From: keyser72@mac.com Subject: Date: April 21, 2005 3:53:51 PM CDT Hankblog: November 2004

Monday, November 29, 2004

Ick!!!

From Peter King's Monday Morning Quarterback column:

FACTIOD THAT MAY ONLY INTEREST ME

Next to the scoreboard in the end zone at the Metrodome is an advertising panel for Spam. It's evidently a new way to market Spam, one of the great meats of my 59-cent-dinner-off-campus Ohio University experience. The ad: "At home or away. The new one-slice pouch." Spam in a pouch. Now there's a snack we can all believe in.

Ew!

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Poker Update/Warning

First a note: if you've clicked on the links I have provided for the Fantasy Poker League recently, you may have gotten what appears to be a dead link. They've had some trouble with their web service provider, and are looking to transition to a new server.

That having been said, an update: Went to Ringers to play late on Wednesday night, playing a hunch out. The hunch was good. None of the regulars I play with were there, all having taken off for the Thanksgiving Day holiday. I finished fourth on the late tourney. Which means that for at least a brief while, if you check the standings at the website you'll see me in first place for at least a week :-). Yay me!

Update: They're making the transition to the new server, and you can see my glory here.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Poker update

I had a third place showing in the Fantasy Poker League at Ringers Sports Lounge this last Wednesday. You can go to the Fantasy Poker League here and select the leaderboard for Texas and scroll down to see how I am doing :-).

Could make some hay out of this, yet!

Teen Angst:

I always thought it was a sign that I had gotten older or moved into demographic adulthood when I stopped relating to or caring about teen movies. The teen movies of my youth still carry a lot of emotional weight with me. I still quote from Ferris Bueller's Day Off on many an occasion. I hope to take a tour of some of the same spots they visit in that movie on their day through Chicago when I journey there to visit next month. Likewise, Pretty in Pink and Breakfast Club hold special places in my moviegoing heart, though I can't quite view the former the same way after seeing it get the Mr. Sinus treatment at Alamo earlier this year.

So with that in mind, I didn't think I would get anything out of Mean Girls, a teen comedy released earlier this year. Not only was a shocked to find I enjoyed the film a lot, but was also surprised at some of the sharp observational humor that the film had to offer.

Lindsay Lohan
is Cady Heron, a sixteen year old girl about to embark on her first day in high school. Up to this point in her life Cady had been home schooled while in Africa with her parents, both zoological academics. However, Cady's mother received an offer for tenure with an U.S. university and as a result, Cady finds herself thrown into the urban jungle that is public high school. Her indoctrination into the public school lifestyle includes making friends with goth girl Janis (Lizzy Caplan) and gay teen Damien (Daniel Franzese). It's through these two that Cady ultimately gets introduced to "The Plastics".

The Plastics is the ultimate chic girl clique that everyone in the school wants to be a part of. Assistant babe Gretchen (Lacy Chabert) and ditz Karen (Amanda Seyfried) caddy and cater to the queen bee of the high school social world: Regina George (Rachel McAdams). The Plastics do everything they can to maintain their place atop the food chain, exercising a fair measure of vindictiveness that is both alien to Cady and at the same time vaguely familiar. When Janis and Damien convince Cady to try and infiltrate the Plastics to extract some sort of revenge for Regina's past transgressions against the high school world, Cady finds herself getting a very different kind of education than she expected, and the heart of the movie comes out in the open.

This is not a movie that is going to have you writing home over any acting performances, but it does have a lot of entertainment value to offer. The movie revolves around the four female leads, and while none of them will be mistaken for the second coming of Katherine Hepburn they each hold their own adequately in the roles that are drawn for them. Lohan and McAdams in particular do a very good job of providing a contrast between Regina's queen bee/supreme bitch of the world and Cady's innocent learning the ropes.

The true strength of the movie lies in the script penned by Saturday Night Live regular Tina Fey, who also has a small role as Cady's math teacher Ms. Norbury. The script does an exceptional job of capturing the trials and tribulations of life as a teenager today. There are a couple of sequences that contrast the high school lifestyle with the animal hierarchy in the wild, and under any other circumstances in any other movie it would have played out in a ridiculously silly fashion. Yet in Fey's script the whole thing seems not only natural, but fun and more than a little bit insightful.

