Well.
Here we are safely ensconced in Spud Central III, where we will
hopefully stay
for quite a while. No big whoop about this move. I learned my
lesson from the ill
fated 19 month sojourn to Lower Scarberia. I must admit however,
that though there
are a lot of things I won’t miss, like the distance and
the raging quietude, I will miss
the neighbours. This was the nicest collection of neighbours that
anyone could want.
Friendly, intelligent and mainly into their own thing, so they
all had the utmost
respect for your time yadda, yadda. We will, I daresay, venture
back from time to
time to see them. And that’s all I’ve got to stay
about that.
Housekeeping Note: Clinton Young, by reason of the fact that he
is one of the
original 100 Spuds, gets to have Pulp Fiction added to the list
of larger than two
spuds movies of all time.
OUT OF TIME (VIDEO) (TWO SPUDS)
I think that Denzel Washington has one of the coolest voices on
the planet. He’s no
James Earl Jones, but there’s a real intensity and intelligence
about the way he
speaks that kind of makes you want to believe everything he’s
on about. Denzel has
made some pretty significant films about Black Men In America.
But he has also
made some pretty good thrillers too. Out Of Time, unfortunately
is not one of them.
Now don’t get me wrong. It’s a perfectly OK film for
the kind of film that it is. But it’s
a little too gimmicky to raise it up onto the level of some of
Denzel’s other thrilla
type movies like Training Day, The Bone Collector, Devil In A
Blue Dress, The Pelican
Brief, The Mighty Quinn, A Soldier’s Story or Fallen (all
of which are worth checking
out).
In Out Of Time, Denzel plays the sheriff in a sleepy little Florida
town who gets taken
to the cleaners by some conpersons. Because this is a caper film
and it’s sort of
worth seeing, I can’t tell you a whole lot more. What I
can say is that I kind of found
this movie a little on the predictable side. It was one of those
‘all plot and relatively
little character’ pieces that come along every so often
and have a hard time being all
that they can be.
Anyway, Denzel plays his role with earnest professionalism, in
spite of the fact that
he doesn’t really have a hell of a lot he can sink his teeth
into. My personal opinion
about this film is that it really should have been played more
for laughs than semi-
serious and they probably would have really been onto something.
Instead they
ended up with a kind of weird hybrid that didn’t really
have much in the way of tone
anyway.
COLD MOUNTAIN (TWO SPUDS)
It wasn’t the coldest day of the year, but damn close when
the Wife and I headed out
to see Cold Mountain. This movie, which is based on a book which
millions (mostly
womenfolk) have read. It’s one of those strange sad tales
that only seem to happen
in America.
Cold Mountain is a place in Virginia or Carolina somewhere, below
the Mason Dixon
line, where a young man named Inman (Jude Law) falls in love with
the daughter
(Nicole Kidman) of a preacher (Donald Sutherland), and then marches
off to the war
between the states, sees a lot more crap than he should, gets
injured and goes
AWOL, making a beeline straight for home and lovely Nicole. And
frankly, who
wouldn’t?
Cold Mountain moves back and forth in time quite liberally and
without managing to
confuse this Spud’s peanut brain. The story it tells is
really quite magnificent, the
phrase ‘sweeping saga’ comes to mind. The production
values of this film are really
quite something to behold. It’s as well acted, well directed
and well crafted as they
come.
What’s weird about Cold Mountain is that it is a quintessentially
‘American’ story,
but almost every leading role, with few exceptions, is played
by an Aussie, a Brit,
another Brit, yet another Brit, an Irishman and a Canuk. It was
also, for the most,
part shot on location in Romania, which I guess looks a lot like
America in the 1860s.
This doesn’t diminish the film in any way. In fact the actors
chosen by director/
screenwriter Anthony Minghella are absolutely perfect, including
Yankette Rene
Zellweger, who is amazing as a mountain girl sent to help Nicole
after things start
going to hell for her.
Cold Mountain is a stunning mini-epic, a scaled down Gone With
The Wind, which
was immensely entertaining, moving, powerful, violent and sad
at the same time. It’s
one of those movies that should do quite well at the Oscars, not
that there’s
anything wrong with that.
The best you can hope for with a movie like this is that it takes
you away to another
place and time where you can come away with a sense of what it
must have been like
to live back then. Cold Mountain certainly does that, I guess,
although I doubt there
were women as good looking as Nicole Kidman around back then.
Man, she even
looked stunning in the dead of winter when she was starving. Now
that’s good
looking.
SPUDITORIAL—POOR PATHETIC FAME ADDICTS
Re TV: this is what I know so far. A lot of the shows I was raving
about last year are
starting to turn into soap operas of one kind or another. A lot
of the new shows that I
thought were pretty cool this year are starting to get goofy.
And those goddam
reality shows just keep on coming. One of the most obscene that
I have seen lately is
called The Apprentice. This is a show where a whole bunch of allegedly
bright
people, who have been successfully running their own businesses
all over America,
collectively pack it in and come to New York to compete for a
job in Donald Trump’s
organization. One by one they are eliminated from competition,
not because they are
particularly devious or dangerous, as is the case with some of
the Survivor
contestants, and which I can somehow respect, but because they
are inadequate. It’s
a really dumb question, I guess but I can’t help but wonder
why these people would
subject themselves to humiliation at the hands of Trump, who really
comes across as
a true dick in this show, and do it in front of a fairly large
audience of voyeuristic
ooglers that could include people they will someday have to do
business with.
To me this culture of reality TV is one of the biggest mysteries
I have encountered.
Many, many people are perfectly willing to make complete assholes
out of
themselves for a teeny tiny, and mostly forgettable period of
time in the spotlight.
Has our society, with its intense focus on fame and celebrity
and its voracious
television appetite, actually created a whole subculture of ‘fame
addicts’? People
who will sacrifice both their privacy, and in many cases, their
dignity for that fifteen
minutes…Whoa.
This is all pretty sad in my opinion, even though there is really
nothing I can do
about it, outside of this lament. I don’t know whether to
feel sorry for these people
or to just shrug my shoulders and move on. Obviously something
in their lives has
let them down big time, for them to be craving attention so desperately.
Myself, I have always preferred to remain anonymous and faceless,
not because I’m
particularly hideous to look at or anything. But because I always
thought that being
recognized by the great mass of people presents a combination
of negatives. First of
all, it makes you a target for anyone who might be jealous of
your celebrity. And,
secondly, it forces you to actually spend time chatting with a
lot of people who are
only interested in you because you are a celebrity, which strikes
me as a relatively
huge drain on your freedom and privacy.
But there you go. As far as the Donald Trump show goes, I only
catch bits and pieces
of it here and there. But he seems to have these people jumping
through an
incredible number of hoops every week. They all seem to be loving
it and so does the
fairly respectable audience this show is pulling in. And at the
end of the day, that’s
seems to be more to the point. This stuff sells, no matter how
crappy or degrading or
lowest common denominator it seems to be to me.
That’s all she wrote for this week. (or fortnight).
I do want to remind you that the big Beat The February Blues Festival
in the Junction
is just around the corner, so go check out all the great events
that are being offered
at www.junctiongardens.ca . Tickets are moving briskly because
there’s lots of cool
stuff going on including a series of progressive dinners, blues,
rock and funk
performances, magicians, hypnotists etc. And of course you’ll
be supporting a great
cause to boot.
See you soon.
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2004 - COUCH POTATO CHRONICLES
