Where's the Outrage?

I’m sure that I’ve mentioned this before, but I really love movies. I’m probably one of the few people who can say that he has seen Attack of the Killer Tomatoes three times in the theater. It was an awful movie and the guys who were making it knew it was an awful movie. Contraband is not awful. It just isn’t that good. For me, this is disheartening. I love movies in which one character outsmarts everybody else. I can’t remember the first movie that I saw with that kind of formula, but the movie Hopscotch with Walter Matthau is the first one that I can think of off the top of my head. Of course, all of the James Bond-type movies are exactly like this.

Our hero, Mark Wahlberg, is a famous smuggler who has now gone legitimate. His brother-in-law, Andy, is played by Caleb Landry Jones, who is terrible in this movie. Jones’ character has gotten into the business and is in trouble. He has had to dump a shipment of cocaine and now the bad guys are after him. So far, we’ve seen this movie before. Mark Wahlberg to the rescue. He confronts the bad guys. Personally, I didn’t think the bad guys seemed to be all that bad. Why doesn’t our hero break open a can of whoop ass and call it a day? Well, for some reason, he doesn’t. Instead, he has to come up with some ungodly sum of money or badness will rain down on his family. He decides that he’s going to do one last run. Surprised?? He’s got a go to Panama and pick up some phony money. Up until now, the movie is somewhat believable. From here on out, you really need to suspend any connections with reality.

Once in Panama with his crew, our hero rushes to make the drop-off. Unfortunately, the counterfeit money is bad. It’s made with terrible paper and our hero has to go and find the big boss. The big boss is so laughable as a character that it almost completely ruins the movie. (Think of drug runner from Romancing the Stone who was supposed to be a parody of Latino druglords.) The big boss convinces our hero to help with a daylight assault on an armored vehicle (this just happens to be going down right now, great timing!!) which turns into a shooting match with the police. Everybody dies except for our hero and his smuggling buddy. Surprised? Our hero somehow comes away with a rolled-up drop cloth (turns out to be a Jackson Pollock painting) and loads of counterfeit money. Oh, did I mention that his best friend, who is supposed to be protecting our hero’s family back in Louisiana while he is in Panama dodging bullets, is actually the mastermind drug dealer behind the bad guys? He is the same best friend who tries to make a move on his wife. Kate Beckinsale, as the wife, is very nice to watch, but does almost nothing to help this bad script. He then somehow almost kills his wife, who we are supposed to believe is dead, but who is really not. Confused? Don’t be. The movie really divorces itself from reality. A wife who has been hit over the head, wrapped in plastic and then nearly drowned in wet cement can wake up in the hospital a couple hours later just fine.

If you like these kind of movies, check out last year’s Mechanic with Jason Statham or, from a few years back, Gone in 60 Seconds with Nicholas Cage. Both are much better movies. I give this movie a C - which probably reflects grade inflation. (The commercials are highly deceptive and really do not give you any flavor for what the movie is about.)

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This is a must-see movie. It is simply fun and entertaining. It is as George Lucas mentioned in his interview with Jon Stewart. He was unable to tell the whole story of the Tuskegee airmen in two hours. When you think about it, he’s exactly correct. This movie goes into none of how the Tuskegee airmen were formed or the hardships they had before they got over to Europe. This movie starts when they are in Europe. It really focuses on the skill and the camaraderie that these World War II aces had. Racism is not the focus of this movie. Yes, the movie does touch on racism, somewhat. More importantly, the movie, in my opinion, captures what it must’ve been like to be a Tuskegee airman in the early 1940s. Because you were Black, race was a part of your daily life. It didn’t matter if you were an officer. This is captured extremely well in the movie.

Let me take just a second to talk about the special effects. This movie has the best flight and air to air combat sequences that I’ve seen since Top Gun. It is outstanding. It’s clearly a leap forward. You feel like you’re really in the cockpit flying with these guys.

I know that some people worried about a movie containing both Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr. Don’t worry. The acting is fabulous. They are more than adequate in their roles. Nate Parker (Marty ‘Easy’ Julian) and David Oyeleowo (Joe ‘Lightning’ Little) are outstanding. Their friendship, their camaraderie, really makes the movie. Daniela Ruah (of NCIS – Los Angeles fame) was a pleasant surprise as an Italian civilian and romantic interest. This movie’s script and the cinematography are done with 1940s-type feel. If you made a war movie in the 1940s, there had to be a romantic interest. Someone of substance whom you, as the audience, became attached to, must die. That’s part of the 1940s formula for war movies. This movie follows the same pattern.

