Category: play

I’m not proud of this. I’m not sure Gary Oldman should be proud of this either. On this very night that my wife went to see Gary Oldman in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I sat in a sorry old Courtyard by Marriott about 600 miles away and watched Red Riding Hood on the free hotel HBO.

It actually didn’t end up being that bad. I couldn’t really stop watching it once it got going. It was kind of suspenseful. It actually reminded me of that M. Night Shyamalan movie The Village. It had the same sort of suspense with a twist.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Let’s face it, Red Riding Hood probably targets mostly teenage girls. I’m betting the nice tidy ending satisfied that group, even though grandma dies.

Certain feelings of self-loathing have entered the picture at this point; I watched this movie while my wife and a friend saw an intelligent British spy thriller with academy award aspirations. No good can come of me continuing to write any more, but I’m committed to documenting even gratuitous, non-sports TV watching.

I’m out.

My holiday movie marathon continues. I’ve had some varied experiences: a remake of a foreign thriller, a British period-piece/crime fighting buddy movie, and now, an Oscar front-running drama with a famous American actor. I won’t rank them or compare them, that wouldn’t be right.

Okay, maybe I will. Suffice it to say, I’ve really enjoyed all of them. From an emotional standpoint, this one, The Descendants, prompted the widest range of emotions. I was happy and sad. I was excited and bored. I laughed and scowled. In the end, it was a rewarding experience and I’m on board with any Oscar accolades this thing gets. Additionally, as you know, I’m a fan of family carnage, which it had going for it.

Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaiian guy who’s family secrets get bared when his wife is severely injured in a boating accident. He, along with his two tempestuous daughters and his daughter’s friend Sid, sort through the aftermath of his wife’s accident. At the same time, Matt has to deal with the disposition of 150 acres of prime Hawaiian real estate that his family has owned forever, and for which he’s the trustee.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Art should illuminate.

At some point in your life you’re probably going to have to sift through the wreckage of some tragedy. It could be something related to your family, your job, your friends, whatever. It could be partly your fault, all your fault, or none of your fault at all. Who knows. You won’t have any control over the details anyhow. But you can control how you react (you’ve probably heard this advice before, I just saw it the other day in some quote).

We follow Matt, his family, and his friends around for a few days and see how they react to his wife’s imminent death (she’s coming off life support soon). Actually, we follow mostly Matt. Through the course of the movie he runs through a bunch of emotions and sometimes reacts without thinking or by thinking of himself first. But in the end, he handles himself with grace and puts his feelings aside to help everyone else deal with this tragedy.

He’s a flawed person. He works long hours, is out of touch with his kids, and can’t express himself very well. But you’re pulling for him. Near the end there’s a moment where his father-in-law accuses him of being at fault for his wife’s death, which you know isn’t true. Your initial inclination is to want Matt to stand up for himself and shout back. He doesn’t. He shows restraint. He reacts the right way.

And it’s a good kind of restraint. It’s not the, “I’m keeping this bottled up inside until I blow my stack” type of restraint. He just knows the right thing to do and he does it, that’s it. And in the end, he gets rewarded with a modicum of closure.

Heavy stuff, I know, but it didn’t feel that heavy. I never really got choked up because there are so many humorous and lighter moments sprinkled in. It’s really a great movie. Just a darn good flick.

There are some great crime fighting duos in the annals of screened entertainment. Holmes and Watson can hold their own against the best of them, at least Guy Ritchie’s version can. I didn’t think this a few years ago when I left the first Sherlock Holmes so my expectations were low.

Well, as it inevitably happens when I have low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised. It turned out to be an exciting and humorous trip to the theatre on New Year’s Eve to see A Game of Shadows.

By the way, did I tell you that referencing the director when discussing movies increases your pop culture street cred considerably? Often, if you play it right, it could elevate the conversation to high culture.

