Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates speaking to an audience of West Point cadets:
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”
The Oscars were handed out last night in Hollywood and while there were a few surprises here and there, the vast majority of winners were predicted.
The King’s Speech didn’t pull off a major sweep but managed to take home four of the top Oscars, including Picture, Director (one of the night’s surprises, as David Fincher seemed to have been the favorite), Lead Actor, and Original Screenplay. All were deserved, even though I would have preferred to see either Black Swan or The Social Network snag Best Picture (since The Kids Are All Right didn’t stand a chance).
The Social Network missed out on Director but still snagged Adapted Screenplay, Editing and Score. No complaints about the first two but Score should have gone to Inception. I’m listening to the score for The Social Network as I’m writing this and, apart from the main themes, it’s not memorable at all, while the score for Inception is still seared in my brain about eight months after watching the movie.
Inception, snubbed in the Best Director category and overlooked in many of the more prestigious ones, still took home four Oscars, including the all important Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, and Sound Effects. All well deserved and too few in my opinion.
Two Oscars each went to The Fighter (Supporting Actor and Actress), Alice in Wonderland (Costumes and Art Direction), and Toy Story 3 (Animated Feature and Song). Again, all prizes well deserved. The nominated songs all felt underwhelming, so I really had no preferences.
The last two Oscars went to Black Swan (Lead Actress) and The Wolfman (which I haven’t seen but my friend Vittorio says is terrible -– for Makeup) and they both were well earned. Portman was phenomenal in Black Swan and from the clip of The Wolfman the makeup looked AMAZING!
Overall, the prizes got spread out nicely among a field of very deserving motion pictures, satisfying most appetites, even though some deserving movies (case in point the virtually perfect The Kids Are All Right) went home empty handed, as is often the case.
What turned out to be very disappointing was the ceremony itself. Scared by its plummeting ratings, both ABC and the Academy decided to streamline the show as much as possible and make it more appealing to younger people. I think both decisions were wrong and here’s why.
I started watching the Oscar ceremony because I’m in love with movies. I love watching them, analyzing them, remembering them, so it was only natural that I’d be inclined to watch a ceremony that recognizes their excellency. I can’t imagine anyone deciding to watch the Oscar ceremony only because there are going to be fewer montages or dance or song numbers and younger presenters. People who never cared never will, but by choosing to cater to them the Academy risks alienating the loyal viewers that always follow the ceremony.
I’m not saying I won’t watch next year, because I know that no matter what I’ll always watch the Oscars, but I will say this: This year’s ceremony was by far the worst I ever watched. The magic was gone. There was no fun, no charms, no exploits. What we were given was a bare bone stream of presenters (or presenters of presenters – more on that later) and recipients giving largely boring and predictable acceptance speeches.
The hosts, two young actors that I both like very much, didn’t come out of the whole affair as winners either. Franco, always charming and unassuming started out fairly well but then, almost realizing that the whole thing was just a bore, seemed to lose steam and interest and started acting forced, tired, and unwelcoming. He was also very stiff the whole time, something I wouldn’t have expected of him, but that perhaps was dictated by the show’s producers, who might have nixed more gags out of fear of alienating someone in the audience. Problem is, Franco is great at gags and poking fun and here he looked positively harnessed.
Hathaway, always charming, was at times overly bubbly and her comedic timing and abilities (so greatly displayed in The Devil Wears Prada) were, as in Franco’s case, overlooked or underutilized at best. She’s also a great singer apparently, and the producers obviously decided to showcase that by giving her a solo act, but what was the purpose of it? She virtually just sang about the handsome Hugh Jackman deciding not to join her for a duet (and why would he?). Again, to what purpose did she sing that song? It had absolutely nothing to do with the ceremony or the movies, which were what we were all there for after all. A waste of time if you ask me. Oh, how I wished they had used that time to showcase a couple minutes from each of the nominated Scores instead...