This movie is not Malcolm X. It is a war movie. It is about action. It is about the heroes who flew the P 51 fighter planes. If you’re looking for something more, you need to find a different movie. If you’re looking for a movie that is fun, full of action and truly honors the legacy that the Tuskegee airmen left, then this is clearly the movie you need to see. I give this very entertaining movie an A-.

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There was a time long, long ago when it was fun to go to movies. The movies weren’t that expensive. They were easily available. If you lived in a big city, like Atlanta or Dallas, as I did, there was a huge variety of movies. Now, with expensive movie tickets, even more expensive concessions, irritated and downright rude patrons, moviegoing just isn’t as fun as it used to be. Also, we now have high definition TV at home with the movies of DirecTV and Netflix. It is almost more comfortable stay at home. So, I don’t go to movies is much as I used to.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was worth seeing. It was fun. Fast-paced. The script was well written. Robert Downey, Jr. has really found his stride and become the megastar we thought he would be over 20 years ago. The one thing that I will tell you is that in the many iterations of Sherlock Holmes, his chief nemesis Professor Moriarty is never seen. You’re always left wondering whether he is real or an intricate concoction of his imagination. In this movie, the professor is very much real. Because of my knowledge of previous movies, TV shows and books, I was wondering for most the movie whether the “good professor” was really as bad as Sherlock Holmes thought he was. By the end of the movie, it is clear that the professor is really, truly evil.

If you’d like to see a movie that is fun and that doesn’t have a bunch of cursing and nudity, then Sherlock Holmes is a great movie for you. You can take a date. I give the movie a solid A-. Enjoy.

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I had never heard of Tintin, a comic book which is extremely popular in Europe. Basically, the tale surrounds Tintin, a newspaperman who seems to have unlimited resources. He sees mystery and adventure everywhere. He is accompanied by his dog, Snowy, who seems to be more insightful than any human in the movie. There is a drunken sea captain and a suave but evil villain. The comic relief is provided by two characters named Thompson that reminded me of Laurel and Hardy.

The plot is enjoyable if not somewhat over-the-top. What makes this film so enjoyable is the outstanding animation. This may be the first time that I truly enjoyed 3-D. 3-D was not used as a gimmick, but was instead used to enhance outstanding action. If you remember Raiders of the Lost Ark – Temple of Doom, there were several scenes where the action was… let’s just say, a little intense. There was the roller coaster scene and there was the poison bottle scene. Tintin has several scenes which suffer from this hyper-action, but somehow it seems to work in this movie where it failed in Temple of Doom. There is a scene where Tintin and drunky Captain are trying to get several pieces of paper which have a secret code inscribed on them away from a beautifully drawn hawk. There are zip lines. There are tanks running through buildings. There is water rushing down a canal. There are good guys chasing bad guys and bad guys also trying to get the pieces of paper from the flying hawk. Somehow, this chaotic scene is all tied together. I enjoyed this movie immensely. This movie is clearly worth the price of admission plus popcorn and a drink. I grade this movie an A-. Have fun.

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My grandson has been in town the last several days; therefore, it is time for me to catch up on movies. Of course, he’s eight and I’m catching up on the cartoons. A couple of days ago, I posted a review on Puss in Boots. Today, I’m sorry to say that I’m going to spend a little time talking about Alvin and the Chipmunks. Alvin and the Chipmunks was a somewhat tired franchise when I was young. It was dreamed up by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. in 1958. It was kind of a cool novelty record but, in Showbiz, you can never leave well enough alone. Basically, there are three Chipmunks. There’s Theodore, the fat one, Simon, the smart one and Alvin, the mischievous one. Dave is the human who looks after the crew. Over the last 50 years, there have been numerous cartoons, records and movies which have all chronicled Alvin messing up in some way, shape or form. This new series started back in 2007. I missed that movie. I did see the sequel in 2009. It was funny. The formula was the same. They added the girls. The animation was off the hook.

Now, we have Alvin and the Chipmunks, Chipwrecked. (It’s a joke and we are supposed to laugh, I think.) If you’ve never seen Alvin and the Chipmunks, go take a look. If you have seen any of the modern reincarnations, don’t bother. There’s nothing new to see here. The jokes are the same. The dance sequences are the same. (BTW, how many squeaky dance numbers should we be forced to listen to? I think there are six or seven songs in this movie. I lost count.) The characters are the same, and even the bad guy Ian Hawke is back. One would figure that they could’ve bought a decent script with all the money they made off of the sequel ($443 million worldwide). I guess not. This movie gets a C- for using the same old tired formula. I was looking for something, anything else.

