Reviews

I saw this when it was originally broadcast and revisited it on disc the day after 08 Nov 2016. It's a quickie morale booster for someone who wants to live in a real Star Trek universe.

When this cash-in, ST50 special cleaves closest to the art/craft and sociology of Star Trek, it's marginally better than the other ST50 cash-in special, BUILDING STAR TREK. But it's best to think of this as a slap-dash ST50 birthday party that none of the "Captains" attended. It's not as bad as it sounds.

The opening panel of talking heads assembled in the Leonard Nimoy Theater wasn't that bothersome, to me. I can ask, "Why those guys and nobody else?" But it was very nice to see Jeri Ryan up in that mix.

50 YEARS OF STAR TREK (aka STAR TREK ANNIVERSARY) does feature a chopped- up interview with Nimoy along with remembrances/comments from a hodge-podge collection of non-Captain actors and others behind the scenes. Among those others, it was very nice to see and hear DC Fontana, who is not well enough celebrated for her prodigious contributions to ST:ToS and ST:TNG.

50YoST attempts a full franchise retrospective, which is flat-out impossible in a meager 85 minutes; but correctly, I think, places more emphasis on ToS & TNG.

While Roddenberry was the visionary who conceived of this enduring "Wagon Train to the stars," he could never have kept his Enterprise afloat without the team that executed and delivered on tight timelines and even tighter budgets. Not enough of that off-camera drama was touched on here.

What we do get are a number of decent slices of and perspectives on what ST has meant to many of the familiar, yet rarely featured, faces who brought ST to TV and movie theaters.

One ST story that deserves its own Ken Burns-style documentary is the making of ToS' City on the Edge of Forever. That production, behind the scenes, might be the closest that ToS ever came to the anarchy that eventually produced (the Bogart/Bergman incarnation of) CASABLANCA. It's an episode that went way overtime and over budget to the point of almost not being made -- and, being made, with many compromises, generated considerable fallout for years to follow.

And I wished that 50YoST managed to say anything about Gene ("the lost gene") L Coon's contributions to ToS, rather than nothing, at all.

MISS HOKUSAI (MH) is an ambitious and visually sumptuous anime interpretation of the Edo period historical manga _Sarusuberi_, written/illustrated by Hinako Sugiura. The film is a brilliant exercise in the Japanese Buddhist concept of "everyday suchness."

When you look at a centuries old Japanese painting of a young girl in a garden, staring into a bamboo aquarium containing goldfish and bare accouterments, you think you know what you see, but can you really see what the artist experienced to create that painting, let alone the ideas underlying the image?

The source manga is disconnectedly episodic in nature and it's a real stretch to claim that there's any main character therein, even though the historical figure Katsushika Hokusai pops up repeatedly early in the series.

Hokusai's most famous historical work is a woodblock print series, yet, for all of MH, we never see him work on a woodblock. We do see Hokusai paint. Are director Hara, screenwriter Maruo and ProductionIG messing with us? No. Hokusai is not the point of this story.

The Edo period is a time when chronic illness turns to death in the blink of an eye.

Although Hokusai pays little attention to healthy living, he's highly adverse to spending time with his terminally ill youngest daughter, for fear of catching something that might prevent him from living to be 100. For reasons known only to him, Hokusai believes he'll achieve artistic mastery at that nice round age.

It's another daring move to make Hokusai's daughter, Katsushika O-Ei, the seemingly central character of MH. Yes, she's in nearly every frame, beautifully and sparingly drawn. Yes, MH is a feminist tale.

O-Ei is the chosen vehicle for telling the anime's story which is larger than just her. She, too, is a rather accomplished painter. Later in the manga series, O-Ei grows more prominent, without becoming central. Don't expect anything from O-Ei, but do be mindful/aware as you observe her context. If you relax in your seat, this happens naturally. The only obligation is to remember.

As in real life, O-Ei's personality is very much like her father's, yet O-Ei is judged by many, on screen and in the audience, as being "harsh" and "unlikeable," while drunken and slovenly Hokusai is well admired by many more.

O-Ei is a woman far ahead of her time, even as she willingly carries out "traditional" duties of assisting her father in his work. She knows that she is honing her own skills through the experience, while being far from subservient.

Valuable lessons, harsh though they may seem, from Hokusai to O-Ei, about composition and balance, are literally and tersely depicted in the context of the story's moment.

O-Ei's highly opinionated and suffers no fools. She's pursued by some for her beauty and by others for her art. O-Ei is devoted to her sickly younger sister, O-Nao, and gets along well with her mother. O-Ei's hardly maladjusted.

MH shows us everyday Edo period life as an artist, who just happens to be O-Ei, experiences it.

We learn that O-Nao is blind and that she "sees," with her mind's eye, that the goldfish pets given to her by O-Ei are having great fun inside their bamboo aquarium, which brings O-Nao equal joy and respite from her illness.

MH includes many direct representations of how elements of everyday life become ukiyo-e prints and paintings, often emphasized in perfectly timed freeze frames that do not interrupt the flow of the film.

Sisters in a riverboat, fingers trailing in the rippling water, speculating about the dangers of rough open seas. Ripples become waves, becoming an imaginary tidal wave about to engulf the riverboat, scene turning into woodblock print. Visual poetry.

O-Ei walking at sundown, through the shadows/light between city structures lining her way home. She passes Hokusai ambling along in the opposite direction across the street. As they pass, O-Ei is aware. Hokusai might not be. Both are in shadows, neither acknowledges the other. Then as O-Ei passes back into light, we see her admiring the fresh rays of light streaming between her fingers. A scene brimming with symbolism.

(The more you know about Hokusai's work, the more Easter eggs you'll find in MH.)

Mindfulness/awareness/context, within everyday life, are what MH is all about. Not "character development." Not "plot." Don't let western cultural conventions/blinders keep you from absorbing and enjoying what MH shows us about everyday suchness.

O-Nao manages to see so many things within the limits of what her young mind can comprehend. At every step and turn, we all face limits, but everyday suchness allows for that.

Too much is made about how trivially O-Ei's "marriage" is narratively tossed off in an end title card.

The real O-Ei was briefly married to a fellow art student BEFORE she became an assistant to her ailing father. She divorced, because she found her husband to be a comically poor artist. She never had a need to remarry. The anime treats O-Ei's one marriage as seriously as she did. We see the gist of that "relationship" play out in O-Ei's later interactions with her male contemporaries in the film.

...

Now, what do you see when you look at O-Ei's painting of O-Nao in a garden admiring her goldfish?

Perhaps you see a contented blind girl, intently focused on the joyous watery sounds of her pets. She's also surrounded by the dotted red beauty of fallen tree blossoms all around her. The little girl, in a peaceful garden, is surrounded by death.

O-Ei's painting is a wistful remembrance/celebration of her dearly departed sister, for which words can do no justice.

That's the context of that centuries old painting. That's a deep taste of everyday suchness. That's the point of MISS HOKUSAI.

"It must've been tough being Marlowe in the time of Shakespeare," director Ken Bowser commenting at a March 2011 US screening on the music business shadow that Bob Dylan cast over the genius of Phil Ochs.

Until a friend of mine recently introduced me to the music of Phil Ochs, I had absolutely no idea that Ochs was the composer of "I Ain't Marchin' Anymore," despite the fact that I'd heard and even sang the song, myself, many times before, at anti-war and "progressive" rallies over the decades. It was treated like a public domain anthem.

The reason for my ignorance wasn't entirely my own fault.

It's pretty clear to me that the music business and mainstream media did it's level best to erase Phil Ochs from the public consciousness, even though his music refused to die.

It's no consolation that you can run a search on him in iTunes, when you realize how much stuff has been destroyed. Even the predecessor to PBS was involved in the destruction of valuable and unique archival tapes of Ochs, on the grounds of fiscal conservatism -- anything Ochs just wasn't worth the cost of keeping around.

PHIL OCHS: THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE is an awards worthy first step in the direction of unerasing and restoring Ochs to the public's consciousness. It's long overdue and just in the nick of time, too. The things that Ochs cared (from the heart) and wrote and sang about are urgently relevant today.

I'd like to ask everyone who's curious about and/or moved by PO:TBFF to run a web search on four articles, written in 2011 by B E Levine, P S Brown, M Simmons and D Loranger, that appear in Counterpunch, so that I might devote my space here to other matters. Those folks provide unique and valuable, if not excellent, specific commentary and insight into Ochs' work and significance that nicely compliment and augment the film.

For those who criticize Bowser's treatment of the music in this documentary, let it be known that Bowser said that there are at least two more feature length films worth of unused documentary material that he uncovered and would like to do something with.

I told Bowser that if he doesn't get around to making those films, I will come looking for him. There's no deadline, but there's an absolute expectation.

As it was, this film faced a decades long battle of unearthing, restoring and assembling surviving (in some cases, barely surviving) archival footage of Ochs, himself, in concert and in conversation. The royalties (none of which went to Ochs' estate), for what footage was included, consumed more than 80% of the total production budget.

That's not all. This film was originally booked to run theatrically in only a dozen US cities; but, by sheer force of word of mouth, it is now, as of this writing, slated to open, in 2011, in more than an hundred. The capstone to this ascending trend would be an Academy Award in 2012. Yes, I'm predicting.

And give Bowser a break about The Music.

Ochs composed or recorded more than 238 songs, which completely dwarfs the 97 minutes of this film, end-to-end.

Bowser has *promised* that there will be full-length song performances included, as bonus material, on the DVD that is due out in the Summer of 2011. We can hold off sharpening any knives until and unless those tracks fail to materialize.

The genius of this introductory primer to Ochs is that it raises as many questions as it answers and, more importantly, it whets the appetite for much, much more.

I absolutely want to have a say about any follow on documentaries.

Part 2 should focus primarily on the music, from the perspective of Ochs' artistic influences (which were much broader than just fellow musicians) and his artistic/social goals. Ochs was quite articulate about these things and it'd be terrific to hear him speak - and sing - this part of the story as fully as possible.

Part 3 should focus on the aspects of mental health and mental illness that played a role in Ochs' life and death. The major point being that there's still very little real world, public, if not scientific/medical, understanding of manic depression. What contributed to Ochs' early demise is still killing people today, because manic depression is much more than just a disease or a diagnosis. Its effective ongoing treatment, especially in high functioning individuals, is a very complicated, if not tortuous matter. Part 3 should also celebrate Ochs' sense of humor.

