Paul's Thing

“Time to nut up or shut up!” — Woody Harrelson as Tallahassee in Zombieland (2009).

If you think I’ve been posting a lot of DVD reviews lately, you’re right. I’m doubling the frequency of DVD review posts in an effort to catch up with movies I’ve watched, cataloged, and previously reviewed on Facebook. Trouble is, I keep watching movies, and the backlog keeps growing!

	Trainspotting (1996) I’m coming to Trainspotting 14 years late. Does it stand the test of time? Christ, does it ever. An early scene (“Worst Toilet in Scotland”) drove my wife from the room, but I recognized it as metaphor, stuck it out, and was shortly thereafter rewarded with the scene where the junkie mother discovers her neglected baby dead in its crib. I am not saying this is an easy movie to watch — it isn’t. But it’s not entirely a descent into despair either — for all the parts that will make you cringe, other parts will make you laugh. This movie has power — you’ll never forget it.
	Shrink (2009) Kevin Spacey is very good, but the movie is derivative (they’re still trying to cash in on Crash, imagine that), and the happy ending, where every character’s problems are upliftingly resolved (well, except for Kevin Spacey’s dog), is actually kind of sappy.
	The Hangover (2009) Why did I like this movie? I hate movies about boys behaving badly. I hated Jackass; I hated Borat. I fully expected to hate The Hangover. But I didn’t. I laughed. I worried about the guys’ missing friend. I wanted Phil to get out of his relationship with that awful woman. I badly wanted to find out how the tiger got into the hotel suite. And oh by the way I watched the unrated version, the one with plenty of T&A, the one most likely to appeal to Jackass & Borat fans. I think the difference is in the movie’s approach to calamity. Where Jackass and Borat present calamity — people experiencing sudden & great physical or emotional shock — merely for laughs, The Hangover takes a more empathetic approach. You care about the characters. This is a surprisingly good movie, and the slide show at the end is worth the wait.
	Last Chance Harvey (2008) Meh. You know, if movie producers had a bit of nerve, they’d choose non-beautiful, unknown, unsexy actors to play middle-aged unsexy people. Instead they give us Dustin Hoffman, whom I assume any number of women would do, and Emma Thompson, whom any number of men would definitely do, and we’re supposed to pretend they’re middle-aged unsexy people. This forgettable movie reminded me of that other middle-aged romance where Carol Burnett and Alan Alda got it on. As in, big whoop.
	The Blind Side (2009) A superficial feel-good movie with all the standard superficial feel-good tricks — the struggle to overcome a horrific childhood and lack of education made to look like a breeze, accomplished in two or three short scenes; a hulking teenager from the ghetto with absolutely no bad habits, social and legal obstacles easily vaulted — if you didn’t know the script was based on a true story you simply wouldn’t believe it. But I’ll tell you what, Sandra Bullock carries the whole damn thing, and she is a marvel. I loved this movie, and I love Sandra Bullock.
	Gentlemen Broncos (2009) This is a silly movie, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. There’ve been a lot of sci-fi geek movies, but this one is original and interesting. One reviewer said the director, Jared Hess, is a cross between Wes Anderson and John Waters, and I think that’s right on. It probably helps if you’re a bit of a sci-fi geek yourself, and a fan of MST3K-style cheesy movies. I am both, and I got a kick out of Gentlemen Broncos.
	The Time Traveler’s Wife (2009) Frankly, I was disappointed the movie added nothing to the book. People often complain movies are not like the books they’re based on, but in this case I thought it was faithful almost to a fault . . . it really isn’t much more than a Classics Illustrated version for lazy people who can’t be bothered to read. Funny, though, I don’t remember the book being quite as dull and depressing as the movie, so maybe there are differences after all. But here’s my real problem: time travel is not a subject for romance, it’s a subject for science fiction.
	2012 (2009) Mega disaster porn from start to finish, with last-second cliffhanger after last-second cliffhanger, often with a countdown clock running. Even as you know John Cusak will live, you involuntarily scoot forward in your seat as the goddamn clock clicks down to zero . . . enervating entertainment. The best thing about the movie is Woody Harrelson.
	Couples Retreat (2009) Predictable and sappy, but the actors are engaging and the scenery delightful. Sexual innuendo and dry humpage run rampant throughout, inducing a few guffaws . . . so if you take PG-13 to mean “family fun,” you might want to reread the definition.
	Zombieland (2009) One of the better “fun” zombie movies I’ve seen. It put me very much in mind of Night of the Comet, an excellent 1980s movie about young folks surviving in a devastated and depopulated world. Same idea . . . only with zombies, you have to be on your toes every second of the day. The opening slo-mo scenes are worth the price of admission alone, and Bill Murray was a pleasant surprise.

