James Piper - Entries from March 2009

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

...see, I do have some good ideas...

ast week I wrote an entry on the issue of a falling salary cap number in the NHL. The falling cap means some teams will have less room than they'd like to fill out their roster. I suggested teams pay a salary that is a percentage of the cap instead of a flat amount. I sent the following question to the Toronto Star hockey reporter:

Q: If an NHL team is worried about a falling cap number and committing dollars to a free agrent which squeezes room for other players, why not sign contracts where the salary is a percentage of the cap number and not a flat amount. It probably makes sense to assign all players a percentage of the cap and you don't have to worry about being squeezed. (Provided the GM isn't Max Bialystock and his assistant isn't Leo Bloom.)

A: Yes, if it were only so that we knew those who have run the Leafs for the past 40 years were simply channeling The Producers. It would all make so much more sense.

Basically, what you’re suggesting is an interesting idea, but not legal under the current collective bargaining agreement. Each player must have defined salary and number for cap purposes. The only way in which a percentage of the cap can be used is to generate the maximum salary allowable, which can be no more than 20 per cent of the maximum cap figure for any individual.

I would someone at the NHL was thinking when put the CBA together.

Posted 2009/03/31 at 18h28ET in Hockey. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Victor Victoria. Feature film. (1982, 130 mins) IMDB

...just thinking about this film brings a smile to my face...

f you're like me, you've seen a great number of movies over the years. Many of them are forgettable, but occasionally there's a movie that for whatever sticks in your mind. VICTOR VICTORIA is one of those movies for me. I must have seen it sometime in the 1980s and a second time probably one rainy Sunday afternoon. I remembered I loved the movie, but more importantly many specific details from the movie stuck in my mind. Lines of dialogue. Specific scenes. Robert Preston's performance.

I watched it again tonight and I probably love it more than the other times. It's perfectly cast with wonderful performances, a great story, wonderful music, incredible costumes and sets for the 1930s. There's all that plus Blake Edwards's quirky comedic moments sprinkled throughout the film.

The movie is a musical and comedy, but more significantly a romance and the romance works.

Julie Andrews plays Victoria Grant, a singer in Paris in 1934. She's so hard up for money she licks the food off someone's napkin. Her luck changes when she meets a cabaret performer played by Robert Preston. In a moment of insight, he realizes the answer to her problems. If she can't make it as a female performer, she can pretend to be a man who does female impersonations. TOOTSIE used the same premise but instead of singing, Hoffman was an actor. (Odd both films were released in 1982. I wonder what was going on).

It doesn't take long for Victor to become a smash hit and as a man she meets James Garner and falls in love. What follows is the struggle to realize that love.

And will I watch it again? Yes. On some rainy Sunday afternoon. Just thinking about the film brings a smile.

Posted 2009/03/31 at 18h28ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Vantage Point. Feature film. (2008, 90 mins) IMDB

...the filmmakers's idea of insight is rather obvious...

ake a run-of-the-mill storyline, chop it up into pieces and show the same event from six different points of view and you have a film called VANTAGE POINT.

There is nothing new in this film. Nothing new about the narrative and nothing new about the way it is told. All have been done before, yet it is an interesting film since you'll probably want to see it come together in the third act, but once you do, you won't need to see it a second time and you may be probably be disappointed.

That's my fundamental test for a movie. Would I want to watch it a second time or a third or fourth? In this case, once is enough.

The film takes place in a large city in Spain. World leaders have gathered to sign a treaty to fight terrorism. The big dog on the block is the US president complete with his massive convoy and army of secret service men.

In the seventh minute, POTUS steps to the podium to address the crowd and the world TV audience. Without saying a word, he is shot twice and collapses. Chaos ensues. We hear a distant bomb. A minute later, a bomb under the podium goes off and all hell breaks loose.

Who shot the president? Was he really shot? Will the shooter be caught? If so, how? My immediate answer was "inside job." One of the secret service agents had turned bad.

In thrillers the story line continues until there is a twist. The twist comes in the way of new information we didn't have before (although we may have guessed it in advance). The twists are often the revelation we were duped. We thought A happened, when in fact A never happened, it was B or C. The classic example of this twist is character B, a supporting character to our hero, was seen as a good guy, someone to trust, when in fact he's a mole.

There are two major twists in this story. The person shot wasn't the president, but a double. Second, it was an inside job. One of the secret service agents worked with the terrorists and helped them carry out the plan. It's the most plausible explanation for what happened in the first POV sequence.

How it comes together in the third act is complete Hollywood make-believe. The good guy (played by Barnes) figures it all out and, with little aid, chases after the bad guy. There is a car chase that lasts at least five minutes if not more and is typical no-brainer fair. Once the bad guy is chased down and killed, the president is saved and life goes back to normal.

The first POV sequence is from inside a TV control room covering the event. It works because we're setting up the start of the film and TV reporting is a natural for exposition.

The second POV is our hero--Quaid as a grizzled secret service agent protecting the president. Introduce our hero early in the film. The pat-the-dog scene is a TV clip showing him literally taking a bullet for the president. The inner turmoil is bubbling out with his sweat.

The subsequent sequences show other characters until we finally see how the bad guys pulled it off. Once that's over, it's Act III where they have taken the real president hostage and the chase is on.

The film is fun to a point but not great.

Posted 2009/03/31 at 18h28ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, March 30, 2009

Flushed Away. Feature film. (2006, 85 mins) IMDB

...watch and enjoy...

LUSHED AWAY is a funny, interesting, enjoyable animation film. Pratfalls to make you laugh. A love story. Action to interest. An ending that resolves the story, isn't predictable but is setup. That's difficult to create and many stories lack all three elements.

The premise: Roddy is a pampered pet rat living in luxury. When the family goes away on holiday, he's left alone, but loving it. When a sewer rat arrives, his world is turned upside down and he's flushed down the drain into the underworld of sewer rats. How does he get back in one piece?

During his attempts to leave the hell-hole, he meets Rita. She's savvy of the ways of the sewer, devoted to her family, running from the Toad (our bigger than life villain) and his henchmen, and totally uninterested in knowing let alone helping our hero.

That they should spend the rest of the movie together in what can best be described as "buddy movie" isn't surprising.

Posted 2009/03/30 at 20h07ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, March 30, 2009

Shampoo. Feature film. (1975, 109 mins) IMDB

...no do-overs in life...

arren Beatty plays George, a pretty-boy hairdresser in Hollywood. Not only is George not gay, he's a womanizer who will jump into bed with just about any women. Hell, he'll jump out of one bed to jump into another. He's completely flighty and irresponsible. A bachelor forever.

His girlfriend is Jill (Hawn). She's in love with him and is too stupid or naive to see what's going on. At the end of the second Act, she finds him screwing Jackie (Christie), her best friend and his former lover. The shades are off Jill's eyes and the relationship is over. Jill moves on.

Jackie is a kept woman. She'd be with George if he wasn't so irresponsible. She didn't want to wait while George grew up. Her lover and keeper is Lester (Jack Warden). He's older and loaded with money, but he's also married to Felica (Grant). Their marriage is dying. Felica has George do her hair and her plumping.

At a dinner banquet to watch the presidential results (Nixon in 1968), all the couples come together in the same room and all the relationships are torn at the seams.

Felcia wants a divorce.

By the end of the movie, George has learnt the errors of his ways, realizes he's in love with Jackie and asks her to marry him. The problem is, since Lester left his wife, he's free to marry Jackie. She said yes and they plan a trip to Mexico.

You'd wouldn't think Warden would end up with the girl and not Beatty, but that is precisely want happens. From a Hollywood hill, George looks down as a Bentley (or Rolls Royce) pulls out of Jackie's drive way and down a long road toward the airport. Inside is Lester and Jackie and her luggage. As the camera tracks the car over the shoulder of Beatty, the anticipation grows. When will we see the glow of break lights?, but they never come. The car disappears into the distance, cut to black and the movie is over.

Sometimes we realize what we have when it's too late.

Posted 2009/03/30 at 20h07ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Crusades. Feature film. (1935, 125 mins) IMDB

...a Hollywood romance with swords thrown in...

he title is extremely misleading. The film is not about the crusades but a love story set in the midst of a crusade led by King Richard.

Richard never spoke English and barely even lived on the British isles. He was a Norman who spoke French, but you wouldn't know that from this film.

The filmmakers also want you to believe the King would have been caught up in something as trivial as love. Not a chance. Marriage wasn't about love. It was about matters of state, about power, and with that power, wealth.

A true-to-history film about King Richard and the Crusades would lack romance and therefore wouldn't appeal to a broad audience.

What we have in this film is nothing more than a love story. Richard is betrothed to Alice, the sister of King Philip of France. He doesn't want to marry her. He decides to go on the crusade because there's a chance he'll die and therefore not have to marry Alice.

In Marseille, he negotiates with a local King for food. Richard will marry the king's daughter in exchange for cattle and grain. Richard doesn't attend the wedding--he sends his sword instead. The oddest wedding ceremony I've ever seen. His wife to be is the gorgeous Loretta Young. She despises his boorish behaviour. He can't even bother to meet her, but when he does meet her, it's love at first sight.

Once in the Holy Lands, the battles against the Arabs begin, but oddly we don't see very much of it. The camera is held in close, never back to give a wide shot. I can guess at the reason--money. To film it otherwise would have cost a great deal more. As a result, the film doesn't have the feel we're used to when battles are shown. DeMille would make up for it in his later films.

THE CRUSADES is not a great film. It's mildly interesting with a completely absurd Hollywood romance narrative. I expected a great deal more from this film.

Posted 2009/03/29 at 18h14ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Sensation of Sight. Feature film. (2006, 134 mins) IMDB

...another non-linear non-sense film that is supposedly profound but isn't...

t what point did a confusing narrative become great story telling? I am amazed at how people have been duped by this film. (And others like it).

I have no issue with the actors or their performances. It's entirely with the filmmakers. Their idea of a great story is to present a middle-aged man in angst for reasons we don't know. Somehow his bizarre behaviour, as a result, is great cinema, great storytelling, but we have no idea where he's been or where he's going and therefore it's meaningless.

The linear narrative of the story is straightforward. A high school teacher (our so-called hero Finn) stands in a class room with a student. One on one. The student pulls out a pistol, shoves it into his mouth and kills himself. The teacher is screwed up as a result.

The filmmakers don't want you to know that. No. They want to fuck with your mind as if they have profound things to pronounce. As if figuring out why this guy is fucked up is suspense. Tell us why and show us how to solve it. That is storytelling. That is something I'm interested in.

Instead, they present a screwed-up middle-aged man who pulls around a child's wagon in a small town. I suppose we're supposed to wonder why, but we don't care because we know nothing about him.

I expected a great deal more from this film then some ghost haunting. I suppose it's not suppose to be literal yet that how's they show it--the wordless young man in his black suit who shadows people. We seem him, but the characters can't.

Ghosts don't exist. They simply don't. But the "ghost" in this film is the suicide asshole. In order words, we're haunted by past events. The ghost is simply our inability to move on and live in the present. Things from the past, at times, consume our present thoughts. It happens. But why hide that fact? Show it. Show the teacher as normal. Show the suicide. Show the reaction. Show the breakdown. And so on.

Instead the filmmakers present this muddled mess that doesn't engage because we see n number of characters living in a void, behaving without context. Who are they? What do they want? We ask these questions and when we get no response, we give up.

If you want to see a non-linear film that works see Richard Donen's TWO FOR THE ROAD with Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. It's an engaging film that works from start to finish and while it's non-linear, there's still a three-act structure to it complete with suspense.

Posted 2009/03/29 at 18h14ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Real Time. Feature film. (2008, 80 mins) IMDB

...what do you do when you an hour to live?...

ake one last look at the world.

It's the line Reuben (Quaid) says to Andy (Baruchel) in Act III of this short, very shot film. The pistol in Reuben's hand is pointed at Andy's head. Indeed. One last look.

Except for Emily Dickinson, Woody Allen and me, not many people dwell on death. We know we're going to die at some point. The question is when, where and how. In Andy's case it's bullet to the head at 15h--compliments of Reuben. At least that's what the filmmakers what us to believe and yet we know there must be a twist to change the storyline and there is.

Andy is a deadbeat. A loser. If he died no one would mourn. No one would remember. The world would be neither better off or worse off. He simple exists in his miserable life. Because of ignorance, his lack of education, he believes there is such thing as luck--good luck, bad luck, shitty luck, fucking terrible luck. To him, nothing in his life is about what he does, it's about what happens to him.

The film begins with Andy studying a race form. He wonders if he should go to the race track and if so what horse to bet on. Along the way he stops at a variety store to buy a lottery ticket. No luck there and off to the race track except Reuben comes to take him away.

Reuben is an underworld figure who volunteered to kill Andy for his $68K in gambling debts. If it was about killing Andy, it would have happened in a minute and the film would be over. Can't have that. Reuben gives Andy a chance to settle his affairs before Andy's luck has completely run out. The clock is ticking.

For the rest of the film, it's primarily Reuben driving his car around this working class city with Andy. They talk and talk in a mostly philosophical manner about life. Reuben is trying to teach some lessons to Andy, but it surely must be wasted on him.

The twist? Reuben is dying from cancer. In the climax of the scene with Andy kneeling on the ground waiting to be shot, Reuben spills his guts with emotions about his own life. Cut away to a wide shot of the forest. Hear the sound of a gun shot echo across the field. Cut back to the scene where Andy is still kneeling, petrified. Reuben lays on the ground dead.

In Rueben's suit pocket is an envelop for Andy. It contains a bank draft for $68K. The amount to pay of his debt. Another chance for this deadbeat who probably doesn't deserve another chance.

The handwritten note says, "You're a lucky son of a bitch, Andy."

The film is billed as comedy. Can't say I found many scenes with humour. One or two at best.

And why did they use US cash, greenbacks, instead of Canadian currency when it's clearly shot in Canada with Canadian flags flying and Canadian words (e.g., pop). I don't get that.

Posted 2009/03/28 at 19h14ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, March 27, 2009

Tora! Tora! Tora!. Feature film. (1970, 144 mins) IMDB

...Get a sense of what it might have been like on the day the Japanse attacked Pearl Harbour...

ora! Tora! Tora! was the code word the Japanese military used for its attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. When the bomber and fighter pilots heard those words, they knew the attack was a go.

The film shows the events leading up to the attack from both the US and Japanese point of view. Unlike a lot of WWII movies, the Japanese military men speak their native language instead of Hollywood English. I prefer that approach even if the white subtitles are sometimes washing out because the background is white. White on white doesn't work.