The ending of the movie is very formulaic and standard as far as teen movies go. But the whole enterprise is insightful, more than a little fun, and very entertaining for teens and adults both. I think that even if viewing the film with the same degree of skepticism I had going in, anyone watching this is going to find something to take away that they enjoy and will find themselves talking about long after the film is done.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Ok, folks, I'm sorry but...

This has got to be the STUPIDEST F***ING THING I have ever seen.

Bar none.

I need a drink...

Friday, November 12, 2004

Movie Review: The Incredibles
(2004) Starring - Craig T. Nelson, Holly Hunter, Jason Lee, Spencer Fox, Sarah Vowell, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Bird; Director - Bill Bird; Screenplay - Bill Bird; Rated PG for some violence.

Intro
There's a part of me that's compelled to try and one up Websnark's twenty one word review with a four word review of my own.

Oh my F***ING god!!!!

But that would not even begin to scratch the surface of just how amazing this film is. I don't think I could cover it all in 10,000 words, but I will try and find some kind of ground somewhere in the middle to bring it all together.

What is The Incredibles?
Craig T. Nelson voices Mr. Incredible, aka Bob Parr, THE superhero in an unnamed city teeming with them. Mr. Incredible possesses super strength, a love for protecting the city in which he lives, and a passionate love for Elastigirl (Holly Hunter), the super heroine who will become his wife.

When an incident involving an over zealous fanboy named Buddy Pine (Jason Lee) sets in motion a chain reaction of events that forces the retirement of all so called "Supers", Mr. Incredible forces himself to try and adjust to life as a "regular" citizen of the world. Despite the love of his wife Helen/Elastigirl, and their three children, Mr. Incredible longs for the old days when he could make a positive difference in the world in which he lives.

When an opportunity to go back to being a Super presents itself in the form of an offer from a mysterious woman named Mirage (Elizabeth Pena), Mr. Incredible finds he may have bitten off more than he can chew. It's up to the efforts of his wife Elastigirl, their two gifted children Dash (Spencer Fox) and Violet (Sarah Vowell), and family friend Lucious Best, aka Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) to confront the mysterious Syndrome (also Jason Lee) and ultimately save the day.
OK, that all sounds like pretty standard super hero fare. What's so "Incredible" about it?
Oh lord, where to begin with this one. Let's start with the voice/character work.

Craig Nelson as Mr. Incredible is spot on in his portrayal of the character. In essence, he is every bit the do-gooder that Christopher Reeve's Superman was, but weighed down with the burdens and responsibilities of your average, middle-class, middle-American father/husband. As his frustrations with his involuntary "retirement" build up, the portrayal of it as a sort of mid-life crisis is something that's going to resonate with every parent/adult who brings children to see this movie. At the same time, hid frustration at being barred from trying to do good things is painted with wide enough a brush that any child is going to understand why he's frustrated, and root for him to be able to do what he wants to do.

In the same vein, Holly Hunter's Helen Parr/Elastigirl is an everymom that every viewer can relate to. Whereas Mr. Incredible is a big picture type of person, Elastigirl is the mother caught up in the details and how those little things can tear a family apart. As a mother who is quite literally stretched to her limits in every way, Hunter's voice lends a lot of credence and weight to her portrayal of Elastigirl.

In support of these two strong leads, all of the "secondary" characters have a chance to really stand out on their own merits. Fox's Dash Parr is every bit the budding young boy on the verge of starting to find out just what kind of man he could potentially be. Jason Lee comes out of the shadows of being pegged as a Kevin Smith regular and really stands on his own as Buddy Pine, and as Syndrome. He creates his own persona and runs with it beautifully. My personal favorite, Sarah Vowell's Violet comes across as the tortured teenager that she is without laying on the angst too heavily. Each of these characters could easily denigrate into the realm of stereotype. Yet each actor works hard to keep their character from falling into that trap, and really rounds their role out into something uniquely their own.