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Damn!  I went away for a motorcycle ride this morning and came home to find Donna in the middle of a cleaning spree.  She’s particularly proud of her sewing room, and I must admit, it’s looking pretty organized.  Photos, please:

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Certain words and phrases indicate a person’s inability or unwillingness to engage in honest conversion.  I call them eye-rollers.  When you hear them, you know you’ve hit a brick wall: whether it’s stupidity or willful close-mindedness, the person who utters them is not listening.  Roll your eyes and find someone else to talk to.

• Ground Zero Mosque*
• Terror Mosque
• Obama Mosque (oh yeah, some are beginning to call it that)
• Islamic Niketown (WTF?)
• Terror Imam
• Sharia Law (in the context of Muslims imposing same on Christians)

*You can’t instantly assume someone who repeats the phrase “ground zero mosque” is a Stupid.  Low-information/Fox News types may not know it’s neither a mosque nor at Ground Zero.  But if you explain the facts and they persist in using the phrase, it’s time to move on.  They’ve embraced Teh Stupid.

Update (8/26/10): That last bullet isn’t right.  Yes, the scardey-cats like to talk about shraria law, making it out to be some kind of threat.  But the US constitution not only gives Muslims the right to build mosques and worship in them, it separates church and state, preventing Muslims from imposing religious law on any American, including Christians, Jews, non-believers, Buddhists, and — yes — Americans who are Muslim.  We mess with that precious document at our peril.

Is there something about aviation accidents reporters don’t understand?  Upwards of 95% of airplane crashes (actually, more like 99.9%) are caused by the pilots involved.  But you might never guess that from newspaper, magazine, and blog reportage, where a passive-voice form of politeness takes over.  They report the who/what/when/where of aviation accidents, but rarely the why, which in virtually all cases is operator screw-up.   Why do reporters covering aviation accidents so often handle pilots with kid gloves?  They don’t do it for anyone else.

I’ve been following the automotive blog Jalopnik.  Jalopnik’s ground-level reporting seems right on, but when they tackle aviation the results can be risible.  Two examples from this past week:

New Photos of Jack Roush’s Scary Plane Crash

A NASCAR team owner flies his own airplane to Oshkosh.  He gets too slow on final approach.  His private jet does what any airplane will do in such a situation . . . it stalls (aviation-speak for “quits flying”), rolls, drops like a stone, and hits the ground.

How does Jalopnik describe it?  “Roush’s Raytheon/Beechcraft Premier 390 reportedly stalled during an attempted landing at the Experimental Aircraft Association AirVenture Fly-In in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.”

Get that?  It’s not that Jack Roush did anything.  It was the airplane that stalled.  One would almost think the reporter thinks “stall” means the engines quit working.  Matter of fact, I bet that’s exactly what the reporter does think.

It’s interesting to note that this is the second airplane Mr. Roush has crashed.  You’d think he was a doctor, not a car guy.

Malware Blamed for Disastrous Plane Crash

This one is particularly misleading.  MSNBC reports (and Jalopnik uncritically passes on) that computer malware caused a deadly airline crash in 2008.  Sounds pretty spooky, right?

Not exactly.  The pilot and co-pilot tried to take off without setting the slats and flaps.  That’s what caused this accident.  Had they properly configured their airplane for takeoff, in accordance with procedure, they would not have crashed, and 154 people would not have died.  How do I know this?  I Googled “Spanair Flight 5022” (as MSNBC and Jalopnik should have done).

The malware report MSNBC and Jalopnik are trying to sensationalize, two years after the fact, says that Spanair’s ground maintenance computer system may have been infected with a trojan virus, preventing ground maintenance crews from calling up known problems listed in the airplane’s computerized flight log.  Okay, that’s a problem worth investigating and fixing, but it had nothing to do with the crash.

Still, I understand the temptation to sensationalize.  Wouldn’t it be scary if Al Qaeda could bring down airliners by introducing viruses into on-board computers?  You can see the movie now: a giant 747 lifting off from a runway at LAX as a bearded jihadi in a nearby Starbucks sweats over an iPad screen showing a horizontal bar and a flashing word: LOADING . . . LOADING . . . LOADING . . .

Look, Jalopnik (and MSNBC) dudes and dudettes, you wouldn’t hesitate to call a speeding car driver a dumb shit for running a red light and killing a family in a mini-van, would you?  Airplane drivers shouldn’t be treated any differently.

