CleverDonkey.com …Musings, Commentary, Opinions, and Drivel

Click here to see the review of Kill Bill: Vol 2.

Kill Bill: Vol. 1 is Quentin Tarantino’s fourth film as a director. Well, third-and-a-half would be more appropriate, since this is really the first half of one film, not the first film in a film/sequel progression. So far he’s batting .500 in my book. I *loved* Reservoir Dogs, and still watch it once every year or two, even though it’s a tough, gritty ordeal. I’ve never been able to watch Pulp Fiction all the way through, finding it to be a moronic, but more slickly Hollywood, pale imitation derived from Dogs. I’ve seen enough movies that I believe I can tell the difference between good films that I just don’t happen to like and bad films. Pulp Fiction may not be a bad film, but it’s sure not good, and certainly not great, and I have always struggled to understand its popularity.

My pet theory is that Pulp Fiction was embraced by those who had heard that Tarantino was a great director, but had never bothered to seek out (or endure sitting through the pain of watching) Reservoir Dogs. I’m pretty neutral about Jackie Brown, in that it was mildly enjoyable when I first saw it, but it was quickly forgotten and I’ve never revisited it.

Which brings us to Kill Bill: Vol. 1, which I enjoyed greatly. There is almost zero prelude or character development in this movie, which jumps immediately into a violent revenge story, and only gives us the slightest of glimpses at the back-story of these characters. And even the back-story is an un-detailed, just-the-facts presentation of events, without any explanation of why. In typical Tarantino fashion, the story is not linear, but is told through flashbacks, memories, and even animated sequences. This is all done masterfully, weaving in the bits and pieces of the story at just the right times, without being dumbed down for (Hollywood’s understanding of) the multiplex audience.

The basic storyline is that The Bride (Uma Thurman) and her entire wedding party, including her unborn child, are slaughtered by her fellow assassins on her wedding day in a small, dusty, clapboard chapel in El Paso. Except that The Bride survives, even though Bill (an unseen David Carradine) administers a point-blank, bullet-to-the-head coup de grace. The Bride ends up in a four year coma, and when she wakes up she realizes she has lost everything except a white-hot need to exact revenge on her former boss and colleagues. The rest of the film follows The Bride as she starts hunting down her former teammates one by one.

In an interesting directorial choice, Uma Thurman’s character is never referred to by a given name in this film, with the exception of one scene where it is uttered twice, but purposely beeped out both times. There doesn’t appear to be any reason to keep her name secret, but it does add to her mystery, and the beeping feels right and actually works within the story rather than being distracting.

The Bride’s quest for revenge involves much hand-to-hand combat, knife fights, and sword fights, but does not involve any Weapons of More-serious Destruction, like guns. This, of course, indicates that the film does not take place in the pseudo-reality of movies set in the real world, but instead is set in a mythical place, where all the assassins use guns when attacking The Bride and her wedding party, but then all of the subsequent revenge fighting is lead-free. This movie could have been over in 10 minutes if even one of the hundreds of world-class bad guys who’s butt’s The Bride kicks would have thought to carry a gun.

Fortunately (from my perspective), the mythical world of Kill Bill is not the digitally rendered, video-game like, heartless, soulless, plastic, lame-ass type of world seen in the Matrix “films”. Instead, it is much like the real world, except for the actions of the characters (and a couple of gravity defying fighting moves), none of whom are digital, and all of whom are sort of honorably stylized and/or stylishly honorable, in that they all seem to live (and die) by some unwritten Assassin’s Code.

For those who don’t already know, Tarantino shot this as one film, but it ended up with a ~4 hour running time, which he was reluctant to cut down. So the studio made the decision to release it as two films, the first out now, the second out early next year. I don’t have a big beef with the split, because I understand that any movie showing in a multiplex with a four hour run time is going to be under-viewed. However, I have a *big* problem with the long delay between the release of the halves. In fact, in my opinion, they should have been released on consecutive weekends, which I think would have set up a kind of harmonic vibration of folks going to see both of them, ending up generating more box office dollars than this artificial delay. You see, since this was conceived as a single film, there is no traditional “end” to Vol. 1, just a stopping point. Nothing is settled or decided, no watersheds are reached, nothing. If you look at the list of film/sequel combinations that are actually watchable, they all have one characteristic in common, which is that each film tells a complete story, and that story is part of a larger continuing story. With Kill Bill: Vol. 1, you get half of a well-told story.

And what a half it is. The sparse dialogue is not trite, not Shakespeare, but a perfect fit for this film. There’s an animated sequence that tells the horrifying story of one of the assassins coming-of-age. The sets, locations, and cinematography are beautiful. The violence and gore start out extreme, soon become over-the-top, evolve to comedically ridiculous, and finally blossom into sublime commentary/homage/satire of the violent film genre. Uma is likeable and lethal in her role, David Carradine does a good job as the unseen but seemingly omnipotent Bill, Daryl Hannah and Vivica A. Fox embody their roles with gusto, and Lucy Liu is suitably Oriental in her role as the…Oriental. I don’t think I will be spoiling anything for anyone by telling you that Uma survives this first half, but only some of the rest do.

