Clash of the Titans Does everyone remember the original from the 1981? It had an all-star cast, including Lawrence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Harry Hamblin and Burgess Meredith to name a few. I remember it fondly because I always liked the special effects Ray Harryhausen came up with. (I loved those warrior-skeletons in Sinbad.)
The best way to describe this remake is “better special effects but the same old story.” Somehow the story of Perseus seems to have started out old and fallen into disregard from there, no doubt as a result of literary entropy. Greek mythology reads well but doesn’t seem to translate to the screen very well.
Sam Worthington stars as Perseus. His claim to fame is having been discovered by James Cameron and cast in the leading roll of the paraplegic Marine in Avatar. He is not required to act in either movie which plays to his strengths.
The story is as follows: Perseus is born and grows up. His father is Zeus but he doesn’t know this right away. He finds himself in Argos, a city where the people are in the process of rebelling against the gods—never a clever thing to do in ancient Greece. The gods become angry and Hades talks his not-overly-bright brother (Zeus) into letting him punish the humans with his pet Kraken, the most terrible creature every to come into existence. Hades then tells the citizens of Argos that they will all die at the next eclipse unless they sacrifice Andromeda, the kings beautiful daughter, thus returning the gods to their rightful places as . . . well . . . gods. Their only chance to escape this fate is to kill the Kraken, which is unkillable and has been tasked to destroy the city. So Perseus and a few Greek warriors go looking for the one thing that can destroy the invincible Kraken, which is the head of Medusa. It’s the usual plot-driver. As you know, Greeks invented the sitcom and this is a good example of the genre. Since the story is at least three thousand years old and we all have to read it in high school, giving away the ending won’t spoil anything. Perseus wins with the help of his doting father, who gives him a magic sword and the Pegasus (although this time the flying horse is black. This is what passes for ‘creativity’ and a ‘personal vision’ for the producers and director.) Naturally Perseus and his cohorts have to pass through all kinds of tests and challenges which is how all Greek stories go, and from which only Perseus returns unscathed. And by scathed I mean dead. It is essentially a melodrama.
The special effects are as good as one would expect in today’s market. I especially liked the way Hades enters and exits a scene. The Kraken is awesome. Basically it is a mutant cross between a squid and some kind of crustacean, and it is the size of Rhode Island. One wonders how something so huge could even see the Medusa head even when it is right in front of the beast, but it does, which turns it to stone.
The best scene is where Perseus picks up a golden mechanical owl he finds and asks what it is. The leader of the Greek soldiers scowls and says, “put it back,” and that’s the end of the owl.
A thin story line, zero characterizations, no profanity, no skin and good FX. There is absolutely no reason to see this movie, much less to have made it. I went with around eight members of the Voorhies clan and we all agreed that the 3-D effect not only did not add anything to the experience but actually detracted from it. I think I’m going to stop going to 3-D versions of movies. Nita didn’t go. She wasn’t interested and the movie started at the same time as her bedtime.
No cussing, no sex. In fact, nothing interesting at all. But you should still go see it.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes Unless you are one of my children (none of them have a television capable of receiving network broadcasts or cable or satellite) you must have seen the previews by now. This is Guy Ritchie’s (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch) latest endeavor and it is a good one. I’ve been worried about him because he and Madonna (or “Masluta” as Newell and I like to say) recently got divorced, but he seems to have come out of it with his creative juices intact.
This is not your classic Sherlock Holmes, Lionel Barrymore movie. This is Ritchie’s reinvention of Holmes and Watson, and it worked very well for me. It is an action movie, a thrill a second, with a smart, pepper-shot screenplay, great acting, and a truly convoluted and twisty plot worthy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Robert Downey Jr. Plays Holmes with an odd but effective fake English accent, and Jude Law is the redoubtable Doctor Watson. The chemistry between the two is spot on, displaying a deeper, more complicated relationship than the books ever delved into. They have been turned into action heroes while managing to retain the spirit and core of the two characters and the insanely elaborate mysteries. Holmes is a martial arts devote. Ritchie employs a wonderful gimmick a few times during the film, which I found very entertaining. While in the midst of a fight (where he is usually losing) the action slows to very slow-motion as we hear Holmes predict his opponents next few moves and countering with strategies of his own, the slow action following the play-by-play. Then the action returns to normal speed as Holmes actually goes through the list of blows and counter punches—all based on his incredible attention to detail and the slightest of clues—in perfect precision and order, completely disabling the poor sap on the other side of his rampant physicality. Very effective, and Ritchie knows not to overdo it. Watson is a former Military physician who has served in various exotic locals and knows his way around a brawl as well, although not with the same panache as his erstwhile companion.
Each man in involved in a romantic relationship and they spend a good deal of time making one another’s relationship much more complicated than it needs to be. Watson is about to be married and Holmes is doing everything he can to undermine that situation.
