Quantum Of Solace: A Review

No, not the movie, you silly goose. That won't be released until mid-November. This is a review of the Ian Fleming short story, published way back in 1960.

The story is far from a typical Bond adventure filled with guns, girls, and megalomaniacal villains bent on world domination, and there isn't a single character with a ludicrous name like Auric Goldfinger, Pussy Galore, or I. P. Freely.

As the story begins, 007 has just finished a routine operation which is described matter-of-factly in one paragraph on the second page. Bond is in Nassau, dutifully chatting with the Governor after a tedious dinner party, when he makes a flippant remark about marrying an air hostess, i.e. a stewardess. That prompts the Governor to tell the story of an old friend who did indeed marry an air hostess, with tragic results.

Between puffs on his cigar, the Governor delivers a surprisingly poignant tale which shows how even the gentlest of people can become cruel and vindictive when pushed too far. But how far is too far? That's where the title comes into play.

Here's how the Governor describes it to Bond:

You're not married, but I think it's the same with all relationships between a man and a woman. They can survive anything so long as some kind of basic humanity exists between the two people. When all kindness has gone, when one person obviously and sincerely doesn't care if the other is alive or dead, then it's just no good.

Well, duh.

The Governor goes on to call this the Law of the Quantum Of Solace, meaning that as long as you offer the other person a glimmer of hope, or a quantum of solace, then there's a chance the marriage will survive.

Fleming seems overly proud of himself for giving a simple concept such a grandiose title, and he even has Bond say that it's "a splendid name for it" before giving his own thoughts on the theory.

I still stand by the claim that Quantum Of Solace is a terrible name for a James Bond movie, and I don't think it was a very good title for a short story either. It reeks of a pulp fiction writer getting all pretentious and trying to prove that he could have been taken seriously as an author if that was what he'd wanted.

The thing is, when Fleming isn't patting himself on the back for that title, he actually manages to tell a very compelling human drama with a nice little twist at the end. Hopefully the movie pulls off the same trick and manages to be a good film with a bad title, but if any character in the movie uses the title in a line of dialogue, I'll most likely puke up my popcorn.



Another intriguing aspect of the story is that Fleming seems to be re-examining his own career path in this passage after Bond has heard the Governor's entire story:

Bond laughed. Suddenly the violent dramatics of his own life seemed very hollow. The affair of the Castro rebels and the burned out yachts was the stuff of an adventure strip in a cheap newspaper.

And later still:

He reflected on the conference he would be having in the morning with the Coastguards and the FBI in Miami. The prospect, which had previously interested, even excited him, was now edged with boredom and futility.

Fleming seems to be wondering if he's wasted his life writing adventure tales without much emotional resonance or insight into the human condition.

I think there's always a time and a place for escapism, and I grew up on James Bond movies and novels, and even obsessed over the role-playing game for a while, but as I got older I became more interested in realistic human dramas, and it seems as though Fleming was feeling the same way.

Not counting Thunderball, which was developed from a screenplay that Fleming had been collaborating on for years, the next Bond novel published after Quantum Of Solace was The Spy Who Loved Me, which was also radically different from typical Bond fare. It was considered a failure, both critically and financially, and I remember hating it when I read it years ago, but it's interesting to see how Fleming was stretching himself, perhaps reflecting the same soul-searching expressed in that short story whose name I can't bear to type yet again.

Fleming then wrote several more successful Bond novels that stuck to the formula, but he hadn't completely given up on the idea of pushing himself because he also wrote the children's book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which was published in 1964, the same year he died.

Who knows what other directions his work might have gone in if he had lived, but hopefully the writing of a successful children's book that had nothing to do with Bond gave a dying man a quantum of... nope, I'm so not going there.



Or buy from Amazon.ca (Canada)

Who Watches The Watchmen Trailer? You, That's Who!

I've been in a comic book frame of mind lately, what with all the superhero movies hitting theatres this summer.

Hot on the heels of The Dark Knight's debut comes the trailer for next year's most highly anticipated comic book - I'm sorry, graphic novel adaptation, The Watchmen.

You can watch the trailer here.

My first impression is that Dr. Manhattan looks great, but the Nite Owl looks far too young, muscular, and slick. The paunchy, bookish Dan Dreiberg from the original seems to have been sexed up for the Hollywood version, and that doesn't bode well for the movie.

Not that I ever had any real hope for this project. Not after 300, which had all the subtlety and intelligence of professional wrestling. There's no doubt that Zack Snyder has a visual flair, although he tends to overdo it if you ask me, but it's his story sense and ability to work with actors that I found so appalling in 300.

A great movie could be made based on The Watchmen, but I doubt Zack Snyder's the guy to make it.

New Actors, Old Roles

When The Dark Knight opens this Friday, the character of Rachel Dawes will appear, but Katie Holmes will not. And in the trailers for the latest Mummy movie, that's clearly not Rachel Weisz tagging alongside Brendan Fraser. The re-casting of raven-haired Rachels is a distraction in both cases, but hardly without precedent. And with the first of these high profile sequels opening this week, the Onion's AV Club and IFC.com both decided to look at other awkward re-castings in film history.

I think the AV Club did a better job of it by focusing on situations where characters with new faces are appearing in the same timeline as their earlier incarnations, so reboots and remakes are given a free pass, but the IFC deserves top marks for remembering Crispin Glover's absence from the Back To The Future sequels.

In the case of The Dark Knight, I'm more than willing to suspend my disbelief because Katie Holmes was horribly miscast in the first film and Maggie Gyllenhaal seems much more at home in Christopher Nolan's version of Gotham City. Holmes is adorable eye candy and she's been excellent in other roles, but she's far too youthful and perky to be convincing as a District Attorney who bravely crusades against murderous crime bosses. Maggie Gyllenhaal, with her off-beat looks and aura of intelligence, should easily fill Katie Holmes' shoes, but not her bra, while making the role her own.

And if the re-casting of Katie Holmes is distracting, imagine how awkward it will be if the studio tries to replace Heath Ledger as the Joker in the next Batman film. I doubt Christopher Nolan would get involved with something like that, but it's just the sort of thing a clueless executive might think up.

Here's hoping that common sense prevails.



Or buy from Amazon.ca (Canada)

I have very little to say about Maria Bello taking over for Rachel Weisz in the Mummy sequel because I like both actresses but I despised the first film, skipped the second, and have no intention of watching the third. Replacing the writer/director with someone a lot better than Rob Cohen would be the only way to get me to watch another Mummy movie.

You can read the AV Club's article on awkward re-castings here and the IFC take on these matters here. Both are interesting reads for movie buffs.