Beyond the realm of documentary, Ochs' story also deserves a feature length, dramatic bio-pic treatment. I can see Sean Penn expertly playing the "older" Ochs, but a different actor could/should be cast to play the politically and musically awakening Ochs, from college into the All The News That's Fit To Sing period.

Let me make it clear that I find no contradictions whatsoever, between Ochs' "politics," his embrace of "heroic" American iconography, his expanding musical horizons and wanting to be famous.

It's only fickle fans and critics (the latter of which, quoting Ben Sidran, "Don't know how to swim, can't even float!"), who fabricate contradictions where there are none.

Ochs was asking all of the right questions, of himself and those around him, who claimed to care about social change and the role that art can consciously play in it.

I'm adding Ochs' recordings to my personal music collection, as budget permits, where it'll be in as heavy a rotation as my complete collection of the recordings of Gil Scott-Heron. (Now, you all have heard of GS-H, right?)

One good place to start is iTunes, where there's a slowly growing body of legally free resources on Ochs to partake of.

Peace. Out.

The story of Anne Hathaway's Maggie Murdock and Jake Gyllenhaal's Jamie Randall has been told before in what was once known as tear-jerker, "disease-of-the-week" TV. The difference here is the organic layering of a "romantic-comedy" atop three dramatic subtexts -- the overall health care crisis, pharmaceutical companies' influence over physician scripts and the trials/tribulations of living with Parkinson's disease. The smartness of the framing drama is signature Ed Zwick and is superior to the moronic contrivances that are typically used to stitch together most romantic-comedies today.

It never hurts to have highly talented "eye candy" filling the screen, too.

Jake has maintained his non-gym rat "cut" from Prince of Persia and I had no real idea about Anne's considerable physical assets, until this go around. Beyond physicality, they add palpable on-screen chemistry, with ample acting range that makes some people wonder about these two being a real-world, off-screen pairing. By no means is this just a ChickFlick(TM). It's an Equal-Opportunity-to-Enjoy date movie.

Jamie's a natural born salesman, a self-described "sh*thead", with suitably situational ethics and mores. He knows that sex sells and never shies away from it. He feigns ADD, but is really a whip-smart, premedical college dropout -- the oldest son, in a family spoiled by medical and financial success. He's a prototypical 1990s ne'er-do-well. Gyllenhaal nails the part with a gee-shucks, then pour-it-on charm, telegraphing that Jamie knows he skates on his good looks over the thinnest ice. Once the ice gives way, Jamie is forced to suddenly flee from commissions-based consumer electronics into entry-level Big Pharma sales. Being a newly minted "health care professional," by Pfizer's sales organization, Jamie is shipped to Pittsburgh, where he is to prove himself in market-share battle, under the tutelage of minor-cog sales manager Bruce Winston (Oliver Platt).

Maggie's a talented and nonconformist visual artist, in multiple media, who's living with early onset (stage 1) Parkinson's disease. She seems to make ends meet by waiting tables at a small-but-trendy coffee house, as well as by organizing senior citizen excursions to Canada to buy affordable prescription medications. Young, beautiful and incurably ill, uninsured/cash-economy Maggie has a serial history of romantic (or were they merely sexual?) liaisons with men who would be her savior. But Maggie doesn't want to be saved by anyone. She considers herself to be a "sh*thead," of sorts, too.

Maggie and Jake first cross paths during one of Jamie's doomed-to-fail efforts to try to meet his Zoloft sales quotas. Prozac has a 100% lock on the scripts of local market trend-setting GP, Dr Stan Knight (Hank Azaria). Jamie has managed to bribe his way into Dr Knight's private practice rounds in order to study the latter's daily workflow. Posing as an "intern," Jamie rides Dr Hank's coattails into a medical consultation with (and impromptu breast exam of) Maggie, who needs to have her multiple scripts for Parkinson's, and all of the attendant side-effects, refilled.

After Jamie's deception is exposed and the requisite, unethical persistence in obtaining Maggie's phone number, the two find ostensibly "honest" common sexual ground, where neither wants anything more from the other, other than an ongoing FWB arrangement, with hot-and-heavy emphasis on the B-part (pretty much the stuff that fuels a lot of Craigslist "CAS" fantasy.)

If that's all there was to L&OT, then it would be just another dumb-as-a-bag-of-screws romantic-comedy, no matter how beautifully and tastefully lensed.

What attracted Zwick and co-writer Charles Randolph to tell this story were larger (harder?) issues raised in Jamie Reidy's non-fiction book, Hard_Sell:_The_Evolution_of_a_Viagra_Salesman.

Viagra is played to the hilt for jokes, but...

We're living in the midst of an ongoing health care crisis, where physicians confront ongoing undue influence from Big Pharma, HMOs and insurers in decisions that ought to be strictly medical. What was once an "higher calling," has become just another job (albeit, highly compensated, with accompanying high stress and high professional/financial risk).

Physicians are routinely enticed to write scripts through offers of free gourmet meals, paid vacations (dressed up as educational junkets), outright cash payments (for "teaching" speaker-ships) and "miscellaneous" services. All of that really happens and, just maybe, contributes significantly to the high-price of name brand prescription medications.

We also see an highly compressed story (it's not supposed to be Medical School) of living with Parkinson's (with many technical advisers thanked in the end credits, including Michael J Fox).

Yes, Maggie's story is fictional, but it rings with authenticity.

People who find themselves saddled with debilitating, life-threatening, chronic illness, who strive to live the best life that they can manage to, have a right to make their own choices as to how best to do exactly that -- and to be accepted, respected and even loved for those choices, however they pan out, without pity. (That's not even easy to write down.)

Sometimes, True Love is asymmetrically, even messily, welded to Real Needs.

L&OD conveys that, from the writing all the way to the faces and eyes of Gyllenhaal and Hathaway in extreme close-up. It's straight up Drama, that doesn't diminish the romantic-comedy. The former only serves to accentuate the latter and vice-versa.

Platt and Azaria are to be thanked for their supporting turns that help carry the film without ever stealing it away. They're every bit as versatile as the leads.

I don't need or want every film I see to be "Oscar worthy," but I always look for smart entertainment that doesn't insult me as a member of the audience.

L&OD is the only romantic-comedy that I've felt compelled to write something about to date. I was taken completely by surprise.

(I will also miss Jill Clayburgh, 1944-2010, who lost her long-running battle with lymphoma. We may get to see her work one more time in 2011's Bridesmaids.)

Consider yourself an every day type of person? If you're married, how well do you really know your spouse? Beyond every shadow of any doubt? And just far would you go to save her/him from a gross miscarriage of justice, after every legal recourse has failed? Could you forsake all of your worldly possessions? Would you be willing to leave behind your one and only old child, a six year old, as part of the price of freedom? Willing to risk being shot on sight? What about always wondering if law enforcement is going to kick down your door in the middle of the night? Going on the run requires money and money always runs out when on the run.

Can you live with *all* of that? If you can't...

All of the above fueled the well received 2008 French crime thriller, Anything for Her, the directorial debut of screenwriter Fred Cavayé. Paul Haggis' The Next Three Days is the American remake, trading Paris/Europe for Pittsburgh/North America -- and Cavayé is very pleased by all of that.

Three years. That's the time interval over which Russell Crowe's sheepish, straight arrow, community college English lit professor, John Brennan, has to reckon with his wife Lara's (Elizabeth Banks) sudden arrest and quick conviction for the brutal parking lot murder of her boss. In the absence of new evidence, every viable avenue of appeal is now exhausted. The pace of the film in this section is deliberately slow, like a wet fuse that threatens to quit with every sputter, provoking the patience of some audience members, in the same way that these three years have worn down John, Lara and their six year old son Luke.

Three weeks. Facing life in prison without possibility of parole, Lara attempts suicide. Failing that, she chides John for never once having asked her if she committed the crime, strongly implying that his steadfast belief in her innocence is wrong. It's a startling, hardboiled moment. John rocks Lara to the verge of tears with a fiercely gentle insistence that he knows her far better than that. Then he calmly promises her that the rest of her life won't be spent in prison. John means it and that ignites a second, measured fuse of searching, plotting, tinkering and flailing to get her out, by any means necessary.

Three days. Seventy-two hours notice is given that Lara is to be moved out of county lockup to a remote state prison. All of John's site-specific preparations to spring Lara are about to go up in smoke. Heaping measures of white-hot desperation and sheer dumb luck fuel a now go-for-broke, chutes-and-ladders prison break action/thriller.

Obtaining run money, forged passports, drivers licenses and credit-worthy stolen identities are beyond the grasp of mild manners. There's no more time for any more half-measures. Will they or won't they beat the 15/35 minute municipal lockdown perimeters? Will Luke be left behind? Will they get away or will they be caught? Even if you think you know, you never know just how.

In the Three Weeks section, John's Internet searches lead him to Damon Pennington (Liam Neeson), an author who has written a book about his experience escaping from prison seven times. In the French original, Pennington's counterpart becomes a directly engaged mentor to the protagonist for an extended portion of the story. Director/writer Haggis boils the role down to a single, compelling scene, in which Neeson's Pennington primes Crowe's John for what will be an arduous and profoundly solitary quest to become a desperately competent escape artist. Neesom sells it without resorting to any Obi-Wan Kenobi/Yoda/Qui-Gon artifice, and then he is gone.

At points, the film threatens to lose it's way over YouTube-for-Dummies tutorials on bump keys and tennis ball pneumatic plungers, but then quickly reestablishes a coherent context in the service of story. (It's a minor blessing that the bump key prominently shown on screen isn't fit for real-world duty.) Haggis' emphasis is on John's native intelligence and his refusal to engage any co-conspirators (not even Lara). John's fallibility, desperation and nagging decency (when escrow on the family home won't close in time, he can't bring himself to rob a bank) all work against, as much as for, Lara's and his own sake. The psychological wear and tear of John's solitary second life all plays up to a poignant father-son scene, between Brian Dennehy and Crowe, that can be taken either way as slip-up or shrewd intention.

Yes, there are a few almost unbelievable moments, but cleverness and luck are the deciding factors here, just as they sometimes are in real life.

The success or failure of tN3D as entertainment depends entirely on three things, all of them acting, Crowe and Banks and the supporting cast filling out the seriously tenacious law enforcement roles.