The enemy is a practitioner of the occult arts, which seemingly renders Holmes’ rationality impotent, but fear not, he is well ahead of everyone, even if it seems as if he about to be killed at least twenty times during the course of the film while the entire British Aristocracy is under the thrall of the evil-doer.
An excellent supporting cast rounds out the mile-a-minute adventure and all is brought to a more or less acceptable finale.
It is rated PG-13 and that is about right. Lots of violence in the form of brawls and fist-fights, very little actual killing, and no profanity that I can recall. I would not take a sensitive ten-year old to this one, but a world-wise twelve-year old and up will enjoy it, if they are quick enough to keep up with the action and Holmes’s racing intellect. I thoroughly enjoyed it, Nita didn’t go, but my oldest daughter did (it was a kind of experimental outing—my first since the uh, “episode”) and she loved it as well. We recommend it.
P.S. It’s nice to be back in the saddle, more or less . . .
This is not your classic Sherlock Holmes, Lionel Barrymore movie. This is Ritchie’s reinvention of Holmes and Watson, and it worked very well for me. It is an action movie, a thrill a second, with a smart, pepper-shot screenplay, great acting, and a truly convoluted and twisty plot worthy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Robert Downey Jr. Plays Holmes with an odd but effective fake English accent, and Jude Law is the redoubtable Doctor Watson. The chemistry between the two is spot on, displaying a deeper, more complicated relationship than the books ever delved into. They have been turned into action heroes while managing to retain the spirit and core of the two characters and the insanely elaborate mysteries. Holmes is a martial arts devote. Ritchie employs a wonderful gimmick a few times during the film, which I found very entertaining. While in the midst of a fight (where he is usually losing) the action slows to very slow-motion as we hear Holmes predict his opponents next few moves and countering with strategies of his own, the slow action following the play-by-play. Then the action returns to normal speed as Holmes actually goes through the list of blows and counter punches—all based on his incredible attention to detail and the slightest of clues—in perfect precision and order, completely disabling the poor sap on the other side of his rampant physicality. Very effective, and Ritchie knows not to overdo it. Watson is a former Military physician who has served in various exotic locals and knows his way around a brawl as well, although not with the same panache as his erstwhile companion.
Each man in involved in a romantic relationship and they spend a good deal of time making one another’s relationship much more complicated than it needs to be. Watson is about to be married and Holmes is doing everything he can to undermine that situation.
The enemy is a practitioner of the occult arts, which seemingly renders Holmes’ rationality impotent, but fear not, he is well ahead of everyone, even if it seems as if he about to be killed at least twenty times during the course of the film while the entire British Aristocracy is under the thrall of the evil-doer.
An excellent supporting cast rounds out the mile-a-minute adventure and all is brought to a more or less acceptable finale.
It is rated PG-13 and that is about right. Lots of violence in the form of brawls and fist-fights, very little actual killing, and no profanity that I can recall. I would not take a sensitive ten-year old to this one, but a world-wise twelve-year old and up will enjoy it, if they are quick enough to keep up with the action and Holmes’s racing intellect. I thoroughly enjoyed it, Nita didn’t go, but my oldest daughter did (it was a kind of experimental outing—my first since the uh, “episode”) and she loved it as well. We recommend it.
P.S. It’s nice to be back in the saddle, more or less . . .
Sunday, November 15, 2009
2012
2012 I really wanted to like this movie. Everything started out great too. A blockbuster, huge budget, wall-to-wall special effects. Plus I like John Cusack a lot, and Amanda Peet is fine. Woody Haralson plays another freakish crazy guy. Makes me think he is probably a freakish crazy guy in real life.
I assume you all know the plot: The world is ending because the Mayan Calendar says it has to.
Sidebar: I believe I wrote an IGM about this previously, but just in case there is someone in the world who didn’t read it, let me repeat. The Mayan calendar does not end on December 21,2012. It resets. The calendar is circular, cyclic, which is why they carved it as a series of concentric wheels, on round stones. So rather than that date being the end of the world, it is only the end of a specific period, an era. There are several million Mayans, mostly in Guatemala, who aren’t worried about it. But there will be some crazies taking it seriously. So stay away from hilltops and kool-aid.
Now back to our review. There are no surprises in this movie, and no one expected there would be. It’s all about the action, suspense and effects—which are breath-taking. And for the first two hours it succeeds brilliantly in giving us what we paid for. The story follows Cusack, a divorced writer who is trying to keep some kind of relationship with his two kids. The writing isn’t going so well, despite his first book having just been published, and he is driving a limo to make ends meet. He has to use the longcar to take his kids to Yellowstone, which as we all know, is the world’s biggest active volcano. (See my IGM titled Yellowstone: The Real End of the World). Yellowstone—apparently only an hour or so from LA by limo—is where Cusack meets Haralson who is broadcasting remotely from an RV, exposing all the secrets the worlds governments have been keeping concerning the end of the world. Something about the molten core heating up and spinning faster resulting in the curst breaking loose and going through some radical rearrangements. (See my IGM entitled The Treadmill Theory of Geological Relocation: A Creative Extrapolation of the Plate Tectonic Theory). The governments have known about the whole thing for a few years and have secretly been building “Arks” in which a few hundred thousand selectees will ride out the apocalypse based on their political juice and/or their ability to offer truly prodigious bribes. Cusack finds out about it and decides to get his family and get them onto one of the ships. Easier said than done, especially when Southern California has decided to become North Dakota.
