Michael Clayton

The latest George Clooney vehicle is a well written, well acted, greatly edited thriller that allows the Oscar winning actor to show off his craft once again after his well received turn in the convoluted but very good Syriana.

SPOILER TAG: In Michael Clayton, Clooney plays a special kind of lawyer, the kind that works behind the scenes and cleans up whatever mess comes up, instead of in the courtroom. This time, he's called upon restraining the top lawyer of the firm (an always excellent Tom Wilkinson), who seems to have gone crazy - and switched sides - while working on a major class action lawsuit against one of their biggest clients.

The chilling Tilda Swinton, head of the legal department for the sued company, faced with some very compromising evidence by the lawyer's betrayal, has to now make some tough decisions.

The thriller is built around an initial flashback that effectively drums up the suspense towards the end, when we catch up to it.

I think the best part of the movie is the writing, which is then very effectively transposed to the screen by a nice ensemble of actors. I'm not a big fan of Clooney, who oftentimes seems to re-use the same "charming" expression over and over, but sometimes he turns out a good overall performance, and this is one of those.

This is a good thriller, reminding me of the good old Hollywood thrillers that so rarely now get made, victims of the much more profitable (but less rewarding) summer blockbusters.

Grade: 7.5

Cinnamon Kiss, by Walter Mosley

This was a good read and an interesting mystery thriller. It was also the first audio book I read with strong sexual overtones and references.

SPOILER TAG: It's the story of Easy Rawlins, a black private detective in a 1960s Los Angeles, who has to track down a girl known by the titular nickname of Cinnamon in order to recover some documents that could compromisingly link a wealthy family to the horrors of WWII Nazis.

He doesn't have any choice in the matter since his adopted little girl is quite sick with a rare and poorly known blood disease which could claim her life if she doesn't get the expensive cure she needs quickly.

His years of detective work in the city allow Easy to pull in favors from the many friends and people he helped throughout his life, but it remains to be seen if he'll be able to recover the documents before a chilling assassin put on his trail gets to him.

The book is expertly narrated by Michael Boatman, whose silky and smooth voice kept reminding me of the very sensual Terrence Howard in the role of Easy, riding through the city, juggling his duties as father, lover, and professional investigator.

Throughout the reading I kept waiting for the mandatory final twist, which does come and doesn't disappoint.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a good and lite thriller.

Grade: 7.5

An unwanted American experience

I'm referring to the fact that I' m currently, for the first time, recovered in an American hospital, and I have no idea when I'll be able to go home. That's one experience I could have done without, but what can I do? I started having a stomachache on Monday, and when it hadn't gotten better by Tuesday around midday, Ray suggested I go get checked.

The doctor than told me to go to the ER right away, in case it was appendicitis or gallbladder, before it got any worse.

Problem is, it was none of those things, and they still haven't figured out what it is. Meanwhile, the pain is getting worse and there's no explanation.

They already gave me all the tests they could think of (now they'll repeat one) and they are totally puzzled by my ailment. I've become what you'd call the Mystery Patient!

All my vitals are normal, so it's even more puzzling, because they have no pointers to any "known" illnesses. All there is, is the sharp pain in my abdomen.

I just hope they figure something out soon, but I don't want to go home in this condition, because at least here I'm receiving the care I might need at some point.

A Quote By:

Jeanne Phillips, aka Abigail Van Buren, aka Dear Abby, on her support for same-sex marriage:

"I believe if two people want to commit to each other, God bless 'em. That is the highest form of commitment, for heaven's sake. Accepting the status quo is not always the best thing to do. Women were once considered chattel, and slavery was regarded as sanctioned in the Bible. However, western society grew to recognize that neither was just. Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain have recognized gay marriage, and one day, perhaps, our country will, too. If gay Americans are not allowed to get married and have all the benefits that American citizens are entitled to by the Bill of Rights, they should get one hell of a tax break. That is my opinion."