You want to talk crime fighting duos? I’ll tell you about crime-fighting duos. My generation had:

• Riggs and Murtaugh
• Burnett and Lowrey
• Tango and Cash
• Lee and Carter

They were often characterized by one crazy guy and another guy who’s like, “Hey dude, you’re crazy, nooo way, I got a family at home and I gotta feed my fish and what you’re suggesting could be illegal …so you go ahead, and I’ll follow a few steps behind and probably get embroiled in the brouhaha anyhow, but I’m on record as saying ‘this is crazy, this is crazy’.”

Oops, that last part was from Vacation I think. That’s genre-mixing, another surefire way to jack up your pop culture street cred.

Holmes (Downey, Jr.) and Watson (Law) carry on this tradition of crime fighting duos, Holmes being the crazy guy and Watson playing the family man. They team up with Noomi Rapace, of TGWTDT fame. It looks like the original Salander is getting the best of the new Salander for now, based on the Christmas week box office. I don’t think this will last. I think the book fans will keep TGWTDT alive much longer.

A Game of Shadows had some great slow-motion action scenes, a lot of quirky humor from Downey, Jr. and Law, a very villainous villain, and a pretty exciting and inventive ending.

I give it a thumb’s up.

There are certain things I glom on to. Fixate may be a better term than glom. All kinds of different things really, and The Millennium Trilogy is one of them.

Other recent fixations:

• The Wire
• Three Floyds beer
• British spy stories
• Sue Grafton’s alphabet series
• NBA

This fixation bias could be a character flaw of some sort. I don’t really understand why I do it and it throws me a curveball every so often. The other night, a dear friend asked me, “Why are you such a big fan of Three Floyd’s?”

I didn’t have an answer. I stumbled around a little and eventually just told her something like, “I don’t know really, I just fixate on things…Squirrel!!”

I ask for Three Floyds wherever I go, I fantasize about a brewery tour, and I constantly try to push it on others. All this, and I bet I couldn’t pick it out in a blind taste test with Budweiser.

Along these same lines, I can’t really explain my fixation with The Millennium Trilogy either. Why did I decide to fixate on it instead of, say, the Mission Impossible franchise? You have every right to doubt the genuineness of my devotion to these things. Heck, part of why I write this stuff down is to make sense of these fixations. I went back and checked out my take right after I read the first book and it was somewhat enlightening.

I’m sure of this though, these things provide me with awesome sensory experiences. Excitement, anticipation, flavor, introspection …that’s all that matters isn’t it? And the sensory experience is heightened a little bit when you have some stake in it, when you take it a little more seriously, when you care. I could have gone to see the Mission Impossible flick with my wife, but I didn’t, and won’t. I went to see TGWTDT, alone, because, for whatever reason, I’m into it. I care. I’ve read the books and seen the foreign films and read all the reviews. I take my Blomkvist and Salander seriously.

It started out cool. The cover of Immigrant Song during the opening credits was awesome. I just stared in wonder as the music boomed and the black oil stuff oozed across the screen. I bought the song (oh, I already owned the Led Zeppelin version).

It stayed on pace after that. Great movie. Well done by Fincher. Relatively true to the book, at least to my satisfaction. Mara and Craig put forth solid performances as Salander and Blomkvist. I would see it again. I started re-watching the Swedish version (instantly on Netflix) to clarify some things and maybe I’ll re-read the book.

I wonder what it would have been like to see this thing for the first time. I didn’t get to feel much of the excitement and anticipation because I knew the story. There were audible gasps from theatre-goers throughout (it was jam-packed the day after Christmas). It was evident that many were familiar with the story because a lot of the gasps would occur before the shocking moments.

** PLOT KILLERS FOLLOW **

Fincher made some changes, most notably the ending. It threw me a curveball because I was waiting for the trip to Australia, but it never occurred, so I blanked on the key scene. Oh well.