None of the smart intricacies of Haggis' script work without the uniformly excellent contributions of all the actors, particularly Crowe, who carries the film with the tenacity of a gladiator, while relying mostly on the finer muscles of intimate character acting. Banks encapsulates a woman's who is always tough to love, but who is all the more to be loved for it, even when she's totally glammed down. Lara's got a tough exterior, but, inside, she's on the brink of quitting.

Danny Elfman's score is beautifully restrained and subtle, too. I had no idea it was his work until I saw the end credits.

Haggis makes quite a living out of polishing the scripts of other writers that somehow got greenlit despite being turds. This remake is completely able to stand on its own, as well as stand in good comparison with the French original. Cavayé is quoted as saying that he is honored by Haggis and can't wait to see tN3D himself. How often does that happen?

I'm glad I caught this one. It's very good entertainment.

It took four years for Danny Boyle to be able to make a non-documentary film based on the real life ordeal of American mountaineer and adventurer Aron Ralston.

The early obstacle was Ralston, who originally insisted that his memoir, Between_a_Rock_and_a_Hard_Place, had to be filmed as a straight documentary. What eventually changed Ralston's mind was Boyle's phenomenal Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle also had to call in every industry marker owed to him, over the financial success of Slumdog, in order to finally get 127 Hours made. The end result is another work of genius from Boyle and co-writer Simon Beaufoy and a tour de force performance by James Franco portraying Ralston.

127 Hours winds up being truer to the momentous essence of Ralston's story than straight documentary could have managed.

We get to see and enjoy some of the upsides of Ralston's pre-ordeal "hard hero" lifestyle. It's fun and exhilarating for also being reckless and extremely fortunate, right up to the point when the luck runs out.

A failure to prepare (beyond sheer physical ability) compounds the direness of a seemingly single misstep that turns out to be one in a long line of lucky mistakes. When every ounce matters, better gear was packed for entertainment (CD player, camera, video recorder, spare AA batteries) than for survival (dynamic rope, harness webbing, 'biners, headlamp, belay device and a poorly maintained, no-name multi-tool with blades as dull as a butter knife). Not a single rock tool among them. (What blade sharpens itself, except in TV commercials?)

None of that's about hindsight being 20-20; it's about training and preparedness. Ralston full well knew better.

As sensational as Ralston's true story is, Boyle makes a shrewd choice to underplay the pivotal act that Ralston is forced to commit, in order to save his own life, so that viewers never lose sight of the larger context of the story (insouciant selfishness) and are permitted to get inside of Ralston's expanding frame of mind. We see what we have to see and nothing more. (Some of what Ralston really did to his necrotic right hand is never depicted in the film, because it would have thrown the film far off into Saw territory.) This is very important, because frank self-criticism is an essential and transformative element of Ralston's experience. This is more profound than regret or even the will to live. This allows the many messages embedded within the story to have an impact on us, without over doing it.

Life threatening shock, elemental exposure, exhaustion, dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and likely early onset blood poisoning can individually, let alone in combination, produce moments of vivid hallucination and even supposed lucid premonition, in real life -- and to the film's story telling advantage. Some license is taken with these episodes, but mostly on the margins, with dazzling camera work. Much of what we see is what Ralston says he experienced and I have no doubts about the latter. What's even more amazing is how fully Franco immerses himself in episodes of grim determination and then delirium.

I was an avid non-professional climber back in the 1970s-80s, but not one of the gonzo-types with something to prove. I always knew that no matter what any human being brings to bear out in the elements, Mother Nature's got plenty of surprises that can overwhelm anyone and everyone. I climbed with a self-selected group who trained together and shared a life-and-death view that each of us goes in, and comes back, with ten fingers and ten toes. Every time. We began and ended with dotted I-s and crossed T-s of outdoorsmanship. We maintained our equipment because safety depended on it. We studied mountaineering medicine and wilderness survival, because we knew we'd have to rely on ourselves, not on radios or cel phones, in a jam. We practiced tying proper knots with one hand, because you can never know when you might have to. Every climb was technical, yet even with proper equipment in correct use, when things went wrong, it could happen faster than you could snap your fingers. Randomness (luck) always remains a factor; but luck tends to punish the prepared less.

I've fallen on belay, with the sickening experience of carabiners popping out, one after another. Ideally, they're not supposed to do that, but, at the same time, they're still helping to slow my fall, while I hope that one will finally hold, before I crash to a dead stop on top of some hard, unyielding thing. It's an icy feeling. It happens fast. You, and your fast belayer, think those thoughts.

Franco's sudden fall from the chockstone struck me as being very realistic, but that didn't hit me viscerally. The moment when Franco *chose* to break his radius and then his ulna, that's when I felt my blood leaving my hands and feet, in involuntary sympathetic shock, resurrecting a body memory of my own mishaps on climbs.

While self-rescue was a huge part of this story, Ralston would still have perished if he had not come upon the three vacationing hikers from the Netherlands, who provided him with water and food and then summoned a rescue helicopter.

Ralston extricated himself, but he likely still would not have survived all by himself.

While I'm not sure if Ralston has ever said it in exactly the words used in my title, the profoundly correct grasp of karma, as spoken by Franco at one point in the film, must be at the heart of why Ralston has said that he did not lose his hand, rather, he gained back his life, in the sense of his conscious connectedness to all of the people who are in it.

127 Hours has a grippingly authentic general feel that perfectly compliments the specific drama. It's artistry is everywhere, in the script, the cinematography, the score, set design, editing, direction and acting.

Absolutely Oscar worthy, on multiple counts.

I don't go to any movie as a first attempt to "learn" about "current events" or history. I make it an ongoing point to learn about the evolution of facts on any topic that interests me through multiple sources, all of which I try to double-check and cross-reference, until my doubts about veracity are reasonably satisfied. That can still leave matters unresolved, especially when compelling evidence is stacked up on the sides of both thesis and antithesis.

When I see "documentaries," it's part of challenging my current take on which way I believe the weight of truths and contradictions are tipping. The interpretative and editorial spin of any given documentary becomes a strength, and not a weakness, in this context. Many times, I come away with my own understanding of things further honed. Sometimes, I find myself completely reversed.

I thought long and hard before I went to see C9. I've much respect for Alex Gibney's previous work; but I wondered whether or not seeing C9 could further inform and/or change anything I knew and opined about Spitzer.

I was, and still am, deeply disappointed over the personal failings of the disgraced former Governor. I know that White Collar crime exists and that the pervasiveness of it, especially today, is not strictly a matter of a handful of Machiavellian masterminds. Broken assumptions, broken systems and failures of regulation (on many levels) are also necessary for the few to be able to relentlessly plunder the many. It is a cancer that must be fought.

Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace was unforgivable, in my mind, not just because of the damage he wreaked upon himself and his family, but because of the huge setbacks that we have all suffered in the "war" against White Collar crime in the US. Spitzer was the hard-and-fast hitting Sheriff of Wall Street and a Crusader for Main Street. He never took a bribe, but he still managed to find a spectacular way to violate the public's trust while in office. Spitzer took one huge measure of personal responsibility by resigning from office; but he also created a huge political vacuum for the sorely needed fight against ongoing crimes in high places.

I also knew that outrage toward Spitzer was the largest part of what I felt, going in, and that outrage creates its own blindspots.

So, I stood under an umbrella, in light rain, for an hour, to see this film and I am very glad that I did.

The facts presented in C9 pertaining to Spitzer's record of public service were well presented and jibed with what I already knew. But there is still special value in actually seeing the major adversarial players as they tell their own stories.

Gibney pulls off a number of compelling interviews, not just with Spitzer (who was interviewed on four different occasions), but also with some former aides. Spitzer is allowed to evade specifically answering certain questions (including campaign finances), but the expression on his face and in his eyes, in those same moments, still spoke volumes to me.

There's also a rogues gallery of the powerful enemies, in finance and in government (state and Federal), that Spitzer made over the course of his career in office. Several of these players get as much individual talk time as Spitzer.

The middle part of the film is a whodunit-style look at how the sexual scandal came into fruition. Here's where the tag line, "You don't know the real story," comes into play. The net effect of this is to desensationalize just about everything that print and television "news" got (mostly) wrong, which is no small order.

The infamous Ashley Dupree never participates in an interview for Gibney, although she still manages to get some screen/blab time in. It turns out that she very likely only had a one night stand with Spitzer.

The ongoing liaison that Spitzer came to seek out through the Emperors' Club was with an entirely different "escort." While "Angelina" does not consent to be filmed (she's now a day trader and no longer in her former line of work), Angelina does agree to be interviewed. Gibney uses an actress to read/interpret Ashley's portion of the transcript. (The only thing that I disagree with about the execution of this is that Gibney does not make it clear, from the onset, that it's an actress standing in for Ashley on camera.)

C9 created a new context for me, in which to re-think much of what I already knew.

Spitzer is by no means let off-the-hook for literally screwing around, but the media creation is brought several notches down from shining knight and a few notches up from pariah.

I was once again reminded of all of the good that Eliot Spitzer and his assembled associates managed to accomplish while in office. Some of the strategic and tactical mistakes were made clearer, too.

Important questions are raised about the scandal, itself. How did the FBI come to investigate the Emperor's Club? How did a prostitution and money laundering investigation come to focus on the Mann Act and the interstate transport of women (who were of majority age and not by any stretch of the imagination "white slaves") to provide prostitution services? Who were the other clients of the Emperors' Club? Why were there so many investigative leaks to the press pointing specifically in the direction of Spitzer? Why not anyone else?

As a result of seeing C9, my own view of Spitzer has become better tempered and from that improved vantage point useful new questions arise.

If we set aside the sex scandal, can we say that Spitzer's official conduct in office, as AG and governor, was ends-and-means right or wrong? A handful of BadGuys(TM) were brought down, but there are many more undaunted. Has anyone else picked up Spitzer's mantle? Where are his replacements?

Unstoppable is a pulse-pounding runaway thrill ride with iron-sided save-the-day heroism on display courtesy of Washington, Pine and Dawson.

Spoil sports have been grousing that Unstoppable can't possibly be "inspired by true events." In fact, the runaway AWVR777 in Unstoppable is based on the real-life CSX8888 (crew) Y11615 incident that took place in 2001.

CSX8888 was a single engine pulling 47 cars, 22 of them loaded, for in-yard car switching. The Final Report on the CSX8888 incident is available on the Internet along with other accounts and documentation.

