Caption Contest 2
 
Not due to the underwhelming success of the last caption contest, but due to the fact that sometime pictures seem to defy their humble origins and move into that rare space where even a 1,000 words would have to be spent before even a portion of the useful things that could be said were thought or uttered.  Also, calling it a contest when there was nothing to win other than the adulation of blog surfers might have been presumptuous.  Still, I found another one I just have to fling atcha.
 
Hit me with your best shot:
 

A Peak

One of the most beautiful songs ever written and performed is Gerry Rafferty's "Whatever's Written in Your Heart." His voice has a plaintive beauty, singing about love and loss while acknowledging to his paramour past that she has to follow her heart, regardless. He's held aloft by a gorgeous chorus during the refrains. An understated solo instrument echoes in the background - which could be a lute, a guitar, a keyboard, I've never been able to identify it - during the instrumental bridge, which matches perfectly the loneliness of the song.

It can be found on the classic album "City to City" which also contains another best of all time song, "Baker Street."

Have a listen to "Whatever's Written in Your Heart."

The Butterfly Effect

I really want to 'splain why I feel the way I do about this movie, so after the short and sweet sour review, we will go into spoiler mode. You can probably see the alert from here.

Anyway, Roger Ebert - who's about the only movie critic I read for the actual review of the movie - says a critic's job is to review the film itself (was it effective, well-done, artistic, skillful, good plot, etc.) and not necessarily the topic of the film. Yes, if the topic of a film is repugnant, you should say so, but you have to be careful in judging a film thus, because what may be repugnant to you many not be to others. Now, if you are a constant reader, you know I break this rule all the time. But I typically break that rule when nothing, such as a good quality production, can save a film, or conversely when sloppiness can't diminish its grandeur.

This film walks right down the razor's edge in that context. For a film presenting its story, this movie is very well done. The acting is outstanding. Since this is a movie about shifting timelines that have different outcomes for the characters, each actor has to portray their character in vastly different states, sometimes through just scant seconds of screen time via body language and costume, and boy do they bat it out of the park in that regard. In a technical and mechanical sense, the film is top-notch. The direction's sharp and the story is riveting.

But, the actual events depicted are an entirely different matter. Wow. Gotta tell ya. This baby is just mind garbage. The writers (at least the originators of the story) are either very young and don't know any better (extreme youth doesn't offer the perspective or wisdom to consider how some topics may play to the more experienced (or more innocent), hence the shabbiness of many first-time novels by people in their early 20s), or the writers are morally bankrupt in their ability to discern what comprises appropriate topic matter for a film of this nature, or at least lack the skills to frame such matter so that it doesn't sink the narrative. So, away we go...


*** SPOILER ALERT ***
ALL MATTERS OF THE PLOT, INCLUDING THE ENDING, ARE DISCUSSED -- READ NO FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO KNOW

(Scroll down to continue)























Ashton Kutcher plays Evan, who has the ability to go back into the past by re-experiencing that moment through any recording of the events, such as a journal he's kept his entire life. Evan's childhood buddies, Kay the quasi-girlfriend, Tommy her brother, and Lenny the fat kid, go through a series of over the freakin' top and leaving-the-stratosphere traumas. They go through them ALL conceivable childhood traumas actually. Here's a quick, partial list:

- Kay and Tommy's father forces Evan and Kay to have sex when they're about 8 or 9 year old, and tapes it, while Tommy looks on.
- All four kids decide to play a prank after Tommy finds a stick of dynamite. They light it and have Lenny deposit it in someone's extravagant mailbox (that looks just like the main house). Just afterwards the woman who lives there returns home and decides to check for mail with her toddler. Just as the toddler lifts the top of the mailbox, the dynamite goes off. We don't see the aftermath, but we do see the effect it has on the four kids. Lenny essentially has to be sent to the funny farm for a while.
- After the above events, Tommy, who's messed up himself from his abusive, pedophile father, sees Kay and Evan kissing, which pops a fuse in his young head. He decides to teach Evan a lesson by burning his beloved dog to death. Lenny has just come back from the Thorazine ward, when Evan and Kay lure him from his room to go for a walk. They come upon Tommy putting the doggie in a sack, dousing it with lighting fluid, and then fetching a torch from a fire he has set. Though the three try to prevent the horror, Fido fries.
- Tommy, though only a shrimpy 8 or 9 years old, beats a teenager who mocks him in a movie theater with one of those metal poles used to create velvet-rope people corrals, to show Evan and Kay how tough he is and that Evan is next if he doesn't leave his sister alone.

