Dan Brown writes fine fantasy. Dan Brown does a great deal of research and can, for a moment, make you think he found something really devastating in its impact on the world. The Davinci Code is still making people think. Still developing controversy with the Church.
So we come to the sequel.
Once again director Ron Howard – the most overrated director in Hollywood teams up with Tom Hanks, still somewhat underrated as an actor, to tell the next story of symbologist Robert Langdon.
This time the story is even more stretched thin, tying in theoretical antimatter with a Vatican Conclave for an adventure where terrorists threaten to blow up the Vatican.
The terrorists? The Illuminati. A group of scientists with a vengefull wrath against the church. These geniuses have broken into the Large Hadron Collider at Cern and moved a large does of antimatter to Vatican City to use science to defeat religion.
And that’s when the plot is on its most solid ground.
The action takes place as Langdon and scientist Vittoria Vetra scramble to find the antimatter before it makes a mess. The bad guys put the good guys on a clock. “We’ll kill a Cardinal (each of whom are the next most likely to become pope) every hour until … wait, what did they want. Just pretty much to kill the church so there is no negotiating. Just that they plan to do this killing along a symbolic and synchronized pathway until the destruction of the church.
Along the way we learn a bit about Rome and a bit about certain arcane rituals of the church which serve the drama but don’t inform or sensationalize our current knowledge of the church as they did in DaVinci.
The biggest problem, and it is infernal and infuriating is the cinematography. Its too damned dark in this movie. 80 – 90 percent of “Angels and Demons” is filmed in such low light that you have to strain your eyes to see it. (I’m told the book was that way, but if the book were about a blind person would there be no black on white type?) With the curtains drawn I could still see my own reflection in the tv more than I could see the actors. I’ll bet that was again brilliant acting by Tom Hanks. Can we blame the cinematographer? Perhaps, but I think not. I think that this is what Ron Howard wanted. Any modern movie has dailies and this “look” would be thrown away and reshot right away if the director wanted his film to be seen. I can only expect that Howard was so ashamed of this film that he wouldn’t let people watch it because its that dark, that often.
Find some way to light the interior scenes so that we can see not only the people’s faces (which most of the time were only 1/2 visible by candle light, but so that we can see where they are in these catacombs and tunnels and indeed Vatican interiors.
Just to make matters worse, there is this systematic turning out of lights in the grid in order to see when the lights would go out on the explosive device, which is lit somewhere in the bowels of Rome and on camera to prove its real.
And if that wasn’t enough to turn you off from Angels and Demons, the plot, which is fairly inorganically constructed to begin with, turns 180 degrees on itself and goes from sappy … to absurd …
[SPOILER] when the modest good guy turns out to be the malevolent bad guy by manner of a little bit of late exposition!
Its unbelievable. Add that to the fact that it is literally unwatchable and “Angels and Demons” goes from a movie I really wanted to like, to one that I cannot recommend.
2 of 5 Smiling Maxes and 3 of 5 frowning Maxes for an exercise in frustration in a movie I wanted to like.
Typical Disney story. Child is cute. Child’s parent gets killed. Child struggles to survive but makes it against all odds learning the true meaning of life along the way.
UP provides us with a different sort of Disney tragedy to start the show. Boy has a dream. Boy meets girl with the same dream, they meet, they fall in love, they can’t have kids. Its always a tragedy.
Sometimes, in “old man” stories, a child arrives to teach the old man life lessons he once knew, all over again.
That’s what happens here.
One of this reviewer’s favorite movie, for any age group, is “Monsters Inc”. Its just thrill ride adventure with tension and more tension at each advance of the plot.
Not surprisingly Peter Docter is lead writer on both movies. UP follows the same thrilling pattern that “Monsters Inc” does. I was squirming on the edge of my seat before the end of the movie, and that was compounded by the hieght, which, was as breathtakingly high as a cartoon/animation can get.