Even Samuel L. Jackson in limited screen time as Frozone/Lucious has a few choice moments that make you wish he had a whole lot more. And director Brad Bird's supporting contribution as Edna "E" Mode will leave you in stitches.
That's a lot of "super"latives. What about the story?
Brad Bird's script has every bit of the heart that his directorial debut The Iron Giant had and more. This is a story about finding yourself and making peace with what you find there. Every single one of the characters offers a valuable lesson with what they find and whether they decide to learn from those lessons or ignore them instead. The morals that come from that give the movie a degree of poignancy that I found resonated within me even more so than in any of Pixar's previous efforts.

When you combine that with animation that Pixar continues to refine and improve upon, you have a movie going experience that left me breathless both times that I have watched it, and seriously wanting more. I think I could see this film 10 times in a theater and come away with something new, enjoyable, and breathtaking every time.

There's so much attention to detail that for me rounds out the film into something beyond a standard family film. When Violet and Dash each have a moment that for them goes from simply knowing what they are able to do with their powers, to I just what that potential can hold, the moments very nearly brought tears to my eyes. Some may find this gross hyperbole, but I can honestly say that when these two children come to grips with their abilities, for me it was almost like seeing children of my own grow up. That is how attached I became to these characters, and I think it's the truest testament to the things Bird accomplished with his script.

Wow! That's a super sized heaping of praise. Anything about the film you found evil in the least?
Not a single thing. I know that I am coming off as over the top in my praise of this film. But I do not feel I can contain the exuberance I feel for this movie. I felt in conversation with a friend after my first screening that it was not an exaggeration to say that this movie ranks among the best super hero films ever. If Pixar is ever going to contend for a Best Picture Oscar, it should be for this movie, and I think it would be the ultimate the Academy could do in terms of justice, considering the lack of recognition Bird's previous effort in The Iron Giant received from the Academy.
Any other praise you want to pile on?
I don't know that there's anything else left to say. There is no question in my mind that this ranks among the best movies of the year, and ranking it against the other movies that really moved me is going to be very difficult. This one has so many things going for it, ranking it behind anything might be one of the most difficult challenges I will face as a reviewer. That's saying a lot.

Movie Review: I Heart Huckabees

(2004) Starring - Jason Schwartzman, Mark Wahlberg, Jude Law, Naomi Watts, Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Isabelle Huppert; Director - David O. Russell; Screenplay - David O. Russell and Jeff Baena; Rated R for language and some sexual situations.

Intro
I think that it's fair to say that every person goes through some sort of existential crisis at some point in their lives. One asks themselves questions like "Why are we here?", "What am I doing with my life?", "Am I fulfilled?". There are variations on the theme, but the general gist is the same. Resolving these crises is a sort of trial and error endeavor. Some people make career changes. Others find a new lover, or buy a new car, or some other expensive toy. They do something to try and validate the choices they make in life.

What if there were people out there whose sole purpose was to help people resolve these dilemmas? Not psychiatrists or therapists, but "existential detectives". People who would observe our lives in these moments of crises and ask us the probing questions inspired by our behavior to open new doors in our way of looking at things. In doing so, they could help us find the way out of our dilemma and get on with our lives.

This premise is not in fact a project out of a collegiate psychology or philosophy course, but instead the framework the plot of David O. Russell's latest film I Heart Huckabees hangs on. Like a bad suit, this premise hangs loosely, and isn't exactly the best fit.

What is I Heart Huckabees?
Jason Schwartzman plays Albert Markovski, head of a local chapter of an environmental group called the Open Spaces Coalition. Open Spaces is endeavoring to save a marsh that is the prospective home to a new development by the Huckabees Department Store chain. Albert's existential crisis stems from the fact that the Huckabees representative he had been dealing with to try and prevent the development is seemingly moving towards taking over Albert's own movement, in addition to making sure the development proceeds in some fashion.

Brad Strand (Jude Law), the Huckabees rep, seems to have it all. He's successful in his job, and the coopting of the Open Spaces Coalition may be the key to his making it to the big time. He has a beautiful girlfriend in Dawn Campbell (Naomi Watts), the official spokeswoman for Huckabees' entire ad campaign. Everything couldn't be better for Brad.