There are other subtleties that fans are talking about and one of them relates to the Mara/Fincher take on Salander relative to the Swedish take (played perfectly by Noomi Rapace). I thought Mara nailed Salander, don’t get me wrong, but Rapace’s version was what I envision Salander looking like. Monika Bartyzel, from movies.com seems to agree, but for reasons much more subtler than I could discern on my own. She says this:

Fincher’s Lisbeth is not Larsson’s. She is sexualized, softened, romanticized, and less empowered. Whether he intended this or not, it’s what countless critics see in the film; they don’t mind it – in fact most like it – but they’ve recognized it and have written about it.

So there’s that. See what you think. Here’s the Charlie Rose interview where Rapace makes specific reference to “inhabiting Salander” (early on, starting at 1:45). Contrast this with the Charlie Rose group discussion with everyone from the American version (Rooney Mara discusses her take on Salander at about the 19:45 mark).

Hmmm, I don’t know what to make of this issue. I’m not in touch with my subconscious enough to be able to assess if Fincher and Mara ruined Salander.

I hope they make the whole trilogy and I hope they keep the team intact. It didn’t fare well in the first weekend, but there were some big films out, so hopefully it has some staying power. Go see it.

[UPDATE]: John Kass has a take, and a familiar fixation.

This feels like the future to me. Let me start from the beginning. I saw Louis C.K. for the first time back in April on the Talking Funny special on HBO. He was kind of funny so I started following him on Twitter. I didn’t really pay much attention until I started seeing internet chatter about his self-distributed comedy special.

That stuff gets me interested. I love the idea of indie artists making a go of it on their own just using consumer level technology and marketing things via the web. That’s cool. So I followed the link to his download site from a tweet or something and paid the $5 via Paypal. What the heck? Sure, I was almost completely unfamiliar with his comedy, but I figured it was worth a shot. Heck, this stuff usually retails for $14.99 to $29.99 so it felt like a good deal.

He’s actually not very indie. He’s a well-established comedian with HBO specials and his own TV show and probably a millionaire. He anted up $250,000 and paid some professionals to record his show at the historic Beacon Theatre in New York and a web firm to build a real simple website.

It’s very well done. It’s an hour long HD movie that measures about 1.2GB (it took about 30 minutes to download). I watched it on my computer while eating breakfast and reading the paper the morning after I bought it. It has no DRM so I can do whatever I want with it. In fact, I can download it two more times and stream it twice before they lock me out. The purchase transaction was a piece of cake. I clicked buy, entered my Paypal info, then hit download.

He gave a detailed accounting of all the money he made on this thing plus gave a ton of it to charity. It’s a great read and will give you a sample of his humor, but I’ll give you a synopsis. He’s already sold over 200,000 downloads. That’s over $1 million. So far, he’s paid for the production costs ($250,000), gave big bonuses to his crew ($250,000), donated a bunch to charities ($280,000), and pocketed the rest. And that’s only been in the first few weeks.

Pretty amazing, when you consider that big companies like Apple, Amazon, Best Buy, and Sony didn’t get a cent from this. Even if you don’t like the guy’s comedy, you have to commend his efforts. He’s on the front lines, trying to make digital world work for him rather than fighting like the music industry did for so long. Here’s his plea to not torrent the darn thing:

To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.

Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I’m just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can’t stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.

Sincerely,
Louis C.K.

About his comedy – it’s for mature audiences only. Here’s a take on his comedy from a blogger named Frank Chimero. I found it through Daring Fireball. I thought the special was pretty darn funny. But the humor kind of got lost in my infatuation with the distribution methodology. I’ll move it over to my iPhone and watch it again.

This little experiment has inspired me to look for other ways to get great entertainment, at a reasonable price, that I can consume anywhere, gift easily, and support the artist directly without paying big dollars to big companies. Here are some other ideas:

• Edward Burns just made a movie for $9,000
• There are a bunch of people self-publishing ebooks
• My wife brought this online-distributed movie called For Lovers Only to my attention, but it’s direct-to-iTunes, so it’s a little different
• Leo LaPorte started his own TV station and is throwing up tons of indie content

So there are ways to go it alone, but it’s still difficult to do it without any help from a publisher, label, or distributor. Louis C.K. came darn close, but he was only able to get famous by first getting distribution with big TV. He showed some real leadership on this though so maybe other artists will be inspired.