I deducted a half-star from this rating as penalty for not being to see the whole $%#@$%$# story and thus not knowing if it will actually be good, once the fullness is grokked. However I get the feeling that The Compleat Kill Bill will end up being a four star masterwork, as long as the second half lives up the first half. And it should, since they were shot together and so shouldn’t suffer from any of the creative/artistic mutations that seem to plague the majority of sequels.

So Quentin Tarantino is now 2-2 in my book. Kill Bill is undeniably the work of a director with both a clear artistic vision and the complete command of the medium necessary to tell his story exactly as he envisions it. I’m quite upset that I have to wait until next year to see the rest of the story, but I also think that the anticipation will make the finale all the sweeter.

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Another star is born. Jack Black has slowly been working his way up the movie role food chain, starting with small roles in movies like Waterworld, Bob Roberts, Demolition Man, The Cable Guy, and Mars Attacks, and then moving up to more visible roles in such films as High Fidelity and Shallow Hal. And now, in School of Rock, he has grabbed the mic in his first big, mainstream, successful starring vehicle.

He is starting to be compared with John Belushi and Chris Farley, and I think those comparisons are close to the mark. Black has a unique style, and while he doesn’t appear to trying to emulate either of them (or anyone else), he does have Belushi’s commanding presence and Farley’s endearing earnestness, as well as the comic abilities shared by both. One hopes that Black will be able control the conflagrations of fame to become an enduring fixture, and not a brightly blazing, but too soon extinguished, shooting star.

The film itself is laugh-out-loud funny and charming, and manages to be family-friendly without slipping over into smarmy sweetness. The story follows Dewey Finn (Black’s character), who is a fringe-dweller in his town’s local music scene, as he gets kicked out of the band he helped found (to be replaced by a guy with less talent but better abs, tats, and hair) and finds himself broke and jobless and facing eviction from his apartment by his roommate’s girlfriend if he can’t cough up the back rent. Dewey’s roommate is a substitute teacher, and one day Dewey fields a call from a school looking for an emergency substitute, and ends up taking the position himself (while masquerading as his roommate).

The school turns out to be the finest private prep school in town, and Dewey’s students are all refined, polite, and highly intelligent. He tells the kids that they’re going to have permanent recess in his class, scams some munchies from one of the kids, and promptly does a whole lot of nothing else as he avoids the pinched headmistress (played with tightly-wound conviction by Joan Cusack) and attempts to keep up the charade long enough to get a paycheck without having to actually do anything.

But when his kids head down the hall for music class, Dewey follows them and finds out that they are talented musicians and singers. By the time the kids come back to his class, Dewey has schlepped in all the band instruments from his van and has decided that he and these kids are going to win the upcoming Battle of the Bands, giving him revenge on his former bandmates. The problem is that the kids are schooled in classical music, not rock and roll, but this only inspires Dewey to become, of all things, an impassioned teacher. And his lessons, ostensibly about the history and art of metal rock, are, in true Hollywood fashion, metaphoric life lessons.

And also in true Hollywood fashion, Dewey learns from the experience, too. He has written his one great song, a Zeppelin-esque rock ballad/anthem, complete with deeply mystical lyrics and overblown orchestrations, and he thinks this is the song that will take his new band to victory at the contest. However, one of the students writes his own song, a simpler but ultimately more powerful song based on his own troubled relationship with his success-focused father. Dewey recognizes the superiority of the song, and learns that being a leader means using the best ideas, even if they’re not yours. And the band goes on to overcome tribulations, compete, and while they don’t win, they do triumph, and learn that it’s more important to be true to yourself and your art than to win.

Jack Black shines here as Dewey, imparting the pure joy of his love of music and convincingly portraying his evolution from slacker-loser to deserving shaper of young minds. The kids are played by actual musical prodigies with little or no formal acting experience. This results in performances that, while rough around the edges, are better than anything that could have come from precocious acting veterans, because these kids play their own instruments and sing their own songs, and that more than makes up for the occasional lack of acting polish.

All-in-all, this film is a trifle, but it is a very enjoyable one. It will be interesting to see how Jack Black handles his new movie-star status, and how he balances his own roots in the mock-rock band Tenacious D with the pull of Hollywood and the lure of superstardom. I’m already reading stories where Jack Black talks about his schedule being so hectic that he’s using pills to control his sleep cycle. I don’t know if these quotes are accurate, but they seem eerily familiar. Let’s hope that his rock opera turns out to be heroic, and not tragic.

