actors, everybody's a real FBI agent--you can tell, the line readings are merely that, line readings. "Bob, let's get this over to the Cryptanalysis boys to see what they think." "O-kay, Wendell!" And the actors, mostly unknowns except for the always-natural Lloyd Nolan stick out because they're at ease and have better hair-styles. Real surveillance footage of the German Embassy during the war is used in this story of a Quantico-trained double-agent tracking a Nazi plot to discover the secrets of The Manhattan Project (or "Project 97," as its called in the movie--it was made in 1945, after all). It's a stunt-film, a propaganda document, an early film-noir (without the noir stylistics). And the blend of styles almost gives it a documentary feel. Henry Hathaway does some ingenious work making this all work together, at the cost of making the staged segments feel extremely staged in a D-budget sense.

"The Hound of the Baskervilles" (Terence Fisher, 1958) I'll go see any Sherlock Holmes story (as long as it's not a spoof), not so much because the story's are compelling--they're fascinating for the glimpse of salaciousness in Victorian England, but the story-template is rarely altered--but because the portrayal of Holmes is an actor's showcase. Holmes by Doyle is something of a blank slate, so an actor can infuse him with whatever qualities they choose to emphasize: Basil Rathbone, the heroic; Jeremy Brett, the neurotic; and on down the line to the worst--Stewart Granger who was content to make Holmes merely British (we won't get into Hugh Laurie as "House"). So, it's interesting to see the Hammer Studios' "take" on Holmes. Hammer was the British equivalent of Roger Corman's AIP, but with a distinct advantage. They also purloined classics in the public domain, but they had Terence Fisher, with his flawless eye of direction (and cleavage) and a repertory cast that included Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Here Cushing plays Holmes and he's obviously devoured the Doyle stories for Holmes quirks, stabbing documents into his mantelshelf and writing notes on his cuffs. His Holmes is energetic and flinty, bordering on rude with a relish of the melodramatic. His skull-like face even recalls Sidney Paget's original drawings. Until Brett came along, Cushing, to this Baker Street Irregular, was the best of the Holmes portrayals. Christopher Lee plays the put-upon Henry Baskerville, and as the actor is quick to point out in a "Special Features" interview, it's one of a handful of romantic leads that he's played in his long, long career. What makes this "Baskervilles" different from the countless others? Holmes is absent for less time, a lurid flash-back acquaints us with the origins of the Baskerville curse, there is a romance (of sorts) and the death by quicksand is given to someone entirely different. It is, though, faithful in spirit, if not in detail.

"The World's Fastest Indian" (Roger Donaldson, 2005) A labor of love for Donaldson, who first did a documentary of the man in 1971, "The World's Fastest Indian" tells the story of New Zealander Burt Munro who fulfilled a dream of testing the 1920 Indian Spirit motorcycle he'd been tinkering with his entire life at the test track on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Everything seems to be against him: he's old, lives in a shack, has a pension and angina, but his basic subsistence-level, his spirit, energy and resourcefulness (and his not inconsiderable charm) are enough to get him to America during "Speed Week" in Utah. Recommended by FarmerScott, K. was a little underwhelmed by the prospect--"I'm not into "engine" movies," she said--but was charmed by it, and so rooting for the man, that any set-back was felt keenly. It helps that Anthony Hopkins plays Munro as a slightly-distracted charmer, who, when he goes off on a story or a philosophy turns away from his audience as if he's addressing the world, but takes things in great genial strides and an attitude that it can all be overcome. It's one of those "Based on a True Story" tales that actually is a true story, as the documentary that Donaldson originally wrote and directed is also provided on the DVD, and the real Munro's words and manner are displayed. It's a truly heart-warming, uplifting tale, made doubly so by its provable authenticity. It is easily Donaldson's best film, and a tragedy that so few people went to see it in a theater. It's always asked, "Why don't they make movies like they used to?" And the answer is--because people don't support them. "The World's Fastest Indian" is one of those that "got away."

