December 29, 2007
Dirty, the Movie - Review
Quite simply, this is a lame effort. Director Antoine Fuqua and writer David Ayer of "Training Day" should've at least been given credit for providing the fecundating material for this film. All of the stock phrases in the poor dialogue from this film come from Training Day.
The street and building scenes and noises, and even the music all seem like they were also taken from Training Day. Then, the scenes sifted a bit, the dialogue reordered, the elements scrambled and a new entity created that is given the name "Dirty". The plot, as in Training Day involves rogue cops and the unraveling of events of one day, but this movie is written by a different writer and director, Chris Fisher.
The movie includes the stock corrupt upper brass figure, a Tom Berenger look alike. Clifton Collins' character even mimics Denzel after he pulls the gun on his partner, Cuba Gooding. "My nigger," he says, reminiscent of the scene in "Training Day" where Denzel pulls his gun on Ethan Hawke and makes him smoke a bowl of pot laced with pcp.
The character Maria crosses a busy boulevard with a gun drawn to shoot Gooding's character while he sits in a parked car, but she lays the gun down and walks away. It is a poor denouement of her involvement with the plot. It turns the film's attempt to give a portrayal of police corruption into a bedtime story for good mothers to read to their children so they won't grow up to be gangsters. Not to mention that she has still pulled a gun on a police officer which is a serious offense regardless of the fairy tale being played out in her head. Of course, all is made right a few seconds later when bad guys drive by and shoot Gooding. It's okay when the bad guys kill their own, even if the murdered is a police officer. It is puzzling what the viewer is supposed to take away from the experience of sitting through this. Sometimes vigilante justice is okay? We want you to hate this character for 90 minutes so it'll be cool when he is murdered in the end?
It is astonishing that Cuba Gooding would be associated with such a poor effort. He is far too talented an actor to have this dud on his resume. Unfortunately, the movie is making the current rounds among the premium cable channels so it will be a little while before he will be able to put it behind him.
Posted by Ronald at 01:34 AM | Comments (0)December 15, 2007
Compass Disappoints at the Box Office
"Compass" topped the box office charts, making $25.8 million in domestic receipts during the three-day period from Friday to Sunday, but it was considerably shy of where analysts thought it needed to be: anywhere from $30 million to $50 million.
The Catholic League, an activist organization, staged a boycott of the film over purported atheistic views in the trilogy of books by Philip Pullman called "His Dark Materials." "Compass" is the first of three books in the trilogy; the others are "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass."
Did the league's efforts take a toll on the film's bottom line? New Line, a division of Time Warner Inc. says no.
Click here to read the full article
Posted by Ronald at 06:12 PM | Comments (0)December 12, 2007
The Cider House Rules - Film Review
The Cider House Rules is a suberb film from 1999 that won several Oscars including Best Director, (Lasse Hallstrom, who also directed An Unfinished Life), Best Screenplay based on material previously published (John Irving, who also wrote the novel), and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Michael Caine).
The Cider House rules are on a paper tacked to the wall of the house where the migrant workers stay. The migrants are illiterate and they ask Homer to read them, but he is interrupted by the leader, Mr. Rose who says that those rules are written by people who don't live their in the cider house.
The film is about a young man, Homer Wells, played by Tobey Maguire who is raised in an orphanage in remote Maine by Dr. Wilbur Larch, played by Michael Caine. Like many of the others at the orphanage, Homer never finds the right home. But Dr. Larch recognizes the exceptional intellect of Homer and teaches him gynecology, obstetrics and general surgery. Dr Larch performs abortions, which are illegal, and it bothers Homer's conscience. He is torn between the pietistic rules of society and their efficacy, and the bitter decisions we all must face.
Homer is a young man who has never seen the outside world. He lives in Maine and has never seen the ocean, let alone a lobster. So when Wally and Candy come to the clinic for an abortion Homer seizes the opportunity to ask Wally for a ride. He has no idea where he is going to end up, he just needs to see the world.
As luck would have it, Wally's family owns an apple orchard and Homer asks to stay on as an apple picker and stays in the cider house along with the migrants. When Wally introduces Homer as someone who is smart Mr. Rose, played by Delroy Lindo, notes the the irony of a young, intelligent white boy working under the black Mr. Rose and the other migrants. "I believe we just made history," says Mr. Rose. The innocent Homer doesn't understand, of course. He hasn't been properly schooled in the world's prejudices.