In my other examples above everyone has plans to have a “theatrical run” or “get a publisher” or “broaden distribution with iTunes/YouTube,” which are contrary to what Louis C.K. is doing. I don’t think he’s selling this video to a label and I don’t think he’s going to put it on iTunes or Amazon. His distribution method is simple, go here. That’s all, for the rest of eternity. If you want to re-download or refer a friend to the video, you’ll just have to remember these 15 characters – buy.louisck.net.

Have we had a true indie star who stayed indie but still became a gazillionaire? I’d like to find one. Let me know if you know of any.

Valerie Plame was in the CIA. She was trying to figure out if the Iraqis had nukes back in 2002. Her husband, Joe Wilson, was even getting involved in the spy stuff. He was a former ambassador and took a trip to Niger to check an important piece of intelligence. A very important piece.

Then Scooter Libby and the White House started getting involved. Libby appeared to be angry that the CIA hadn’t found any nukes. He figured the Iraqis had them for sure because they were darn close 1991 and they’ve had ten more years to work on them. He’s like, “Just find ’em, CIA.”

Plame starts working overtime to figure this out and husband Joe starts getting discouraged and pissed because he’s starting his own gig in Washington after being an ambassador and his wife is always gone so it’s a logistical nightmare raising the twins.

They portray the White House as you would expect them to be portrayed by Hollywood, as a group with tunnel vision and a preconceived notion that Iraq had nukes. The CIA, Valerie Plame, and her husband knew this was wrong. We still invade Iraq. You know the story.

All this, very convincing with hindsight (I still need to do an accuracy check). But that’s not the point of the movie really. It’s easy to throw the Bush administration under the bus for blowing this intelligence, but the movie doesn’t dwell on this. It dwells on the fallout of his apparent vendetta against an outspoken Joe Wilson (he blew holes in a key piece of intelligence that Bush used to convince Americans of Iraqi nukes). The fallout I’m speaking of is marital strain for Plame/Wilson, job losses for both, and a serious hit to their reputation.

David and Goliath. Small taking on big and powerful. Family drama. Fact based. Good story.

I feel there’s a subtler point that I’m not sure what to make of. Here it is. Shouldn’t the CIA get accorded the same type of respect and honor that our armed forces get? If so, how do we show it? Do we show it enough?

You don’t ever get a “thank our troops” type of sentiment for the CIA. In fact, since 9/11, it seems they get increasingly maligned. Is this deserved? I feel like I should have been outraged about the leaking of Plame’s status.

The White House basically released to the world that Plame was a CIA agent. Only her husband and parents knew. Can you imagine that? Your best friends think you work for a venture capital firm but really you’re trying to save the world.

She was a spy, man. We’re not talking about an analyst or desk jockey here. We’re talking spy, in the field, doing secret agent stuff, until some dude named Scooter Libby takes it on his own to bring Plame/Wilson down.

Well, actually it wasn’t Libby really, I think Richard Armitage eventually copped to the leak. Libby took the fall though and got 30 months in jail and a $250,000 fine, but Bush commuted the jail time anyhow. So the whole thing kind of went unpunished.

Plame and Wilson moved to Santa Fe and wrote non-fiction books. They consulted on the movie and I think she’s going to start writing spy novels. Sounds like they’re making a living and maybe even living the dream in that beautiful New Mexico town. My wife and I have been planning to go there for a vacation but haven’t pulled the trigger. Gail says they have a huge outsider art community there.

Squirrel!!

Oh well, I digress.

The ending was kind of slick. They had Naomi Watts walk into Congress to begin testifying on this…then they blanked the screen, paused and did some beeps and blips, and switched to recorded video of the actual event with the real Valerie Plame while they started rolling the credits.