And these are just some of the horrors we witness directly. Many other terrible things occur off-screen that we are only told about. Tommy ends up in prison after killing someone, frinstance.

This is just the setup of the movie, folks. It really kicks into gear when the adult Evan accidentally discovers his gift for returning to the past and being able to influence events. Kay has ended up a twitching mess who works as a waitress in a greasy spoon, as Evan discovers when he goes looking for her to get some answers about the past. See, when the events above occurred, Evan would pass out and "lose time" and not remember the climax (sorry) of each of the events. We find out that this is when his adult self came back from the future and took over. Before he knows this, he goes back to ask Kay what happened as a result of dynamiting the mailbox. This sets Kay off, and later psycho Tommy calls Evan to say Kay killed herself after Evan's questions, so Tommy is going to kill him for it. This provokes Evan to start returning to the past to try to fix things, in a sort of Bedazzled meets Se7en horror show. Every time he tries to fix it, something else in their lives has one wrong, often making things worse.

I'll not delve into all the horrors that happen in those alternate timelines. However, if pedophilia, baby killing, and puppy torching weren't enough to contend with, in one of the timelines, the one that starts out the most optimistic, Evan ends up in prison, getting an "ass pounding," as it is so vividly put in the now-classic Office Space. This particular episode ends when Evan goes into the skinheads' cell to offer them conciliatory blowjobs in order to join their gang, the most powerful one in the prison. He is really there to retrieve his journal so he can hop back into the past and hopefully avoid prison in another timeline. As Evan is performing his initiatory task, his cellmate, who has been duped into believing Evan has powers from God (the cellmate is very religious), closes the cell door. Evan then stabs the skinheads in the little skinhead, grabs his journal, and flees into the past just as the most of the other prisoners break into the cell to kill him.

Well, Evan eventually tries everything. Literally. He returns to every horrific episode to fix things and none of them does (thus we get to revisit some of the nastier events again and again). He comes to the conclusion that everything happened because Kay didn't go live with her mother, and thus stays with her evil father, because she wanted to stay where Evan was because she's always loved him. (K, let's pause right here. What mother lets BOTH of her children stay with an alcoholic, abusive dad simply because the very young daughter wants to for unnamed reasons.) Evan decides that he has to be removed from Kay's life so that she'll stay with her mom and everything will be OK.

Here we branch into the two endings available on the DVD, one the "theatrical cut" and the other the "director's cut." Common to both versions is the information that Evan's dad and granddad had this ability, too, and both ended up in the cuckoo's nest. Also, a gypsy palm reader discovers that Evan has no lifeline, which causes her to declare that Evan "doesn't have a soul" and that he "wasn't meant to be here." (Which, if you're counting, is unintentionally funny. Evan thus far has been a victim of pedophilia, baby snuffing, pet torching, sodomy, (oh, and his own dad trying to kill him when he visits him in the psyche ward - I've left that one out so far) and now he's told he doesn't even have a soul. The guy just can't get a break, huh?)

In the director's cut, we find out that Evan's mom had had two miscarriages before she had him, and is her "miracle baby." Evan somehow gets his hands on a film of his mother giving birth to him, and through his gift, he hops into himself in the womb. We see him open his eyes as a fetus and then proceed to strangle himself with the umbilical chord. We cut to the mother screaming, "No! Not again!" Seemingly pre-birth infant suicide has plagued her attempts to be a mother in the past. We then see her sitting forlorn in her hospital room afterward, but, through the narrative of a collage, we see everyone else has been saved from their terrible, previous fates. Credits roll. At which point my wife looked at me and telegraphed with her eyes that my input into video selection has been suspended for at least a couple weeks.

