Spuds

Hope you are enjoying the fine spring weather. I've been chopping ice in the back yard of Spud Central on and off all day, myself. I just can't get rid of the stuff fast enough. Happy Easter to everyone who is inclined to celebrate this holiday. And to those who don't, well I hope you enjoy the long weekend anyway. I'll take one whenever I can get one.

Cheers, Mur

PS: Please note that the mini series Angels In America starts on Showcase on April 12. Consult your TV bible for the exact time in your area. This is a pretty amazing piece of work.

 

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V O L U M E 250

The street outside the windows of Spud Central are icy and slippery once again. It’s nearly the end of March, technically two days into spring and winter just doesn’t want to let go. It’s easy to be philosophical about this. But I’m jonesing pretty badly to get the old bike tuned up for the warm weather. I mean, I know this isn’t the Maritimes where the houses are all literally buried under the snow for five months solid, but, really, don’t you think we’ve had enough of this crap. I mean this is spoiled rotten Toronto—The Centre of The Universe. Flower are supposed to be popping their little heads out of the ground. I’m supposed to be wearing sandals and keeping a pitcher full of iced tea in the fridge. The tables are supposed to be filling up outside of Starbucks so Stortini and I can drink coffee and watch all the local talent parade by But noooo. Not yet, Mr Couch Potato person. Not just yet.


MR 3000 (2 SPUDS) (DVD)

Bernie Mac is a comedian I have to admit that I never totally got. I tried watching his show for a while but it got a little tedious. He did a lot of staring into the camera and talking directly to me and it was kinda weird. I didn’t mind the technique when it was used by Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller’s Day off. But this was not my cup of tea. Maybe it’s those bulging eyes or the angry black man sensibility bubbling beneath the surface.

All that not withstanding, Bernie is slowly but surely making a rep for himself in the movie business. In the beginning, it was mostly in movies that are marketed primarily to brain dead black audiences with titles like Booty Call and How To Be A Player and House Party III. Oi. Then he got his own TV show and the white folks started to get interested in him and he started doing supporting roles in movies like What’s The Worst That Could Happen? and the two Oceans movies 11 & 12. Now Bernie is stepping out in front with Mister 3000.

In this flick which is a sort of comedy, Bernie plays a Barry Bonds type schmuck baseball superstar who gets 3000 hits, which is enough to get him a Hall of Fame nomination, and then just walks away from the game and his team at a critical point in the season. Ten years later when the Baseball Hall of Fame stat nerds are going over his record for Hall of Fame worthiness, they discover that he didn’t really get 300o hits, but was, in fact 3 short. Now this puts a real crimp into Bernie’s little business empire and so he decides to go back to his 2 team, The Milwaukee Brewers, in this case, and get those three damn hits, which he considers should be no sweat.

This is a very charming movie. Bernie has a lot of charisma and handles his part very well. The story is put together by people who actually know a bit about both the game and the business of baseball. And while this is no Kevin Costner homage to the sport kind of movie, it’s pretty easy to watch and good for a few mild chuckles.

This flick was directed by a guy named Charles Stone III, who also made another very good 2 Spud movie a few years ago called Drumline, about life in a division one college marching band. Yeah, really. Both are worth checking out


I HEART HUCKABEES (1 SPUD) (DVD)

There are a lot of big time actors who support the work of relatively new directors. In this case, it’s Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin, Mark Whalberg, Jude Law and Naomi Watts. The director is a guy named David O. Russell. The O is for obtuse, I think. His only claim to fame was that he wrote and directed a decent movie called Three Kings, late in the last century, which is where he met Mark Wahlberg. After that it’s all about connecting the dots. Unfortunately when actors conspire to get a movie made, it’s usually because they get to do something in the movie that plays against their type. And so it goes.