For the next hour and a half our heroes miraculously miss being killed in interesting ways mostly involving large pieces of the planet falling on them, while they make their ways unerringly to China under less than plausible circumstances. But hey, it’s all in the script, right? It’s fun and exciting, get’s the blood up; in other words, doing exactly what we paid for. But then it doesn’t end. It goes on for another half hour (About 2 hours 40 minutes, total) and falls into a dreary, hackneyed, morass of the worst kind of melodrama. It’s as if there was a huge safe somewhere in Hollywood where every cliché in the history of cinema is kept and the writers and director got into that safe and used every one of them all at once. In a nightmare of professional idiocy, the movie leaves the world of the merely implausible and makes itself at home in the world of “who the hell wrote this slop? Kim Jong il?”
They tried to tug at our heart strings. Which works a time or two, when intelligently done, with some semblance of restraint. But this was like the Olympic Gold Medalist of over-doing it—the super-tsunami of “oh, please!”
I went in fully prepared to maintain a healthy dose of “willing suspension of disbelief,” (Which I’m really good at) but it beat me. It finally became a parody of itself. The worst stereotype since Armageddon.
It’s rated PG-13. The usual end-of-the-world mayhem and destruction. It will quicken your pulse, no doubt about it. But if you decide to see it, be sure to get a lobotomy-to-go first.
I assume you all know the plot: The world is ending because the Mayan Calendar says it has to.
Sidebar: I believe I wrote an IGM about this previously, but just in case there is someone in the world who didn’t read it, let me repeat. The Mayan calendar does not end on December 21,2012. It resets. The calendar is circular, cyclic, which is why they carved it as a series of concentric wheels, on round stones. So rather than that date being the end of the world, it is only the end of a specific period, an era. There are several million Mayans, mostly in Guatemala, who aren’t worried about it. But there will be some crazies taking it seriously. So stay away from hilltops and kool-aid.
Now back to our review. There are no surprises in this movie, and no one expected there would be. It’s all about the action, suspense and effects—which are breath-taking. And for the first two hours it succeeds brilliantly in giving us what we paid for. The story follows Cusack, a divorced writer who is trying to keep some kind of relationship with his two kids. The writing isn’t going so well, despite his first book having just been published, and he is driving a limo to make ends meet. He has to use the longcar to take his kids to Yellowstone, which as we all know, is the world’s biggest active volcano. (See my IGM titled Yellowstone: The Real End of the World). Yellowstone—apparently only an hour or so from LA by limo—is where Cusack meets Haralson who is broadcasting remotely from an RV, exposing all the secrets the worlds governments have been keeping concerning the end of the world. Something about the molten core heating up and spinning faster resulting in the curst breaking loose and going through some radical rearrangements. (See my IGM entitled The Treadmill Theory of Geological Relocation: A Creative Extrapolation of the Plate Tectonic Theory). The governments have known about the whole thing for a few years and have secretly been building “Arks” in which a few hundred thousand selectees will ride out the apocalypse based on their political juice and/or their ability to offer truly prodigious bribes. Cusack finds out about it and decides to get his family and get them onto one of the ships. Easier said than done, especially when Southern California has decided to become North Dakota.
For the next hour and a half our heroes miraculously miss being killed in interesting ways mostly involving large pieces of the planet falling on them, while they make their ways unerringly to China under less than plausible circumstances. But hey, it’s all in the script, right? It’s fun and exciting, get’s the blood up; in other words, doing exactly what we paid for. But then it doesn’t end. It goes on for another half hour (About 2 hours 40 minutes, total) and falls into a dreary, hackneyed, morass of the worst kind of melodrama. It’s as if there was a huge safe somewhere in Hollywood where every cliché in the history of cinema is kept and the writers and director got into that safe and used every one of them all at once. In a nightmare of professional idiocy, the movie leaves the world of the merely implausible and makes itself at home in the world of “who the hell wrote this slop? Kim Jong il?”
They tried to tug at our heart strings. Which works a time or two, when intelligently done, with some semblance of restraint. But this was like the Olympic Gold Medalist of over-doing it—the super-tsunami of “oh, please!”
I went in fully prepared to maintain a healthy dose of “willing suspension of disbelief,” (Which I’m really good at) but it beat me. It finally became a parody of itself. The worst stereotype since Armageddon.