In the theatrical version, Evan goes back to the day he met Kay, at a kid's party of some sort. He makes a point of leaning over and ferociously whispering to her, "I hate you and I don't want you near me ever again." She walks away, crying and hurt. Again, everyone is saved (same collage as the other version). Granted, this is only a little less silly than strangling oneself in the womb, but at least it's not as grotesque. In my opinion it's a better ending not only for that, but because it accomplishes the same thing as the womb-snuffing version, and it doesn't leave mom a hollow shell - everyone is truly saved in this version.

Still, the events you have to witness for what is essentially a light entertainment completely ruin the film; they're just too heavy for the larger topic. It's like trying to carry rocks with a wet Kleenex. It would be like ending It's a Wonderful Life like it was The Sixth Sense. "Well, George, yes the world is a better place for your having been in it, and yes you still have Zuzu's petals, but you succeeded in killing yourself when you jumped off that bridge. The bell's ringing because of your ghostly presence brushing against it, not because I got my wings. Merry Christmas!"

Freaks.

Joe Bob Briggs, where are you?

Hey, the Bush administration is floating the idea that they would want to postpone the presidential election if America is hit with a terrorist attack around that time. I have always thought that this administration was going to try something like this (shame apparently isn't in their makeup), so I'm not surprised by the concept, but I am surprised they have attempted to float it this early.

Since bringing it up early will allow those opposed to the idea to organize and more effectively fight it, which evil Karl Rove would have considered, there is probably another reason they have brought it up now. Is the administration trying to tape a "kick me" sign on America's back? In other words, are they sending a message to terrorists that if they were going to attack, this administration would prefer it happen at election time?

In related news, since it's out of print in hardcopy, you can get Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here here.

Caption Contest!



Use the comments area to write a caption for this picture. (How could you not? This picture just begs for it!)

Lately...

Some flicks I've seen recently:

Garfield
The whole family was underwhelmed by the fat cat whose day in the orbit of fad planet is long gone. Believe it or not, Garfield was subversive and fun when it first hit the comics. In a way, it was a precursor to the later great ones like "Bloom County" (now thankfully resurrected as "Opus"), "Calvin and Hobbes" and "The Far Side" in that it got away with jokes that the established comics were too timid or too vanilla to attempt. Then Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, handed over the reins to a team of people who produced it for him, and so "Blondie" (another team effort as the original creators are dead) is often more cutting edge. The creators of the other three comics listed don't attempt to hide their disdain at such a move (before one sheds the mortal coil, at least). As for the movie, I had hoped that either it would be so bad or so completely messed up by Hollywood hacks (ala the two Schumacher Batman films) that it would be fun train-wreck-wise. Beyond hope was that they had captured the spirit of the first few years of Garfield and would be kind of daring and iconoclastic. Well, they did neither. This is a safe, down the middle of the road kind of movie. As a matter of fact, it's perfect for really young kids, say 3 to 5, as the plot is simple enough for them to follow, and there's absolutely nothing worse than the application of a shock collar to Odie in one scene (which would have been played for laughs and not meanness in the original comics). Garfield, actually, is a lot like a toddler in that he never wants to leave his cul-de-sac out of fear of the big bad world. He exists to eat, sleep with his teddybear, and hang out with John. Little ones will relate to Garfield immensely.

The only fun moment in the movie for us didn't occur in the movie. At one point the main human characters have a brief, chaste kiss. Some young one spontaneously and whole-heartedly bleated, "Ewwww!" into the quiet of the theatre (it's a quiet movie, too, btw). We all laughed and laughed.


Spiderman
Ok, I think the critical hype is a bit over the top, but this is a darn good movie. Just don't walk in expecting the first Star Wars, Indiana Jones, or The Matrix, though it is better than the X-men flicks, and is even slightly better than the first Spiderman movie. Personally, I thought Daredevil did as good of a job of illuminating the personal angst of the super hero himself, but so many folks are allergic to Ben Affleck that that fact scotched the flick for some, and the very graphic violence harmed it in the kiddie market. (Super hero flicks have just gotta be a soft PG-13, Mr./Ms. movie exec.; that's the primary audience, even if a few of us nominal adults wouldn't miss one.)

I admit this is one of the first super hero flicks since Superman to honestly move me, and consider I saw Superman when I was a teen and more susceptible to such a moment in that kind of a movie. (You've seen this moment in the previews so I don't consider this a spoiler:) When a crowd of people lift Spidey over their heads as though he were crowd-surfing a mosh pit and move him along to safety, it's touching. And there are many other nice humans moments I won't spoil.

