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

I had pretty much written this movie off my possibility radar — I really like Paul Bettany (those of you who don’t recognize him might remember him from A Beautiful Mind or Master and Commander, playing second violin in both to Russell Crowe) but I can be hot and cold on Kirsten Dunst. Normally she’s okay, but the ads for this movie looked a little too sappy chick-flick, and it looked like her character was just a little too simpering for me.

However, in looking for a good post-dinner-and-coffee film with a girlfriend the other night (we even went jewelry shopping, so I guess we were looking for a chick flick), Wimbledon lined up correctly in the genre/theatre/timing category and there we were. Boy, was I pleasantly surprised! I was expecting at best a guilty pleasure and at worst a cringe-worthy moosh-fest with all the worst that Hollywood can serve up (so to speak) in a romantic comedy. Although I guess maybe it isn’t “Hollywood” crafting this movie, since it came from the team that put together Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, both clever and decidedly British comedies. I should’ve had more faith in that pedigree!

First of all, Wimbledon was much more of a Tennis Movie than I was expecting. Bettany’s character is Peter Colt, whom the announcers (great cameos by John McEnroe and Chris Evert Lloyd, by the way) constantly refer to as a ‘journeyman tennis player’: a relatively unknown Brit who’s been to Wimbledon 13 times, currently ranked 127th at 31 years of age, although in his younger days he was once ranked as high as 11th. He’s decided this is his last hurrah at tennis; he’s old (for a tennis player) and ready to retire to reluctantly become pro of a local club where he can be ogled by the rich old ladies in their tennis whites. His status in the tennis world is so marginalized that even his announcement of retirement is lost as the reporters turn to interview another younger, hotter player who enters the room during the press conference.

To make this in part a Tennis Movie, the filmmakers actually make excellent use of something I normally dislike — the athlete-psyching-himself-up-while-performing voice-over. Because they introduce it right from the beginning and it’s used consistently throughout, it actually adds to the movie rather than being a pesky fly buzzing at me during an otherwise enjoyable scene. And it makes the movie very much about the character of Colt and his tennis odyssey.

Well, not entirely. Enter Lizzy Bradbury, the young (but hopefully not too young, since Bettany’s character is 31) hot American tennis star. A mixup in hotel keys upon arrival at the Wimbledon’s primary hotel leads to Peter seeing Lizzy in her shower, and she seeks him out for flirting on the practice courts and private dates in her hotel suite after that. Cue standard pleas to keep their dates private from her overly-focused father, played by Sam Neill and said father inevitably finding out and menacing Peter to not distract his daughter from her game.

Peter and Lizzie’s little affairs, of course, end up rejuvenating Peter’s tennis game, and the journeyman player ends up being an unexpected hope for Britain in Wimbledon. Peter’s agent (a marvelously funny turn by Jon Favreau) begins speaking to him again after two years as Peter is hot property at the old age of 31. None of the major arcs in the story are exceptionally groundbreaking, but the minor details often go in unexpected directions and keep you interested: Peter Colt’s family is an interesting cast of characters, and a verbal conflict between Colt and a tennis rival doesn’t resolve in the stereotypical way you might expect.

All in all, it’s just a touch more than a lighthearted piece of fluff. It still has all the romantic comedy elements if that’s what you’re looking for, but the writing was just a shade above standard Hollywood schlock, and I really enjoyed it. I think even the guys might dig it. Jewelry shopping ahead of time not required.

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Shaun and Ed are flatmates in London. They have been best friends since primary school. Shaun has a brain-numbing job as a salesman in an electronics store, and Ed pretty much just sits around the house playing video games and not taking phone messages. They have a third flatmate, Peter, who is an officious prig who harangues Shaun about the fact that his friendship with Ed is holding him back in the world.

Shaun and Ed spend most evenings down at the Winchester pub, which is a sort of long-standing, dingy neighborhood watering hole. Shaun drags his upwardly mobile girlfriend there each evening, too, much to her dismay. Shaun and Ed spend each day in a semi-drunken, stuporous torpor, going about their soul-sapping, lower-middle-class lives as numbly as possible.

However, one effect of their self-induced sensory deprivation is that they fail to notice that their neighborhood (and all of London, based on the snippets of news shows we see as they channel-surf past them without absorbing content) is slowly transforming from one filled with zombie-like worker bees to one filled with zombies. The zombies move slowly, and so don’t really catch their attention, such as during Shaun’s daily walk down to the local convenience store for beverages. During his first trip we see his route, and the people along it, all going about their dull, pointless lives in a trancelike haze. During subsequent trips, the camera clearly shows that more and more of his neighbors have stopped being zombie-like and started being zombies, but Shaun is too self-medicated, self-absorbed, and closed off from reality to take any notice.