It’s rated PG-13. The usual end-of-the-world mayhem and destruction. It will quicken your pulse, no doubt about it. But if you decide to see it, be sure to get a lobotomy-to-go first.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Zombieland For all you newbies out there, anything with the word “Zombie” in it, or with even a hint of ravenous, reanimated, cannibalistic humans in the trailer, is a must-see for yours truly. I know, it’s disgusting (of which Nita reminds me each and every time) but I can’t help it. Ever since I saw Night of the Living Dead back in 1970 or so I’ve been hooked. I wish it had been angels with heavenly messages and bright lights shining over their heads, but what can you do?
Zombieland is a quirky, unpretentious movie that tries to be funny in an ironic way, but ends up actually surpassing that admittedly unambitious goal. It is funny, but it manages to go beyond the usual Hollywood superficiality and find a hint of meaning in the midst of what otherwise is a plain old blood and guts flick. And make no mistake, the blood and guts are there in Technicolor, filmed in loving detail and über-graphic slow-mo. That’s part of the fun and expected in this genre.
The story revolves around a young twenty-something college drop-out—a phobia-laden, girl-challenged socially-inept boy. Some kind of plague—very briefly tied to mad-cow disease with a description of swelling brains, high fevers and ultra-violent outbursts fueled by an insatiable desire for human flesh—has rendered mankind all but extinct in a matter of months. A few normal’s are left, people who have been lucky and/or managed to survive by dint of a genetic propensity for zombie-killing. Woody Haralson is another survivor, born, it seems, to shine in the post-apocalyptic world of Zombieland. The two males accidently join forces and soon meet two females who waste no time scamming the boys out of their ride, food, guns, and everything else. It’s the classic story really; boy meets girl, girl turns out to be a grifter, boy rescues girl (and her little sister) from the zombie horde.
This movie is a good example of what decent writing (not great writing) can do for a terrible story—and let’s face it, anything with zombies in it must be, by definition, a terrible story. Tallahassee and Cleveland (no one uses names—you don’t want to form any lasting relationships in Zombieland) are polar opposites but seem to mesh as they go looking for the girls and their gear, killing zombies right and left along the way.
About a fourth of the movie takes place in Beverly Hills, in what is supposed to be Bill Murray’s mansion, and that sequence takes the film from just another pretty-good genre flick to memorable, and a sure-thing for cult classic. Murray is in it, playing himself, and that’s all I can tell you about that.
Amidst the scatological humor, disgusting special effects, and high-irony, they somehow manage to find moments (albeit brief) of sincere suspense and humanity. Which still doesn’t make it a good movie, but does make it a not-completely terrible movie. The director borrows a few gimmicks from Quentin Tarantino, with little asides in the narration, (like the Zombie Kill of the Week) and odd little scenes just for fun. It also borrows from the TV show Fringe with little 3-d labels and signs that appear randomly in the scene and sometimes break and fall down. Very odd, but I liked all that.
So . . . it’s rated R, and it wears that letter proudly, kind of like the big red “B+” my sister wore on her sweatshirt at BYU. (You English majors should get that . . .) Lots of foul language, lots of viscera being eaten, black fluids dripping (okay—spewing) from dead mouths, decapitations, vehicles running over bodies, the usual stuff. It is not for the mainstream movie-going audience, even though it is, ostensibly, a comedy. But it’s an existential comedy, full of angst, pathos and hubris, and the afore-mentioned irony. I do not recommend it for anyone. A few of you will want to see it and you know who you are. For the rest? Rent a classic. Had Nita, in her own brain-swollen fever, gone with me to see it, she would still be in the ICU.
Zombieland is a quirky, unpretentious movie that tries to be funny in an ironic way, but ends up actually surpassing that admittedly unambitious goal. It is funny, but it manages to go beyond the usual Hollywood superficiality and find a hint of meaning in the midst of what otherwise is a plain old blood and guts flick. And make no mistake, the blood and guts are there in Technicolor, filmed in loving detail and über-graphic slow-mo. That’s part of the fun and expected in this genre.
The story revolves around a young twenty-something college drop-out—a phobia-laden, girl-challenged socially-inept boy. Some kind of plague—very briefly tied to mad-cow disease with a description of swelling brains, high fevers and ultra-violent outbursts fueled by an insatiable desire for human flesh—has rendered mankind all but extinct in a matter of months. A few normal’s are left, people who have been lucky and/or managed to survive by dint of a genetic propensity for zombie-killing. Woody Haralson is another survivor, born, it seems, to shine in the post-apocalyptic world of Zombieland. The two males accidently join forces and soon meet two females who waste no time scamming the boys out of their ride, food, guns, and everything else. It’s the classic story really; boy meets girl, girl turns out to be a grifter, boy rescues girl (and her little sister) from the zombie horde.