Though I have been a big fan of Kirsten Dunst since Interview with a Vampire, she's looking kind of stoned these days. And I mean really wasted. Typically, they can hide an actor's impairment - think of Carrie Fisher in The Empire Strikes Back. The reason Han Solo says, "I know," to Princess Lea's confession of love is that she'd flubbed the line so many times, he had spent the entire day being lowered into the dry ice smoke of the freezing unit and was tired of it. Everyone - except Carrie who was off doing another line - agreed the ad-lib was better, so they kept it. When you watch that movie, can you tell how ripped Carrie is throughout? No. Therefore, I was shocked when it looked like Kirsten was going to space out, giggle, and then ask Toby if he was gonna eat that. (<--- Standard stoner joke, don't worry if ya don't get it.) Watch the tabloids for Kirsten's first rehab trip. Maybe she can hang with Mary-Kate!

Along Came Polly
Caught this one on DVD. It was merely OK. We laughed at a few scenes, but then most of those were in the previews. It is now time for Ben Stiller to do a bad indie movie to get back some cred or he's gonna be more typecast than the cast of Star Trek. And, still, 50 First Dates was way funnier and was more of a well-rounded movie than Polly. See it instead.

Secret Window
Johnny Depp can't manage to save this one, though I am impressed at his ability to play a relatively normal guy. You know that it must be a stretch for him. So, as a fan of both Depp and King (though I loathe the character actor John Turturro), I'm disappointed that this wasn't better. It's not even slightly scary. The most horrific moment is supposed to be when he finds his dog skewered on the front porch (and if you think that's a spoiler after you're introduced early on to his sweet, blind dog, then this must be the first movie you've ever seen, and I apologize). And I know there's a demographic that thinks violence to animals is the worst possible thing anyone can do, but when the deaths of actual people are dealt with almost comically, I just have to wonder about priorities. That said, any given episode of The Twighlight Zone handled this kind of material with much more finesse. Skip this one, unless it's being broadcast on TV for free, you're trapped on your couch out of lethargy, the remote's too far away, and sleeping just isn't an option.

Us and Them

True music lovers are not reducible to a binary "there are two kinds of people in the world" categorization, but there are centers of gravity and faultlines that can define swaths of us. One of those faultlines appears to run through the Velvet Underground and the New York scene that spawned them. Those that like the VU tend to be what I'll label here as "the intellects," who approach music for the lyrics, or what the band is "about," or how they fit as a puzzle piece into the larger scene (how different they are); the music itself is almost secondary. Then there are the people who I'll call "the romantics" who could care less about coolness factor, statements, or other esoteric stuff that has nothing to do with the music, and are attracted to the sonic landscape created by musicians; great lyrics, beautiful expressions of the human condition are all gravy - greatly appreciated gravy for sure - but the song has got to have a sound, a groove, an emotion, an atmosphere, something that rises above and becomes something greater then the sum of its parts. The "romantics" like myself tend to be very eclectic and make tape/CD mixes that might contain Hank Williams, Kiss, Tom Jones, Nirvana, Electric Light Orchestra, Weird Al Yankovic, Mighty Mighty Boss Tones, and Tomita all on one CD, and oddly the mix hangs together in a sonic thematic sense that you can't quite put your finger on.* The "intellects" tend to listen to music the same way most read books: they put it on, sit down at full attention, hands on knees, and listen to it in its entirety, as the artist meant you to hear it. Consequently they don't listen to music much. Standing up and shaking their butts once in a while is right out.

I've noticed that no "romantics" like VU and nearly all "intellects" do. To me, their sound is flat (their worst offense), Lou can't sing (not that not being able to sing is a problem, but his one-note range really doesn't go very far), and the lyrics are full of puss and bile. (Also, nearly any group assembled like the Monkees has to win me over with at least one fantastic song before I can grant them actual band status. VU was assembled by Andy Warhol as one of his "projects." And, still, "Sweet Jane" was done way better by The Cowboy Junkies.) The "intellects" talk about how groundbreaking the VU were; or about how the thin, minimalist sound WAS the point; or that they wrote about junkies and queers, which no one else would touch, and so on. But they almost never mention how a particular song or melody moved them. It tends to be what they represented moreso than what they played for the "intellects."