That sets the stage for Shaun of the Dead, which is being (accurately) characterized as a zom/rom/com (zombie romantic comedy). Shaun and Ed end up leading a plucky band of survivors against the ever-growing zombie population, and as with all zombie flicks, some survive and some die. But, unlike most its zombie-film predecessors, Shaun of the Dead is first and foremost a comedy, and a very funny one at that.

To set expectations, this isn’t an Airplane-like spoof, but a comedy that happens to be set in London during an outbreak of zombie-ism. As played by Simon Pegg, Shaun is a loveable loser with surprising resourcefulness when the chips are down. Ed, played by Nick Frost, sails serenely through their fight for survival with equanimity, courage, and a bit of wind. The rest of the cast plays their parts well, with most of the characters balanced on the precipice of caricature, but just real enough to keep the movie enjoyable.

The movie is laugh-out-loud funny, and the zombie portions are sufficiently scary and gory, although this is not a gore-fest. It is a zom/rom/com, and doles out all three with equal measures of screen time and skill. Well worth the price of admission.

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I can’t quite figure out why there’s not more chatter and hubbub surrounding mad cow disease. I have theories, such as the fact that if the facts were made clear to everyone there might be massive public panic (plus the possible collapse of the commercial beef industry). For all intents and purposes, mad cow disease looks like it will be the AIDS of this century. We appear to be on the precipice of an epidemic, but nobody is talking about it.

What Is It?

Cows get something called bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), which is known informally as Mad Cow Disease. Diseased cattle can transmit the affliction to humans, where it manifests itself as something called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD). In both cases, what happens is that malevolent particles, called prions, drill through the actual tissue of the brain, consuming grey matter and slowly eroding the function of the brain until the infected person (or cow) becomes a slobbering, staggering idiot with no memories, no higher brain functions, no voluntary (or involuntary, eventually) muscle control, no self-awareness, no nothing. In 100% of the cases the person finally becomes bedridden and then dies. Slowly. Painfully.

CJD cannot be positively diagnosed in a living person. The only way to make a diagnosis is by examining the brain of someone who has died. The brain will be riddled with holes, hence the term “spongiform”. Once you catch it, you are dead. Period.

How Do You Get It?

Humans contract CJD by eating the nerve tissue or marrow of infected cows. The disease is transmitted by particles called prions, which are an abnormal form of normal protein. Prions have the wonderful characteristic of not being alive, which means that they cannot be killed by any reasonable means, and so retain their full infectious power even in fully cooked or cured beef. I’ll repeat, you cannot cook beef to make it safe from mad cow disease. Any time you eat ground beef from the grocery store, fast food joint, or restaurant, you are playing Russian Roulette. There are no tests to determine that beef is safe before it is sold. There is no way to treat or prepare the beef to make it safe if it contains any infected nerve tissue.

Who Has It?

But who has this disease? Well, that’s almost impossible to tell, as it appears to have a long incubation period, measured in years, even decades. That means that there could be dozens, or hundreds, or thousands, or millions of infected people in the world today displaying no symptoms, unable to be diagnosed, and unable to be cured.

Why Should I Be Worried?

First of all, if you are a vegetarian, you probably have nothing to worry about (for the most part, more below the Conjectures section). Also, if you never eat ground beef from the grocery store, fast food place, or restaurant, then you’re probably okay (see Conjectures). However, if you eat ground beef (that you haven’t ground yourself from whole, muscular cuts of beef like steaks or roasts) regularly, then you are running the risk of infection. Why is it risky to eat ground beef? Well, first of all, in the US it is now legal for cattle producers to sell their sick cows to feed companies, and for those companies to process these sick and dying animals into feed protein that is fed right back into the cattle population.

Think about that for a moment. You are a cattle rancher, trying to make a profit. You see that some of your cows are feeling a bit poorly. Nothing major, but just not looking right. You know that by the time you get them to the meat processor, they will probably be so obviously sick that the processor will be forced to reject them (by law). That means you have fed, raised, and shipped the cow, and now get nothing for it, except the additional expense of trying to dispose of it. However, you have another option. At the first sign of illness you can sell your cow to a feed producer. You’ll get much less than the market value of a healthy cow, but at least you get SOMETHING for your troubles.