"The Innocents" (Jack Clayton, 1960) One of the truly great horror movies ever made, though without a drop of blood in sight. Jack Clayton's film of William Archibald's play (based on Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw"), with a polish by Truman Capote, and a final coat of lacquer by John Mortimer, is a creepily finessed horror story/psychological thriller depending on your point-of-view. Miss Giddens is given her first governessing job by "The Uncle," a cold bon-vivant, who wants her to "handle everything" and "leave me alone." Arriving at the country estate, she finds a world alive with life...and some dead stuff, too. Isolated and buttoned-up (minister's daughter) she starts to suspect that her little charges are more than they seem to be, finally convinced that they are in the thrall of the dead care-takers previously employed. Deborah Kerr treads a fine line between gentility and hysteria, and Michael Redgrave, appearing briefly, is the coldest of rakes. The stars of the film, though, are little Martin Stephens and Pamela Franklin, she, vibrating like a thing possessed (well...) and he, all-stillness and eyes that are fathoms deep. There has rarely been two kids as quietly malevolent as these two. Then, too, are the presences of Peter Wyngarde (Britain's epitome of the degrading satyr) and Clytie Jessop, as the figments of Quint and Jessel, who have gone before. The image of Jessop, standing ethereally among the reeds of a lake still is one of the singularly creepy images in all of cinema for me. Freddie Francis did the outstanding cinematography, and A.G. Ambler and John Cox, who provided the outstanding sounds evocative of things both natural and not. Talk about the road to Hell paved with good intentions...

* Your Public Library

When "Pack" Authority Breaks Down

2007-11-06T07:43:00.000-08:00

No one tell "The Dog Whisperer," please?

On the Road Again: I'm heading for Portland. K's heading for Bonneville (Washington), then Mehico, then Eugene. Smokey the Hat will be staying at the Dog-Sitter's 'til I get back this week. Splendid times are guaranteed for all.

Coming Attractions: More Tales from the Socialist Literary Collective (lots of 'em!), Some Tales from the Red Envelope, and at least two new reviews--probably more.

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Bumper Sticker of the Day: On a sticker with a monkey-head silhouette: "I fling poo"

Song in me Head: "I Shot the Sheriff" (Eric Clapton) --but with the lyrics "I bought Musharraf, but I could not buy de-mo-cra-cy"

It's Cartoon-Time, Kids!!*

2007-11-05T11:09:00.000-08:00

"Sunny" Day sent me this and I laughed so hard (and K laughed so hard) that I am compelled to share, despite the fact that I can't embed the damn thing. No, you have to go to all the trouble of clicking on a link.

Rest assured, you are going to a safe site (it's Yahoo!®Video), but this is the only place I've been able to find this cartoon.

It's worth it, though.

Joy of Cat

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*Of course, that line comes from every kid's show ever transmitted through a photon tube, but the guy I remember saying it the most was Chris Wedes, aka "J.P. Patches." Today the Mayor of Seattle declared November 5th "J.P. Patches Day," which hardly seems like enough. The man would pull down 2 shows a day and one on the week-end and then go out and open every single grocery store in the Puget Sound region. To read more about the self-proclaimed "Mayor of the City Dump," click on the "City Dump" link over there on the right, and enter the peculiar (and mostly ad-libbed) world of J.P. It's an understatement to say he had an influence on my life and career. Here's a check-list that I still have from J.P.'s show:

And Now, For Something Completely Different...

2007-11-03T23:47:00.000-07:00

Q: If you had an infinite number of marshmallows, how many Lincoln-Logs would it take to reach the moon?

A: No, because ice cream has no bones!

This was first thrown at me in a High School English class by a smart-ass who wasn't following an argument I was making about some novel of some kind. It did exactly what it was meant to do: it stopped me cold, derailed my train of thought and made me shut up for a few seconds while I was dealing with the flow of non-sequitirs.

Now, so many years later, I can use that timeless (and time-twisting) poem:

Turn backward, turn backward,
Oh, time in your flight,
Just thought of the comeback
I needed last night*

...which would be:

1) That the best you can do: babble nonsense at me?

2) If you don't have a valid argument, why don't you shut up and let someone speak who does?

3) What's your point?

4) That was a good line when Groucho Marx said it, but what's it got to do with this?

That's what I should have said...(wish I had a Time Tunnel)

* Just a sneaky way to plug the fact that you need to turn your clocks BACK one hour Sunday morning! A Public Service Message from this station.

Jetsam!!!