The plastic bag: the big polluter

I read this old article and was shocked to find out how damaging plastic bags can be to the environment, because of their composition and their ubiquitousness. I mean, I knew they weren't good for the environment, but they are far more harmful than I thought:

The plastic bag is an icon of convenience culture, by some estimates the single most ubiquitous consumer item on Earth, numbering in the trillions. They're made from petroleum or natural gas with all the attendant environmental impacts of harvesting fossil fuels. One recent study found that the inks and colorants used on some bags contain lead, a toxin. Every year, Americans throw away some 100 billion plastic bags after they've been used to transport a prescription home from the drugstore or a quart of milk from the grocery store. It's equivalent to dumping nearly 12 million barrels of oil.

Only 1 percent of plastic bags are recycled worldwide -- about 2 percent in the U.S. -- and the rest, when discarded, can persist for centuries. They can spend eternity in landfills, but that's not always the case. "They're so aerodynamic that even when they're properly disposed of in a trash can they can still blow away and become litter," says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste.
[...]
Floating bags can look all too much like tasty jellyfish to hungry marine critters. According to the Blue Ocean Society for Marine Conservation, more than a million birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles die every year from eating or getting entangled in plastic.The conservation group estimates that 50 percent of all marine litter is some form of plastic. There are 46,000 pieces of plastic litter floating in every square mile of ocean, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. In the Northern Pacific Gyre, a great vortex of ocean currents, there's now a swirling mass of plastic trash about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, which spans an area that's twice the size of Texas, including fragments of plastic bags. There's six times as much plastic as biomass, including plankton and jellyfish, in the gyre. "It's an endless stream of incessant plastic particles everywhere you look," says Dr. Marcus Eriksen, director of education and research for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which studies plastics in the marine environment. "Fifty or 60 years ago, there was no plastic out there."
[...]
The problem with plastic bags isn't just where they end up, it's that they never seem to end. "All the plastic that has been made is still around in smaller and smaller pieces," says Stephanie Barger, executive director of the Earth Resource Foundation, which has undertaken a Campaign Against the Plastic Plague. Plastic doesn't biodegrade. That means unless they've been incinerated -- a noxious proposition -- every plastic bag you've ever used in your entire life, including all those bags that the newspaper arrives in on your doorstep, even on cloudless days when there isn't a sliver of a chance of rain, still exists in some form, even fragmented bits, and will exist long after you're dead.

Wow, that's pretty scary, especially the part about that vortex in the Pacific Ocean. Man, I can't even imagine something like that exists!!

Horrible as is must be, I think we should all be shown that sight. Maybe it would make us more aware of what we're doing to our planet.

As for a solution, seems like bringing your own bag would be the best one, or reuse whatever you end up using, be it plastic or paper:

The only salient answer to paper or plastic is neither. Bring a reusable canvas bag, says Darby Hoover, a senior resource specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. However, if you have to make a choice between the two, she recommends taking whichever bag you're more likely to reuse the most times, since, like many products, the production of plastic or paper bags has the biggest environmental impact, not the disposal of them. "Reusing is a better option because it avoids the purchase of another product."

No End in Sight

This is a documentary about the failure on the part of the Bush administration to plan for the aftermath of the Iraq invasion of 2003.

The director, Charles Ferguson, doesn't openly attack the several players responsible for the Iraq debacle, thereby avoiding the risk of coming off sounding like a liberal peacenik à la Michael Moore.

All Ferguson does is present the evidence he gathered, evidence available to any investigator, and then sits back and lets us draw our conclusions.

Needless to say, the evidence strongly condemns the Bush administration for misstep after misstep, blunder after blunder, all brought on by either lack of experience on the part of the political appointees put in charge or lack of influence on the part of those few experts who cared for Iraq's future and genuinely wanted to help the country rebuild after Saddam was overturned.

Over and over, I found myself just shaking my head in disbelief for the way things turned out, even though there weren't very many surprises, considering most of what is described in the documentary has already been reported on by the media at some point during the war.

At the end, you walk out of the theater totally incredulous at the thought that someone so powerful as the President of the United States invaded a foreign country without a good reason and didn't plan for the aftermath.

