In Memoriam

Paul Newman, actor, civil rights activist, philanthropist, devoted husband, Oscar winner and one of the last big movie stars of the 20th century, died this past Friday at his Westport, Connecticut home after a long battle with cancer.

From the NYTimes.com:

If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.

He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless.

Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a nonprofit entrepreneur with a line of foods that put his picture on supermarket shelves around the world.
[...]
Mr. Newman’s filmography was a cavalcade of flawed heroes and winning antiheroes stretching over decades. In 1958 he was a drifting confidence man determined to marry a Southern belle in an adaptation of “The Long, Hot Summer.” In 1982, in “The Verdict,” he was a washed-up alcoholic lawyer who finds a chance to redeem himself in a medical malpractice case.

Of his food company's legacy:

All its profits, of more than $200 million, have been donated to charity, the company says.

Much of the money was used to create a string of Hole in the Wall Gang Camps, named for the outlaw gang in “Butch Cassidy.” The camps provide free summer recreation for children with cancer and other serious illnesses. Mr. Newman was actively involved in the project, even choosing cowboy hats as gear so that children who had lost their hair because of chemotherapy could disguise their baldness.

Of his long marriage to Joanne Woodward:

In an industry in which long marriages might be defined as those that last beyond the first year and the first infidelity, Mr. Newman and Ms. Woodward’s was striking for its endurance. But they admitted that it was often turbulent. She loved opera and ballet. He liked playing practical jokes and racing cars. But as Mr. Newman told Playboy magazine, in an often-repeated quotation about marital fidelity, “I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?”

I, like many, never thought too highly of his acting skills because of his incredible good looks, and those amazing blue eyes, and yet, his craft is undeniable.

I look forward to watching many of his movies I never got to see before.

As they say when such a great presence is gone, It's the end of an era.

No Country for Old Men

Joel and Ethan Coen finally struck gold with this Oscar winner featuring a scarily wonderful Javier Bardem as a ruthless killer.

[SPOILER PARAGRAPH] Bardem is trying to track down a bag of money that was stolen from the site of a drug delivery gone bad. The (un)lucky guy who found the money at first tries to run and then to fight back. His sheriff is on his tail too, as are the people who owned the money to begin with. What will happen?

Everything in this movie is of the highest quality: acting (besides Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin are excellent), cinematography, editing, screenplay, direction, so it most definitely deserved its Best Picture Oscar win. Bardem was also awarded an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actor, while the Coen brothers won for direction, production and screenplay. Quite the trifecta.

The thing I liked the most was that, typical of the Coen brand, the movie didn't follow the Hollywood canon of how a movie should be made, with a beginning, a middle and an end, all plainly explained, a resolution to every thread and a happy ending. The Coens aren't afraid to break mold and usually come out with pretty interesting products. This is one of their best.

Don't miss it.

Grade: 9

Blood Diamond

This Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle doesn't disappoint in terms of action or acting.

[SPOILER PARAGRAPH] The plot follows DiCaprio in his attempt to recover a very big and rare pink diamond, hidden somewhere in Sierra Leone by the man who found it, Djimon Hounsou, who is leveraging the diamond's location to reunite and rescue his family from the nation's civil war unrest.

The cast is pretty good all around, although the mandatory love story between DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly isn't very convincing and I believe detracts from the final product.

A nice score with a wonderful cinematography complement a well directed movie whose message makes you wonder if there's anything people wouldn't do for riches.

I sure hope the diamonds in my wedding band were mined without any risk to anyone's life. And if I had to buy more, I'd definitely ask if their origin were legit and how it can be proved.

Grade: 7.5

Don't drink juice and take meds!!

A new study has discovered that drinking juice around the time you take a medication might dramatically decrease its effectiveness:

Drinking fruit juice dramatically reduces the effectiveness of drugs used to treat cancer, heart conditions and high blood pressure, scientists say.

Research has shown that orange, apple and grapefruit juice can also wipe out the benefits of some antibiotics and hay-fever pills.

It is thought the drinks stop drugs from entering the bloodstream and getting to work in the body - possibly rendering them useless.

The potential effects are so serious, researchers warned, that if in doubt, patients should swap fruit juices for water when on medication.
[...]
The study showed juices do not need to be taken at the same time as drugs to have a dangerous effect.

Those drunk up to two hours before can reduce drug absorption.

But patients need not stop drinking juice altogether.

Professor Bailey said: 'Juice taken four hours prior to drug intake did not have an effect. Thus, it should be possible still to take grapefruit, orange and apple juices while on affected medications provided there is a sufficient time interval.

'I would recommend taking drugs with water on an empty stomach to get the most consistent effect.'
[...]
Professor Bailey made the link after asking volunteers to take the hay fever drug fexofenadine at the same time as either a glass of water or grapefruit juice.

Taking it with juice cut its absorption into the bloodstream by half.

Experiments showed naringin, the chemical which makes grapefruit taste bitter, blocked the drug from moving from the small intestine into the bloodstream.

The researchers have pinpointed a naringin-like compound in orange juice and are looking for a similar one in apples.

A different mechanism is at play with the drugs whose levels are boosted by grapefruit juice.

There, juice deactivates a liver enzyme that breaks down drugs, making normal doses potential overdoses.

