The false hope of early spring showed its face last week, only to be crowded out by the reality of lingering winter. Don't put your Sorels away just yet.

THE MISSING (TWO SPUDS)

Ron Howard has been a household name around Hollywood since he was a young warthog, starting as Opie on the Andy Griffith show and later are Richie Cunningham on Happy Days.

Ron probably realized after Happy Days and that his now legendary hair loss would put him out of the running for more TV or movie work, so he turned his hand to directing. He grew up watching all kinds of Hollywood productions go down and was no stranger to the process. He took to it like a duck to water,  so to speak and his filmography has put him at the top of the mainstream Hollywood director heap. Ron always seems to make movies about stuff he is  interested in and it really shows. His grasp of what makes a film a great  viewing experience is very strong. His choice of material is generally  excellent and because he works with well-connected producer Brian Grazer, there is always enough $$$$ to make the movie the right way.

The Missing, Opie's latest Opus (how's that for criticspeak), is a beautiful  looking film that stars Tommy Lee Jones as the estranged father of Cate  Blanchett, who is on a quest to repair his relationship with his daughter, after having deserted Cate and her mother many years earlier to embrace the Native American lifestyle. Which means that Tommy Lee gets to have real long hair and dress in a lot of funky leather.

While he is in the process of being told to put it where the sun don't shine by Cate, one of her daughters is taken by a mob of renegade Indians, led by a nasty looking Medicine Man, who are burning their way across the New Mexico territory picking up young girls to sell into sexual slavery in Mexico.

Anyway, after a lot of emotional jostling Cate and Tommy Lee set out to get Cate's daughter back etc etc.

This movie was based on a book by a dude named Thomas Eidson who, according to the IMDB works as a spokesman for Fidelity Investments in Boston, so I don't know how authentic his research into this subject was. But we're talking about a mainstream Hollywood movie here, so who knows how true any of this was to the book.

The Missing was mostly about the relationship between Tommy Lee and Cate and  about how some things in life can change you in ways that are extremely profound. I don't know what it is that possesses a man to go out for a pack of cigarettes and never come back. But because I am a writer, I have often imagined a number of reasons for it. Back then, intelligent settlers were faced, more often than not, with insurmountable hardships. Yet they saw that the Native People were one with the environment and appeared to survive quite nicely. Well, it was their land after all and unlike the settlers and the armies and the robber barons who, slowly but surely, took it all away, they had respect for it. Maybe Tommy Lee thought that was just a better way to live.

The Missing gets a little herky jerky and expected at the end as Ron struggles a bit tying things up in a neat little Hollywood bow. But overall, it was an interesting experience and these days that counts for a lot.

THE ESSENTIAL RON HOWARD

- A Beautiful Mind ('01) - Ed TV ('99) - Ransom ('96) - Far & Away ('92) -

- Backdraft ('91) - Willow ('88) - Cocoon ('85) - Splash ('84) - Night Shift ('82) -

MASKED & ANONYMOUS (1 SPUD, MAYBE TWO, I JUST DON'T KNOW)

There's a very fine line between genius and tomfoolery in movie making. Having said that, I can't really figure out how to review this movie. I have immense respect for Bob Dylan who wrote and stars in this film. He's the only real legendary character I choose to acknowledge. He was definitely one of the reasons I chose to be a writer and certainly one of the most powerful influences in my literary life, such as it is. So I am always willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

But this movie is very strange. In it Bob plays essentially himself, (under the name Jack Fate) who has been released from a third world prison to play a benefit concert in a third world country, which he does. That's really about it, except for several layers of politics, intrigue and social commentary about just about everything.

A lot of the reviews I have read of this film have almost begged and pleaded for patience and understanding here. And so I tried. But I found the dialogue, all of which was delivered by a pretty stellar cast, just a little too poor man's Shakespearian for my mainstream sensibilities. So shame on me for not getting it.

From almost every perspective, Masked & Anonymous is a textbook example of well rendered and thought provoking absurdity. But I guess it's that implied oxymoron here that fractured my attention span and caused me to hear only the cacophony of high sounding ideas and verbal cleverness spewing forth with no apparent rhyme or reason. I apologize, Bob, for not being as enthralled with your screenwriting as I am with your songwriting. I really wish I had because I have been a huge fan for so long.

But you yourself said it in one of your most brilliant songs. "I used to care but things have changed". That about sums it up for me vis a vis this movie.

And that brings me right back to where I started, trying to decide whether this movie was a work of genius or just a silent but deadly fart in a windstorm. I'm giving it two spuds because I think you should decide for yourself. Who knows.