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Puss in Boots

I’m not sure who thought of the idea of taking a character from Shrek and making a movie around him. The guy (or gal) deserves a medal. You would figure if you’re taking a character out of Shrek that the movie would be something akin to Shrek or Shrek Junior. Nope. Puss in Boots is what happens when you take multiple fairytales and jumble them all up together. You have Humpty Dumpty, the goose that laid the golden egg, Jack and Jill and Mother Goose. They’re probably a few others that I missed. The story is pretty good. There is actually a plot. Animation is outstanding. I’m sorry, I did not see it in 3-D so I can’t talk about the use of 3-D. I can say that this is an extremely enjoyable movie which can entertain the very young (I took my eight-year-old grandson), pre-teenagers and adults alike (teenagers are hard to please, enough said). This movie is well worth the money (if you don’t buy popcorn and a drink). I give the movie a solid B. (Oh, watch for the Jedi mind trick. It is hilarious.)

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What do you want in a movie? Do you want to see something new? Do you want to see something exciting? Do you want to see something that’s going to expand your mind? Well, Mission Impossible 4 is exciting. It really isn’t new. It really isn’t going to alter your life either. It is one of the most entertaining Mission Impossibles. If you like Tom Cruise, you will like this movie. He is exactly who he has been for the last three decades. The movie is fast-paced and beautiful to watch. There is witty banter. Cars are fast (the electric BMW is awesome) and crash and flip in really cool ways. I was a little disappointed that the old team was broken up, but Paula Patton more than makes up for it. She is fresh and extremely beautiful. Her character is somewhat inconsistent, but those kind of details are more important in other movies, not in a Tom Cruise special. He and his movies are about look and feel. They aren’t about plot and character development. Jeremy Renner’s character (Brandt) is never fully explained. Simon Pegg’s character (Benji) doesn’t seem to fit in the movie. There are some great special effects and, as usual, Cruise has to defy gravity at some point in the movie. For those looking forward to his stunts, the movie will play with you a little bit by having two other characters do some amazing gravity-devying feats.

I give this movie a solid B. It is worth the price of admission.

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I loved this guy. He was a great actor. He appeared in tons of movies and was, of course, Col. Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H. He was also on the long-running TV show, Dragnet.

He was 96.

From WaPo:

Mr. Morgan — billed as Henry Morgan for much of his early career — was slight and balding and had a gravelly voice that could convey menace, irritation or wryness. Such versatility kept him in near-constant demand as a performer, and he became an instantly recognizable screen personality.

He had appeared in more than 100 films since the 1940s and was particularly effective as a witness to a lynching of alleged cattle rustlers in “The Ox-Bow Incident” (1943); a shadowy villain in “The Big Clock” (1948); a businessman who fears outlaws in “High Noon” (1952); and a small-town judge in “Inherit the Wind” (1960), based on the Scopes Monkey Trial.

Starting in the early 1950s, Mr. Morgan was a frequent movie sidekick to James Stewart in westerns (“Bend of the River,” “The Far Country”) and military dramas (“The Mountain Road,” “Strategic Air Command”). He also played pianist Chummy MacGregor in the 1953 musical biography of Glenn Miller, the swing bandleader portrayed by Stewart.

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My seven-year-old grandson is in town and I therefore have an excuse to see lots of movies. If you’re familiar with the comic book, the Green Lantern is a fabulous story. Basically, the ring chooses this guy because this guy has incredible courage in the face of danger. He uses the ring to fight evil. Nice basic premise. Hollywood seems to have a problem turning a simple basic premise into a movie. They feel they need to go into long, elaborate explanations. The movie spends way too much time telling us how our hero got the ring and then there’s the bizarre sequence as our hero is sent to the home base, an alien planet, where he meets his fellow Green Lanterns. The sequence really reminded me of the movie Star Trek (the first one which came out in the late 1970s), where it seems like half the movie focused on special effects.

The rest of the movie is pretty formulaic. The bad guy isn’t really all that bad. The good guy wins the beautiful and talented girlfriend. The movie also sets us up for a sequel. The Green Lantern is better than Thor but not as good as Kung Fu Panda 2 (which is by far the best movie that I have seen this summer).

So far, I’m kind of disappointed in the summer movies.