2007-11-02T02:11:00.000-07:00

We've done Flotsam. Here's Jetsam.

Customer Relations--A Study in Contrasts

The Good Example: Over the weekend while K. was gone, I was taking the near-occasion to walk the dog when we got into my car and discovered that it wouldn't start (I was driving). Well, I tried to compression-start it to no avail, so we (the dog and I) decided to walk down to the beach (he was driving). Anyway, no juice in the car. It could be one of a couple of things: dead battery (not uncommon when the weather turns chilly), or a bad something-or-other, either the ignition, or the distributor. In any case, I was not going to move forward with at least a jump. But I really didn't have anyplace to go, so I let it set. K. was coming home Monday morning. Not a big deal.

K. came back, we hooked up the jumper cables--and "Lookit, Igor!" it came alive, ALIVE!! But the next morning, not so much. So after another boost, I took it in to Les Schwab--known around these parts as the very model of a modern Better Business. I left the house at 10, and I was going to be doing chores in town all day, but let me just start by saying I was on the 11 am ferry. So I left my house at 10. It takes 20 minutes to get to Les Schwab. I was ON the 11 o'clock ferry.

What transpired? I went inside, explained the problem, they gave me dollar options and then went to work. They were done within a half-hour. As I was paying I mentioned to the mechanic, "Now I just hope it's not the generator or distributor acting up.." "Oh, we checked those," he said. "You're good to go."

He CHECKED all that. I was GOOD to GO.

And, indeed, I was. But, I had to tell him my admiration for the Schwab shops by telling him of this story, to which he laughed and just said, "It's what we do..."

And exceptionally well. Next stop:

The Bad Example: My first stop was to get the pads of my eyeglasses fixed. The one pressing against the right side of my nose had cracked and split off, causing my some irritation, so I thought that that was the day to get it fixed. I went to the Group Health "See Center" on the Eastside. They were up on the third floor of the building, so I went into the Office, and was promptly beckoned to a cashier. What was I there for? "I just need to replace the pads on my eye-glasses. You can do it here, or I'll just buy the pads and do it at home." Fine. My name? I told her. I have a common name, so I had to do the standard wait while they find which of the "me's" is actually "me." What's my address? Not there. What's my phone? Not there? Any previous address? Not there. How about my birth-day? Not there, either. This went on for 10 minutes. "Well, I can't find you in our data base, so we'll just have to start a new account. Name?" You've got my name. You've got my phone number, my birthdate, and my last two addresses. I could've applied for a job by now. Do we really have to start a new account? "Well, we need it for payment purposes." I'm going to be paying CASH. "It doesn't matter. We still need a record for..." No, you don't. I don't want to start a new account. I'll go someplace else. "Well, if that's what you want to do..." Thanks, I lied. And I left.

Bad Group Health. Very bad.
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I don't give two hoots about sports (though I did cast an eye towards the World Series results), especially College Football, but this caught my eye. Like I said, I don't like c-football, but I do like chaos, and I understand that when a play is made, it takes equal parts planning and luck, and something like a miracle for a complicated play to be completed.

But, this? This is insane. This is a play being made on the edge of a razor blade for a staggering minute and a half, when at ANY TIME, something could and probably SHOULD have gone wrong. But it's been that kind of crazy year for football.

Here's the last play--Trinity College and Milsap. :02 on the clock. Amazing. In fact, legendary.

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So, what's up with you, anyway?

Well, this year I decided that I wasn't going to buy Hallowe'en candy. We (I) always buy too much, and it just sits around the house calling our name, because for the past five years or so, we've always lived in "the spooky house." The house with very few lights. The house that's difficult to get to. Whatever the reason (Hmmm. Maybe it's the ferocious barking of a certain Hound from Hell*), we don't get a lot of kids for Hallowe'en. None, precisely. So no candy shopping this year.

K. went off to her "Smoking Cessation" class (She's doing EXCELLENT, by the way). Before she went, we discussed the Hallowe'en situation. "Do we have anything to give 'em?" No. I've got some Toll-House cookies baked, but parents will be concerned about razor blades and stuff like that. "Well, I don't know..." I could give 'em some of that nicotine gum you don't like.... I thought that was an inspired plan, but K. said you weren't supposed to give nicotine gum to kids, so that put the ki-bosh on that. I guess we would have to contend with T-P in our trees, if any pint-sized pirates and princesses showed up at our door.