Banned Books Week is September 25-October 2, so mark your calendars.  And in case you didn’t know, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, sponsor of Banned Books Week, has a Facebook page.

Planning to take your copy of Mein Kampf with you on your next trip to Toronto?  Maybe you should rethink that.

Glenn Beck’s heterosexual minions strike a blow for censorship in New Jersey . . . and the LGBT community fights back.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “banned in Boston.”  Do you know what’s behind it?

An English teacher’s thoughts on teaching banned books.

A mother’s complaint about manga in public libraries . . . and the library’s sensible response.

Childrens’ author “disinvited” from Texas literary festival, other authors withdraw in response.

This article about school library censorship in Missouri is not that interesting.  But the reader comments will give you a chilling look into the minds of those who would control what we read.

Ever hear the rumor about people trying to ban Where’s Waldo?  Apparently it’s not a rumor.  And here’s why.

. . . we got around to spring cleaning!

Polly is here for a few days, and she came to work.  So far she’s painted our guest bedroom and removed the carpet (Donna’s going to put in laminate flooring, but that’s a near-future project, not an immediate one).  Today she’s driving down to Green Valley to help our friends Bob and Linda with some inside painting.

Out of shame, I thought I’d tackle a long-deferred project and work on our spa.  Two burnt-out pump motors are now replaced, and the spa’s been drained, cleaned, and refilled.  What the hell, might as well touch up the siding while I’m at it, right?

If you can stand to look at them, here are some photos of Polly and me hard at work (click the thumbnails to see the originals):

• Painting
• Ripping out carpet
• Staining the siding

So, it wasn’t Rush who broke hate radio’s N-word barrier after all.  It was Laura Schlessinger.

Will there be consequences?  À la Don Imus?

In my earlier post, I expressed the opinion that Rush could get away with it.  Laura, I don’t know.  Maybe if Rush backs her up?

I must say, though . . . Laura’s Palinesque “two wrongs make a right” rationale is impeccable: Hey, they say it, why can’t we?

Welcome to post-racial America!

Update (8/18/10): Laura quits (to spend more time with her beloved Aryan brothers and sisters).

“The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother’s keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” — Samuel L. Jackson as Jules Winnifield in Pulp Fiction (1994).

If you think you’re seeing a lot of DVD reviews here lately, you are. I’m doubling the frequency of DVD review posts in an effort to catch up with movies I’ve watched, cataloged, and reviewed on Facebook.

