CP Chronicle 185

THE RE-RUNS ARE COMING! THE RE-RUNS ARE COMING!

Today, the Wife and I decided that we really had to start getting out a little more. We'd just gone through what totaled up to be about 5 weeks where either she or I felt like total crap, the results of concurrent colds, flus, sinus problems and a nasty tumble the Wife took and from the generally low rent air we have to breathe here in The Land Of The Sport Utility Vehicle. This of course tends to limit your mobility and add to the 'Cabin Fever' syndrome that hits all of us at this time of year and is further compounded by the enforced claustrophobia of what is hopefully the Last Big Dump of the winter.

This is me breathing a heavy sigh as I pray for spring to get its fat sunny ass up here and put an end to our collective hell. And it won't be too soon either, because on the TV front, most of the decent TV shows are coming to the end of their runs. This means its time to start getting a little more serious about what to rent at the video store.

So I guess I'd better get my arse in gear and start working on Volume 3 of "Movies That Don't Suck", so that nobody will end up accidentally renting say, K 19 The Widowmaker or The Harvard Man. Oi.

The Wife is usually happy with anything I bring home that set in the 19th century or earlier, so she's an easy date in that regard.

Myself, I'm leaning towards some of the foreign films that Andrew Smith has been going on about, plus, the first season on DVD of the hit HBO series 'Six Feet Under' looks like it might be fun. More about that later. Onto the flicks.

THE RING (TWO SPUDS)

This was one of those movies that I had to wait until the Wife had something else to do before I rented. That was a wise choice too, because this is the kind of film that would give her some serious nightmares.

Now by their very nature, films in the horror genre force you to suspend a certain amount of disbelief, especially when it comes to the paranormal. So that's a given when you sit down to watch The Ring. After watching it though, I am now conflicted. Why? Well I'll tell you. On the one hand, I thought it was an incredibly stylish and frightening film, extremely well art directed, shot and edited. But on the other hand, I have to admit I could not quite figure out why the stuff that was happening in this movie was happening and that kind of pissed me off because it pointed to a glaring flaw in the script. This is something I'm seeing a lot of and getting really tired of in movies these days. I'm not sure whether it happens as a result of shoddy scriptwriting or the ornate 'committee' decision making process that tend to accompany most movies of any significance that get made down in Hollywierd.

In this story, there's a video tape that is up at this mountain lodge outside of LA (where else?). Now if you watch this tape all the way through, you then get a phone call which announces that you will be dead in seven days. And by gum, that's what happens. After a young girl and her boyfriend die, allegedly as a result of seeing the tape, the girl's aunt (played by Naomi Watts), an investigative reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper puts 2 and 2 and 2 together, ends up finding the dreaded tape and of course, watches it. (They always do) The rest of the movie takes place over the 7 days she supposedly has to live, which she chooses to spend unearthing the shroud of mystery surrounding the identity of the woman in the video instead of, well just about anything else.

Now don't get me wrong, I really kind of liked this movie. It's construction and outstanding use of symbolism and the fact that it never really went over the top into schlockland, when it easily could have, are all to be admired. What bugged me was the fact that this dreaded video tape just seems to come out of nowhere. There's no hint of how it got made, why it got made and why it was what it was. As a viewer, I felt it was something I needed to know. There is another logic flaw attached to the whole video tape thing that also bugged me, but it's so key to the plot that I can't tell you about it.

Admittedly, I look at these things with a much more jaundiced eye than most Spuds would. So if you kind of allow your eyes to glaze over a bit and not let the flaws get to you, you end up with a very worthwhile movie experience. A super stylish horror film with a lot of memorable images and a pretty good wallop for your psyche.

TUCK EVERLASTING (TWO SPUDS)

I've never been a big Disney fan. Not since Old Yeller, anyway, and I write that off to being young, stupid and stuck in a small town with TV and movies as my best friends. But over the past few years, I've noticed that some Disney movies become, well a lot less Disney-like. Tuck Everlasting is one of those films. Though it can definitely be classed as both a fantasy and a family type film, we found it to be quite enjoyable, mostly because of big name stars like Sissy Spacek, now everybody's mom, William Hurt, who always does a good accent, and Ben Kingsley, who makes a delightfully ornate villain.