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I don’t live in New York, I’m not a member of the literary intelligentsia, I’m not Jewish, I’m not single, and I’m not female. Crossing Delancey tells the story of a single, Jewish woman who lives in New York, and whose work has her rubbing elbows with noted, famous authors. Despite having nothing in common with the main character, Izzy (short for Isabelle), I *love* this movie. I think that it’s because I identify with Sam, the pickle man, who is Izzy’s sporadic suitor.

Izzy is played by Amy Irving, in one of her best, perhaps very best, roles. Izzy is an intelligent, upwardly mobile professional who seems to be making a good life for herself doing something she loves. She has a good, rent-controlled apartment, works at a prestigious old-style bookstore, hobnobs with the upper crust of the New York literary scene, and spends personal time with her life-long girlfriends. Her only remaining connection to her past is her grandmother, Bubbie, who still lives in the old neighborhood in the old way. Izzy is dutiful in visiting her Bubbie and helping her with shopping, etc, but resists her Bubbie’s insistent meddling into her personal life. Bubbie firmly believes that Izzy “…lives alone, like a dog. Only a dog should live alone, not people!” Izzy insists that she has a great life, and doesn’t need a man to feel complete.

Unbeknownst to Izzy, Bubbie retains the services of the local matchmaker to help Izzy find a husband. Izzy doesn’t find out about the setup until the wheels are already in motion, and she is too respectful of her Bubbie to just leave once she finds out. So, she dutifully, but coldly, endures a lunchtime meeting around Bubbie’s kitchen table with the matchmaker and her blind date, Sam. Sam is played by Peter Riegert, in a marvelously understated performance. Sam owns a pickle stand on the lower East side, which he inherited from his father. A pickle man from the old neighborhood is definitely not what Izzy wants in a man, as she tends to get all doe-eyed and mushy over a prattling, Euro-trash author, played with perfect pitch by Jeroen Krabbé.

That’s the basic setup of Crossing Delancey, and the rest of the story follows Izzy as she goes through the process of separating what she thinks she wants from what she actually needs. There’s nothing earth-shattering or original about the plot, but the story is imbued with wit, warmth, and humor, and all of the characters feel real, and it’s easy to care very much what happens to them. Amy Irving does an excellent job of portraying Izzy’s angst as she struggles with the forces pulling her between her old and new worlds.

The movie portrays a literary world populated by semi-talented, blathering, self-congratulatory “noted authors”, who are surrounded by fawning, pseudo-intellectual wannabes. I’m actually distilling down to one sentence what is only eventually implied by the movie, and this characterization of the literati is not heavy-handed or comical. But the movie does seem to be telling us that the only difference between the fawn-ers and the fawn-ees is that one group was lucky enough to have sold a few books, and the other group sees that as the highest achievement of mankind.

Izzy is definitely a fawn-ee, with a genuine love of literature, but with a blind spot that seems to have her equating today’s bestselling “serious” authors-du-jour with the classic masters of writing. Given this predisposition, it is impossible for her to notice, much less appreciate, the subtle charms and non-egotistical confidence of a guy who has to soak his hands in milk and vanilla to get rid of the pickle smell. Sam pitches a little woo her way, and she eventually has to acknowledge that he seems like a good guy, but that he’s just not part of her world. Sam takes this news with equanimity, and does not chase her, but events (and meddling yentas) eventually put them back on each other’s radar.

Sam has a lot of characteristics that I admire, and that I strive to nurture in my self. Sam is very centered and has a strong sense of self, and doesn’t look for external validation of his worth. He runs a pickle stand with his brother, he lives in the old neighborhood, he plays handball, he helps the local bubbies with heavy chores, he’s witty and engaging, and through all of these small things he makes the world a better place. He doesn’t need anyone to praise him for what he does, or to tell him that he’s great, because he already knows who he is, and he knows the right things to do, and he does them. It’s very simple, subtle, and non-flashy. Still waters run very deep, indeed.

Anton the Dutch writer (Jeroen Krabbé’s character), on the other hand, is a charming-yet-angsty manipulative-tortured-genius type. The movie explores one of the standard relationship conundrums, which is why are women sometimes unable to see through brash flashiness and pathetic egotism and recognize jerks? (Nice guys everywhere would love to know, since it would sure save everyone a lot of time.)

But that conundrum is the heart of this film, and it makes for a very interesting, funny, charming, and heart-warming story. Of special note is Reizl Bozyk, who plays Bubbie. This was her first, and only, film appearance, after a career on the Yiddish vaudeville stage, and she gives a wonderful performance as the loving grandmother who seems to be doddering and out of touch, while all the time knowing exactly what she’s doing.

As we go through life our beliefs and philosophies continually change. In the end, I think the message of this film is that going back and re-embracing things that were previously discarded is not tantamount to compromise or settling, but instead is something that we should all be open-minded enough to do.