There were plenty of other oddities. How about the introduction of Hilary Swank to introduce Kathryn Bigelow to introduce the Best Director winner? Why not introduce Ms. Bigelow directly? Did the producers think that she’s so poorly known to the general public that it would be best to introduce her first by someone more... appealing? Or what about those three recipients of special technical awards from the night before, three out of many, who were welcomed onstage for an extra applause only to be quickly whisked away??
No wait, there’s more!! How about the appearance by Billy Crystal to pay homage to arguably the greatest Oscar host ever, Bob Hope. Halfway through this boring mess, his half-a-century-old jokes felt positively exhilarating and seeing Crystal only reminded us of his brilliant opening numbers, poking fun and showcasing the most varied nominees. By the time Hope’s digital rendition faded to black all I could think of was how lame Franco and Hathaway’s opening mash up had been and how boilerplate their exchanges were. Alas, they weren’t bound to get any better.
Was there anything I liked about the ceremony? Sure. The stage was great, absolutely fabulous. The references to the glorious years of Oscar’s past were very nice, although they once again made us pine for those ceremonies instead of the current one... The handing out of the awards moved very swiftly, which isn’t a bad development. What didn’t work was that in between awards there was nothing left!
I did like the warm introductions given to the ten Lead Acting nominees, even though they unwittingly minimized the Supporting Acting ones and also caused such a trimmed down ceremony to go overtime anyway. And the In Memoriam segment was paired with a song that wasn’t too mournful, which felt good.
The best thing was the return of the presenters announcing the winners by saying, And the Oscar goes to, which is great, ‘cause I hated, And the winner is...
I also didn’t mind the kids chorus at the end, singing one of my favorite songs ever, and the grouping of all the winners on stage for a final bow. It felt good and original. Better than the hosts saying a quick Goodnight and see you in a bit at one of the parties...
The last bitter pill for me though, was the only real montage of the night, which came at the end to introduce the ten Best Picture nominees. Superimposing The King’s Speech’s final speech over images from all the nominated movies showed little respect (other than spoiling the movie for those who haven’t seen it yet). It’s as if the other nine deserved only to be seen but not heard. Given that The King’s Speech was already the favorite to win, that thought was hard to keep at bay. Furthermore, the mash-up felt confusing and bewildering, throwing in scenes from ten movies that were as disparate as night an day with only the voice of the likely winner to tie them together. A dreadful decision.
Overall, while I can say that I was fairly pleased with the winners, I was totally disappointed by the ceremony itself. A long and boring affair that hopefully will get a total make-over next year.
Obama has determined that section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional and has therefore asked the Justice Department to stop defending it in court. The law will still be enforced until reversed by Congress or definitively struck down by the courts, but the Obama administration now maintains that laws against gays and lesbians must henceforth be viewed under the lens of a heightened scrutiny test.
From Towleroad, which has a lot of coverage on these issues:
Attorney General Eric Holder has just released a statement regarding the Justice Department's defense of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying that President Obama "has concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet "a heightened standard of scrutiny" and is therefore "unconstitutional."
Holder continues: "Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the President’s determination."
The memo notes that the White House is not ending enforcement of DOMA, just its defense in court. Congress must repeal the law or a court must rule in one of the pending cases for enforcement to change.
Awesome news!!
Once again, Obama shows how he can be a true leader when it comes to gays’ and lesbians’ equality and civil rights.
In a few hours the Oscars, the most prestigious awards in the field of cinema, are going to be handed out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Here, in red, are my predictions on who will win:
Now, if I were an Academy voter, these would be my personal picks (excluding the Foreign, Documentaries, and Shorts categories, since I haven’t seen any of the nominees), with the Best Picture nominations listed from 1 through 10 as the Academy now requires:
All that’s left now is to watch the ceremony in just over an hour.
Now that Curveball, America’s most valued Iraqi source prior to the war, has admitted that he lied in order to get rid of Saddam, more truth is coming to light:
Colin Powell's ex-chief of staff said Thursday the former Secretary of State was lied to and manipulated by Vice President Dick Cheney into justifying the US invasion of Iraq.