Dr. Larch never loses site of Homer's true calling and sends him a doctor's bag. When the local medical board suggests hiring a replacement for Dr. Larch he knows that the well meaning board with their rules, far removed from the orphanage and its everyday pragmatic realities would do more harm to the children than good. He forges Homer's credentials and decries him as a Christian before the board, knowing that it would in effect be a recommendation to the pious zealotry of an influential woman on the board.
Homer is disillusioned by the practice of abortion. At the orphanage, he witnesses a young woman euthanised by Dr. Larch after she has been mutilated by someone claiming to be a doctor. Dr. Larch makes Homer look at the mutilation and exclaims "if she had come to you four months ago you would have done nothing. So she goes to some moron who doesn't know what he is doing," and she ends up with a crochet needle jammed inside her, puncturing her uterus, the fetus unexpelled, leaving her with acute peritonitis.
After Wally had been called to the war, a forlorn Candy turns to Homer for intimacy. After the apples have been picked and the migrant workers go south, the relationship evolves into a a sexual one. Homer rationalizes his own actions, and though he may not understand women, he knows he is something of a surrogate man for Candy while her husband is away.
When the migrant workers return the following fall, Jack, a worker who fights with Mr. Rose, isn't among them. When Homer inquires after him the workers furtively answer that he wasn't up to coming this season. And Mr. Rose's daughter Rose is pregnant with her own father's child. Homer confronts Mr. Rose who points out that Candy is his friend's wife.
Wally returns from the war after he is stricken with malaria which paralyzes him. As it turns out, the child that Wally and Candy had aborted was the only child they could've had. Society has used Wally and returned him to his family to take care of him. Just as Homer realizes that the Rose's in life, and the orphans at the orphanage are his family. These are the people he has been trained to care for. The rules of society would disqualify him from his true calling and make him an apple picker or a soldier.
The film reaches its denouement with Homer performing an abortion for Rose. He then reads the rules that are tacked on the wall of the cider house after Rose asks him to. They are rules that state there is to be no smoking in bed, and no eating or sleeping on the roof, redundant and stupid rules that are unnecesary. Rose says "that's it? Well, they don't mean nothing at all. And all this time I've been wondering about them." Mr. Rose exclaims that those are rules written by people who don't live there. We all live by our own rules. Meanwhile, Dr. Larch has died of an overdose, leaving the fate of the orphanage up in the air.
Rose runs away after stabbing her father, and as Mr. Rose lay dying he instructs Homer to tell the police that he stabbed himself because he was so unhappy that his daughter left. When Homer witnesses a paralyzed Wally being carried out of a car and Candy kissing him, with pity on her face, he refuses the worker's exhortations to come with them to Florida and returns to the orphanage.
The movie has several key subplots, including the reality of everyday decisions we must each make without the interference of authority. The individuality of women who could never meet the puritanical standards of society at large is explored. As is the coming of age of a young man coming to terms with his own personal integrity, and doing the things that are right, though according to rules are not. The degradation of "stupid rules for stupid people" not just for blacks, but for everyone in workplaces across the country regardless of skin color is something that is easily overlooked in today's society that doesn't recognize that all races everywhere are being exploited in a similar fashion across the country. But this film is more than just about the dichotomy between the individual and society, it is about the rules that individuals collectively enforce upon other individuals to deny personal freedom to determine their own lives.
Posted by Ronald at 05:27 AM | Comments (0)December 08, 2007
The War on Greed, Starring the Homes of Henry Kravis
"Bells will be ringing, and carolers will be greeting the Upper East Side neighbors of Henry Kravis this morning.
"It may be Christmastime, but the revelers are not there to embrace the holiday. They will be outside the apartment of Mr. Kravis, a founder of the buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, for a sidewalk screening of the first of a series of short films crusading against private equity firms. Passers-by can catch the film on high-technology sandwich boards being worn by protesters."
Of course, the usual response is given by Kravis that these protestors are simply acting to increase their ranks and are not really interested in the issues. Of course, this premise is laughable given the fact that most of these people have jobs, classes, careers, children, etc... and simply have too much intellectual capability to fritter away for no particular. The argument reaches even more absurd dimensions when the very thing these people are protesting against, the degradation and commodification of the individual while wealthy continue their outright exploitation of the majority of US citizens. It is most unfortunate that I received a comment that expressed these sentiments from a soldier in Iraq who was under the impression that Walmart had a starting wage of $10 per hour and that their employees enjoyed good health benefits. He futher claimed that the smear campaign against Walmart was propaganda instigated by the "Unions" so they could fill their coffers due to the hundreds of thousands of employees at Walmart. The employees of in nearly every small town in America I am sure would be shocked that someone could be this out of touch with reality, and a soldier nonetheless, but it is indicative of many others who seem blind to reality.