All six "gross errors" committed by the engineer responsible for CSX8888 are reproduced in Unstoppable, one of them being sugar coated with magic pixie dust, when the engine selector handle auto-magically pops out of "dynamic brake" and into "power" mode, with the throttle handle set to 8, the maximum setting.

The dynamic brake should never have been set during yard operations (gross error #4). Dynamic braking is optimal at speeds >=40MPH and it is ineffective at speeds <10MPH (except on AC locomotives, of which 8888 wasn't).

The independent brake of the locomotive was also set, which nullified the alerter switch system, which would have otherwise acted as a circuit breaker to the incorrect selector and throttle settings.

All six gross errors really happened and had to be made in the proper sequence in order to result in a powered runaway.

Two CSX employees chased CSX8888 in a private vehicle to a grade crossing, because they feared that its engineer had suffered an heart attack at the controls. The engineer had already stepped off the moving train back at the yard (gross error # 3). The CSX employees intercepted CSX8888, but were unable to board it.

The runaway CSX8888 did have hazardous cargo on board, variously reported as two cars of molten phenol acid (CNN) or molten sulfur (local Ohio news sources), the latter being less hazardous than the former, although both are toxic. The two hazmat cars were in the middle of the train and they were not considered to be at risk if the train had derailed. The hazmat cars were far enough in, for the surrounding terrain, that they should have remained on the track even if an engine derailment had succeeded.

CSX8888 had an average speed of 30-35MPH and may have been going as fast as 47MPH at one point. Four attempts were made at derailing CSX8888, three by diverting it through sidings and one by using a portable derail. CSX8888 dislodged the portable derail and threw it from the tracks. All attempts to derail CSX8888 failed.

CSX8888 was eventually stopped by a pursuit locomotive, running in reverse, CSX6462 (crew) Q63615. Avoiding a collision course, CSX6462 had to run in reverse, which blindsided the engineer during right hand turns. That required the conductor to setup at the rear of the locomotive, now the front, so that the conductor could spot for his engineer. The maximum unloaded speed rating for CSX6462 was 30MPH. It had to achieve speeds in excess of 50MPH to catch up with CSX8888. This meant that the conductor's end of CSX6462 swayed 18" from side-to-side at times. Had CSX6462 derailed, there would have been no way for the conductor to survive. Life and limb were definitely at risk.

CSX8888 was stopped without loss of life, limb and/or property.

When CSX6462 caught up with the runaway, it coupled from the rear and then the engineer applied CSX6462's dynamic brakes, to slow CSX8888 down, exercising great care not to break the train apart between the two locomotives. Once CSX8888 slowed to less than 11MPH, a prepositioned engineer was able to run alongside, board it and take control of CSX8888, bringing it to an orderly stop.

Almost all of these elements are incorporated into the story of Unstoppable, albeit in Tony Scott's ScottFree way. It's reality x2 and all of that's in the service of delivering a ripping yarn.

The same people complaining about Unstoppable probably swallowed everything Scott & Co served up in Top Gun without chewing.

Unstoppable does make a point of belaboring the fact that the hoses for the air brake system were never connected, but that happens to be SOP for in-yard flat car switching. You can't properly "kick" cars if their hoses are still connected. (That's my only beef.)

There are plenty of other things that never happened, or couldn't have happened, but none of that matters thanks to the acting talent on board.

Denzel Washington's Frank Barnes is a seasoned engineer and 28-year AWVR veteran who never shows any of is his inward concerns, whether they be about job security in downsizing times or worry for his two daughters working their way through college. Denzel's Barnes is all about the j-o-b and doing it right. Chris Pine's Will Colson is relatively new to the ranks of conductors. Rumor in the yard is that Colson's a beneficiary of union boss nepotism. Will's also got domestic problems at home that distract him from the job. This sets up professional tension when Barnes are Colson are paired to crew AWVR1206 for a routine run. Although Barnes has seniority, Colson's technically in charge. Pine & Washington have a lot of tension-cutting fun with this.

Rosario Dawson plays Connie Hooper, a rail control supervisor, who has got to plow through considerable BS, not only to find out what's going on with double-engine AWVR777, but also to figure out how best to deal with it, once it's determined that 777 is a fully powered runaway. Even after "corporate" cuts Connie out of the CBA/CYA loop, Dawson makes us believe that Connie is going to do the right thing, no matter what.

Kevin Corrigan deserves special mention for his turn as FRAMPE Inspector Werner. He convincingly supplies crucial factoids needed to solve the problem of 777, with a Spock-like just-in-time manner.

That's Entertainment!

Fair Game may not do well in the US, despite being Doug Liman's best directorial effort to date. If that's the case (I hope not), it'll be the fault of American audiences' inability to deal with the condensed truth of Jez Butterworth's screenplay, derived from the individual memoirs of Valerie Plame and her husband Joseph Wilson. I almost didn't see FG myself.

Those who somehow knew next to nothing about the larger, global context of what came to be known as the Plame Affair/Plamegate, were dumbstruck.

Even though I knew the facts and long ago decided that something seriously wrong had happened, at the conclusion of FG, applause was the furthest thing from my mind.

FG left me feeling freshly mugged -- mentally, emotionally and Constitutionally.

Headline factoids are drilled down to a personal level, without jettisoning the larger context.

Valerie Plame is a veteran CIA NOC operative, tasked with global nuclear counter-proliferation. The details of Plame's gritty human intelligence work fuels the thriller side of the story, debunking spy mythology. She's recruiting/turning assets and running ops with life-and-death stakes. None of these details as depicted are facts, because Plame hasn't revealed specifics about her classified CIA work. Liman claims that credible scenarios were pieced together from interviews with other sources, who spoke hypothetically. It's riveting stuff.

VP Cheney tasks the CIA with a "DFU" mission to investigate reports that Saddam's Iraq has purchased 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger. Someone must be sent into Niger, who knows how that government and its uranium mining industry work, to see if there is credible evidence that this transaction took place.

-REDACTED- in DCI suggests that Plame's husband, former US Ambassador to Niger, Joe Wilson, is an ideal candidate for the job. Plame is asked to write up Wilson's qualifications. The decision to send Wilson is made by people several pay grades higher.

Wilson agrees to conduct a fact-finding mission about the yellowcake. This isn't clandestine; it's diplomatic. He goes to Niger as an unpaid patriot, works contacts, in and out of official service, and beats feet looking for any signs, whether mining paperwork or convoy tread tracks, that 500 tons of yellowcake went anywhere. The film never reveals that Wilson's was the second, US diplomatic debunking of these allegations.

There's also highly speculative minority dissent among CIA analysts about the significance of aluminum tubing shipped to Iraq from China. Are they centrifuge-grade for weaponizing yellowcake into fissile uranium? Or are they more likely parts for strictly conventional missiles? A second invasion of Iraq hangs in the balance.

When Wilson's report comes back, stating emphatically that no yellowcake ever left Niger for Iraq, Cheney's Chief of Staff, "Scooter" Libby (David Andrews), engages in a concerted campaign to pressure dissenting CIA analysts and, ultimately, to cherry pick findings in support of claims of an active Iraqi nuke program that's on the verge. The White House neutralizes Wilson's report with British intelligence that directly contradicts Wilson's findings. (A painfully funny and literally profane joke was made about strategic US use of select Middle East "British intelligence" in the 2008 film In the Loop.)

Naomi Watts' Plame more than holds her own with, and against, Sean Penn's Wilson. While license is taken depicting Plame's work within the CIA, Watt's portrayal makes it clear that Plame was more than a time-card-punching civil servant. Plame's stoic public silence as her career with the CIA comes to an end is conveyed with measures of professional duty and inward sacrifice. As she's hung out to dry by officialdom and a right-wing intelligentsia, she's solidly there for her kids. The whole of that really sold a pivotal scene between Plame and her father, Lt Col Sam Plame (Sam Shepard), for me. Watts portrays an humanly unbreakable Valerie Plame.

Some reviewers have criticized Penn's acting for feeling "preachy." This is likely directed at a question Wilson poses to a lecture hall of college students, where he asks, how did this become a matter of my wife's cover as a CIA operative being blown and when did it stop being a question of the President lying to the American people about WMDs? That's a rough paraphrase, but that's also the crux of the whole film. There are two wrongs to contend with, but why must one overshadow/distract from the other? Both are grievous. If one needs to be addressed, so must the other. If you disagree with that, then Penn must be preaching. I'm not in that camp, just as I don't shoot messengers, whether I like the message or not.

Penn delivers a suffer-no-fools rapier intelligence, edged with humanity, along with expected moral outrage and a fighter's tenacity in fleshing out Wilson.

We'll never know if any hum-int assets who were associated with Plame, over the 18-years prior to Plamegate, were imprisoned, tortured and/or executed/assassinated as a result of her NOC status being blown. All of them were made "fair game," too. That gets buried in memoirs and official papers that remain classified for 80+ years. (I've been to archives where such materials remain untouchable under seal.)

We know that there were never any WMDs found in Gulf War II. They were obliterated in Gulf War I.

FG delivers tough punches. First, the cover of a loyal and capable CIA operative is blown, not by antagonistic foreign intelligence services, but by people at the highest levels of the US government -- sacrificial lamb (and presidentially pardoned) Libby, (unindicted and non-prosecuted) admitted leaker Richard Armitage and ultimate suspect Cheney. Second, manipulated NIEs are used to falsely/improperly represent WMDs as a major reason for starting Gulf War II.

But the biggest punches of all: Why don't more of us know this story, and what are We the People doing about the messy aftermath?

The oft repeated mantra of, "truth, justice and The American Way," is down for the count.

Eastwood's Hereafter is going to be a love it or hate it affair. It is remarkably different from anything he's directed before and remarkably superior to previous, similar efforts from Inarritu, etc, to relate globally dispersed, yet ultimately intertwined character driven stories.

I am someone who does not believe that there is such a thing as life after death. As skeptical as I am about it, I also know that I cannot possibly prove that there is no such thing. Hereafter didn't change my mind about this one bit, but that didn't stop me from deeply enjoying and appreciating the story that Eastwood and Morgan had to tell.