But they didn't. Saved by the lack of a bell. K. came home, I put together dinner and sat down to watch our Hallowe'en movie, "The Innocents," starring the recently late Deborah Kerr. It's a great little hysterical romp of a movie with a sound-design track I've always liked, and some images that have always stuck in my head. But it was made even more spooky, when all of a sudden...the lights went out, and the DVD went dead, and the stereo quit.

Not so much scary as disappointing. The outlets on one wall of our house went dead for some reason. So, we plugged everything into a surge-protector and plugged it into a wall-socket in the bedroom. We resumed the movie, but we kept furtively glancing at the wall-sockets to see if their might be melting or erupting in flame. Anyway, it made for an interesting Hallowe'en!
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Tying it up in a Nice Thematic Bow

Remember the storm we had October 18th? 50+ MPH winds, and all? I was in Portland. But if you were taking a ferry from The Rock to The Mainland, it might have looked like this:

This is the ferry Cathlamet making its way to the Mainland. I've taken this ferry on rides similar to this, but I've never seen this happen:

Now, that is a big, hurkin' wave splashing up and over (and through) the car-deck, completely drenching, and no doubt re-arranging the cars positioned there. The usual procedure is to put motorcycles on the front lip of the car-deck, so that they can egress first--that is, egress once they've docked. I think this time egression was a bit premature.

Which brings us back to "Jetsam." According to dictionary.com, "Jetsam applies to cargo or equipment thrown overboard from a ship in distress."**

Though I doubt the Cathlamet (or is it the Klickitat--I'm not really sure) is not in REAL distress, it would sure seem like it to someone on board. I'm hoping nothing was thrown overboard, but that is one scary looking "hit." One more reason to someday get off "The Rock."

* Ya know what I'd like to see? A "dripping blood" font. That would be ever-so-handy for Hallowe'en, Horror movie invites, James Bond film festivals, Stigmata conventions....

** And "flotsam" is the floating debris from a wrecked ship. You can have jetsam without flotsam, but you can't have flotsam without jetsam.
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Bumper-sticker of the day: "Boys Lie"
Song in me head: "Yes It Is" by The Beatles
Oh, and Happy Birthday, Ev'!

Ghost Story

2007-10-31T01:36:00.000-07:00

Happy Hallowe'en!

I'm a "recovering" Catholic. I don't believe much (but, I do believe I'll have another beer ), so Hallowe'en does nothing for me except raise my blood-sugar. I don't believe in God and Heaven. But angels? I don't know. Satan? Well, I told that story here, here and here. Again, I don't know. I need to see it with my own psychic orb. But nothing is black and white. I know people who've seen spirits. I know people who've seen Jesus.

I know people who've seen my dad.

The day my dad died was a traumatic, nearly incomprehensible thing. One minute I was sitting on his bed, talking stuff inconsequential and consequential; "Don't worry about stuff. It's just a waste of time..." Two hours later he proved the point by dying.

One minute he was there, and the next--no dad. All or nothing. 24 grams of difference, they say.

When the doctor came in and told us he did all he could do, my mom collapsed into my brother's arms and wept. It's one of the few times I've ever seen him cry. My sister grabbed onto me, and me? All I could do was not believe it. It was inconceivable that my father could die, and I couldn't imagine what life, for us, on the other side of that event, would be like. It didn't occur to me to think about him. He was dead, and that was it. His troubles had ceased. I remember crying violently and pounding on my leg in disbelief, like it would wake me from a nightmare. Pound pound pound. For all the good it did. Dad was just as dead.

And life was just as changed. It would never go back. My family went in to see Dad's body to see him at rest. I demurred. Mom told me it would reassure me, but I said no. I've never regretted that decision. My memories of my father are only of him alive. *

We went back to our house, stunned. No more Dad. We were cried out, in shock; not much to say, not much to be said, really. And then the relatives started showing up, with casseroles, with sympathy, and with stories...and a miracle. Within two hours, my morbid Uncle Rob and his brother-in-hijinks, Uncle Bill, had us laughing hysterically--my Mom, too, laughing gratefully at their jokes and cutting up. It's my fondest memory of my uncles, and whenever I see their kids I remind them of it.