[…]
Lawrence Wilkerson, a retired Army Colonel who ran Powell's staff at the time, was asked by MSNBC's Cenk Uygur if he believes he and Powell were "flat-out lied to."
"I cannot come to any other conclusion," he responded, saying that some intelligence sources had warned Curveball may not be reliable. "I think there was some manipulation of the material and there was some outright lying."
[…]
But Wilkerson lamented that even if Curveball had not existed, "we still would have gone to war with Iraq because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were absolutely intent to do so."
So there you have it. Bush’s mind had already been made up, whether to avenge his father or ensure cheaper oil for the US, and the country was bound to go to war in spite of all the evidence of its uselessness, no matter the cost in treasure and lives.
I wasn’t able to post earlier about this, but I can’t let it go without a mention:
Less than a year after seeing the push for civil unions vetoed, gay rights advocates cheered as Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed into law a bill legalizing civil unions and making Hawaii the seventh state to grant such privileges to same-sex couples.
"E Komo Mai: It means all are welcome," Abercrombie said in remarks before signing the bill into law. "This signing today of this measure says to all of the world that they are welcome. That everyone is a brother or sister here in paradise."
"The legalization of civil unions in Hawaii represents in my mind equal rights for all people," he said.
The ceremony was broadcast live on television and the Internet as Abercrombie, a Democrat who campaigned on a promise to sign the bill if it reached his desk, reversed the decision made by his Republican predecessor.
[…]
Senate Bill 232 allows all couples — same-sex and heterosexual — to enter into a civil union, a legal status with all the rights, benefits, protections and responsibilities as traditional marriage.
Couples would be allowed to start entering into a civil union on Jan. 1.
"This bill has been a long time coming for committed couples in Hawaii who have been denied the basic right to take care of their families," said Laurie Temple, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii.
Fantastic news. We now have 7 states that offer Civil Unions and 5 states plus the District of Columbia that offer same-sex marriage.
And this statement takes the cake:
The Hawaii Catholic Conference issued a statement expressing disappointment. "Passage of this legislation is just a step towards the legalization of same-sex marriage," read the statement.
Do I all hope they’re right!
Here’s another classic that I had never watched before. Given that it was made in 1951, the visual effects and the concept must have felt both revolutionary and terrifying to its audiences, and I can see why The Day the Earth Stood Still has become a classic.
Synopsis: a spaceship suddenly lands on Earth spreading panic and fear. A human-looking alien steps out flanked by a tall and scary robot. The message it has for earthlings is to live in peace or face destruction, but it won’t be easy to deliver it.
The movie is well acted but I do have a few reservations about the screenplay, as it felt quite rushed here and there. Furthermore, certain things happen that are, frankly, too hard to believe. For instance, a supposedly dangerous robot is guarded solely by two guards (What?!!); or said robot is able to walk up to a city jail, destroy an outer wall, grab the alien inside and walk him back to their spaceship all without anyone noticing anything (Yeah right!!).
The visual effects are quite good albeit rudimentary, but the robot would have benefited from a bigger size since an 8 foot tall robot is not that scary when you consider that men are about 6 feet themselves.
Overall, I liked the movie and its age raised the final grade, but I was not blown away and it actually made me appreciate the remake a bit more, given that they ironed out many of the kinks in the original’s script.
Grade: 7
NASA’s space shuttle Discovery took off on Thursday for the last time.
Truly the end of an era.
DreamWorks Animation has definitely proven that it’s not a flash in the pan, ultimately establishing itself as Pixar’s main competitor. With How to Train Your Dragon, nominated for a Best Animated Oscar, they’ve successfully created another impressive universe full of strong, funny, and relatable characters.
Synopsis: a young Viking, derided by everyone for his lack of physical prowess, is determined to fit in. His main problem is that his people are dragon slayers, while he can’t bring himself to kill them. Instead, he spares the life and starts caring for a Night Fury, one of the fiercest known dragons, who ends up befriending him.
Both the human and dragon characters are incredibly well “fleshed” out, and the animators seem to have gone to great lengths to create a whole plethora of differing species of dragons, each with their own physical and behavioral peculiarities.