So, what do you think the ranchers do? They do the economically sound thing and cut their losses, that’s what they do. And pour all those wonderful, indestructible, infectious prions back into the cattle population. Legally.

So, then what is the extent of the infected cattle population? That is unknown, and currently unknowable, because most cows don’t live long enough to develop symptoms. That’s right. Any or all of the healthy looking cows that we eat could be infected, and it is undetectable.

More importantly, what is the extent of the infected human population? Again, that is not very well known, as the medical community is only recently becoming aware that some deaths previously attributed to things like Alzheimer’s disease might actually have been caused by CJD. In fact, Pittsburgh Veterans hospital did autopsies of 50 or so patients whose deaths had been classified as being due to Alzheimer’s. Upon examination, it was determined that 5% of the patients actually had CJD at the time of their deaths. Think about that statistic. That’s one out of twenty people. This study has not been widely publicized, and there have been no other publicly announced studies of this kind (that I can find as of this writing).

Okay, Now I’m Worried. But What Can I Do?

This is a tough one. My wife and I have stopped eating commercially processed ground beef, for example. We bought a meat grinder and sometimes grind up steaks or roasts to make our own hamburgers, because we still get a burger jones every now and then. The issue with commercially ground beef is that, as most of us know, hamburger is not usually made from premium cow parts. Lots of lesser parts make it into the mix, including, unfortunately, random bits and pieces of nerve tissue and marrow. Cow muscle tissue (steaks, roasts) doesn’t contain any nerve tissue, normally, and so is safer than ground beef of unknown makeup.

Conjecture

However, if one starts with the fact that prions are virtually indestructible, the issue becomes more difficult. For example, if a restaurant cooks your steak (or grilled veggies) on the same grill where a hamburger has been cooked, it’s absolutely possible that prions from the hamburger can drip onto the grill and then hitch a ride on your steak (or veggies!). Remember, cooking doesn’t kill prions or render them any less infectious. Following this logic thread makes it easy to start slipping into paranoia, but the truth is that the world should be more paranoid about this threat. NOBODY is talking about this issue. NOBODY is doing anything about it. Why is that?

Well, one reason for that may be that the powers that be know that there is nothing that can be done. It’s too late to warn people, because the meat supply has been contaminated for so long that they can’t stop it now. The people who have it, have it, and they are going to die from it, and it would serve no purpose at this point to start a panic about something for which nothing can be done.

Also, another reason you don’t hear much about this is because of what happened to Oprah Winfrey. If you recall, in 1996 Oprah had a show about mad cow where she covered some of the very same topics in this article, and suddenly found herself staring down the business end of a big old civil lawsuit brought about by the beef industry. After six years, and $1,000,000 in legal fees paid by Ms. Winfrey, the suit was dismissed. Yes, free speech won out, but it certainly wasn’t free. Now, we all know the power and influence that Oprah wields in the world, so imagine the political clout of a group that can drag her through the courts for six years, and have the whole thing end quietly and under-reported.

My personal opinion is that this problem is more widespread than the powers-that-be imagine, and the threat is certainly not being investigated nor treatments or prevention being explored to the degree necessary. If you recall the gradual public awakening to the threat of AIDS, you might find the current reaction to CJD to be eerily similar. A fatal disease spread by something that everybody does, with a long incubation period so that it becomes widespread before it is publicly acknowledged with any fervor. Delays in funding research into the detection, prevention, and cure of the disease. Widespread public ignorance as to the true nature of the disease. The consequences with AIDS are millions infected and dying around the world, and no cure in sight.

What will the toll be for mad cow?

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This year’s Emmy awards offered a reality-show theme while skewering the format, with the wry smile and funny jokes that only Garry Shandling can deliver. It was such a joy to have him back in the driver’s seat, I really couldn’t wait for the show to be on, and I wasn’t disappointed. This year’s telecast offered some truly hilarious moments.

Great acceptance speeches:

• Michael Imperioli accepting his supporting dramatic actor for The Sopranos: touching, thoughtful, and brief. Others could learn from him.
• Drea de Matteo, too flustered to remember who to thank, just said she’d get off the stage before she started to “cry, choke, or puke”.
• Kelsey Grammer’s speech, paying respects to John Ritter while also graciously signing off after 20 years of playing Frasier Crane.
• Meryl Streep, accepting for Angels in America. She epitomizes the first lady of american acting, showing off the cuff humor and wit. “There are some days when even I think I’m overrated… but not todayyyy!”