The movie starts slowly. We learn to love the characters, then Ellie is gone and as Karl Fredricksen is, we are sad. And the kid, Dennis, starts out just mildly annoying. We warm up to him. Before long this two against the world story takes us away on a struggle and adventure which provide the old man with a chance for adventure, and a reawakening of his dreams. He and Russell, the originally annoying scout child find through their trials that they need each other and “once again the world is spinning in greased grooves”. But before all is fine, there are threats to life, limb and friends and friendships and new friends and ever and ever more dangerous challenges to overcome.
Its almost as scary as jaws!
If you don’t like hieghts, this could be a tough movie for you even if you know its animated. Its slow, but increasingly scary.
But its fun. And now for the second time in my life, I have to say what a great movie Pete Docter has written.
Watch it with your kids. Watch it with your 88 year old wife. It’ll make you cry. It’ll make you smile and it might just make you bit your fingernails!
5 of 5 Smiling Maxes. Two Thumbs way UP.
Directors:
Pete Docter
Bob Peterson (co-director)
Writers:
Pete Docter (story) and
Bob Peterson (story) …
Release Date:
29 May 2009 (USA) more
Genre:
Animation |Adventure
Edward Asner … Carl Fredricksen (voice) (as Ed Asner)
Christopher Plummer … Charles Muntz (voice)
Jordan Nagai … Russell (voice)
Bob Peterson … Dug / Alpha (voice)
Delroy Lindo … Beta (voice)
Jerome Ranft … Gamma (voice)
John Ratzenberger … Construction Foreman Tom (voice)
After deciding to run some reviews of my favorite podcasts, I’ve kind of fallen down on the job. This I hope to rectify soon.
Meanwhile I do have an update on my Qn / Quirky Nomads.com podcast review.
Thse are just a few QN’s [or Quirky Nomads] that you should listen to:
Surviving the 1950′s 2/16/09 And Lo and Behold Obviously I Should Not Be Left Alone In The Apartment 3/23/09 – [funny story about fire. Fire? Well ... yeah] The Secret of the Sparkle 12/26/08 [Wonder what all the "Twilight" hype is about? So does Sage] The Church of LDD 5/29/08 [There's another one just a week or so before this one that sets up the whole anti Mormon thing. The Mormon boys in the elevator story. She has a thing about Mormons. I'll try to find that specific episode and update here.] Here it is! En Flambe 5/27/08 [I just liked this one] Gin, Television and Social Surplus 4/30/08 [I found it fascinating. Long like "The Sparkle" maybe 18 minutes.] Paper Doors parts 1 and 2 2/07/08 and 2/08/08 [Starts a bit slow but stay with it] Fuck John McCain 11/3/08 [passe' now, until you think about the "Internet Freedom Act"]
These are by no means all of the Qn’s to which you should listen. But they are all I’m going to link to now. All of the stories involving Kite [Sage's mother] are revealing and heart warming. And there’s still more on Joseph Smith too I think.
Reprinted from the New York Times
November 23, 2009, 2:45 pm
By ROMAN SKASKIW
Home FiresHome Fires features the writing of men and women who have returned from wartime service in the United States military.
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I’m occasionally asked what I’ve learned from my experiences in the military.
My responses, particularly before my third tour, have always involved leadership, confidence, knowledge of myself and of people in general. This hasn’t changed. I remain grateful.
Sometimes I feel the pressure of expectation to cast myself as a victim of my experiences, but in truth, I think I’ve benefited from them.
The Army, and especially the infantry, gives its junior leaders tremendous responsibility. The rough world of the 82nd Airborne Division was a steep learning curve for me, a freshly minted lieutenant accustomed to the studious habits of Stanford University, of its School of Engineering, no less. I learned an awful lot and, I think, emerged a better person.
More recently, I’ve realized some of my beliefs have formed so slowly and subtly that their learning has been entirely unappreciated. I’ve learned that no matter what, life goes on — it’ll do so with or without any one of us — and I’ve found a measure of respect for selfishness; for people who look out for themselves and their lives yet to come. This is surely cynical.