But at some point, everyone had to leave. We were exhausted. I had a date that night, and I cancelled. I stayed at home with sister and Mom and tried to make sense of it all. Failing that, we all went to bed early....

I was the last to get up. I hadn't slept well and was restless all night. I groggily made my way to the kitchen, noting that coffee would be nothing like my father had made it--thick, black and slightly chewy. He'd learned to make coffee in the Navy. Both my mother and sister were up. They looked at me. My mother looked at me gravely.

"Did you see Dad?"

HUH?!

"I saw dad last night," my mother said. "So did I," said my sister.

What'd you see? Are you sure it was him?

"Yes. I saw a flashlight first, like when your dad would get up in the middle of the night. I looked at him and I said 'John?' He told me not to be afraid--that everything was going to be alright."

What'd he look like, mom?

"He was beautiful. He seemed so at peace. He said not to worry about him, he was alright, and everything was going to be fine. Then he walked away. I got up to follow him, but he was gone. So I went to your sister's room, and she was sitting up in bed." My sister nodded. "She looked at me and said, "Did you see him?"

I looked at my sister. "You saw him, too?"

"Yeah. I saw a light, and I saw him. He said he was alright, and everything would be fine. The mom showed up."

"Did you see him?"

No. (But that doesn't mean anything--I'm as psychic as a brick.)

Both my sister and my mother I consider rational people. This was twenty years before my mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis. After my father's death, she would go to work at a mall bookstore, and for the majority of the time before her retirement, worked the mall Information Booth--ironic, as that's the least-likely job for someone who would suffer from short-term memory loss. I could argue that the shock of my father's death triggered some chemical spurt in their brains to manifest his image (the way they say that those stories of "life flashing before your eyes" is caused by strength-producing adrenaline being released through your system). I don't know, but I suspect not. In the subsequent years, when I've heard similar stories--many of which came from an all-day session recording people's near-death experiences--I've been alert to the similarities between those stories and my mother and sister's. For instance, the phrase that seems to be a lulling mantra--"Don't worry about me, I'm alright and everything is going to be fine"--is common in the majority of these stories. The similarities are striking--unnervingly so.

But is that real or the imagination? Are we consoling ourselves through brain chemistry, or does St. Peter allow a free phone-call at check-in? Either way, I find myself marvelling at the mechanics of the Universe that would provide such comfort. Does it work for everybody? How about when everything isn't okay, and not fine?? Do the dead return to console in war? How about a death by violence? Are those the ghosts who wander the Earth as wraiths, poltergeists and banshees?** In death, apparently, one size does not fit all.***

We will all die (Garrison Keillor says that "Nature doesn't care about your golden years--it's aiming for turnover" and that's exactly right). But some of us could die "better" than others. One hopes that when The End comes for us, we can have the opportunity to reassure those we love...one way or another. It's the unfinished business of a finished life. The opportunity of a lifetime.

"Don't worry about me. Everything's going to be alright."

Reading over this, I'm a bit frustrated that there are far too many questions and not enough answers, but I suppose I won't know those answers until I cross-over, with the possibility of discovering The Big Picture.

When I do, I'll get back to ya.

*Subsequently, when my Mom died, I was the one to go make sure the funeral arrangements had been met, so I elected to view the body. My brother and sister did not. My sister-in-law, Jane, went with me. I've never regretted that decision, either, relieving them of that task.

** I'm sure I mentioned my psychic-friend. On this subject he was blunt: "Ghosts are ass-holes!" he said. He was very contemptuous of them.

*** I remember reading that Stanley Kubrick thought his film of "The Shining" was, actually, quite hopeful. "Isn't anything that implies life after death?" But Kubrick gave death his own spin by implying that it could be just another trap, waiting to make life...or death...hell.

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Bumper-sticker of the day: "Yes! This is my truck and NO! I won't help you move"

Song in me head: "Mrs. Robinson" (Simon and Garfunkle)

The Political Haunted House

2007-10-29T23:17:00.000-07:00

It's not too late. We can still do this for Hallowe'en.

