The Hours
The Hours and hours and hours....

I shouldn't really complain about the length of this puppy, since I only made through about one hour (with the help of a brief nap) before I gave up and left the room.

A more ponderous stew of twee and pretention you'd be hard-pressed to find. And I was so mesmerized by Nicole Kidman's nose that I don't think I ever heard a word her character said. Needless to say, The Hours won't be going on any of my "Best of" lists. Can't believe there was an Oscar associated with it. Sheesh.

Paycheck - A Guest Review
(This review is courtesy of William, my significant other. Thanks, dude!)

Me and John Woo, we're not on speaking terms anymore after this bucket of bilge.

For one thing, it scans like it was edited by some underpaid summer intern rather than a professional. Whatever criticisms one might have of epic fantasy, "Return of the King" was a beautifully edited film, actively assisting the viewer to get through two-to-five concurrent story threads; and after watching three and a third hours of how to do it right, two hours of how to do it wrong felt like a slap in the mouth.

As for the script... after carving away all the scenes of exposition and all the action set pieces, Woo and hack-of-the-first-order Dean Georgaris leave the cast to fend for themselves. Paul Giamatti, as Ben Affleck's nerdy pal, mugs for the camera like he's in an "In Living Color" sketch. Affleck and Uma Thurman aren't given any help in the script to establish romantic attraction (you know, like LINES they can SPEAK to each other), so they're reduced to simpering and twinkling at each other.

And oh yeah — once again in John Woo's universe it's possible to jump out of the way of a bullet after the gun's been fired. Did somebody mention epic fantasy?

The Return of the King
Mood:  on fire
Now Playing: The Monkees Music Box set, Disc 2
It's been twelve hours since I walked out of "The Return of the King" and I still can't summon a cohesive review beyond this: This movie is marvelous.
The whole trilogy is marvelous, and "Return" is a worthy capstone to the entire undertaking. Anyone who leaves this movie unmoved is simply too tightly wound, period.
I saw the movie last night with the Kiddo and three of her school friends in the tiny theater here in our home town. There was a packed and respectful house, with no rowdiness whatsoever. All four of the girls loved it, each for different reasons. Kiddo, of course, as the premiere Sam fan of the western world, spent the majority of the movie in tears and loved it.
The Kiddo and I are going to see it again tonight, this time with the S.O. and my brother, in the stadium seating venue about a half-hour from here. I bought the tickets two days ago, on my birthday.
Crazy? Maybe. But mostly harmless.
And this movie is nothing short of a masterpiece. Five stars easily.

Three for one deal
Blow Fly., by Patricia Cornwell. Run, don't walk, far away from this book, especially if you like Patricia Cornwell and her Kay Scarpetta books.
I don't know what misalignment of planets or hoodoo-ed diet of dread caused Cornwell to write this barking dog, but I hope she gets away from it soon. All I can say is that I regret mightily paying even the Sam's Discount Club price for this waste of paper, and Cornwell has now officially gone onto my "library only" list. I won't be paying any more money to encourage high-priced jerk-offs like this thing.

Second Nature, by Alice Hoffman. A pleasant palate-cleansing diversion into magical realism land after the horror that was "Blow Fly." A newly divorced woman unrealistically walks into a psychiatric hospital one day and unrealistically walks out with a patient, a man who was literally raised by wolves in northern Minnesota. She takes him home with her, teaches him manners, how to read, how to understand traffic signs and all the other minutae of daily life.
They fall in love, of course. Something goes terribly wrong, of course. Mistakes are made. Misunderstandings abound. A murderer is found. A bittersweet ending ensues for all.
Not a bad book. It won't change your life, but at least it won't leave you cussing and threatening to rip out all the pages and burn them in the fireplace lest somebody else have the misfortune of reading this book. Like some books I won't name but read lately.

Slow Dollar, by Margaret Maron.
I love Margaret Maron. She can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned. I love the true Southernness of her language and her understanding of the south and her people. And she writes a darned good mystery, too. This time Judge Deborah Knott gets tangled up with a murder at a small carnival that turns out to hold some not-so-distant relatives. This twists and turns are all worked out in due time, but a big part of the delight in this book comes when Deborah and her long-time friend Dwight Bryant..... well, I can't say. If you've read any of the other books, you'll guess. And if you haven't, you need to. Excellent read.

FIVE DAYS to the Return of The King!!!!!