The animation is splendid and well deserving of the Oscar nomination. The voiceovers are good and the screenplay is nicely written and manages to come up with a fully original concept that is a breath of fresh air in a marketplace overcrowded with remakes and retellings.
I do agree with my friend Vittorio when he says that Toothless’ appearance is strikingly similar to Disney’s Stitch, from Lilo & Stitch, which is clearly the result of having the same two directors in common. I also agree with his excited review about How to Train Your Dragon’s impressive visuals, witty screenplay, and soaring score, but I sincerely hope that Toy Story 3 will prevail in the animation field at the upcoming Oscar ceremony.
Grade: 9
I was laughing out loud from the get go. Watch it:
Here’s a link to more videos from this guy. Some are just as good!
I apologize to the lady in the picture, but the size contrast is just too funny:
From the 135th Annual Westminster Dog Show.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope discovered a new solar system that closely resembles our own:
Scientists using NASA's Kepler, a space telescope, recently discovered six planets made of a mix of rock and gases orbiting a single sun-like star, known as Kepler-11, which is located approximately 2,000 light years from Earth.
"The Kepler-11 planetary system is amazing," said Jack Lissauer, a planetary scientist and a Kepler science team member at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "It’s amazingly compact, it’s amazingly flat, there’s an amazingly large number of big planets orbiting close to their star - we didn’t know such systems could even exist."In other words, Kepler-11 has the fullest, most compact planetary system yet discovered beyond our own.
[...]All of the planets orbiting Kepler-11, a yellow dwarf star, are larger than Earth, with the largest ones being comparable in size to Uranus and Neptune. The innermost planet, Kepler-11b, is ten times closer to its star than Earth is to the sun. Moving outwards, the other planets are Kepler-11c, Kepler-11d, Kepler-11e, Kepler-11f, and the outermost planet, Kepler-11g, which is twice as close to its star than Earth is to the sun.
"The five inner planets are all closer to their star than any planet is to our sun and the sixth planet is still fairly close," said Lissauer.
If placed in our solar system, Kepler-11g would orbit between Mercury and Venus, and the other five planets would orbit between Mercury and our sun.[...]
A planetary system is born when a molecular cloud core collapses to form a star. At this time, disks of gas and dust in which planets form, called protoplanetary disks, surround the star. Protoplanetary disks can be seen around most stars that are less than a million years old, but few stars more than five million years old have them. This leads scientists to theorize that planets which contain significant amounts of gas form relatively quickly in order to obtain gases before the disk disperses.
Being able to find so many planets circling a remote star is impressive, even if none of them seem to be positioned within the “Goldilock zone,” that is the habitable zone where a planet can maintain liquid water on the surface and sustain Earth-like life.
Here’s an artist rendition of what Kepler-11 might look like:
That’s what they should name this yacht, if they ever build it:
The yacht, named the Streets of Monaco, features replicas of famous Monaco landmarks such as the Monte Carlo Casino, Hotel de Paris, Cafe de Paris, La Rascasse and Loews Hotel, as well as a fully functional go-kart circuit based on the Monaco Grand Prix Circuit, reports 'Overseas Property Mall'.
In some ways it is more like a mini-cruise liner than a super-yacht with its multiple swimming pools and tennis courts. However, it would need a commission in order to finalise design requirements of the client and to commence construction.
Insanity. And beautiful.
Link.
This thriller looked promising, but it’s ultimately a little disappointing. The Zero Game was my first book by Meltzer and based on it, I don’t particularly like his style, so full of flourishes that are totally unnecessary.
The last Best Picture Oscar nominee I still hadn’t seen ended up being one of the weakest contenders, in spite of the hefty material and brilliant performances.Best Actress Oscar nominee for The Kids Are All Right Annette Bening spoke out for the dignity of gay families at the Oscar luncheon.
She’s great.
Following are 2 beautiful videos from Freedom to Marry’s new “Why Marriage Matters” campaign:
The best neighbors one could hope for.
From Towleroad.