This movie is a good example of what decent writing (not great writing) can do for a terrible story—and let’s face it, anything with zombies in it must be, by definition, a terrible story. Tallahassee and Cleveland (no one uses names—you don’t want to form any lasting relationships in Zombieland) are polar opposites but seem to mesh as they go looking for the girls and their gear, killing zombies right and left along the way.
About a fourth of the movie takes place in Beverly Hills, in what is supposed to be Bill Murray’s mansion, and that sequence takes the film from just another pretty-good genre flick to memorable, and a sure-thing for cult classic. Murray is in it, playing himself, and that’s all I can tell you about that.
Amidst the scatological humor, disgusting special effects, and high-irony, they somehow manage to find moments (albeit brief) of sincere suspense and humanity. Which still doesn’t make it a good movie, but does make it a not-completely terrible movie. The director borrows a few gimmicks from Quentin Tarantino, with little asides in the narration, (like the Zombie Kill of the Week) and odd little scenes just for fun. It also borrows from the TV show Fringe with little 3-d labels and signs that appear randomly in the scene and sometimes break and fall down. Very odd, but I liked all that.
So . . . it’s rated R, and it wears that letter proudly, kind of like the big red “B+” my sister wore on her sweatshirt at BYU. (You English majors should get that . . .) Lots of foul language, lots of viscera being eaten, black fluids dripping (okay—spewing) from dead mouths, decapitations, vehicles running over bodies, the usual stuff. It is not for the mainstream movie-going audience, even though it is, ostensibly, a comedy. But it’s an existential comedy, full of angst, pathos and hubris, and the afore-mentioned irony. I do not recommend it for anyone. A few of you will want to see it and you know who you are. For the rest? Rent a classic. Had Nita, in her own brain-swollen fever, gone with me to see it, she would still be in the ICU.
Monday, September 28, 2009
Thor at the Bus Stop
Thor at the Bus Stop This review will be a little different than usual. I am reviewing a movie that hasn’t been released yet. And, I am also pitching the movie. All will be explained.
Thor at the Bus Stop is a local production. It was written, produced, filmed, edited . . . everything . . . here in Las Vegas. It is an off-beat, quirky little existential comedy about the God of Thunder (Thor) and his date with Ragnarök, in which he is destined to fight a really big snake, die, and usher in the end of the universe. We find him, as the movie opens, sitting at a bus stop somewhere in Summerlin (a suburb of Las Vegas for you out-of-towners), with an annoying little girl, trying to find a ride to his destiny. From then on we loosely follow Thor’s progress—or lack thereof—and the myriad odd but memorable characters which inhabit this contemporary fantasy. We are treated to—as the trailer says—Thunder Claps, Fruit Snacks, and the Power of Cool.
We meet Big Zed and L’il Ned, two petty thieves who specialize in lunch boxes, White Trash Chuck who wants to be good but is having a bad life, Passenger-seat Pete, who intends to slide through life with as little effort as possible, and several others. My two favorites are the wounded guy, who has a yield sign stuck in his chest throughout the movie, and someone known only as “Milk Strider”, who we see countless times, always hurrying, wearing boxers, a tee shirt and a robe, and carrying several gallons of milk. All will be revealed.
Several people are killed, including the annoying little girl who opens the film, and two cops are on the job, trying to find clues in the small mounds of ash which is all that’s left of them. Bernard Bernard, an apparently agency-less news man with a camera-slash-sound man, a van, and a satellite dish made out of cardboard, follows the cops, trying to beat them to the scoop. The eternal questions about life, relationships, the meaning of Cool, God, and why it’s so hard to find good medical help in an emergency, are all asked and answered—sort of. In the end, everyone learns something, and Thor accepts the inevitability of his fate, enters the cavern, and faces the serpent. I quite liked it, despite the obvious lack of a budget or any name-actors. I don’t think it has been rated, but I would give it a PG. There is no cussing (White Trash Chuck used to cuss until his little sister was born—he is obviously frustrated but trying hard), no sex or skin, and only one attempted, then aborted, murder. Cool Prevails. Any violence is off camera except for our petty thieves roughing up a few elementary school kids, and Thor killing a basketball standard and the Serpent of Midgard.
The music was done by local talent as well, by two groups, “A Crowd of Small Adventures” and “Hungry Cloud”. Both are fronted by Jackson Wilcox, who is credited with the soundtrack. (Jack is a cousin, my uncle’s grandson, but those of you who know me, know I have thousands of cousins.)
Now, here is why I am pitching it. My daughter’s boy friend and his brothers made the movie. Mike and Jerry Thompson wrote and directed it, G. Scott Thompson (the boyfriend) co-produced and plays Big Zed, and they all took part in the filming and editing. One of the brothers plays White Trash Chuck, and another is Thor. Even Chani, my daughter, has a two-second scene near the end. ( Hint—She is the reason for all the milk.) The movie has played at several film festivals, including Sundance, and won some acclaim. They managed to put together a week at the Brenden theaters here in town. (At the Palms Resort). The premier is September 25 (the day after Thorsday—get it?).
