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Out of touch

November 17, 2012
Boehner demonstrates he continues to be out of touch with reality or he slept through the election. Candidate becomes first African American to win two terms as President. Candidate becomes first African American to win two consecutive terms as President. Candidate becomes first incumbent President to win re-election with narrower margin than in first election. Mainstream press (with exception of perhaps Jane Mayer at The New Yorker) swallows, and uncritically and unthinkingly propagates, latest personnel decision story hook line and sinker. Romney demonstrates he remains out of touch with reality. Rove demonstrates he was out of touch with reality and remains out of touch. Republicans as a class demonstrate they remain out of touch with reality.

Democrats show signs of at least minimal cognition (Patty Murray saying if the Republicans don't like the deal now, we'll let the tax cuts expire, pass a tax cut in January for everyone with AGI under 250K, and take it to the country if the Republicans vote against the January tax cut which vote might also cause most of them a problem with Grover Norquist, holder of the documents in which many of them effectively signed away their right to federal office).

Posted at 11:16 AM in Politics |

Wreck-It Ralph

November 17, 2012
3.5 Stars out of 5

I admit it. I had an arcade game habit during the early 1980s. I took the 10 minute drive out to Walnut Creek several times a week and played $5 worth of games at a time when nearly all games were just a quarter, The number of video game parlors has plummeted since then, but the fact that soft-serve frozen yogurt came back from the (nearly) dead gives me hope for a video game revival. In the meantime, we can look at this delightful Pixar/Disney concoction that examines the interior lives of arcade video game characters and develops the rules for their universe behind the glass.Some of the characters are new and original; others (such as Qbert) are actual arcade characters making cameo appearances. It is amusing and clever. As always, the celebrity voice cast is first rate: John C. Reilly and Jane Lynch are perfection in casting. The movie is funny, clever, entertaining and only slightly too long (90 minutes would really have been enough).

Posted at 11:15 AM in Film |

The Sessions

November 17, 2012
5 stars out of 5
Oscar season hasn't even gotten underway yet, and already I have seen two Oscar-worthy films in one week. Sessions, about a paraplegic who hires a sex surrogate, is an amazing film. If there is any justice in this world, Helen Hunt will be nominated for best actress for her turn as a sex surrogate, and William H. Macy for best supporting actor for his portrayal of a pragmatic Catholic priest.  John Hawkes, an overnight success after 17 years in the business, should be up for best actor, considering that he is not really paraplegic. The movie is, by turns, tragic and funny. The writing is deft, the directing magical. Helen Hunt portrays the most relaxed full frontal nudity I have ever seen in a Hollywood film. It's a little raw in places, so it isn't for everyone (and is rated a hard R). But it is amazing.

Posted at 11:14 AM in Film |

Lincoln

November 17, 2012
5 stars out of 5
Hello Oscar! Daniel Day-Lewis offers an amazing portrayal of our 16th president, the third most written-about man in human history (after Jesus and Shakespeare). Although the film is loosely based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's Band of Rivals, any resemblance is coincidental. The first two hours of the 2 1/2 hour film are devoted solely to the month of January 1865, as Lincoln struggles to pass the 13th amendment, banning slavery. There are other good actors in the film as well. Sally Fields is impressive, albeit too old, as Mary Todd Lincoln. James Spader has an hysterical cameo as a fixer trying to line up the votes of lame-duck Democrats (his two f-bombs, I am sure, nearly got this film rated R, instead of the PG-13 it carries). Tommy Lee Jones as radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens offers the first sympathetic portrayal of the man I have ever seen; usually he comes off as a John Brownish radical buffoon. Here, screenwriter Tony Kushner makes him a pragmatic man of principle. If this  Steven Spielberg film is not nominated for best picture, I'll eat my hat.Two warnings: it is very talky (some would say boring) and there are some graphic scenes of carnage. Not everyone's cup of tea, I'll wager, but certainly mine. I'll be seeing it again as a extra-credit weekend activity with whichever of my students wants to come.

Posted at 11:14 AM in Film |

Cat Column, Cat Hair Jewelry, Dern on Sci-Fi Movies, Snarky Restaurant Review; Dan Grobstein File

November 17, 2012

There's a new Jon Carroll cat column. Also, a friend alerted me to cat hair jewelry.

Daniel Dern notes a British list of sci-fi movies, which includes at least one that's already opened (and closed) here, but is still an interesting look ahead for the most part. Also, he found more proof of how much fun reviewers have when doing a really nasty review. This is the first time this reviewer has given a restaurant no stars and a "poor" rating.

Dan Grobstein File

Posted at 11:13 AM in Letters |

The Ground Game

November 05, 2012
Life is just one damned thing after another.  
    --Elbert Hubbard (1856 - 1915)
It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over.
    --Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)
When you have a problem, life is the same damn thing over and over. When you no longer have a problem, life is one damn thing after another.
    -- John H. Weakland (1919 - 1995)

I must like the second quotation, because my mother taught it to me as a boy, and it has always been at my fingertips (although, I will admit, I thought for a long time it was Sartre, or Camus, or some other French philosopher who said it, rather than an American author). It seems to float to the top of my consciousness every two years or so (2008, 2010). Previously, it came to mind during the long slog from Martin Luther King's Birthday to Spring Break, This time, it came to mind during the fall slog.