HIDALGO (TWO SPUDS)

Suffice it to say there hasn't really been a movie like this for quite a while. To wit, a big sprawling adventure that doesn't take itself too seriously. The last good one I saw starred Harrison Ford. Unfortunately Hidalgo isn't in that league, even though you get the feeling it wants to be. It's purported to be based on the real life story of a halfbreed
cowboy/pony express rider by the name of Frank Hopkins, played to perfection by Viggo Mortenson. Frank is a quiet man in the noisy world of 1890 America.

His best friend is a painted mustang named Hidalgo and together they became well known for winning long distance endurance races. Anyway Viggo and Hidalgo get invited to compete in a race in Saudi Arabia, mostly because the Sheik who puts on the race has been breeding Arabian horses for many moons and a decisive victory over an American Mustang would remove any doubt about which breed is the world heavyweight champ.

Hidalgo is directed by Joe Johnston who's one of this good old boys who knows how to photograph animals in action and has a strong Speilberg (Indiana Jones/Jurassic Park) connection.

But contrary to what the trailers would have you believe, Hidalgo isn't all wall to wall action and adventure, there's been some thought put into the story here as well. Which really separates it from the pack in the sprawling epic category.

Viggo, as I said, does a great job of being quiet, softspoken and generally laid back Indian like. Omar Sharif is also great as the Sultan of Sultans who has lost two sons to the race, which is aptly named The Sea of Fire.

Hidalgo is the kind of movie that should be seen in the biggest theatre you can find. We saw it in the big theatre at Eglinton Town Centre (Eg and Warden in Toronto). This is one of those movies with something for everyone and how often do I get to say that.

SPUDITORIAL-FINALLY CLIMBING OUT OF THE VORTEX OF THE FANTASTIC PLASTIC

Here's where I finally lost it for the Academy Awards. About half an hour into the proceedings after a pretty funny twenty minutes with Billy Crystal, some asshole who won an Academy award for a live action short film that nobody, and I really do mean nobody, will ever see, prattled on and on and on and on and on, way past the music that was supposed to signal the bitter end of his speaking time, just thanking all these goddam people, filling the TV box and the lives of more than a billion viewers, myself included, with the deadest of deadly dead air as he kept chanting names.

Certain that my head was as close as it has ever been to actually imploding, I felt time slow down to a crawl. In this surrealistic quarter time, I rose up out of my comfortable Loblaws glider, mumbled something to the Wife, and walked away. I climbed the stairs, grabbled a fresh bottle of water from the fridge and relocated myself in the living room where I proceeded to watch some basketball, then The Shield, then the last hour or so of Scarface on TBS, but I slept through most of that.

All the while down below, the ultimate exercise in pointing out the obvious was unfolding as The Lord Of The Rings received its just reward and just about every Oscar it was nominated for. But I honestly didn't give a rat's ass.

Frankly my apathy surprised me a bit. I had been watching the Academy Awards since I was a Tater Tot. I remember Bob Hope and Johnny Carson hosting the shows. I I remember the amazement I felt at seeing all those big time movie people all packed into the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. And just how special that night was.

But last night, after close to half a century of loyalty, I guess I just kind of outgrew it. It started right from the get go with all these insipid on camera people interviewing all the needy egomaniacs and chanting the mantra de jour, "And just who are you wearing, tonight?" The bible according to Gucci and Armani and Ralph Lauren. I really thought I was going to Ralph myself. Then Johnny Depp, who I used to think was pretty cool and who had laid down was far and away the best male acting performance of last year. By showing up admitted that he too had been sucked into the Vortex of the Fantastic Plastic. Sooner or later, it gets everyone.

At that point, it wasn't going to take a whole lot to nudge me over the edge and then, wouldn't you know it, here comes the live action short film guy droning on and on, pouring thick gooey syrup on my poor fried brain, causing it to shrivel up and turn my memories of Oscar nights past into just so much antique dust.

I've already said my piece on the fact that there are way too many awards shows. Unfortunately the Academy Awards, which I used to think was pretty special, has taken its place on the great mandala and is now just another awards show. A great excuse for a Sunday night party, a chance to heap ridicule on the egocentricity of the movie industry but, alas, very little else.

I guess maybe I just don't have as thick a skin as some of the 800 odd million people who made this year's Oscars the highest rated show of all time. It just seems to me that these awards have become just another in a long list of established entities that through the course of time grow a political tumor and eventually start to serve the process in a way that was probably never really intended back in the day. Or maybe not. Maybe we've all just been hoodwinked by a clever stroke of PR genius and one by one we' re just waking up to it.

Nuff said.

See you next issue.