There are no stars in this film because the focus shifts from one of many characters and the focus is mainly on the mandarins in Washington and Tokyo or the generals and admirals. We never connect with a private on the ground or a seaman on a ship unlike a lot of war movies. In that sense, the film is more a documentary made with professional actors and very large budget than a feature film. Yet I enjoyed it. I was intrigued by the bureaucratic bungling and diplomatic talks. The battle sequences were believable and filled with real explosions--not CGI smoke and flames.

The film doesn't address the revisionist history of the event. Did FDR know the attack was coming? Did anyone else know? Could it have been avoided?

Posted 2009/03/27 at 20h05ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, March 27, 2009

Trade. Feature film. (2007, 120 mins) IMDB

...Why do filmmakers make such bleak films...

he filmmakers would like you to believe this is the first film to follow the plight of women who are abducted or conned into becoming prostitutes--the sex slave trade into the US. It isn't. I've seen at least one movie on the topic, although the title escapes me at the moment.

Abducted. Conned or duped. Sex slaves. Topics that bring out the dark side of human nature. I wonder why filmmakers want to show it.

An easy answer is to allow us to feel good about ourselves. Look, someone says, I'm glad I'm not in that situation. Maybe. The same argument is made about news in general. It's filled with negative events (wars, fires, murders, accidents...). People read the newspapers and watch the television, day after day, and find comfort from other people's misery. Schadenfreude. I think it's a sad way to live life.

People build themselves up by putting others down. Sad to the nth degree, but it occurs every second we're alive.

But back to this film.

It starts out in Mexico where we meet a young man named Jorge. He has a mother and young sister. His father is nowhere to be seen. He makes a living by conning and robbing tourists. As far as he is concerned, life is good until some Russians abduct his thirteen-year old sister off the street and push her into a sex slave trade headed for New Jersey.

He follows after her and the narrative is in full swing.

Along the way he meets Kevin Kline who plays a Texas cop searching for something that isn't clearly defined until later in the film. They join forces and search for Jorge's sister.

The film shows the brutality of the captors. Rape. Forced drugs. Beatings. Coercion. And if you think it's just dirty old men wanting sex with young girls, there are young boys who are treated just as badly.

The film follows a three-act structure. Sister abducted. Follow her. Meet up with Kline. Arrive in New Jersey. Find the girl. Confrontation to save her and they succeed.

TRADE is not a film one can enjoy. Who can enjoy a rape scene? Who can enjoy a suicide? It's not a film to be a enjoyed. There is a sense of routing for the victim and that develops. Of routing for Jorge to redeem himself because he's the reason his sister is where she is and that develops. But at the end, when the abductor's world crumbles, there is no sense of triumph or relief and I don't understand why.

Posted 2009/03/27 at 20h05ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, March 26, 2009

...a good workout...

he change in my diet is making a big difference in my weight loss. I hit 92.2 KG today. The weight, fat, is coming off and staying off. I feel slimmer.

Bicep Curls: 7kg x 25 reps x 3 sets

Tricep Presses: 14kg x 25 reps x 3 sets.

Stomach Crunches: 30 reps x 6 sets with 2KG medicine ball.

Leg Lunges: 10 reps x 6 sets - Left/Right

Squats: 10 reps x 6 sets.

I face a dilemma. I want to go swimming on Saturday and Sunday. I want three weight workouts this week (I've done two). And I shouldn't do weights on consecutive days. Something's got to give. Do I do weights tomorrow or on Saturday or Sunday? Do I accept two weight workouts this week and cardio tomorrow? Not sure. I'll know tomorrow.

Posted 2009/03/26 at 19h20ET in Exercise. [View single entry]

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Union Pacific. Feature film. (1939, 135 mins) IMDB

...a film worth watching...

ecil B. DeMille is known for making epic films. Giant sets with hundreds of extras. Productions some say are cost prohibitive today without the use of computer graphics.

The budget for UNION PACFIC was apparently $1 million, but that's 1939 dollars. What is that in today's dollars? About $130 million. While that amount would be a large budget for today's standards, it probably wouldn't be enough to make the picture as he made it.

The film is based on real events, connecting the Union Pacific railroad west with California in the period after the US Civil War, but what is shown is entirely a Hollywood invention of storytelling to please an audience.

You need a good guy, a bad guy, a love interest and something at stack--an objective.

The main objective is to build the railroad, but there's another company building a railroad from west to east. Whoever gets to Odgen first wins.

Barrows is a Chicago investment banker who appears to be helping the government build the railroad, but behind their backs he works to sabotage the construction. He'll gain financially if the construction fails. He travels to St. Louis where he meets Campeau--a gambling operator. Barrow convinces Campeau to move west with the railroad where he'll offer drinks and gambling to the men who work the railroad. They'll be too drunk or too interested in gambling and women to want to work. Construction will be delayed and the railroad won't get to Odgen first.

Enter our hero, Jeff Butler played by Joel McCrea. He was an officer during the war and is now the hired gun for the railroad. His job is to smash anything stopping the construction. He's immediately at odds with Campeau and what follows are a series of confrontations between the two.

What I loved about the drama that unfolds is the fact Butler uses his wits, not his brawn or guns to win battles over Campeau. Here's an example. The train to take workers from camp to the end of the track is ready to load up. Campeau, in an attempt of sabotage, offers free drinks for everyone. The men stay to drink and gamble and not work. Butler bets he can get the men out and working without force or threat and he does. He borrows a gold nugget from Leach, his bodyguard, and tells one of the men he found it while out at the end of the track. The murmur of gold in the ground grows until the men stampede from the saloon and onto the train for work. He won the battle. He does it over and over. Wit and smarts, not guns or brawn. Bravo.

The subplot is the love story. Molly Monahan works the post office for the railroad--a rail car post office. The first time she meets Butler, she falls in love with him, but there's a catch. A love triangle in the form of Dick Allen, played by Robert Preston. Butler and he were army buddies, but there friendship is in doubt because Allen works for Campeau and he's in love with Molly. When I say Molly marries Allen, you won't believe me, but she does. Watch the film to see why.

At 135 minutes, the film is longer than it need be. The reason is there are several climaxes before the final climax to end the film. Part of the reason I think they constructed the story this way was the title. They had to show the last spike being driven into the ground, yet the fight to rid the railroad of Campeau ends well before that scene. To add in more action, our three principals head west on a train and Indians attack. The subsequent battle sequence goes on and on until the Calvary literally comes to the rescue. I'm glad those day of filmmaking are over.

The use of false climaxes and several climaxes in Act III is quite common these days for action flicks, but I wonder if they watched this film to get the idea.

The film was worth watching. Entertaining. Different. Interesting characters.

Yes. A model train collapsing on a trestle was obvious, but, hey, it was made in 1939.

Posted 2009/03/26 at 19h20ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Si j'étais toi (The Secret). Feature film. (2007, 92 mins) IMDB

...how can a mother transfer her personality and life to her daughter?...

s the film opens we follow a middle-aged husband and wife. They are madly in love. Sugary type of love. They have a sixteen year old daughter who is sarcastic and petulant. It doesn't take long to realize something is going to happen to break up this perfect love nest. That event? The mother drives the family SUV on a highway with the daughter in the passenger seat. In a flash, she jerks the steering wheel to avoid hitting an oncoming vehicle, loses control. The vehicle tumbles down an embankment.

Cut to a hospital scene where mother and daughter are alive but badly injured. When the daughter goes into cardiac arrest, the mother reaches over and grabs her daughter's arm. A moment later the mother dies, but the daughter lives.

The major twist of the story comes shortly after when the daughter wakes up and we discover it's the mother in her daughter's body.

FREAKING FRIDAY used the premise of the mother and daughter switching bodies, but in that film both lived. In this film, the mother dies and is buried, but her personality and spirit live on in her daughter. One plays for comic effect, this film has no comedic moments.

It's not surprising no one believes the daughter because it defies rational explanation, but of course there are events and knowledge only a wife would know about her husband. The daughter behaves differently as well--cooking and cleaning when she did neither before. What follows is an awkward situation. A father who is madly in love with his wife inside the body of his sixteen-year-old daughter. A wife who wants to be close but can't.

The secret is to keep this secret.

The daughter must try to live her life as if she were the daughter--going to school, socializing--in the hopes their daughter will return.

The second act deals with how the father/husband and mother/daughter deal with it. When the daughter returns to school, she's a fish out of water. The father is paralysed between wanting to be the husband and having to be the father.

The story progresses with the arc of the daughter becoming the daughter again. Fitting in at school. Socializing. Planning to go university. Finding a better self in herself.

The mother in her disappears.

There is no explanation for why it happened or how it happened. The transference (if that's the word) is simply a plot device to explore relationships and character interaction that wouldn't exist otherwise. I hate that. Give me a rational explanation beyond the irrational paranormal and supernatural.

Posted 2009/03/26 at 19h19ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Cleaner. Feature film. (2007, 88 mins) IMDB

...who you going to call?...

love the setup to this film.

Samuel L. Jackson plays Tom, a retired cop ,who runs a cleaning company, but not a typical cleaning company. His firm cleans up when someone dies whether it's murder, accident, suicide. Not the sort of job I would even contemplate, but someone has to do it.

Tom gets a new assignment. There has been a murder in a mansion. When he arrives, no one is there, but there are signs the police have finished their investigation and after all he received the new job from the police. When he enters the house, the corpse is gone, but signs of a bloody murder cover the living room and he gets to work cleaning it up.

A day later, he learns someone set him up. Framed him. There was a murder, the blood was real, but the police hadn't started their investigation because they didn't know there was a murder. He cleaned up a murder scene before they could investigate. To make matters worse, evidence suggests he has motive and opportunity to kill the victim. He's up shits creek.

The filmmakers want us to believe the motivation for this frame-up is police corruption. The murder victim was a bag man for police payoffs and was going to testify in court. Kill him and the corruption charges go away. Frame our hero and the murderer is free.

It makes sense, but we meet Tom's former police partner, Eddie Lorenz. Their relationship is stormy. Tom left the force because he was involved in police corruption--taking money, working outside the law on criminals. At first Tom doesn't want to tell Eddie what happened on the mansion, but gives in when Eddie confronts him with forensic evidence industrial cleaners were at work. The two work on solving this riddle and keep Tom from going to jail for a murder he didn't commit.

But to get to Act III, the landscape has to change. The possibilities include Tom losing his get-out-of-jail free card (evidence of his innocence), he's arrested, daughter kidnapped. (That reminds me, why didn't he go to the DA who isn't involved in corruption, or did I miss something? Oh, well.)

Then there's the other possibility. His friend, ex-partner, was behind it all. You don't need to see it unfold to know it. The clues are in place before we get to the reveal.

First, if some corrupt cop wanted Tom in jail, framed as it were, they'd be following his every move until they could make the arrest. No one was tailing him. Why? Because Lorenz was with Tom and knew Tom's every move and every bit of evidence Tom had.

Second, Lorenz isn't the cop assigned to the murder case, yet he is intimate with all the details of the case. If the investigating cops were dirty, they wouldn't be telling him what he learnt. They wouldn't share that information.

Finally, we never see the detectives except when dealing with Tom. The movie keeps its focus on Tom the whole time. The POV doesn't shift away from him.

Finally, finally, Vargas is so one-sided--mean and vicious, that it's over-the-top. If you really wanted to keep us guessing, tone it down. Add subtly.

Given the premise the filmmakers were working with, they could have gone in so many other directions. Personally, I wanted to learn more about cleaning up the bodies.

There's a pat-the-dog scene early in the film. Tom, as boss in his office, meets with one employee who came to him troubled because he can't handle the work. It's too distressing and he wants to quit. Our hero shows compassion, won't let him quit and gives him other assignments. Pat the dog.

To show our hero is fastidious, he arrives home after work and promptly hangs his set of keys on a hook near the door. There are three hooks. He uses the one with his name under it. When he puts his shoes in the closet, there is a rack where Tom lines them up like soldiers on parade. Everything has it place. It's neat and tidy. Fastidious. I guess that's why he's a cleaner.

Posted 2009/03/25 at 20h30ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Snakes On A Plane. Feature film. (2006, 105 mins) IMDB

...one too many snakes on a plane...

as there every been a movie with such internet buzz before it was even made? That's the legacy of this film, not the film itself.

Snakes on a plane sums it up. Not much else to say, but I'll throw out a few comments.

Oddly the film was first setup with Paramount, but after a while they decided they didn't want to produce it. The death of a screenplay, except the people behind it bought it back, known as turnaround, and got a new deal with New Line Cinema. Turnarounds don't happen very often. Studios buy more screenplays than they put into production and if they don't green-light it, it sits on a dusty shelf--think of the closing scene of RAIDERS and where the ark ended up. It's just the nature of the Hollywood system. William Goldman in his book WHAT LIE DID I TELL? suggests if he were the head of a studio, he'd hire a bunch of readers and comb through all the scripts the studio owns, but never produced. There might be some gems hidden there.

But back to the film on the screen. The story line goes like this: whatever the hell the filmmakers needed to get a whole bunch of people on a plane with a lot of poisonous snakes. That's the narrative. Start to finish.

The film starts out like a comedy with images of sun and fun in Hawaii. We know a fun ride will follow, parts reminded me of the opening of AIRPLANE!, but once the snakes are loose, it's no longer a comedy. It becomes part action film and mainly a horror film. I'm not a fan of horror films and not once did I feel frightened or terrified by these snakes on the screen, but if it had been on that plane, I'd would have been frightened to shade of pale worse than death.

What surprised me was the relentlessness and intensity and number of snake attacks on countless passengers. Some images are gruesome. The deal toll sounds like a body count from a battle.

Prior to the film's release, the buzz on the internet was unprecedented. I think everyone involved in making the film had visions of a STAR WARS like blockbuster, but after a big opening weekend, the film tanked. Word of mouth brought it up and it brought it down. Why?

I can offer a few reasons. An R rating will obviously impact who can see it. It limits the potential target market. The irony is the studio wanted and got a PG-13 film, but based on the buzz and expectation about Samuel L. Jackson saying a certain line using a certain explicative, the film was reshoot. To use the word motherfucker once meant an R so they added scenes to make it even more R rated. I'm not sure if it made the film better or worse, but it limited the potential audience.

Second, starting out with comic overtones then changing genres throws off people. Not consciously, but they are confused and wonder what the filmmakers were doing.

Finally, it was overkill with the snakes. Too many. Too many attacks. Too many deaths. Too gruesome. Too horrific. That's my opinion and some will disagree, but consider this. If you knew there was one poisonous snake roaming around your home and you couldn't find it, what would you do? How frightened would you be? How effective would it be in getting your attention?