My enjoyment of this year’s Oscar race front runner (with 12 nominations) likely suffered from high expectations. I anticipated a movie that would knock my socks off and instead found a fairly subdued, quiet, and gentle tale of a man finding his inner strength at a crucial junction in history.
I ended up watching True Grit, the latest project by Ethan and Joel Coen simply because it was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar at the upcoming Academy Awards, since westerns are pretty much the only genre I’m not at all drawn to. I also have to admit that, without subtitles and because of the southern accents, a large portion of the screenplay was totally lost on me.
After that preamble, the movie is certainly well made but hardly Best Picture material. The cinematography, art direction, and costumes are excellent (and all nominated as well) but the movie as a whole, in my opinion, only benefited from the enlarged Best Picture nomination field to 10 contestants.
The plot: a way-mature teenage girl decides to hire a US Marshal to help her track down and bring to justice the man who killed her father. They’re accompanied on and off by a Texas Ranger who’s already on the trail of said man. Unfortunately, when they find him, he has already joined forces with a dangerous band of outlaws.
Best Supporting Actress nominee Hailee Steinfeld is quite good in her role, as is Matt Damon, but the real pillar here is Jeff Bridges, nominated for Best Actor only a year after winning that same prize for Crazy Heart.
True Grit is a well-made movie that showcases some great performances, but not being a fan of the genre, I wasn’t too impressed.
Grade: 7
Duplicity was supposed to be a surefire hit at the box office, but it failed to ignite. It stars a woman who’s a perennial favorite (the adorable Julia Roberts) and a man who can act and looks great in pretty much any part he plays (the gorgeous Clive Owen), and yet the end result is underwhelming.
The plot: two rival companies engage in industrial espionage to gain the upper hand in the marketplace. Roberts and Owen are involved in the spy games and try to play some of their own at the expense of everyone else.
Roberts and Owen are a good pairing in roles that require a lot of on screen chemistry. They certainly bring that and more for our pleasure, and they are flanked by two very good supporting actors, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti.
The script is quite good as well, piling on twist after twist, and developing believable characters who utter reasonable lines. And yet, like I said, the final product lacks something that would make it really pop, hence the lukewarm review.
Would I recommend this movie? Sure, to all the fans of either star or to the fans of the genre, because I basically liked it, but it’s still only an average movie.
Grade: 6
This remake of the 1981 original is the textbook example for why you shouldn’t temper with the classics. Sure, visual effects have progressed so much that pretty much every movie would benefit from a remake, but the question is should they be remade just to make them look better?
The answer is no. First of all, visual effects aren’t all that matter in a movie. If they were, eighty percent of the movies out there would have no reason to exist, and that would be tragic. Second, movies are very much products of their time, meaning that they reflect the aesthetics of when they are released. The cheesiness and campiness of the original feel right at home in the early ‘80s, turning it into a classic of sorts. Today’s version feels anachronistic and superfluous, and underlines the widespread lack of originality in Hollywood that’s reflected in all the remakes it regularly churns out. This also says a lot about the times we live in, when remaking favorites of old often trumps creating original content.
Clash of the Titans tells the story of Perseus, demigod son of Zeus, who decides to stand up to the Gods because he cannot let them treat the humans as toys any longer. The Gods have their own internal strife as well, with Zeus’ brother Hades, God of the Underworld, positioning to take over as supreme ruler over Olympus and the Earth. Fiery battles ensue.
The rugged Sam Worthington, hot off the money-making machine that was Avatar, stars as Perseus and does a respectable job with an over-the-top part that requires a lot of swagger. That’s not the case for Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, two very good actors (great is a better descriptor for Fiennes) who are given such risible material to work with, they sputter their lines without much conviction. Neeson’s part especially is unintentionally (one would hope) ridiculous, with a pathetically silly costume that makes it impossible to take him seriously (and he’s supposed to be the supreme God!!).
The only character I really liked was actually Gemma Arterton’s Io, who is so ethereal, mysterious, and charming, I felt like the movie was over once she met her demise.