I highly recommend the film on its own merit. Beyond that, I think we should do what we can to support and encourage the arts in this valley. So I am inviting everyone to go see it that week. If enough people go, the stay will be extended, and we might start a phenomenon, like we did with Napoleon Dynamite. Take a friend or twelve, make an evening of it. If nothing else think of the awesome trivia questions you’ll be able to generate, and annoying quotes you can share with friends in the know!
Those of you who live out of town are welcome to come and stay with us for a day or two while you take in the movie.
Addendum: The film is out now. We went to the world premier here in Vegas. It was kind of a family reunion for the Thompson boys. It gets better every time I see it.
Thor at the Bus Stop is a local production. It was written, produced, filmed, edited . . . everything . . . here in Las Vegas. It is an off-beat, quirky little existential comedy about the God of Thunder (Thor) and his date with Ragnarök, in which he is destined to fight a really big snake, die, and usher in the end of the universe. We find him, as the movie opens, sitting at a bus stop somewhere in Summerlin (a suburb of Las Vegas for you out-of-towners), with an annoying little girl, trying to find a ride to his destiny. From then on we loosely follow Thor’s progress—or lack thereof—and the myriad odd but memorable characters which inhabit this contemporary fantasy. We are treated to—as the trailer says—Thunder Claps, Fruit Snacks, and the Power of Cool.
We meet Big Zed and L’il Ned, two petty thieves who specialize in lunch boxes, White Trash Chuck who wants to be good but is having a bad life, Passenger-seat Pete, who intends to slide through life with as little effort as possible, and several others. My two favorites are the wounded guy, who has a yield sign stuck in his chest throughout the movie, and someone known only as “Milk Strider”, who we see countless times, always hurrying, wearing boxers, a tee shirt and a robe, and carrying several gallons of milk. All will be revealed.
Several people are killed, including the annoying little girl who opens the film, and two cops are on the job, trying to find clues in the small mounds of ash which is all that’s left of them. Bernard Bernard, an apparently agency-less news man with a camera-slash-sound man, a van, and a satellite dish made out of cardboard, follows the cops, trying to beat them to the scoop. The eternal questions about life, relationships, the meaning of Cool, God, and why it’s so hard to find good medical help in an emergency, are all asked and answered—sort of. In the end, everyone learns something, and Thor accepts the inevitability of his fate, enters the cavern, and faces the serpent. I quite liked it, despite the obvious lack of a budget or any name-actors. I don’t think it has been rated, but I would give it a PG. There is no cussing (White Trash Chuck used to cuss until his little sister was born—he is obviously frustrated but trying hard), no sex or skin, and only one attempted, then aborted, murder. Cool Prevails. Any violence is off camera except for our petty thieves roughing up a few elementary school kids, and Thor killing a basketball standard and the Serpent of Midgard.
The music was done by local talent as well, by two groups, “A Crowd of Small Adventures” and “Hungry Cloud”. Both are fronted by Jackson Wilcox, who is credited with the soundtrack. (Jack is a cousin, my uncle’s grandson, but those of you who know me, know I have thousands of cousins.)
Now, here is why I am pitching it. My daughter’s boy friend and his brothers made the movie. Mike and Jerry Thompson wrote and directed it, G. Scott Thompson (the boyfriend) co-produced and plays Big Zed, and they all took part in the filming and editing. One of the brothers plays White Trash Chuck, and another is Thor. Even Chani, my daughter, has a two-second scene near the end. ( Hint—She is the reason for all the milk.) The movie has played at several film festivals, including Sundance, and won some acclaim. They managed to put together a week at the Brenden theaters here in town. (At the Palms Resort). The premier is September 25 (the day after Thorsday—get it?).
I highly recommend the film on its own merit. Beyond that, I think we should do what we can to support and encourage the arts in this valley. So I am inviting everyone to go see it that week. If enough people go, the stay will be extended, and we might start a phenomenon, like we did with Napoleon Dynamite. Take a friend or twelve, make an evening of it. If nothing else think of the awesome trivia questions you’ll be able to generate, and annoying quotes you can share with friends in the know!
Those of you who live out of town are welcome to come and stay with us for a day or two while you take in the movie.
Addendum: The film is out now. We went to the world premier here in Vegas. It was kind of a family reunion for the Thompson boys. It gets better every time I see it.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
IGM: Mary Travers
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Mary Travers
9-17-09
It is with a profound sense of loss and a quiet sense of personal satisfaction that I announce the death of Mary Travers. After a long and painful struggle with leukemia, she has finally won the battle at age 72. Loss because I will miss having her in the world, and satisfaction because of a life well-lived and one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given. The gift of music.