Posted 2009/03/25 at 20h30ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2. Feature film. (2008, 117 mins) IMDB

...they can and should make a sequel...

our young women in their early twenties have a special pair of pants they share during the summer. Even though the four are different sizes, the pair of pants fits them perfectly and while wearing them, they experience miracles. That was the premise of the first movie (though they were younger) and it's the jumping off point for this movie.

The women have finished school for the year and return home to spend the summer together, but it doesn't work out as planned. They are going on their summer adventures. Each will take turns wearing the pants.

Lena goes to a art school to study drawing. Her first encounter with a nude model tests her nerves. Later they meet and date and appear to hit it off, but there's someone else. Kostas. She met him in Greece during her visit in the first movie. The complications of young love continue in the second film. The movie explores Lena's relationships with these two men. Who will she end up with?

Libby stays in New York City to work on her screenplay--a romantic comedy. She has a day job in a video store. And there is Brian. Her boyfriend. The first time they have sex, the condom breaks. Terrified she might be pregnant, the relationship is ruined. She doesn't know how to talk to him while he tries. (The men in this movie, the love interests to the women, seem like woman in male bodies. It's one of the few weaknesses of this film.)

Carmen is studying theatre at Yale and gets a chance to work in a summer theatre in Vermont. Her mother is pregnant. Her best friend at Yale is Julia--a ditzy, attractive blonde who aspires to be a famous actor. They room together in Vermont, but the friendship turns dark. Julia's family rivals the Barrymores and Regraves. While I say Carmen studies theatre, it is not to be an actor. It's theatre production. Imagine Julia's surprise when Carmen gets the part of Perdita in A WINTER'S TALE while Juila gets a one-line part. Ouch. Scratch.

The fourth woman is Bridget. She's the athletic blonde who goes to Turkey on a dig, but something from her past is haunting her. Her mother's death. In an attempt to get answers, she travels to Alabama to reunite with her estranged grandmother.

While all these adventures happen in Act I and II, the pants travel from one to the other, but no miracles are happening. It's more the opposite. The pants bring turmoil and bitterness. Ignored by Lena, her younger sister takes them with her to Greece where she loses them. Act III begins.

Lena travels to Greece to find the pants. Not long after, the other three show up. The attempt to find the pants brings them together. It also gives the three a chance to fabricate a meeting with Lena and Kostas. To bring them back together. You can watch the movie to find out what happens.

I never tire of those amazing shots of Greece. It's absolutely incredible. If you grew up there, why would you want to leave?

While the story is slow to start and there are plot points we've seen over and over, I eventually did find myself caught up in the story of these four women and the gigantic cast that surrounds them.

It is engaging, funny, sweet, poignant and many other things. It is worth watching. The two male love interests (Leo and Brian) bring it down because they are simply gorgeous bodies without any personalities, but I suppose for a movie geared towards girls (not women), that's what the filmmakers wanted.

I laughed out loud at one great moment. Lena is at her grandmother's home in Greece. She is drawing a LOST & REWARD poster for the pants. She asks Yia Yia, her Greek grrandmother, how to spell 'lost pants' in Greek. Yia Yia curses in Greek and says, "A Greek girl never loses her pants." Love it.

I noticed one glaring goof in the film. The marquis on the theatre reads: Village Theatre Arts. Later a poster inside shows the ER spelling. It's common to see the RE spelling in the US when it applies to the stage.

Finally, I read Ebert's review where he says there won't be a sequel because the pants were lost and never found. I can't believe he would say that. Of course there could be a sequel wherein the whole first act is the triumph of finding the pants--just go to the wardrobe trailer.

I have no trouble with this title even if some thinks it's long. The worst title is a while: INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. That's a mouthful.

Posted 2009/03/24 at 19h01ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

The Palm Beach Story. Feature film. (1942, 88 mins) IMDB

...a Preston Sturges film--burn brightly...

reston Sturges created THE PALM BEACH STORY during the height of his career as a Hollywood writer and director. Some draw similarities between him and Chaplin. Hitting their heights at a young age only to vanish from the scene. It was fun while it lasted.

A Preston Sturges's film is filmed with any number of devices to create comedy and laughs. Satire one moment, pratfalls and slapstick the next. He wasn't afraid or embarrassed about using any of it, provided it got a laugh and it usually did.

The story concerns a time when divorces weren't as common or as a easy as they are today. There are many real-life and fabricated stories about a wife moving to Reno to wait around until the divorce came through. In this film, instead of Reno, Claudette Colbert heads to Palm Springs for the same reason. It doesn't hurt that Palm Springs, Florida is known as a magnet for rich people.

But why a divorce? At the start of the film she marries Joel McCrea and life should be perfect except it isn't. He's a dreamer and idealist. He has plenty of ideas for projects, but they don't bring in any money. She feels she's not a good wife to him (can't cook, can't sew) and therefore a burden to him, a financial burden. She tells him he'll be better off when she's gone. He doesn't accept it because he's in love with her, but she won't change her mind. In a flash and with no money, she packs her bags. She talks a cabbie into giving her a ride to the train station for free, and once there, a group of men to let her onto their private train car for the ride to Florida. McCrea follows, but a policeman stops him. She's gone and he's dejected.

Through unusual circumstances, he receives money for a plane ticket. He flies off to meet her in Florida.

During her trip she meets a bookish, nerdy man who seems to like her. She accepts his charity for food and clothing because she has neither. He's latched onto her and takes her shopping--a shopping trip women dream about. He spends thousands on clothing, shoes, suitcases, jewels. And he's no ordinary person. He's John D. Hackensacker, III--one of the richest men in the world. She's hit pay dirt and he might have found a woman he could marry.

In Act III, they all arrive in Palm Beach. Mr. Moneybags and Colbert, his sister arrives, played by Mary Astor, and McCrea catches up with his wife but is introduced as her brother.

The sister has the hots for McCrae.

The four forces are working to completely pull apart the marriage until Colbert gives in. She does love her husband and no longer wants a divorce. It doesn't matter what may come.

Everybody takes it well. No hard feelings, but the film doesn't end there. It twists in a way that is unexpected. Husband and wife each had a twin. Convenient? Yes, but the husband and wife are back together and Mr. Moneybags and his sister get to marry the twin of husband and wife.

One of the best scenes happens on the private train car where this group of men, duck hunters, have drunk themselves silly. One is sitting on a chair with a shotgun pretending to hit a cracker flying through the air. The man next to him doubts he hit the cracker. The bet is on. The second man pulls out his shotgun, loads it with two shells, asks the coloured barman to toss some crackers and starts firing. It continues from there until the entire car is shot up. Ridiculous for sure, but it's believable and damn funny.

Posted 2009/03/24 at 18h59ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, March 23, 2009

W. Feature film. (2008, 129 mins) IMDB

...Why haven't more people seen this movie?...

. is a bio pic on the rise of George W. Bush. At it's heart is the relationship between father and son. In telling that relationship, the filmmakers show the progression of W. as a young university student bent on drinking and socializing, his struggle to find his place in life (a failure at so many things) to his rise as governor then president.

The other aspect of the story is the development inside the White House for the plan of war against Iraq--the drive to remove Saddam Hussein, to control the region and maintain the US dominance in the world.

The story weaves back and forth between the young, unknown Bush as he makes his way and the president in the White House as the administration puts their war plan together, implements it and suffers humiliation when no weapons of mass destruction were found.

Having read numerous books on the Iraq war planning I knew the story. Cheney et al manipulate just about everybody in order to start a war with Iraq, get rid of SH and control the region. There was nothing in the film I wasn't familiar with; however, for some I'm sure there will be revelations.

The personal life of W., the young W., was mostly knew to me and mildly interesting. It's one thing to have find your place in the world, but it's another thing when your father is George HW Bush--a man who excelled in school, athletics, business and politics. W. was a failure at all of them except politics--he figured out how to run for office and get elected (thanks in part to Karl Rove). The problem was he didn't have the needed skills once elected.

The acting performances, and the cast list is long, were outstanding. Dreyfuss's performance as Cheney was spooky, scary even. These actors embody the characters they are playing.

I don't know what to make of the baseball dream scenes that start the movie and end it. There are ample opportunities for "what if" and rewriting history, but it's a parlour game.

One thing that struck me in watching the film is the irony of the Iraq war. The feeling was the middle east and eastern Asia were and are unstable places in the world that threatened the strength of the US. Threatened it's stability and dominance. Threatened its economy. The irony is that what is bringing down the US, isn't external. It's internal. Policies on financial regulations, budget deficits and a monstrous national debt have weaken the US to a point where it will never be the same--even if leaders want to tell people otherwise. The US can't continue living on debt as they have been doing. Something has to change.

The film is well made, well acted, but only mildly interesting because it doesn't bring anything new to the plate, yet it is a film that should be watched.

I can hear the criticism now. It's Oliver Stone. He made it up. Nope. You can't shot down the message in this film by shooting down Stone. It won't work, but that's a tactic the right uses all the time in their arguments. Unfortunately people buy into it instead of understanding reason and logic. W. is closest thing to fact as you're going to get.

Posted 2009/03/23 at 03h24ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 22, 2009

The Doctor. Feature film. (1991, 122 mins) IMDB

...do they show this movie in medical schools?...

he last line of my notes is: It's not the first time I've seen this movie, but I love it. The question is why?

The simple answer is it moved me--emotionally moved me. In the theory of story, bringing emotion and understanding together is why we read novels and watch films.

The story can be summed up easily. A selfish surgeon gets a dose of his own medicine when he discovers he has throat cancer, decides he doesn't like it and changes as a result. I know, it doesn't move you, you have to watch the film to get that part.

There's the inciting incident when he realizes a cough isn't just a cough. Act I climax when he discovers he has to have a biopsy. Act II dealing with the hell of treatment. At one point he's mistaken for another patient and despite his protests is given an enema anyway. Act II climax with the news the radiation treatment didn't work. He never was closer to his own death. Act III the surgery, the death of his friend June, the reconciliation with his wife and the final transformation as he gives his interns a lesson on being a patient.

Here's an example of smart filmmaking. Our good doctor has just found out the devastating news the need for a biopsy. He arrives home in shock. His wife tells their son, "Go talk to you dad." The son runs to the phone, picks it up and speaks into the receiver. He doesn't expect his dad is standing in the kitchen next to him. So much said in such a short scene. The poetry of screenwriting.

The next time you get bad medical treatment, pull out a copy of this DVD and wave it around.

Posted 2009/03/22 at 20h34ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Ride The High Country. Feature film. (1962, 94 mins) IMDB

...Peckinpah directing his first feature film...

ot your typical western. There are signs in the film that it takes place around 1900 when the west was dead or dying yet it was released in 1962 at a time when Hollywood was still turning out the product for theatres and TV.

One thing that surprised me was an old looking Joel McCrae. Not the same man we remember from the FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT or SULLIVAN'S TRAVEL. He didn't age well. Randolph Scott on the other hand had Hollywood good looks, and even more surprising, retired from acting after this film. He could have acted for another decade or more had he chose to do so.

I haven't watched a lot of Westerns so I can't comment on the genre or even the famous Sam Peckinpah. I only know his famous film, THE WILD BUNCH, famous for its violence. There is violence in this film--bar room fights, shoot outs, but it's tame--even for its time.

McCrae plays Steve Judd who rides into a one-road Western town--the typical start to a Western. His past isn't explicitly stated, but it appears he was a lawman of sorts but because of age or circumstances forced to do something else. That something else is work for the town's bank to bring gold back from a mine high up in the mountains. He recruits Gil (Scott) to ride with him and Heck--an impetuous kid--to be the third man in this security guard group for hire. It wouldn't be a movie if the job wasn't dangerous--all that gold, the wild west etc.

With the three in place, they saddle up and begin their journey. They stop at a farmhouse for the night where they meet a young Elsa. Her father is a bible-thumper who scolds her daughter for being flirtatious with Heck. She's bored her life on the farm.

The next day, the three travel on higher up the mountain and discover Elsa has tagged alone. There's a twist for a Western. If there are women in a Western they are wives at home or prostitutes in the back rooms of saloons. They aren't on horseback riding into danger.

Heck and Elsa have a thing going, but she's travelling to the mine to meet up with Billy whom she promised to marry. That's the subplot or maybe the plot for much of the second act deals with this love triangle. The second act also takes place in this rugged, primitive tent city.

The city is peopled with miners looking for riches and businessmen looking to cash in on their fortunes.

At the city, Steve and Gil setup a tent where they collect gold, measure it and issue receipts against the bank.

So far our story is straightforward. Steve gets the job with the bank, rides up to collect the gold and bring it back. Simple.

It's complicated by the marriage of Elsa and Billy. We see Billy is an ignorant, violent thug. He doesn't deserve Elsa. On the wedding night, his brothers try to get a piece of the action with attempted rape. Our hero comes to the rescue and in the process creates enemies. He blackmails the judge into saying he wasn't allowed to marry people and therefore the marriage isn't valid. If she's married, she has to stay with her husband. Unmarried she can leave with our hero and the rest and that is what happens.

It's also complicated by the fact Gil and his sidekick Heck want to steal the gold and try to do so. When the angry husband and his gang come after our hero, it's just him and Elsa. He tied up Gil and Heck as criminals.

We have the first shoot out in the high mountains. The good guys prevail, but Billy and company get away to fight another day.

Enter the final showdown. They made it down the mountain with the gold and the girl. They return her to the farm but are ambushed. The gang murdered her father and wait inside for Steve and Elsa to arrive. Steve is killed in the final shoot out. Gil promises to get the gold to the bank. Heck and Elsa embrace.

It's a simple story that didn't move me. For some reason I didn't get caught up in any of it. I feel suspense.

There are some great shots--scenes of the mountains--those expansive vistas, it's pretty to look at, but that's not enough for a film.

Posted 2009/03/22 at 20h34ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Feature film. (2008, 122 mins) IMDB

...what's with the long title?...

ou've watched the movie, seen the trailers, heard the hype on TV--probably. Since I don't watch TV, I missed it--no great loss.

I read they wanted to make this 4th version for Indiana Jones for some time, but it kept being delayed because George Lucas wouldn't sign off on a script. Many screenplays were written and rejected. I'm more interested in the development of the scripts than the actual movie and I'm writing about other things than the movie, because there isn't much to say about the film.

Should I be amazed the budget for this film was $185 million? Wow! That's a lot of money for one film. Is that the cost of getting the film into the can or does it include all the advertising, publicity and prints? Not sure. I'd like to know that as well. Maybe someone at Paramount can send me an anonymous email with some details.

It goes without saying that RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is one of the best action adventure movies ever made. It stands up to any movie of its genre. I think one of the reasons it works so well was the fact it was set in an era different from when it was made. The film can't age. Second, the German uniforms always look good on film. Ask any costume designer that question and they'll agree with me.

