Wordschat blog on Livejournal

Hi all:

Again slow at writing reviews of late. We just discuss them so much in person that there's nothing else to share in print. That I've been busy meeting people in the real world and relaxing after work so not always in writing mode.

For sake of brevity:
2012 - 2 stars
- It's three years from now, movie felt like it ran 3 years. Even for a disaster flick (genre I love) you can only suspend reality so far. This was ludicrous.

Planet 51 - 4 stars
I loved it. Turns the 50s cold war alien movie genre on its ear. The human's are the scary aliens to a Earth like reacting planet of aliens, Great 50s music, cute aliens for the kids. Heard a lot of laughing from them and from myself in recognition of the jokes for kids and the well used movie and pop culture references for adults. The animation was very good.

Now as for etiquette I was pleased at how polite a gentleman with two kids and lady friend in seats in front us moved two seats to the right to NOT block our view. They came in about 10 minutes before the film start and did what 99% of people don't do. He cared that he not block people who come in before them. Well done! As for other bozos that moved around several times, well I wont swear in print.

Finally today a little true life humour. After the Canadian Thanksgiving dinner I left the dinner table and the pic below is what I saw. Some bits and bytes for desert? This was not a set up. All Windows laptops surfing wirelessly the web. Gates would be so thankful :)

BTW the decision by coincidence to switch back to the Mac came a week later.

Switch gears figuratively and literally computer wise. After hanging up the Macbook Pro for over a year I've dusted it off just as I was going to try to sell it or give it away to a family member. Given the cost of it originally and the software upgrades verses the PC I thought with the roll of OS 10.6 Snow Leopard operating system and the updates to iLife and iWork that I'd see if the Mac would do what I want faster, easier and with more fun cool factor. One thing that I've always wanted to do easily with good results but couldn't with Windows software was slideshows. Seems simple but isn't. Crappy fades, can't get music to work right, can't save it right. With these upgrades in mind I looked at tutorials and MacLife magazine then went to an Apple Store and in 5 minutes saw iphoto09 do what I wanted. I've since bought the upgrades, installed easily with the great advice from their staff and I'm on the go. The Lexmark all-in-one printer is another matter. A known bug that Lexmark refuses to fix so far has us people scanning photos, documents doing it in more steps to get around the bug. You don't know it's their bug and not your product knowledge that is the culprit till you Google the problem. It would make too much freaking sense to put this near 100% user affected bug in the Read Me of drivers update package. That bug is to scan to TIFF and then convert to JPEG. The Lexmark software embeds s colour profile making jpeg format unreadable when creating the file that most will import into iphoto so TIFF it then convert it.

 Hi all:

I haven't written many movie reviews lately as we've been discussing them pretty much at the time in person. Also I've been seeing some by myself. I don't know if it's the in between time from summer blockbusters to fall Oscar contenders but I've seen what I feel are a lot of mediocre at best 3 star movies lately. They just don't live up to the hype or end how I don't believe it should which ticks me off. Here's these barely 3 stars in question.

Amelia
Richard Gere does a better job acting than Hillary Swank. Her Amelia Earhart sounds more like Katherine Hepburn from Golden Pond "you old poop".  I loved that A.O Scott of the New York times said the same thing on At the Movies which I saw AFTER seeing the movie. Ewan McGregor with whom she has an affair doesn't do much. It's a good bio pic but not fantastic. Swank will likely get her 2nd undeserved Oscar nomination. I know people loved Million Dollar Baby. Guess what I didn't!

Cairo Time
This film could have been subtitled "Brought to you byTourism Egypt"
Simon and Garfunkel sang "give me those nice bright colours, give me those greens of summers. Makes all the world seem like a bright summers day. Give me that Nikon camera, I want to take a photograph so mama don't take my Kodachrome away". This was a love affair  of the sights, sounds and people of Cairo Egypt. This is the background done lovingly as a character just as "Paris Je T'aime" did. However the stories in Paris Je T'aime we interesting vignettes. The feature length story here is wafer thin, predictable and has about as much sweetness.
If Patricia Clarkson the lead was any more sweet, smiling and giddy she'd be a poster girl for Pepsodent.  Nice movie to look at but yawn....