On a technical level, the visual effects are all quite good, as one would expect, especially Hades’ transformation into flying demons and the Kraken, while I was unimpressed by Medusa. The makeup is remarkable, especially that of the three witches, and the costumes quite good (except Zeus’, who wears something you’d only see Cher wear on stage).
Overall, I’d say watch the original and skip this one, and I feel bad for the poor schmucks who forked over extra cash to see this lame turd in 3D.
Grade: 4
The Messenger is the perfect example of how a movie doesn’t have to have a huge budget, a bankable star, or incredible visual effects for it to stand out. Oftentimes, a good script (Oscar nominated) and great actors will do the trick.
The plot: an Iraq war veteran is ordered to join the team charged with delivering the bad news of the loss of a soldier to his family before they find out by the newscasts or other means. The task is grueling because of the amount of grief he’s forced to deliver, but his biggest problems start when he falls for the widow of a fallen soldier.
Ben Foster and Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson give great performances as the team charge with delivering the bad news, and so does Samantha Morton as Foster’s love interest.
Overall, a good movie about the ill effects of the Iraq (or any) war being felt back home.
Grade: 7
Another fantastic HBO production, Grey Gardens takes a look at the real life story of the aunt and cousin of former First Lady Jackie Kennedy and their astounding eccentricities.
The story spans many decades, beginning when Little Edie is still a teenager and her family still intact. She’s a free spirited, happy young girl with a mother, Big Edie, who keeps her firmly under her wing. Unfortunately, Big Edie seems to have a warped view of the world around her, which ends up tearing the family apart and bringing the two women, who will always be tightly linked, spiraling downward.
All the production values (particularly art direction, makeup, and costumes) are incredibly good, but it’s the performances by Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange that ensure an outstanding experience.
This TV Movie is a must see not only for their work but also for the veritably close to reality light is shines on a period of time that remains among the most controversial in American history.
Grade: 8
This past Monday Illinois joined several other US states in legalizing civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. It’s not marriage (yet) but a good first step towards it (and better than nothing):
“Here we are in 2011 on the eve of Abraham Lincoln’s 202nd birthday and I think this is very special,” Quinn said as 20 politicians joined him on stage and hundreds of supporters packed a hall in the Chicago Cultural Center. “We believe in civil rights and we believe in civil unions.”
With the move, Illinois joins five other states and the District of Columbia in establishing statewide laws to provide the equivalent of state-level spousal rights to same sex couples.
The new law provides more than 650 spousal benefits and protections.
“If you enter a civil union, you can now visit your loved one in the hospital to make medical decisions and not be turned away. You can take time off to care for your partner and not lose your job,” Attorney General Lisa Madigan said. “You can build and protect your family.
“This legislation represents a giant step toward equality.”
The law takes effect on June 1.
How can a self described “news organization” make a blunder of such proportions?
Especially considering that they put Egypt in what’s really Iraq. You know, the same country we’ve been at war with FOR THE PAST 8 YEARS!!
Link.
The Walking Dead is the latest entry among AMC’s original series and it’s an instantaneous hit! I just recently caught up with it through a 2 nights marathon after reading such glaring reviews that I didn’t want to be left out of what sounded like “the next big thing on television.”
The plot: Rick Grimes, a deputy sheriff, wakes up from a coma in what looks like a devastated hospital after being shot while on duty. He immediately realizes something has gone terribly wrong out there, given the hundreds of dead and mutilated bodies he sees all around him. What’s weird is that some of these cadavers are actually still moving and start to pursue him. After finding out more or less what happened, he sets out to reunite with his wife and son, whom he believes to still be alive. Many adventures follow him and the still living people he comes in contact with during his quest.
Andrew Lincoln stars as the tough cop with a big heart, and does an excellent job. The great acting work extends to the whole cast though, turning this series into a pleasure to watch not just for the compelling storylines but also for the overall production values.
If you haven’t checked this out yet, make sure you catch up before the second season starts in the fall. It’s a must see TV show.