But I should say something about this film.

I won't say how Indiana Jones triumphs in this movie, other than he survives, because I never understood the story line. It's the most muddled, confusing and odd narrative of any of the Indy movies and it baffles me that this script was accepted. I want to know what they were thinking? At some point someone will explain it to me.

In the first film, the villains were Nazis and the French archaeologist they hired to find the Holy Grail. Someone wrote that the Holy Grail was a MacGuffin--Hitchcock's term for a plot device that drives the story but has no value in and of itself. The Grail did have value and meaning and to label it a MacGuffin is incorrect.

The third reason the first film worked is because all the stunts and action actually happened. No computer effects. The same can be said of the Bond films. This fourth version has a bunch of computer generated effects and every time they pop on screen they are obvious and take away from the film.

Since Harrison Ford has aged (I guess he's in his sixties now), the character has aged. The film is set in the 1950s. His sidekick in this adventure is a cliché--the rebel-without-a-cause type--the black leather jack, slicked back hair, switch-blade knife, motorcycle etc. Couldn't they come up with something original. It was annoying as the rock music of that era. I suspect that is a George Lucas influence on this film. Flashbacks to AMERICAN GRAFFTI.

I was delighted to see the return of Karen Allen. Aging isn't kind to women and it's the reason many don't have careers past forty. In this film, she's just as feisty as in the first film, but more tongue-in-cheek.

One of the coolest action sequences is probably the simplest. Our group of heroes are deep in a Peruvian jungle at the lost City of Gold. They are walking down steps inside a circular tower. It's all made of stone. The steps are slabs of stone that jet out from the wall. At first everything is fine, but then the steps slowly move in toward the wall. They are vanishing and with it a plunge down this column. It was fun to watch.

Finally, one of the trademarks of an action-adventure film is the capture of our hero. It usually marks the end of Act II. Well, it doesn't quite happen that way. He's captured before the film starts in the teaser that is too long and not interesting enough. Did we really need to some teenagers racing a hot rod on a desert road? What did that prove? The characters weren't part of the story--it was completely indulgent. Another Lucas touch for the worst.

Posted 2009/03/22 at 20h34ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, March 21, 2009

The Grass Is Greener. Feature film. (1960, 105 mins) IMDB

...as enjoyable as any movie...

hen they say they don't make films like they used to, THE GRASS IS GREENER would be an example. It's a film filled with brilliant dialogue, little physical action, longs scenes. There is wit, subtle, delightful wit and a dilemma to drive the narrative to its conclusion.

A film like this would easily get made today, but it would be an independent film which means a low budget, limited marketing and distribution and wouldn't hit the top ten on the box office listing. Further, it wouldn't have actors with the status of GRANT, KERR or MITCHUM.

Grant and Kerr play Lord and Lady Rhyall. They live in a stately mansion somewhere in the country near London in England. They are a gorgeous, happy couple with two young children. Despite the trappings of wealth, they are cash poor and must allow visitors entrance to their estate on tours. It's a sign of how different life is for nobles in England compared to the Victorian era where the estate would have been filled with hundred servants doing any number of jobs.

One of the tourists come to visit is Mitchum. He's a wealthy American who happens to ignore the sign saying PRIVATE and enters a room to find Kerr. What should be a short scene and he dismissed, becomes the pivotal first scene of the film.

Imagine a scene with just the two of them talking in this drawing room for over ten minutes and it works. It works because of the dialogue, combined with subtle gestures by the actors, especially Kerr.

Without every saying it, Kerr falls in love with Mitchum and he with her. On paper it seems absurd to think two people could fall in love so quickly, but when performed, it works.

The whole film works.

There is a scene where Grant's Butler comes to seek advice. He's frustrated because there simply isn't anything for him to do. Grant tells him he should work on his novel. The butler explains the novel isn't going well. He's too contented with his life and too ordinary to be a writer. It's one of the few times a character actually says what he's thinking.

The film takes a familiar concept of love and works a story that is delightful, mature, interesting.

The resolution of Grant winning Kerr back, forgiving her infidelity, seems alien today where divorce is as common as spelling mistakes. And I'm sure the religious freaks would have a thing or two to object to.

I am surprised this film isn't better known, better loved because it is a great piece of story telling, but perhaps that's it. It's more a play (it's origin) than a film.

It's probably best known for its opening title sequence (toddlers on a lawn) created by Maurice Binder. He a graphic designer and artist who got his break with this film and went on to fame as the title designer for the James Bond films. He created the sequence with the black and white gun barrel, Bond shooting followed by the red blood dripping.

Posted 2009/03/21 at 08h32ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, March 21, 2009

...open mouth, insert second foot...

50 year after the publication of ON THE ORGIN OF SPECIES, the most researched and defined theory in science still generates controversy and denial. This week it was Gary Goodyear, the Conservative MP for the riding of Cambridge.

Anne McIlroy of the Globe and Mail asked him if he believed in evolution. This was his response:

I'm not going to answer that question. I am a Christian, and I don't think anybody asking a question about my religion is appropriate.

In other words he's a bible-thumper in denial about evolution. It wouldn't matter except he's the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology.

He adds to his errors when he says:

I do believe that just because you can't see it under a microscope doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It could mean we don't have a powerful enough microscope yet.

I guess he's not familiar with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the photo electric effect. It's impossible, for instance, to look at an electron with an optical microscope. The electron moves when hit with light energy. Not to mention the fact the light wave is much bigger than an electron and misses it in most instances. So much for a powerful enough microscope.

When the first article appeared on Tuesday, it created a dust cloud. The minister then tried to clarify (see G&M article) or backtrack or, I'm not sure what to call it, except another goof, when he said this:

We are evolving every year, every decade. That's a fact, whether it is to the intensity of the sun, whether it is to, as a chiropractor, walking on cement versus anything else, whether it is running shoes or high heels, of course we are evolving to our environment.

He can't even get the concept of evolution correct. We don't evolve in response to a changing environment. We simply evolve as a matter of living and if those changes suit the environment and the individual lives to reproduce, those new traits get carried on through future generations.

In the United States under George W. Bush, the US administration implemented policies based on religious beliefs that reminded me and others of the dark ages--that vast period of history where an autocratic church controlled people's lives like Stalin.

The theory of evolution as first beautifully and intelligently put forward by Charles Darwin is a fact. Life evolves and it has for hundreds of millions of years. Get used to it. It's not going away.

Posted 2009/03/21 at 08h06ET in Theory of Evolution. [View single entry]

Saturday, March 21, 2009

...what is with some people?...

n Thursday, March 19, 2008, the Globe and Mail published a front page story on the death of Natasha Richardson. To my surprise, when the story broke on the Tuesday, I followed it with great interest. I wasn't alone. It captured the attention of millions. I'm not entirely sure why that happened, but it did. I'm not sure why I got caught up in it. I was reading everything I could to get the facts on the story--something I rarely do.

In reading the comments about the article I came across this entry:

Golden Locks from O'bama Land, United States writes: This death is on the hands of Canada for not having the proper medical capabilities and instead having to airlift her to the Good Ole USA; your favourite country to hate.

Posted 18/03/09 at 8:35 PM EDT | Alert an Editor | Link to Comment

First, it's impossible to know if this person truly believes the comment or is simply throwing lighter fluid on a fire, but let's assume it's believed in which case there are a number of problems with the comment.

I don't like the fact people hide behind pseudonyms and aliases. If you're going to make comments, tell us who you are.

Next, she was treated in Montreal. They have world class medical facilities. McGill University is the home to the founder of modern medicine--Dr. William Olser. To say there was a lack of "proper medical capabilities" is absurd. It simply isn't true.

Second, she wasn't airlifted to the US to get proper medical treatment. The last thing you would want to do with someone with a head injury is put them on a private jet and fly at 45,000 feet. Unfortunately, she was brain dead before she left Canada at which point there was nothing more that could be done.

I'm not sure what compelled me to write an entry on this. I could spend all day finding such examples of ignorance and not change one thing.

Posted 2009/03/21 at 08h05ET in Current Events. [View single entry]

Saturday, March 21, 2009

...NHL GMs in a jam of falling cap...

he NHL works under a cap system--all teams are limited in the total amount they can pay their players. The cap number is based on league revenues which come from three sources: gate receipts, media rights and licensing. With the downturn in the economy, the revenues for the 2009-10 season will surely fall and with it the cap number. It may even fall in the year after that.

Current player contracts were signed with the notion of an ever increasing cap number. It would be possible therefore for a team to have a roster in place that is at or under the cap for this year, but be over next year.

Then there is the issue of signing free agents in the summer. Teams usually spend big dollars on free agents. Teams could be a position where they sign a player or two and are left with no cap room.

The solution? Sign the free agents to a contract where the player gets a percentage of the cap instead of a flat amount. If the cap goes down, the salary goes down and the team is protected. In fact, all player contracts would be a percentage of the cap.

Why is no one talking about this approach? It makes sense to me.

Posted 2009/03/21 at 08h05ET in Hockey. [View single entry]

Friday, March 20, 2009

Aerial Gunner. Feature film. (1943, 78 mins) IMDB

...everybody sacrifice--there's war on...

he only reason I watched this film was the claim that Robert Mitchum was in it. Well. He is in the film, but for about one minute during the middle. That's what I call misleading advertising. I could have checked before hand, but I prefer to watch films cold. I don't want to be influenced by trailers or reviews or hype. Not easy, but for older films like this 1943 war propaganda B movie, no C movie, it's possible.

Anyway, Mitchum's name is on the cover of the DVD which is absurd. The IMDB.com listing shows him as "uncredited." If he's not credited in the titles of the movie, then you shouldn't put his name on the cover. But people want to make money and Robert Mitchum is a name you and I recognize.

I wouldn't have minded if the film was at least half decent, but it's a nothing more than war propaganda. I wouldn't be surprised on two accounts. First, the Pentagon financed it. Second, Mitchum was seduced into appearing in the film as his patriotic duty (a little PR doesn't hurt) and for a case of Scotch. It was a one day performance. He spent the morning getting into wardrobe while drinking some of that Scotch and said his two lines in the afternoon. Not bad for a day's work.

While the film is completely forgettable, it's not entirely full of cringing. There are far too many moments with bad dialogue, "If someone doesn't stop that thing he's going to be killed." And filled with exposition. On a firing range one asks, "With everyone firing (at the same target), how do you know who hits the target?" "That's easy," someone replies, "each gun has their own coloured bullets." Okay. I guess. Never heard of such a thing.

You'll go to sleep trying to remember these gems so you can impress someone when you recite them.

There are six main characters. Foxy. Davis. Sandy. Sleepy. Gadget. Peggy.

Peggy is Sandy's brother.

Foxy and Davis are rivals and love interest to Peggy.

Sandy is just effeminate or gay. He likes to paint and doesn't seem suited to the military.

Sleepy is well sleepy.

Gadget is always taking something apart or putting it back together or something in between.

I like the fact there is a clear distinction between each of these characters except for the two leads. Foxy and Davis. They looked alike. Sound alike. Unless they were head to head, it was tough to remember who was who. (It didn't help that it's shot in B&W with grainy images. Some shots were clearly out of focus. This is not an A or even B Hollywood movie. Call it C. An independent movie financed by the government.)

Much of the film deals with the training for these gunners--men (and they were only men) who sit in a plane and fire large calibre machine guns. It sounds simple, but it isn't.

Act III deals with the men in combat in the Pacific theatre, fighting the Japanese. That some of them should die in this war film isn't surprising, that the film should blatantly say sacrifice is what is called for labels it propaganda.

Posted 2009/03/20 at 18h22ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, March 20, 2009

The Heart of Me. Feature film. (2002, 96 mins) IMDB

...there has to be a better word than non-linear, non-chronological...

very time I start to write one of these movie commentaries, I wonder what am I going to write about. What should I focus on? What is important about this film? What worked? What didn't work? What is the film about? I probably go through the same list of questions and thoughts and then start writing.

There doesn't seem to be a right or way to do it, but somehow I don't believe that. There is probably a science to writing a movie commentary. (I don't write movie reviews.) You would think after writing some two hundred plus of these commentaries, I'd have found an answer. Nope. It always starts with what am I going to say about this movie and the answer is: I'm not sure.

I guess you can figure I'm not sure what to say about his film. Too many thoughts vying for focus and condensation, for structure. Writing is rarely easy.

But onto this film. There's the story and the way in which it's told. That seems important. There are two sisters. Rick is married to one of them but in love with the other. It doesn't take long for a love affair to blossom into a pregnant sister-in-law.

There's a moment in Act I that says it all. A crowd of people have gathered for a New Year's Eve party. Lots of monied people all dressed up. Dinah, our single sister, excuses herself to go outside as midnight approaches. Not long after, Rick the brother-in-law, follows. Outside they kiss, and well, have sex in the park while inside his wife looks around alone and embarrassed.

Since it's a period piece, an historical film, that seems important to mention. All those costumes and old cars and pouring whisky from decanters. Of course, at some point, a film made about 2009 will be a period piece.

I should mention there was a beginning, middle and end. That was very clear. Sort of.

Handling exposition is always an issue in crafting a screenplay. As a viewer, we can only learn about the characters and story by what we see on the screen and what we hear. This film takes an easy approach to exposition. It ignores it. It reminds me of David Mamet and in particular his film SPARTAN. The characters behave and talk as if they are living. It should be that way provided we know what is going on. For the longest time, I was never certain if Rick was Dinah's sister or sister-in-law. At first I certain, it was sister-in-law, then no, there was major twist and reveal that she was his sister, then back the other way. We shouldn't be left in the dark about such issues, but the film wants to toy with us, to spoon feed us information the characters have long since known. That's annoying.

The film is entirely about this husband and father who is in love with his wife's sister. There is no question it's about love, not a fling or brief affair. We never learn why he married the one sister and not the other. That happened before the film started and this film doesn't want to deal with backstory. As I think about it, I'd like to know the answer to that question. Why did he marry a woman he didn't love and she didn't love him. Since the film is based on a novel, perhaps we can find the answer there.

The technique and structure. Since love triangles and love affairs are a staple of stories, the question to answer in crafting this story: how to make if different. The answer. Be oblique. Withhold information in an attempt to raise questions and suspense. Plus, hack up the story line. Start in the present, 1934, and move forward to 1946. Then jump back. Then after awhile jump forward where we know this but not that. We're forced to make assumptions which turn out to be wrong. Then jump back. Then forward again. Keep jumping back and forth in time to screw up our senses and notions about what each characters knows etc. I wish there was a word to describe such a storyline. I suspect there is one and I'm ignorant about it. Non-linear or non-chronological just doesn't roll off the tongue with any poetry. I'm also hoping there isn't such a word and I can make one up. I think it should be a Germanic word. A word like schadenfreude.