Albert decides that rather than addressing his larger issues, he needs answers to a curious coincidence in his life involving a gentleman he seems to keep running into. He decides to consult a pair of "existential detectives" to see if they can help him determine the significance of his coincidence. These detectives, Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin), work not only towards giving Albert context for his coincidence, but also understanding for the other crises he's experiencing in his life with the Open Spaces Coalition. Along the way, they hope that Albert's situation may provide help for another client, Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg), who has issues of his own. They're also fighting to stay ahead of a colleague turned rival (Caterine Vauban, played by Isabelle Huppert) who has designs on helping Albert and Tommy with her own philosophy, which is much more nihilistic than that espoused by Bernard and Vivian.

Whew! That's a lot to take in.
Yes it is, and I think that's where I wind up having some serious issues with the film. There's subplots all over the place. It's like playing a game of pickup sticks trying to figure out where everything falls into place and how it all fits together. I can appreciate that that might be part of Russell's intent with this movie. It seems to me that some of what they're trying to convey with the story is that there are no such things as small coincidences, and that we need to make note of everything that happens to us, because we can't foresee how the randomness may impact us in a discernible pattern in the future.

The problem I have is that I think the whole endeavor tries too hard to be cute with the way it ties everything together. The subplot involving Caterine and her rivalry with Bernard and Vivian just doesn't have any resonance with me. When she comes into the middle of both Albert and Tommy's issues, the way it plays out and is resolved just doesn't work for me. And in a movie rife with absurd moments, the ones involving an interaction with Albert and Caterine in the focal marsh just played out for me in a fashion I found to be the height of stupidity. I think I understand what they were trying to do with the scene. I just don't buy an ounce of it.

I also just didn't care much at all for Bernard and Vivian as characters. Hoffman and Tomlin are funny enough in the roles for what is called for. But for my money, I just didn't see that they added much to the story to really make it zing.

Lastly, I just didn't feel anything for Wahlberg's Tommy. His issues, like Albert's, start out bigger than just what we see within the context of the film. When they start to get brought down to a more personal level, I just didn't feel like they came down in a way that resonated with me. Wahlberg has only one truly inspired moment in the film. That's not enough for an actor like him, who while not one of the top tier performers out there, has shown the ability to handle some fairly challenging projects.

That's a lot of the movie you don't seem to like. Anything redeeming about it?
Quite a bit actually.

For starters, Jason Schwartzman as Albert is fantastic. A joy in the vastly underappreciated Rushmore, this movie completely falls to pieces if he isn't compelling as the crux of all the various conflicts that get brought out in the film. He rises to the challenge in a huge way. Albert is without question the most sympathetic character in the entire film. He conveys the way Albert seems to be coming completely unmoored from his emotional bases with the loss of control over Open Spaces in a fashion that makes you sympathetic to his plight, even as his flaws are brought to the fore.

And as a foil for Albert, Jude Law's Brand is an equally compelling study in contrasts to Schwartzman's Albert. The facade of control and confidence he puts up is very nicely torn down in an exchange with Bernard and Vivian, even as Brand makes an attempt to try and take over yet another part of Albert's life (the detectives themselves). Brand could be the most complicated character in the movie, and Law puts it all out there for the audience to see. His transformation from the beginning of the film to the end is very easily the aspect I was most intrigued and entertained by.

Along the same lines, I thought Law's Brand and Naomi Watt's portrayal of Dawn Campbell was the relationship in the film that not only made the most sense, but had the greatest impact on my enjoyment of the film. Brand and Campbell clearly work on a superficial level, because in the beginning, they come off as the most superficial people in the film. But as each character's flaws and true motivations get peeled away and put out on display for the audience, I felt like their more dysfunctional aspects were about as real as anything I've seen of late in terms of relationships. By the end of the film, Campbell I think goes through the starkest transformation of any of the figures we're introduced to, and it's the most compelling for me by far.