I can't think of any glaring omissions on either list, but I did find David Hyde Pierce's absence in Hellboy 2 a disappointment. I know it wasn't him under Abe Sapien's makeup in the original, but his distinctive voice brought the character to life in the first film, and Doug Jones gave a comparatively flat performance in the second.

And on a final note, I got a real kick out of this part of the IFC's article:

For unspecified reasons — speculation ranges from script dissatisfaction to loyalty to departing "Silence of the Lambs" director Jonathan Demme — Jodie Foster chose not to reprise her performance as FBI Agent Clarice Starling. Ultimately, the honor of playing Clarice in Ridley Scott's sequel fell to Julianne Moore. Demme went to great lengths to diminish Foster's Starling physically onscreen; in a world of beefy guys, she's always the smallest person in the elevator. Scott and Moore's Starling, on the other hand, is some kind of supercop; blissfully snoozing seconds before she's blowing baddies away. After seeing the performances side by side, it's hard to believe their IMDb pages, which state that at five foot four inches tall, Moore stands just a half an inch above Foster. In, "Hannibal," it's more like half a foot. People joke about the camera adding 10 pounds; I never heard of it adding 10 inches before.

How soon we forget Boogie Nights.

In Bruges: A Review

In Bruges (it rhymes with stooge) is a wonderfully coarse and talkative crime caper that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the best of Tarantino and the Coen Brothers.

Two hitmen (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) have been ordered to hide out in Bruges (it's in Belgium) until the heat dies down after a recent job. Gleeson, best known as "Mad Eye" moody from Harry Potter films, is a reasonably cultured and introspective hitman, so he delights in the city's medieval buildings, canals, and cobblestone streets, but despite the director's obvious love of this stunning city, Farrell's character never wavers from his belief that Bruges is a shithole. While Gleeson is awestruck by the city's rich history, Farrell "sulks like a five-year old who's dropped his sweeties".

He only perks up when he discovers a film shoot involving midgets, and then meets a beautiful young woman (Chloe) who he invites to dinner after sneaking on set. They each have sordid pasts, but offer each other a shot at redemption.

Farrell is a bundle of nervous energy, as usual, but this time there's a reason why his character is always trying to crawl out of his own skin. I won't reveal the reason here, but after a half hour or so you'll understand why he's constantly at war with himself. On a dinner date, for example, he tells Chloe a coarse joke about a recent series of murders in Belgium. When Chloe says that one of the victims was a friend of hers, his self-loathing is genuine, but moments later she reveals that she was only teasing, and Farrell is soon bursting with laughter. A minute later, he's beating up the man at the next table.

Gleeson, on the other hand, is the relatively philosophical voice of reason. He's a more experienced hitman who's good at his job, but would have chosen a different career if his life hadn't turned out the way it did. He manages to think of himself as a relatively decent person despite the fact that he kills people for money, so he becomes Farrell's de facto therapist, tour guide, and father figure while trying to help him work through his issues, which are very real and not played for laughs like in Grosse Pointe Blank or Analyze This.

But the sightseeing, bonding, and laying low can't last forever, so once the high-maintenance, volatile crime boss (Ralph Fiennes) reveals the real reason that Farrell and Gleeson are in Bruges, the threat of future violence comes into play.

You might find the first half of the film a bit slow if you're expecting non-stop action, and if you're easily offended you might find yourself wincing repeatedly as Farrell makes consistently rude remarks about Americans, homosexuals, midgets, and countless others.

The fact that there happens to be a film shoot taking place In Bruges is somewhat self-indulgent, but the dialogue was so sharp and funny, and the location was so stunning, and the brotherly relationship between Gleeson and Farrell was so appealing that I was able to forgive the somewhat contrived ending.

Unlike most comedies about killers, this one reminds us that innocent people often get hurt when there's gunplay, and when the violence does come in the third act it's quite brutal, so the movie should appeal to fans of the Coen Brothers' Fargo. And there are obvious parallels between these two hitmen and those portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, but In Bruges has a style and tone that feels fresh. And, most importantly, it's extremely funny and I cared about these characters as much as they cared for each other.


Final verdict: 9/10

Horror Nights At The Rio Theatre: Every Friday Night @ Midnight In July

Night owls and horror fans rejoice!

My favourite East Vancouver movie house, the Rio Theatre is showing classic horror films every Friday night this month.

Black Dog Video and the Rio Theatre present:

Scary Midnight double features of Classic Cult films every friday night in the month of July...don't be scared!!! tickets $10, costumes, fake blood, prizes!!!!

This week: Friday July 4th, Dawn
of The Dead & Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
July 11th Dead Alive & Return of the Living Dead
July 18th Fudoh the New Generation & Ichi the Killer
July 25th The Rocky Horror Picture Show with Live Performances!

Bad Lieutenant: The Remake

That's one movie I never thought would get remade.

Here's a plot summary of the original, courtesy of the IMDB:

A police Lieutenant goes about his daily tasks of investigating homicides, but is more interested in pursuing his vices. He has accumulated a massive debt betting on baseball, and he keeps doubling to try to recover. His bookies are beginning to get agitated. The Lieutenant does copious amounts of drugs, cavorts with prostitutes, and uses his status to take advantage of teenage girls. While investigating a nun's rape, he begins to reflect on his lifestyle.

Here's the basic plot as I remember it: Harvey Keitel plays a cop who witnesses many bad people doing bad things, but he himself is also a bad person who does bad things. As he investigates a very bad crime and the badness of his bad behaviour escalates, he becomes an even badder person, until the final twist at the end when he does something that is either very, very bad or kinda good, depending on how you look at it. Then he dies.

He's badder than The Bad Seed, badder than Bad Santa (or Badder Santa) and badder than both the Bad Boys put together. He does more bad things than the cast of Very Bad Things, he's a badder influence than the entire cast of Bad Influence, and he dispenses with the Good while going straight for the Bad and the Ugly.

He's just that bad.

Imagine The Bad News Bears being molested by the Big Bad Wolf on the set on Michael Jackson's Bad, and you get some sense of just how bad the Bad Lieutenant is.

Depressing and repetitive is how I remember the film. It makes Todd Solondz' "Happiness" look like a Hope and Crosby road movie. Not exactly the sort of thing that usually gets made in Hollywood, let alone gets made twice.

German director Werner Herzog will be behind the camera, and even more surprising is the A-list cast the remake is attracting: Nicolas Cage, Val Kilmer, and Eva Mendes have already signed on.

Now word yet on whether there'll be a cameo appearance by Harvey Keitel's penis.