This back and forth movement in the story line is the entire basis for generating intrigue. It works to some extent because we know the son died and Rick died, but we don't know how. It's not revealed until the end. That's a bit like most stories. We know the ending: the hero triumphs, but we don't know how.

Finally the plot relies on aspects of life that would make the plot impossible today, it's set in the period it is. For example, once the affair is out in the open, the mother and sister conspire to lie to Rick and Dinah. The mother tells Rick, Dinah has left the country therefore go back to your wife. The sister tells Dinah her husband is still recovering at home and needs rest to recover. Both are telling the love interests to stay away and they believe it and were duped. Given the height of technology today, it would be hard to pull off hence a period piece.

Does it matter that both sisters appear naked in this film? No. But I suppose for some that variable fits into the calculus: "Naked women, good."

Posted 2009/03/20 at 18h21ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Angel. Feature film. (2007, 135 mins) IMDB

...I guess it wasn't a dream...

ased on a novel, ANGEL tells the story of a young working-class girl in England during the early parts of the 1900s. Her father is dead. While her mother runs a simple grocery store, Angel dreams of fame and fortune. She gets it, but at what price? And how?

By writing.

It seems impossible at first. At a school she is asked to read her homework assignment--a writing assignment. Her teacher scolds her on the lack of authenticity, but that doesn't stop her.

She writes and writes and writes and ends up with a novel. She sends it off to publishers in London who show interest, and off to London she goes.

When asked about her favourite writers, she replies she doesn't read. She spends her spare time playing the harp. Very odd.

Having written several novels, I find it odd for her to say she never reads and at a young age, publishers want to publish her novel. I suppose it happens, but then again so did the big bang. Once. (As far as we know.)

There's an interesting scene where she meets with her would-be publisher played by Sam Neil. He offers some suggestions on how to improve it. She flatly refuses. She writes literature. As we learn that's absurd. She writes romances and at her age, the changes-to-be-made should be many, but no, she won't have it. Even when he points out you don't need a corkscrew to open a champagne bottle, she is immovable. This is not a typical woman. She lives in a dream. An optimist.

I was never sure what to make of this film. Farce? Drama? Comedy? After seeing it, I'm still not sure. There is certainly a three-act structure.

This young girl never gains our confidence and hopes. She's a what?...A bitch? A user? Well, she's someone who rises and surely will fall and does.

Her rise happens quickly. One book leads to many and with it lots of money. Soon she buys an expansive estate called Paradise. Instead of serving on others, she has many attendants.

Most of the second act deals with her publishing and her love affair with a cad and eventual marriage. WWI comes to spoil the party.

What I found surprising is the fact she was as virginal and innocent at the start of the film as she was as the end. I was expecting some major dream reveal, but apparently we're supposed to believe all that happens in the film.

Sam Neil spends his entire time holding back knowing it's better to say nothing if you can't say something nice. I think he was also wondering about whether his cheque cleared.

I don't mean to disparage the actors, because I don't believe it's their fault. At times I wondered if this was a TV movie. The obvious blue-screen shots where cheesy. The over-the-top melodramatics shouted: this is TV. But while it seemed to play for one way (farce, TV), it kept going another way saying this is serious drama. When it was over, I wondered what they were thinking and what would others think?

I still wonder if it was all a dream. Maybe when I get up in the morning, I'll find this file doesn't exist.

Posted 2009/03/19 at 18h28ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Day 6 of 6

...I am seeing results and it's a good thing...

n a way I've become a gym rat. I didn't think it would happen, but one day leads to another, then a week or two then a few months and it just happens.

You can't say I'm lazy. You can't say I'm undisciplined.

Today was a weights day. Back exercises.

Lateral Back 27 kg x 25 reps x 3 sets

Vertical Back 27 kg x 25 reps x 3 sets

Stomach Crunches: 25 reps x 6 sets with 2KG medicine ball. That's a heftier size.

Leg Lunges: 10 reps x 6 set - Left/Right.

Squats: 10 reps x 6 sets.

Long-term average is now 6.0027.

Posted 2009/03/18 at 17h52ET in Exercise. [View single entry]

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

The Women. Feature film. (2008, 114 mins) IMDB

...a film with no male actors...

remember watching the original 1939 film on which this film is based. Two points obvious points. First the witty batter, lots of great lines, but second, the film had only women in it. I haven't watched a movie before or since where that's true. (If I did, I don't remember). So, knowing that, and knowing this film was a remake, the question I had at the beginning was: are there any men in this movie?

The answer is no and as a result, the story is limited as a result. Odd and awkward at times. It's not a sex issue, it's a storytelling issue. A movie with only woman can work, just not this one.

The story line is simple. It's NYC. There are four middle-aged women who are friends. The lead character is Mary (Meg Ryan). She seems to have a perfect life. Nice house, servants, husband, daughter, activities to keep her busy. Then the bomb shell. Her husband is seeing some other woman played by Eve Mendez. The film spends the rest of its time dealing with how Mary will respond to it.

How she and her friends and mother and daughter respond to it are predictable: Ignore it. Get divorced. Start a new life. Reconciliation. There's nothing fresh or interesting about the situation.

In a way, this film is like a version of Sex and the City without Mr. Big and any of the men.

Yes, there are some funny lines. There would have to be since it's a comedy, but the lines just hang out there. They come across as a stand up comic routine.

But here's the main problem with the film. Because there are no men on screen, things happen on the phone or somewhere else. Meg tells her husband she wants a divorce. They argue etc. It all happens off screen and we hear a recap by the two live-in servants. That zaps the scene of any drama and it's done repeatedly. We don't want to hear about what happened, we want to witness it. Eavesdrop.

The best sequence happened at the end when Edie goes into the labour. It's the type of scene that has been done in film and TV many times, but there's something about the angst of a women in labour that is funny. It's played as a slapstick routine and it works. There was a ghost of Charlie Chaplin.

Posted 2009/03/18 at 01h53ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Wanted. Feature film. (2008, 110 mins) IMDB

...another mindless action flick from Hollywood...

f you like action movies that defy the known laws of gravity, medicine and just about everything sensible, then you just might like this movie.

A bullet bends when fired. It happens because gravity pulls it towards earth, but the bending is towards earth. In this movie, the bullets bend around people and corners and happens because that's what is called for in a movie. They aren't bullets--they are guided missiles.

Another trick to defy logic and reality--instant healing bath. Have a cut, bruise, broken bone? Soak in a special tub for a while and presto, you're healed, ready to fight another day.

Action films have always been filled with the improbable, but there was always a pinch of reality and believability to the action. In this film, like many recent action films, reality and believability go right out the window. They are no longer action movies, but computer games and many of the images we see in this film are entirely computer generated.

I don't play computer games, know virtually nothing about them, but it seems to me if you want to be involved in creating a Hollywood action movie these days your best bet is computer programming for computer games.

Oh yes, there is a traditional story line to this movie. Not that it matters.

The film starts out dreary with a dreary character: Welsey Gibson. He works in a cubicle for some corporation. He hates his job, his boss. He lives in a crappy apartment. His cheating girlfriend is a bitch to him. I suppose we're supposed to feel sympathy for him, but we don't. He's boring and annoying. He's a wimp.

Inciting incident. Anglina Jolie approaches him at a checkout counter in a drug store. It seems Gibson has a special gift for killing people, just like his late father. They want him to join the Fraternity--a secret cadre of assassins. Before he can respond, all hell breaks loose as someone starts shooting at them. The drugstore becomes a shooting gallery and the first big action set-piece is motion. It includes car chases and more bullets fired than a major war. At this point in the story, our hero is a wimpy bystander who says, "Sorry."

When the dusts settles, he's taken to meet the leader, Sloan, played by Morgan Freeman. The full offer is made, with lots of details about the situation, and well he can't accept. It's not time in the story for that. He hopes it was a dream, but it wasn't. His bank account balance shoots up over $3 million. Seems what Sloan was telling his wasn't a lie. With some confidence in his step, he blows up at work and accepts his new life.

Act II has started. Time to train to be an assassin. For the next thirty minutes he endures a bizarre training regiment. They beat the shit out of him, stab him with a knife and so on, but with a quick soak in a healing bath and he's as good as new. It ends with a typical montage showing how he has mastered all these techniques.

Now he's ready to go kill a few people. Yep, our wimp is now a cold blooded killer. What's that expression? Only in movies.

Anyway, he fires a gun from a movie subway train, watches as the bullet arcs around as if race car on oval racetrack and smacks the target right in the chest. Huh?

Or how about, flying a car over a bullet-proof limo because a shoot through an open sunroof will work. Okay.

With these kills out of the way, he's proven his worth, it's onto Cross and the main story line. Here's where the story takes a turn that is completely inane and unbelievable. Turns out Cross is his father. All those shots Cross took at Gibson were what, just good fun? And if Cross is on his side, then Sloan isn't. I kept hearing, "Luke, I'm your father."

So with the tables turned, it's Act III. He's going after Sloan and the fifty red shirts who stand in Gibson's way.

WANTED is another popcorn movie you will forget the moment the DVD is ejected from the player.

Posted 2009/03/17 at 01h28ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, March 16, 2009

Day 4 of 4

...what does the pain in my knees mean?...

oday was a weights day and it should be chest exercises since I hadn't done any in almost two weeks. I missed one day of weights last week.

I noticed when I was doing leg lunges, I felt a pain in the top of my knee. I haven't noticed that in quite some time. What does it mean? It's not good, that much I know.

Bench Press: 11kg x 25 reps x 3 sets

Inclined Bench Press: 11kg x 20 reps x 3 sets

Stomach Crunches: 30 reps x 6 sets with 1KG medicine ball--a new method. 1KG feels light. I may switch to 2KG next time.

Leg Lunges: 10 reps x 6 sets - Left/Right

Squats: 10 reps x 6 sets.

Lots of stretching.

Posted 2009/03/16 at 17h24ET in Exercise. [View single entry]

Friday, March 13, 2009

Day 1 of 1

...back in the swing of it...

he worst of the flu/cold virus was on Thursday so on Friday I decided to get back to my exercise routine. I'm not sure if was the best move, but I didn't feel worse for wear. Since I had only one weights day so far this week, I decided it should be a weights day.

Bicep Curls: 7kg x 25 reps x 3 sets

Tricep Presses: 14kg x 25 reps x 3 sets.

Stomach Crunches: 25 reps x 6 sets

Some sets were 30 reps. I've gotten used to this workout. In the future I may use a medicine ball to increase the resistance.

Leg Lunges: 10 reps x 6 sets - Left/Right

Squats: 10 reps x 6 sets.

Long-term average is 5.9982--below 6 again, but by Sunday it'll be back to 6.0000.

Posted 2009/03/13 at 21h22ET in Exercise. [View single entry]

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Chaplin. Feature film. (1992, 143 mins) IMDB

...An ambitious film...

watched this movie once before, probably in the mid-1990s, and it stuck with me--at least the film as a whole and certain aspects of the film. I know I enjoyed it then and I enjoyed it again.

If you were to break the film up into three acts it would be as follows. Act I deals with the young, unknown Chaplin growing up in England. Act II deals with his move to the US and his fame and fortune. The women in his life. The trouble with the FBI and Hoover. Act III deals with his exile to Switzerland when he couldn't return to the US. Hey, they thought he was a communist and a jew.

It climaxes with his appearance at the Academy Awards in the early 1970s. Titles at the end tells he died at age 88 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.

That's the overall structure of the film and it's ambitious to want to cover the entire life of a man, but they do. At least the dramatic bits of his life. I'm sure there are many things that could have been used.

Downey gives a career defining performance. It's a demanding role with that ranges from pratfalls to tears.

Aykroyd gives a memorable performance as Max Sennett.

If you step out of the room to check your email, you'll miss seeing the lovely Marisa Tormei.

The film definitely gives a sense of the zany style of comedy prevalent during the silent era. Some of it recreated for this film, some clips from actual films. In one scene in Utah, the characters (Chaplin and his crew) play out a scene as if they were in a silent movie and it's delightful to watch.

There is another aspect of the structure that adds to the film. It's the 1960s. An old Chaplin has written his autobiography and an editor has come to ask him questions, to clarify and add details about his life. These questions and answers serve as exposition and segue ways into the recreation of his life that is the film. As the film progresses, we get brief interludes with Chaplin and the editor. It helps to clarify the significance of moments in the film, exposition, but it works.

Posted 2009/03/12 at 20h18ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Congo. Feature film. (1995, 109 mins) IMDB

...Why is CONGO such a bad movie?...

he question isn't: is this good or bad film? The question to answer is: why is this a bad film? It struck me very early in watching it, that I wasn't going to have fun watching this film and I didn't.

There are two elements to consider. The dialogue and plot.

On the plot, it's paint by numbers. Because three diverse groups have to hook up as one to make a trek from the US to the darkest part of Central Africa, the story creates these ridiculous scenes. Does Dr. Ross really have to plead to get onboard a charter flight leaving the US? No, but the film wants them together and so that's what happens. That's just one of many examples.

The ending makes no sense. The climax happens well before the end and they escape in a hot air balloon!

So much of the story makes no sense, isn't the least bit believable and truly ridiculous. It's painful to think about it.

Then there is the dialogue. It's filled with boring exposition. In an attempt to liven it up, melodramatic conflict is added. Errrrr!

One bright spot was Joe Pantoliano's small role as a hustler at the airport. Too bad he didn't have a larger role.

I still haven't answered my question. Why is CONGO a bad film? It's based on a book by Michael Crichton. That's a good start. The screenplay is credited to John Patrick Shanley. He's a top notch playwright and screenwriter, but I suspect his strengths aren't with action-adventure movies and it's difficult to know how much of what he wrote ended up in the screen. How much did the producers, director, studio execs and actors change or have changed?

Here's the other twist. There are lots of special effects movies and action-adventure movies with weak dialogue and ridiculous plots, but there's a certain level of entertainment in them that make them enjoyable--not great films, but enjoyable. CONGO is neither.

At this point, I'm only guessing at why it's such a bad movie. Too many characters with hero potential. Stick to one. Perhaps. No clear objective--at least one that's worthy of being in a film. The story should have been designed better with a clear focus on Dr. Ross.

I can't pinpoint it and maybe that's it. There are many wrong elements in this film, not just one.

The other question: how did this script get made? I can understand wanting to make a film based on Crichton's book, but why this version?