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I love movies. I have watched some of the greatest movies over the last 40 years and I have watched some of the worst. Think about the some of the great Super Hero films – SuperMan (Christopher Reeves, of course), SpiderMan and Batman to name a few. On the other side of great films, I have watched some terrible Super Hero movies, like SuperGirl, Elektra and CatWoman. Add the Green Hornet to the list. It was really awful from start to finish. It is one of those films that you have to wonder which executive at the movie studio read the script and thought that it would be a good idea to make this this film. Was he high?

Jay Chou was pretty good as Kato. Cameron Diaz was completely wasted as the “babe/love interest.” She basically redid her role in the Mask. The Mask was a great film. This was not. Seth Rogen was just plain bad as the Green Dude. This was simply a bad movie. Normally, I would rate this an F but because this was a royal waste of my time, I’ll rate it a Z.

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The greatness of Lena Horne is hard to describe to folks younger than 40. She was a giant on stage, screen and in the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement needed big stars to step up and give the movement energy and money. Lena Horne did that and more.

From NYT:

Ms. Horne might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early, and languished at MGM in the 1940s because of the color of her skin, although she was so light-skinned that, when she was a child, other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a “white daddy.”

Ms. Horne was stuffed into one “all-star” musical after another — “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “Broadway Rhythm” (1944), “Two Girls and a Sailor” (1944), “Ziegfeld Follies” (1946), “Words and Music” (1948) — to sing a song or two that could easily be snipped from the movie when it played in the South, where the idea of an African-American performer in anything but a subservient role in a movie with an otherwise all-white cast was unthinkable.

“The only time I ever said a word to another actor who was white was Kathryn Grayson in a little segment of ‘Show Boat’ ” included in “Till the Clouds Roll By” (1946), a movie about the life of Jerome Kern, Ms. Horne said in an interview in 1990. In that sequence she played Julie, a mulatto forced to flee the showboat because she has married a white man.

But when MGM made “Show Boat” into a movie for the second time, in 1951, the role of Julie was given to a white actress, Ava Gardner, who did not do her own singing. (Ms. Horne was no longer under contract to MGM at the time, and according to James Gavin’s Horne biography, “Stormy Weather,” published last year, she was never seriously considered for the part.) And in 1947, when Ms. Horne herself married a white man — the prominent arranger, conductor and pianist Lennie Hayton, who was for many years both her musical director and MGM’s — the marriage took place in France and was kept secret for three years.

Ms. Horne’s first MGM movie was “Panama Hattie” (1942), in which she sang Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” Writing about that film years later,Pauline Kael called it “a sad disappointment, though Lena Horne is ravishing and when she sings you can forget the rest of the picture.” (more…)

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Matt Damon’s latest movie, Green Zone, is an entertaining tale about the beginning of the Iraq war. Unfortunately, the commercials sell this as another Bourne Supremacy movie. It is not. Those of us who’ve kept up with the minute details of how we got into the war and how the Bush administration sold the war may be disappointed because all of the names are changed. The details are compressed. Blame is not directly placed on any one individual (I place it on Cheney). Nonetheless, I found this to be an extremely enjoyable movie.

Matt Damon plays a soldier whose job it is to find weapons of mass destruction. The movie picks up as Damon and his crew are entering the third site that he has searched. They find nothing. Damon begins to question the intelligence. As expected, there are forces for good and forces for evil. The Iraqis in the movie are somewhat cliché-ish.

If you remember that this is a movie made in Hollywood and don’t dwell on the politics too hard, the movie is fun and action-packed. It brings up again why we went to war. There are several points in the movie in which the lines between right and wrong are somewhat or completely blurred. Nonetheless, I found this a blast (pun intended) of a movie. It does not fix our political situation or the one in Iraq. Enjoy!

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So I was talking with my brother and somehow we got on the topic of movies. I challenged him to tell me the movies he considers the five funniest of all time.

1. Blazing Saddles
2. Caddyshack
3. Monty Python’s Meaning of Life
4. Coming to America
5. National Lampoon’s Vacation

Here’s the opening scene from Blazing Saddles. (BTW, I don’t think that I typed my brother’s preferences in order.) What do you think? What would you add or subtract?

JW adds his list -

1. Seven Chances
2. Princess Bride
3. Rocketman
4. The Kid (1921)
5. It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World

I must admit that I haven’t seen Seven Chances or Rocketman. The Princess Bride is one of my favorites. Here’s a scene:

My good friend TCB weighs in with some great films:

1. Animal House
2. Ghostbusters
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
4. Hangover
5. Another vote for It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad Mad World

Wow, these are some really, really great films.  Here’s a clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

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*I saw the movie, The Book of Eli, last night. Outstanding.