I was reading Stephen Colbert's guest editorial in the New York Times,* (here's the link to it, it's hilarious), and the image that stuck with me the longest was his vision of Dick Cheney driving a tractor through the Times newsroom while drinking sweet crude oil from Keith Olbermann's skull. That stayed with me for days, and though I'm a flaming liberal, not only could I imagine it, it was something I'd like to see. It got me to thinking: here it is the time of year every radio station and/or charity group--wait a minute, aren't they the same thing?--trots out any old abandoned warehouse/church/crack-house** and turn it into a "Haunted House." (OoooOOOOoo, spoo-oo-ooky!) The only people who like these paper-mache nightmares are kids in the narrow slice of life from 8 to12, and frat-boys who can get a cheap feel and blame it on the volunteers dressed half-heartedly as ghouls and trasvestite vampires.

And seeing as it's the start of a new political season, AND Hallowe'en season--wait a minute, aren't they the same thing?--why not COMBINE the two into your very own

POLITICAL HAUNTED HOUSE!! (thundercrack!)

a concept that just drips insincerity

But what (I hear you cry) WHAT would you PUT into the Political Haunted House (tc)? Bwa-ha-haa! Funny you should ask...Step this way..lead with your left or your right, it doesn't matter...and mind the broken step, the troll might grab you.. (Back off, Ron Paul! Put down that torch!!) Now we'll start in the foyer (yes, there's lots of cob-webs which indicates inactivity, but we're trying to make this an exact replica of a legislative chamber!). Any direction you go is better than no direction at all, and if you know that, why aren't YOU running for office? Oh, you hear screaming? Pay it no mind. That's Howard Dean.

Off with you now.

The Dick Cheney Halliburton Bunker Maze (and Shooting Gallery)- It's a House of Mirrors buried deep underground in the moral and physical swamp-land that was Washington, D.C., but now more resembles a quick-sand field. Good! It can't go to Hell fast enough. Step inside the distorting House of Mirrors, 'cause if you happen to shoot somebody, you'll only be shooting yourself. And if you don't like what you see in one mirror, there'll be one you like somewhere down the line. See how many dead-ends you can hit and still bluster that it's the way to go, anyway. There's a time-limit, but don't get the clock-ticking confused with your pace-maker. Either way, time is limited, so spend your capital--political and financial--as fast you possibly can. Who knew that when you said you weren't going to go to Viet-Nam because you had "better things to do," it was planning how to destroy THIS country, instead! Good job....Dick.

The Emperor George W. Bush Quo Vadis Vault- A man of many talents, "W." fiddles while effigies of American landmarks, made up of bricks of cash, go up in flames. One can't help wonder that, though he takes his marching orders from the "Other Father," the tableau looks more like the Other Place, with the Commander-in-Cheat as it's...Commander-in-Cheat. It's actually a good thing that if we're going to go to Hell as a Nation, his tax-cuts were just enough that we can buy a hand-basket to go in. And they're flammable. The only thing that could douse the all-consuming flames would be a level-5 hurricane--and we know how effective he is against those.

The Condy Rice Ti-tanker Room - If you're going to be on a sinking ship, it might as well bear your own name. The oil-tanker Condoleeza Rice (I'm not making that up) is seen going down for the first and last time, while on the prow Condy, Rummy and Paul Wolfowitz, their arms extended, scream "We're Queen of the World!" And when they go under, the only open arms they'll find will be their own. But of course, I'm being facetious--they''ll be on the board of directors of an oil company in the very near-future. Trouble is, with their wrong-way of looking at the world, they see a sinking-ship as a prelude to deep-ocean drilling.

Rudy Giuliani's House of Rubble: Six years after 9-11, the only thing that's been built on the site is a clueless campaign for President by the Mayor who thought the best place to put a disaster center was the place that had been bombed years before, and would be a crater years later. We won't even bring up the cross-dressing, the shameless exploitation of a national tragedy, or the rotating mistresses. The only reason he's running for President is no one'll give him a job in New York. And if the best thing you can say about him is "He went to a lot of funerals," it makes you think. But this room does exactly the same thing its namesake does--blow a lot of smoke.