Posted 2009/03/10 at 19h25ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, March 9, 2009

Tucker: The Man and His Dream. Feature film. (1988, 115mins) IMDB

...The American Dream lives on in film...

f you told me there was man named Preston Tucker and in the 1940s he designed and built a better car, I wouldn't have believed you. Not in the period during and after WWII. But this film is built on real events and was a passion of the director since he's from Detroit.

Tucker had a passion for cars. He's a dreamer, an optimist. Nothing gets him down and in this film there are lots of reasons for getting him down.

The film has a straightforward structure. Introduce our hero and his family. He has an idea for a wonderful new car, but doesn't know where to go from there. He gets an idea for publicity. His car is featured in magazines and thousands of people are writing to him. They want the car. Since he's broke, he has to raise financing on Wall St. That means a money man in the form of Abe played by Martin Landau.

Act II is about building prototype or proof of concept so the brokers can sell the shares. Once they have the financing, they then have to find a factory and the materials to make the car. They also need an experienced auto executive to run the business and in the process management waters down the car.

There is also a dark force in the form of a Senator from Michigan played by Lloyd Bridges. The Big Three and the Senator want Tucker to fail.

As Act II ends, the pieces for Tucker are falling into place. The assembly line is producing cars, even if at a slow rate. Then disaster. The government brings fraud charges down on him. He stole money. His car isn't wasn't what he advertised. It's an injustice, but it brings a resolution of the story. There are court proceedings where it's clear the government in interfering with justice. They can't let Tucker succeed.

Meanwhile back at the factory his loyal employees are frantically working around the clock to produce fifty of his car and satisfy the terms of a contract he has with the government for lease of a factory complex.

The cars are made. Tucker makes an impassioned and trite speech about the "American Dream." The jury gives its predictable verdict and everybody parades out on the street as the 50 cars arrive from the factory.

The story didn't move me or interest me much. I can say I don't care about cars. I just don't get the fascination with a piece of metal.

There are some interesting trick shots in the film. In one, Tucker sits at the kitchen table at home as they discuss getting a factory. When he gets up from the table, he steps forward, flips his hat on and in the next step we're inside the factory.

The beginning uses a tongue-in-cheek, propaganda-feeling narration and industrial file. I think it sets the wrong tone for the film. It says it wants to be a satire and comedy, yet the film is a drama with dark undertones.

It was publicity that brought Tucker fame and his chance at a dream, and it brought him down, but surely it was folly to believe he could create a car company to rival Detroit.

Posted 2009/03/09 at 19h49ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 8, 2009

The Ladies Man. Feature film. (1961, 95 mins) IMDB

...Jerry Lewis plays it the same way and you might laugh...

t goes likes this. Jerry Lewis has a contract with Paramount that says he has to star in another film, but he doesn't have a script. He needs a script. He sits down with Mel Brooks and some others and they spitball some ideas. They know they want a young audience to come to the theatre and see the film. Let's have a lot of young women in the film. How can we have lots of young women in a film that hasn't been done before? Broadway musical? Nope. All girl school. Too young? Hospital? Been done. I know. There's this large mansion in Hollywood. Lots and lots of rooms. Lets set it up as a boarding house for aspiring actresses. That way they're together and they're young and beautiful and, what?, it's been done! Oh, well, we'll do it again.

Jerry Lewis can play the dumb, humble houseboy. I can be cleaning some priceless figurines and they all shatter and crash into pieces on the floor. That'll work.

Did I forget anything?

Nope, I think that covers it all.

Posted 2009/03/08 at 19h56ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Cinderfella. Feature film. (1960, 91 mins) IMDB

...Jerry Lewis plays it up for laughs...

nother Jerry Lewis comedy where he stars and gets the bulk of the screen time, but for whatever reason, he didn't direct it like many of his other films.

The story line doesn't matter, but based on the title, it's not hard to figure out. Take the story of Cinderella and have three brothers instead of sisters. Lewis plays Fella whose father died and left his vast estate to his stepmother played by Judith Anderson. Yes, the same woman from Rebecca. She's much older, but perfectly cast for the role as evil stepmother and you can't help but recognize her.

There is a beautiful Princess Charming, but she doesn't appear on screen that much. Nothing comic about her I suppose.

Like in his other films, the story is put together in order for Lewis to be silly. There are pratfalls and gags. He's a humble person with no ambition, dumb, does what people tell them, cleaning and doing household chores--lots of chances for gags.

There are a few funny moments, but a film like this is probably best seen with a large group and some mind altering drug.

Posted 2009/03/08 at 19h56ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 8, 2009

The Heiress. Feature film. (1949, 115 mins) IMDB

...One of the greatest endings to a film...

HE HEIRESS is a classic, must-see film. It has a big time director in William Wyler, big stars with Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift, an intriguing story line and one of the best endings of any movie. You won't forget it.

de Havilland plays Catherine, an unmarried woman living with her father, who is a physician, in the wealthy area of Washington Square, NYC. Her mother died some years ago and left her a yearly allowance to live on. It's a substantial sum of money, hence she's the heiress. Her father has his own wealth and may or may not leave it to her when he dies. The reason she's unmarried isn't looks or money, it's her personality. She's bashful, shy, awkward. It's impossible to have any conversation with her. Enter a suitor played by Clift. He's incredibly handsome, charming to the point of flattery and broke. He falls for Catherine when no other man would. She's delighted by his affection and soon they plan to marry. Her father has other ideas. He believes the suitor is only interested in the money and that there is no love for her.

Act II deals with his attempts to discredit Clift and to educate her daughter. It doesn't work. She's fallen in love with the boy and plans to elope. She knows what it means. Her father will cut her off; however, she won't be poor. She'll still have her mother's inheritance. Determined to get married, she tells Clift to make the arrangements and return later that evening. She explains to him her father will cut her off. Clift leaves promising to return. Catherine, full of excitement, packs and waits for him. And waits and waits. As her aunt explains, he wasn't in love with her, he was interested in the money. A devastated Catherine grows up and Act II is over.

In Act III, time passes. She learns Clift ran off to California to strike it rich. Her father catches an illness and dies. She has his house, his money but no husband. She lives a lonely life. She passes the time with needlepoint.

Near the end of the film, Clift returns and wants to see Catherine. She wants nothing to do with him, but at her aunt's urging, relents and sees him. It's as if nothing happened and she's madly in love with him. (He even has an explanation of why he ran off and that it wasn't about the money). She tells him to pack and return later. They will run off and get married. Now he's the excited one, the eager one, but the trick this time is on him. When he returns, she won't answer the door. The film ends with him pounding on the locked front door and through a window above it, the fading light of a lamp as she walks upstairs and away from him.

One of the remarkable aspects of this film is de Havailland's performance. There is clear arc in this character's development and she plays it perfectly. Bold, strong and wise in the third act, naive and timid at the start.

As the ending approaches, we're left guessing and probably led in one direction when something else happens and you won't forget the ending.

Posted 2009/03/08 at 19h56ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, March 7, 2009

A Piece of the Action. Feature film. (1977, 135 mins) IMDB

...Who would you have over for dinner? Sidney Poitier or Bill Cosby....

PIECE OF THE ACTION is the third film starring Bill Cosby and Sidney Poitier. Poitier also directed the films.

(And yes, I would be fascinating to have both them sitting around a table for dinner.)

We're in Chicago and I love the setup for this film. It's clever, fun and interesting.

It starts during the dark of night. Crosby is a cat burglar robbing a vault in a bank. He's by himself, all the tools he needs, and doesn't speak a word of dialogue for at least the first twenty minutes of the film. It must have been killing him. His robbery goes off successfully. (It includes a jump from a six or seven story window. There was a similar scene in their earlier films.) When the cops arrive during the daylight, they haven't a clue and we catch a glimpse of James Earl Jones as a detective. (Interesting this film was released in the same year as Star Wars. Need I say more.)

Off to Poitier's part in this story. He carries out a con on the mob. There's a scene where lots of cash is collected and counted. (Odd given the source of the cash that it's all perfectly flat and crisp!) On Poitier's word, the mafia guys think they're going to be raided by the cops. They panic and ditch any evidence which includes the money which Poitier takes control of. When it's over, they know they've been had.

Thanks to a crocked cop, Detective Jones knows about this scheme.

Poitier has to worry about the mob coming after him but they don't know it was him. Crosby is in the clear. Enter Jones's retirement. He makes an anonymous request of the two: help out at a community centre or you're going to jail. They don't want to, they like their lives as they exists (they only met because of Jones), but what choice do they have? None.

They agree to go to the community centre. Now we're into Act II. The community centre is run-down. Two women run it with the help of others. The focus is on a group of young black adults who are unemployable. The centre is trying to clean up their acts so they can be productive citizens. Fat chance. P&C refer to them as gorillas because they act uncivilized, but with Poitier as their instructor, now there is a chance. (It reminds me of an earlier film he made in the UK: TO SIR WITH LOVE. It's worth watching.)

While Poitier is trying to make something out of these kids, Crosby is tracking down companies who might hirer them. He's also trying to figure out who the anonymous blackmailer is (Jones) and he's falling for the woman who is running the place.

Act III starts with the realization that Jones's late wife the founding administrator of the centre. They have him and confront him, but in the process the mob locates Poitier and are after him. It gets worse when they kidnap his girlfriend Nikki. Give us back the $475K you took and we think about returning your girlfriend.

Poitier doesn't have the money. He's spent a bunch of it. Jones gives them a lead from the crooked cop. They rob a couple of safes. During these scenes a secret is kept: what did they rob and from whom?

The final confrontation. Money for the girl. Girl goes free, but not Poitier. They are going to kill him. They would kill him except for some reason the mafia boss, Bruno, kept incriminating evidence in these safes. Poiter has his out.

There's a fair bit of social commentary in this film, preachy to a point, but even after thirty plus years, it doesn't appear as if anything has changed.

It reminds me of a famous quote by the head of Columbia Pictures, "If you want to send a message, use Western Union."

Having said that I'm not going to fault them on that. If I were in their position, I'd probably do the same thing.

The best scene of the film is the moment when Poitier walks into the classroom full of gorillas and gets no respect. You know something is going to happen to make them change and you want to know why.

Posted 2009/03/07 at 19h57ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Marie Antoinette. Feature film. (2006, 123 mins) IMDB

...A different sort of historical film...

familiar story based on real events. It's been told before, so why tell it again? I do not know.

It's the late 1700s in Austria and France. Lots of costumes and more costumes. When inside a palace, the rooms are as gilded and ornate as any in the world. (I can't imagine how people can live in them, but another time and place). When outside, the grounds are trimmed and green and filled with colours from flowers. Oh, yes, and all those costumes.

There are horses to pull carriages and horses to carry men during the hunt. Then all those extras with their costumes. Filling an opera house. Filling a ball room. Filling the grounds as Marie makes her first entrance at Versailles.

I don't understand royalty and all their attendants. The film makes a point of odd aspects of being a young princess and later queen. When morning arrives for Marie, a curtain around her bed is pulled back and an audience stands around as she gets dressed. She's stripped naked and bathed and perfumed and dressed all the while many woman looking on. I don't get it. Not in real life or in the film. Certainly it's odd, but do we really need to see it?

The film starts with the young princess still living in Austria. An arrangement has been made where she'll go to France, marry the future king and become Queen. And off she goes to France. She gets married. The people around her gossip. She's alone in a new world.

A large focus of the first half of the film is on her getting pregnant, to give France a future king. It's tough to do when your husband won't have sex with you. Why that's the case is never explained in the movie although the implication is Louis XVI is a nerd and a dork.

The film wants to be a comedy, not a farce or satire. Why else would you cast Rip Torn as Louis XV and Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI? As a comedy it fails because there's not much in the way of laughter and given the ending, I don't need to spell it out, it's not comedy.

Eventually Louis XV dies and Marie becomes Queen along side her husband. She eventually has three children one of whom dies, but trouble is brewing in North America and France sends money and soldiers to help. Meanwhile there is trouble in France. People are starving and their own revolution begins.

Act III of the film deals with this darker period in France's history and the life of Marie Antoinette. It ends when the couple and their children are forced from Versailles. Their fate known, but not shown.

It was clear from the start of the film the filmmakers wanted to bring something new and different and approachable for young audiences. It's the only reason pop/rock songs are played throughout.

The film's POV is entirely Marie's. Rarely does it shift to another scene where she's not in it. Those types of scenes where two other characters talk and we get some insight or advancement in the plot of the story. Not in this film.

What makes the film an historical film is the underlying story, setting and costumes, but from there the film diverts from traditional filmmaking. The music is one aspect of that divergence, the other is the narrative and POV we see. It looks like an historical film, but feels like something else. I'm not sure if it's good or bad, but it's different.

Part of the difference is the lack of dialogue. Much of the first act is devoid of dialogue. It's a procession of visuals as Marie transverses from young girl to young wife. And while you might think that's boring, it isn't. There's a story being told with pictures. Granted most people would be bored with it.

There are certainly times when I felt a replay of musical notes and I mean that in a figurative sense. A replay of notes from LOST IN TRANSITION and this film. I suppose you could say directors have signatures and preferences and I sensed it but I can't point to something specific at the moment.

While I was never bored or uninterested with this film, I wasn't enthralled or carried away either. There must be some attempt to parallel Marie's life with modern day women, and I suppose if I thought about it long enough I'd come up with something. If that's not the intention and reason for making this film, then why bother. The film is devoid of suspense. We know her life story.

Some may argue, it's about rewriting her life story, I should say, they want to put a positive light on this person's life, fine, except why? It obviously won't change history and what does it matter what we think of her.

Posted 2009/03/07 at 19h57ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, March 6, 2009

They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!. Feature film. (1970, 108 mins) IMDB

...Was too much expected after the first film?...

idney Poitier is an icon and deservedly so, but not because of this movie. The title for this film comes from a line from one of those movies, but if I have to explain that, well...

Mister Tibbs is a detective working in San Francisco. He has a wife and two young children. Part of the story is the typical husband/father absent from home because of his work.

The main story arc is a murder in an apartment building where the prime suspect is a good friend of Tibbs. That friend is also a minister of unknown denomination and a political activist. He leads the charge for proposition No. 4. Whatever that might be.

From the opening credits, to the slow start, to the cheesy look, the film felt like a TV show from the 70s. Further there is nothing terrible interesting or exciting about the story line. No great insights. No great revelations.

I watched the trailer for this film after watching the film. It creates the image of an action piece with lots of excitement. Each bit of film from the trailer was shown in the film, but it's misleading. The pace of the film is so much slower. The action tired and trite. What is interesting is how the trailer was cut and put together. It also reinforces the old adage: don't believe everything you see.