If like is like a football game, than blogging is the recording of the long, spectacular passes; the ones that are easy to see, beautiful to behold and often game changers. But as anyone who has played on a football line (Benson High, left tackle, JV) knows, games are won not by the flash, but in the ground game, where you grind out unspectacular gains, get a first down every three plans, and "suddenly" find yourself at the goal line. Alas, the analogy breaks down because of the difficulty of defining "win the game" and "goal line" in the context of human life. Plus, while death is inevitable, scoring in football is not. In any case, it is hard to blog the ground game.

As I said in 2008, a year after I almost died in a car crash, I try hard to be grateful for every day of my life. I mean, I was before, but just not as explicitly as I am now. And if I've learned nothing else from my younger daughter, I've learned that you spend time, but should never kill it, because it is too valuable.

Most of my time and mental energy goes to my half-time job. I promise to give my students my best every day, and I do. I ask them to give me their best every day, and sometimes they do. For 180 school days every year, we dance in a dance marathon (to try another analogy). It is a marathon, certainly not a sprint (to drag in a third analogy). We go as fast as we can, but not so fast as to collapse before the finish line (as in a race). We help each other out and try to cheer each other up so we can finish (like in a dance marathon). As for the rest of my life, it consists of the love of my family, my friends, and my God. The Beatles were right; Love is All You Need.

There! Did that disguise the fact that nothing much happened this week (that I can talk about), aside from a couple of dinner parties we threw at the house?

Posted at 07:19 AM in Personal |

Political Briefs

November 05, 2012
  • Kerry Should Speak
  • How do you maintain your silence and vote for an American soldier to be the last man to die for mistakes (in Iraq and Afghanistan) you could have prevented?
  • Godfather Romney: "Nice country you have there" Krugman spots the threat, Romney confirms it.
  • Matt Romney Delivers Message To Putin And Seeks Russian Money
    Mitt's alleged "concern" about the Russians is so fake Mitt is sending his son Matt to Russia deliver messages to the Russian dictator Putin and to get Russian money for the family (avoiding the inconvenience of using international telecommunications channels which might be subject to interception thus avoiding the embarrassment Richard Nixon faced in 1968 when his treacherous sabotage of American foreign policy in Vietnam was taped; the alert reader will recall that just before the 1980 election Ronald Reagan also avoided the use of international telecommunications channels by reportedly sending George H. W. Bush to Paris to arrange for the continued imprisonment of American citizens in Iran in exchange for arms which were provided by the Reagan Administration to what Reagan and G.H.W. Bush referred to as the terrorist government of Iran)
  • Uncertified Software In Ohio
  • The Republican Cover-Up in Ohio

Posted at 07:19 AM in Politics |

Flight

November 05, 2012
4 stars out of 5
This is another one of those cases where the preview showed only things that actually happened in the movie, but fails to put across a true sense of the film. Denzel Washington, playing against type, is a raging alcoholic. You see him in the preview as a genius pilot who saves hundreds of lives, and there is a brief hint of the drinking, but the drinking takes over the film in a way I don't recall seeing since Jack Lemmon in Days of Wine and Roses back in the 1960s. In this wrenching, lover-long exploration of personal deterioration, he demonstrates the common drunk's delusion: "As long as I can perform my job, I'm not really an alcoholic." It happened to a good friend of mine, and I is, I am sure happening every day.  The crash scene, which you've seen in the previews, is gut-wrenching and amazing. The two hours of personal stuff that follows is just gut-wrenching. John Goodman offers a great comic-relief cameo. British television actress Kelly Reilly sheds her accent and turns in a moving secondary performance that may presage bigger things in American Movies. Washington should send his tux out to be cleaned, since he'll be going to to Oscars for this one.

Posted at 07:18 AM in Film |

Seven Psychopaths

November 05, 2012
4 stars out of 5
A highly original work, with standout performances by the versatile chameleon Sam Rockwell, the ever-scary Christopher Walken, the heavily eye-browed Collin Farrell, the continuously surprising Woody Harrelson, and a man who has always held a spot in my cinematic heart, Harry Dean Stanton in a cameo that will only add luster to his already illustrious list of credits. The humor is sick, the violence cartoonish (but frequent--not for the squeamish). As my daughter put it, "It's nice to see a film I haven't seen before." You should go see it just to encourage Hollywood to make original movies. It is hard to imagine the elevator pitch for this one. It is up there with Inception and Memento  in terms of off-the-chart originality. It is a meditation on screen writing, alcoholism and dog kidnapping. The characters are constantly discussing, and debating, the movie we are watching. Weird, yet interesting.

Posted at 07:18 AM in Film |