Lastly, while I think there are a lot of random interactions between the characters that are just too clever for their own good (the aforementioned scene in the marsh with Albert and Caterine, and the lead in between Albert and Tommy involving rubber exercise balls - don't ask), there are a few "zany" moments that are very genuinely inspired. The exchange between Brand, Campbell, and the two detectives that triggers the beginning of Campbell's transformation is funny, pointed, and in some aspects truly sad. An exchange around a family's dinner table involving Albert and Tommy (Walhberg's best scene) that figuratively and literally goes all over the map likewise had an impact on me as a viewer that left me wanting a whole lot more. I really wish the movie delivered more of it.

So is this a thumbs up or down?
I think this one is about as sideways as I can possibly get on a film. There isn't enough there for me to feel compelled to give it any kind of recommendation as something people need to see. At the same time, there are enough positives in it to make it a kind of intriguing film with some serious potential, even if all of it isn't entirely realized. Which leaves me in a quandary as to whether I could recommend seeing it or not.

What's the number for those detectives again?

Movie Review: Primer
(2004) Starring - Shane Carruth, David Sullivan, Carrie Crawford, Casey Gooden, Anand Upadhyaya; Director - Shane Carruth; Screenplay - Shane Carruth; Rated PG-13 for some language.

Intro
Every once in a while you come across a movie that you really just can't explain and begin to do justice to the thing. It's a comment I've heard quite a bit about I (Heart) Huckabees lately. It was also how I felt about Pi. I mean, how do you really explain a movie that is on a surface level about math, for crying out loud? Never mind that it ultimately all comes back to the one true name of God.

In the latter respect, some of the same things could be said about Primer, a film currently on the art house circuit that really tries to turn your brain into a pretzel. While not as complete a film nor as effectively executed as Pi in my mind, Primer is still an interesting and challenging film that offers some neat discussion opportunities after seeing it.

So what is Primer?
Aaron (Shane Carruth) and Abe (David Sullivan) are a couple of engineers working with a couple of friends from college on various projects in Aaron's garage. Though they have had a couple of minor commercial successes selling some homemade PC cards they've designed, Aaron, Abe, Robert (Casey Gooden), and Phillip (Anand Upadhyaya) are all frustrated at not being able to come up with something that will give them the financial and professional independence they desire. They also all want to come up with something that can really help change the world as they know it.

One day Aaron and Abe are tinkering with something they keep referring to as "the box" when they get some very unexpected results. Exploring the results further makes Aaron and Abe realize they have stumbled onto something far more potent than they ever expected: a very real means by which one may be able to travel back in time. It's in confronting the surface level possibilities such a device offers and the ethical questions lying underneath that Aaron and Abe find they might have much more than they bargained for.

Sounds like standard sci-fi fare. How does it work?
Well, that's not a good assumption to make off the bat. This movie is sci-fi in the same way that Gattaca was sci-fi. That is to say that it takes a sci-fi premise or convention, but then builds a straight dramatic story around it. Not to give too much of the plot away, but really the movie is more a step removed from Wall Street or The Boiler Room, with their questions regarding financial ethics. That having been said, the movie is flawed but has some interesting things going for it.

Carruth and Sullivan as Aaron and Abe will not be accepting any Oscars for acting awards any time soon. But they do have an engaging chemistry as two old friends just trying to piece puzzles out. They have a rapid patter going back and forth as one person teases the idea out, and the other picks the ball up and runs with it. At points, they don't even really finish the thought out loud, which would leave the audience a bit more clueless were they not so good at showing they know where the idea is going with their non-verbals. There's a scene involving them brainstorming in front of Aaron's basketball goal involving Aaron and the ball that helped me understand the science better than anything either character said out loud.

There's also some visual treats that Carruth offers up as a director that show he might have some potential future on the other side of the camera. A shot done through a garage door's windows does gives a nice subtle illumination of just how separate Aaron and Abe are from their fellow geeks in terms of understanding the things they want and how to get them. There are a few other scenes in the same vein that show that while Carruth may not have known a thing about filmmaking before taking up this project, he has some good instincts for what works and what doesn't. You can go to the official website and see the bios for both Carruth and Sullivan to see they come by the geek thing honestly.

Sounds like a lot of potential. Do they live up to all of it?
Well there are some definite pitfalls along the way, and most of them tie back to the script.

