Here
we go again. By the time you receive this, I will have been to
about a dozen Christmas parties and weigh about 10 pounds more
than I do now. But I don’t care. This has been a strange
year and we all deserve to party our brains out over the holidays.
Then come the new year, we’ve got to get back to work. There’s
a lot to be done because a strong and vibrant economy is the only
thing that’s going to show the world that we’re not
just a bunch of pussies over here in the land of the free.
MY HOUSE IN UMBRIA (DVD-TWO SPUDS)
With nothing but a lot of middle of the road crap to watch on
video these days (Tomb Raider, the latest Jim Carry, X Men yadda
yadda), I cruised on over to Blockbuster yesterday and picked
up this outstanding little HBO film. I’m a sucker for anything
that HBO produces. For some reason, they don’t seem to play
by the same rules as the Hollywood establishment.
What I mean by that is that they actually make movies that are
good, as opposed to most Hollywood features these days, which
always manage to look good but invariably leave you pining for
the sense of being completely entertained. Only, as I look back
through the archives, only a few big time movies I have seen this
year have managed to do that. Seabiscuit, Matchstick Men, Pirates
of The Carribbean, The Rundown, Moonlight Mile. The list goes
on, but not too far.
My House In Umbria falls squarely into the category of complete
movie experiences.
It succeeds on every level, creating and capturing a mood, being
extremely literate, yet still managing to have an interesting
plot, being extremely well acted and paced, and being amazing
beautiful to look at.
In a nutshell, this is the story of a bunch of people who are
riding on a train when a bomb goes off in their compartment, killing
several of them, but leaving several alive and in various states
of disrepair. Pre-eminent among the survivors is Dame Maggie Smith
who is one of the great screen actresses of all time and who still
looks pretty damn good in spite of the fact that she has to be
close to 70. Maggie is a writer of romance novels who has a house
in Umbria where she invites the survivors of the bombing to stay.
Maggie has a caretakers in the form of great Irish Character actor
Tim Sprall and takes in a retired British Army General, a young
German journalist and a young orphaned girl. Together they form
a motley crew of of people on the mend. The cast is rounded out
by Giancarlo Giannini, as a police inspector who is determined
to get to the bottom of the mystery of the bomb.
Most of this movie takes place at Maggie’s amazing house
in Umbria, where the living is extremely genteel. Maggie also
does an amazing voiceover narration which ties this film together
in a golden bow of literacy, and elevates her performance to Emmy
level. The lion’s share of this film is spent exploring
the friendships which develop between the characters, all of whom
are extremely concerned about the young girl who appears to have
build a wall of silence around her. And as if the cast weren’t
rich enough, about half way through the proceedings Chris Cooper
appears as the young girl’s uncle who has come to bring
her back to America, but is ill prepared to handle the responsibility.
My House In Umbria is an extremely well rendered emotional melodrama,
which is
absolutely captivating from start to finish, mainly because of
Maggie’s powerful anchoring performance. This is her movie
all the way. Her arc is so complete it made me extremely envious
of the skill of the people who put this film together. Namely
TV movie veterans director Richard Loncrain and writer Hugh Whitmore
who have worked together a lot and it show, because this movie
simply flows like butterscotch.
Granted this is not the kind of film that you will be attracted
to. At Blockbuster there were just 3 DVDs and one VHS copy available.
But all that means is that at least four people get the extreme
honour and pleasure of Maggie’s company for a couple of
hours.
LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER—THE CRADLE OF LIFE (NO SPUD 4U)
The Wife and I are trying to establish Friday nights as Pizza/Basketball/Movie
nights here at Spud Central. Admittedly, The Wife isn’t
too crazy about the basketball part, but there you go. Unfortunately
it’s pre-Christmas Bottom of the barrel time and the movie
we ended up with was the pretentiously titled Lara Croft –
Tomb Raider—The Cradle Of Life.
This movie is nothing more than a opportunity to swell the collective
libidos of every
teenage boy who watches it, thanks to the made-in-Hollywood body
and high priced vocal coach that helped shape this performance
by Angelina Joli. Now don’t get me wrong, there’s
nothing wrong with Angelina. She’s a very well manufactured
screen presence. She’s shapely and sexy and tough as nails.
Sadly however it’s really all for nothing because the movie
that surrounds her gives new meaning to the phrase ‘insipid
nonsense of the highest order’. There was absolutely nothing
about this movie (outside of Angelina’s boobs) that held
my interest for even a nanosecond.
Now The Boy tells me that I really have to be a ‘gamer’
to get what’s going on here and that Angelina’s performance
in both of these films (this is #2 in the series) is very true
to the character of Lara Croft, who is essentially a game fabrication.
My response to that is that’s all well and good, but I’m
watching a movie, not playing a video game, and the least the
producers could do is give me something to watch beyond the gymnastics
of Angelina, climbing here and flying there and riding this gizmo
and that white stallion and interacting with a lot of badly-rendered
visual effects. It all gets old really fast.
The
old bugaboo here is that they will spend all kinds of money on
effects (which may or may not be worth it), but they won’t
go out and find a screenwriter who can imbue these rather excessive
goings on with something ressembling a plot. Just so that the
non-gamers in the crowd will have something ressembling a movie
to watch.
This has probably been the worst year on record for bad Hollywood
movies. It’s not that the film making in and of itself is
so awful, it’s just that we are all starting to catch on
and grow tired of the all the tediousness of special effects magic.
We’ve become hungry for good old fashioned storytelling.
This restlessness will hopefully start to influence the way movies
go in the future and will allow a few more substantial films to
make their way into production and onto the screen. I hate writing
reviews like this. But you really do need to be warned that your
six video store bucks are just being wasted here.