So much has been said about the leisurely and meandering pace of the film, which I find to be pointless observations. Many of these same reviewers completely failed to grasp that the astonishing, mostly first-person tsunami sequence was supposed to have happened in Thailand (not Maui, where the practicals were shot), based on the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. It's equally clueless of these same commentators to characterize the terror elements of Herefter as being "post-9/11," when terrorist attacks against civilians have been going on, around the world, before and since 9/11. The terror incident portrayed in Hereafter is clearly based on the 2005 London Tube bombings, known over there as 7/7. (No one, not even a ghost in Hereafter, predicted it.) Finally, some of these same reviewers fault Matt Damon's George Lonegan for not being a future seeing clairvoyant, when his one and only supernatural ability is limited to channeling the dead under very specific circumstances. For these impatient chroniclers, all of these details must have rushed by too slowly for them to have noticed at all.

The fundamental story revolves around three kinds of loss.

Cecile De France's silver-spooned French TV journalist Marie LeLay dies (skeptics would say she has a near-death, out-of-body experience) and then miraculously comes back to life when active efforts to revive her have failed. Her experience of crossing over and back gradually comes to overthrow nearly everything in her previously self-assured and self-determined Parisian life.

Damon's Lonegan rightfully considers his ability to channel the dead as being a curse. Modern medicine has boiled his condition down to a form of childhood brain-injury induced schizophrenia, to be controlled through the use of powerful medications that render him feeling lifeless. Refusing to medicate, his unmuted "talent" results in his ongoing alienation from the rest of everyday humanity -- that humanity having a high propensity for shooting messengers. In the meanwhile, he lives an economically precarious blue collar life in San Francisco and listens to Charles Dickens audio books as a substitute for sleep. All of this is portrayed with deft understatement by Damon.

Real-life identical twins George and Frankie McLaren portray twelve-minutes separated twins Jason and Marcus, who are engaged in a spirited battle to prevent London's Child Services from taking them away from their beloved opiate addicted mother (Lyndsey Marshall), who self medicates between fixes with alcohol. The younger Marcus, who has always deferred to his "older" brother, becomes a lost half-soul when Jason unexpectedly dies while returning from an hope filled errand that Marcus was initially asked to undertake for their mother. (Jason was filling a prescription that would begin their mother's fight against addiction.) The same tragedy results in Marcus being placed in a foster home. So, he loses his mom, too. No matter how high functioning Marcus seems to be in his determination to reconnect with "Jase," he is deep in the grip of shock and grief.

All of the other elements of Hereafter serve to underscore and develop each character's profound sense of loss as well as their respective quests to fill their voids with meaningful answers. There's a very Dickensian feel to this, too.

Bryce Dallas Howard delivers an inspired turn as Melanie, George's night school cooking partner and potential romantic interest. Some reviewers have criticized Howard for overly hammy "bad acting," when, in fact, she perfectly nails the part of a hypomanic speed-dater, rushing headlong into something she desires, but is too wounded by a traumatic past to be able to handle. It's all seemingly unbelievable... until you've met people, in real-life, who are just like Melanie. As such, I think Howard's interpretation was something courageous.

The acting is so relaxed and natural you almost don't realize that it's a direct by product of Eastwood's (mostly) one-take approach to film making. Every actor is delivering their A-game. If I were permitted more than 1000 words here, I would go into more detail about that. Suffice it to say that no one is phoning anything in.

As for how things tie up at the London Book Fair and the fairy tale ending between Marie and George, I have no qualms. She's died and come back, so George's "curse" becomes his unique means of understanding what happened to Marie in a way that no one else can. To me, that is something lyrical, if not poetic.

Hereafter delivers no answers whatsoever about the afterlife, but it does conclude with three bright notes of new beginnings. In that, some might see the work of a benevolent divine hand. I saw three decent souls who chose to never give up. One does not contradict the other.

I urge you to see it and decide for yourself.

Inkheart was not quite as good as I had hoped and I really did hope.

First, the Good News.

I most appreciated the acting of Eliza Hope Bennett, who played Silvertongue Mo's (pre-)pubescent Silvertongue daughter, Meggie. I next appreciated what Paul Bettany managed to accomplish with the horribly and repetitively mis-written Dustfinger. In a lesser actor's hands, Dustfinger would have become AshCans. Helen Mirren must also be thanked for her turn as the equally under-written Aunt Elinor.

It was also a very inspired bit of casting to have Jennifer Connelly play Roxanne, Dustfinger's wife. (In real life, Bettany and Connelly met and fell in love during the production of A Beautiful Mind. They are, in reality, husband and wife.) If Connelly were calling me to come back home, I would break a Hulking sweat running, if not flying, back to her. That's Motivation.

The weaknesses in this film were many.

Brendan Fraser, must be tired of phoning in the same performance over and over (Mummy 1-3, Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D) no matter what film he is actually in. Fraser's Mo could've used at least two more Stooges.

Andy Serkis, who got his big break playing the mo-cap body puppet for the CGI Gollum in Lord of the Rings, was not permitted any contortionistic body movements as arch villain Capricorn. Hence, he was about as scary as Mr Bean's Evil Twin.

What an utter and horrible waste of the talents (and beauty) of Sienna Guillory, who was stuck playing the exact opposite of Resident Evil's kick-ass Jill Valentine. What's her name? Oh, Resa.

And then there's The Shadow, which was reduced to just another Mummy-like dust storm with a vengeful personality. (Yes, I know that these were the best smoke/particle-effects CGI to date, but, dramatically, it was just another retread. You also have to wonder whenever CGI smoke requires its own choreographer. Is that much like Ang Lee mo-cap miming the angst of the Incredible Hulk?)

I sat up in the nose-bleed seats, in the midst of several families with young children. Many of these kids had to submit a drawing of their favorite character from the book in order to win family passes to see this film. Several parents were forced to try to explain the nonsensical screenplay to their bewildered tykes, who no longer recognized their beloved story. No one in their right mind thought to shush any of those valiant efforts.

For me, I never read the book and this film did not move me one bit to even think about bothering. I do not want to feed this studio franchise monster in any way, shape or form.

On the one hand, there were far too many direct cribs from the Wizard of Oz to even pretend to be original. On the other hand, there were so many plot repetitions and literal backtracking of travels/steps that I was also reminded of 12 Monkeys. (Or is that 12 Minkeys?) Only this wasn't homage. This was counterfeit.

There were way too many plot holes and story inconsistencies for a supposedly "family friendly" story/film, too. The friendliest thing one can do in a family film is to not lose the kids in all of the smoky dust.

Given whatever butchery was done to the original source, why is it that "evil" must only be destroyed as if that were an universal imperative (akin to the Hunt for Osama Bin Laden)?

If the film is going to allow Meggie to write her own ending to the story, in order for her to then be able to read it into reality, why can't she just as readily write a new and rehabilitated character/personality for Capricorn and his minions? If you've got the power of the Creator, why not save everyone, even from themselves? But, no, Meggie must destroy Capricorn & Co, with brutality.

We don't want to teach our kids about the power of salvation or even the possibility of redemption. Only cowards may be redeemed. Not any Bad Guys(TM). Hence, Inkheart.

First off, what idiot wrote the synopsis?

There were *four* Bielski brothers who escaped into the woods and they were *all* eventually under arms: Tuvia, Zus (third eldest, in fact), Asael (second eldest) and *Aron*.

Secondly, none of the Bielski's intentionally set off to save 1200+ Jews of East Poland and West Belarus. Their struggle was initially and understandably for their own survival after the slaughter of their parents. The "saving" of so many others began by accident and according to conscience, with considerable internal strife. And don't anyone kid themselves, lots of personal scores are settled in wartime.

Thirdly, great liberties were taken with history in the Zwick/Frohman screenplay that does not do justice to the detailed facts of the real story of the Bielski otriad and their checkered history prior to and during WW2. The thuggishness of the older Bielski brothers is only very slightly alluded to in the film, under the heavy cover of the ends justifying the means. Regardless of whether or not the Bielski otriad was in anyway involved, the entire matter of the 1943 Naliboki massacre (by Russian partisans, at the very least) is completely omitted from the film. All done to bolster comparisons between Tuvia and Moses.

All of that said, I found Defiance to be far more moving, suspenseful and entertaining than Valkyrie and Quantum of Solace combined.

The performances by Craig, Schreiber, Bell and MacKay (who plays Aron) combine to deliver a fine piece of ensemble acting.

The use of spoken Russian whenever the Bielski otriad dealt with Russian partisans was dramatically appropriate, in order to emphasize the other-ness of the Jewish partisans within the larger Russian resistance to the Nazi invasion/occupation. The use of Eastern European/Yiddish accented English (as a substitute for Yiddish accented Polish), within the Bielski otriad, invites the audience to sympathize, if not identify more, with them easily.

These fighters and "malbushim" were thrust together to make history, by equal parts circumstance, choice and necessity. Which is how history is more usually made than by Great Man design.

Written history emphasizes that the "success" of the Bielski otriad was rooted in the strategies of survivalism and guerrilla tactics that demanded maximizing evasion and minimizing direct contact and conflict with Nazi forces. The film takes great license with these major points in order to compress the life-and-death stakes of a *three+ year* ordeal into an 137 minute film. The fact that >1200 were saved by the war's end remains undiminished by any of this.

For some, this dramatic mish-mash will be unacceptable. For others, it may become an impetus to further study history.

In any event, I was nearly moved to guy-tears, at several moments, for the emotional truth that the lead actors brought to their roles. There are many unspoken parallels between the racially segregated units of the US Army fighting in Europe during WW2 and this story, too, where black and brown (rather than Jew) were always more expendable than white.

None of the romantic sub-plots offended me, either.

See this film, talk about it and then go and try to learn something new from history, if you were moved.

I have no sympathy for those who luxuriate in "Holocaust fatigue" and I have no patience with those who think only Jews can be the victims of "pogroms."

What happened then is still happening today and what are any of us doing about that? History will judge us no less harshly.

What happens if/when you look in a mirror and can't begin to admit that you don't really like what you see?

Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road is a relentlessly bleak and compelling experience that can't be called an "entertainment," but it's powerfully disturbing in ways that *art* can sustain, where "conversations" tend to die sudden deaths.

The Wheeler's are a 1950s married couple, complete with two kids and a house in the "cozy" CT burbs; but, like most of the repressed denizens of that day, they are failing at the "Ozzie&Harriet"(TM) life, where 1+1 is supposed to =1 ("his" one).

This house turns out not to be much of a home.

Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslett) are wholly disconnected and miserably incomplete. (The bedding on the sofa that April tends to in the first scene of her daily domestic "bliss" telegraphs that they haven't been sleeping together and not even in the same room.)