* I’m not sure how the Democrats messed up a special election in Massachusetts. Hopefully, they can pull a rabbit out of their hat. If not, a government that is relatively dysfunctional will grind to a halt. Now, Republicans can only block some legislation. If they gain this one seat in Massachusetts, their ability to block legislation increases exponentially. The status quo is fine with them. I hope that progressives from Massachusetts who say that they’re not going to vote because they’re unhappy with Obama or Coakley or the weather understand the ramifications of their inaction.

From the Political Animal:
* Haiti: “U.S. troops landed on the lawn of Haiti’s shattered presidential palace to the cheers of quake victims on Tuesday, and the U.N. said it would throw more police and soldiers into the sluggish global effort to aid the devastated country. The U.N. forces are aimed at quelling the outbursts of violence that have slowed distribution of supplies, leaving many Haitians still without help a week after the magnitude-7.0 quake killed an estimated 200,000 people.”

* Turnout in Massachusetts’s special election is reportedly higher than expected. While higher turnout usually benefits the Democrat, no one in the party seems to think this maxim applies today.

* In case you’re curious, there are no exit polls. (editor’s note – You should exit polling info by Rasmussen soon.)

* President Obama focused on schools this morning: “Obama traveled to an elementary school in the Virginia suburbs to make a pitch for Congress to expand his signature education initiative, Race to the Top. Mr. Obama said he would ask lawmakers to approve an additional $1.3 billion for the initiative, a grant competition that is intended to spur innovation in schools by requiring states to pledge adherence to stricter standards.”

* A “Fox & Friends” host encouraged viewers, on the air, to “make a call to Massachusetts and get some people out to the polls” because, as she put it, Scott Brown may help investors’ stock portfolios.

* Interesting story about Defense Secretary Robert Gates encouraging his military aides to stop wearing combat fatigues to work.

* The problem with tuition freezes.

* Bill O’Reilly is genuinely disappointed about who can and cannot make fun of: “48 years ago in this country we could make fun of Arabs…. We could make fun of people in a general way, and certainly, Ahab was the Arab was a general parody. But now, we can’t. What has changed in America?” He wasn’t kidding.

* And if you’re looking for a little something to feel good about today, take a look at this video, showing a search-and-rescue team from Los Angeles, freeing a woman in Haiti who’d been trapped under a collapsed hotel. A crowd assembled, and cheered, “U.S.A., U.S.A.”

Tags: Elections, Foreign Affairs, Movies, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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What do you want to see in a movie? For me, I think my answers have been the same over the last 30 or so years. I want the director to take me on an adventure. I want the writer to weave a story that makes me forget my daily troubles. I want actors to make me forget that they’re acting and allow me to get into their characters.

James Cameron (Titanic, Terminator series) is the engine behind this movie. He has had this script sitting in a drawer for over 15 years. Cameron is one of the few directors in Hollywood that can really make their own movie. George Lucas (Star Wars series and the Raiders of the Lost Ark series), Steven Spielberg (ET, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Jaws), Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings series) and Cameron are about the only directors that can walk into any studio and say they’d like to make a movie and the studio would open up their pocketbooks.

One of the things that has happened over the last 20 years is that studios have made movies more visually beautiful. Sometimes they do it with great cinematography (Out of Africa) and other times they do it with special effects. In Avatar, they do it with both. I’m positive that you’ve read all the superlatives that other film critics have bestowed on this movie. Let me say that I believe all of those superlatives are well deserved. This is a beautiful movie. The people, the machines, and the landscape are incredibly detailed and original (some of the machines have been seen before).

In spite of all this, I was looking for a story. I was looking for story that I hadn’t heard seen over and over again. This story has been told in countless westerns dating back to the ’30s. A stranger comes to a strange land, wins the heart of a local girl and saves the strange land from outside invaders. That’s it. The dialogue and acting in this story was pretty good, so if you’re not paying attention and are blown away by the special effects, you might miss that the story is not original. There are no original plot twists. The story just takes place on an original planet. And for many people, that’s enough of a story to justify the ticket admission price. I was looking for more.

I really didn’t like Titanic. I thought it was terribly long. I thought the love story was unimaginative. Avatar reminded me of the movie Starship Troopers. Great special effects and not much else. Granted, Avatar had much better acting.