Hancock - Review

Based on the negative buzz and the underwhelming trailer and the mixed reviews and the track record of director Peter Berg, I went into Hancock with low expectations but came out pleasantly surprised.

I found it very refreshing to see two major plot twists in a big budget Hollywood movie that weren't even hinted at in the trailers. Previews usually give away the entire movie in two and a half minutes, but not this time around, and for that reason alone I hope Hancock is a big hit. Maybe it'll give Hollywood the courage to show similar restraint with other marketing campaigns in the future.

Some audiences may be disappointed with the directions Hancock takes because it doesn't follow the typical superhero formula. There isn't much of a villain and the final showdown is a bit anti-climactic. There isn't as much action as you'd except from a Will Smith summer blockbuster, and when it does come, it's darker and more violent than I expected. And even though I laughed a lot, the humour is often edgier than anything in Men In Black or any other recent Will Smith vehicle.

The movie is also more serious and emotionally resonant than I expected, and that may be the final straw for the normal popcorn munchers. Hancock isn't just a comical boozehound/superhero, he's a super-entity with deep emotional scars who takes solace in the bottle whenever possible. And he isn't a loudmouth asshole simply because that's what passes for cool in today's youth culture. He's a jerk because he hates his life, and there's no end in sight because he's immortal, so he lashes out at everyone around him.

I still think Peter Berg is a terrible director, what with his obsessive use of shaky cams, extreme close ups, and sudden zooms for no apparent reason. But the script was solid and unusual, Will Smith does more than just act cool for a change, and Jason Bateman hits all the right notes as Hancock's PR guru, so while Berg and his cinematographer were busy showing off, everyone else got down to making a good movie.

Hancock could have been better with a different director, or it could have been a lot worse with Michael Bay behind the camera, but the film is still worth seeing for the performances and surprises, which I've tried not to give away.

Surprises in a summer blockbuster? What are the odds?

Final Verdict: 7/10

Wall-E: A Review

There's something inherently wrong about using words to describe the brilliance of WALL-E, because this is a film that places the emphasis squarely on visuals and music to tell one of the most magical stories of the past few years.

Alfred Hitchcock once said that you're ready to start shooting once the script has been written and the dialogue has been added. The people behind WALL-E understand better than most that talk is cheap and that characters are truly defined by their actions, not their words.

WALL-E is a thoroughly adorable creation not because he offers snappy banter and pop culture references while mugging for the camera like the dogs in that hideous trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua, but because everything he does speaks volumes about what a good-natured creature he is. In the same way that R2D2 was the emotional core of Star Wars, this little robot is the most human, genuinely heart-warming movie creation in years. Not since Puss In Boots flashed his baby blues in Shrek 2 has an animated character expressed so much while saying nothing.

And the deserted planet that WALL-E inhabits is an equally fascinating treat for the eyes. When seen from space, the familiar blue, white, and green sphere once known as Earth has turned a rusty shade of brown. WALL-E has been left alone on this abandoned planet to clean up the mess that humans have left behind, and his piles of garbage tower over the largest skyscrapers. The shots of this lone robot wandering through a desolate wasteland while humming a catchy tune are truly stunning.

WALL-E happily goes about his business, as he's done for 700 years, because it's the only life he's ever known. He works all day, compacting garbage into neat little cubes, occasionally keeping trinkets that he finds interesting like egg beaters, a rubik's cube, and the box that a diamond ring came in. The diamond ring, having no inherent value that WALL-E can understand, gets tossed on the trash heap.

WALL-E's managed to survive long after all the other WALL-E models have broken down, and like many Sci-Fi robots before him, the more information he assimilates, the more his own personality develops. He's a machine that's evolved to the verge of sentience, but we see him as a young child who's just beginning to make sense of the world around him and his place in it.

His only friend is a pet cockroach who follows him everywhere he goes like a loyal puppy, and WALL-E spends his off-hours watching Hello Dolly and emulating the dance moves. There's also something about the love story that he finds fascinating, but he doesn't quite understand it all. And then EVE arrives.

She's a newer model robot, apparently designed by one of Steve Jobs' ancestors, and she's been sent to Earth on some unknown mission. WALL-E is initially terrified of this strange visitor, but the more he watches her the more fascinated he becomes, and his initial timid attempts at courtship are thoroughly endearing to the audience, if not to EVE. No matter how many times she threatens to blow him to bits with her highly advanced weapons, all he wants to do is get a little closer, earn her trust, protect her from harm, and hold hands.

Beyond the love story and the laughs, there's some very effective social commentary on the dangers of mega-corporations and our increasingly obese, lazy society. This is deftly handled in a way that's hard to miss, but never heavy-handed.

I honestly don't know if most children will enjoy Wall-E because it lacks the hyper-kinetic action of typical kiddie fare, but I sincerely hope they'll respond favourably to WALL-E's expressive eyes, charming body language, and sweet-tempered personality.

If, after seeing WALL-E, your kids would rather watch Beverly Hills Chihuahua, I weep for the future.

And as for adults, if you don't find WALL-E to be a wondrous movie-going experience, there's an excellent chance that you're a cold-hearted bastard, and if I was the last robot on earth and my choice of companion came down to you or a cockroach, I'd choose the cockroach.

Worst Movie Trailer Ever?

I normally try to avoid hyperbole. I hate browsing YouTube and seeing every other video labeled the Worst ___ Ever! or the BEST ____ EVER!!!!!

But after seeing this movie trailer twice and cringing both times, I've scoured my brain to think of a more annoying trailer, and I've come up blank.

View the trailer here, if you dare

It's drivel like this that gives animated movies a bad name. Today was the second time I've seen this trailer, and viewing it before the remarkable Wall-E* was quite a stunning contrast.

If I had kids, I'd sooner give them up for adoption than take them to see this crap. And if they insisted on owning the DVD, I'd be forced to sell them into the white slave trade.

* more on Wall-E later. What a brilliant, heart-warming film.

The Seventh Python - Neil Innes

A documentary about Neil Innes called The Seventh Python is having it's world premiere in Hollywood this Thursday, and you can read all about it here.

Or watch the trailer here:

(Well, not here, exactly, but several pixels below here. And by here I mean there. Up there. And to the left. Unless the text has wrapped onto the next line in your browser, in which case a simple "up there" might be more accurate when referring to the location of here. As for the trailer, it's down there.



If Neil Innes is The Seventh Python, I guess that makes Carol Cleveland the Linda McCartney that none of them slept with.

Stan Winston RIP

The LA Times reports that legendary makeup and special effects man Stan Winston has died at 62. He was one of the best to be sure, having worked on Predator, Aliens, Edward Scissorhands, and countless others. He also worked on John Carpenter's The Thing, which was featured in the Wired article on coolest movie metamorphoses I wrote about just yesterday.

