I Am Legend

I Am Legend You can’t possibly have missed the marketing for this one. They have been pushing it for a year now. Based on the old sci-fi classic of the same name, Will Smith plays Robert Neville, the last man on earth. The story has been changed and updated to resonate with contemporary society. In this new version (another one came out in 1971—Omega Man, starring Charlton Heston) a major breakthrough having to do with genetically engineered Measles virus has apparently cured cancer. This of course goes bad and kills 90% of the world’s population. 90% of the survivors develop symptoms similar to mega-rabies and kill and eat almost all of the immune. These infected survivors cannot abide ultra-violet light which keeps them in the dark until sundown. Neville (Smith) is one of the few remaining immune. He is an Army Colonel and a genius researcher trying to find a way to stop and reverse the virus. He and a German Shepherd are all that remain of humans (and dogs) in New York, and as far as he knows, the world. (Canines can’t get the airborne strain of the virus, but are susceptible to the physical contact variety, and that’s all I will say about that). The dog is wonderful and should get nominated for best supporting actor. Neville lives a life dedicated to order, organization and constancy, never giving up on his single-minded attempt to cure the infected. His life is solitary but full, as he divides his days into distinct chores, radioing each day in the hopes of finding other survivors, hunting, farming, working in his lab, replenishing supplies, and keeping track of where the infected congregate during the day. It has to be a daunting task to be in every scene of a movie with virtually all the dialog, but Smith is excellent in this picture, showing us new depth and range. The back-story comes to us via flashbacks which work well and are nicely timed. Which means other people are in the film but not for long, until the very end. It’s a good story, and a sensitive look into the mind of a man fighting loneliness and despondency, as well as his own demons and fear of insanity. The special effects are up to snuff, with grand views of a deserted New York City being overrun by nature. The infected creatures are scary but a little uneven in their abilities to reason. Their strength is superhuman of course, but they are killable. And despite the fact that they are technically still alive, they exhibit all the major characteristics of Zombies, which makes the movie that much better. The ending is bittersweet, reminding us of the vagaries of life, the need for sacrifice and the joy of survival. It is rated PG-13. There is no sex, no skin, no cursing. The violence is momentarily intense, but not gratuitous, and not overly graphic. I liked it a lot and recommend it to the action-adventure, blockbuster fan. All you Will Smith fans will enjoy the scene where he is working out and displays a totally ripped physique. He is starting to show a touch of gray around the temples these days and I liked that he didn’t dye it out. Unless the gray was makeup. All in all, a great treat that lived up to its hype and long-awaited release.