The movie, Directed by Robert Greenwald, “The War on Greed, Starring the Homes of Henry Kravis,” "is a tongue-in-cheek story — think “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” meets “Roger & Me” — detailing Mr. Kravis’s homes and lifestyle, juxtaposed against the homes and incomes of working families."
To read an article about Mr. Greenwald's filmClick Here
Posted by Ronald at 05:31 AM | Comments (0)December 07, 2007
The Henry Rollins Show: Season One - DVD Review
American icon Henry Rollins is well known for his work with seminal 80's band Black Flag, his spoken word CDs and his prose. Most significantly of late, Get in the Van, a book about his years with Black Flag. The recent cable airing of the film American Hardcore brought attention to a largely ignored, yet extremely influential movement in American music that is often misidentified with the British punk movement in the late 70s.
Black Flag brought an intenisity that Rollins insists was only possible through sobriety. The riots and fistfights that occurred at hardcore shows weren't about drunken or drugged excess. The movement was a way of life brought on by the malais of the Reagan presidency and the growing disconnect between those who strove for and abused authority, including businesses, politicians and religious leaders, and a generation of youth who saw themselves increasingly marginalized.
The music wasn't about technical precision, musicianship and entertainment. Rather, it was a manifestation of the psyhcology for those who refused the ready made life society had waiting for them. The music was about raw power, raw emotion, in your face conftontation. The youth who were part of the movement didn't need, nor for the most part want their views effected by drugs and alcohol. It is a misconception by self proclaimed analysts and educators; the bigots and self proclaimed "culture warriors" that the music of this movement and those who followed it were menaces to society, drugged out losers and malcontents.
Out of the American Hardcore movement Henry Rollins continued to publish prose and poetry that spoke to not only that generation, but to the entire country in the midst of what was becoming a steamroller of propaganda and public opionion horseshit in the news entertainment industry. With such books as High Adventure in the Great Outdoors, Bang!, Art to Choke Hearts, Pissing In The Gene Pool and One From None, Rollins continued to build a following of loyal followers. He became a regular guest on the Tonight Show and proved to be one of the more sought after guests on late night television for his no-nonsense views and educated opinions.
Henry now can be seen on IFC with his own show, The Henry Rollins Show, and he continues a maniacal schedule of spoken word appearances and musical tours when he isn't doing his radio show, guest appearances and writing. Like any great artist, he has marked a wide territory with which he continues to influence a large number of writers, singers and performers.
Season One is available as a 3 disc package that includes all 20 episodes featuring such guests as Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne, Bill Maher, Werner Herzog, Oliver Stone, Matt Dillon and many others. Henry doesn't ask who these people are dating, or other banal bullshit you will hear on David Letterman and Jay Leno. You will hear director Stephen Gaghan explain his hair raising interview in Beirut with Hizbollah, Matt Dillon talk about his conversations with Linda Bukowski and preparing for the role of Henry Chinaski in the film Factotum, and Marilyn Manson tell why he was somewhat unsatisfied with the film Bowling for Colombine. Henry doesn't assume that his audience is a senseless pack of vicariously living morons, waiting like pigs to consume the latest piece of gossip with which they can regurgitate with others of like mind at office water coolers across the country.
This DVD package would make a great gift for the millions who are being turned off by today's modern day news entertainment industry with its bigots and blowhards who are trying to frame minds with a narrow minded and abusive version of reality.
Posted by Ronald at 04:35 AM | Comments (0)November 28, 2007
Hustle and Flow - Film Review
Just as so many movies John Singleton is associated with Hustle and Flow has a wide appeal, involving a good story line, an excellent cast, and a symbiotic relationship between the action and drama. This 2005 movie is written and directed by Craig Brewer and produced by Singleton and Stephanie Allain. The film garnered a multitude of awards and nominations for best actors and actresses, as well as an award for best original song. There is a 2007 mixtape CD from Dj
Myrikal entitled "Hustle & Scratch" which is based around soundbytes from the movie. Terrence Howard won the breakthrough artist award for this film and was nominated for best actor in a leading role. Anthony Anderson was nominated for best supporting actor.