If there’s redemption in the selfishness, it has to do with loving life, with respecting yourself enough not to end your days prematurely or in futile pursuits. Yes, I said it. Somewhere between my second and third tours, I came to believe that our foreign, undeclared wars flouted our Constitution and made us less safe — from terrorism, from debt and from tyranny at home. Believing this wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t help it. Without faith in our military endeavors, my long-held notions about duty, heroism and fighting the good fight didn’t survive long.
If there’s redemption in selfishness, it has to do with respecting yourself enough not to end your days prematurely or in futile pursuits.
I think you’re only a hero for as long as your image is useful, as evidenced most dramatically by then-Major George S. Patton’s cavalry charge against World War I veterans protesting for their pay in 1932, and General Douglas MacArthur’s zeal in pursuing them across the Anacostia River even after President Hoover ordered an end to the assault. If you’re not troubled by history, you’re not studying it correctly. Let’s choose our role models carefully.
I recognized my ideas about mortality and the false promise of legacy as something learned when I recently described a ceremony at Bagram Air Force Base (B.A.F. pronounced baff) to a friend.
I had arrived at B.A.F. en route back to the United States for my mid-tour leave. Transient housing consisted of a hangar-sized tent absolutely full of bunk beds. There were clusters of men in Polish uniforms, Egyptian and Jordanian uniforms. The majority were Americans — Army and Navy. (I suspect the Air Force found themselves better billeting somewhere else.)
I found a bunk. One neighbor compulsively called me “sir” and told me he returned to B.A.F. to process his U.S. citizenship. The other never stopped watching movies on his laptop.
In the morning, the P.A. system sounded: “There will be a fallen comrade ceremony at zero eight five zero. All available personnel are requested at Disney Drive. P.T. uniforms and photographs are not authorized.”
Disney Drive is the two-lane strip of road around which much of B.A.F. seems to sprawl. It’s named, like everything else, after a fallen soldier. The notice sounded several times before I fully woke. I dressed, dry-shaved and showed up the standard 10 minutes early. Both sides of Disney Drive were lined by military personnel. The notice sounded every few minutes. After 0850, it changed to “momentarily.” I kept waiting in the line of uniformed strangers. It was already hot.
I remember when my battalion took our first casualty in Iraq in November 2003. At the ceremony, my first sergeant who’d been wounded on the same mission choked back tears and called roll, repeating our fallen comrade’s name three time as if his absence was unexpected. In many ways, it was. The sharp commands “Ready. Aim. Fire.” broke the silence after the third call of his name, followed by the report of seven rifles. Then again, “Ready. Aim. Fire.” Bang! And again. Then the lonely, immortal, brassy melody of taps rolled over us from an unseen bugle. The first sergeant faced about and slowly saluted the empty boots and rifle stuck into the ground by its bayonet.
I felt the enormity of what had happened, and the long shadow of eternity. I felt the grim dignity of the 82nd Airborne Division, and admiration for what I then recognized as the noble tragedy of the situation. That was then.
Standing on the side of Disney Drive I felt only hot and tired, and slightly cranky at having shown up early. What five years earlier had been noble tragedy now appeared to me as wasteful folly. My sympathies were bitterly reserved for people I knew and people I was forced to know.
I felt an imagined jury pawing at my soul and pleaded with them: Ladies and gentlemen of the court, I answered the call to return to uniform. Many did not. I am in Afghanistan (Again for God’s sake!) and trying to do my job well. Isn’t that enough? Aren’t I entitled to my private feelings? Leave my immortal soul out of it!
After a 45-minute wait, a security vehicle drove by, followed by two Humvees, each bearing a flag-draped coffin, followed by a pickup truck with two cameramen standing in the bed filming. Everyone saluted as they passed, then went to breakfast, the gym, the bazaar or wherever else.
I mustered only slightly more sympathy for the fallen strangers in those flag-draped coffins than I did for the wounded enemy combatant whose stretcher I helped carry from the helicopter pad to our detention facility in Asadabad. He wore taped-over goggles (sandbags have fallen out of fashion since the torture scandals appeared on the radar), flex-cuffs on his wrists, and a bandage on his leg which had swollen like a sausage, pulling the skin taught and featureless from thigh to ankle.