First of all, the dialogue in I'd guess the first 15-20 minutes of the feature is almost all tech heavy. While the way the characters talk about these matters helps give a little bit of insight into the characters, it's easy to get lost in all the engineer speak and lose track or interest in where they're trying to go with the story.

Even more difficult to contend with is where the script seems to completely jump the tracks when it tries to go into full fledged sci-fi time travel mode. There's a major plot point centering on an aspect of their invention called the "fail safe" that would attempt to explore some of the potential conflicts involved in time travel regarding paradoxes and alteration of future events. As the fail safe matters build to a head and the big surprise ending, I found myself looking for a remote to skip back a couple of chapters on the non-existent DVD and rewatch scenes to see if made the ending make more sense. My companion for the evening was equally befuddled as to how we wound up at the ending. I'm not entirely convinced that even a repeat viewing would clear things up a whole lot.

Also frustrating was a subplot involving a girl Abe is interested in for access to her father, who might be able to offer the venture capital needed to get Abe and Aaron out on their own. The subplot is batted around a bit in the first third, almost completely forgotten in the middle third, and then drops out of the sky in the last third for a final surprise before being completely discarded. It feels like an idea that was never fully fleshed out, but kept in to help pad the running time to keep the film closer to feature length, and not looking like a bloated short. At a 78 minute running time, it just barely accomplishes this, but I could have done with it being a bit shorter and the nonsensical subplot being discarded altogether.

Not the strongest endorsement
I know, and I don't want to come off like I am damning the movie with faint praise. It is an interesting film, and worth a look if for no other reason than to see what someone can accomplish without a strong educational background in filmmaking. It is trying to do something original as a small independent film. This is something that should be commended and encouraged. There is talent on display in a fair capacity. Just don't go in expecting Citizen Kane, or even Following or Pi. Just enjoy it for what it is, because the parts that do work provide a decent amount of grist to mill with friends after a joint viewing. That's worth the price of a rental or a matinee viewing any time you can get it.

Hold 'Em Junkie

So as I think I mentioned previously, I have recently become a Texas Hold 'Em addict with some of the various free games around town. Recently, I had the fortune to try out the games being put on by The Fantasy Poker League. They are doing point based tourneys that will feed into larger area tourneys which will feed into one big statewide qualifier. The statewide tournament's grand prize is a spot in the World Series of Poker. So as I play in their games, I'll put up notes on how I'm doing here.

Right now, if you go to their leaderboard, select TX, and then use the pull down to bring up the board for Ringers Sports Lounge here in Austin, you will see I am a robust 8th place with only one tournament under my belt :-). Should enjoy it while it lasts, so I will brag on my mad poker skillz to all my homies out there, yo yo!

OK, now that I've made an ass of myself ;-)....

Friday Cat Blogging

Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly used to have a tradition of posting pics of his cats every Friday. Dubbed "Friday Cat Blogging", it was a nice way to break the drumbeat of seriousness of each week. Other bloggers have taken up the cause of cat blogging, like Atrios at Eschaton, since Kevin can't do it anymore (his cat blogging was done at his non paying gig, Calpundit). The phenomenon even got play in the NY Times (registration required to view the story). Anyway, I felt the need to get on the bandwagon, so as a first, here's a Friday cat pic for your amusement. If you have cat pics you'd like to share and have me put up on a future Friday, drop me a line at my email address, and I'll coordinate getting the pics from you there.



Because you never know when you might need kitty to go....

BONUS KITTIES: Atrios has his two kitty cats all warm and fuzzy :-)

Apologies, lamentations, and other nonsense.

Haven't posted in more than a week, and I am sorry for that. The elections took a lot out of me.

I imagine if you're on the blogsphere to any degree, you've already read a lot of reasons why the election results hurt if you're on the lefty/progressive side of the political fence. If you're on the right side, you likely don't care much why it hurts, you got the results you supported most likely.

For me, I think the thing that hurts the most, or upsets me the most, is the way this election seemed to put a seal of approval on a culture of hate.

I have a friend who I have come to be quite close to over the last few months. Just met her this summer through a mutual friend. She is a gay woman, and I can't even begin to fathom how hard the elections hit her. 11 of 11 states passed measures banning gay marriage. 11 of 11 states have basically said that she is considered a second class citizen, including her home state.