Howard is also known for his roles in Ray, Lackawanna Blues, Crash, Four Brothers, and Get Rich or Die Tryin. In Hustle and Flow Howard gives a moving portrayal of DJay, a pimp and drug dealer who is in an early mid-life crisis. His father died at the same age and he knows there is a world of possibilities for those who dream. His girl Nola also has a dream to get out of her mean existence. She just doesn't know what that dream is. In the end DJay tells his friend Key that when his daughter grows up and asks him if she could become President he says he is going to lie to her because a person has to have a dream. As Chinasky says in the film "Factotum," "a person has to have a dream. Success isn't important, but you have to have a dream."
DJay's tenderness is placed against the harsh backdrop of his environment where hard things in life have to be dealt with by any means possible. Still, the movie has its light moments such as DJays's reaction when the clean cut Shelby, who plays piano in a church choir, shows up at DJay's house to help Key record DJay.
"You Mormon's is some brave muthafuckers."
He then pulls Key into the kitchen and asks:
"You know he white, right?"
"No, he's just light skinned."
DJay and Nola, played by Taryn Manning, share dialogue that is poignant in that it reflects the hopes and dreams that are shattered before they can come to fruition in the nation's ghettoes. But both are determined to succeed. For Djay, that means putting his experiences and thoughts into words. For Nola, it means having something she can apply herself to. And after DJaY is arrested for the shooting at the club following the altercation with Skinny she has her task. She takes charge of marketing DJay's music and he is able to realize his dream of hearing his music in the courtyard of the prison.
It's not a pretty life. Yet, it is a dirty reality of the American experience that there is an unseemly desperation that undermines the dreams of so many. Food, housing and clothing, not to mention survival, must be obtained by any means necessary. And DJay isn't about to let his baby girl's dreams be shattered by the rotting wasteland of the urban ghetto. When he tells Key he is going to lie to his daughter when she asks him if she can grow up to President it is reminiscent of the Scarlet Letter, which showed that love and lying have always gone together, and truth can actually be fatal.
I admit being biased towards John Singleton, because he is a talented director whose portrayals of class and ethnic interaction and conflict go beyond simple portrayals of degradation. They don't come off lecturing, and they bridge gaps over the racial divide. This film is another fine of example of that.
Posted by Ronald at 07:17 PM | Comments (0)November 25, 2007
Sweeney Todd - Film Review
"Sweeney Todd," which opens Dec. 21, is another ambitious reimagining of a venerable text. The result is a beautifully scored, high-art slasher film, told almost entirely in song and topped off with Depp paying homage to Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff.
Tim Burton, just in time for the holidays.
"Sweeney Todd" costars Burton's companion, Helena Bonham Carter, as the meat-pie-making Mrs. Lovett, Alan Rickman as the evil Judge Turpin and Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford. The story, with its origins as pulp magazine fodder in Victorian England, went through various literary interpretations before Sondheim's operatic 1979 Broadway musical, which starred Len Cariou as Todd and Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovett.
Posted by Ronald at 05:42 AM | Comments (0)November 08, 2007
Factotum
Factotum is a film loosely based on the life of writer Charles Bukowski who gained fame as a columnist in Los Angeles. His stories are wrought with the brutal reality and banality of mean living. The day laborer, flophouse resident of his stories, a semiautobiographical character named Henry Chinaski provides the vehicle for most of Bukowski's narratives and is the subject of the film. Though the film shares the title of Bukowski's novel, it isn't a screen production of the novel, which centers around Chinaski's travels across the United States during the World War II era. Rather, it is based on his life in squalid urban Los Angeles.
As I am familiar with Mickey Rourke's performance in Bukowski's play adapted to film, Barfly, Matt Dillon's performance seems a bit inspired by Rourke. The slurred words and soft voice with elongated vowels is reminiscent of Rourke in Barfly. The narrative is interspersed with tidbits from Bukowski's vast catalog of work.
To paraphrase Henry Miller, the writer himself is an artist consumed with the art of living, and this is what director Bent Hamer has captured. The word factotum means general servant, or one who engages in many diverse activities. Chinaski is a factotum by civil definition, but by his own definition he is a writer. Comedian Mike Meyers once told the story of his father who insisted on not revealing his occupation to others because he did not want to be identified with his occupation. He was not to be defined by his job, that was simply something he did in order to make money.