Warning: this is not really a kid movie. In spite of some of the advertising and the associated games have come out, there is some harsh Marine language. I never blushed but I felt badly that I took my six-year-old grandson.

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I haven’t seen this film yet but it is on my list. My sis has and has written a GREAT review. So -

From Black N’ Bougie:

• Elvis fans – shoot yourself now. There is only one King and his name was Michael Joseph Jackson. He ETHERS all competition, there has been nor ever will be anyone like him. What This Is It shows you is pure artistic genius. This is an artist who knows what he wants and how to do it from lyrical intonation, to choreography, to film, to stage design. This man looked at a stage full of dancers and was able to say “She’s the one.” When a musician moved a nano-second too quickly from chord to chord, Michael stopped him and said, “Not so fast, you have to let it simmer. It needs to be bathed in moonlight.” My creative heart just fluttered. Bathed in moonlight (stealing it).
• I embarrassed BougieMom… just a little bit. From after the opening segment through the end credits, I (and most of the audience) sang, danced, clapped, and cheered. At one point I attempted to get up to do the Thriller dance and she cut me an indulgent but definite side-eye. I eased back into the seat. To compound issues, we were in a theater that served food and drinks and yes, I ordered the gigantic Long Island Iced Tea. Since I hadn’t eaten since breakfast by four sips in, I was feeling every bit of the groove. More than once I let, “Get it Michael, you go boy!” fall right out of my mouth.
• I won’t spoil which songs he sings or what the overall show feels like except to say that it’s an extravaganza for the senses. From start to close, it showcases amazing talent, dedication and attention to detail. Honestly, his rehearsal footage was better than most live performances I’ve been to. As we are all sadly aware, most of today’s “marquee” singers can’t hold a note without production help and autotune. This dude not only breaks off acapella riffs, he mimics instruments with his voice to let the musician know how it’s supposed to sound.
• His doctor deserves to be shot. It comes to you about midway through the movie that this is a guy FULL of life and focused on the future. If he was some sort of doped-up druggie, he hid it amazingly well. Hell, I was tired just watching him move around. I really had to make a conscious decision to enjoy the feeling and the music and not dwell on the grief. But it was very hard to reconcile this vibrant live wire of an entertainer with someone who is no longer with us. You look at him up there larger than life and cannot comprehend how he ended up dead. If the jury for Dr. Caribbean Kevorkian’s trial sees this movie, he’s going under the jail. (more…)

Tags: Movies, Music by ecthompson md
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I would like to say that my day starts like everyone else’s. You know, you wake up in the morning at the alarm clock’s warning – you take the 8:15 into the city. Not. I’m a trauma surgeon who was on call the before the World Premier of the Informant! I spent the majority of the night with a lady who fell off of a horse and broke several ribs. There was also the lady who had fallen down the stairs and had multiple extremity fractures and a head injury. This last patient was on a blood thinner and it was a long night with a very sick patient and her family.

From 5 am – 7 am, I prepared for a lecture at 8 am to a group of paramedics. They wanted to chat about critical care. After the lecture, I sprinted home, took a shower, packed and drove to the airport. The best thing about living in a small city is that it takes no time to get to the airport. A little over three hours later, I was in NYC. There is nothing like flying into New York. Manhattan is simply beautiful to see from the air.

This is my third or fourth trip to New York since 9/11. In 2003, you could feel that the city had changed. The cabbies were nice. New York cabbies were really, truly nice. Everyone was nice. Well, by 2009, New York was back to its old self. I felt none of the warmth that I felt just two or three years ago. Although the cabbie didn’t cuss me, he was short in a New York kind of way. He left my wife and me to watch some infomercial on the monitor that was staring us in the face.