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So, The Rock has *it*. That may already have been evident to his wrestling fans, and maybe to others after his film debut in The Scorpion King, but I remained undecided. His performance in Scorpion was better than I expected it would be, but it still didn’t convince me that he was destined to blossom into a legitimate movie star.

But The Rundown has made me a believer. The Rock still has a few rough edges, but in Rundown he’s funny, cool, menacing and charismatic. Now, this is an action/buddy/comedy, so he’s not being asked to demonstrate a Method actor’s range, but he does an excellent job with the material at hand.

The film itself is mindlessly/mildly enjoyable, with some good action sequences, beautiful jungle scenery, trite-but-relatively-inoffensive storyline and dialogue, rapacious monkeys, an inexplicable Scotsman, and Christopher Walken doing an excellent impression of Christopher Walken at his most menacingly cruel. It also has Sean William Scott, who may be on his way to replacing Keanu Reeves, in my mind, as the luckiest dope to ever fall ass-backwards into a film career.

The storyline is basically an amalgamation of Romancing the Stone, Midnight Run, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Magnificent Seven. The plot is unremarkable, but it also manages not to get in the way of the heart of the film, which is the action, the stunts, and the scenery. Several of the stunts looked real (not CGI) and quite painful, and the fight scenes have some amazing looking moves that, again, do not appear to be computer-generated. There are a couple of places where the trickery is noticeable, but it never devolves into Crouching Angels Reloaded fantasy-fighting. And the mountains of Hawaii are breathtaking as they stand-in for the jungles of Brazil.

So, the best part of this film is The Rock laying the foundation for what appears to be a long and successful career. Pay close attention to the first few minutes of the film to see what appears to be the (deserved) passing of the Action Hero torch from one generation to the next. I hope that The Rock chooses his next few projects wisely, as he is on the verge of superstar status, and many before him have been at this same watershed point, only to take their eye off the ball and end up Van Damm-ed to mediocrity.

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We purchased the NordicTrack CX 995 Elliptical Trainer (aka CX995 or NTE1392) recently, directly from the NordicTrack website. The online experience was smooth, and the product was delivered within the promised time frame. Here are our impressions of the unit, so far:

If I Were Already Hercules, I Wouldn’t Need This Thing!

Please note that their delivery company only delivers curb-side, and will not bring the unit inside. They clearly state this in the shipping section, but the full impact does not hit home until the delivery guy leaves you with a 260 lb. cardboard box, secured with straps, sitting on a wooden pallet in your garage. You can take about ¼ of the weight out of the box by schlepping in the smaller bits and pieces, but the main unit, with the attached elliptical ramps, is all in one piece. In our case we were installing the unit in our upstairs bedroom, and getting it upstairs was quite a challenging chore. Be sure you have two strong, competent, affable people to wrangle the thing, because it’s pretty frustrating.

Some Assembly Required, Some More Assembly Required, More and More Assembly Required…!

Assembly is also a bit of a chore, but if you’ve ever bought a complicated piece of furniture from IKEA or some other put-it-together-yourself place, you can probably handle it. Keep in mind that assembly is definitely a two-person activity, as there are several cases where things have to be held in place and aligned, while other things are assembled/inserted/etc. Again, the directions clearly state that two people are needed, so believe it. It took us about 90 minutes to get the thing together.

Oh Baby, That’s Smooth

Once assembled, the first ride was very positive. The machine is extremely solidly built, and the movements are quiet and sure as you ellipse. The machine also comes with a wireless chest pulse sensor, that you wear around your torso, and you can track your heart rate on the console as you work out. There are also heart-rate monitors built into the handgrips if you don’t want to use the wireless one. The handgrip sensors will also measure your body fat percentage (damn them).

The footpads on this model are spaced apart such that the movement feels very natural. We had tried some of the other NordicTrack ellipticals in various sporting goods stores, and the foot pedals were widely spaced, meaning that you were doing a weird sort of bowlegged shuffle instead of a normal-feeling running motion.

The incline of the ramp adjusts electronically, so as you go through your exercise program the unit will hum and you will suddenly be “running” uphill. The motion on this unit is very smooth, and it feels very natural, like running but without the pounding.

This Unit Are Smart

The console provides around 20 different workout programs. They offer such things as hilly terrain, where the slope changes as you run, fat burning, strength training, etc. My favorites are the ones that let you target your heart rate and then the unit automatically varies the workout (and prompts you to speed up/slow down) to keep you near your target heart rate. There’s also a fan in the center of the console, which you can turn on and have it blow on your torso or face, as it is adjustable. One minor complaint is that if you tilt the fan down far enough to blow on your body, it will slowly scooch it’s way back to the point where it’s blowing on your face. In other words, it doesn’t stay where you point it.