She's not a decadent hedonist, as Alan Keyes tried to paint all homosexuals with his broad brush of stereotypes. She's not on the same level as a practioner of beastiality as Rick Santorum tried to pigeonhole her. She's no more perverse or kinky than any straight person I know (actually a lot less than most, though she talks a good game).

Same could be said of many of the gay man I've worked with over time. At least two of them in my days in the box office of a local theater, and one here at my current place of employment, prior to switching departments. They were all exceptional people. Just like anyone else you'd meet and work with everyday.

There was a point where I had to ask myself "How can I fathom someday bringing children into this world now, knowing that if they happen to be gay, that I brought them into a world where hating them is sanctioned by the powers that be?" That's a scary thought.

I've had a couple of rough days around some of the hardcore Republicans I know. I think I was on the verge of tears the day after the election from some offhand comment thrown out there. Not because I think the person saying it really meant to try and hurt me, or make me feel bad. But the disconnect from some of the Bush supporters I know about just how hurtful and hateful the "base" of that party really is just utterly amazes me.

The only reason I didn't seriously consider looking into selling my house and moving to Canada, Australia, or Europe, is because of something a friend of mine said. He mentioned that this country is based on 200+ plus years of progressivism, and it's too important to abandon now. And I know he's right. We haven't always gotten it right in trying to do the right thing in this country, but ultimately, we always move forward towards the greater good. It's the good fight, the right fight. And I need to be here to offer help in any way I can towards that end.

I likely can't do that here through my little niche on the internet, but there are other things, other ways. Have to find those outlets and make the most of them. In the end, the good guys will win. I know it. I have to believe it.

Will get some movie reviews up later this afternoon. Am taking comments off on this post. If anyone wants to be a troll or flame my thoughts, they can do it to my mail. Thank god for spam filters.

Keep hope alive folks. See you soon.

Monday, November 01, 2004

Monster Mash: John Carpenter's The Thing

Considering the current political climate, and the constant talk of the dangers of "the enemy within", I think it's appropriate for a belated Halloween monster movie retrospective to look at what I think is John Carpenter's best film.

Kurt Russell is R.J. MacReady, helicopter pilot for a US scientific expedition in one of the most isolated parts of world (an Antarctic base). The base's routine is radically disrupted when a helicopter from a Norwegian base explodes near the US station while in pursuit of a stray sled dog. Russell flies one of the base doctors out to the Norwegian station to see if they can find out what happened and why the dog is so important.

At the Norwegian base, they find everyone is dead or gone. There's a mysterious videotape that documents the Norwegians excavation of some unknown item under the ice. The item turns out to be a huge ship not of this world. And the dog carries an alien life form that can assimilate the form of any creature it touches, destroying the original in the process. This puts the entire base at risk, and by extension the rest of the world if it should get back to civilization. MacReady and the rest also have a larger problem to be concerned with: they have seemingly no way of knowing who has been infected/assimilated and who is truly human. As the bodies fall and the chances of stopping the creature get smaller, paranoia sets in in a huge way.

I love this movie for the psychological terror Carpenter employs, making us feel each actor's paranoia and indignation at suggestions they might somehow be the creature in disguise. Every person in the group feels the pressure and the need to look out only for themselves, not being able to know who can be trusted and who can't.

Russell as the focal point in MacReady carried the movie. He leaves you feeling like he's the only one who has a real lock on what's going on and how to handle it. Even then, Carpenter throws a few twists into the mix that leave you wondering to the very end whether he might still be the last person you can trust. There's also a couple of out of character turns by Wilford Brimley and Richard Dysart, playing against their usual amiable father figure types.

And the creature seals the deal with some really graphic, gory special effects. Austin's Alamo Drafthouse did a special program called "The 100 Greatest Kills" featuring 100 memorable screen deaths spliced together. When the program aired last year, they had "Bring your own kill" night, allowing audience members to bring tapes or discs featuring their favorite deaths not included. 3 people brought one of the deaths featured in this film, and there are a couple of others that could have just as easily been included. Not the bloodiest film I've ever seen, but some of this is definitely not for the faint of heart.