The two came together at a Bohemian "Village" party shortly after the close of WW2. Frank was an infantry veteran of the ETO, but remains a boy-man, floating from job-to-job and possessed with a "charming" frankness about himself. His only real ambition, besides not winding up like his Old Man, is to make his aimless, male prerogative bachelor ends meet. April was an aspiring actress with mildly diva-ish pretensions. April considers herself "special," superior to the herds of lemming-like '50s conformity. She thinks she sees in Frank the most interesting man she's ever met and extrapolates that to also mean a kindred spirit. What Frank sees in April is the most stunning woman at the party who's willing to enter into his conversational orbit. It's a match filled with both promise and peril.

Bun in the oven, the two marry and assemble the customary pieces of life needed to Play House, still fueled by a young and otherwise untested love. As they travel down a road of material practicality, though, safety becomes conformity and deep disenchantment. Whatever "special"-ness they might've thought they shared got lost along the way.

Frank and April become almost exactly like all of the other suburban drones that they once considered themselves to be vastly superior to. April, as it turns out, might not be an actress, after all, for all of her formal studies. Frank is an Ad Man working for the same Gray Flannel company that his Old Man once toiled for over in Sales.

April is the more desperate of the two, because her days are filled with the small trials of raising of two children in the isolated social barrenness of a not-quite-arrived suburbia. The kids rarely turn to Frank when he's home. Frank has the daily diversions of his commute into NYC, the shallow banter of his co-worker AdMan flacks and the distractions of the secretarial pool. April feels trapped. Frank is feeling 30. Each seems to have only the other to blame for their predicament.

None of the "others," who also inhabit this story, who don't openly aspire to April's personal sense of "specialness," are altogether pleased with their own lives, either, but they repeatedly choose resignation.

This is a time when women were routinely *diagnosed* as being "hysterical" (as if it were a XX-chromosomal disease) and social non-conformists sentenced to "funny farms" and electro-shock "therapy." Nothing at all wrong with Society, so all problems have to be individual. All of these details serve to illustrate the hairline fissures in custom and culture that would erupt in the decades to follow.

Frank and April each embark on their own extra marital affair. And, even in that, April's options prove to be more desperate and less superficially gratifying than Frank's. (Think three-minute wonders here, and April's refusal to even pretend that Shep has anything to do with "love.")

 ...

Do any of us know even one couple, today, that's in the grips of a Wheeler-ish predicament?

Have any of us ever bellowed, or muttered, any of the caustic lines in the film toward anyone that we claim to positively care about?

Does any husband, today, turn up his iPod in order to tune out his wife and/or the kids?

Which is worse? An act of martial infidelity or all of the tiny little deaths/failings in a committed relationship that come before?

Even if women truly have more personal/individual choices available to them, today, than they did in the 1950s, don't almost all of these come with additional burdens, stemming from perniciously persistent gender roles that have more to do with sociology than biology?

When women, in particular, are made to suffer, are men immune to any/all collateral damage?

These and other questions raised by this film make it either a riveting watch or completely obtuse.

There's no way to see RR and remain unmoved.

I praise the terrific acting of Winslett, DiCaprio and Shannon (as the lone, sanely astute commentator in this brutally tragic story). I also credit Mendes for his direction and Haythe's screenplay adaptation of the Yates' novel, despite the role of Frank being so internally pared down.

This is a very tough film to have a shallow conversation about, because it is whithering social commentary, none of which is safely buried 53 years in *our* past. The contradictions depicted in the film are very much alive today, dressed with more modern veneers, as we face a real possibility of entering into a Great Depression II of our own collective making and *continue* to question a woman's right to reproductive choices.

This isn't the best film of this year, in my book; but it's a must see and quite possibly a litmus test for where we are in our own lives today.

I attended the San Francisco screening on Danny Boyle's b-day, where he participated in a follow-on Q&A.

My impression of Boyle is that he is genuinely down-to-earth, culturally sensitive/astute and an exceedingly humble person. It is equally apparent, from everything we see in this film and come to feel, that Boyle possesses a seething passion about film making and a genius for story telling. These all infuse every frame of this film.

The film is powerful and moving, with seamless performances by all three sets of actors portraying the three lead characters. There's also a who's who of Bollywood heavy weights in pitch perfect supporting roles.

Two of the three youngest players were cast straight out of the Bombay/Mumbai slums. This casting choice then necessitated that all of the scenes involving the first trio of Jamal, Salim and Latika would have to be entirely in Hindi. Fearless as ever, non-Hindi speaking Boyle turned to his India casting agent, Loveleen Tandan, to direct the Hindi-only speaking actors. Boyle directly credits Tandan for the verisimilitude of the children's' performances and he gladly elevated her to the title of co-director, in recognition of Tandan's and the children's numerous original contributions. I love what was done with the subtitles, too.

(The bone crushing poverty and pervasive corruption that exists in Bombay/Mumbai is a harsh reality. It is something that Boyle says has to be accepted for what it is, with compassion, but also without pity. At the end of one shooting day, one of the principal child actors went home, only to discover that the government had dissolved that particular ghetto that same day. Production staff then had to search high and low, across Bombay/Mumbai, to locate the family and reunite them. Then the next day dawned. There are many more stories about these real life children, too.)

I never read Vikas Swarup's Q and A; but I take Boyle's word that the book, as written, would be impossible to film. Tremendous credit has to be given to Simon Beaufoy's brilliantly loose screenplay adaptation. It is a feat that withstands direct comparisons with The English Patient and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, for grasping the essence of an original and then lovingly taking it into the stratosphere.

Boyle has a deep cultural and artistic appreciation for Bombay/Mumbai and Bollywood's traditions, yet he lensed the story with a respectful Western eye. Suketu Mehta's book Maximum City - Bombay Lost and Found, served as a production bible, and was referred to just as much as the script. (One can only hope that if Mehta finally ever options his book for film that Boyle will get a real crack at making it.)

Where ever there were scenes in Beaufoy's script that could be taken as being sacrilegious, creative adjustments were made. One specific example given was the appearance of Rama, which was supposed to have been represented on a t-shirt, but was, instead, turned into a quasi-magical-realism vision/appearance during the Muslim-Hindu riot scene. Not only was this change culturally sensitive, it was vastly more striking.

The love story, between Jamal and Latika, is one of Beaufoy's story inventions. Given three sets of actors portraying Jamal and Latika, there is so much that could go wrong with this central and interrupted thread of the story. The seed of love first has to become apparent, then its shoots must bud and become Jamal's quest. No part of this can be sappy, if this is to hold together. Before I saw SM, I had no idea how much of a romantic Boyle is and, at the same time, he is also one who does not wear his heart on his sleeve. You just have to see the film to know what I mean by that.

I don't care what any of Dev Patel's detractors have to say about any of his work prior to SM. All I know is what I saw in SM where Patel's Jamal went toe-to-toe and scene-for-scene with Bollywood Royalty, and he acquitted himself decorously as leading man.

Boyle also resorted to some special technical innovations.

The spectacular scenes running through the Bombay ghettos were captured using a pole mounted camera/lens, tethered to a MacBook (in a backpack) serving as DVR. In addition, the MacBook had to be cooled using slabs of dry ice. This allowed the camera operator to "roll" in the midst of all the action. Dry ice had to be cached along the way, in so many locations, that there were surreal swirling clouds of CO2 "smoke" seeping from the various hiding places.

Boyle's crew also lost access to the Taj Mahal before all of the shots were completed. In a brilliant move, the DP armed an alternate camera crew with a Canon EoS camera and used it, in rapid frame mode, to pick up all of the remaining Taj Mahal shots. If no one had told me, I would not have known the difference. And neither, apparently, did Taj Mahal security.

I've seen this film three times already and cannot wait for the DVD to come out. If it's handled correctly, there will be hours of bonus features. One the one hand, there is so much to enjoy, in terms of pure entertainment. On the other hand, there are so many engaging stories about the making of this masterpiece.

Finally, I am deeply torn, this year, because I love both SM and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and they are both squarely in the category of adapted screenplay. I love SM for its dense compactness and I love tCCoBB for its sprawling expansiveness.

Might it be possible for tie votes to win, in more than one category?

The magical realism of the two gives me reason to hope.

Eric Roth has hit another one waaay out of the ballpark with his brilliantly *loose* screenplay adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's original short story.

Be prepared for a nearly three hour excursion into magical realism (with spectacularly seamless character effects), where time will fly as Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) ages in "reverse."

The spirit and intent of the somewhat pedestrian FSF short story have been completely and lovingly transformed into a highly nuanced, cinematic Faberge egg masterpiece of epic genius.

Substituting New Orleans for Baltimore permits the hurricane (that is ever looming) to be *Katrina* (with the washing away of all traces that might come to imply). Subtracting father Button (who figures so prominently in FSF's short) for most of the story also works to heightened effect.

The story inventions of Caroline, Mr Gateau and his train station clock, Queenie ("'Nevah know what's comin' fer ya"), Mr Daws (Lightning Man), Daisy (and, implicit in that, a nod to Fitzgerald's Gatsby), Mr Oti, Capt Mike, hummingbirds and Elizabeth Abbott are all pure Roth, with nary a gleam in Fitzgerald's eye.

Some of these embellishments might be dismissed as paint-by-numbers analogs lifted from Gump (which was also adapted from a lesser original source for the screen by our Good Scribe Roth), but I think most people will neither be offended, nor care. If you've payed attention, you know that none of these are Gump. tCCoBB is full of heart and laden with delicate symbolism. It stands fresh, with new revelations, even on a second viewing. If anything, tCCoBB is a more mature and polished work than Gump.

The juxtapositions of time and point-of-view allow the story to steep in the best of two worlds -- Daisy's loving, yet unsentimental, *remembrance*, via Caroline's reading of BB's "last will and testament," on Daisy's deathbed, and the vicarious thrill of being a fellow traveller on BB's actual journey. Of course, an attentive audience figures out, well before Caroline does, what her relationship to BB is; but how can one not ache to see how she will come to take it, given that BB is now long gone?

While there are many moments of pathos in this story, the film is ultimately inspirational and uplifting.

David Fincher's directorial vision brings forth pitch perfect performances from the entire cast.

Brad Pitt exceeded my every expectation. Not only is this his best work to date, it clearly establishes that he has developed acting chops that eclipse his long running reputation for good looks. Rather than deliver a "star turn," Pitt confidently and subtly inhabits Benjamin Button in a way that no other actor could.