Tuck Everlasting is a simple story about a family (The Tucks, of course) who live in the deep woods somewhere in America and have discovered a mysterious gigantic oak tree that somehow produced water which made them basically indestructible and kept them frozen at the same age for more than 100 years. The two Tuck sons are just arriving home from ten years of travelling the world, but are being followed by the nasty and evil Ben Kingsley, who has sort of figured out what's up and has his own set of priorities regarding the Tucks.

The young daughter of the man who owns the land upon which the Tucks have been living all these years stumbles across the youngest Tuck son, Jesse, who instinctually trusts her, and is willing to let her go, but is overruled by the oldest son who brings her back to the old homestead. This leads to a big manhunt and a whole bunch of other plot related stuff, which ends up being, well, a pretty damn good story from top to bottom.

While it's easy enough to take this movie at surface value and just breeze along with the tale, Tuck Everlasting also raises a few interesting philosophical questions about human beings' obsession with holding onto life, relationships between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters yadda yadda, all of which adds quite a lot of texture to what is otherwise a pretty simple story.

Unlike some of the more recent Disney fiascoes (The Kid, Newsies), Tuck Everlasting is the kind of film that Disney has become famous for. To wit, a movie that will grow slowly but surely grow into a family classic and will do land office business around Christmas, and all summer long when the rugrats and pre-teens of America need something wholesome, yet interesting to fill in a couple of hours between Kraft Dinner and wieners and Hamburger Helper and French fries. One could argue that there never have been, nor will there ever really be enough of those.

LIFE AND TIMES -- JONI MITCHELL (TWO XL SPUDS)

For all you Yankee and international spuds, Life and Times is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's version of Biography. It doesn't come on anywhere near as often because, let's face it, it's Canada and the majority of our most interesting people don't live her full time anymore. But of all the famous Canadians populating America, England and points beyond, you'll be hard pressed to find one who doesn't believe that Canada is the best place on earth to live. Maybe not the best place on earth to become world famous and fabulously-well-to-do, but a good, sane, solid, clean and relatively peaceful place to hang your hat (toque in winter).

We caught the first half of this two-part biography of Joni Mitchell on Saturday and the second half last night (Tuesday). Because there's no rhyme or reason to scheduling practices at the CBC. (Or anything else as Van Fleet will attest).All that aside, this was one of the best documentary profiles of a creative person I have seen in quite some time.

I think the reason is that the film makers had Joni's full cooperation in the the making of it, because once you see it, you get the unmistakable feeling that hers was very much the guiding spirit at work here. My theory is that when she was approached to do this documentary and agreed, she applied the same kind of diligence, charm and creative genius for which she is famous and applied it to making sure this film was done right by telling her story the way she felt it needed to be told. And it makes sense, because let's face it, you don't get to be one of the greatest singer songwriters in folk music, rock and even jazz without being something of a control freak. In this case that's not a bad thing at all, because Joni logged a lot of first person camera time, shelled out insights into her character and her particular creative process that added immeasurably to the overall narrative that was rolling through this film. Her insights and opinions and bits of wisdom alsoadded context to the other interviews, mainly with the men who had been her lovers/best friends over the past 45 or so years.

The other things these insights did was deepen your appreciation for the sheer amount of hard work a world class singer songwriter necessarily puts into her work in order to make it as special it is. In order to make the songs still sparkle with relevance and dazzle and genuine intelligence after so many years.

The Wife and I have been big fans of Joni since the beginning of her illustrious career. Now we understand a lot more about why that is. Here's something I haven't said since the premiere of This Hour has 22 Minutes...thanks, CBC.

COPYRIGHT 2003, Jim Murray COUCH POTATO CHRONICLES