I napped after breakfast, lifted weights, ate lunch, took another nap, looked at gem stones in the bazaar, and walked the mile or so to the Internet center, feeling disquiet the whole time.
By chance, an officer from another provincial reconstruction team (P.R.T.) found me online. We were both former infantry officers and good friends. We’d been members of a circle of involuntary recalls called “the captain mafia” during our pre-deployment training at Fort Bragg.
He told me their P.R.T. lost two guys the day before to an I.E.D., and apologized for giving me bad news as I left for vacation. I told him about the ceremony. I had known the casualties only distantly at Bragg. We chatted a bit longer and he excused himself for a meeting.
Had I known the coffins carried remote acquaintances from another P.R.T. I might have seen more of myself in their eternity, but I doubt my reaction would have been much different.
For me, an atheist in church, the ceremony and the sacrifice it represented seemed gratuitous, though from a distance I still recognized it as appropriate; necessary, too, for the military institution.
I was like the old Italian man in “Catch-22,” or Hemingway’s Pablo. Patriotism gone, I focused on doing what I must to get along, and on not dying.
I told myself there had been and continued to be tragedies and injustices greater than the I.E.D. which killed two distant comrades. I told myself that everyone in Afghanistan at that point had chosen to be there, including me — we all rolled the same dice. That wasn’t the case in Iraq in 2003. I told myself we’d had a long look at these wars, or at least the opportunity for one and had decided to be here.
I told myself the two dead officers made the choice and other choices too. I wondered if they made bad ones, which I wouldn’t make, like neglecting to coordinate with a route clearance package or choosing to go someplace that didn’t need going. I was very careful in my planning.
Where my sympathy should have been was anger, and a feeling of absolute, positive, beyond a shadow of a doubt certainty that, God help me, I did not want to end up like them. Legacy be damned.
Roman Skaskiw
Roman Skaskiw served as an infantry officer with the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan and Iraq. After three years of civilian life, he was recalled from the inactive reserve and deployed with a Provincial Reconstruction Team to Afghanistan’s Kunar Province. He lives in Iowa City.
“If the Republicans get any worse, we’re moving to Canada. And then, they really did!”
That was the lead in to the OLD QuirkyNomads podcast. The new show, cleverly recast as Qn is a hit.
Qn is a three day a week 8 to 15 minute podcast (with regular wild web gameshow exceptions) featuring original free form writings from the host Sage Tyrtle. (I don’t know. I never asked her, but I think the answer is “yes”!)
Sage writes lyrically personally and with a gentle grace. She readily features other writers (used with permission) on politics, art and life in Toronto.
Left of left of center, Qn politics fill the airwaves with wit and substance.
Perhaps what makes Qn unique and deserving of the honor of being the first featured podcast here is that Sage perceived the universalism of the web and the intertubes and uses the fact that she can reach people from Canada to Australia at virtually the same time. Taking advantage of this she literally and literaryally combines disparate widely separated people in mini dramas and shows combining the talents of various people actually all over the world who have never met.
Brilliantly intuitive and funny Sage hosts her “minions” (such as myself – full disclosure). She casts her minions in brief dramas and reconstructions to illustrate her positive world view and warm hearted good humor. Sages personal and generally self depericating essays are worth the moments you lend to these entertainments. The girl can write.
You should try Qn. Its silly and smart. I did and though smaller, my world is richer for it.
Its just a guy who drove his 2 million dollar Bugatti Veyron into a saltwater lagoon. The driver was not injured. He said he was distracted by a pelican and dropped his cell phone. Draw your own conclusions.
I like to listen to Total Talk Nonsense podcast. Jon and Scott do movie reviews among other things. They loved “The Proposal”. I loved it too, though maybe not quite as much.
Ryan Reynolds (the bastard that married my Scarlett in real life) plays a young ambitious Administrative Assistant (Andrew Paxton) who’s tightly wound high strung super business woman editor boss Margaret Tate needs to get married or get deported to Canada.
There’s a bad guy immigration official and the setup is pretty basic romantic comedy stuff. The horrible boss’s heart softens when she see’s the real family her loyal but abused sidekick takes her back home to, so that she can meet his family and fool the customs guy.