Many of you will not be familiar with Mary. She was the full-throated blonde in the folk trio, Peter Paul and Mary. They hit it big in the early sixties singing traditional folk songs, and then expanded their repertoire to include protest music, and uplifting songs about peace and love and stuff like that. They won five Grammys and maintained an active career well into the eighties, and accidently got rich. I have no idea how many albums they sold, but I have one or two of all of them. (And by album, I mean vinyl.)
I was probably fourteen or so when I first heard them, and they changed my life forever. Peter Paul and Mary remain the single biggest musical influence in my life. By the time I was in high school in the late sixties I was playing guitar and singing their songs, then jointly formed a trio (two guys and a girl) of my (our) own and we became PP&M clones. We eventually branched out a little and did Dylan (so did PP&M . . . so did everybody) and Donovan and other, less well know stuff—like the Sons of the Pioneers—including some of our own. We played the coffee house circuit between Baltimore and D.C. In some ways, that was the “best time of my life”, to quote Bryan Adams. It is difficult to describe the extent to which their music touched me, moved me, and still does today. Those beat-up, scratchy records are still the ones that get played the most, despite the size and breadth of my collection. My kids were all raised on folk music and classic rock and roll, but if you asked them, I think they would tell you the folk was their favorite when they were growing up. (Their kids have all been raised listening to Donovan’s “For Little Ones”, among others.) Their arrangements and harmonies, their passion and technical superiority affected me immensely, and informed my own brief career in the music business.
PP&M were socially conscious. They stood for principles. Not always shared by me, but they were sincere and consistent. They donated huge sums of money to causes and did nearly as many benefits as paying concerts. They were one of several acts who performed on the Mall in DC when MLK gave his famous “I have a dream” speech. It is one of the main disappointments of my life I never got to see them live, but in his later years Nita and I went to see Peter Yarrow at a small venue in Albuquerque. He was just out of prison for cavorting with under-aged groupies (he says they lied to him) but it was a great show. Now I never will.
Mary will be missed. Her oddly put-together face, the way she snapped her head and made her hair flop around when she wanted to emphasize something. Those bangs. That throaty, hard-driving voice of hers and her sense of humor. Late in their careers they made an album called Peter Paul and Mommy, a collection of tunes for children, which is an absolute gem. At one time I knew most of the songs on that album and wore out my guitar singing them to our kids and their friends.(“Daddy’s taking us to zoo tomorrow . . .”) In fact, doing some of those songs for my wife’s little nieces (Nita and I had just met) at dinner one night, was instrumental in her deciding to marry me.
Mary will never stop singing. One of the best things about technology is our being able to save—and savor—music and art into the eternities. Peter and Paul (Noel) will eventually die as well, sooner, later, who knows? And So will I. But until I do, I will be listening to their music, and, in that sense, keeping them alive forever.
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Mary Travers
9-17-09
It is with a profound sense of loss and a quiet sense of personal satisfaction that I announce the death of Mary Travers. After a long and painful struggle with leukemia, she has finally won the battle at age 72. Loss because I will miss having her in the world, and satisfaction because of a life well-lived and one of the greatest gifts I have ever been given. The gift of music.
Many of you will not be familiar with Mary. She was the full-throated blonde in the folk trio, Peter Paul and Mary. They hit it big in the early sixties singing traditional folk songs, and then expanded their repertoire to include protest music, and uplifting songs about peace and love and stuff like that. They won five Grammys and maintained an active career well into the eighties, and accidently got rich. I have no idea how many albums they sold, but I have one or two of all of them. (And by album, I mean vinyl.)
I was probably fourteen or so when I first heard them, and they changed my life forever. Peter Paul and Mary remain the single biggest musical influence in my life. By the time I was in high school in the late sixties I was playing guitar and singing their songs, then jointly formed a trio (two guys and a girl) of my (our) own and we became PP&M clones. We eventually branched out a little and did Dylan (so did PP&M . . . so did everybody) and Donovan and other, less well know stuff—like the Sons of the Pioneers—including some of our own. We played the coffee house circuit between Baltimore and D.C. In some ways, that was the “best time of my life”, to quote Bryan Adams. It is difficult to describe the extent to which their music touched me, moved me, and still does today. Those beat-up, scratchy records are still the ones that get played the most, despite the size and breadth of my collection. My kids were all raised on folk music and classic rock and roll, but if you asked them, I think they would tell you the folk was their favorite when they were growing up. (Their kids have all been raised listening to Donovan’s “For Little Ones”, among others.) Their arrangements and harmonies, their passion and technical superiority affected me immensely, and informed my own brief career in the music business.