The Fatal Flaw

OK, we really do love this machine. It is solidly built, has lots of very useful features, and works like a dream. When you use it you can feel how well engineered it is, and you can tell that the designers went to great lengths to make it smooth and quiet. It being quiet is very important to us, because we use this in our bedroom, and often one is using it while the other is sleeping. The unit is quiet enough for that, except for one thing.

YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE BEEPING OF THE CONSOLE!!! It can’t be muted or even turned down. All of the exercise programs emit periodic beeps to tell you about your progress or alert you to various things that are happening in your program. There are places where it will beep every minute…and not just one beep, but a series of beeps, counting down. BEEP BEEP BEEP.

I contacted NordicTrack and they told me that was the way it was, and there was nothing to be done. Eventually, if we don’t become immune to it, I’ll probably end up disassembling the console and snipping the speaker wires. But I don’t want to ruin the unit, or void the warranty just yet. Still, this issue seems like an incredibly stupid oversight by the folks at NordicTrack. Can you imagine being one of the engineers, who worked and slaved to shave off every decibel of noise that you possibly could, and then having some electronics geek stupidly put an incessantly beeping console on your beautiful machine? As a geek-engineer myself, it breaks my heart to see the near-perfection of this unit ruined by something so pedestrian as yet-another-annoying-beeping-electronic-device.

But We Still Recommend It

All that being said, the unit’s positives outweigh that one glaring negative. If you’re looking for a solid, feature-rich, sub-$1,000 elliptical, take a good look at this one. If you can live with the beeping, it will probably fit the bill.

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Dude, You’re Getting a Career!

Through dumb-luck, I fell ass-backwards into a computer career when I aced my first college computer class back in the dark ages, where I learned Fortran programming using punched cards. I promptly changed my major from Business to Computer Science, and never looked back. When I hit the job market in the early 80’s it was just in time for the blossoming of the Personal Computer (PC) market, which was the Boston Tea Party of the Technological Revolution, and kicked off one of the most explosive periods of technological advancement since the Industrial Revolution.

I rode the first swells of this wave throughout the 80’s, never fearing for my career prospects, and worried only about being able to work with the really cool emerging technologies instead of the old, stale, well-known ones. But as good as I (and my compatriots) had it in the 80’s, nothing could have prepared us for the 90’s, when the rising tide of technology turned into a tidal wave, sweeping over everything else in the business world, drowning some, lifting others, but moving everybody and everything with tremendous, irresistible force.

Those of us who learned to surf this monster had a lot of fun. And after those first violent upheavals, where only the skilled could stay afloat, the wave smoothed out enough that any motivated dork with a boogie board could ride it, too, as long as they stayed in one spot and didn’t try to do anything fancy. The problem with this is that the wave became crowded with neophytes and one-trick ponies who were only surfing the wave because it was trendy and cool, and who made it impossible for truly dedicated riders to enjoy the curl.

But now the wave is getting smaller. Oh, it’s not disappearing, but it’s moving into deeper waters, and becoming a more integrated part of the ocean of business. This is analogous to the Industrial Revolution in America, where the rise of factories and mills created a class of workers who were always in demand, had freedom of movement because there was work everywhere, and could be proud of what they did because it was nothing short of world-changing. The rise of labor unions helped preserve and protect the way of life of a factory worker, and extended this period of economic prosperity for the American working man.

But as heavy industry evolved, it started to develop economies of scale, and to realize that there were skilled workers all over the world, and most, if not all, of them were cheaper than Americans. Also, as technology advanced they found out that automation could be used to reduce the need for human labor, reducing the number of available jobs even more. So industry and labor waged a pitched battle for years, with industry wanting to automate industrial jobs or move them offshore, and labor fighting tooth and nail to preserve the jobs of their members (and therefore keep money in the union’s coffers). But the path was inevitable, because if US businesses didn’t adapt then their newer, cheaper foreign competitors would come along and steal their customers anyway.

Rosie the Riveter, meet Dakota the Developer

Well, we in the tech job market are experiencing almost this exact same evolution. We all rode a wave of ever-increasing salaries, benefits, bonuses, and foosball tables without giving it a second thought, because, dammit, we deserved it, being the harbingers of the future, and all. But, just as our industrial forbearers, we are now faced with a shrinking job market, reduced relevance, and the offshoring of our livelihoods.

There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth regarding the movement of tech jobs offshore. Some groups are calling for legislation to outlaw it, and others are exploring the idea of unionizing tech jobs to provide better bargaining positions. The truth of the matter is that, in my opinion, both of those strategies are doomed to failure, as they really have no place in today’s world. First of all, if you use legislation to try to force companies not to move jobs offshore, that doesn’t mean the jobs will still exist, or will exist with the same compensation. It’s the inevitability of the law of supply and demand, and you can’t legislate that, as our now-defunct, former-archenemy Communist brethren proved so clearly.

