![Tropic Thunder (Unrated Director's Cut + BD Live) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51AQjWBZOEL._SL75_.jpg)
There’s no polite way to say this: Tropic Thunder sucked. Why so harsh? I dunno, maybe I was just in a grumpy mood, but the flick just struck me as bloated, overly self-conscious, overly inside and, worst of all, simply unfunny. I might have laughed two or three times during “Thunder’s” two hour running time. I don’t suppose I have to tell you that’s a bad thing with a movie that advertises itself as a comedy. Another thing that really bothered me — and I readily concede that this might be a personal thing — was that this was obviously a very expensive flick. Something about seeing all of those dollars wasted on such a lackluster script didn’t sit right with me.
So, what we have here basically (if you take me at my word) is an unfunny movie with good actors who all deserved more and better things to do. Too bad.
Christopher Nolan hasn’t been shy about citing Heat as an influence on The Dark Knight. For that reason — and because Heat is very well-regarded in its own right — I decided to finally dive in and see this flick I had somehow spent the last twelve years missing. Now that I’ve gotten that egregious error out of the way, my feelings on the movie are decidedly mixed. Let me first accentuate the positive: 1) Heat is extremely well-made. It feels authentic all the way through with its expertly chosen Los Angeles locations and its terrifically-written dialogue. 2) The cast is phenomenal. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro (technically sharing the screen for the first time here) lead a group of actors both familiar and competent. 3) The script is smartly written and deals with smart people — a rarity since smart people are hard to write, because, you know, you gotta be smart to do it. But it’s that same screenplay, replete as it is with so much good stuff, which brings us to the bad… Heat is too ambitious. It tries to do too much and, at nearly three hours, it outstays its welcome. There are subplots about serial killings and Al Pacino’s stepdaughter which, I feel, could be excised and never missed. There’s also one outlandishly convenient bit of business toward the end which strains credibility in an otherwise taut cops and robbers drama. It’s hard to reconcile the things this Michael Mann script gets wrong in light of all the brilliant things it gets right. It almost feels as though certain elements were prepared in haste, or — more likely — the script was even longer than it is now and bits of connective tissue fell by the wayside.
Anyway, if you’re like I was a day or two ago and you’ve never seen Heat. should you bother seeing it now? Damn straight you should. It’s a damn good movie, it’s just got a few wobbly bits which, thankfully, fail to tarnish the overall experience.
Talk about your quick reads…
Had I not been hip-deep in one family illness after another (long story, hopefully soon to end) I probably could have plowed through F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Pat Hobby Stories in a single evening. The book is made up of seventeen short stories all revolving around (you guessed it) Pat Hobby, an alcoholic has-been screenwriter in 1940s Hollywood. Actually, calling each entry a “story” is a bit of misnomer in that many of them are really just “sketches” — a quick set-up with a punchline. In fact, the majority of them are clearly meant to be humorous or whimsical (with only one or two venturing into anything resembling poignancy). That’s not a slight by any means, just know that this isn’t The Great Gatsby when you pick the book up. You’re not going to get a rich novelic experience here, but that’s okay because I’m sure none was intended. I would say that Fitzgerald did these tales as a lark (and I’m sure to an extent that he did) but there are some haunting similarities to F. Scott’s final days to be found in The Pat Hobby Stories. When he died, Fitzgerald was toiling away as a screenwriter in 40s Hollywood and his alcoholism is, I believe, well-documented. Real World parallels aside, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. I have a particular fondness for Hollywood films of the period depicted and, not surprisingly, the attendant history. The Pat Hobby Stories gave me a welcome window into that world.
[Is "novelic" a word? Well, dammit, it oughta be.]
This past weekend I reacquainted myself with a flick I hadn’t seen in close to twenty five years: Fright Night, starring the late, great Roddy McDowell. If you’re in my general age bracket, you probably remember McDowell best from the Planet of the Apes films. And, if you remember him from those films, I’m guessing it’s with some fondness. There’s just something very watchable about old Roddy. He was never showy, but your eye just goes to the guy. I don’t know what it is. At any rate, Roddy is just as good as he always was in this vampire flick from 1985. Couple his performance with a super-slick villain portrayed by the underrated Chris Sarandon and you’ve got yourself a fine little, modestly budgeted horror film (with its fair share of laughs).
As the old saying goes this ain’t Citizen Kane, but you sure could do a lot worse.