The study is not the first to highlight the dangers behind supposedly healthy juices.

Last month, research from Harvard Medical School in the U.S., showed that one glass of orange juice a day can increase the risk of a form of diabetes linked to poor diet and obesity.

But eating whole pieces of fruit cuts the likelihood of developing the disease. It is thought the lack of fibre in juices may cause spikes in blood sugar levels.

Wow! That's incredible. I often take medication with juice. Just this week, when I had the flu, I drank a lot of juice to keep hydrated. I guess I invalidated part of the medicines I took.

Flags of Our Fathers

Another movie by Clint Eastwood, another successful exploration of what happens to ordinary people when they are faced with challenging circumstances.

Flags of Our Fathers tells the story of the small group of soldiers who raised the US flag at Iwo Jima in one of the bloodiest, and yet little glamorized battles of World War II. That simple action, forever immortalized in newspapers all over the country, set off an effort that was both noble and deceiving and that forever changed the country and the three soldiers who got trotted wherever a contribution to the war effort could be elicited.

Given the fact that the US was uniquely engaged on both fronts of the war, in the East against Italy and Germany and in the West against the Japanese, it is laudable that Eastwood decided to shine a light on the latter, since many more movies have been made about the D-Day battle and the European victories than those fought in the Pacific.

Like many war movies, this too is an ensemble piece, and the whole cast does a very good job. The three actors who got top billing, Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach worked well together but their performances felt, at times, uneven. Beach effectively gets across his character’s pain for what happened to his war buddies and the falsity that now surrounds him and that he himself must stoke, but at times he seems too theatrical. Phillippe does an all right job as the war doctor who has become somewhat numb as a consequence of all the pain and death he has witnessed, but he still needs to convince me he’s more than a (gorgeously) pretty face. Bradford’s performance actually is the weakest, since all you see is a (very) pretty boy.

Technically, the movie is impeccable. The cinematography, washed out like in an old postcard from the middle of the twentieth century, adds a patina of sadness, immediacy and danger to the proceedings. Both visual and sound effects are very well done, and the main assault, more intercut and drawn out than Spielberg’s famous opening scene for Saving Private Ryan, is just as masterful.

The editing is the only aspect of the movie that put me a bit off. Because of all the different characters and the numerous flashbacks involving a large number of them, I often found myself having to hit the rewind button just to be able to put all the pieces together. Maybe this jaggedness was intended, but I found it a bit frustrating.

Finally, the brilliance and courage of Eastwood’s craft is that he looked at the events occurring in Flags of Our Fathers in another movie as well, a movie that he released the same year, Letters from Iwo Jima. The difference between the two is that the second one recounts the events of that point in time from the Japanese perspective. I haven’t seen Letters from Iwo Jima yet, but I plan to, since the reviews were even more stellar than for Flags of Our Fathers.

A good war movie. Watch it.

Grade: 8

Jarhead

An interesting reflection on the first Iraq war, the Gulf War, the one that actually did have a reasonable purpose, was well executed, and accomplished what it set out to do, that is free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s invasion.

[SPOILER PARAGRAPH] The movie follows a group of young marines as they prepare to go to the Gulf and subsequently get ready to “kick the Iraqi Army’s butt.” As you would expect, they have great expectations regarding their upcoming big assault, but instead of being unleashed against Hussein’s forces right away, they are forced to sit and wait until those in command decide it’s time to attack. When the time comes, however, the Air Force is engaged first, to clear the way for a ground assault and reduce casualties, and the might of their attack is so big that Hussein is forced to capitulate, leaving our wanna-be heroes to watch from the sidelines, disappointed and frustrated, without having fired a single bullet.

As I said, it’s an interesting concept, based on a true story, that has its moments, but never really feels like a complete and satisfying tale. When the credits roll, you just get up and walk away, and what you saw is soon forgotten. Not a sign of a successful film, I would say.

Jake Gyllenhaal, as a strong, young man who is still trying to figure out what he wants for his life, is good (and steaming hot) in a role that is the polar opposite of his previous one, opposite Heath Ledger, in the sorrowful Brokeback Mountain.

The rest of the cast is very good and includes a few exceptional actors (Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, and Dennis Haysbert), but no one particularly stands out, except perhaps for Sarsgaard, who alternatively stokes Gyllenhaal’s character’s fire and makes him realize the negative impact that war has on men.

Check this title out if you like war movies (but keep your expectations low) or if you like Jake Gyllenhaal (you won’t be disappointed), otherwise, skip it.

Grade: 6

A preview of what's to come if we lose this election?

The Atlantic, the magazine that ordered photographer Jill Greenberg's portrait of John McCain for its cover, is up in arms for the unflattering doctored pictures Ms. Greenberg later posted on her website.

The same can be said of a bunch of Republican hypocrites who would be gloating if the subject of such pictures had been Obama.


I find the pictures brilliant, especially given the fact that they voice my fears and concerns for a McCain presidency.

Alas, his chances look now pretty good, especially after picking the Alaskan Antichrist as his running mate.

I'm really starting to think he will win in November. And soon after he will die. And she will be President.

That thought scares me even more than a McCain presidency.

Who would have ever thought that the Republicans would be able to find someone worse than Bush and Cheney to send up to the White House?