Moments of weirdness:

• Chris Noth’s strange marriage proposal to Sarah Jessica Parker. Was that scripted? If so, it was reeeaally lame.
• Allison Janney convincing Mariska Hargitay to come up onstage with her during the Best Actress in a Drama acceptance speech.
• Elaine Stritch’s acceptance speech… what a riot!! She might be my new favorite… whatever the hell she is!!

Moments of hilarity and great quotes:

• All of Garry Shandling’s opening monologue.
• The director of the Oscars accepting his Emmy while directing the Emmy broadcast from the control booth, including cutting to his parents sitting in the audience – completely adorable.
• “I’d like to sing this now, if I may”. Mitchell Hurwitz, finishing off the tail end of his acceptance speech as the get-him-off-the-stage music begins to play.
• “Alright, I have no jokes on Iraq cause I thought we’d be done by now.” –Shandling
• “Don’t you know God? Couldn’t we have gotten a better joke than that?” Zach Braff to Amber Tamblyn after their scripted joke fell rather flat.
• “Drea, killing you was the hardest writing I’ve ever had to do.. .and this is coming from someone who wrote on ‘The New Adventures of Flipper’”. –Terence Winter, winning for best writing on The Sopranos.
• Conan O’Brien: “Joan Rivers couldn’t be here, she’s out protesting High Definition TV”.
• And the all time best Emmy Moment: the spoof commercial for reality TV series “What’s In Front of Garry’s Door?” with David Duchovny reprising his role from the Larry Sanders show playing David Duchovny as a smitten paramour complete with a spanking ping-pong paddle. I laughed so hard I thought I was going to quit breathing. Brilliant. Freaking brilliant.

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In general, there were no really horrific messes this year and not too many standouts. Mariska Hargitay wins top honors for best dressed at the Emmys in a gorgeous, gorgeous, absolutely classic outfit – a beautiful apple green Vera Wang column dress-and-a-train complete with a tropical flower in the hair. She just glowed and looked every inch the classic Hollywood goddess. (I guess being a newlywed helped, she was just smiling the whole time as well).

For the most part I liked:

• Heather Locklear’s wine-colored goddess dress
• Portia Di Rossi’s classic Givenchy with great Diane Von Furstenburg jewelry.
• Marlo Thomas’s classy white column as she accepted her father’s Bob Hope Humanitarian Award.
• Drea de Matteo’s beautiful and slightly renaissance-looking black and gold frock.
• Kim Catrall in a simple but fun pink Pamela Rowland – her overall look was just so simple and effortless.
• Jennifer Anniston’s gorgeous white tube dress from Chanel with a very Indian gold design.
• Cheryl Hines in an absolutely gorgeous Norma Linay teal beaded chiffon halter.

I found very blah:

• Laura Linney’s black knee-length Prada frock.
• Sarah Jessica Parker’s unspectacular yet somehow fussy black ankle length Chanel couture.
• Amber Tamblyn’s too-old-for-her garnet-colored fishtail gown.
• I almost-liked Debra Messing’s beautifully cut and colored beaded gown, but it was a bit too short for her (and quite see through on the backlit Red Carpet).

I thought the following were horrible!! I officially want to outlaw keyhole gowns.

• Cynthia Nixon’s unflattering brown jersey sheath with a ropes-of-turquoise necklace. Even Engineerboy noticed it was less than Emmy-worthy: “What’s with that turquoise?? Did she hold up Phoenix at gunpoint??”
• Mary Louise Parker’s “Hooray for Boobies” brown keyhole dress.
• Edie Falco’s unflattering black Randolph Duke tulle over beige going in several directions at once.
• Melina Kanakaredes’ red silk keyhole gown – not even bias cut!
• Patricia Heaton’s wacky multi-colored Elie Saab… the drape and cut were nice and fairly flattering on Patricia’s body, but the colors were just a little too out-there for me.
• Jane Kaczmarek’s custom made weird Randy Rohm (sp?) dress … she really does make some strange choices. It had some weird embroidery and beading. If she had this custom made, that makes it even stranger for me.

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So, I have to admit, I always watch Miss America if I track that it’s on. It’s a spectacle of pure schmaltzy Americana that is truly impossible for me to pass up. The combination of fashion (or what passes for it on the pageant circuit), the opportunity for me to make bitchy comments (see previous parenthetical note), and how American women wrestle with their femininity in a decidedly unfeminist contest is like catnip to a girly girl and holder of a sociology degree. This year I had no clue it was on but was just closing the browser window for TV Guide when I saw Miss America pageant in the listings and got it queued up on TiVo just in time.