The anecdote to the formulaic writing of the modern novel is Bukowski. The language isn't pretty, there is no pretentious psycho babble, there is no attempt to talk over the heads of the targeted audience. Bukowski could've cared less whether you liked him. He was America's first reality writer who spoke to his fellow men using the common language of the day to convey the simple profundity of every day living.
The life of the common man is like a game of hockey, through all the viciousness and brutality their is incredible grace and beauty. There is something about a 6'5 inch 240 lb. bruiser with no front teeth and a black eye skating in lithe circles, jumping over bodies and manuevering a puck between an opponent's legs that only the common man can appreciate. Just so, the mythical everyman can identify with Dillon in this film. The struggle to assert oneself in a hostile world is carried by Dillon with the ease of someone who identifies with his audience. It is a shame he was overlooked by the industry for this role.
Lili Taylor gives a brilliant performance as Jan, a role which won her the Golden Swan award at the Copenhagen International Film Festival. Hers is the portrayal of the urban woman struggling to maintain her own identity in the face of what the banal urban environment offers her. There is no fanciful romance in her position, she has no pretensions of love from men as portrayed in movies. Reality for her is that men leave when they have grown tired of having sex with her. She does what she has to to survive yet always retains her femininity.
The stock boy, floor scraper, assembly line worker, pot scrubber... all can appreciate Chinaski's 'so what another job attitude'. These jobs are all too common, and all too often managed by would be authoritarians with a chip on their shoulder themselves. The common man in modern America has a chip on his shoulder. His wages don't buy half of what they used to but don't seem to increase. The only thing that is constant is the creditior's calls, the fights with the spouse over money, the foreclosure notices, the stupid talk of politicians who glory in seeing us fight among ourselves.
For the American plumber, taxi driver, drywaller, construction worker or parking attendant; for the American Security guard, material handler or short order cook the psycho diarhea being published as fiction with the help of university writing programs is worthless. It isn't because these people lack culture that they don't read fiction and poetry, it's because what is offered them means nothing to them. These people could care less about Bill Gates' rise to stardom. What is real to them is that Bill Gates' wealth is gained at the expense of others. They don't care about the story of a rich Jew who is trying to sort out his inner consciousness. Give them Bukowski and a good game of hockey as these are things they can readily identify with. They are no longer afraid of death. They realize, as Bukowski wrote "there's nothing left for death to take."
When a rich man is too cheap to buy a reserved seat at the racetrack he sits among the common people as if he were one of them. The people around them do not know the man is rich, but the film's viewers do. And so does Chinaski. He politely asks the man to move and when he challenges Chinaski "whatcha gonna do about it?" Chinaski throttles and punches the man as people around them disinterestedly observe. This scene underscores the class resentment that is seething below the surface of political discussion in America. Chinaski would more readily sympathize with a man taking his seat if he was poor like the rest of the people in the general seating area, but he cannot take this intrusion of his world by a member of the upper classes.
The scene in the pickle factory where Chinaski is introduced to Mr. Jefferies is a stark portrayal of what the would be artist is up against as he toils through the mind numbing jobs in order to earn a living. When Chinaski tells him he is a writer the supervisor asks him, "are you sure?" To him a writer is a writer by occupation. He invites Chinaski in for a bull session with his friend, Jeffries, a writer. Jefferies self importantly smokes his cigar, silent, waiting for Chinaski to ask him about being a writer. The supervisor thinks he is doing something for someone who fancies himself a writer. But Chinaski is the real writer, true to his art, true to the art of living. For Chinaski, his "contest is only with himself, to do it right, with power, with force and delight, and gamble." He takes a few puffs from his cigarette and asks "may I leave?"
Kristin Asbjornsen provides the beautiful music for this film. The lyrics aptly capture the banality, brutality and disappointment of the urban Los Angeles with which Chinaski, and Bukowski, is so familiar. The street scenes and Chinaski's dwellings vividly recreate the actual environment as it plays a major role in developing the scene, the dialogue and the psychological influence of those who live within it. It plays a role much like the woods in Thomas Hardy's novel The Return of the Native.
For the upper classes and scholars this film will not have much appeal except perhaps on some sort of bohemian level. For the rest of us who make up the vast majority of world civilization this film is a masterpiece that will help us all to identify ourselves and the role our environment has in our perception of ourselves and our world.