Reading This Side of Paradise wasn’t nearly as pleasurable as my recent revisiting of The Great Gatsby. It’s quite evident to me that “Paradise” was F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first published book in that it’s showy and pretentious, the work of a young writer in love with his own talent and eager to share his philosophies on life and literature. In fact, the book isn’t so much a story as it is a Book of Ideas disguised as the journey of an affluent Eastern kid from boyhood through his early adult years. “Gatsby”, by comparison, manages to be more eloquent and more profound with considerably less verbiage and with more precisely drawn characters. And the fact that I didn’t love This Side of Paradise really does boil down to character. Since so much of the focus is on the protagonist — Amory, the aformentioned young Easterner — your whole enjoyment of the work will depend on whether or not you care for said protagonist. I didn’t, and it’s as simple as that. I didn’t completely dislike Amory, but he is a little difficult to relate to at times. He’s the product of an upper class upbringing, he attends Princeton, and yet he’s an insufferable soul searcher. To be fair, I don’t think that soul searching is the exclusive province of the lower and middle classes, but I do think the rich should have to good taste to shut up about it.
One of the other things that struck me about “Paradise” was just how much the culture has changed in the near-century since the book was written (and this is not a critique so much as an observation). Male-female relations in particular have undergone sweeping changes since Fitzgerald’s time. I was amused at the way his characters treat a simple kiss the way young people today treat intercourse. Regarding affairs of the heart, F. Scott’s twenty-somethings behave like the eight and nine year olds of today. What a difference one little Sexual Revolution can make.
So, has This Side of Paradise derailed my little foray into the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald? Not at all. As I mentioned, despite the book’s failings, the author’s talent is still very much on display and I’m interested to see how this first book stacks up against the others Fitzgerald produced in his all-too-brief life. In fact I’ve already moved on to a volume called The Pat Hobby Stories, a collection of short pieces all of which feature an alcoholic screenwriter working in 40s Hollywood.
![The Godfather - The Coppola Restoration Giftset (The Godfather / The Godfather Part II / The Godfather Part III) [Blu-ray]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51ek%2BlM5IIL._SL75_.jpg)
I’m not going to spend any real time talking about the plot or the merits of Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of The Godfather. I’m assuming most of you have seen it. For those of you who haven’t: shame on you. Stop reading this and watch it right now. I’m not kidding. Go.
As for myself, I watched the film again this evening for two reasons:
- I picked up the new restored version on blu-ray and
- I just read the novel for the first time recently and I wanted to see how the movie compared
Point number one: this is the best The Godfather’s looked in years. The new print is absolutely spectacular. If you’re a fan of the film and you haven’t seen it in a while, you’re going to want to check this new version out. I recommend the blu-ray version, of course, but I’m sure the standard def version looks much better than the last DVD incarnation which was released six or seven years ago.
Point number two: I did find myself enjoying the movie a little more with Mario Puzo’s novel still fresh in my mind. It wasn’t like a completely new experience, but I did pick up on several subtleties I missed in all of my earlier viewings. I now know what it means to “go to the mattress” and I smiled when I saw Michael carrying around that hanky the whole time he was in Sicily. Also, I got a better appreciation for just how faithful an adaptation this really was. Apart from some necessary condensing, The Godfather the movie is The Godfather the book — it’s like the novel I just read lept from the pages whole-cloth onto the screen. The sheer number of details that correlate between page and celluloid is pretty remarkable, really.
I finally got around to playing The Force Unleashed thanks to a friend of mine who was kind enough to loan me his copy. After completing the game’s story last night, I’m of two minds on the experience…
Mind #1 — The Game-play:
For those of you who don’t know, LucasArts was a market leader in the middle 1990s, producing several adventure titles that are acknowledged classics. Since that time, they’ve fallen on artistically hard times — primarily by crafting a plethora of mediocre games which did very little for either their Bottom Line or their reputation. The Force Unleashed could have been a real “renaissance title” for them, but the missteps of its engineers and system designers ultimately keep the game from snatching that particular bit of glory. While “Unleashed” isn’t by any stretch a disaster (as it has been called in some quarters), the level of its gameplay cannot be described as triple-A. I experienced numerous glitches during my play-through — including disappearing architecture, enemies who were dead and strangely not dead, etc. Beyond the simple hiccuping, though, there were consistent problems with where the camera was pointing at any given time and combat was simply not fun quite a bit more often than I would’ve liked (especially when you consider that combat is the meat and potatoes of this game). Imagine this scenario: Your avatar has just been hit with a piece of heavy equipment (hurled at him by an angry Evil Jedi). While your “getting up” animation is being played, you’re hit with another piece of scenery and knocked back down. While your “getting up” animation is (again) being played, you’re hit with (yet) another piece of scenery. Before you’ve actually exercised any control over the character whatsoever, you are dead. This is bad design and, as you can imagine, enormously frustrating. After some time, I was able to acclimate myself to “Unleashed’s” play mechanics, but I shouldn’t have to meet a game that’s this high-profile in the middle. All of the great games “come to you” (if you take my meaning).
