P.S. A Column On Things

Neal Vitale Reviews: Easy A

4.5 stars out of 5

Easy A is pure, unadulterated - albeit lifted from the best of TV - fun. It is a goofy, completely adorable revisiting of "The Scarlet Letter," as an Ojai High School student decides that notoriety as an "easy" girl is better than no notoriety at all. Easy A has a delightfully ironic, pop-culture-infused screenplay, and the cast moves through it seamlessly. While there are a host of notable smaller performances in Easy A (Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson, Thomas Hayden Church), this is Emma Stone's breakout film. You might remember her from Superbad or The House Bunny, but there's no forgetting her now. She is as winning a personality as I can remember seeing on-screen for many a moon - I can't wait for her performance as "Skeeter" in next year's film adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's The Help.

Neal Vitale Reviews: The Town

4.5 stars out of 5

Director and co-writer Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone) has created one of the best films to date in 2010, a vivid and arresting profile of a gang of criminals in Charlestown, MA - the apparent bank robbery capital of America.  Though the screenplay of The Town is more nuanced than what is typical of the genre, it is ultimately overshadowed by the acting of an excellent cast. Affleck distances himself from films like Gigli  in the lead role, walking an excruciatingly fine line between loathsome and endearing. He is complemented by his primary partner in crime, Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker), who should get an Oscar nomination for his nearly-unhinged, cocksure performance. Terrific actors Rebecca Hall (Vicky Cristina Barcelona),  Chris Cooper (Adaptation), and Pete Postlethwaite (The Usual Suspects) are all outstanding in small roles, and the star of "Gossip Girl," Blake Lively, is an interesting surprise. A great heist film, full of cop chases, violence, and riveting action, but with a nice, slightly implausible, undercurrent of sweetness. [Obscure reference for Red Sox fans - The Town features a wonderful and long overdue take-down of Jack Clark.]

Neal Vitale Reviews (on DVD): City Island

4 stars out of 5

Growing up/living in an ethnic urban neighborhood is at the root of a seemingly endless stream of films,  and the theatrical release of City Island in late winter 2010 was lost for me amidst superficially similar fare like Brooklyn's Finest and Our Family Wedding. That is a shame, as City Island is clever, well-written, and well-acted, a snapshot of a dysfunctional family, rife with a variety of exotic secrets, living on a tiny island community in the Bronx. While the storyline of City Island frequently skates perilously close to absurdity - and, some would correctly say, periodically goes over the edge - it is an engaging, funny, and intrinsically warm-hearted film.

Letters: An elderly Internet meme, Dan Grobstein File

In Internet years, August is the last decade. But in the spirit of better late than never, here's a meme, submitted by an old friend, which you can catch up on, if you haven't already. You heard it here last.
You know the internet. A new meme every second. I wanted to share with you a meme from August- ooooold. Originally it was straight news story about a rape in Lincoln park, but one of the interviewees was such a colorful character people thought it would be funny to make a rap out of what he said.

Here is a sample of the lyrics
"He's climbin in your windows
He's snatchin your people up
Tryna rape em so y'all need to
Hide your kids, hide your wife"'

Here are the complete lyrics
Here is the rap version
Here's the original story

Even older internet meme. Some high guy sees a rainbow in the sky and thinks its a "double rainbow."

Dan Grobstein File

• [Dan filed so much stuff this week I had to move it over to the Danaganza!]
• 60 facts about Bill Murray on his 60th (including two Groundhog Day facts)
• Lizz Winstead: The leader of 50 racist shitheads got more press than all the anti war protests in 2003. #ThanksMedia #WhyDoTheyHateUsAgain

• Ted Koppel, Shrill?
  Never expected to see this much good sense in the Washington Post Kaplan Daily. No doubt Kaplan’s latest ombudsperson has already drafted a tear-stained apology to Andrew Breitbart
  

• TMI.
  

  Anyway, she marveled at how many of her students — masters candidates, mind you, at a top-10 business school — are amazingly ill-informed, read little news, either in newspapers or offline. She said she recently discussed exchange trading in class, how a person who is buying and selling commodity contracts has to be well-informed in general, has to know how a storm brewing here might affect the harvest there, what the stress of a natural disaster might do to a shaky ruler (speaking of Myanmar), etc. The class response? Crickets. Bottom line: Expect further rug-pulling by Asia, and learn Chinese.