And adding unions into the mix would just be ridiculous, given the nature of tech jobs. Oh, unions might be able to maintain the status quo for a few more years, but take a look at US heavy industry today to see what awaits you as a worker if you go down that path. Is that really what you want out of your career?

OK, So Now What, Smart Guy??

So we in the tech job market are drowning, and so far all I’ve done is describe the water. The next logical question is, how do we save ourselves? Well, the truth of the matter is that as our ship sinks, we are finding that there aren’t enough lifeboats for everyone. That is a very sad, but true, fact. And that means that one harsh reality is that some of the people in the tech job market will simply have to face a career change. In some cases these will be excellent, well-qualified people who just happened to get caught in a terrible set of circumstances. But in most cases it will be the folks who got into technology simply because it was a cool, high-profile, well-paying career, but who really couldn’t care less about technology and weren’t true geeks-at-heart to begin with. These are the folks that learned one or two things, then rode them as far as they could, never taking the time, nor having the inclination, to expand their experiences and skill-sets.

Diversify

Also, even some uber-geeks never took the time to develop interpersonal skills, because their technological skills were in such high demand that employers tolerated their porcupininess. Well, this is no longer the case, as employers have their pick of the lot when filling an open position, or even when looking to refill an already-filled position. If you are a committed iconoclast, and refuse to change your ways, then I applaud you for your lack of hypocrisy. However, I also foresee career difficulties ahead for you.

Employers also want employees who can contribute to the bottom line, and this means understanding the business. If you’re a coder, and expect people to open your door, feed you technical specifications, and wait for you to excrete exquisite, optimized code, well, that’s just not enough today. Your competitors offshore can do exactly that, perhaps even more exquisitely, and definitely more cheaply. No, you need to be involved in, and understand, the business. You need to be able to interact with the business owners, ask questions about the specifications, see relationships to other parts of the business, and understand the entire lifecycle of your company’s business in order to adapt and survive in today’s world. You need to be the business analyst, the application architect, and the coder. If you can’t, or won’t, do that, then the sad fact is that somebody cheaper will come along and take your job. Period.

Recognize the Inevitable

Then there are those of you who have known all along that you weren’t technology people. You’ve sort of been faking it, standing in the back row, mouthing the words without singing, watching the others for the right steps and hand movements, and just sort of pantomiming your way along, hoping never to get exposed as a technological dilettante. Well, here comes the microscope. Perhaps it would be better if you proactively made a career change. That way you could at least control the timing, and it’s much easier to find work when you have work. I’m not trying to intentionally sound mean or cruel, it’s just that you are in a mean and cruel position and it will be easier for you to get out of it if you aren’t trying to start a new career while unemployed.

Also inevitable is the normalization of salaries and benefits. It’s a buyer’s market right now, so be prepared. Not only is it possible that you won’t get a raise, but it’s entirely possible that you will be asked to take a pay cut. That isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s better than being replaced outright and then hitting the bricks to try and find a job in today’s market.

Think Critically

Those of us who remain in the technology industry (and I hope to count myself among them (fingers crossed)) would be well-served to put our focus firmly on the bottom-line. Not on what would pad out our resumes. Not on what geeks us out. Not on the product from the vendor who takes us golfing. But we also don’t need to become ostriches with our heads in the sand, sticking only with what we already know. We need to keep current on not only what’s new, but what’s new that works, and understand how the new stuff that works might help our bottom-line.

The Y2K phenomenon was the last great binge for a while. Every company in the world threw money at the problem like they were newly minted rock stars throwing money at strippers. And in the morning they woke up and realized that, even after spending all that money, all that happened was that they got f—ed. So now all companies are pinching pennies, and nobody is throwing around money like the old days. But companies will continue to spend money on things that help them grow and feed the bottom line. The trick, for those of us who want to stay in our technology-related jobs, is to figure out how to do that consistently.

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Yesterday there were various news reports about a 40 foot long gelatinous sea creature that washed ashore in Chile. The story can be found many places, including CNN (which has a picture):

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/07/02/chile.science.reut/index.html

Reading this story got me thinking, because it’s not every day that 40 foot long creatures washes ashore that nobody can identify. And then I thought about another unidentified water creature, the Loch Ness monster. The legend of Nessie has persisted for a long time, but nobody has been able to find her. Sophisticated motion detectors, sonar, radar, etc have been used to try to spot Nessie, to no avail.

However, what if Nessie was a giant jellyfish of the same type that washed ashore in Chile? Jellyfish have a density that is very close to that of water, and don’t have any hard parts, like bones or shells. That means that it would be very difficult to use sonar/radar to distinguish her from normal fluctuations of water temperature, density, and pressure. A giant jellyfish might be quite stealthy in the deep, cold waters of Loch Ness.