I personally don't feel like Carpenter was targetting this movie as a political statement, though released during the later part of the Cold War in 1982, it's possible to read it as an allegory about the "Red Menace", in much the same vein as Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Carpenter's film is a remake of a 1951 Sci-fi classic (the full title of which is The Thing From Another World) that I thought was referred to often as a statement about McCarthyism, as was the source material short story "Who Goes There?" by John Campbell. I only found one reference to this Googling though, so I could be wrong. In any case, there's still something to be said for the message about the destructiveness of isolationism that is epitomized in this film. Perhaps the White House should have had a screening prior to the Iraq invasion? ;-)

Ok, will save the political cracks for post election. In the meantime, if you just like your scares straight and gory, with a healthy dose of machismo, check this one out. Very much a "guy" flick, but also a good scare flick to watch with friends. Enjoy!

Minor note regarding format change for this blog

Those of you out there reading this will recall that I used to do a week's worth of movie retrospectives all along one central theme. I found that was too challenging to do on a consistent basis, especially with my schedule at times being all over the map (see the Halloween monster movie posts going up on NOV 1 :-). So what I'll be doing is tagging movies as I see them on video and giving them a category as I write them up. If I get a good run of them, I'll put up an index post with all of the films in a category in one spot as I can. Just FYI.

Monster Mash: An American Werewolf in London


Shaun of the Dead is hardly unique in its attempt to fuse horror and humor. Comedy is frequently an element that plays a major role in most really successful modern horror films. Scream had a lot of denigrating, self-referential humor, though that franchise managed to beat that dead horse into a bloody pulp. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise is successful not just because it is scary and gory, but also because Freddy at his best is also pretty damn funny. An American Werewolf in London takes an approach much closer to Shaun's of sly, dry wit, and that helps it morph out into a really effective black comedy, as well as making a healthy dose of tragedy at the end that much more poignant.

David Naughton and Griffin Dunne are David and Jack, two young American college students who are enjoying a break between semesters backpacking across England. They stumble into a pub in a rural town trying to get out of the rain. They find that the residents of this town seem to be living in fear of some dark terrible secret, one which they have the misfortune of running into personally. When they are shunned by the townsfolk out of the pub, they are attacked on the moors by a vicious wolf like creature. Jack is killed, and David lapses into unconsciousness seeing the creature looking not at all like a wolf, but like a human being.

Regaining consciousness in a London hospital, David is skeptical of the official response that he and Jack were attacked by "an escaped lunatic". His focus on the incident is shaken by the affections of Alex (Jenny Agutter), the nurse caring for David in the hospital. Alex is quite taken by David, and they embark on a whirlwind love affair. Everything seems to be ok, until one night David is visited by the gruesome ghost of Jack advising David he needs to kill himself before the next full moon, or David will transform itself into the same thing that killed Jack: a werewolf.

The movie balances some very tongue in cheek humor with some pretty gory images the whole way through. Jack's ghost starts looking much as he did when he was killed: bloody, open wounds and mangled flesh everywhere. As time moves on, his ghost decays as his corpse would, and it leads to some hysterical exchanges between David and Jack ("I will NOT be threatened by a walking meat loaf!"). Gradually though, it turns into gallows humor as Jack's ominous prediction proves to be true about what David becomes.

The transformation sequence earned Hollywood makeup god Rick Baker his first of 6 Oscars for his make up work (the first Oscar awarded for Make Up), and to this day, almost a quarter of a century later (Jesus the movie's been out that long? I'm old...) I still think it's quite possibly the most merited Oscar awarded since I started watching movies. It's an old school type of special effect that only lets you see little bits and pieces of the creature David will become, letting the true horror run wild in the viewers imagination. Most werewolf movies depict the transformation as painful, but this one in particular looks like sheer agony. And much like Jaws did with the shark, director John Landis never lets you see all of the creature until the very end of the movie, letting the fear build up in the viewers mind up until near the end of the picture.

Fun, scary, and sad, this film is definitely going to be a must watch for next Halloween. Paired with Shaun of the Dead (DVD release Dec. 21, 2004), it will make for a fun night of laughs, thrills, and chills the whole night long.