I'd hate to be the mortician who has to apply Stan Winston's makeup before the memorial. I'd be worried that his ghost would be hanging over my shoulder making note of everything I'm doing wrong.

Memorable Movie Metamorphoses

Wired recently posted a list of their coolest movie metamorphoses, which is a pretty solid list, especially David Cronenberg's The Fly and American Werewolf In London. However, Smeagol's transformation into Gollum in the beginning of The Return Of The King should have made the list, and I thought there was one other glaring omission from a movie that many of you may have forgotten.

Fright Night was an entertaining horror comedy aimed squarely at teens, and the movie holds up fairly well, even now that I'm *ahem!* just a wee bit older. Roddy McDowall is priceless at Peter Vincent, an actor who's made a career playing fearless vampire killers in B-movies, but when he's forced to slay an actual vampire in real life he gets much more than he bargained for.

He's attacked by a character nicknamed Evil Ed, a horror movie geek who's the pathetic yet sympathetic best friend of the main character, Charlie Brewster. Evil Ed has been an outcast his entire life, so he becomes seduced by the power that being a vampire brings him.

He takes the form of a wolf, gets a stake through the heart courtesy of Peter Vincent, and the resulting transformation is one of the most memorable sequences in horror movie history.



Up until this point, Fright Night had been a fairly light-hearted, entertaining, and spooky flick, so I wasn't expecting such a poignant death scene, especially after the character had ostensibly become a villain. Top marks to the makeup and sound effects teams, the composer, both the actors involved, and the director for injecting so much unexpected pathos into a genre flick targeted at teenagers. Even watching this scene out of context via YouTube, it gave me chills.

The Incredible Hulk on IMDB

I'm a big fan of the Internet Movie Database. I visit it several times a day to look up information on whatever movie I'm watching, thinking about, or reading about. I love participating in the polls and rating movies, and I have a morbid fascination with the message boards. Reading them makes me weep for the future of Hollywood (and humanity) but I can't seem to keep away.

But my enjoyment of the IMDB has been severely hampered for the last week or so by the in-your-face marketing for the Incredible Hulk on the site's main page.

The cartoonish CGI image of the Hulk replacing the normal banner is mildly distracting, but forgivable. The real problem has been the trailer which automatically begins to download every single time I visit the front page.

That's a ton of wasted bandwidth, so I find myself clicking on the first link I can find just to avoid downloading more of the trailer than is necessary. But if I want to actually read any of the material on the front page, I'm forced to endure that same bloody trailer over and over and over and over again.

Does that kind of endlessly repetitive marketing actually work on some people? It certainly doesn't work on me. Prior to this misguided marketing blitz, there was a small chance that I might see The Incredible Hulk in the theatre on a whim, but I'm so sick of that miserable trailer that I'm deliberately avoiding the movie in theatres, and I probably won't ever rent the DVD either.

Rushing out a reboot of the Hulk franchise a mere four years after Ang Lee's version reeks of desperation anyway, but the incessant marketing was the final straw.

Creating audience awareness is the first role of marketing, but enough is enough. My awareness has turned into annoyance.

Untraceable: A Review

There are two independent, single-screen movie theatres in my neighbourhood that I like to support, even to the point of paying for movies I'd never go out of my way to see. Sometimes when I'm sitting across the street having a slice of pizza with the marquee staring me right in the face, I'll take a chance on a movie like Untraceable, especially when I'm feeling less than great and my only plans for the evening involve going home and doing a load of laundry.

After browsing the reviews last week, the general consensus seemed to be that Untraceable was a below-average cop thriller which bordered on torture porn, and based on those reviews I had no desire to see it. But I'd forgotten all about that tonight, until the opening sequence of a kitten in a cat carrier in a dingy basement, meowing and scratching at its cage, begging to be let out, while a video camera records the whole thing. An unseen man places what appears to be a glue trap in front of the carrier, places some food on the other side of the trap to entice the kitten, then releases it from its cage. At this point, I was thinking that paying for this movie was a mistake.

I suddenly remembered the torture porn accusations from the reviews I'd read and I started to imagine the worst. As an animal lover who lost a beloved cat of my own in the past year, I found the tension in this scene almost unbearable, until a harsh light suddenly lit up the kitten's face, causing it to hiss, and then the film cut to a different location.

I had to give the filmmaker's credit for creating an extremely nerve-wracking scene without ever resorting to grisly images of feline flesh being torn apart, so I settled in to give the movie a fair chance.

Untraceable focuses on Jennifer Marsh, an FBI cybercrimes expert played by Diane Lane, presumably because Ashely Judd was unavailable. When Marsh and her coworkers, including a bland Colin Hanks, discover the website killwithme.com, they see a still frame of the kitten on the glue trap, and if it weren't for the dialogue I wouldn't have known for sure that the kitten was dead.

The movie shows similar restraint for most of the first act, even as Marsh watches grisly videos of suicides and tragic accidents on the internet. The camera usually focuses on the characters while small, grainy images play out on computer screens in the background, and I was thinking that Untraceable was shaping up to be a reasonably tasteful thriller with a message I could really get behind, i.e. condemning the voyeuristic desire to watch real violence online. But then the killer claimed his first human victim.

I've never seen a movie that was labelled as torture porn, such as the Saw or Hostel series, and if I have my way, I never will. So when the murderer started slowly killing people on-screen in increasingly bizarre ways while streaming the deaths for an online audience, the movie lost some of the respect it had earned during the opening. Although, I must admit, I was expecting a lot worse.

Yes, there is quite a bit of blood during the first torture scene, and extensive make-up work showing flesh being destroyed in various ways during later murders, but I didn't think it was drastically worse than images from other movies which critics have praised, such as Silence Of The Lambs or Se7en. The main difference is the amount of screen time given to the death scenes which play out in real-time, but is that any different from Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy, released way back in 1971, which had equally lengthy murder scenes, minus all the special effects.

I'm not about to rush out and rent Saw IV after surviving Untraceable relatively unscathed, and I'm not saying the movie isn't grisly, but I'm not convinced that the movie deserves the torture porn label. The bulk of the images during the murder scenes focus on the victims' faces, the shocked reactions of the investigators who watch the killings online as they take place, or the cold, bemused expression of the killer. There are closeups and inserts of images that are designed to be revolting, but the movie does hold back more than I expected, albeit less than I would have liked.

As for the rest of the movie, it's an uneven police procedural with both its fair share of nice touches and ludicrous moments. It was shot in Portland, Oregon, so there's lots of wonderful scenery, unique locations, and interesting cityscapes that you wouldn't have gotten shooting in an over-used location like L.A., New York, or even here in Vancouver.