I’m not a “true believer” in Nessie, and am not looking to justify my beliefs. However, I did find that this creature in Chile offered a plausible explanation for the phenomenon of the Loch Ness monster. Time will tell if it’s an accurate explanation or not.

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Local Hero is my all-time favorite film. On the surface it’s a quaint  romantic comedy about an American fish-out-of-water in Scotland. But the film  has layers that at first may not be apparent. The first time I watched this  movie I knew absolutely nothing about it, and only watched it because I couldn’t  find the remote, didn’t feel like getting up, and this movie came on. I had been  planning to drift off for a lazy Saturday afternoon nap, and the slow, quiet  pacing of this movie seemed like the perfect background noise to lull me off to  la-la land. But a funny thing happened…I found myself getting caught up in the  story and the characters, in the music and the cinematography, and in the  near-magical mood of the film. The basic story is that an oilman from Houston, Mac MacIntyre (Peter Riegert),  is sent to Scotland to buy up an entire town to become the site of a refinery. 

The town is a tiny, idyllic fishing village, called Furness, populated by a cast  of characters who may at first appear to be stereotypical, but turn out to be  deeply drawn and fully realized, even if some of them only have a few moments of  screen time.  When I watch the film I get the feeling that each character,  no matter how major or minor, represents the tip of the iceberg of a complex and  real person.  And I don’t mean that in the intense, method-acted,  angst-filled, emoting-from-the-diaphragm perspective, I mean it from the  humorous, simple, and natural interaction of actual people perspective.   Mac tries to diplomatically address the disruption of lives and displacement of  the locals, while the locals joyously (and secretly) can’t wait to sell at a  high price.  Mac’s negotiating opponent is the local chartered accountant,  Gordon Urquhart, played with sublime canniness by Denis Lawson.

To tell more of the story would be a shame, as you should experience it for  yourself.  The layers of this film are not hidden or exposed, obscured or  highlighted — they are merely there for you to see and/or feel for yourself.   The topmost layer…which is the basic storyline…is very enjoyable in and of  itself.  The script is witty and poignant, the acting and directing are  flawless, and the scenery is beautiful beyond description.  My suggestion  is that you get a copy of this film on DVD, then wait for a cold, rainy day when  you have nothing much to do other than stay safe and warm at home.  Have  some wine, or a hot toddy, or some single malt scotch, unhook the phone, snuggle  in and watch this movie.  Then wait a few days, or a few weeks, or a few  months, or a few years, and then watch it all over again.  Repeat as  necessary.

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******************** Caution: May contain spoilers ********************

Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle is a good, solid, entertaining, escapist summer film. In addition to the stunts, explosions, prurience, humor, and action you would expect from this movie, there is also a dash of drama and a pinch of…well…tragedy. Nothing heavy-handed, mind you, but integrated well into the story and a bit unexpected.

Sadly, my first thought after leaving the theater was that seeing this film has caused me to like the Matrix films even less than I already do. The Angels director, McG, and company have of course included the requisite big-budget, CGI driven stunts that the movie studios expect that summer audiences expect from this type of film. I’m okay with that, in theory. However, my understanding is that the Angels, while being quite good at what they do (solving cases, kicking asses, titillating), are not superheroes, and they do not have any superhuman capabilities, nor do their adversaries. How, then, are they able to regularly violate the laws of physics? I’m not talking about a kung-fu move that seems implausible, I’m talking about the ability to change direction in mid-air, the ability to dodge bullets, and the ability to fly (or at least glide) by virtue of the aerodynamic properties of a lace blouse. I mean, I’ve never seen Stevie Nicks get airborne, and she’s spent most of her career spinning around in lace tops.

The blame is shared by the popularity of the Matrix films and the herd mentality of Hollywood. Even though I don’t care for the Matrix films, I will freely admit that the superhuman activities of their characters makes perfect sense within the logic of the story. Those same activities are ridiculous in a film like Full Throttle. Seeing McG insert these slavishly-wannabe-Matrix segments into his film was disheartening, as my opinion after the first Angels film was that he was developing a unique voice as a filmmaker. He still might, but I hope if there’s another film in this franchise that he remembers that there are a lot of folks in the audience like me, who will buy (and have probably come to see) the implausible, but who find themselves completely jolted out of the enjoyment of the film by seeing the impossible.

With the exception of this bad case of Matrix-pox, I enjoyed Full Throttle. The girls are very cute, Demi Moore is sufficiently menacing as the bad gal, the cameos are well done, and the soundtrack is nearly perfect. And the special effects, even if inappropriate, are also well done and state of the art. Bernie Mac is pretty funny as the new Bosley, and they handle the transition from Bill Murray fairly smoothly. The story revolves around the Federal Witness Protection program, and the various underworld syndicates (Japanese, Italian, Irish, etc) who want to get their hands on the list of hidden witnesses. The film even delves deeper into the back-story of one particular Angel, but I won’t spoil it by telling you which one. In a totally unrelated note, Drew Barrymore is one of the producers of the film.