By 5 pm, my stunning wife and I were siting in the Warwick Hotel bar with my best friend from high school and his wife. Kurt Eichenwald is a remarkable man. We have been friends since third grade. We were in each other’s weddings. We have been through a ton of crap together. Almost 25 years ago, Kurt was writing for a Washington paper (not the Post) and making almost nothing. From there he was hired by the New York Times. I can’t remember what he was writing about when he first started. I think his office was in the basement near the furnace. Over a period of years, he wrote and wrote. His talent led him to the Business Section of The Times. He turned up dozens of corporate wrongs over the next 20 years. Some landing Kurt and his article on the front page. He became a widely read and respected reporter for the Times. He was reporting on things that I didn’t understand. Then again, it could be that I wasn’t really paying than much attention to what he was talking about. Just like when I was talking about medicine, he probably was zoning out also. His first, Serpent on the Rock, my personal favorite, about Prudential Brache selling these “safe” securities to little old women in Florida. We all know how that ends. The old women lost their shirts, houses, and savings. Prudential lost tons of money and no one went to jail. Kurt received a huge break from a most unlikely source. Some guy was reading Kurt’s book on a plane. He finished the book then walked up to First Class. He handed the book to Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes. Wallace read the book and did a big 60 Minutes expose’. Kurt was featured in the story. Kurt’s second book, The Informant (there was no ! in the original title) was about Archer Daniels Midland fixing prices of lycine. The book at its heart was about greed of major multinational companies. The book has a cool twist. The main character, the informant, was a truly brilliant guy who was crazy. I’m talking really crazy, like he needs to placed on meds kinda crazy. Mark Whitacre, while giving the FBI, great insider information, was secretly embezzling millions of dollars from ADM and their clients. Mark lied about tons of things. He lied to his bosses at ADM, to the FBI and to his wife. Yet, the information that he gave to the FBI was 100% accurate.

Instead of the documentary format, Kurt uses a novel format to tell this incredibly complex story. It is masterfully written. The Informant becomes a NY Times bestseller. Over the next six or eight years, the book becomes a movie. This is why we are in a bar in the Warwick Hotel. This is the premier of the Informant! Over the next hour, we talk about the movie and the premier. We laugh. We are old friends. We laugh a lot. We talk about our families and life. Kurt is nervous. It is clear. He is worried about everything as if he were a Warner Brothers executive.

Now, it is now time to go. Kurt and his wife leave in a Lexus Limo. My wife and I walk less than half a block to the Ziegfeld Theater. My wife looks wonderful as her feet slide around in her new heels. (Women and their shoes continue to amaze me.) We are ushered to our assigned seats in the balcony of this beautiful old theater. It is 6:30 pm. Over the next 30 minutes the theater fills with all sorts of people – some in well-tailored suits and dresses others in baggy jeans and a tee shirts. 7 pm, the start time for the movie, comes and goes. About 7:15 I see Kurt and his wife talking with others who were associated with the movie. He was about 100 – 150 yards away from where we were sitting. Around 7:30 or so, the last of the important people arrives… the director, Steven Soderbergh and Matt Damon. Everyone in the audience seems to know that he has arrived. There is a crowd that surrounds him. Another 10 minutes pass as Damon makes his way to his seat and shakes hands with those who are seated around him. He is about 100 yards away. The lights dim and an announcer begins. He thanks everyone for coming. He introduces about 10 – 15 people who were associated with the film including my friend, Kurt Eichenwald. Of course, Matt Damon gets a big ovation.

The Informant! was made as a comedy. When you think about the book, which was definitely NOT a comedy, the main character is so flawed, so off the wall that it had to be made as a comedy. Matt Damon proves once again that he is truly an actor at the top of his game. The movie is told through Damon’s character, Mark Whitacre. There is a running voice-over. Whitacre’s random thoughts are really bizarre and funny and usually not related to what he was doing. The supporting cast is solid. Of note, the Smothers Brothers are in the movie. You are going to have to look carefully to find them.  Good movie. Worth the price of admission, if I do say so myself.

Update: NPR (Terry Gross) interviews Soderbergh and Damon. Salon.com’s review which I think is very accurate.

I had a great time. A really great time.  There is nothing like watching a movie in a packed theater with real movie stars only 100 – 150 yards away from you.

Tags: General, Movies by ecthompson md
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I thought I’d say a few things about John Hughes who died this week. I like to consider myself a movie buff. I’m probably one of the few who can happily say that he is watched and laughed at Attack of the Killer Tomatoes! more than once. I’m one of the guys who stays after the movie’s over and watches the credits. (Although I watch the credits, I don’t memorize the credits. I don’t care who the key grip was.)

I only really knew John Hughes as a director. Now that I’ve done some reading, it looks as though I actually knew his writing just didn’t recognize it. He wrote National Lampoon’s Vacation in 1983. He also wrote Class Reunion in 1982. I was lukewarm on both of these films. He wrote Mr. Mom, also in 1983, which starred Teri Garr and Michael Keaton. I would give this movie a solid B. It is worth a rental.