In a nutshell, this movie is about a tree hugging poet (Jason Schwartzman) who wants to keep a WalMart sized megacorp, called Huckabees, from building a shopping mall on a small marsh in his town. His ex-best friend (Jude Law) works for the Huckabees and has also managed to take over the preservation group, causing Jason no end of consternation. He enlists the help of a couple of psychic detectives (Oi), (Hoffman and Tomlin) to help him get his head straight, which of course takes him through a ton of issues yadda, yadda. They introduce him to Mark Whalberg, a crazy fireman who is obsessed with doom and gloom and together they take off, on their freaking bicycles no less, on a voyage to discovery.

Now, I’m really torn over this movie because on the one hand it was very well written, well directed and well acted by all the high priced talent. On the other hand it was completely moronic, ludicrous and indulgent in its tone and story line. On the other hand, it was kind of interesting from a psycho-philosophical perspective. And on the last hand, I just couldn’t get over the feeling that I outgrew the basic philosophy of this movie when I stopped messing around with altered states of consciousness way back in the day.

Is that confusing enough for you? Let’s just say this. If you are 20 years old and you have not yet formed a view of the world that allows you to function within it, this movie might serve as a kind of facile form of therapy or intellectual exercise. If you have already kinda figured your life out and are relatively happy with your level of social awareness, this movie is a facile waste of celluloid, filled with actors who really should know better.

On the other hand, maybe now that Mr Russell has this out of his system, he will go on to makes more good movies like Three Kings. But what do I know. I certainly don’t think this movie ever should have ever even been made. But there you go.


JAKE IN PROGRESS (1.5 SPUDS)
THURSDAYS, ABC. NO FIXED TIME. IN A NUTSHELL:

John Stamos, Hollywood prettyboy who hasn’t really had a steady job since the Olsen twins were cute and cuddly, is back as a sharp dressed New York PR guy who is trying to figure out a lot of things. This show is a less sophisticated, broader comedy than 3 Sex In The City, and the four girls are three guys. John and his two buds. One, a dentist who is married and whipped by both his wife and his in-laws and the other who is a David Blane wannabe…at least for the moment. FEARLESS FORECAST: This show is interesting because it’s well written and acted and it’s fun to watch, but it’s currently up against the OC, the Apprentice and CSI, so the sad fact is that I could be the only spud out there watching it. I’m not sure it can survive long in this time slot, although I think Thursday is a good night for it. For some reason they’ve been running two half hours eps back to back and tonight they ran four in a row. Maybe ABC just sees this as crack filler, as the Lion’s share of the audience this week is going to the NCAA March Madness Tournament. BOTTOM LINE: This show is good enough. I just think the competition will probably end up killing it.


CONSTANTINE (1.5 SPUDS) (BIG SCREEN)

My real life business as advertising guy is going great guns at the moment. Since the beginning of the year I have been hitting the computer at about 7 am and working till about 6:0o. But yesterday was the first day in a long time where the Wife and I could both wedge in a movie, so at around 3:30, we just said screw it and headed up to the mutant mall for a little R&R in the dark.

The movie we chose was Constantine. This is one of those strange movies about the Devil and religious mumbo jumbo and some of the world weary souls that are keeping heaven and hell from colliding with eachother right in the middle of all we have here.

Keanu Reeves plays this exorcist named John Constantine, who, during the course of what is supposed to be a routine exorcism, (how weird is that?), concludes that there’s something odd going on. Keanu is a chain smoking, hard drinking, non-priestly kind of exorcist who has just been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass. He works for the Archangel Gabriel, played by Tilda Swinton looking very much like a curly haired David Bowie. Evidently Keanu is busting his ass down here dispatching demons in order to earn his way into heaven, but somehow he just can’t catch a break.

This movie is based on a DC Comic book or graphic novel called Hellblazer, and it is filled to the brim with all kinds of neat Catholic mythology, outstanding inter-dimensional weaponry, spectacular visual effects and lots of high end grossout stuff too. There’s even a vision of hell, where Keanu has to go for business reasons, that is to die for.

