DVDS
WAR INC (1.5 SPUDS)
THE BUCKET LIST (2 SPUDS)
DEATH DEFYING ACTS (2 SPUDS)
TV
THE US ELECTION (2 SPUDS)
KNOW YOUR SPUDS
TWO XL SPUDS — Absolute Must See
TWO SPUDS — Definitely Worth Checking Out
1.5 SPUDS—Worth Checking Out, But Don’t Expect A Ton
ONE SPUD – Not Worth It, Except For The Hardcore Fan
NO SPUD 4U – Just Plain Sucks
THE US ELECTION ( 2 SPUDS)
The weather is starting to cool down again, after the great Indian Summer we had last week. But that’s OK with me. It’s time. The damn Christmas commercials have cranked up in full force. What’s with these advertisers? Don’t they know we know it’s just 6 weeks till Christmas (4 when you get this). And good luck with trying to get people into the Christmas spirit this year. Dear Santa, please leave a mortgage I can afford under the tree. I blame advertising for a lot of the stuff that’s wrong in the world right now. Not just the kind of advertising that you see in the conventional media. The kind of advertising that brokers do when they want to get you to buy into oil futures and drive the price sky high. The kind of advertising your banks do to gently convince you that you need to own your own home and have equity and property and are willing to bend over backwards to make your mortgage happen…for the first few months and then wham…they hit you with reality. Spud Central is owned outright by the Wife and I and it took a lot of years to make that happen. But one thing we never did during all those years was miss a payment. We were religious about it. It was a matter of honour. And some months it was really tough. Some months we worried a lot. So I can sympathize with the plight of many people out there who, for whatever reason, are finding it hard to make ends meet.
I know we’re not feeling the same pressure here in Canada as our American neighbours.But if things keep going south down there, it’s only a matter of time before we start feeling it too.
It’s gotten so bad in the US that they have done something they seldom do, and might actually find it is a good solution to a lot of what ails that country. They’ve given Barack Obama a clear mandate, a strong majority in both houses, and they have wiped the Evil Asshole Bush right off the map. The most amazing paradox of our time is how governments, who are supposed to be making sure our society runs smoothly, are often the biggest impediment to that process. It makes you wonder if it wasn’t better when we all lived in family tribes and didn’t have so much crap to protect or people to look out for.
This US election is like nothing I have ever seen in politics. It became a complete force of nature, sweeping up everyone, not just in the US, but around the world. It’s the first time in the recent history of the world where a single election has garnered so much attention from just about everywhere. I was watching PBS the other night and they were showing clips from all over the place of people celebrating Obama’s victory. We’re talking China, Indonesia, Japan and even France here. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Call me skeptical or cynical but I never believed a black man would ever be president in my lifetime. But it comes at a great time in history. A time when being a person of colour puts you in the vast majority in the world community. A time when you can use that colour and the clout of your office to affect changes that an idiotic old white guy could never hope to affect.
The United States has allowed themselves to be led by a complete boob, an old school republican who turned a blind eye to just about every crisis that country has faced from 9/11 to Katrina to the Wall Street meltdown. He not only was nowhere to be seen when it came time to solving those problems, he was also a very busy boy creating new problems of his own. Problems none of us even knew we had. And for what? Well besides the general carpetbagging that most Republicans are historically famous for, my theory is that he was simply supporting his own family. You see, his dad, who used to be president and did the same sort of crap as his son, is now one of the world’s biggest weapons suppliers. Do the math…it’s not advanced calculus…it’s just perverted form of pork barrel spending.
I spent the last eight years seesawing back and forth from total disbelief to total disgust at what the leadership of the United States was doing to its own country. And now were seeing the effects of that bad management in just about every important sector of American life. People can’t afford their mortgages, because of unchecked banking practices. They can’t afford health care, because of old school republican thinking. Their investments are in the crapper because of Wall Street greed. Their auto industry is in deep doo doo and looking for a bail out because nobody wants to buy the gas guzzling behemoths they have been making, all because nobody in government gave a shit about the environment. Hundreds of great green business ideas are withering on the vine for the same reason. They are 10 trillion dollars in debt to China, who are just sitting there and waiting for the bottom to fall completely out. They have zero respect as a superpower around the world, cause they can’t win a war to save their asses. My God…has it ever been this hopeless down there. And how long will it take before this trickles north?
So what do we have. A tiny ray of hope named Barack Obama. The world was a lot smaller place when there was anyone who was this well known that wasn’t an athlete, movie star or capitalist trillionaire.