The Hillary Rodham Temple of Dominazons: Every Haunted House should have something REALLY scary, kids. And nothing scares males (and some females) more than a woman with power over your life...or your career...or your government. In this little tableau, all the deep-seated insecurities from Mommy-fixations and parent domination are given a damn good prodding--This will HURT! (Whack!) But it's GOOD for you! (Whack!) And my health-care will cover any permanent DAMAGE (WHACK!)--your life will be regulated, curfews fixed, and you'll be "carded" for everything, while personal information is gathered and distributed. Sort of like now, but with a really bitter den-mother where an "all-hat-no-cattle" cowboy used to be. Four years of "Mommy, may I..." sounds bad, but think of the First Husband (which implies there could be a second!)--he gets the karmic experience of finding out what it's like to be on your knees in the Oval Office. Payback is a bitch!

The John McCain Tilting Balance Room--It's tough to keep your balance when the room turns on a whim--lurching to the left--lurching to the right. You begin to think that the best position to take is low to the ground...but WHOOPS!..there goes your balance off in another direction. But see, that's the funny thing about tilting rooms. They start off balanced, but if you make a move, everything shifts with you, and you usually end up over-compensating and looking like a fool...or flat on your ass. Whoops! Off to the right, again! Not to worry. This installation is temporary, at best.

The Alberto Gonzales Memorial "Crafts" Room: The only thing different from when he was A.G. are a few more cob-webs, not only on that unused Constitution, but high up in the rafters. But don't worry, the place is still doing a cracking business, just not with the same "fresh zeal" when everything was a new experience. Why, the world was your gulag with everything from psychological brow-beating in a hospital room to full-on electrified alligator clips. Come on in and desecrate a sacred text, play with the dogs (or their feces) or practice your simulated sexual positions. It's a party, and the music is loud and 24/7! Need a break? Step into the relaxing water-boarding room (it's like bobbing for apples, only you're the apple!) Be sure to get directions to this one, because the location is a secret. It's quick! It's painful! It's unconstitutional! (And as a parting gift, you get a web-page of black-hooded memories). The Alberto Gonzales Memorial "Crafts" Room: He may be gone, but his legacy lingers on--you know how slow the kangaroo-court system is!

The Al Gore Conversation Pit and Aquarium (Sunken)--Yes, it's underwater. Yes, you have to go in there. But at least, you don't have to LIVE in there...not for forty years, anyway. Yes, the price of global warming will be lots of developments that might as well go by the name of "Atlantis," for all the good it'll do ya. You think those climatologists who doubt the ice caps are melting are all wet? Wait a year, they WILL be! But you can help stop it by buying "carbon credits." After you've bought all those carbon credits, all you'll afford for Christmas is a lump of coal in your stocking. Carbon Credits is a lot like buying insurance. You throw a lot of money you may never see again, even if you do get sick. Don't worry, though, you've got a choice: Take the moral high ground now, or scramble for high ground later. In the meantime, I've got some swamp-land to sell ya.

Actually, Swamp-land futures.

Actually, Texas.

Hope you enjoyed your visit to the

POLITICAL HAUNTED HOUSE (thundercrack)

Just remember--it's only for Hallowe'en! What? It's just the same outside the Haunted House?

Ooooooh---SCA-RYY!!

*He was subbing for Maureen Dowd--a writer I just can't get behind. For all her crowing and lambasting of the Bush Administration these days, back during 2000 -election-time, she was one of the lazy reporting bunch who would parrot back the latest mis-characterization of Al Gore's speeches portraying him as an ego that invented everything, when a simple reading of his words--or...you know, research?--would have revealed that it was merely niche-reporting by the scribblen-lumpen, that Dowd and her ilk would just parrot back and howl about over their gin-and-tonics. Meanwhile they kept giving Bush the benefit of the doubt when he proved to be not as stupid as they assumed--and they had a grudging admiration for the unapologetic craveness of his campaign. After he was elected, these reporters were stumbling all over themselves with sober pontifications of "He's very smart--He's smarter than we thought he was--Smart, Verrrry smart!" Now, he's been proven to be the incompetent boob anyone who looked at his record as a businessman knew he would be, and these bandwagon reporters, who a few months ago were still fawning for press credentials and White House Invites have decided that they're now working for the Good of the Nation. Wrong, as always. She may be a leader in the Press Corps, but it's a Corps of lemmings, and chickens. If you want to lead a stampede in no particular direction, send the Maureen's.