Of course, this is one of the new and weird Miss America pageants that they have now, where they rejigger the format every year to desperately try and please the audience that’s disappearing or doesn’t even bother to show up in the first place. But if this is a modernized Miss America, it’s just horrible. The music and lighting when they announce the ‘winnowing down’ rounds on the ABC telecast is straight from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. The bikini competition (c’mon, none of the all-too-toned girls are gonna hurt their chances and wear a one piece) is sponsored by Speedo — the host mentioned Speedo’s name twice and the bikinis have a Speedo logo on the back of the suit (it’s a small logo, but it’s there).

New to the competition this year (or at least I don’t remember it, and boy do I think I would remember something this awful) was an awkward strutting casual wear competition. The girls start by being lined up and vogueing behind white screens — honest to god, they vogued behind backlit screens — it was so strange and embarassing. Then, one by one as their names were called, each made another quick vogue-y pose and came out on the runway for about 20 seconds like some kind of America’s Next Top Wal-Mart Model. I guess the girls were told to “act more natural” or “be themselves” or something, because they each girl did weird non-pageant-y things like shimmy her boobs or flip her hair with her hand while kicking up a heel to one knee. I mean, no one quite did the Elaine Benes thumbs-and heels-out dancing, but it some of it was really painfully non-choreographed and weird. Accompanying this strange parade were contestant voice-overs telling cute stories about bowling with nephews or how her mom gives her cookbooks as a good luck gift before each pageant.

The swimsuit competition sinks to a new low. Aside from the Speedo (TM) sponsored all-bikini factor (although I think Miss Arkansas would’ve worn a g-string if they would’ve let her), the actual live competition was preceded by five minutes of a pre-show swimsuit “shoot” footage. The girls were poolside, surrounded by candles with toes dipping in the pool water. With the girls smiling seductively, talking about staying in shape, and leaning forward seductively, and the camera monitor visible in some frames, the entire setup looks so much like a Playboy shoot it was very creepy. When the live bathing suit competition finally started, it began with a strange little choreographed dance on stage with all 52 contestants intermixed with more scenes of the pre-recorded stuff from earlier by the pool set to weird clubby rock music. The strutty part of the competition was the standard stuff, girls in bikinis and heels. At least Miss New York was shaped like a real person and walked like a normal person (she actually looked like she enjoyed it and didn’t have that weird plastic smile), but alas didn’t make it into the Top Five so I guess “weird plastic smile” is actually what the judges are looking for.

The evening wear competition was more standard Miss America fare, but In general, I just really lament that some of these women don’t really know the meaning of “formal wear”. Miss Alabama’s idea of formal wear looked like something out of Frederick’s of Hollywood. Yes, I understand that you want to show the judges that you have a well toned body, but isn’t that what the bikini section is for? Her outfit was two pieces and the skirt was slit up to the upper thigh. At least Miss Louisiana was in a dress that looked like something that someone might actually wear to, say, a charity gala (albeit one in New Orleans). Then again, Miss Two Piece Alabama won the formal wear section, so apparently taste isn’t really a factor, it is how much skin you can show, and this is why no one is beating down my door to be a pageant consultant. What really dropped my jaw weren’t the fashion choices, however, but the fact that the show producers played the video clips of the same audio clips that they played during the casual wear competition. This was especially annoying…surely they could’ve figured out getting two different snippets of ‘personality’ from these girls? They sure didn’t seem to repeat any shots of the girls frisking around by the damn candlelit pool for the bikini competition.

On to the more re-vamped portions of the show. The quiz show aspect was added a few years ago and provides some interesting insight into the knowledge of today’s young women. There are only a few questions, but it’s interesting to see what questions they do and don’t get (and which one’s I can and can’t get — it’s not like I got all questions right, either). I really like this addition to the pageant, actually — it’s not subjective judging and it’s a chance for the women to prove their knowledge of American history and current events. I mean, if the top prize is a scholarship, after all, it does seem to make sense that part of it should depend on some actual knowledge.

The biggest change in the pageant this year is that the three runners-up were announced ahead of time and the two finalists went “head-to-head” in talent competition. This provided the dual benefit (from the producers’ perspective) of being able to pretend that talent is one of the most important deciding factors and only having to show the actual talent performance of two of the competitors. Miss Alabama sang (always a popular choice with the judges) and Miss Louisiana did an uneventful tap dance. Miss Alabama eventually won the crown, although she was one of the least dynamic girls there, in my opinion.