I won’t tell you too much about the story, because it’s pretty decent, even if it’s a little far fetched. I’m kind of a student of movies that are made from comic books, because the guys who create the source material are really the last of the stoned-out literary innovators.

All in all, this movie is pretty spectacular. But it falls short of two spudness, because basically it’s way too dark and full of itself, and because it’s about all the weird stuff that religion has spawned, it’s kind of silly and facile, if you have somehow managed to come out the other side and just believe that God doesn’t need to be personified to be real.

Keanu is perfect in this part. But it’s sort of the kind of part he always plays these days. A kind of sad, self-destructive, ultra-introspective anti-hero. Line Neo in all those silly matrix movies. It’s a far cry from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. But it’s still worth seeking, even if only for all the cool effects and a very convincing character turn by Peter Stormare as Satan.


THE SPORTS POTATO CHRONICLE
MARCH MADNESS—WHAT THE HELL DOES IT REALLY MEAN?

There are essentially two kinds of people in the world. Those who know what March Madness is and those who don’t. There may be a third group of people who know what it is and don’t care. They are what I call Maple Leaf fans.

March Madness is the nickname that has been given to the NCAA Collegiate Division One Senior Men’s Basketball Tournament, which takes place over three long weeks starting in mid March. This tournament brings together 64 of the allegedly best college basketball teams in the country to bang heads until there is just one team standing.

The tournament teams are is divided into 4 sub brackets of 16 teams each. The subbrackets play off against eachother and the winners from each of the brackets assemble on the final weekend in something called The Final Four. Actually there’s nickname for each state of the tournament. The first round isn’t really called anything except maybe Round 1. The second appears to be called The Round of 32. The third round is the Sweet 16. The fourth round is the Elite 8 . The fifth round is the Final 4. And the last game is the national championship.

Like most sporting events, the thing that powers the interest, aside from school loyalty, is wagering. It’s estimated that more than 2.5 Billion dead presidents are wagered on these games, which makes it the biggest gambling event in sports. I find this kind of weird because, it is extremely difficult to pick teams in the sport of men’s college basketball. Last night, for example, two of the top teams in the country, Kansas and Syracuse (my personal pick) were eliminated by teams from schools I have never even heard of. Part of being successful at wagering is having a bit of a grasp on a team’s makeup and performance record. This is something that’s nearly impossible to accurately track in college sports, because you really have to look hard for news about half the teams that get selected to play. And hardly any of the teams playing in the tournament have ever played against eachother. In other words, you really do pays your money and takes your chances here.

But what I really like about this tournament is the basketball itself. There are more heroics going on in these 120 odd games than you will see in a whole NBA season. These kids are fighting for their lives in every game. And they are also young enough and strong enough and talented enough to make the fight a real scrap. Obviously in the first round there’s going to be a lot of inequity, when you have a Number 1 seeded team playing a #16 seed, but so on. But this year there are a lot more close first round games than I have ever seen. In fact out of the 32 games played, there were 8 upsets. Which is a lot.

Today (Saturday), we move into the second round and the play gets even more intense, because the team pairings start to become more evenly matched. And as any sports fan will tell you, there’s really nothing as exciting to watch as a very tight men’s division one college basketball game. It’s the dictionary definition of ‘intense’. In fact, everything about this tournament is totally intense, from the rabid fans who will pay more than 600 bucks for a nosebleed seat to any of the final four and championship games, to the TV commercials that are aimed at the rest of the college students watching in sports bars all across America, all the alumni sitting watching on their big plasma screens in the suburbs, and the urban black market, with sons, brothers, best friends cousins and fellow gangbangers playing in the tourney, to all the CBS network hype, it really is just so much madness. And because it takes place in March, well, there you go -- March Madness. Now you know what it’s all about.

By the time you get this the final four teams will be decided and will play next weekend, with the Championship game on Monday. This is pretty amazing basketball. It makes the NBA look positively antique.u next time.