John Hughes really made his mark on me and Hollywood with a series of films that he did in the mid-to-late ’80s. He managed to portray the good, the bad and the ugly of being a teenager or young college student in movies that were funny and sad. They were heartwarming without being sappy. The Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, Weird Science and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (my personal favorite, a must see for anyone who likes this genre) were simply strokes of genius. The premises of his movies were simple, like The Breakfast Club, in which several teenagers have Saturday detention. How can you make an interesting movie out of that? Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was about a guy who skipped school. Big deal. Yet somehow John Hughes was able to make these ordinary occurrences extraordinary. He found the right combination of actors to make his stories engaging. Somehow the bad guys weren’t all that bad and the good guys weren’t all that good. Everyone was okay. His screenplays were written in such a way that the story unfolded the way teenagers and young adults would have wanted it to unfold and then to end. His movies hit a nerve, not in a bad way but in a good way.

He made the careers of Molly Ringwald, Matthew Broderick, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy. (Remember her?) John Candy actually worked with Hughes in eight films.

He made some other good films, like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (John Candy and Steve Martin). Home Alone was a huge hit for him.

Sometime in the early ’90s he stopped directing films and just wrote screenplays. He wrote Dennis the Menace, Flubber, 101 Dalmatians, Home Alone 3 and Home Alone 4, to name a few.

In my opinion, John Hughes told a generation of Americans (who are now between the ages of 35 and 50) that it’s okay to be different and that‘s a great legacy to leave.

Tags: Movies by ecthompson md
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We should give more to save the CEOs.  Looks like Michael Moore is gearing up for another great movie.

Tags: Movies by ecthompson md
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I just saw the movie Angels and Demons. It was much better than The Da Vinci Code. Tom Hanks has lost 35 or 40 pounds and he looks good. The movie lacks those dull, slow parts that so dominated the first one. It’s very entertaining and, in my opinion, more respectful of religion.  It is well worth the admission price.

North Korea proved that they are less respectful of the rest of the international community by setting off some sort of nuclear device earlier today. It will take several days to analyze the data, but it seems clear that North Korea set off some sort of large device. Now what? Should there be consequences for defying the international community? Who should enforce those consequences? The United States? Should the United States try to enforce something unilaterally? That sounds a lot like what the Bush administration did with Iraq. The international community will not go for the US going its own way, again. Should the United States, Russia, China and the European Union try to do something jointly? It is important to remember that no matter what we do, North Korea has the ability to retaliate, not against us, but against the South Korean civilians. It will be interesting to see if President Obama will be able to forge a coalition that will actually force North Korea into some sort of international compliance.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell went on the offensive yesterday to combat charges that several Republicans, including Dick Cheney, have thrown at him (remember, Powell left the Republican party). He argued that he is still Republican. To paraphrase his argument, the Republican Party needs to, dare I say it, change. Now there are a lot of Americans who still believe that Colin Powell can save the Republican Party. I don’t know. Maybe he can. I know it’s a long way to the 2012 elections, but I don’t see Colin Powell as a viable candidate. I believe that his reputation is too tainted with the stain of Iraq. I just don’t see how the Republican Party can move forward without dealing with some of their more radical elements. This would include Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and Dick Cheney.

Many progressives are upset that Barack Obama has decided to push ahead with military commissions. Personally, I think that military commissions set a terrible precedent. Putting precedent aside, though, I understand that President Obama is in a terrible situation. People like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the so-called “20th hijacker” Al-Qahtani are clearly terrorists. If given the opportunity, they would try to wreak havoc either on the United States or United States interests around the world. They need to be tried and jailed for the rest of their lives. Unfortunately, both of them were subjected to harsh interrogations (torture). There’s no court in the United States that would try these guys. Most, if not all, of the evidence would be thrown out. So what do you do with them? Indefinite detention without charges seems repugnant to me. If we could find a way to try Terry McVeigh and the so-called Blind Sheik, then we should be able to find a way to try and convict these two terrorists. We have to have some evidence that was not obtained by illegal means. We must. (I hope.)

Finally, Ryan Leaf has been arrested. I’m not laughing at the misfortune of others, but… just a little over 10 years ago, Ryan Leaf was the number two draft choice for the San Diego Chargers. He went from the anointed one to a bum in less time than Sarah Palin has. The former NFL quarterback has been indicted on drug and burglary charges. This says something about our society and about Ryan Leaf. Maybe putting athletes up on a pedestal is not the best idea.

Oh, this is a great Memorial Day story.

Tags: Civil Liberty, Domestic Issues, Movies, North Korea, Obama administration, Party Politics, Torture by ecthompson md
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