• This is why we have such security theatre at the local bank when you try to open a savings account. Have to show how diligent we are.
  From The New York Times
  OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR: Follow the Dirty Money
  An elite multi-agency task force is needed to monitor banks closely enough to root out international money laundering.

• From The New York Times:
  OP-ED COLUMNIST: China, Japan, America
  Japan knows that its economy is hurt when China buys up its bonds. It’s the same for our economy, but our policy makers just don’t get it.

• Income Inequality Week Continues!

• The Foxification of the Republican Party
• My experience with the post office is that they try to get you to send every package by priority mail so whatever advertising they do to bring people into the post office ends up by increasing priority mail use. Other than that, I have had a very good customer experience with the post office. Things get to where I send them. I get my mail in my PO Box in a timely manner.I hope that they don't allow "competition" in the non-package business because that would allow cherry picking. "Competition" in bus routes has screwed up bus service. There is no "competition" in cable tv or cell phones or broadband.
  Privatizing the Post Office
• Hoist on his own petard department: GA-Gov: Nathan Deal's (R) financial travails
• AK-Sen: Joe Miller's $14,000 government handout

End of September 20 Column

Good luck or bad? My bicycle accident

Last Sunday about 10:30 am, M and I were riding on the badly-maintained Contra Costa Canal trail just north of Via Montanos in Concord, CA. We had started our ride on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend with the intention of doing a 50-mile tuneup ride for the upcoming Waves to Wine ride we had signed up for (back to back 50s over two days). M was riding for Charles Schwab, and I was an honorary rider for that team. Because one of my heart drugs causes me to sunburn easily, I was wearing long sleeves and long pants, despite a prediction of highs in the 80s. We had started at 8:30, and expected to be done by 12:30; we were on target for time and average speed. 

There is a stretch of the trail which is gravel; it always makes me nervous, because my bike is not a mountain bike. I have slipped in the gravel on several occasions, but never seriously. So I rode very carefully. When I got past it without incident, as I usually do, I relaxed. Alas, I did not account for a large crack in the pavement running parallel to the bike path. The crack was an inch or two deep. It grabbed my back tire and flattened it, and sent me to the ground, face first, at 12 miles an hour.

Ouch.

Thank goodness for the long sleeves and long pants. Had I been wearing shorts, my elbow and knee would have been bleeding wounds full of gravel instead of severe scrapes. Kind of like motorcycle riders in leathers.

Apparently, I would have hit my head, had I not been wearing a helmet--the impact knocked the visor off my helmet. Of course, I haven't ridden a bicycle 10 feet without a helmet since 1980.

I knew I was hurt. I was bleeding and feeling pain from my mouth, my left elbow, my knee, my chin and my side. My teeth! My beautiful new crowns, not fully covered by insurance, for which I had just paid several thousand dollars a few months earlier. Funny, the things you think of at a moment of danger and pain like that. Three years earlier, when I passed out on the freeway at 60 miles an hour and woke up a minute later as my car ran over guardrail and plowed itself into the ground, my first thought was, "Oh my god, my beautiful car." Yup. It was totaled.

Yup, my front teeth were totaled. 

I never lost consciousness. M quickly came to help me up. I was hurting. Normally, I don't run pictures with this column, but you need to see this crack:

We were about 10 or 15 minutes north of our parked car. M rode quickly back while I stood in a shady patch at the intersection of the trail and Via Montanos. (she marked the location on her iPhone, which then gave her directions to get back). I called my dentist--he said there was nothing to be done until after the long weekend, on Tuesday, but it sounded like I had broken my crown AND my tooth. I considered the emergency room, but didn't want to wait several hours for help. I felt sure I was not bleeding internally, and my nose and chin had already stopped bleeding.