In general, I’ll keep watching every year, although I feel the pageant slipping more and more into the morass that’s enveloping TV in general these days. The host was from The Bachelor, and the cheesy dramatic music is sort of dorky but I guess what should I expect… it is still a pageant after all. The swimsuit competition is looking more like Temptation Island, though, and I think the producers are really making a mistake by taking the pageant in that direction. I think classier would definitely go over better and increase viewership and ratings over the long haul. But then again, what do I know? I’m just a viewer, and I watched this year, didn’t I?

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So, I’m learning that Bernie Mac is an actual actor, in addition to being a comedic performer. We’ve watched The Bernie Mac show sporadically, and I’ve always enjoyed his performances, although I’m hot-and-cold on the show in general. He was engaging as the new Bosley in the second Charlie’s Angels movie, and in Ocean’s Eleven. I like that he seems to have doggedly kept doing his thing and waiting for the world to figure out he was talented instead of trying to remake himself or package an image that follows the trends of the day. I find his humor to be very funny and very real, and obviously derived from real life, which is where all of the truly funny material comes from.

And in Mr. 3000 he shows that he is not just a performer and a funny guy, but also an actual actor and a Hollywood star with the chops to carry a major motion picture as the lead (which he does so easily that I kept forgetting that he’d never done it before). The movie itself flirts with being a great, timeless comedy, but it’s been dumbed down just enough to make it semi-forgettable. This film could have joined films like Big and Groundhog Day in the pantheon of seriously deep comedies, but it doesn’t quite make it out of the park. It’s a long fly ball, though, and the fielder has to jump up and snag it off the wall to keep it from being a round-tripper. That fielder is the script, which has some trite, Hollywood-y parts that tarnish the potential greatness of this film.

Speaking of tarnished greatness, that about sums up Bernie Mac’s character in this film. He plays a former major league baseball player who was a big hitter, who when he gets his 3,000th hit immediately retires from baseball, leaving his club (which is involved in a tight pennant race) in the lurch. You see, he only wanted to get to 3,000 hits because he felt that would insure his eventual induction into the Hall of Fame, even though he was an unrelenting jerk to everyone (teammates, media, coaches, girlfriends, etc) all throughout his professional career.

However, after he’s been retired for 8 years he’s still not in the Hall, but it looks like this will be his year. It looks like he has the votes, finally, to achieve his dream. Unfortunately, on the eve of the final tallying, the record keepers at the Hall discover that a clerical error has accidentally given him three more hits than he actually had, meaning that he’s really just Mr. 2997. That doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, nor does it match the names of all of his post-baseball businesses, which all have “3,000” in their name to capitalize on his fame. Suffice to say that he doesn’t make the Hall (by a landslide).

He decides that what he needs to do is get back into baseball (at age 47) and get those three hits. Suffice it to say that the rest of the film is fairly standard Hollywood stuff, but with a nice ring to it. His love interest is played by Angela Basset, who, in a refreshing change of pace for Hollywood, is his age. Wow, what a concept. I send out positive vibrations to the person who made the decision to cast Ms. Basset over the Halle’s and Jada’s of the world. The soundtrack is filled with good, old, funky R&B, which sets the perfect tone for Bernie Mac’s good, old, funky character. The one false note is the Frank Sinatra tune that serves as the music for the closing credits. It rings completely false and spoils the musical mood of the rest of the film.

The film hangs somewhere between 2.5 and 3 stars, but is closer to 3 so I rounded up. The film could easily be 3 or 3.5 stars with the simple deletion of some of sappier scenes, and an ending that matched the tone of the rest of the film, but what does one expect from Hollywood anymore? The fact that this film is as good as it is means that the creative forces behind it (not the dealmakers) probably had to fight long and hard to keep in the deeper, more serious parts, and so probably had to agree to Hollywood’s idea of what this film should be (and paste in the sappier parts). I have no knowledge that this is true, but the sappy parts are so clunky when compared with the rest of the film that one is led to the conclusion that they were done involuntarily by the creative team.

All that being said, the film is still well worth the price of admission. The baseball scenes are well done, with an authentic feel, and Bernie Mac is just in barely good enough shape to be believable as an older guy making a comeback. Bernie Mac and Angela Basset are an amazingly excellent pairing with real screen chemistry. The fact that they’re both in their late 40s simply makes it all the sweeter, as it is much more interesting to me to see adults falling in love as opposed to teenagers and twenty-somethings flirting with smit. And I also can’t wait to see what Mr. Mac does next.