PP&M were socially conscious. They stood for principles. Not always shared by me, but they were sincere and consistent. They donated huge sums of money to causes and did nearly as many benefits as paying concerts. They were one of several acts who performed on the Mall in DC when MLK gave his famous “I have a dream” speech. It is one of the main disappointments of my life I never got to see them live, but in his later years Nita and I went to see Peter Yarrow at a small venue in Albuquerque. He was just out of prison for cavorting with under-aged groupies (he says they lied to him) but it was a great show. Now I never will.
Mary will be missed. Her oddly put-together face, the way she snapped her head and made her hair flop around when she wanted to emphasize something. Those bangs. That throaty, hard-driving voice of hers and her sense of humor. Late in their careers they made an album called Peter Paul and Mommy, a collection of tunes for children, which is an absolute gem. At one time I knew most of the songs on that album and wore out my guitar singing them to our kids and their friends.(“Daddy’s taking us to zoo tomorrow . . .”) In fact, doing some of those songs for my wife’s little nieces (Nita and I had just met) at dinner one night, was instrumental in her deciding to marry me.
Mary will never stop singing. One of the best things about technology is our being able to save—and savor—music and art into the eternities. Peter and Paul (Noel) will eventually die as well, sooner, later, who knows? And So will I. But until I do, I will be listening to their music, and, in that sense, keeping them alive forever.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Movie Review: 9
9 Here is a strange movie. The advertizing made a big deal of it being a Tim Burton production, But a guy named Shane Acker directed it, and Shane and Pamela Pettler wrote it. I guess Tim fronted the money for it. This full-length feature is animated, but it is not a cartoon. It is directed at a specific audience, like all Burton movies.
The story is post-apocalyptic. A terrible war has been fought and there are no survivors, at least in the area where the story takes place. Several small, doll-like “creatures”, automatons, are all that is left and they have no clue what is going on. They find each other, have scary, dangerous adventures, and slowly follow clues that lead them to the discovery of who (what) they are, and how they came to be. Sort of. They were made by a scientist who was pessimistic about the survival of humanity. He built a device that was able to transfer parts of his soul to each of his nine, diminutive creations.
The movie is worth seeing because of the masterful animation and the over-all style of the production. It is engaging. One of the fascinating features is the technology extant in this imaginary world. It is very similar to the retro Sci-Fi sub-genre called Steampunk, which deals with fantastic inventions of a mechanical nature, as if revisiting Jules Vern. The little entities are very inventive, building weapons and armor and all kinds of devices out of the scraps and detritus of the just-ended war. The look and feel of the movie is wonderful. The characters are fairly-well developed within the limitations of the plot. There’s the usual tension, antagonism, rivalry and even redemption.
Ultimately, however, the story seems weak. We are thrown into the situation along with the Numbers, (the only identification of the characters.) And we never really find out much about what happened or what the fate of the little creatures might be. They are mechanical, imbued with some of the essence of a human, and that’s about all they, and we, know. Can they reproduce? Will they survive an obviously mega-hostile world? There are no real answers in this story. It starts and it ends.
The one great thing it has going for it is the cast. The voices are Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Elijah Wood, and several others.
It’s rated PG-13. I recommend it for Burton fans and precocious kids. Not for very young, or overly-sensitive children. People who go to movies for entertainment value only need not bother.
The story is post-apocalyptic. A terrible war has been fought and there are no survivors, at least in the area where the story takes place. Several small, doll-like “creatures”, automatons, are all that is left and they have no clue what is going on. They find each other, have scary, dangerous adventures, and slowly follow clues that lead them to the discovery of who (what) they are, and how they came to be. Sort of. They were made by a scientist who was pessimistic about the survival of humanity. He built a device that was able to transfer parts of his soul to each of his nine, diminutive creations.
The movie is worth seeing because of the masterful animation and the over-all style of the production. It is engaging. One of the fascinating features is the technology extant in this imaginary world. It is very similar to the retro Sci-Fi sub-genre called Steampunk, which deals with fantastic inventions of a mechanical nature, as if revisiting Jules Vern. The little entities are very inventive, building weapons and armor and all kinds of devices out of the scraps and detritus of the just-ended war. The look and feel of the movie is wonderful. The characters are fairly-well developed within the limitations of the plot. There’s the usual tension, antagonism, rivalry and even redemption.
Ultimately, however, the story seems weak. We are thrown into the situation along with the Numbers, (the only identification of the characters.) And we never really find out much about what happened or what the fate of the little creatures might be. They are mechanical, imbued with some of the essence of a human, and that’s about all they, and we, know. Can they reproduce? Will they survive an obviously mega-hostile world? There are no real answers in this story. It starts and it ends.
The one great thing it has going for it is the cast. The voices are Christopher Plummer, Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Jennifer Connelly, Elijah Wood, and several others.
It’s rated PG-13. I recommend it for Burton fans and precocious kids. Not for very young, or overly-sensitive children. People who go to movies for entertainment value only need not bother.
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