So now there are two Charlie’s Angels films, and I hope they make more. Given the ensemble nature of the cast, I could see this turning into a Bond-like franchise, with the Angel’s roles being passed down to each successive generation of new, young, upwardly mobile stars. As long as they keep the mix of humor, action, and drama I’ll be looking forward to it.

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******************** THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS ********************

I am not particularly geeked out by art-house flicks, nor do I have any particular fondness for foreign-language films. Nowhere in Africa is both, and I still loved it. The film is not a stereotypical art-house flick, in that it is not avant-garde, film noir, experimental, hyper-sexual, nor stupid. What it is, is a very real story about real people trying to live their lives during extraordinary circumstances.

The film is set around the time of the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. The story follows a married couple and their daughter, who are Jewish, as they try to adapt and survive in a changing world. When the story begins the mother, Jettel, and daughter, Regina, are living the last few precious days of their privileged lives in Germany. The husband, Walter, is off in Kenya (where there is a nascent Jewish community) attempting to create a livelihood and homestead for his family, and bring them out of Germany to escape what he senses is the upcoming devastation of the lives of Jews in Germany.

As we all know, his guess turns out to be correct, but at the time and place of this story it’s still not clear exactly what, if anything, might befall Jewish people, other than some more overt, but not catastrophic, anti-Semitism. But he finds work in Kenya as the bwana (manager) of a farm, working for an unsympathetic-but-not-evil landowner. Walter sees the drastic changes to their lives in crystal clear terms, and implores his wife to leave their fancy china behind in order to make room to bring a refrigerator. They will be living hard lives in an unknown land and won’t have the resources for frivolities. The wife, either not understanding this or refusing to accept it, brings the china, spends their last few marks on a ball gown, and unapologetically shows up refrigerator-less.

This begins one of the primary plot themes, as Walter expects his wife to quickly let go of her old world view and accept the new reality, and Jettel refuses to accept that everything that had defined her up until this point in her life was gone, and that all she has left is life as the wife of a poor farm manager in Kenya. Caught up in the middle of all this is Regina, who is five years old when they move to Kenya. She immediately bonds with their cook Owuor, who is a tall, good-natured, middle-aged Masai tribesman who is more than happy to work in the house of a bwana. Regina and Owuor develop a spiritual kinship despite the difference in their ages and backgrounds.

The story is told primarily from Regina’s point of view, as she explores the new world and new reality with the open mind, open heart, and resilience of a child. The story spans many years, from their emigration to escape the Nazis, to the end of WWII and their agonizing struggle to figure out what to do in the *new* new world. In between these bookends the film tells the story of their lives in Kenya, trying to make a living, keep their family together, educate their child, understand what’s happening to their families back home, and understand their adopted country.

This doesn’t sound very exciting, and it isn’t, but it is engrossing and meaningful, as their day-to-day struggles are the same as ours, only magnified by their bizarre circumstances. Should they be happy to still be alive, or should they be grieving for the loss of the life they once had and the peril of their families back home? Or both? Should they be raising their daughter to be a Kenyan, a German, or a Jew?

The Kenya they live in is hard and beautiful, and the native Kenyans benevolently/bemusedly tolerate these strange residents of their land. There is just a touch too much of the “noble savage” stereotype for my tastes, but it is subtly done and the viewer is not clonked over the head with it. The locations are both breathtakingly beautiful while also feeling real and not staged for the film. The cinematography does justice to the natural beauty.

The acting is virtually flawless. Regina is played by two different actresses, one as the young Regina, one is the adolescent Regina, and both capture the same spirit and tone so that the transition is smooth. The adult characters are very deeply drawn and well-acted, even those with small roles. The film is over two hours long, and the pacing is deliberate, but the story spans multiple years and kept me totally engaged throughout. The main characters all speak German in the film, with English subtitles, but this is not as distracting as it may sound. There are multiple languages being spoken by many of the characters, so almost any viewer would need at least some subtitles in order to understand. After the first few language changes I stopped noticing the subtitles.

Refreshingly, the film does not depict the Nazis, WWII, or the Holocaust, but instead tells the smaller story of real people caught up the larger events of the world. World events occur elsewhere and only impact our characters via letters and radio broadcasts. I find this refreshing because while there are many films made about WWII, there are very few that are made about such a remote but oddly fascinating facet of that period. This film told a story about real characters who felt like real people to me. I laughed with them and agonized with them and was confused by the unfolding events, just as they were. I believed what was happening on the screen, and I cared about the characters and about what happened to them. What more can you ask from a film?

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