This dude really has his work cut out for him. And it’s going to be really interesting to see if he can pull it off. It’s also going to be yet another stern test for the American people, to see if they are willing to swallow the bitter pills that are part of the treatment required to fix all the stuff that’s wrong. This is, historically, where it all falls apart. Where the nano second attention span of the people starts to kick in, turning everything into yesterday’s news.
I pray, and so should we all, that this time will be different. That the Amercians who are so pumped, at the moment, will continue to be pumped long enough for Mr Obama to really get the job done.
DVDS
WAR INC (1.5 SPUDS)
This flick is a sequel of sorts to one of my favourite movies of all time, Grosse Point Blank, in which John Cusack plays a professional killer who has a contract in his home town at the same time as his high school reunion is happening. This movie is thriller comedy and it’s one the best ever put on film. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for this flick. While it is interesting and has more than its share of humour, its send up of US Imperialism is way over the top, and the characters all lose their grounding, which is the thing that tends to make these kinds of movies work. In this film, Cusak’s hit man has gone international, and has developed a whole bunch of new quirks as a result. For one thing, he carries around a small case full of burn your guts out hot sauces and drinks the stuff straight out of a shot glass. This is to evidently shock him out of the numbness he normally feels. The location is some ‘Stan’ country that has been ravaged by US might and the carpetbaggers have descended to rebuild the infrastructure and strip the country’s treasury in the process. War Inc. looks and feels like it could have been made in the seventies or eighties when it was, for some reason, OK to be over the top.
War Inc isn’t really all that bad. It’s just that it’s an ugly sibling to a real masterpiece and that makes it come off even shoddier by comparison.
THE BUCKET LIST (2 SPUDS)
This flick, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson as two geezers dying of various forms of cancer, isn’t anywhere near the comedy it was advertised to be. Sure there is some funny stuff here, but mostly it’s about two guys who are dying and determined (at least one of them), to go out with a bang. Jack plays a billionaire HMO tycoon and Morgan a working class mechanic who end up sharing the same hospital room, become friends. Then after their treatments are over and their death sentences pronounced, begin to trapse around the world doing all the things they wanted to do but never had time to up till now, hence the title.
There’s a lot of sad irony here. And a lot of really good acting. This story is touching and tweaks your heartstrings in a number of different ways. It’s a little manipulative in that regard. But then any communication that comes at you is manipulative if it’s doing its job.
There’s a certain amount of depressing-ness to this film, as you would expect, but these actors have such nobility that it doesn’t really make you feel sad or depressed. But it does make you think about life and all the unfinished symphonies you have on your own Bucket List.
I don’t really have a long list. I’ve never really sought or have been driven to achieve greatness in an iconic way. I’ve always believed that we’re here for a good time, not a long time and I am determined to enjoy life as much as I can. Writing this column, evidently, is one of my main sources of joy. I have no idea how many people are reading it. I do know that the people closest to me do, and that’s enough for me. I love writing lyrics, but don’t really care all that much if they get turned into hit songs or not. The joy is in the doing, just as it always has been.
Anyway, you can see that The Bucket List has brought out a little of the philosopher in me. Maybe you should check it out and see what it does for you.
DEATH DEFYING ACTS (2 SPUDS)
This movie was made in Scotland and stars Guy Pierce and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who are pretty big time A-List people. It’s a little slice of the life of the famous illusionist Harry Houdini. Guy Pierce plays Houdini as a boisterous and slightly manic superstar of his day, who was, for some reason, obsessed with getting into psychic contact with his dearly departed mother. He actually staged a contest where he would pay $10,000 to anyone who could tell him what his mom’s dying words were.
When he blows into Edinburgh, a resourceful con artist (Zeta-Jones) and her daughter glom onto this and con their way into Houdini’s life and, in Catherine’s case, bed.
It all makes for a very entertaining movie for both sexes, since neither Guy Pierce and Catharine Z-J are all that hard to look at. They have some very good chemistry together and that, coupled with an interesting story, great supporting players plus outstanding production values right across the board and you have yourself a very good evening’s entertainment.
Death Defying Acts has a lot of the same qualities of the Illusionist and The Prestige, which are both excellent period pieces as well as great stories.
Anyway. It’s Saturday afternoon. I’m sitting down in the Spud Central screening room watching Dirt…the excellent USA Network series starring Courtney Cox. The Wife is out doing some (early by guy standards) Christmas shopping with the Princess of Pain. I’m thinking about maybe planning for a day at some point in the future when I will head out and just nail it all down all at once. It’s a guy thing. The only trouble is that it only takes a couple of minutes from right about now till the first day back to work after New Years. I really like this time of year, but it just seems to go so damn quick. Doesn’t it?
See you next time.