Grade – Season 1: 10
We have read Where the Wild Things Are to the kids many times, so it was natural that we’d show them the cinematic transposition, which I’m happy to report is quite good. I was actually surprised that a book so short could be successfully stretched into a full-length motion picture, but Spike Jonze did an excellent job.
The plot: a kid runs away from home after an altercation with his mom and, upon finding a boat, sails away in anger. After a while, he reaches a shore, but the creatures living on that newfound land aren’t really human. Will our hero manage to live among them? Will he like it? Will he ever leave?
Max Records does an excellent job as the kid who would be king and Catherine Keener, in the very small part of his mother, is great as usual. The visual effects, costumes, art direction, and makeup however, are what really make this movie succeed, especially given that the creatures weren’t computer generated, but rather actors in real, physical costumes.
Overall, I liked both the story and the visuals, but I would recommend against showing this to very young children, in spite of its PG rating. Our kids are 7 and 8 and I’m glad they weren’t any younger, mostly because there’s an overall darkness, sadness, and depression, coupled with some not-so-mild violence, pervading the entire movie.
Grade: 8
I rented Stargate Continuum because I thought it was a sequel to the original Stargate, which I really liked, but after feeling let down I found out that it was really a direct-to-DVD release.
What disappoints primarily is the fact that the whole thing feels more like an extended TV episode of the series, which I never watched, and definitely not a product that can stand on its own legs and attract the uninitiated like the original movie did.
The plot: the Stargate team is about to witness the demise of the last of the System Lords, when people suddenly start disappearing. Three of our heroes are able to run away through the Stargate only to end up on Earth but in an alternate timeline in which the Stargate hasn’t been found. Their efforts to restore the timeline are at first hampered, but when the System Lords attack Earth in this timeline as well, their help is promptly sought.
The acting is fair and the technical aspect is on par with what you’d get on a regular TV episode, which is another letdown, given that usually movies developed from TV series, given their larger budgets, tend to be far bigger and better spectacles.
Overall I’d only recommend this to fans of the series, although it could be fun to watch on a boring night too.
Grade: 5
Oliver Stone’s third dabble in politics after JFK and Nixon saw him take on former President George W. Bush. While not as enthralling as the first or captivating as the second, W. is quite fascinating and clearly damning of the Bush presidency.
The plot analyzes the handling of the Iraqi “threat” after the tragedy of September 11 by Bush and his team of advisors and cabinet members during W’s first term. This is all interspersed with scenes from Bush’s past: the alcohol infused college years, the failings in the workplace, meeting his future wife Laura, finding his footing in politics, and following his religious calling.
W. straddles a fine line. On the one hand, it tries to coldly show the audience that personal interests and politics constantly meddled in the interests of the State and influenced the administration’s policies. On the other, it is a clear dramatization of the events that plunged the United States into one of its darkest periods, from which the country is still recovering. As such it can sometimes feel contrived, but having lived through the Bush years, I also know that the many incredible things he says or does actually happened.
The art direction and costumes are good while the cinematography and editing work in sync to show us a man resentful of his famous and powerful father and his predilection for his younger brother Jeb. George clearly suffered from a complex of inferiority that pushed him to prove himself. Unfortunately for all of us, he obviously didn’t have the mettle to be President and, once in the Oval Office, it showed, with one wrong, deceiving, or misguided decisions after the next.
While some of the actors seem to barely play caricatures of their real counterparts (I’m looking at you Thandie Newton, Scott Glenn, Richard Dreyfuss, and Toby Jones), others do a fine job of channeling their characters, like Jeffrey Wright, Bruce McGill, James Cromwell, Ellen Burstyn, and Elizabeth Banks. Fortunately, the best performance comes from the actor that matters most, the handsome Josh Brolin, who plays W. with panache and contentment and with the right amount of pretentiousness, naiveté, and swagger.
While not a great movie per se, it’s worth a look for the light it shines on the backroom deals that had the ultimate effect of threatening the worldwide leadership role and image of the US and of soiling the Bush name, perhaps (hopefully) undermining Jeb Bush’s chances of running for the presidency for good.
Grade: 7