Posted 2009/03/06 at 18h41ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Friday, March 6, 2009

For Love of Ivy. Feature film. (1968, 101 mins) IMDB

...A romantic comedy you've probably never heard of, but should...

t didn't long into this movie to realize I had seen it before. How could I have forgotten? Too many movies? Not sure.

FOR LOVE OF IVY is a romantic comedy where Sidney Poitier plays a successful businessman (he and his partner run a day-time trucking company and a night-time gambling operation). She's a live-in maid to a wealth family in the suburbs of NYC. One of those homes on Long Island with a view of the ocean and lots of green grass. There's a husband and wife and two adult children. The family all talk with Ivy but not to each other. Then the bombshell.

Ivy gives notice. She wants to quit her job as a maid to the family, move into NYC and go to school. She wants something more. Nothing the family says can make her change her minds. She's going to leave.

The two children hatch a plan. Maybe if she met a man, she'd wouldn't want to leave. Tim, the hippie son, scams a meeting with Jack Parks who happens to do trucking business with the family company. Jack isn't too pleased about it. He's single and wants to stay that way. Besides, a maid isn't his idea of a mate. Part of the plan includes Ivy being there at the same time and the two meet. Before you know it, he's invited to dinner and the story is in full swing.

What develops is love. He falls in love with her, scene by scene. She likewise. There comes a point where they must split up, the end of Act II. Before they split up, they were definitely in love with each other even if they didn't say it entirely.

What causes the break-up? Ivy realizes there was a set-up. She reasons Jack is only going along with the kid's blackmail which is essence: date our maid or we'll tell the cops about your illegal gambling operation. It's true, but it's not true. It started out that way, but as he got to know her, he fell in love.

Since it's a film from 1968 and the two lead characters are black in a white world, race plays a part of the story, but it's a comedy and therefore it's toned down.

It would be easy to quibble about the plot, but that would take away from seeing these two people fall in love. It was fun to watch. Too bad Abbey Lincoln who played Ivy didn't have more feature film roles. She was beautiful and charming to watch. If I have to explain anything about Sidney Poitier then you must be young.

Posted 2009/03/06 at 18h41ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Once. Feature film. (2006, 85 mins) IMDB

...Can you watch this film just once?...

ublin, Ireland. A young man stands on a city street as he sings and plays his guitar. On the ground in front of him is his guitar case. A few coins tossed inside. Everything about him is Irish.

She's not Irish. She came from the Czech Republic with her mother and young daughter, Ivonka. She walks the same streets selling flowers where she can. She gets a job cleaning house for some rich family.

They know each other because of these streets. They've met before the film starts. (Showing a first meeting would have been better).

Both are poor. Both with an interest and affinity for music. Both wanting something. Man and woman. A love story has started. It must be a musical but without the dancing, and even then it's a different type of musical.

Because she has a broken vacuum cleaner and his father runs a repair shop for such things, the writer creates a reason for them to get to know one another better. He's clearly interested in her. She seems to be as well, but really she's more sensible and pragmatic.

She knows he sings and plays guitars, learns he writes his own songs. Some songs have no lyrics and she takes a turn at composing them. He learns she plays piano, but since she can't afford one, she has to sneak off to play at a musical store. The owner lets her.

It wouldn't be a love story if there weren't others involved. There is a father to her daughter who is somewhere else. A missing father and a missing husband. She's ambivalent about reuniting with him.

Our Irishman had a girlfriend who screwed someone else and ran off to London. He's heartbroken and dreaming of better things, still thinking about her, thinking about London while our Czech beauty lives in the moment under the crushing realty of life.

It brings them together because it gives them a reason for him to make his moves on her and he tries and tries, but she's not going there and doesn't. Because of that, the focus shifts to the future and music. He has talent, she has talent. Make a demo and go for something big.

A large sequence of the film deals with booking a recording studio and spending a weekend in it to record his songs. Non-stop they play and record. Listen to the playback. Here, it's all about the music as if watching a music video but without the special effects or wizardry designed to dazzle the eyes. A non-plus, jaded engineer turns when he realizes what he's listening to isn't another cover band.

One of the best moments in the film has little to do with them and everything to do with them. It's about a banker they've some to see to secure a loan, money to pay for the recording session. The scene starts out in typical way. Staid and dour. The two heroes explains what they want. They play a tape of his songs. The banker doesn't speak, there's not one reason a rational banker would lend them money, none, but cut forward where the banker, in his suit, in his office, plays a guitar and sings, "I've got to be me." Very funny. Don't think a cut, a simple cut can't create humour because it does and it's been used in many films.

There's no great triumph in this movie. It isn't ROCKY. It's more a documentary of two people who seem to actually exist. The style of filming reflects that.

Our hero has his demo. He tries to convince her come to London but she won't. Too much baggage. He trucks on for a flight to London and while he's leaving, a delivery van arrives at her apartment with a piano he bought for her. Never mind he doesn't have the money. Never mind she may be forced to move and can't bring it with her. Never mind we have no certainty about happily ever after. As I said this is a different sort of musical.

There's nothing I didn't like about this film. The question is why. First, no melodramatics. There are no drunk Irishman. No one wanting to throw a punch or threatening to throw a punch. No one yelling and screaming. Second, the setup is different. An Irish musician in Dublin? Sure, but a Czech sweetie with her head screwed on. Not a chance you've seen those two before. And, you don't expect what you follows. Nothing about it is predictable. She doesn't jump into bed with him, doesn't wax poetic about love, and, it's entirely believable and refreshing.

ROCKY had its underdog and this film has its. Both are interesting films in their own way.

Posted 2009/03/05 at 21h14ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Day 26 of 26

...I did remember....

wenty-six straight days of going to the gym formy workout. I'm at that point again where I don't even think about whether I should go. I just go and do what I need to do.

Today was a weights day and decided it should be chest exercises to which I remember to increase the weight from 9KG to 11KG. The lower weight was too easy. With the heavier I did fewer reps until I'm sure I can handle. I do that to avoid injury.

Bench Press: 11kg x 20 reps x 3 sets

Inclined Bench Press: 11kg x 25 reps x 3 sets

Stomach Crunches: 25 reps x 6 sets

Leg Lunges: 10 reps x 6 sets - Left/Right

Squats: 10 reps x 6 sets.

Lots of stretching.

Posted 2009/03/04 at 20h45ET in Exercise. [View single entry]

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

I Am Legend. Feature film. (2007, 101 mins) IMDB

...Fact or fiction...

dd title.

In I AM LEGEND, we see the future. The future where a measles virus has been genetically engineered to cure cancer. Known as the KRIPPIN VIRSUS, or KV for short, it cures cancer, and it mutates killing 90% of the world's population. It's the biggest pandemic ever.

What happens to the other 10% of the population? 1% are immune. They don't die from the virus, nor do they mutate into dark-seekers, haemocytes. The other 9% do. These haemocytes kill, eat the remaining humans.

Our hero, our legend, played by Will Smith is part of that 1% that lives. How he survives while others died is part of the story.

It's three years after the outbreak. Manhattan has been deserted. Deer run wild. Buildings have crumbled. Plants grow everywhere including the cracks in the streets. To create such illusions the filmmakers relied almost entirely on CGI, but there are scenes that appear to be backlots or even on location, dressed to looked ruined. (The filmmakers failed in one aspect. Manhattan is built on a swamp and surrounded by water. Without humans, pumps that keep water out of the city would fail and thus major sections of the city would be flooded.)

Our hero has the city to himself. He and his dog, a German Sheppard named Sam, search for food and other people, he broadcasts a daily radio transmission and waits, but when sunset comes they hurry home to a fortress designed to keep the dark-seekers out.

The bulk of the movie focuses on these two characters to explain what happened, where they are now, what life is like now. What it's like is not something you'd want to live with.

Since our hero has no companionship, he treats his dog as if it were a child. Eat your vegetables, he tells her. He gives her a bath before going to bed.

The dark-seekers are hairless humans or rats or dogs infected with the virus. They have no ability to tolerate UV rays and must stay inside during the day. This quirk in their make-up provides a means for our hero to move about during the day but poses threats at night and does.

The dark-seekers are vicious, rabid animals. They have two responses: to attack until killed or flee because of the UV rays. They are a formidable menace.

Part of the backstory is told in flashback. Every time our hero sleeps, the flashback continues to fill in what has got us and him to this point. The key elements: his wife and young child died trying to escape Manhattan and he was a colonel in the US Army. A trained medical professional involved in developing and now controlling this virus.

He's still looking for a cure. His basement is a full-scale lab with dark-seeker rats. I've seen rats and you don't want to meet these rats even when caged. But on this day, he appears to have found a cure. One of the rats seems to be behaving normally. He'll only know if he starts human trials. That means capturing a human dark-seeker and bringing it back to his lab. He literally sets a trap to grab one. By the end of the film, he has a anti-virus, a cure. There is hope for civilization. But what civilization? Who is left?

Late in the second act, he and his dog are out on patrol when, with the sun setting, they are surrounded by dark-seekers. The dog acts as a bodyguard fighting them off, but is mauled in the process and infected with the virus. Our hero tries to save him, fails and must kill the dog. His response is reckless, suicidal behaviour. He attacks the dark-seekers and is caught in a trap they set. He's surely going to die but doesn't when a woman rescues him. She is immune and responded to his radio broadcasts. She's her rescuer, but in doing so she lead the dark-seekers to his house. When night arrives, they arrive and attack begins. Here's the finally battle. A long action sequence with growing levels of doom.

That anyone survived is a miracle, that our hero died saving her and the young boy she rescued is the reason he's a legend.

I find it interesting to imagine these scenarios because there is a chance they could happen. A pandemic could wipe out billions. The loss of cheap oil could have devastating effects on civilization. Global warming. Meteors. Just to name a few.

Posted 2009/03/04 at 20h45ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

...The evolution continues...

rom time to time I run into computer troubles. I know enough about computers to solve the problem, but not always, and the solution is usually found with a web search. I haven't been contributing to the body of knowledge because the solutions are already out there. Yesterday I discovered an answer that didn't exist (at least I couldn't find it) so I decided to document it and put it on my web site. Writing it took on a life of its own, that's another story, and I needed a new category: Computers.

To do that I changed the RightNav file by adding code for a link to Computers under the Category listing. Plus add the category to the database. It takes a minute or two. Seamless change.

It's not the first time I've changed it. A new month came on Sunday. More changes. Links for Movies watched in March. March Archives. I'm up to version 12 for this one file in this year. There maybe a better solution, but it works for now.

It was during the changes I clicked on to something unusual. March 1st was a Sunday. February 1st was a Sunday. Two months in a row with Friday the 13th. That can't happen very often, but since the calendar repeats, it must happen at predictable intervals like solar eclipses or passing comets.

Posted 2009/03/03 at 23h51ET in JamesPiper.com. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Another Life. Feature film. (2001, 101 mins) IMDB

...Even a story is based on real events, the writer must construct a proper narrative...

e've seen this story before even if this film is based on real events.

It's the early 1900s in England. A young, single woman is happy in her life with her family, middle class and all, but dreams of more. Fantasizes about adventure and glamour. She meets a man who seems to fit the bill, Percy. They get married, but married life is a bore. She meets another man and starts a passionate love affair. If only her husband were out of the picture, the two could live happily . But it's a time when divorce is out of the question. Scandal would erupt. She has a reputation to protect. Enter the notion of killing her husband.

The suggestion is she tries to poison her husband and it fails. Then one late autumn evening, her lover comes as the husband and she walk down the street. In a flash, he's slashed with a knife and killed.

Act III. Quickly they are arrested. Brought to court. Sentence passed. They are both executed.

I read an online account of the real events. The murder happened October 2nd, 1932 and by January 9, 1933, the two were executed. Just over three months.

I suppose it would help if you know something about Edith Thompson, but it shouldn't. Act I is slow to get going even though it starts with a flash forward to the murder. What's presented at the start is too confusing to be interesting.

The story gets darker as it progresses from happy and carefree to death. What's presented in Act I doesn't mesh with what follows. It's as if two stories are presented. One a comic period piece, the other a drama with life and death. I found it hard to stay interested, and even when the notion of murdering her husband entered the story, I perked up but felt there was nothing original about the story line and there wasn't.

The court scene and final execution were rushed.

She had to be drugged and carried to the scaffold. Even as she was hysterical, I wasn't moved by it. There was no sense of right or wrong about the execution. It just happened. Another note in history.

Given the material to work with, I think a much better story could have been told.

Posted 2009/03/03 at 21h08ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

...You have to love computers but like a loved one there are days when...

nless there's something terribly wrong, I use one of several computers everyday. They are an indispensable part of my. Like most days, I started Monday by checking my email. Lots of incoming emails. As I ran down the list in my inbox, the screen was showing cryptic code and I knew something wasn't right. That something was the size of my PST file. I use Outlook 2000 and it doesn't like PST files bigger than 2GB, but it will create one--one that it can no longer read! That's called bad programming design. Stupid really. I'm imagining a last cigarette, a firing squad and a stone wall caked with dried blood, but I guess those days are gone.

The program crashed. When I tried to restart it I received an error message: Quit the program and run the Inbox Repair Tool. It doesn't tell you what this repair tool is or where to find. More bad programming.

Fortunately I've paddled up this creek before and knew about SCANPST.EXE. I ran it. It seemed to want to work, but then crapped out. Onto a portage for another creek, moving deeper in this forest, the canopy blocks out the sun. I hear the crack of lightening.

The next body of water is murky and idle. It's called PST2GB.EXE. It takes your PST file, hacks it up and reduces so it will work with OUTLOOK. The process takes an hour or more. I'm paddling and paddling. I can't see across the water to the other side. A fog has rolled in. I'm startled by a splash of water, jerk around to look and catch a glimpse a of crocodile's tail as it submerges. The waves it creates bounce off the side of my canoe. The snaps for my lifejacket shatter, it hangs loose. I fiddle with it and in the process lose a paddle overboard.

I tell myself to not look. Just keep paddling and as I reach the shore I run for land, leaving the canoe and paddle behind, Don't look back, but I must. I started OUTLOOK with my truncated PST file. What emails did I lose?

In front of me wasn't anything I recognized as my email and contact data. There were numerous "Lost and Found" folders. I have to rearrange all the folders and in the process I realize I have lost the most recent emails. It could have been worse. I had an image of the croc snapping his mouth shut on my leg, pain shouting through my entire body, panic paralysing me as my life was about to end.

But I was on land again. The rain had stopped, the dark clouds behind me. When as I walked toward what looked like a beautiful woman in a clearing, I tripped and fell forward. When I looked back there was nothing but air. Dumbfounded, I rose to my feet, see the girl wave and trip over air. God damn it! What the? There was a folder called "Recovered Folder 8082". It was my Inbox and no matter what I tried, the program wanted to use RF 8082. I couldn't delete it. I couldn't rename it. You want to explain that one to me?