The film does get preachy at times, and its message is weakened by hypocritically showing the kind of violence it claims to loathe. It also relies on too many Hollywood clichés, such as when the killer deliberately taunts the investigators and eventually targets the woman in charge of the case.

On the plus side, the killer unexpectedly chooses men as his first three victims, which goes against the conventions of the genre, thereby making those scenes a little less tacky, and when the connection between the victims is finally discovered, I found the revelations quite clever and intriguing. And the basic premise - the more hits the killer's website gets, the faster his victims die, thereby making web surfers complicit in the crime - had great potential.

Diane Lane's performance keeps the film grounded in reality, and Billy Burk does nice work as the local cop assigned to the case. The fact they don't immediately fall into bed together makes this a better movie than it might have been, and the personal lives of the characters are handled in a way that's emotionally honest.

But the killer's increasingly elaborate torture devices become a bit silly, which may be why I didn't find them as disturbing as something more plausible, ie. a sick bastard with a big knife. And the way the killer finally ensnares his first female captive is laughable. He's supposed to be a technological wizard, but his expertise in that sequence completely destroyed the film's already thin credibility.

This genre is one I haven't paid much attention to for years now, and since seeing David Fincher's brilliant Zodiac several times this year, I think any movie that spends this much time focused on the bloody exploits of a brilliant sadistic killer will seem tacky and exploitative by comparison. So, all in all, Untraceable is a decent, occasionally formulaic and somewhat passé serial killer movie with moments of true inspiration, improved greatly by Diane Lane's performance and the fresh look of its locations.

See this movie if you liked: Kiss The Girls, Hannibal




PS - I can't remember which site I saw this on, but I read movie reviews somewhere that required the reviewer to list their biases to help readers better understand where the reviewer is coming from and if they're likely to react the same way. I think that's a brilliant innovation in the world of movie reviews, so I'll do the same thing now and in any future movie reviews I post here.

Biases
The Reviewer Likes: Diane Lane, rain-swept vistas, kittens
The Reviewer Hates: Blood and guts, recycled plot devices, doing laundry

James Bond Will Return In... Quantum of Solace?!?!?!

The title is taken from one of a collection of short stories published by 007 creator Ian Fleming in 1960.

Um... really? This is not a hoax, or a journalistic blunder? This is the actual title for the next James Bond movie? Really?

I'm thinking Bond 22 would have looked better on a marquee.

On the plus side, I probably won't confuse this new film with any of the other Bond flicks the way I did with last few Brosnan efforts, The World Never Dies Another Day and Tomorrow Is Not Enough.

Another plus is that I already have a good title for my review of the film, should I write one...

"Quantity Of Suckage".

If the movie turns out to be good, I'll just have to find a way to make that title fit.

Quantum Of Solace... Really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

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Past And Future Rip-Offs In NBC's Heroes

After getting off to an outstanding start, Heroes wasn’t able to deliver much of anything in the latter half of the first season. The series peaked right around the time Peter saved the cheerleader, and everything afterwards seemed anti-climactic. It was obviously stalling for time after shooting its wad too early, sending its heroes on one side-quest after another while trying to justify the lull by arguing about semantics, i.e. “Maybe it was ‘Save the cheerleader, then save then world’.” And even though the series was still good at creating cliffhangers, the payoffs were never as good as the setups, and each episode ultimately left me feeling disappointed. The writing seemed to suffer because of the assembly-line approach dictated by network television in America, and perhaps the biggest sign of the show’s decline was all the recycled story ideas.

The premise itself is a blatant rip-off of the X-Men combined with the realistic approach of M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, but it worked in the beginning. Most of the powers displayed by the heroes are familiar comic book archetypes, but even that was forgivable because the actors were all fresh faces and the writing was so sharp. As the series progressed, it began to incorporate elements from other sources, so the following article lists some examples of other people's ideas that have already worked their way into the show, and other possible story lines Heroes might rip off/pay homage to in the future.