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I used to like Denzel Washington a lot as an actor. But then he slipped into a fairly repetitive rut of playing himself in every role, and I lost interest. I didn’t see Training Day, but I heard he gave an interesting, non-Denzel-like performance. That piqued my interest in his movies again, to a certain degree. But then I heard that he was starring in a remake of The Manchurian Candidate. Now, I loved the 1964 original, and thought it was way, way ahead of its time. It was also one of those movies that (I thought) never should or would be remade, because what would the point be? How could one surpass the shocking bizarre-ness mixed with reality that caused the first one to perfectly capture Cold War paranoia? When I heard about the remake, I knew two things: first, that I would never see it, and second, that it could never measure up to the first.

Well, I was half-right. It certainly doesn’t live up to the gestalt of the first, because there’s just no way they could surpass the surprise of the movie and storyline springing into existence. But, after hearing endlessly positive buzz and reviews, I did go see it. And, I have to say, it doesn’t suck, and it is not the abomination that I was sure it would be.

The story has been updated, with the backstory occurring during the first Gulf War, and the primary story being told pretty much in the present day. The basic storyline is that during the Gulf War, a patrol of soldiers goes missing, and then turns up several days later with an amazing story about how one of them heroically and single-handedly saved them all during an attempted ambush. The “hero”, played by Liev Schreiber, is the well-born son of a powerful US Senator, played by Meryl Streep. Although he was born to the manor, he eschewed his rightful place as a moneyed magnate and volunteered for the Army just in time to ship out for the first Gulf War.

Upon his return he is nominated for, and receives, the Congressional Medal of Honor by his platoon commander (Denzel Washington). He then quickly moves up the political ladder (thanks to the maniacally Machiavillian machinations of his manipulative mother) to join his Party’s ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate.

However, all is not as it seems. After a speaking engagement, Denzel’s character is confronted by one of his former squad members, who rambles on about strange dreams of their lost days that don’t match his memory of what happened. It turns out that Denzel has been having the same dreams, and decides to approach his old (and newly politically powerful) friend (Schreiber’s character) to see if he’s been having the dreams or if he can use his political clout to try and figure out what really happened to them during their lost days.

Suffice it to say that drama and intrigue ensue. All the primary actors do excellent jobs, particularly Meryl Streep, whose Senator seems like a combination of Hilary Clinton, Joseph McCarthy, and Hitler. Denzel is very un-Denzel-like, with a sort of quiet, sour manner, and very little overt emotion of any kind. If the first film had never existed, I’d probably be giving this one another half-star, but it does derive its basic storyline, characters, and concepts from the original, so loses a few points on originality.

But, that being said, it’s still a very entertaining movie. If you haven’t seen the original, go see this one and you’ll probably enjoy it greatly. If you have seen the original, this version is still worth a look due to the good script, updated story, and strong lead performances.

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So, this movie is hilarious. Mynagirl and I had a rare, footloose vacation day and indulged ourselves by attending a business-afternoon screening, attended by us and a handful of 18-22 year olds. We, and they, laughed out loud throughout the whole thing. Mind you, there are some parts that are slower and stupider than other parts, but overall this is a smart and funny film wrapped up in the guise of a stoner buddy flick.

The basic storyline follows two post-graduate, pre-maturity roommates named Harold and Kumar as they spend a weekend getting stoned, getting the munchies, and embarking on a Quixotian quest for some White Castle hamburgers. For those unfamiliar, White Castle sells tiny little square hamburgers served with diced onions on top. One (if one is me) typically eats 4-6 of these little burgers (referred to colloquially as “sliders”, because they’re small, greasy, and tasty and slide right down the gulliver) at a sitting, along with 2-3 orders of fries.

The Harold in Harold & Kumar is a Korean, twenty-something, junior investment banker. He’s smart, hard-working, and shy and likes following the rules, at least as he sees him. For instance, at one point Kumar throws the correct change into a tollbooth, but the signal does not turn green and the boys are out of change. Kumar proposes just driving off. Harold says no way, because it’s his car and he doesn’t like breaking the rules. The funny part is that while Harold is declaring his conformity, he’s also rolling a joint.

Kumar, on the other hand, is a super-smart, Indian party-boy who aced his MCATs, but purposely throws his med school admission interviews so that he can simply get high and live off of money from his dad. Kumar floats through life looking for a good time, and looking to ensure that Harold loosens his white collar over the weekend and gets back in touch with his inner stoner.