Master and Commander
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: ***** Five stars
Get ready to go sailing on a tall ship!
"Master and Commander" is an excellent movie of a most unusual type. It isn't particularly about the plot, although the plot - a cat and mouse game between a French warship and a British warship on the far side of the world - is a dandy. It isn't particularly about the characters, although the characters are many and diverse and absolutely beautifully portrayed, from the "military to his toenails" Captain Jack Aubrey to the "I'm a doctor, not a soldier, dammit" ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, to the various young (so young!) officers in training, the older seamen, even the cook. They were so well portrayed that when battles started, I found myself gripping the armrests, fearing for the safety of these people.

But the movie ultimately doesn't seem to be about the plot or the characters, per se. It's a movie about how it was to live as a sailor on a tall ship far out at sea during the Napoleonic era. Director Peter Weir is a master at the contained environment (think "Witness" and "The Truman Show"), and "Master and Commander is ultimately another in that series. Life on the "Surprise" is so beautifully depicted, and with so many rich details, that I walked out of the theater still half on that ship.

Now that's genius.

I highly recommend this movie. Even if you think you're not interested in sailing movies or war movies or period pieces, go see it anyway. It's a gorgeous piece of work.

32 days until The Return of the King!

A Chorus Line
Now Playing: * : 1 star out of 5
Boy, I had forgotten how very not good this puppy was. ::shudder::

I rented it for the kiddo, who'd gotten very into musicals lately, and this is as close as she can get to seeing "A Chorus Line." Which is too darn bad, because the play was absolutely incredible and this movie truly stinks up the screen.



I don't know what kind of crack somebody was smoking when they decided to add the whole Michael Douglas subplot, but I hope they didn't pay much for it because they got ripped off. On top of that, the voices are all definitely sub-par compared to the Broadway show, except for the woman who plays Cassie. The dancing is okay.

The worst travesty of all, though, is how the numbers are chopped up, mutilated and even left out entirely. "Hello Twelve Hello Thirteen" is started, but then never come back to at all, and it has some of the play's best showoff parts.

I dunno. I think Marvin Hamlisch was doing drugs. That's all I can figure. Do yourself a favor and don't watch this puppy. If you can't see a live production of "A Chorus Line," just listen to the Broadway cast album and dream..

44 days until The Return of the King!

Mystic River
Now Playing: ***** Five stars out of possible five
Nearly two weeks later, and I still can't think about "Mystic River," even in passing, without getting a small, sharp shudder. I can't remember the last time a movie left me with this strong a sense of purely contemporary human emotion: love, pity, hatred, desire, despair. It's all there, in the story of three boys who grow up to be three men whose lives entwine in tragic ways.
Sean, Johnny and Dave are just three kids playing street hockey when we meet them, just before impressionable Dave is talked into a "police" car for a trip that changes his life forever. The main body of the movie picks up years later, when Johnny's teen-age daughter is horrifically murdered. Sean, who has grown up to become a policeman, is working the case, which tugs the three men back together.
I've never been a Sean Penn fan, but his performance in "Mystic River" is nothing short of excellent. He displays the kind of tough inner grit that's letting him stay "in control" of the neighborhood while keeping it covered with a much more easy-going layer of family man and small business owner. His utter soul-level grief at the hideous death of his daughter is almost too raw to watch, and he never strikes a false note throughout.
Kevin Bacon has been wasting himself as a performer, judging by the tightly nuanced performance he gives in "Mystic River." His cop, Sean, is trying to live by the easy-going route, but unspoken problems have torn his marriage apart and his one-sided attempts to get back in touch with his runaway wife are painful to watch.
But the real revelation in "Mystic River" is Tim Robbins as the deeply damaged Dave. I've been a Tim Robbins fan since forever, but even I was amazed at this performance. Director Clint Eastwood has either pulled from or allowed to emerge from Robbins a performance of absolute fearful despair. His Dave is a man living on the ragged edge of one last little bit of sanity. Even physically, the performance is a work of genius, as Robbins, the largest of the three main characters, seems almost to fold and shrink into himself in every scene. It's almost as if he were trying to make himself disappear.
"Mystic River" is something not seen often in contemporary American cinema - a classic tragedy. Nothing is overblown, nothing is racheted beyond believeability, and yet the overall impact is absolutely stunning. The last time I remember being this deeply moved by a movie was with Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter."
This is a movie that must be seen. Do yourself a favor and go. You won't regret it.

48 days until The Return of the King!