You can’t even say hilarity ensues. Just fun.
Sandra Bullock does a fine job as a taught ambitious and none too nice boss and Ryan (I hate him) Reynolds is really excellent as the likable and not-too-dormatish assistant.
Betty White as Grandma Annie steals the show and Mary Steenburgen is charming and a bit too young looking as the mom but the whole thing works. Its easy to watch and the people are beautiful and the characters all make us wish they were our family.
Its easy fun and enjoyable with no nudity and very little even suggestive comedy (a male stripper scene and some suggestive dialogue and covered nudity in the bedroom). Its a high brow hit that won’t make you squirm too much if you watch it with your kids.
Good stuff. 5 of 5 Smiling Maxes
Director:
Anne Fletcher
Pete Chiarelli (written by)
Sandra Bullock … Margaret Tate
Ryan Reynolds … Andrew Paxton
Mary Steenburgen … Grace Paxton
Craig T. Nelson … Joe Paxton
Betty White … Grandma Annie
So I’m in town, Saturday for an appointment.. An appointment I both look forward to and dread.
While I’m in town I call the long time friends. Does anyone want to see a movie I’d rented but didn’t watch Friday night, because the hockey game that wasn’t supposed to be on, was on.
Pretty much everyone’s going to see the Conklin Presbyterian church’s version of Seussical the Musical (Jr). Don’t ask about Jr. I dunno. But my friends know people in the show and do I want to go. Sure.
It was a fine production. Really excellent for a small amateur group and right down to the sound and program. Good job CPC!
Most Sundays this time of year I’m over at their house to watch the NY football Giants torture my heartstrings with improbable losses after playing well for 2 and half hours. This weekend? The Giants had a bye and the Tri Town Players were putting on a performance of Gypsy.
Once I had helped as a prompter for one of their productions and generally like the theater and its right next to my house back in the boonies so I go … to see “Gypsy”
Now when I was a boy I spent a stretch of time as a 13 year old pretty much alone in my room with my black and white tv. When, in the TV guide, I saw a review of the movie “Gypsy” and it was about a stripper, I made it a point to watch it. I couldn’t believe my luck. It was about a stripper! I liked it.
Yes, later I learned that it was great theater and that it was really a story about an obsessive stage mom and the depths she would stoop to, to keep a hand in show biz by controlling the one remaining person who wouldn’t leave her, but to me it was an education about stripping. I was thirteen.
The Tri Town Theater does a decent job of putting on a wide array of productions with a wide array of talent. When I saw that they were doing “Gypsy” I thought about their production of “Chicago” that I’d seen which was, talent wise, uneven.
So I went with the expectation that we would see one or two young Gypsies and probably a more mature woman would do the stripping. I even thought I’d know who it was and that would be ok with me.
So, at intermission time I meet in the lobby a woman with whom I used to work, who’s daughter is in the play. “Who does she play?” I ask. “Louise” came the answer. “Gypsy”.
Now I have travelled to many desks in the course of my job and while I’m working on their computers I typically look at the pictures that people place in their cubicles of their family. This woman has a beautiful daughter who’s picture I’d seen on her desk for years. A lovely girl who no doubt is now probably in and out of college and who, suprisingly looks a bit like Natalie Wood, but who I think of as a kid.
As I’m sitting there after the intermission I notice that I’ve started ripping apart my fingernails.
Let me say that ever since seeing Gypsy, I’ve loved a good strip tease. I’m no prude. I’ve gone to strip clubs. I’ve liked it. One in particular stands out and I always think of one stripper in particular when I hear the song Magic Man. I bet my buddies from back when, when we were 19 know exactly who I’m talking about.
But this is someone’s kid. Someone’s child that I’ve met actually, once.
Maybe they’ll do something different. End the show more modestly. It was after all, in the school theater. But when she put on the gloves and the fur shall. When she said, like Natalie Wood said “Momma I’m a beautiful young woman.” When she walked out on stage and started singing “Let me entertain you”. I left.