Bush is really a failure of gargantuan proportions and his presidency will most certainly be remember as the most infamous ever.

Don't miss this film. It's a must-see.

Grade: 9

A Quote By:

Henry Rollins, book publisher, musician, TV show host, and actor, when asked why he speaks out on behalf of gay rights:

"But when you see the kind of hatred exacted at these people who can't help how they feel about men, it's sad. What if it was weird to be straight? What if someone said, "What's wrong with you?" for staring at a woman? I think if Bill and Tom want to get married, they should be able to in America. If someone has a problem with that, go on your way."

Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for their work to raise awareness about global warming:

During its announcement, the Nobel committee cited the winners "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
[...]
The Nobel committee praised Gore as being "one of the world's leading environmentalist politicians."

"He is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," said Ole Danbolt Mjos, chairman of the Nobel committee.

I'm very happy for him. He's been pushing the global warming issue for decades and is finally enjoying the results of such a huge effort.

The only regret I have is that, if he had been sworn in as President seven years ago, instead of Bush (as he should have), he wouldn't have won this now, but we wouldn't be in the mess we're in, and the world would be a better place.

And just to drive home the point I just made that Gore is a better man than Bush:

In a statement, Gore said he was "deeply honored," adding that "the climate crisis is not a political issue, it is a moral and spiritual challenge to all of humanity."

The former vice president said he would donate his half of the $1.5 million prize to the Alliance for Climate Protection, a U.S. organization he founded that aims to persuade people to cut emissions and reduce global warming.

Hats off, Mr. Gore.

What will the world...

... look like:

Global temperatures will rise 2.5C within the next century even if the world hits its targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, according to the scientist leading research into the issue.

Consequences could include widespread starvation, as farm yields fall 50% in parts of Africa, water shortages for 300m and the destruction of 20-30% of species. If targets are missed the rise could reach 4C.

Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued his warning in London last week.

“We have come to the conclusion that global warming is unequivocal,” he said. “What is particularly worrying is that it is accelerating.”

Live Free or Die Hard

This is another movie we went to see as a next-best choice when we couldn't see our first pick (Rescue Dawn).

The movie theater in question wasn't near us and I had never seen one like it. It had only 2 screens and instead of the regular rows of chairs that you find in the average movie theater, these were cushier and laid out around small side tables. Each theater also had its own bar and you could order food and drinks from a menu to a waitress like in a regular restaurant. It was a nice experience, and I would definitely go to a place like this if there were one near us.

However, because of the setup, whenever there were individual people sitting at a table, the chair next to them was empty and no one wanted to sit in it, because obviously it looks like you're on a date with the person sitting next to you. As a result, many chairs were empty here and there, but since Ray and I were there to enjoy the movie together, not split and sit next to a stranger, we had to go to the other show, where many double chairs were still available.

Anyway, we enjoyed a drink and some appetizers (I had brie and foie gras, and I'm salivating just thinking of it...) while watching the movie, almost as if we were at home.

As for the movie itself, it wasn't horrible, but it was chock full of those unrealistic, implausible, and unbelievable scenes that usually keep me away from such fair as this.

Spoiler Tag: this time around John McClane's routine is disrupted by a disgruntled former government employee, who is taking advantage of a vulnerability in a computer network he had setup, to bring the country to its knees and make himself very wealthy in the process.

Bruce Willis is just average as are Timothy Olyphant, Justin Long, and the rest of the cast. No one really stands out. The writing is forgettable too ("I ran out of bullets" is Willis' justification for taking down a helicopter with a flying car) and even the visual effects are overblown to the point of risibility (the F18 vs. 18-wheeler at the end is just one such case in point).

To sum it up, this movie doesn't add anything new or exiting to the Die Hard lore that wasn't there already. It's a very commercial vehicle released to milk some last drops out of the die-hard (no pun intended) fans still out there, but you can safely skip this one and still feel confident that you didn't miss out on anything.

Grade: 4.5