Flame and Citron
A true story about Danish resistance fighters against the Nazis. Their nicknames: one a red head, the other drives a Citron car was a face paced who done it, cat a mouse game. In the end according to true life both die but the manner in which one dies seemed against his character. I should look up and see if this aspect was changed. I lost respect for him. Can't fault the movie. Am I faulting his history?

A Serious Man
The Coen Brothers bring a circa 1960s story of a man whose life is falling apart.  He is Jewish, his wife is having an affair and wants a divorce, his son is studying for his BarMitzvah, his kids bicker, his brother has troubles and he has issues where he is a professor. True life I guess with a lot of dark humour. It had me going as finally a sleeper hit till the end. Where'd it go? Did they leave out the last pages of script?

That's it for the movie round-up. I still put District 9 as one of the best and original features I've seen for ages.  As for TV, two new series have better drama and stories than most of the above. CBS had Three Rivers a medical drama with high tech graphics and the soul of St. Elsewhere. ABC has FlashForward an X-Filesish drama about a 2.5 minute blackout and jump forward for the world. As Scrooge asked 'are these visions of what is or can be?"

 Hi again:

The second theatre outing in 24 hours brings Alex and I to the National Arts Centre for the New cast touring revival of A Chorus Line. We all the know the story, a musical about the casting of the cast for a musical. We see the cattle call then see in song, dance and spoken word the stories of what makes the individuals tick. Zach wants those stories to get the feel for emotion and depth an singer, dancer, actor, actress can bring to the musical he is mounting. This new cast brings the power of dance and voice to memorable numbers like What I did for love, Dance Ten Looks Three, and One. The story of Cassie is strong and the story of Paul moves me to near tears.  Joey Dudding is but one of several to play the role of Paul in the new cast. Thanks to Internet Movie Database I looked up who played Paul in the documentary about A Chorus Line called "Every Little Step". Jason Tam was one of the actors who tried out and got the part which he played in 2006. His Paul did bring tears to the producers and the audience when I saw it at the Bytowne a couple months ago. He is now on TV in "One Life to Live". If you enjoyed A Chorus Line you must pick up "Every Little Step" to learn the creative process and the real audition process that is this musical theatre classic.

One downside to the NAC production is the limitation of the width of the stage. As with Cats and Showboat that I've seen staged at the NAC the stage is a tad small. For these productions you could see the extreme stage left and right were squeezed. In the final chorus the actors at both ends were nearly in the wings. It's fortunate that the sight lines are excellent at the NAC to take all in.

A solid musical that sets the bar high. Rating 4 stars



 

 Hi all:

Next few weeks are busy with several plays and musicals at or commissioned by the National Arts Centre. The first seen Friday evening in the pleasant company of Bill and Clayton was a marvellous play that wowed Broadway a few years ago called The Drowsy Chaperone. written by Canadian Don McKeller whose credits include Last Night and the overlooked Twitch City. The musical, play within a play has a 50s gentleman relaxing in his easy chair. He muses aloud to the audience about a favourite musical of his a 1928 farce of love and gangsters, of hoofers and starlets. He then proceeded to put the cast recording - on vinyl record of course on the player and we're transported to the musical. His on and off again commentary as we go in and out of the musical is full of pop culture references to today and of the past. They are also very perceptive of why we the audience seek out the musicals and the arts as an escape to the land of fancy, free and gay (as he says happy not today's meaning which is fine too). 

The musical part is full of farce. There is a show stopper tap dance sequence early on, a hilarious spit take routine and the tale of the actress giving up the show to get married leaving the hapless show producer in dire straits with the bumbling pun filled gangsters is pure delight. Don't forget the Latin lover and the boozy chaperone of the title. 

A fine evening, a charming, very funny and yes thoughtful comedy, musical, play.