In addition to Pitt, the notable standouts (not by any ranking) are Henson, Harris, Blanchett (along with the two younger Daisy's) and Swinton. I find no fault with any of the other players (including the variously sized/aged Benjamin body doubles) that I fail to mention by name here.

It absolutely *requires* a cutting-edge-tech savvy director like Fincher to juggle all of the elements of characters, locations, sets, plot/sequence/pacing *and* workhorse digital GG/VFX and make all of that *craft* disappear into a seemingly effortless work of art.

It all looks, sounds and feels so organic. (The score is terrific, too.)

It is important to add that I attended the advance screening solely on the basis of the astonishing cinematography, as glimpsed in the television trailers. Every frame in this nearly 100% digital shoot was composed and captured as if it were a painting, with all of the warmth and subtlety of an old school film shoot.

There will be many award nominations for this film in all categories. People should be advised that the "make-up" is almost entirely state-of-the-art CG/VFX (digital facial mapping, combined with digital "make-up" effects, in some cases, grafted onto body doubles) that are as technically unobtrusive as (but vastly more elaborate than) all of the VFX that were in the English Patient (and Gump). (There will also be moments when some will wonder if one other Hollywood icon in particular, RR, made a cameo appearance.)

This is easily the best film of the year (and that is said as much as I *love* Slumdog Millionaire).

If you somehow manage to miss this film in the theater, you will have denied yourself the cinematic gift of the year.

I can hardly believe that this is a "major studio" film.

Bravo!!!

After phonetically memorizing a handful of lines of opening dialog in Deutsch, Tom Cruise gets to Vulcan mind-meld with the audience in California English for the rest of the film. (To be fair, the whole ensemble's accented English was all over the map, literally, according to each actor's native tongue. This soon comes to have a net numbing effect on the audience.)

It seems they really permed Cruise's hair, too. (Somewhat vain that Cruise initially took such a strong interest in von Stauffenberg primarily because Cruise thought their faces, in profile, are similar. A victory of form over content or just one "method" borrowed from the Color of Money?)

The film fails to make it sufficiently clear that previous *suicide-assassination* attempts against Hitler had failed, and that von Stauffenberg was not only required (by sheer necessity) to be The One to bomb Hitler, von Stauffenberg was also the one main charismatic personality who had any chance of convincing/*conning* non-conspirator Wehrmacht commanders (who outranked him) to go along with the coup, *after* the bomb had gone off. This is presented with a few too many touches of Mission Impossible and Jerry McGuire rolled into one lump. (I overheard someone asking why a *truck bomb* wasn't used. I suppose there wasn't enough Mission Impossible for that one.)

The film raises plausible questions about how the attempted coup might have succeeded, if *all* of the conspirators had von Stauffenberg's relentless and steely resolve (and/or just a little more luck). Some artistic license is taken, but it mostly boils down to one too many chicken poops ruining von Stauffenberg's intricate broth. (Not everyone, who would be necessary for success, was sufficiently determined to stop Hitler at all costs.) The film argues that despite Hitler's surviving the assassination attempt, swift and decisive conspirator action, according to timetable, might have neutralized the Gestapo, SS, SD and Hitler's inner circle for the coup to have succeeded anyway. This is both plausible and debatable.

This film is not a complete disappointment (it strives to cleave closely to known historical fact, given that most of the principals were executed or committed suicide and hence could not write confessions, let alone memoirs), but it is not nearly as good as some others make it out to be. The supporting cast does a commendable job, but cannot fill the gaping holes at the core of the film. The director and producers are entirely at fault. My 6.4 out of 10 is rounded down to 6.

How entertaining would any *procedural* "caper" flick (like MI1-2-3) be, if everyone on the team nailed their marks and the gambit *fails* anyway? Well, in real life, this clockwork gets botched and all winds up for naught. There was some hint of political intrigue in the film, but zero "psychological" drama. More of either or both would have helped. Where The Curious Case of Benjamin Button didn't seem nearly as long as *three hours*, Valkyrie felt like it was much, much longer than its actual two.

It's always a very bad sign that a film has lost its audience, when several people are snoring more loudly than the surround-sound, shake-you-in-your-seat crescendos that are liberally sprinkled along the course of the story. Some of the sleepers didn't awaken even for these rumblesome moments.

My bet is that, this season, Defiance will be the more revealing and more moving WWII story "based on true events." (Far fewer people already know about the amazingly heroic, yet internally conflicted, Bielski otriad.) Defiance's success will not be a matter of accents.

This will be one of those "animated" feature films that adults will drag children along as an excuse to go see, with mixed entertainment value for the tykes.

Don't get me wrong, the animation is both storybook stylized and state of the art. The characters' eyes and all emulated reflections and refractions of light are technically excellent, as are the flow of character body movements and facial expressions. (Real world physics are otherwise pretty much ignored, but this is a fairy tale, so no harm done by that.) The face of Princess Pea (voiced by Emma Watson) is an inspired interpretation of Vera Farmiga's (and not a bad choice, even though she was not in the voice cast).

All of the other voice talent also deliver better than decent performances. Matthew Broderick captures the essence of youthful wonderment and exuberance in all of Despereaux's lines.

If I could pick anyone to read me a bedtime story, it would be Sigourney Weaver... but there is too much use of narration to bridge the gaps between book and screenplay.

There is a lot more to honor, courage, heroism and commitment than merely reciting them as a laundry list, no matter how beautifully Weaver repeats the words. The pared down story telling in the film reduces Roscuro's character arc to one of an opportunist with an heart of gold. Roscuro simply switches sides without much self-examination or doubt about his honor, courage, heroism or commitment.

I could not help but notice that a lot of the younger kids (K-6-ers) who were present for the screening I attended grew visibly and audibly restless and were, at times, completely lost.

When a film engages children, they are brimming with accounts of the parts that they liked the most and want to see again. That was not the case with this film. The film makers were too busy aiming to please the grown-ups, who pay for the tickets, and forgot about the kids. The kids shuffled out at the end in near silence.

I think that is an unfortunate shame, because the book is such rich source material, speaking to most age groups. It is possible to keep both children and adults engaged with a good story, without having to alternately play to one audience at the expense of the other. I think kids were given the short shrift.

(For adults who have the time and patience, there is a lot of material in the film worth trying to discuss with children, after they've seen it. But that is more of a credit to the book than the film on its own.) Middle school children might better grasp the moral/ethical dilemmas and uncertainties, as boiled down in the film, than K-6-ers. High school students will likely disdain going to see a "children's" animation, whereas, many of the characters in the story are acting out what amounts to teenager-ish angst.

This is supposed to be a story concerning four "heroes," but the case for heroism is not evenly made. (A press kit I saw listed Princess Pea as the fourth, who was omitted from the IMDb synopsis). Despereaux passes muster (the film would be a disaster if he didn't) with flying colors; but the heroic conduct of the others is dubious, at best. There is also a fifth hero in this story (the Royal Chef, who eventually defies the king's decree against soup), but the promotional materials for the film have overlooked the obvious.

In short, I was entertained (but a bit troubled by what was lost in translation from book to film). Kids, on the other hand, were just barely included for much of this ride.

There are worse films to take kids to see, but this one could, and should, have been so much more.

Now I understand why Clint Eastwood took over the directorial reins for Changeling from Ron Howard. (Howard dropped Changeling in order to make Frost/Nixon, instead.)

Eastwood did an excellent job on Changeling, with a genuine feel for the dark subject matter, and guided Angelina Jolie to one of the best performances of her career, to date, significantly expanding her dramatic range.

The film that Eastwood really wanted to make this year, GRAN TORINO, was greenlit by that other deal. This is crucial, since all of the Hmong cast are first-time actors, who were hand picked by Eastwood from cold auditions. Any film with a cast of unknowns can be a tough sell in Hollywood, even with Eastwood helming and starring. (The list of award winning Eastwood films that almost didn't get made is long and very distinguished.) In casting, Eastwood didn't want "thespians." He wanted an honest exactness of performance.

While I really like and respect Changeling, I found GT to be far more satisfying. GT is probably *not* the best film of this year, but it is one damn fine entertainment and it fully holds its own in this rich season of films that are up for awards contention.

GT is an humorous and compelling meditation on the themes of ubiquitous bigotry, culture clash, political refugee immigration/resettlement (and, by way of that, US foreign policy) and Old School, Doing the Right Thing (vs today's more commonplace "situational" ethics). All of this rolled into two, parallel, coming of age stories, served on platters heaping with very real slices of life. The messages crack like jabs, with the sting of truth, and are never too preachy. (Eastwood is one of the few directors who respects the intelligence of his audience. He surprises film goers, always, without ever talking down.)

One coming of age story involves a neighbor kid, Tao Vang Lor (played by Bee Vang), a dirt-poor son of divorced Hmong immigrants (Vietnam war political refugees).

Tao lives with his mother, sister and grandmother, next door to Walt Kowalski (Eastwood). Walt insists upon calling Tao, "Toad" (initially, with some good reason). Tao's sister, Sue, (a scene stealing Ahney Her), is spontaneously outgoing and engaging with Walt, and confides to Walt that Tao is growing up without any proper male role models in his life. In fact, Tao is in the midst of confronting the grim prospects of either being recruited into his bad-seed cousin's gang or becoming a permanent victim of said 'bangers.

The less obvious coming of age story revolves around Walt Kowalski, a recently widowed Korean War veteran. Walt's Polish ancestry seems to serve no purpose other than to establish him as "ethnic" white, living in a dog-eared neighborhood of ongoing immigration stories. Walt is a curmudgeon, who lacks basic "people skills" with even his own family, let alone the world around him. But he has managed his way though life, fine enough, up to the opening of the film's story.

Just about every review I've read about GT describes Eastwood's Kowalski as a "racist Korean War veteran," which misses one of the major points raised in the film -- that bigotry in the US is deeply ingrained in every niche of society. None of us is innocent or absolved of anything in this regard and the film is very frank about this point. Initially, this serves as nothing more than a source for shock humor, but Eastwood finds a way to subvert this into a message of tough-love hope.

The gang life incursions into the story are very true to life. Gangs are always either recruiting new cannon fodder or marking new victims. If parents seeing this film had no clue about this, they ought to start finding ways to open up ongoing lines of discussion with their kids about what's really happening, day-to-day, at school, in the playground and elsewhere. Most of the time, kids like Tao, just internalize all of these pressures, hoping that they won't be picked on, and otherwise feeling powerless. None of us should ever kid ourselves about *all* kids, not just some kids, being "at risk."