• The X-Files - One of the ultimate cult classics on TV, it started out as a compelling series where each individual episode stood on its own as a terrific little horror story. But then the series got bogged down in the alien invasion plot and the machinations of the mysterious group of rich white men who were manipulating events from the shadows. Heroes has its own group of rich white men with unlimited resources and an interest in the paranormal, represented by Mr. Bennet's former employer, the Company. And Bennet himself started out as a mysterious villain known only to the heroes as "The Man With The Horn-Rimmed Glasses" which seemed like an homage to William B. Davis' "Cigarette Smoking Man".
• The Watchmen - Considered one of the greatest stories in the history of comic books, Heroes has beaten Hollywood to the punch by stealing several ideas from this iconic Alan Moore story before Hack Snyder (300) could bring his version to the big screen. Both stories have two generations of heroes, a mysterious killer hunting the retired crime-fighters, and the villain's plot in the Watchmen was more or less the same as Linderman's nefarious idea to unite people through a shared tragedy. (Side question: instead of manipulating Peter's entire life to turn him into a human bomb that destroys New York, wouldn't it have been much easier to build an actual bomb?)
• The Lord Of The Rings - Sauron only had one evil eye to watch Frodo with, but apart from that this new unseen villain haunting Molly's dreams is a lazy knock-off of the Dark Lord of Mordor. I can't imagine anything much more obvious than that spooky voice telling Molly "I can see you". It's like the writers aren't even trying to hide their influences any more.
• Star Wars – What was the purpose of Nathan’s vision of his scarred visage in barroom mirror during the season two premiere? Anything would be better than that ridiculous beard, but I suspect this was more than just an expression of his inner desire to try a new look. I’ll bet that something in the future will leave Nathan hideously scarred – perhaps a tragic shaving accident – and this will lure Nathan over to the dark side where he becomes some sort of masked, heavy-breathing Darth Vaderesque villain, bitter from losing the election and hell-bent on seizing power any way possible.
• Star Trek – After the stunt casting of George Takei and Nichelle Nichols, it’s apparent that someone on the creative team is an original series era Trekkie. So how long will it be before some of Gene Roddenberry’s concepts start working their way into this increasingly derivative show? Probably not long. Maybe Matt Parkman’s abilities will evolve to the point where he can perform mind melds. Maybe once the heroes finally decide to don uniforms they’ll be brightly coloured and made of velour. Hayden Panettiere in an ultra-miniskirt would be a real ratings boost for sure. But my money is on a more obvious choice – the Eugenics Wars. For the uninitiated, that's shorthand for humans vs. the genetically enhanced in all all-out war for world supremacy. Substitute “mutants” for “genetically enhanced” and it’s a perfect fit. Plus it would double up as yet another idea inspired by the X-Men. Of course, the show won’t actually deliver a war. There’ll just be a lot of talk about it without either side ever taking any action. An all-out war is something the budget could never handle, so the writers will probably just give us the familiar tease without the climax.
• Spider-Man – He’s the biggest superhero of them all, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of the web-slinger working its way into the show somehow. Isaac Mendez selling paintings of the heroes was already sort of similar to Peter Parker's day job at a photographer. Also, take Peter Petrelli’s first name plus Matt Parkman's last name and what do you have? Grounds for a lawsuit, that's what. Plus, both characters have a lot in common with the Marvel Comics archetype of an everyman hero, but Peter/Parkman’s powers are already well-established, so there’s another way they’ll have to go to make this work. You’ve already got a scientist (Dr. Suresh) and an apartment filled with insects (cockroaches) so throw in some radiation and bingo – Cockroach Man! Sure, it sounds absurd, but people hate spiders almost as much as they hate cockroaches, so everyone thought Stan Lee was crazy too.
• Batman– Number two on the Hollywood Superhero power list, and an obvious source for inspiration, if you can call stealing inspiration. I laughed out loud when Claire’s new season two love interest introduced himself as West, as in Adam, so I wondered if he’d turn out to be the son of wealthy parents who were killed before his eyes, but instead it turns out dude can fly, so who knows where they’re going with that. In any case, West is the stupidest first name for a television character since Fox, as in Mulder. Maybe Mr. Bennett will get tired of being some powerless sissy, don a utility belt, and start fighting crime under the shadow of darkness.
• The Seven Samurai – With Hiro in 17th century Japan, this one is practically inevitable. The main questions are how blatant will the rip-off be, will any of the fanboys even recognize such an old school reference, and will this rip-off include a subsidiary rip-off of…
• The Princess Bride – As soon as Hiro’s childhood idol turned out to be a phony, I expected to see some Dread Pirate Roberts action. It’s already going in that direction, with the Englishman using locals to do his bidding while pretending to be Tazeko Kensei, so I suspect Hiro will assume the identity of the famous samurai, save the village, win the girl, solve the mystery of the fire swamp, then, once the name of Takezo Kensei has been redeemed, he’ll pass on the mantle to some young Japanese warrior, telling him that the name is what strikes fear into the hearts of villains, not the man, yada, yada, yada, it’s all been done before, and then Hiro will teleport off to somewhere else cool. Maybe some place with pirates.
• Pirates Of The Caribbean - Pirates are hot right now, and much cheaper to shoot than giant transforming robots, and since the producers of this show seem shameless enough to give the fanboys what’s worked before, this wouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
• Office Space – Mr. Bennet’s story arc in the season two premiere seemed to be a one-off copy of the hero’s crappy day job and annoying boss in The Incredibles, but maybe they’ll stick with this for a while and show Bennet going ape on a fax machine. Unlikely though, since the HRG as Assistant Manager subplot was already wrapped up in a neat little clichéd bow.
• Night Gallery – You could make a case that Isaac’s paintings were a rip-off of Night Gallery from the very beginning, but they were an important part of the show’s visual appeal – and much cheaper than actual FX – so I was quite surprised when Hiro wasn’t able to somehow save Isaac. True, Santiago Cabrera was the worst actor on the show, but that doesn’t mean the paintings have to cease. Peter absorbed Isaac’s powers, so hopefully he found the time to produce some artwork during the hiatus. And since Mohinder’s voice-overs are already a familiar part of the opening of each episode, you could always have him walk through a darkened room full of Isaac’s paintings while delivering that painful exposition and smoking a cigarette.
• Desperate Housewives – I was surprised when Mrs. Bennett turned out to still be a part of the series when she showed up at the dinner table. I had assumed that she’d been written off the show, just like Matt’s wife, Nathan's wife, Claire’s friend Zach, and all the other characters who had simply disappeared when the producers no longer felt like paying their salaries. If Mrs. Bennet is still around, there must be a reason for it beyond the constant obsessive dog-owner jokes that were explored so completely in Best In Show. She’s no Eva Longoria, but she’s not much older or uglier than Felicity Huffman, so expect to see a shirtless swarthy poolboy or a handsome man trapped in a sexless marriage to appear in the neighbourhood before sweeps week. As for Claire's brother who did nothing but nod and mumble one line in the season two premiere – he’s dead meat. Unless he’s some network executive’s nephew, I expect his character to be killed off ASAP. Either that or he’s got nothing better to do and he’ll keep showing up at short notice each week to be little more than a glorified extra. Good career path.
• Three Men And A Little Lady – You’ve already got Matt Parkman and Dr. Suresh taking care of Molly. And now that George Takei’s character is out of the picture, Ando suddenly finds himself jobless and storyless. What good is a sidekick without a hero to suck up to? I can see Ando moving in with Matt and Suresh while the three of them bicker and make one hilarious blunder after another while trying to raise poor Molly, who turns out to be more of an adult than any of the grown-ups, ‘natch. Throw in a wacky neighbour and you’ve got a sitcom classic in the making. And speaking of neighbours, I know Eden is dead, but that doesn’t have to mean she’s dead dead. She’s too cute to stay killed, and since credibility is no longer an issue on this show, I say bring her back. It could be Three Men, A Ghost, And A Little Lady. I smell an Emmy. Well, maybe a Golden Globe.
  

I didn't go back and rewatch the entire first season before writing this post, so feel free to let me know about any recycled ideas I may have missed. And despite all my whining, I still think that season one of Heroes is very much worth having on DVD, even if you wind up throwing away the final disc. I wouldn't have bothered writing a post like this if I hadn't enjoyed the beginning of the series so thoroughly, which lead to my disappointment when the show fell so far so fast. And I wouldn't have bothered watching the season two premiere if I hadn't been hoping for the best while expecting the worst. "I broke history" was a great line, and one which actually seemed original to me, so that offered a tiny glimmer of hope in an otherwise ho-hum episode. I'll probably keep watching now that I've got the griping out of my system. The show is the only thing on TV I watch these days, and it's become somewhat of a habit. Hopefully it'll return to its former glory.

Post-catum Depression

Grief can make people do strange things. Things they would never normally do. Things they later regret. Last night, while mourning the loss of my furry friend, Suzy, I did something I’m not proud of. I went to see Ghost Rider.