LINE OF FIRE (TWO SPUDS) ABC TUESDAY NITE
This is a new series that was written and directed by a dude named
Rod Lurie, who has had a couple of fairly good and very well written
features released in the past few years, most notable among them,
The Contender, which Mike Elliot and I fought over quite rigourously
when it was released a cxouple of years ago.
Anyway, Rod, like a lot of other auteur directors has found his
way into series television with Line Of Fire. I’m reviewing
this in two part, because most of the first episode was spent
introducing the rather large cast of characters. Including one
of my favourite actors, David Paymer.
Like most Rod Lurie projects there is a hell of a lot of character
development involved with getting his series off and running.
And while I may argue with similar tendencies in guys like David
E Kelly, I think this its going to be quite useful to viewers.
The pilot episode started very slowly establishing that there
had been a double murder. A bad guy from the Malloy Crime Family
and an FBI special agent.
This sets the stage for what appears to be a big time war between
these two factions.
Heading up the FBI side is Canuk, Leslie Hope, who played Keifer
Sutherland’s wife in the first year of 24. This lady reminds
me a lot of Joan Allen whom Lurie wrote The Contender around.
This, in and of itself is kind of rare, a male writer who like
to write strong female characters. I’m taking a stab at
it myself in my latest screenplay and I can tell you it’s
not easy. You get the impression that her character is one hard
driving hard living FBI babe, and that she will be a formidable
for David Paymer who plays the principal bad guy, Jonah Malloy,
with a low key intensity and intelligence that could earn him
an Emmy, if this series survives.
I have a very good feeling about this series. But I’ll tall
you more after I see episode 2 on Tuesday night. OK, I just saw
it. Two Spuds, in spite of the XL cast of characters and the fastness
and looseness that everybody on the good side of the law plays
with the rules.
Maybe that’s just Rod Lurie making a law and order type
statement and so I give him the benefit of the doubt, because
the show moves along and is interesting all the way through.
THE TORONTO RAPTORS (2 XL SPUDS) (TV & LIVE IF YOU CAN AFFORD
IT.)
A few weeks ago, as the trade rumours started circulating, I was
already kind of pumped about the Raptors, mainly because it was
just such a pleasure to see Vince Carter finally firing on all
cylinders. But the rumour was also interesting. A three for three
trade that would send Antonio Davis the wily veteran and interior
big guy, Jerome, the Junkyard Dog ,Williams an excellent rebounder
and spark plug off the bench and Chris Jeffries an unproven centre,
to the Chicago Bulls for point guard Jalen Rose, all round forward
Donyell Marshall and backup centre Lonnie Baxter. I used to think
that Donyell Marshall had a lot of promise when he was playing
for the Utah Jazz, but that Karl Malone just kept getting in the
way. I’ve always liked Jalen Rose, and consider him one
of the smartest players in the game. And I didn’t know anything
about Lonnie Baxter, except that he really wanted to impress Raptors’
management and nail down a big contract for next season.
In just one week, this acquisition has already been the best thing
to happen to the Raptors since the signing of Vince Carter in
‘01. And it’s a real good example of just how delicately
balanced an entity a basketball team really is. Rose and Marshall
became immediate starters and their presence on the floor now
makes every other team in the league think twice about automatically
double teaming Vince Carter whenever he has the ball as an effective
way to keep the Raptors off the scoreboard. And it took them all
of about 10 minutes to adapt and start to define their roles on
the floor. And when Lonnie Baxter hit the boards about ten minutes
in, he brought the same level of intensity that Jerome Williams
used to bring, but in a much less flashy way. He’s all about
rebounding and blocking and cleaning up the garbage under the
basket.
How good are the Raptors with the addition of these guys? Well,
in my humble opinion, they should be able to hold their own with
anybody in the east. I put them in the top five along with Indiana,
Detroit, New Orleans and maybe Philly. But at the end of the day,
that’s not what really matter most. No what matters most
is that you got your root beer and your microwave popcorn and
you turn on a game and lo and behold, that’s actually what
it is—a game and a damn good one at that.
Well, that’s what I’ve been treated to for the past
week, as the Raptors have gone 5 and 0 against the Sixers, The
Hawks, The Celtics the Seattle Supersonics and the Cleveland Cavs,
who they actually don’t match up very well with. Everyone
is having the time of their life out there. Everyone has dialed
up their game. The Raptors are building some serious momentum
here. My only hope is that they can ride this all the way to the
playoffs. In the Boston game, they dopped an NBA season high 17
three pointers. If you’ve ever stood behind the three point
line on a basketball court, you’ll know this is a hell of
a thing just to make one. But seventeen…in front of an audience…give
me a break. Vince Carter has also just been named NBA Player of
The Week and centre Chris Bosh made the cover story on CNN Sports
Ilustrated’s web site.
Like most Toronto sports fans, I’m as cynical as anyone
when it comes to believing that these guys can ride this wave
for much longer. It’s just not in the nature of the game.
Not to mention the sad state of affairs in the NBA eastern division
this year.
But a true spud makes the most of every great sports moment, so
here I am, cheering long and hard for the home team and it’s
been a hell of a long time since I had anything to cheer about.
That’s about it for this week. We’re gonna try and
hit some of the big Holiday season
blockbusters next week. The Last Samurai, Lord of The Rings, etc.
Then it will be time for the big year end review. This should
be pretty whacked out, since 2003 is one of those years that go
down in my book as “glad to have made it through in one
piece.”.
COPYRIGHT 2003 - COUCH POTATO CHRONICLES