(As for the non-white, poly-ethnicity of Kowalski's part of town, the disbelievers of the authenticity of that have only been exposed to the rarefied 'hoods of mainstream Hollywood. I can name any number of mid-to-small cities/towns where the exact mix and flavors in GT are very real. You don't have to live in a 'hood to pass through and/or stake out an occasional corner on which to hang. The Latino and black "presence" in the film never implied that they lived in that neighborhood, although they were obviously trolling for victims. Perps who don't intend to be caught *rarely* hunt in their own backyards.)

Walt knows that he's dead set in his ways, not all of them "bad," but not most of them "good." Beyond the confines of his own property line, Walt may be a little more effective than Tao, out in the real world, but, he too is, in many ways, powerless to change the way most things are. Nevertheless, in getting to know Tao, Sue and the extended Hmong community to which the Lors belong, Walt discovers that his Fort Apache ways don't work anymore. Walt realizes that he has yet to finally come of age, too. (Some will call this "atonement." I call it "growing up, again, at 78." Both are spot on.)

This film will make you laugh. It may even make you cry. But it might also make you think about some stuff you thought you were long ago done with thinking about.

People at the screening I attended were so startled at the end that there was a significant moment of silence before applause finally broke out.

GT is another lovely present from Clint Eastwood. Don't miss it.

Actors should stick to acting, until and unless they land the actual director's chair by choice and design. Even then, most actors, turned director, would rather not have to act, in order to focus on the directing.

Much has been written about Daniel Craig hand picking Marc Forster to direct Bond 22. Did Sean Connery similarly pick any of the directors of "his" Bond films? Quite the contrary, the directors of the original Bond films were well chosen by the founders of the franchise and those directors guided the rough hewn Connery into the role of 007 and on to bona fide stardom. One supposes that Craig needs his James Bond to be more James Bourne (or Jason Bond) in order to create a more comforting distance between himself and the unsurpassed Bond embodied by Connery. This is mistake number one in the making of Quantum of Solace and Craig should take no comfort in it. Does it also explain why Craig can't manage to utter the trademark, "Bond, James Bond," in QoS? Unless Craig co-produces or directs, he should leave the selection of director to others who understand Craig's own strengths and weaknesses in the role, better than he does himself. Even Forster's initial instincts about directing this film were correct; he has no "feel" for directing a "Bond" film. Hence, he failed, utterly, to deliver a Bond film.

Mistake two is resorting to over used script doctor (turd polisher) Paul Haggis to conjure up a more Bourne than Bond script. Haggis isn't Shakespeare. When Haggis lifts ideas from prior art, he rarely bothers to raise the bar these days. The opera setting confrontation is borrowed from Godfather III, where it was done with far more dramatic impact. The one Bond-ian embellishment in the QoS opera scene, which is of little consequence to the scene or plot, is the point-to-point audio conferencing gadget. Shades of Die Hard 1 & 2 in that, too. And speaking of copying while pretending not to copy, there's a gratuitous crib from Goldfinger elsewhere in QoS (with oil standing in for gold paint). What in blazes is M doing out in the field? M is supposed to be a Mandarin. Why bother over-building the "set" that is her office if she isn't even going to operate therein? The whole dialectic between M and Bond is supposed to be one of remote control/out-of-control.

Don't even think about sitting in the front half of the theater. We have the Bourne-ish "shaky cam" and staccato editing (chopping out way too many detail frames of more cinematically "realistic" action) that tend to discount all of the physical injuries Craig (and others) sustained on the way to bringing those action sequences to the screen. Roberto Schaefer seems clueless about how to capture realistic and coherent action. Perhaps that's part of how Craig got his injuries (while getting coverage shots). Or maybe it was the violence of all of the excessive editing. (Note to Matt Damon: Remind the Bourne stunt team that Bourne 4 is supposed to only be a movie.)

Mistake three is a total failure of dramatic/action pacing. Shortest running time Bond ever. Whoopee. This film is a sprint to the finish, which means more screenings per day for exhibitors, and no time for movie goers to absorb much of what (little) is going on. An healthy diet is supposed to include some "fat," otherwise a body will never absorb all of the necessary and vital nutrients. The same is true of story telling.

Allegedly 200,000 rounds of blank ammunition were discharged in the making of QoS. Is that supposed to impress anyone? When was the last time that a bullet killed (a non-double) Bond? What will EON promote next? Marksmanship scores of cast members? (Note to EON: blanks intentionally never hit the target.)

They also say that Craig hand picked the tailor for all of his Bond-wear in QoS. One has to wonder if he got to keep the wardrobe. Once again, though, Connery always looked 100% Bond, even when wearing off-the-rack suits in Never Say Never Again (which is a Bond film not counted by The Studio among The Official 22). At least one of Craig's highly tailored suit jackets looks a bit like a woman's waistcoat... or was that just a continuity error?

These mistakes happen when studios commit to making films on a forced timetable, before there is even a draft script in hand, let alone a worthy director well chosen. $225M dollars in the making and so little to show for it (unless that tab also includes all of the medical expenses, Craig's and two stuntmen.)

QoS is supposed to be a direct continuation sequel from Casino Royale. I have no problem with that concept. In fact, this really should be a double feature screening, with Casino Royale immediately preceding QoS (which I managed, courtesy of DVD). Then we might more readily follow what little (and heavily obfuscated) plot there is in QoS. But then we would also be reminded about how much better a Bond film Casino Royale is than QoS. QoS not only fails to surpass Casino Royale, it doesn't even come close to running a dead heat. QoS isn't a complete waste of time and money, but it has jarringly lost its way in the wake of Casino Royale.

I really liked Craig's Bond in Casino Royale and I think the franchise can succeed with him and respectfully re-invent and invigorate this now once again dusty franchise without "copying" prior Bonds.

But not by abandoning Bond for Bourne.

My bet is that 24: Redemption does a much better job with action, character and drama than QoS, when 24 should not even be a contender. That's how disappointing QoS is.

The film's been compared with The English Patient; but it doesn't quite measure up.

The actresses who portray Briony all turn in fine performances. McAvoy delivers a most believable and harrowing portrayal of Robbie Turner. The consequences of his overwhelming betrayal by Briony Tallis. His gradual physical collapse during the British retreat at Dunkirk. McAvoy's eternally hopeful yet pragmatic Turner never surrenders, even as his flesh and blood are about to finally fail him.

Wright displays polished excellence in the unedited shot that he orchestrated to present the milieu of the beach at Dunkirk -- not only for the handling of the steadycam, but for composition over the course of the shot. Principal characters weave in and completely out, transporting the viewer directly into the midst of the confusion, suffering and hope. That scene is nothing less than brilliant.

No matter how many excellent piece parts there are in Joe Wright's film, the whole fails to exceed their sum.

The first third of the film is where I find fault. My suspension of disbelief was rudely broken, more than once, in there.

When a writer tells a story, the reader is forced to go by the words that are on the page. Even when the reader "reads between the lines," the reader does so with the mind's eye, not with independent physical vision.

It works, on the page, whenever Briony's version of crucial events is presented in advance of Robbie's and Cee's experience of the same; because McEwan can quickly conjure up a full and satisfying enough description of outward appearances and inner states of mind. McEwan can take leaps and keep us exactly where he wants us to be as readers.

Film, however, is a medium of explicit vision and the viewer's eye can't help but wander far and gaze deeply.

When Wright shows us Briony's mildly distorted view of things, first, it undermines the story of the budding love between Robbie and Cee. It also steals momentum from the drama surrounding the three. The mild depiction of Briony's skewed "view" of crucial Robbie/Cee events deflates those events before they are fully savored by the audience, in as dissatisfying a manner as coitus interruptus. The sweetness of the romance is soured before the audience is permitted to taste it.

A thinking audience also has to ponder how a 13 year old girl, who writes pithy plays, who has formed so sharp an opinion about what the "foulest word, ever" must be, could then begin to so thoroughly "misinterpret" all that she comes to witness one hot summer day. The love scene in the library, as Briony saw it, has nothing whatsoever in common with the later rape scene (that is flashed once in real time and again as a vivid remembrance) that Briony later witnessed. Her accusation of Robbie is impossible to fathom as having even a single shred of innocence; it can only be chalked up to sinister motives. If I am to care much at all about Briony in the last third, I have to have one shred of sympathy for her by the conclusion of the first third. The film could have and needed to take more dramatic license.

These are mistakes that I did not expect Wright to make. Is this thudding clumsiness the handiwork of the same person who so ably directed the rest of the film?

What I ask for, could be accomplished almost entirely through a re-edit of the first third of the film.

I would rather that Wright present the Robbie/Cee thread of events, as they experienced them, before we take time to revisit them through Briony's eyes. Permit the audience to make an emotional investment in the small and intimate; allow us to root for the couple's success. Only then bring Briony's mild misinterpretations into play. Create narrative and emotional momentum before you break it. Spring Briony's betrayals of Robbie on us in a more fully formed context. (Briony betrayed Robbie at least twice. Intruding on the "wrong note," intended for Cee, was the mouse trap. Accusing Robbie of raping Lola was the bear trap. Considerable dramatic momentum was lost between these two story beats, because of a failure to more boldly reinterpret the setup, in the first part of the book, for the visual medium of film.)

Otherwise, one way to make Briony's misinterpretations more effective as the first representation of critical events in the film, would be for Wright to present them as being much more "over imagined," far more grotesque than and out-of-whack with a more balanced and informed view of the same. The Robbie/Cee thread would still be sorely under served, but the problem of Briony's state of mind might begin to act as a more adequate dramatic point of focus.

The dramatic failures of the first third, also weakens the poignance of the final third.

A much older Briony remembers past events with clarity, depth and more objectivity. But then she spins a fictional final chapter to her story of Robbie/Cee, in her final work as a celebrated author. She thinks it an atonement, when atonement is no longer possible. Briony's book becomes an empty act of selfish commerce, not anything noble, despite what she confesses to be the truth and her motives during the taping of the interview (featuring English Patient director Anthony Minghella as Briony's interviewer).

Briony's imagination simply continues to overpower her. She is still out of synch with reality, even at that late stage of her life.

...

These nits of mine might not matter much to others. I still hope people will go to see this film.

I hope that more people will also be moved enough to read McEwan's book, if they haven't already.