** For years, I lived across from the building that was the traditional "haunted house" for one particular Seattle radio station (couKJRgh!). It was originally the site of Children's Hospital. Then The Seattle Police Department turned it into The City Morgue (talk about "cradle to the grave!"). Then, after the Morgue moved (and became a part-time Haunted House), someone got the bright idea to make it an assisted living facility. Someone with a short-term memory problem, no doubt. In fact, they're probably living there now.

"A Soft Lilac"

2007-10-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

"All the while, in the sky above, where the sun is about to set, clouds are massing. One resembles a triumphal arch. Another, a lion. A third, a pair of scissors. A broad shaft of green light breaks through the clouds. Then, a violet ray. Then, one of gold. Then, pink. The sky turns a soft lilac. Gazing at this sky--so glorious, so magical--the ocean scowls at first. But soon it, too, takes on tender, joyous, passionate colors for which it is hard to find a name in human speech."

"Gusev" Anton Chekhov

A Thousand Words

2007-10-24T00:27:00.000-07:00

Feeding Frenzy

2007-10-22T18:51:00.000-07:00

This has, I am told, been happening every day. Usually in the morning, or near sunset, the madrona in our yard is beset by swarms of birds diving into the tree and swooping out, several at a time, and in all manner of variety (although anything crow-sized or larger stays away). The reason: the berries in the madrona are fermenting, and the birds are getting their fill and then (s)tumbling, drunk as a city council candidate, back to their nests, to work off the hang-over.

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Song in me head: "I Am the Walrus" (Googoogajoob): "See what taking acid does for you?" says K.

Movie Review - "Michael Clayton"

2007-10-21T16:16:00.000-07:00

"This keeps getting better and better"

Michael Clayton is not himself today. A lawyer for the firm of Kenner, Bach and Ledeen, he finds himself at 45 and the end of his rope without a knot, deep in debt, estranged from family, and very aware that that whooshing going by his Mercedes window is his life and he doesn't have much to show for it. Then he gets a phone call. "Arthur Edens just stripped down naked in a deposition room in Milwaukee." As its the firm's biggest case at the moment with billions on the line, he has to go fix it.

That's what Michael Clayton does. He has little to do with the law. He's a fixer. Need a fast consult? He does it. Need palms greased? He does that. Tickets to the big game? Scored. A leaning story in the press? Not worth a thought. "I'm not a miracle worker," he says to a rich client who's just run over a jogger in one of his cars. "I'm a janitor." And his territory is the moral sludge that he must wade through on a daily basis

"I'm not the enemy here" he tells his friend Edens, who's off his meds and has broken down to a Howard Beale-ish moral clarity that is legally inconvenient. The madness drops from Edens' eyes. "Then who are you?"

That's the question. And at that point, to say any more would be spoiling one of the best, deepest and engaging drama-thrillers to come down the aisle in a long time. Supposedly, when Clooney saw this script by Tony Gilroy he wanted to direct it, but deferred to Gilroy who probably saved this screenplay for himself. One of the better script doctors, it was his work on the "Bourne" series of films that made his name, and his directorial debut crackles with the same precision he brings to one of his unaltered screenplays. Just to allay Warner Bros. fears, the film is top-heavy with directing talent: Clooney stars and produces, Steve Soderbergh and Anthony Minghella are on the production side, as well as Sydney Pollack (the film feels like a Pollack project) who pulls off a career-best performance as the law partner on top of all the chaos. Michael O'Keefe makes a welcome return to films as the firm's "asshole" (I wonder if its on his business cards), and Tom Wilkinson's Edens--babbling, disheveled, isolated, walking around in a pure light that only he knows is there--is the showiest part, has the best lines and the actor throws off his customary restraint and relishes the opportunity. Tilda Swinton is all contained paroxysm as an outwardly smooth CEO whose veneer of respectability is as thin as that of the chemical company she heads. Then there's the Clooney, all-furrowed, with a Raymond Burr hood over his eyes, hating himself and everything he's doing. His one moment of respite has all the subtlety of a burning bush.

And then, things get interesting.

"Michael Clayton" is a full-price ticket.