Rating 4 stars

In a few words: intelligent, interesting visuals and action, good acting  - Rating 3.5 stars

Our group of five were impressed with this intelligent story of a maybe a not too distant future where people live through robot alternate versions of themselves. Rather than go out and live their lives interacting with real people the vast majority of people plug in to virtual reality and have robots do the living.often as enhanced versions of themselves . Unlike the Matrix where people didn't know they were plugged in; here they do so by choice. Things begin to unravel and Bruce Willis' cop character tries to solve what is going on. This makes for high tech police work, fast chases and high action. What raises the bar here is the real questions the film poses, questions of line between leisure internet and gaming verses addiction to it and hiding from reality. Questions of dealing with life in general, of learning social interaction skills and of what really makes us human. Sci-fi is great at that. Like District 9 earlier this year this film hopefully with make you think long after you've been entertained. Ingenious that truly good dramas and literature can do both.

LAME you're a pale imitation of the original Fame movie and the 1980s TV show that came after.

This 2009 version of kids trying to make it at New York's High School for the Performing Arts seems to be trying to be a merger of a Chorus Line and the High School Musicals and succeeds at neither. Like them and  the original Fame movie, the TV series there are so many background stories to tell that shape the performer, actor, singers, dancers they hope to be. Gritty stories with heart, tears, hope, sadness, determination. Fame 2009 tries to go for it but just when it looks like we'll see some real honest story about a character it pulls back and goes for the easy tidy ending. 

As for the music it loses realism there as well.  While the lunch room and school look circa 1982 like the TV series many of the production numbers have the lighting and hi tech look taken right out of Baz Lehrman's Moulin Rouge.  The singing except for a soul singer are weak. One pairing on and on are so squeaking high pitched I was tempted to yell "Alvin!".

One classic Fame song is there and done beautifully so it's not a total loss however the title Fame song isn't done till the end credits and not again well.

I loved Fame and the TV series. Rent them,

Rating: 2 stars

Well it was a nice Saturday starting with Coffee chat plus plans to see hopefully two good movies. Well the company was good for the coffee chat and for the The Informant but the movies themselves were  not ......  read on


LOVE HAPPENS
Too bad a good movie didn't happen as well. The  talents of Jennifer Aniston,  Aaron Eckhart, Martin Sheen and a real find Dan Fogler can't save this saccharine laced story of motivational speaker - a close rip off of Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia. Eckart looks great, Aniston is attractive in her mousy way, Martin Sheen adds some humour and Dan Folger as Eckart's manager is the voice of reason. Problem is the script is manipulative and has as much depth a a dime store novel. It is like that soda you get at the candy counter. It's sweet as hell,  you like it  for the moment but 5 minutes after its' gone you've forgotten it.. Such as it is with this film.

Rating: 2 stars


THE INFORMANT
Matt Damon stars in yet another fact based story. Even though we get an epilogue at the end,  how much we see actually happened I don't know. He is a high upper in an agricultural firm. We learn there is is price fixing so the FBI get involved. We also learn there is embezzlement going on by Damon's character. None of this I've given away, it's all in the TV and movie previews. His character is so full of himself, so quirky. He goes off on these riffs of trivia as he daydreams when ignoring others. These are hilarious in  Damon's very capable hands. Those bits and his performance raises this barely to 3 stars. Scott Bakula as half of a bumbling FBI team is too light weight unbelievable and Marvin Hamish's score just gets annoying after awhile.

Reminder, feel free to add comments. You can also email me directly, just click on User Info or something like that in the menus.

Hi all:

No I'm not talking about Canadian Mike Myers often hilarious Saturday Night Live sketches where he plays Linda Richman (patterned after his own mother in law) who gets faklempt - upset and suggests a thought provoking topic to discuss while she pulls herself together. But that is a a good segue of commonality to the Saturday coffee group I go to. I've mentioned it once or twice before. A little group of gay men meeting for coffee every Saturday is growing. Today almost a dozen with 4 regulars missing. We're almost outgrowing the friendly coffee shop we go to. All good conversation going from light to heavy topics among the various chats going on at once. I pigged out well today with two cherry danishes, scrumptious. Like the Linda Richman sketch in reality we do laugh and often come away learning a few things too. Good people, good way to start a weekend.  Oh yes I do love my coffee crisp ..... joke from another thread.