Sunday and Monday were not TOO bad--both M and R were home for the Labor Day weekend and we had a barbecue, did a jigsaw puzzle and went to see a movie. As long as I didn't breathe deeply or wear long pants or long sleeves, I was fine. Tuesday, I went to the dentist for the bad news about my teeth, to my GP for a checkup, to the lab for tests to make sure my spleen as OK (it was), and to the x-ray facility to check out my ribs and nose (not broken, no point in fixing my nose unless I have breathing trouble). By the way, all x-rays are now digital. No more film! At least, not a John Muir. Makes it easier to email them around, and speeds up the process--no more guessing if the x-ray is clear, or shows what needs to be seen.

Anyway, I am not an expert on karma, but I now assume I must have been the equivalent of Mother Teresa in at least one of my previous lives. Ironically, I walked away from that 60 MPH car crash in less pain than I am feeling from the 12 MPH bike crash (and I can be sure of my speed because I have a new and newly calibrated speedometer)--probably because there are no airbags on my bike. But in neither case were my injuries a fraction of what they could have been. Just last week, I heard about a man who was walking down the street in NYC when construction debris fell off a building and severed his leg. His friends told him he was lucky. "No, lucky would have involved my not being there," he said.

So, perhaps real karma would have meant not having either accident. On the other hand, in my dim understanding of karma, we undergo experiences that are meant to teach us lessons. I hope I am learning the right ones. Had I been a little more "in the moment," perhaps I would have crossed that crack sideways instead of riding into it. Had I listened to my body, I might have been sitting somewhere other than the driver's seat when I fainted. But then I wouldn't have gotten my pacemaker... this karma stuff is complicated!

I have been afraid of an accident like this since I got back from the Duke Diet Center three years ago. Clearly, if it hurts to breathe, I cannot exercise. I don't know how long this will last. So far, in the first three days, no weight gain, due, I am sure, in no small part to the fact that eating is quite an involved and difficult task at this point. Things may get more difficult once my teeth are fixed. We shall see. I will get "back on the horse" as it were, as soon as I can breathe deeply without pain. Could be as little as two weeks, says the doctor. I will let you know.

[Update on Sunday: Since I wrote this earlier in the week, the rib pain has gone down quite a bit. I went to school on Friday. On Mon-day, I'm going to get back on my stationery bike for the first time in a week. Then, to remind me of the extent of my dental damage, I am going to see a periodontist on Wednesday about getting an implant to replace my front tooth]

More on LA Times Versus Teachers

Apropos of the item Richard Dalton sent from the LA Times last week about evaluating teachers based on their students' test scores, I should have remembered what I already knew. That, for example, there are many confounding factors other than teacher performance in student performance. Among them are socio-economic status, absenteeism, nutrition and family strife. At the simplest levels, student ability to learn varies and difficult students are not distributed equally. Add to this the fact that the California Standards tests are no supposed to measure progress (just attainment of each year's standards information), and you are left with a virtually meaningless measure on the face of it. Variability is also a problem; research says that there is a 35% chance of an individual teacher moving from effective to ineffective (or vice verse) each year. Does that sound like a piece of information with which you'd want to make decisions? You could do about as well tossing a coin.

I know teachers' unions are too negative and reactive, but sometime they are so for a reason. CTA President David A. Sanchez's response to the article:

...all education research has concluded that using value-added models as a primary measure for evaluating teachers is not appropriate as the measures are too unstable and too vulnerable. It is impossible to fully separate out the influences of students' other teachers as well as school conditions, classroom assignments, and student attendance.

The CTA wrote a two-page letter to the editor with a more detailed (and footnoted) rebuttal. I'd say it was "Dear sir, you cur, strong letter to follow," except that it is the strong letter that follows.

I know it is trite, but let me say it again: I believe in teacher evaluation. I believe in weeding out the bad ones. At the same time, I believe in protecting teachers from arbitrary personnel actions. This is a difficult balancing act. The fiction of "value added" measurement won't do the job, unless you really want your teachers to spend all their time teaching students how to take standardized tests and none of their time teaching anything else.

We're already perilously close to simply "teaching to the test." It is the law of unintended consequences: you judge teachers and school districts by their test scores, they will teach to the test. I mourn for the interesting and innovative student activities I've tossed out in just the last eight years because  the STAR tests are the first week of May, so we have to be through reconstruction by then, or else our students go into the test unequipped. Don't get me started about the week we spend drilling them on sixth and seventh grade history (because history and science are only tested every three years in middle school).