Also, it may have something do with their being from New York. Many many people, especially those on the coasts, ascribe way too much cachet to art/fashion/products simply because they hail from New York. Most of us in the flyover zones, as we are dubbed by the Coasters, put "and it's from NY!" stuff through a filter first, just to see if really has merit, or is just another big apple empty hype. But, since many folks from all over praise the VU, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt here.

All of this occurred to me as I was reading this mash note to Husker Du's 80's opus Zen Arcade. Granted the album has its merit and charm (if you consider bandsaw guitars played at a land speed record clip in oceans of feedback bracketed by snarled lyrics about hate, death and angst charming), and it is a classic in its genre, but it's not something you'd want to buy blindly. It's also of a very specific mood, and you are not going to want to play this on Sunday morning with the paper and coffee, or at the party, or whilst on an excursion to the beach. No, you put this howler on while loading guns for the apocalypse, or during one of those self-pity benders in the wee black hours of the endless night, or to roust fugitives from the complex. So, I wondered why the author, Patrick Smith, was slobbering on Zen Arcade like it was Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or Graceland (or even Nevermind) until he eventually gets around to the obligatory genuflecting to the VU. Then it all made sense. Zen Arcade was considered one of the coolest, most sincere, alt/hardcore efforts in its day (or ever), so surely the Great Pumpkin would not pass up their pumpkin patch if he existed. But the vast majority of us who bought the thing listened to it a couple times, maybe remarked on how cool it was that it was printed on virgin vinyl,** and then we put it away only to take it out again maybe once just to freak out the children and/or the dog.

I believe most casual music fans are more of the "romantic" stripe than of the "intellect," which explains why rock critics' taste so rarely match that of the general public. Almost all rock critics anymore are of the "intellect" vein. Only the late Lester Bangs seemed to be one of us "romantics." (If anyone knows of a critic who appears to be a "romantic," please alert me.) Hence, most rock critics these days are puzzled as to why the band The Strokes (from New York!) haven't caught on like they predicted they would. Well, they sound a LOT like the VU. Mystery solved.

Most of the rest of us like Jet ("Are You Gonna Be My Girl?") or, even if we won't admit it when sober or in polite company, The Darkness ("I Believe in a Thing Called Love").

*TLD: For instance, I was slapping some CDs in the player once, and I turned to my wife and asked if it were OK if I played some tunes for a while. She said it depended on what I was going to play. I showed them to her and she asked if I was going to randomize them, and I said yes. I'm not really in the mood for that, she said, and suggested I play some of my mix CDs. I asked her what the difference was between songs randomly picked by the player and ones I put together on a mix. She said that I somehow always put songs together that complemented each other and the transition from one song to the next was always pleasant and made some sort of musical sense compared to a jumble of random songs. I take my compliments where I can get them, so I decided to be flattered. I have been told this a few times in my life, actually, so I've chosen to believe it.

**TLD: Ah, virgin vinyl. I still get an endorphin rush at those words. Most of the vinyl used to make records was recycled from previous printings or from failed shipments that were returned to the companies. It was melted down with the labels on, and thus the paper and any dust or dirt on the surface became part of the next record that was printed on it. Usually, this made no difference in the initial sound of the record, but it contributed greatly to its deterioration. Virgin vinyl was vinyl that had never been used before, and when you hold a record made of it up to the light, you can see light through it - it's translucent. When the needle passes along the groove while a record is playing, the vinyl actually melts at the contact point for a brief moment, which after time causes deterioration in the groove and thus in the sound. Virgin vinyl is more elastic and will snap back to its original shape better and more often than standard vinyl. Hence, it was popular with archivists and collectors, like me. And it's purty to look at, too. Factoid: Most 45s were made with virgin vinyl because they tended to get played over and over a lot, like in jukeboxes, and the only way they would last is if they were made from virgin vinyl. When you hold them up to the light, most of them are a deep, translucent red.