I searched web sites for suggestions, tried them and I was still tripping over something invisible. I resigned to live with it when I moved on to the next phase. Lose some weight.

I used the archive feature, something I've done before, to take emails from my PST file and put them in a separate PST file. It worked, the emails were gone, stored in their own den, but damn is it slow. It seems to be the type of thing you'd do overnight. It's a lot like trying to burn off excess fat. SLOW GOING.

But here's the thing. I removed about 1GB of data from the PST file, I know this because of the size of the new PST files with the archived emails, but my main PST file was still 2GB! Why didn't it get smaller? It should have.

Since I knew the PST file is nothing more than a giant database file, I knew there must be a compact and repair tool. Yes, I'll run SCANPST.EXE. It worked but it didn't reduced the size of the file. Damn.

All right. Maybe there's a compact tool built into the program. Where's the compact tool? I searched the program menus. Nothing. Searched again. I guess putting it under TOOLS is too obvious. Damn. Then I found it. An advanced feature of the properties feature for a folder.

I backed up my PST file, spat on my palms, twirled my chair six times and clicked on COMPACT. Then. I. Waited. And waited. The pretty girl in the meadow had turned and walked away. I yelled out for her to stop, but nothing came out of my mouth. It was as if I were in the vacuum of space. STOP! She kept walking and as she did, she descended down the hill, only her shoulder and head visible.

After I don't know how long and without fanfare, the compacting process was done. I checked the size of my PST file. 358MB. What a relief, I could pig out again. Where's those rippled chips? I yelled out, this time I heard it. This time, she heard it, turned her head to look at me and started running toward me.

I clicked on RECEIVE. Keep running. Run faster. To my surprise, the new emails went right in the Inbox folder and not the lame "Recovered Folder 8082" subfolder of "Lost and Found" folder. Could it be I found bliss?

I looked up and saw the pretty girl running. She was near the edge of the meadow where it meets the forest. I got up and ran, sprinted really, and as she stepped into the forest she vanished.

I had realized I had archived emails based on their date. Reasonable, but a better solution is to create PST files of archived emails based on topic, sender etc. There's something else to add to my TO DO list.

Posted 2009/03/03 at 21h08ET in Computers. [View single entry]

Monday, March 2, 2009

The Spiderwick Chronicles. Feature film. (2008, 96 mins) IMDB

...Fun for the whole family...

t was clear from the DVD this film was for children, but even though I was a bit reluctant to watch I decided to do so and I wasn't disappointed. I had heard the name, SPIDERWICK, but it meant nothing, other than in relation to this film which I knew nothing about. As I watched the film, I discovered the name is a family name. There's Arthur Spiderwick and his young daughter Lucinda Spiderwick.

The film starts out 80 years ago where a naturalist is documenting nature in a large room. A laboratory if you will. Butterflies pinned in place, snakes jammed in glass jars. There's drawings and notes. Pages of them. The room Arthur works in is filled with these items and in a flash it's over and we're in the present when a mother and three children arrive at the very same house.

It's odd they move into a house in the darkness of night. Odd still the house hasn't changed much in all these years, but it's a movie and without any of it, there wouldn't be a story.

There's a young adolescent daughter who is into sword fighting. Can't imagine that would play part of the story. Then there's the younger brothers. Simon and Jared. Simon is a lawyer or accountant type. Doesn't want to get his hands dirty and we don't hear from him a lot. Then there's Jared. (Same actor for both roles). The story focuses on him and his antics. He's a young boy who gets into trouble. His sister and mother accuse him of everything and usually they're right except as they've moved into the house, he didn't steal his mother's car keys nor his sister's medals.

And what are those eerie noises coming from the walls?

As he investigates the sounds, he discovers a hidden world behind the walls. A pack rat of sorts took the keys and medals and any number of things. As he searches further, rising up in a dumb-waiter, he discovers a secret room--the room Arthur used at the start of the film and in that room he discovers a fantastical world of creatures we don't see and a book explaining it all. In 80 years the room was left untouched. Covered in dust. Again, it's a movie.

That someone else wants that book becomes the central line of the plot. That someone else is the ogre voiced by Nick Notle. The ogre leads a troop of toads in the quest for the book--the book in possession of our hero.

These creatures can't be seen unless they want you to seem them or if you look through a special eye-piece or if a certain bird-eating pig happens to spit into your eyes. It's all part of the fantasy. There are certain POV issues that arise because of this fact, but it's a minor complaint.

The fantasy doesn't end there because there wouldn't be much of a movie. The ogre and his buddies would simply walk into the house and grab the book, but they can't. There's a circle of security surrounding the house which prevents them from entering. As long as the kids and book are within the circle they are safe.

They have other defences. Salt. Tomato sauce. Swords. Knifes.

The entire premise of this story reminded me of JUMANJI, but I would argue this film is more enjoyable because there are more interesting characters instead of wild animals devoid of personality. Here we have Thimblejack who is mild and helpful until he blows a fuse like a drunk Irishman, but give him a cracker with honey and he calms down. There's Hogsqueal who wants to help but every time he sees a bird, he drops everything to grab his snack. Characters make a story and this film is filled with them.

So how come JURASSIC PARK worked and JUMANJI didn't. There's similarities. Answer. Guess. Even though the animals of Jurassic didn't have much personality, the special effects were novel.

Back to this film.

It was a fun, enjoyable ride even if I'm not sure what a goblin, ogre, or brownie are, nor the ten other words used to describe these non-real characters.

So how does it end? First, the circle of security is blow away. How? The ogre gets part of the book with the magic spell for destroying it, but they must wait for a full moon. When it arrives, the shield is gone and he and his toads storm the house. By this point, the family is all together in believing something is going on and not just Jared with a wild imagination.

Using swords, knifes, salt and tomato sauce they battle the toads. Many a splatter later, it's just the ogre left who shape shifts into a giant snake to capture the book from Jared. Then onto the roof for another duel where the ogre changes again into a raven and flies off with the book except the helpful Hogsqueal, always looking for a bird to catch and eat, grabs the raven and in one gulp the bird and therefore the ogre is gone.

It's an exciting ending and well developed. No cheating here. It's reminds me of the ending of ALADDIN.

Posted 2009/03/02 at 20h58ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Monday, March 2, 2009

Fracture. Feature film. (2007, 113 mins) IMDB

...Two strong performances by lead actors...

nthony Hopkins is Ted Crawford--a wealthy man living in LA. He has the hyper-sports car, the expansive house, the trophy wife, except she's having an affair with someone else. Seems he doesn't like that.

At the start of the movie, we see these things then he raises a pistol and shots his wife. The shot to the head should have killed her, but it didn't. Critical to what follows, she's alive, but brain dead.

Calmly, after the police arrives, he explains he shot her. I confess. In court, he wants to represent himself. No lawyers.

Enter Ryan Gosling as the prosecuting attorney Willy Beachum. He's had a stellar record in the DA office, but he's off to the riches of a private law firm. Wooten Sim. He only agrees to do this case because it won't take long. Since it's a movie, there's more in store for him.

There's the confession. The murder weapon. Witnesses. Crawford should be convicted and sentenced in no time, but the case unravels when the detective who took the confession, who was at the scene of the crime, is shown to be the victim's lover. It taints the confession and other evidence.

Then the gun found at the crime scene was shown to have never been fired. (That's never explained clearly). The once clear-cut case against Crawford has dissipated into a game. We realize he was smarter about the entire affair than we realized.

As the case unravels, Beachum's life goes in the tank. The rosy new job is looking iffy, then gone. So is his position with the DA's office. Nothing is going right for him. No matter where he looks for evidence he can't find it. The wife is brain dead and can't testify. The murder weapon can't be found. Video cameras don't show enough. He's beating his head against the wall to find the answers.

Act III starts when, in the court room, Crawford, acting as his own counsel, moves for a motion to have the charges dismissed for lack of evidence. There is no evidence except some fake evidence the lover/detective has concocted and our hero has to decide. Use it or drop the case. He stays on the right path. The case is dropped and Crawford goes free.

To that point, I wasn't entirely sure where the story was going. Two clever guys matching wits. Who would prevail? Would justice prevail? Would greed take over? It turns out justice prevails, maybe.

Clever becomes cocky. Crawford has his wife taken off life support. He thinks double jeopardy will protect him, but that only applies to the same crime, the same charge. His first trial was about second-degree murder, the subsequent one is a different charge. Oops. Not so smart. I didn't believe it, but I'm sure it could happen.

I expected a different ending given the connection between the detective and the gun. I was even hoping for Crawford to outsmart everyone. Nope. I thought the detective/lover would have been charged etc. even though we saw what happened in the early scenes.

I was definitely caught up in this movie. Gosling's performance was incredible. You wouldn't know he was Canadian. Hopkins was strong and believable.

David Strathairn plays a small role as the DA and odd that I watch two movies on the same night and he's in both of them. This film and THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES.

The ending cheats in the usual way. The cocky, secure bad guy spills his guts to the authorities at end thus dooming himself. Given what got us to this point, a better ending was required.

The films ends with the notion Crawford will be convicted this time, but there's an argument it won't happen. What's the evidence against him? His second confession. The first wasn't allowed as evidence, maybe the second won't either. And the murder weapon? It seems just as tainted as the other evidence. Given what happened in the first trial, it wouldn't surprise me if he was acquitted or the charges are dropped.

Posted 2009/03/02 at 20h58ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 1, 2009

The Prisoner of Zenda. Feature film. (1952, 95 mins) IMDB

...A fascinating study in remaking a classic film....

he film is a remake of a 1937 film of the same name. A study of the two films is an interesting lesson in filmmaking.

The original film is based on a novel. I can't say anything about the adaptation. The second film is basically the same script but with different directors and actors. There are few changes between the first and second film. The dialogue is virtually identical. The scenes and even the direction is the same, but they aren't the same film. How is that possible? Three characters.

David Niven plays a small role as a junior advisor to the king in the first film and he stands out because he's David Niven. The same role exists in the second film with an actor I don't recognize and well, he seemed invisible.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. played Hentzau probably the only way he could with flamboyance, a laugh and over the top, but it was fun to watch. James Mason is an entirely different person and the performance is more menacing and devoid of humour. Both effective but I preferred Fairbanks even though I have nothing against Mason and have enjoyed his other performances.

Then there is the brother to the king who wants to be king. The minute Raymond Massey shows up on screen we feel the evil of the character and it continues until his final scene in the movie. The actor in this role in the second movie seemed invisible and at best a warm towel.

For the casting choices and acting alone, I argue the first version is a much better film, but not entirely. The sword fight at the end between Mason and Granger is one of the best in film. At least pre-CGI films. It's much better than what happened in the first film, but it's not enough to compensate for the other deficiencies.

In William Goldman's book WHAT LIE DID I TELL? he states that you have a chance if you have: a good script, the right director and it's cast properly. If those ingredients aren't in place at the start of production, then the film will surely fail. Having watched these films back to back, I can see what he means. Same script, same directing but different casting and they aren't the same films.

The rest of the casting works. Granger for Coleman. Kerr for Carroll. Louis Calhern for G. Audrey Smith. They all worked.

Mary Astor is believable in the first film and Jane Greer in the second, but each different. To me, Greer catches and hold your eye. She has an intriguing look with a sense of power and command within. Astor is more plain looking and vulnerable. The sense of desperation of the character is entirely believable. Greer works in this small role, but she deserved staring roles.

Posted 2009/03/01 at 17h57ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

Sunday, March 1, 2009

The Prisoner of Zenda. Feature film. (1937, 101 mins) IMDB

...A charming, interesting, well-made film....

onald Colman plays an Englishman who has come to a fictional European country (think Germany or Austria of 100 years ago) to enjoy some time fishing. He's immediately mistaken for the crown prince who looks exactly like him because he plays both roles.

Madelaine Carroll is a princess. While she has a small role in the film, each moment she's on screen is a pleasure because he was beautiful and captivating.

C. Audry Smith plays a grandfatherly-senior advisor to the king. David Niven, in a small role, plays the junior advisor.

Raymond Massey, in an amazing performance, plays the king's older brother. He is a villain to the core. He believes he should be king and not his brother, but they won't let him be king because they had different mothers.

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. plays an aristocrat aligned with the brother, but plays the role with whim and humour. Quite a contrast.

As for the story. Our hero, the commoner, arrives in the fictional country to go fishing. Immediately people stop and stare because as we learn he looks identical to the crown prince whose coronation is tomorrow.

After his arrival and out in the wilderness, he happens to meet the crown prince and his two advisors. They hit it off because of their identical look and learn they share common ancestors. They are cousins.

Invited back to the lodge, the king-to-be and company drink and eat and toast. Seems the king drinks a bit too much, and, well, the evil brother has spiked his wine with something and he passes out.

Morning comes and the state of affairs is in ruins. The king is not conscious and can't attend his coronation. His brother has drafted documents to take over as reagent. If a king isn't crowned, he'll never be crowned and Michael will win.

Enter the inciting incident. The advisors convince our hero to be the king for the purposes of the coronation. Just one day. He reluctantly agrees. The king is crowned and Michael's plan is foiled until he hatches a new one.

The brother orders the Fairbanks character to kidnap the real king. As a result our hero gets to play king for longer than he bargained. Enter the princess.

I should note, everyone who meets him doesn't suspect a thing.

Our hero and our love interest hit it off and the love story of this film has started. Lots of scenes in Act II are between them, yet, the princess doesn't have a great deal of screen time.

The game of identities can't continue. Our hero wants the princess and will stay on as king to keep her. The brother wants to take over and get rid of the king. The advisors want the true king to be in place. The Fairbanks character wants to gain some wealth and power from the happenings. Something has to give.

The intrigue that develops is quite convoluted and dynamic but ultimately leads to a showdown where our hero goes to the castle to rescue the king and does.

The brother is murdered. The Fairbanks character stabs him with a knife. Guards are killed. Then the big fight. Our hero and Fairbanks in a sword fight. Effective and entertaining until our hero gains the upper hand. Fairbanks jumps out of the window to fight another day. Our hero cuts the rope to allow the draw bridge down and reinforcements to enter. The king is saved and is able to rule as if nothing happened.

The film ends with our hero meeting with the princess. They are madly in love, but she must put that aside for the good of her country. No happy ever after.

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) is an enjoyable film with lively characters. The quality of it all stands up some seventy plus years after it was made.

Posted 2009/03/01 at 17h57ET in Movie Commentary. [View single entry]

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