	Witch Hunt (2008) This one was a real disappointment. Sean Penn has a reputation as a crusading rabble-rouser, so I expected much of this documentary about the innocent people rounded up and sent to prison without due process on false charges of pederasty. I remember the cases vividly — parents accused of having sex with their own children, trading them with other couples, satanic rites, middle-of-the-night airplane trips for sex with movie stars — it was a 20th century witch hunt, and some of these people served as much as 20 years before they were exonerated. Not a single person in authority at the time — not the “sex therapists” who coerced false confessions out of the kids, not the cops, not the DA — ever received any punishment for ruining all these lives. But the film doesn’t capture the outrage, and it leaves more questions unanswered than it answers. Sean Penn inexplicably pulled his punches with this one, and I just can’t figure out why.
	Breaking Point (2009) Remember how cartoonishly cheesy and thuggish the villains in Charles Bronson’s Death Wish movies were? Now imagine a movie where everybody is that bad, including the hero. Pretty bleak stuff. You can have it.
	The Hurt Locker (2008) Watching The Hurt Locker, I couldn’t help contrasting it with the 1962 film The War Lover, which covered some of the same ground — the intensity of combat, the sense of mission and brotherhood in arms, the potency of being at the tip of the spear — but which covered it in a novelistic way, explaining everything as it went along. Not so The Hurt Locker. Kathryn Bigelow took a different tack — don’t tell, don’t explain, just show. And her movie packs three times the punch. This is a brilliant movie, and I’ll be rooting for it on Oscars night.
	Pandorum (2009) It’s fine when a movie has dark subject matter, but not so fine when it’s filmed in the dark. I always think they’re trying to hide something . . . cheap sets, crappy special effects, something like that. This movie is dark all around, save for a sappy Adam-&-Eve-start-over-on-a-new-world ending. And listen, other Facebook reviewers, those weren’t aliens, they were fucked up humans. Go watch Pandorum again as punishment.
	Public Enemies (2009) Public Enemies is an over-long, gloomy, pizazz-free retelling of the John Dillinger story. Watching Johnny Depp and Christian Bale walk around with identical pursed-lip expressions for two and a half hours led me to this startling realization: sometimes you literally cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys. Also: when the good guys’ actions are indistinguishable from the bad guys’ actions, the movie has nothing to say.
	Moon (2009) Really good hard science fiction is hard to find. Moon mostly delivers. Remember how the replicants of Blade Runner had a short life span? Remember also that they were confined to off-world mining and production? At least the replicants knew who and what they were. Introduce Lunar Industries and Sam Bell, lone operator of an automated mining station sited on the dark side of the moon. He’s on a three-year contract, just about due to fly home to his wife and child. Uh, Sam? You’re a clone, dude, and you’re almost at the end of your three-year life span. Another Sam Bell clone, currently resting in cold storage, will soon replace you. This time, however, the old and new Sam Bells’ paths cross and they figure it all out, with the help of HAL’s non-evil twin, GERTY (you can tell GERTY’s friendly because his eye is blue . . . HAL’s was red). Okay, I’m making it sound corny and it isn’t corny at all. Moon is a thoughtful exploration of cloning and the bad uses to which it could be put, a pretty good detective story, and a solid psychological thriller. It’s also good sci-fi. Kudos to the director, Duncan Jones, for using well-lit sets, both inside the lunar habitat and outside on the surface. Too often, sci-fi films are dark (Pandorum and Event Horizon are good examples), probably to hide marginal sets and special effects. A couple of sci-fi geek quibbles: since when does the moon have normal Earth gravity, and since when can you hear an arriving lunar lander when you’re on the surface, in a vacuum? Other than that, I liked it. A lot.
	Cold Souls (2009) Mostly, when a movie’s core idea is impossible — in this case, that you can have your soul removed and placed in storage, that you can have another person’s stored soul implanted, that the soul is a physical object — you’re constantly aware of the impossibility, and even if it’s a good movie you enjoy it in the same way you enjoy Star Wars, having fun but not taking it seriously at all. But with Cold Souls, you might find yourself accepting the impossible premise, actually hoping Paul Giamatti finds out more about his implanted soul, hoping he gets his own soul back, seriously stressing over the fate of Dina Korzun’s character. This is a well-acted, interesting movie.
	Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001) This one is actually pretty good. It reminded me of that vampire flick that’s so popular with the girlies, only with a manly man in the lead role, not some mincing ponce with bad teeth. Normally I’ll get up and leave when any sort of kung fu shit starts, but Christophe Gans apparently understands the “art” in “martial arts” means beauty, not technique, and as long as the viewer buys into the core concept of kung fu chivalry — that only one bad guy at a time is allowed to attack the hero — the fights are beautiful. Well, I say manly men, but actually the Mohawk sidekick is sort of androgynous, but hey, it’s French. And the bête — a hyena? — is awesome bad. Good entertainment, even if you do have to read subtitles, and gorgeously filmed.
	Law Abiding Citizen (2009) Vengeance flicks satisfy something in us, but there’s something wrong with Law Abiding Citizen. Apart from the original murderer and his accomplice, I’m not sure the right people get killed. I guess that’s why Death Wish and The Brave One appeal to me where this one doesn’t. Bronson and Foster take on the specific people who do them wrong. Gerard Butler’s character takes on the system, where individual blame and responsibility are diffuse, killing people only peripherally involved in the injustice he suffers. Bronson and Foster go after their bad guys one on one, face to face. Butler goes after them from a control booth, using remote-controlled high-tech systems. Bronson and Foster know when to stop. Butler just keeps killing, aiming eventually to wipe out the entire city government of Philadelphia. Jesus, does this guy hate cheesesteaks too? So basically what I’m saying is . . . this is a movie with a muddled moral message.
	Battle in Seattle (2007) A docudrama about the 1999 protests at the World Trade Organization summit in Seattle, and the third-world-dictatorship-style police response called in by our corporate overlords. A stirring reminder that the original Tea Partiers, like the activists and protesters in Seattle in 1999, were front-line revolutionaries prepared to take serious personal risks for political and social ideals, not the pack of ignorant cowards we see shouting on TV today, hiding behind the skirts of the Republican Party, cheering on the corporations as they consolidate power, amass obscene wealth, turn once-proud working people into abject wage slaves, poison our food supplies, and strip mine the very earth beneath our feet. That, right there, should give you an idea of the kinds of passions this movie will stir up in you . . . if you have a soul.

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