The Eagles: Long Road Out of Eden

I flew over to Wal Mart a couple weeks ago to get the new Eagles release, Long Road out of Eden. It’s a double CD and the radio was saying Wal Mart was pricing it at $11.88, which was true, but I found out later the Eagles signed an exclusive contract to let Wal Mart sell the first 3 million copies at that reduced price. I believe it was an attempt to sell as many of them as possible before the pirate copies became too prolific. The boys in the band are my age (pushing 60) and sound pretty old school when it comes to intellectual property and copyright laws—as am I. My son and I have had some passionate and fascinating debates on those very issues and I find the generation gap to be radical in this area. My position is simple: Intellectual property is sacrosanct and should be vigorously protected. Artists of any medium need that protection in order to earn a living and to maintain the integrity of their work. Grah, my son, takes the opposite view. He tells me I’m hopelessly caught in my own past (which is true), and that today sharing music, print material, almost anything, is a common, accepted method of doing things. He insists the recording companies and publishing houses are going to have to radically change the way they do business so as to reflect the new solid-state and digital age. He is as honest as the day is long, but tells me he is consciously engaging in civil disobedience by sharing everything with everybody, in order to force the government and the private sector to get off their butts and solve the problems—which he sees as challenges and opportunity.
But that’s not why I called you here today. I wanted to review the Eagles CD, even though I haven’t quite heard it all yet. (There’s a reason for that, which I will get to.) Let’s spend a moment in Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine. The last studio album the Eagles made was The Long Run, and that was 28 years ago. Most artists would be so forgotten by now, they’d have already been buried, dead or not. But somewhere in that nearly thirty year hiatus, they got back together, went on the famous Hell Freezes Over tour, and released a CD and DVD of it—kind of a best of. That grossed (according to 60 Minutes) a quarter of a billion dollars, which got them thinking along the lines of “hey, maybe there’s still some milk left in this cash cow.” And they decided that any new project had to be a studio piece, of new material. Woo-Hoo!
So my brother and I go fishing on his birthday, November 11, which is an annual thing for us, and I mention I have the new Eagles CD with me, and since he is the second biggest Eagles fan in the known universe, he got out the kit and put the first CD on. It’s about 5:30 in the morning, the sky is glowing with pre-dawn light, the freeway is nearly empty, and Newell has a killer stereo in his Yukon. So we sit there listening, lost in the bliss, until the last song is finished, and I suggest, naturally enough, that he put on the second disc.
“I think we’d better listen to this one again,” he tells me. I’m driving, what can I do? (He always makes me drive.) So we listen again. And again. And again. I’m lovin’ it, he’s lovin’ it, and then he plays the last song again, right after we’d just heard it. It’s called Waiting in the Weeds. As it begins with this sweet mandolin, or possibly tenor guitar, Newell says “this is the one.” Meaning, this is the song, the best one on the album, the best on since Hotel California or The Last Resort. I know this is what he’s saying because we’re brothers and because musically, that’s the way we both think. Weeds stands out. He plays the disc a dozen more times, over and over, and every time it gets better, we hear a little more, find some new thematic nuance, figure out some metaphor or oblique reference. Which is why we listen a hundred times to new stuff. If we like it. Because, you know, we never listened to say, Smells Like Teen Spirit at all, because we didn’t like it.
Eventually we stop and decide to fish, although we could have easily just sat there all day, listening to that song and talking about it. Next best thing; we fished streams all day and talked about it, while playing dirty tricks on each other in order to win the coveted Masters Cup in the International Free-Style Trout Fishing Exposition. But that’s another story. Great day by the way, we caught about 20 apiece—including some lunkers—and put them all back.
Then we get back into the Yukon and I’m thinking surely he’s going to play disc 2 now. But he says “I don’t think I’m quite done with this one yet, and don’t call me Shirley.” So he plays the whole disc again and again and—well, you get the picture. By the time we get back to Vegas, we’ve heard disc 1 at least 30 times, and Weeds at least fifty. Yep, that’s definitely the one. And I’ve been playing that song again and again at home, following with the lyrics in the little booklet thingy, playing it for Nita, for my daughters (for whom this has been a way of life), everyone going nuts over this powerful, beautiful, surprising song. Anyway, disc 1 is awesome, as good as anything they’ve ever done, (with the possible exception of Hotel California) and Weeds is a masterpiece. I still haven’t heard 2 all the way through yet so I’ll have to get back to you on that.
(Some of you of course will be scratching your heads, wondering why I’m bothering to even mention the Eagles, or wondering who they are, maybe some third-party political party, or a social organization, or some new addition to the Boy Scouts, or even a misspelled Snoopy fan club. If you fit into any of those categories, please take a step forward. You guys in the front are all philistines. Barbarians. Unworthy of the air we breathe and the lives you are currently squandering.)
These old pros sound better than ever. The arrangements are mature yet bold, taking us to unexpected places, both melodic and harmonic, blending voices with absolute perfection and tone. It is full of songs about remorse and the bitter aftertaste of lost love. There is a scathing indictment of our consumer society and what some believe to be our nation’s recent Imperialistic machinations. The first song, No More Walks in the Woods is adapted from a poem and is mostly a-capella with very tight, four-part harmony. It is beautiful, poignant and achingly sad, as it mourns the loss of our pristine landscapes. The guys know how to turn a phrase, paint a picture, set a mood, and go for the jugular (think of Get Over It). But Waiting in the Weeds is a song apart. On a par with the best they’ve ever done and as good as Henley’s The Last Resort or his solo Über-Lied, Talking to the Moon. Listen to it fifty times on a really good stereo or with headphones, and you’ll see what I mean. Unless you’re a philistine.