I liked this passage so much, I just had to share it with ya:

     Granny Sugars believed in bargaining with God. She called Him "that old rug merchant."
     Before every poker game, she promised to God to spread His holy word or to share her good fortune with orphans in return for a few unbeatable hands. Throughout her life, winnings from card games remained a significant source of income.
     Being a hard-drinking woman with numerous interests in addition to poker, Granny Sugars didn't always spend as much time spreading God's word as she promised Him that she would. She believed that God expected to be conned more often than not and that He would be a good sport about it.
     You can con God and get away with it, Granny said, if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next.
     He'll also cut you some slack if you're astonishingly stupid in an amusing fashion. Granny claimed that this explains why uncountable millions of breathtakingly stupid people get along just fine in life.
     Of course, in the process, you must never do harm to others in any serious way, or you'll cease to amuse Him. Then payment comes due for the promises you didn't keep.
     In spite of drinking lumberjacks under the table, regularly winning at poker with stone-hearted psychopaths who didn't like to lose, diving fast cars with utter contempt for the laws of physics (but never while intoxicated), and eating a diet rich in pork fat, Granny Sugars died peacefully in her sleep at the age of seventy-two. They found her with a nearly empty snifter of brandy on the nightstand, a book by her favorite novelist turned to the last page, and a smile on her face.
     Judging by all available evidence, Granny and God understood each other pretty well.

- From Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

In the Back of the Rack, on the Cheap

As the summer holidays and long weekends drape over the tent pole of the season, hopefully you'll find some extra hours to idle away, even after you've spent time in the sun, hanging with the clan, and doing the odd chore. If you happen across some of those golden, happy hours, and all the latest releases are already rented, here are some wonderful older movies that I bet you haven't seen:


The Frisco Kid
Back in the days of the Wild West, Gene Wilder stars as a Rabbi who is charged with leaving the Old World and setting up a congregation in the New World, in a place called San Francisco. He suspects it's somewhere on the East Coast, and figures he'll ask directions when he gets there. Imagine his surprise. Harrison Ford co-stars as a bandit who ends up accompanying the Rabbi on his voyage. This is the first time Ford got to show his comedy chops. This one's OK for mature children (say, 13), as there is some western-style violence and some language (the word "tits" is employed in a classic line, for instance). Totally charming and one of my grandma's favorite movies.


Jack's Back
James Spader plays the role of a lifetime as a doctor who figures out that all the gristly killings happening lately are reenactments of the original Jack the Ripper murders. Spader has always had an amazing range, and he pulls all of it out here. I guarantee this movie will have at least TWO huge twists you will never see coming, so by all means don't research this one first or read anything (else) about it on the web. Due to the subject matter, this one's appropriate for the 16 and older crowd.


Boondock Saints
Two Irish brothers inadvertently shake up the power structure of the neighborhood's mob bosses, becoming local heroes. Like Spiderman (though they have no super powers other than a killer brogue), they reluctantly assume the mantle of their new responsibilities. But these guys are class A fuckups, so things often don't go as planned. This is a blend of clever dialogue, slapstick, mixed with a bit of Tarantino-esque hyperviolence. A highlight is Willem Dafoe's depiction of an FBI profiler who's tortured over his admiration for the "saints," and his drive to do his job. The depiction of his doing his profiling voodoo, reconstructing the acts of the "saints," is some of the most original and mesmerizing filmmaking I've seen. (Oh, and this is also one of the few times where a character's homosexuality didn't feel gratuitous or trendily politically correct.)


Bedazzled (Original Version)
Dudley Moore and Peter Cook wrote and starred in this comedy of a man (Moore) who makes a deal with the Devil (Cook) in exchange for 7 wishes. To cancel a wish, Dudley must blow a raspberry (it's simple: just put your tongue between your lips and blow), which just keeps getting funnier. There is one brief, almost hidden, hard-to-pick-out flash of breasts in a mirror, but other than that it is OK for kids, even if they don't follow half of the jokes. They will especially enjoy the animated segment where Moore becomes a fly who can't blow his raspberry because he's choking on bug spray. For me, one of the more charming aspects is the attention to detail on the Devil's spreading of mischief. As he's going about other business, he casually intercepts things on their way to stores, putting big scratches across record albums and cutting a random buttons off of dress shirts. Mystery solved, eh?


