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I know it’s kind of premature to start thinking about spring, especially when I’m sitting here on Sunday morning and the temperature is hovering somewhere around absolute zero, but there you go. Just two days ago, I packed in the week an hour early and took off for a little junket on my bike. Yes, on my bike. The roads were dry, it was bright and sunny. It was a balmy 4 degrees C and not too windy. Within 30 minutes I had ridden to Jumbo Video to return a movie for the Princess of Pain, stopped into the Bulk Barn for a few movie supplies and was firmly tucked into my seat at the Beaches Theatre, which I am, for reasons of extreme convenience only, giving another chance, to see Big Fish. The conclusion here is that, it’s nice to be in the centre of it all once again and not out on the fringes where everything you want to do involves expending fossil fuel, driving on roads with a lot of impatient people and finding convenient parking in overcrowded mini, maxi and mutant malls.

THE SUPERBOWL 1 SPUD

Andrew Smith and Kuljit, his lovely bride-to-be showed up along with Mike “Where’s?”
Waldin for chips and chili and some Costco macaroons. Nobody was expecting this to be much of a game, myself included. I thought the New England Patriots would 8-yard pass the hapless Carolina Panthers into oblivion, then add insult to injury by completely shutting down their defense. And that’s pretty much what happened for the first half of the game.

Then in the second half, what do you know a football game erupted, and a high scoring affair at that. New England won, but only by a field goal kicked with just 4 seconds left on the clock which otherwise would have sent the game into overtime and who knows what.

Forgettable first half -- extremely memorable second half. I’ve seen both better and worse.

Having said all that, I’m saddened to report that the entire game was eclipsed by what has now become the most infamous act of boob exposure maybe of all time. I am referring of course to the halftime hijinx of Ms Janet Jackson, who in a duet with ex boy band pretty boy Justin Timberlake, allowed said prettyboy to tear away a piece of the leather costume she was wearing, thus exposing the alleged boob. Now all this could have been nothing more than an unfortunate accident that played out in front of about a billion people, give or take a few million, except for the fact that the boob in question, in addition to being quite a nice boob, had some sort of sculptured pastie/nipple ring attached to it, This led me immediately to the ghastly conclusion that this was no accident but a deliberate act of boob exposure on the part of Ms Jackson. I lay this completely on her, because if you saw the look on pretty
boy Justin’s face , you would have had a very hard time believing he was in cahoots with her on this. And as it turns out, Ms Jackson has subsequently admitted that it was her decision to let the boob in question be exposed. This leads me to another pretty obvious question-- What the hell is it with these Jacksons? A couple of weeks ago, Michael Jackson comes out of the courthouse where he is being accused of child abuse and climbs up onto the roof of a limo for a king size photo op. Didn’t anybody advise him that a little humility could go a long way in his situation? Last weekend little sister Janet displays a middleweight mammary to a billion people. You know, I’m starting to think that the yahoos who populate these reality shows are really only mildly infected with fame addiction, but these Jacksons seem to have a thousand dollar a day habit.

There is, however, a funny side to all this hoopla. It’s getting to watch the constipated old farts who run professional sports like the NFL, looking like they are ready to blow a gasket while they paint a picture of what is really nothing any kid in America hasn’t seen in his dad’s Penthouse magazines, (which he thinks are all so well hidden), as something akin to the gang rape of an elderly nun. Come on America. You’re the world’s leading producer of soft and hard core pornography. It’s the twenty first century. And at the end of the day, it was just a nice little boob with a pastie on it. Get over yourselves. 99 percent of your audience was six beers over the line and too busy lamenting over how bad a first half of football they had just witnessed. Nobody saw anything and even if they did, nobody really gave a rat’s ass. At least nobody here at Spud Central.

LOST IN TRANSLATION (NO SPUD 4U)

This movie is being hyped as one of the best American films of 2003. If that’s the case, I think we have to start redefining what’s good and what’s not and start taking another long look at all the other ‘boring’ films made last year. This movie is a serious yawnfest from beginning to end, punctuated only by some funny Bill Murray stuff, which you can get for free on the Tonight Show, three or four times a year.

I noticed in the newspaper tonight that this film was nominated for 4 Oscars, including best picture. Oi. I can make you a list right now of ten pictures that were better than this mumbo jumbo and didn’t even get a second look. America is a funny place. In America they expected that Sofia Coppola, the director of this film, would be breaking out big time with this movie.

She had made a couple of other so so films and was due for something. My thinking was that she would maybe go for something a lot more dramatic. Instead she went for quirky and arty. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, It’s just that arty is generally, well, boring, and that’s exactly what Lost In Translation is.

What little story this movie contains is about a two people who meet in Tokyo. Bill Murray is a big time Hollywood movie star (like Bill Murray) who has come over to do an ad campaign for some kind of whiskey. Scarlett Johannson plays the bored wife of a vapid rock and roll photographer (Giovanni Ribisi). Bill and Scarlett start hanging out, mostly because there’s nothing much else to do in Tokyo except interact with a lot of high technology.

The cinematography in this film makes it feel like dusk in the winter all the way through. I’m assuming, because it’s ‘arty’ that that is making some sort of a statement about life in Tokyo. Unfortunately it’s about the only statement I caught.

About three quarters of the way through, it was unanimously (Wife/Me) decided that we’d taken enough of this particular torture. So I don’t really know how this movie ends. If it stayed ‘arty’ then it probably didn’t end at all, just kind of faded out. I know it felt kind of endless to me.

SECONDHAND LIONS (DVD) (2 SPUDS)

There was a time when Disney films used to make me want to surrender my lunch. But the one big advantage of having a guy like Michael Eisner at the helm is that he’s somehow managed to shake up the formula and add a little more sophistication to the movie mix.