Now, at this point you might think that Harold & Kumar is simply an updated Cheech & Chong movie, but it’s not. This film, while a stoner comedy on the surface, also provides witty commentary about the lives of young, first-generation Americans who live in limbo between the gratefully hardworking ethos of their parents and the soft, slacker pace of the lives of young Americans in general. Harold and Kumar are both smarter than your average bear, and pot-smoking notwithstanding, are on track to becoming upstanding pillars of society…eventually. Their adventures in this film represent a sort of last, wild bachelor party prior to their betrothal to maturity and good citizenship.

The film has a couple of low-brow moments that I could live without, but overall it is laugh-out-loud funny throughout. John Cho (Harold) and Kal Penn (Kumar) both do excellent work embodying the conflicting facets of their characters, and I expect big things will come to both of these actors as a result of their performances here. The rest of the cast also does a good job, the direction is good, the script is snappy, some of the effects are a bit cheesy, but then again this isn’t the latest Star Wars installment (thank god). This movie is well worth the price of admission. In fact, Mynagirl and I are actually talking about going back and seeing it in the theater again this weekend. Given the backlog of unwatched movies out there that we need to get to, the fact that Harold & Kumar jumped back to the top of our list should tell you a lot.

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It’s hard for me to know how I’d like this movie, or any of Shyamalan’s movies, if I hadn’t first seen The Sixth Sense. You’ll have to bear with me as I preface my comments for The Village with a few about Sixth Sense and the rest of Shyamalan’s oeuvre. I was so irritated with that movie right up until the ending that brought the whole story together that I then became an instant fan of this director, willing to give him so much leeway in any story, to let him lead me where he wanted. I gave Unbreakable that same kind of “okay, where are you taking me today” wide-eyed wonder, and I ended up liking that one, too, even though it is oddly paced and weird in its own way. I liked Signs, too. I know a lot of people objected to a member of an advanced, space-traveling alien race being able to be trapped in a kitchen pantry, but a modern army paratrooper would be similarly trapped if caught without any of his conventional weapons. See? Sixth Sense was so brilliant I’ve just been willing to go along with whatever else has come out from the director since. And I know that’s so many people’s big beef with Shyamalan, that his first movie was brilliant, and that either (a) the other movies don’t live up to the first shining promise of Sixth Sense, or (b) Shyamalan’s got the movie going public hoodwinked with his emperor-wears-no-clothes Hollywood cachet. And it is hard to judge what I’d think of his other movies if it hadn’t been for his first one, and The Village is no exception.

It’s also hard to discuss this movie without discussing plot spoilers, and I’m going to break a normal rule here and talk a little bit about plot. So:

*************PLOT SPOILERS AHEAD****************

The movie, like all Shyamalan films, makes repeated use of color. Unlike previous works, however, it’s more than just a thematic element. In The Village, the residents of an early 1800’s hamlet lead a semi-idyllic life of self-contained sustenance. They farm, school and raise children, and marry one another within a few square mile area surrounded by woods. The villagers and their houses are swathed in drab colors; anything bright red is hidden or forbidden. At nighttime, the men of the village stand guard at the perimeter of the village land near the woods in ochre yellow cloaks, warding off an unseen (and, in the beginning of the movie, very nebulous) menace. Village residents are not allowed into the woods, and residents of the woods are clearly not friendly toward the villagers. Red is forbidden because it attracts the menace from the woods

As the movie progresses, the central conflict becomes a need for one of the characters to travel through the forboding woods to “the towns” on the other side, something that the elders took an oath they would never do when they founded the village. The acting is quite good here; Bryce Dallas Howard is wonderful as the youngish woman entrusted with this task, and Joaquin Phoenix is also excellent opposite her. As for the rest of the cast, William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver are also quite solid. I know some reviewers took exception to Oscar-winner Adrien Brody ‘deigning’ to play a mentally challenged man in this film, but I thought he was great and that the film was worth of his performance. There’s a hell of an emotional scene between him and Bryce Dallas Howard that was very difficult for me to watch.

I really did like The Village, but it had one flaw for me. The main disappointment for me was that there wasn’t anything supernatural or extraterrestrial in this film (Engineerboy made me use the word extraterrestrial here — he pointed out aliens don’t qualify as ‘supernatural’ in the movie Signs, although if you really remember the plotline Mel Gibson’s character sort of had spooky premonitions from his dead wife, so I think that qualifies, but whatever). The movie was still good, but I was looking for that extra Shyamalan weirdness, and all my little frissons of expectation (“oh man, I can’t wait to see what those turn out to be”) as the plot progressed didn’t pay off at the end. I still really loved the film, and I think the director is still a genius, but that one element was missing for me.

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