Now before you call the local mental health authorities, let me explain. I had to get out of the apartment because I’d been sitting around all day wallowing in pain. Everywhere I look in this place I see something that reminds me of Suzy. I couldn't swing a dead cat in here without hitting something that reminds me of my dead cat. I spilled some muffin crumbs on the carpet yesterday, and when I grabbed the vacuum cleaner I immediately teared up when I thought about how Suzy hated that machine even more than I do. On the rare occasions when I did vacuum, Suzy would immediately scurry away and hiss angrily if I came anywhere near her with it. I’m sure it would irk her to no end to know that her mortal enemy had out-lasted her.

Anyway, I figured that the best way to feel better in the short term would be get out of the apartment and distract myself with a movie. I didn’t want anything serious or emotionally resonant, so that eliminated Pan’s Labyrinth or Zodiac, which would have been the sort of thing I’d normally see, but emotionally fragile children or grieving families was not at all what I needed. If ever there was a time for escapist entertainment, this was it.

Nicolas Cage and Peter Fonda realize they have a lot in common.
First and foremost - a need to fire their agents.

Long story short, Ghost Rider was drivel. Utter and absolute twaddle. And exactly what I needed.

This is the kind of movie where Sam Elliot tells Nicolas Cage he’ll be safe in the graveyard because the demons who’re after him can’t enter hallowed ground. Then, ten minutes later, where do we see those same demons? In a church.

This is the kind of movie that never stops to ask why exactly does the devil need a bounty hunter anyway?

This is the type of movie where the stunningly gorgeous Eva Mendes pines for a decade over her childhood sweetheart, then drops everything to take a chance on him again when he re-appears in her life. We see her waiting in a restaurant in a low-cut dress which would make the hair in Nicholas Cage’s toupee stand on end. And yet, when he doesn't show up she acts like an insecure pre-teen girl, grabs the nearest waiter and asks him “You think I’m pretty, right?” I mean, WTF?!?!?! And if that wasn’t absurd enough, the waiter responds to her question with an indifferent shrug that implies she’s nothing special to look at. I would have walked out of the theatre at that point under normal circumstances.

Eva Mendes comes to the shocking realisation that she is appearing in the movie Ghost Rider.

It feels good to be thinking about this sort of trivial crap instead of mourning the loss of my faithful fuzzy companion. If I start to feel too sad at any point this weekend, I think I’ll go see Wild Hogs. That should fill me with enough film snob indignation to carry me until Easter.

"What's my motivation?
Oh wait, I just remembered. It's money."

The Five Stages Of Grief

1. Denying you went to see Ghost Rider
2. Anger over paying to see Ghost Rider
3. Bargaining to get your money back after watching Ghost Rider
4. Depression after watching Ghost Rider
5. Accepting that you wasted two hours of your life on Ghost Rider

Halloween Special: Exorcist Outtakes

Any list of the greatest horror films of all-time would have to include the Exorcist at or very close to the top of the list. But like any movie, it would have been much different if certain choices hadn't been made in the editing room. Today's article will take a look at some of those deleted scenes, a few of which have been restored in recent years, but many of which have been lost forever.

The most infamous deleted scene from the Exorcist was the fabled "Spider Walk" sequence wherein the possessed Regan walks down the stairs on all fours, her spine twisted horribly, and then scuttles across the floor with a lizard-like tongue flicking in and out of her mouth.


The merit of this sequence has been debated by the film's fans for years, even before it was restored in the expanded version of the movie released a few years ago. Personally, I think the sequence holds up reasonably well, and probably would have been very chilling back in 1973.

But what most fans don't know is that there was an alternate version of this scene where, instead of doing the "Spider Walk", Regan performs a Chicken Dance, much to her mother's horror. Sadly, footage of this version has never surfaced. Pity.


Demons In Iraq? Too Obvious

Another little-known cut revolved around Father Merrin, played by Max Von Sydow.

The version of the film released to theatres begins with a long sequence featuring Father Merrin in Iraq on an archaeological dig. But the studio felt this lengthy prologue would test the audience's patience since the movie was marketed as a horror film about a little girl possessed by the devil, not as a movie about an old man sifting through the dirt in the Middle East. So, at the studio's request, Friedkin shot an alternate opening with a much younger Father Merrin in rural Japan, learning martial arts and saving a village from a horde of angry demons. Some hand to hand combat was then added to the the exorcism sequence in Regan's bedroom, but those were eventually cut since Friedkin deliberately shot the martial arts sequences in a campy, overblown fashion and the studio eventually agreed that the Iraqi sequence could stay. Friedkin has kept the Japanese footage under lock and key threatening to sue anyone who makes it available to the public, but this rare still has surfaced in recent years...

Father Merrin, about to deliver a vicious karate chop

The Sexorcist?

The studio also decided during the editing stage that the film could use a little sex to jazz things up, so it was suggested that Friedkin shoot a sequence showing Father Damian Karras' mother sucking co**s in hell. Friedkin wisely refused, so the task was handed over to Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione, who would later draw upon this experience when adding explicit sex scenes to Caligula after the original director had already finished his cut. Mercifully, none of Guccione's footage shot for the Exorcist can be found today.


Captain How'd He Do That?

One of the more chilling images in the Exorcist has to be Captain Howdy, a disturbing manifestation of the demon which appears almost subliminally, appearing out of the darkness in quick shots during various dream sequences. But despite the lasting impact of this makeup creation, it wasn't William Friedkin's first choice.

During the initial stages of pre-production, the makeup department created a truly repulsive version of Captain Howdy which Friedkin showed to various test audiences prior to the film's release. The audience reacted with such horror that many of them fainted or got up and left the theatre. Those who stayed left comments about about Captain Howdy like "disgusting", "repulsive", "I love to be scared, but that freakish, pale white face went too far." The studio agreed. Friedkin was asked to tone down the Captain Howdy makeup, and the memorable image of Captain Howdy as we know him was created. And now, for the first time ever, The Thinking Man's Idiot has obtained a still image of the original Captain Howdy which was deemed too horrific for mass consumption. Read on if you dare.

Captain Howdy, as seen in the Exorcist

The original Captain Howdy

If that doesn't keep you up nights, nothing will.

Classic Cinematic Captions

I'm not saying my captions are classic (that's for the readers to decide) and they're hardly cinematic either. They're just plain text on a white background. Not exactly Lawrence Of Arabia in Cinemascope. But I'm sure you know what I mean.



"Greetings, Earthlings. I come to you in the spirit of peace from the galaxy Andromeda. I bring you wondrous new technologies that will enable you to end world hunger, travel to distant star systems, eliminate all pollution, and end your reliance on fossil fuels. But first, does anybody have a towel? I'm sweating like a motherf**ker in this suit."







"A monolith, huh? We had something similar on our planet. For us, it was more hydrant-shaped. Taught our ancestors how to use a can opener. Things were never the same after that."