Mind #2 — The Story:
Here is why The Force Unleashed‘’s mediocre game-play is so disappointing: underneath that layer of chunky mechanics there’s the best Star Wars story told in perhaps twenty or so years. I am a huge fan of 1997’s Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight and, while I think that particular tale has a little more depth and breadth, “Unleashed” wins out thanks to the epic way that it interconnects with established continuity and in the pathos that it manages to deliver. “Unleashed” makes great strides in giving us a video game character who’s performance is nuanced and who’s motives are complex. You have to be a Star Wars geek to some extent to appreciate all of the dots that “Unleashed” connects, but even casual fans will relate to the hero’s quest. The game has a very satisfying narrative and it’s a shame that it wasn’t conceived as a film. It’s certainly more compelling in many ways than any of the prequels.
Let me just say two things which might be deemed critiques of the narrative, but bear in mind that these are not truly damning in any way:
- Occasionally the narrative feels truncated — as though some connective tissue was left on the proverbial “cutting room floor”. While this didn’t really cause any lapses in understanding on my part, it did make me curious to read the tie-in novel. (Which might have been LucasArt’s intention all along. Sneaky bastards.)
- It’s not unusual for games and movies to be anti-climactic, am I right? If anything, I think The ForceUnleashed‘’s pay-off is “over-climactic”. The sheer scope of the ending (and the way it affects canon) is an embarrassment of riches. Had I been Director of this project, I would have scaled the ending back a little, but that’s just me. Anyway, take my complaints about too much of a good thing with the requisite grain of salt. Too much of a good thing is still a good thing, right?
Even though it remains one of the highest-rated drama programs in television history, I’d never gotten around to seeing Lonesome Dove until recently. When I was a younger man, I think I had myself convinced that I didn’t care for Westerns. Now that I’m older and (marginally) wiser, I realize just how silly that position was. In fact, some of the greatest stories ever told on film are Westerns and “Dove” certainly ranks right up there. Robert Duvall who, let’s face it, is one of our best living actors has said that his Lonesome Dove character is one of his favorite parts. That alone should be enough for those of you who haven’t seen “Dove” to sit up and take notice. And let me tell you, the character (”Gus McCrae”) does not disappoint for a second. He’s an honorable man with the heart of a roguish little boy, and he’s an absolute joy to watch. Partner him with the stoic and emotionally closed-off “Woodrow Call” (played expertly by Tommy Lee Jones) and you’ve got a partnership as good or better than any to be found in classic Westerns of yore.
I should warn you, however, that Lonesome Dove is not a cake walk. This isn’t a white hat/black hat sort of Western — it depicts life on the frontier as it surely must have been: bleak and occasionally touched by death. The journey’s a little rough in places, but that just makes the experience all the more authentic and meaningful. There’s a new DVD of “Dove” out now sporting, for the first time, a widescreen transfer. Watch it. It’s terrific.
[Of course, now that I've seen the miniseries, I'm curious to read the Larry McMurtry novel on which it was based. That book won the Pulitzer. So many books, so little time.]
Show me a hero and I’ll write you a tragedy. –F. Scott Fitzgerald
I first read The Great Gatsby in high school or early in college — I don’t remember which. Right away, I declared it one of my favorite books of all times, and I felt strongly that it would remain so. Not having read it in fifteen or twenty years, I decided to put my unabashed love to the test; to see if my memories of the book would stand up to reality. Well, I’m happy to report that revisiting “Gatsby” was not in any way a let-down. In fact, I’m willing to tip my hat right here and now to the unimpeachable good taste of my younger self.
Not only is The Great Gatsby a terrific story — poignant and wise — the writing is humblingly great. This Fitzgerald kid knew what he was doing. The prose is lean and shot-through with meaning all at once. If you’ve ever tried to write seriously then you know how difficult that can be — to say the most possible in the least amount of words. It’s easy to ramble on and on without a point, but economy and eloquence are not often found together in close company.
Strangely, “Gatsby” is the only one of Fitzgerald’s novels I’ve ever read (though I have read some of his short stories). This re-reading of the author’s best-known work has got me excited to correct that long-standing error. Expect more posts on good ol’ F. Scott in the not-too-distant future.
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