Don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t happen every time. In fact I still find the majority of
Disneyflicks tend to reek of melted sugar, but every now and then you get a good one. The most recent of this ilk is Secondhand Lions, which stars Michael Caine and Robert Duvall as two much- older-than-they-look brothers who take in their nephew (Haley Joel Osment), while Haley’s single mom goes off to pick up another loser boyfriend in her search for the small house with the picket fence that tended to define the late fifties American dream.

As the movie progresses Haley learns that his two uncles have led quite a life and have amassed a fortune in the process, which they keep in a big steamer trunk in their basement-- a fortune which everyone in the family, including Haley’s mom, are trying to get their mitts on.

This movie is a simple and lighthearted romp that doesn’t appear to be trying to stake out any high moral ground or be any sort of a coming of age message film either. It’s just a pleasant little tale of two eccentric rich Texans and the kid they grow to love.

There are lots of cool flashbacks and a pack of dogs and a pig that hang out everywhere the action is, in typical Disney fashion. It’s worth a look-see on a slow TV night and it’s great for the kids.

SOMETHING’S GOTTA GIVE (2 SPUDS I SUPPOSE)

This is what’s commonly known as a vehicle, which is a mode of transportation, not unlike a limo, for really big movie stars to ride in between making ‘significant’ motion pictures. Or not. This particular vehicle stars Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton and is a pretty stereotypical Hollywood romantic comedy, where everybody is rich and successful and has great jobs along with a beach house in the Hamptons and always look good and say witty things and have deep seeded anxieties and inadequacies that make them as vulnerable and endearing as the aformentioned rich and successful nature of their fictional lives will allow.

In this one Jack plays a wiley 63 year old music mogul who only dates women under 30 and Diane plays a dysfunctional writer of plays who has been divorced for 20 years and has just about got the hang of it.

As romantic comedies go, this one isn’t all that bad, though it does get a little dumb down the home stretch, mostly because the story has gone on a bit too long and I’m sitting there going “wrap it up already”. But overall it was a cute little story which was hinting at but not polemicizing the ludicrousness of May/December relationships, kind of concluding that while they may be a lot of fun at first, at the end of the day you’re really better off with somebody closer to your own age, which of course is the purest form of bullshit, but who cares, it’s a Hollywood romantic comedy. It has to be about something.

In addition to Jack and Diane who pretty much dominate this film, there is some very good supporting work by Frances McDormund, Amanda Peet (who is drop dead gorgeous) and Brampton boy Keanu Reeves (who is drop dead gorgeous too, according to the Wife…I wouldn’t know anything about that, myself).

If you want to see Jack Nicholson’s entire facial expression range and if you’ve ever
wondered whatever happened to Annie Hall, this is the movie for you, although the love scenes between Jack and Diane are a little hard to take, and Diane’s nude shot was a pretty brave thing for her to do. We got a few good laughs, though and didn’t come away feeling all that manipulated, so that can’t be all bad, now can it?

BIG FISH (TWO XL SPUDS)

I have always had this image of Tim Burton as something of a circus ringmaster. There’s an element of big time fantasy in his work that’s unmistakably his. And as he progresses and evolves he just gets better and better until he arrives at a movie like Big Fish.

First of all, you should know that there really is a big fish in the movie. And secondly that there really is a powerful allegory at work here that has to do with big fish. Which is undoubtedly why the movie is called Big Fish.

Big Fish is essentially the story of a man named Edward Bloom, who is played in his old age by Albert Finney and as a younger man by Ewan McGregor, who has told what his son believes to be ‘tall tales’ all his life. The son, played by Billy Crudup, comes back home to be with Albert while he’s fixin’ to die and begs his father to reveal something more of himself than just the stories that he has heard so many time and has never really believed.

What this movie turns out to be is the story of Albert’s life, which has been embellished to some extent. And as it turns out this becomes, in the hands of Tim Burton, a fascinating eulogy to the common man in America.

It all sounds a bit intellectual and that I believe is the point Tim Burton is trying to make here. He wants us to believe (and probably always has) that you can bring literature to life in a way that’s exciting, visually stunning and extremely moving, without hauling out a whole boatload of movie cliches. This movie is powered by some of the finest visual creativity going in perfect synch with an interesting story extremely well told, an amazing Danny Elfman score, tour de force acting performances right across the board and an ending that is one of the more moving scenes I have ever seen on film.

I talk a lot about suspension of disbelief as a critical part of your responsibility as a watcher of movies. But the real art of this film is that its innate charm and sincerity don’t force you to suspend anything. All you have to do is watch and you’ll be taken somewhere very special.

The characters in Big Fish are so well constructed that you just can’t help but care about them. You can really feel the love the three members of the Bloom family have for eachother.

And it gets you thinking about the love you have for the people who are close to you. Wow. That’s pretty powerful stuff.

Tim Burton has gotten so good interweaving strange and unbelievable things with real and believable ones in his movies that I found myself more than willing to drop all my
intellectual defenses and just give in to the story. And if you can do that, the emotional rewards are simply astounding. This movie has stuck with me for quite a while now.

I can’t guarantee that you’ll relate to Big Fish as strongly as I did. I’m not what you’d call an ultra-emotional person, but there was something about this movie that struck a chord deep inside me. I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was. Something about the way Edward Bloom lived his life, helping a lot of people and never wanting any credit for it. There is something so fundamentally good about that notion. And there are very few directors who have even attempted to mine that particular vein. The only one I can think of offhand is Frank Capra.

So I guess I’m pretty much putting Tim Burton in that league. Go see this movie. It’s a real keeper.

Well that’s all I got for this session. See you soon.