We watched on Showtime. We don’t buy movie channels, but we got it free for six months in some promo deal. Gail made the decision to watch, I was just along for the ride. I liked it.

Here are other options to look into this:

• 60 Minutes Interview
• Wikipedia (Valerie Plame)
• Wikipedia (Plame Affair)
• Fox News Interview with Rove

The special prosecutor was Patrick Fitzgerald. That dude had his hands in everything it seems.

Wow, I remember Robo QB well. I recall my high school buddy, the only USC fan in Findlay, talking up Todd Marinovich. My buddy was always ahead of the game on college football recruiting and he hated the Big Ten. He would tote out stories about Marinovich as proof of how much the Pac 10 would supposedly dominate the Big Ten in the future. This was maybe 1984, when Marinovich was probably a high school sophomore.

In 1989 I saw Marinovich play live. I attended the Notre Dame vs USC game that year on a rainy Saturday with my wife. I can picture  it like it was yesterday. We had two tix in the north end zone and it was a great game. Marinovich had three TDs (I don’t remember that stat specifically, but I verified it). ND won and I can remember thinking, “This kid is going to be good.”

He was good, but he was a serious headcase. Remember though, this guy was raised by his dad to be a QB beginning at age four, so despite the head problems (and the pot and booze), he was able to be relatively successful. His dad was one of the first strength and conditioning coaches in the NFL (Raiders) and used all (and I do mean all) of their free time to train Todd for the quarterback position.

By 1992 Marinovich had achieved all of his dreams, he was the Raider’s starter and had made his dad proud, but he still wasn’t happy. He felt empty. He says:

If you’re good at something, does that mean you were meant to do it?

The Raiders cut him shortly thereafter for failing a drug test. He was a recreational drug user, but soon after being cut he became a full on heroin addict. He told his side of the story to ESPN while sitting on the beach on an overcast day, wearing a baseball hat without a logo, talking directly to the camera. I was moved.

It’s a familiar story in sports and eerily reminiscent of a similar story in the golf world. When Marinovich made those comments above, the first name that popped into my head was David Duval. Here’s what Duval said after winning a major (from Breaking the Slump, by Jimmy Roberts):

“Vijay (Singh), Mike (Weir), and a bunch of family members were on the plan,” remembers Moore. “After awhile, everybody else fell asleep, and David and I were drinking champagne from the Claret Jug. I remember as we were landing, the sun was coming up, and we were pulling into Toronto and David says to me: ‘I would have thought it would feel better than this.’”

Duval termed it his “existentialist moment.”

“I started to think: ‘That’s it? That’s all there is?’” he recalls.

Unlike Marinovich, after reaching the top of the mountain, Duval’s life didn’t spin out of control into a drug-fueled cesspool, but his golf game went into the tank. Like Marinovich though, the trip back down from the mountaintop led to Duval meeting the woman of his dreams, starting a family, and coming to terms with a family trauma from his childhood (Duval’s brother drowned). In both cases, the ending is somewhat uplifting.

Marinovich is now an artist in Southern Calinfornia and has a wife and two kids. His art looks like it’s mostly portraits themed in sports and entertainment. He’s been clean since 2009 and has come to terms with his childhood and his dad. Todd and his dad continue to collaborate on art projects to this day and are actively involved in each other’s lives.

This was a solid sports doc by ESPN. I don’t like ESPN and I try to avoid the world wide leader for anything but live events. I rarely watch Sportscenter, never go to ESPN.com, don’t have the app, and haven’t watched Gameday in years. But they’re difficult to avoid if you’re sports fan. They’ve done some wonderful work on these sports documentaries and this one was well worth the 90-minute investment.

That being said, I’m always on the lookout for the spin. The cynic in me asks questions. Did ESPN sugarcoat the relationship with his dad to make it more touching? Marinovich’s website just went up; is this all about marketing?

I’m choosing to believe in the genuineness mostly because of Marinovich’s solemn and even-keeled retelling of things. He drew me in with his apparent humbleness. Great stuff.