"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife...
YOU DAMN DIRTY APES!!!"

More Thoughts On Mel – Plus Another Movie Pitch

I honestly didn’t expect a mini-controversy (see below) to erupt over my Mel Gibson blog entry, but in retrospect, it’s not that surprising. Any time you mock someone who’s beloved by millions, especially when religion is involved, you’re bound to take some heat for it, and I’m okay with that. My only regret in all this is that it brought up some bad memories of Stuart Adamson, a personal hero of mine, who also battled alcoholism.

For those who don’t know, Stuart was the leader of Big Country, the Scottish rock group best known for their debut album The Crossing and hit singles like In A Big Country, Fields Of Fire, Look Away, Chance, and Wonderland.

Late in life, Stuart suffered a relapse and was charged with drunk driving in Florida. Shortly afterwards, he went missing for nearly a month, and was eventually found dead in a Honolulu motel room where he had hung himself. His blood alcohol level at the time of his death was 0.279 percent. The legal limit for driving is 0.08 percent.

It hadn’t occurred to me that jokes about Mel Gibson’s drunk driving would trigger memories of Stuart’s darkest hour when I posted a link on the Big Country website, and for that I apologize to Stuart’s fans and anyone who knew him. It still pains me to think about that dark period in Stuart’s life. I honestly never thought about Stuart while writing that post.

With that being said, I still think drunk driving and reckless driving in general is a horrible thing to do, and people should be held accountable for their actions. If Stuart had lived, I would have expected him to serve whatever jail time the judge deemed appropriate, and I would have hoped he’d get the help he needed to battle his demons. The same goes for Mel Gibson. Since he means nothing to me personally, I chose to express myself through jokes, or attempts at such. If Mel Gibson’s fans were upset, remember that he brought it on himself, and I’m hardly the only one joking about it.

One reason for my post was to remind people that alcohol is a drug that’s every bit as dangerous as illegal drugs like heroin or cocaine. It’s extremely addictive, it can ruin your entire life, it can make you do things you’ll regret for the rest of your life, and you can overdose from it or die from accidents related to alcohol. Worst of all, you might kill someone else. So when someone as famous as Mel Gibson screws up publicly because of alcohol, non-celebrities like me have a chance to make their voices heard on the subject.

When famous people do anything, the average Joe pays attention. If a normal person had done what Mel did, it would have shown up on the police blotter in a Malibu paper and that would have been the end of it. If a non-celebrity had done what Mel Gibson did and killed someone – a very real possibility – it would have been headline news in Malibu for a few days, but the rest of the world wouldn’t have heard a thing about it. But when Mel Gibson gets arrested for driving drunk, the world suddenly pays attention. That’s where people like me come in.

If celebrities who drive drunk are publicly mocked and sufficiently punished by the legal system for their crimes, it just might cause a few people out there to think twice about getting behind the wheel after they’ve had a few, and that’s a good thing. If young people realize that alcohol can make them do incredibly stupid things in the short term and destroy their lives in the long term, they may not even drink in the first place, and that’s a very good thing. If Mel Gibson had never touched a drop in his life, he wouldn’t be going through what he’s going through now. And I sincerely believe that if Stuart Adamson had not been seduced by the glamour of alcohol as a young man, he’d still be with us today writing wonderful songs like this…

"Devil In The Eye"
(Stuart Adamson/Ray Davies)

Take a little care
When you put your lips
To her long cool neck
One kiss will be too much
A hundred not enough
Treat her with respect

If I could tell this to you
Would you believe it was true
You might just laugh I expect
And say you feel sophisticated
Confident and ready for the next

Has no time for modesty
Doesn't care for honesty
Deals in broken promises
Will spell you with her lies

Has no time for modesty
Doesn't care for honesty
Deals in broken promises
Will look the devil in the eye

You'll be the class fool
A perfect asshole
You'll be the guy in control
And make decisions
Based on derision
And wake up deep in a hole

Wishing the ground would
Open beneath you
Enough to swallow you whole
So you don't have to face the wreckage
You left scattered from the night before

Has no time for modesty
Doesn't care for honesty
Deals in broken promises
Will spell you with her lies

Has no time for modesty
Doesn't care for honesty
Deals in broken promises
Will look the devil in the eye

You will be dazzled by
The pictures she will paint
Colours she will bring
And feel so safe and warm
Far away from harm
Wrapped up in her wings

And slowly drift through the day
Letting it all slip away
Without a care in the world
And wake up in a cold sweat
Screaming for her touch to ease your troubled soul

Has no time for modesty
Doesn't care for honesty
Deals in broken promises
Will spell you with her lies

Has no time for modesty
Doesn't care for honesty
Deals in broken promises
Will look the devil in the eye
Will look the devil in the eye

Now if I could get back to Mel Gibson for a minute, I find it unfortunate that the media is choosing to focus on Mel’s alleged anti-Semitic remarks. As vile as racism is, it’s not a crime. Drunk driving is. It’s a very serious crime, and the focus on the alleged statements downplays the gravity of the crime that we know was committed. If what he supposedly said turns out to be true, he should be tried in the court of public opinion, but he should also carry the stigma of being a drunk driver every where he goes.

Also, I’ve heard people say, “He’s already apologized. Can’t we just leave it at that?”

Hell, no!

First of all, his apology was probably as much a callous business move as it was an act of genuine remorse. The apology was released by Mel Gibson’s publicist, whose top priority is to make sure Mel Gibson’s image is not tarnished by this arrest. There’s an excellent chance the apology was written by the publicist, or a crack team of highly-paid damage control experts, in consultation with the legal department, of course. Maybe Mel had a chance to approve the final copy before it was released to the media, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the apology was already being worked on by Mel’s “people” while their meal ticket was still stewing in the drunk tank.

As far as I’m concerned, his “apology” is meaningless.

If Mel Gibson is genuinely remorseful about what he’s done, here’s what he should do – use his vast financial resources to fund a movie about the potential horrors associated with drunk driving. Given his penchant for slow-motion cinematic violence, I bet he could come up with something sufficiently disgusting to make sure a lot of people never make the same mistake he made this past weekend. I even have a title for him… “Blood On The Highway”. And if he needs a failed screenwriter to come up with a script, he knows where to find me.

Here I am, less than week into my blog’s existence, and I’ve already wavered from the idea that this would simply be an outlet for my attempts at comedy. I guess that’s okay, but don’t expect all my posts to be as serious-minded as this one. I’m sure my next post will be nothing but a bunch of goofy jokes without an ounce of substance. At least, I hope so. Being silly is much easier.