Dazed and Confused
For those of us who attended high school in the late 70s, this is our American Graffiti. Everything is completely dead-on correct here: the clothes, the hair, the cars, the music, the drugs, the lingo, you name it. I am completely transported every time I watch this gem. This is one of Richard Linklater's early films; you know him as the director of the great current hit starring Jack Black, School of Rock. You'll recognize a raft of actors who got their start with this film: Ben Affleck, Parker Posey, and Matthew McConaughey, who - as the guy who's graduated but still hangs with the high school kids - has the great line: "That's what I like about these high-school girls; I keep getting older, but they stay the same age." There's some language, but it's realistic - an earmark of Linklater's films - so it's appropriate for 13 and over.


Zero Effect
Bill Pullman is goofball private detective named Daryl Zero. Ben Stiller is his gopher/lawyer/assistant. Detective Zero is the best detective around, smooth when he's on the job, can solve just about any mystery. However, when he's not out doing his thing, he's startlingly neurotic and weird. Stiller stands out in an early example of what he does best, the exasperated nice guy in the middle of events he didn't create. This one's a pretty solid "R," so 16 and over is best.


Commenters, what say you? Got any good sleepers to foist upon us for those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer?

Mystic River

Here I sit scratching my head over all falderal. I mean, Mystic River was a good movie. But it did not live up to the hype, which is not its fault. Still, had I gone in cold, I would have said it was medium good, say three and a half stars on a five star scale.

I waited a while to watch it, waiting for the right mood, etc., because I just cannot waltz into movies where I know a child dies, or is even just hurt badly, anymore. And that's been since I had one, not since I lost one. So, the story's gotta be pretty spectacular for me to go on that little walk through hell. In other words, it's gotta be on the level of Sophie's Choice for me to endure that kind of a plotline.

The fault line of "too far" vs "just enough" is almost directly over The Sixth Sense. When you don't know what's going on in that movie, Haley Joel Osment's extreme distress is heard to bear, but when all is revealed, it's actually about the perfect tension level. As a matter of fact, all of Shyamalan's movies are like that. He hits the perfect note so that parents don't have to squirm (too much - or at least for child-in-peril reasons) throughout the movie.

Over the line by just a redhead is Mel Gibson's Ransom. Even though the boy is OK eventually, the fact that he endures what he does makes it hard to take. And when Mel goes for the cheap seats and freaks during one memorable scene on a balcony overlooking the city, his agony is so palpable it's almost too real. I nearly puked in empathy.

What got praised in Mystic River was the acting. And, by golly, it was just OK. Nothing too phenomenal, imvho. I still think Mel's anguish outdid Spicoli's - I mean, Sean's - by a pretty fair stretch. Of course, Meryl's (Sophie's) is the current high water mark, which will most likely never be washed away. Like a lot of folks have said when discussing the acting in the flick, perhaps Kevin Bacon will be recognized as someone as good as the rest of the other "A-listers" and thus get more heavyweight roles - which will make the game "Seven Degrees of Bacon" too easy to play. Tim Robbins officially looks older than his SO, Susan, which is amazing as she is over a decade his senior. Kind of makes you wonder what in the hell happened to him.

So, I liked Mystic River, but did not come away with a lasting impression. If you were to mention the title to me in about 5 years, I'll probably wonder vaguely if it's a song I heard once.

And now we go into the spoiler section. I don't have any postscript after the spoiler part, so surf away now if you've not seen Mystic Sniveler.

**** MONDO SPOILER ALERT ****














Also what mitigated the child-in-peril part was the girl was 19 years old and about to elope to Vegas with her love muffin. The previews give you the impression it's a little kid who's killed. And yes, no matter their age, your children are still your babies and you will care as much, but for fiction it just has a different tenor once they've reached adulthood.

Also, it comes out that her murder was simply a fuck-up. Two kids were playing with a handgun and somehow manage to fire it into the windshield of the girl's oncoming car, and rather than help her, the kids beat her to death to hide their tracks. The misdirection of who really killed her feels like as much of a cheap shot as the actual fatal one.

I've read a few of LeHane's stories now, and they all have that not-quite-what-you-expected flow to them, and they all produce that same sensation of being a little ripped-off by the actual outcome. I tend to prefer Nelson DeMille in this genre, as most of his have a payoff that exhilarates rather than making you mumble, "Well, hell..." to yourself.