In theory, we teach them high-order skills of thinking an analysis. In fact, they don't test those on the STAR test because they can't be tested in a multiple-choice test. As a result, we pay lip service to those standards while we drill our students with the 300 or so facts they need to know to do well on the test. This is nonsense, makes them hate history, and doesn't really educate them. But it's that or fall behind the two adjacent towns on the Academic Performance Index (which measures schools).

Ironically, we already know who the good and bad teachers are. Every member of the staff knows, as does the administration. But, as with "this is not a step" on ladders and "do not drive nails with this toaster," our society has become so gun-shy and litigation-happy that we can't find a way to get rid of them. Don't blame the unions--they are simply doing their job. Without them, random and arbitrary principals (while I've never had one, I've had friends who have) would  reward friends and punish, not the incompetent, but teachers they simply didn't like. I admit I don't know the right answer, but I know a wrong answer when I see it, and "value-added" is the wrong answer.

I told my friend Richard Dalton about this item, and he wrote back, "Let's hope teachers don't get run over by bureaucrats and parents looking for simple answers." Hear Hear.

The American

3 stars out of 5

George Clooney and a cast of unknowns made this $20 million picture about yet another unhappy assassin. If you went only by what you see on the silver screen, you'd have to say this isn't much of a way to make a living. I won't give away the details of the plot, but let's just say almost everyone you expect him to kill he does in the end (and the beginning and the middle). I thought the device of having him spend most of the film making a gun, rather than shooting people, would raise the film above the pedestrian. It didn't. I like Clooney and his acting style, so the 100 minutes or so went by reasonably quickly. The music was ok, albeit a bit much in places. There are several sex scenes, and they lasted long enough to make my slightly uncomfortable but not painfully uncomfortable. I can see why director Anton Corbijn (or writer Rowan Joffe who adapted a novel by Martin Booth) would say the scenes were critical to the plot. They weren't. I generally try to review the film, not the box office, but this one made $20 million the first weekend, so with foreign sales and DVDs, George Clooney's reputation as a guy who can open a film is safe. Certainly there's no one else in this film who could open, close, distribute or project a film. OK, but not worth walking across the street for. Clooney won't need an Oscar speech this year.

Cairo Time

3.5 stars out of 5
Writer/Director Ruba Nadda clearly knows a great deal about Cairo, and cares a great deal about the city, its beauty, its pyramids, its struggles with poverty and conservative Islam. It may well be she wanted to make a travelogue and got sidetracked into adding some plot, because that's how this film reads. I am taking nothing away from Patricia Clarkson, the lead, and Alexander Siddig, her love interest. Their chemistry was slow, subtle and well-played. Nadda isn't a bad writer, just one who cares more about the locale than the characters. If you've never been to Cairo (I haven't), you'll walk away with the feeling you know something about the city and Egyptian society. You won't walk away thinking you know something new about love and relationships.

Going the Distance

4 stars out of 5

This is an above-average romantic comedy; my younger daughter and I agreed. She liked it because she thought it was funny and more realistic than the average romcom. Maybe so. I would have to say the best way to see it is with someone you know and love and with whom you can exchange snide remarks sotto voce. It may also help that my wife and I were in a long distance relationship (Portland, Or. to San Francisco) for 14 months. Plus, it helps of you like Drew Barrymore and Justin "I'm a Macintosh" Long.

Several caveats. First of all, the ending is not pat or neat; I generally like my romcom endings pat and neat. Also, it is a romcom for the 20-something generation. I was shocked and appalled by much of the R-rated dialog. There are among other things, several "caught in the act" scenes and some unusually frank, graphic and stomach-churning descriptions of self-love. I always thought Woody Allen's explanation of his love-making skills ("I practice a lot when I'm alone) was as far as I wanted a movie to go. This one went farther. My daughter assures me 20-somethings talk this way with each other.

Having said all that, the fact of the matter is that I laughed out loud numerous times, and that, for me, is the measurement of the quality of a comedy. Thus, four stars, but be warned: not light and innocent fare.